I read the following news bit at the Archaeology Magazine website:

Descendants of 1812 war hero General Zebulon Pike want to exhume his supposed grave in Sackets Harbor, New York, for DNA testing of the bones. They also want to boost tourism to the town and make a documentary film of the experience. But the town’s mayor, Eric Constance, says “The mood [of the townsfolk] is just let the general rest in peace."

As my Deadlands character is named Zebulon Pike, I figured that I should present a short history on the origins of my character and his name.

It was a year and a half back when the game was about to get underway, I decided on a mad scientist character. I had a mad scientist in a previous Mutants & Masterminds game and was dissatisfied, both with the rules concerning mad science and with the guy running the game. I though Deadlands might be better. (Although I am still waiting for the Foglios to complete Gurps: Girl Genius.) I had rolled up the character. Built out some of the personality but had not settled on a name. I tried a steampunk name generator at Brass Goggles but it only generated a name based on another name. What I wanted was something that might generate a list of names.

Driving home and listening to NPR, there was an article that spoke about the person after which Pike's Peak is named: Zebulon Montgomery Pike.

I instantly had my character's name.

Well, almost. I didn't want to just take someone else's name and something about that middle name didn't sit right with me. I left it go as the game started. Zebulon Pike would do. I didn't need a middle name as yet. I also started fictionalizing the game sessions in the form or letters written by Zebulon to his sister. For her I chose the name Mrs. Hannelore West. She needed a middle name because, well, it's so very steampunky to have one, and at first I thought of Penelope. Hannelore Penelope West. I wasn't sure I liked that middle name either.

I don't know what revelation I had, but when I had it I wondered why I hadn't though of it earlier. Vitruvius was a siege engineer for Julius Caesar and I had read his book on architecture some years ago. Thus: Zebulon Vitruvius Pike. And the neat thing about that is he could be Dr. Vitruvius as an alias. Once that was decided upon, I just as quickly changed his sister's name to Hannelore Persephone West.

While the Zebulon Pike of the Deadlands game is fairly understated, the Zebulon Pike that I cosplay is a bit more heroic. Listen to the character of Othar Tyggvassen at Girl Genius Radio Theater and then say it with me:

Zebulon Vitruvius Pike, GENTLEMAN ADVENTEURER.

User: "Well, I'll be a brunken ditch."

 

At Marcon, Louis Nicoulin showed me a take on a steampunk lightsaber that inspired me to construct my own device. When I built my walking stick, I had wanted to add an electrical sword component, much like Agatha Heterodyne created in the Phil and Kaja Foglio webcomic "Girl Genius." While the sword cane idea didn't pan out, with Louis's brilliant idea of using a telescoping magnetic pick-up tool, I was quickly off on a steampunk lightsaber design, or rather, a Teslatronic fencing foil.

Teslatronic fencing foil

The first thing was replacing the single magnetic tool with two telescoping radio antennas. Two of them turns the thing into a Jacob's Ladder sort of device. Oh, if only I could get electricity to arc between the two electrodes but that is way beyond what could be safe and handheld. I also wanted to bend the ends to match the way the tips are on Agatha's swords but I found that the alignment didn't stay the way I needed them to so I bent them back.

The grip is a wood dowel wrapped in leather. The front end is a PVC plumbing connector with a bike gear inside. The rear end is some more plumbing with a piece of gutter mesh on a core rod from a lamp. I need something more inside the chamber. Something that lights up. Some vacuum tubes would be good. I added the copper wire and connectors on the side of the grip because I wanted it to be more busy. More steampunky. It also looks inherently dangerous because it's clearly something that should carry some high voltage current but it is right next to where the operator's hand goes.

I want to add a connector at the back end so that I can run a cable to an off-hand generator as is in "Girl Genius". That would be a hand held box with moving parts and flashing lights. Large Tesla coils have an alternator that consists of a rotating disk with contacts that ark brightly and loudly with extremely high voltages. They look a bit like a Wimshurst Machine on steroids (at least, that what it looked like at the Science Center when I worked there). I'm not sure that would look quite right so now I'm thinking of a more traditional generator looking device but without the enclosing (and concealing) magnets. It would look a bit like a rotary engine but with two rotating in opposite directions with strobing lights inside to simulate arcing electricity. For the cable from the generator to the foil, I think a braided plumbing hose as is used for faucets would look good. Most of the ones I see on line have been chromed but I'm sure I can find one in the original, uncoated brass.

A sound effect would be good. Those greeting cards that allow you to record your own message might work. I could remove it from the card and record the sound of arcing electricity to play as a continuous loop either in the foil or in the generator.

