I Hate Google

Yesterday, I decided that I finally should get a gmail account. I was having all sorts of problems trying to register for GenCon and part of the problem was due to my host tagging their emails as spam. And I figured I needed a backup email address that wasn't tied to my ISP (like my sbcglobal addresses).

I created a new Google account based on the new gmail account and everything went fine. I was able to send an email to my sinsterthings.com account. I transferred my Google Reader subscriptions very easily. I was even able to access it from work, which is something I can't do with my sinisterthings.com address. I sent a test email from gmail to both work and sinisterthings.com today, but it never arrived.

I came home and tried to access my brand-spanking-new account--an account that has sent a total of 2 emails, mind you, and I found that I have been blocked for TOS violations. This is not the first time that Google has thought I was a bloody spammer. Even now, with this post, I have to fill in a captcha to prove to Blogger (owned by Google) that I'm not a robot. This has been going on for months and months. Every time I log in, I am greeted by the message:

Using that last link as repeatedly proven to be futile. It's one of the reasons I don't update as often as I'd like. Well, it's an excuse, anyway. Now, back to the story.

To fix my gmail problems, I had to have Google send me a code via text message. I didn't want to do this because I don't have a texting plan. So I tried to get them to send the confirmation to my sinisterthings.com account. That didn't work, so I finally broke down and used my phone. Which worked. For now. Until Google decides that I'm still breaking their Terms of Service. To them, my using their service violates their Terms of Service.

If it weren't for deadlines...

...there would be no last minute for things to get done in.

It has been quiet around here because things have been fairly quiet. Even the usual Friday Night Gaming stuff hasn't inspired writing. New job has kept me distracted too. Still thinking about repurposing the site. Still working on a few game ideas. It's been said before, but I'll say it again. Meh.

One Page Dungeons

The final compiled PDF of all the One Page Dungeon Contest winners is out. They also posted posted a PDF with all the entries. Details here.

I haven't read the other winning entries yet, but skimming through the PDF, I'm impressed by the graphic design and attention to detail of the dungeons. I'm a stickler for templates and adhered as closely as I could to the one provided. That's why, for example, my name doesn't appear on my entry (page 29): there wasn't a place for it on the template. And no, anal retentive isn't hyphenated.* But I like the way many of the entries broke out of the template.

I might actually end up using some of these in the future. But not mine, it's just way too silly.

* Though this shows it both ways.

Why I got ice cream today

My parents sold their house (my childhood home) and moved into a smaller place in a seniors-only golf community. Navigating the housing market and the selling process was highly stressful with some ridiculous demands from the buyers and hairy logistics.

An example of the former: they wanted the house professionally cleaned. Now, anyone who has ever stepped foot in "my mother's house" knows what an outrageous demand it was. You could eat off her floors. Growing up, we didn't have a five-second rule--five minutes would have been ok (assuming we didn't get yelled at for leaving a mess on the floor). I distinctly remember being sniped at for dropping an ice cube on the tile floor in the kitchen. I'm of the opinion that the buyers were just trying to get away with anything they thought they could.

An example of the latter: The new place became available July 10 and they had to be out of the old house before the 13th. My folks wanted it painted, so the painters started on the 10th. And the cable hook up was scheduled for that day too. Movers packed on the 11th and moved the boxes and furniture on the 12th. The painters just finished today.

I went over on the 10th to supervise the cable installation, which included a cable modem. My parents are very much of the "email and word processing" mold when it comes to computers, so I wanted to make sure that they got basic internet access. It wasn't clear, based on the conversations I had with my mom, relaying what she was told by Comcast, exactly what they were being hooked up for, especially since the home owners association provided basic cable. I brought over my laptop and didn't let the cable guy leave until he had shown me the internet was working on it. That went relatively well. What didn't go well was that they had been signed up for an HDDVR but didn't have an HDTV. That's one of the things on the "to get" list this week. So, the cable tv box wasn't hooked up.

Also on the "to get" list was a laptop. In the move, they lost a bedroom/office. Taking the cue from my brother, they decided to get a laptop that they could just carry around the house. This also meant a wireless network. On the 11th, I took my mom over to Best Buy to look at laptops. I kept an eye on price and features (remember, they didn't need much) and let her focus on whether she liked the screen and keyboard. They only need a netbook, but those are too small, so we gravitated toward a low-end HP Presario with a 16" monitor. She also glanced at the Macs (which my brother has), but quickly decided that paying the additional $500+ over what we had been looking at wasn't worth it.

We left the store without getting anything. I wanted a chance to check online for reviews, positive and negative, and look at more detailed specs. And it so happened that the model dropped in price by $30 the next day. Cool beans. I also checked out the routers and satisfied myself with the choices at Best Buy. Sure, I could have dug deeper for bargains and saved maybe a hundred bucks, possibly at the cost of several days shipping, but it wasn't really necessary.

