A small but noticeable grin reflected against the blue glow of a dimly lit terminal screen. Somewhere in Los Angeles, a gateway translated zeros and ones into coherent instructions which it then sent through seemingly countless bounces, finally arriving at its intended destination. This time, the chosen destination was the International Crime Database.

Fred didn’t have a cool hacker name like “El Techno” or “Digital Mage.” He didn’t need one. He was happy being Fred of the Uplink Corporation. He was happier with the steady flow of cash infusions willingly transferred by other corporations into his account for what he calls “subcontracting” gigs. Fred enjoyed his gigs very much, and he enjoyed this batch of gigs in particular.

Corporations who need to appear wholesome to the public sometimes require Fred’s confidential industrial services. That is, industrial espionage, sabotage, creating and falsifying identities, and making certain individuals’ lives miserable. From the list of jobs in Uplink’s internal services machine, he had gathered a list of names that needed police attention. Well, they would need police attention after he was done altering their records, anyway.

It has always been a bit challenging for me to upgrade Kubuntu since I tend to add programs that are not in the default install.  Often enough, it comes down to giving up an upgrade and just installing anew.  Thankfully, /home is in its own partition so I get to keep my data.

Recently, the upgrade process has been less glitchy but still, I had issues.  The install asked me about a config file which it wanted to overwrite.  No problem, I said, and clicked the option to make it so.  Then the machine stopped responding.  Hey, alright, I thought, no choice but to hit the reset button and face whatever demons await after the reboot.

After rebooting, the machine spun and spun.  I hit ctrl-alt F-something to try and get a command prompt, which I got.  Logged in, tried apt-get update/upgrade and it suggested I do sudo dpkg –configure -a instead.  Doing so made the machine do its thing and continue its installation.  Another reboot and I had upgraded to 11.10.

Now the annoying part: kmail migration is borked.  SERIOUSLY?  Yes, it’s a known issue and yes, there were instructions online on how to manually backup files and re-import them into the new kmail but again, SERIOUSLY?  Someone really decided to release Kubuntu with the main e-mail application upgrade process broken?  This isn’t some obscure app or game that very few people would care about…this is e-mail.

After having gone through the process of doing the manual migration (is migration really the term for upgrading to a new version of the same application?) I had to deal with kwallet to store my e-mail account information.  Now, after I log in with my username and password to get to the desktop, I have to type in another password so kwallet knows that it’s ok for kmail to access my e-mail account information.

In the end, I’ve upgraded.  Everything seems to be working, and I’m hoping that just a little more digging around would help me figure out the extra password entry annoyance.  Rant completed.

ElTechno was deemed too much of a renegade to hang with The Renegades so without consulting a dictionary, Dear Leader decided it was best for ElTechno to be on his way.  Finding himself once more without a guild, he began to wonder about the most peculiar things, like why his clothes didn’t fit anymore.

Yes, seriously, why does some equipment have a guild level requirement?  This belt is really members-only?  Is DDO run like my old high school with its own clothing police?  No sports-related clothes, no hats (I’ve got the hat bug so none of my hats are visible), and apparently they’ll need to see my ASB card if I want to keep wearing my crafted belt.

The problem was that I was quite fond of my gear.  The same went for Eberlinz Evil Twin and Estocean.  The easiest solution to the issue was to create my own guild.  Without any fanfare, the Guild of Estoceans was born with barely any members and hardly any renown.  We are nothing like The Renegades.  We are nothing like the Fabulous Killjoys.  For one thing, we can’t stand in V formation.  However, on occasion, I may hum the Batman theme while descending upon an unsuspecting mob and disposing of them with a wand of blasting.

Let’s talk about arts and crafts.  You see these hands?  They spent years of training in both spell-casting and rapier-based combat.  With a touch, I could draw the life force out of a creature within arm’s length.  For those further away, my hand can shoot necrotic bolts, fire, lightning, acid, or ice with similar results.  When I feel the need to see some blood, I draw my rapier and carve my way through opposition.  These are dirty, bloodied, calloused, warrior hands.

