Ich war mal ein austausch schuler auf Deutschland.

I was an exchange student in Germany. I went with a private organization, and made a direct exchange with a German family... their kid came and lived with my family for a year, while I went to Germany and lived with his family. This did not develop into a friendship between either of us and the other's families... we were simply too different, had values that were too far apart.

That's not really what I wanted to write about, though. I wanted to write about the fact that today is the twentieth anniversary of the reunification of Germany.

When I went to Germany in 1986, there were two Germanys, the Federal Republic of Germany (West) and the Democratic Republic of Germany (East). I went to a town named Göttingen, which was only a few kilometers west of the border. My host family took me, at one point, to an overlook, where I could look down on the chain-link fence topped with razor wire.

It was dangerous to have a united Germany. After all, a united Germany had started two world wars in thirty years. I had my doubts about the causal relationship between a united Germany and world wars, but that was the official line... there would not be a united Germany in our lifetimes, because it would be dangerous.

I wanted to go to East Germany. I got on a train bound for Berlin, but the border guards looked at my passport and turned me back. They said I didn't look enough like my passport picture. I imagine that was just an excuse, but who knows what the real reason was.

At the end of the year, I reluctantly left Germany. If I could have figured out a way to stay, I might well have. I was mostly happy in Göttingen. I had friends, I liked the atmosphere of the city... the only thing in the whole town I didn't like, actually, was my host family.

But I didn't have the resources to stay, so I came home to Arizona, and a while later, joined the Navy. Which is where I was in November 1989. I don't remember President Reagan's "tear down this wall" speech, but I do remember feeling very relaxed about being in the Navy, feeling that the likelyhood of the war we'd been dreading throughout my childhood was now very low. (I was surprised, a year later, to find myself in a completely different war... but that's another story).

I remember watching on the television on the mess deck of USS Papago (ATF-160) as the wall began to topple. I was surprised and overwhelmed that the world could be so reasonable for a change.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to return to Germany since the wall came down. I'd like to. I'd like to travel in the places that used to be East Germany, to look at the architecture, to see what it's like.

Congratulations to my German friends, for being part of a country that [i]isn't[/i] a dangerous factor in world politics. Congratulations for being part of a reasonable world. And most of all... congratulations on this twentieth anniversary of the wall falling.

On Saturday morning, I tend to do a little web browsing on news sites. Less for the news, and more for interesting commentary on news. This particularly Saturday is also Halloween (for which, alas, I am doing nothing interesting this year). So this reflection by a BBC New York correspondent on Halloween, American style was fascinating. It also leads me to ask my foreign correspondents what their experience of Halloween at home is?

Then richardbrewer tossed out a link to this New York Times article written by a fellow with a Ph.D. in political science who works as a motorcycle mechanic. Again, even if you don't agree with the conclusions he draws, it's a great read.

I was dreaming. I was a wizard of great power, and I had a need for a bedroom in the wilderness. Therefore, I created one. It was a marble slab an inch thick, ten feet on a side, with furniture on top of it. It hung nine feet in the air. The following discussion then occured.

Cute Girl in Dream: It's marble!
Me: Yes.
CGiD: Won't it be hard to keep clean?
Me: I'm a magician.
CGiD: Won't it be cold underfoot?
Me: I'm a magician.

Apparently the "hanging in the middle of the air" thing didn't bother her, or she just accepted that I was a magician at that point. However, then the dream went to a strange place involving flesh-eating eels living in the bathtub....

I'm listening to Planetary Radio, the podcast of the Planetary Society. It's an episode from a few weeks ago, recorded after the announcement of the discovery of water on Luna. Bill Nigh, in addition to being the widely heralded "Science Guy," is also the vice-president of the Planetary Society, and he contributed an opinion piece to the show, about Luna being a dead end for science; that the "real action" would be on Mars.

This caught my attention for a couple of reasons. First, the Augustine Commission Report was recently published, which suggested not returning to Luna, and abandoning the Ares rocket development because of budget restrictions. As it happens, I agree with the suggestion that we should make use of commercially available space lift, but the rest of it, I have issues with.

