Hello Friends!
Just a quick post to say hi from Montezuma, Indiana (map!)
I'm here all week working on work stuff.
So take care while I'm away!
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
D&D timeline
So I'm super late on this, but posting it anyway.
Way back here, I talked about having gotten together with some current and old gaming friends of a session of D&D. Well, it was not a letdown. I can say that, because I expected very little of D&D. Call me jaded.
Mostly to entertain myself, and apparently prove that I'm snotty and snide, I kept up with a timeline during our session. Here it is:
(Note - I'm just being a dick in general, not toward our GM or any of my players, so no offense, anybody)
7:00 todd arrived
7:08 todd reads intro text
7:14 the party asks questions of their employer
7:16 party travels into desert
7:17 find big easter island heads
7:25 john fails to find a big footprint, jason finds it
7:30 the heads start to make alot of noise
7:33 we start running around, and the heads start moving (of course)
7:36 we're fighting the big moving heads
7:44 round two, fighting some big giant heads
7:52 bruce calculates damage, todd asks what spell resistance is, bruce looks stuff up in the DMG
7:54 round three
7:58 we look up tumbling rules
8:05 one of the big heads is grappling bruce
8:11 round 4 perhaps?
8:18 fight is over, hydrate, duck into the statue's mouth
8:26 we pile up on the stairs, fretting about the maiden shaped arch
8:34 we get burned up, and vogel dies
8:39 maddie declines to play, comes to look over my shoulder
8:40 younger sends me gmail messages
8:41 maddie better check her email
8:43 bruce laughs loudly
8:52 bruce whacks away at one of the fire things that have attacked us
8:56 jason picks his way through dog poop
8:58 keith rolls saves for his items, having been handily resurrected back in town. but we don't have time to rest
9:06 we peer into a room full of chains
9:33 we battle some dogs and chains
9:42 todd makes some calculations while we discuss jumping boots
Way back here, I talked about having gotten together with some current and old gaming friends of a session of D&D. Well, it was not a letdown. I can say that, because I expected very little of D&D. Call me jaded.
Mostly to entertain myself, and apparently prove that I'm snotty and snide, I kept up with a timeline during our session. Here it is:
(Note - I'm just being a dick in general, not toward our GM or any of my players, so no offense, anybody)
7:00 todd arrived
7:08 todd reads intro text
7:14 the party asks questions of their employer
7:16 party travels into desert
7:17 find big easter island heads
7:25 john fails to find a big footprint, jason finds it
7:30 the heads start to make alot of noise
7:33 we start running around, and the heads start moving (of course)
7:36 we're fighting the big moving heads
7:44 round two, fighting some big giant heads
7:52 bruce calculates damage, todd asks what spell resistance is, bruce looks stuff up in the DMG
7:54 round three
7:58 we look up tumbling rules
8:05 one of the big heads is grappling bruce
8:11 round 4 perhaps?
8:18 fight is over, hydrate, duck into the statue's mouth
8:26 we pile up on the stairs, fretting about the maiden shaped arch
8:34 we get burned up, and vogel dies
8:39 maddie declines to play, comes to look over my shoulder
8:40 younger sends me gmail messages
8:41 maddie better check her email
8:43 bruce laughs loudly
8:52 bruce whacks away at one of the fire things that have attacked us
8:56 jason picks his way through dog poop
8:58 keith rolls saves for his items, having been handily resurrected back in town. but we don't have time to rest
9:06 we peer into a room full of chains
9:33 we battle some dogs and chains
9:42 todd makes some calculations while we discuss jumping boots
Werewolf gaming
Also as promised: Werewolf.
I am immensely pleased to announce that I recently successfully got a Werewolf the Forsaken game going.
After months of whining about no gaming and no gamers, within a single week I found 3 people interested, and rapidly assembled them and my two other gamers, and got a game going.
I wanted to meet and game first in a neutral location - somewhere that was not-my-house, since inviting people that I've known for 3 days and only via email to my home. But, scheduling did not allow a day when our local library was open, and I didn't want to try it at Starbucks/restaurant, we did it at my place.
