Fonze

Might as well share some screenies of my JoM submission this time around... (would also love to see more shots of others' maps; so many I've seen so far have looked fantastic!) Map submitted by the skin of my teeth, heh. I felt pretty uninspired all week and after squandering away most of my time on failed layouts, this map had me in panic-mode. I wound up spending about 10-11 hours on it, though I feel like it looks like I spent 3. Having been in an uninspired rush, I don't feel confident in this map; we'll see how it turns out, heh.

Note: Difficulty settings are implemented

Decay's back and it's Progressive Duel for Progressive People, come join in!

Zand 3.0
[TSPG] Painkiller: Progressive Duel

149.56.242.162:10706

1 2 3 4 (above qwerty, not numberpad) and backslash keys all stopped working on my laptop today... gonna be some rough DM matches for the days to come until I can figure this out, heh.

On-screen keyboard and external keyboards have no problems, drivers updated, uninstalled, and reinstalled, last windows 10 update was 5 days ago... I think it's a hardware issue, but from what/how is a head-scratcher... I didn't drop it, didn't get it wet, and I don't abuse my keyboard.

Here's to hoping Dell's customer support will do me right; very glad I dished out the extra money and sprung for good coverage.

Mad Fonze: Fury Road

People are interesting creatures and combined with the stress of driving 2-ton death machines with giant, glass price tags on their bumpers, you never know what behavior you will find on the road any time you go out. This is a short story of how my day began today immediately after leaving the house.

I left my house on my way to work; plenty of time to get there, but I was speeding a bit out of frustration from an argument I just had. Not like I was going 50 mph in the neighborhood, but I was prolly going 35 in a 25. 2nd gear, so unlikely I went past 35, (the car would have been pushing 5k rpms at that point, which has a certain feel and sound). Still, I was speeding. Before exiting the neighborhood, I came up on a car that was going considerably slower; I slowed a bit to see how fast they were going (and because I'm not actually sure if you can legally pass somebody on a road without lines in a neighborhood, though obviously you can't be speeding up to reckless levels to pass somebody in a neighborhood; I'm just unfamiliar with that particular facet for the very rare situation of somebody driving too slow/slower than the speed limit). After a quick couple seconds (pacing about 10-15 feet back, so not tailgating) I went to pass them. Yeah, I'm an asshole, but not the type of asshole who gets in other people's way. I'm in and gone asap; I don't pass people I don't intend to drive faster than.

Well, I went to pass this guy (around a bend) and he actually attempted to cut me off, to the point that he wound up in a driveway on the opposite side of the road he started on and I was in the grass, inches from hitting his car and about a foot away from a ditch. Of course I started braking as soon as I saw him fully cut off the road and at the same I knew I was going off-road, which is what saved me. I was honestly in shock at the time that I didn't hit his car. Thinking about it in retrospect, would it be his fault in this situation once it got to the point that I would have hit him in somebody's driveway? I don't know; I'm sure if there were an accident, an officer would issue me a ticket, perhaps reckless driving, but I think it'd be a bit messed up (aka believable) if he walked away without fault or a ticket. Whatever though; idle thoughts on something which didn't happen.

So there we were stopped in some guy's driveway and yard; the driver got out of the car and started walking towards me. He wasn't saying anything yet, and in my shock over not hitting his car (he looked, heh)  and him getting out like this I didn't say anything either. I looked at him for a moment as he walked up and away from his driver's seat, then I put it in reverse, backed up, and went around him. Get this though, some kid was with him; 18 years old prolly. This kid gets out of the passenger seat and starts walking towards me as I backed up. Just a little threatening when a stranger cuts you off in somebody's yard, then gets out of the car, along with another adult-sized person (yeah they were both bigger than me), and both start walking up on you. Now, neither were big enough for me to assume defeat 1-on-1 (if it came to that), but when I saw the second person I was happily commited to putting it in drive and moving on. As I started to drive forward, the young guy stands in the middle of the available road and holds his hands out, like he's either wanting me to stop or wanting to get some nice hand-prints on my car as I run him down.

Now, let me stop here to say don't ever, ever, do what this kid did. He was extremely fortunate that I maintained a level head and wasn't experiencing road rage or blinding fear; standing in front of a car who's driver is freaking out over a potential altercation and who was just attempted to be blocked in, or just standing in front of a car who's driver is really pissed off, is the perfect way to get run over. I'm not a saint; I'm an asshole. I maintained a level head because I didn't view it as anything in the first place when I went to pass the guy, because I was freaking out over almost hitting his car when he cut me off, and because I didn't ultimately care enough about the situation to devote time to it, which necessarily meant absolutely not hitting anything. Hell, I didn't even want to devote time to following a slow driver, let alone stand there and argue the morals of driving speeds, passing in neighborhoods, threatening people, and getting hit by cars.

