Malicious Bastard's

I propose a social understanding. If A and 2 make plans, and A does not confirm, and A doesn’t show up, that is on A. A was inconsiderate. However; if A and 2 make plans, and A does show up, but 2 not because A did not confirm, that is not on A. You both made plans, and A fulfilled their half. Similarly; if A and 2 make plans, and A confirms, but 2 cancels during the confirmation ( or vice versa ), no one is inconsiderate. Alternately; if A and 2 make plans, and A confirms the day of, but 2 must cancel because 2 double booked ( or vice versa ), then that is on the double bookee. No amount of confirmation fixes the disregarding of the previous plans.

In short, if confirmation is really what you hang your plans and social interaction on, a [insert communication device here] works both ways. Stop griefing the person who stuck to the original plan because you forgot and they didn’t remind you. You forgot. And trying to blame the party that remembered is uncouth, and certainly uncalled for. For the record, the previous statements were not made with malice towards A or 2. Simply commentary on backwards social practice.

It isn’t reasonable that we have grown to require plans to be made, scheduled, and then also confirmed. Making the plans and scheduling them in the first place is confirmation enough. If you are of a mind to take down these plans into a calendar, to write them down in some place that you will refer to later when making plans, then you have already confirmed your plans.

I have on several occasions had my presence requested for technical support. Fixing computers is kind of this thing that I do. When you call me, and ask for assistance, and I schedule an appointment, I will be there. If I do not show up, that is my damn fault. But when you decide to skip out because I didn’t call and confirm that I would be there, because you requested my presence? Guess what? [Expletive] you. That’s what. If I were Geek Squad you would be getting charged for my [expletive] [expletive] time. And it would be a lot more than I charge.

Trust me.

— Vid

It took a while to edit it down to a point where EVE would accept it as a proper bio, but I managed to finish Rotevni’s rather extensive history. What was really frustrating about it was determining what the actual character limit was. See, when I originally typed it up it came out to 2,025 characters with spaces. I tried to copy and paste that into the bio field on the EVE gate for characters, and when I hit save it told me the limit was 2,000 characters. My thinking was “Oh, that’s reasonable. Hold on and I’ll use my varied lexicon to adjust some choices.” I cut it down to 1,997. Tried to paste it again.

Same [expletive] error.

So I figured maybe this had to also leave space for character name, federation, corporation, and other unknown formatting things. Cut it down to 1,743, tried again, and got the same error.

Well, to make a long story short ( ha, puns! ) I eventually managed to get it to keep. Final character count is at 1,598 and it saved without issue. See, I was doing this because I’d put one in place in game earlier, and was okay with it, but for some reason EVE decided to erase it. Not sure why, maybe because I tried to edit it later and forgot to save or something. Still, either way, I figure I’d explain my little row with it’s coding ( coding and I are arch enemies ), and provide a copy of it here for easy referencing later. So, here is Rotevni’s brief history.

Rotevni’s life story reads a bit like a comedy of errors. Born in the late 20th century, Maxwell discovered at a very young age that he had two very unpopular things; a wise mouth, and a scientific progenic mind. Expelled from nearly every public and private academy, he crashed classes, studied on his own, performed experiments, and built facilities and inventions with his own funds.

Late in 2012, there was a very energetic explosion centered in Rotevni’s lab, removing the entire British Isles and the Northern coast of France. He managed to escape by forced jettison of an I.C.E.C. [Interorbital Croygenic Escape Capsule] which threw him past the atmosphere. First found several decades later, by that time Britain was but a memory and no one even knew his name.

With few resources to his name, he worked for various groups. Bringing his very advanced methods of scientific thinking into the current of the time before yet again some strange accident in his new lab would freeze him and throw him through space for more decades. This cycle was repeated frequently. Eventually, both the distance he traveled, and the time he was lost were so great that when he was found, the I.C.E.C. was mistaken for an antiquated and heavily damaged capsuleer pod. With no records, he was entered into the cloning system through a debt work-off program with the Federal Navy Academy.

Industrious, a workaholic, and generally lucky, Rotevni paid off his save-debt in lightning speed. His own man again, he hoped to get back to what he loved most; inventing, and changing the industrial scientific complex.

Hope you enjoyed it. And if you didn’t, then I have some beachside property in the Andromeda galaxy that Rotevni would love to sell you. Only temporally relocated once!

— Vid

Natural disasters can teach you a lot about yourself, and the people around you. You get to see things like how you handle yourself in a crisis, or how people panic around you. Man made disasters aren’t much different, as it turns out. Yesterday at about 3:30pm-PST a large portion of Southern California lost power, and it stayed lost until around 2:00am-PST this morning.

By all accounts, people kept their cool. Except when it came to actually staying cool, it seems. Temperatures were running pretty high in the middle of the day, so there was a rush for ice. I’d heard reports that all major markets were out of bags of ice somewhere around 4:30pm-PST. Still, some markets and corner stores were at least still offering service. My local liquor store was doing cash-only transactions until sunset. I was able to pick up a six pack of Shock Top with only a mild wait in line. Pretty cool, guys. Thanks for keeping your community running!

Still, with no power, there were no games. Similarly, both my DS batteries were dead, as was my phone, and the laptop. It was interesting, sitting in the front yard for a few hours, doing nothing but talking, drinking beer and finally having a dinner of cold leftovers that would have spoiled otherwise. All in all not a bad night.

I’ve always felt that I’d be able to handle myself if things ever went so pear shaped that society stopped working altogether, but after what I saw today I’m a little more steeled to the thought. This was by no means a litmus test for a long term outage, but people still managed to come together and handle themselves with some poise and grace.

Well done, local humanity. You have managed to show adaptability.

— Vid