Marshmallows

Zoe likes them.

Everything I Need to Know, I Learned from D&D

1. You'll be more successful if you have a plan for your life, instead of taking it as it comes
2. In order to make that plan, you will need the advice of someone who knows the system better than you do.
3. Being bold is more fun than being cautious.
4. Get along with people, especially your own group.
5. Don't get separated from your friends.
6. A person with high intelligence but low wisdom will do stupid things
7. People who do stupid things tend to regret it. Or die abruptly.
8. You will gather more fame and fortune by being really really good at one thing, than you will by being marginally okay at a lot of things.
9. It takes a lot of effort to be a hero--but what else would you want to be?

The Avengers

Had a good time with this film. Not as good as Iron Man 1, but as good as Captain America or better, and definitely better than Thor. Loki was, as in Thor, a very creditable villain, clever, manipulative, and arrogant. Several good lines, although none were up to the (admittedly high) bar of Princess Bride; the most enjoyable was perhaps Hulk's reply to Loki.

Deck

Tonight I heroically wrenched a couple of boards from the deck with my bare hands*, trimmed new 2x6's to shape with a nail file**, slammed them into place, and drove the screws four inches through the wood with a quick twist of one fingernail***. Tomorrow morning we'll put the paint / goop on, and that will hold us until we're ready to spend a couple thousand bucks and get the deck rebuilt.

* which happened to be holding a prybar

** and a jigsaw, as my circular saw is balky

*** which was on the trigger of my drill

MegaMek

Had a good game with Josh tonight, 10,000 points to a side with my slower and heavier mechs doing a creditable job of taking on his lance of faster and lighter mechs. Jump jets make a big difference in hilly terrain, which is what we were fighting in. After four hours and 18 turns, we called it a draw, although I have to say my force was looking pretty chewed up at the end with two of six mechs destroyed, one immobile and and one down with an unconscious pilot. I need to get better at the mech equivalent of the Lufbury Circle, and to pick a specific set of mechs instead of rolling randomly to see what forces I get.

May Day

Today is May Day, which is also celebrated throughout the world as the leftist / communist International Workers Day. So this would be a good time to remember the approximately 94 million people killed by Communist states, either directly (as in the Khmer Rouge killing fields or the Chinese Cultural Revolution) or indirectly (as in the artificial famines engineered by Stalin).

Ninety four million people killed. That's the equivalent of every man, woman and child in California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.

Books

Just received The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State , a book on government failure in the provision of law, and private alternatives. Five sections, which are:

• From Voluntary to Authoritarian Law
• A Public Choice Approach to Authoritarian Law
• Reemergence of Private Alternatives
• Rationalizing Authoritarian Law
• From Authoritarian to Private Law

Thus far I've only taken it out of the box and read the introduction, but speaking as the creator of the Alarishi Empire, this is a book I'm really looking forward to.