And to explain why, I'm going to have to use some numbers. Those of you who are math-phobic, avert your eyes for a paragraph or so. I believe it was Robert Heinlein who first said that, once you reach geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO) you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system. And it's true, in terms of energy expended. In space, energy is expended to speed up and slow down, but it's not necessary to continue expending energy to continue moving. In the vacuum of space, there's nothing to cause friction which would cause you to slow down (although, ask me about the Pioneer Anomaly, some time). This expenditure in energy is measured in terms of change of velocity, or ΔV.

To go from the Earth's surface to low Earth orbit (LEO) you need a ΔV of about 9,300-10,000 meters per second. To get from LEO to Luna? 5,700 meters per second, or somewhere on the order of 60%. The same holds true for the return from Luna to LEO.

Now, here's the interesting thing. To go from the surface of Earth to the Surface of Mars, you're looking at a ΔV in the neighborhood of 20,000 meters per second... which is a lot. However, to go from Lunar surface to Martian surface? Approximately 9,000 meters per second. It takes less than half the energy.

Obviously, people are going to have to come all the way from Earth. But all the stuff they'll need on Mars (or any other area of exploration) doesn't have to. Regolith, the Lunar soil, contains iron, aluminum, titanium, and many other things. But the best thing it contains is hydroxyl, which is a molecule formed of one hydrogen and one oxygen atom. With a process such as vapor-phase pyresis, these materials could be extracted.

Ultimately, unfortunately, I do think that NASA is going to abandon manned spaceflight. It's expensive, it's dangerous, and NASA is a government agency, which shies away from both of those things. If we're going to see human exploration of the solar system, it's going to rely on private industry, which will have to pay for its own weight at every step. Whether that means groups such as Bigelow Aerospace that want to put hotels on-orbit, or foundations such as The Artemis Society which leverage the wealth of large groups of individuals, remains to be seen.

Unless the Chinese show that they're making a serious go of reaching Luna. Then all bets are off... but that's a subject for another day.

It's another week.

I was awoken this morning by a phone call from lysander_cat, which is rather surprising, 'cause normally, my phone is on silent at night. Well, let's be honest... here, lately, my phone is pretty much on silent all the time. Anyway, lysander_cat had car trouble on his way to work this morning, and called me, so I went out to where he was stuck, took him to work, and took care of getting his car to the garage. (Amusingly, as I was writing that, I realized I was pronouncing "garage" in the British fashion).

As I was out, driving around, I was listening to Skepticality Episode 114, about the new Skeptic Magazine sponsored podcast, Monster Talk. It started me thinking.

If I get the job as a science writer (and I'd very much like to... I honestly feel I'd be good at it, and it would be good for me) I think I'm going to pitch some new media approaches to the boss. One of them would be a weekly or fortnightly podcast about science, and new discoveries. NASA does their Science@NASA podcast, as well as making This Week at NASA available as a podcast. The SETI Institute makes Are We Alone, and The Planetary Society does Planetary Radio.

I don't know how many listeners each of these podcasts has, but I know that the organizations find it worth producing the podcast... so I'm thinking that the organization I'm hoping to work for would find a Science podcast worth the time to produce it, as well.

On Sunday, I spent the day in much the same way as Saturday, but I lathered myself with sunblock first (and apparently didn't get it all blended in, as atensibilla was kind enough to help me with that), so I didn't get sunburnt any further. It's a pretty mild sunburn, as sunburns go, and I'm not in agony.

I did better with making sure I got people's names right in the two courts on Sunday. Which gave me cause to think. Not that I did better, but that I was doing something in court at all.

It's been just over a year since I went out to Crown Tourney to visit with raventhourne and was convinced that I should rejoin the Society for Creative Anachronism after a twenty-year hiatus.

In that time, remarkable things have happened. When I rejoined the Society, I hooked up with the College of Sankt Vladimir, They happened to be thinking about a populace badge, and I knew something about heraldry, so I offered to work on it. Which got me elected Herald of the College.

I went to a war, Southern Crusades X, and offered my Baron and Baroness my help for our own war, Highlands War... which, a few months later, ended up with me being the primary event steward for that war.

It's my belief that the amazing success of that war was down largely to Baron Christopher of Ered Sûl, to Lady Aoife and Lady Violet, but other people persist in congratulating me on the job I did. They seem surprised that a first time event steward could pull off such a large event.

