I think we all have some form of this list, even if it's just vague "pay off the debts, nice house, nice car, world cruise" thoughts which occasionally drift by when we pay the bills.

Some of us, though, have detailed, written lists of exactly what we'd do with half a million dollars... or ten million... or ten billion. (Mine currently goes up to just under one trillion US dollars - I have some plans for global infrastructure investment.)

At assorted logarithmic levels, some of my entries are:

Four figures: repair the car or get a replacement second-hand one; get some minor repairs done on the house.

Five figures: superannuation; fairly new car; shed full of tools and making-stuff toys.

Six figures: pay for the nephew's future education; pay off mortgage or buy moderately nice house.

Seven figures: buy rather nice house or have one custom-built; cautiously invest in some minor product ideas I have; some donations to various conventions and fan works; minor philanthropy.

Eight figures: send money to many artists whose work I have enjoyed for free over the years; invest a little more in some longer-term product and service ideas; medium-level philanthropy; pay for three fulltime professional music production studios - one to follow filkertom around, one to follow seanan_mcguire, and one to occasionally give the other two studios a couple of days off, because otherwise they'd be working 24/7/365 just to keep up.

Nine figures (top 1000 richest people in the world): six-figure grants to various scientific, educational and medical institutions; small investments in new inventions.

Ten figures (top 40 richest people in the world): establish a couple of foundations and funded think tanks for the progress of science, education, and really cool stuff; investments in bringing disruptive technologies to market; buying and distributing stuff from Dean Kamen and people like him.

Eleven figures (top 200 companies in the world): attempt to tilt global policy at least a couple of percent in the direction of improved education and general access to basic resources for the majority of the world population; politically influence repairs to things like educational and IP systems.

Twelve figures (top 20 companies in the world): invest in long-term high-cost projects like new energy resources; see if something can be done about boosting general interest in space again.

Thirteen figures (approx GDP, top 10 countries in the world; global annual international trade): pay off all global international debt. Could also cover the cost of the Iraq invasion, but where's the fun in that?

Fourteen figures (GDP China/USA/EU, global GDP is about 14.8): really only thrown in for comparison; feel free to speculate.

(I can speculate assorted business plans which might end up producing eleven to twelve figures maximum; beyond that I'm not really sure. Such a project would probably be world-notable, but not necessarily world-shaking unless there were deliberate moves in that direction.)

So, what things would YOU do with Lotto levels of money?

This is a mockup I made of a fancharacter back in 2004, done by tracing existing art of a canon character and slightly modifying one or two lines. Assume that any faults in the art are mine and my lack of art and tracing skills.

What bugs me is that I still can't find the original G1 Springer art it was based on.

( Fairly large-ish image under cut. )

Saw it on discount day.

Thoughts: Predictable, right through to the final method of saving the hero. Bunches of fairly nice CGI. Skynet is apparently either monumentally stupid/unimaginative in its designs, or it's stealing/using pre-existing designs from somewhere, because there's absolutely no reason that its robots and facilities should have easily accessible labs, panels, or wiring - or indeed things like chairs or viewscreens at all. Really, all of Skynet, its bases and drones, should consist of something like solid mechanics. There's no reason to have corridors and tunnels that humans can comfortably stroll down. Or motorbike drones which can't pick themselves up if they're tipped over.

It bugged me enough that there was apparently some non-electronic way to control the Moto-Terminators. Or that T-800 nuclear power cells could be used in the way they were. Or that after CGI Arnie punched/splatted that particular important item (you know the one), it was apparently still in good enough working order to be used as it was in the scene which came after.

Plenty of visual and directorial homages to the previous films, especially #1 and #2. I didn't like the obvious CGI on the non-Connor hero, though. The problem is the same one encountered all the way back to films like _Death Becomes Her_: When you use CGI to remove parts of a body, the remaining nearby parts should not continue to move as if the missing parts had simply become invisible. They need to sag, to flop about, to retract under skin and muscle tension that isn't counterbalanced any more. In DBH, the problem was that an undead character had a hole the size of a basketball blown through her torso, and the remaining tiny strips of flesh either side didn't immediately collapse from the weight of her upper body. The effect was Invisible Torso Chunk, not Missing Spine And All Core Trunk Muscles.

The pure machine CGI is getting better, though. The robots are looking more solid.

So I saw ROTF.

In a word, it's... better.

Without giving away major plot points or scenes, it felt like the Movie franchise had grown into its skin a little better. There was less stupid inappropriate humour (although still a little - someone needs to stomp on that; it just doesn't work with the rest of the film). That burden was largely shifted to the Twins, who carried it better than Sam's mother or the excess of toilet humour in 2007. There are some irritating moments, though.

The G1 references were fewer and more muted, although some of them still felt a bit forced. There were fewer wispy B- and C-plots, and even though the end result still came out as unpolished in a lot of places, it was significantly better integrated overall than the first film.

Fairly trope-full, nothing that wasn't telegraphed a mile off, but... better. A film that I'd be OK cautiously recommending to those looking for a summer popcorn flick, whereas the previous attempt was just a little too teeth-gratingly embarrassing.

The question now is whether the third installment is going to build on its comfort and familiarity and make something really watchable, or whether it's going to backslide into complacency.

I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Lack of telekinesis does not necessarily mean you are awake. Other dream-clues include additional siblings, the neighbour's hamster run for micro-foxes, and being unable to remember when exactly you started living in a tree.

(On the plus side, I've gotten better at remembering to check for TK.)

Well, after a night of file copying, installations and tweaking, the new PC is starting to take shape. I still need to find it an optical drive, and dig out a monitor stand to see if its previously-never-used inbuilt video port can support a fourth screen. Darn the response times, I'm after pure pixel real estate here.

My old workstation is doing very nicely on life support. Where previously it had more cables going into it than a telegraph office, it is now ticking along with only power and network, thanks to VNC. If I had a USB WiFi dongle lying around, I'd be tempted to take that down to a single cable and tuck the box somewhere unobtrusive for a while until I could be sure I'd never need anything else off it, and then it could be scoured and repurposed as a firewall upgrade.

I may even succumb to familial pressure and put Skype on it. And there's some webcammery rumblings in the wind, too - although far be it from me to inflict my homely mug upon the unsuspecting denizens of of the internet at large, especially before they've had their coffee.