Everyone showed up, and after sucking up my stage fright, and rambling through personal introductions and then introduction to the game, we were up and running.
So far so good. We're only a few sessions in, and we're only doing every-other-week, and we're having some scheduling conflicts, but I think I'm handling those particularly well.. We've got two scheduled gaming sessions where we're going to be short - on one we'll be missing Maddie, and on the other we'll be missing Jerry and Andrew. I do not want to run our regularly werewolf pack while anyone is absent - and for a second I seriously considered doing Shadow of Yesterday stuff on those two sessions - but I really do not want to throw any kinks into this excellent bit of gaming. So instead of either not meeting at all, or playing a different game entirely, or leaving players out of the pack's adventures, I'll be running two "one-shot" sessions that revolve around the periphery of our pack's story. More specifically, the players will get to play bad-guys in the story. I don't intend to put them head-to-head with their own characters, but they'll be close enough to smell each other, so to speak.
Again, I've been incredibly lucky finding these other gamers. Maybe I worry more than I should, but in addition to the problem of there being generally very few gamers at all - I'm always concerned that they'll be unsalvageable, or more simply, that I won't be able to put up with them. But that has not been the case at all. The guys who showed up are mildly-hard core D&D players, with a mix of "hey, check out my homebrew game that relies on large pools of d12's", but I'm being negativish. One fellow is seemingly my age, and is clean cut and looks like he does computer or paper-work. The other two are a father and son, the father being older than us, and the son being perhaps 16, both somewhat classic geeks, but super easy to welcome into my house.
So anyway: YAY GAMING!
I am immensely pleased to announce that I recently successfully got a Werewolf the Forsaken game going.
After months of whining about no gaming and no gamers, within a single week I found 3 people interested, and rapidly assembled them and my two other gamers, and got a game going.
I wanted to meet and game first in a neutral location - somewhere that was not-my-house, since inviting people that I've known for 3 days and only via email to my home. But, scheduling did not allow a day when our local library was open, and I didn't want to try it at Starbucks/restaurant, we did it at my place.
Everyone showed up, and after sucking up my stage fright, and rambling through personal introductions and then introduction to the game, we were up and running.
So far so good. We're only a few sessions in, and we're only doing every-other-week, and we're having some scheduling conflicts, but I think I'm handling those particularly well.. We've got two scheduled gaming sessions where we're going to be short - on one we'll be missing Maddie, and on the other we'll be missing Jerry and Andrew. I do not want to run our regularly werewolf pack while anyone is absent - and for a second I seriously considered doing Shadow of Yesterday stuff on those two sessions - but I really do not want to throw any kinks into this excellent bit of gaming. So instead of either not meeting at all, or playing a different game entirely, or leaving players out of the pack's adventures, I'll be running two "one-shot" sessions that revolve around the periphery of our pack's story. More specifically, the players will get to play bad-guys in the story. I don't intend to put them head-to-head with their own characters, but they'll be close enough to smell each other, so to speak.
Again, I've been incredibly lucky finding these other gamers. Maybe I worry more than I should, but in addition to the problem of there being generally very few gamers at all - I'm always concerned that they'll be unsalvageable, or more simply, that I won't be able to put up with them. But that has not been the case at all. The guys who showed up are mildly-hard core D&D players, with a mix of "hey, check out my homebrew game that relies on large pools of d12's", but I'm being negativish. One fellow is seemingly my age, and is clean cut and looks like he does computer or paper-work. The other two are a father and son, the father being older than us, and the son being perhaps 16, both somewhat classic geeks, but super easy to welcome into my house.
So anyway: YAY GAMING!
Porn
Thought that might get your attention.
