Third Verse Same As The First Two

I swear that Murphy must love those of us on Blogger.

The other night, I was getting ready to log and head to bed when I noticed something odd: the listing for my MMO Blogroll feed was messed up again:

As of 11:50 PM EST on October 13, 2026.

See all those regularly updated blogs unfairly shunted to the bottom of the pile? Yeah, I couldn't explain it either, but when I clicked on one of the links I got basically a bunch of HTML garbage, as if Blogger couldn't understand what the feed was. 

Anyway, by during the day yesterday it certainly looked like things were back to normal, except for poor ol' Wilhelm, who had somehow avoided the issues last time but was stuck in hell this time:

From 5:00 PM EST on October 14, 2026.

I Have Touched the Sky has been broken since forever, so I discounted that one, but I did check and verify that The Ancient Gaming Noob has a brand new post as of October 14:

As of 5:01 PM EST on October 14, 2026.

Ironically enough, both the old post found in my Blogroll and the current post have to do with Richard Garriott of Ultima fame, only 14 years apart. Wilhelm's post encapsulates my opinions of Garriott quite well, so I don't need to hash it out here. I will say, however, that there must have been something in the water at Origin Systems, because both Garriott and Chris Roberts of Star Citizen have what I will politely describe as gone off their rocker over the years. I guess you could call them both a case study in people who have come into too much money and 'street cred' far before they were mature enough to handle it, but I digress.

I guess I was going to have to wait for Wilhelm's blog to be properly read by Blogger, until I was perusing the blogroll and noted something odd:

As of 6:30 PM EST on October 14, 2026.
Yes, I went back and got this screencap after I'd
started writing this.

Knowing Shintar and her current interest in WoW Forever, I didn't trust that that was her most recent post. Sure enough, when I clicked on her blog, I found that yes, she'd made a new post today:

As of 6:12 PM EST on October 14, 2026.

So yeah, something is up once again. In the meantime, Blogger has been active in other areas:

I noticed this early in the day on October 14, 2026.

I read the notice, and it was all about adult content, non-consensual adult content, scams, hate speech, etc. My first thought while reading this was "You mean to tell me this wasn't there before now?" Better late than never, I guess, although in today's world some people might read this rather reasonable announcement and cry "Censorship!" or worse, "Woke!" But that's the world we live in today in 2026.

Stay tuned, peeps, because I'm sure this whole situation will change in a few days. Again.

***

And just as I was prepping this entry to post in the morning, this happened:

As of 7:06 PM EST on October 14, 2026.

Yeah, I don't get it. I mean, it's a feed, and all you have to do is poll it when you reload the blog and you get the latest post. Why did it take so long for Blogger to realize it was there? And still no sign of Wilhelm's blog either.

There are days when I wish that this was 1998, because at least the hypertext was simpler and I knew that if something broke I could fix it. But now, I'm completely dependent upon a company whom is little better than Microsoft at rolling out patches for a platform that I'm not quite convinced that they want to keep supporting.

***

And guess what? The issue on last night HAPPENED AGAIN.

Taken on 11:45 PM EST on October 14, 2026.

This time at least I took a screencap of what happens when I clicked on a link or two, such as Priest With a Cause:

Taken on 11:49 PM EST on October 14, 2026.

And here's Kaylriene's Blog:

Taken on 11:49 PM EST on October 14, 2026.

About the only thing I can say is that if you hover over the blog entry on the problematic links, it definitely shows the /feed hyperlink, not the actual blog hyperlink. On the properly working links, you see the actual blog URL address. How Blogger is screwing this up after well over a decade of stability is a complete unknown to me.

/sigh

Meme Monday: Quiet Memes

There are times when I want peace and quiet. 

That doesn't always happen, of course, but a guy can dream. Sometimes, however, I find the most peace and quiet in an MMO, where you'd think that is most likely NOT the case. I mean, the acronym means Massively Multiplayer Online, but hey, it happens. Especially when you do what I do and go against the grain.

From SrGrafo, via Reddit.

If you play it just right, you can find
some peace. From Instagram.

It needs to be said that this is merely
an illusion. Having been on the progression
train, I know that this peace only lasts
for a few moments at best. From YouTube.

Sometimes the peace and quiet finds you
standing in awe someplace for the first time.
From Instagram.

And then there's this image. (Minus the
murloc. Come on, don't ruin the feeling!)
From Facebook.

What am I Doing at 5 AM on a Saturday (Again)?

Who, me? Oh, not much...

This was around 7 AM. 7-ish.

Today was the morning of the Queen Bee Half Marathon, and I along with 40 or so other hams were providing communications for the staff.

