Can you do decimals with Roman numerals? I guess I just did. Whee!

While BG2 installs, I figured I'd go for a bit more ranting. Or semi-ranting, or whatever.

First off, Oregon State Football. I'm glad that our football team finally doesn't suck. After not winning a season for like 23+ years, we're finally getting somewhere. Even for a sports non-fan like me, that's sort of nice.

The downside of this is, of course, that there is NO PARKING SPACE AROUND HERE on game days. Which means I had to drive around the parking lot twice to find something. Compare this to last year, when I was routinely able to find parking fairly close to the dorm with no effort. You can understand why I'm somewhat angry about this.

Now then, I'd like to rant a bit on the state of computer games these days. Specific in my mind is this whole idea of collectors editions and the like. I've bought two games in this last year that were packeged that way, because (of course), you get more stuff with them. Ultima IX was the first of these games, and BG2 is the second. What did they come with, you ask? Both came with cloth maps. Big freaking deal. Every Ultima before IX had a cloth map. BG2 has a spiral bound manual. 10 years ago, it seems like that was a standard feature almost. I got little trading cards with BG2. We all know what AoK:TC comes with, right? U9 gave me a set of little virtue cards, which amount to the same thing. Once again, little goodies like this used to be standard 10 years ago, seems like. The only thing that seems like it was worth a lot was BG2's extra CD with more magic items. Worth the extra $10? Maybe.

On the plus side, of course, the graphics (if not always the gameplay) of games nowdays is far superior than even my beloved (but 8 and 9 years old) Ultima VII and Ultima VII Part 2. This is good. Unfortunately, you have to have a supercomputer to run them half the time. BG2's requirements aren't spectacular, but for U9 you needed a Cray or thereabouts. And to what end? 3D in many cases, flashier graphics in others, and huge worlds and the like. Whee. Oh yes, there's always longer install times. BG2 on full install takes an epic amount of time.

And no, there's no real point to this. I'm sure somebody's gotta share my observations though.

I know you've all been eagerly awaiting VI. The alternate title for this is Stories From the Tonto Bash Night.

We got war stories, and we got some commentary. Let's start off with the war stories. And since I've played like 6 games or something, I'll only hit the high points.

Lemme see. First game I remember is Czar, Desert, and I (Marechal co-oped with Czar for a bit, then left) against Andy, Sammy, and Stick. Features of this game include me getting my base utterly squashed by Andy's Mongol scorpion hordes (Ghengis really needed a few of these), me relocating to Czar's town while Czar/Desert pretty much squashed Stick and Sammy. Andy dropped most of the way through, after Czar started his (second?) wonder, and since Sammy was dead, Stick was left to face Czar, Desert, and my dinky hussar army, and something like 3 or 4 combined wonders. My team won that game, not that I did anything useful at all except maybe slow Andy down for a while. Sorry guys.

There were a couple more games of various people vs random Zoners, but nothing exciting, IIRC. Next high point was me dropping in on Kaiser, who didn't actually make it to the game... (that free ISP thing not work, Kaiser?) Basil and I proceeded to trounce a couple of random Zoners, one of which we went on to play the next game.

Which was last game, and just ended. Basil and I did a 2v2 against a guy named Sleipnir2k and another guy who's name I can't remember right now... Lag was horrible. Being Baltic, Basil and the other guy (something Dawg...) engaged in massive amounts of naval warfare while Sleip and I settled down in a sitzkreig near his base. It's worth noting that I was Japanese, he was Goths, Basil was Byz, and Dawg was Spanish. Somewhere in the middle, Dawg dropped, followed by Basil a while later, leaving just the two of us. A few invasions by his Gothic hordes were turned back early by the combined forces of a whole ton of HCs, a lot of samurai, and a few of those uber Japanese trebs. He attacked my 4 trebs with 9 while I wasn't looking, and ended up getting squashed. I LIKE it. At any rate, he finally brought up bombard cannons and attacked the wall blocking the narrow spot, but was repulsed by the 120+ guys I had sitting there. It should be noted, btw, that we weren't really playing a serious game at this point. He dies, I invade, his town dies, end of game. It was a lot of fun, and I now have a new entry on my Zone friends list, which means I can take a break from dying to Czar and Andy on occasion.

