Today is ...

… yadic, but also a day pibbur won't bother you with details about his doings. But wikipedia knows about lots of things which he will bother you with:

1582 – In Stratford, the one lying on the top of the Avon, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway pay a £40 bond for their marriage licence. Didn't know she was that old.

1660 Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, Christopher Wren and other leading scientists founded a learned society now known as "the Royal Society (coat of arms pictured)". What a strange name.

1814: The Times is published on Steam.

1907: In Haverhill, Massachusetts, scrap-metal is given its first movie theater.

1909: Sergei Vasilievich makes life difficult for piano players.

1919 – Lady Astor is the first woman to sit in the House of Commons. Countess Markievicz, the first to be elected for some reason chose to stand.

1989: Cold War: Velvet Revolution – In the face of protests, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announces it will give up its monopoly on political power.

pibbur who observes that first automobile race in the United States took place in Chicago 117 years before pibbur came to town.
 
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The Times is not a game I'm familiar with; was it Greenlighted on Steam? :)
 
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What does "incroyable" mean ?
 
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What does "incroyable" mean ?

It's incredible that you don't know that "incroyable" means "incredible".

pibbur who may have learned a new word in French, but who also may have learned it before ad sort of forgotten all about it. Est-ce que encore de la confiture? (typos not intended)
 
Ah, thnk you. My dictionary didn't know this word. ;)
 
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… the day after yesterday that pibbur did two things and learned one thing.

First, he tried to behave like an american. That is, he had a very nice chat (which he initiated) with a complete stranger (In Norway a stranger is a stranger is a stranger, Here they wish you a pleasant evening when you leave the elevator you've been sharing). There was this huuuuge line of people waiting for something. It turned out (which I found out by asking) that they were waiting for popcorn. So he asked why on earth 100 people would stand in line for popcorn. Then (and this is what) he learned that this wasn't just popcorn, it was a very special species of popcorn - of which he didn't catch the name. But all in all it was The Ultimate Popcorn with a capital 'P'.

Second: He bought an IPad, and being one who still has a fairly thorough and precise knowledge of anatomy, he of course selected a retina one.

Other things:

1409: University of Leipzig opened.
1697: St Paul's (the Cathedral) opened.
1755: The second Eddystone Lighthouse shut down (uncontrolled).
1775: USS Alfred became the first vessel to fly the Grand Union Flag, 128 years and 15 days before Wilbur and brother.

We also saw the implementation of several emperors, none of them roman, and therefore fairly long-lived:
1804: Napoleon I
1848: Franz Joseph.
1852: Napoleon III
1966: Napoleon XIV

pibbur who knows of a lot of things he wouldn't stand in line for, one of them is popcorn. And who knows a lot of annoying tunes.

Please excuse me if the dates seem wrong. Me and Wikipedia isn't exactly in sync regarding System.DateTime.Now;
 
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... the first day I have a computer of my own again.

A few days ago, my mulish comp died on me.

It was no sudden death, not at all: The thing had not been able to boot up the regular way for months. Back then, I thought it was a HDD error at first, but a tech scan didn't show any disk errors. Well, so I believed my OS had become tangled. I was too lazy to reinstall Win7, thus I booted from a GRML CD instead. Not a big deal since I never shut down the computer, anyway, at least not voluntarily.

A few days ago, hubby had the glorious idea to buy me a Win8 update.
I updated. The comp still suicided on rebooting.
Well, this time I moved some of my save games to an external HDD and allowed hubby to format C and reinstall Win8.
The comp still didn't reboot.

Well, hubby exchanged the motherboard.
The comp still didn't reboot.

Hubby exchanged some cables.
The comp still didn't reboot, so hubby sighed and ordered a new HDD. It would take a few days to arrive with the rest of the stuff he ordered, though, so I took out my very old, frail notebook just to discover that it was about three OS versions behind the current edition of kubuntu. I downloaded all the packages and told the notebook to install them; this should have taken all night, so I went to bed ... and when I got up in the morning, my notebook had died.

Well, I was out of a computer for good; my notebook from work doesn't count. So I made a deal with hubby, and he reserved a little corner of his work comp for my web browser and mails. This was rather uncomfortable, having to share a computer with someone ...

Anyhow, my old comp is back with its new board and cables and HDD and OS, and without any games but Minecraft.
 
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Anyhow, my old comp is back with its new board and cables and HDD and OS, and without any games but Minecraft.
There's a certain joy to reinstalling games, though. Deciding which ones "make the cut" and having a nice nostalgia high for a day or two while you swap cds until your fingers bleed... Good times.
 