When I came back to Tucson, I offered my services, figuring I'd get slotted in somewhere, as someone's deputy, and never be heard from again. To my surprise, the Baronial Herald was stepping down, and the leading candidate to be her successor was tied up doing something else... which again, meant that I stepped right into an office I've little history to prove that I could do.

But I think that I've done reasonably well at it, and I hope that as we go forward, atensibilla and I find ways to overcome the couple of minor challenges (notably the fact that I'm partially deaf) that came up this weekend.

In about ten months, I'm going to be stepping aside as Herald, so that the afore-mentioned primary candidate can step into the job. I hope that, when we reach that point, everyone will look back on this as an experiment that worked. And maybe then, I'll be someone's deputy, and never be heard from again.

Or maybe some other office will mysteriously open up at just the right time for me to step into it.

I had a long day at Dragon's Horde (a Baronial event of the Barony of Tir Ysgithr). I'm a little sunburnt. It turns out that the reflective sun alone (I spent most of the day under either the Baronial Pavilion or snotblossom's shade fly) is enough to burn my fair skin.

I'm really tired, in spite of the fact that I didn't actually do much. A day spent being active in the sun is more tiring than one spent being active on a computer. For that reason, I'm going to do a bullet-point entry on my day in the fashion of snotblossom, which will probably seem cryptic to people who weren't there. So. Things I learned / want to remember about today:

• It's not just me. Other people think she's annoying, too.
  
  
• I really am partially deaf. Talking to me quietly enough that others won't overhear also means that I won't overhear.
  
  
• Teasing the wee bairns is fun. It's best when they're brought up in a family that teases, though. Otherwise they just look at you with hurt in their eyes. That's not fun.
  
  
• I really need to find out how to pronounce names before court begins. I feel like a schmoe when I flub one.
  
  
• snotblossom and swordmage are good people. I have spent days in many, many worse ways than hanging out with them and talking about comic books.
  
  
• posadnik_ivan had a good point about garb. I was wearing my "Help, help, I make my own garb" tunic, and he was wearing his cool yellow and blue one. I commented that most of the things which were wrong with mine were because it had been tossed together instead of made with care. He said that SCA garb tends to have a curve of increasing quality, both because you get experience, but also because, when you have a few things that you can wear to events, you can afford to take more time with the things you make after that, and quality garb builds up slowly.
  
  
• She really is that pretty. And willing to talk to me about geeky stuff. And a good fighter.
  
  
• Apparently, the "y" in Ysgithr is not pronounced. And the two words are run together. I am a schmoe.
  
  
• I need a bigger ceramic container for water. Preferably one with a handle. I wonder if the paint your own ceramic place I went to with Christmas Girl is still there, on Campbell. If you remember Christmas Girl you've been reading this journal too long.
  
  
• It's fun to be behind the thrones at court. You can hear what's going on, and the jokes that get made too quietly for the populace to hear them are often pretty darn funny.

I woke up early, for me, about 8:30 this morning. I trolled the internet looking for jobs, applied to a couple, and then played some World of Warcraft. About 1, I got up, took a shower and got dressed, and went out for a walk.

Came home, dragged my Aunt's sewing machine out, and proceeded to work on my tunic... only to discover that my Aunt's sewing machine also needs service. Fortunately, I was able to finish the tunic, without damaging the machine.

Sat down, played a little more World of Warcraft. lysander_cat came home from work, and went out in the back yard to spend some time with the turtles. That's not a euphemism for anything, there are three red-eared sliders and two tortoises living in the back yard.

hamner showed up, and we headed out to dinner. On the way, we talked about the surprisingly low rung of moral rectitude Insurance companies occupy (it is the consensus that it is the one directly above child pornographers, but several steps below telemarketers). I had a cheesesteak sandwich. lysander_cat and hamner each had a tuna melt.

And then off to capt_weege's house for this week's Serenity game with the Usual Suspects. We had a good time, but had to stop in the middle of an operation, so we'll see how that goes for us in a fortnight.

Next week, of course, is the Warehouse Eureka game, and I believe I have the bones of that already; I just need to flesh them out. And see if I can get MapTools working.

Hey, y'all.

There are things I could write about, and I sort of feel obliged to at least nod at them. lysander_cat and I spent four hours at Urgent Care because he'd gashed his foot while working on the turtle pond.