As this was my first marathon, I was grouped up with our club's president, and I carpooled with her to our station (shown above) at the designated time. Since I was driving to her place first, that meant I was up at 5 AM to have an early breakfast, get dressed, and get out the door with my equipment by 6 AM.

I think I'm going to have to stop by this
coffee shop for a visit soon. The coffee
smelled delicious.

The water station was manned by kids from one of the nearby high schools, and we were joined soon after our arrival by spectators wanting to cheer on the participants. 

Our presence was there to not only contact Net Control for assistance --medical or otherwise-- should it be needed, but to also let Net Control know who the lead runners were so others would be on the lookout farther down the race course. Our water station was one of the earlier ones, so I expected people to be clumped together once they reached us.

To my surprise, that wasn't what happened.

The lead runners were moving at a really fast pace and were already well ahead of the main body of runners by the time they passed us, but eventually the field swelled. I could have easily taken dozens of pictures, but these two will do:

These were some of the first runners after the lead
pack came through.

Once the runners had mostly passed by, the race
walkers were behind them, moving at a steady
pace by themselves.

Typically the Queen Bee draws between 4000-6000 participants*, and that jives with what I saw this morning.

As far as incidents goes, they thankfully were few and far between, so it was an enjoyable morning for the two of us. After the sweep bus came through (following the last of the participants) and we were discharged, the a few of us hams grabbed a mid-morning breakfast at a local restaurant before heading home.

Okay Pippin, you win. Yes, it was a Second Breakfast.
From Pinterest, but really, it's from Fellowship of the Ring.

So... That's what I was up to.

*There's both a Half Marathon and a 4-Miler race, so unofficially there were 3174 who completed the half marathon and 2209 who completed the 4-Miler, which makes it about 5383 total. There were a few hand cyclists on the course as well, and they started (and finished) ahead of the official Half Marathon. Our station would have seen both the Half Marathon and the 4-Miler crowds, and given that not everybody who started was able to finish, we probably saw even more than the people who actually finished.

Being Reminded What My Age Actually Is, Part Whatever

In case I didn't know I was getting old, my body reminded me of that this past weekend.

On Sunday, with the weather finally settled into a more traditional October sunny day, I decided I was going to work on my outside antenna a bit.

Now, to set the scene properly, I'd already planned on driving a ground rod into the side of the house where the antenna would reside, and I bought some 6 gauge solid copper ground wire to bond it to a ground rod on the back of the house. I'm eventually going to bond it to the house ground on the south side of the house, but unfortunately the fiberoptic cable that brings my internet (and phone service) into the house happened to have been run right on top of where the ground rod lay buried underground. 

The PVC pipe for the fiber line is on the left, the one for
electrical is on the right, and in the middle is an oxidized
ground line that connects directly to the ground rod
(buried) directly beneath it.

Sometimes you can't make this stuff up.

Anyway, I decided I'll deal with that house ground another day, but I could bond the two other grounds together this past Sunday.

To do that, I needed to run the ground wire along the edge of the house, under the deck and the raised porch, and then I could use the clamps I'd bought at Lowe's to finish the job. 

Easy peasy, right?

It may sound easy, but that involved me crawling around under the deck and the porch for upwards of an hour.

The amount of vertical space I had to work with was between 2 to 3 feet (2/3 to 1 meter), and most of that large end was under the porch section, where ironically enough most of the rocks strewn about the ground were as well.

I hope you're not claustrophobic.

So I didn't really have a lot of room to move over things, such as the PVC pipe there that redirects the sump pump from simply emptying out there under the deck* to a spot beyond the deck. I could have brought a screwdriver with me to disconnect the pipe and remove it, but to be honest that was going to be more trouble than it was worth. 

When I snuck under there, I quickly discovered it was still damp. The right side of my clothes were soaked before I'd gotten very far --I'm a lefty, so my right side was on the ground-- and then to avoid the pair of center beams I had to crawl to the left and then up toward where the wire had gotten stuck. 

No, I did not bring a smartphone while I was under the deck; the rocks would have destroyed it. 

I was able to free up the wire and shoved it forward to where it then reached the porch portion, and I had to exit and then head up that way.

Sure, I love rocks, but this is a bit much. Plus it's broken
pieces of concrete, so likely from a slab that was once
here. Just a guess, but given what I saw probably accurate.

If I thought the rocks I'd climbed over on the deck portion hurt, the porch side said "Hold my beer."

Also, I found some very unusual items there under the porch:

Trust me, they're there.

The item on the left is the remains of a small individual-sized yogurt cup which you can make out fairly well, but the one on the right... I began crawling closer and I thought "That CAN'T be what I think it is, right?" Oh yes, it was: a suction cup attachment for a breast pump, complete with the screw top connection for a baby bottle.