On Sunday, I ran my Savage Worlds campaign and since this was a hectic moving day, there was no sense in trying to get anything computer-related done. On Monday, the 13th, I met my mom at Best Buy, we got the computer and a router, and went the new place. The painters were supposed to have been done, but they weren't so the furniture wasn't in place and there were boxes in the middle of the room. None of it actually got in my way, but it added a layer of frustration and discomfort to the activity.

After unboxing and going through the normal new PC rigmarole, I tried to get it working with the modem. And failed. My XP laptop, which I brought as a control, worked as before, but the new Vista machine simply was not getting an IP address from the modem. I rebooted modem and PC. I reset network ports. I ipconfiged my ass off. One symptom of the problem was that I couldn't release the default IP address and kept getting an error related to Loopback Pseudo-Interface 1. I tried various things in various combinations and finally gave up. I unboxed and set up the router. Getting the PC to talk to it was easy and painless. But it wouldn't talk to the modem either. There was cursing.

One source of consternation was navigating Vista. It seems that with each version of Windows, Microsoft was made it more difficult to do semi-advanced network port configuration. Just finding the list of networks was a chore. And of course, their "get connected" wizards were absolutely useless and actually lead me down a blind alley for a half-hour. In some cases, I think they tried to make the language of Vista menus and options more "naturalistic" and less "jargony," but it just made things harder for me. This is not an anti-Windows rant, just a "can we reduce the number of clicks for me to get where I want to go?" gripe.

Of course, I tried to call the cable technician, who had left his number and said to call if there were any problems. Of course, he determined it was a problem with the PC. Of course, I called HP tech support, but after 3 minutes on hold, I gave up. My back was hurting from not having a proper chair and the reception on my cell phone sucked (the land lines didn't get turned up until the next morning and the phones weren't unpacked until the afternoon). I called it a day.

I brought the new PC to my place where I could check it on my router, my DSL modem. And it worked fine. And I was able to download a bunch of updates, including SP2. I also removed crap that comes with new PCs, like the "sign up for Norton" screen that came up every time the PC booted. I also talked to (Friday Night Gaming) Brian about my headaches and his experiences. He had some helpful hints, which I employed.

The next day, Tuesday, today, I went back and tried again. Terri and I brought lunch and after we ate, I went to work. This time, I took a very deliberate approach of turning off the modem and the PC, turning each on in sequence, and hoping. And it worked fine. I was stunned. Emboldened, I disconnected everything again, hooked up the router to the modem, and went through the same routine. And it turned up on the first try. I was relieved. I don't know if the Windows Updates made the difference, but I'd be surprised if they hadn't since the ipconfig behavior was very different. I also don't know how how I was supposed to get it to work if I hadn't had an alternative method of getting online. On the other hand, that doesn't explain why the modem decided talking to the router was ok now.

I spent another hour or so cleaning up the new PC, verifying the signal range, using both laptops at once, and getting my mom started on using the new computer. After helping to clear out some empty boxes, we left and got some ice cream.

Best Silly Dungeon

Back in May, I submitted my entry for the One Page Dungeon Contest. I was intrigued several factors:

• The one-page format. I love the challenge, like my 200 Words essays, of condensing the essence of something into a minimal space.
  
• The "edition-less format." Since I haven't actually made a dungeon for D&D in ages, I could keep it system agnostic.
• "Submitting a dungeon to the contest releases it under the Creative Common Share-alike license (US 2008) with credit to the contest participant." Many other "contests," which force the participants to sign over the copyrights of their submissions to the contest owners or publishers, are really just scams to get other people to provide content for free. Clearly, that was not the case here.

After a day or so, I came up with a central concept: making a dungeon based on a classic video game. My biggest challenge beyond making the map was filling the entire page with what was essentially a one-line joke whose punchline is given away by the map. Thanks go out to Matt Helms, who helped with some constructive feedback.

And now, if you look through the list of winners, you'll find my name after "Best Silly Dungeon." Which is exactly what I was going for. Rather than the standard prize of D&D 4th Edition modules (for which I have absolutely no use), I'll be getting a $20 gift certificate for Drivethrurpg. I have uploaded my entry, the MAZE of NAMCAP. The compiled PDF of winners can be found here.

I've grown bored with this site

It has been 3-and-a-half years since my first post here, but I've had a website in one form or another on at least 3 different domains, for at least 10 years. When I first started, it was fun coding my own HTML, making (simple) graphics, and generally tooling around with it. Over time, I put various roleplaying and other gaming material, including my A&E zines, up on the site. Because I figured it I was generating it, I might as well share it.

I have never been cutting edge when it comes to technology... OK, I have to pause right here and assure to any future employers that I have helped develop and market plenty of cutting-edge technology and products, but what I'm talking about here is my personal, home life. I have never been one who needs the latest gadget or get on the latest trend. At work, I'm a tech-oriented product manager. At home, I'm a bit of a Luddite. Well, not really. I don't hate technology. I think it's grand... At let me digress again to say that in the last episode of Battlestar Galactica <spoiler> the decision by the surviving humans to abandon their technology </spoiler> was stupid. But I don't own a smart phone, an HD television or DVD player, or a wireless router. The most impressive piece of technology I own is a TiVo. Whee!