We got together with hamner and had some KFC for dinner, and hamner gave me the Phineus and Ferb soundtrack. If you're not a P&F fan, I have to say that you're missing out, because the show is sheer genius.

Anyway, he mosied on home, and we connected on Skype with lysander_cat, hamner, and angel_lord. We were experimenting with playing an RPG via computer, and it was mostly successful... we had trouble trying to get our MapTool thingie to hook up, but the Skype connection worked well.

Stayed up late reading.

Got up in the morning, and went to breakfast with the relations. Came back to the house, and crashed. Got up in the evening, went out to rocketengineer's house. lysander_cat played some poker with the lads, while darth_riley and I sat with hamner and roxietiel. We played a hand of "Go Fish," and pillow-fought a little, and watched the U of Az football team blow the game with Washington State.

And then back home, where lysander_cat and I ran hamner through Scarlet Monastery in World of Warcraft, and in a little while, I shall seek my bed. (I imagine I'll find it... it's not far away).

So lysander_cat and I were discussing zombies. As one does. Then we got to discussing warewolves, which, really, is a logical extension of the zombie discussion. And, of course, if you're going to talk about warewolves, you have to talk about silver bullets.

And that got me wondering about silver bullets. Could you purchase silver bullets in, say, .45 ACP, which is my preferred caliber? What about 10mm Auto, which the U.S. Government likes for law enforcement?

Well, a little poking around found no one who currently manufactures silver bullets in any caliber... but it also yielded this fascinating article on casting silver bullets which explains why it's a lot more difficult than casting lead bullets, and of dubious merit (nutshell: Silver is much harder than lead, and will blow right through with limited hydrostatic shock effects).

It looks to me like, if you're going to hunt warewolves, the sawed-off shotgun with silver shot is a better plan than silver bullets. Or, if you're concerned about explaining what you're carrying to Mr. Officer, the Taurus Judge, with the Magnum 3" chamber will accept .410 shot shells.

Actually, looking at the results of a .410 chambered Judge with the magnum load, and tripple-aught shot, I have to say, this thing is a zombie-killing machine. Which, really, brings us back to the intial topic of discussion... Zombieland, which is funny and well made.

And we're seeing it again on Sunday, this time with hamner.

I have the ick.

Brain lubricant is draining out of my head. And, in spite of taking two tylenol "simply sleep" tabs last night, I can't seem to stay asleep for more than an hour.

Watching second season Addams Family on Hulu. Waiting for the misery to pass.

I went to Victory Hall tonight.

Victory Hall is kind of a fighter practice for the SCA... and kind of not. Fighter practice (FP) for the Barony of Tir Ysgithr happens on Tuesday nights at Reid Park, and a boat load of people are there every week. (As a side note, before FP this week, Baron Tighearnain held a class on building rattan staves up into swords, and it turns out that everyone's right, I put way more tape and effort into mine than most people do). By contrast, Victory Hall is invitation only, and there were six of us this week, including american_knight, posadnik_ivan, raventhourne, myself, and a couple of people who either don't have LJs, or I don't know their usernames.

When posadnik_ivan invited me, at Chocolate Revel, I kind of had a "Yay!" moment, because, well, who doesn't want to be invited to train with people one respects? It was a little like Sally Field at the Oscars... "They like me, they really like me!"

... and that would be my lack of self-esteem showing. Sorry.

Anyway, Victory Hall is kind of like an organized Dojo class for SCA fighting, with a couple of really good instructors. Tonight, we went over a drill called "running the clock," and that was a bit of a workout... that shield is heavier than you think it is, and so is the sword. Then we paired off and did a slow-tempo drill, kind of like you'd do in a martial arts class, where one person is the Uki, and throws the blow, moves in the expected manner each time, so that the other person can work out how to block the blow, and respond to it.

I don't feel that I did particularly well at it, but I did feel that I learned some things, and felt it was time well spent. Next week we won't be doing it, because american_knight will be off at a war I'm not attending, but I did get invited back for the following week, so I clearly didn't make a huge fool of myself.

And sometimes, that's really all you can ask for.

I know some of you who, for some mysterious reason, read my journal, also read webcomics. A while back, I recommended count your sheep!, and I hope that some of you have read it. It's fun, and innocent, and doesn't rely on shock value to get a laugh. Adis delivers a child-like innocence, and in a world that seems to be determined to race away from innocence at full speed, I think that's a valuable thing.

