Break Update

Hokay, I should write something here before people assume I died in the snowstorm in Point. Alas I missed it completely by less then an hour. So not a white Christmas for us in La Crosse. Ah well, hopefully the snow will still be there in Point!

Anyhow Christmas wasn't too bad. Funniest gift: a measuring glass that also works as a shot glass. Talk about great for someone like me who isn't a good cook. After I botch the cooking I'll have a shot glass handy!

Other fun things: I got a big Foreman grill. Pretty exciting but I need more counter space to be able to use it. Maybe when I get a house?

Major haul comes from books. Dad and I went to Uncle Hugo's today. Yay for books (I'm a book nerd as alllllways). Got both of the Eric Frank Russell anthologies (Major Ingredients & Entities). Tolkien's: Silmarillion and the Tolkien Reader. Harvard Lampoon's Bored of the Rings-my Dad loves this book and it is pretty funny. The "boggies" (aka hobbits) immigirating to the Sty (er Shire er wait) under the guise of a band of iterent grave-robbers won me over. Gaiman & Pratchett's Good Omens finally returns to paperback so I got that as well. I also picked up a book copy of Chaositech for my Ptolus campaign and decided to check out Secrets of Zir'an which flopped cause it had some semi-illegible pages.

In addition I picked up a couple of Alternity books for Carl and the Werewolf core book for Dani (hopefully the right edition). That's all for now. Hope everyone had a great Christmas and has a good new year (I almost wrote "had a condition once", wonder what that meant.)

Home

Yay for home! Merry Christmas everyone!

And then there weren't many

The University is rather sad and lonely with everyone leaving...

Last Call

(Alternate title Beeks and the Deathly Hallows)

So I'm working my last work shift which is my last act as a student at University Wisconsin - Stevens Point. There's nothin' left after this. It's bit a strange. Doesn't help that the last couple days have been kinda gray and grim and internally I've been the same. Just some things left hanging that I've felt maybe I kinda screwed with my irrepressible timing ability.

Tomorrow barring bad weather ala Denver heading for home and Christmas. Still got wrap my presents (oops!). Home may be relatively busy visiting family and just running errands that need to be done there. Then back here for London reunion and work.

I'm done. It's strange. And good. And sad too. No more late nights :/

I forgot

So after I graduate I still gotta take finals. Hahahahaha...awe, I just made myself sad.

Ok it's not actually all that bad, I'm done tonight so it's not like things drag out the whole week. Then I've got a couple days to hang out with folks before everyone goes home. January is kinda a lonely quiet month (even more so since I am sans roommate) although work will probably fill things up more then I realize.

Speaking of, I'm not sure I can quite get my mind around that in a couple weeks I'll be working full time. Academically I understand what's goin' on but still kinda boggles the mind since in a lot of ways it's a totally new expierence (with the internship you knew that eventually you'd get a break, etc, etc).

Good luck on finals to everyone who still has them!

News

I graduated, now what?

Picking the below

Opening Credits: Cells (instrumental) - The Servant
Waking Up: Living Water - Ryan Farish
First Day At School: Cats in the Cradle - Bon Jovi
Falling In Love: Wounded Feet - Telecast
Breaking Up: Life is like a Boat - Rei Fu
1st date: Save Tonight - Eagle Eye Cherry
Prom: What Planet Is This? - The Seatbelts
Life's OK: Da Da Da - Trio *
Driving: The Courier - Randy Edelman (The Last of the Mohicans OST)
Flashback: Wind - Akeboshi
Getting Back Together: Golden Brown - The Stranglers
Wedding: Conquering Fools - OAR *
Birth of Child: Can't Take it In - Imogen Heap
Final Battle: The White Tree - Howard Shore (Return of the King OST)
Death Scene: Someone Said Goodbye - Enya
Funeral Song: Hurt - Johnny Cash
End Credits: Targetron - Nathan Lamont

Well there's my picks, not totally sure about all of them but think it'd be an interesting track. Got Twism to do it too!

Random Meme

So, here's how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle.
3. Press play.
4. For every question, type the song that's playing.
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button.
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool.

Here's Mine/Also done with top 500 songs

Opening Credits: Murron's Burial - Braveheart / Amnesia - Chumbawumba
Waking Up: Conquering Fools - OAR / Drops of Jupitor - Train
First Day At School: The Stone Table - Chronicles of Narnia OST / Cats in the Cradle - Bon Jovi
Falling In Love: Final Duel/Into the Death Star - Star Wars: Return of the Jedi OST / Strangers - Wolf's Rain OST
Breaking Up: O Tannebuam - Vince Garibaldi Trio / Like WOW! - Leslie Carter (Shrek OST)
1st date: Collide- SF Game Center - Seatbelts / Pretty Fly (For a White Guy) - Offspring
Prom: Christmas is Coming - Vince Garibaldi Trio / Clocks - Coldplay
Life's OK: Judas' Death - Jesus Christ Superstar / Wassail, Wassail -Mannheim Steamroller
Driving: A Fistful of Dollars - Futurama episode commentary / Rhythym Emotion - Gundam Wing OST
Flashback: Home with Me - Chumbawumba / Big Yellow Taxi - Counting Crows
Getting Back Together: Into the Blue - Moby / The Holly and the Ivy - Mannheim Steamroller
Wedding: Pain - StereoMud / Stumblin' - Powderfinger
Birth of Child: Hell or High Water - Tinsely Ellis / Circle of Life - The Lion King OST
Final Battle: Invoke 4 - Gundam SEED OST / The Throne Room/End Titles - Star Wars: A New Hope OST
Death Scene: Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby - O Brother Where Art Thou OST / Princes of the Universe - Queen
Funeral Song: Postcards from Italy - Beirut / No Other Way - Jack Johnson
End Credits: Alien: End Title - Jerry Goldsmith / Pinch Me - Barenaked Ladies

Conclusion: iTunes is not a good judge / Somewhat better judge when limited to songs I listen too (I have a day's worth of music I have never played even once)

Next up: what'd I'd play if I could pick (prolly sadder then letting iTunes randomly pick but I need something to do I am kinda nervous/bored)

"We have done the impossible and that makes us mighty." -Sqt. Mal Reynolds

That makes me smile.

Books rehash

Yay, they came! Now of course which one do I read? The various Exalted 2E books I'll prolly attack in little bits and pieces. Scroll of the Monk I may read mostly for the new martial art forms. Have to see what the differences are but I might convert them to 1E if I ever run that again. Probably tackle Driscoll's book once I finish purusing the Exalted books. Then onto The Impossible Country by Brian Hall. This actually is a precursor to the Yugoslav civil war so should be interesting. I had a hard time on Amazon finding any decently rated books on that war which somewhat surprised me. Maybe I am searching by the wrong keywords. *shrug*

Anywho, that is all.

Worldview

Interesting food for thought. Watching "X" and the opening credits show Earth from orbit. It's centered over Japan. It's easy to forget that our worldview naturally has the United States at the center or relatively close due to where we grew up. Still it's kinda odd thinking of South Africa being the center of the globe. Of course it's a globe so there is no real "center" persay.

Old Connections

Yay, reconnected with an old friend! Also beat Sketchfighter (and then proceeded to start playing in Hard mode). It looks like WDMD may turn out ok, I should pass at least. Still need to do put some time into it but might get this figured out. Yay. I graduate in a week and it's kinda strange. Suddenly I'll be done and then everything starts over again.

I don't actually much else to say at the moment. Yea, I'm deep I know...

The Obligatory 0214 Post

Well not much that actually obligates me to do this. Thought I would anyway.

So let's see, what have I been reading of late? Not much. I am in transition between books since I finished Battle for Moscow. I haven't really felt like picking up Wild at Heart although I intend to eventually. Not really feeling the deep, insightful read. So I am waiting for Amazon to deliver Mark Driscoll's Confessions of a Reformist Pastor which Al introduced me to and is hilarious. Seriously the guy is a ball of laughs and it was a pretty funny Chi Alpha where Al was quoting him although most of Al's messages usually have a laugh or two in them so good figure. Book seems fun and imfortative so that will probably get first dibs and be my Christmas break read. Next up because it'll come in the same package with be the book on the Yugoslav civil war. Can't remember the name. I got interested in the area after seeing about 1/3 or 1/2 of Harrison's Flowers (random side track, IMDB switched the website a bit and it's really weird!).

Hoping when I am at Uncle Hugo's that I can find the pair of Eric Frank Russell Anthologies that Dad has (entitled Major Ingredients and Entities Amazon tells/reminds me). They've been out a couple years so I suppose it is touch and go but I remember I really enjoying his works but never getting a chance to really read them because by the time they came out I was in college. Also the reason why I never finished the Pacific half (nor even started the Atlantic) of History of the United States Naval Operations in World War Two by Samuel Eliot Morison. Who did such a good job, by the way, chronicling the Navy in the Second World War that he got a ship named after him.

There you go. Tons of my reading thoughts. Honestly buying books (moreso RPGs) is my guilty pleasure. Next year I am gonna have to set a spending cap because this year I initially said I wouldn't buy anything past January (when Exalted finished up) and well I've spent a lot. Gotta save for the house :D

Final thoughts: Yeah Toast!

Interesting

Well surprise surprise, I can suddenly use Blogger Beta. They finally got around to porting the old gaurd in. Here's hoping to a smooth run.

I meant to post this yesterday since it was December 7th. Anyone remember?

As for me, yesterday was pretty good except for that I found myself rather overwhelmed by WDMD as he fully intends us to code the stuff in PHP and I have no clue. Thought others were in the same boat but doesn't look like it. I will have to sit down and work my butt off.