My first true forays into the internet was that kiddie pool known as AOL, back in 1994. I can't knock it, since that is where I met my wife and we just celebrated our 12-year anniversary, but I'm not going to pretend that I'm anything other than a layman when it comes to the web. Nowadays, I spend most of my online time at RPG.net, RPOL.net, BGG.com, and playing flash games. I read forums, but I'm mostly a lurker. I'm not on any social networking site and don't really feel the need to be. The only reason this site has a blog format is to make updating it easier.

And it is exactly the blog format that I've grown unhappy with. Yes, it makes updates easy, but it doesn't work well as a repository for my gaming stuff. The indexing sucks. I miss my old tiered structure, even if it was a pain to manage. A more wiki-like structure would work much better for my needs, I think. I've been playing with Google sites for my Monster Hunters campaign and it seems to work reasonable well, but I desperately need to tackle the page design and layout.

Of course, changing the site would mean a lot of work that is neither rewarding nor interesting. And I really need to prepare my Call of Cthulhu game for Kublacon. So I have some more thinking to do and I'm not under any time pressure (though I tend to prioritize projects based on when they're due, so not having a deadline is not necessarily a good thing). If anyone has any suggestions, please send me an email.

Squeamish Update

I didn't get much sleep last night. When I did finally manage to stay in bed at 3:30 or so, I woke up every 90 minutes, it seemed. Better than not waking up, as the case was, but still annoying.

My symptoms mostly subsided this afternoon while I was flipping channels. I managed to eat solid food for lunch and dinner and so far, so good. I still have slight stomach cramps, but that may just be from being so empty for a couple of days.

Hopefully, all will be right tomorrow.

The following is not for the squeamish

I didn't sleep well Sunday night. I thought it was heartburn aggravated by stress from the job hunt. I finally got out of bed around 4:30 in the morning, went downstairs, and watched television.

I figure there are three ailments which laymen frequently self-diagnose when they really have no reason to do so. The first is the mysterious "spider bite," which may not be from a spider (since people rarely see them) and may not be a bite at all. The next is "24-hour flu," which probably isn't the flu at all and may be the third ailment: "food poisoning."

In my case, I'm going for "food poisoning" because Terri had similar symptoms (though her re-routed digestive track makes direct comparisons tricky). We had the same thing for dinner: hot dogs, mac-and-cheese, and a doughnut for dessert. Yeah, I know, we're such the gourmands. She managed to go to work in the morning, but didn't go back after lunch.

I could not keep anything down yesterday. Rather than the typical case of regurgitation within an hour of eating or drinking, it would just sit there like my stomach simply refused to digest anything. Eventually, I would do something like stand up and walk around that would make my stomach decide it was tired of not being empty. So long as laid still (often napping), I would be fine (aside from sore muscles and general unease) for several hours.

So far the morning, I'm feeling much better. My abdomen aches from the extra workout it had yesterday, but the other symptoms seem to have passed. I haven't tried any solid food yet (I'm sticking to 7-Up for now to test the waters), but I'm hopeful that I'll be able to eat dinner.

Item!

I've been busy for the past two weeks dealing with two completely different projects.

1) I was laid off and thrown back into the job market. Actually, Alacritech treated us all very fairly and continues to be supportive of everyone they had to let go. For example, my key still works and I can still access my computer. This is the second time I've been laid off so I know the routine. It's also the second time I was laid off from a company I was recruited to, leaving my previous company voluntarily. Even so, I have absolutely no regrets about my decision to leave Sunrise Telecom. Sure, if I knew then what I know now, I might have changed my mind (or at least used the opportunity as leverage with Sunrise), but I am absolutely positive that I made the right decision at the time.

2) I went to DunDraCon over the holiday weekend. I don't think I'll be writing a convention report as my writing energy has been going toward cover letters that go along with the resumes I've been sending out. I did manage to spin out a quick feature description for a game assignment system. This was inspired when the DunDraCon system broke following a power outage Friday night, but I do believe that the system is flawed based on anecdotal evidence I've collected over the past 15 years. In general, I don't trust anecdotal evidence, but I do trust in the perception of users. Whether flawed or not, people whose opinion I respect perceive it to be flawed. And in product marketing, a product that is believed to have a problem is just as bad as one that actually has a problem.

And we're back...

Not that anyone except me noticed, but the site was down for a bit while I changed my hosting service and had all the nameservers changed and the files transfered. But it seems to be ok now.

Where did September go?

Has it been two months already?

A lot happened in August. Less happened in September, except my birthday, which was the same non-event it always is.

I wrote a review of Cartoon Action Hour: Season Two.

We went up to Muir Woods for an afternoon hike. It is one of the many Bay Area attractions that I had never experienced. It was much smaller than I anticipated and we covered the standard "easy" hike in a couple of hours. We may go back and do the harder trails once Terri can handle the inclines.