As promised: Porn At Work
The other day I'm sitting at my desk at work fulfilling my role as an IT guy. I'm on the phone with a user at our remote facility, trying to fix his hootielau. I tell him to try X, I tell him to try Y, no dice. So I decide to connect to his desktop and go "hands-on", but I was feeling lazy, and instead of just looking up his IP address, I tried to walk him through finding it. No luck with this either, where Z = finding IP address. So I bring up my desktop connect client, where I type in an IP address to connect to, and I say to myself "I think this is his IP." Hit enter, the window loads with the desktop of a user at our remote facility, and omg porn. Boobs. Dick. Dick fucking boobs. Porn. More porn. Oh look some more porn. And some boobs. So like 6 seconds of real time pass, though it feels like minutes, as hardcore porn plays out across my computer screen. My boss sits at a desk kindof behind mine, where if he were looking, he'd see... hardcore porn on my screen. So I disconnect from the remote session. Aloud (remember: still on the phone with some guy, trying to fix his whatchamagigger), I say "Well that's not your desktop apparently", since he's still mumbling into the phone about how his thingamajig isn't working.
So, I go on to get this problem sorted out and fixed, and get off of the phone with him. Now, curious, I dig around to figure out who's computer that was. So I find the IP I connected to, and figure out which user that is, and tell my boss. He sighs, and recalls that just a few months ago we had to clean this user's computer off, since it was completely overwhelmed with spyware and junk, and how the user swore to him that he didn't go to "those" sites, and if he had, it was by accident, and yada yada yada. I offer that I am not completely certain that the user was actively "using" the porn, since its possible to get nasty spyware that will pop porn onto your machine even if you are not there. I figure'd I'd chance it, and connected to his desktop again. Porn.
Porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn.
Its uncomfortable to stand next to your boss at work, looking at your (my) screen, with porn rapidly playing out across it. After a few moments he offers that it seems unlikely that the user is there, as its all scrolling/refreshing/etc pretty quickly. So I close the explorer windows, as my boss picks up his phone to call that user. It was late in the afternoon, even later at our remote location, and we figured maybe everyone - including this user - had gone home for the day. No. He answered his phone. My boss suggested that the user should "stop using the internet now. Yeah, just go ahead and log off of the computer."
I've since figured out how to block content on IE ;)
As promised: Porn At Work
The other day I'm sitting at my desk at work fulfilling my role as an IT guy. I'm on the phone with a user at our remote facility, trying to fix his hootielau. I tell him to try X, I tell him to try Y, no dice. So I decide to connect to his desktop and go "hands-on", but I was feeling lazy, and instead of just looking up his IP address, I tried to walk him through finding it. No luck with this either, where Z = finding IP address. So I bring up my desktop connect client, where I type in an IP address to connect to, and I say to myself "I think this is his IP." Hit enter, the window loads with the desktop of a user at our remote facility, and omg porn. Boobs. Dick. Dick fucking boobs. Porn. More porn. Oh look some more porn. And some boobs. So like 6 seconds of real time pass, though it feels like minutes, as hardcore porn plays out across my computer screen. My boss sits at a desk kindof behind mine, where if he were looking, he'd see... hardcore porn on my screen. So I disconnect from the remote session. Aloud (remember: still on the phone with some guy, trying to fix his whatchamagigger), I say "Well that's not your desktop apparently", since he's still mumbling into the phone about how his thingamajig isn't working.
So, I go on to get this problem sorted out and fixed, and get off of the phone with him. Now, curious, I dig around to figure out who's computer that was. So I find the IP I connected to, and figure out which user that is, and tell my boss. He sighs, and recalls that just a few months ago we had to clean this user's computer off, since it was completely overwhelmed with spyware and junk, and how the user swore to him that he didn't go to "those" sites, and if he had, it was by accident, and yada yada yada. I offer that I am not completely certain that the user was actively "using" the porn, since its possible to get nasty spyware that will pop porn onto your machine even if you are not there. I figure'd I'd chance it, and connected to his desktop again. Porn.
Porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn.
Its uncomfortable to stand next to your boss at work, looking at your (my) screen, with porn rapidly playing out across it. After a few moments he offers that it seems unlikely that the user is there, as its all scrolling/refreshing/etc pretty quickly. So I close the explorer windows, as my boss picks up his phone to call that user. It was late in the afternoon, even later at our remote location, and we figured maybe everyone - including this user - had gone home for the day. No. He answered his phone. My boss suggested that the user should "stop using the internet now. Yeah, just go ahead and log off of the computer."