Got to chat with a couple friends that I normally don't get to talk much too (of course always hope that I can improve on that) and also plugged away at Sketchfighter, which will have to stop now til PHP is complete!

That's it for now.

That's Sketchy

Oh dear I've discovered a distraction! Probably not good for trying to focus on the confusing class that is WDMD. In the meantime I think i've made a misstep but I'm not sure.

Winter

Well winter may not officially be here yet but it certainly feels it all cold, blustery, and snowy. It looks like we're gonna get an inch or two of flurries that will take about 5 days to arrive. Guess I can't complain, everything is white. I'll try and toss up some photos for the 1 of you who doesn't live in the state of Wisconsin and is therefore seeing this first hand.

This week feels really busy but I think in perspective it's not really that bad at all. As long as I keep cracking at it I can stay on top of things and really with this history paper I am and these couple quizzes after this week the only class with assignments still will be WDMD.

Ptolus 1

For those who are interested results from first session of Ptolus are here.

And here the Word of the Lord...

Today was pretty busy. Ran Ptolus and it went pretty well. Geez, it can take a long time to get people up a level at the normal rate! I've got lots to learn about DMing. Then went and saw Scott's documentary. It was pretty good, can't see why it got banned! It was a little shorter then I thought but that was ok. I got a chance to go out and see the candlelight hike in Schmeekle. Have to admit I didn't expect much but dang that was pretty cool to do the trail by candlelight. Really creepy actually too, just a trail of torches in the dark. Cool!

Almost Over

Wow, I graduate in 16 days. I start work in little over a month. What happened to the time? In a sense life won't change a whole lot. I'll still be in Stevens Point and my friends will still all be here for the most part (except for those lucky people named Seth and Kat who are going overseas!) so the only radical shift is that I'll be working the 8-5 5 days a week. Maybe a tough shift initially doing the early morning thing but after that I'll prolly just adjust to a more normal life schedule. Isn't that a scary thought?

Anyhow I should get back to working on Ptolus stuff so that goes well Saturday. Things are getting busy leading up to finals so it's good I am just doing a starting shot and then waiting til after finals!

Whee

Today was a pretty good day even if it showed that I've got a lot of growing still to do. And lots of Ptolus work...

Yay

The hardcover copies of The Red Star Battle of Kar Dathra's Gate and Nokgorka came today. Very elegent simple covers and the bindings seem better. Ironically they are too tall to fit on my bookshelf. Said bookshelf was built to hold RPG books primarily so it is surprising that it wasn't tall enough. This one is getting pretty full now too (won't moving be fun?) so might have to ask for a second one for my birthday. I must be some sort of crazy to ask for bookshelves for my birthday eh?

Bombing Mars

Life has been a little hectic of late but mostly in a good way. School work is picking up as naturally the semester winds to a close. December is traditionally a time in the collegiate's life where they are bombarded by homework. Mostly I think because professor's realize they have a ton of stuff they need to get through and suddenly about 3 weeks to do it. Hilarity ensues. (Begin Jack Benny music?)

I am now employed once I graduate and that's very exciting. It means I get to stay in the area and I am pretty thrilled by that too. Having start over somewhere else does not thrill me. I suppose I am oddly enough setting myself up to be here for a long time but that doesn't bother me at all. Perhaps i'm like the one guy in American Grafitti who decides to stay for a little bit and ends up being their my entire life? Who knows.

I got a new cell phone over break. So far it's a toss up on whether I like it better then the old. Don't get me wrong it has better battery life and seems to get better signal reception both things I bemoaned my old phone. However its interface feels less efficient and it has 3,735 more features then I need; there is a major trend within phone manufacturers to produce some really cheap but fairly crappy phones and the rest are expensive and have a bunch of features that a bunch of trendy teenagers would like but not much practical value. Basically what the last sentence means is that I'm a phone luddite. I go for practicality over features. Function over form?

Also when I was home I found a big gamut of Rifts books at my local FLGS. The whole lot was for sale very cheap (less then $6 for a book and consider even Rifts books are usually about $18) and a couple are ones I'd debated getting. It was a nice haul. My bookshelf is almost full. It was pretty empty a year and a half ago. Pretty sure my guilty pleasure in life is buying RPG books. However at least I am buying something that stimulates my mind!

Gray

Today is one of those quiet days where everything seems to mimic the weather.

Star Wars & Firefly

So it appears that I have a month or so to make sure Kat has seen all of Firefly and episodes 5 & 6 of Star Wars. Better get crackin' :D

What's Wrong Me?

Yea I know, I haven't written in a couple days. Whenever I feel like I want to write once I get there the feeling is gone. Actually of late things have felt a little off-balance. I think Thanksgiving will do me good getting me away from here and taking my mind off all the stuff that I tend to worry about when I am in Point.

What have I been up to? Well helped Carl to celebrate his birthday and that involved a lot of food and board games. I am really loving the board games. I only have a couple (primarily Junta although I'd count Munchkin/Ninja Burger in the board game category) and really don't get to play a lot but they tend to be fun to do. The challenge is initially you need enough people and then generally have to explain the rules. I'm so-so at rules explanation so for somewhat complex games like Junta I am daunted by teaching new players even though I really want to play. So Aprill if you read this invite me next time! (Ok she prolly never will but I can dream eh?)

After looking at the Top 50 Sci-Fi/Fantasy books I went on Wikipedia and looked up Hugo Awards. It's amazing how many of the winners/nominees I have read. Def. due to my Dad's influence although considering a couple writers basically get major repeat noms or wins if you prefer a certain author or three you end up reading a lot.

I picked up A Bridge Too Far again. It's been awhile since I've played this (much long since I played the original Close Combat) so it is a fun re-hash. Plus unlike RTS I do decently at this because the game isn't about speed but about tactics. Trust me speed just causes casualties, I'm reminded that from time to time when I attempt to bum rush the Germans. I am still sad that CC III-V came out only on Windows and are so old that none of them run on XP (will something designed for 95/98/ME run on XP by any chance?) Oh well. That's life isn't it?

Anyhow, it's 2AM and I have to get up around 8AM although I won't fall asleep anytime soon. I'm wide awake. This means morning will hurt a lot but not much I can do make myself more tired.

Randomly: Traci's on facebook! Pretty cool considering I haven't heard from her in ages (my fault that).

Russian Fronts

So I am reading The Battle for Moscow right now. I know I said I'd pick up Wild at Heart whence I finished Ptolus but Moscow got picked up for when I work out and now I am hooked. So far it's pretty interesting. It's a little different take then Road to Stalingrad primarily because it focuses more on the Germans (Stalingrad and its "sequal" Road to Berlin are almost entirely from the Russian POV) then the Russians about 60-40 spread in fact. Its analysis focus on leadership decisions and the level the decision is made on. All the way from squad level (tactical) to divisional/corps (operational) to overall theatres and the war as a whole (strategic). So far it has been stressing how a given leader excells at a certain type. For instance Hitler is pretty good at operational command but struggles much above that.

This definitely focuses on the entirety of Barbarossa being one gigantic strategic blunder. One that could have been remedied had the Germans had a better focus. It's a fairly easy read so I am shooting through it. One thing that I found impressive was it describing the Russian terrain on the steppes. Flat flat land that when it rains because a giant puddle all the way to the horizon a foot deep. Man, that's crappy terrain to have to fight over let me tell you.

That's my reading for now. I am also dabbling in various D & D books as I prep for my Ptolus campaign.

Thoughts on the vote

Democracy has to be government by the compromise that makes everyone the least happiest. It frustrates me when everyone gets really angry when every vote on every issue/candidate/toast doesn't go their way. Makes me think that in general Americans have gotten so righteous that everyone else who disagrees with them in an uncultured heathen. So I guess that makes us all righteous uncultured heathens...

Think that's my profound thought for November.

In obscure analytical news in the past year 6676 visits were recorded on this page. Rough estimates conclude that probably 6677 of those were by me :D

Less profound but interesting. A meme of sorts I took off of BHM's journal:

This is a list of the 50 most significant science fiction/fantasy novels, 1953-2002, according to the Science Fiction Book Club. Bold the ones you've read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put an asterisk beside the ones you loved.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien*
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett*
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein*
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

Java Based Ptolus

Was thinking of using a lot of computer support so to speak for when I run Ptolus. Mainly to have most of the PDFs available if I need them but also to take advantage to my listing of nearly all the MM creatures (just have animals and vermin left to enter- try to ignore that I started this in July). Additionally I was thinking I could make a fairly simple Java programmed that'd calculate XP automatically. Be a good way to get readjusted to programming again since in theory I will be doing that starting in January even if I am not programming Java. Good project to keep me busy!

Lesse, not much else new. The snow is half gone. I never did find anyone to go out for a walk with me in it. Granted there'll be lots of more snow at this rate and that's darn exciting all on its own.

That's all for now. I should really be tryin' to get some sleep!

Reflecting on the Day

Ever have days where despite being relatively productive it doesn't feel like you've gotten anything done? That was today for me. I cleaned the apartment did my history homework (discussion and a quiz) and it still feels like I did nothing. I dunno. Now I am kinda bored but am not sure what I want to do. Maybe I'll go for a walk although walkin' by my lonesome isn't much fun.

White Wolf Online

World of Darkness coming to a computer near you? In other news: yay my hardcovers of The Red Star ship Monday :)

Snow

Wow, lookit all the snow! It sure came down considering at 11 nothing was even falling from the sky. Driving's kinda crazy though but can't complain cause everything is white and pretty. Hard to believe last night I was biking around!

Snow!

w00t! We're gonna get snow tomorrow! Yaaaaaaaaaaay!

Election Results

Well I think the Onion sums up the election quite well so I will just say read their article on it.

Special article for Folky he'll get why I think he'll be amused by it ;)

This just in...