I have updated the Zines page with the past 4 months of A&E zines.

I haven't been working on Toaster, and instead got myself distracted by running a "modern day mystic shit" game. The first session didn't go so well and I rushed through the plot and didn't focus on the mood as I promised myself I would. Part of my problem is that I don't feel comfortable being indulgent with narration and atmosphere, especially when the PCs are still isolated from each other and if I spent 10 minutes on each PC, it'd be an hour between player turns. But I did manage to get the PCs together and hopefully now I can be a little more indulgent without feeling I'm wasting their time.

The Friday night gaming group (the only group I have going on at the moment) has managed to play several board games and it occurs to me that I should be talking more about them. I think I'll start writing concise 100-word opinions/impressions. These wouldn't be full reviews (that's what BoardGameGeek is for), and many will be based on a single play. One of my gripes it that we don't bring longer games back to the table and instead a new (to us) game is taught and played. So the impression pieces won't contain deep analysis or have the benefit of repeated plays. And since I generally hate writing session reports, I won't be doing those, either. Maybe I can make that a (semi-)regular feature to get my posting back on track.

We'll see.

Kublacon & Toaster

Kublacon 2008 came and went. I had a great time. I will be doing a con report for A&E.

As part of my (slow) site upgrade, I ran into Toaster. I haven't looked at "my baby" for years and I have decided to update it. And maybe even play it. :: rolling eyes :: In addition to reworking the layout, I'm tweaking some of the rules without changing the basic design. Of course, I'm stuck on how I want to deal with combat damage, but that's nothing new.

So I may be distracted for a while while I work on those two things.

Update for April

The project to integrate old stuff into the new format is almost complete. But I can't say I'm happy with the length of the character posts. I want an index, damn it. And not one I have to make myself. Maybe I can find a way to get Blogger to generate one.

My Argument with God is a short and sweet anecdote, though the title can be considered misleading.

I have been grooving on Google Reader.

Thanks to light rail, I've really caught up on reading. I'm caught up on my (few) monthly comics and all my graphic novels (and have been buying more). I now have to start digging into the non-fiction and novels. I may compile a list if I can work up the energy to do a 100+ word review on each. Otherwise, it's just a list, which is not very useful.

Post-Con Update

Posting slowed down a bit due to DunDraCon. Before the con, I was too busy getting ready for it to post. After, I was too tired to post. And I've been working on a new superhero game project (actually, just completing the various half-starts I've had over the past 10 years). More characters to come soon. And then onto roleplaying essays and projects.

Ignore what I said before

Part of it, anyway. I ended up putting labels on the About, Exit, and Zines pages because otherwise the contents index on the right (<-- over there), didn't so up. I may be able to modify the post template to fix that, but it was much more expedient to do the labels.

The Other Games page is currently in limbo between the Old and New versions.

Super Bowl Update

I didn't watch the game. Instead, I finished my latest A&E zine and updated the zine index page (which doesn't include the latest, figuring I'd wait until it actually was published first). I finally put labels on the last of the old posts (a few are still missing labels, but those are index pages, like About, Exit, and Zines, so they don't need tags).

Progress continues on putting old characters as posts, to be followed by games, and then I'll change the template (ever so slightly).

It is now less than two weeks to DunDraCon.

Now With Labels

When I first started with the Blogger-based interface for this website, they did not have the option to add tags or labels to posts. Now they do. I am now going through and adding labels to past posts. I am also integrating very old pages, something I should have done over a year ago, and adding labels to those. Then, I will redo the index to use the labels. As it should be.

Happy ACD!

Happy Arbitrary Calendar Day!

No seriously, there is nothing special about this particular day than any other, besides the fact that a great many (but hardly all) people decide to increment the year. Bad Astronomy has a very cool summary regarding what a year really mean.

I don't do New Year's resolutions, but I did decide I needed to clean up on this site. Update links, add more stuff (which is the point of this place, after all), and whatever else I feel tackling.

All that won't be happening today, though. I'm fighting allergies (or a cold, I can't say for sure I don't have a cold, but I don't think I do) and working on my game for DunDraCon. But (I think) I know what I want to do, so it's just a matter of finding the time and the inspiration.

Overdue Update

Has it been a month already? Ugh. Having that joke there for that long makes Baby Jesus cry.

In that time, I've managed to severely exacerbate my plantar faciitis. When I stretch that calf, it feels like I'm rubbing a blister against the heel of my shoe. Except I'm barefoot. So I am back to icing and naproxin/Aleve. I just can't wear the therapeutic sock, the one that keeps my foot at a right angle, because I just do not sleep well with it. I wake up every time I need to roll over.

Two movies we saw are 1408 and Ratatouille. Both were good for completely different reasons. 1408 impressed me with the reasonable (and even not-so-reasonable) actions the protagonist took given his circumstances. Ratatouille was just a joy--an animated film that was clearly aimed at adults with humor thrown in for the kids, rather the reverse. The quality of the rendering and animation was actually distracting for the first ten minutes. It also showed yet again that you can still have state-of-the-art CGI while maintaining the tradition of stylization and caricature rather than having "realistic" human forms.

