Truine Metaphysics, CCNA, East Timor Book Launch, Socrates, Gaming

[tcpip]

Last Tuesday attended a meeting of the Atheist Society at Trades Hall. Rick Barker gave a surprisingly intelligible presentation on "The Truine Metaphysic of the Christians: Visible or Invisible?". Despite some of the very difficult Greek-derived terms (logos versus logia; emical versus etical; keros, theoria and chronos) this work was heavily derived from Gregory of Nyssa.

Sweet consistency finally reached in CCNA semester 2, with module test results of 87.0% (Routing and Routing Protocols) and 88.9% on Distance Vector Protocols. This week is TCP/IP Error and Control messages and Router Troubleshooting.

On Thursday went to David Scott's book launch ("Last Flight out of Dili") at Uni of Melbourne. David (a neighbour of mine, literally less than 100 meters away) was the founding director of Community Aid Abroad and served on the HMAS Arunta which was responsible for rescuing Australian soldiers from Timor in WWII. He was also in Dili in November 1975 just proir to the Indonesian invasion. The book is a very hefty tome, full of empirical data, references and so forth. It's not a light read by any stretch of the imagination and contains some quite choice quotes by the supporters and appeasers of the annexation. The other practical upshot of the launch (which was attended by hundreds of people) was the opportunity to catch up with Jose Ramos-Horta whom I had a couple of words with.

Sunday was spent voting in ALP elections for State Conference delegates, which apparently has seen a state-wide swing to the Socialist Left/Labour Left of 2-4%. Managed to get to the city just in time to give my presentation at the Unitarian Philosophy class on the last two books of the trial of Socrates, namely Crito, which deals with justice and just actions, and Phaedo, which has some rather interesting arguments for the immortality of the psyche. This was followed by the Outbreak of Heresy game which was primarily about local gypsies causing problems, but was seriously disrupted by dukeofmelbourne who managed to spoil the entire day for everyone with his unacceptable behaviour.

National Day of Protest against Industrial Relations changes is on tomorrow.

Comments

[evil-genius.livejournal.com]

The duke just can't keep his dick in his pants....

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

It is a problem at times.

His brain is fundamentally broken and, I suspect, beyond repair.

When it is lucid it can quite entertaining. At other times it is just a damn nuissance.

[evil-genius.livejournal.com]

Not interested in spewing public details ehe. Well best to leave the drama for the lhamas.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's not that. The 'details' are fairly trivial. Basically when the Duke is off his head he hogs the conversation (because he's talking at around 300 words per minute), he interrupts everyone else (he is the only person of note in the universe), his topics have nothing to do with the activity, he talks in extreme riddles and metaphors and his behaviour (moving things around), cluttering up the common space, drinking tea with pine cones and dice added etc are just a nuissance.

Six hours of this and we've had enough.

[evil-genius.livejournal.com]

Why on earth did you put up with such a disruption for 6 hours.

You would have done both your group and the duke a service by pulling him aside after 20 or 30 minutes. Explaining the situtation to him in no uncertian terms and then kicking him out.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

We have told him in no uncertain terms if he does this again he'll be banned from our group permanently.

I guess some of us feel sorry for him. He is brain damaged after all (in the literal sense).

[jimboboz.livejournal.com]

Reading his blog, there's no way I'd let him in my group.

So what if you feel sorry for him, doesn't mean you need to let him in your group. I feel sorry for the thieving heroin addict, or the gambling addict, or the woman who went troppo and lopped off the leg of her toddler. Doesn't mean I'd invite them over for dinner!

Roleplaying is not my chosen method of exercising charity towards the suffering.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I understand your points.

This said, when he is lucid he does come up with some excellent roleplaying ideas (this is a guy who used to write for A&E and rewrote Empires of the Middle Ages).

Even in this game his character is very interesting; a Czech Puritan Hussite who has a thing for their armoured mobile cannons.

[jimboboz.livejournal.com]

Oh well, better you than me:D

My old man works with brain injury patients. He doesn't do it because he feels sorry for them, he does it for casual and penalty rates.

The issue of a player who's sometimes great, but usually awful, is a common one, going beyond the occasional actual brain-damaged person. I look at it this way: if one person screws up a whole session for five others, they need to be exceptional for another five sessions just for your net amount of fun to be zero. I've never encountered a "usually great, sometimes awful" player who was trouble less than every third session. So on balance they're not worth it.

Don't believe the Geek Social Fallacies. Ostracism can be good.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I've never encountered a "usually great, sometimes awful" player who was trouble less than every third session.

I think the breakdown (using d4-d4 terms) is middling with occassional outstanding and occassional crap.

I did award him -50 character points ;-)

Don't believe the Geek Social Fallacies. Ostracism can be good.

Which is why they instituted it. Much better than prisons or other forms of incarceration.

[jimboboz.livejournal.com]

Speaking of ostracism, you should reply to your emails as quickly as you do to your LJ comments:D

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, but that requires confirmation from another person, remember?

[evil-genius.livejournal.com]

It just seems kind of cruel to let him make an ass of himself. If this happens from time to time. Then chances are it will happen again at some point and then you will have to ban him. Far better to realize the man has problems and put some other plan of action into place for next time he flips out. Otherwise his eventual banning is inevitable.

[jimboboz.livejournal.com]

Maybe they're hoping to "help" him. It wouldn't be the first time I've seen a group hope to "help" a disturbed person, or "educate" an ignorant person.

Or maybe they're just trying to be nice. It takes a hard heart to tell someone to sod off. I know, I will probably have to sack a waitress this weekend.

[evil-genius.livejournal.com]

I would hope they are trying to help him. But the ultimatum of do it again and you are out is only going ot lead to him being banned. As the implication of Lev's post is that he has done this before. Chance are he will do it again.

I'm just saying they aught to have some kind of alternative plan. Like maybe one person could volunteer to take him for a nice long walk to let everyone else play.

[lardarsegreg.livejournal.com]

On a totally unrelated subject... what advice do you have to a new Linux user?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

What distribution are they using?

[lardarsegreg.livejournal.com]

Ubuntu 5.10 "Breezy Badger"

And it's me who's using it. My otehr computer was dicking around too much with windows, so i switched.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. Welcome to the Lightbringers.

There's a decent el-jay Linux community (you can guess the name) and a very good Ubuntu newbies website:

http://www.ubuntux.org/

Don't feel afraid to ask me any questions either...

[evil-genius.livejournal.com]

Have lots of patience and beer. (not in that order)

Advice...

[imajica-lj.livejournal.com]

Learn how to find the information that's relevant to your system.
Check out your local LUG's (linux user group) and get onto their mailing lists as that's really where the help is, when you need it.
Don't be afraid to ask stupid questions.
Teach others.

Try:
http://www.bristol.lug.org.uk/

Re: Advice...

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

*points*

What he said.