One thing that more-than-doubling the width of my usual browser window (from portrait to landscape, plus a larger screen) has done, I notice, is to make LJ look very different. Before, it was blocks of text - squarish chunks marching down the screen. Now it's a rare line which trails on long enough to actually wrap around. The effect is more like Venetian blinds than newsprint.

(I haven't tried reading LJ at 4660 pixels wide, yet. For starters, I'm not entirely sure if I can get all of these screens in my field of view without leaning back. I'd certainly be scanning back and forth with every spaghettified paragraph.)

Currently posting from my new PC, via a VNC connection to my old PC, as the new one is still in the process of being turned from a house into a home, as it were. All my configuration files and whatnot are currently being blasted over the LAN. In the meantime, it's kind of like sitting alone in the middle of the floor in a new house before the furniture and personal items have arrived.

One interesting side effect of the transition is that now I'm able to use the 30-inch panel as my main screen (and after all this time, it turns out I was RIGHT, HAH, about the misdiagnosed 'fault'), I won't be seeing everything in triple portrait frame any more. It's back to landscape for me, after, what, two, three years?

I'll still have portrait screens on the sides, and maybe the original centre panel hovering overhead like some vast predatory bird, but at least whenever I run into something which doesn't play well with multiscreens, I'll still be able to widen it out to more than 1050 pixels.

Kind of interesting to see the order in which I downloaded things for the new PC. Even before I ran OS updates (but after I configured all the standalone and network settings), I pulled down Firefox. Second was a VNC program so I could remote back into my old PC and not have to go dig a second keyboard out of storage. Next came Opera, my preferred browser, while FF was installing AdBlockPlus. As soon as I copy over my bookmarks and get some third-party utilities up and running, I'll be largely set.

Plus - picked up a new PC, one with a video card which can actually run my 30" flat panel I've had sitting around for the last year and a half.

Minus - despite looking in all the boxes I have, I can't find the dual DVI cable which I bought specifically to use with that screen. Maybe it's boxed up somewhere in storage. Must go look tomorrow.

Plus - got $50 off the new PC cost and a better video card because it doesn't have a CD/DVD drive (which I can probably source elsewhere).

Minus - new PC also does not have enough spare PCI slots to run all my screens. Will have to make do with three, and use the last one as a spare, although a 22" panel seems a little excessive for a router box. Maybe I can source a cheap PC to use as a secondary, linked workstation.

Plus - new PC is a commercial custom gaming machine built in bulk for an internet gaming cafe, and is fairly solid all around in the hardware department, as they didn't want to spend their time fixing hardware problems. It's also powerful enough to run pretty much anything modern.

Minus - I don't think my triple monitor arm will be able to reach far enough to hold one portrait screen on either side of a 30-inch centre. And I don't really want to have to have the largest screen off to one side. May have to, at this rate, though. I wonder if I can source a cheap or free single-monitor arm, or even just a desk mount that can stretch to a foot?

Bought the parents their new-to-them PC the other day. Second-hand, but in good nick, from a guy who refurbishes them for a hobby (and is fairly good at it, from what I can tell). It's about twenty times as powerful as their old machine, and within an order of magnitude of the current middle-top end of the market. Cost $80.

I haven't swapped their data over to it yet, as their oft-used printer uses a Centronics port and the new PC is pure USB. As soon as that hurdle is overcome, I'll flip everything over and they should be good for another ten years.

I'm actually half tempted to go back to the PC builder guy and ask him for a custom job. It seemed like he'd been handed a crappy end of the stick in life, but was making good, and actually taking pride in crafting cheap, solid PCs with all the drivers loaded and tweaked. Couldn't hurt to throw a little business his way.

One thing I _did_ set up for them was their new set-top box for getting digital channels. It was kind of from scratch, as I don't watch TV and haven't kept up with the latest and greatest in telly for several years now. Apparently there are more than five local free-to-air channels now - who knew? Still, after juggling cables, repairing a bent plug, and fiddling with endless onscreen menus, they're now happy with their improved picture and extra channels.

In other news, after chasing up the real estate company, it turns out that no, there actually won't be a home open here tomorrow. Thanks for, you know, SAYING. This is a huge relief, because those things are a pain in the arse what with having to pack everything even remotely personal away into storage for two hours a week rather than having it to hand. Still, last week's one was an excuse to clean up a bit. Even so, this real estate mob seem to be rather uncommunicative dicks who have to be hassled continually to get any information out of them. They didn't even announce that there was going to BE a first home-open until 48 hours beforehand. Thanks a freakin' LOT, guys.

ISBN 1-932453-42-3

"Dedicated to all the 'bot-lovers out there. We know who you are. And we're calling the police."

Summary: Mid-level, moderately heavy on the Transformers designs, devotes more time to transformation than drawing. Each page has good points but is a little sparse.

Detail:
This is the one which Doug Dlin and Robert Acosta contributed to, and is also (according to its publication details inside) "Printed in the Canada". Not just any Canada is good enough for this book. It touches on designs from the 70s, 80s, 90s, and early 21st century. While there are several examples in the book which are direct lifts from very specific toylines (mostly Transformers), they've usually been genericised just enough to avoid finger-pointing by lawyers.

I'll start off by saying that the worst thing about the book is simply that it's too short. There's an absolute ocean of material available for inclusion, and while the book wades in and definitely gets its ankles wet, there's so much more I would have liked to see addressed and deconstructed in this style.

The first chapter covers art tools, as so many similar publications do. While it's a good basic reference for the novice artist, I have to wonder if that would be the intended audience for such a fairly specific book.

Moving on, the second chapter addresses six simple transformation joints and joint variants which are commonly found in many robot toys. In a wink to those in the know, the demonstration robot is fairly obviously a blocked-out version of the original Optimus Prime toy, with the "finished" version stealing a torso from Fire Convoy and rounding off the head to avoid depicting the Big Mack directly.

Chapter Three covers fine-tuning robot design to a theme, and setting proportions, although it also takes an interesting, if momentary, diversion down the road of turning one non-robot form into another - something which could have been expanded into a chapter on Triple Changers and various ways to address and approach their more complex design.

Moving on, the next chapter is all about heads and helmets. Changing a head can change a robot's entire personality, as the collectors of BotCon exclusives know well. Some familiar faces also show up here - look especially for 70s designs. Eyes are also discussed, and it's a useful reference for anyone who hasn't delved into robot faces previously.

