space_coyote has posted pictures of volume 2 of Yokaiden. What? You say you haven't read volume 1 yet? What are you waiting for, run down to the store and pick it up. It's fun!

Volume 2 comes with nifty features like pre-printed, pre-assembled pages. That's right! No longer do you need to print, cut, stack, and glue the pages, only to then need to find the heaver paper to print the cover on. Del Rey's manga group has already done that for you, all you need due is turn the pages and read.

Honestly, I'm looking forward to volume 2, and you have find preview pictures of Yokaiden 2 at the link you just read over.

Another post got me thinking about pharmacists who want to be allowed to pick and choose which prescriptions to fill. Now, there are some reasons I can think of why this could be reasonable. They might see that Doctor A has prescribed Medication X while Doctor B has prescribed Medication Y, which in combination will have serious side effects. It would be reasonable for the pharmacist to say, "Whoa! I don't think Doctor B knew what Doctor A prescribed. You really, really ought to make sure he knows this. If you want we can call his office and ask if he still wants you to take Medication Y when you are also taking X, or if it really has to be that medication we can call the other doctor and ask if he can change his prescription." Or perhaps they might have just received some kind of notice about previously unknown side effects. Perhaps most importantly they might see reason to believe that the prescription is fraudulent. (I actual saw this happen about a month back. The pharmacist said they wouldn't be able to fill the prescription until the next day. Then as soon as the person left, they called the doctor who had supposedly written the prescription. Strange, but the doctor's office says they have no patient by that name, nor is other information on the form correct.).

That said, whenever people come out arguing for pharmacists to get to pick and choose what to fill, they hardly ever seem to be giving more than token time to these issues. Probably because pharmacists are already able to take those issues into account. Nope it's given as a moral argument. "But it would be horrible to force the poor pharmacists to fill prescriptions that offend their beliefs."

To which I have to say, "Yeah, and who held a gun to the pharmacists head and told them, 'Go take pharmacy classes, get licensed, and work as a pharmacist -- or die!'? No one? Really? Then how is the possibility of this occurring a big surprise?" Should I be allowed to get a job as a bartender, and then say, "Whoa! Wait! Hold on! I'll serve people soda, or soda water, or if they insist mock cocktails, but I don't believe in drinking alcohol. No way I'm serving beer! And don't you dare fire me for this, I'm just obeying by moral principles!" I'd get laughed out of court, and if I went to ask my state or federal reps to change the law for me, I'd get laughed out of their office.

You know, you walked into the job eyes open. Either fill the prescriptions without a darn good reason, which doesn't include, "But I don't wanna," or maybe *you* ought to pay the expense of hiring your replacement.

It makes about as much sense to me as the kid who enlisted in the Marines, and then come Gulf War I said, "Whoa! Wait! I only joined for the college money, I don't believe in killing people, even in time of war, let me out!" Really? In you joined the Marines? The Gung Ho, storm the beach, kick the door in, and clear the way for the rest, Marines? You're a pacifist and you somehow didn't realize joining the Marines might mean going into battle? Right. You think my IQ is lower than my height in miles, don't you.

Based on an item on the news todayyesterday:

State court tells guy he never paid a ticket in 1999 and that he will have to pay it, plus almsot $1k in interest/fines. Guy says not only did he pay it in 1999, but that he is especially irked because a few months after paying in 1999 he was told he hadn't paid and had to go back to court and show that he had indeed paid. Sadly he apparently decided after some years of not being gone after to stop looking after the financial records with a paranoid eye.

Which raises two questions for me.
1) Shouldn't there be record of his going back to court to show that it had been paid. And shouldn't this be something that can be used to quash the current claim?
2) Isn't it normally the one making a claim that is expected to prove it. "You never paid!" Should be answerable with, "Okay, produce the complete file, and explain why for a decade a supposedly unpaid claim wasn't pursued."

And additional bit, a DMV official on camera said with a straight face and without apparently thinking there was anything wrong with it, "When you pay your ticket, hold onto the proof." "For how long?" "I'd say forever."

Um. Yeah.

I am rather unlikely to reach 50k words by the end of the month. I only have just over 4k now and would need a to a touch over 3k a day for the rest of the month to hit 50k. But that doesn't mean that I'm giving up entirely. I'm just acknowledging the unlikeliness of reaching the NaNoWriMo goal.

That said, since posting part one I've got a dream (which is clearly a dream from the start, none of that "Oh my what's happening... psych, fooled you, just a dream sequence" nonsense from me), a little of the aftermath of the dream, and skipped ahead and did a portion of the school play (which will probably later be ruthlessly cut -- too much, "Look at the nifty background history I came up with," most of which can safely be trimmed).

After November I think I'll work out what my average daily output was and use that to help set a continuing goal. Then when next November hits I'll be better prepared.

