Kopaka's Ice Engineering

This may be attributed to the "sketch" nature of the...well.....sketch, but I've got a question: Why is the scabbard on the same leg as the sword is in hand? Isn't that an awkward retrieval? -KIE

What's a 486? 486 MHz...the processor to have back when I was in high school.... ....in the mid 90's. -KIE

Kopaka's Ice Engineering would like Exo to inform Kopaka's Ice Engineering as to what an oofo is: Kopaka's Ice Engineering is now 27 years old and is prone to forgetting such colloquialisms in his old age. The keyblade master of light is getting a bit of a headache from continuously saying The keyblade master of light. *PAIN* OW! Kopaka's Ice Engineering thinks The keyblade master of light is simply out of the habit of using the third person when referring to The keyblade master of light. Kopaka's Ice Engineering recommends that The keyblade master of light practice, ere The keyblade master of light draw the ire of Little Miss Krahka. -KIE

Vocabulary phrase of the week Who Dat?: a rallying cry of exuberance and jubilation in reference to the New Orleans Saints franchise of the National Football League. Not to be confused with "Who Dey?" of the Cincinnati Bengals franchise, though it's unclear which predates the other. usage in the following chant, heard many, many times just yesterday evening: Also: a fan of the New Orleans Saints with a propensity for initiating said chant with little advance notice, though certainly not without cause. I didn't get cake yesterday. It's been delayed to today, since so many people took off work to go to the Saints game, very early. Writing this down for future reference: DEII's season tickets are in the Poydras end zone, at the Loge (200) level. So says Beaugh (who did get a pair of tickets in the draw). Okay, stuff I got for my birthday: A set of pots & pans, brushed aluminum and not non-stick (convenient when I want to actually submerge-in-oil fry some chicken), and a larger pot for pasta (but not non-stick)About a dozen or so birthday greetings, including e-cards, from friends playing Ultima Online.My very own GD topic for a day, and for once I was able to post in it on my birthday....the past 3 birthdays have found me a ways away from the internet all day.My first DEII FFL win, at the expense of the perennial underdog-now-favorite Laplace GatorsA Saints victory on Monday Night Football (first since 1992), even if I didn't get to attend the game.Having my birthday largely unheralded for a second consecutive year at the office (HAD the cake come yesterday if the Saints played on Sunday, most everyone would've been asking "Whose birthday is in September? No one has a September birthday.")A promise from my mom to go out to eat Sunday at Olive Garden (Never Ending pasta bowl = win) after church.And lest I forget and lean on a corner, a welt in the middle of my back inflicted by my loving little brother and a paintball rifle.Swag is so overrated, apparently. -KIE

Just like you'll get grief [from some] for being into LEGO at all when you get to be my age. Then, there are some that will just look back so fondly on days gone by. -KIE

Hrm...yucca root? no.... Garlic? Well, that won't get breaded, but I fry that all the time.... Pasta? Er, maybe.... I've got it! Fried Orange Juice! They'll never fry orange juice! Or if they do, well, I give up. -KIE, who just fries hashbrowns & chicken

No, it's German Chocolate. Thank you, Turakii. Give my belated birthday greetins to yon Toa of Bubbles. -KIE

Well geez, I've already said I didn't get tickets, so I can't get an autograph, because I'm not going to be at the game!! Thanks for not rubbing it in. *over it* -KIE