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Today is the day pibbur's thread got hijacked. And in a desperate act to regain the control he never had, he'll tell you that this is the day he returned from Chicago (without popcorn). It's also the day he'll complain about a new word he learned, which he heard repeatedly at the RSNA conference (in Chicago) and which he absolutely hates!!!

"Ologies"

Pibbur and 10 other norwegians and a dane were in Chicago to learn about how to implement a system, a vendor neutral archive (VNA) for storing and accessing images outside radiology. Radiology already has it's archives (PACS), now it's time for other types of images: Photos from dermatology and ophtalmology (bad things happening to the eye), endoscopic images from gastroenterology (bad things in your intestinal structures). And so on. Now, since we can't call the sources of those images radiology, since that's already taken, what should we call them. What abouut "other diagnostic images"? "Non radiology images"? Whatever. What you don't want to do is call them "ologies", because that's just stupid (and of course excludes images from orthopaedics, pediatrics and such (joke)). So that's exactly what they did!!!!

Other (possibly) (disgusting) things:

1492: CC called Haiti "La Isla Española".
1757: Battle of Luthien
1933: Prohibitioen endis in the US
1958: Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD), whatever that is, didnt bother to check, is inaugurated in the United Kingdom by Queen Elizabeth II
1969: Down goes ARPANET

pibbur who is sure that the above unmentionable word is the sole cause for him being sick a couple of days in Chicago.
 
To be accurate, the highjack started yesterday even if it didn't feel like it then. Sneaky.

Thats ok. To pibbur yesterday and today is like any day.

pibbur who tries to be the liar

But, for once to be arbitraily close to serious: I didn't mind. It's of course not my thread. But I don't mind keeping this off topic thread slightly more on topic either. Thanks to JDR.
 
I wonder if unintentional hijacking constitutes hijacking, and I wonder if this post is intentional or unintentional hijacking - if it ends up hijacking.

DArt - who wonders a lot.
 
… a day pibbur is in paradise on earth. Or in hell. Depending how you looke at it (and in this particular case when you look at it). He's once again in the US. In Arizone. Phoenix (which can be hellish hot during summer).

It's his third visity to the US in less than half a year, and he feels like he's getting to know the place. Want to know where the Apple Store is on Michigan Avenue@Chicago? Just ask pibbur for guidance. He knows a place where they've got tasty crab cakes in Baltimore, and will happily show you the way from the Hyatt Regency. Phoenix is a bit more difficult, currently he's busy finding his way at the Hyatt Squaw Peak Resort. Roms seem to be randomly distributed in randomly distributed buildings. But, walking randomly around the area will most likely lead him to the lobby. And the fitness center. And the congress facilities. And back to his room. Eventually.

Proceedings start tomorrow. He arrived yesterday and is still somewhat groggy, since Phoenix is 8 hours behind schedule. At the moment of writing it's 18:35 in Phoenix. But he feels like it's close to 02:35 (24 hour clock). Yawn!

Other things today: Apparently the Swedes celebrate saint Knut, whover that is. And…

1815: British troops pwns Fort Peter in St. Marys, Georgia. In the War of 1812. 3 years late in other words.

1832: President Andrew Jackson writes to Van Buren, 245 years befofre the fallout.

1893: Labour.

1913: DSTH

1953: An article ("Vicious Spies and Killers under the Mask of Academic Physicians") published in Pravda accused some of the most prestigious physicians in the Soviet Union, mostly Jews, of taking part in a vast plot (the so-called doctor's plot) to poison members of the top Soviet political and military leadership. I won't cite the whole article (you can read about it on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors%27_plot#Prague_Trials), but a few quotes may be of interest: "a group of saboteur-doctors", "band of inhuman beasts", "gang of poisoner-doctors", "feverishly preparing for a new world war". Apparently things wasn't just as bad after the ascension of big Joseph.

1975: A Seraphim is elected Archbishop of Athens. (http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18907)

2001: An earthquake hits El Salvador. But the operetta lingers. Then the piano lid comes down. And breaks his f*ing fingers.

pibbur who doesn't think it rains much in Phoenix, and therefore wouldn't want to live there. And who just got a message saying 3 people unfriended him on Facebook. He doesn't know who they are, but fortunately there is a free tool to find out exactly that. Which could be interesting, but he fears that he has to create an account on Facebook first.

53,500 googles for pibbur. 37 for Phoenix.
 
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… another day in phoenix and pibbur is sick. He's got a cold, which you perhaps wouldn't expect in phoenix. But it is actually quite cold here, although it doesn't have to be cold in order to get one. Fortunately it's not influenza.

BTW: did you know
1. There is a bacteria known as Hemophilus influenzae?
2. That it doesn't cause influenza?
3. That it is a cause of epiglottitis and meningitis?
4. Pibbur is not infected by that one?

