Print Story Along the way, I closed my eyes
Diary
By alprazolam (Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 12:57:27 PM EST) clean living, nerds pumping iron, a very dull boy (all tags)
Long and boring...what I've been up to lately.


Well it's a slow, slow day today. Haven't had a single board to work on so I feel obligated to write one of these, since it's been sooo long.

Well where to start. I got the pictures from spin the bottle a while back and they were freaking awesome. Sorry I'm not going to post them here I don't think. I left the CD in the cart when I went to Walmart to get prints and had to drive back to get them, there's no way I want to leave that CD laying around somewhere.

So, I pretty much bought a couch. I'm going with "camel" color (it's a microfiber). It bothers me to spend so much money on a freaking couch but I do like it and I had little success in finding anything else I was sure about. At least I won't have to listen to my mom nag me about it every time I talk to her.

The Longhorns and the Cowboys lost this weekend. That sucked. I was expecting the Lions to lose of course. I'm glad to hear they didn't embarass themselves though.

I've been doing the power clean on Wednesdays lately. It's a very fun lift and the first Olympic lift I've done. I'm not sure that my form is all that great and that I'm doing everything right, but there's not much I can do about it. I also started front squats a couple weeks ago, those are interesting as well. I also bought a new pair of running shoes that I get to try out tonight. I'm a little worried that there's not enough cushioning for me, but I wanted to try something out that had support for a high arch and compensated for my pronation.

I've been doing a ton of cooking lately. I made LinDze's Swordfish, Bok Choy, & Wasabi Wine Reduction with great success. I did cut down on the soy sauce as per ana and I think it may be one of the best dishes I've ever cooked. I also made lm's Salsa Bravo with slightly less success: 6 serrano peppers without seeding any of them made it a bit too spicy (I doubled the recipe). Overall I did like it though and I like it as a way of getting vegetables. I'm going to make another batch tonight and seed a couple of the peppers instead of using them straight. It's very convenient and I like the idea of spicy/tangy coleslaw. I've developed my own recipe for chicken burritos which calls for me bake the chicken in the oven and then shred it with forks (my sister's idea), which ends up being a lot easier than chopping up 3 raw chicken breasts. Gives the brown rice time to cook as well, I could probably even boil beans rather than using canned, but I'm not quite that dedicated.

If you have good, relatively easy recipes, feel free to post them here and I'll probably try them at some point.

I guess it's not surprising that cooking has turned out to be such a fun hobby for me, I was always in the kitchen as a kid, trying to help out my mom (and get fed). I really wonder at times if I am in the wrong profession.

Speaking of work, it's been a really slow week this week so I sort of volunteered for a two week project that starts next week. I hope I didn't bite off more than I could chew, it sounds like a compressed schedule and kind of a jerk manager. I don't mind if I have to work extra hours, but I'm not skipping workouts, nor meals. Period. Well except for maybe Monday, if I'm still feeling a bit overtrained. We'll see I guess.

I've been attempting to win Civ 4 with Mao on immortal, using slavery (heavy whipping) and a specialist economy, but I haven't gotten very far at all. I get pretty crammed in and the AI grows exponentially faster than me, well I may have solved that but I need to do a better job on my relations I suppose. I'll probably take another go this weekend.

I started the Johnny Cash movie again and got much more into it this time...and then the disc stuck. Well I finally got another from netflix but I haven't had time to finish it yet...maybe tonight.

I also just started reading Ursula Le Guin Earthsea series and I really like the first book (A Wizard of Earthsea). It starts off very fast and the characters are pretty interesting. I can't wait to get into the meat of the story.

Well that's pretty long and pointless. Anyway life is alright, it could be better if I didn't suck so much, but all I can do is try.

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Along the way, I closed my eyes | 20 comments (20 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback
On immortal! by cam (4.00 / 1) #1 Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 01:19:04 PM EST
Ai ai ai. The Barbarians would destroy me in five turns on that level.

cam
Freedom, liberty, equity and an Australian Republic


I actually have them turned off by alprazolam (4.00 / 1) #5 Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 01:45:19 PM EST
although I don't think they'd have a huge impact, being as I'm completely surrounded by AI territories by the time I get my second city built. May be worth trying though.