1) Violet 2) Violet 3) Violet Not-purple for the win! -KIE

Well, either Marilyn or Matt Hasselbeck gift-wrapped a victory for the Cruisers this weekend. 81-70 is the final, and I was a 10½ point underdog. But I'm not about to complain or gloat: Jimmie gloated, and Tim, the commissioner, came up with this story to switch kickers and wide receivers after the fact, creating a tie between the Touchdown Titans (Tim) and the Caribe Sharks (team Martinez), with the Titans having a player left to play tonight. Marilyn still said she wanted to start T.J. Who'sYourDaddy, but someone told her to start the Patriot RB pair. Yeah, I'm gonna get lit up by her next time we meet (probably next year). But that's not the football I'm talking about. Today's my birthday. It's an office tradition to have a birthday cake every month for those in the office whose birthday is that month. Except September last year. See, last year I was the only September birthday, and had only been working for Digital for 7 months, so no one realized when my birthday was. Massive apocalyptic hurricane Katrina putting most businesses out didn't help either. So today, my first birthday cake in at least 15 years. No more than 22 years, though...I remember the Putt-Putt party when I was 5, and I know there was cake then. But that's not football at all. Tonight, the Louisiana Superdome is reopened. Monday Night Football. People taking off work. (Some guys are leaving in a few minutes, for a game that won't start for another 9 hours.) Everyone wearing black & gold. This city needed this. Really. Thank you, Paul Tagliabue, for sticking it to Tom Benson when he tried to move the team to San Antonio. Benson is a, well, it's not a nice word, so I'm not going to repeat it. Anyway, I have work to get done. I'm not going to the game tonight. Nope, couldn't get the office tickets FOR MY BIRTHDAY. MY BIRTHDAY THAT WENT UNCELEBRATED LAST YEAR, but I'm not bitter. I'm going to BW3 in Hammond, instead. GN, you & your brother (and by extension the family, but I'm not buying everyone's meal) are welcome to join, but I'm not driving all the way to BR to catch a football game. -KIE, who is still waiting for Torhu to tell him why BW3 screwed up the Caribbean Yerk (but with a J) sauce P.S. Next week, the Cruisers are favored early by 5½ over the visiting Poplarville Stallions, then a truly rough stretch against the Cookie Crunchers, Dahveed's Dominion, and the aforementioned Titans.

Perhaps if you celebrate International Omi Day with the rest of us, you will learn the ways of ascended coolness that you (and the rest of us mere mortals) could declare your own, International Torhu Day. Then again, maybe not. -KIE

Yeah, there was a safe distance given in the instructions, but see, Michael didn't realize he was only 4-5 yards (roughly 4 meters) away when he fired. He's said as much and apologized. I can still give him grief over it. It looks like it successfully scabbed overnight. Still a tender welt, though. Oh, and in the time between my including the link at the beginning of the post and the time of posting, Edgerinn James scored a touchdown (6-7 points) and the New York Giants (not sure who) intercepted Matt Hasselbeck (2 points) and returned it for a touchdown (6 points). Between that, the Moss Bluff Cruisers upset the toughest team in the DEII 2006 FFL, 81-70. Will go in the "Woulda Lost" column because T.J. Howdoyouspellhislastname and Todd Heap were more effective than the two Patriot running backs; Marilyn would've ruined my first good performance of the year. But hey, win's a win. To follow up on paintball, all 13 of us (2 stayed out of the speedball at the end) agreed: while it was fun and definitely something cool to do every 6 months, none of us are going to get serious about it. Sorry if that throws a wet towel over your plans for BZP domination, GN. -KIE

Today was the first time I ever picked up a CO2 rifle, Omi. I was a rookie and it showed. A not-too-shabby rookie, but a rookie nonetheless. -KIE

Uh...when would there ever be another AC12? Isn't the next one 13? And then 14? Does it wrap around eventually? -KIE

Kopaka's Ice Engineering is wondering how Little Miss Krahka will smack divine might into Kopaka's Ice Engineering should Kopaka's Ice Engineering not use third person, but then Kopaka's Ice Engineering realized Kopaka's Ice Engineering was using third person anyway, so the point was moot. -KIE

