IMarv's mad mad world

Sharon went in for her every-other-week appointment today. She's had some extra swelling recently, and today, we discovered that Evan has "dropped" into the birthing position. The occasional contractions Sharon has been having are NOT Braxton-Hicks.

There is no time this week for a new Ultrasound, so it has been scheduled for next week. She is not on bed rest yet, but she isn't allowed to do anything.

I'm not sure he's going to wait for October at this point. According to the What to expect when you're expecting book, there's a 98% chance of him surviving if born this week.

We Bays just can't do anything in the normal fashion.

IMarv

When I'm asked if I want an extended warranty, I will take that as a retailer's concern for the quality of the product. I will then respond with "Are you that concerned with the quality of the product that you believe it requires additional protection? Perhaps I should reconsider my purchase. Thank you for warning me. I think I'll hold off on my purchase for now."

Then I'll attempt a price match somewhere else until I run out of stores, somebody gets a clue, or someone forgets to offer extra protection.

IMarv

Today, we got our 3D ultrasound. Check out the pictures of his face at http://www.imarvintpa.com/Imagery/v/Family/Boy2/Ultra3d/

In other news, Blake lost a battle vs a dresser on Monday. He's fine and looking much better today.

IMarv

The Congress has a very specific list of things that it can do, anything outside of that is illegal. Lets see if we can get any "Yes" answers from the list for federal health care.

Section 8 - Powers of Congress

• The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States
  • No. Common defense and general welfare refer to the union, not its people, so these taxes and duties cannot be used.
• To borrow money on the credit of the United States
  • No. At the rate we're going through our credit, this isn't going to be worth much. But this does not authorize health care.
• To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes
  • No, not really. This is for commerce that travels through borders, so I suppose any doctor providing care to a patient while each stands on a different side of a state border would apply, but I don't think it qualifies all doctors and patients.
• To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States
  • No.
• To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures
  • No.(BTW, it doesn't say print money either for a reason.)
• To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States
  • No.
• To establish Post Offices and Post Roads
  • No.
• To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries
  • No.
• To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court
  • No.
• To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations
  • No.
• To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water
  • No.
• To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years
  • No.
• To provide and maintain a Navy
  • No.
• To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces
  • No.
• To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions
  • No.
• To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress
  • No.
• To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings And
  • No.
• To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
  • No, since none of the former authorized health care.

Other than the 16th Amendment, no other powers have been granted to the Congress of the Federal government. And it is not for health care, just making it clearer (as mud) about Income Taxes.

So, please, tell me why this idea has any traction, and where's the constitutional amendment in the pipeline to do this?

I'm looking forward to being able to quit my job, renounce my citizenship, and have free health care (Obamacare), food (Food line), and housing (homeless shelter) in our wonderful country. It may not be of the same quality that I have now, but I'll be able to play WoW all day long, every day with my friends on my laptop using the public Wi-Fi.

Additionally, every bill that goes through congress needs to be checked against this checklist. And the majority of those bills fail.

IMarv

Here are the pictures, a little delayed.

http://www.imarvintpa.com/Imagery/v/Family/

IMarv

IMarv

We just got back from the 20th week ultrasound and our second child is a boy! Blake will be a Big brother to a Little brother. I'm quite excited!

Pictures will be posted once I get the scanner working again. They'll be at my gallery at http://www.imarvintpa.com/Imagery/main.php

IMarv

Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog

IMarv

I thought 4th Edition D&D came too soon. That could be forgivable.
I don't really like 4th Edition upon review. That could be forgivable, that is opinion.
You yanked Dungeons and Dragons magazines from Paizo. That's a hard pill to swallow.
Your new "open license" for 4th Edition sucks and was damaging to publishers using the old one. That is hurtful.
Now you've removed your PDF products from everybody with no notice.

I can no longer justify purchasing any WotC product. Thank god for Paizo's Pathfinder RPG and the other 3rd party 3rd edition continuations. I've been out of the M:tG for a long time, I'll try not to promote it at the library on game night either now.