(Crossposted at Steamfashion)

From: Mr. Zebulon Pike, Deadwood, Dakota Territory
To: Mrs. Hannelore West, Kingsport, Mass.
August 1878

Beloved Sister,

I know that you are fond of both reading and writing fantastical fiction and the tale I am about to tell seems taken from the pages of Sheridan's ghost stories, though with a distinctly less gothic bent and certainly nowhere near as literary as your creations.

In celebration of the grand opening of Messrs. Tobin, Pace and Bongiovi's “establishment”, a gambling tournament was hosted. It would seem that, with my automated pancake machine as a centerpiece, the so-called “House of Pancakes” was not to be merely a brothel but also a saloon and general gathering place. For all their brutality on the trail when under fire, my comrades present themselves as marginally respectable. Even so, my interaction with this event was only to keep the machine running to feed our guests.

Oh, and I am pleased to tell you that I have completed the blueberry formula. While it contains no actual blueberries and tastes almost, but not quite, entirely unlike blueberries, it is exceptionally good and is wildly popular. Huzzah for modern chemistry! I have included the formulae and recipes along with the plans for the machine itself and ask that you convey them to my patent solicitor, Mr. Siegfried Block of Post Office Square, Boston. While I have heard rumors of another pancake machine, I am sure that mine would be an improvement of magnitudes when combined with the custom batters. It is important that such things be documented and registered lest some upstart claim my superior machine as some copy of a lesser device.

Where was I? Oh, yes. The murder.

It occurred in one of the upstairs rooms reserved for “guesting,” to use a polite euphemism. It did not take long to exonerate the girl Sun Lee in the strangulation. In spite of one of their own having been mysteriously murdered, the other gamblers were not deterred from continuing their game the next night as there were large stakes to be won or lost. With Mr. Pace thus engaged in gambling and attempting to determine if one of the other gamblers was the murderer, and Mr. Tobin acting as present security for the House, it left Mr. Bongiovi and I to set out and investigate what we could.

At first, the Sheriff Bollock seemed disinclined to assist us. I suspect that our founding of a new brothel interfered with his long established business dealings with the Bella Union and Gem Saloon. Later, however, his lack of inclination turned into outright inattention. It would seem that he was under some outside influence, perhaps a drug-induced susceptibility to suggestion or mesmerism. In any case, our dealings with the sheriff and his condition caught us unawares when another murder occurred. This time, at the Gem Saloon.

Mr. Bongiovi provided the distraction while I was able to infiltrate the room of the murdered gambler to investigate. There I found papers that lead me to suspect a young card sharp named Spinner was involved, either as an accomplice or even as the murderer. Spinner's room was just down the hall and entering that room I found a steamer trunk which contained only a fine layer of soil. This immediately suggested to me the Eastern European myths of vampires and I felt sure that I had found the murderer's lair.

I improvised a fire-trap and fled out the window when Mr. Bongiovi's antics no longer held the attentions of the saloon's employees, eventually taking up an observatory position on a nearby rooftop.

It was several hours before Spinner returned and, through the window I was able to observe her arrival. Indeed, I saw that what we had thought to be a young man was, in fact, a disguised woman. This revelation was not of any significance when compared to the moment that she opened the steamer trunk and my incendiary detonated.

Unexpectedly, I began taking gunfire from out the windows of adjoining rooms. It would seem that our murderess had accomplices. We had exchanged a few rounds of ineffectual gunfire when a singed and quite angry Miss Skinner leapt from the room, across the alley to the adjoining rooftop where I was. She no longer appeared as a young woman, or even as a disguised young man but as a demon, with ashen skin, fangs, claws and even wings upon her back. I now had to contend not only with an enraged vampire at close quarters but also with two gunfighters shooting at me from across the way. Several .41 caliber projectiles from my pistol found their mark in the creature's chest but failed to slow it down. My efforts to deliver a fatal shot to the head missed their mark. Finally, still taking pistol fire from the hotel windows, I activated the conflagrationator concealed in my cane and unleashed it's chemical inferno.

The flames were spectacular, disgorging with power and range to fill the one room across the alley, setting my one assailant ablaze. The cone of combustion washed across another room and sent the other gunfighter reeling. Though he was only singed, he was no longer firing at me. Lastly, I turned the nozzle upon Miss. Skinner and at point blank range, the last of the discharge seared away flesh.

Badly injured, she fled to the street but did not go far as Mr. Pace came upon the scene and, with a few rounds from his Winchester rifle, brought her down. I put the miserable wretch out of its misery with a a buckshot round to the back of the skull.

Things have calmed down significantly. The surviving accomplice has been taken into custody and is apparently revealing everything in an attempt to avoid the hangman's noose. Mr. Pace has returned to his gambling tournament and looks to be making a tidy profit. Having had a murder in our establishment seems to have dampened enthusiasm during our opening week but the favorable reputation of “The Infernal Pancake Machine” seems to be offsetting that slow start. I have set up a makeshift laboratory in a laundry next door and have found some interesting things from Miss Skinner's dissection.

I am developing plans for an arc lamp which, when enhanced with hydrogen gas, should be even more effective against similar solatopic beings than my conflagrationator was. (I am still displeased with that name. Pray, come up with something better.) I will send you plans for that as well once they are complete and successfully tested in addition to some others. I have built a narrow-gauge mine engine that runs on compressed air rather than a tradition external combustion steam engine. This will aid the local miners where highly combustible coal dust and gases is a significant hazard.

Stay well and be sure to write to me. I look forward to hearing how things are transpiring back home.

Your ever loving brother,

Zebulon

 

The Papacy has released the results of scientific tests performed on some bones housed in a sarcophagus in the Vatican.

“Tiny fragments of bone” in the sarcophagus were subjected to carbon dating, showing they “belong to someone who lived in the first or second century,” the pope said in a homily carried on Italian television. “This seems to confirm the unanimous and undisputed tradition that these are the mortal remains of the Apostle St. Paul,” Benedict said in Sunday’s announcement.

Lets follow that line of scientific investigation once more, shall we?

Because the bones are between about 2000 and 1800 years old, they MUST be those of Paul. I've seen worse leaps to conclusions, but not many. They could be anyone's bones. Sure, they are from the right era but plus-or-minus-a-century is nowhere near "undisputed." It would be like finding a body in the woods of New Jersey, saying that they had been there for maybe 20 or 40 years and declaring that you thus had definitively found Jimmy Hoffa.

They would need to do better than that. And then, of course, even if those were the bones of a guy named Paul from the 1st Century, that in no way would validate or even lend support to his purported claims of a divine audience with the resurrected Jesus.

 

From Failblog.org.

With The Bank proceeding with the process of integrating with the Other Bank that they bought with TARP funds last year, they have changed the Help Desk menu system. That is, when users call in for integration issues, there is a prompt that says "For Other Bank integration issues, press 1." The problem is, people often don't listen to the menu or just choose the first item to get a hold of someone right away. And yet, the Help Desk programmers insist on making these special rollout numbers Option 1 on the menu system.

So, I spent the last week or so keeping track of the calls coming through this line just to get an idea of how bad it was going to fail:

8 calls from users to address an integration issue chose Option 1 properly.

13 calls from Other Bank users for issues that they didn't choose the Menu 1-Integration option. That is, they chose the password menu option because they had a password issue, not specifically an integration issue in their mind but technically they probably should have chosen Option 1.

17 calls from regular Bank users calling for something completely unrelated to integration choosing Option 1 incorrectly. Often a password issue and, when not a password, usually accompanied with the statement "I don't know if this is the right menu option, but. . . "

Again, the Menu 1 option is a complete failure, by a rate of about four to one (at least, from my perspective). People who are supposed to be using Option 1 aren't. People who aren't supposed to be using Option 1 are. There is no way to derive any sort of accurate information.

I passed this information on to the programmer and he had the nerve to be surprised.

 

Matt recently learned of Kingman's new Eraser 11mm paintball gun and was very excited about it. I liked it, too and promised him that if here were to order, I would as well so that we could play. (Actually, I decided that I would order two. I didn't expect him to order almost immediately but, well, I made a promise and our guns arrived this week. He and Daniel came over yesterday and we had a chance to try them out.

I've read some reviews by people who thought they were ugly but they were mostly by paintball enthusiasts. It looks a lot like a real firearm, though a little bulky. With the 12 gram CO2 cylinder and 9 round magazine in the grip, it's a bit long so someone with small hands might have a little bit of a problem. It also makes it a little tough to reach the magazine release with your thumb. It's almost as easy to reach around the grip and activate it with the second finger. I wonder if I could find a mag release extender at a gun show.

We got the Eraser model. Kingman produces the Chaser which is half a pound lighter than the 2.4 pound Eraser. We chose the all aluminum for the ruggedness but holding it out at arms length for a while can get a little tiring. It is a lot more like a real gun, though.