The fifth chapter is about roboticising anatomy and combining it creatively with altmode parts. There are some core ideas here, but again I feel they're skipped over a little too rapidly. Still, that's because the chapter also covers creative use of kibble and how it can be tied directly in a transformation, plus the three-part torso and a number of specific transformations (including partsforming) for arms and legs - all the way up to the complexity of Alternators Sideswipe.

Chapter Six is all about perspective and foreshortening - making your robot pop. It's fairly short compared to the former section.

The next two chapters are on different complexities of transformation. "Simple" covers things at the Micromaster/Minibot/Minicon level, "Intermediate" goes into some more detailed options (including asymmetric transformations, using a twin-rotor helicopter as an example). There isn't a "Complex" transformation chapter, which saddens me a little, but perhaps it would simply have taken up too much space.

Onwards! Part Nine takes on the subject of beast modes, and after turning G1 Grimlock into a kangaroo and slightly adjusting the transformation, a suitable subject is available for discussion and dissection in depth. Afterwards, a not-quite-Voltron limb is used as an example of a combiner component, and a half-frog, half-Energon-Divebomb shows how winged creatures can be altmodes too, and also how leftover components can form weapons and shields.

Gattai! Chapter Ten is all about combiners, or at least those of the Scramble City style. It takes us through the development of one from go to whoa, and doesn't stint on the supermode kibble, either. (An issue - I would have liked to see some discussion of the desirability of packing all the super robot parts away in the individual components.)

And yup, that's it. Ten chapters is your lot. There's actually quite a number of concepts covered, just not in excessive depth. If you're looking for a be-all and end-all reference, this isn't it - but it may be as close as you're going to come until "Transformers - the 150-Volume Encyclopedia" is released.

Just out of curiosity, I tallied how many internet vs non-internet sources I use on a regular basis.

News, offline: there's the local free newspaper, although it's only through inertia that it keeps arriving. Sometimes it gets read, sometimes not.

News, online: Nineteen websites, including only one general news site, although I also occasionally skim accumulator sites.

Social, offline: The Frankenstein Club, on Monday nights. Might see friends or family every few weeks. Sometimes months.

Social, online: Eight general forum sites, six hobby forum sites, five social networks (LJ being really the only one I check nearly every day, though), six newsgroups (although I only post on about three), the occasional Twitter, and very occasional bit of IRC, possibly only for nostalgia. For those of you who IM me on three networks, I haven't forgotten you either.

Entertainment, offline: one movie every couple of months. If it's a good year, the occasional local convention or two. Sometimes I pick up a hobby and run with it for a while before losing steam.

Entertainment, online: 102 webcomics that I check weekly. Plus another couple of dozen comics and other sites I check every month or two. Or simply cruising the forums looking for fun threads to stick my two cents into. Plus all the spin-off links from all the other sites. Not to mention that many of the other sites are plenty entertaining themselves.

So, um yeah. It looks like I'm pretty net-heavy.

Went to the Thinkerama again tonight. Not much went on - some updates on what's happening with earlier projects, some minor tweak ideas for current stuff.

I'm unsure about some of the discussions. They seem... I'm not sure how to put it. Off. Misaligned. In the wrong mental space. It bugs me because it tends to make me want to jump up and cry "Wrong!" or "You fool! That will never work!".

I've had it explained to me that some of the ideas aren't necessarily going to be used in the form they're introduced in, and that there might be a lot of verbal jumping off to related spaces where more useful possibilities work, and I'm fine with that, but it bugs me that the original ideas could be tabled when they have such obvious huge self-defeating flaws.

Sure, with sufficient neurocrackling momentum we'll eventually pinball our way out of the original limitations and into a new phase space, but sticking us in a box of stupidity in the first place just wastes our limited time. It bugs me when I can see such boxes around us within seconds of the idea leaving someone's mouth, and know that we're going to be in for a long, boring, and fruitless round of "Now, I want to go around the table and get everyone to tell me what they really like about FredJimBob's idea" while I'm mentally shouting "Nothing, because it obviously CAN'T WORK!"

Apparently this comes across as not being helpful, even when I'm doing my best to restrain myself to a simple "I'm not seeing at this point how we're going to overcome X, could someone enlighten me and perhaps grow the concept towards a wider headspace?"

I don't always even add "...because otherwise this product is going to OBVIOUSLY POISON PEOPLE IN THE FACE WITH KILLER BEES", or even "...because the idea you've described only has applications in two areas, both of which have better, cheaper, and faster systems and products which have been commercially available for decades."

I swear, one of them tonight actually said "There's nothing on the market using this process", and it took all my power to bite back "There's a REALLY OBVIOUS REASON for that, if you'd just actually consider the ramifications of what you're proposing."

While I don't mind discussions which eventually end up going in a useful direction, it doesn't help to start them by presenting a product idea which requires suspension of a couple of laws of physics or complete redefinition of human psychology to work or sell. Sweet Zombie Jesus, please, for the sake of all that's good and pure and not wasting my time, pitch ideas which are at least marginally possible in their original form. Otherwise we're going to be rattling around in the tin bucket of FAIL for the next thirty minutes while my brain tries to squeeze out my ear and run away gibbering.

It's like being asked to evaluate and comment on the best way to tweak and market a lipstick which is applied by cannonball to the face. Serious discussions of Rose Blush vs Spring Lilac are not going to help the product. Really. Nor are such lines as "Well, we could make a cannonball-applied lipstick for about $20 per decapitation application... with packaging and administration, $25 per item isn't really viable - so we'll sell it at $49 each."

Good God, I'm surrounded by people who are lapsing into management.

Frantic house cleaning for surprise photo session sprung on us yesterday. Not entirely happy about that. Also, apparently will have home open on Saturday. Nice to tell us less than 48 hours out.

Kitchen scrubbed, windows Windexed, washing washed, garden trimmed, huge sprawling vine plant Krynoid thing hacked back to shrubbery, bathrooms and showers bleached, sweeping done, much frantic tidying done, necessary ancient documentation uncovered from archive after many hours searching.

More to go.

So the parents have been finally pushed into replacing their 64MB, Win98 PC after Youngest Brother sent them a webcam and told them to install Skype, which of course even in its earliest incarnations needed a chunkier PC than that to work on.

On the plus side, they can get an entire XP box with enough to run everything they will ever need for the next ten years for under $100.

On the minus side, I'll be the one evaluating the second-hand PCs and setting it up.

So I thought "Why not see if I can put together a webcam on my own PC - at least I'll be able to test it remotely, and maybe have an excuse to install Skype myself one of these days."

