Last Saturday: Thought about going out observing, but my back was bothering me a bit, so we decided to stay home and watch a movie instead. See Stupid Neighbor Tricks for summary of the remainder of the evening.

Last Sunday: Didn’t really feel like going out of the house, due to my back still bugging me, and not wanting to see the neighbor outside. Stayed inside pretty much all day.

Monday: Went to work. buncha meetings.

Tuesday: Site problem in the morning. Also, back pain was worse. After dealing with the problems, I decided to stay home and nurse my back. Ordered in for Thai food.

Wednesday: Went to work. More meetings.

Thursday: Minor site problem in the morning. More meetings.

Friday: Went to work. More meetings.

Saturday: Finally got the telescope out to Darren’s house to do some observing. After playing with the finderscope briefly, we turned our attention to the main scope. (It is a Celestron 11 inch, nice scope). Well, it took some experimentation with different eyepieces and focusing to see anything at all through the scope, but we sort of got the hang of it after an hour of fiddling. GPS auto-alignment is sweet, the only minor confusion was finding out which star we were supposed to center the scope on when dozens were visible. But after the second try, we managed to get it aligned. We were able to see both Jupiter (including some stripes across the center and three of its moons next to it) and Saturn (complete with a ring around it). Downside was, everything was a little fuzzy, we weren’t able to get it to focus crisply. We think this was due to condensation on the outside – when we looked at the front, it was totally covered with dew, looking like a steamy shower door or something. I’m surprised we were able to see anything at all… the fact that we saw two planets and rings and moons with dew on the front is probably an indication of how huge and how nice this scope is. We stayed a while and played games as well, got home about 1:30.

Sunday: Did laundry, met up with kethry about lunch time, she stayed until about 7:30. corrii was here as well, getting the last bits of stuff from her room. After Kethry left, we decided to use the carpet cleaner on a couple of spots, which prompted an angry response from the neighbor, see previous entry.

Now to bed!!!!

Dear Neighbor,

I’m writing to apologize for the noise earlier tonight. Our roommate is moving out, and she rented a steam cleaning machine, so we used the machine to clean other parts of the carpet as well. Unfortunately the only time we had available to work on this was 7:30 to 8:30 and the machine was due back the following day. This is a one-time event and I don’t expect to have any future needs to clean carpets in the evening.

More importantly, I’m writing to address your other concern…

Had some problems with the neigbor making loud noises again. Since this was disturbing our movie, I decided to do something. Since he reacted rudely when I complained before and basically told me not to call him next time, I decided to call the police instead.

If you want the whole story, check out my Letter to the management company…

Received telegram from abroad:
“By wire from The Empire of Terafina. Stop. We have founded the terroriry of Hy Brasil, and invite your government to depart your territory and join us. Stop.”

Conferred with Majesty during twice-daily “lap conference”.

Replied to The Empire of Terafina: “Message from His Majesty: We care little about “region” affiliations, but since your country exports some fine Treats, we will forward the request on to our minions for their consideration.”

After taking this action, still in favor with Majesty at this time. End report.

Not wanting to be left out, I decided to go to nationstates.net and created The Dictatorship of Bunland. This land differs from other nation states because it is governed by a non-human: a near-domesticated British shorthair mackerel tabby cat named Bunny.

Since Bunny doesn’t speak English (and by most accounts understands very little of it as well) the business of the nation is carried out by his Minions. Those Minions in favor with Bunny may make policy decisions from time to time. Those Minions who fall out of favor are scratched and bitten, though they may be given a chance to earn favor again by lobbying him with treats. (Yes the currency is the “treat”. We use paper money here… we’re not savages… the name “treat” is of mostly archaic/historical significance but the paper currency still bears caricatures of little fishies, chickens, etc. — a remnant of the days when we were still on the Savory Treat Standard.) Some of the more liberal-minded Minions have collected themselves into a Parliament, but this is more to make their nation appear legitimate and less about making policy decisions fairly than one might at first suspect.

Interestingly, based only on our responses to a few Agree/Disagree statements, the computers at NationStates.Net seem to already have a pretty good idea of what it’s like to live in Bunland. (I wonder if the computers that power this simulation have already been 0wned by Simon…)

The Dictatorship of Bunland is a tiny, environmentally stunning nation, renowned for its strong anti-business politics. Its hard-nosed, cynical population of 5 million are ruled without fear or favor by a psychotic dictator, who outlaws just about everything and refers to the populace as “my little playthings.”

Crime — especially youth-related — is well under control, thanks to the all-pervasive police force. Bunland’s national animal is the british shorthair cat, which frolics freely in the nation’s many lush forests, and its currency is the treat.

Things I wanted to do this year
Write more
Roleplay
Go out with friends
Exercise

How it really turned out
Exercise: Exercised regularly during the end of May and most of June, most of August, and pretty much blew it off the rest of the time.
Writing: This has been inconsistent, just don’t seem to have the excess energy or enthusiasm for it.
Roleplaying: There was Merlin’s game that has wrapped up, but nothing really other than that. I probably need to get involved with a Mush in order to get more roleplaying and I am afraid of getting wrapped up in something that takes too much time.
Go out with friends- I am doing better on this but we are still a bit constrained because M prefers to stay home a lot.

Good things about this year
– I am glad the work situation got itself worked out. Things have been a lot less stressful at work without having to deal with employee issues. I feel like the team is really doing well in terms of morale and I am proud of them and proud of how I dealt with some difficult situations.
– I lost some weight and managed to keep it off

Bummer things about this year
Sleeping on the couch- I have been sleeping in the front room for most of the last six months, due to my snoring problem. This doesn’t keep Miche up so her schedule has been a bit more regular. I can sleep well just about anywhere so not really a problem, but it would be nice to sleep with my weety.

OK then, goals for next year
Go see an allergist about snoring
Get serious about exercising. Not going crazy with it, just being consistent.
Go out with friends more
Roleplaying
Take more vacation

I am starting to slowly switch services over from charon to neko-base (two servers here at home). The first step has been started, which is to duplicate all DNS information to both and start switching over domains to point to the new servers. If you’re a charon user, you may have already received mail from me about that.

The idea behind a slow migration rather than a quick one is so that each service will be impacted for a minimal amount of time — hopefully no more than an hour of inconvenience to the owners, and no Web/Mail outage observed by their clients. For Mush clients there will be an interruption, either the users will not be able to play during the switchover, or if the owner prefers, the users can stay logged in to the old server while the new one is being set up (and they should not do any building or send/change their +mail). The slower migration of services to the new host also allows me to double-check the services we are providing, to drop any services that are no longer required, and change the setup on the new machine if needed.

The rest of the message describes how I am going to move users over from one to the other. If this affects you, I will be emailing you anyway, but comments are welcome from others as well.
neko-base migration plan

Happy Birthday!

Today would be J.R.R. Tolkien’s eleventy-first birthday.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/books/01/03/film.hobbit.reut/

I wrote this in response to Pixel’s post. It is a suggested reply to someone who is “offended” at a web site. Apologies for the duplication, but I wanted to save it in my own journal too for future reference.
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A friend of mine pointed me to this (as a cool party game) http://www.princeton.edu/~mafia/