Well I feel like an idiot today.  My class had their final performance troubleshooting problems today.  After they finished I did my standard checkout of all the equipment to make sure it was all working properly for later in the week when we have to do the last two operational labs.

Anyway about mid way through checking everything out one of my former students dropped by to get some troubleshooting assistance so I went ahead and talked him through the procedures and lent him an extender card to check things out.  I then went back to checking things out.

I had gotten a 1321 fault on one of the units before he showed up and I forgot all about it.  After the final person finished I checked out that station and found everything was working so I started securing the equipment.  I got all done and still heard a blower motor on and went to check that out. 

Low and behold there was the unit with the 1321 fault still on and still faulted out.  So I went ahead and took care of that and brought it up on line.  Now I got a No Net Control fault.  This one had me scratching my head because it was now passing all the BITE tests and should have been working so I was on my way to grab the tech manual when it dawned on me.  There was no net control because I had secured the master station.  I felt so dumb.  Anyway I went ahead lit it back off and everything passed.

So now I guess I will work on some power points presentations for the rest of the day.  Tomorrow should be quiet since I just have to give them the test and then we will do the final labs on Thursday and start antennas on Friday. 

Sorry for not updating and all.  I had a very busy Thanksgiving since I did all the cooking and all.   I got up early on Thanksgiving and got the deviled eggs and salad stuff all done up as well as getting the kitchen organized. I figured the turkey would need to go in about 11 AM to get done about 4 PM.  It was not a huge turkey, just a 14 lb which was good enough for us since I also had a ham.

Anyway I got everything done on time though it did take a little longer for the turkey to get done than I had planned.  I used a meat thermometer to make sure it was fully cooked.  The dinner was great and the kids cleaned up the mess so I was able to rest a bit.

The rest of the weekend was working on the regular household stuff like laundry and the kitchen and all.  I was dragging tail a bit all weekend long and really didn’t even get much into the online games as I usually do.  I did lay on the couch a lot during the day.

I watched some stuff on the History Channel and some movies but after getting the housework done I didn’t really feel like doing much of anything else.

There were some things happening in the games.  In Tribal Wars my world 8 and 10 empires are growing steadily and I will be getting another village today, if Laila gets up on time.  Yesterday she was helping me take one over but attacked the wrong village so hopefully I will get it today.

They also started world 12 on Friday which is good because everyone starts at the same point.  On the other levels people have already been playing for a while so you have to watch out and make sure you are not bullied around by some of the bigger tribes. 

In all the worlds I don’t have to spend much time doing stuff since I can make my moves and then log off for a while.

Unification Wars on the other hand did another underhanded thing by the having one of the admin accounts run the overload project.  It is bad enough that the top tribes do it all the time, but when the admins do it unannounced and with other rules it is aggravating. 

Yeah I attacked it and brought it down but it was at great expense of my turn generating artifacts.  I know the game is supposed to generate cash for the owner, but they have been overdoing it a bit with the negative effects and now with the NPC running the overlord it is making me a little upset. 

There are only two ways to get Big Time Capsules.  You either make them with regalos or by fusing them or you can buy them.  To run or take down the overload takes hundreds of turns and so many people buy regalos or BTC’s when the overlord project is running.  Since the negative effects cause loss of planets and infrastructure has been repaired and many folks lost, a lot people have not been running the overlord project as before.  A lot of people invested a ton of time and effort into generating the infra just to see a large portion of it disappear and they are not happy.  Also when this project is run allies and fed mates are hurt as well so feds are hesitant to run it now.

This has caused the cash cow of regalos and BTC sales to drop in the game and so now the owner has found a new way to get people to spend money on his game, well those that stay anyway.  I don’t mind spending money playing something I enjoy but this is nothing short of extortion.  I used to buy regalos and BTC’s from other players to work on my infrastructure.  Now that the overlord project kills my infrastructure why bother working on it the way I had been?  Stephen’s logic is buy my stuff to kill a project that I started or my project will erase all the work you put in on the game.

