I don't know that we used that exact action very often. It was kind of an epiphany sort of thing when it happened. I think we decided that 'flee' was probably the best use. That puts the commandee out of action for at least two rounds. And if the corridor he's fleeing down is one you haven't checked for traps yet... well, all the better.
What exactly would a vampire do if you told him to masturbate? Probably try to suck your blood if he wasn't doing so already.
I'm not offended. Although I'm not sure what you're referring to. You don't want to hang around someone who says the word 'masturbate'? WTF are you doing on/. Word of advice: Don't ever read at -1.;}
OK so, does that sound like I was 15 when that happened? I was a bit older than that, but so what. What should I have been doing? At 15, what are my options - go to the mall? Go to my friend's house and watch TV? Do homework?
Or, let's say I was 21. Should I have been at a bar, drinking? I did plenty of that when I was in my 20's. I've been drunk in more different countries than most people can name (US Navy). So what?
Should I perhaps have been watching a sporting event? Did plenty of that, too. About 10 years ago I stopped watching sports - right after all the baseball players went on strike. (BTW, Cal Ripken does not have an unbroken streak of playing in however many games he was supposed to have played in. He went on strike and sat on his ass at home for a year.) Right after that football or basketball went on strike and I said that's that. So when I look at the front of the Washington Post sports section and see 'indicted', '$50 million dollar contract', 'steroids', 'rape', 'self-defense', etc. I just laugh. Do I think Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame? Probably not, but at this point I could give a shit. Barry Bonds - probably guilty - yes his records are probably meaningless, and again, I could care less. I keep up enough so I know what the issues are, but that's it.
Which stereotype are you talking about? Bunch of pimply-faced male teen-age geeks? We had several women/girls/females play with us. I dated several of the girls I met through D&D. Do I look back on my high school years and wish I'd been more sexually active? Sure, there are several girls whose pants I wanted to get into. Which guy doesn't have that yearning? In reality, if I'd done that I would have probably gotten someone pregnant and my whole life would have been screwed up.
What did you do on Friday and Saturday nights while in high school and college? Get drunk? Watch TV? Hang out? How is that a better way to spend your time? I'm 40 now. I'm still friends with those people. I'm not friends with anyone from my high school or the neighborhood I grew up in. But I'm still friends with a lot of the people I played D&D with. How many friendships do you have that have lasted over 20 years?
On Friday and Saturday nights we killed Dragons and Demons; forged swords of legend; rescued maidens; toppled kingdoms; fought everything in the Monster Manual (at least twice); escaped fiendish traps (well, sometimes we didn't). We laughed, we cried, we fought. We had fun. The fact that most of this happened in our heads doesn't matter. We had an amazing amount of fun.
If I could find a bunch of people around here to play with, I'd join in a night a week. I think my wife and son could spare me that.
There's this clerical spell in D&D that's called 'Command'. If successfully cast on an opponent they will do whatever your command was for 1 round. The command could only be one word and it had to be a verb. The most common use was 'die', which was specifically addressed in the rules - the affected 'monster' would just fall down in a coma for one round and be able to get up the next round and re-commence beating the crap out of you.
Being able to take an opponent out of the battle for one round is a good thing, but you'd like to do more. Eventually, I came up with a better one: 'Undress!'. A fighter with plate mail: drop the sword, drop the shield, start undoing a bunch of leather straps, etc. When the round was over he had to put his armor back on or his AC wouldn't be as good as it was. So you might take him out of the fight for two rounds (or more - it often takes longer to put stuff back on than it does to take off.)
So then if you know you're gonna be fighting 'the big-breasted babe from Bouncytown' the next day, you ask for all the command spells you can remember (clerical spells are granted by your god), then sit in the back of the party and just 'Undress!' until you run out. This, of course, led to someone eventually switching to: 'Masturbate!'. The first time somebody did that we were all rolling on the floor.
Needless to say, DM interpretation of events varied widely. Points to remember: You don't ever want to tell a dragn to 'Masturbate' (depending on the DM, self-gratification to a dragon may not be exactly what you'd pictured), and you really, really don't want to lose a fight to someone who was forced to diddle themselves in public. Believe me, there are worse things to be impaled on a pike than your head, if you're still alive to... uh, 'enjoy' the experience.