To show my more sensitive side, however, today we are using these same hands to knit a cozy cloak for Eberlinz Evil Twin.  You see, Ebbie’s a human ranger with a little bit of a problem staying on his feet.  He wields twin khopesh blades (also designed by yours truly), which I’m sure he’d love to swing around and hurt people with if only he weren’t so easily tripped by his enemies.  Because of this little issue, he asked if I could make him some sort of Cloak of Balancing.  “Sure can,” I enthusiastically exclaimed, “I just need to gather some materials.”

The first step is to decide on exactly what we’re going to make.  For Eberlinz, I wanted to give him something a little extra so today we’re crafting him an Unbalancing Cloak of Balance which not only makes him more surefooted; the cloak is so awesome it has a chance to knock enemies off their feet.  After deciding on that, we gather the necessary essences and collectible items to create the magical shards that would go into the cloak.  For our purposes, we have created an unbalancing shard and a shard of balance.

Shards in hand, now we look for a used cloak.  It is a good idea to keep a few old cloaks around just for crafting purposes.  Any will do, really.  We take the cloak, find the designer tag, rip said tag, and replace it with “Hecho De ElTechno.”  We then use a hot glue gun to secure the shards into place.  A little bit of cleanup and here we have a lovely cloak, hand-made and ready for the rigors of combat.

Up on the mast, there’s a lonely mote herd…

When people think of the Risia Ice Games, they think of sliding gracefully down icy slopes and gliding through the air through low-gravity jumps in search of assorted colored winter coins. They think of fighting fire elementals and renting ice skates. They think of the poetic snowfall in Stormreach Harbor the likes of which hadn’t been seen since a dragon terrorized Korthos.

Well, realistically, a lot of people ignore the ice games entirely, and for the longest time, I was one of those people. That was until I became involved in an obsessive-compulsive hunt for eternal wands. The basic idea is as follows: during the Ice Games, a character collects assorted coins, which gets redeemed for random items. Some of those random items happen to be crafting materials which when placed in the Risian Altar along with other ingredients, create or imbue weapons with icy properties. One of these possible creations is an Eternal Wand of Ray of Frost.

There was ElTechno’s wraith form and extended versions of “Jump” and “Expeditious Retreat” spells standing on a docked ship’s mast deciding on the best path to collect as many blue coins as possible in one leap. There was ElTechno cursing as his footing slipped, gliding back down to the dock and jumping back up to the boathouse roof for another try at a precision landing onto the ship’s mast. A successful jump netted three blue coins and a switch to another instance in the multiverse for an attempt at three more. This was repeated countless times to gather materials for him, and for members of the guild.

Thusly he herded the motes of winter, crafting recipes, an assortment of icy potions, and candy canes which he used as unexpected presents for guild and party members. After crafting the eternal wand, he embraced his jumping proficiency and continued herding motes of winter for various other recipes. He gave quite a few of the materials away and to those who were interested, he taught his methods of coin farming.

All of this was strange to the Drow rogue wizard who had lived a borderline sociopathic life.

Did you know that a Divine Union of Hirelings exists? Apparently so! In the last union meeting, countless speaker cards were filled out in order to address the issue of hireling maltreatment and abuse, with many hireling clerics speaking out against doing contract work for a Drow Wizard named ElTechno De La Biblioteca.

Yes, they spoke out against me and they made me sit through the whole thing. One cleric recounted the time when I cast Expeditious Retreat and Invisibility on myself and left her to run after me through mobs of hostile soldiers and scorpions. “I came back to pick up your soulstone!” I exclaimed. Another spoke of a time when I went for a swim through an underwater cave and left him to fight trolls and rust monsters alone. while someone else testified that I had locked them out to face Whisperdoom alone.  Yet another recalled a time I watched her get electrocuted to death by a trap I had jumped over. “That’s because most people would step away from the trap BEFORE healing themselves!” A few others spoke of being tactlessly commanded to use runes, open doors, heal others not specifically named in the contract, having to heal spiders and miscellaneous pets, and being injured numerous times by a summoned arcane skeleton mage. “You command Drow Scorpions as pets! Consider yourselves fortunate that Vulkoor has not manifested his wrath upon you!” I yelled in exasperation.

