Author: Jason Thibeault

Uh, guys. It’s a cracker.

Jason Thibeault, 14 Comments

You may or may not have seen this already.  It’s been several days since this particular outrage hit the net, but I just hadn’t gotten around to writing about it until now.

Recently, a student by the name of Webster Cook at the University of Central Florida attended a Catholic mass on campus.  The man was evidently not a Catholic himself, and attended to see what his tuition money was paying for (as the university was allocating $40,000 a year to this on-campus church).

In either case, when given the Eucharist, which is a small yeast-free cracker that the priest is supposedly capable of “transsubstantiating” into the body and blood of Christ (yes, the blood too, even though the wine is also supposed to be the blood), simply by casting some sort of magic spell over it at the altar.  Webster did not swallow the cracker, but instead took it out of his mouth and kept it, as a keepsake I suppose.

This then caused an uproar in the Catholic community the likes of which no sane person is capable.

Continue reading “Uh, guys. It’s a cracker.” →

Uh, guys. It’s a cracker.
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It’s hot and my brain’s not functioning.

Jason Thibeault2 Comments

I’ve been working like crazy over the past few days to deal with a few metaphorical fires that started burning both at my own site and a nearby one, due to the other site’s IT guy being out sick suddenly.  Between that, and the heat, and the stress of buying the house, and the overall general stress of existing (you must understand what I mean by that, since you all exist too!), I haven’t been getting a lot of sleep lately.

I also haven’t been biking to work at all this week.  Again, between the heat and lack of sleep, it’s hard to muster up the energy in the morning.  I did work from home yesterday, due to having worked until 2:30am the night before, which was good, except that I pretty well worked from 8:30am straight through until 10 or 11pm with a short break to play some Diablo 2 around suppertime.  Working from home isn’t all it’s cracked up to be sometimes.  Yes, you get to be home, not waste gas and thus money on going into the office, stay in your pyjamas (or in my case, due to the heat, nothing but a pair of shorts) all day, and eat and maybe even catch up on sleep at your leisure.  The downsides are that you don’t really actually stop working until people stop bothering you.  I easily put in over 10 hours of solid work yesterday.  I’m on salary though, so my only solace is that I got to stay home.  Well, that, and a member of the other site’s management, with whom I never get along, put in a kudos e-mail to both my direct boss and the president of the company for my efforts.  I’m sure we’ll turn around and go back to butting heads in due course.

I’m also reestablishing communications lately with my closest friend.  And yes, reestablishing, because we constantly lose and reestablish contact with one another.  This is a particular failing of mine, one which Jodi has in the past rightfully chastised me, and one to which I spoke in a recent post.  It’s nice to re-connect, and it seems to be coming at a timely juncture, as we can both hopefully help one another work through our particular stresses at the moment (granted, hers involves a thesis, so I think hers trumps mine).

The house situation is putting along.  I have to look into insurance, we’re considering getting an inspection anyway even though we don’t really need to, my dad’s money order arrived, and I’ve gotten the lease consent form, purchase and sale, and addenda, to the mortgage brokers.  It’s a waiting game again now, though I do have other issues and minutia I should address.

Should, and will.  Tomorrow, though.  I need sleep now.  More desperately than the last time I said so on this blog.

It’s hot and my brain’s not functioning.

Update on the house situation

Jason Thibeault10 Comments

The seller has signed our offer, and the signed copies of the offer are in the hands of her lawyer.  Once they wend their way to my lawyer, I sign it, give the lawyer a $100 deposit on the closing costs, and then have to get that paperwork to the mortgage brokers to get the mortgage on the go.  The closing date is set for August 18th, and I’m taking a week’s vacation to get this place packed and moved to the new one.

As for the closing costs, we’re depending heavily on selling one of those two computers mentioned earlier, however neither of them are generating the kind of interest they should be getting.  My father’s agreed to loan me $500 until such time that one of them sells, or if they don’t, then until I can save up enough to pay him back.  Hopefully the closing costs won’t be nearly as expensive as most other places, since there won’t be a title search, survey, or other such legal trivialities to undertake, what with it being leased land.