Loss of your inner child
on
Singularity Sky
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"Then I grew up and realized that most science fiction sucked."
You've lost contact with your inner child. You need to find it again. I re-read old Heinlein (Citizen of the Galaxy, Tunnel in the Sky, Starman Jones, Farnham's Freehold, etc.) and E.E. Doc Smith (Lensman and Skylark novels) frequently. The science is usually wrong, the characterizations are often shallow, the dialog frequently corny ("You're a blinding flash and a deafening report."), but if you truly don't like that stuff anymore you need to re-connect with a simpler version of yourself.
It's like if you suddenly stopped liking Legos and Video Games. It's OK to not play with them as much as you used to, but if you truly think of such things as childish and beneath you and uninteresting even for a few fleeting moments you've lost something vital. If you never liked such stuff to begin with, then you're OK. Otherwise, you're repressing something.
Of course, you could just be someone who's gotten to the point where they don't want to admit they like that stuff any more. That's OK. You'll grow out of that stage, too.
Yes, I read the article. Doesn't mean those things can't be hacked into the kernel. If they can modify it to run on the X-box, they can hack it on to a Crusoe too.
One: Get a thermos. Make yourself a big honking pot of whatever you like in the morning, fill your thermos, drink it all day long. This technology has been around since the fifties or so.
Second: French Press. If you have the capability of making/getting near boiling hot water, then you can make good coffee at your desk. If the grinding noise (fresh ground is best) bothers others, take your grinder to the kitchen.
Third: Little expresso machine or coffee maker for your desk. Again, fresh ground is best.
... but the monetary rewards of reading all that cracked traffic is worth way more than $1 million. Just last month I extorted $250,000 from a rich exec who didn't want his wife to find out about Mistresses 1 and 2. Also sold some high-tech secrets to an oil-rich third world country for a good bit of cash (I assume they'll use it to keep development of alternative-fuel vehicles from progressing very quickly, but what do I care as long as I get my money?)
You keep right on developing that uncrackable ECC stuff. Heh. Nothing to worry about as long as no one claims the mil, right?
Of course this is all a joke. No-one has cracked anything. Posting this as an Anonymous Coward for obvious reasons. What's that dear? Champagne bath is ready? I'll be right there. Just let me hit 'Submit'...
I normally make it a rule not to reply to Cowards, but you obviously don't get it, so I'll make an exception. Henry Ford did not create the internal combustion engine, nor did he invent or discover the car. He did, however, have a big hand in creating the car as we know it today.
The internet was not called 'The Internet' until sometime in the 80's, long after Mr. Gore had become a senator, and long after he started helping it along. He helped to create the internet as we know and love it. He didn't say he invented it or discovered it or pulled it out of his back pocket. He said he took the initiative in creating the internet, which I understood to mean 'I took the initiative in helping to create the internet'. No sane person would think he was claiming single-handed credit for the internet. He didn't do anything technical but if you don't believe that funding and shaping public policy are important, you should crawl out from under your rock more often.
Saying you created something is not the same thing as saying you invented something. I created dinner last night. Doesn't mean I invented food or fire. The internet is not a single technology. It's a group of technologies used in specific ways. I don't know that you could give anyone credit for inventing the internet - it's a feature of having a bunch of computers that communicate with each other. You can, however, give lots of people credit for helping to create it. Gore should be one of them.
You should hire yourself out to be Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh.
2 computers talking to each other happened way before Gore became a senator, I agree. The internet, as we know it today, didn't come into existence until many years later. Gore was instrumental in privatizing it and bringing it to schools.
I will have to admit that 'took the initiative in creating the internet' is misleading. I understood what he meant, though. I doubt I'm much smarter than you, so why can't you figure it out?
Me and the other main geek here at work have been going round-and-round with this for a couple of days. There's no way this is true, much as I might wish it were. It's very simple: What flash medium is out there in the 1GB-4Gb range that costs less than $100? If there is one, it's impossible to find on the web.
What are they doing, repurposing all those old 1-4GB hard disks that people are tossing out? Have they invented some new cheaper flash memory? If so, that's major. A lot more than IpodJrs are gonna come out of that if that's true. Somebody want to help me out here? Anyone? Bueller?