Tallahassee, FL (AP) Early polling results from Florida appear to give Fidel Castro victory in the gubernatorial race by an overwhelming majority. Initial reactions were mixed but reportedly Castro was just as surprised as the average Floridian at his victory.

In other news Congress has officially banned Florida from voting until 2072 on the account on "those idiots being unable to vote correctly no matter what we to help them out".

GOTV?

So apparently there is an election or some such thing tomorrow. I'd recommend staying in a doorway or taking cover under the nearest...oh wait that's for earthquakes. Hmm, I suppose you could always go vote. If you are from Chicago I think you get to go at least twice.

Oh yes and because we are all told how to vote I'll tell you too: on the referendums vote "Maybe" because what else will we have for controversy if you vote with one of those more definitive words?

"What about the floating pig out there?"

"That's a government pig."

Pause

This feels a little unbalanced kind of like the calm before the storm. Today wasn't bad but something felt off. Well here's hoping I'm wrong.

Movies, Ptolus, Corinthians, and Old Times

This week has felt rather nostalgic. When doing my brief hours in the Chi Alpha office some Cru reps came in one of them was an old acquaintance from back freshman year when Ole, Twism, Brad, myself, and a bunch of others would go and take advantage of free soup/salad time at Debot. An amazing amount of that core are all married now. It's odd more so because of all of them the only one I keep in touch with is Twism. How times changes.
Then I managed to hang out with Amber and Evie and there's more memories of years past with Lena and them being silly and generally acting somewhat below our age. The good old days of going to watch CSI: Miami and mocking Horatio and his sunglasses.
Today when I went to get some nessecities at Wal-mart I made the mistake of going past the $10 movie section and picked up four movies: Shrek 2, Snatch, Super Troopers, and Kingdom of Heaven. Tell me if that isn't the weirdest combination of movies?
In the meantime I have been re-reading 1st Corinthians and will be moving onto 2nd Corinthians if I can keep this pace up. I am also trying to plug through the last 100 pages of Ptolus so I can get a game running.
And in the background I have a track from DDR 3 playing that I found after seeing it on a YouTube clip for Invader Zim (which I am really looking at buying but it's expensive on Amazon, makes me sad).

In the end I realize the God is way smarter then we can imagine and covers all of his bases need be. Mr. Wonderful indeed!

Mr. Wonderful

Finally finished with locations Ptolus. Only about 100 pages left to go. Wonder if I even will be able to get a game going prior to break not that break should stop me from running a game most of my potential players live here now. Not sure my player's potential characters will live very long in some of these places though, the dungeony parts of the city seem rather anti-playercharacteral.

Anyone ever seen Invader Zim? I was watching some clips on YouTube and it looks pretty funny, well at least GIR :D

Oddly Humorous

So after having lunch with a couple friends I was driving through campus and got stuck on 4th when all the students were crossing between classes. I wasn't in any hurry so I was fine with just watching the continual flow of students go by. The funny thing was that I had tuned in on the local NPR affiliate who also play classical music and ironically the students crossing the street matched to the music. It amused me some :D

Not sure what I've gotten myself into but now I want to procrastinate again...

Book Goodness And Other Things

Hmm it's Halloween. Not that exciting. More of a pain that's it really windy and therefore chilly outside. I am attempting to be rather productive today cause stuff could pile up next week. For the first time in awhile the CPS lab is half dead. It's a little unreal considering this place usually is a zoo.

I got Prison of Souls today. It's nice and highly complicated in comparison to Battle of Kar Dathra's Gate and Nokgorka but that might be also cause I've only read it through once. Alas I gotta wait once again for the next one to come out and they are still writing things so could be awhile!
DMZ 1: On The Ground has the same issue, DMZ 2 doesn't come out til January of February. Should count my blessings there though and from a practical sense the delay is understandable. Before they become graphic novels these are actual comic books so it takes several issues before there is enough for a novel.
Pride of Baghdad is also impressive and I gotta admit the ending made me a little sad. Pretty good book that can do that.

Not much else new and unusual here. Carl makes dang good soup but in general Carl is a dang good cook. (I got a Lars replacement, hooray! hooray!) Things feel busy again but I think in retrospect they aren't too much different then the past couple weeks.

Well off to write some religious studies papers.

Monday Day Longs

Ah today was a long day for some reason. I was permanently tired even though I got a decent amount of sleep. My body is crazy sometimes. Maybe it was the fact I had lots to do today. I got it mostly done too. I worked on a web page and it was rather challenging but I think it turned out ok in the end although it's not finished (then again it's kind of a prototype so maybe did not need to completely finish it til it's ok). Also general studying for a quiz.

Tomorrow is religous studies up the wall but that's ok. Then I dunno, this week feels like I have a ton to do. Guess I need to get organized.

Carl made beer cheese soup tonight. Twas good. Plus I got some of my books I ordered. Yay. Wasn't that random? Anyhow I am done. Maybe more tomorrow!

LibraryThing

Do it, I'm mirv120 of course :D

Movies

Two similiar movies about two very different wars: the Balkans and Rwanda.

From Slashdot

Hmm today I learned how to rig the elections and then learned how some liberal bloggers are helping to keep the Democrats in the same category as the Republicans. I just love how politics happily invades every sphere of existence and always with that wonderful spin although granting this started several years back. Maybe I'd believe it more if they were pointing searches for their candidates rather then using this to point people to bad press about the opposition.

Marketing Issues

It must be tough for PR departments around this time of year trying to get the word about their cool new products. All the local channels just show campaign ads and nothing else. It's like watching a political infomercial channel (with all the subtleness of Fox News/al Jazeera). I'm darn lucky to be gone in 2004 so I didn't have to watch it!

Something Book Reviewish

So I finished American Gods which means I can return to Ptolus.

So the valid question would be: "what did I think"? Well as you can probably guess it was at least decent cause I read through it in what 3 days and in the middle of that I did study and take a religious studies test too. First half of the book was ok. Thought it had a few too many sex scenes and was a little confusing but the second half focuses more on the story and is therefore less confusing. Also by this point I'd figure out what to be looking for in the story so I got more out of the characters. The confusion actually works well as the reader gets to figure out the world with the main character.

I loved the fact that a huge amount of this book takes place in Wisconsin and in winter. It made it feel like home. Perhaps since the middle portion is primarily focused on those two setting points is what made the latter half better. In the end the book surprised me. It's not blow you away great but it's certainly a good read and the main character is enjoyable to support. I'd probably get a ton out of re-reading the book at some point but who knows when I'll get a chance with the backlog!

So this morning there was frost on my bike seat when I came out from morning shift of work. I thought the dew was the show-stopper. Shows me! Rather tired all day, napped between work and my test and had strange dreams but not enough nap. Be interesting next week when I am up later. But I seem to be able to survive on very little sleep besides which I can sleep in most Wednesdays. Twas nice to see the sun today. Gotta admit at this point the sun is better then the grey-gray of clouds in late fall and it feels like late fall. Only flurries or snow make clouds ok.

Statistically speaking the most obvious equivalent for a county in Wisconsin called Lumber would be Wood right? Either way I don't think there is a Lakeside, WI so the trick is to figure out where it is. Lakeside, Lumber County, WI. A couple hours north of Madison (meaning beyond Point).

Prison of Awakiness

It's almost 2 am and I am wide awake. I gotta be up at 6am to work and I got a test that I haven't really studied enough for at 11am. The inklings of a cold that would not go away despite adequate sleep and lotsa fluids is now finally into the runny nose stage. Yet I still feel pretty good. Course gonna feel bit worse in about 4 hours but what can you do? Least I have lots of reading material and more on the way.

Mythos

So reading American Gods (and aside from expecting to be a)snowing and b)freezing because of said reading) I've realized how much fun it would be to create your own mythos. Not a mythos based oneself but rather just create any old one that would somehow fit into today's society. It'd be a challenge in a lot of ways to make it seem feasible for a pantheon to exist in today's world but not impossible in fact relatively easy. It would just take a certain amount of care at times.

Anyhow, that's my thought. I really should be studying for religious studies because I have a test tomorrow but I will admit that I'm not. I'm reading and procrastinating and genetrally not motivated.

American Gods

So after a discussion with Carl today about Neil Gaiman I went and found American Gods from Bookworld today. I realize that I really love books. I shouldn't be getting more books but I am. I am going to have a huge library eventually but I wonder if I will have read all of it!

I suppose though I could be spending my money on worse things. I'm gonna need a bigger bookshelf soon though.

C for Vendetta

(alternate title V for Cookie)

Remember, remember the 2nd of November

(Yes 2nd was intentional)

LotR Redux

So I actually sat down and watched the special features from the LotR special edition dvds. They are 3-4 hours long each. Wow. That's really long. Interesting tidbits tho. Kinda fun to sorta watch in an absentminded, not quite there, way. I realized that last fall semester I finished the semester off by watching the entire trilogy twice through and then the entire Star Wars saga (all 6) in less then a week while I ground through homework. Don't think I will need to do that again thankfully although there was something downright legendary about that time in my mind. Twism and I pounding through our projects so focused that entire movies would pass without notice. Oh the good old days. Hard to believe that was last year and I count it as a good old day. Maybe I am slightly whimisical for times when I just had people around. Single apartment is nice but occassionally have the company all the time is far better (the two each have pros & cons).

Anyhow Mario Kart is on tonight. There's a rehash of the good old days. And then maybe over to the LAN party. We shall see!

Darkness Falls

As Tyler pointed out. It's dark out already. This week has kind of been a doldrums, not that I am complaining. It's just not been terribly exciting for good or bad. Makes me kinda wary as usually these middle grounds don't last long and I have a tendency to expect them to go down hill (me of little faith I suppose). In the meantime I suppose I should enjoy the slightly more relaxed pace of it all right? That just leaves me with the debate between bio-informatics and generic positions. Hmm.

