Dear reader, I pose this question for you:

Should I hold myself to a different standard than I hold other purveyors of fiction?

When I read fiction that touches on science or technology¹, and said science is wrong², it bothers me³. However, if the rest of the tale is exciting, intriguing, or otherwise entertaining, I am all too happy to let it slide.

The idea I've started entertaining for this year's NaNo novel is based on some pretty lousy science. I don't want to get into the details just yet, but suffice it to say that it would bug me if I were just the reader.

My problem is twofold. First, it's NaNo; to reach the goal, I just need to crank out 50,000 words, regardless of how useless they are. And second, it troubles me that I can't think of a more elegant way to cause the scenario which is the basis for the story, and I'd really hate for my first success⁴ at NaNo to be based on something that would bug me as a reader.

As I said, though, if it were another author's book, I'd let it go and enjoy the rest of the tale.

So what do you think? Should I write the story, warts and all, or should I spend the next three days cramming for a better idea? Your comments would be welcome.

---

¹ Would it kill Hollywood to hire a nerd or two to vet the so-called hacking that goes on in TV and movies?

² And, sadly, it almost always is.

³ Bad science in non-fiction, like our news and politics, makes me even crazier, but that's a whole 'nother post.

⁴ This is rather unlikely, given my track record

Welcome to cynicaloptimism.org.

I'd always meant to register myself a real domain name, but having conned a number of people into visiting the old site on a regular basis, I was a bit daunted by the proposition of getting things changed over.

Plus, there was the problem of figuring out what the heck to register. Blob's an okay nickname, but no untaken variations of it appealed to me as a domain name. So, I tried many dozens of things until I came across cynicaloptimism, which I felt conveyed the essence of my outlook on life nicely concisely.

This was back in May, mind you. It took me until now to be satisfied that the new old server would be stable and that I could migrate things over reasonably efficiently. That's right, no longer is everything running on the old Pentium 133 with 32MB RAM. We're talking dual P3-450s with 1GB, baby. That ought to improve some of the performance around here.

Not much else is going to change in the near future, however. You'll still get nearly daily Haikus and occasional other content. I was working on a flash fiction project actually, which has turned itself into a short story. I hope to get that done before November and NaNo.

Her smile was genuine, completely care-free. Reginald marveled at it.

Since he'd gone off to war twenty years ago, he had never felt like that. Happy, calm, at peace. How marvelous he found it that she could be that way, and as she giggled as she twirled beneath his hand, how wonderful that she could almost make him feel it again.

She was younger than he was; not much older than he had been when they put a rifle in is hand at age seventeen and called him a man. He'd done his duty, aided his nation in her time of need. He'd killed young men who had never wronged him and he carried the guilt of it all these years. It's true that they would have—wronged him, that is—had they had the opportunity, but he knew that it was only because they, too, were doing their patriotic duty. In the intervening years, he had learned it could all have been avoided with just a bit more understanding and a little less posturing by politicians on all sides. That had made him angry and bitter, too. That was almost worse than the guilt.

She had never known war, though, so perhaps the innocent glee of it came naturally. Still, she was old enough to have her own share of burdens. At a mere twenty-two years of age, she'd already lost a husband to disease and a child to still birth. And yet, here she was, swaying to the blare of klaxon horns as though it was a symphony.

He'd enjoyed getting to know her. Grace was her name, he suddenly remembered. Fate had put them at a table together that evening, just as as it had made sure their mutual affection and attraction could never blossom into something more. They'd exchanged tales, both happy and sad, talked at length about their triumphs and their fears. She had been working as a clerk since her husband died, but she was studying to become a nurse.

Grace had won her ticket through some sort of lottery. She said that she had spent a significant portion of her life savings on the dress she wore that night. It was simple, but effective. Bright red and delightfully clingy, yet with a flare at the hem that billowed with each twirl.

He hadn't had the heart to tell her that he had spent several times as much on mere sashes for the fashions he had tailored for the nobility and heiresses that comprised his clientele. Upon reflection, though, he realized that no amount of gold could bestow on the majority of them the simple, ethereal beauty that the Grace possessed that evening.

He pulled her tight to himself, draping her arm around his neck and placing his around her waist. The more enthusiastic portions of their dance had set her heart racing and he could feel it through her chest. She flashed that smile at him again and to his surprise he suddenly felt his own, cold, cynical heart flutter and leap.

His memory flashed, a feeling awakened something that had lain dormant for two decades. A girl that he had loved very much before the war, a girl not too different from Grace. He'd forgotten all about her and about who he was before. He'd felt this feeling then, too, before chaos took it all away.