Okay, both of those items point to a family with really little kids, but how did they get under here? When our kids were little you couldn't even get under the deck because the skirting blocked any access, and the porch floor is tongue-and-groove, so you can't accidentally drop these items to the ground. So either a critter pulled those items under there, or they were dropped there during the construction of the porch itself. 

When I told my wife later what I'd found, she disputed the breast pump suction cup, saying it had to be something else. "A lot of things use suction cups," she insisted.

"Just how many have the screw tops for a baby bottle?" I countered. "And believe me, with three kids around here I know what the breast pump cup looks like."

She had nothing to say to that.

Anyway, once I got the wire pulled through to the far side I was able to connect the wire to the ground rods.

Here's the new one, hidden behind
a row of burning bushes.

That was a lot harder than I expected. Being in your mid-to-upper 50s and trying to crawl under a tight space like that like I was 30 years younger was probably not the smartest thing I've done, but it is finally finished for now. 

I woke up Monday morning feeling like I'd been run over by a truck. No amount of coffee or Tylenol could help with that, so I was a wee bit grumpy when I started work. Still, a very necessary part of antenna work was completed, and I won't have to crawl under the deck for a while.**

The next step is to simply wait for the roof to be replaced and then I'll proceed from there. Unfortunately, it might not be until Spring before I finally get an antenna up outside, but we'll see.

*Yes, when we first moved into the house I had no idea where the sump pump exited, and then on the first big rain it became quite obvious that it was just being dumped right under the porch itself. "Hell no," was my reaction, and I redirected it out to farther away under the deck, and I have since extended it to beyond the deck itself. That little indentation you see on the ground in the first photo is where the sump pump exited after my first "fix". 15 years created that little mini-valley where the dirt had washed away. 

**Note that I didn't say "never". I know better.

EtA: Corrected grammar. 

EtA: Also corrected that this was to be posted on Tuesday, not Monday. (Monday is for Meme Mondays.)

Meme Monday: Being Wrong on the Internet

In honor of the fact that I completely misinterpreted what the first video I posted the other day was about, I figured I'd touch on something that is incredibly common yet you'd never guess it from the way people act: being wrong on the internet.

Yes, I know, you're thinking of the XKCD comic:

From XKCD. But you knew that already.

If this was the only thing Randall Munroe was known for, he would live forever online. Of course, he's done FAR more than just this comic, and I heartily recommend his books as well as the entirety of the XKCD back catalog to peruse. 

Still, there's more than just this meme to cover for being wrong on the internet.

There is the Da Vinci method. From Idea Link.

Isn't this a sign of maturity that you don't wallow
in the pig sty (or the minefield)? Well, I don't often
have such restraint. I'm still trying, tho. From Quickmeme.

Or to put it another way, "You mad bro?"
Yeah, if people were saying that and put THAT
face in front of me, yeah, not good for my stress.
From memecoup via Instagram.

I've done something similar. At work. About
a decade ago. It could have gone really badly,
but the person I was complaining about did
de-escalate things. And we patched it back up.
From memegenerator.

Hoo boy. This reminds me of some of the holy
wars on soc.history.medieval on Usenet back
in the day. From Reddit.

This got me. /raises hand.
From Cleanmemes.

Speed Runners Gonna Speed Run

My YouTube feed is starting to calm down from the WoW Forever hysteria of the past few weeks.

I won't say that people are any less excited about a new version of World of Warcraft, but the initial rush of YouTube and blog posts seems to have calmed down quite a bit. Still, one of my observations that the game may change but the community doesn't seems to remain accurate...

And...

The speed running crowd certainly seems to be working things out right now, which kind of defeats the point of WoW Forever. Those seeking to monetize the optimized leveling process, such as Zygor, are prepping their tools for a release alongside (or shortly after) WoW Forever releases. 

If nothing else, the WoW community does not disappoint.

Okay, let's be honest with ourselves: speed running was definitely going to happen. There's no two ways about it, really. The concept of speed running has been baked into video game culture for decades now, and it is so ingrained into MMOs such as WoW that any attempt to slow the speed runners down has drawn lots and lots of gripes by the larger WoW community. Concepts such as time-gated content, staggered raid wing releases, and abilities (such as flying) locked behind reputation grinds are all there to combat speed running and protect the community from themselves. 

I guess someone ought to create a WoW Forever bingo card based on when they observe certain classic WoW community behavior in WoW Forever, with others providing a Shocked Pikachu face when it happens:

Use it or lose it, I guess. From all over the internet.

Instead of the Center Square being free, it could be a behavior which is effectively free: Saying "I'm bored" in Trade Chat. 

Oh well.

FINALLY

Their Googleness finally fixed the Blogroll:

As of September 30, 2026 at 8:49 AM EST.

That is all. Back to your regularly scheduled doomscrolling.