Observe the manhandling of the Cruisers, in their home stadium, versus the Laplace Gators. Peyton on a good team, as if I ever had a chance. 0-2 becoming 0-3 on the way to 0-5. That's not what hurts today though. Although yes, knowing I'm putting down $110 all told to get walloped week in-week out is an ego blow, there are other things. Like, say, Friday night, when the whole of Napa Valley turned out to take out yon Über-Monster-of-the-Fortnight, the Void Shadow. Took 3 hours to kill. At 6000 gold or so insurance renewal per death (because it's really hard to kill the monster when the monster takes your armor or weapon), I lost about half a million gold to one monster. By the current eBay exchange rate, that's about $9 cash...a pretty decent loss considering how difficult it is to lose money in Ultima Online. But the big baddy is gone now, so all is well, until the next über-monster-of-the-fortnight rolls around and wreaks havoc for two weeks. And yet, that's not really why I post this. Today I drove the Causeway, the longest bridge in America (23 miles, give or take), to the north shore [of Lake Pontchartrain] to Abita Springs, to go play paintball with the rest of my little brother's wedding party. It's a guys & girls bachelor party. First round was capture the flag. I tasked myself with defending the flag. Knocked out one, maybe two attackers, but ran out of ammo. Fortunately, Red ran out of time after recovering our flag to return it to their base before time was called, so the game was drawn. $20 on another bag of paintballs, and we played, oh, not speedball but something similar to. I was the last man standing for Blue, and while I did some nice dodging, I got surrounded. Stood down. Then, a few private rounds of speedball, with just the wedding party (because it was obvious we had no clue what we were doing out there) Won a 6-on-5 matchup with no regen. Won a 5-on-6 matchup with regen. And then, a last round, just to finish off the paintballs we had. 2-on-3. While I had surrendered earlier, technically, I'd yet to have been hit. Off we go. Michael (my little brother, the groom), on the other team, splits to his right, where I've been camping out the past two rounds, very very effectively. I spray him as he comes across one of the bags and saw him duck. I had to duck myself because he was being given cover. So I figure he's hunkered down. Oh no. There's a lot of open ground in 2-on-3 speedball. I was watching the middle, where Stephen (I think it was Stephen. It wasn't Stobe, that's for sure.) was covering cross. In any case, I wasn't warned that Michael had kept moving along the boundary and came around the backside. For a split-second, I saw this sage green blur on the corner of my eye, and then all of a sudden a stinging pain in the small of my back, then a pop at my wallet. Michael shot me. Once in the back, once on the, well, rump. The first shot (on the back) not only gave me a welt, but tore a dime-sized hole in the shirt. The bruise is still seeping blood. That hurt. So anyway, my lifetime record in paintball is now 2-2-1. I can cover a flag pretty well, and I've got the volley thing down. But gee, my back stings. -KIE

That's because their server is a 486 in the computer science lab, Biomech. -KIE

No no...I've seen it before, but it was just BZ at the time..... 10 AM PT on December 9, 2001, I think. *pulled a random time and he knows it* -KIE

A: #3 Assorted Meercats. Reason: lack of white fabric -KIE

For a second, I thought, no hoped, you were talking about derivatives of the calculus variety. Hm...verdant means green, so I'm going to say verdate means lively or living. Amorance....a state of love Sororitous....dealing with a female collective on good terms with each other. (i.e. sorority) Ranine....Dr. Jones should quit making up words: I have no clue where to start on that one.

If it did, I would have already been Blog of the Week with my previous 4.7 ranking. However, Omi, with his perpetual 3.9-4.0, Exo with his low 4.something, and Turakii (now 4.3 ish) have all been blogs of the week. Unless your username is GregF, a high blog rating seems to preclude your blog from consideration. It's just the way the random selection falls. -KIE

Yes, thanks to someone one-star-rating my blog, I've been knocked down to 4.5 oblivion. Thank you, whoever decided to torpedo my rating. Word to the wise: High rating means nothing RE Blog of the Week. -KIE

Surefire way to keep the metabolism up and the water bill down. -KIE, who has been there.

That's not the only zany email: I posted another two back in June. They're back there..somewhere. No need to worry about shifting the topic of reply conversation without a clutch: just so long as it concerns the entry, it's fine by me. In fact, I expect it, as much stuff I cover per posting. And then edit in the next morning because I forgot about it when writing the original post. -KIE

And mine is next Monday...so I guess we're just not sure if it's anybody's birthday today. Certainly not Exo's. -KIE