Musings of A Dark Lord

Fay wasn't all that bad, but this new one has me concerned:



Any storm named after a big huge honking piece of German artillery should make anyone worry. If the reference escapes you, Google "Schwerer Gustav".

Albus The Gay Sorcerer
(No, NOT slash!)
This story is not HBP nor DH compatible, and ignores a bunch of things from OOTP as well. It was inspired by one of my favorite movies.

After having managed to successfully wreck wizarding society by the latter half of 1999, Voldemort set his sights more fully on the Muggle world. The Muggles, Voldemort knew, were sufficiently numerous to be a threat to his designs of a new world order, especially given their technology. The Dark Lord created a spell intended to envelop the globe in a low-level magic field, one sufficiently powerful enough to disrupt the electronics so much of Muggle technology was dependent upon. Voldemort then planned to take advantage of the resulting chaos to reduce or eliminate any Muggle resistance to his rule, the better to impose his will on wizard and Muggle alike.

His plans were to come to fruition on Hogmanay, 31 December 1999. Voldemort’s ritual was timed to culminate at the stroke of midnight – his “Hogmanay gift to the filthy Muggle scum” – but was interrupted by a team of Aurors led by Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived. The Battle of Stonehaven was short but intense, ending at ten minutes to midnight with the final destruction of Voldemort. Harry Potter somehow managed to refocus Voldemort’s planned magic field solely on the Dark Lord himself, and the resulting concentration of magical energy was enough to bring a final end to the Dark Lord’s dreams of conquest. Many of Voldemort’s strongest supporters, such as the Lestranges and Malfoys, were destroyed as well…

-- Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts, LXXII Edition, excerpt from Chapter MMCLXIV, Defeat of the Dark Lord Voldemort

The Reign of Shadows or, as it is sometimes known, the Second War (of Voldemort), can be said to have begun in June of 1995 with the Resurrection of Voldemort and was ended by the final defeat of the dark wizard by the young Auror Harry Potter on 31 December 1999. (For more on this period, please refer to Chapters LXVII -- XCIX.) The damage done to wizarding society of the time by this conflict was incalculable, culminating in the wrecking of the wizarding economy in 1998 with the Death Eater assault on London’s Diagon Alley and the sacking of Gringotts Bank. The destruction of the Ministry of Magic in October of 1999 emphasized the tenor of the times, making the chaos of the following quarter-century an inevitability rather than the possibility that existed in the latter half of 1998. The total elimination of the government that year, coupled with the mysterious disappearance of Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore in 1998, left the wizarding world adrift with no able leader immediately available…at least, no such leader then acceptable to the majority of wizardkind. After twenty years of fits and starts, the last scion of the Black family, Sirius Black, had managed to convince a majority of the remaining powerful family Heads to support him as Minister of Magic…

-- Modern Magical History, Introduction to Chapter CCXXXII, page 10345

Okay, not doing a NaNoWriMo. But I am going to take the plunge and write something, to see if I still can. I'm hoping if I post it here, people will see it and twit me if I don't start writing.

I announce: Harry Potter: Seconds From Disaster. More will be posted here as I make it up.

NaNoWriMo...

...this title has put fear in the hearts of many a wanna-be writer. I, like many, have tried and failed. So this year I'm going to forego quantity for quality. My novel will be a historical...

( Want To Know More? )

Oh, Lord! Check this out: The LOLCat Bible

A friend of mine sent me this the other day. It's a fictional speech that the President could make if he got fed up with all the idiots in the country.

Normally, I start these things out by saying "My Fellow Americans." Not doing it this time. If the polls are any indication, I don't know who more than half of you are anymore. I do know something terrible has happened, and that you're really not fellow Americans any longer.

I'll cut right to the chase here: I quit. Now before anyone gets all in a lather about me quitting to avoid impeachment, or to avoid prosecution or something, let me assure you: There's been no breaking of laws or impeachable offenses in this office.

The reason I'm quitting is simple. I'm fed up with you people.

I'm fed up because you have no understanding of what's really going on in the world. Or of what's going on in this once-great nation of ours. And the majority of you are too damned lazy to do your homework and figure it out.

Let's start local. You've been sold a bill of goods by politicians and the news media. Polls show that the majority of you think the economy is in the tank. And that's despite record numbers of homeowners, including record numbers of MINORITY homeowners. And while we're mentioning minorities, I'll point out that minority business ownership is at an all-time high. Our unemployment rate is as low as it ever was during the Clinton administration. I've mentioned all those things before, but it doesn't seem to have sunk in.