Well back to reading Ptolus.

300,000,000

200,000,000 more and we'll be at half a billion. (You can do your part by getting married and having 72 children. Wait...)

I'm not so sure that I'll actually be making it out to Hawaii these days. Not gonna lie, that makes me pretty sad :(

Reading

Today is an odd day. I don't really have much on my plate. One e-mail needed to be sent and a short paper written. That's done it took very little time. That leaves me with Ptolus (p 302 of 655 - the rest of the book is appendixes/indexes/appendindexs) to read for the remaining 3 1/2 hours of my shift. I'd better be on p 400 when I'm done I guess.

There really ain't much else new with me. Not that that is very odd, life is pretty quiet. Class, work, reading, and when I can fit it in (not often enough) friends. The one disadvantage with my schedule now is I never have enough time with my friends. I have very few free evenings and my weekends tend to be overscheduled. On the bright side in a couple months hopefully I will be gainfully employed by day and nothing taking up my evenings. We'll see.

Blargh

I hate it when my stomach feels like crap. :/

It's cold

Well I got snow but someone turned off the heat and then turned on a fan. Be careful what you wish for eh? Sorry I've been quiet of late. Pretty busy with life and stuff.

Long day

Hmm normally Wednesdays are pretty good but this one seemed off. It was kinda cool that it snowed today and I got to see Jessie. Mostly though it just felt off. Couple randoms thing I can point to that attributed but I dunno overall why. Must be one of those weeks eh?

Long week already

This week just feels long and its only Tuesday evening. Oy. Not much news. Plus I'm tired.

Reading

So I bought and read Jurassic Park on Saturday. Back to Ptolus tho!

Well that could have been handled better on my part...

Anyhow. As a lot of you might be aware yet another UWL student ended up in the river of late. Think I wrote about the last one too a way's back. It's a bit depressing actually. See I get home this evening and what's one of the frontpage stories? An article about how this year's Octoberfest (ie Not-Sober-Fest) noting that this one set the record for ER cases relating to drinking. 32 years and we're setting records. Rather sad. Someone had a .42 blood alcohol count! No wonder people keep ending up in the river. That drunk near the main channel of one of the biggest rivers in the world? *sigh*

And

I know, I need to update active blogs again, etc, etc.

Urgh

Yea, that's right.

So Ptolus is def. a big distraction at the moment. I am slowly crunching through it. Ironically I may actually plug through it in a week or two at this rate. Very interesting reading too. Lots of plot hooks even within organizations. I haven't even gotten to locals (except jumping ahead to skim the two evil fortresses on the Spire). At least I am enjoying it though so I didn't waste my money. Pretty sure I'd like to run this for people the whole thing can support a full run from lvl 1 to lvl 20!

Anyhow, this weekend I'll be home. That should be fun. I'll even have the place to myself for a night. That might actually be kinda lonely. I've realized that while I really want a house it'll be darn lonely with just me. Hadn't thought of that initially and don't know why. Guess I might need to recruit housemates. Or get hitched? (Ok quit laughing, it could happen someday, maybe even before the 2nd Coming.)

Right, well I'm out.

Pink Form Letters

First an update on the neutrality issue. Heard back from a couple people in the know. This is apparently a legal and allowable stance for the SGA. Can't say I am thrilled and the previous administration certainly handled touchy issues like this better then the current one. I got a form letter response today from them. It was a rather generic but I guess one can't expect much more. Nice to see that our little government emulates its bigger brother quite well.

I suppose I cared mostly cause I tended to not side with the "Vote No" campaign but I think they'd be just as ticked if the SGA had sent out a "Vote Yes" e-mail so arguing for neutrality it a fair compromise. Oh well.

In other news, what would you say if this blog went pink for the month? I know Tyler is opposed but Katy liked the idea enough that she made her Livejournal pink. It's for a good cause but I'll let people weigh in. So actually weigh in!

That's all for now. I got the rest of GITS:SAC 2nd Gig and Ptolus today so pretty excited/consumed by that.

Ptolus

It's huge!

October

Wow, the leaves are starting to change fast. I should get out to Schmeekle and snap some pictures for Jenny. That'll be a Wednesday project probably. Get out for some exercise and all. It's October already. Graduation is hurtling towards me. The mind boggles at all the stuff I probably need to do and don't even realize it. I've just started job hunting and that of course makes me nervous. I'm always worried I'll make some little faux pas and the HR person will just toss my application even though I'd be good at the job. Sometimes details can elude me and I'm aware of it enough to worry about it. Ah well, God'll put me where he wants (someone remind me about this post when I am hired as the IT expert for the Amundsen-Scott Base, Antarctica).

I finished The Color of Magic last night. Yea, I know that wasn't on the reading list but I needed some light reading and that fit the spot perfectly. What can be funnier then a failed wizard sheparding a tourist (with sapient luggage) around the world while doing their best to avoid Death? Yea, you can't think of anything cause it's hilarious. In all honestly I'll probably be massively sidetracked in Ptolus (pronounced Tawlus btw) before I really get into Wild at Heart. Then again I suspect Wild of Heart may cause much thinking and we all know how I avoid that like the plague! :D

I have the urge to read Jurassic Park. I wonder if it is on discount at the B & N back in La Crosse? They are moving really soon (yay a new bigger store, I can't wait!) so a lot of stuff is supposed to be marked down I'm told. I'm excited. Don't ask me why I suddenly want to read Jurassic Park. Somehow I looked it up on Wikipedia today and realized the novel sounded pretty good. Can't hurt to try it out anyways. Oh, I know why now. Cause the British game warden (Muldoon?) was in the video we had to watch for Religious Studies. That also inspired this quote, from a Rabbi in the video: "Do you know Brother Christiani that in 500 years velociraptors will kill you?" Ok, so he didn't say that but I thought it'd be funny.

Yea, I am wide awake and I'll be hurting around 6 when I have to get up. So I should get to bed. Night all.

"You must understand. We are all criminals now. Everyone of us on this ship. Our own have been ordered to shoot us out of the sky. We're under attack on all sides. I know you want to go home. But that is impossible for any of us now. There is one way for us to go. Forward, only forward. Into what we cannot know." -Kyuzo, The Red Star

Neutrality

This has been a strange day in a lot of ways. I get up this morning and dutifully check my e-mail for work and because I just check my e-mail regularily. Today's was a bit of a surprise. There was a shouting (ie ALL CAPS) e-mail from the Student Government Assocation urging me to VOTE NO! I thought it a bit odd because there wasn't as far as I know any student referendums on campus or at stake in November. I was right there weren't. Instead the SGA had decided that they were going to represent all students by e-mailing the entire student body and urging them to VOTE NO!

Not urging them to get informed on a major issue that could affect their lives. Not providing both sides of the issue for students to make their own informed opinions. Not maintaining a high standard of neutrality so as to be an unbiased source of student representation on a local, state, and national level. No they went ahead and picked a side.

Did they ask the student body for any input? Send out an e-mail stating that a resolution was coming up to discuss the SGA weighing in on the issue? No. Are they legally allowed to endorse a side in a referendum? I'm unsure at the moment. Gut feeling says yes although they cannot endorse a political candidate so it's very possible that they legally cannot endorse a position for a referendum. I will make an effort to follow that up.

The greater concern for me is not the issue they supported but the precendence it sets for SGA in the future. In the previous administrations while I was well aware of the people serving in the government's standing on issues they kept their personal beliefs to themselves and fought for what they said they would fight for students. Issues like tuition and university budget. They made an effort to not get bogged down in divisive political debates where the student body was split on the issue. No students are split on tuition, they universally want it to go down and most don't complain about a bigger budget unless it makes the tuition go up so these are not at all divisive.

So where do we stand now? Will the SGA tell me how I should vote on every issue they can from now on? Do they think that they have particular insights into the world that I do not? Will there political siding hurt me because politicians in Madison look at them and say: "They tell my constituents to vote against me and issues I support. Why am I approving state funding for them?" Will students ask: "Why are my segregated fees going to a group that is supposed to be neutral and instead are vocally advocating things I am opposed to?" Afterall it's our money so shouldn't the SGA be accountable to us?

Those are my thoughts. I am surprisingly riled up about this hence actual action on my part. I'd urge others to do the same. We need the SGA to be aware of their responsibility to all parties and not just become the mouthpiece of a select few. A tyranny of the majority or the minority is not acceptable!

Music and Things

So iTunes has been running this promotion through Facebook where each week they often 25 free songs for a different given genre and they've actually had couple songs that I've enjoyed. There are probably more I just haven't gone through all the songs (100 new songs is a lot especially if you don't like all of them). That makes me kinda happy and gives me more songs to loop. I bet somewhere Tyler is thankful that he isn't forced to listen to me looping the same dang song over and over and over.

On semi-impulse I bought Ptolus today. What is Ptolus you ask? Well it's a gigantic RPG book. I really do mean gigantic. It weighs in at over 6 pounds and has over 700 pages of setting goodness. For reference look at the book in some of the pictures here. I hadn't realized how monstrous this book was even though I've heard lots about it. So I am pretty excited even if it was rather on the pricey side. At least I got it massively on sale!

I should prolly get to bed now. Night all.

Three prong efforts

I just noticed that I've been actually able to keep all three of my very different blogs somewhat up to date of late. Technically I have been helping to keep the XA blog in tune as well so maybe I should say four prong efforts. Somehow that makes my day in a simple way.

In random reading news I finally finished Armed Struggle. Moving onto Wild at Heart now.

