I WAS a happy ING Direct customer

Up until now, I've been an exceptionally happy customer of ING Direct. Good interest rates and practically no fees for anything are two rather large selling points after all. But an e-mail I received earlier this evening made me seriously reconsider my relationship with them.

White dragons are healers

Blackwing, Timoran, and I were playing Wii Sports Resort bowling earlier this evening. Blackwing, in a fantastic show of overenergeticness and ADHD, managed to swing so wildly that his arm went straight up into a low-hanging ceiling light, shattering the glass fixture and narrowly missing the fluorescent light within. I don't recall him screaming, but he was whimpering and bleeding pretty badly from the index finger of his right hand.

At first we didn't think it was that bad, but then we realized that the blood wasn't slowing down and Blackwing was getting increasingly agitated from the injury. Timoran tried to handle it at first, but it just wasn't working out so well. Blackie was nearly screaming any time we even tried to run warm water over the wound to clean it out; in hindsight we really should have tried using soap despite his protests, or at least washed our own hands to ensure they were reasonably clean. At this point, some sort of weird instinct kicked in, as did memories of the first aid panel from MFM earlier this month.

While Timoran briefly handled the situation, I got Blackwing a glass of ice water as he was complaining about being quite hot and didn't look so good. I then  asked for a first aid kit, and Timoran was pretty quick to get out of the way after Blackwing said he felt like he was going to puke. I grabbed the gauze pads out of there and used just one first, but the blood soaked through in a matter of moments, requiring a second pad. That too didn't last long, but the blood was just going through a small portion of the gauze. I took a third pad, folded it into quarters, and firmly held it into place. It didn't soak through after a minute so I felt confident enough that it was going to hold. I got the medical tape, firmly taped it into place, then Blackwing promptly lost his dinner after I had it secured. He later said it didn't really hurt that badly when I did it, but I'm wondering if it's because those nerves were just overloaded and not able to register the sensation.

Things calmed down after he was able to get his head out of the toilet. Timoran was trying to clean the glass off the basement floor, while I took care of cleaning up the bathroom and ensuring that Blackwing's condition was stable. The aftermath resulted in Blackie being relatively silent for the first time all weekend. We finished cleaning it up, gave the injured dragon some mouthwash for the taste in his maw, and things have since gone back mostly to normal.

Overall, the incident has made me wonder if I really do have a knack for things like this. It's not the first time that I've responded pretty quickly when someone needed some medical attention. I have stayed fairly calm during it. At the very least, I'd like to take a proper first aid class so I can make sure that I get things right next time. While I still doubt I'd make it into a full on career, I do enjoy helping people like that a lot. It's just something to think about. At the moment I'm just glad Blackwing's okay and I feel like I owe it to the first aid panel from MFM.

When it rains it pours

Tonight was a mostly decent night until a few things happened in relatively short order. One person made a hopelessly tasteless joke at my expense. Another more or less confirmed that there's zero chance of me ever meeting him in person due to his mate/owner being part of a package deal and my aversion to wanting to live with (even temporarily) another couple due to the awkwardness that inevitably brings. That same person is someone that I'd have wanted as a roommate if not for him saying - after dancing around the subject for an irritating length of time - that there's no chance of him coming without his partner regardless of anything I say. This compounded with earlier frustrations, including work-related crap that cost me an hour, the inability to get a ride to see friends if I made it near Chicago, the near-total unresponsiveness of almost everyone I wanted to talk to, and simple exhaustion from being on such a weird sleep schedule so many days in a row.

As a result of all this, I - in a nutshell - feel like shit. I know it's irrational to think that nobody wants to see me given that two people explicitly said they do earlier today, but it's rather hard to take any consolation in that when they're people that lack the means to actually go and see you. Not that it matters anyway, considering I'm nowhere near anyone I know at the moment. Even if I end up getting a house, it's pretty obvious at this point that I'll be living alone and probably couldn't bribe people to come over, much like I've always run into. I don't know what the hell I'm doing wrong but it seems like nobody actually wants to be around me most of the time no matter how I try and act.

To head off anyone who would jump to conclusions: I'm not suicidal. I'd very much like to die right about now, just to be out of my misery, but I lack the energy to even take a shower tonight, much less to actually take any action to end my existence. If I don't wake up in the morning, though, I wouldn't mind.

CNN's Rick Sanchez calls out Fox Noise as liars

I'm far too tired to write up another intelligent post and plan on being awake in less than five hours; see my work blog if you want to know the details of my last couple days. So, instead, I leave you with this video from CNN's Rick Sanchez, in which he says on national TV what I - and a lot of other bloggers - have been saying about Fox News for a very long time.

Taking the Penguin Plunge - I installed Linux Mint

Having grown tired of waiting forever for Vista to respond to anything I want to do, I decided to give Linux Mint 7 a try, something I'd been meaning to do for a while now. It proved to be as fast running from the CD as Vista is running from my hard drive and every piece of hardware I have works with it smoothly, from the entire assortment of hotkeys to  the wi-fi and mobile broadband.

Amusingly, the most annoying/difficult part of the installation was trying to get Vista to shrink its partition to make space for the Linux ones. Ultimately I had to boot into safe mode to get around the cryptic access denied errors Microsoft so helpfully provides. Pretty much everything else was automatic; Mint's setup created my user account (and could have imported my one from Windows, if I were so inclined), had most of the software I needed right from the get-go, and provided a welcome screen to explain anything I might have needed help with.


I've been using the OS all weekend now and I'm still extremely happy with it. Everything is significantly more responsive, sometimes almost too much so; I keep having to disable the touchpad since it is a little too sensitive now. :)  As I migrate things over to Linux I may end up dropping the Vista partitions entirely and just going for broke with Mint, but that's something I won't decide on for a couple months, just in case something suddenly goes awry.