In the space of an instant, the memory had passed and he was once again in the moment. Perhaps for the first time in twenty years he was truly in the moment. Impulsively, he leaned down to kiss her and as her smile parted for him, he closed his eyes.

They spent a lifetime in that kiss, they married, had children, grandchildren, they grew old together. When they stopped to catch their breath, he was surprised to find that only moments had passed.

When he opened his eyes and saw her smiling again, he smiled right back at her. He knew joy.

As they joined again in a different, more purposeful kiss, the asteroid the klaxons had been warning about smashed into their ship. Apparently, the crew had failed to revive the engines in time and no rescue ship had reached them.

Far better to die like this, he thought in that final moment, than to live like that.

Here's the problem.

I love ethanol. Nearly every concoction I've tasted to that contained liquid ethanol has been pleasant to my taste buds. I love scotch. I love beer. I love wine. I love (good) tequila. I have enjoyed fermented and distilled beverages of many classifications.

Consequently, I drink a fair amount of it. A beer with dinner a couple of times a week, a glass of wine here and there, and a trip to the bar or a friend's party a couple of times a month. Nothing too outrageous, I think. I was never one of those people who drink just to get drunk. I'd never drink bad beer because it's a cheap way to get sloppy. If I drink beer, it's a good micro brew for the flavor, not the buzz.

However, it has happened on occasion that I would overindulge and find myself not fully in control of my faculties. It's not an unpleasant state, but not one I actively seek. Certainly, the mornings after are sometimes a stiff price to pay. But then, I've never been severely hung over, either. I've never vomited due to excess consumption. I was very, very close once. I don't think I'll be drinking those martinis again.

On two occasions, though, over the holidays, I found myself drinking fairly significant quantities of alcohol with no ill effects whatsoever. Indeed, I had little more than a good buzz to show for the open bar party I mentioned in a haiku last week. This began to worry me.

Had I become an alcoholic? Had my little here, little there attitude meant a little more here and a little more there to the point where I'd built such a tolerance that I could no longer get drunk casually?

It should be noted that alcoholism is not uncommon in at least one half of my family and that I may have a natural tendency toward addiction (or possibly just low impulse control). I abused caffeine for years, I had a pretty serious MUD problem for a while, I eat like an alcoholic drinks, I habitually gnaw my fingernails to nubs, etc.

So I thought I should take a step back and see how well I can resist the temptation. I'd take a week off (between Volcanicast Sunday night and a friend's party on the following Saturday) from booze and see how it went.

I'm happy to report that I think I did very well, in spite of some serious temptation. There was the occasional, "Damn, I could go for a glass of... wait." But that was nothing compared to having chili for dinner last night. Chili without beer? When there is perfectly good beer in the refrigerator? How is this even possible? But I resisted every time, and with very little effort.

So, the answer, for now at least, is a cautious, "No, I'm not an alcoholic." Yay!

Fig. 1
Forza Motorsport 2

I mentioned way back in 2005 that I was smitten with Forza Motorsport. Well, two and a half years later, I have an Xbox 360 and its successor, Forza Motorsport 2. FM2 is just as much fun as its predecessor, with even more paint customization options and more physics and polygons and shit.

I have a couple of friends on my friends list who, like me, love the racing sims. One of them, we'll call him CBizkit, invited me to join the ARS Technica gaming forum racing league, and eager to test my skills, I joined up.

FM2 has a Performance Indicator system, whereby points are assigned for things like horsepower, weight, braking power, tire grip, and even shift time. For each race in this series, each driver takes a 2002 Lotus Esprit, which has a base PI of 695 and adds modifications to get as close to (or usually on) 850 as possible. You can add handling mods like tires and weight reduction or horsepower mods such as turbochargers and exhaust systems, or in many cases a combination of the two. Then you can adjust the car's transmission and suspension settings to suit the track and your driving style. This leads to quite a varied field of cars on most tracks and a great deal of challenge in finding the best setup for any given race.

Furthermore, being the complete and utter nerd I am, I can't resist creating the occasional writeup on the forum of my goings on, usually in the form of a press release/race report in the style found on my favorite Formula One news sites. Expect crossposts of those, such as the one you're about to read, to become a regular feature of the blog until the season is over.

---

Blob Motorsports marks its debut at Tuesday's ARS Group One race at Maple Valley

"When we started this season," says Blobemetheus, CEO of Blob Motorsports and driver of the currently 5th place #42 Lotus Esprit, "it was just me and a car." He adds with a characteristic grin, "Okay. A couple of cars."