On the Road Again

At work, I tell people that "All things Ethernet go through me." That is to say that I oversee all of our products designed for the turn-up and troubleshooting of Ethernet services up to 10GE. I have so subordinates and my boss does the best he can to back me up (when not working on his products (mostly SAN testing)), but at the end of the day, I'm the only product marketing manager -slash- applications engineer -slash- applications development engineer -slash- point toward which all escalated customer support issues get directed -slash- guy at whom the buck stops.

Most of the time, it's not too bad since all 5(!) of my products have a shared pedigree and related feature set. It also means that when the field needs someone from the factory to go out and visit customers, it's me. If not for my boss, I'd probably be traveling twice as much I am now. I've never as productive on the road as I can be when I'm in the office. I always dread reading email and finding out what blew up when I wasn't there to put out the fuse. I appreciate the importance of face-to-face meetings and building customer relationships, but there comes a point when its counter-productive to the sustained health of my products to not be nurturing them at home, as it were.

All this is a long winded way of saying I'm sick of airports, of lugging around a 50-pound carrying case along with my luggage and PC, of not sleeping in my own bed next to my wife (and up to 3 cats), of being up past midnight because my body thinks its not even ten o'clock yet, of flying out on Sundays despite what my personal plans might be, and of being home only 1 full week in the entire month of June.

Zombie Electronics

Last night we had a bit of a scare. There was a power surge and brownout that left many of our electronics, including the garage door opener, refrigerator, DSL modem, and television dead. Fortunately, once we got full power back, everything came back to life. Except the answering machine, which is dead-dead.

According to PG&E, it affected 15,000 customers. I suspect it was due to our first truly summer-like day we've had and everyone turning on their air conditioners... except us, since we don't have air conditioning. Well, ok, we do have a single-room portable machine, but it is not (yet) hooked up.

Monterey

Last Monday was Terri's birthday, so we went down to Monterey for a few days. The aquarium is one of her favorite places and I enjoy it when I'm not fighting crowds. They have a new (to me) otter exhibit which is very cool.

We also played tourists around Cannery Row, Pacific Grove, and even did the 17-Mile Drive. Terri was in charge of pictures, so go to the links to get cool pics (the few I took with my phone aren't worth posting).

Belated Synopsis of DunDraCon

• It didn't rain.
• Hell froze over. No wait, that was last year's game.
• I had a generally good time and played in fun games. Nothing orgasmic, but enjoyable.
  
• The coconut is no good.
• My BESM 3rd Edition game went well, though the PCs were such a pain to make up that I don't see myself using the system for a while. I really, really want to like BESM 3e as my go-to system for when Savage Worlds does not fit, but the character creation system is just far more complicated than I want it to be. Given how easy the system is to use, spending time distributing hundreds(!) of character points is too much. I want to do a proper review, but I've been too busy.
  

Neuen Post

So, here I am sitting in a restaurant in Heathrow, where I'm stuck until my ride gets here several hours from now (and I've already been here several hours), closing in on 24 hours of no sleep (not counting a catnap I managed to take on the plane here). I'm connected into the WiFi network (checking email and the usual websites) and figured this would be a great time to write a pointless entry into my "not-a-blog." I'm using the interface at Blogger (rather than emailing it in (funny thing, I can read my email but I cannot send it--I'm not getting through to my smtp server), which I never do anyway) and it's in German. Now, I'm in England, so even if they are trying to localize Blogger, one would expect it be in, well, English. I can cope, but it's damn odd. I blame T-Mobile.

36 Years

Insert witty comment here. Or a lame one, whatever floats your boat.

GenCon & Beyond

This week is GenCon. I'll be there, running a few games and playing a few games. Then, we are off to visit family and be tourists.

www.xenongames.com is closed

In case anyone noticed (or will notice), I let the xenongames.com domain expire. This site is now all Siniser Things all the time. I am still shaking out the implications for my email, which remains patrick (at) sinisterthings (dot) com, with the old xenongames.com address leading nowhere.

I had been using xenongames.com since I first started using my own domain name, but I have grown tired of it. Since this is not a high traffic site and really just a place to put my stuff, it is not like I will be losing a lot of visitors. Anyone who really cares will know, or already knows, the new domain name. Or can just ask me personally.

I still use xenongames as my identity on various forums, groups, etc. and I do not expect that to change for a while.

The word of today is despondent

Everything I try to write reads like crap.




This is no exception.




That is all.

Quick Kublacon Report

Kublacon was a letdown this year. After having a good start with Unknown
Armies on Friday night, Saturday was a complete bust. I spent much of my
time wandering around, watching my friends play, and getting my butt
kicked at Ticket to Ride: Marklin edition (which is quite a good, tense
game). Sunday, I failed to get a slot in the demo for the new Mongoose
edition of Runequest (the one game I truly, desperately wanted to play),
but the game was cancelled to do the GM not showing. I did manage to
give blood, which is something I always like to do, but always forget to
schedule for myself.