Without a hopper on top like a conventional paintball gun, it has a proper sight picture. I had a tendency to just point and shoot and found I aimed low. I think Daniel took a little more care in lining up the sights and tended to be deadly accurate. He would fire off two or three rounds and hit with each one.

A conventional paintball gun fires a 68 caliber paintball at up to 300 feet per second. That places the energy at about 11.8 joules of energy. That really stings, leaves a significant welt that can bleed if impacting on exposed skin and requires a full face mask. I got hit in the face once at arms length by one of these (in the days before full face masks became widely available) and I still carry the scar.

The Eraser uses 11mm or 43 caliber paintballs at 200-250 feet per second. The energy there is between 1.6 and 2.0 joules, significantly less than a conventional paintball but twice as much as a 6mm airsoft pellet at 0.8 joules. With that we learned that it stings and may leave a little welt but not very bad. Not enough to break skin, even at close range. I played with only goggles and was shot in the face several times. One shot hit my upper lip and broke on my teeth. (Blech!) Yea, it stung but only the lip shot really hurt and swelled up a little, but even the relatively delicate skin of the lip was not split by the impact. It was decided that some sort of head covering would be preferred, such as a balaclava or a shemagh would be more than adequate protection.

The spec sheet says that a 12 gram CO2 cartridge should be go for 80 rounds. That should be nine 9-round magazines. We found that we would get something closer to 7 or 8 magazines out of it but that could be in part because it's difficult to keep track of round you fire and are likely to empty the magazine and then fire off a few more before realizing you're out. We took to carrying the extra two round in the left hand for rapid reloading. When changing the CO2, you need to make sure your turn it hard and fast to crack and seal the cartridge or the CO2 will leak and you will only get a magazine or two out of it. The knob has a extendable lever to aid in that.

Paintball is expensive. While bulk paint costs are pretty much the same between the 43 caliber and 68 caliber paintballs, using the pistols leads to shorter ranges and less shooting so more savings. And, given those shorter ranges, one can play in smaller area (such as my back yard) thus the biggest savings is in not having to pay someone like Buddy at Riverside Renegades $30-plus for the privilege of using his woods or his inflated field paint costs.

At the next gun show, I'm looking for holsters. Kingman sells a holster for $50 but I'm pretty sure I can find something for a lot less. I would definitely carry this gun as a backup at a conventional paintball game as it has more firepower and is more reliable than the Sheridan PGP I normally carry as a backup. I have two so I could well imagine carrying both of them onto Buddy's field and terrifying the kids by rushing them in their bunkers, John Woo-style.

 

Yesterday morning, I was checking my email, webcomics, blogs and such and say that the sci-fi club website that I maintain was down. I went to the IPOWER Control Panel signon and it would not accept my password.

Last week, I had received an email that my annual bill was coming and, unless I took some other specific action, my account would be automatically charged on Thursday and my account renewed for another year. Fine. I ignored it. I balanced my checkbook and paid some bills of Friday and saw that my checking account had, in fact, been debited, so everything should be good.

Except that the website was down. So, I got on the Live Chat site and talked to a tech. He changed my password and after a minute I was allowed to signon to the Control Panel:

IPOWER Tech: "Is there anything else I can assist you with today?"

Geis: "Well, yes. My website is down. I received an email saying that my bill was due and that my account would be charged automatically. That appears to have been done as my bank shows the money has been debited from my account and yet my website is down and my password no longer worked."

IPOWER Tech: "I have noticed that your account is paid and up-to-date. The name servers of your domain is pointing to our old servers. Please contact current registrar of the domain and point the name servers of the domain to the new addresses."

Geis: "Wait, what? I changed my domain provider over a month ago and suddenly it doesn't work just after my IPOWER account expiration date? I don't see how that is GoDaddy's fault."

IPOWER Tech: "Your account is up-to-date. Please contact GoDaddy.com and update the name servers of the domain properly."

Geis: "Unless you updated your name servers overnight, the information that GoDaddy has had for the past month should continue to function. I received no emails concerning any changes to nameservers. My bill came due this week and today I notice that my website is down and my password doesn't work. The proximity of those events suggest a correlation, don't you think?"

IPOWER Tech: "I have just noticed we are experiencing issue with our servers. I apologize for providing inaccurate information earlier."

Geis: "I see. Well, that's what I've been saying."

IPOWER Tech: "Please check after 1 hour."

The website came up a few minutes later. Did the tech just trying to cover himself? I know that when servers go down at The Bank, we at the Help Desk are the first to find find out that something is wrong. That this tech had to monkey around and shift the blame to GoDaddy does not speak well of the situation. I went to GoDaddy and changed the nameservers anyway and everything is fine.