After a bit of gavel pounding, the whole episode ended with me being limited to non-union contracts over at House Kundarak. I wasn’t too worried since I knew a lot of the union clerics secretly moonlighted as bodyguards in House K. However, until the excitement that my name invoked wound down, I decided it was best to hit the realm’s Looking-For-Group Bulletin Board again for a while. Good thing, too, because I had found a group running the “Diplomatic Impunity” quest which in turn led to my being accepted into a guild.

“It’s a bit like Craigslist for looters and grave robbers,” he thought as he reluctantly asked to be invited into a group running the “Depths” chain for House Deneith.  The quest required more work in the sewers which sent his former hireling packing in a fit of rage, grumbling as he left about a dry-cleaning bill.  Not wanting to go solo, ElTechno had to resort to becoming more sociable in the hopes of having a group to go questing with.

At the group leader’s approval, ElTechno was in and on his way to the sewer entrance.  He gave a brief and almost-sociable “hello” to the other members.  As he looked over everyone in the party, he assessed each of them in his head.  There was a swordsman and an axe swinger as cannon fodder, a sneaky rogue to disarm traps, a spell caster like him, and a cleric to heal everyone’s ills in case of a pneumonia outbreak.

Spells and incantations that empowered party members were cast at the dungeon entrance as was the custom.  ElTechno cast his one mass-effect spell of Protection from Evil as well as Bull’s Strength for the cannon fodder.  He then summoned his skeleton mage and a giant spider to assist.  He turned to his side to find that someone had summoned a Drow scorpion as a pet.  It was the cleric.

“I find it a bit offensive that you would take a Drow scorpion as a pet.”  The Drow scorpion, a Drow Elf with a scorpion body, was revered by the Drow as elves that had transcended into a higher union with their scorpion god.  The cleric dismissed the anthropology lesson and said “gets the job done.”

The quest had gone quite well until the rogue took a wrong turn and gathered more blades to his torso than his health cared to handle.  With the rogue’s demise, ElTechno silently appointed himself the new trapmonkey.  After inspecting a suspicious apparatus in one particular hallway, he quickly yelled “trap!”  He leapt above a ledge to disarm the trap and others in the group tried to follow.  One fell off and was immediately cut down by giant rotating blades that had been cleverly hidden within the walls.  It was the cleric.

“Gets the job done,” ElTechno thought.  “Keeps one of my people as a pet,” he thought.  “Stupid enough not to heed my warning,” he thought.  With a sigh, he took the cleric’s soulstone and dutifully brought it with him to the resurrection shrine around the corner.  That is what any good party member would have done.

There was an unpleasant stench. Ankle-deep sewage flowed downstream like the hopes and dreams of the young Drow elf who reluctantly navigated the sewer system in search of a man named Atlas or Argos or Arlo Guthrie or something. He motioned to his hired healer who rolled his eyes and reminded him that the man they sought was named Arlos.

Even though he made more platinum than most hirelings, the unpleasant sewer smell nor the sociopathic nature of his Drow employer made the healer believe that the trip was not worth twice the money he was offered. Triple, maybe, but only if one factors in the dry-cleaning bill for the +1 to healing plate mail he was sporting.

Further along the path, the Drow elf wizard’s conjured pet charged forward to confront a couple of Kobold warriors. The preoccupied wizard took a slight left turn to break open a few barrels and crates on the floor. He pocketed the scattered contents.

“Why would you do that? You don’t even own a bow!” the hireling inquired rhetorically.

“Masterwork arrows fetch a decent price at the vendors” said El Techno with a charismatic smile.