My Call of Cthulhu game, a revisit of the great game I ran at DunDraCon,
did not do well. My GMing skills were not up to the task that day, due
in part to not having the room to ourselves and thus never obtaining the
proper atmosphere. It was however, an interesting exercise in how some
groups fall together (DunDraCon) or fly apart (Kublacon).

I'm a Klutz

Yesterday, I was in an oddly good mood. I think it was a combination of the spring weather, having not gone into the office the day before, and listening to perhaps my favorite Dwight Yoakam song on the MP3 player. Coming back from the break room with my fresh can of Diet Coke in hand, I spied the large black military case I used to haul my gear on my trip and had not yet bothered to finish unpacking it and moving it to its home under my desk. I then had the goofy and ill-advised notion that I would hop on top of it as I came back to my cubicle. I was just about to start my skip-hop, still grooving on the song, when it occurred to me that the case has two wheels facing me and by hopping onto it, it might very well slide out from under me. At that point, I don't know what my body did, but I distinctly remember falling the floor on the fall side of the case, the unopened cola can flying further down the isle, and my headphones becoming dislodged. Instantly, I knew no real harm was done and I busted out in laughter. I pulled myself up, reset my headphones, and picked up the can from where it had stopped against the wall, and explained to my coworkers that yes, I was in fact ok. I had to replace some decorations I had knocked off my cubicle wall, but nothing was damaged. Certainly not the high-grade plastic case. I restarted the song from the beginning, since my spill caused me to miss the last half. Later, I found out I had banged my ankle enough to break skin and it is a tad swollen and uncomfortable, but hell, this story was worth it.

Update for May

I finished up Birds of Prey (so now I'm on a monthly schedule again) and all the Runaways tpbs. I am a tad behind schedule because we had sales training seminar last week and those things usually leave me too exhausted to even read (and remember what I read).

I am now reading the new Usagi Yojimbo rpg (much easier to carry on a plane than comic books) from Sanguine Productions while also catching up on my Usagi comics. I noticed something profound about UY yesterday: it has no ads. You get 24 pages, cover-to-cover, of story. Inside the front cover, you have publishing information. Inside the back cover, Sakai puts in story notes and letters. The back cover itself is an advertisement for a comic covention. Nowhere will you find ads for video games, bicycles, movies, energy drinks, or anything else. UY is a $3.00 black-and-white book, but the $3.00 full color books from DC and Marvel have a ton of ads.

I just finished purchasing my event tickets for Gencon. I am running four Savage Worlds games (one each day, starting at 10:00 a.m.) and got into games that started right after mine ended. This will leave my evenings free; besides none of the later games seemed as interesting.

Ya, that was pretty boring as a post. The past two weeks have been kinda boring, otherwise. :)

Been Reading Comics

I have a two-and-a-half year backlog on comics. Fortunately, I only collect (on average) one book per week, so the 30-month backlog is not as huge as you might think. Each week, I would buy a comic and then bring it home and put it in my "to read" shortbox. And each week, I would forget to actually read it. At first, this was a conscious decision. I wanted to save up several issues and read them all in one sitting. Keeping track of a title you only read once a month can be difficult. In the case of Usagi Yojimbo or Y The Last Man, I could have (should have) simply waited and bought the trade paperback. But with other titles, like Birds of Prey, I could not guarantee that a compilation would ever be made. In the meantime, I also picked up the occasional graphic novel or tpb of some other series and not read those, either.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been catching up on this backlog and having a blast. I remember now why I read comics. In particular, I highly recommend Runaways, which I started with tbp #5, and now have gone back and read the first two (waiting for #3 to show up at my new favorite comic book store). One of the factors facilitating all this reading is a rainy lunch hour that has prevented me from walking outdoors. Plus, there are fewer shows to watch on television and the TiVo queue is at a very manageable level, so I have also been reading in the evenings.

My grand plan, once I get fully caught up (besides not letting this happen again and switching to tpbs almost exclusively), is to catch up on a backlog of roleplaying games and supplements.

April First

I hate April Fool's Day. Practical jokes piss me off. People suck.

The flea market went well; it didn't rain and that's all I could really ask for. Our booth was slow--the crowds were down a bit--but we did all right.

The April issue of my A&E zine is up.

Back from the Mists

The Great Fumigation of 2006 is over and we are back home. The entire experience would have been simply inconvenient had it not been for the cats.

Should I make an aside here and ask if talking about one's cats a sign of a true blogger?... :)

Beau (short for Beaumont) hid behind the bed for the first two days. She's the most skittish and shy of all the cats, so this was not unexpected. Getting her into the carrier to take her to the hotel was a major trial in itself.

Spike, after spending the first day under the bed, woke us up at five in the morning by getting herself trapped behind the refrigerator.