I managed to get around the kid and I sped right off. I might have lost a bit of time in the process, which kinda sucks, but at least I didn't have to drive behind that guy on approach to the intersection with the main road that people love to balk at, heh. They didn't follow me, or couldn't find me if they tried. Idk; don't matter, they continued with their lives and I continued with mine just the same as if they had just let me pass in the first place. I'll be the first to admit I'm at fault here and that I'm an asshole, but who are they to take it upon themselves to disperse their view of the "law?" Most roads in life are 2-way, and while I should have been patient instead of acting more self-important or whatever people think of speeders, can anyone put their hand over their heart, look another human being in the eye and say that if they were to put themselves in that driver's shoes and I were to have run that kid down for any reason, anger or fear; can anyone say they would feel no responsibility or remorse for their actions? I couldn't, but then again I'm the asshole in this equation, so take my side of the story with a grain of salt ;D

Quote

Dragonfly said:

 

I personally am a total rookie when it comes to Doom multiplayer and am interested in getting more involved,

Would love to see you around the MP community and in some DMs some time :D

If you do IRCs, quakenet.org's channel #dmstuff is a great place to dip your feet in the water on the social side of things and also helps with finding matches.

Zand 3.0 DM testing for The /newstuff Chronicles on Morgenstern; come for frags on some beautiful maps; stay because your frame rate is too low to allow you to click "quit!"

@kb1 asked me to make a diagram or something detailing how the Boom sector worm works in hopes to eventually add some new linedef types to the Boom+ format he is working towards. After typing stuff up and drawing on screenies, I think some other folk might get a kick out of how grandly tedious this is, yet how interesting and non-Doomy the effect is that it creates.

I know a handful of people have seen this already, but here's a short video showing the worm:

The key to understanding this design is looking at it in general terms; while each number here (10, 11, 20, and 21) represent an entire chain of unique tags, all of them are merely segments of the overall worm, so there is only reason to examine one segment of each sector/action/tag. This worm can be broken down into three/four main purposes: to have the floors move up/down in sequence to emulate a worm crawling, to have the lines scroll with the movement, as well as floors to emulate 'moving,' and to be silent in the process (which calls for a second voodoo doll and the 11/21's tags (the floor scrolls could otherwise be on the 10/20's).

Before getting into the details, a quick flow diagram for the voodoo dolls:

So while they start off moving directly eastward, once really any trigger is activated the voodoo dolls can be thrust in a different direction, with the only limitation being that they must complete their 'rotation.' I added in an extra 'behavior' for the worm through placement and length of the teleport-to-line lines; because of their positioning and length, they slowly but surely move the voodoo dolls closer and closer to the North/South, causing them to take off on those other paths naturally and simultaneously* after about 35 seconds, which should hopefully be enough time for people to both see the worm and go through the bullcrap in the beginning of the map this is for. About 10-15 seconds after the worm changes path/leaves he "kills" the player (if they haven't escaped their cage yet, because apparently the worm outsmarted the player and trapped them with plans to kill them, so the player must escape the cage and wander around the map seeking a way to find, catch, and probably stomp on the evil worm while under constant pressure from monsters that revive when the worm passes through their area; wow after typing that I can't believe I'm devoting time to this). Point is though: the player makes the move to escape the cage, which aside from if the player were to do nothing and accept death, is what causes the worm to 'make a break for the escape tunnel button and leave.' This basically establishes the proof-of-concept for the remainder of the 'logic' yet to be implemented, such as chasing the worm and how the little guy will evade the player, as well as finally catching the little bugga and murdering him in cold blood, a fitting end to the worm's most dangerous game. The main caveat of this is how the player will interact with the worm in the map proper, which is something only a massive binge of testing will straighten out. But cross bridges when reached; if the idea works then solid execution is only a matter of time and imagination.

*Note that there is a small chance for Doom to happen and the voodoo dolls will not go as simultaneously down their intersected-paths as might be expected; there are work-arounds for this, but their style depends on the worm's eventual area-to-area 'movement' style. Still, it would be great to find a way to cut the second voodoo doll out.

Getting back to how it works: with the flow and idea established, here is a breakdown of the triggers:

Note that "real" means fake, because this whole worm is fake. (in the sense that the playable map sectors never actually move)

Also note that I marked all scroller movement with purple arrows, including the constant/mapstart ones.

IIrc, there are only 9 different actions that make up the worm (10 with the button raising the escape hatch), not counting the player's interactions with it. The raise/lower floor height triggers do not actually affect the "real" worm's sectors in order to preserve silence without having to move the control sectors twice as far away, as well as rely on tons of tiny joined sectors scattered all throughout the map which are joined with tons of other tiny sectors scattered very far off the map... just a bad recipe; though I suppose if just one worm were used it might be okay to use joined sectors instead of the extra voodoo doll. Perhaps a silent floor (or ceiling/lift, for that matter) move would be a good addition. The Scroll Wall when Sector Changes Height triggers operate off the same tags as the raise/lower floor height triggers, but their tag number is arbitrary; their tags could be the same as the scroll floor and fake floor tags, or their own unique tags, but due to the sheer number of tags to be involved, it makes the most sense to double them up as much as possible on either set arbitrarily chosen first. I'm just showing it the way I built it, which is influenced by the process it took to nail every effect needed down.

The first voodoo doll only does the raise/lower floor actions on the dummy sectors (which controls basically everything), while the second voodoo doll only does the change floor texture action on the "real" worm's sectors. If they get off-time, the flats are the only things that are off. After the first voodoo doll crosses a trigger, each of the three control sectors for the worm moves accordingly. The floor-lower triggers for each segment are located several triggers 'behind' the floor-raise triggers for those segments, for obvious reasons.