Hasboro is next on the list, and I don't think that's too hard to do either.

IMarv

(I'd claim that WotC is doing this to cut off its nose to spite the face, but I fear the face has been missing its nose for a while.)

In two consecutive weeks in two different campaigns, two different players have gone temporarily hostile to the group's goals.

Last week, the party fighter, for greed, wanted to knock out or kill the gnome shopkeeper they were interrogating about missing children. He is hell bent on getting his Adamantine Large Great sword ASAP. He also wants his Rogue friend to do some pick pocketing to help accumulate the 3400gp needed for the weapon. Anyway, this shopkeeper was trying to be indirectly helpful, never hostile, and generally non-threatening. He wanted to knock him out and steal everything in the shop. Other members of the party explained to him that if you don't kill him, the shopkeeper could tell the guards that you/we did it! If you kill him, you've gone too far in what is needed to be done.

This week, the party rogue was next to the party monk when the sniping goblin shot arrow and knocked out the monk. He kept asking what's the nearest thing I can shoot, and we kept correcting him that he wants to shoot enemies. I pointed out the Monk as the nearest thing, and he announced that he was going to shoot him!
Well, 1d8+2d6 later, and the Monk was dead. (This was the Monk's second session of DnD here.)

Both characters are CN and their players claim that is why they can do it. For both of them, this is also their first Pen and Paper RPG. I put a halt to the first instance since it was about the 5 session for that game and had to explain that that kind of behavior spills over into player discontent and can cause a group to dissolve (I have a LG Monk character in the game, but the LG Cleric also helped). In the second campaign, I had no means of preventing it available, I have no characters in the game and we were in the middle of a big battle. There are also 9 players in the older campaign, so it can afford some shattering. The attacker and victim were also good friends.

How do I teach mutual support is better than random stupidity?

IMarv

Just to give some warm-fuzzy to users for my site.
The database for dndlive is exported nightly, gzipped, and e-mailed to me.

The web pages are backed up by being on my development machine.

DreamHosts' backup policy is here: http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Backup , but should something go wrong, that'll save me the time of fixing it myself. But they recommend having your own backup as well. (Upon closer inspection, I think their policy is pretty close to none.)

IMarv

http://www.imarvintpa.com/dndLive/ACharacter.php?ID=2

I still have a few bits of him and the character sheet to work out, but this is pretty.

IMarv

I've gotten a bunch done! It still doesn't do casters, and there are no menus to get to the existing classes or characters. But there is something to show for the time now!

http://www.imarvintpa.com/dndlive/ACharacter.php?ID=1

IMarv

Can a Kenyan be President.

(Although, had McCain won, we'd have a Panamanian for President.)

IMarv

Where do you see the economy in 2 months?

IMarv

In my insane state, all of the following are true:

The bible has been heavily edited for many purposes.
Reincarnation is real.
We choose to be here, and had a large influence on the events that transpire during our lives.
Our souls are playing a learning game called "Polarity Integration" in this universe on this planet. The goal isn't to be "Good" or "Bad" but "Compassionate Neutral". I have not learned what other games are available elsewhere.
Earth is a "Grand Experiment" which simply means we have free will. I am not certain what less than free will entails, but signs indicate that it is not Boolean.

We are entering the end of a major portion of game, and other enlightened beings are waiting to welcome us into this time and helping us get there.

The Illuminati and New World Order exist, and they are the dark cabal that are trying to prevent this enlightened time. They had extraterrestrial help, but recently that help has turned their backs on them by divine order, this reversal was from a previous order to cause darkness.

The interior of the Earth is hollow.

If you wish to be incarnate for the end of this major time, you need only make it to the end of 2012.

Free energy exists.

May you live during interesting times.

Chaotic Neutral for the WIN!

IMarv

A fine gentleman named Robert Kahre has caused a bit of a headache for the IRS. He paid his employees in silver and gold coins using their FACE value. Here's the article: http://www.liberty-watch.com/volume03/issue08/coverstory.php

Long and short of it, he, his employees, and customers got baked in the sun, then they (except customers) got fun in the legal system. The jury found them not guilty of 160 charges and hung on the remainder. The Feds are not sure they will retry the hung charges.

