Blackmoor Vituperative

I am putting this here in case someone else has the same problem. The network adapter in my laptop kept disconnecting (not all the time — once a day, generally). I could not figure out why. These links helped me solve the problem.

• Network stops working @ Windows 7
• Windows 7 x64 Network Adapter Stops working on high load
• Enable/Disable TCP Task Offloading to NIC in Windows | Windows Reference
• IT – Hint: How to disable Windows Scalable Networking Pack Components

I hope this helps someone.

This is pretty huge news. The Egyptian government has shut off the Internet there, in response to civil unrest which may be reach civil war proportions. And Egypt isn’t the only Middle Eastern country having problems.

I am not going to make any pronouncements or try to draw any conclusions from any of this. I will point out a couple of things, though. First, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has been in power for 30 years. I am probably typical (among Amercians, anyway) in thinking that this is too long for one person to hold that much power. Second, although the average Egyptian is poor, the Egyptian economy is in better shape now, and is less centralized, than it was 30 years ago. So would an Egyptian civil war make that better, or worse?

A revolution is a dangerous thing. The revolution which resulted in the creation of the United States of America is almost unique in how little it cost us and in how well it turned out (and it certainly wasn’t bloodless). People in the USA who call for overthrowing or even substantially changing our form of government should keep that in mind.

Be careful what you wish for.

I am tired of people singing with robot voices. I am ready for that fad to go away.

The only time it’s cool to sing with a robot voice is when a machine is the singer. For example, “Still Alive”, sung by GlaDOS from Portal.

I’ve experiments to run.
There is research to be done.
On the people who are still alive.

I am still attempting to watch every DVD we own in more or less alphabetical order (and I am still on “C”), but two DVDs were released recently that I had to tell people about.

The first is Thundarr The Barbarian. This is a show from the early-mid 1980s about an ill-tempered barbarian in a fur teddy, a Wookie Mok named Ookla, and a postmodernly hip, vaguely Asian sorceress in a blue one-piece bathing suit named Ariel (Princess Ariel, actually). I love this show. I even started writing a role-playing game based on it (which I never finished, although it’s playable as-is). I have been waiting for years for Thundarr to come to DVD.

It’s a “made to order” DVD, which means it’s physically on par with a high-quality bootleg. But I don’t care. I think it’s worth it to pay for the genuine article.

The second DVD is released under the aegis of “Roger Corman’s Cult Classics”, although he had almost nothing to do with it: Star Crash, also known as The Adventures Of Stella Star (the sexy space smuggler). This movie is classic. I don’t think any other Star Wars ripoff is even close to being this entertaining (and that includes the last three Star Wars sequels). You have to see this movie. In fact, we will be riffing it at RavenCon this year, on Friday night. Come join the fun!