The triangles on the far left side are mechanical locks to turn everything on/off; copied over from THT MAP19 where they were needed, but so far uneccesary here.

The first and second control sectors control the floor and wall scrolling for the worm. These actions unfortunately require 2 exactly identical control sectors, due to the shape of the worm, the scroll-direction needed, and the segment-to-be-scrolled. Tags could be identical as well (once again they just aren't here because I'm too lazy to 'clean up for human-viewing' the lot of them). Perhaps a combination of scroll wall when sector changes height and scroll floor when sector changes height would be a good addition? It would allow me to cut down one massive control sector for each worm-path. These two control sectors require a height difference of 25 to scroll for long enough for the segments to rise, sit for a bit, and fall.

The third control sector is scaled exactly to the same size and shape of the "real" worm, which actually doesn't matter, but it's easier to copy+paste the same size, though when tweaking for slime trails it would prolly be smarter to match this control sector's size to the 4x ones. The main purpose of the third control sector is to have a space for the fake floor triggers that only moves up/down by 1 pixel instead of the 25 required by the scrollers.

This is a view of the "real" worm:

When he decides to take the southern path over the button, the escape tunnel rises out of the ground as he approaches it.

And some fun 3D-mode views:

A quick and easy recipe I haven't made in a while:

There are few "real" proportions with this recipe, but I'll try to make some up for the sake of communication:

I start with either some chicken I've previously boiled and pulled or when I'm lazy I'll swing for some of the canned chicken breast, since it's basically just boiled chicken. Little bit of a tuna-y smell to the canned stuff, but heavy spices cover that up well, heh.

Let's just say 12 oz chicken breast, pulled/shredded

Add mayo; I eyeball about as much as it would take to cover the bread I'm using. The mayo doesn't do too much anyway but keep the meat moist.

Add mustard; I'll usually put in a bit more than I put in mayo, but truthfully there is like nothing in mustard and you can add as much as you want without destroying the "healthiness" of this.

Add tons of oregano. Yep, just keep pouring it on; you'll thank me when you eat it. Obviously don't dump the whole container, or even a really noticeable amount of it, but with all the strong flavors of this, you need that oregano to be at the forefront of the taste.

Add salt+pepper to taste; once again you can likely add quite a bit of pepper, as with the oregano, but of course you really don't need more than a tiny pinch of salt to bring out the flavor of the meat. 

Add cheese; I like provolone, but truthfully a more sharp-flavored cheese might match the meal better.

A couple varieties I've tried over the years that are pretty good: add Worcestershire sauce, add liquid smoke, add parmesan cheese. However by far the best one I've had is adding hot sauce, specifically the somewhat newer Texas Pete brand Sriracha sauce... omg take off the cap and dump it in. Coincidentally, you'd be surprised at how much the mayo, mustard, *bread* and cheese cut down on the heat of the hot sauce. 

You can also take this and mix it straight into a cheap box of Craft mac n cheese, which is enough to feed 2 hungry men that can eat a lot. I think I may have eaten the whole thing once or twice years ago and regretted the decision, so 'lots of food for cheap' is basically what I'm getting at here.

I originally made this recipe off input from my pops when I was wrestling in high school, during times when I had to cut weight (and didn't have much money to buy nice food). All of the ingredients, save the mayo and cheese, (and possibly the bread, but let's be honest here, somebody has to eat the bread armies being baked on a daily basis to conquer our world) are healthy. You can prolly leave the mayo out as well, but I found that a bit of mayo compliments the mustard well on keeping things from getting too dry, especially if you eat this out of the mixing bowl and without the bread (which equates to a very high protein, low fat meal). Of course the hot sauce might be able to flat-out take the mayo's place as well.

Unfortunately I wasn't the only one eyeing the sandwich on the counter...

Hey I hear that guy Fonze is thinking of pressing "Y." Somebody should deathmatch him in a minute!

Last spotted on ZD.

It's been a terrible day today... My mom's birthday; I figured I'd go buy her some flowers and pay a visit. About 18 miles from my house, and another 5-10 away from where she is, I felt a 'pop' from my clutch, at which point the car stopped being able to go into gear. Clutch pedal wasn't stuck, though, and thankfully I was able to push my car to some degree.

I'm a small guy, so while I can push my car, I cannot push it quickly and making tight turns is extremely difficult for me to do. My car got stuck in the middle lane at a red light. I began to push my car over to the median and another driver got out and helped me get there, which was cool. However, I wasn't in a good place and with the traffic I didn't have the time to get myself into a better place.

To my luck an officer pulled up. We talked for a bit and he of course wanted me to get towed. I was feeling a bit indecisive and emotional over what was going on, though, and that I still wanted to complete my trip, but I recognized the fact that I couldn't just leave my car there. I began to think about having it towed a block down the road into a parking lot and calling a cab, finishing my trip, then getting a new tow back to the house or to a shop, but (I learned after the officer had called the tow truck, meaning it was too late to turn that bad decision down anyway) the area I was in apparently doesn't have a cab service, meaning that I'd have to pay a cab driver from another area the miles to come down here to give me a ride, in addition to the cost of getting in the cab and the miles we drove.