He then looked up and nonchalantly took a couple of steps back behind the hireling as fire potions rained down from a Kobold thrower ahead, bouncing against the cleric’s armor. He checked his robe for ashes and looked dismayed by the couple of spots he found.

“Well,” said El Techno, “get to work.”

As the cleric charged forward to fight alongside El Techno’s pet, a loud alarm gong rang followed by the appearance of a large ogre set on defending his territory.

“I guess I have to get my hands dirty,” sighed the wizard, pulling an eternal wand of acid splash from his backpack.

“That’s great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane…”
– REM, “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

Science makes predictions.  If I drop my mouse from my table, it should fall down.  I can test this prediction (and occasionally do — absolutely intentionally, of course) to satisfy my curiosity.  Knowledge of, nor faith in gravity is not a requirement for my mouse to fall.  This is not a Bugs Bunny cartoon.  My dedication to the continuous advancement of science often demands that I test this prediction constantly, and sometimes in the most inconvenient ways. Does an egg obey the law of gravity when I intentionally let it slip from my hand as I take the experimental mass from the fridge?  Does lip balm fall from my pocket as I take a pen out? Will a hard drive hover in mid-air after dropping it?  Unfortunately not.

Having said this, a religious organisation has made a prediction that the world would end today.  6pm on the hour, every hour as each time zone hits that time.  Earthquakes, zombies, the gullibles being beamed up into another dimension.  You know, the works.  The great thing about this is that the same group had predicted the same event back in the mid-90′s and they were wrong then.  From the newscast today, it looks like they’re wrong again.

I won’t go into the “problems and the hows and whys” of such thought and blind faith here, but instead present an odd sense of admiration for this religious organisation.  They had the courage and conviction to proclaim loudly — “This is what we believe, and this is important.  This is our testable prediction!”  Not too many religious groups out there doing that.

If we are to be consistent in this scientific study, we evaluate this theory using the observable experiment we have been presented.  If the prediction fails, the theory is incorrect.  We move on.  The world did not end, there are no zombies walking around, the gullibles are still here.  Will they re-evaluate their theory?  That is a psychological experiment…and I predict the answer is “no.”

At any rate, I’ve had the roast beef sandwich at the Cafe At The End Of The Universe, and it was good.

The world is a vampire, sent to drain
secret destroyers, hold you up to the flames
and what do I get, for my pain
betrayed desires, and a piece of the game
– “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” (The Smashing Pumpkins)

Happy Mothra’s Day, everyone! I haven’t seen any of the Godzilla movies but I guess that particular subculture had gained enough influence to make Mothra’s Day a mainstream holiday. I was a bit puzzled at first by the gifts exchanged on Mothra’s Day but after realizing that the connection was so obvious, I almost feel ashamed to point it out here.  We exchange flowers and sweets because butterflies are naturally attracted to them. It is our way of honoring Mothra.

Some may say that I have the holiday confused with something they insist is called “Mothers’ Day” and I did give the notion some minor consideration. Looking at the Wikipedia entry for Mothra, I was able to see where the confusion came from.

Wikipedia states that Mothra “is almost always portrayed as a kind and benevolent creature, causing destruction only when acting as protector to her worshipers on Infant Island or to her egg, or as collateral damage while protecting Earth from a greater threat.”

Wikipedia also claims that “Mothra has proven a formidable adversary in combat: in larval form she may use her silken spray to wrap and immobilize an opponent, and has a knack for biting and clinging to foes’ tails. In imago form her powers vary widely from film to film, including very animalistic scratching and dragging, incorporating several bolt and beam weapons in the Heisei era, and often concluding with a poisonous yellow powder (or “scales”) -her last defense.

Mothra is one of the most powerful psychics in the Toho universe. She has had the ability to use this power benevolently, to communicate with humans, or aggressively, to destroy her enemies.” (From Wikipedia entry on Mothra)

Though it may be confusing, be assured that the holiday IS called Mothra’s Day. Any similarities between the formidably protective, poison-spewing, benevolent psychic female authority figure and Mothra are strictly coincidental.