Tag: personal

Shame Comes to My Alma Mater

So you’ve probably already seen the video above. The story went national sometime last Friday afternoon and it seemed that wherever I looked over the weekend there it was. Oh, just another bunch of Occupy Wall Street kids and just another in the seemingly endless cases of Police brutality. And, maybe for you that’s all it is. Not for me though, see University of California is where I went to college; it’s where my wife is attending right now for her PhD. we live in Davis. Davis is a wonderful place to live with a great sense of community. The city itself has had an occupy movement that has camped in Davis Central Park for over a month now and the city has done nothing but support it’s citizens right to peaceful protest. Sadly, a block away on the UCD campus that sentiment is not shared…

I don’t know how to feel about all of this… Mostly what I’m feeling is ashamed. Ashamed that the school I attended, the school I loved did this to some of her students. Ashamed that the woman in charge of UCD doesn’t seem to understand what the role of a University is, or her role in guiding it.

I felt these things strongly enough to write a  letter to the Chancellor of UC Davis, Linda P.B. Katehi:

Chancellor,

You know what this letter is about. I imagine your mailbox is beginning to overflow with them. As a UCD Alumni I take some pride in my Alma Mater and the actions you initiated against peaceful student protesters is truly horrifying and unacceptable. “Alma Mater” is a funny Latin phrase, it means nourishing mother and was used as a term to describe numerous pagan deities, such as Ceres and Cybele, and to describe the Virigin Mary. This term is also applied though to our colleges and universities. These entities, UC Davis, exist to provide an education, to nourish the soul and mind of those who attend them who in doing so become their children. I can’t think of anything more opposed to the spirit of Alma Mater than the actions the UCD police, on your orders, took against students.

I’ve stopped my end of year donation to UCD and it won’t resume until the officers, not just Lt. Pike, are properly reprimanded if not removed and you personal apologize not only to the students your actions have harmed, but to all UCD students, alumni, and the institution itself. You shame us all with your behavior.

Sincerely,

Jonathon Howard

If you want to read a much more powerful and effective letter you can find one here.

If you want to sign the petition calling for Chancellor Katehi’s resignation you can find it here.

GO AGGIES!

Planeswalking Once More

I hope you appreciate the mess I made, and had to clean up, in order to take this picture...
 I played Magic: the Gathering in high school pretty extensively. I didn’t have much disposable income but what I did have went into procuring more MtG cards. I in to the hobby enough to participate in local tournaments and wager money on the game before I quit. My quitting story isn’t all that unique, I have an addictive personality and played Standard. That meant that I was constantly having to keep my deck(s) up to date whenever new sets came out. This wasn’t so bad when I was competing with other teenagers, there were a couple of kids who had large allowances but I could deal with that. No, it was when adults with jobs got involved in the local hobby scene that I left. These guys had jobs they had a lot more money coming to them than I ever did and they were happy to spend that money, frivolously, to get whatever cards they needed. I could still deal with that it just meant I had to be smarter about deck construction. What drove me away was these grown men taking advantage of naive teenagers and small children. How so? Selling cards and decks to them for much more than they were worth as well as showing up to tournaments where the oldest participant was maybe, 13, and then trouncing everyone one to win a box of boosters, when they could easily buy that box. I sold all my cards and went on with my life; happier and with more money in my wallet.

Fast forward 13 years and I now find myself playing the game again. It was a slow process of hanging out in a forum and IRC room with people who played, finding out one of my friends here used to play (and kept many of his cards), and the release of Magic 2012 for Xbox Live Arcade. I first picked up the XBLA game (that is a single purchase and comes with all the decks/cards you (or anyone) will be able to play with, you can unlock various cards for the various decks by playing with them. This is a nice way to play MtG without having to worry about purchasing cards or constructing decks. I’ve been playing about two or three games a week against the computer and am having fun.

I also went into a hobby store looking to pick up a couple of starter decks to teach D how to play the game. I some how lucked out and managed to enter a hobby store when someone working there actual cared that I was a potential customer and he sat down and answered a number of questions about MtG and then handed me two free 30 card decks to play with. D and I have played a couple of times with these and I’m hopeful that she’ll get into it enough that we can sit down with some real decks (pre-constructeds, probably) and play.

One of the first things I noticed is that they’ve simplified the game by removing interrupts and other card types, everything is either an instant or a sorcery, as well as reformating the phases in a turn. The game doesn’t play that differently but it is easier to explain.

So, just a heads up you might be seeing some MtG related posts in the future.

PS – If you have MtG:2012 on XBLA look me up and we’ll play! I’m xnosophorosx

My Name in Print on a Book!

I took this one day at work with a cheap instant camera

It isn’t exactly how I want to see my name on a book. The goal here is to be the name that comes after the title, you know, the author? But, I’ll take what I can get for now. You can’t ever be the author if you don’t ever sit down and write. That’s a problem I have, I don’t write nearly enough.

The new edition of California’s Legislature just came out (you can see the old edition here.) I was interning in the Chief Clerk’s office at the time it was being revised and such and helped do research for the book. I don’t quite recall what the research was. It was looking up various dates or verifying said dates. Anyway, that isn’t important; what’s important is that my name is in the acknowledgments section of the book:

That's me! I circled it for you to make it easier to find

Shock of all shocks they spelled my name wrong. Doesn’t matter that I had it verified twice with the editors. I’m sure some “helpful” person at the Printer’s decided I didn’t know how to spell my own name. To you “helpful” printer I say, “die in a fire, please.”

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