So the officer had offered to call the next tow truck driver on his list, to which I asked if that incurred a different cost as compared to me calling them personally; he said it didn't, so I let him call a tow truck for me. (I was planning on using my roadside assistance tow to get home; the tow down the block was kind of just a necessary evil at that point) Turned out that the price indeed is different (as I thought) and, well, there went 135 bucks. Everything happened so fast that I didn't have much time to get my plan down.

During the tow, I called my insurance agency and got them to send a tow truck; the guy who dropped me off actually wound up being the same guy to tow me; he got the call as we finished payment... some kind of irony there. So at least I was covered for the tow home, but now my trip is incomplete.

We took my car to a shop and the guys there took a quick look; apparently something in the clutch exploded into fragments, sending rivets likely all throughout to tear the place up. So I need a new clutch and some other piece that my brain is blacking out on now needs to be rotated. That'll be only 350 bucks, which isn't as bad as it could be; luckily my boss is friends with that mechanic, though I do have to pick up the parts myself. In retrospect, I hope he was including the price of the parts in that. I think he was, but as I have time here to sit and understand life backward I can't help but wonder.

So I went over to the rent-a-car place and now I got a shiny new car that I'm terrified to drive (because with these sudden bills I just can't afford to spend the extra 150 bucks on the insurance, meaning that anything that happens to the car, even if fault of another driver, is on me), but there's another 450 bucks I'll just have to do without. Ironically I'd prolly lose less money overall just calling out of work unpaid 'til my car is fixed.

And so here I am at home with a bouquet of flowers; I want nothing more than to leave and make the trip but the thought of hitting the wrong type of lottery keeps me grounded.

A true failing on my part; I'm so sorry.

Pro Tip: always post screenie(s) whenever speaking about one of your Doom maps if your goal is to get feedback or to be interesting to others. It's okay if the shot doesn't look great, but it at least shows what's there and gives people something to talk about. It also shows progress, which is another great thing to talk about.

I'd love to see the status updates get used more to show what we're working on and give us a chance to talk more in-depth player-to-author about their work without cluttering up say, the doom pic thread or the other similar thread.

As we get closer to Mother's Day we should take the time to think of how much she has done for each of us, how we can show our appreciation, and how we can make her life better for spending so much of it on us. For those of us without, we must be reminded that faith is hope/belief in the face of doubt; we'll meet in the end.

Development screenie dump:

Older pics first

Day 1 of detailing

Other part of room

Day 2 of detailing: texture Frankensteinery abounds; all stock Doom 1 textures

Dk called this light "adorable" on seeing it for the first time; coincidentally so did I when I made it, lol

Day 3; stuff on ceiling

Other view

Other view

This and the wall conveniently not pictured in the previous shots are the next areas to detail, hopefully with less lines involved, heh

My contribution to my buddies' J and Meisha's engagement party cookout.

2 dozen cookies with mini choc chips, white choc chips, coconut, and those crunchy star-shaped rainbow sprinkles that stay crunchy after baking.

2 bowls of cucumber salsa; 1 hot 1 mild. Cucumbers, avocados, red onion, bell peppers, jalapeno with/without habanero peppers, cilantro, garlic, lime juice, salt... Good stuff ^^

The story of "Fonze and the Drunken Deer," by Fonze.

Animals can do crazy things sometimes and aren't always perfect; the following is a story of a brief moment in time where perception matched reality in the most uncanny of ways.

This story begins a little over a half a decade ago: it was the late 2000's; I was 19-20, working overnight, and going to college during the day. During one of the breaks, I took a trip with some friends over to a big party college. I of course went directly to the library and shut myself in; get your heads out of the gutter.

(Jk)

We were only there for the weekend, so the first night we stayed in the house and drank; talked to our buddies staying there. The second night we went out to different house parties; I'd like to say each was wilder than the last but to be honest I don't remember much of them. Mostly I just remember drinking a lot and talking to tons of people I'll never meet or remember again, but that's a topic for another time. We were out for a while, then it got to be about that time; we left back for the house, stayed up a bit, then people started crashing. Eventually it was just me awake; I had just finished the bottle and working overnight at that point in my life I wasn't exactly tired. So I made a decision that would forever stick with me as (the first time I truly believed) 'that moment I saw everything' (except this was before that 8-car crash which definitely tops this in shock factor). I decided to go for a drunk walk. Hey, maybe I'd get into a party somewhere.

A pretty simple concept: get drunk with a bunch of people; when everybody goes to sleep and you're the only one left awake, go for a walk. Don't ask me why, but you have to be drinking with a group for drunk walks to be possible. Don't ever decide to just drink a bunch and then go for a walk; that's how you get picked up by the 5-0, hauled off, and given a fancy yellow piece of paper for drunk in pubic.

So I set off on my fershnikit way, heading off into the unknown. This apartment coxplex is on a mountain; it had only one road leading in/out to the main road, so that was where I went.

As I reached the entrance/exit portion of this area, I had just crossed the road when suddenly the 5-0 appeared. For some reason I thought it'd be a good idea to act like I was fiddling with my keys at "my car," so they wouldn't think I was drunk or underage; (yeah wtf was I thinking) luckily they didn't stop. Still, in a way fiddling with keys might look a bit less drunk-in-public-y than stumbling around.