Dew

It depresses me somewhat that I work so early on Tuesday mornings that dew forms on my bike seat while I am away. Oh and riding to work as the sun rises too. At least I can nap for a bit now tho.

And GITS:SAC has entered season 3!

Dust

Ok, I actually don't have much to say. Just that the wall of stress that had hit me seems to have gotten slightly lighter. This probably not the case but maybe I am finally adjusting to my semester schedule a little bit.

I am re-watching Ghost in the Shell: SAC 2nd Gig (ie season 2). Boy I am picking up a lot more. I think this might be because I am aware of the overall arc of the story so I am watching for things early on that explain things later on. Plus just re-watching usually seems to add new bits of information just about every time. Makes me wonder about just how little we take in when watching something. I can still occasionally catch new things in Firefly and I've watched that several times. Additionally I am really enjoying the musical score, it does a fantastic job at highlighting key points to the show and setting the mood.

Anyhow, better get back to working on homework and such. I am making an attempted effort to actually do a lot of my reading this semester since I work so much and don't really have much else on my plate school wise.

Junta in Thailand

I have to admit as soon as the news referred to the new Thai government as a junta all I could think of was the game. Ironically one of the governments (I think Denmark) referred to these events as like those of a bananan republic. Better warn people over there to watch out for the Interior Minister!

Spur

I just picked up GITS 2nd Gig. That was rather spur of the moment of me. Then again of late I really feel like I need something to take my mind off stuff. So much for the last semester being non-stressful.

Arr

It's talk like a pirate day matey! Garsh!

Der

Why is that whenever Islam feels its under attack by the West for claiming they are a violent religion they riot violently in response to the injust claims? Oy.

This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Muppet Theater

"I" sing!

Not sure how to title this

Slate.com did a graphic novelish representation of the 9/11 Commission Report. While it'd be good if people went and read the book it can be a bit dull and dry at times. I actually thought the "comic" was a joke at first but it's not and it seems fairly detailed. You can find it here. It may still take awhile to read. I stopped halfway through the first section. It still stands that if you have the time you should read it. Afterall it is the official look at the events of 9/11 and surrounding it and democracy does function on us being educated.

Armed Struggle

Lately life has been kinda surreal for me. Today the sunlight seemed to help to cut through it a little bit. I hate the start of the semester if mostly cause I have to find my footing. Knew it'd happen and it still seems to throw me. Oh well. Pete Yorn is a pretty decent musician. I am enjoying one of his songs free and he had on a soundtrack I bought way back that became one of my "London Hits", ie a song I discovered digging through my iPod music files while abroad. Good stuff. Also good stuff: a couple of my books are shipping including the Ennegram book so now we have one in Stevens Point not tied to one of the wayward XA leadership folks. Then again maybe I am a wayward XA leadership type til end of December. Who knows. My curiosity is: if leadership sucks this much informally how much does it suck professionally? Maybe CEOs get paid boatloads of money because all they do is meet with people as powerful as them. That would be most unfun.

Random theology thought I've had of late. Why do we need all these incredibly big words and confusing stuff relating towards God? I mean theology, philosphy, etc, etc all seem to try explain what Jesus did with simple parables. It strikes me that what is happening is that humans in their attempts to both understand and be superior to each other have created a field that while it attempts to explain God pushes many farther from it especially those who don't have that kind of high extreme end thinking. It just seems to me that when Jesus and then His disciples after Him could explain things in relatively simple terms so that all could understand and do it to a satisfaction that God would enshrine their works for all to read that we should do the same or else we simply distort/diminish/hide the true message from others. I suppose its bound to happen either way but I just think that maybe some very fervent people are helping the enemy by getting overly technical on things. I doubt this will change anyone's position but that's ok. The faith lives regardless the people and how they believe and that's what matters.

Huh, that was long. Did I mention I really like Pete Yorn's music? The new song has been looping throughout this. Impressive eh? So yea. This is a long content heavy post. You know what's really sad? Some employer might look through this and judge me unhirable. Does this thing really accurately portray me well enough to determine my employment? What an odd world we live in!

"This honored comrade's identity rests with God." We were still there 62 years ago and we're still here 5 years later. Faith manages.

Stimuli

"What was it like being dead?"
"It was alright. No sales tax!"

Ah rvb you made me chuckle again.

So in the news or something like that I've ordered all three of The Red Star graphic novels. I was very impressed with the artwork that Green Ronin used for the RPG of the same name and the story is intriquing. I am pretty excited for that.

Incidentally I also pre-ordered Makeshift Miracle from Zub as he just opened it up for pre-orders. I'm rather vague on the story but he is a phenomenal (spl?) artist. I'm mostly familiar with his work through UDON for Exalted but after perusing his liverjournal for past year or so I've also enjoyed his random sketches. They are amusing and fun to look at. For awhile I think one of my icons was of his sketches of an Invader Zim character.

So I am really pumped about this fall because I should get some outstanding looking graphic novels to read. That's all for now.

Stutter Step

Somehow I am already off-balance this semester. Maybe I am always like this the first couple weeks I just never quite remember it from semester to semester. I usually adjust a little slower then most to change and naturally this is a big change. Suddenly I have work and classes to manage and mentally I have gotten times a little off. Work is slow initially and that is probably good.

It's tough because this is the point a lot of people jump "gung-ho" into the school year while I prefer to ease slowly in. So in a couple weeks I'll look back and this slump and wonder what I was thinking. Until then, who knows.

Classes will be interesting I think. History 212 will probably be pretty dull. I am hoping my other history class (215 I think) will be better but considering that it is a 200 level class I suppose I shouldn't hold my breath. Rel 101 might actually be something of a mental challenge. It also tackles the major religions from an academic standpoint which is kind of tough for me. Part of me will most likely chafe as Christianity is played out as no different as any other belief system. Ah well, that's secular schools for you and it's good growth to be able to step back and analyze your own beliefs and those of others. WDMD 305 may be very interesting. The normal Prof up and resigned end of July and the old head of the CIS department got pulled in to take over. Alas he has a very different teaching style and teaching philosphy then the previous prof. The old one was more focused on design and using Dreamweaver (prolly the most used professional web development software). This prof is instead eschewing Dreamweaver for mostly hand coding and doing stuff with PHP, MySQL, and a little Cold Fusion. I'm fine with all that it shouldn't be too much of a challenge except maybe the PHP which apparently he thinks all of us have taken WDMD 301 (and thus are fairly familiar with it) when we all haven't. CIS Web emphasis and WDMD Minors don't nessecarily need to take it. I also gather that WDMD majors didn't understand it all that well because a lot of WDMD is design. Basically it looks like the Prof is ignoring how the major is set up (whether for right or wrong) and following his own beliefs. I guess I'd prefer to go the design route but from my CIS standpoint the coding aspect is probably more practical.

In other news my Dolphins are losing 14-10. Chambers hasn't gotten any catches so I am sad. He's been targeted thrice but hasn't been able to reel one in yet. The D looks kinda weak sadly. Culpepper seems to be doin' ok. The Fins kick/punt returner/WR is pretty talented. I might pick him up if I have some slacking receivers. Have to watch him for a week or two tho.

In brief gaming news I am prepping for Brady's Eberron game by getting familiar with the world. I like some of the concepts for it but overall am skeptical on the setting. I rather prefer Forgotten Realms over it although Forgotten Realms has a lot of issues on its own. Makes me want to develop my own setting. But yeah, that'll probably never happen.

That is all.

Jump Around

So despite having, in theory, a relatively easy schedule today (and my schedule in general) has been kind of crazy. It's def. been worse but there is a prototypical amount of mayhem that must just be required for first day of classes. Fer instance: my work schedule is slightly different then I was given so I actually had more free time then I thought. It's a plus that. To balance out I logged into work this morning set up my work account (so I can get paid) which included setting a password and promptly forgot the password completely. So now I have to wait for admins to change the password and they are doubtless swamped with a million and seven things cause it's the first day.

This weekend now I am shootin' home to get the CRV cleaned up from the road trip (CRV sayeth: "Hoorayeth!") but at the same time Al & Steph are out of town this week so they really need people there to help out at church. Normally Carl could fill in and do my job just fine-it's relatively easy and all- but Carl is gone this weekend hence why I am going home.

Like I said, kinda crazy. I'm sure it'll all work out. Especially if I write down my password this time...

Football Season Begins

Ah you know the football season is right around the corner when the Fantasy Football drafts are abound. Tyler and I did a couple drafts so I'll have an interesting season keeping tabs on things.

Despite having two days without classes my schedule still looks to be fairly busy. Work's 14 hours really fills a lot of time too. Here's hoping for a good semester!

One Semester Left

One day of summer left and then I've got one last semester of school. Crazy.

Oh funny

Brits do have more fun especially when it comes to the names of their ministers!

Work

Work schedule is in and it's not too bad. Worse thing is I am working in the LRC. This is something I had hoped to avoid. I also work at 0700-0900 but oddly enough this doesn't bother me much. I can sleep in a lot on this schedule so getting up early will be good discipline for me and will hopefully also keep my sleep schedule in decent check. Mostly you just hear stories about LRC so would prefer not to deal with that.

Have 7 hours in the CPS in 4 & 3 hour shifts Mon/Tues. Won't be bad tho and might be easier depending on if Prof's reserve the main lab alot. We shall see. I work under Dani in South Quad on Thursday evenings so that should be interesting. Ironically I will have now worked over half the different labs I think. It'd be close. I've worked North, South, UC, CCC, CPS, LRC & (N)FAC. That leaves Allen, HEC, CNR, CAC, & SCI. Pretty close I guess. We have a lot of computers labs. Swarms in fact.