"But, you know, I had to do everything. Line up sponsorships, pack up the gear, haul the cars, drive 'em, tune 'em, replace dozens of snapped carbon fiber wings, deal with suppliers. It was a nightmare. And you can see from our early results that it just wasn't working. I couldn't even line up the car at the season opener in Laguna Seca. That was a real heart breaker. We did all our preseason testing there, and I was feeling pretty good about the car and the track. I think I could have taken it to the big boys, but alas, we'll never know."

Blob, as he likes to be known, then went on to a string of DNFs, including the exhibition race at the Nurburgring and a race at Sebring that had been going well until he ran out of fuel just two laps from the finish.

"Well, I got into a wall early on and needed to pit. Of course, I had to get out of the car myself and bang out the body work. I climbed back in and turned in some decent laps. I thought I was good to go on fuel, but obviously I was wrong."

Blob hopes he's put all that behind him, now. While in Germany, he put in the last few phone calls required for the incorporation of Blob Motorsports.

Fig. 2
Blob Motorsports Decal on the #42 Lotus

"I've got a business manager and a mechanic and a logo now. Man, what a relief to be able to concentrate on what I'm best at: Getting that gorgeous hunk of metal around the circuit as fast as possible."

It seems as though the arrangement has payed dividends immediately. After the action packed and ultimately aborted first start at Maple Valley, he'd secured third place. "And even if Audiocee hadn't gone out, I think I would have caught him after the pit stops," says Blob. "I'd done a little bit of engine damage trying to keep it off the wall while sliding on the grass, but it's nothing we couldn't have cleaned up in the pits."

Blob Motorsports opted for an all-handling configuration at Maple Valley, sacrificing ultimate speed for control and consistency.

"After a few dozen practice laps, I had a real good rhythm going. I was flat for like 90% of the lap. Of course, with all that wing, I didn't get much above 140, but the car was solid and stable. But I knew I was in for a fight on Tuesday because I was still nearly a second off Uni's time. But I figured that if I could just run it clean, I might stay competitive."

Fig. 3
The grid at the restart

After the restart, clean was the operative word. While there's much speculation and justification around race control's decision to restart with a random starting order, Blobemetheus was happy to retain his second place grid spot.

"It was good. I was running a really tall first gear, so I was very happy I managed keep the revs up without smoking the clutch or the engine at the start. I was able to keep touch with Audiocee, who started first, and when he went wide, I slid past on the way up the hill. After that, it was clear sailing for four laps."

Fig. 4
Blobemetheus taking the lead

On the fifth, though, Blob made his first error and went wide, giving Unimetal and the #007 Lotus an easy pass for the race lead.

"I just missed my apex. I wish I could blame it on something other than driver error, but that's all it was. A momentary lapse of concentration can cost you a lot out there, especially when the other driver's got nine tenths per lap on you. I saw him coming and obviously let it rattle me."

Fig. 5
Final lead change: Unimetal on top

Blob nearly caught Unimetal at the top of the hill on the very next lap, but having to check up to avoid collision, that was the last he'd see of him all day.

"After that, I just fell into my rhythm and did my thing. I think I had one more minor off, but other than that, I was pretty good, even when the tires started to lose grip. Unfortunately, I needed Uni to make a mistake at that point and it seems like he never did. I've gotta give Unimetal and the 007 team their propers. They did their homework and drove a good race."

Still, after a very disappointing start to the season, the second step of the podium must have been a big boost for the young team.

"You bet! While I hope for bigger and better things as the season rolls on, my first podium is very exciting. Thanks go out to the fans and to the guys at Blob Motorsports. Oh, and to CBizkit, for giving up a lot of points and letting me lap him. Twice."

Well, that didn't take long. I walked down the hall to the restroom wondering what I might write about. By the time I got back, I had it. Here's a sample.

Coincidentally, it was at about 650 words when I decided to post this.

It's that time of year again. It gets dark way too early. It's fucking cold. The only thing really worth looking forward to, aside from April and maybe the orgy of materialism around the winter solstice, is a dead bird and some gourd flesh made into a dessert. And thousands of psychotic people like myself get the notion to write a (albeit short) novel in November's 30 days.