A little rattled, I continued moving on; at this point it became clear that this wasn't necessarily a good idea. I couldn't, however, return back the way I came because the whole 'one-road throughout this complex' thing, so I took my walk around the back side of the nearby building with hopes to make a loop around somehow.

As I walked a little way, I came to a clearing between two buildings and noticed a party going on with two guys standing at the door talking to some people inside. Naturally I'm like, 'sweet, I'll get into another party,' and I walk on over. Well about 15-20 feet away from the door my plastered eyes finally begin to make out words on the backs of the jackets of the two men standing at the door. Did it say the name of a college or sports team? I would have liked to think so, but in this case the jackets simply read "POLICE."

No sooner had I read that than I had turned right back around and walked towards the closest corner; somehow, by some great grace, I wasn't noticed.

Well, that solved the question of 'where the cops were,' but unfortunately now I was commited to finding a loop around somehow; in my haste to gtfo, I had ducked back behind the next building and my path back was reeeally cut off now. My only option at this point was to follow a road up a big hill towards some houses and see if there was a way around from there.

I reached the top of the hill; a cul-de-sac of all things, and took a look in the direction of the place I was staying at. To my surprise there was a large clearing in the woods going in kind of the right direction. This clearing was like those places where they clear out 15-20 feet of woods in a long, straight line to give large power cables room.

I'm walking down this clearing, big drop down (and the way I had to go) to my right and some houses on my left. I was behind them, so their back yards were closest to me, with all of them having a little, 4-foot tall chain link fence bordering their properties. All of a sudden I see a flash in my peripherals over to the left, and I looked over just in time to witness a deer try to jump this tiny little fence and fail epicly.

You ever get that feeling when you've been drinking that everybody around you is just as drunk as you are, particularly in places where you know for a fact nobody else has been drinking? Well that was how I felt here as I watched that deer slam into the side of the fence... with his side. Maybe he was just practicing for the deer-lympics and their high jump is as unintuitive as ours; I dont know.

So I see this deer hit that fence and right away he pops on up and runs the opposite direction, going behind a small shed where I couldn't see him. For the next full minute, I stood there entranced by the sound of a chain link fence rattling; long enough for me, in my inebriated state of mind, to go through the following series of thoughts, with pauses in between each:

 "What's that?" "Hey, is that that deer?" "I think it is; maybe he's in trouble." "Maybe I should go help him." "How do I get over this fence?" What if this isn't a good idea?" "What if the owner comes outside?" "He really does sound like he's in trouble." "How do I get over this fence?" "What if he attacks me like in that movie?" "No, I should definitely help him; he'd do the same for me." "Omg this fence, wtf?"

Finally, the sound stopped; I still hadn't gotten close to surmounting this impossible obstacle before me, tried as I might, but for the next moment all I could do was pause to listen, making no sound, one foot still raised, barely not wedged into place, and both hands still on the fence. No sounds. Now, fortunately I didn't question "what if he died," as I would likely have been in that same spot by the morning, or head-first in the home owner's backyard with like a pant leg caught on the fence or something, or running around in my skivvies. No, I just assumed he was okay and stood there for a few minutes, happy my new friend was okay and wondering what his story was. So many questions; so many things left unsaid.

The rest of my walk back wasn't very eventful, I soon found a decent path down and walked/hopped/rolled my way to glory and back to the place I never should have left.

Since then, I've taken many a drunk walk, still looking for that metaphorical deer, even when in a big city. In all the drunk walks I've taken, I've seen some funny things, but I've never seen anything to top the time I saw that deer as I was. Nor have I seen him again, though a man can dream...

I have a couple tribes of Native American in me floating around somewhere in small doses; perhaps that deer was my spirit guide. Or maybe I haven't seen him since on account of the fact that I accidentally killed Bambi one day while driving down a dark road in the woods with a mid-to-high speed limit. Hey, not a scratch on my car though!

Lol, apologies; I'm a terrible person. Maybe I'll see some friends in Hell, if it exists ;D

Glad to see your still kicking :)

I'm always getting in my own way... every time I go to take a step one foot is in front of the other :( 

Just for you Bzzrak, another driving story: "Fonze and the 8-Car Pileup"

This was perhaps 6 years ago; my mom was still alive, I was working overnight and attending a University during the day, commuting about 25 miles each way down the interstate. Pretty close to the same spot I got my newest yellow paper from, except going the opposite direction this happened.

I was on my way home from school, no cars near me, about halfway through my 40-48 hour day (work overnight, school during day, back to work overnight, rinse, repeat) driving down the interstate. The time was about 4 PM-ish, so still fairly close to the middle of the day with the sun high in the sky. A clear day; perfect driving conditions.

There are signs that show if there is a backup on the way to the tunnel which read thay there was a couple-mile one up ahead, but it took a little longer to reach it than it seemed (maybe this is what got the other drivers). Well finally I came to the top of a shallow hill and I saw a ton of cars way up ahead; I get closer, see that they are not only not moving very fast, but not moving at all. So I begin to slow down, about a football field away from them at this point and I look in my rearview mirror to check on any cars back there. There were cars back there, and a good amount (all stuck behind a 2-car wall... ugh) but they were also about a football field away. I continue to slow down until eventually stopping, without hitting the car in front of me, and of course the whole time I'm glancing in my rearview because both I like to know what other cars (especially the moving ones) are doing around me and also I'm just kinda paranoid like that. Well as I come to a stop, finally I'm starting to think "hey, these people don't look much like they're slowing down..." After stopping I continued to watch as something I never would have imagined, nor could I ever make up unfolded both in front of my eyes and all around me.