They're certainly the devil on emperor.

Have you ever played a terra game? That might come in the 1.6.1 mod. It's kinda fun and different.

[ Parent ]

I played the North African mod by cam (2.00 / 0) #7 Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 02:14:24 PM EST
as the Austral-Americans and got pounded. I managed to take the tip of Algiers and some of Syria and western Egypt, but couldnt hold it permanently.

My computer isnt powerful enough for the Terran maps. It is a 1.8Ghz Win2K machine from about five years ago. So i tend to play the dual maps with four Ai and try to culture them off the map.

I think I have won a couple on warlord (one up from noble?) but I suck at the military aspects, I am too impatient to build a good military force and instead want to give my minions colluseums and pantheons and gold lighthouses and rocks and stuff.

cam
Freedom, liberty, equity and an Australian Republic
[ Parent ]

builders by alprazolam (4.00 / 1) #9 Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 02:45:47 PM EST
you're a "builder".

the pros tend to stick to only granaries, libraries, and forges in most towns, and put the economic buildings (market, grocer, bank) in commerce generating towns. although those economic building give no benefit if you run your science at 100% because they affect your gold rather than commerce.

[ Parent ]

so you segregate your towns based on purpose? by cam (2.00 / 0) #10 Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 03:03:44 PM EST
What are the first five things you build when you establish a city?

cam
Freedom, liberty, equity and an Australian Republic
[ Parent ]

depends a lot but by alprazolam (4.00 / 1) #15 Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 03:51:04 PM EST
Early I try to get an obelisk in although with Mao I've been getting writing fast enough almost to go straight for libraries. Granaries are very very useful for whipping, but I haven't mastered that strategy yet and haven't used it until recently. I used to build aqueducts but whipping keeps the pop under the health limit most of the time so it's not really a necessary building. Libraries and monasteries both give culture and science but possibly more importantly they allow you specialists, which is also not a strategy I've mastered. I always build courthouses and forges asap in pretty much every city.

It really depends a lot on the leader and strategy you intend to use. The civfanatics forums has a disturbing amount of strategy and philosophy laid out for you, some for n00bs, some for wannabe pros.

I have not had to specialize cities from the very beginning to win up until now, but I had a tendency to do that over time anyway. Cities with a lot of flood plains are good for great people farms or cottage spam; commerce or science cities. Capitals can be either production or commerce or science cities, especially with bureaucracy. Production cities with the heroic epic will be best used as pure military production cities. And so on.

[ Parent ]

What is whipping by cam (2.00 / 0) #17 Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 04:13:40 PM EST
It is obvious I am going to be playing Civ4 tonight to try some of this stuff out.

cam
Freedom, liberty, equity and an Australian Republic
[ Parent ]

pop whipping aka "the whip" by alprazolam (2.00 / 0) #18 Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 04:39:17 PM EST
that's the term for sacrificing population for production under slavery.

it's almost a whole other world the way they use it, you're basically treating food resources as production by trading pop/workers for hammers. you can sacrifice two pop for some bizzarely high number of hammers, i don't really understand the mechanics fully but you can get up to 60 hammers for one pop and that seems to scale up linearly so that you can get nearly 120  for 2. there's a penalty for whipping on the turn you start building something but otherwise it seems to be grossly overpowered to some degree, although you build up a happiness penalty over time if you don't let the initial penalty go away every time you whip.

i highly suggest you start a new game and concentrate on using slavery and the whip and don't worry too much about winning and losing, it's worthwhile to master that strategy. i mean hell you can win on immortal with it without setting up some gay dual map with lame conditions that guarantee your victory (not criticizing you for dual but some people win by the set up and that's lame imo). so far the trick seems to be to let the penalty wear off in between whips and get the timing right to get the max use out of each whip. another thing is if you whip say an axeman, you want to have another queued up behind him so the overflow hammers will be put to his production, if you cross genre/type from unit to building you lose the overflow.