After debating for much of the day I decided to post the first portion. For anyone who skipped the previous post this is my unofficial nanowrimo effort (I haven't actually taken the time to set up an account at NaNoWriMo.org). I spent the first several days working out who the characters were and a few of the major plot elements, which means that at my current words per day rate I will run well short of 50k words. I'll have to see how many words I manage on the weekend, and if I manage to keep modestly upping the words per day rate.

Warnings: This is a fanfic for those allergic to that, set in the universe of Peta Hewitt's (chaypeta

) comic Terinu. Set on the world of Vulpine Prime, so yes, if you're allergic to furry the majority of the population are aliens who look like anthropomorphic foxes. For the rest of us, part one of the story comes under the cut.

{include: non-standard disclaimer} Terinu is a really cool and nifty webcomic. If you think my story is nice, go read the source material, it's even better. Fanfic written without prior approval or permission of Peta. She has been pretty cool about fanfic in the past however. Hey, she's nifty. Have I said to go read Terinu yet? Oh, but make sure you have time to work through the archives. Aren't Rufus and Melika made of awesome? The rest of the cast too, but hey, extra props to the Vulpine characters since this fic is set on their homeworld. Peta is of course free to ignore or use anything here as she likes. It's her sandbox, please don't send me home before cookie time, I wanna finally try a Tim Tam. (Silly grocery store put up a display bragging about stocking "Australia's Favorite Cookie" and stocked the entire display with packages nigh a month past the sell/eat by date). {end: non-standard disclaimer}

( The Unquiet Past, Part 1 )

...if your character never actually mentions the other character's name? Still in the opening of my nano, and have one character make an of hand reference to, "The Brushtail's pet digger," which as I think about it isn't really a nice way for him to refer to Lady Dorothea Bayard, AKA Aunt Dottie, archaeologist and family black sheep from jeriendhal's Terinu fanfic Spin Recovery. He needed to make reference to someone known for studying pre-subjugation history, and hey, what do you know there might not be anyone mentioned in canon so far (that I recall being mentioned) but Dottie fits the bill (and is probably eccentric enough to be known). Which yes, means what I'm working on is also a Terinu fanfic. Or at least set in the same universe, most likely it won't involve any of the major characters.

Although hopefully my characters will be able to avoid running into addiction and loss of limbs like happened in Spin Recovery. Which isn't to say that they'll manage to avoid the involvement of law enforcement. Then again a story without troubles isn't going to be a very interesting story. For someone is going to be a very naughty boy, forcing my main character to take care of things when she'd rather not be on scene at all. ("Troublesome commoners and their silly celebrations, should never have accepted that offer of shore leave to visit home. Could have been in training, or doing paperwork, or getting shot at by pirates instead of this.")

Now to try and actually write past the opening scene...

EDIT: Hurrah, I do believe I now have a title. "The Unquiet Past"

Well, it looks like Ubuntu 9.10 doesn't like the wired or wireless networking in my laptop. Spent a while poking at it, then decided to give it one last chance, a clean install instead of an upgrade install. Short answer, even with a clean install there was no sign this machine has networking anywhere but in the log files that reported neither part coming up.

Ah well, no money lost and 9.04 is working just fine. I'm planning on giving Nanowrimo a try this year, so I'm not going to spend the time to try and find a way around this until December at the earliest.

From Royce's fic Altered Trajectory

Rufus fought the urge to just turn around, as the hairs rose up on the back of his neck. Looking into the reflection of the dusty mirror mounted behind the bar, he could see a figure hunched down over in a corner booth, nursing a beer. He appeared to be about two meters tall, with a scaly snout emerging from the hood of the cloak that left the rest of his face in shadow. Given normally suspicious nature of the bar’s patrons, he might as well have been carrying a three-dimensional holographic sign stating, GREETINGS! I AM TRAVELING INCOGNITO! PLEASE IGNORE ME!

Link when I'm not on battery fumes...

From "5 Myths About Health Care Around the World," at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/21/AR2009082101778_2.html

Under the header, Foreign health-care systems are inefficient, bloated bureaucracies. "U.S. health insurance companies have the highest administrative costs in the world; they spend roughly 20 cents of every dollar for nonmedical costs, such as paperwork, reviewing claims and marketing. France's health insurance industry, in contrast, covers everybody and spends about 4 percent on administration. Canada's universal insurance system, run by government bureaucrats, spends 6 percent on administration. In Taiwan, a leaner version of the Canadian model has administrative costs of 1.5 percent; one year, this figure ballooned to 2 percent, and the opposition parties savaged the government for wasting money." (emphasis added)

Can we at least have a rational debate about improving out health-care system? While we're at it can we also be honest enough that if it's going to be government run that we make that pass constitutional muster (with something more palatable than the "let Congress do any bleeding thing it wants to do" Interstate Commerce Clause AKA The "Limitations? What? You thought we were serious when other sections imply any kind of limit to Congressional Authority" Clause).

In which I make a brief post to comment on my habit of leaving lengthy comments elsewhere. AKA: Gee, maybe that should have become a post over here.