I have:
A Canon Powershot A470, which has a video mode
USB
Theoretically, access to software which can do the job.

Problem 1: Connecting to the camera. It's not showing up in any of the usual computer locations that a USB camera would. Some specialised software can occasionally dig still shots out of it over USB, but that's about it. Time to go Googling for a solution.

Problem 2: Although many people have had this problem, solutions are random. Suggest reinstalling software.

Problem 3: All the usual software sites which would have the driver software instead point to the official Canon site.

Problem 4: The official Canon software site for cameras was closed earlier this year.
Fortunately, I manage to dig out and blow the dust off my old, original CD of software for this product.

Problem 5: The DVD/CD drive on my PC clicks and dies. Drive is dead as a dodo.
Potential solution: The CD drive on my gateway PC is physically operational.

Problem 6: I don't want to disconnect the drive as I might need it again on the gateway.
Potential solution: Map to the drive over the network!

Problem 7: Gateway is a Linux box.
Solution: Samba is installed! Remote to box, add /mnt/cdrom as a Samba share, mount the drive, map a drive to it in Windows because there's a good chance the installation software will choke if it's asked to deal with UNC paths, reinstall software from CD.

Problem 8: Still doesn't work.
Solution: Found item buried in documentation saying "If on this particular type of PC (and no other), install software BEFORE plugging in camera!"

Look at plugged in camera.

Sigh, unplug camera, uninstall software, reinstall software, reattach camera.

Problem 9: Computer still not recognising camera is attached.
Solution: Turn dial on camera to playback mode.
Computer: Y HALO THAR CAMERA.
Software: WE SEE A CAMERA!
Windows: Would you like me to give you the camera specs?

Problem 10: When in playback mode, lens retracts and lens cover deploys, making use as a webcam difficult.
Solution: Try dialling to a non-playback mode.
Computer and software: U HAS TAKEN MAI CAMERA!

Problem 11: Camera is apparently only visible on USB connection when its lens is covered.
Potential solution: Use media cable instead to pretend to be outputting to a TV in real time, use capture PAL/NTSC input, pipe to webcam app.

Problem 12: If there ever was a media cable, it is probably in some packed box of cables somewhere.
Result: For now, blocked again. Dang it.

How do I actually decide which journals to friend?

Well, for starters, I don't use LJ as a social circle all that much. I'm more likely to friend a journal which has posts I find intriguing or intellectually curious than one which belongs to someone I've met online just because I've met them. There is a little bit of that, but mostly I use Facebook for my social address book and LJ as a kind of combination diary and RSS feed.

That said, sometimes I'll feel like looking for a new journal to friend. It might be sparked by a particularly amusing or interesting comment made on one of the comms I read, or something thought-provoking posted somewhere, or a link from elsewhere on the net, or just because I feel like a friending binge and I go trawling /friendsfriends or common interest tags.

However it comes about, there are a couple of things which I've found myself looking for when deciding whether to friend a journal. I'm not saying these are the only, or even the best, ways to go about it, but it seems to be what I've ended up with. Results and mileage may vary.

Things which make me less likely to friend:
- Friendslocked journals, especially those which have very few unlocked posts, doubly especially if they only have the single unlocked post, and triply if they have no unlocked posts at all.

- Infrequent posting. If I'm adding someone to my list of journals I read, it's because there's something there to read. I'll often jump back around twenty posts in a journal and see if the date on the 20th is older than six months ago. If so, I'm less likely to click "Add".

- If I'm already linked to the person via some other social network, and the content of their posts on both networks is pretty much identical.

- Low signal to noise ratio. This is highly personalised, and pretty much comes down to "number of posts I want to read vs number of posts that bore me rigid". I'm just not into reading someone's feed if it's going to feel like a chore, no matter how nice they might be in real life.

- As part of the previous, terrible writing skills. Although it's mostly self-correcting, as people who don't write well don't tend to have frequently-updated online journals for very long in the first place. Or at least don't move in the same digital circles.

Things which make me more likely to friend:
- Frequent posting and high signal to noise ratio.

- If I've known the person for quite some time, either IRL or online.

- If the journal writer is linked to something else I've been following for a while. I have quite a few webcomic authors on my flist, for starters.

- Humour.

- Intelligence.

- Creativity.

- Correct spelling, punctuation and grammar. I don't mind regional variations, just pick one and stick to it.

- Philosophy, or at least thinking more than peripherally about things.

- Of course, posting about stuff I'm into. Pictures and links usually, if not always, a bonus.

- Certain personality types, apparently. I'm not terribly thrilled about this, but it does seem from the available data that I'm more likely to friend/follow/reply to people of particular types more often than others. Occasionally, it can be a User Info page which tips me one way or the other on whether to friend. I'm not sure if this is me being biased or just human.

- Stuff based in Australia.

( click for larger picture )

After screwing around with the previous dragon mode, I settled on a two-headed wyvern instead. It has the advantage that the legless body will be less like the two-legged dinosaur/Godzilla mode, and it allows some cobra-esque poses as the tail is still quite articulated (as are the necks and wings). I've included a flying shot to show off some of the poses it should be capable of. On the minus side, its tail will be more similar to the dinosaur, although the dino will have less flex and will probably have the familiar blue wedge on the end of it.

I made the jet-wing segments detachable and turned them into wing panels for the wyvern. Each one attaches to a single strut, so the wings can actually be collapsed (they're shown fully open in these shots).

The images at the top left show the remolded AA guns, now with the extending/collapsing ability I always wanted to fit in there. It's going to make reworking the train mode a lot easier.

Less thrillingly, the Autobot symbols which are the right way up on this mode will be upside down once I fix the orientation. Perhaps I should have flipped (and smaller) Autobrands on a white background on the other sides of the cargo pad for modes like this.

Oh, and once again I realise I've not attached the silver grille accessory. Umm... just imagine it sitting between the necks, or something.

And, ah, yes, it does kind of look like it's wearing an orange corset. Not deliberately, but if you're into corseted wyverns, far be it from me to stand in your way. Interestingly enough, the slimmer middle makes the toy look correspondingly longer and larger than it did when it was wider but flatter.

Still can't do as much with the wings as I'd like. I really need somewhere to be able to pack away more wing panels in order to get the full mythological effect. At the moment there's some visual uncertainty about whether it's a winged creature or simply a fan dancer. Perhaps if I pulled the elbows and wrists in closer to the body? It'd reduce the wingspan but the wings would look a lot more continuous from tip to tip.