I've since figured out how to block content on IE ;)
The Warrior
So last night we watched Musa. There has been some confusion as to its title. Let me explain why.
A few months ago, the wife and I settled in for a quiet evening and determined to rent a movie on Pay-Per-View. We flipped through the movies, seeing a few things that looked interesting, and saw "The Warrior". We hit the preview thing, and watched this trailer (trailer is from IMDB, and looks to be in WMP format). Anyway, it looked like a cool Wuxia film, in the style of Crouching Tiger-Hidden Dragon, and had Ziyi Zhang in it, from Crouching Tiger and Hero and so forth. So we decided to give it a shot. The movie started, and we watched. It moved slowly, but was good. About an hour into it, it occurred to us that this was not the movie that we had previewed. We thought this was strange, but we were enjoying this movie.. which was called "The Warrior".
After watching it, we went back and looked at the PPV selections, and saw that there were two movies called The Warrior. The one we'd seen, and another, which must have corresponded to the preview that we watched. So a couple of days later, with some friends over, we told them the funny story that I've just related to you, and then went to PPV and rented the other The Warrior. The one that we wanted to see, with Ziyi Zhang in it. Well, it was QUICKLY evident to us that this was also not the movie that we had previewed. The movie that we were watching was exactly like a live-action japanese cartoon, complete with huge skull-shaped alien clouds, spinning scythe-like computer generated blades that one of the hero's commanded, and um, a bunch of other weird, over the top stuff that left us all thinking "What the hell are we watching?" We were watching Zu Warriors. Oddly, it also had Ziyi Zhang in it, though in a tiny role. We could not even finish watching it. I'm sure it is a fine movie - if you like that genre. We gave it the "no, thanks".
So, we again consulted the internet, and realized that there are the following three movies: The Warrior, an excellent Hindi language film. Musa, also known as The Warriors, a Chinese/Korean film. And Zu Warriors, a strange power-rangers type film. And Time Warner sure was confused, and so, in turn, were we.
Anyway, this sordid tale has a happy ending. Having enjoyed the Hindi language "The Warrior" so much, and having not had any luck in watching Musa, we turned to amazon to see if we could get our hands on it. Somewhat by accident, we ended up getting both on dvd for less than $20.
So, back to the beginning, last night we watched Musa, and it was quite good.
A few months ago, the wife and I settled in for a quiet evening and determined to rent a movie on Pay-Per-View. We flipped through the movies, seeing a few things that looked interesting, and saw "The Warrior". We hit the preview thing, and watched this trailer (trailer is from IMDB, and looks to be in WMP format). Anyway, it looked like a cool Wuxia film, in the style of Crouching Tiger-Hidden Dragon, and had Ziyi Zhang in it, from Crouching Tiger and Hero and so forth. So we decided to give it a shot. The movie started, and we watched. It moved slowly, but was good. About an hour into it, it occurred to us that this was not the movie that we had previewed. We thought this was strange, but we were enjoying this movie.. which was called "The Warrior".
After watching it, we went back and looked at the PPV selections, and saw that there were two movies called The Warrior. The one we'd seen, and another, which must have corresponded to the preview that we watched. So a couple of days later, with some friends over, we told them the funny story that I've just related to you, and then went to PPV and rented the other The Warrior. The one that we wanted to see, with Ziyi Zhang in it. Well, it was QUICKLY evident to us that this was also not the movie that we had previewed. The movie that we were watching was exactly like a live-action japanese cartoon, complete with huge skull-shaped alien clouds, spinning scythe-like computer generated blades that one of the hero's commanded, and um, a bunch of other weird, over the top stuff that left us all thinking "What the hell are we watching?" We were watching Zu Warriors. Oddly, it also had Ziyi Zhang in it, though in a tiny role. We could not even finish watching it. I'm sure it is a fine movie - if you like that genre. We gave it the "no, thanks".
So, we again consulted the internet, and realized that there are the following three movies: The Warrior, an excellent Hindi language film. Musa, also known as The Warriors, a Chinese/Korean film. And Zu Warriors, a strange power-rangers type film. And Time Warner sure was confused, and so, in turn, were we.
