1000 buffalo stampede

Wow. Despite already having a low opinion of our elected officials, I’m nevertheless mildly surprised to hear, via CNN/AP:

U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris told a religious journal that separation of church and state is “a lie” and God and the nation’s founding fathers did not intend the country be “a nation of secular laws.” … Separation of church and state is “a lie we have been told,” Harris said in the interview, published Thursday, saying separating religion and politics is “wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers.”

It’s almost a shame … while she’s certainly entitled her whacky little opinion, she should almost be disqualified for her office based on them.

I mean, c’mon …

I wonder she feels that the Founding Fathers weren’t really serious about the whole “let’s form our own country” thing too.

Don’t you love it when nut-jobs run the country?

In line, waiting to order food, I have to deal with some know-it-all in front of me who seems completely unable to step outside herself. She steps up and tries to order 13 cookies. But she won’t order 13 cookies; she needs to order a baker’s dozen.

Now, I know what a baker’s dozen means, but it was pretty clear that first one then two clerks had no idea what she was trying to get. Not only was it blatantly obvious that they didn’t know, the know-it-all customer kept insisting on a baker’s dozen, including clarifying it for them “It’s a baker’s dozen … they call it a baker’s dozen.”

At which point, fearing I would die of starvation before getting to the frickin’ counter, chime in with a “Just ask for 13 cookies, already.”

To which the know-it-all-responds, “Yes, it’s called a baker’s dozen.”

“Just order 13 cookies already …. ”

Yes, it’s been suggested that I should have claimed a baker’s dozen has 11 cookies and really screwed things up … but I was trying to be helpful.

No, really …

As if time weren’t scarce enough, many projects brew ahead. I’ve got a whole list of ‘em – and many of them already have an oar in the water (or 1/2 an oar. Well, hey, it’s a lotta projects). Some of the more exciting projects:

• 2d6 Feet in a Random Direction. My new podcast, with friend Chris from EndGame. Chris – with a helping hand from my old nemeses at OgreCave – got me into podcasting. It’s a technical challenge, and an active project with schedules is always good for forcing one blazing down the technical learning curve. Me. It’s always good for me, I should say. It also gives me a place to shove my ever-renewing gaming crap. I’ve wanted to split that stuff off for a while, and give it a home somewhere. Somewhere else, as in “not my blog”. We’ll be two ‘casts into it by this weekend, and so far, we’ve gotten good enough response.
• The Code of Bushido. Speaking of games, I’m very excited to be working on a writing gig for a new publisher. I won’t say exactly what or who it is just yet until I get a little further ahead, but the samurai-genre is a favorite of mine.
• Primetime Adventures. Ok, more games, but what-the-hell, right? I just got turned on to PTA – of the indie crowd games – and, wow, I’m quite impressed with it. It’s a digest-sized, 106 page work of exceptionally tight focus from Matt Wilson (Dog-Eared Designs). It explores the roleplaying campaign as / through a TV show. Just three days of reading this and I have about a 1/2 dozen show concepts. PTA looks to be a great game that gets out of its own way to faciliate good, strong play. Just three days and my copy’s looking pretty dog-eared (through no fault of the publisher).
• Music. No, really, this is a project. I have a whopping music collection, plus enjoy some good internet radio stations, like Groove Salad and Secret Agent (both from SomaFM. And, amazingly, sit in silence more often than I consciously realize. No more! Groove Salad is playing as I type this, and much happier for it.

There’s a few others, but somehow I think the idea of fall-cleaning the apt. and organizing myself, and maybe clothes shopping just ain’t bullet-point worthy.

Yea, it’s been that kind of a week / weekend. For reasons made clear by my previous post, I wasn’t in much of a writing mood for the week. The service for Britt was Friday at noon. It was a comforting, if sad service, and I went and raised a pint in his honor with several others afterwards.

The rest of the weekend’s been spent fiddling with technology. Friday night was another taping of my new, not-so-secret-anymore project: the 2d6 Feet in a Random Direction podcast – available via blog and iTMS. After taping, more than a few hours went into tweaking the code to get it to work the way I wanted.

Yes, podcast.

“Hooray, ego!”

Last night and this morning was spent upgrading both my ancient House of the Jade Lantern code, as well as upgrading the creaking, severely out of date version of WordPress that 1000 buffalo was running on.

This afternoon was spent having a tandori chicken kebab lunch at Breads of India, because, damnit, I deserved a decent lunch after working all that php code.