fractured reality

I am running out of growth space, and soon I will have to face the Barberton dilemma: how can merge my industrial zones and residential without an outbreak of slum and ghetto conditions?

I probably cannot. Grr! My shiny simcity tarnished! All in the name of progress!

This weekend we went to see the Simpsons movie, and I will not post any spoilers here for at least a week, if ever. It was terrific, however, and I was very glad to hear Al Brooks voicing a character again (we love you Hank Scorpio!).

In book news, Middle World is almost like a missing 200-page chapter from Bryson’s ASHONE, solely concerning Brownian motion and its position as unifying thermodynamics, chaos, and classical mechanics. Needless to say, I enjoyed it.

What else is there to say, really? Food is tasty, this weekend I got my shit-kickers from karazhan, my reading list is outpacing my book budget, and somewhere in there I still find time to clean house and shoot zombie villagers. Life is good.

E

Becca says that Josey Wales was, “strangely spitty”.

That is all.

E

Recently, Frank gave me a foam rubber semi-truck squeeze toy. Today, I received play-doh as part of a cubicle kit. My immediate reaction was to construct a half dozen of small humanoids (and a dog!) surrounding the truck, whose back wheel is parked on the head of another tiny humanoid.

At least it’s Friday, so the strange looks I get are tempered with sympathy.

E

When I accepted the position of Systems Analyst, I didn’t really think I would ever be making counterfeit prescription labels for bottles filled with candy.

These things happen, I suppose.

E

So I recently picked up a copy of SimCity DS, making this the 823rd rendition of the game I have owned. This time around, interaction with the game is (predictably) through use of the touch-screen, with varying results.

The first thing I noticed was the lack of save spaces (there is only one slot available, so you can only save one city at a time) and the removal of water pipes (thank you thank you thank you). Power lines are also way more forgiving than in the past, but road/rail management is a bit of a pain with the stylus, and the undo feature is sometimes not as forgiving as it could be.

There appears not to be any outright cheat for getting a butt-load of money, but as I was playing I noticed that taxes accrue on the first of each month, and that the amount is determined at that moment in time, not as a running sum for the month. So basically, if you set the residential tax to an obscene 22% on the 30th of the month, let taxes hit on the first, and then set the taxes back down to say 5% or so, the citizens don’t have time to realize that they just got royally boned, financially, and your coffer will overflow with their hard earned money. This undoubtedly makes the game way more enjoyable (no one likes having to build an empire by gaining a measly 200 bucks a month) but may cause you a twinge of “gee, this is fucking broken.”

Other than that, and the stupid touch screen mini-encounters, it’s terrific.

In other news, it’s raining enough that I didn’t ride this morning (my riding jacket is only mildly “rain resistant”). As a result I got here early and started reading Middle World by Mark Haw, which is not a fantasy novel, but a book on Brownian motion. I’ll try not to spoil the ending for you, but I will post again on it after I’ve finished more of it.

E