In other news

I am epically awesome at the stock market.

26 trades to my goal. 26 trades. This assumes I don't add to my account (a faulty assumption), and assumes a 20% gain per trade (a reasonable one, with the way I roll.) I've been making 15-30% trades for the past 3 weeks straight. I was at 31 trades, then I deposited more funds.

Of course, all this could take a few years to accomplish. It's not every day you find a stock that swings so wildly, and the volatility seems to be leveling off. My goal is within five years. I've never been a Buy And Hold guy. I play the stock market like I play Supreme Commander: I go for the throat with swift, decisive attacks. I'm not (yet) a day-trader, but that's the direction I'm headed in.

By the by, Forged Alliances is a worthy expansion to Supreme Commander. I finished it yesterday. I didn't like some of the nerfs, but there were some benefits to certain changes. My only complaint is that I'm too good at RTS games. The new UI is nice. I really hope GPG does something with that nice opening they left at the end... Chris Taylor is king. And Jeremy Soule's compositions are stuck in my head. I'll have to see if the FA soundtrack is available. I've enjoyed the game so much that last night I dreamt Brackman became a traitor. It made me happy.

They've really nerfed the skirmish AI. I had to destroy the enemy commanders early in the game because I had an Easy ally (cannon fodder) who ended up ganking all the resource nodes. When the commanders were dead, the AI sat there doing nothing. And I've never seen a Tech AI sit there and Horde with Level I units. It was pathetic. I'll have to find some good player-made AIs. Or some players who prefer late-game mixed-tech battles to 3-move checkmates. Yeah, yeah, the rush-victory is great in tournaments, but the game is too good to waste on crappy attacks with T-Is. It's not that I'm bad at rushing or defending against rushing, it's that it's just like Command and Conquer or the ever-loathsome Starcraft. Zerg rush, anyone? Supreme Commander offers such a wide array of weapons...why not use them all?

But right now, I have some money burning a hole in my pocket. I could put it in the market, too, but life is short. Fun now and fun later, that's my outlook.

I'm getting inked this weekend: the Ouroboros on my right shoulder. Finally. Two years overdue. I'm glad I didn't get it while I was depressed. There are few things I enjoy enough to have put on my body permanently, and while I like looking at people's gorgeous and intricate tattoos, they're not for me. That one gal with the Battle of Hoth on her arm in Lafayette was awesome.

The episode "The Hand of Saint Sebastian" inspired me to get the Ouroboros, as Peter and Frank found it tattooed on the preserved corpse of a member of The Group: a member from 1000 years before who died in a peat bog. I've been planning this for years now, and I'm finally at a place in my life where I can afford it and not have it conjure up bad memories. This is a good time in my life, perhaps the best time. I've friends, family; I'm materially well-off and improving with each passing day. God is good.

This Is Who We Are.