...I suppose I could look at having the orange cargo pad unfold a lot more to make up the gap. If I flipped this mode front-to-back, opened up the cargo pad, and popped the wing shoulders back into 'flat' position, it wouldn't matter which way the Autobot symbols were facing, and the AA guns would be in a slightly less suggestive position too.

On the phone to Pizza Hut the other night:

ME: Can I pick this up from $localbranch?

Oh, that store, the one closest to you, has been closed.

Huh. Shows how often I order pizza. What's your next closest store to $mypostcode, so I can tell if it's going to be worth the driving distance and/or likely delivery time?

(Typing sounds)

You could pick it up from... Ballarat.

...

...

...Uh-huh. Hmm. Have you got anything closer than TWO THOUSAND MILES AWAY?

Four seasons, two movies. Mainlined like it was the last heroin on earth.

Thoughts:

- As a series where characters grew up and things changed, I don't think it really jumped the shark all that much, even when the main protagonists' relationship changed, Ron underwent character development, and despite the occasional wardrobe update.
- OK, I can see why KP fans have a thing for Shego. Sarcasm and intelligence make her a definite potential breakout character.
- The theme song is very under-the-breath hummable and has very nice musical phrase arcs, even if the wording is a little sloppy here and there.
- Interesting use of occasional integrated 3D CGI here and there, especially when animating vehicles (and the wave of little killer devil robots in one story). It wasn't always terribly obvious CGI from the appearance, either - it was generally spottable by its relatively smooth movement.

Back from the Ancient Mariners of Invention get-together. I think I'm only going because three other people from my Monday designfest group are there and I'd possibly be otherwise conspicuous by my absence.

I don't know if it's just that group in particular or groups of a certain average age in general, but there was far too much of the kind of thing which usually drives me nuts about groups. Essentially, this is where a concept is brought up, and in the first ten seconds enough information is presented about it to give a full and comprehensive knowledge of what the thing is, what it does, and about half a dozen places it could be used.

Then, the next thirty to ninety minutes is spent going over and over the same information in microscopically different ways, bringing nothing actually new to the table. This is the time I spend staring at the ceiling, making mental notes about housework that needs doing, or reviewing the fascinating harmonics of Mongolian throat singing in my head.

Yes, I realise that I'm possibly comparing it unfairly to the design group dynamic and that of events like SF convention panels, where people just get complex stuff that's waved in front of them for half a second.

On the plus side, one of the slightly less boring topics managed to keep me awake long enough to map out a completely new psuedo-autonomous multi-instance paradigm for the 3D effectors on Project Mekashigani. This should make the end product significantly faster, more modular and repairable, and able to scale better. As a bonus, it can even be put together out of currently available technologies.

Twelve years ago, I was part of a Perth-based Terry Pratchett fan group. At least two or three of you reading this will remember it, and I know where to find at least two others...

And I just found another group member on LJ :)

That just leaves... David, Owen, Sally, Sharon, Steve, Alex, Kahlie the Viking, Pamela, Jack, Ruth, Neil, and Ken. None of whom (from memory) were involved with The Quilt.

Ideomancer.

Your thoughts?

Just found out there's a job being advertised as a kind of add-on to a team I used to work for. It'd be basically a liaison position between the team and the onsite people who are their human firewall. Given that I've done both positions and rocked them like a hurricane, and I have a hell of a lot of ideas about what needs fixing between the two groups, I've decided to throw my hat in the ring.

Part of their problem is that while the centralised team and the field agents were supposed to have been very close, various policies and procedures have combined over the years to the point that they've become almost completely separated. The onsite folks aren't trained or funded anywhere near the amount they really need to be, and as a result most of their work gets escalated to the central group which is about 1/20 the size.

As a side effect of something I actually did for the central group (or, to be more realistic, the people funding it), they now have about a quarter of the personnel they used to. Plenty for what they actually need to be doing, but a tight squeeze for the work they find being thrown their way.

Thus, they need to look into retraining and revamping the onsite personnel to take up the slack. That's what this job would be co-ordinating.

I SO want this position. It's absolutely bloody perfect for me. I know all sides of the equation backwards and forwards, I've worked not only on both sides of the divide but also on the teams once removed from the major players, and I know what inspires and motivates. I can LIVE this position.

Also, did I mention it pays a heck of a lot better than pretty much any of the weaksauce offerings available locally?

Currently, I have multiple levels of mail filter running.

Level 1 strips out 82% of email received (spam).

Level 2 strips out a further 1% (more spam).

Level 3 strips out another 6% as being mailing list stuff I might read at a later date.

The next 2% gets deleted either without reading or immediately afterwards, for being boring.

8% is skimmed and archived in batches as it relates to things I'm only peripherally involved in.

This accounts for 99% of my email.


The remaining 1%, I should note, mainly consists of automatic advisories from various web forums and ancient memes that certain family members have only just found out about and are forwarding to everyone they know.

Hooray for the digital age?

More news from Inventors Anonymous. A new guy, Heinie, turned up and we kicked around his idea for water tanks for a bit. Conclusion: could be a goer if similar existing products aren't too similar.

We also reviewed the catering industry request we'd had previously, and we should be seeing prototypes shortly. Because it's such a simple product, it should also act as a good process setter for future, more complex stuff.

We tinkered with my construction idea some more, too. Dirk reckoned that if we could nail down operating parameters, he could build it. Sweet!

When pulling entire seasons of old TV shows off YouTube, try not to do it during the times the local ISP deems 'on-peak', as that leads to caps being hit and traffic being shaped down to dialup speed for the next two weeks.

Additionally: After waiting for off-peak, ran a complete software upgrade on the internet gateway and threw in a reboot for good measure and as a useful uptime start point for before-and-after comparisons. Average load appears to be much reduced. Nice.

Just got off the phone from an interview with a different branch of a previous employer. While I got through the first written round (63 candidates down to 12), I'm guessing that that was pretty much just weeding out the applications written in crayon. I'll hear back in two to three weeks regarding how the phone interview went. O yay.

Spiced up the CV a little. If I don't get this job, I might get the next one.

Dang, it's windy outside.

Question: Why am I doing five or six part-time jobs, all unpaid or very nearly so? Something's not right about that.

Monday's meeting was fun. We had a new guy, Dirk, an engineer, who is looking to get some of his own backlog of ideas into concrete and money-earning form (and aren't we all?). He might become a fixture later on.