Despite the shock to our economy of 9/11, the stock market has rebounded to record levels and more Americans than ever are participating in these markets. Meanwhile, all you can do is whine about gas prices, and most of you are too damn stupid to realize that gas prices are high because there's increased demand in other parts of the world, and because a small handful of noisy idiots are more worried about polar bears and beachfront property than your economic security.

We face real threats in the world. Don't give me this "blood for oil" thing. If I were trading blood for oil I would've already seized Iraq's oil fields and let the rest of the country go to hell. And don't give me this 'Bush Lied; People Died' crap either. If I were the liar you morons take me for, I could've easily had chemical weapons planted in Iraq so they could be 'discovered'. Instead, I owned up to the fact that the intelligence was faulty.

Let me remind you that the rest of the world thought Saddam had the goods, same as me. Let me also remind you that regime change in Iraq was official US policy before I came into office. Some guy named 'Clinton' established that policy. Bet you didn't know that, did you?

You idiots need to understand that we face a unique enemy. Back during the cold war, there were two major competing political and economic models squaring off. We won that war, but we did so because, fundamentally, the Communists wanted to survive, just as we do. We were simply able to outspend and out-tech them.

That's not the case this time. The soldiers of our new enemy don't care if they survive. In fact, they want to die. That'd be fine, as long as they weren't also committed to taking as many of you with them as they can. But they are. They want to kill you, and the bastards are all over the globe.

You should be grateful that they haven't gotten any more of us here in the United States since September 11th. But you're not. That's because you've got no idea how hard a small number of intelligence, military, law enforcement, and homeland security people have worked to make sure of that. When this whole mess started, I warned you that this would be a long and difficult fight. I'm disappointed how many of you people think a long and difficult fight amounts to a single season of 'Survivor'.

Instead, you've grown impatient. You're incapable of seeing things through the long lens of history, the way our enemies do. You think that wars should last a few months, a few years, tops.

Making matters worse, you actively support those who help the enemy. Every time you buy the New York Times, every time you send a donation to a cut-and-run Democrat's political campaign, well, dang it, you might just as well FedEx a grenade launcher to a Jihadist. It amounts to the same thing.

In this day and age, it's easy enough to find the truth. It's all over the Internet. It just isn't on the pages of the New York Times or on ABC or NBC News. But even if it were, I doubt you'd be any smarter. Most of you would rather watch "American Idol".

I could say more about your expectations that the government will always be there to bail you out, even if you're too stupid to leave a city that's below sea level and has a hurricane approaching.

I could say more about your insane belief that government, not your own wallet, is where the money comes from. But I've come to the conclusion that were I to do so, it would sail right over your heads.

So I quit. I'm going back to Crawford. I've got an energy-efficient house down there (Al Gore could only dream) and the capability to be fully self-sufficient. No one ever heard of Crawford before I got elected, and as soon as I'm done here pretty much no one will ever hear of it again. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to die of old age before the last pillars of America fall.

Oh, and by the way, Cheney's quitting too. That means Pelosi is your new President. You asked for it.

She has already proposed the following appointments:

Chuck Shumer- Vice President

John Murtha - Secretary of Defense

John Kerry - Secretary of State

Barrack Obama -UN Ambassador

Al Gore-Energy

Harry Reid- Homeland Security

Al Sharpton- Health, Education & Welfare

John Edwards - Attorney General

Ted Kennedy - Labor

John Corzine- Treasury

Hillary Clinton - Special Counsel to the President (for double-checking all other appointees)

Bill Clinton/Jimmy Carter - Chief Presidential Advisors

Jesse Jackson - Special Assistant on African American Affairs

Watch what these folks do carefully, because I still have a glimmer of hope that there are just enough of you remaining who are smart enough to turn this thing around in 2008.

So that's it. God bless what's left of America . Some of you know what I mean. The rest of you, kiss off.

There's a lot of truth in this. I sincerely hope that 51% of America wakes up and realizes it before things pass the point of no return.

I stole this image from the Auburn Athletics site:




I'd say that just about explains it all. War Eagle!

Tropical Depression #4!

This one worries me a bit. You can believe I'll be keeping an eye on it...

Y'know, earlier tonight I was watching the "Candy Castles" show; I think it was on the Food Channel. It's the show where candy chefs make castles out of spun sugar and other confectionary items, and they compete for best looking and most likely to stay together.

I had a thought.

If I were to ever appear on that show, I have no doubt that they would kick me off very shortly, because my castle would be complete with gingerbread men-at-arms, catapults, and trebuchets.

I would be firing peppermint candies and such at the other contestants' castles.

Heh.