Rufus, after the initial shock of the move and not wanting to come out of the carrier, did rather well.

Personally, I am beat and my brain is a more than a bit fuzzy. So I shall catch up on TiVo for a bit and then go to bed early.

Snake Anti-Defamation League

St. Patrick's Day (not to be confused with Whacking Day), has always had a special place in my life. As a kid named Patrick, March 17th was always kinda cool.

My second-favorite final in college happened on this day. ...

But now I just find St. Patrick's day mildly annoying and mourn for the snakes, figurative, symbolic, and literal.

Fumigated

Our townhouse is being fumigated, so we get to enjoy the comforts of a local Residence Inn for a few days. Unfortunately, our landlord is only reimbursing us for about one-third of the hotel costs. The Marriott was the only place that would allow our cats, but it is still cheaper (and better for them) than having them boarded. I wonder how long it will take Rufus to open up all the cabinet doors in the suite.

Playing Fetch with Spike

Spike is my cat. The youngest of our cats, and she... yes, Spike is female... is not so much my cat as our cat, but I'm the one who plays fetch with her most often and I am the one she comes to wake up in the morning after the alarm has gone off and I am still in bed.

I am plugging away at SSΩ, but it has been slower going than I had hoped.

I joined a few more games over at rpol.net, but half of those crashed before they even started.

I have not been inspired (or irritated) enough to write another 200 Words.... There is just so much that is fucked up with the current administration and their policies that I should have plenty of material, but none of it hits enough of a personal chord with me to motivate me to work on a essay. It's like a throbbing toothache that never goes away until you almost get used to it. Really quite depressing, actually.

My Savage Worlds campaign is on haitus. After losing 2/5 of my players (one to family, one to Japan) and having another PC die (sorry, Gil), we need to refocus the campaign. Or even switch to something new.

Spike just brought me the poofball again. She sometimes takes breaks and then we start again when she's ready. She is better at this game than either of the two dogs my folks had as I was growing up. Sometimes she loses it (we have more poofballs under our couches than I care to mention), and sometimes she does not quite bring it back all the way (perhaps as a way of showing me who's boss and perhaps just forgetfulness), but we have fun nonetheless.

And I'm currently listening to Foster & Lloyd (for those who remember what country music in the late 80's) after listening to Pink Floyd earlier this evening.

Right. Enough rambling. I think Spike may be done for the night.

DunDraCon Report

The following will also appear in the March issue of A&E:

When I walked out of the house in Friday to go the convention, it was raining. The nice weather we had been having turned chilly on the weekend, but the rain is welcome to what has otherwise has seemed a very dry winter.

Overall, the convention was very good for me. I played in four games, including three which were new to me, and the Call of Cthulhu game I ran went exceptionally well. The games I played reinvigorated me to resume work on SSOmega, specifically to just jump in and start play testing ideas.

Friday night, I played in a Mutants and Masterminds game based on the Marvel series Exiles centered on alt-reality characters bobbing around trying to fix ripples in the multi-verse. This was the first time the GM had run a game at a convention, and it showed. Despite the heavy-handedness of the adventure, I had a lot of fun playing my character, the daughter of Juggernaut who inherited many of her father's powers. Anytime the words "bitter" and "deathwish" are in a character I play, I am sure to have a good time. I also got to see the new 2nd edition M&M rules in action but they failed to impress upon me the need to purchase them.

The first game on Saturday was a first-contact science fiction game with an international team of specialists sent to intercept what turned out to be a generation ship, using the HeroQuest rules. We only used the extended contest rules once, but I was out of the room (and the scene) at the time, so I still do not have a feel for how they work. But the rest of the system seemed to work fine and I am tempted to pick up QuestWorlds when it is finally released.

Goblin City is a clever haiku of a setting, a one-page rpg that has a good heart. It can be downloaded from http://www.wargolem.com/freebies/goblincity.pdf The second half of the six-hour adventure pitted our motley crew of vermin exterminators against a walking mage fortress slowly making its way to the city. Overall, it was a nifty mix of high-adventure and chaotic looniness, marred only by the first three hours of dull directionless chaos.

With the Goblin City game going to four a.m., I chose to sleep in and only play in one game on Sunday, a True d20 game set in the forthcoming Mecha vs. Kaiju setting. We started with creating level 1 characters, the latest recruits to the mecha-based defense force. Three of the PCs became mecha-pilots while the other three, including the two magical and psychic adepts, were assigned to the lower-powered power-suit division. While the mechas fought the giant monsters invading Japan, the others were on crowd-control and fought against the human terrorists (including ninja) out to sabotage the defense effort. I really enjoyed the mix of giant-robot and human-level conflicts and would definitely play it in the future.

