In response to a part of my B Nomic proposal in which I wrote:

An External Force is anything which exists independently of the game. That is, it would still exist if the game stopped existing, and would still exist if the game never started existing.

Another player named Wonko replied:

I think that should be “would still exist if the game *had* never started existing”. As it stands, it implies that “never starting to exist” is something the game might still do.

Jessi and I are settling into our house well. It’s starting to feel normal to live here. Our driveway got paved yesterday, and it looks nice, although they left a lot of dirt in our front yard.

So now, they naturally would like payment. They’ll take $5,000 if I give them a check, but if I get cash, then it’s only $4,700. This seems a bit… fishy to me. I know that it can’t cost them $300 to process a check. So, there has to be something more going on. My guess is that if they get a check, then they report it on their income taxes. But if they take cash, it just goes into their pockets and they don’t properly report it. (And it’d be much tougher for an IRS audit to establish a paper trail, or something.)

“This change will give you a new annual premium. This request will not cause a change in your annual premium.” — Email from Liberty Mutual confirming my address change that I submitted on their web site.

I recently needed to send some copies of some documents (the occupancy permit and such) to my bank for them to release the rest of the funds for our construction. I only had a physical instance of these documents. Since the snazzy all-in-one printer/scanner we got for Christmas was also a faxer, I figured I’d just fax it to the bank.

• The machine took my analog document and converted it to a digital image representation.
• It then took this digital representation and converted it to an analog sequence of sounds for transmission over a phone line.
• My Vonage voice-over-Internet service took this sequence of sounds, and converted it to a digital representation and transmitted it over the Internet.
• My cable modem took this Internet packet and encoded it as an analog signal over the cable lines.
• Charter took this analog signal and converted it back to digital Internet packets, which it sent to Vonage’s servers.
• Vonage took the packet and converted it back to the phone line sounds, sending it to my bank’s fax line.
• My bank’s fax machine took the call, and converted it back to a digital image.
• The bank’s fax machine printed the digital image out onto analog paper for the loan department.

This whole process worked flawlessly and transparently. Yet, somehow it seems inefficient.

“Sometime in the future, you are going to drive up to your house, and your Car Area Network (CAN), is going to seamlessly merge with your Home Area Network (HAN).” — Heath Johns

This ZeroConf/Multicast-DNS/Bonjour thing is something I’ve been looking for for a while to manage my home network.

We now have cable hooked up in our home, and now our home network is complete.

“You mean, you haven’t been to Girl Scout camp?” — Jessi, to me

“‘We’re very concerned about public safety,’ said Gov. Mitt Romney after surveying the damn late Monday.” — Worcester Telegram & Gazette

The world needs more editors. I see errors like this all the time in print, and I’m not even an English major.

“When you want to reach new readers who aren’t your mother, however, usability becomes important.” — Jakob Nielsen

We moved the rest of our stuff, and ourselves, in on Saturday.

We are now living in our own house.