Google, get your shit together.

Just spent like ten minutes trying to make Google sign me in with the account I actually use instead of the random account Viaero gave me for my phone. Should not have been this hard.

I'm at a show at the Broker, it's all right but I'm rocking beyond nowhere near enough reality right now. I'm trying to think of some way to be productive since I'm far too sober ATM, but this was the closest thing that came to mind.

I've played a lot of chess tonight, trying out Hikaru Nakamura's hyperdefensive strategy as white and the Sicilian Defense as black. I'm getting good at the former, but I get the impression that the Sicilian is hard to play well. My ranking for live chess has improved though... I'm about 1000-1100, only about 100 points below my non-live ranking.

What else... I've been sick since Labor Day. Wouldn't be out tonight except that my friends and I made plans. This is also why I haven't done a comic in three weeks. Well, that and the thesis.

That's coming along swimmingly, though. I made my first map for the thesis this week; just a map of central Asia before Genghis Khan started breaking shit. My advisor says it's pretty good. I've seen the fairly simplistic maps that predominate the field of Mongol studies; putting out something that's got more information while being prettier and easier to read shouldn't be hard. The background in art and geography is helping me a lot. I'll try to provide a pic for the net here soon.

Speaking of random stuff helping out, it turns out Draya spent her childhood riding a Mongolian horse, which is important because they are different from other warhorses. Not as strong or fast, but they can endure twice as much. Mongol strategy often involved pretending to run away and tiring the enemy cavalry out, and then attacking. Mongol horses aren't very common on this continent, so knowing someone who grew up handling one (and dating her, no less) is incredibly lucky.

Apparently one of Draya's relatives is a translator over in Mongolia, to boot. Which gives me heart about this degree, especially if I go on for the Ph.D. Even if I don't teach, I can almost certainly travel abroad and earn a living translating stuff. My Russian skills will help with that too, as they're next door. If I can somehow learn Chinese, I'd be set.

Anyway, enough rambling for now. Now that I, well, have an app for this, I may post more often.

Lunar Eclipse, 4/15/2014.

^Taken with my Sony Cyber-shot just now, right outside my apartment on campus.

I would have completely forgotten about the lunar eclipse, except that I needed to dash to my car to get some tax information (yes, I waited until the last minute). On my way back in, I noticed the moon was red. So I woke up Draya, who has to work at 5:30 AM, to come see it. She agreed it was worth it.

Anyway, I have a friend in Scottsbluff who can't see it through the clouds, and friends in Scotland who can't see it period because it's morning there. So here's the best of the pics I took.

Every new beginning is some other beginning's end.

My buddy Nate and I have been living parallel lives in reverse ever since July 2011. We've both noted this phenomenon, and with my move, the chapter has finally closed.

July 2011: I arrive in Fort Collins, Colorado on a Greyhound. After hanging out with a friend for the night, he picks me up and we hang out with his brother for a few days at a Rennfaire, and then go to Chadron, where I have a job offer with Wreckers as security for Fur Trade Days.

I'm functionally homeless for two weeks as I take out loans to get a house that I'll share with Nate. I'm crashing on his couch, or when he's got family visiting, in his backyard. His parents are nice and I do a lot of cooking to sort of earn my keep until the stuff I mailed from Portland to myself arrives and we can get a house.

In short order, we do get a house. Technically one-bedroom, the basement can easily serve as a second bedroom. We'll eventually make the mud room (think a garage that you can't park a car in) into a third bedroom. I get the actual bedroom, Nate takes the basement. We don't know this yet, but it will be infested with wasps in short order. We will have a "Bug Board" keeping a running tally of bugs slain by each of us; at last count he was leading 127 to 6.

Nate gets a car. The first time I moved to Chadron, it was for a girl. Her parents still like me, and her dad works at one of the dealerships, and he hooks Nate up with an excellent 2001 Buick with all the stuff for $1800. We have a house, we have wheels. I need a job. He's got a job cooking at the nursing home.

Jingle hell.

My very first Black Friday happened on Thanksgiving.

To be fair, my Thanksgiving was already ruined. I was moving across town that day; I didn't have access to a U-Haul or a truck yet so we were taking loads in my car (we did get that thing working, and we even named it: "Stormy," because every other name suggested by a powder-blue car is, well, "precious") and those loads generally involved a bookcase sticking out of the trunk and bookshelves arranged in order in tubs and boxes weighing down the backseat. Draya would be in the backseat where what little room remained, making sure the bookcase didn't fly out into the street. It was a day from hell; we had expended a lot of effort and most of the house remained to be moved when we were done.

It was in that frame of mind that I trudged off with Nate to Walmart to hopefully buy an Xbox 360 for $100 during Black "Friday" on Thanksgiving.

I didn't like the idea of Black Friday already; as a supporter of working stiffs everywhere I really didn't like the idea of a bunch of poor bastards having to cut short their Thanksgiving for this bullshit. But, like most people there, I just couldn't resist the deal.

The stress of college life.