I was seriously on the fence this year. I really wanted to do it. In fact, I really wanted to revisit my 2005 novel, Unchained, and finish it. That was my best effort to date; of the three times (not including this one) I've attempted NaNoWriMo, I got around 22,000 of the required 50,000 words before getting so far behind that I threw in the towel. While I was pondering whether or not to participate, I re-read it. With the distance from the rigors of actually writing it, I found that it was an enjoyable read. I wanted to know more, so I resolved to rewrite it.

But I also have a lot on my plate. Five or six hours of my free time per week are now devoted to the Volcanicast. I'm remodeling my living room/dining room/kitchen. And work looks set to get stupid busy on me.

Furthermore, I've lost my two best writing buddies. KJToo has defected to the Lake County group, and honestly, who can blame him; they're much more local to him. And Wesley isn't working on a novel this year, but his own pet NaNoesque project. He's also working nights, so I won't see him at any of the meetings. Without their camaraderie, I'm losing a significant part of the motivation. I hope that doesn't sound like a complaint, I can certainly not fault either of them.

With all that, I've done a miraculous thing. I've given myself license to fail. Every other year, I've expected to succeed (because I'm foolish and undeservedly optimistic). As such, I was overly concerned about being "behind" the average one thousand, six hundred sixty-six and two thirds words per day, and felt the growing gap as a tremendous weight such that when it became mathematically impossible for me to complete the task, I simply gave up and quit.

So I have a much more relaxed view toward NaNo this year. If I don't make it, that's okay. The odds were against me, anyway. If I do make it, though, what a sweet victory it would be.

I started on November 1, rewriting Unchained as Projection. It quickly became apparent, though, that that's not what I really wanted to do. Every divergence from the original feels wrong. I find myself copying chunks of words (manually, no cut/paste) because I think I did it better the first time. That's not what I set out to do. And I realized that I just want to finish Unchained as it is.

This leaves me with a dilemma. I still want to do NaNo, so I think I'm going to start over with a new story. I don't have any characters or plot, but that's never stopped me before. I know that if I just start writing, the rest will come. The good news is that I came to this realization fairly early. That means that if I start tomorrow, my average word count per day need only be 2,000. A mere pittance over the original goal of 1,667.

I'm pretty excited about this turn of events, actually. I'm also excited about the freedom to fail. I don't think I'm going to quit this year, even if it seems near the end like I'll only hit 20K, I'm going to write until the last day.

So, wish me luck, and look for the new title and reset status image at the top left of my home page.

---

^*There goes another 650 words. I'm doing it wrong.

So, you know you've got hard wood under your nasty old carpet and you're thinking to yourself, "I can probably yank the carpet, sand that sucker down, apply some finish and have a great-looking living and/or dining room floor." This is a friendly guide to doing that very thing, based on my personal experience.

Step 1: Don't.

Step 2: Seriously, call somebody who knows what they're doing.

Step 3: If you are, like me, foolish enough to skip steps one and two, read on.

I had decided to use some of my accumulating vacation before I lost it and spend it on this exciting project since I had no money for a real vacation. I figured $300-400 in supplies should do the trick, and I could just about swing that. So, we began.

What you will need:
• A carpet knife/box cutter/liberty killer
• A device for prying carpet, nails, tacks, and staples
• A shop vac and a swiffer/mop
• One or more generous and very understanding friends
• More money than you expect
• More time than you expect
• Patience
• Floor sander
• Lots of sand paper
• Hand-held random orbital sander
• About six hundred tack cloths (Estimate. Probably closer to fifty.)
• Stain and applicator
• Polyurethane and applicator
• Lots and lots of mineral spirits for cleaning the above

What you may want, but hopefully not need:
• A cyanide capsule

First, yank up the old carpet. This will take longer than you expect. We began at about 8pm on Friday, Oct. 19th. I had a wife and a friend to assist; we finished at about 5am. That was about 400 square of carpet stripped from our living room, dining room and stairs leading up and down (we've got a split-level), cut into sections for garbage removal, padding pulled and put in garbage bags and/or vacuumed, nails, staples, and tacks all pulled.

Next, remove the furniture. This will probably take about as long as you expect. This is where the friends come in. Thank you ever so much, Wesley and Sam. This begins our Saturday.

Next, tape off everything. This will take longer than you expect. Any place that sawdust can go, you almost certainly don't want it to. Particularly your HVAC system. If it does not pose a fire hazard (it will), it will certainly kill your filter.

