HWC's Diary. Read it at your peril.

October 3rd

And so I return once more. Cheers resound from the peanut gallery. What has happened? Sleipy has been rank whoring fit to bust. In the Dark Chamber with Vagile, and then in the Valley with a whole bunch of RWs. But it all had a sad sad ending I fear to say.

Poor Elenis lost it completely. I think the Knight finally drove him completely crazy. And Sleipy wasn't even being very annoying at all. Just one (that's right, just ONE!) comment about Babajaga's great beauty and he tears off in a foul temper. Ah well, no problem think I. But then, strangeness supreme, there comes a whole series of SS messages about how he couldn't be my friend any more because I'm just far too annoying with my pathetic role playing and so he was going to block me from now on. Woo. What the fuck? think I. So it transpires that Baba has been getting inundated with similar SS messages from our dear friend Elenis. Sleipnir is such a pain in the ass and you just make it worse and I can't be your friend any more and .... and ..... etc. Oh dear. Being blocked, there's not much I could do about it, even if I wanted to which I don't particularly. Life is too short to have to spend time on difficult on-line acquaintances.

But it did give both Tove and me some momentary sadness. It *is* sad when people that you actually like and respect, and in a reciprocal manner (you thought), when they turn on you like that. I know, better than most, how a person's mind can be unpredictable, strange, incomprehensible, how someone's personality can change completely, and how it's not their fault. Maybe Elenis has similar problems at the minute. Who knows?

I had never really interacted with Glaurung before. I enjoyed his company whilst rank whoring. Funny. Another flea-bitten smelly Zo. And I met Sargon as well, not ever really having talked to him before. Another pleasant exile. Usually one can tell the level of maturity in one sentence. Or less. Sargon impressed.

Ore collection and donation. Coin collection as usual. Trying hard to open the path into Lyfe Island, but no luck yet. When it opens it'll be a nice quick run, a fall, and a depart. Can't wait.

Sleipy stormed out of a Red Quill meeting. Lunaria was *so* rude to him. Really, I just had to leave in a hurry and it was a neato excuse. I wasn't really doing an Elenis.

That's about it for now, I guess. An unpleasant weekend, overall, but nothing to do with CL. I am, officially, sick, and therefore able to take time off work and leave my assistant to teach my classes whilst I play CL. Yes! Huzzah! Kids are on holiday too and the weather is lovely. I can't really take advantage. Bummer. But I would like to know, what the fuck does the hospital with all the blood and urine they collect in such huge quantities? Maybe they sell it off at a huge profit? Knightly fluids have to be worth something.

Poor Luke just had all his guitars stolen out of his car. Fuck. No insurance, not Luke, so he has no idea what he'll do. Maybe some kind music store will cough up some goodies as a promotional thing. Maybe.

October 6th

Healer Sabaria has bitten the dust, and given birth to fighter Sabaria. Healers are too boring says the local expert, all you can do is run around looking for dead people. I want to be a fighter now. Are you sure? asks Daddy. Of course I'm sure says the local expert. Bam, reset time. 10 minutes later. I want to be a healer again now, Daddy. Well, too bad, says Daddy. THAT'S NOT FAIR says the expert. Shut up, says Daddy, or I'll wallop yer backside. The local expert quickly finds that fighters aren't so bad after all. She's under strict instructions always to share with those on her "nice" list (so that they can get a little experience second hand for being so "nice"). Why is Althea on that list? Fucked if I know. I had to smile bravely while explaining to the expert.

So I've now lost my high Horus on-call healer. Sabaria had many many hundreds, and all thrown away! Waaaaaa! Bunbel is just the same as ever. Collecting curses like confetti. Does Paul care? Hell no, he doesn't even notice.

The kids have also discovered Warcraft. First thing, do all the cheats, get 100,000,000,000 gold and every single spell and upgrade etc etc etc etc, then build an army of 100,000,000,000,000 sooper dooper knights and then tremble with indecision about whether or not to attack the 3 green baddies. But Dad, Dad, they're really strong! But Dad, Dad, we may lose a fighter! But Dad, Dad, what about if we lose?

Shut up, says Dad, I'm trying to get a life, just like Natas told me.

NG post of the century from Noivad. How, when just beginning, he learned (very quickly) all kinds of sooper dooper fighting moves and then taught them to "the girls". Oh dear, I have to pee. Must be the laughter.

Blog post of the minute from poor old Singular. Ack. My heart went out to her. I know just what it is to be laughed at and ridiculed, to have the finger pointed, the head turned in my direction, the sudden smirk, the.... but ... no, wait. Hang on. I *like* that. What am I saying? Duh.