They are still highly centralized on the production side
Because the people running the game couldn't be bothered to distribute the load. Could have been done. Don't blame nature. Blame human lack of forethought.
I've been asked this question a million times, albeit in a slightly different form - "What kind of computer should I get?" To give a good answer you need to understand what they're going to be using it for. If all they want is to do some simple web browsing and word processing, you can show them how easy that is to do on a Pentium-100. If they need to run AutoCAD or something like that, then maybe they DO need a P-IV.
And if you're going to give them old Pentium 100's, you're going to have to find a source for old software if you're talking Windows. Where would you go to buy a copy of Windows 98 and Office 97? And if you're talking Linux, who'll be doing tech support?
I don't envy you. Everyone wants the new BMW, not the '94 Honda Civic. But, more importantly, if they're going to be hauling lumber, neither of those cars is optimal. Both you and your customer have to understand their requirements.
Boy, that just all seems so obvious. Have to get up the energy to hit 'Submit'...
... games, games, games. My 5-year old loves dinosaur games. Aside from that, he's into bugs. Spiders especially.
Have you heard of LOGO? It's a kid's programming language. You use a BASIC-like language to make a turtle draw things. There's java emulators. You should load it up and let them work on it. Show that changing 'Draw 0 10' to 'Draw 0 20' (or whatever the exact syntax is) makes the line twice as long.
Aside from that, games. There used to be 2-liner contests in old magazines, some of which made functional little games. Pong should be easy to program. Tic-tac-toe maybe. I doubt the code for checkers would be of interest to little kids, but you might show them simple coding for a tic-tac-toe game. Something along the lines of: "OK, you put your X in the upper left hand corner. What do you think the computer should do?" Talk them through the logical consequences - most kids should be able to understand 'if A does this, then B should do that'.
Depends on how much work you're willing to put into it. I think I'd just show up with some games and say "If you become a programmer, you can make your own." But then I'm lazy.
$143.04? I can only assume you're a poor college student. Or that you don't read a lot. Or that you buy only from the $0.50 stack at the used book store. Or something. (Big library user, maybe?)
Or did you go through some sort of 'Books Anonymous' program? Does that work? $20 a month on books. That's... that's... unpossible! My hands are sweating just thinking about it. I'm gonna have to go to Borders at lunch. Is it lunch yet? Amazon! Nope, takes too long to ship. E-books. That's it. An e-book. Gotta go.
I guess it was movie night at the weather center. Last night's feature: Bladerunner . About time the meteorologists saw that one. Next up: Highlander 2 . I can just see the conversations the next morning.
Meteorologist: Dude, if the ozone layer goes away, we'll just put up a big shield.
Anchor Guy: That's unpossible.
M: No way, man. I saw it on TV last night. It's true, just like big cities causing rain.
AG: Please don't talk me.
Yeah, OK, so in my imagination meteorologists are dumb dorks. Considering they get the forecast right about 50% of the time around here (which seems like dumb luck more than anything), I'm not sure I have anything to atone for. If you're gonna go into a profession where you're wrong a lot, you have to put up with at least a little abuse. Or go work in Southern California. "Tomorrow? Sunny!"
I remember reading 'The Rolling Stones' when I was a teenager. It's a Heinlein juvenile. It's in the future and it's about a family's journey to Mars to make a new life for themselves. Kind of a 'Grapes of Wrath' except not sad.
You could read a chapter every night. I know my son enjoys it when I read to him. Bradbury's 'Martian Chronicles' might work too, but it's a little more adult. You could try 'Podkayne of Mars' or, better yet, Edgar Rice Burrough's 'John Carter of Mars' series. There's about 11 of those.
There are no anti-photons so light from anti-matter stars looks the same as from regular stars. So you wouldn't be able to tell from that. However, somewhere there would be an interface of some sorts. A boundary where on one side is anti-matter and the other matter. This isn't a hard boundary, but if you have two galaxies, about half-way in between there would be a lot of shit going on.
See, empty space isn't really empty. There's Hydrogen out there. There would be an amazing light show at the border. The constant meeting of matter and anti-matter (space dust, if you will, emitted by both galaxies) would most likely be very visible. Matter/anti-matter reactions are very energetic, far more so than fusion, even.
