"No matter that a deadly sharp can be fashioned from virtually anything found on a plane, be it a broken wine bottle or a snapped-off length of plastic, we are content wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and untold hours of labor in a delusional attempt to thwart an attack that has already happened, asked to queue for absurd lengths of time, subject to embarrassing pat-downs and loss of our belongings."...
"So the fabled binary liquid explosive - that is, the sudden mixing of hydrogen peroxide and acetone with sulfuric acid to create a plane-killing explosion, is out of the question. Meanwhile, making TATP ahead of time carries a risk that the mission will fail due to premature detonation, although it is the only plausible approach.
As I mentioned yesterday I patched NetHack with a tinfoil hat patch. Since I wasn't too thrilled with it I deleted the binary and went about my merry way. A little later I decided I would try out the mining helmet patch.
Dwarven helms are always described to the uninitiated as being mining helmets. Some generous person went ahead and coded up mining helmets to actually light up when applied by the wearer. A quick test in wizmode which ended with the creation of bones proved the patch to be successful in its implementation. Definitely a keeper.
Next I attempted to use a patch which would include different Castle levels. For those of you playing along at home the Castle is a special level right before the Valley of the Dead. It has four treasure rooms and in one of the towers is a guaranteed wand of wishing! Unfortunately this patch failed and I had to revert to the original binary and source tree.
Finally I went to use the Spore Colony patch. This randomly creates a room full of gas spores which allows the player to experience the wonder of chain reactions. I don't think the patch is complete since it didn't want to patch itself to NetHack.
Anyway if anyone is interested the Windows binary is available.
Jaybird told me about this homeless guy who he thought lived downtown around Acacia Park. I knew better that this guy lived in my apartment building which was significantly larger than the current one but looked like a larger version much like the gag in Steve Martin's "The Jerk". GET IMDB LINK. The man in question resembled Parka, a black homeless guy who always wore a parka even in the middle of summer when Colorado Springs's patented high-altitude sun was beating down on the Earth and drying it out promulgating fire hazards. What was different is in my dream the homeless guy was white and had a significantly longer beard and he wore prosthetic legs which replaced what was missing below the knee. I knew about the guy because no one knew his name and I had contributed to his various needful surgeries. Most recently his left forearm had become gangrenous and had to be amputated so I donated some cash on the sly out of fear he'd go nuts on me and out of consideration for what little pride he had as an independent human being.
"Okay. He used to be a doctor. Dr. Black." My mind kept confusing Black with Schwartz in my dream and kept doing so throughout the dream. "A long time ago he was doing charity work for the Revolutionary War Orphanage down on Monument. He was home sick that day when the orphanage caught fire and all the kids died. When he dragged himself out of bed to see what was going on his heart broke when he saw the one good thing, the one good deed go up in smoke and he threw it all away." I looked over my shoulder and couldn't see the orphanage or its ruins even though I was expecting to see it.
"Thanks Jaybird." Sometimes I call him that because Jaybird has been his nickname since forever and his mom uses it too. I ran back home. Olympics Guy was home and putting his suitcases into his white pickup truck but I was invisible to him which was a relief. That's when I noticed that I was only wearing my bathrobe. The only entrance into the building was in the back through the laundry room. The door on the north side of the house, the kitchen door to Olympics Guy's pad and the front door had healed over making the laundry room Grand Central Station. I needed to find Dr. Schwartz.
He wasn't home, all I found was the brown stain in the hallway corner where he'd usually curl up. I wanted to tell him that he didn't have to continue his self-imposed penance for something he had no control over. In my mind's eye I could see him standing at the smoking entrance of the Revolutionary War Orphanage wearing his trademark parka because he was sick and cold then vowing he would never remove it so if this ever happened again he would be there to help or at least die with the ones he loves. My next stop was the library.
Penrose Library wasn't all modern and white like it is in waking life. Instead it resembled an old British library with oaken book shelves full of red leatherbound books with gold letters on the spine. There even was one of those pushable ladders to reach the top shelves. I was there to find his true name, to get corroboration on the story Jaybird told me and finally tell the world so he could rest in peace. I couldn't find much except for photographs from the ninteenth century showing the building in happier days. No where could I find anything about Dr. Black or Dr. Schwartz when I realized I didn't know his first name.
When I returned home he was silently standing in the middle of the street looking north at the setting sun. Being in his presence instilled old visceral fears about approaching unknown people, especially crazy homeless people and I never got the balls to approach him.
The final scene was a non-sequitor. A darkened laboratory with the sole source of light coming from the floor behind a bakelite bench with a sink and gas outlets for bunsen burners. Zoidberg only had one eye like Leela and he was waving his claws around smashing retorts, test tubes and beakers out of frustration.