Well they have seen my last dollar.  They have not implemented things that people have asked for in the game.  Instead what they have done is make changes to make their profits go up and are forcing people to use up their donation points to protect their infra that they worked so hard on.  Yesterday I used up my BTC’s that I was going to us on infra to assist taking out the overlord.  I will not buy any more and when my current donation points run out they run out.  I might just take a break from the game.  I want o see what the admins do when they discover regular customers that do pay cash start leaving or going VM.  I know many people who are starting to get fed up with the practices as they are being used now.

On another subject I have been complaining that since the recycling center opened up near the post office that the bums have come back.  Well the recycling center is gone.  It was only open about a week or so but it already gone.  I don’t know if they were told to close down or if they were robbed but something happened and they are completely gone now. 

Yesterday I ran over to the mini-mart in base housing and on my way home I saw a police car running off the panhandlers that hang out near the little neighborhood businesses. 

It has been terrible in the neighborhood even.  Last week someone knocked on the door right after I went to bed looking for a place to stay.  My son answered the door and called the police.  Then during the day last week some guy knocked on our door and wanted to take the dead car battery sitting by our trash can.  My daughter let him have it since it is worthless to her, but to me it is a matter of principle.  Why are people I do not know knocking on my door? 

In fact last week one of the guys rooting through the neighborhood trash down in National City must have hit the mother lode as he didn’t take the recycled materials but was wheeling the entire trash can down the street.  I would have called and reported it but I do not carry a cell phone and he would have been long gone by the time I was able to call it in from work.  San Diego is just too homeless friendly.  The great year around weather attracts them and while there are plenty of places for them to go many just sleep on the streets and the parks.  If they were to go to Father Joe Carroll’s St Vincent De Paul Center or the Salvation Army they have to follow rules so they won’t go there. 

Well I suppose that is it for today.  We have a busy day of practice troubleshooting and I am sure after the long weekend it will take us a little time to get up to speed.  We will see what happens.

Last night and then again this morning were not too good for me.  Saturday night and into Sunday morning I did something dumb.  I stayed up until 4 AM Saturday night and fell asleep at the keyboard.  I woke up at 6 AM and then would up staying on all day posting op. 

I was so busy throughout the day that I had to use BTC’s on myself to even go out and reset.  When I finally got in I was down to under 500 turns and so put up op and than watched as some of the fed mates go out.  I was trying to go to bed early because I was really tired and was also still feeling the pain in my side but since everyone vanished and we had a member out that has no communications with other members of the fed I was relaying stuff back and forth.

One of our guys was out and was getting slapped around by a higher empire.  All I could do was watch him get slapped around since I was posting for the higher one.  He lost a bunch of planets, used up all his credits and ran out of turns.  All I could do was watch since I had used all my transports earlier and didn’t have BTC’s left. 

Anyway I finally logged off and just went to bed at 11 PM.  I fell into a deep sleep but was awakened about 3 AM when my son and his girlfriend started arguing.  I told them to shut up but I was awakened again many times between 3 and when I got up at 5.  He does not know it yet but she is going to be told to leave and I might even give him the boot too.  I am tired of this crap and it is really uncalled for.

When I got up this morning Laila was having a cow.  It seems that a few members decided to go out over night and use up all the static op, one was out for a second time that evening.  Also because some of the higher empires posted for our little guy who ran out of everything static OP was a lot lower that normal.  I went ahead and raised mine up but couldn’t stay because I had to leave for work, but we are going to have to address this low op problem as well as this wild card that goes in and out at will.  It is unacceptable and the reasons did not add up.

Then this morning I left the house and just as I turned onto the freeway onramp heard that between where I get on and where I get off a semi hit a sedan.  Sure enough as soon as I got on the freeway there were the folks slowing down to look at the wreck.  Actually it looked like the sedan ran into the back of the semi, at least that was what it looked like.  It was probably someone talking on a cell phone.   I got to work on time but just barely.

So now I am tired but a little lucky as I am awaiting my class to finish testing out of DAMA so I can start OTCIXS.

Well I guess that is about it because I have to get the lab setup.

One of these days I am going to learn to slow down in my old age, but it is obvious I haven't learned about it yet.  One thing people know about me is that I do everything fast.  I walk fast, I talk fast, and I even try and type fast which makes for many spelling errors (thank god for spell check).

Yesterday on my way home I stopped by the grocery store to pick up some milk and also decided to buy some fried chicken since I was a little too lazy to cook.  We were also out of orange soda which we all love to drink.  I went to the soda isle and saw a good deal, buy two and get two free. 

While reaching down to grab them and put them in the cart I stood up and twisted too fast and pulled a muscle in my rib cage.  Since I also have a bit of a cold every time I cough I feel like I am getting stabbed in the ribs. 

So now I feel miserable, but it is my own fault and hopefully if I am careful it will heal up pretty quick.  It is just going to remind me of my age.

Laila and I have been working on our new tribe in Tribal Wars.  Our old tribe was attacked by a huge tribe bent on eliminating threatening competition and since we are new to world 10 someone recommended that we establish a foot hold in our area and start building there. 

Other than that I guess things are going on as normal.  I am happy that today is Friday and that next week will be a short week for Thanksgiving.  I can't believe that the end of the year is already nearing.  This year has passed really fast.

Anyhow, let me get this saved and ready to post and I hope everyone has a great weekend. 

Well it has happened again.  I like my car.  Though it is small and all it has been dependable, gets good gas mileage, and is low maintenance.  But there are two things that have happened that drive me nuts.  The first one is the windows.  The new beetle’s have a problem where if you open and close the door with the window down it comes off track and then you wind up only being able to get it half up or down.  Currently my driver side door is like that where I can only get the window half way down.

The other problem is the headlights.  This is about the fifth time I have had a headlight go out.  I discovered it on my way to work this morning while driving behind a dark mini-van.  I would change it myself but the last time I had a problem and wound up breaking the assembly, and getting it replaced was very costly.

To replace a light on a VW you have to move a plastic lever.  It does not move freely and it sometimes does not move to the release point completely.  If you pull on the lever too hard it will snap off in your hand and then you have to replace the entire assembly.  The last time I changed one I snapped the handle off and it cost over $100 to replace. 

After you get the assembly to release it you have to pull the entire light housing out through the front of the car and then you have to take that apart to replace the bulb.  It is a real pain to do and since I don’t ever have a reason to drive at night I think I will just wait until I have to take the car for its next checkup to get it replaced.

That reminds me, I have to renew my car registration here in the near future.  It is due in Dec and while it is not much in the way of fees, I do have to get it smog checked.  That doesn’t cost much either but it takes time and spare time is one thing I have not had lately.  I have to remember to get that taken care of though.

I am thinking on changing the route I drive from the gate to the school house.  The last couple of days have been nuts.  I currently come in the gate and drive past the gym and then take a right at the medical clinic to get to our school house parking lot.  The road behind the clinic is used by many of the ships to run their physical readiness test.   They used to run these tests early in the morning like 5 or 6 AM but lately they have been running them later.  The result has been to tie up all the traffic for people trying to get to work in that area.

So starting tomorrow I will take a different route from the gate.  I wish they would open up the side gate.  It has been closed about 2 years now, but it was fantastic for keeping the backups to a minimum.  I still see no reason for them having it closed other than to save money on security for it maybe.

This morning on the way in I heard that Hillary Clinton got caught answering preplanned questions.  I guess the Clinton campaign went ahead and gave out some questions to be asked to some college students and then made sure she called on them during a question and answer session.  Now everyone is bashing her about that.

While I will never vote for her, I figure everyone does it so what is the big deal.  We already know that she can not answer a straight question with a straight answer so who cares.  I figure once the campaigning gets really hot and heavy all someone has to do is put together a video showing her taking both sides of every issue and just play that over and over.  There is plenty of video clips out there of her different speeches and all.  It should be pretty easy.

To make a big thing out of planted questions is not an issue.  It just shows she is just as dishonest as many of the rest of politicians. 

Well I suppose that is about it for now.  I have to get ready for another day of work so let me get this saved and ready to post.

BT

The three day weekend is over and so it is back to work again today.  I got a lot of rest over the weekend though it was not the quality rest I am used to since some was spent in my computer chair.

I have been really rising in Tribal Wars but I am still a slave to the fed in Unification Wars.  It seems every time I log on to my computer the chat windows start opening up and I can’t get anything done.  I don’t like to be rude to anyone but the whole thing is getting old. 

I have one open with Laila, one with the allied feds, and one with our fed.  Then there are those that want to have a private chat.  Before long my entire screen is filled with chats and I am stuck getting nothing done. 

I also got a little upset yesterday as I got out of DP too late.  Our fed has 20 people and the majority reset in the evening in my time zone.  We have had a couple of times where we have a whole line of folks waiting to go out and in that case Laila, Joe, and I do when right thing and do a quick reset.  We just go out and try and get hit right back in without attacking.

Last night was one of those nights when the folks that like to stay out for a while ate up all the reset time and I didn’t get out until after 9 PM.  Sometimes when I get out after 9 I wind up having to stay up until 12 or 1 AM to get back in.  That would be fine if I were a youngster and could stay up until 2 and still function when getting up at 5 AM like my old navy days but that doesn’t work now that I am older.

Last night I voiced my displeasure about it in the chat and even threatened to go to Vacation Mode (VM).  It is really starting to bug me that some folks have been concentrating on the lower empires who operate at 3B or lower and leaving the higher ones like ours waiting.  There are less people in our operating range and therefore fewer opportunities to get hit in. 

In addition we do have a minimum standard to get into the fed which has not been met by these lower empires.  They are always running out of credits and food trying to post in our range when their empire can’t support it.  Also they seem to be the most vocal in the chat, sometimes to the point where they become an annoyance.

I don’t think I am the only one that tunes out the chat now when certain people are on.  I have noticed a lot of us older folks are not paying attention.  The chat gets so cluttered with BS that I have to send a separate chat window to get peoples attention so they can go out.  And then when you ignore some of these folks they send you a separate chat.  That really tees me off.

Another thing that really bothers me is people trying to talk to me when I am out.  I will not talk to folks when I am out any more.  I will also stop talking to people when I am posting for someone that is out. 

On tribal wars Saturday turned out to be very frustrating.  Since I knew I would be home I worked really hard to get my third village.  I then started building it up fast then the game crashed.  It took them about 7 or 8 hours to get the game back up which they did with a set of backups.  The backup was from a point before I took the third village and in fact to a point before I even built the noble.

While the game was down I was watching a forum chat where people were complaining about how their moves were lost or what they had been waiting for.  As soon as I saw some of the things people were doing to others I realized that my main village is not ready for me to start taking over others so I went on a mad building spree the rest of the weekend and was raiding as many places as possible to get materials for building.

I am glad we did because we are currently at war with another tribe and though there is no enemies in my area I still want to build up to protect it.

It would be a shame to be nobeled and taken over because I got a little greedy and spread myself too thin.  So right now I am building like crazy and trying to get 5000-7000 troops in my main village.  It is going to take a while especially since it takes time to build them and I am finding that since I concentrated on other stuff I am not building as fast as I could if I would have worked on other areas first.  At least now I know.

Now that the work week has started it is especially worrisome as someone could attack me from far away and I would not be home to know about it.  So I want to get those troops up fast.

That is enough about games and all.  This weekend I also managed to get several things done.  I got the grocery shopping done along with the laundry and I made some good meals over the weekend.  I watched the Chargers game on Sunday and was surprised that they won.  The defense looks really good while the offense is still struggling.  They almost gave the game away in the second half and I still worry that this year is going to be a mediocre year for them at best.  The AFC west is so weak this year so they should be able to win the division.  I guess time will tell.

Again I did not post an entry that I had written last week so I will get that up and backdate it.  Like I said, as soon as I log on, even when I have yahoo invisible, chat windows pop up out of no where and then what ever I was planning on doing is lost. 

Well I guess that is about it for now.  It is time to get ready for the afternoon session of work.  We are doing practice performance tests so I have been running around a bit today.  I will have a little more running around to do this afternoon and then will get to go home and start raiding again. 

Have a great week everyone.

 

Last night I managed to get to bed on time, though I was really tired.  I got up on time this morning but hit the snooze alarm a couple of times so I got downstairs a little later than normal.  I still had time to chat with Laila and all and got out of the house and to work on time, but I was still dragging a bit today.  I always feel this way by Friday as I get older.

My class finished their lab early so I went down to the 400 Hz generator room to help ET1 Kelly try and repair the generators so we could get the class back on schedule.  He had one of them up after cleaning it really good.  I guess they haven't been being maintained because no one wanted to take responsibility for them. 

The other one was giving him problems.  He had identified 2 possibly bad circuit cards and was still getting bad readings on the front panel.  The L1 and L2 windings to ground were reading low while the L3 winding was reading good.  The L1-L2, L2-L3, and the L1-L3 were reading good.  That told me the output should be good and that maybe something was wrong with the voltage sensors.  I had him tap on them and spray them with compressed air and when he did that they started reading a bit higher but were still low. 

We then went ahead and shut it down and hooked up a multimeter to the voltage outputs to ground.  I had him shut it down when hooking up the meter because we were unsure of how much current would be present and I didn't want him to get electrocuted.  When we measured the voltages they were perfect, so all we had was some bad front panel indications from the sensors. 

We then went ahead and checked out the 2 possibly bad circuit cards and got it down to 1 bad card.  Currently the 2M soldering folks are testing it out on the Huntron tracker to see if they can repair the card. 

So now everyone is happy and it will give Kelly something to put in his evaluation.  It is really more impressive to the chain of command because public works couldn't or wouldn't take a look at it and they were not able to contract it out.  If the 2M folks can get it down to a component it will really be great because he will have repaired it at a cost of just over $100, which was the cost of the technical manual.  Seeing as how the faulty component is most likely a diode or transistor, repairs to the card will be cheap, probably less than $5.  Even if it is an IC chip the cost will still be small.

So now we can get everything back on schedule and that is a good feeling.  If we could not have gotten it fixed it would have been nearly impossible to teach the antenna area.  So now I am ready for a well deserved three day weekend though I do have to do some grocery shopping on the way.  I hope everyone has a great few days off.

Last night we all got reset early and I was just about to go to bed when I wound up in a chat with a fed leader from another fed.  Laila was on her way to the dentist so she was not on line and if I would have been just about a minute faster I would have been asleep but instead I wound up staying up until midnight trying to iron out some issues that people have with one of our members.  I am getting so sick of having to deal with people in this game.

Someone gets hit and then everyone gets upset and tries to assign blame or come up with some conspiracy theory.  The fact of the matter is, if you are not going to attend to empire don’t whine and cry when you suffer losses.

There are people in the game that follow a strategy.  They know who has a history of coming out unattended.  They know what stacks the person has and they know when the best time to hit the empire is based on live op posters in the fed. 

It only takes one hit to set you up and then one hit to bring you down when you are unattended.  The first attack does two things.  It destroys the OP and messes up the defenders stacks.  The hits after that are just taking everything they can get from you.  Some people in our alliance and we all know who they are, always have some empire that they have scouted and are ready to attack.  Some folks have probably got a week worth of targets already scouted.

People that have a history of coming out unattended therefore are probably targeted by players in other feds and all.  After all, are we the only folks that do that? 

Now I am having to try and put to rest accusations and stuff about fed members and frankly I am getting tired of the whole mess.  If you are not going to attend to your empire and you get hit it is your fault.  It is not a conspiracy of people passing information in the chats.  It is not poor OP.  It is frankly people just scouted who was coming out unattended or who was out without OP and they got hit.

As far as a new fedmate getting hit by his old fed by historias and put in forced VM, I would say that is between him and the past fed.  The fed he came from has a history of doing former members dirty.  He left, they were mad, and he got screwed.  What do you expect from those players there?

I am sure that Sam and Joe are beginning to feel the same way Laila and I do right now.  We are tired of spending our time trying to take care of peoples egos, acting like an idiot in the chat, or not having enough resources to support themselves.  We spend a ton of time in this game and instead of being enjoyable it is becoming a burden.  Now I am getting hit with conspiracy theories and the like on top of all the other BS. 

I am beginning to get to the point where I don’t even want to sign onto my yahoo because the chats will start opening with someone else’s little problem or demand.

I think my daughter Judy did the right thing when she went VM.  She told me, “Dad, I just can’t deal with it anymore.”  I am beginning to feel the same way.  Tonight when I get home I am going to talk to Laila and I think we both may take a long VM.  We will see.

Anyway, I will not continue to lose sleep over this game.  I will reset early, post and log out of the chat to prevent having to stay up past my bedtime in the future.  Either that or I will just go into VM.

This morning I was a little upset.  When I got on the freeway onramp it was backed up a quarter of a mile.  Why, because some lady either broke down or parked on the onramp.  She did not have her emergency flashers on or anything, but was just sitting there.  She made no attempt to get the car off to the side of the road.  Anyway, I still made it to work on time, and I hope that someone showed up to get her car out of the middle of the road so others would be able to get to work.

Also I was watching the news this morning and they were saying that the buses and trolley are free today to try and get more people to ride them.  I think it is a good idea if it were more efficient.  The nearest bus stop to my house is about 2 miles away and while I am not sure of how often it comes I do know how long it takes to get to work. 

Currently by car it takes me about 10 to 20 minutes to get to work depending on traffic.  If I were to take the bus to the trolley station it would be a 2 mile walk to the bus stop, a 30 minute ride to the trolley station and then I would have to wait up to 10 minutes for the trolley.  I would have to of course stand on the bus and the trolley while they were in motion because they are pretty full with people going to school and all.  The trolley ride would be about 10 minutes to get to the base.  When I get off the trolley near the base I would have another 2 or three miles to walk to get to work.  So this is just not feasible for me.

With the money the taxpayers have paid into mass transportation you would think they could do a better job.  Japan has a good model for mass transportation.  Perhaps if they studied the Japanese they could come up with something that would work here.

Well I guess that is about it for today.  It is time to get back to work.

Well it just dawned on me that I forgot to post yesterday's entry.  I went to the dentist yesterday, got hung up in traffic and when I got home and logged onto the PC people were already trying to contact me about both games I am playing online.  It is getting to the point where I don't have time to get anything done for myself.

Another thing that is getting annoying is we have a couple of youngsters in our fed and in the alliance are continually pestering people.  It is getting to the point now, where I do not even pay attention to the chat any more than to look to see if the person out got hit.  I have actually been missing some of the hits because of some of the nonsensical chatter going on in the chat.

Some of these folks seem to be chatting just to see themselves chat and some can't seem to type a sentence without it being laced with four letter words.  I am about to start deleting some from my contact list or maybe starting an adult's only chat as it is really getting to be a pain in the butt.

The other annoying thing is that in addition to pestering people on the game chats they feel it is important to contact me personally about stuff.  I already have a chat window open with Laila and one for the fed chat, one for the allied chat and sometimes one for the leaders chat.  I do not need other people pestering me with chat windows because they are lonely or insecure. 

It has gotten so bad with Judy that she just logs on for about 5 minutes every hour to go ahead and make her moves and then logs off.  Some of these people can be so irritating.

Another annoying thing that has been really bothering Laila and me is that we have a couple of people that insist on going out at 2 B PR while the rest of the fed is going out at 4B and above. 

We have a rule that people can go out whatever PR they like, but Laila and I are done posting low for these folks.  Also they are always demanding this and demanding that.  They do not have the planet count to add to the fed count.  They do not have the resources to maintain their empires, and they are also the ones that are so annoying in the chat.  We both feel it was a mistake to let them in the fed and so as soon as Joe or Sam has had enough they will get kicked.

Well time to get some work done. 

This morning I got up really early again so I guess I didn't completely adjust to the clock change yet, but it did give me a chance to have some extra coffee and all before work.  I did stay up a little late last night as our reset times got all messed up.

In Unification Wars there has been something called the Ultimate Weapon and when generated an Overlord is generated.  The maximum power rating for regular players is 20 Billion while the Overlord has a power rating of 200 Billion or above that sometimes.  After a few days the overlord can use negative effects on people, like loss of infra, enslaving empires that do not have a lord, lose planets and resources and stuff like that.

Anyway the negative effects aspect of the project never worked and for months now we have had one overlord after another.  It has been pretty much of a joke as the higher feds were just taking turns continually having one up there and would bring him down in a week or so when they got tired of seeing the same person at the top.  If you successfully complete it I guess there are some monetary gains and all associated with it.  The top feds have been using it to gain donation points to buy stuff in the game and have pretty much owned it because everyone else was too disinterested to do anything about it. 

Well yesterday I went to work and when I came home found that I as well as everyone I know in the game had lost infrastructure.  That infrastructure took me hours to build and I was not very happy about it.  Seems that right in the middle of the current overlord project they fixed the negative effects and the guy running the project used them to decrease everyone's infrastructure, including the infrastructure of his feds allies. 

Just about everyone I know was extremely unhappy and there was a massive attack on him last night that brought him down and ended it.  Not 5 minutes later some other guy tried to run one and was smacked down within a matter of minutes.  I don't think there will be another successful one allowed to even get started with the way many of us feel.

I guess it is for the good of the game, but a little heads up would have been nice.  To allow a change to be implemented right in the middle of the current project was totally unethical.  It should have been advertised and implemented the next time someone tried to start the project to allow people to try and stop the effects before they could be used.  As a result many folks were caught flat footed and helpless.  And many of us are not happy about it.

Anyway I stayed up until midnight last night after the overlord was defeated posting op and trying to get our folks reset.  I feel bad because I left Laila holding the ball when I had to go to sleep and she still had not reset herself.  We had several empires come out unattended and on in particular got me angry. 

Natlav had gone out right after I came in.  He had to go to bed and left his empire in our hands when he went to bed.  When I went to bed at midnight after posting op for him he still had 8 tokens.  This morning I woke up to find that sometime around 3 AM my time some fool had hit him for a big loss.

Well time to change subjects, to the drive in this morning.  Today was one of those mornings when the roads were full of idiots.  A few people were weaving in and out of the off ramp lanes on the I-805 this morning causing traffic to back up but I am used to those boneheads.

It was at the gate where I saw several idiots in action.  I was heading south to the right hand turn I needed to take to get in the gate.  A large tuck had his signal on and people were not letting him in.  I knew he was going to stay in the left lane going in the gate so he could take the freeway onramp just before getting to the gate, so I let him in and was going to follow him.  That way when he turned to get on the freeway I had a straight shot in the gate. 

Anyway as anyone knows trucks have a large turn radius and so he was kind of taking up both lanes while making the turn.  While he was turning I saw at least three people maybe more go ahead and make a third lane getting around him so he couldn't get into the left lane.  I would have just run them over if it were me.  Anyway I let him get to the left lane after the third lane boneheads got far enough ahead and he gave me a nice wave as he went south and I went west in the gate.  After that it was smooth sailing to work.

It sure would be swell if people would just obey the traffic laws.  Everything would run so smoothly and efficiently.  No matter how well planned a road is, it will not be effective if people don't follow the rules and around here they don't.

Well that is my rant for today.  I have to get some stuff done this afternoon and then get to a dental appointment so I'll get this saved and posted.