Of course, I'm also a sucker for Disney movies.

Anyway, Adis has asked for help in a competition that would lead to him getting some money for his work. It's a separate web comic. It's cute, it's innocent, and I like it. Here's your link:

I'm a member of a World of Warcraft guild that is mostly a social guild, built around the fandom of hamner's podcast. Also in the guild is a fellow from the United Kingdom, England, in fact, who uses the name HolySocks in-game.

I'd chatted with him a couple of times in Skype or Ventrillo as we ran instances, and when he and his father were deciding where to go in America for their vacation, they chose Southern Arizona. They flew over, rented Harley-Davidson motorcycles in Phoenix, and drove down to Tucson as the hub from which they'll be touring with their group.

Last night, they gave lysander_cat a phone call, and he and I ended up getting together with the two of them. We took them to Rosa's Mexican Restaurant, up on Fort Lowell, and chatted for a couple of hours on rather wide-ranging but geeky subjects, and had a good evening.

They'd never had Mexican food before, and the father liked it quite a bit; I think HolySocks himself, however, was a bit overwhelmed by it. hamner, when they're hanging out with you on Thursday, expect a request for Mexican food.

I ended up going to the party. And, for the most part, it ended up being a good time.

It did amuse me that the same thing that generally happens at parties here at Chateau lysander_cat happened at this party off on the other side of town... I spent the whole time in the pool with the under-ten crowd, while adults went off and did other things.

Of course, I wasn't alone in the pool with the under-ten crowd... weavedancer was there, as well, and there was a mother who was sitting on the deck, and a father who brought his kids into the pool and stayed while they were there. On the other hand, it amused me that at least one mother came over, told me her kids' names, and disappeared for the rest of the time they were in the pool.

They were well behaved kids, and listened well, though none of them could swim. I didn't really try to remedy that, as they were only going to be in the pool with me for the one afternoon, so I gave pointers, but didn't try to do any actual instruction.

After the sun went down, I sat with the adults for a little while, and tried to participate in the conversations, with a noticeable lack of success.

Still, the food was good, and the cake was good (I suppose cake is a subset of food, but, particularly at a birthday party, it's a very important subset!) and I did get to talk to a couple of people, so there y'go.

I'm on Twitter, though I don't do a very good job of it. I never have been able to say anything in twenty words or less. So here are some things I've had on my mind lately, inspired by tweets -- mine, or other people's. (I use the same username on Twitter as here, if you're curious).

vendredi13

nytemiste

alohomoron

dorinda2212

lapis_lazuli

nytemiste

nytemiste

I've been spending a lot of time lying in bed, reading. Not that I'm objecting to that, per se... it's been one of my favorite activities all my life. No, what I'm objecting to is why I've been lying in bed, reading, which is that this hurt back has gone on longer than any hurt back in the history of my life.

Of course, I'm older now than I used to be, and they tell me that one of the things that happens as you age is less ability to recover from injury....

Anyway, I've read several of Terry Pratchet's Diskworld novels. We got The Color of Magic from Netflix the other day, you see, and it started me off wanting to read more....

And yes, all of my friends who are already diskworld fans may look down their noses at me, but somehow, I never got around to them before, in spite of the fact that I think Good Omens is quite possibly the funniest book ever written, and Pratchet had a hand in it.

It's interesting to me, though, that the Diskworld novels are not serial. They're episodic. The characters and the setting are established, but everything is reset to ground state at the end... Rincewind will be on the run, the witches will be in the Ramtops, and anything that changes will have been forgotten by the beginning of the next novel.

It's comforting, in a way. When you pick up that next novel, you know that it will be funny, and the characters you love will be there, being what you love them for. In this case, it's all right that there's no character growth, that there's no real "what happens next," because that's not why you read the novels. You read them to have a bit of a laugh, and pass some time, and then go on with your own "what happens next."

Which, at the moment, doesn't seem to be all it's cracked up to be.

I think I'll go to bed.

I like bed.

It's a quarter to five on Monday morning, and I'm awake. I don't know how long that will last... hopefully, not too.

Friday, hamner, lysander_cat, and I got together in the evening. The rest of the Usual Suspects had decided to take the week off of our D&D game, so the three of us worked on characters for hamner's Serenity game, and my upcoming Champions game. We went over to the Broadway Diner, and had some pretty good burgers.