Final thoughts on things. It's a good schedule. I get Wed & Fri off as requested. I got the weekend off for the first time. I figured I'd still get that cause I am still vaguely low in the ranks. Can't complain and just gotta hope things go smooth in the LRC. Oh and my later LRC shift I've got one of the LRC LC's with me anyways so that should smooth things out anyways.

All in all I am happy I got a lot of time in the CPS (even sans Filteau should be fun) and a shift under Dani (I love knowing my boss, makes life so much easier knowing their tolerances and making them happy.) Looks to be a good way to end things!

Changes

Wow. Def. realizing that I miss being around the girls after hanging with them for so long. Funny thing cause I know I wanted some alone time but at the same time it's strange not having them, Lars, and the two dogs around. Ah well, a couple days and they'll be back in town.

In the meantime I've cleaned things up a bit and organized a little for school. Got my books today and then hung out with Carl. Carl got the Colossal Red Dragon "mini" from Wizards today. Now keep in mind in D & D the average medium size person mini takes up a one inch by one inch square that is equal to 5 feet. Now Colossal creatures are something liek 30+ feet tall/long. So consider that this dragon has a base that is 5 inches by 5 inches and it's prolly close to a foot tall. Really gives a good impression of scale in a game. The gargantuan black dragon looks tiny next to it cause well colossal is twice its size.

In the meantime while enjoying that I watched Troy crushes 5 others in Monopoly. Man, it's been forever since I've seen that game played. Crazy times.

Tomorrow might get to hang with Kara and then a work meeting all afternoon. Here's hoping they actually paid attention and didn't schedule me Wed & Fri!

Balls' Gang Goes to Denver

Well this could be a long post so grab a drink, something to snack on, a pillow if you get bored and fall asleep easily, and a squeaky tennis ball to amuse yourself with, last week myself and three girls went west to find Lars, mountains, and Nebraskan cornfields. Events may end up slightly out of order, alot happened what can I say?

So funny story about heading out. See we were expecting it to take about 24 hours to make it there so we timed things so we'd leave here about noon and get to Denver about noon. By about Nebraska we realized we were going to get there early, say 10 or so. By Colorado we realized we were going to get there really early, say 5:30 or so. So after the excitement of Kum & Go in Iowa and Nebraska by Night (White Wolf really needs to make that supplement for one of their games, I'll write it for them if need be) we hit Denver about 4:30 AM. We killed time by having an hour long breakfast but still arrived at Lars' place in the foothills at 6:30. So we enjoyed the sunrise over Denver and the scenery and then played cards in the driveway until John's (Lars' uncle) girlfriend came out of the house and discovered 4 college kids sitting there.

Which leads us to day 1: the girls napped in the morning but wanting to be on a normal sleep schedule I opted to stay awake. I met Lars' uncle John and played with Jabez and Mickey (John's dog) a little. Then Lars and I headed down to Denver to get some food and check out Valhalla's Games which was going out of business. Now they had a nice deal since they were going out of business, if you bought more then $400 dollars of stuff it was half-off. Lars and I figured we could find enough stuff between the two of us and went all out. I picked up over half a dozen books, plus Junta (which Aprill rather enjoys and after playing it I concur), the Star Munchkin expansion, and some other random stuff. Lars got Ninja Burger, some minis, a mat (for the minis), and another board game which I forget what it was called (Knight Warriors?). All in all I was pretty excited. I'll post the RPG book haul over on the gaming blog if you are interested. Afterwards we all went to Casa Bonito for dinner. It was a very interesting Mexican theme restaraunt. By this time I was dog tired however having been up nearly 40 hours and having driven halfway across the country, and deprived of my normal oxygen count and sacked out.

Wednesday Lars had us going down to Sox Place to help volunteer. It is a place for street youth to get a meal and hang out during the day. I was kind of nervous cause this could be pretty people interactive volunteering and with a category of people that through travelling I have been taught to give as much of a wide berth as possible so not exactly my thing. We helped clean and organize the place and then just kinda watched and talked to the kids coming in. They were an interesting bunch, not all that much different from your average group of people in the end. Not sure it's something I'd do again but certainly wasn't a wasted day and it was nice to be able to help out there. They do great stuff there. In the end once again we were bushed but first we made a meal for John, Brigit (his girlfriend), and Lauren (his daughter). It was good stuff. Then kinda crashed again as our bodies were still looking for oxygen.

Thursday we headed for the mountains. Or higher up since Lars lives in the foothills. Our specific target was Mt. Evans a 14,258 foot (according to the little bronze marker at the top) giant just up the road from Golden. The cool thing was it had a paved road right up to about 100 feet below the summit so we could "climb" it with relative ease. Or we could bike it like the dozen or so people were doing. It was very cool to do if a bit unnerving to realize your car is less then a foot from a couple hundred foot vertical drop at times (Dad's wariness of heights has worn off on me). We saw various mountain fauna, the mountain goats in particular had taken over the burned out restaraunt at the summit. After rolling down in neutral because Lars was nearly out of gas we at Beau Jo's Pizza in Idaho Springs. Great pizza! The irony was a couple hours later we headed over to Lars' godparents for supper. They had made another huge meal for us which we somehow managed to consume. That evening Lars and I kicked back in the hottub and enjoyed life (yea, you're jealous, admit it).

Friday we helped do some cleaning at Red Rocks Church which is where Lars is involved at. It was pretty simple stuff and it got us lunch. Their set-up is very interesting. They are in an amusement park set up by a mining company to dampen noise from their mining. It was the only way the city of Golden would let them mine the area. So it was a church in a small themepark. It was still pretty big. After that we visited the Colorado Mills mall and I found Alex a birthday present (The Lorax, which Al and Steph had, shockingly and appallingly, never heard of). Then we returned home for a relaxing night. The girls and I took advantage of the hot tub while Lars ran some errands.

Saturday Lars and the girls went to go volunteer at the Orphan Exchange. This meant they had to get up incredibly early while I got to sleep in because I was going to visit my aunt and uncle and cousins in Aurora. It was going to be an interesting day driving for me though because I was gonna have to cut across Denver to get to Aurora. The highlight of that drive was I25 with 12 lanes of traffic moving at 5 mph. I made it there fine though and spent some quality time with the relatives. It's a little strange around my cousins as they find me as a giant jungle gym and I'm not really used to that. Hopefully I wasn't to much trouble for my aunt and uncle. They cooked me a great meal though so I drove home nice and full.

Sunday we headed over to church early and it was a good thing too. The place was packed. A couple hundred people at least. I still like Evergreen more but it was a nice sermon and all. Worship band was quite good. Totally unuse to sitting in the crowd rather then lurking in the back. We then explored the theme park a bit and then headed over to Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Yea that Red Rocks, where the Beatles first played in America, where Dave Matthews, U2, and just about anybody whose ever been good has played. Its huge. You get winded walking up the stairs. Lars, Lauren, and Chris would run it three times a week in the summer. I wish I was that kind of physical shape. I took everyone out to eat at one of Lars' favorite places in Denver (The Yardhouse). It was great food and I got calamari! Yay! We took the rest of the day as an R & R day and went back and played games: Junta, Ninja Burger, and Blokus. Lots of fun. Junta's a blast. You get to assasinate close friends or overthrow them in a coup. Good clean family fun.

Monday was our departure day. It was also Lars' first day of class so he was gone all day. We milled around watching tv and cleaning up a bit. We weren't leaving til 6 that night so it was kind of a strained day in ways. We were sad to be leaving but happy to be going home and we didn't have anything to do til then. Eventually we hit the road and 16 hours later were back in Stevens Point. On the way Aprill did find her Iowa dip and we did have the crazed fun of staring at our cell phones waiting for them to switch time zones automatically in Nebraska. Kat never did get her picture of Nebraska cornfields because we never we actually in Nebraska during daylight hours.

All in all it was a great trip. We never got to the point of wanting to kill each other. Sometimes we needed a break from each other, especially me I suppose since I live alone now I am used to having a lot of personal space but everything turned out fine. I couldn't have gone out with a better group of friends or stayed with a better friend (and his relatives). So here we are back and school is just about to start. I'm actually pretty lonely, life is strange after spending a week with 3 cute girls and two very attention demanding dogs. Ah well the wheel keeps turning and I got a squeaky ball out of it :)

Home Safe

Back home but very tired. More about Amander the Pirate, Meow, and Balls tomorrow when I have slept!

Rocky Mountain High

Well Denver is going pretty well. It's fun but tiring at the same time. Lars has kept us busy out here. Today we're probably gonna hit a Rockies game after church which should be a nice relaxing way to finish things off. As much as I like it out here I do miss home as well so looking forward to the flatness of Stevens Point. This is after all the Pointer not the Buffaloer!

On the road again

I'll be going west for a few days. Noone burn down the place while I'm away, k? If you are bored you could always go to here(gaming) or here. Now I must go help collect cans on Jupiter. Peace out ya'll!

Busy weekend

Ok so I am gonna include Friday in this "weekend" mostly cause with class finally being done my schedule is somewhat mixed up and days are all cluttered in my head.

Friday I helped Brady moved from his old house to new house. It actually was pretty fun. Nice to hang out with Brady (plus he bought me supper, what a class act!) since I haven't really seen much of him in awhile cause he's been up in the Cities. Also makes me want a house really bad because they are just so big. Now I have no use for a huge house but sometimes I just wish I had the space to grow into. Ah well, soon enough I will be working and can look at houses maybe.

Today I cleaned a lot. Still have dishes sitting in the sink. Always have dishes. I'm a slow dishes doer. Tonight was the last movie in the park and it was a really good time. I didn't have anything official to do so I could just kick back with Carl, Evie, Amber, and Maria and enjoy myself. Chronicles of Narnia is a great movie but reading Janisaries made me over analyze the battle. Ah, well, that's life. I even managed to not freeze to death although it was odd having to use the heat in the CRV on the way back. Most of my windows are actually shut in the apartment it's that cool!

