Enoch

Gene Ammons -- Confirmation Charlie Parker cover, from the excellent Boss Tenor album.

The only results in VA so far are all out in hick country (or, if you prefer "real America"). McCain will lead until the precincts in NoVa and Tidewater start reporting. The shocking thing to me so far is Indiana. Bush won there by 20% 4 years ago, and now it's neck-and-neck, with zero results so far from the Chicago suburbs in the NW of the state.

It could be effectively over pretty early. If FL, VA, PA, and OH all go one way or the other, there probably isn't much point in staying up to hear the results from out west. Sure, we won't "know" anything, but we can guess with 99.9% accuracy at that point.

Balderdash. There is no evidence whatsoever that... (Excuse me for a moment-- the doorbell just rang; apparently, someone has sent me a candygram!)

Yeah, voter registration and ballot printing and distribution have been handled at the county or city level in every jurisdiction I've voted in, too. Generally, states set the laws (within Constitutional bounds) and the counties administer them on election day. There is some potential for federal involvement, but that all takes place well before election day-- I'm thinking of DoJ's review of changes to voting procedures in covered jurisdictions under section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

What's wrong with polygamy, huh? It's even in the Bible. Jacob (AKA Israel) had multiple wives, and he had a whole nation (God's Chosen) named after him! Much like other banned sexual/marital practices, such as incest, bestiality, and marriage of/sex with minors-- but unlike homosexual relationships-- polygamy correlates strongly with abusive relationships and near-abusive relationships where one "partner" has a domineering level of power over the other's life and choices.

Had an awesome evening last night. Ordered pizza. Talked the wife into a quick romp in the 40 or so minutes before the pizza arrived. The delivery got there immediately after that was concluded to the great satisfaction of all involved (I was just washing my hands when I heard the knock at the door). Then we ate pizza and drank beer. And after that, we watched a football game on TV (and the team I preferred won!). Call me a stereotypical American heterosexual male if you must, but the beer/pizza/sex/football combo is pretty much the gold standard, at least on a weekday when there isn't time to do any serious home cooking*. * (This may or may not be a euphemism.)

Voted this morning. Got to the polling place at 6:40 AM, 40 minutes after the polls opened, and was out at 8:00. I waited on line, reading a Dashiell Hammett novel, trying to politely ignore the older gentleman behind me who didn't bring a book and kept trying to make conversation, and pondering whether this was all worth the one-in-ten-million chance that my vote will actually matter. Oh, and one of the candidates for a county board position came by and shook my hand.

Yeah, I played it a couple weeks ago and rather enjoyed it. The controls can be a bit troublesome, but apart from that, it's a very charming game with an entertainingly surreal storyline and some fun puzzles.

Confrontational social situations.

I'm certainly fed up with the constant political advertisements. I watched a few NFL games this weekend, and it was wall-to-wall mudslinging in the ad breaks.

The best completely-thrown-together Halloween costume I have come up with over the years was back in college. I walked into my dorm room and decided that I would go as the most frightening thing I saw: my pile of laundry. I was a shambling mound of clothing, attached to me in various fashions. I also had a pair of briefs on my head, which was key. Edit: Also, aaaawwwww!

Next weekend. But we both have to work Mon-Thurs, which means that most the packing needs to happen today and tomorrow. We currently have way too much stuff for our current place (a 1-bedroom apartment), so taking everything out of where it has been carefully stowed to put it in boxes leaves pretty much no room for anything else in the joint. Fortunately, we're going to a 3-bedroom house, so unpacking will not have quite the same problems. (It'll have new problems, like not having any furniture.) But first, we have to make it through the week.

Packing sucks.

I found the Bethesda Ruins about 3 hours ago. Everyone there is dead now. I was hoping for an easter egg or something, but that's it: Bethesda Ruins with some raiders inside. Too bad. I actually work in Bethesda. That's a shame. I'll be moving there a week from today. Is there anything interesting in the Rosslyn-Courthouse area of Arlington? Anyhow, the developers' offices are actually out in Rockville. You can see the building (with a "Zenimax" sign, which is their parent company) if you drive north on I-270 through the Rockville-Gaithersburg area.

The British version of the Atari store has the manual available for download. Link.

And if I exited the Earth's atmosphere the next time I jumped for a rebound on the basketball court, the theory of gravity would be pretty much gone, too.

Halloween tradition: Eyeball Skeleton -- Eyeball Skeleton Captures the essence of the holiday perfectly: little kids having fun by obsessing about monsters.

You do realize, of course, that, as the number of races rises, the chances that the developers will have enough time and resources to create unique content for all of them falls dramatically? I'll wait until I've seen the SoZ content before I decide what kind if things I want to see in a new expansion (which may or may not be a good idea at this point).

Nothing really at the moment. I had been playing Deus Ex (for the first time), but I got a little distracted and my efforts petered out at the beginning of the Paris area. The game seems to be progressing such that the stealth-based gameplay depends on either constantly burning charge on your cloak, or being really really lucky. As I am a notorious resource miser in this kind of game, I tend to about using up my charge, which usually throws me into run-and-gun situations that I don't find particularly fun. Also, when the mood strikes me, I occasionally open up World of Goo to try to earn a few more OCD challenges. But the lack of stuff to play now is strategic-- moving day is next Saturday, so I can't afford to spend all my packing time on games.

I also was amused by his complaining about getting a weak energy weapon "too early," as if the skill balance in FO 1&2 wherein energy weapons were non-existant for 3/4ths of the game and totally pwned in the last 1/4 was good design.

Same. Although it's been a long time since I revisitied Alpha Centauri, so depending on mood I might pick that one instead.

Not much new, but there's a fun picture: That's one unfortunately placed cattail.

Ugh. I spent most of yesterday afternoon/evening fighting a rather virulent adware infection on my laptop. This one messed with the registry such that it locked me out of the Task Manager and prevented AVG and Spybot S&D (the two anti-malware programs I had on that PC) from launching. It eventually took a combination of Smitfraudfix (which successfully opened up my access to those two programs), AVG, Spybot, Malwarebytes, and some Safe-Mode manual deletion to remove all of the symptoms I was seeing. As long as I feel like I'm making progress and have a plan of attack, I find that kind of maintenance strangely satisfying. But looking back at all the time it ate up, I get pretty angry.

Some local media coverage: WaPo: Fallout 3, Starring D.C. Honestly, the local angle on the game is a pretty big selling point to me. My office, my apartment, and the house I'll be buying in 2 weeks are all within the game's geography.