Quickie update, complete with run-on sentences

It's way too late at night, especially considering that I have to get up in five hours (on the first day of a 2-week leave of absense I am taking from work) and I have been playing over at Pogo.com while listening to Don Williams and thinking about the Changeling game we had today. I have nothing particuarly intelligent (or articulate) to add, except to say that I'll be distracted this week while trying to finish my zine for A&E and getting ready for DunDraCon, which consists of the usual last-minute work on the Call of Cthulhu game I am running on Monday. Oh, and I'm also playing fetch with Spike, the youngest of our three cats; though she often gets distracted or loses the poof-ball under (or in) the couch, she is still better at it than the two dogs I grew up with. :\

600 Words of Recent News

I flew to North Carolina to assist in the turn-up of two 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE) connections between two financial data centers. I started the push for a 10GE testing solution at my company and have been the product manager on the project (through no less than 3 inceptions) since 2002. The turn-up itself was very easy, since were we essentially just testing ~7 km of fiber optic cable running a DWDM wavelength through a couple of network elements and actual Ethernet traffic had very little to do with the test. The main difficulty, besides coordinating with the other data center with people who could not follow directions, was that the work officially started at midnight Saturday night. With preliminary work and equipment setup, I was actually there assisting the customer starting Saturday evening and did not get to bed until after three o'clock in the morning in Sunday. Overall, it made for a very long weekend and I did not fly home until Monday morning. In addition to the useful field experience that I could apply later that week (see below), I learned that Cracker Barrel really is not all that it is cracked up to be.

On the following Thursday, I returned to the east coast, Atlanta this time, to assist in the creation of test procedures for the type of turn-up that we performed the previous weekend. And by assist, I mean do it on my own, since very little constructive input or feedback was provided by the customer. An important part of my job is to make my customer's job easier, and it is very frustrating, inefficient, and costly in time and travel expenses when customers are unable to help me help them. This is hardly the first, or the last, time when I encountered a situation in which I knew more of the technical details of testing than the customer. After all, I was there to be a technical expert and consultant for 10GE, but so much of what I do depends on the specifics of the application, that I need good, complete information from the customer so that I can be helpful. Fortunately, this particular Layer 1 application is so basic that my questions were few and easily answered. Since there are no switches or routers involved, we can sidestep all the complexities associated with MAC and IP addresses and protocols.

I returned to find myself called to the Superior Courthouse for jury duty the following Monday. Given my low juror group number, I had expected this and was warning people for weeks. This was not the first time I had been called for jury duty, but the first time I had ever set foot in the actual courtroom. I lucked into being picked as an alternate and on Tuesday, I became an official juror when one of the other twelve had to be excused "with cause." Fortunately, it was a quick civil trial and we handed in our verdict on Wednesday morning. I will not go into details, simply because I cannot think of a way to make them interesting, except to say that our decision was unanimous in favor of the defendant, a large national retailer and against the little old lady who was knocked down in their store. While I am not a defender of Corporate America, we simply did not see any negligence on their part that would make them responsible for the damages. I used the new Winchester extension of Light Rail, which dropped me off right at the courthouse and made for very pleasant commuting.

Zine Update

It occurred to me that I have not been uploading my A&E zines and I had accumulated quite a backlog.

All the zines through December of 2005 have been uploaded. They can be found in the usual place.

Bear With Me

I am twiddling the layout, fixing the archiving and feeds, and performing cleanup. I have to change the style sheet of the non-blog pages, update the error page, and delete the old site index page.

As has been noted in private email, I do not have my comments enabled. They will not be enabled until the transition is done and I stop tweaking the site. Even so, I do not know if this page will turn into a true blog or remain, as it was originally intended, as a convenient front page to my stuff.

Stay tuned.

Month One: No Stuff

After listening to Wil Wheaton's Just a Geek: Teh Audiobook, it occurred to me that I had not updated this place. Part of the reason is because I simply did not have much to say.

I am an fairly introverted, private person who will not go into his personal life and bare his soul the way that Wil and other bloggers do. It is just not my style.

In the past month, I attended ConQuest for Friday and Monday and it pretty much sucked. There simply was not enough interest in my Savage Worlds games to make me feel like it was worth the effort. And since I was running adventures taken from my bi-weekly campaign, it was hardly any effort at all to prepare them for the convention. Rather than inspire me to write a bunch of new material for my campaign, the con simply left me drained. I did not attend Saturday because of other commitments to my wife and on Sunday, I chose to play with my regular DC Heroes group. I have not decided what I want to do for next year, whether or not I want to try again and give ConQuest another shot. My convention focus right now is squarely on DunDraCon, but I am waiting until after Serenity opens to determine exactly what I will try to run.

A place to put my stuff

I noticed the other day that I had not updated my web page in six months. This made me re-think what I was doing with my web page (plus, I had recently decided to shift from xenon games to sinister things). Its primary purpose is still to have "a place to put my stuff," which is mostly rpg-related material that I write and then upload for my players (and the general) public to view and use. However, much of what I write never gets uploaded because it simply is not "meaty" enough to go through the effort. This blog is a first attempt to find a place to put my stuff that I cannot be bothered to archive on the main site. We'll see how it goes.