The fact that it’s leased land, though, gives me a different piece of paperwork to have to do — the lease consent form, that basically says the mortgage brokers are aware that it’s a leased land and are allowing it, and that the leased land owners do not have any claim over the house itself.  This is turning out to be a bit of a hassle, with both the land owners and the mortgage brokers demanding the other sign first.  I happen to agree with the mortgage brokers, on reading the text of the document — despite my not having a legal background, I can read high-level English and can usually get at least something out of the documents.  It’s in the land owners’ hands now, having been faxed to their head office.  Hopefully it doesn’t come back with another request to get the mortgage brokers to sign first, but we’ll see.

Update on the house situation

Games that don’t suck

Jason Thibeault, 11 Comments

It’s been a while since I’ve played a game that’s really drawn me in.  For a while I played Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and, despite its endless content (with downloadable plugins and content created by the user community), sandbox world style gameplay, and certain absolutely brilliant modifications that alter even how the game engine itself works, I eventually lost interest.  It might have something to do with my being such a completist that I spent most of my time playing every single side quest and getting every single item and upgrade I could, ignoring the main plotline.  That’s probably my biggest problem with sandbox games — they don’t hold my attention for long enough for me to actually get around to completing the plot.  For instance, despite greatly enjoying the series, I’ve never completed a Grand Theft Auto game.

(way more below the fold…)

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Games that don’t suck

Today’s “Fuck You” round-up!

Jason Thibeault, 7 Comments

Fuck you, Robert Mugabe.  If you have to put your opposition in prison and threaten everyone in your country with violence in order to win an election, then there’s no point in having a fucking election at all.  Just call yourself a dictator and be done with it.  Asshat.

Fuck you, Republicans who were eager to question John Kerry’s service in Vietnam, producing smear after execrable smear of his record, but are now more than happy to bitch about General Wes Clark questioning whether McCain’s graduating in the bottom 1% of his class (no, seriously! 894th out of 899!) then proceeding to get shot down in your fighter jet (after having crashed four other planes, by the way) qualifies you for being president.

And a big old, bold-faced, FUCK YOU to Future Ex-President Bush for finally seeing the light with regard to using diplomacy with one of the members of his supposed “Axis of Evil“, not one month after giving a speech before the Knesset (text) in which he called Barack Obama’s policy of diplomacy a “delusion” and akin to Nazi appeasement (and this in front of the legislative assembly of Jerusalem!  Subtle, real subtle!).  Yes, diplomacy is the right way of dealing with the assholes that occasionally occupy world stage positions, and force only comes as a last resort, so Bush should be applauded for managing an actual diplomatic win (maybe the first of his presidency!), but the hypocriticality of the whole situation just makes my blood boil.

It also bothers me that if Bush manages to get his war on Iran begun before he leaves office, then his ditto-heads will have another talking point — that Bush dealt with the Axis of Evil.  Forget the fact that North Korea now has the bomb, and under Bush’s watch.  Forget the fact that Iraq is a quagmire.  Forget that he’ll be dumping THREE wars on Obama’s lap.  (I refuse to even entertain the idea of a McCain presidency.  And you can’t make me.)  Edit: Oh yeah.  And forget that the REAL war he’s supposed to be engaging in, the “War on Terror”, has a real organization involved, Al Qaeda, which is headed by Bin Laden, who is in Pakistan, and the Bush administration is FUCKING PREVENTING A SPECIAL FORCES PLAN TO GO KILL HIM!

So to you douchebags, I say, FUCK YOU.

Heh.  That’s a good one.  I’m going to use that image again in the future, I’m sure.

Today’s “Fuck You” round-up!

Tunguska, 100 years later

Jason Thibeault2 Comments

On June 30th, 1908, witnesses described a fireball in the sky over Siberia, resulting in a column of fire moments later that split the sky and threw some observers to the ground.  The area impacted, near the Podkammenaya Tungus river in an unpopulated, swampy part of northern Siberia, was levelled for hundreds of kilometers around, with all the trees flattened, but no crater in its epicenter.  This was thereafter known as the Tunguska Event, and its circumstances remain shrouded in mystery and have since become a staple of fictional conjecture.

I can’t adequately convey the grandeur of the damage done, at least not in comparison with some other, more eloquent astral observers.  I just thought it was noteworthy enough to merit a blog post and a number of links where you can read more about the event and the speculation that scientists may have recently proven that a nearby lake is the actual impact point, where the remains of the meteor may be at its bottom.

Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy has a brilliant write-up on the event, as does the BBC News service.

Edit: Holy crap, sorry Mr. Plait.  My error in your site name is unforgivable, especially given that it created a pingback in the comments thread.  My shame knows no bounds.

Tunguska, 100 years later