UserFriendly is right on today.
Or, in case you're reading this on some other day, here is a direct link to the cartoon.

So I'm finally starting to assemble the Orphan Islands module for Neverwinter Nights.
I should have some notes and screenshots and stuff online under the "Projects" heading this week.

Lore cracks me up. Stupid humor rules.

It's perfectly fine to use the name of your pet or child as a password. However, for the sake of security, make sure the names of all your pets and children contain several non-alphanumeric characters.

When the French fur traders traipsed and trapped about the part of North America that would become the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, they used an ingenious method of measuring distance: the pipe.

A length of trail between two waterways could be expressed by the number of pipes smoked from start to finish. The pipe was used during rest stops, about two pipes for every mile.
This is a very early fixed-speed, variable-time distance-keeping. Similar to a light-year, but not as long.

When I go on road trips, I often use the compact disc as a unit of travel.
"Oh, it's about two CDs from Minneapolis to Duluth."
If you're driving from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon, that's a lot of discs.
You should probably get one of those carousel changers that fit in the trunk. Anyway...

This morning, as I drove to work through torrential rain, traffic was bad. Really bad.
I was able to listen to the entirety of Lamb's Fear of Fours, and I was partway through the bonus remix disc before I arrived at work.
Normally, this drive takes about 15 minutes. But today it was over an hour.

Because two feet of standing water tends to play havoc on exhaust systems, many cars had stalled.
I counted at least a half dozen: two of which were in the center lane, and one of which was missing its driver.
People, if your car dies, please push it to the side of the road before you abandon it! Thanks.

I spent the majority of the time staring at the back end of a Circle R side dumper from Sioux City, Nebraska.
Sheltered behind its bulk, no jackass SUV or minivan drivers cut in on me. It was nice.
Now I feel like I have an intimate knowledge of that vehicle. I feel bonded somehow. It's strange.

From Penny Arcade I realize that I am not alone:

I love Neverwinter Nights. I don't know what the hell is wrong with us, as Batjew, Monkey, Pork, and myself played it until three-thirty in the fucking morning, which was very poor planning on my part and I do apologize for it.

Ditto.

This weekend I took advantage of a break in the rain, and I rode my bike from Cannon Falls to Red Wing and back again.
But this time was more interesting; I got a flat rear tire.
Fortunately for me, I brought a spare innertube.
Even more fortunate, three Good Samaritan cyclists helped me change the tire, because I had forgotten my tire tools.
Worse, the tire was so old, the rubber did not want to give.
It was a wresting match, but I got back on the road and completed the ride.
Next up, new tires for the bike.

So it's raining in the Twin Cities.

So my trivia team lost in the tournament.

So I'm feeling dreary.

A magnitude 5.0 quake shook Evansville, Indiana today.
It was proceeded by a magnitude 4.4 quake near Paducah, Kentucky.
These seismic events were felt as far away as Indianapolis, Indiana and Louisville, Kentucky this afternoon.

The nearby New Madrid Fault is full of surprises.

But apparently this quake is part of the Wabash Valley Fault Line, not the New Madrid Fault System.
How these two faults interact with each other is still under investigation.

Blogdex points to a hilarious Mark Leyner piece on the New Yorker site.
One of the great things about Mark's writing is the faux autobiographical voice he uses.
Did that happen? What was the real life event that inspired this fiction? Anyway...

I've been riding my bicycle in preparation for a 100 mile ride.
I rode 20 miles on Monday, 40 miles yesterday.
My experience can be summarized in a single word: pain.

Now this discovery is weird.
This totally reminds of the "alien slowtime bubble" device used in so many science fiction novels:

• World of Ptaavs
• The Last Dancer
• Across Realtime

And so many other sci-fi tv-shows, films, et cetera use the same "alien in stasis" plot device.

Our protagonists inevitably discover some round, metallic sphere at the bottom of the ocean, or in the Alps, or on the beach in the Carolinas.
Unbeknowst to them, it's an emergency time capsule for an alien who froze himself as a last resort.
Frozen in time for eons, he wakes up and wreaks havoc on the unprepared discoverers.

Be careful around that sphere, guys, you never know what might jump out!

Now that's a big catfish.