[ Parent ]

Warlords by ucblockhead (2.00 / 0) #12 Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 03:32:49 PM EST
If you have Warlords, you can build the Great Wall, which makes them ignorable. Though I suppose getting that wonder at a high level would be tricky.
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[ Parent ]

Dude, duplicate account and the hole by georgeha (4.00 / 1) #2 Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 01:24:07 PM EST
for those pics.

I have a WIPO, but I don't know the author. Maybe you can tell me, he writes something like this:

I never thought these stories were true, until it happened to me. I attend a large university in the northeast...




it's not that it's me posting them by alprazolam (2.00 / 0) #19 Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 04:41:10 PM EST
i don't know if i feel great about spreading pictures of my buddy's wife making out with chicks all over the internet.

[ Parent ]

I would certainly feel great about it... /nt by ni (4.00 / 1) #20 Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 06:49:23 PM EST



[explaining the sledge-hammer] We had to maintain discipline among the floorboards. -- MissTrish
[ Parent ]

Adriatic Shrimp by StackyMcRacky (4.00 / 1) #3 Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 01:25:47 PM EST
you need:

*peeled, deveined jumbo shrimp (we use 1lb for the 2 of us)
*3-4 sun dried tomatoes
*italian parsley (about same proportion as tomatoes and garlic)
*3-4 garlic cloves
*olive oil
*salt
*lemon

mix some salt into water, and brine the shrimp for about 20 mintues.  let tomatoes soak in warm water for 10 minutes.

slice lemons into wedges

tomatoes are finished hydrating, chop tomatoes, parsley and garlic at the same time, so all the flavors mix.

when shrimp is finished brining, mix it with the garlic-tomato-parsley so it's evenly coated.  heat oil in a skillet.  saute coated shrimp (with the bits that fell off!) until cooked.  serve hot/warm, and squeeze lemon juice onto shrimp before eating.

serves 2, but very easy to scale up or down

it's super-easy, and a flavor explosion in your mouth!



also... by StackyMcRacky (2.00 / 0) #4 Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 01:36:24 PM EST
buying a nice couch is not a bad purchase.  even when the fabric gets worn, you can always have it re-covered (or slipcovered until you want to spend the money on recovering).



I Watched the Line. by Christopher Robin was Murdered (2.00 / 0) #6 Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 02:01:55 PM EST
You know, I just couldn't get into the Johnny Cash movie either. And I dig me some Johnny Cash big time, so I assumed I'd be all over the flick.



The three fantasy authors by aethucyn (4.00 / 1) #8 Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 02:26:29 PM EST
that I continue to read are Katharine Kerr, Katherine Kurtz and Steven Brust. I'm not claiming that they're the best, just that I haven't really picked up anything by a new author since 1995. These were just the three who continued to hold my interest enough that I'd keep picking up their new books as they came out. Kurtz is actually getting closer and closer to dropping off the list as she seems to just be filling in stories that we already know more or less. Brust, though, continues to get better. Terry Brooks had the most spectacular removal from my list, as in 2001, I got about 2 pages into his newest book, before I threw it against the wall because the prose was just so bad.



Brust by ucblockhead (2.00 / 0) #13 Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 03:35:40 PM EST
I was disappointed in his latest book, though it was still miles better than the usual crap.
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[ Parent ]

I haven't yet read by aethucyn (2.00 / 0) #14 Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 03:44:29 PM EST
the one that just came out. (Dzur?) I'll also admit that I preferred The Phoenix Guard and Five Hundred Years After to Viscount. I appreciate what he was trying to do with it, in the extent that it corresponds to Dumas' Musketeers series where the final three-parter also expands focus to cover much more than just the titular heroes, but then, the first books in Dumas' series were better as well.

[ Parent ]

Yeah by ucblockhead (2.00 / 0) #16 Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 04:06:35 PM EST
I pretty much agree with that assessment.

Dzur returns Vlad to his old haunts and seems a bit...I dunno...by the numbers...

Still a good read, of course.
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[ Parent ]

WIPO: China Mieville. by ucblockhead (4.00 / 1) #11 Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 03:30:36 PM EST
I've been meaning to read Earthsea for a long time. I've read most of her other books but for some reason avoided the pure fantasy.
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Along the way, I closed my eyes | 20 comments (20 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback