Good morning!

So I stayed up last night rather late.  Why?  Because I dropped the 9:40-10:30 MWF class, and my first class on Friday is now at 12:55pm.

Yay!

So this morning I hear my phone go off.  My phone is generally my alarm clock, so I grabbed it and opened it up, and... it was not my alarm!  In fact, it was my lady love.

Of course, I have no reception in my bunk.  It's a metal bunk in a concrete building, with two walls being the least seperating me from the outside of the building in any direction.

I noticed that the time was no 11:59, when I set my alarm for, but rather it was 9:35am.

My lady-love called again, and managed to tell me (over the horrible reception on--as I found later--both our ends) that I had class at 9:40am.

I wanted to burst out laughing, hug the lovely lady, and scream all at the same time.  Did not want to get up early, you know, but on the other hand she was so concerned about me not missing my class that she called me.  For a class I no longer have, but it was still a tremendously sweet gesture.

I love the dear Toshi.  And I feel very loved.

According to the Foreign Service

Mixed feelings post:

As you probably know, I've been relatively iffy about Obama.  Not so much that he's going to do a horrible job, but rather that people seem to think that now that Obama is in office, things will get better.  But I don't really see the change that much.  "Change you can believe in" was one of the slogans, and I guess I never believe.  I just watch and see.

Well, last Thursday in my Global Career Development class, we had a presentation by this Foreign Service lady.  Of of the questions we asked her at the end was: "How much does your job change between administrations?"

The answer was that generally speaking, foreign policy stays the same between administrations, with an exception recently.

The ways things have actually changed?

1) The Bad Bush Effect.  First she told us that during the Bush administration, things got harder.  Originally, people loved Americans.  As a diplomat, people would be like: "We think you're wrong, but we like you and your country because you're American."  That stopped during the Bush administration, particularly after the start of the Iraq war.  "We think you're wrong, and we don't like you or your country because you're American."

I can personally vouch for this one, on reflection.  As you probably know, I've been traveling since before I was 1.  My first birthday was in Australia, and that was on the return end of traveling through China, my dad teaching in Helsinki, etc.  Grew up all my life traveling.  And people liked Americans.  The soft power was there, and damnit, it helped.  Americans were cool, people wanted to be like Americans (I always had mixed feelings about that last one).

As I turned into a teenager, that sense faded.  I always assumed it was me, some sort of nostalgia, but maybe not?

Anyway, Bush made diplomacy difficult, and while the elites generally knew better than to assume most US folks were like Bush, the foreign service had to really drive the public publicity that they try at.  Stuff so that people get to know normal americans.

In the mean time, they probably wished they could wear shirts like this. (By the end of the talk, I got the feeling that the Foreign Service had pretty legitimate reasons to be pissed at Bush.)

2)  She also noted climate change policy problems.  The Bush administration's views on climate change were widely variant from the global norm.  It's kind of tricky to talk with people about anything that is affected by climate concerns when, to your goverment, climate concerns don't exist.  How do you make a treaty on industrial pollution standards when the US and the rest of the world are working from a different base of assumptions?  (Yet another reasons for them to think that US folks are stupid.)

3) Abortion too.  According to Bush administration policies, federal government institutions were not allowed to provide funding to any health organization, governmental or not, that includes abortion as a possibility in their their health-control schema.  Which seems like a nasty jab at abortion - good if you are anti-choice, bad if you are anti-life (because I like being negative).

The problem in practice is that most governments only have one department of health, and that does everything.  So instead of cutting out the programs that provide the option of abortion in favor of those who don't provide that as an option, the policy wound up cutting the health programs of entire developing countries out of US funding.  And gods do some developing countries need adequately funded health programs. (Another reason for them to think that US folks are dicks.)

So, now with the change to Obama, the US has a fresh new face abroad, is now on the same page as everyone else for climate change, and can fund the health programs of developing worlds.

I haven't travelled abroad since Obama was elected.  I hope to see some change.  At least the foreign service gal did.

Economics grade scores.

Yesterday was the first economics class after break.  The Thursday before break, we had an exam, which I figured I did so-so on.

Yesterday, while we were waiting for class to start (with me diligently working on my knit scarf), we were talking about grades we got, or would get when he passed back the exam.

The fellow to my forwards right got a 38/50, and was pleased.  He figured that the curve would help him out a lot.  The lady behind me got a 32/50 and was less pleased.  The guy on her left got a 39/50, and got some dirty looks.

I, of course, had not checked the online grade posting - for me, once the test is turned in, the grade is going to be the same, so I have no hurry to figure out what it is.

I was sort of worried, though - the test had been a lot harder than I expected - I had little to no trouble with the practice exam from the fall semester, but the exam this time had a lot of questions about elasticity, which I hadn't studied very well for.  (Actually, I hadn't studied much at all - only skimmed the textbook, etc.  But I didn't know it very well, at any rate.)

He started passing out exams.  The guy behind me got a 22/50.  I was worried.

I got a 44/50.  I was impressed.  I figured that I would get around a 39/50, being smart and all that.  I was sort of worried, though - the class is graded on a curve, after all, and so the higher my score, the more true reason people have to be unhappy/jealous.

And then once all the papers had been passed out, Dr. Wang was going to write the top and lowest scores on the board.

Wang: "Wilford, what did you get on the exam?"

Me: "44?"

Wang (to class): "The highest score was 44, the lowest was something like 16 or 18."

Me: *blushes*

So yeah.  Apparently I didn't just do okay, I actually set the curve.

First time I've ever done that.   Mixed feelings between pride and superiority, and embarassment and cringing.  The other students weren't that mad, but they did give me dirty looks occasionally.

We went over the exam in class, and they argued some of the questions.  I was pondering helping them argue for the questions - Lowering my grade to be more on par with the other high-scoring students would not hurt me at all, and would help everybody else.  Eventually I didn't, though - the professor's policy was that people could talk to him privately about it if they cared about points.

I missed two questions, each -2 points, and I got 3/5s credit on one of the essay questions.  I could have easily argued the essay question, but... what's the point.  Setting the curve is an odd situation to be in, apparently.

Anyway, this might lead to the first time I get a A+ in a college class.  I've always been a A-/B+ student, traditionally.

Go me?

Sins of A Solar Empire

Well, I up and bought it.  I don't have a computer that can run it, or really the time to play it, but I bought a license to play it via the Impulse digital content distribution system, and downloaded it onto my roommates compter (with permission).  It runs okay on his computer, though I can't max out the prettiness.  I do enough the prettiness.

According to the Impulse license FAQ, I get to download it from my Impulse account and play it on whatever computer I want, though only one downloaded version can exist at a time.

Need to play Tim.  He has it on his laptop.

While on the topic of Sins, I've played exactly one game on my roommate's computer.  It was a 1vs1 on Fertile Crescent (a slower map) against a Hard Computer (random personality).  I'm guessing it took about two and a half hours, over the course of two days.  Here's a brief summary of what happened:

I had been reading online about various capital ships.  I normally pick the Marza Dreadnought because of it's absurd DPS, planet bombing abilities, and it's amazing ultimate ability, which deals 150 damage 20 times to all enemy ships in the area (affected by shield mitigation, so effectively "only" about 1500).  It's pretty tough, too - the TEC builds ships like that.

However, the stuff that I was reading, while agreeing about the Marza's awesomeness, also reccomended the TEC's Kol Battleship.  Why?  Not because of its offensive power, but for it's balanced abilities and amazing defense.  Without abilites, it is statistically the toughest capital ship in the game.  It starts with a clean 3000 HP and enough armor to make it effectively 3750 HP... but better with regeneration.  Decent shields.  It has a a direct offensive ability, an anti-fighter-craft ability, and a defensive ability.  It's ultimate ability does not ravage fleets like the Marza's, but gives it good regeneration in HP and shields.  Gives its attacks splash damage, and decreases cooldown time on special abilities.  Lastly, it increases antimatter regeneration.  If you weren't spamming the special abilities during Finest Hour (its ultimate), you would not only generate antimatter to recoup the cost of using Finest Hour, you would also gain a net 150 antimatter.  It seemed pretty decent, though I felt I would miss blowing up everything with my Marza.

So I started with the Kol, and scouted out the three unknown planets from my start.  Immediately sent the Kol at the astroid, and it ripped appart the native defenders there.  Colonized that, sent the Kol (again, by itself) to the next planet over, which happened to be moderately defended.  Turns out?  Kol doesn't kill things fast.  It just sat there, dealt damage, and got hit a bunch.  I had chosen the defensive ability early, so periodically it would take 15% less damage.  I had heard good things about it, but 15% before mitigation doesn't seem that amazing.

Well, apparently it does work.  The Kol nearly single-handedly cleared the system of it's defenders, and I went and colonized that planet.  I then checked the damage on the Kol...  It still had about 1700 HP left.  The thing is like a friggen rock.  I sent it to the next planet, now with back-up, and I cleared that as well, then colonized it.

I was happy - my initial push had seized two out of the three planets on the crescent, and so now I had enconomic superiority.

Then the oppnent arrived at the central star system, and started the battle that lasted, on and off, for nearly 2 hours.

My Kol was still pretty hurt from defeating the planet's defenders, and the planetary defenses were in the process of being built when they arrived.  And by they, I mean bunches.  I had about 3 missile frigates and my Kol.  They had a Vulkoras Desolator, 7 of the Varsari's version of the missile frigate (which is more expensive, but better), and 10 or so light frigates.  My LRM (long range missile frigates) do great damage against the light frigates, but my main concern was beating down their LRMs to slow the offensive power of their army until the planetary defenses were online, and the rest of my fleet returned (I had sent them to conquer a planet while the three LRMs and the Kol sat on the central planet, backed up by the planetary defenses).

Unfortunately for me, they soon warped in planet bombers, and started trying to destroy my colony on the central planet.  With no colony, the constrution of planetary defenses would halt, and my delaying tactics would be for naught.  I focused my remaining LRMs (which were going down fast) on the Karrastra Destructors and took them down.  Unfortunately for me, my Kol was going down in health, and they were destroying the defense structures as they were being built.  Eventually, though, I did manage to get a repair bay online, and that repaired my Kol  (the LRMs were long dead at this point).  Now faced with a 2000 or so HP Kol, two gauss gun defense platforms (admitedly at half health) and a repair bay, they decided to flee.  I suddenly realized that their capital ship, despite arriving with more health than mine, was down to about 1000 HP.  I didn't have enough offense to focus on finishing it, but it ran away anyway.  My holdings were safe.

And then they came back.

Joining their damaged Desolator was another capital ship, the Jarrasul Evacutor - their colony ship.  They now had about 10 of the Vasari LRM, and 10 of the light frigates.  I fought for a bit, but once the repair platform was gone, I had to flee with my Kol.  The Egg (as it is called) poses as a colony capital ship, but it has two insanely offensive-based abilities.  One-on-one Cap versus Cap battles have the Egg (starting with the offensive ability) win every single time.  In my case, it was a new ship, a level 1 ship compare to my level 3 Kol, but the nano-disassembler reduces my armor by two and deals 30 non-mitigated damage every second for 20 seconds.  That's 600 damage, no ifs or buts.  If my ship was at two low HP and got hit by that, it wouldn't matter if it ran.

So I ran a bit early, when I was at 1500 HP.  By the time I got out of the gravity well to the next planet (which I had built defenses on), it had been hit by the nano-disassembler and focus fire by most other ships during the armor decrease.  It phase-jumped to safety with literally only 45 HP left.

I sent it to the repair bay in the planet there while my LRM fleet got over to meet up with it.  My LRM fleet, plus the new LRMs I had built at my factory, was about 15 ships, plus my newly-repaired Kol.

Meanwhile, their fleet was ripping appart my defenses, and starting to bomb the planet via the two capital ships.  The Desolator is specialized into planetary bombardment like the Marza is, and so it was going a bit faster than I would like.

When my Kol was nearly repaired, I sent it and the fleet over to the planet.  I ordered the LRMs to destroy their LRMs, and I had my Kol focus on the damaged Desolator.  Meanwhile, while my fleet distracted theirs, I tried to built a repair bay.  Three of them were destroyed before one of them got built.  Meanwhile, my LRMs all died and my Kol stubornly sat there, soaking up damage while chipping away at their much more fragile Desolator.  Their Egg was apparently out of antimatter, as it only hit me with the Nano every now and then, rather than each time the 12 second cool-down finished... which is shorter than the 20 second effect, by the way.

The Kol eventually destroyed the Desolator, and the enemy fled against, giving me a brief respite to build a few more repair bays, and reinforce with a few LRMs.  Then they came back with the Egg and their own main battleship, their equivalent of the Kol.  My Kol was at level 4 now, compared to their level 2 egg and level main battleship.  I sat on my repair bays and destroyed their Egg while my LRMs fought their LRMs.  My Kol leveled up to 5 just in time before they sent a number of carrier cruisers into the gravity well under contention.  Meanwhile, I used my resource advantage (I controlled one more planet than them, plus being the TEC) to research my own carriers, and send them out as well, outfited with air superiority craft.  Vasari air is better than TEC air, but mine were cheaper.  More importantly, my last level-up with the Kol had me investing in its Flak Burst, an anti-strikecraft measure.  Unfortunately, while the flak burst rips apparet opposing TEC and Advent strikecraft, both of which are fragile, the Varsari craft had about 85 HP, and could weather the Flak Burst better than most.

Combat went on, with the enemy sending in periodic reinforcements and me sending in the same.  I always had less of an army than my foe, but I had multiple repair bays to repair my ships and each other.

Eventually I researched into repair ships and eventually heavy cruisers, and the repair ships started making life easier.  A bit easier.  My Kol got to level six, and then it started using Finest hour, which, given its negative antimatter cost, was on one third of the time.  (60/180 seconds.  It's actually more like a finest minute).  Very helpful.  After the Kol got to level six, I built a second capital ship, a Marza, and sent that in.  The Marza did it's thing, and I kept my strategy focused on destroying any capital ships they sent at me, using the fact that my capital ships kept getting stronger to provide me with an advantage.   I dealt with their frigates as I could.

My strategy paid off when I got to level six with my Marza, and unleashed its Missile Barrage.  This nearly killed all of their amassed frigates and some of their cruisers, and suddenly the battle was in my favor.  I routed them, and the remains fled to the next system.  Using the momentum of the minute, I sent scouts over to the next planet, and made sure they had no huge fleet of reinforcements there.  They didn't.

About this time, I realized their plan - while the battle was taking forever, they were building broadcasting units on their planet and building up culture.  Defend it as I might, the central planet would have revolted against me if the culture had converted the population.

I attacked their planet, and destroyed everything I could.  Their fleet fled, but I was fine with that.  I destroyed their colony and their orbital structures, including a broadcasting structure.  I figured out that most of them were in their home planet, where their fleet had to be re-massing for a final defense.

I waited in that planet until my ships were ready to fight again.  Specifically, the repair cruisers had repaired my capital ships, and the four minute cooldown on the Missile Barrage finished.  I then invaded their planet.

Again, they had a larger fleet than me, but once I sent the Marza into the middle of their fleet and used the missile barrage, I was in a much better spot than them.  I destroyed their latest capital ship, destroyed their fleet, and set to work on the orbital structures and the planet.

From there, it went smoothly.  My economy was much better than the two remaining planets they had, and all that was left was wiping out the remains.

Victory was mine.

So that was the first game I played on my roommate's computer.  Sort of a warm-up game, getting used to his mouse and keyboard and such.

Some real Sins of A Solar Empire will be played later.

I should play against Tim...

I managed to blow up the Desolator, and the rest of their fleet fled back to one of their planets.

Feel like a man.

So I was staying over at Toshi's place for part of Spring Break, and I did something manly!

She was having trouble with her lamp - one of the three heads had a switch that would not twist. She asked me to fix it with my man-skills, so I fiddled with it. Didn't work. I told her that I couldn't do it without tools. She drags out this thing with More Tools Than In Irish C, and asked if they will help.

I took the bulb-holder out of the lamp, and disassembled the whole socket/switch device. Figured out what was jammed, put it back together, and it was fixed! Go me.

Yesterday, I was at my parent's place, and I found that my mother was using Dad's High-tech Laptop for her email and internet surfing. Had some 20+ tabs open on it two, including at least 5 .pdf files. I covet my dad's computer because he does not use it and it can run modern games. Like Sins of a Solar Empire, my favorite RTS.

The reason for her using it was that her own computer had stopped functioning.

So I decided to fix her computer.

I pressed the on-off switch. Nothing happened.

I pulled out the plug, and plugged it into another outlet.

I pressed the on-off switch. It turned on.

I have technical genius! :P

Oh, and then I stopped the constant error that had kept her printer from functioning: Put paper in it and plugged it into the computer.

Such a man!

That new blog smell...

Okay, so I decided to follow the crowd and make myself a blog. Two blogs, in fact. Abandoning my old LJ blog. Seperate from notes. Not sure why, but I always feel a compulsion to write about how my life is when I right on LJ, rather than just commenting on things that happened.

So maybe here I will just comment on things that happen, not on how my life is going in general.

Logistical information:

This is the Lightside blog:

I noticed that Leah has two blogs - one for positive things and one for negative things. I saw it and I liked it. I think that the two blog setup will help me avoid every post segwaying into whining about my life, whining about my computer, etc. The Darkside blog is whatsdownnil.blogspot.com...

Title is temporary:

Reference to newspeak, obviously. Wish I could get Nil to be capitialized, but Newspeak is based off of english, and English doesn't work like that. Anyway, I'm hunting for a new, better title. If you have suggestions, tell me.

The names I go by:

Online I go by Nil Athelion, Nillion, Aelaris, and Patience. Nil Athelion is my full-blown psuedonym; Nillion was when I needed no spaces and more than three letters; Aelaris replaced Nillion, as Nillion is a modification for Nil and I was already going by Aelaris for some purposes; and Patience is my gamer-name, since Nil Athelion is two words, and Aelaris is a pacifistic personality.

Aelaris and Patience are both female.

Aelaris is female because Aelaris the name is based on Aelaris the character (Much as Nil the name is based on Nil the character), and Aelaris has a vivid and remarkably feminine personality. I used to go around as Aelaris as an alter-ego, and even still I will act differently under the name.

Patience is also female, but that stems mostly from the name. As a gamer, I tend to be either aggressive as Nil or predatory as Patience. Nil plays Halo 2 and Super Smash Bros: Melee, Patience places Magic: The Gathering, Chess, Gladius, etc. Aelaris gets some game-time too, in the sort of games she would be comfortable playing. Many games force you to be violent, though.

What do call me:

I would prefer not to go by my actual name online, so if you comment, refer to me by Nil, Nil Athelion, Mr. Athelion, etc.

Other names of importance:

There's a certain Toshi in my life these days. She is my lover and girlfriend.

The other people will be explained or not explained, as the situation entails.

Happy Reading,

-- Nil Athelion