Next, acquire a sander. I rented a Varathane floor sanding system thingy from Lowe's. Don't do this unless you know you have an easily-sanded finish. I understand you can rent sanders that will strip more readily, but must be more carefully controlled to keep from over-stripping. I would like to have dealt with that problem. There are two good things I can say about the Varathane: 1) The sandpaper pads can be easily removed and reapplied. This will become important in a moment. 2) The integrated vacuum really does a great job of minimizing the sawdust.

You will want to begin with a coarse sandpaper to do most of the cleaning/leveling, then move to a medium grit for prepping, and a fine grit for finishing. Unless you have a floor covered in shellac, or whatever sticky finish they used on my floor. After just a few seconds of sanding, the sander started bucking and making an unpleasant grinding sound. I immediately shut it off and turned it on its back. It had thick brown streaks, the consistency and color of dried chocolate all through the sandpaper and had left a brown muck apparently glued to the floor. See Figures 5 and 6 to the left.

After some research, we found that this is common if you have shellac or lac-based finish on your floor. The solutions are to either 1) Sand anyway; this will take longer than you expect and use a lot of sand paper, or 2) Strip the finish first with some nasty chemical. I actually went back to the store and bought some nasty chemical and tried it in my pantry (which is also part of the floor I did). It didn't work.

The solution is to sand about half a square foot, when the machine starts to complain, stop, take the pads off, knock the crap off of them (I accomplished this by slapping them against hard things I could find outside), then repeat with another, cool set of pads. They heat up very quickly and that seems to be when the stuff starts sticking. I ultimately had about 9 sets of pads in a rotation. Gum one, clean it, grab the next, repeat. This will take very much longer than you expect. I actually wanted to buy more sand paper pads, but all the Lowes in the area ran out of them. I bitched and got a second rental day gratis, since the old sandpaper becomes less and less effective with use and cleaning.

I was done with the rental sander on Monday at about 1pm, this was pretty much exactly when I had to have it back to avoid being charged another day, and also represented about 50 hours of work since Friday night. Finishing your own floors is only a bargain if you assume your time is worth zero. Which, considering I can't really get a second job or paid overtime is effectively the truth. I took the rest of Monday off because it was likely the last good weather of the year. We took a motorcycle ride. I had another day off on Tuesday because I was scheduled to babysit nephews.

Next, you will need to do the corners and clean-up with the orbial sander. This will take longer than you expect. If you look at Figure 7 in the full resolution, you'll notice that where one floor board was slightly offset in depth vs. its neighbor that there was old finish remaining in those nooks and crannies. Trouble is there's a lot of them. Fortunately, Renee suggested that I could just attack them with the fine sand paper on the orbital and she was right. That saved me a bunch of time and effort sanding with the coarse and then graduating to the fine. It did, of course, gum up more 120 grit sandpaper, but it was way worth the expense. Unfortunately, I had already done the perimeter edge where the floor sander couldn't reach in the coarse grit, so I did have to go over that with the fine. This took me all of Wednesday and Thursday, with just breaks for meals.

Next, you will clean the floor thoroughly. You need to remove every trace of sawdust that you just got done filling your house with. This will take longer than you expect. We spent most of Thursday on this. First with the shop vac (very helpful!), then the swiffer, then tack cloths on the swiffer, then tack cloths by hand.

Next, if desired, you may stain the wood. I had already decided to do this, and decided on the color (Olympic's Antique Maple). But when I saw how good the floor looked au naturel I almost didn't use it. I was very proud of myself at this point. I applied the stain using a mop-like applicator, then wiping off the excess with rags by hand. This worked better than I expected, and the overlap marks I feared where one section stopped and the next began did not materialize. When this dried, I was extremely pleased with myself. Be sure to paint yourself into an exit.

Next, you will wait for this to dry a while. We waited overnight.

Depending on the darkness of the color you want and how much time you allowed between application and wipe-off (we went for about 10 minutes), you may want to do a second coat of stain. This was already slightly darker than I wanted (and fairly even, thankfully), so we did just the one.

Next you will lightly sand the floor, clean it, and apply the finish, we chose polyurethane for its durability. We did this on Friday morning. I used a lamb wool applicator, also mop-like, and the first coat went on very well. They tell you to maintain a wet edge on the applicator, which basically means you want to be sure to have enough liquid to be able to push a wave of the stuff ahead of the applicator through the stroke. I had very long strokes since I wanted to get even coverage go with the grain of the wood. The applicator did about four boards at a time and I went the entire length of the floor at any particular part in one long stroke. I actually daubed a bit of polyurethane at strategic points in the anticipated path so that I could maintain the aforementioned wet edge all the way through the stroke. The first coat went fairly smoothly (the applicator caught a piece of wood that had been "lifted" by the stain and ripped it out before I felt a thing; this left a slight gouge a half inch wide, three inches long, and a couple of millimeters deep) and I painted myself into the stairs going down.