Which brings me to my commentary section. Let's start with some stuff on the Zone. Lag, as we have all realized, is annoying. It sucks, and I want it to die. I think a special fund should be set up just so every person with a computer has a dedicated T3 to their house. Lessee... People who are like gogogogogogogo suck, but we knew that. People spamming with game types and map settings and such get annoying too. Hrm. The Japanese are cool, but I should have been playing the Franks. It's 11:30, I'm tired, and I'm rambling. But cherry coke is good. Very good. Excellent, perhaps. The noises ZM makes is highly irritating after a while. My room has very crappy acoustic qualities. As in my stereo was going the whole time and I didn't hear a thing. I think I've exhausted every concievable topic now, but let's see... Nope, I forgot that bicyclists are heinous scum who think they rule the universe and should be rounded up and shot.

[Edit] I also have a quote for yall. It has nothing to do with anything, but hey. I like it.

"There's this line from the song 'Rocket', 'Bleed in your own light'. I wanna fucking bleed in my own light, not in Kurt Cobain's, not in Perry Farrell's. I wanna go down in my own fucking ship. That's what I'm about. " - Billy Corgan

I sort of relate to this, and Rocket is just such a cool song, and the Smashing Pumpkins just rock, so I figured what the hell. I'll include em in my rant. Besides, I wanted to write this quote somewhere, cause it's one of my favorite quotes. Whee. [/Edit]

Ok, now that that's off my mind, I'd really like to apoligize to Czar and Desert, among others, for being such a crappy teammate. You guys are just too good for me, or something, cause I just can't seem to keep up... Feels like I'm more of a pain in the ass than I'm worth, especially what with ya'll having to save me all the time.

Thus ends your regularly scheduled disjointed rambling rant. Please, join us next week for the next installment of Marius' Rant of the Day.

Oh dear, am I up to five already? That's bad. I should probably cut back. But, since it's 12:30 in the morning, I'm totally bored, and I really should go to sleep because I have 2 hours of utterly boring econ lecture tomorrow morning, I've decided to grace you all with another rant. Today's subject? Dorm life.

There's some good stuff about it, definitely. There's tons of people, so it's (sort of) easy to meet people, and I'm all of five flights of stairs and 50 feet of walking between me and all sorts of unhealthy food like pizza, burgers, and pasta. I also live in a single room this year, so I've got lots of space and no roommate to deal with (although my roomie last year was cool).

Unfortunately, there's some bad stuff that comes along with this. A few of the more obvious things: The food places all close at 7 this year, as opposed to 11 last year. This means I must pay real money to get my cherry coke fix late at night, as opposed to putting it on my meal card. I'm sure you can see the problems here. Then we have the fact that my internet connection didn't exist for a week. But I went there already, so we'll ignore that. Then we have the fact that the hall smells like burnt popcorn. EVERY NIGHT. Let's also make a nod to the annoying people who insist on blaring country and rap and such at the top of their stereo's volume in the middle of the night. You will of course note that I am blaring Radiohead, but through earphones. Nyah. Lemme see... Oh yes. The bathrooms. We all know that public restrooms are hell, but have you ever lived in a place where you were forced to use one, EVERY DAY? College students are notoriously bad here. They don't flush, they like to throw up everywhere, and nobody washes their hands. YUCK. On a similar note, I have decided that the entire population of Callahan Hall are heinous losers who sit in wait on the off chance that I might be taking a shower, and when they see that I am, they run in and flush the toilets every ten seconds, which has the effect of cutting out the cold water and turning me into a boiled lobster imitation. And on a couple of final notes, people who go out to parties and get drunk and then run screaming through the halls ANNOY ME. I don't care if you get wasted, just do it quietly or outside, please. And don't make your car make loud noises. You aren't cool, really. And on that same note, please don't run through the halls screaming in the middle of the night. And don't pull the fire alarm for the hell of it at THREE IN THE MORNING (this happened last year, it sucked).

