Aligment debate

If you ever played D&D, you probably remember alignments. You know - whether your character was Lawful and Good or else Chaotic but Neutral or whatever. And you probably remember arguments over whether or not an action was "according to your alignment" or the "alignment is a straightjacket" or "alignment is an aid to role-playing" arguments.

Order of the Stick posits, like other geeky gaming webcomics, a world that operates according to game rules. Including, in this case, alignment. And it goes on, amazingly, to look at how a court of law in world with knowable alignments might argue and operate. Those are the most nuanced and well-spoken words I've seen written in the Great Alignment Debate, and having been a member of not a few D&D GM forums, I've seen a lot of them.

Quote of the Day

"Highway congestion has grown so severe that virtually all of the Washington region's main commuter routes are chronically clogged and unable to move motorists efficiently, according to a regional study released yesterday."

- WaPo staff writer Steven Ginsberg covering a report that surprised local officials, none of whom apparently drive.

A Godfather sort of week

How serendipitous that, the very week I watched The Godfather, the Manolo, he would make the reference I would not have gotten two weeks ago.

Mac attack

I have a new computer at work; it's a Mac Powerbook. I am not religious about my computing platforms, but man...

I have a two-button mouse. Unfortunately, it doesn't do me any good. I can highlight text and right click all day long and the sucker still won't give me the "copy" shortcut.

OK, so real computer users use text shortcuts (not when they're already involved in a mousing task, but whatever). So, Ctrl-C. Ctrl-V. Hey! Where's my text? Ctrl-C. Ctrl-V. CTRL-C, CTRL-V, DAMMIT!

Fine, fine, Menu Options... Edit... Oh. It's Stupid-Curly-Symbol-C, Stupid-Curly-Symbol-V. Because... just because. Macs are different.

And to force a quit (yes, on my very first day of Mac Ops here, I had a Mac factory Install program hang - or I imagined it, since Macs never ever have problems like that - I had to do a Google search for "mac control-alt-delete" since I did recall that Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't work on Macs, but darned if I could remember what did. (Ctrl-Curly-Escape).

Let's not even get into Adventures in Third Party Program Installation.

On the other hand, I now have access to GarageBand, which is Just Cool.