Irritating rollover navy advert

Logged into MSN for the first time in ages - suddenly noticed this rollover advert in MSN - when you move your mouse over it, it expands and fills up a bit of space on your desktop - click to close, but it opens up everytime you rollover.

Irritating as hell, no? Definitely doesn't make me feel like joining the navy.

A gift I want

Someone, please commit to playing some boardgames with me!

Northern Lights

Penny (Elaine) 's been recommending His Dark Materials for the longest time, so I picked it up for the plane ride to/from Jakarta last week. And with the author's recent interviews indicating that he liked CS Lewis' Narnia works but thought that Tolkien's LotR had no substance, it seemed he might have something there in his own work.

It was.... not as good as it could have been. A very interesting backstory, with the daemons, fate, some quantum weirdness. But done in too cavalier a manner, the story's too short, everything falls into place too easily. Unless his whole theme is meant to be that Lyra is the fated one and that everyone else she meets is just cannon fodder in the story of her life, and the book is meant to feel like that. That's like HP telling me that Eddings' repetitious writing style in his Belgariad and Malloreon series is meant to fill in the theme of recurring patterns of history.

I definitely won't be buying the next two books, I think. Maybe borrow from library just to see the completion of his ideas.

And contrary to what Wing thinks, without having read the last two books, I do think Asriel and Coulter are both evil people.

We met randomly

Some days ago I was trying to add an office colleague to my new facebook account. Due to some miscomm I actually ended up adding someone else I didn't know instead.

Today I saw a notification that said (random) person had accepted the notification - we met randomly. Is that apt or what? I think I'll go clarify with said person. :>

Conflict of interests

1) KeY wants to get a bike license.

2) I think motorbikes are dangerous for riders regardless of skill.

3) I think that a bike license will inevitably lead to bike-riding.

4) I also believe that I should not impose my desires on others - they should have free choice.

5) I've told KeY my thoughts about bike-riding.

6) She still seemed keen.

7) I was conflicted and unhappy. I told her about point 4 as well, and my internal conflict.

8) She promised not to.

Did I violate point 4? How does point 4 work when other people's actions can have severe effects on my own happiness? Am I just scared of having to go through life alone?

A new group of gamers, a new group of games

Met a different bunch of boardgamers today - and tried out a few games, including:

RoboRally - crazy crazy mechanical shoot each other up fun! Definitely not a serious game.. very party, because it's (i) 8 players; (ii) encourages chaos and destruction, (iii) very luck-based! Storyline - bored robots racing around a factory. Win either by getting all the rally flags or by killing everyone else.

Mr. Jack - one-on-one game (though we split into two teams to play this), kind of like Fury in the sense that one player is trying to deduce and the other player is trying to hide. An inspector is trying to find Jack the Ripper in London 1888 - but it's complicated because he's hidden himself among one of 8 people. Most of the players felt the game was quite skewed in favour of the inspector, but I don't think overly so. Well, I'll find out in a bit if I buy this.

Bang - like Mafia! One sheriff, some deputies, outlaws, and renegades, trying to kill each other off. I thought this was really fun! Definitely a party game, it apparently plays up to 8, and like Cash n Guns, banging people is real fun!