I got up early on Saturday with the intention of recovering from my gumption trap, and finishing the tunic. Except that I discovered that it wasn't just a gumption trap, there actually was something wrong with my sewing machine. So I climbed into the red kilt, and the blue doublet, and headed for Phoenix, for Brymstone's Chocolate Revel.

childofsnow met me there, and I introduced her to my friends, and that was nice, as was seeing some of the folks from St. Vlad again. It was sort of odd... when I was actually there, and immersed in that culture, people half my age seemed normal. But now that I've been away, and dealing with a broader segment of society, they seem so... young.

I had to leave early, as my ride was uncomfortable leaving her dog alone for more than about 8 hours. I would have liked to have hung around a little longer, but....

I woke up late on Sunday morning. About 11, which worked for me pretty well. Back was still sore, though not the band of agony it had been. Read Terry Pratchet's Equal Rites. Floated in the pool for a couple of hours.

Watched the season finale of Eureka which was interesting, because it felt like a series finale, but I know that the show's been picked up for another season. Also watched last week's episode of Warehouse 13, which is not the season finale. That'll be this week, and I'll probably watch it on tape delay again, because I mean to get out to the park to fighter practice, even if it's just to demonstrate my skill at hobbling around with a sore back.

It's already the last week of September... where does the time go?

I have things to write about, for a change....

First of all, I need to thank lysander_cat for renewing my World of Warcraft subscription. I hopped on last night, did a little bit of auction house business, leveled blacksmithing about fifteen points, and completed a daily quest.

Talking to lysander_cat, I heard about Tucson's Proposition 200. It would mandate police and fire staffing levels in the city charter. Wanting to be an informed voter (which reminds me that I need to update my voting registration so that I can vote in Pima County) I dug around and found the website of people who are a'gin 200. After reading their arguments, I'm convinced. There are some nasty stings in the tail of that proposition, and it doesn't benefit Tucson.

And turning away from politics... I want to thank everyone who gave me a game recommendation yesterday. I tried most of them. As mentioned, I'm a member of a strange cult known as Mac Users, so my gaming options are somewhat limited. In fact, it has been a source of some frustration to childofsnow (not to mention myself) how few Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games offer Mac clients.

I tried all of the suggestions. Bookworm was fun for a while, but left me feeling like I'd been working. I got caught on Evony online. It's similar to the Tribes game I played for a while, last year (the year before?) but has a couple of things that make it better.

For one, it has an interesting quests system, which both teaches the new player how to play, and rewards them for doing things that grow their village and increase their security. Evony, instead of having a straightforward subscription fee, has a micropayments system. Using real-world money, you can buy in-game items that help you gain an edge, speeding up construction or research, letting you declare a peace for 12 hours, during which you can neither attack anyone nor be attacked by anyone, and so on.

Can you play the game without these geegaws? Yes, you can. You can even get some of them without paying the fees, by means of the random item awarded each day just for continuing to play.... but spending money means that you can get the ones you want, and it definitely gives you an edge.

Unfortunately, I suspect it will ultimately suffer the same flaw as Tribes, which is that it's basically all about the PvP, which means that those of us who are thoughtful citybuilders, getting our kicks from seeing our people prosper and build, will have our beautiful cities taken away from us by someone fielding an army of a gajillion conscripts.

Anyway. Things to be done today. I need to do some heraldry paperwork, and have to stop by the kingdom herald's house tonight, to give her some paperwork and get some from her. Yay?

Also need to finish the tunic. I hit a gumption trap the other night, and stopped. I probably have half an hour to an hour's worth of work left, if I just bear down and do it.

My back still hurts. I drank some brandy last night as a muscle relaxant, and underestimated the alcohol content of brandy... ended up with kind of a swimmy head. Also had sort of an interesting sensation of being very large, which I haven't encountered with alcohol before.

Anyway... I should do things that are actually, you know... productive.

My World of Warcraft subscription expired on Sunday.

Civilization II, which I used to play the heck out of, and waste many hours with, is compiled for OS 9, and will not run on my current computer.

I don't actually have any games for my current computer.

I feel like doing something more active than reading, but not particularly physically active, 'cause my back still hurts.

Bleah.