"No, those cars are definitely not slowing down," I thought as the gap between us shortened to a dangerous distance, then to a trivial distance. I was in the left lane of a 2-lane highway. The car directly behind me swerved to the right into the other lane, hitting a car and then t-boning the car in front of me. Somehow during everything (this part I didn't see) a truck lost control in the right lane and hit the side guard rail head-on. Perhaps the chain-reaction on the right side hit him at some point, but I was glancing back and forth to what was happening in front of me and the cars still coming up, so I missed just what happened to the truck. The car behind the car behind me (yeah get used to this, it's a long chain) swerved into the ditch to the left. The car behind them stopped behind me. The car behind them swerved into the ditch and hit the other car over there. To finalize the insanity of it all, the car that actually managed to stop behind me without hitting me also took it in the backside from the next car in the chain of stupid (which may be a bit callous to say, but let's be honest here, sure the hill was only shallow, but how could the cars behind the cars in front have not seen the giant wall of cars stopped up ahead? Lol. Never mind the whole 'follow distance' thing). Somehow, by some unbelievable stroke of luck, my car remained untouched throughout it all.

I sat around for a while with everybody, listening to them talk about who to assign blame to; my story didn't really match up with theirs but by the same token it all happened so fast and from so many angles that I couldn't have confidently defended my story to a group of people looking to push blame off of themselves. One thing that was weird though is that most of them told their story as if I wasn't even present, with the car that wound up behind me stating that she stopped behind the car that got t-boned... (as if my car wasn't directly in-between the two) It's whatever though, I explained what I saw to the motorist assistance guy and he recommended I just leave before the officer asked me for a statement and I got called to court to testify randomly for the next 6 months. Tired, confused, irritated, and thankful, I got the Hell out of there.

Narrowly avoided a reckless driving conviction today for speeding on the interstate (late at night; very few people on the road); the judge knocked down 19 mph off my speed after I had already gotten another 4 from a speedometer calibration. 83/55->60/55. Cost only $99, which was a huge surprise and the entire experience was very humbling, but I get the feeling I dont ever want to step foot in that courtroom again, hehe. I also took along a driver improvement class certificate, my driving record (which is very good; +5 points in this state is as high as you can go, with only +1 given each year if you meet certain criteria, and is what I had walking into the courtroom), and a letter from my boss at work saying I'm a valuable, reliable employee. I just told the truth: 'I made a mistake. I admitted to speeding, but mentioned it was an unfamiliar area and that I simply wasn't paying proper attention as I should've. (I didnt tell the judge this, not pertinent I suppose, but I had sped up to pass somebody then sped up more when another car got up on my ass before I finished passing the first car) I recognized afterward that there was a problem and that I was it, so I took actions to correct myself,' at which point I gave him the stuff as I listed each document off one-by-one, which is kinda good when most other people came in there with either a calibration or a driving school thing, handing him one-or-two things and here I have 4, even if one was a mostly worthless letter from my boss, but character witness stuff is always important, to be able to have somebody to speak for you. He didn't read it, lol. But as one of the last people to walk in front of him (thank God he wasn't having a bad day and that nobody pissed him off before me, hehe), perhaps it helped my case to have been clearly taken seriously, which he commented on my taking it seriously as part of the reason I got off the hook.

It pays to do get all your ducks in a row before walking in that building :) But I should have thought to do some good community service before-hand. Might have been totally dismissed (prolly not); never know...

I did feel somewhat compelled to at least thank the officer for doing his job before walking away from the stand; (since I was standing right next to him after all) as bad as this could have been for me, it would've been worse if I had lost control of my car (for any reason; a flat could happen at any moment and adding speed doesn't help things) and hit someone or something.

Second-best part though: no lawyer. That would have easily cost me upwards of $500, but it is always good to ask them for some free info when you get the chance, to better know how the legal system in your area affects you and how you can best work within it to better yourself. Lotta people at least in my area don't realize that often a phone call with general info covered is totally free, plus the other hundred lawyers in a 50 mile radius you can call after the first pretty much give a wealth of info if you just ask the right questions ;D

I love that we tend to want to see "more discussion" and yet discussions online (through text) are too often mistaken for arguments, conflagrated by folk with no leg in the race who chime in on something they'll never spend time on. Not talking about anything specific here, just in general; I have no opinions on Revilution at this time.

I made an 'oopsie' at work, followed by an 'uh oh' and preceded by a 'duh-huhuhuh-humbass.'