Ok, now that THAT is out of my system, it really ain't bad here. Most of the people this year seem ok (although I've only met a few of em). Living on 5th floor sucks, but oh well. It's classes that really kill ya. 2 hours of boring econ lecture tomorrow. YEAH! I can hardly wait.

And for all ya HS people in the crowd, don't do any of the bad stuff I'm saying up above. Or else the big bad Marius_monster will getcha (I'm really 6' 115 lbs in RL, but hey). Raarg. *paws the air a couple times, then squashes a 3 inch long mosquito that flew in the screen somehow*

And now I have the second part of today's rant for you. I'd like to dedicate this one to my economics proffessor, who is a heinous loser. Why, you ask? He's utterly boring, but thinks he's hilarious. You know the type, I'm sure. He's got this conception that people can copy down pages of material in like 5.238 seconds flat, and is amazed when everyone is like no wait stop we didn't get everything. He does this little stupid game to illustrate diminishing returns, something involving stapling copies of the syllabus. Real hilarious. Laugh a minute. Then to demonstrate effeciency/equity, he brings this pizza in and says well, I could give a few of you a slice, but that wouldn't be effecient, would it? I left at that point, being heartily sick and tired of the guy.

For your enjoyment, here's an excerpt of my notes. You will note that most of it is writing in the margins that's all song lyrics that have nothing to do with anything, but kept me from falling asleep.

7 lines on equating margins

4 line marginal benefit example
4 line marginal cost example
results of both examples
6 lines of stuff I didn't need to write down
7 lines on diminishing returns

Then in the notebook margins, we have: (everything is by the Smashing Pumpkins)

The entire lyrics to Tonight, Tonight (takes up 26 lines or so)
The first verse of Pissant (6 lines)

And in the top margin, the last verse of Plume. And just cause the lyrics are so relevant, I'll reproduce that for you.

Oh yeah, another day
Oh yeah, what a waste
For you, it never was
I don't care, or give a fuck
My boredom has outshone the sun
It's so dumb
I just want to have some little fun

And that, my friends, is the official Economics 201 theme song.

Also, on a side note, there was a really cute girl sitting in front of me who I could swear that I know, but can't actually place from anywhere. Isn't that sad?

Final note. No, I'm not this angry at life. Just on days like this... I'm just hoping somebody gets some entertainment out of these rants. You are somewhat entertained, right?

*watches hordes of screaming Tontos running for the nearest exit*

Anybody miss me? No? Didn't think so.

Yes folks, after a full week with no internet connection period (oh the horror), I'm finally back. I had an appointment with the tech folks to come fix it, and said appointment would have happened in a couple hours, but fortunately it just sort of started working earlier today. I'm now the proud possessor of a nice fast college ethernet connection. Yeah!

Now then. Browsing the forums, a lot has happened this week, hrm? Welcome to all the new (what is it, 5?) tontos, and welcome back to _badkitty.

I'm sure you'd all be entertained by some college life trivia, so pull up a chair, and listen to the Great and Vast Wisdom of Marius (heh). First off, I've been frequently bored. It's absolutely amazing how addictive the internet (and especially forums) really are. Scary, perhaps. My book and assorted side projects didn't really cut it over the weekend. Not to mention nobody was around. Class, on the other hand... First day back was pretty good. I'm taking no less than two history classes, and combined, I get the history of western civ up until the French Revolution (sorry Marechal, I took Napoleon+ last term... ). Also far on the plus side, this girl I like is in the Medevil (I hate that word) class. Of course I planned my schedule around that, so no surprise, but still. What WAS a surprise is that one of my best friends here is taking ancient history with me, and didn't bother to tell me. But I don't mind. Plus I have cool teachers for both of them, so that's good. Math sucked, of course, but the lecture hall seats are all padded, and I can actually understand the guy talking now (if you didn't know, I'm retaking two of the freshman business math classes, partially because the teacher teaching them was a loser). Unfortunately, the food still sucks, plus NOTHING WAS OPEN.