Tomorrow the girls arrive for our big trip. Lots of random prep and meetings and such. Should be interesting.

Fooling Around

Well it turns out that the reason why current bloggers aren't able to port over to new the new blogger beta is mostly data integrity related. Alas probably means it'll be awhile before I can port over to the new system. I made a new one based off my Google Account but then managed to pick a pink template :/ The templates haven't changed sadly but there is a lot of more options for fonts and such.

Ok this post gets points for being non-sensical, sorry about that!

Tweaks & Updates

So I added some additions to the sidebar. Explore at your leisure.

CGI vs. Real

So in the sudden free time I have acquired whilst preparing for the road trip I have randomly been watching movies. I've gone through nearly all the tv series I have so I am back to movies. I watched Star Wars episodes: III & I and noticed something: I like the Yoda as a physical puppet rather then a computer model and I can generally tell the difference between the to.

Now granted it's kinda obvious which is which when he is sprinting around in a way that Frank Oz could never do but if you ever really look close you can still figure out what is CGI and what isn't. The technology is good but not foolproof yet. Somehow physical models just look more real to me, maybe that is what makes the original trilogies better in my mind. When I see a Star Destroyer bearing down part of my mind knows there is a real model of it that is there. Can't really explain it better.

Armed Struggle reminds me why I don't like the IRA. Whereas the Brits and the security forces had by the '90s at least gotten to the point where they no longer were out of control (as could be argued the RUC especially was in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s) the IRA continues knee-capping and killing civilians all in the name of Ireland. One thing with Armed Struggle I find implausible is how English (the author) portrays IRA Volunteers dying as tragedies but not British soldiers or on-duty RUC officers. If you're going to call it a civil war then at least grant both sides the same status eh? Guess I can't blame his bias when I have my own.

Point of curiousity to those readers who'd actually comment (guess I might need readers for that wouldn't I?) which do you support current situation where Northern Ireland is part of the UK or having Northern Ireland be part of Ireland? Feel free to give a reason if ya prefer. I'd just like some thought interaction is all.

Oh and if you can't tell, I'd be for the status quo, essentially they can vote to become part of Ireland whenever they want. This leaves the onus to the nationalists to convince the loyalists that joining Ireland is to there benefit. In the meantime I expect the British to keep pushing for equality between those divided.

Memory

I am greatly frustrated by my inability to remember a name of a base/city somewhere in the South East Asia. It has to be in the pile of islands down around Indonesia and such as I know I got it from one of Samuel Eliot Morison's History of US Naval Operations in World War II series and an early one at that. Sometimes I wish I was back home where I have access to my more extensive collection of World War II history books and more particularily Dad's much greater collection of books, including the entire 15 volume set mentioned above. Pretty sure it begins with an F...

(About 20 minutes passes here)

After much more looking (I looked earlier in the evening) I have managed to find it on the island of New Guinea: Finschafen!

Oddly enough if I had had a decent atlas on me (or known one online) I probably could have found it easier. Wikipedia does come through in the end tho proving that most of the information we need is out there we just have to find it.

Carl's D & D Rnd 7

This week in the City of Stone.

Also probably shortly on the same blog is commentary on GenCon and White Wolf's announcements (*cough*Exalted Modern*cough*). I think. I might just be shamelessly promoting the RPG blog.

Oh so Many Random Things

At some point (probably tomorrow) I will get around to talking about Carl's game this week. It was rather interesting.

Anyhow, this week has been kind of strange as a lot of things are wrapping up and it has actually been rather high stress. Mostly probably due to the fact that 480 looked like it might not ever end. Looks like it will be done by tomorrow so now I can focus exclusively on the trip west. Oh and the 72,000 other things I need to get done before then. Hence why I was just a bit belligerent about 480 running late, I've got a lot to do already somehow.

I am trying to have some relaxation time. I finished the Janisaries books when I was home so they got left there along with a couple other books that I've managed to finish. Still have a couple books up here waiting to be read but also replenished the stocks with a couple more history books (The Battle for Moscow and The Battle of Kursk) and a Heinlein, and Man-Kzin Wars IV. Of course I've still got The Color of Magic and Wild at Heart waiting as well so I should be good for books probably up til next June. Especially if any of the non-fiction are slow reads. I've picked up Armed Struggle with the intent to finish it this summer. I'm down to less then 100 pages and this is another one I've been "reading" since London. It's been a struggle because it's somewhat dry and it tends to be pro-Republican whereas I am somewhat pro-Brit. Several of its events are covered in Secret Soldiers so its interesting comparing them. That is my reading situation in a nutshell tho. There are of course hordes of RPG books but I read them at random.

Speaking of RPGs I need to get my butt in gear getting ready for my Exalted campaign this fall. I'm also toying with seeing if Carl would be interested in sorting out the Silhoutte system from DP9 so we could run tactical scenarios with the very awesome ships and mecha in the Jovian Chronicles setting. Have to discuss it with him at some point I guess. It's funny cause this last school year I was in semi-gaming drought. I was running Exalted and that was about it. Now I am in 2 D & D campaigns and will be in an Eberron (guess that's technically still D & D) and running Exalted this fall. Crazy. But I enjoy gaming for the most part, aside from when my dice decide to kill me repeatedly.

Finally, need to tweak the structure on the blog a bit. Some people have new blogs and others have gone quiet. I've found Chuck's liverjournal and (I think) Carl's so some new ones to add. Furthermore Google actually did a major upgrade of Blogger but it's in Beta and I wasn't quick enough on the gun to get in but in theory this will add a lot more features/usability. Might change the look of this thing as well. Interesting times.

That's all for now.

Volleyball Is Over

So guess I can tell the summer is coming to an end. Today was the last day of volleyball. Doubt next summer it'll happen again so it's sad to see it go. I really enjoyed it a lot even if I was never all that good. Think I got better then I was but that doesn't say alot ya know? :D

Today also felt like autumn. You know it's coming when you feel that first day even if it's in the middle of August. Sure, it'll probably get hot again before that but just for a day you can tell that in a month or so the leaves will be beginning to change and school will be in session and the summer will be a distance wistful dream. Everything changes and the wheel of time keeps turning.

Whee, philsophical tonight.

Summer Days

I've been quiet of late due to finals, being sick, going home, and just the general sort of wrapping up summer class and preparing to drive a couple thousand miles the week after that. This week should slow down enough I can post a few times so I can prove I have not died. Just not tonight cause I need to unpack and/or sleep!

Issues

Seems blogger is having issues with posts and the like guess one of their databases are playing mary-hobb with their data. Explains a post I had dissapearing.

Two Presentations

And CIS480 is over. 'Course I have to come down with a cold concurrent with that so I am feeling rather blah at the moment. Wish us luck but either way in less then 48 hours we'll be free men!

Carl's D & D Rnd 6

The casualty list in. It was an interesting session. About half the party is now up to 4th level so we're starting to get decently strong powerwise.

They released what?

Well Apple was releasing info on their new stuff at the WWDC AOL got in the act and released some stuff as well: user's personal searches.

Yup, that's right, AOL released over 20 million queries by over 650,000 users and simply put a random number ID in place of the userID. Cheers :/

Dani's D & D Rnd 5

Here is another session of Dani's game. Enjoy!

...

Huh, that was a most interesting display of why fundamentalists are idiots. I'd talk more about it but I still need the full story. Oh and Billy Graham movies, as a rule, suck worse then "Open Water" and "AI" combined.

In sort of good news I got most of my homework done. Still lots to do tho. :/

Yay!

I got to have Strongbow today :) I miss London :/

Climate porn?

An interesting article.

Dani's game was tonight on a rather short notice. I'll get something up eventually. Looks like we will have one more session next week and then be done.

In the meantime I need to practice my powerpoint presentation for tomorrow.

Inspiring

All of you need to check this out. True art and beauty!

Sadly, I have been reminded that to view this thread you need to be a member of RPG.net's forums. Boo :(

Carl's D & D Rnd 5

Here is the direct link. Random note, most of my RPG related musing is located on the same blog if you are curious.

BTW, it's 82 degrees that feels like 87 right now. And it's 0200!! Man it's hot.

Mental Stimulation

Yea, I got to debate and discuss some of the deeper things in life this evening and it was great. I need to do that more often!

Have you ever wondered?

Why whenever the Israelis retalitate when terrorists attack them that they are "violating human rights" or "committing war crimes" but the terrorists apparently are not even when they specifically target civilians? Not that the Israel campaign in Lebanon is really a good thing at the moment, they do seem to be targetting civillians at this point which is a bit unusual, generally they are more tactful about it. Suppose I shouldn't expect parity in the press or general public tho should I? Especially not in the US or Europe.

One Hundred and What!

So tomorrow the temp is supposed to be 102 with a heat index of over 110. Needless to say VB will probably be canceled and that makes me sad. I've highly enjoyed the event but hard to pull folks out in that kind of heat. Please God cool things down here!

Today I just feel inadequate.

What The...

Well if you missed it the oil corporation's handed in their earnings for the second quarter. Guess Katrina didn't really hurt them that bad. Kind of wonder why they needed any government aid though when they have a profit of between 5 to 10 billion dollars. More then ever I'd scream profit windfalls tax!! I think they can survive on half their profits. Cause ya know 2.5 to 5 billion dollars ain't enough to support research or pay their executives. Or maybe feed Africa.

Sorry, just frustrates me a bit. Also makes me wish I was an oil exec or had large shares of their stocks.

Sort of Busy?