Got a bit light headed, hot, and sweaty dispite working in a fridge; lost more blood than it looked like I should've: (because apparently my skill now is being able to accurately judge blood loss from cuts) 3 gloves full of sopping wet, sticky, 100% dark red paper towels, the gloves dripping from the inside, plus quite a few more totally red paper towels from times when I had to clean my entire hand (and in one unfortunate case my forearm) and (re)bandage it while it continued to gush. 4 hours later it still hadn't stopped completely, though it seems to be mostly there now as long as I don't rip it open again, which apparently takes next-to-nothing to do. It's possible that it may have stopped once or twice while I was still at work and it was wrapped up, only to rip open shortly afterward since the skin kinda peels back a bit easily from the mound of red stuff underneath, which disturbs both the coagulation process and me to a small degree, though I always appreciate the anatomy lesson. I also found out that blue bandaids + red stuff make shiny, black, fancy bandaids, but I wouldn't advise using them.

While it surprisingly didn't hurt at all in the moment (perhaps from a lower nerve ending count on the back side of the fingers compared to other areas of the body), that knife was as sharp as I could get it from having freshly sharpened it not one minute earlier and it hit/cut all the way to my bone, which I can feel now; it feels like a brusied bone with that crucial, sudden, explosive pain when anything beyond slight pressure is applied directly to the bruised area, mixed with a pain similar to if you slightly overextended your finger-joints as best you could for 15 minutes+, like an 'arthritis-lite,' except this hasn't gone away in 30 secs like it would from that little example; overall it now hurts like Hell and I can only look forward to Day 2... (which is usually worse) oh boy. Luckily I have tomorrow off work anyway. Weird thing is, I could feel the cut with my knife (though it didn't fully process at the time) and in retrospect I felt exactly what happened (since I'm used to the feeling of cutting meat at this point) more-so from the knife-hand's perspective than from the cut-hand's perspective. The cut-hand just felt pressure of something hitting it; no pain or feelings of being forcibly split whatsoever, nor did the knife slice/slide around when it hit my fingers. I actually thought it just hit them and didn't cut me at first, since that's actually happened once before, though of course on a duller blade.

Of course I should've been wearing my cutting glove and common knife-sense is to cut away from oneself, but haste makes waste; I was behind on time and I didnt want to dirty up a chain link glove just for my last piece of meat. I wound up hitting a bone shard while thinking it was a patch of thick silverskin in the meat I was cutting into, all under a fat cap (which was mostly what I was shaving off) and near the beginning of my cut when I couldn't see perfectly what I was cutting into; silverskin can be tough to cut through (let alone chew!) and I put more pressure into the maneuver than I should have, in addition to pulling up on the angle of the knife to cut a thinner slice as I tried to work it under the silverskin. Turns out I didn't make it through the silverskin since I hit that bone shard first, which is what made the knife grow legs and jump right on over to my fingers for a quick high five. We tend to keep our knives sharp to not only get good, clean-cut steaks, but also to not have to apply much pressure when cutting, which is helpful since some stuff is tough-enough to cut as-is; cutting (shaving) away from you can take longer and doesn't quite give the same amount-of-feeling and control as cutting towards you gives, which is important when trying to thinly shave fat and bad meat off the large chunks of meat we cut up so as to waste the least amount of meat possible. More importantly, sometimes from the angle of everything it's unavoidable, as these pieces of meat aren't nice, perfect shapes, nor are the areas we have to trim off, so you get used to cutting in whatever direction makes sense for the piece of meat.

On a random side-note: (weird that this is where my mind went during the fiasco) it's almost a shame that I donated perfectly good O(-) blood to the floor, gloves, trashcan, and my coat when I haven't been to actually donate blood for realsies in prolly 5-6 months now... I've been overdue. For shame; I deserved this (for many reasons, it would seem). Just gotta hope other O(-)'s ain't lazy like me if I ever wind up needing the stuff. The sign outside the local Red Cross chapterhouse-building-thingy says our supplies are dangerously low right now. I'm debating if I should to soon or wait a month to go donate after this, heh.

Here is a pic of my fingers as I left work, after (most of the) clean-up and before it somehow started back up again, prolly from me bending them while taking a picture.

Millions of protestant Irishmen rejoice today as throngs of disappointed Catholics break lent this St. Patty's Day.

Walked out of work to find this beauty sitting in the parking lot:



I could only imagine somebody saying "well, Mom always did enjoy hotrods..." (Not that a Cadillac is a hotrod)

*I had typed this up yesterday, but at some point I finished typing, went to the bar, and forgot to hit the post button. I'm too lazy to change every instance of time relation, so figure it out.

On my way to work today yesterday, apparently I pissed some guy off pretty bad and he followed me to my job. Things were still fuzzy from last night, but he was driving like the only person on the road and so when I got the chance, I got around him and cut him off like a dick.

So I got to work, pulled into a parking spot and about 30 seconds later there was a car I vaguely remembered sitting behind me, boxing me in. The driver was a slightly big guy in his prolly 30s (this was a company car, too, decked out in advertisements for the business) and in the passanger seat was a boy perhaps 8-10, barely tall enough for me to see his entire head over the dash. The guy had his window down and was screaming obscenities at me, so I rolled down my window and looked behind and out at him. He was saying stuff like "I'm going to kick your fucking ass you faggot" and some other stuff. Finally I got tired of listening to him and I said "you talk that way in front of your son?" I'm not sure, in retrospect, if that was a very smart or an incredibly stupid thing to say. On one hand, it obviously was going to (and did) piss him off, but on the other hand perhaps it put the thought of his child closer to the forefront of his brain while still in his rage, and might have served to quell the fire to some degree. Needless to say, he wasn't a fan of that comment and replied a classic "My son could prolly kick your ass too you faggot." I immediately looked at his son and sized him up, out of instinct, of course. Joking on that last sentence, but he really did say that. After he said that he got out of the car and proceeded to rant some more, stomping around, huffing and puffing. It would have been comical if I wasn't afraid. Not afraid of pain, but afraid of the consequences of the only course of action I saw if this escalated. But I couldn't go anywhere and I certainly couldn't have allowed myself to show fear, part of an unfortunate side-effect to that was that I also couldn't back down. "Fear and foolish pride," I think there's a saying about that.

