Pilot's Log

*) Tried to sell my old wireless modems at a second-hand mobile phone store overday, and the store refused to buy them. I wonder if I should just consign them to a friend who has an eBay store.

*) Zvezda in Russia promises that there will be new kits in their Art of Tactic series that will be scale compatible with Wings of Glory WW2...and I'm particularly interested in the Bristol Blenheim bombers. Well, with the politics between Stateside and Moscow being what they are, I shouldn't expect to get these very quickly.

*) REIGN on CW is a mess. It's supposed to be historical but their visual RNA for scenery, props, costuming and casting is jarringly off-the-mark. Or, at least, I THINK it's supposed to be historical.

My sister visited overday, and we gave her more of Mum's stuff and I helped replace the windshield wipers on her car.

I'm playing around with the paper model files again. I wonder about the hobby possibilities of poster printer hardware. Who can I ask about that?

--And possibly random shopping.

I found a tourist trap shop that has an abundant supply of now-passe NASCAR Race Day packs. Race Day is a game that Wizkids put out in 2005~'06 with stock car models printed onto plastic card pieces that the user assembles. The track is a poster-sized sheet of paper that is also included in the game pack. (Suddenly I want to call it "NASCARcheezi".) I got five packs, opened them, and got a little educated on the game itself and the topic of "rarity" as it applies to such things.

There are three levels of rarity at play here: COMMON, UNCOMMON and RARE. Every pack in my sample had an Uncommon, and since there are twelve Uncommons in the set if the selection premise holds, then there is a 1 in 12 chance of getting any specific Uncommon in any pack. The remaining pieces in my sample were split between Commons and Rares 3 to 2, so if that held, then logically the likelihood of getting a specific Rare is 40% less than that of getting a specific Uncommon, since there are an equal number of Uncommons and Rares in the total series set.

Again presuming my selection premise is true, there is a 60% chance of getting a Common in any pack, and so because there are only 4 Commons in the set, a 15% chance of getting a specific Common. And a mathematic certainty of getting a specific Common from buying only seven packs at a random.

I'm glad that I didn't have a fandom reason to get into this earlier, but at the same time, I wish I could have done a better job learning probability math in college.

I still dream of my mother just about every night. I guess she still weighs heavily on my subconscious mind.

Earlier this afternoon my internet connectivity refused to work properly so I decided to go to the area flea markets just to browse around. I pulled into the parking lot of one and in the slot next to Moonshine's there was a station wagon--and a helium balloon rested on its interior ceiling. Sure enough, I noticed a kid on his father's shoulder on his way back to the vehicle after their shopping.

Turns out today is Ascension Sunday, which commemorates the return of Jesus to Heaven following his Resurrection. Both it and Pentecost (next Sunday) are often excuses for church congregations to celebrate by releasing balloons and giving balloons to the children; since it usually coincides with the end of the secular school year it's often the end of the Sunday School year for the kids too.

I guess we're getting into a time of year I used to look forward to as a child, the transition from Spring to Summer. As an adult, that has lost a lot of meaning for me. Maybe that's the point of this "random encounter". For me, times need new meanings.

From e-mail, specifically my Spamtrap: Who, in their right mind, would think that I could possibly be in the market for a vacation to Pigeon Forge?

* * *

Has anybody else on LiveJournal seen a lot of sockpuppets show up in the Comments lately? I removed a couple this past week. When their statements show up 3500 times in a Google sweep, I get suspicious.

* Great American Stories (an anthology book that includes Stephen Crane and Ambrose Bierce fiction)
* Artwork by Jean Bierce
* A graphic for the Henry Bierce Company in Akron
* Full Frontal Nerdity strips
* Medium Large strips featuring "T.O.D.D. & Son"
* My IPMS reviews of books and model kits
* The Battletech Unseen and Reseen Mechs
* The Phalanx/AAC Penetrator gunship helicopter
* The Heavy Gear TV series and the Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad TV series, from my reviews on IMDB.net

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I live without a mobile phone. :P

They just had this question a few days ago, didn't they?

I really could have stayed another week in Florida, but I got enough of the things on my list done and all the people who matter most to me. Darn it, if America had actual passenger trains running I'd shuttle between here and there all the time.

* "And I'm Never Going Back To My Old School..." As said earlier, on St. Patrick's Day a high school classmate had invited me and my brother to a party at an Irish/Sports bar. Going was a necessary mistake. The music was way too loud to carry on conversations. We found our "party" but beyond two or three people we didn't "mingle" and while I thought I recognized one woman--I didn't want to talk to her. The truth came to me that if I really wanted to socialize with my classmates in school, I would have. These days there is no meaning attaching me to this crowd. All of a sudden I feel okay with having been shunned and flunked. I just didn't fit in.

* Too many of the people I know are now attached to oxygen apparati. If you smoke, quit. If you don't smoke, don't start.

* I will never again go in a Disney store. Mike dragged me in one so he could look at Princess figures. They'd never hire me, but I bet working there would drive a lot of people insane.

* I will probably swear off eating more than one meal a day at a restaurant. Not so much the expense, or necessarily the food...just the stress is enough.

* Q-105 is back. The Tampa station is now Sixties/Seventies/Eighties oldies rather than baseline Top 40, but they haven't lost the style that made us fans for so long.

* I decided to not be the Lipinski Proxy this time. Dana's fantasy baseball league is down to five participants so their draft today will probably run a lot quicker even without my assistance.

* Atlanta's highways are bedlam. Both ways we had trouble with crowds and volume slowdowns. Dunno what route I'll take next time tho'.

*) The Hot Wheels Batwing from the 1989 Batman movie.

*) Scenemaster/Life-Like HO Scale "Coupe Cars", "Pickup Trucks" and "American Autos" so I can equip my "Billy Joe's Boys" militant force for Flames Of War/I Ain't Been Shot Mum. I also want scans of Battlefront's vehicle assembly instruction sheets so I know what "bits" I should buy to properly homologate my machines. And proper rulesbooks for the games of course.

*) The book about early Spitfires I saw at one of the hobby stores I shop at. The owner/manager of the shop is offering me a 30% discount as a local IPMS club member, so the deal looks pretty enticing...and I have the Spitfire project to build for the Reviewer Corps very soon.

*) A pair of normal walking-around shoes and a pair of steel-toe shoes for Tech School.

*) New longjohns.

*) A video camera...Radio Shack put a circular out today and one of the compact ones looked very reasonable. The public TV program Make has plans and instructions for a DIY "steadycam" rig. Very intriguing.

*) DVD four-in-one cases. All the better for consolidating my collection and replacing broken cases.