PS, as independent contractors earning less than the IRS minimum reporting salary, they paid no income tax.

IMarv

50 ODD Things about you! If you opened this, FILL IT OUT! Learn 50 things about your friends, and let them learn 50 things about you!

1) Favorite hobby? Computers

2) Have you ever smoked heroin? No

3) Do you own guns? Nerf. Interested in real ones though.

4) What flavor do you add to your drink at sonic? Cherry or Grape.

5) Do you get nervous before doctors apts? Generally, now.

6) What do you think of hot dogs? Food.

7) Favorite Christmas song? Jingle Bells

8) What do you prefer to drink in the morning? Water or Milk

9) Can you do push ups? A few.

10) Can you do a chin up? I can manage one or two, I think.

11) What's your favorite piece of jewelry? My wedding ring.

12) Do you like blue cheese? I don't thinks so.

13) Ever been in a car wreck? I've managed to break somebody else's license plate frame and do some good dents and rim damage to my Neon. Two separate events but no major accidents.

14) Do you have ADD? No.

15) What's one trait that you hate about yourself? Donno

16) Middle name? Tyler

17) Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment.

* Need to go get fruit trees.
* Sleeping Blake.
* Food

18) Name 3 things you bought yesterday.

* AquaRain Gravity Water Filter
* Baygen Freeplay Plus Windup Radio AM/FM/SW
* Solar Battery Charger w/ Sun Meter

19) Name 3 drinks you regularly drink.

* Water
* Milk
* Lemonade/Juice

20) Current worry? The End Of The World As We Know It/Peak Oil/Economy

21) Current hate right now? Federal Reserve

23) How did you bring in the New Year? Quietly

24) Where would you like to be right now? Completely Debt Free

26) Do you own slippers? No

27) What shirt are you wearing? A Panda picture white t-shirt.

28) Do you like sleeping on satin sheets? Yes

29) Can you whistle? Yes, but not with two fingers.

31) Would you be a pirate? Aye

32) What songs do you sing in the shower? None

33) Favorite girl's name? Sharon

34) Favorite boy's name? Blake

35) What's in your pocket? Cell Phones, wallet, keys.

36) Last thing that made you laugh? Blake

37) Best bed sheets as a child? A quilt with road width patterns for toy cars.

38) Worst injury you've ever had? A cut to my arm when I fell through the glass top of a fish tank.

39) Do you love where you live? Yes

40) How many TVs do you have in your house? 2 TV. One is a Projector and the other is in the quest room.

41) Who is your loudest friend? Jimmy

42) How many cats do you have? 4

43) Does someone have a crush on you? Yes

45) What is your favorite book? The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

46) What is your favorite candy? Reece's Peanut Butter Cups.

47) Favorite Sports Team? Washington Redskins, but only because I need an answer.

48) What song do you want played at your funeral? Journey of the Sorcerer by The Eagles

49) What were you doing 12 AM last night? Putting Blake to bed.

50) What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up? Blake is cozy, I'm not moving.

Global Warming (Solar system warming?)

Hyper-inflation/Recession, Depression, or Great Depression (What the US is doing has been done before and it hasn't worked out before yet.)

Peak-Oil (Reached circa 2005/2006?Tipping point within 6 months to 2 years?)


I'm satisfied that Global Warming is an issue we can do nothing meaningful about short of polluting our atmosphere with "nuclear winter" at managed rates. I am not worried about it.

I'm not convinced that Peak-Oil and Inflation are mutually exclusive disasters and their time-lines appear to converge more than one deflecting the other. These are threatening my sleep.

How about you?

IMarv

Each deal deals out 10 cards. Each suit has 13 cards. You cannot deal out cards if you have any empty stacks of your 10 stacks.

Supposing you are highly efficient and manage to remove 7 of the 8 suits of cards, leaving yourself with 3 cards and one deal left, will the game let you deal onto the 7 empty stacks?

I have yet to run into this, but it is an interesting question.

IMarv