::grin:: Be afraid, Chantal...;)

Yes, it's Saturday, it's raining, I'm home from work. So, rather than doing something productive, like working on my stuff for Jocasta or Aran Weyrs, or studying for finals, I'm taking quizzes. This one is a Serenity quiz:

Your results:
You are Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic)

Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic) 85% Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command) 80% River (Stowaway) 80% Wash (Ship Pilot) 80% Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic) 80% Derrial Book (Shepherd) 75% Alliance 60% Malcolm Reynolds (Captain) 55% Jayne Cobb (Mercenary) 45% Inara Serra (Companion) 45% A Reaver (Cannibal) 35%

You are good at fixing things. You are usually cheerful. You appreciate being treated with delicacy and specialness.

Click here to take the Serenity Personality Quiz

Well, I am back at work, and on my first day back in the plant, the idiots have struck again. This time, they work for someone else. Y'see, we're having VFDs* installed at my place, and I arranged for someone to be there first thing today to get them in and configured. First, they show up late. Secondly, they show up woefully underequipped. I had to tell them where to go to buy the things they should have brought with them in the first place. (We're talking basic stuff here for electrical installation -- wires and conduit, for the love of little apples!) Thirdly, a trip that would normally take thirty minutes at worst took this crew two and a half hours!

What took them so long? Well, they weren't sure if they could actually buy anything. This in spite of the fact that they had company credit cards and a job to do. This also in spite of the fact that they had me around and I would have been happy to go get the stuff (since I'm going to be charged for it anyway, why not?) Apparently, they sat in the parking lot of the supply house for two hours waiting to be told what to do.

Finally, they made it back, supplies in tow, and get to work. Basic installation of the panel was easy. We got that knocked out in a little over an hour. Then came the fun part -- interfacing the new VFD panel with my existing electronics. It turned out that the man who came to see me in October either didn't take proper notes or misread what he had; there were no clear instructions in his drawings to tell the installer what to do.

We spent the next two hours poring over ladder diagrams to try to figure out what had to be wired where. Just when I thought we had it worked out (hey, I was happy with the setup and I still think it would have worked! -- power would have gone where it needed to go and done what it should have done, and everybody would have been happy) the tech decided he was going to fax the diagrams to his home office, quit for the day, and wait for them to tell him what to do.

Here's what I want to know -- what has happened to initiative and personal responsibility? If my training and experience tells me a possible solution to a problem is going to work, I am going to go ahead and do it. I don't see the need for a "Mother may I?" from the home office. If you are the kind of person who is so unsure of yourself as to need some long-distance handholding, I don't think I want you in my plant handling my jobs.

* VFD stands for variable-frequency drive. It's a controller for a three-phase AC motor that allows it to run at different speeds.  It does this by varying the level of the voltage (from 0 to 460 volts) and its frequency (from 0 to 60 hertz), hence the name.

Well, I could be betaing for Loralee, or writing my Evil Weyrleader for Jocasta, but instead I'm surfing LJ and taking strange quizzes:

You scored as Dante Alighieri. According to you most of humanity will spend at least some of their afterlife in hell. You have a high likelihood of being exiled, but anyone as bloody fucking romantic as you deserves what they get. You have an exceptional moral code, overshadowed by the fact that you yourself cannot uphold it. Your existence bears a definite irony, although of fairly Christian morality, many pagans, satanists, communists, and intellectuals admire you and your works for all the wrong reasons. Also, the brighest star in your sky is never going to be your lover... It takes a lot of grief to be the cartographer of hell. </td> Dante Alighieri 92% Adolf Hitler 75% Jesus Christ 75% O.J. Simpson 58% Hugh Hefner 58% Stephen Hawking 58% Sigmund Freud 42% Charles Manson 33% Elvis Presley 33% Friedrich Nietzsche 33% Miyamoto Musashi 25% C.G. Jung 17% Mother Teresa 8% Steven Morrissey 0% What Pseudo Historical Figure Best Suits You? created with QuizFarm.com

Y'all gotta try this! I almost fell out of my chair when I read it!

Dear Santa... Dear Santa, This year I've been busy! In November I invaded Iraq, broke it, and couldn't glue it back together before Mom got home (-1012 points). Last week I had a shoot-out with rival gang lords on the 5 near LA (-76 points). In June I turned ardys_the_ghoul in for running naked in the mall (3 points). Last Tuesday I helped aerden see the light (8 points). In January I put gum in hermionegreen's hair (-12 points). Overall, I've been naughty (-1089 points). For Christmas I deserve a lump of coal! Sincerely, sauron_the_dark

Write your letter to Santa! Enter your LJ username:

Now here's a book I can really get behind:



If you're looking for a Christmas present for me, here you go!