And today? Today REALLY sucked. I learned a fundamental truth today: Do NOT take 2 hour classes if at all possible, unless you KNOW you LOVE the material. 2 hours of economics where the guy rambles on about insanely easy points and you can't read the overhead without binoculars is excruciatingly (did I spell that right?) boring. So boring, in fact, that I almost left during the break, before I realized that no, I did that last year and almost flunked. So I stayed. But almost fell asleep. *sigh* Then I got to go to math recetation, where I discovered that although I had done the algebra on the worksheet at least 3 times previously, I couldn't remember how to do a bit of it. More homework. ARGH! I then realized that since I had got minimal sleep the night before and that I hadn't had anything substantial to eat since lunch on monday, I was starving. Hungry Marius + Tired Marius = Grumpy Marius. Fortunately, I now have an internet connection (YES!!!!!!), so I'm almost happy now.

And that's life at Oregon State University. Anybody actually read this whole thing? Anybody even care?

As various of you may or may not know, I moved into the dorms at Oregon State 3 days ago. Seemed like a good topic for a rant, especially since I haven't been here for 3 days (this gets better). Moving in was surpsingly easy. I was the first person in the checkout line, and it was vastly simple to get all the cards and things, which it most certainly wasn't last year. Moving myself in was semi-easy. One of these days Callahan Hall is going to get 2 elevators, and then watch out world... Only problem: Some beat up the little panel that tells you what floor you're on last year, and nobody bothered to replace it. They painted the stairs though. Which is a vastly more useful thing, of course. Mom continued to ask stupid questions (just like last year), the elevator was crowded (just like last year), hordes of cute girls were running around (just like last year), and I actually knew like 5 people (unlike last year).

Now for the REALLY fun part. I walked down to RCN (the residential computer network) place to get myself hooked up to the campus network. Sit down, the whole process takes maybe 5 minutes, and when I ask the guy when I'll be up, he says it should be on when I get back. Last year they said two days, so I had a large amount of hope. You will notice that I'm at home on my mom's comp typing this. I have an appointment for some guy to come out tuesday. Two more days with no internet. Will I survive? Having beat Baldur's Gate for the 3rd time, halfway through my book, and having watched TONS of movies? We can only hope.

Which brings us to the movie review section of this rant (getting bored yet?). I mean, when you have friends with apartments, jobs at pizza places, and a massive entertainment system complete with a huge TV, surround sound, a DVD player, and 200+ DVDs, you have to take advantage, right? Thus I've watched a bunch of movies in the past few days. The short reviews:

Boyz N the Hood: Whatever I expected out of this movie, I'm not sure that I got it. I think what I was going to find was random acts of gang violence in a somewhat comedic (is that a word?) way. What I actually got was still random acts of gang violence, but in a very, very serious sort of way. Really disturbing. Totally worth seeing, but make sure you've got some comedy around somewhere.

The Thin Red Line: I wanted to like this movie. I really did. Unfortunately, the movie had no action at all, the characters were impossible to tell apart, and 9/10s of the movie was filled with moralizing. Now don't get me wrong, moralizing in war films is a good and necessary thing, but not to the exclusion of an actual movie. Cut out about half the moralizing, insert a bit more action, and it would have been a really good movie. I was bored by the end though.

Eraser: This was either the post-Boyz N the Hood movie or the post-Thin Red Line movie. Either way, it was good mindless Arnold gunfights. Dumb (but isn't all Arnold?), but just what we needed after the massive stress of the more serious movies.

Primary Colors: It calls itself a comedy, but it isn't really. A detailed look into running for offic in the American political system? Yes. Serious? Yes. Somewhat depressing? Yes. Worth watching? Definitely.

There's at least another movie that I watched in here, but I can't quite remember what it was. Something remotely comic after the vast seriousness that was Boyz N the Hood. I'm certain it was good, but it got overshadowed by the first movie. Oh well.

And for a final bit of ranting, I hate Mom's computer. 800x600 (as compared to 1024x76 res sucks. Having the Windows menu bar thing on the bottom sucks (it belongs on the top). The speakers suck (currently playing a very static-filled Radiohead). The keyboard deserves to be attacked by nuclear weapons (don't buy an MS Natural keyboard, they suck). It's semi-fast, at least, and it runs AoK...