The only way to have anti-matter galaxies in your universe is if they were more than 13.7 billion light years distant, so the light from the interface hasn't reached us yet. Or maybe there could be a single anti-matter galaxy somewhere out there, discovered by the weird light reaching us from that corner of the universe. I doubt our telescopes have looked everywhere, yet.
Aside from all that, science is just a hook. As long as you're internally consistent, it doesn't matter if your science is far-fetched. Plot, characters, story. Interesting things happening to interesting people will be what sell books. I probably didn't need to tell you that. I still read a lot of old sci-fi that has bad science in it. 'Lensmen', Heinlein juveniles like 'Tunnel in the Sky', 'Citizen of the Galaxy', and 'Starman Jones', Campbell's 'Arcot, Morey, and Wade' stories. Love that stuff.
Note: Some of my interpretations are probably going to be 'R' rated. Fair warning.
1. Top-down view of someone 'dining at the Y'.
2. Fat lady doing the splits.
3. Vagina with some piercings and an ugly-ass tattoo.
4. Some guy with hemorrhoids bent over and spreading.
5. Two oriental guys with green hats looking at each other.
6. What I would see just before 'dining at the Y'.
7. Flying frog/alligator guy.
8. Two aliens looking at each other with a symbol of crossed condoms between them.
9. Batman flashing some kids.
10. Batman doing 'purple woman' from behind.
There's no way I'm going to remember my password without writing this down. I think I'll stick with the method for password generation that I have now. No, I'm not telling you what it is. Security through obscurity will work in this instance.
Is there a psychiatrist or psychologist reading this? Am I normal?
BOFH Bank Operator: So, Mr. Sanchez, in order to verify your identity I just need your mother's maiden name.
Fraudster: Umm, I can't remember.
BBO: You can't remember your mother's maiden name?
Fraudster: Nope. Not a clue. Drawing a blank.
BBO: You have a mother, right?
Fraudster: Of course I have a mother.
BBO: Well, what was her name before your father married her?
Fraudster: I told you, I can't remember.
BBO: You only opened this account 6 months ago. You knew it then.
Fraudster: A lot has happened in the meantime. Just let me get some money out.
BBO: Do you have a grandmother?
Fraudster: Of course.
BBO: No problem then. Just tell me your grandmother's full name. The one on your mother's side. Should be the same as your mother's maiden name.
Fraudster: Ummm, I can't remember her name either.
BBO: Where are you calling from?
Fraudster: Well, home of course.
BBO: Hmm, caller ID tells me that this is not the home phone number listed on your account. Why don't I call the police and have them come over. Perhaps you'll remember your mother's name by then.
Fraudster:... click.
If we can have BOFH's as sysadmins, I don't know why the banks couldn't use them to good effect.
These were written in the 1950's and 60's. It would be like basing your career on Tom Swift or early Heinlein juveniles. Short of your kid scraping the luminescent stuff off of 50,000 glow-in-the-dark watches, I don't think you have anything to worry about, practically. I can think of far worse things than having your kid say "I want to go to Mars on an Atomic Rocket."
On a separate note, it looks my little guy is going to be an entomologist, at the rate he's going. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Of course, he's only four. Maybe he'll change his mind.
...have enough money to buy both. It's not stupid to buy stuff you want, generally. Yes it's stupid to waste your money on cigarettes. Unless you're one of those people who are addicted (or just really, really like them). It's stupid to buy junk food. Unless you're addicted. It's stupid to buy an SUV, unless you don't care about the environment. Or just value your personal safety over that of the environment.
It's not stupid to buy this DVD if it allows you to watch the first and second movie just before the third one comes out. I don't have an eidetic memory, so don't you think my enjoyment of the third movie would be heightened if I can have the previous one fresh in my mind when I see it?
What I think is stupid is to call other people stupid. You know nothing about me. My wants, desires, needs. My likes and dislikes. My IQ. My common sense. Calling me stupid is an insult to stupid people. Or something.
Slashdot Mirror
... why I gave up sysadminning to go back to programming. Next time they ask, I'll just point them to story id 104740 on /.
Unemployment is paying really well these days, I guess. I'd stay unemployed if I was you. ;}
What exactly would a vampire do if you told him to masturbate? Probably try to suck your blood if he wasn't doing so already.
Thanks about the sig.
