Decomposing Train

I can’t say that I was ever that connected to him as anything other than a name on a book cover… Yeah, I played AD&D when I was a kid, but I branched out to other (and better, in my opinion) games quickly after getting introduced to role-playing games as a concept. I knew who he was only vaguely, in that he had “invented” Dungeons And Dragons… but it is much the same as Noah Webster = Dictionary, at least for me personally. He was highly regarded by a lot of people, though, and Websnark does a fair job sumarrizing Gygax’s impact on popular culture here.

Unencrypted signal = it’s only a matter of time.

UPDATE:  New Scientist has an article on it as well.

He was one of my all-time favorite comedians.

You know who I pray to? Joe Pesci. Joe Pesci. Two reasons; first of all, I think he’s a good actor. Ok. To me, that counts. Second; he looks like a guy who can get things done. Joe Pesci doesn’t fuck around. Doesn’t fuck around. In fact, Joe Pesci came through on a couple of things that god was having trouble with. For years I asked god to do something about my noisy neighbor with the barking dog. Joe Pesci straightened that cock-sucker out with one visit. — George Carlin, from You Are All Diseased

I’ve been following the Hans Reiser trial and conviction for the murder of his wife, via Wired.com’s Threat Level column.

I was a little bit shocked to read (very early this morning, thanks in part to the huge iced coffee I drank earlier combined with tummy trouble caused by a plate of tasty-but-damaging General Tso’s Chicken) that he’s finally led the police to the corpse as part of a deal to broker a reduced prison sentence. Asperger’s Syndrome, my ass. The guy is a freakshow, and so are the other people (well, one other person) involved. I predict there will be a movie deal soon.

At least the Linux-geeks have something new to giggle about.

The thing that struck me most about the digging-up-of-the-body is that, apparently, one of Reiser’s lawyers was handcuffed to him while he searched for the shallow grave and when Reiser found it, he and the lawyer dug up the body together. Do they tell people in Law School, “Someday, you might have to dig up a corpse.” I wonder what the billable rate is on that?