Potomac River "training exercise" nonsense

I was posting about this on Twitter, but I think I can come up with more than 140 characters worth of stuff about this. :p

Shortly after the President finished his speech at the Pentagon this morning, there were reports of a suspicious vessel in the river, just upstream from the Pentagon. The initial reports said that Coast Guard ships were closing in quickly and various officials/officers came into the Pentagon to take care of the situation. It escalated to reports that ten shots had been fired, though no reports said whether they were warning shots or the vessel was actually being fired upon. Once the situation was under control, the Coast Guard issued a press release saying that it had been a training exercise and that there's nothing to be worried about.

Now, let's review this for a moment. They only told the media it was a training exercise after it was widely reported on. They apparently were using live rounds, as various eyewitnesses have reported. This all took place less than a mile from the President and on a day where anyone would have known that people would be on edge. Seriously, would it kill someone for the government to admit that this wasn't planned and whatever idiot piloted the suspicious ship into the river has been detained or shot dead? I'd rather they just say there was a minor breach and that it was taken care of than attempt to spin it into such an implausible story.

Also, if you actually believe the official story, even for a moment, I have some oceanfront in Nebraska for you.

MFM 2009 - Sunday Night Update

Another day, another post! You might think this is going to become a habit! Not a whole lot happened today, though, since I managed to sleep until almost noon and didn't actually get out into con space until about 1 PM. I was able to place the order for the custom staff I won in the tournament, but other than that almost the entire day was once again spent hanging out and having fun in the gaming room. I played a couple rounds of Go with Startide before the closing ceremonies started, during which time they closed everything down to convince everyone to attend. They had been saying there was going to be an important announcement, and they made it: This will be the last MFM.

... at this hotel. Yes, they played it up just like that, too, complete with Tyger Cowboy in tears and the dramatic buildup to a video where they revealed that little detail. Turns out the con is going to move to a private, conference-only hotel in Olive Branch, MS next year, about ten miles southeast of here. This means we'll have more space and it'll all be just for us furries. :)  As such, I'm quite eagerly looking forward to next year's con, as that's a luxury that no other furry convention in the US has had: totally private space.

After the ceremonies Startide and I returned to the room briefly before going out to dinner at Qdoba, then went back to the hotel for a few more games. I played two rounds of Super Scrabble, one with him and once with Redcard; I won both games convincingly. Rock Band followed that, with me taking vocals for a few rounds. Time flew by quite quickly while I was playing that; I still had the mic in hand when they started to shut things down at 1:30 AM.

The plan for tomorrow is pretty simple: sleep 'til about 10 o'clock, pack as quickly as possible, return Startide to his truck, then start heading back to Pensacola. I might be back in time for a later dinner. Tuesday will bring about a hastily arranged furmeet in town - quite possibly the last one before I attempt a move up to the midwest - then Wednesday will likely see me returning to work and spending a month behind the wheel of the pumpkin. For now, though, good night Internet.

MFM 2009 - Saturday Night Update

I spent pretty much the entire day today in the gaming room for various events. First up was the Smash Bros. tournament, which got bumped back to noon. I lucked out and had a bye for the first round, then won a quarterfinal match, leaving me in one of the final four spots before I was eliminated in the first semifinal game. Considering I've not played the game in quite some time I was thrilled with the result.

Beyond that, I'm actually not sure where most of my afternoon went. I did get to play poker a bit before that tournament started, but that's about it. Once the tourney started, though, I got off to a really good start, even busting out Isfacat in the early going and picking up a $20 bounty plus a free custom-made staff from one of the dealers; personally, I think it was a better prize package than most of the ones for the final table. There were all manner of shenanigans throughout the tournament, including two instances where I called multiple cards in succession, though I only lasted a little under two hours. Still, I had a blast. :)

Once the tournament was settled Startide came in and we somehow got a game of Red Dragon Inn started. One of the guys in the first game was an asshole, so we all ganged up to eliminate him as quickly as possible. ;)  I lost both times, but the game is a hoot; I may have to look into picking that up once I have a group of people to do games with regularly. Once the second game was finished, everyone playing agreed that it was time for bed. Startide's lying down and ready for sleep; I'll be joining him soon as this post publishes.

MFM 2009 - Friday night update

I arrived at the convention Thursday night, but nothing was going on so there's nothing to report there. This morning I wandered to the con suite for a light snack before joining the registration line. At 9:30, the reg line was fewer than 25 people long; at 10 o'clock it stretched down most of the first floor. Once that was settled, I joined a panel in progress about first aid and learned a few interesting things. I briefly wandered the dealer's den once it opened at noon, collecting a badge for Timanth from BushyCat and purchasing a dragon plush that bears at least a passing resemblance to my beloved bronze. Then it was off to get lunch, fetch Startide from the terminal, and laze in the room for a little while.

I'm actually not sure where most of the afternoon went, but we hung out in the con suite for a little while, got dinner, then I went to a "panel" that was a crazed, explicit game of Pictionary. Somehow I got up the nerve to play and did fairly well, but I had one clue that left me stumped. How the hell do you draw Goatse when that's your clue, anyway? A sheep with horns (goat) and an eye (see) perhaps? We ended up losing the game as the other team put on a fantastic run in their last attempt, but oh well, still amusing. Beyond that I wandered to the game room, played a few rounds of various things, including two games of Werewolf in which I was lynched in the second round. Having gotten my fill of that and finding it progressively harder to even remain upright due to tiredness, I wandered back to the room to type this up and sleep. Tomorrow I'll be rolling out of bed around 8:30 to get breakfast and head to the gaming room for a day of amusements there.