Burrowowl

A few weeks back, the folks over at the THAC0 Podcast talked a bit about when it’s time to stop following a title. I find that it’s when the series stops being what I liked about it. I’ve commented on this before in regards to anime, but I think I’ve just about gotten to that point for the Order of the Stick.

Rich Burlew started the strip as a way to poke fun at the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game, its game culture, its rules, the tropes of the genre. It was funny. It was insightful. It provided a few nice little pauses in my week. For the past several months, this has been more the exception than the rule. The Order of the Stick has drifted away from its comedic roots and has strayed into the realm of dramatic fiction. Wandering off for a couple of strips into serious exposition in order to deliver the main characters to a fresh set of comedic material is certainly fine by me. I can wade through some un-funny text for a while to get back to the good stuff.

The recent reappearance of Belkar the hateful violent little Halfling has served to highlight how far the value of this strip has slipped. We’ve gone from “I think I missed a spot check” to this:

You’re not missing anything subtle. It just isn’t funny. Or heart-wrenching. Or entertaining.

There’s an army platoon assigned to garrison Forest Watch 21, defend adjacent territory, and prepare for recapture of Forest Watch 20. A quick overview:

Current commander of FW21, has two subordinate officers, each with his own crack team.

Lieutenant Donkey’s team is specialized in close engagements.

Lieutenant Richter’s team Includes multiple ranged-attack specialists, allowing them to project force without needing, necessarily, to change positions to engage. As such they will frequently be called upon to hold positions such as the watchpost itself.

Please note that the rank system used only loosely follows those in use by contemporary militaries. That the second team consists entirely of non-player characters is totally coincidental and not a metagame ploy to keep the spotlight on the player characters at all. Really.

Shortly after the death of Pvt. Leucis, 48 reinforcements arrived, consisting of one Lieutenant, six sergeants, and forty-one privates. In total, this brings FW21 to four Lieutenants (including the commander), seven sergeants, and fifty privates.

Since AT&T is distributing the D-Link DSL-2640B modem/router combo in pretty big numbers, it is necessary from time to time to convince one to stop using PPPoE. Configuration changes beyond bypassing PPPoE are beyond the scope of this article.

1. Connect your computer directly to the D-Link. Use a cable, as Wi-Fi masochism is beyond the scope of this document. Browse to http://192.168.1.1/ in the browser of your choice. If your system has assigned itself a 169.mumble address, you will first need to manually assign your computer an IP address like 192.168.1.5, a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, and a default gateway of 192.168.1.1 to do so.
2. You should be challenged for a username and password to proceed. By default these are both set to “admin” and you really ought to change this at some point.
3. You should be presented with a Home / Wizard screen. Un-check the box labeled “DSL Auto-connect.” This will allow you to specify the VPI and VCI for your connection. For most ISPs in the AT&T ILEC footprint, this will be 0 and 35 respectively. Click Next.
4. You should be prompted to set the connection type. Select the radio button labeled “Bridging” and the pull-down menu option labeled “LLC/SNAP-BRIDGING.” Click Next.
5. You will be presented with the Device Setup screen. The default settings will suffice for most home use. Click Next.
6. You will be presented with the wireless configuration screen. If you wish to disable wireless for some reason (and should have bought at 2320B instead), un-check the box labeled “Enable Wireless.” Click Next.
7. You will be presented with a summary of your configuration. Read it carefully to ensure that it understood you correctly, then click the button labeled “Save / Reboot.” The DSL-2640B will restart, after which you should have Internet connectivity.

If you don’t know the password for your D-Link, you can perform a hard reset (reverting it to factory settings).

1. Locate the Reset button on the rear panel.
2. With the device powered on (but without network cables plugged in), use a paperclip to hold the button down for 10 seconds.
3. Release the button. The modem should reboot.
4. Wait about 30 seconds to access the modem as above.

Most reasonable people that I know, including a couple of online acquaintences like Meesha and Prairie Flounder, have a healthy skepticism when it comes to campaign promises. You may have noticed that the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States of America did not include the return of Jesus Christ, a spontaneous global relapse of all cancer cases, or candy raining from the sky. Of course, these aren’t things that Obama actually promised to deliver.

Politifact’s Obameter has compiled a list of 510 promises that Obama made publicly between announcing his candidacy and his inauguration. So far they have him listed as already having kept six of them, has 18 of them “in the works,” has made serious compromises on one, is stalled-out on another, and have outright broken one promise.

I take some issue with them presenting compromises and stalled attempts as being somehow bad, though. Our governmental system, as I understand it, was intended to bring conflicting interests together to work out compromise solutions that everybody can live with.

My three-year-old son love airplanes. He also loves trains, but that’s beside the point. This isn’t a post about my son, it’s a post about my son’s new toy airplane. It was packaged in an open-face box with a prominent “try me!” label that encouraged shoppers to interact with the cockpit/button, which makes the propeller spin and a speaker to make a crude approximation of engine noises.

When we got out of the store I tore into the cardboard, at the boy’s insistence, and handed him his new biplane. In the process of disentangling the plane from its tie-downs, some paper fell to the pavement. Didn’t want to be a litterbug, so I picked them up. One was a warranty of some sort that I dismissed out of hand. The other was instructions. This is where I figured it would tell me that I needed a screwdriver to access the batteries, and hoped there might be a mute switch of some sort.

Indeed, it laid out how to unscrew a panel to replace some button batteries, and there is no mute button aside from removing said batteries. But lo! There were additional instructions. Behold, gentle reader! How to play with a toy plane:

Thank God the folks at Mattel thought to explain the process.