Now you know. Why? BECAUSE PIBBUR TOLD YOU!!

038 BC: don't know if anyone told him to, but on this very day Octavian aka Augustus divorced his wife for two years, Scribona, in order to marry ms Drusilla. It turns out that said Scribona was forced to divorce her 2nd husband in order to marry Octavian, who in turn divorced ms Pulchra to marry her. It's said of said Scribona's first marriage (of which we don't know the name of the hubby) that she may have had a son (of who we don't know the name) that may have died young and being ignored by historians. Which is a sad destiny for someone who may have been born into imperial family. Anyhow, said divorce of said Scribona and said Octavian wasn't taken too happily by one Sextus Pompey (of which we have said nothing). Still Octavian managed to live still more 52 years, kind of rare for roman emperors who at times had shorter lifespans than banana flies.

1376: The pope comes back to Rome after spending 67 years in France. He (or they, there were seven of'em) chose to stay in france after 1306, due to some minor disagreements involving holy emperors in Rome (of which there were 3, all german).

1608: Emperor Susenyos of Ethiopia surprises an Oromo army, which in cases like this (unlike birthdays of which nobody in close relations seem to know about) is generally not a good sign. And in this specific case specifically not. Pooooor Oromons.

1893: The Citizen's Committee of Public Safety overthrows the government of Queen Liliuokalani of the Kingdom of Hawaii. In general one should be very aware of this kind of comittees, as the one in Paris shortly before 1800 was definitely unsafe for around 40000 french suffereing the destiny intended for Ulrich (not the drummer of Metallica). In Hawaii things weren't nearly as bad. However, a policeman WAS shot and wounded.

1913: Raymond Poincaré was elected president of France despite having no degree in physics.

1991. Harald V becomes King of Norway. He's still in business. Norway has no safety comittees.

pibbur who is somewhat confused by the family relations of roman emperors.

53300 googles forpibbur, none found for phoenix
 
Poor pibbur .. get well soon!


Today is the day I got my yearly attack of Star Wars RPG (D6) nostalgia.

How did it happen?
Sonny forced me to watch the 2009 SW:TOR flicks… here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPdJdEFilaU

What caused my fling of nostalgia?

The part between 09:56 and 10:08.

Why?
Well, the scene nearly made me suffocate (I happened to mis-swallow one of my salted sticks - I'm home sick ATM), for I realized that there have always been morons in the SW universe … mindless critters who throw themselves at dangerous people who carry pointy things in their hands just to press the button of something that might very well explode. This very string of actions made one of my very own SW (D6) characters win the 'Mr. Epic Fail of '99' award.

Okay, there are differences. Many differences. Let's make a comparison.

2009, SW:TOR flick: A Republic trooper named Jace charges a Sith who's armed with a lightsaber and wrestles him over a grenade. The trooper triggers the grenade, detionating the thing.

1999, SW RPG (D6): A stormtrooper named Jaz charges a religious terrorist who's armed with a vibrosword and wrestles him over a dead man's handle connected to a nuclear device. The trooper triggers the DMH, disarming the thing.

The biggest difference, however, is that some characters are just luckier than others, I guess. The SW:TOR baddie forgot all about the pointy thing in his possession while the SW RPG one didn't. Sigh.
 
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I even carried my WEG character's name over into SWTOR.
Now, people get confused why there is a character nameed "Wrw".
Back then, it was the name of an Ithorian land worker, made up using a specal sound only Ithorians are able to produce.

I changed my Twi'lek's background story so that he grew up in a community consisting of mainly both Ithorians & Twi'leks, and being raised by an Ithorian couple, he got that Ithorian name - meanwhile learning Twi'lek culture from the community there.

Some people, however, believe that my character's name is a misspelling of "wow" instead. I've had to post my back ground story several times towaerds nay-sayers.

But most times when I mention what I had played with "WEG material" in the 90s, most people become quiet.

Besides, if you want to find me on SWTOR : I'm on "Vanjervalis Chain", which I usually abbreviate just as "V-Chain".
 
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I just carried my favorite WEG Character's name over to RPGDot, later to the Watch ^^. Jaz Tarn/Oh-One actually left a stormtrooper-sized hole in my RPG character file folder.
Dang, I miss him, even though his squad-mates and his latest commander certainly didn't. The guy was prone to going rogue and doing stuff while the others were still discussing how to solve a problem. Shooting superiors, disarming warheads and charging headlong (and unarmed) into armed enemy units were his specialties...

Should I ever dare to play SW:TOR (dled the client when it became free-to-play but never dared to do something with it), I'll search for you for sure :).
 
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You can play a Soldier there, too. ;)
 
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