Waiting on the last race of the F1 season, on Wreck-Free Sunday

First of all, today is the 6^th anniversary of moving my blog to WordPress as my blogging service provider. Of the other two places this blog has existed one remains an adult dating site (the original place where I just put down my random thoughts much like I do Sundays here) and the other is pretty much a desert with spam blogs filled with spam comments. What is so funny about it is the reason I left that provider was my posts were getting censored for having excessive links and being a possible phishing post. I was getting more than 300 site views a day on a bad day, up to 1000 views a day on a good day, and then my posts were either not showing, or my links were blocked. That was when I checked to see if WP would work with the computer and OS I was using at the time, because when I tried to post at a different site they were not compatible and trying to open the compose page caused my browser to crash. Obviously that doesn’t happen there any more, but as I have established a following at this URL I am loath to abandon here for a new site. I like you guys 😉

I saw a funny on the comments of another site that I had to share: Now, wait a minute
I’m pretty sure Canada is a U.S. territory. As I recall, Dudley Do-Right seized it from the evil Russkie villain Snidely Whiplash in the Battle of Moose and Squirrel. We needed it because the fabled lost Atlantean capital of New Orleans had sunk so we plunked all of our people who spoke Frenchie-talk down in the middle of Canada someplace, so they could provide us with maple syrup. This comment was in response to another comment that the KXL pipeline would not do anything for domestic oil supplies because Canadian oil is still foreign oil.

Well, the race is over and Lewis Hamilton won the race and the F1 driver’s championship. Of 19 races this year Hamilton won 11, his teammate Nico Rosberg won 5 and the other 11 teams combined won 3. Red Bull, last years’ dominant team, barely registered this year, and Ferrari did not have a single driver in the top ten. I’m sure everyone except Mercedes and their power unit customers are exceedingly happy that the rules are getting a major overhaul next year. I don’t pay a lot of attention to the rules package in F1 any more so I’m not sure what the changes are, but if what I have read from unofficial sources are true the engine spec is remaining the same while the amount of fuel allowed for the race is getting reduced from the current spec, and the number of engine changes allowed has been reduced, as well as aerodynamic changes to the nose for improved driver safety.

I forgot to include the column hanger for the steering in the last order for the Sprint T, so I will remedy that mistake when I order my grandson’s Christmas present Flamed Hot Rod Pedal Car. It will be next to the stride bike I built over the summer from a discarded (literally) sidewalk bike. Anyway, steering column and wheel, still trying to cobble up something that will let me bolt the steering wheel to a piece of tubing the same size as the column I’m going to use so I can figure out what length of steering column to buy. Part of me wants to buy the racing collapsible steering column that prevents the steering column from stabbing me in the chest, and also comes with its own mounting drop. I will be running the switches for the indicators on the steering wheel including the turn signals, horn, and high-low dimmer switch, and maybe a set of paddle shifters for the transmission. Lots of switches to mount, and not many places to put them. This isn’t an F1 car where they have a µC in the steering wheel to control all of the functions and interpret the dozen or so switches and send the results down a cable to the MCU for the engine and transmission. Also I’m not the kind of guy that will build a cockpit mockup, and sit there for hours blindfolded touching controls as directed until I can, for one thing that takes at least two people to do and I’m one short on the roster for that. I have already determined that left thumb for left turn signal, right thumb for right turn signal, left finger to down shift, right finger to up shift, lower center to toggle high/low beams, and dead center to operate the horn (something else I have to make a decision on what to get) is about all that I can handle. The upside of this is I can tell the EMU that unless the connections to the steering wheel are right the engine won’t start making taking the steering wheel out roughly equivalent to pulling a minor ignition part so that even if the thief has a steering wheel on a quick release they still can’t steal the car without doing something to replace the switches on the wheel.

Now we are getting ready to leave for the annual patron auction at my church, where we select the deity whom we will honor and learn about for the coming year. This is one of our biggest fund-raisers of the year and also our biggest contribution to local charities from the food items part of the voting. Briefly we have three rounds of questions for the people representing the deity, and based on their answers we give money in one round, food and toiletries in another round, and votes indicated with rocks (from the Stones of Joys and Concerns basket) for a third round. The food and money rounds are obviously the provenance of the better-off financially members of the congregation, but everyone gets the same number of stones to vote with so that how much money you have doesn’t decide everything. There is a point system that awards 3 points to the winner of a round, 2 for second, and one for third. That means if the same deity wins second in all 3 rounds they still lose, but it your choice can get second twice and then win the votes round you can still win if the other two split winning rounds.