OK so, does that sound like I was 15 when that happened? I was a bit older than that, but so what. What should I have been doing? At 15, what are my options - go to the mall? Go to my friend's house and watch TV? Do homework?
Or, let's say I was 21. Should I have been at a bar, drinking? I did plenty of that when I was in my 20's. I've been drunk in more different countries than most people can name (US Navy). So what?
Should I perhaps have been watching a sporting event? Did plenty of that, too. About 10 years ago I stopped watching sports - right after all the baseball players went on strike. (BTW, Cal Ripken does not have an unbroken streak of playing in however many games he was supposed to have played in. He went on strike and sat on his ass at home for a year.) Right after that football or basketball went on strike and I said that's that. So when I look at the front of the Washington Post sports section and see 'indicted', '$50 million dollar contract', 'steroids', 'rape', 'self-defense', etc. I just laugh. Do I think Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame? Probably not, but at this point I could give a shit. Barry Bonds - probably guilty - yes his records are probably meaningless, and again, I could care less. I keep up enough so I know what the issues are, but that's it.
Which stereotype are you talking about? Bunch of pimply-faced male teen-age geeks? We had several women/girls/females play with us. I dated several of the girls I met through D&D. Do I look back on my high school years and wish I'd been more sexually active? Sure, there are several girls whose pants I wanted to get into. Which guy doesn't have that yearning? In reality, if I'd done that I would have probably gotten someone pregnant and my whole life would have been screwed up.
What did you do on Friday and Saturday nights while in high school and college? Get drunk? Watch TV? Hang out? How is that a better way to spend your time? I'm 40 now. I'm still friends with those people. I'm not friends with anyone from my high school or the neighborhood I grew up in. But I'm still friends with a lot of the people I played D&D with. How many friendships do you have that have lasted over 20 years?
On Friday and Saturday nights we killed Dragons and Demons; forged swords of legend; rescued maidens; toppled kingdoms; fought everything in the Monster Manual (at least twice); escaped fiendish traps (well, sometimes we didn't). We laughed, we cried, we fought. We had fun. The fact that most of this happened in our heads doesn't matter. We had an amazing amount of fun.
If I could find a bunch of people around here to play with, I'd join in a night a week. I think my wife and son could spare me that.
There's this clerical spell in D&D that's called 'Command'. If successfully cast on an opponent they will do whatever your command was for 1 round. The command could only be one word and it had to be a verb. The most common use was 'die', which was specifically addressed in the rules - the affected 'monster' would just fall down in a coma for one round and be able to get up the next round and re-commence beating the crap out of you.
Being able to take an opponent out of the battle for one round is a good thing, but you'd like to do more. Eventually, I came up with a better one: 'Undress!'. A fighter with plate mail: drop the sword, drop the shield, start undoing a bunch of leather straps, etc. When the round was over he had to put his armor back on or his AC wouldn't be as good as it was. So you might take him out of the fight for two rounds (or more - it often takes longer to put stuff back on than it does to take off.)
So then if you know you're gonna be fighting 'the big-breasted babe from Bouncytown' the next day, you ask for all the command spells you can remember (clerical spells are granted by your god), then sit in the back of the party and just 'Undress!' until you run out. This, of course, led to someone eventually switching to: 'Masturbate!'. The first time somebody did that we were all rolling on the floor.
Needless to say, DM interpretation of events varied widely. Points to remember: You don't ever want to tell a dragn to 'Masturbate' (depending on the DM, self-gratification to a dragon may not be exactly what you'd pictured), and you really, really don't want to lose a fight to someone who was forced to diddle themselves in public. Believe me, there are worse things to be impaled on a pike than your head, if you're still alive to... uh, 'enjoy' the experience.
It's like if you suddenly stopped liking Legos and Video Games. It's OK to not play with them as much as you used to, but if you truly think of such things as childish and beneath you and uninteresting even for a few fleeting moments you've lost something vital. If you never liked such stuff to begin with, then you're OK. Otherwise, you're repressing something.
Of course, you could just be someone who's gotten to the point where they don't want to admit they like that stuff any more. That's OK. You'll grow out of that stage, too.
Yes, I read the article. Doesn't mean those things can't be hacked into the kernel. If they can modify it to run on the X-box, they can hack it on to a Crusoe too.