I can't say that I'm surprised to see this, given the tenor of the series. If you haven't read any of the Politically-Incorrect Guides, I think you owe it to yourself to check at least one of them out. I've read three (American History, Islam, and English Literature) and they all raise points that I never ran across during any of my formal education.

As a matter of fact, I used the American History guide to ambush a history teacher last year. :) I'm looking forward to seeing what this book has to say.

Disclaimer: the author is a proud Son of the South and never has believed the lies that have been promulgated in Yankee texts, anyway...

I am posting this on an old machine of mine that I decided to install Linux on, over the holidays. To those of you who ask me why I'd want to do that in a Windows world, I say, "Why not?" It's something new and different.

So far, it hasn't been that bad an experience. It's very heavy on command-line stuff, but so were the various iterations of MS-DOS, and I figure if I can tackle that, I can learn to handle Linux.

Chantal, I haven't forgotten that I owe you fifteen w-words, and you and I need to get together to plan the overthrow of the Southern Continent...

Ever have the feeling that you were surrounded by idiots? It's been that kind of weekend for me, and it's only Saturday. Y'see, I've had the week off, as I've got a lot of vacation time stored up and was told I had to use it or lose it. Apparently, while I've been off the inmates escaped and have been happily running the place.

Example Primus: Monday I got a call from the plant telling me that a pump starter wasn't working right and what should they do? I gave them detailed directions as to what to look at and where to hit it, and followed it up with the very important warning: "Should these steps fail, shut the unit off completely and I will look at it this weekend." Much to my...amusement, when I got to the plant this morning, not only was the unit not shut off, it had been left in the auto-run position and as a consequence, completely burned up the motor starter.

Example Secundus: Yesterday, I got a call from one of the field guys. He wanted me to know that one of our lift stations had gone down and "he'd tried everything he could" but was unable to get it to come back up. I told him to lock it down, keep an eye on the station's well, have it pumped down if it got too full, and I'd look at it this morning. When I got to work, I discovered that the boss had panicked and had arranged for a repair shop down in Baldwin County (a couple hundred miles away) to shag ass up here first thing Monday morning (at great expense, y'see) and install a new pump or two in the station. This is moronic because a) this station, along with two others, is scheduled for rehab in two or three weeks (why get new pumps when the whole thing is going to be replaced with something better shortly?), b) he should know by now that if it can be fixed I can fix it, and c) even if I can't fix it, Monday morning would have been plenty of time to call for a repair because the local Roto-Rooter can keep it pumped down for us.

I rolled in, checked it out, and found that one pump was burned completely out and the other, probably as a result of the field guy "trying everything he could", was suffering from a wire not connected properly. I had to replace a bad starter and properly reconnect a pump. Total time: thirty minutes. Fortunately, I was able to cancel the service call, which should look good on my annual evaluation next week. :)

Example Tertius: There is a small lift station at my plant which deals with the drainwater from my sludge drying beds. As near as I can figure, a lot of water released at once, causing the station alarm light to trip (a high water level in the station well is one of the things that can cause this). The fellow backing me up saw that light and apparently assumed that something else was the problem, so he opened up the panel to check. Now, in this panel is a little device called a phase monitor. Its job is to keep an eye on incoming power to ensure that it remains within certain limits. If incoming power deviates from these limits, the monitor shuts the station down until the power returns to normal. There's a little indicator light on the front of the phase monitor which tells you whether or not the thing is set right and working as it should. In this instance, the normal function light is red. As near as I can figure, Mr. Backup saw the red light and, assuming the color meant a malfunction, carefully adjusted the phase monitor so that the light went OFF, thereby shutting down the phase monitor and, with it, the control panel. He was proud of what he did; so proud, in fact, that he wrote a highly-detailed explanation of what he did in the logbook.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying anything against the man's initiative or willingness to try and solve a problem. I just want to know why he didn't call me when he couldn't get the station to work after he made his adjustments. Wouldn't it make sense to call the person who lives with this stuff every day to see if he had a helpful hint?

Sometimes all I want to do is put a lock on the front gate that only I have a key to, so I can keep the idiots out.

My daughter has discovered the Dominion Tank Police.

She will not let me send the DVD back to Blockbuster. Thank the Lord for unlimited rentals.

From the UPI wire...

Flood walls and levees have held their own in northeast Pennsylvania and New York against flooding that killed at least 14 people in four states.

See what happens when they don't steal the levee money until AFTER the work is done?