We were fortunate that during all the drying periods we were able to move from the downward stairs directly to the kitchen or to the upward stairs (I had decided to do the stairs at a different time for this reason). So we had our whole house available to us during the process, which was nice. The prospect of sleeping on the couch with my back aching after a week of hardish labor was not appealing.

We waited all day for the stuff to dry and by the time we had decided to go to bed, around 2am, it surprised us by feeling dry everywhere I checked. I was as proud of myself as I had ever been when I looked around; the urethane had dried evenly and clearly (lots of people apparently experience bubbles: never shake your urethane, and stir it gently). The floor looked fantastic.

Unfortunately, the instructions call for three coats and sanding between each coat. So, we dutifully sanded the whole floor lightly and a little more aggressively where there were minor imperfections. Sadly, this led to us finding that it was not fully dry everywhere. The sanding led to some portions having to be left somewhat rough because you can't sand goo. I hoped that the second coat would fill in these imperfections.

After cleaning again with swiffer and tack cloth, I began to apply the second coat. Unfortunately, I made two crucial mistakes at this point. 1) I missed a stripe, all the way across the floor. That wasn't really the mistake. The mistake was going back to try to fill it in because I didn't notice it until I was several feet past it when the light struck it at the right angle to show it off. I decided to step, in my bare feet, in the still wet urethane to get the area I missed. Don't do this. Just let it go and get it on the next coat. I could not get a good drag of the applicator because I would slide in the opposite direction. Fucking Newton. So, I made myself stepping stones with paper towels. Unfortunately, while all this was going on, the part that I was stepping in was slowly setting, so if you look closely at the floor in the area just this side of the dining room, you can actually find a couple of my foot prints and paper towel impressions even though I went back over it with more urethane during that coat. Mistake 2) I decided that since I could access the family room downstairs through the garage, I would paint myself out the front door. This had two problems that I didn't find until I got there. One, there was very little room to maneuver in the front, as you can see in Figure 1. And two, I stepped outside briefly to set up the tray. I then realized that I had all kinds of dirt and crap on my very sticky urethane-covered feet and there was no way to clean them enough that I could finish applying the second coat at the front of the house. So, the front six to eight boards really only have two coats. Whoops. I went to bed around 4am, exhausted and frustrated, kicking myself for basically ruining a week's worth of hard work in twenty minutes.

On Saturday evening, having given the floor a full twelve hours to dry (the instructions said four), we proceeded to try to sand out the aforementioned imperfections in anticipation of the third coat. Don't do this. Even with twelve hours of drying, we ran into the goo problem again. After giving the rest just a light surface sanding and cleaning up, I applied the third coat, taking the lessons of the previous night to heart. This went very smoothly, I painted myself into the kitchen, and all was well.

Sadly, when I checked it out the next day, I found that the third coat did not fill in the paper towel marks and foot prints as well as I'd hoped. They're not obvious at all if you're just walking around, but if you know what to look for, you can find problems. I suppose I shouldn't be looking for perfection, particularly on my first effort, but after the elation at how great it looked after the first coat of urethane, it's a bitter disappointment.

And finally I had Sunday to myself before having to resume my day job the following Monday. We needed to wait at least 72 hours for complete drying before the next step: fixing the walls and painting. I bought Guitar Hero III and rawked all day long. It's hard work, but somebody's got to do it.

---

^*I totally should have spent this time working on my NaNo, but I wanted to get this out there before I forgot the details. If it comes down to it, I'm going to claim the approximately 2,400 words as part of my novel. Nyeah.

I've been meaning to learn to use AJAX for a while, now. It's a very useful thing to have a web page interact with the server without the need for a full page load. I had a general idea of how it worked, but I hadn't spent the time to learn the specifics.

The bug bit me a couple of days ago, and I had an idea for a fun/easy test gadget, so I got to work.

I'm proud to present: Letterboard. It's a pointless little diversion, but I think it's amusing. The best part is, you can mess with people as they're laying out letters in (almost) real time. It's stupid, but I'm proud of it. The best part? I can make a dress-up Jesus or whatever with very little change to the code. Woot!

You'll need to have Javascript enabled to play, and also to see the notice that says Javascript is required. I should probably make that visible regardless, but then I'd lose the cool fadey-inny-thingy.