We also went over finalising the design for something we brainstormed last week, which should be extremely simple to make (it's just a shaped sheet of steel and a handle) and sell (the chairdude has already been talking to a big manufacturer/distributor). Ideally, because it's so simple, it will also act as a test case for laying out the groundwork inside our group for future, more complex products and business ideas.

We also batted around ways to get a third party's software project off the ground in terms of attracting additional programmers and putting together a business framework. Personally, I don't think we had enough information on the details of the project to be able to come up with a good match. It was one of those things which, if it could actually do what it claims, everyone and their dog would want it - but too many similar projects have come and gone over the last two decades for the programming world to be anything other than cynical. I think the original programmer needs to go public, even if it's via nothing more than a web interface to the main program, just to allow people to verify that it can do what he's claiming. Of course, we still don't know what he's actually claiming, either - that part was left out of the information we got to see. It could be everything, it could be nothing. Very hard to make a call based on that.

Inhaled the last of Daria, including both movies. Surprisingly, for YouTube, a majority of the comments were actually positive, and sometimes even thoughtful.

As an interesting side effect, it seems that being subjected to compressed tens of hours of characters who actually grow and mature realistically over the course of several years can actually get me a little misty-eyed when an entire production is brought to a natural and narrative conclusion.

There really was a powerful impression that the world was a messy place full of false starts and characters with flaws and ignorances and depths and problems all their own. Characters who, regardless of the end of the footage, would continue to live their lives offscreen, growing and experiencing life in all its churned chaos.

Even now, there's continued interest in releasing DVDs of the episodes, and repeated calls for a followup series - either a direct sequel showing the characters in their late 20s, or a similar highschool-based not-quite-remake with new characters and occasional cameos by the adult originals, mostly aimed at the same teenage demographic as the original series.

I know things are bad when I'm actually doing tech support for local pensioners. Paid, yes, but argh, dealing with ancient systems so crumbly after years of overuse that trying to fix one thing means having to first patch four other things - even assuming anything's still supported. Or supportable.

Another mad inventors meeting tonight. This one will probably be sitting around tossing ill-thought-out moneymaking ideas around. I'm torn about whether to derail the entire evening by asking why they don't have a website.

Interview Thursday. Must remember to actually get out of bed.

Cheapie flexible-grippy-thing camera stand arrived. Not bad. Camera is now doing impressions of a Martian tripod.

Wrote an article for a helpdesk newsletter. Might lead to something.

I think it's safe to say that I'm more introverted than extroverted, ability to carry on a normal conversation notwithstanding. As with many other people of both stripes who have been around for a couple of decades, I've learned to fake the other way of acting when it's needed, at least long enough to get through one day or another.

And then there's the research which says people with more friends live longer.

Well. That's irritating.

I wonder if it's correlation, causation, or just something much simpler, such as people with more friends getting more opportunities and therefore more chances at mentally and physically healthier lifestyles while people with fewer friends having a greater chance at succumbing to an injury or mental withdrawal if there aren't as many others around to assist?

I sense the need for studying extroverts living in places they know few people, introverts living in places they know lots of people, and getting some kind of idea about the exact number of friends versus lifestyle effect. Do more friends always correspond to a longer/better life, or do the returns diminish after, say, knowing ten people? Or a hundred?

I suspect depth of relationship may be a factor, too. Having a nakama, close-knit family, or close circle of strong friends would probably work out better than being a loner. They're safety net and ability to explore multiple options and protection and salve and booster and multipoint bootstrapping ability all in one. The lone wolf has to do everything by themselves, meaning that a lot of things simply don't get done, or are done crudely or sloppily or without the luxury of time or resources.

And yet, even with all the logic and research staring me in the face, my psyche still digs its heels in at the thought of having to deal with that many people that often. By and large, people are, quite simply, draining. Peace and quiet and a lack of personal obligations are much more desirable. I would much rather prefer to be an anonymous shadow in the world than someone important, well-known, or continually expected to deal with dozens of family or friend expectations. The downside of that, of course, is not 'knowing someone who knows someone', as it were.

Clues that maybe I'm sending the wrong messages:

Thinking about getting work with a particular employer, I call up the Powah Of Google and find some people from their IT helpdesk. Nothing like going right to the source and asking the boss directly, ya? Wading through HR is _so_ 1950s.

Hey, one of them's on Facebook. Strike up a conversation, hey, how are you, I'm in IT myself and was thinking about maybe seeing if you guys might be hiring, who should I talk to, blah blah. Strictly business, dropping into techspeak once or twice to show I was on the level about my background.

While emailing back and forth over an hour or so, pull up the person's FB page again to check spelling on something.

They've updated their default pic in that time from themselves to themselves with a very obvious and prominent significant other glaring out of the screen.

...so now apparently I come across as a creepy stalker. Just what I need.

*headdesk*
*headdesk*
*headdesk*

I added some rotation joints to allow the dragon wings to join the body in a more natural location, and fiddled with the rotor blade connections to see if I could simulate a better wingspan. Posing the necks in more of an "S" shape also broke up the stiffness of the design a little, although I think I'll need to have the legs in a much more dynamic pose, as with the new wing positions it looks more like someone in a rubber monster suit. C'est la vie.

I also put in some keyboard sweat rebuilding the transforming jet intakes, which aren't shown here. (They were near the new rotation joints, gimme a break.) The new intakes should add another splash of purple to the jet mode, and now come with flip-out four-packs of gun barrels. There's even a tiny little ledge in there for getting your fingernail under in order to get the guns out, and the guns carry the purple theme out and along the jet sides.

Amusingly, even though most of the time when I redesign something I add extra levels of detail (and you can see the accumulation of panels and joints and slots and seams starting to add up to an interesting texture of their own, under the cut), the new jet intakes only add a handful of external lines to the toy when they're not unfolded in all their glory. None of the modelling shows on the surface in any other mode. If you look very carefully at the picture below, you'll see actual diagonal lines peeking out from under the bottom of the chestplate, and a small not-quite-slot running vertically downward from under the wing 'armpit'. That's the new intakes, all folded up.

...Blast, just realised I forgot to add that last dash of sky-blue to the jet mode. Nuts. I'll do it at some point in the future; it'll only take a second.

I might do something with the flat area which is revealed when the claws flip out on the ends of the limbs. Maybe make it a reptilian/insectoid green, given that they can be seen in both dragon and insect mode, as well as the upcoming dinosaur mode. Of course, they might also be fairly prominent in the proposed puma mode, so the jury's still out on that. All the same, a bit of revealed texture or colour would be nice, to break up all the unrelenting white.

