Max @max@smeap.com

A Chronological cut of the MCU would be fascinating at this point.

Captain Marvel was marvelous.

The subtitle The First Avenger implies a chronologic order to the heroes. Pym era Ant-Man and Wasp would be 2nd/3rd, and by rights of tech hero inheritance, so too their successors, maybe? Captain Marvel is 4th. Iron Man likely 5th. (Barring further retcons, such as 60s F4, my fanon.)

It's weird that Endgame is the first team up of even four of the first five then. Also, a shame that either Wasp likely not in the team up.

This damn corporate VPN won't stay connected for more than a half hour at a time when I'm working from home (presumably where it should be focused), won't reconnect without a full restart for some damn reason, won't let me disable it, fucked up my mandatory (ugh) password change the last time I worked from home, and really should just be set on fire and burnt to the ground for being such shit.

How do businesses expect work to ever be done with broken tools like this?

Corporate MITM proxies are such a fucking disaster and should be illegal. I just love~ playing CAFILE overrides, --ignore-security-checks, --yes-my-network-is-fucked games over and over instead of doing my damn job.

In Tuesday Movie Night News it looks like Darkside Skittles are back in stores (sweet), something new called Brightside Skittles, and I found another bag of the Sweet Heat Skittles. (Not all will be for tonight.)

Last minute counter purchase: Mexican Jalepeño Peanut M&Ms. I'm digging these.

I enjoy the morning playlist of the construction workers outside my window some days. What little I can hear filtered through construction noise and walls and semi-sleep.

I'm curious though why the Celine Dion shriek theme to Giant Cruise Ship Sinks was in the middle of all the nice Spanish singers. An interesting playlist choice there. Was it intentional trolling?

When you get to remove your battery in your handheld computer to force it to reboot, and remember most such devices don't have that option because who needs removable batteries?

Another reminder of the ticking clock to replace this pocket friend before security updates stop, and yet there are such few comparables on the market.

What if Web of Trust parties are the only solution to CAPTCHA to prove you are a human and not a bot or spammer?

Will we party like its 1999, have big sleepovers with pizza, reading to each other our romantic sets of random numbers of words to prove our thumbprints match our PKs, checking IDs have matching names, that we don't have those "BOT" tattoos that are now legally required in some areas, and that we seem to operate on existential angst more than any resemblance of the Three Laws?

(Let's face it, Super Mario Bros movie will always be a cult fave simply for Dennis Hopper's performance. Mario and Luigi: Terrorists to the Mushroom Kingdom. Heroes: Fake news. Sad.)

If Quantum Break got one thing right, it's that film adaptations of videogames should probably be more often about the villains (and why they see themselves the heroes). It helps avoid the "why am I not just playing the game" POV problem, and can make the scenery chewing nearly as fun as the worldbuilding.

"I don't work for cops, even ones that wear stovepipe hats."

(The Causal Angel, ~32% in)

Oh look, Dr. Phlox is the bad guy. Who would have guessed he might be a jerk?

This episode is a cross-temporal Star Trek Doctor's reunion with both the EMH and Dr. Phlox.

I'm in charge of Game panel programming at my "home" con this year, which is fascinating. (Any Mastodon friends interested in being a panelist in KY on Easter?)

One thing I've noticed is how much my gut instinct is to "invert" the schedule for game panels versus normal track schedules. Evening is "prime time" there, but game panels get to compete with actual gaming, and I feel like earlier panels are better attended.

It's not an ad hominem attack if it's towards a company, because companies are not people.

Google Fiber announced that it is bored with their "experiment" in Louisville. Instead of fixing their dumb, fucking obvious mistakes, they are just going to ding dong ditch out of town.

What is wrong with these morons?

How does anyone fucking trust Google (or Alphabet) to actually support any damn project they work on? How does a company get this big, being this completely unreliable?

Seeing an increasing number of videos of people running Windows 10 on ARM on the Lumia 950 and feeling somewhat encouraged that when I do replace my phone sometime this year, presumably (as Security Support Prophecies foretell), secondary usage of this multi-year companion in my hand as a Weird Pocket Laptop may continue.

Saw an accidental misspelling of "Kingdom Hearts 3" as "Klingon Hearts 3", and now I have so many questions. Does it still have Disney characters? FF characters? Do Klingons charge into bat'leth battle on a trusty Chocobo? Is the Kingdom Hearts storyline even half as confused in the original Klingon? Is it a soaring opera that that makes far more sense in it's "heart" metaphor with Klingon anatomy and honor codes?

Turned on Windows' Ransomware prevention tool boringly named "Controlled Folder Access". This is a fascinating tool.

Most especially, because it's a constant reminder of how terrible games are at security.

Why does this game need 4 different executables modifying controlled files? Why is one of the EXEs in My Documents folder?

I'm starting to want finer-grained controls (yes, but only folders x, y, and z) and "Temporarily Allow" with a lockout timer.

Three nearly simultaneous Steam Guard notifications of login attempts from Russia, Mozambique, and the Canton of Geneva. That password was less than 24 hours old, 42 characters, high entropy.

In what fucking real world scenario would a person be trying to login to the same account from IP Addresses in Russia, Mozambique, and the Canton of Geneva at the same time? It might be an interesting spy drama to read, I guess?