One: Get a thermos. Make yourself a big honking pot of whatever you like in the morning, fill your thermos, drink it all day long. This technology has been around since the fifties or so. Second: French Press. If you have the capability of making/getting near boiling hot water, then you can make good coffee at your desk. If the grinding noise (fresh ground is best) bothers others, take your grinder to the kitchen. Third: Little expresso machine or coffee maker for your desk. Again, fresh ground is best.
You keep right on developing that uncrackable ECC stuff. Heh. Nothing to worry about as long as no one claims the mil, right?
Of course this is all a joke. No-one has cracked anything. Posting this as an Anonymous Coward for obvious reasons. What's that dear? Champagne bath is ready? I'll be right there. Just let me hit 'Submit'...
The internet was not called 'The Internet' until sometime in the 80's, long after Mr. Gore had become a senator, and long after he started helping it along. He helped to create the internet as we know and love it. He didn't say he invented it or discovered it or pulled it out of his back pocket. He said he took the initiative in creating the internet, which I understood to mean 'I took the initiative in helping to create the internet'. No sane person would think he was claiming single-handed credit for the internet. He didn't do anything technical but if you don't believe that funding and shaping public policy are important, you should crawl out from under your rock more often.
Saying you created something is not the same thing as saying you invented something. I created dinner last night. Doesn't mean I invented food or fire. The internet is not a single technology. It's a group of technologies used in specific ways. I don't know that you could give anyone credit for inventing the internet - it's a feature of having a bunch of computers that communicate with each other. You can, however, give lots of people credit for helping to create it. Gore should be one of them.
You should hire yourself out to be Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh.
2 computers talking to each other happened way before Gore became a senator, I agree. The internet, as we know it today, didn't come into existence until many years later. Gore was instrumental in privatizing it and bringing it to schools. I will have to admit that 'took the initiative in creating the internet' is misleading. I understood what he meant, though. I doubt I'm much smarter than you, so why can't you figure it out?
What are they doing, repurposing all those old 1-4GB hard disks that people are tossing out? Have they invented some new cheaper flash memory? If so, that's major. A lot more than IpodJrs are gonna come out of that if that's true. Somebody want to help me out here? Anyone? Bueller?
How can you surf /. all day while being a valet parker? Do they provide you laptops with wireless connections or something? Am I missing something?
Because the people running the game couldn't be bothered to distribute the load. Could have been done. Don't blame nature. Blame human lack of forethought.
And if you're going to give them old Pentium 100's, you're going to have to find a source for old software if you're talking Windows. Where would you go to buy a copy of Windows 98 and Office 97? And if you're talking Linux, who'll be doing tech support?
I don't envy you. Everyone wants the new BMW, not the '94 Honda Civic. But, more importantly, if they're going to be hauling lumber, neither of those cars is optimal. Both you and your customer have to understand their requirements.
Boy, that just all seems so obvious. Have to get up the energy to hit 'Submit'...
Have you heard of LOGO? It's a kid's programming language. You use a BASIC-like language to make a turtle draw things. There's java emulators. You should load it up and let them work on it. Show that changing 'Draw 0 10' to 'Draw 0 20' (or whatever the exact syntax is) makes the line twice as long.
Aside from that, games. There used to be 2-liner contests in old magazines, some of which made functional little games. Pong should be easy to program. Tic-tac-toe maybe. I doubt the code for checkers would be of interest to little kids, but you might show them simple coding for a tic-tac-toe game. Something along the lines of: "OK, you put your X in the upper left hand corner. What do you think the computer should do?" Talk them through the logical consequences - most kids should be able to understand 'if A does this, then B should do that'.
Depends on how much work you're willing to put into it. I think I'd just show up with some games and say "If you become a programmer, you can make your own." But then I'm lazy.
Or did you go through some sort of 'Books Anonymous' program? Does that work? $20 a month on books. That's... that's... unpossible! My hands are sweating just thinking about it. I'm gonna have to go to Borders at lunch. Is it lunch yet? Amazon! Nope, takes too long to ship. E-books. That's it. An e-book. Gotta go.
Meteorologist: Dude, if the ozone layer goes away, we'll just put up a big shield.
Anchor Guy: That's unpossible.