( The new dragon mode! )

I should really put some colour on the dragon heads. They're only visible in the one mode, so they can be a point of visual interest. Maybe a super-glossy black? Or would that be too derivative of RiD Galvatron, what with the predominant white?

Aaaaanyway, the dragon mode is coming along OK. Certainly it's one of the more articulated (possibly the most articulated) of the modes, with multiple sliding double-ball joints in the necks, wings, legs, and feet, and each wing-strut being individually balljointed.

Hmm, I'll have to combine the new rotation joints with the double-flip joints I use for a bunch of modes but never got around to modelling. Shouldn't be too difficult.

EDITED TO ADD: Oh, why not. ( Here's the jet intakes. )

Callback from the recruiter whose tail I tweaked. Basically tried to buy me off the job I applied for by offering "something more suitable". Uh, lady, if you had something more suitable in the first place, (a) would I not already have applied for it, and (b) should you not have offered it to me when I first signed up, or at any of the numerous points we spoke over the phone previously or I was sitting around in your office completing boring aptitude tests?

In short, isn't this something which should have been done by default from Day One, rather than being offered up as if it's something only the Secret Inner Circle of Applicants could ever be allowed to witness the glories of?

It's all very well to go on and on about my "huge amounts of experience and capability" (which is BS, I have just over ten years of total career, tops), but insincere flattery doth not the bills pay.

Right.

- Washing done.
- Dishes done.
- A little pressure put on the recruiting agency which tried to brush me off after multiple days of crap testing.
- Some more negotiation with a rep for a temp auditing job in Sydney.
- Updated some business networks.
- Started liaising with a Belgium IBM rep who's into repairing Helpdesks.
- Answered some online business questions.
- Formulated a way to cheaply enhance the entire western world's standard education system to address dozens of issues it stereotypically falls down on, while simultaneously boosting average IQ and export and tourism revenues for any country which adopts it.
- Off to the Mad Inventors' meeting in an hour.

Well, less than 24 hours from the next Gadgetinis meetup. Apparently the last idea I submitted is being taken to the next level of putting together a proposal and seeing if anyone bites.

Personally, I don't think it's been hammered out enough for that. It's still highly conceptual and a lot of things were still being fiddled around with last week. Not to mention that I'm a little worried that the cut-down version being proposed for the first prototype has been cut down just one or two steps too far, neutering what I see as a major source of appeal by turning the fast, flexible, general-purpose system I envisaged into a slower, clunkier, rather narrow-scope device which would require far too many alterations to existing industry procedures.

Still, if the group thinks it's ready (or just time to move on to other projects), I can't really say much. Sigh.

They've solicited new ideas/projects for the next meeting. I had nearly twenty outlined and emailed within a couple of hours of getting home last week. Mainly stuff I've had on the back burner for a couple of years, but some new things as well. Hopefully one or two might be seen as potentially viable products, or at least intellectual property.

While working on-again, off-again on my ideal RV-slash-toyhauler-slash-superexpanding semitrailer-based design, I realised that if I was still sticking with a roughly 16'x8' 'garage' area in the back, that could actually accommodate a slightly slimmed down Batman Tumbler. Or a 100mpg Hummer H3. Or a shortened hybrid Humdinga - preferably with an enclosed rear cargo area in order to do the shopping.

So what would be the best toy(s) to carry around in such a mini-garage?

( Images... )

While I don't like to crow "Told you so!"...

Oh, wait. Yes I do.

In other news, my great-aunt (b.1917) passed on this morning after ten years of increasing decline. She was the last of her generation on my mother's side of the family.

And in a spot of good news, the car has come back from its somewhat overdue service and is no longer sounding like an asthmatic sewing machine.

Right, heading off to the Monday night Devisors and Gadgeteers club.

Local blogging article: "Is your IT Infrastructure Pandemic Ready?".

...

It's like a car-crash of FAIL, and that's just the title.

I particularly like the way it justifies itself by linking to a news report that a government spokesperson said it was marginally possible that H1N1 might infect someone in Australia. Maybe. With a strain of flu which so far has failed to kill anyone outside Mexico (with the exception of one Mexican in Texas), which has been successfully treated/survived in every other case elsewhere, which has a death rate which still hasn't been calculated to be anything greater than the chance of accidentally falling into an open manhole, for which at least two widely-available commercially produced medicines are available, and for which even amongst those who catch it there's a 95%+ chance of recovery simply by staying at home and riding it out.

That aside, what the HELL does any of this have to do with friggin' IT infrastructure? It's like asking if your server is pre-shrunk or your network cabling has a Jellicle Name!

Back from picking up the car, only having to remind the shop owner that no, adding 20% to what he originally quoted me wasn't going to happen.

I also note that the receipt doesn't say what brand of alternator was fitted, even though I was quoted specifically on a same-brand part, and the new alternator itself isn't labelled with a model number (the old one was). If I knew how to tell one from another, I'd have some idea of whether I just got bait-and-switched.

Right. The tow truck's just picked the car up to cart it off and have its alternator replaced. With luck, a working car should be on the books for this afternoon.

On a related note, having worked for government agencies for over a decade and generally for large, bureaucratic organisations for my entire working life, I've noticed that I tend to be a little over-detail-oriented when dealing with anything larger than a one-person operation. I'll call to give them information, call back to confirm that yes, they actually do have that information, call to update... or do the same dance with email.

Largely, this is because I've found that if I don't do this, information will fall through the cracks, be forgotten, lost, failed to be passed on, garbled, ignored, incorrectly assessed, or any one of a number of things which will cause additional hassle down the track.

It's why I recommend when dealing with government departments or large organisations to record everything, use email or faxes in preference to the phone, get written confirmation of everything if you _must_ use the phone, and if you have to take documentation in to have it verified, ask that they photocopy the document, stamp it (or sign or initial it), and then give you a photocopy OF the ink-marked photocopy. That way, there's proof that yes, they did photocopy and file that document of yours on that day.

It's also why, when I was on the other side of the counter, I made sure to give people back copies which were date-stamped using an official organisation stamp, and where I then scribbled my work ID code in the blank space in the stamp. Because, to be honest, if there was going to be a screwup in our files (and believe me, there were screwups all right), I didn't see why the poor bastard who'd already done the right thing should have to suffer further due to some lazy git in the office not being able to tell their arse from their elbow.