I'm in my late 20's, I used to scrap when I was young a lot, but not as a man. I'm 5'5" and 125 lbs; I'm a small guy. A fight is more of a life and death situation for somebody my size, especially when the other person is twice my size. All I had, aside from my keys, a lighter, and a pack of smokes was my box-cutter razor knife. Safety danc-- I mean safety blade, so it has a guard and only sticks out 1 cm past the guard, fully extended. But it's a fresh blade and quite sharp; a quick, forceful slice or two of the forearm by the elbow can easily end the use of an arm in a fight, plus a trip to the hospital later on and quick slashes to arms is a good way to both negate a threat and guard your blade from being taken while defending yourself. Or, God forbid, the neck. But I had my hand on that little joke of a blade like it was my life-line, while watching this guy rant and rave, trying to act intimidating. I didn't back down or cower, but my thoughts were racing a million miles an hour with fear of all of the possibilities of what could be if I had to use the thing.

While outside, he continued to go off on a tirade and stated that "street racing happens in the street;" yeah that's typed verbatim. I'll give him that he was flustered, but still, that was funny. Thankfully I had the tact not to seek a fight by joking on him or visibly smiling at that comment, though the thought did cross my mind. But I was still feeling it from last night and clearly from the way I was driving, I had little patience for bullshit at the time. I said something else to him while he was outside that wasn't exactly the "backing-down" type of words that I perhaps should have said, but I don't remember at this point what it was. It's ironic that despite driving a muscle car (mustang) I've never raced it, nor do I ever want to race it, especially the more little problems the car gets that I just don't have the time, money, patience, tools and knowledge to fix; my car doesnt accelerate like it used to.

Shortly after, he got back in his car, which I halfway expected when he didn't walk immediately up to my car upon getting out of his own; stupid, emotional, impulsive decisions like that happen much more likely in less time rather than more. Also, walking up on somebody in their car in that situation would be a death wish because you don't know what they have in there; I could have had a gun for all he knew and I certainly had a knife, albeit a terrible one. Every adult I know has some type of weapon or object they identify as a weapon in their car, just in case of an emergency, so it's a terrible idea to walk up on somebody in such a case, never mind that the car can still technically move and that much weight doesn't need much speed to do damage. But still, I was greatly relieved that he did walk back into his car; if he had walked over, just due to the nature of the only weapon I had on hand, it would have been bloody. Terrible, like a horror movie. I worked as a phlebotomist for a little while some years ago amd now I work as a butcher, so I've had to directly handle large amounts of both human and animal blood, in some cases as a phlebotomist, as it poured out of the patient. But that's different to this and mostly unrelatable due simply to the difference in situation and mindset for all involved. But more-so than anything, as he got in his car I thought how close that poor kid was to having the absolute worst day of his life, and he was innocent in the whole thing. One or both of us would have gone to the hospital and/or jail, if not worse. I've seen somebody die in front of my eyes before and it's not something I would ever want to see again, something I'd never want to cause, and certainly something I would never want to bring onto another, especially a young child, less than 10 feet away from me and peering over the dashboard, not fully understanding what's going on. Never mind that I could have been killed by my own blade; things happen fast. But if that guy would have come over to my car, something would have happened and I wouldn't be sitting at my house right now; something like that little blade could have easily been turned against me, much as it could have done too much for me. It's a bit ironic that I believe that every law-abiding, and stable minded adult should own a gun, and yet I've never felt the need or real want to go buy one myself, preferring to just stick to whatever piece of shit tool or object is nearby, apparently. But guns and confrontations are bad news; then again when a situation is already life and death, I suppose it's only appropriate.

After the guy got into his car, he continued to shout at me and hung out the window, I guess so he would appear more intimidating, like he was about to jump out. At some point he said, "next time you see this car [don't drive like an asshole]" (or something to that effect) I had to open my mouth once more, and I said, "how about the next time you see this car, you get over and you won't have to deal with me," which admittedly was a really stupid thing for me to say, but I never claimed to be the sharpest apple in the race. Then he got all huffy again and acted like he was about to get out again, but after a few more words he finally settled with telling me to get a life, which I found a bit strange because he was the one who angerly followed a total stranger out of road rage with his young son sitting in the car right there with him. After that I went into work; I was glad to find no damage to my car when I got back. Still, I do feel like a total dick because for all I know they could have been having a great day right before I entered the picture and that's why he wasn't paying attention to his walling off the road, but by the same token he could have been acting like a total dick before I ever showed up.

This whole thing was strange to me and I guess at this point all of those other thoughts are moot; I'm grateful that nothing really happened.