Whew. And on a side note (do I get to have side notes in this ramble?), Andy, I'll get to the unit stuff when I have a real internet link, which at this point is prolly tuesday.

Actually read this till the end? Congratulations. I'll rant some more at you on Tuesday. I'm sure classes will provide me ample opportunity.

The last one was funny, this one's serious. But we'll start it out with an amusing part anyway.

Me: *just woke up, wanders down into the laundry room to find something in the freezer, steps in a puddle of water on the floor* Say, wait a sec... *looks up, sees the water filter spurting water everywhere* Um. Hey dad? You might wanna have a look at this...

Dad: Uh-oh. *starts playing with hoses and pipes>*

Now for the serious part. Fun with chemicals. I got to play around with that oil you weather seal decks and other wood things with. Did the majority of a deck today. Well, this stuff SUCKS. Right at the moment I'm light headed, working on a massive headache, and my eyes just stopped hurting. The point? Don't work with this crap on hot days with no wind. Bring a fan or something. You don't want this junk anywhere near your head. Bleh. Ok, I feel better now (sort of).

Ok, it's not really a rant, but... it's funny though, in a weird sort of way. The topic? Home Improvement. We start with our old 15 foot satellite dish in the back yard that somehow died a while back. Dad decides to rip it out. First try: Chain from the tractor around the pole. *yankyankpullpulltugthump* Nope. Dad's next idea? PUSH the thing. The end result ended and sounded something like a rape attempt on a donkey in a metal shop. It also didn't work. Next idea? *digdigdigdigdigdigdig* After a couple feet of hole got dug, we tried the push thing again. Nah. Well, what if we take the dish off? Dish comes right off, leaving the pole. Except during this, the truck with our new refrigerator pulls up. Now we get to have fun with that! Yay. After taking off half of the front door and opening the other half (our front door is actually two doors), they take the old fridge out. All the while, mom is standing by wincing and going pleasedon'tkillmystairseek. Old one's out, they bring the new one up. Dad's pretty much in the way trying to help the whole time, mom's running around like a chicken with it's head cut off, and I could care less. Ok, so now we have a new fridge.

Mom: Isn't it neat! I like it! I like it! Don't you guys?

Dad: Um, it's a fridge.

Me: I'm with dad.

We now return to your regularly scheduled satellite dish removal. After a great deal more digging, the pole FINALLY comes out, revealing the fact that it is indeed quality construction. 5 feet of concrete, and there's easily 200 lbs of concrete there, plus the pole.

Me: Well, now what do we do with it?

Dad: Er... *ponders* Let's put it down by the white shed with all that other crap.

Me: Riiiight *stifles laughter>*

This was thusly accomplished. Now for the dish. Ran the tractor up to it, pushed the rim into the bucket of the tractor, and chained it in. In a flash of inspiration and hilarity, I ran inside, grabbed the digital camera, and snapped some pics. Too bad nobody knows where the serial cable is... The vision of this tractor with a 15 footdish on the front is pretty comical.

Then we got to have fun demolishing this old planter box on the deck. The idea is to use levers to get it up a bit, then take the tractor and pull it down on the ground. I got to stand on the lever. I step up, the tractor moves in, pushes, and the whole thing turns into mini-treb, with me as the rock. Whee.

Thus concludes Marius' semi-rant. I hope somebody finds at least a little bit of humor in this, cause I sure as hell do. Then again, that might be because I got almost no sleep and I'm exhausted, but hey.

This is not the beginning of this blog. That is in March of 2003. But this is A beginning.

The entries for 2000, 2001, and 2002 comprise Marius' Rants of the Day, which were originally posted to several sets of now defunct Tonto Clan message boards. They were my blog before I had a blog, and indeed, they're part of why Whir got me to create my this.

These entries stretch almost the length of my Tonto career, the first being a mere four days after my 9/12/00 join date, and the last of them being a few months previous to the creation of this blog.

Many of these appeared previously on my Writings page, but some appear for the first time. A few appear only as placeholders in the numbering scheme, because even at this late date, there are a few things that the world needs not read. A few, I think, are now lost to the mists of time.

In any event, enjoy what has come before.