There's an ad trying to get me to play Naruteymans Z or something on the internet that I just saw on my Deviantart. I don't know why, in this era of targeted ads, they think I'd be interested. While it's true I play a browser-based game, and that I somewhat like anime, I'm not interested in kids' animes.

I'm grabbing ahold of that because that is the least, smallest, tiniest problem I have before me. I think that's the way to go here... ease into this. I just tried to take a sip of water, just to discover my mug is empty. Which reminds me that the office manager (don't dare call the lovely and capable Brenda Brown a mere "secretary" or you'll soon regret it; she really is the most useful person in the office, myself included) has gotten tired of people not pitching in for Culligan water, and has staged a strike. The water cooler has a call to action taped to it. Tragedy of the commons. I'm going to go get some faucet water, I'll be right back.

Coming back from that, I noticed a stress ball on my desk. It's got a smiley face on it and it was given to me by my Intro to Graduate Studies professor. I'm going to skunch him a few times before I continue. There, much better.

Penguins and dolphins are jerks, and other things from last night.

S'truth.

I was telling that to Vera last night, as we were drinking. Penguins and dolphins have created their very own "rape culture," as have all manner of other animals. They're also remarkably sentient; apparently scientists have discovered that they call each other by names.

I also talked about the unfilmed script of Firefly, and it was gonna be really cool. When I tried to track it down, I found the tenth anniversary special, which talked about a bunch of script ideas. Alan Tudyk came up with an idea about a planet where they train these vicious dogs, and then Jayne accidentally gets dog pheromone on the crew, so they have to run away until River pets them and they calm down. There were a bunch more... if anyone can find that video, they should post a link.

I dunno. Last night sucked and was pretty good all at once. We watched The Room, need I say more? And now my roomie gets why, every time we're listening to 93.7 and the Windfarmer Energy ad comes on, I say "Oh hi Mahk!"

The Maple Street Petting Zoo.

There are four animals in this house now. All rodents. Nate's been keeping his rat Yggie (short for Yggdrasil, the World-Rat) here. My roomie just bought a rat and a hamster. The rat is named Ziggy Marley, because rock beyond reality four twenty-four seven, maaaan. The hamster is named Nug, which is short for 3-And-A-Half-Ounce Nug, because see above.

And my girlfriend Draya now has a guinea pig named Sandie, which is in the pic to the left.

Draya's left for Wyoming for the weekend so I'm left to take care of Sandie. She's a really nervous guinea pig, but she'll let me feed her. Last night, I got tired of her skittishness and pulled her out of her cage to sit on my lap and eat some lettuce. I think she's becoming more cool with me as time goes on. I can't be sure.

Anyway, time for another fuck-huge Civ post. brb

Foo Fighters' "Everlong"

I never saw the music video to this song before. I think Draya might get a kick out of it if she sees it. Maybe it's because I'm rocking beyond reality at the moment, but I think it fucking rocks. And I KNEW that "chick" looked like a dude.

Also, you'll notice there's ads now. It took me all day to set them up, but they're here and soon to have me rolling in the pennies. The worst one to set up was the one below the comments... I had to go into Blogger and take its sass, tellin' me "You can't be PUTTIN' that ad code here! This is MY house!" So I had to let Blogger know what was up.

Anyway, pumpkin pie's about to be all up in this bidness. I gots to run to the store, peeps.

What I'm listening to today.

The album came out last year, but it's fast become one of my favorite songs of all time. The Birthday Massacre is one of the few newer gothic bands to come out that's actually been pretty good. They've kept alive the spirit of the old school while keeping it relevant to the times.

Also, this song reminds me of my girlfriend. The why of it is a story I can't really tell, at least not yet and not directly. (Expect an arc in The 503 in the years to come.) But suffice it to say that I'm a really lucky dude.

Some background to the Syrian crisis, and what I would do about it.

I once posted all this in a thread on a forum somewhere, and the people in that thread said I should submit it to a serious news source, or even Fox News. Draya asked me about a month ago to explain the Syria crisis to her, and so I showed her this. I have no idea if it helped, but reading back a year or so later, it's still a pretty simple primer to the players on the ground in Syria.

First post:

A fairly-extensive rundown for someone that knows absolutely nothing about any of this:

Most of the Arabic-speaking Middle East used to be ruled by the Ottoman Empire, which was based out of Turkey. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I and a successful Arab revolution guided by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia, if that rings a bell), the old Ottoman possessions were divided among the various Western powers. Britain got what's now Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Iraq, and France got what's now Lebanon and Syria.

Thunderstorms on the horizon. Also Minecraft.

I'll have a picture for you all once I get to work. (EDIT: And now I do.)

It's a fitting metaphor. I was up until 5:00 AM playing Minecraft for the very first time. The game's addictiveness was not why. It was a decent way to pass the time while my lungs threw a hissyfit, saying "IF WE CAN'T SLEEP THEN NOBODY SLEEPS." So that's fun. Asthma is one of the few things about myself that I genuinely hate.