Yea, kind of in the midst of being somewhat busy to the point I can't think of much of interest to post of late. Or at least not put up much of quality. Hopefully that'll maybe change this weekend so guess check back at whatever random pace you normally check?

Anyhow, I am greatly enjoying my Cowboy Bebop tuneage. It's quite good and oh so varied!

It rained so we didn't play VB edition

Yea, so volleyball got rained out and that leaves me with nothing to do in a time I generally hoped would be spent on socializing. :/

Anyhow Tyler seems to think I need to talk about the books I got this weekend. Not really sure anyone would care so instead I will provide random video footage of explosions to amuse. When all else fails nuke them from orbit...

The music I ordered finally did come. It's several import CDs of Cowboy Bebop soundtracks. Now unsurprisingly they are bootlegs but I got them through a keep Amazon Marketplace vendor so I am not terribly surprised and they are very high quality. I am highly enjoying the music though especially the stuff from "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" of which I really love the soundtrack but up to this point only had a few songs from it. That was mostly cause I hadn't seen the movie until after Napster got buried so I lost my access to foreign music. I always had hoped iTunes would pick this kind of stuff up but they haven't yet.

Probably a canidate for best soundtrack of the year for me but we'll see how the staying power is. Certainly the musical variety remains fantastic. Cowboy Bebop really does cover nearly every musically genre so have to give a salute to Yoko Kanno and The Seatbelts for that.

Away

I'll be gone a couple days to visit the sister and a friend who reside in the Twin Cities burbs. It'll be my first time driving in that large of a population (Madison or Green Bay not sure who is bigger held the record prior) so wish me luck or prayers to not kill myself in traffic.

I got a couple of the WoD books today. I realized somehow I forgot to order WoD: Armory so may have to get that from Bookworld. I am still pretty excited about running this game (even gonna have a Police Chaplain named Al) but honestly it won't have a chance to get off ground for awhile. If I am unlucky and have to move away from Point to work who knows when it'll happen.

But anyhow have a good weekend all.

The Thing and other things

So a bunch of ECSPers watched John Carpenter's The Thing tonight. Kinda gross and rather nerve wracking at times but in the end not incredibly long term scary. Unless you are going to Antarctica and the neighboring camp has Norwegians and sled dogs. John Carpenter's movies are rather fun to watch, he makes them nicely suspenseful (although most of his characters are a bit dense, the tendency to split up is amazing, gamers learn not to do this can't horror movie characters learn to do it) and usually not way too graphic like horror movies these days. Extremely over the top gorey violence does not ever equal a good plot and especially does not cause you to think!

I just had a random thought, I dought anyone else will do this cause hardly anyone reads this who also blogs (ok hardly anyone reads this period you all got better taste or stuff to do :D ). What's on favorites toolbar? You know the little quicklinks that you can customize just below the URL address?

I've got a bunch. I'll list them name on the toolbar and where it goes.

APOD: Aka Astronomy Picture of the Day. A very long running page the updates with different pictures relating to astronomy. Covers the whole gamut and has some very beautiful pictures.

RPG.net: The one RPG site I visit regularily. Has very active forums. It's the place where I get my random motivational pictures from and keep tabs on RPG news.

Scifi Wire: SciFi Channel's New page. It keeps tabs on SciFi news although lately I've gone their less and it has become less and less useful over time.

Comics: My daily comics fix from GoComics.com (also Comics.com)

Radar: Weather radar at Intellicast techinically this one looks over St. Cloud, MN but it covers all of Wisconsin and Minnesota so I can see what's coming.

Forecast: Intellicast forecast for Stevens Point. Varying accuracy although the far end of the 10 day forecast is wrong as much as it is right.

MAHQ: Mecha Anime Headquarters. Not so useful anymore but occasionally fun to read. I think the name explains itself.

RvB: Red vs. Blue, the webshow. It's funny but has slowly gone downhill overtime. Still check out season 1 if you can, it'll make you laugh (warning bad language in the shows).

AOL Mail: Yea, that explains itself.

Blogger: My link to maintain this blog and others.

PP: Pointless Pointer or what you are reading right now. I use my blog as a links collection for everyone else's blog so I pass through this a lot. Screws up my hit count :/

Gmail: Google e-mail. You want an invite just ask.

UWSP Mail: Also self explanatory. Sorry to get one of these you need to lay down a couple thousand dollars every couple months.

DTRPG: Drive Thru RPG. I only mainly go here from their free RPG that changes every couple weeks. Interesting site tho that is really changing how RPGs are distributed.

Facebook: Yes, I go there too often. That college networking page. It's better then mySpace so quit looking at me like that.

WP: Wikepedia, all the information you could ever want and cross-referenced 3,000 ways. Sure it's not perfect but I got a B in History using this (and it would have been an A except for stuff that wasn't its fault).

IMDB: The Internet Movie Database. Every actor for every movie and tv show ever. Or close to it. The Wikipedia of movies more or less.

D2L: The nefarious Desire 2 Learn site that most UWSP students have suffered through and apparently now most UW students are saddled with. In December that one will be banished forever.

That was fun wasn't it? Time for bed, presentation later this morning.

Er...

So I just bought the entire mortals line of WoD off Amazon. It's not as bad as you think but yet it is. I really shouldn't spend money like this but it's hard. I am bored and for whatever reason I got it in my head to attempt to run a mortal WoD game at some point in the future. Someone take Amazon (and probably Noble Knight too) away from me. They tempt me with too many books: rpg, fiction, non-fiction! A couple of the supplements should be interesting reads though as they are either adventures or locations.

My basic idea is to run a mortals game centered in Stevens Point where the PCs are University students. This gives common ground and might also give a chance to make things a little creepier. Something amiss in Schmeekle, the thing that got out of the CNR building (other then the standard fare that escapes the herptology folks), and so on and so forth. Not a hack and slash kind of horror story but probably something closer to Call Cthulu, not that I have read that. I just remember how much fun I had freaking out my PCs in my Exalted game when they were in a couple places they thought were infested by demons but didn't know where. I'd like to run a game like that but without all the weird powers that the major lines bring and also want to run something different from the standard fantasy fare. Plus nWoD is a pretty simple system especially for folk who are used to oWoD and Exalted (the other major Storyteller systems).

I suppose this really deserves to be in my gaming blog less then here but oh well. I'm not even sure when I'd run this game. Certainly not this summer when I have three games I am in. In the fall I dunno because I will be running Exalted and in two games (maybe three). I'm just really excited by the possibilities. But don't worry those in my Exalted game. I am still plotting your utter demise, I mean exciting new adventures! :D

Books

I forgot how fun it is to read fiction. I'm already on the second Janisaries book. At this rate I migh even finish all three in a week or less. That'd be really good as I'd feel more caught up on my reading. They're also pretty interesting and it had been forever since I read the first one. Think sometime when we still have the RV so that must have been sophomore year of high school or earlier.

I remember when I really started reading a lot in middle school how I could not understand how my Dad could forget the plot of books he'd read. By high school I had realized that your brain simply cannot keep track of all the information, at least not in a way we can dredge up, and with the amount of books Dad has read that he's prolly forgotten most of the stuff about most of them. I've hit that point where a lot of the books I've read are like that. I can barely remember details of any of the Star Wars novels I read in middle school and high school even the really good ones. Plus all the Heinlein's I've gone through. Wish I had better memory but somehow too that makes owning the books better because you can go back and re-read them and it's fun all over again.

Night Watch

Well Allison and I watched Nochnoy Dozor (in English "Night Watch") last night. It was pretty good. A bit hard to follow but far more plot I think then you American equivalent horror film. I suppose more stuff will make sense in the remaining parts of the trilogy which haven't come out to the US or come out at all, yet.

Not a lot else new at the moment. Lars is attempting to run a play by e-mail (PBEM) game of the Iron Heroes variant. It should be interesting although I am a little miffed that right off the bat I am limited to only 5 PC levels of character because of his strange background system. Honestly, I understand imposing limits on characters but I hate when your growth is removed from your hands or your background is heavily controlled. I don't mind if you have to be from a certain region or what-not or if there are certain classes aren't allowed (ie no magic users or no divine magic, etc, etc) but I hate being told by no choice of my own, you will be limited severely in character generation through no choice of your own. It's not a roleplaying challenge if I get it forced on me (and it's not my fault why it happened, ie if I went and got my character maimed in play it'd make sense) but I guess we'll have to see.

Anyhow, time to go to bed. Morning cometh far to soon!

Finishes

Well finally finished Naruto so I can give Dani back the last 6 DVDs. I suppose technically I haven't finished it yet because the show continues to be produced in Japan and the subs are about a season behind. Dani is actually getting the next 3 I think so I suppose in a month or two I will have another 2 dozen episodes to catch up on. The show is ok, some of the characters are quite interesting but the pacing is horrible a lot of the time and there are a lot of elements that show that this is, by nature, a kid's show.

Speaking of finishing things, when I finish Secret Soldiers I'll be about halfway done with the books I bought while I was in London. I am nearly done with Armed Struggle so when I get to that after Janisaries it should go pretty quick. That leaves me with The Road to Berlin which will take forver to read. It's bigger then The Road to Stalingrad by far and that took awhile to finish. I also have Barbarossa which is more of a German perspective of the whole Russian campaign and also encompasses the entire thing. It's smaller then The Road to Stalingrad so it might not take all that long depending on the writing style. I love reading history but it can be slow going.

Of course then I have several Man-Kzin Wars to knock off and a Tom Clancy novel, The Color of Magic, and at least one Heinlein novel. Probably more things beyond that. The list is long. I really need to read a lot this summer so I can catch up!

That's all. Ex-blonde, go cheer for Twism as he presents again tomorrow :D