It just bugged me, all right?

Just sketched some more thoughts on expandable fifth-wheel motorhomes. I think I've figured out how to get the lower storey back up to 40' wide, although I'm limiting the upper one to about 24' and expanding the centre section to a full 53' trailer. If I pull the length of the slideouts back to 36', that will allow storage of the floor panels under the centre of the trailer between the rear wheels and the towing area.

This should give about 2440 sqft of floor space plus just over 400sqft of balconies and 540sqft of unused external space in the corners of the 55x40 space it will take up. Some of that external space will most likely be semi-reserved for the tractor unit and probably the car which would otherwise reside in the back of the trailer when on the move.

That's equivalent to about a 3-5 bedroom house, as far as I can tell, although this place in Vancouver is about the same area and has eight bedrooms and five bathrooms.

Given that the expanded trailer would be pretty much just open living space on both floors, would use RV/boat compact versions of most facilities, and would be designed with sleeping areas that didn't really double as personal playrooms, that leaves a heck of a lot of floor space.

On thing that bugs me is that even with the expanding kitchen, there isn't a whole lot of general storage space. Maybe 500 cuft, and that includes pantry, supplies, toolshed, collapsed furniture, and personal effects.

Of course, that's based on an earlier design, where most of the rest of the volume in travel mode was taken up with the noncollapsing amenities block (about 20%), the compressed kitchen gear (about 10%), the garage (20%), and a storage space for noncollapsing but stackable furniture (10%). With the new design, there should be an extra thousand cubic feet or so available. With careful packing and clever shelving, it should be enough.

The main issue is designing the lower floor so that all the amenities (kitchen, bathroom, storage areas) can still be used if only one side of the trailer is extended. I've kind of put these areas on a central spine with some passthroughs, but it's still a little fiddly making sure it will still work in all three deployment modes and pack away neatly for the travel mode. A secondary concern is breaking up the large areas of featureless open space away from the spine.

Is it strange that the first thing I thought was "Headline: New flu breakout kills fewer than 1 in 20 million; rises to 8,714th-most likely cause of death in world today, just under being sat on by a hamster."

I dunno - I mean, I know it's the disease du jour and a chance for the anti-outbreak folks to get their mojo on, but I can't help but wonder what its projected kill rate might be versus cancer, heart disease, road accidents... choking on a piano...

When it comes to personal theme songs, I'd wish for Pure Imagination, 1971. It's not something I can claim yet, but I would so very like to be able to, one day.

Did a little basic shopping, applied for another job, did some domestic stuff. Just another day.

On the plus side, some family members have said they might be able to help out with getting the busted alternator on the car repaired next week, so that's got potential to lessen the amount of suck that's been going around.

As I have nothing better to do with my time, I'm documenting the FAIL of the recruiter who bait-and-switched me and forwarding it to the HR department of the organisation they are purportedly representing. Let's see if an investigatory hoof in the guts makes them a little more pliable.

Just rereading some archived items from about eleven and a half years ago, when I was working at the bottom of an office structure of insane, corrupt, powermongering assholes.

Looking back, it was a daily miracle I didn't either drown them all in a bucket (possibly by telling them there was a new way to screw over employees at the bottom of it) or go full Mad Scientist and start ranting "Fools! I'll destroy you all!"

I had a supervisor with the brains of a retarded brick, a manager so wishy-washy that she meekly accepted everything dumped on her from above, a corrupt Big Boss who took active delight in breaking employees in the most sadistic manner possible, and a State-level investigative staff with the collective effectiveness of a poodle in a sack.

Not to mention another manager who had made it her life's work to continually write me up for things that only she appeared to be able to see. I actually suspect that she was similarly bored out of her skull with her workload and would have done a lot better being given something meatier to gnaw on. Unfortunately, she was never going to rise any further in that office as there just wasn't anywhere to go, and it's quite possible she was being blocked from HQ positions, given her personality and the amount of time she'd been working for that employer.

Then there was the manager who screamed at everyone she could. Last I heard, she eventually tried it on a new recruit who was six foot tall and built like two linebackers, and he casually pushed her up against the archive stacks and told her from two inches away that if she ever spoke to him again he would, quite simply, kill her.

Then there were the majority of the rest of the office - some fairly nice, some indifferent and ground down by the years, but for the larger part having the intellectual sparkle and drive of wet porridge.

I absolutely think that at that time there was not one single person in an office of over 90 people that I could really, truly talk to. That's isolation in a crowd right there.

So there I was, on my way to my sole remaining bit of weekly relaxation, the local We Make Your Mad Science Real group, ready to shoot the breeze with a bunch of people who are interested in turning my castles in the air into castles full of dollars.

I was glad of the meeting, because given the local public holidays around here, last week's meeting had been cancelled and next week's was going to be too. So this was pretty much going to be it for the month.

It was especially welcomed in that not only had one of the two possible employment possibilities out of hundreds of failed applications decided to blow me off on a whim, the single remaining other one had found me sitting by the phone all day waiting for their Definitely Today call, only to give me ten hours of silence and the remaining job prospects of a dead marmoset.

It hadn't helped that the car insurance had run out and cost too much to renew, and that the car had been making odd rattling noises for a couple of weeks. Still, there was really no other way to get to the other side of the city at this time of night - not if I wanted to be able to get back after ten PM when I couldn't afford a taxi.

So when the car ate its own alternator in the middle of the highway halfway to the meeting, and it turned out that none of my bank accounts or cards had enough money in them to pay for signing up with the local Roadside Assistance mob, then borrowing same from megpie71 over the phone and spending the next two hours waiting by the side of the road, followed by being driven home by a towing service whose motto seemed to be "Keeping your eyes on the road is for people without a Really Big Truck", you can imagine that I felt, shall we say, a tad underwhelmed by life in general. Especially as this means that I currently have no way to attend any futher meetings of this group, unless I particularly want to find myself returning home via three separate public transport routes and transfer stations in the hours leading up to midnight.

(Oh, no, wait, I tell a lie, I can do it in two legs if I'm willing to walk through the middle of the city at oh-dark-hundred to get between the bus and the train. This may or may not be preferable to sitting in a lonely train station on a branch line somewhere for the same time.)

Perhaps amusingly, I had also been rereading a series of internet stories involving a protagonist who loses everything and has to start practically from scratch. Until a few chapters in, where, after hitting rock bottom, they acquire a stupendous windfall of sorts.

Mr De Mille? I'm ready for my windfall now.