M: No way, man. I saw it on TV last night. It's true, just like big cities causing rain.
AG: Please don't talk me.
Yeah, OK, so in my imagination meteorologists are dumb dorks. Considering they get the forecast right about 50% of the time around here (which seems like dumb luck more than anything), I'm not sure I have anything to atone for. If you're gonna go into a profession where you're wrong a lot, you have to put up with at least a little abuse. Or go work in Southern California. "Tomorrow? Sunny!"
You could read a chapter every night. I know my son enjoys it when I read to him. Bradbury's 'Martian Chronicles' might work too, but it's a little more adult. You could try 'Podkayne of Mars' or, better yet, Edgar Rice Burrough's 'John Carter of Mars' series. There's about 11 of those.
Just a thought.
See, empty space isn't really empty. There's Hydrogen out there. There would be an amazing light show at the border. The constant meeting of matter and anti-matter (space dust, if you will, emitted by both galaxies) would most likely be very visible. Matter/anti-matter reactions are very energetic, far more so than fusion, even.
The only way to have anti-matter galaxies in your universe is if they were more than 13.7 billion light years distant, so the light from the interface hasn't reached us yet. Or maybe there could be a single anti-matter galaxy somewhere out there, discovered by the weird light reaching us from that corner of the universe. I doubt our telescopes have looked everywhere, yet.
Aside from all that, science is just a hook. As long as you're internally consistent, it doesn't matter if your science is far-fetched. Plot, characters, story. Interesting things happening to interesting people will be what sell books. I probably didn't need to tell you that. I still read a lot of old sci-fi that has bad science in it. 'Lensmen', Heinlein juveniles like 'Tunnel in the Sky', 'Citizen of the Galaxy', and 'Starman Jones', Campbell's 'Arcot, Morey, and Wade' stories. Love that stuff.
1. Top-down view of someone 'dining at the Y'.
2. Fat lady doing the splits.
3. Vagina with some piercings and an ugly-ass tattoo.
4. Some guy with hemorrhoids bent over and spreading.
5. Two oriental guys with green hats looking at each other.
6. What I would see just before 'dining at the Y'.
7. Flying frog/alligator guy.
8. Two aliens looking at each other with a symbol of crossed condoms between them.
9. Batman flashing some kids.
10. Batman doing 'purple woman' from behind.
There's no way I'm going to remember my password without writing this down. I think I'll stick with the method for password generation that I have now. No, I'm not telling you what it is. Security through obscurity will work in this instance.
Is there a psychiatrist or psychologist reading this? Am I normal?
BOFH Bank Operator: So, Mr. Sanchez, in order to verify your identity I just need your mother's maiden name. ... click.
Fraudster: Umm, I can't remember.
BBO: You can't remember your mother's maiden name?
Fraudster: Nope. Not a clue. Drawing a blank.
BBO: You have a mother, right?
Fraudster: Of course I have a mother.
BBO: Well, what was her name before your father married her?
Fraudster: I told you, I can't remember.
BBO: You only opened this account 6 months ago. You knew it then.
Fraudster: A lot has happened in the meantime. Just let me get some money out.
BBO: Do you have a grandmother?
Fraudster: Of course.
BBO: No problem then. Just tell me your grandmother's full name. The one on your mother's side. Should be the same as your mother's maiden name.
Fraudster: Ummm, I can't remember her name either.
BBO: Where are you calling from?
Fraudster: Well, home of course.
BBO: Hmm, caller ID tells me that this is not the home phone number listed on your account. Why don't I call the police and have them come over. Perhaps you'll remember your mother's name by then.
Fraudster:
If we can have BOFH's as sysadmins, I don't know why the banks couldn't use them to good effect.
On a separate note, it looks my little guy is going to be an entomologist, at the rate he's going. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Of course, he's only four. Maybe he'll change his mind.
It's not stupid to buy this DVD if it allows you to watch the first and second movie just before the third one comes out. I don't have an eidetic memory, so don't you think my enjoyment of the third movie would be heightened if I can have the previous one fresh in my mind when I see it?
What I think is stupid is to call other people stupid. You know nothing about me. My wants, desires, needs. My likes and dislikes. My IQ. My common sense. Calling me stupid is an insult to stupid people. Or something.