Better quit while I'm ahead.

After reading the latest round of NG postings, I think I noticed a few things. I *think* that Donna doesn't like Conny, and I *seem* to detect that Shep the man doesn't like Donna. Not entirely sure, but there are indications. Better than reading the NZ Woman's Monthly, that is.

In other world news (to repeat a useful phrase) the Knight has done absolutely nothing. Not even opening the path into Lyfe Island. He dies just about every time he even tries. GCP you know. Or Lyfelidae thingies. Hate the bastards. Depart time. He is training with ..... yes, you guessed it... Swengus. Ho hum. Training with Evus over a long period of time, you notice your number of swings going down. Not exactly balanced, huh? Perhaps the Knight should train something useful instead, like a language trainer.

Still haven't been sailing this spring. Can't, really. Bad health. Monique's or mine, one or the other. Fuck. But I dug a veggie garden and planted small growing things, I transplanted the mandarin tree, I pruned the lemon trees, and I cleared another patch. Then I collapsed, groaning. Sailing would have been easier, I'm sure. Actually, I quite like gardening. Last time we lived in NZ we had a whole (mini) orchard. Apples, pears, plums, kiwifruit, currants, apricots, hazel nuts, walnuts, grapes. Lovely. Impossible to eat it all. Not this time, our section is too steep to look after so easily. At least it gives us a nice view.

Back to bullshit administration at work. Writing proposals. I hate that sort of thing.

14th October

My, and hasn't it been a while? I'm sure all my gentle readers, whoever ye may be, are devastated by this. I know I am.... well... maybe not. But there is a reason. OS X. I must say I do love the new Mac OS. One gets all the wonderful benefits of Unix, combined with all the wonderful benefits of having a Mac. For the first time ever, the Mac is now a decent machine for scientific computing. I've always had to use Unix boxes for computations, and a Mac for other stuff. Now, I don't. I mean, I don't have to, but I still do, actually. At any rate I'vebeen unixing fit to burst for the past while.

And successfully so! I finally managed to install the Scalapack and blacs libraries on the Beowulf cluster. Woo Hoo. I am so pleased with myself. It took almost a whole week, fulltime, but I finally managed. I can now call up linear algebra routines on the parallel machine, using MPI and BLACS. Woop dee fuck I hear my gentle readers thinking, but hey, it excites me.

But, with the pleasures of OS 10.1 comes the disconcerting fact that it doesn't run Clan Lord, so I'm a CL-free zone at the minute. Well, to be honest, I only tried it once. I must try again now.

(time passes)

Ah, a new version. Let me see if this works ...... Oooo and it does. And I can take screen shots now. Huzzah. Of course, I could only stay online for five minutes (as usual) before the kids needed attention. Not to mention I really need to do some other stuff, read Baba's diary, etc etc. Need to find out what's been going on. The world passes the Knight by.

Mystic ructions in the NG and in the WOD discussion list. I've begun reading that a bit now, it gives a very interesting insight into the younger CL generation. The old generation should really just get out of the way now; bunch of old farts. When I get time I might write a little rant about mystics. I like so many of them, and yet the whole concept of the mystic class bothers me. The old secrecy thing again.

Actually, Althea put it well. In CL, the real currency is information. Absolutely correct. But some people are so generous with it, and others aren't. Just like in real life, some are generous, some aren't. One shouldn't expect anything different in a game I suppose; one will find the whole spectrum of people there as elsewhere. Perhaps it is disappointing because one plays such a game to try and escape from real life for a short time, to get away from the nastiness around one, the greyness, the narrow minds and small brains. One tries, for a short time, to be a stupid Knight, in some stupid chivalric dream, in some stupid courtly romance. And yet, even there, the unpleasantness of real life intrudes. Inescapably. Ah well.

Althea didn't put other things so well. Or rather, she seemed to be unaware of exactly what she was saying, in that her argument was the perfect one to support her opponent. I mean, of course, the Noth debate. Althea had her fun there. Then it became boring. Now, she relishes the extra challenge. This is precisely what her opponents were arguing (can't remember who, but it was a very well-spoken opponent. One of them, anyway.) Fun for Althea now, translates to weaker exiles (such as Sleipy) being screwed around. I really really hate to agree with Michael about anything, I really do. But he does have a point.

It causes me continual residual bitterness that the game is designed to be played by large numbers of powerful exiles, spending a lot of time at once. Not for single players with only a small amount of time to spend at any one time. Cannot an effort be made to keep both interested? It seems not. A management decision that saddens me.