Anyway, this sordid tale has a happy ending. Having enjoyed the Hindi language "The Warrior" so much, and having not had any luck in watching Musa, we turned to amazon to see if we could get our hands on it. Somewhat by accident, we ended up getting both on dvd for less than $20.
So, back to the beginning, last night we watched Musa, and it was quite good.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Note to self:
Note to self: do some blogging this weekend.
Few things to catch up on:
List!
Fixing porn at work.
Werewolf!
Some links:
http://www.anti-capitalist.org/pyramid2.jpg
http://tyrisr.livejournal.com/16918.html
Few things to catch up on:
List!
Fixing porn at work.
Werewolf!
Some links:
http://www.anti-capitalist.org/pyramid2.jpg
http://tyrisr.livejournal.com/16918.html
Friday, February 9, 2007
money, computers and real-time-strategy
I don't like to talk about money, mostly because I have a proven track record of being a poor manager of it. But I'll mention it here, because my latest craving has been to drop a cool thousand on a desktop computer upgrade.
Its funny how the mind sorts out value. I can think of a jillion things that I would not spend a thousand dollars on. But hardware for a computer? Oh heck yeah. I'm a big computer nerd. I like playing with computers, and I spend alot of time on the computer. So at first glance, this seems perfectly reasonable to me. But then if I consider for a moment all of the things that we're still paying for, and some of the small things that we need to spend money on, but haven't, cause its low priority, or whatever.. that thousand dollars starts to look like less of a golden opportunity, and more like some stuff.
Now, since I'm talking about computers, I'll move right on to computer games. I played a copy of Company of Heroes. Its a realtime strategy game about WWII. It looks really pretty, and plays pretty well - its a fun game. Then I remembered that I both hate, and am no good at (related perhaps?) RTS games. I'm a turn-based strategy guy. Always have been. Yet somehow I'm always suckered into trying the RTS games. They look pretty, and seem fun. So I load em up and start playing, and boy it sure is fun! Then the computer opponent, which is always a much better RTS gamer than I am, starts handing me my ass. And I'm not talking about "late stage" or anything, I'm talking about three minutes into the game. "Hey look! I created an infantry unit. I wonder what buildings I can build. Hrmm - 'need more resources'.. Hey, why is my infantry being attacked? .... Where is my infantry?? Crap!" And that's how these games always go for me. So uh.. I recommend Company of Heroes if you like WWII and RTS games.
Also, I'm going to have to switch to BBC news again, since I'm not interested in the coming 30 days of exclusive coverage of nothing but the death of Anna Nicole.
Its funny how the mind sorts out value. I can think of a jillion things that I would not spend a thousand dollars on. But hardware for a computer? Oh heck yeah. I'm a big computer nerd. I like playing with computers, and I spend alot of time on the computer. So at first glance, this seems perfectly reasonable to me. But then if I consider for a moment all of the things that we're still paying for, and some of the small things that we need to spend money on, but haven't, cause its low priority, or whatever.. that thousand dollars starts to look like less of a golden opportunity, and more like some stuff.
Now, since I'm talking about computers, I'll move right on to computer games. I played a copy of Company of Heroes. Its a realtime strategy game about WWII. It looks really pretty, and plays pretty well - its a fun game. Then I remembered that I both hate, and am no good at (related perhaps?) RTS games. I'm a turn-based strategy guy. Always have been. Yet somehow I'm always suckered into trying the RTS games. They look pretty, and seem fun. So I load em up and start playing, and boy it sure is fun! Then the computer opponent, which is always a much better RTS gamer than I am, starts handing me my ass. And I'm not talking about "late stage" or anything, I'm talking about three minutes into the game. "Hey look! I created an infantry unit. I wonder what buildings I can build. Hrmm - 'need more resources'.. Hey, why is my infantry being attacked? .... Where is my infantry?? Crap!" And that's how these games always go for me. So uh.. I recommend Company of Heroes if you like WWII and RTS games.
Also, I'm going to have to switch to BBC news again, since I'm not interested in the coming 30 days of exclusive coverage of nothing but the death of Anna Nicole.
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