This year the candidates that survived the penny auction were Aphrodite, Athena, and Loki. Each has their plusses and minuses, beyond the obvious. The one who wins will be dependant on how well they are presented by their Earthly Representative.

My ride is here, I have to go now.

PSA, Opus the unkillable badass Poet

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In the middle of a motor-racing marathon on a Wreck-Free Sunday

I’m posting this at the end of the Indy 500 race as there is a substantial gap between the 500 in Indianapolis and the World 600 (excuse me the Coca-Cola World 600) in Charlotte. Ryan Hunter-Reay won, Marco Andretti was 3rd and Kurt Busch finished I think 6th to match his boss’ best finish trying for the Double of the Indy 500 and World 600. There was a big wreck 10 laps before the finish that put a lot of debris on the track, so to get the mess cleared up they threw the red to give them all the time they needed to clear away the mess. Then they had a total of 6 green flag laps to the finish, which was edge-of-your-seat exciting. Three passes for the lead in 6 laps! Wow!

The first race of the day was the Grand Prix of Monaco, which became exciting when something got in Lewis Hamilton’s eye in the closing laps and he had to drop off his race pace to a slightly slower speed that he could still see to drive safely, which allowed the 3rd place car to close up on him. While this was going on Hamilton’s Mercedes teammate was running away in first place, leaving Nico Rosberg the winner for the second year in a row. The actual racing consisted mostly of nose to tail pressure rather than side by side racing because of the nature of the Monaco street circuit making passing virtually impossible unless you can force the guy in front to make a mistake, which is something drivers at this level just do not do very often if at all…

Last night was RPG night and we decided to run the game that I play with the older version of Sparrow. Because of the nature of the setting Sparrow does not get the chance to engage the enemy very often, as the engagement distances are beyond the range of all his invocations and spell-like abilities, but this time we ended up in a ship to ship battle at close range as our flying squid engaged an undead white whale piloted by a litch (undead necromancer), getting me within fighting range and able to get a crippling blow against the litch, which distracted him long enough for another player to get a kill shot lined up from another ship in our fleet against the whale. Unfortunately this resulted in losing 4 characters because the kill shot was a suicide attack from the ship that killed the whale and the litch. We also captured the litch’s phylactery which meant he could not resurrect himself, the whale, and the undead crew on the whale. We lost 2 of our living ships, the shark interceptor and the squid salvage ship, but we had made enough money from our previous trading runs that we could replace both even inside the war zone we had stumbled upon. Oh yeah I almost forgot that we stumbled into a battle between our trade allies and another group and we intervened on behalf of the trade allies to route a physically and numerically superior force right before the whale showed up to drastically change everything. Also in destroying the whale we also ended up destroying all the salvage we intended to recover following the battle which made this a losing battle in terms of money. We won, but we lost money, which made it a shallow victory. Also we lost one character permanently as she was outside the secondary shield when the whale was destroyed and there was not enough of her left for our Spear of Righteousness to resurrect.

One thing that I have been able to do in the RP side of the game since my character lacks abilities or feats for ship to ship combat is I have taken over running the town brothel from the NPC proprietor. The previous proprietor had been cheating the girls, customers, and us by over charging and skimming the profits without paying the operating tax. I hired a house mage to ensure the girls were not under compulsions or otherwise forced into working the brothel (which caused us to lose about half of our employees) and a house cleric to keep any diseases from getting a toehold in the establishment. I have been staying true to my alignment by keeping everything in balance rather than strictly adhering to the laws, but because my character had a large say in the laws for our operation concerning brothels the laws mostly adhere to my dictates. The girls are happy, healthy, and making money, the house is showing a healthy profit, and the company is getting their tax on the operation so we can keep the lights on and the plumbing working. The brothel was the only profitable side of the company after the battle because we had the only functional house in the sector after the massive battle. Oh and the NPC that was running the house before I took over? He was given a lifeboat with a ring of sustenance and a year of life support and cast adrift… I don’t take kindly to people who abuse their power under me.

One other thing is we are spending months in travel time between encounters so that my character is now almost 30 YO or about 7 years older than when I started playing this character 4 years ago. We had been running pretty close to “real-time” between character aging and what was happening to the players, but this world has lengthy amounts of time pass between RP and combat encounters. So, Sparrow is aging rapidly compared to his player (me).

And now the World 600 is getting ready to start so to allow me to pay attention to the race and not get the post garbled I’m going to end the post now…

PSA, Opus