Well, I have a few minutes here, so I thought I'd jot some notes down...

But first a season's greeting from Blizzard's fan art section. Hope it doesn't mess up the blog again!!!



Anyway, it's turned out to be a pretty good year for me. The first part was aggravating and frustrating because I felt stuck in my parents' basement. But now that I'm finally up here, it feels like a fresh start. Of course I'm glad that I have backup up here! Yesterday Enron came by and together we kicked ass on the staining that I hadn't done. It's astounding how much less of a chore these things are with someone else around.

Originally I was going to a big party with my old roommate Ranjit, but I waited to buy my ticket and then the price went up from $30 and $40 and the drinks were only free until 10:00 anyway, so I have a feeling I would've ended up spending tons of money....

My relationship with World of Warcraft has finally calmed down. I still like it tremendously, but I don't feel the all-consuming need to play it all the time that I did. It's transitioned from a torrid fling into a long-term relationship. For the sake of my human relationships, my job search, and my physique, this is probably a good thing. Although when the PVP Battlegrounds come out, things might get scary again.

All in all, I'm really positive about the New Year! Sure I'm unemployed and poor, but I'm here! So, hope everyone else is feeling positive, and I'll see you all in 2005!

Wretched Sleep And Year end Recap

Last night I had the worst sleeplessness ever. Not only because I couldn't sleep but because of the few recurring brain activities. (It was like the dripping water torture on Donald duck)

1st - Too much poker. I played until 2 am last night and was up most of the night and on the last few hands managed to break even by making a few bonehead bets. I managed to learn a few antonyms of poker though which shouldn't be broken and works pretty well. All night though, I was betting Cathoders and kept thinking "if I bet a cathoder, they wont' bluff me." Weird.

2nd - Never eat half of tub of ice cream before bed and as a late night poker snack. Do'h. All night my stomach churned and had massive gas buildup. Every 30 seconds I shot some dry gas. It didn't stink though which was a good thing and finally at around 6:30 the farts felt a little juicier and I went to the potty. Felt good. I came up with a formula on Gas or (nitrous oxide)

Gaseous O2 = H20 + I2C2 (ice cream: half tub) + N2 = CO + NO + Non smelly gas

3rd - Kill the Hamster: One thing I hate about hamsters is they are naturally a nighttime animal. Great. So in the daytime, they sleep and make no noise. In the nighttime, THEY ANNOY THE **** OUT OF YOU BY RUNNING THE F-ING TREADMILL. I wish galoob will make a silent treadmill instead of the ones that makes that annoying churning sound.

4th - I'm getting sick. My nose is runny and my head hurts from insomnia. Today if New years eve and I was actually looking forward to hanging out. Now I'm not so sure.

and finally 5th - This didn't bother me as much, but I got the laid off gotta do something anxiety after watching most/all the short flash cartoons on Oddtodd.com. This passed an hour later. Gotta learn and write flash, program HTML, build a awesome web portal... yadda yadda. Then I was okay again.

That's all. I'm tired as heck.

YEAR END SUMMARY AND HIGHLIGHTS-

1) I have been a good boy this year. No insane collusions with the devil or the mafia.

2) I am about to sell the largest stock loss in my portfolio. A crap stock called XOCM. I think I lost around 8000 dollars on this one. Overall, deducting this horrid choice of stock, this year I think I came out ahead. I'll see my year end tally.

3) Joblessness- Wow.. I've been "unofficially" unemployed (off the government statistics since it was a voluntary quitting) for a little over a year now. That's so odd to me, anyone else?

4) I am going to win the Yahoo sports fantasy football. I have rearranged my team solely to defeat the action team. This will set the precedence in 2005! Get ready for some canned ass-woopin.

5) Discovered Latex - o wait... that was already done.

ok... i'm tired and babbling. I'm going back to sleep now.

Johnny

Oh, and by the way..


For my unemployed or unhappily employed brothers, I highly recommend www.oddtodd.com as a limitless source of mirth.

Wait, I told that wrong..


On Party Poker, the main problem you have to deal with is the rake and patience. Even if you play the odds correctly you will only win about 1BB per hour and that's if you're really, really good unless you're playing against totally incompetent opponents anyway. The only way to reliably make money is to "grind it out".. otherwise it's more or less a crap shoot gamble. Unfortunately, that means that it takes 6-8 hours a day to make any money and then only if you can afford to risk playing at the mid-to-high limit stakes tables when it's strongly recommended that you hold at least 300BB to play at a given level so you can ride out the highs and the lows in your statistical progression through life as a poker player.

Playing no-limit is likely to win a lot more money but equally as likely to lose a lot more money. It's almost a completely different game from limit poker.

I played on PP for a few months at the low-limit stuff and did ok, but we're talking about building up a small, small bankroll of about $50 to $150 in a little over a month which isn't exactly ruling the world. I just don't have the patience or inclination to sit there and grind it out on 2-3 simultaneous tables to make any money at it. I've come to the conclusion that I'd rather play for fun once in a while and win or lose as I go. So, I guess that makes me a fish.. but at least a fish with a few teeth.. hehe..

The holidays are exhausting, I like to see my family but I've been up and down to LA so much that it's been a hassle. I really wish either Thanksgiving or Christmas were more towards the middle of the year so my family visits would be more spread out.

My family functions are blessedly free of the kind of harassment that seems prevalent at so many families' holidays. I think there are two reasons for this: 1. no booze, 2. everybody in the part of the family I spend holidays with is pretty mellow. We're all passive-aggressive. Instead of arguing, we plot in the shadows and wait. I'm kidding.

Due to various factors nobody had any time for Christmas Shopping, so besides the Swiffer, my parents basically gave me 200 bucks and said "buy yourself somethin' nice." I'm planning to carefully track my purchases from this pool and then submit an itemized list, which so far consists of:

1. "Time Off! The Unemployed Guide to San Francisco" -- $21.65
2. Classic Pin-Ups: 2005 Calendar (thanks, ma!) -- $14.09

Hopefully some gaming goodness will be added to this list.

OMGSTFULOLWTF!?


So, I've survived a week-long foray into the land of the out(in)-laws with nary a scratch, but I still feel like I've been beaten daily with an aluminum bat the entire week I've been gone. Christmas was good, visited with my fam a bit and spent the rest of the time donning my flak jacket and hoping the outlaws weren't going to start pistol whipping one another. The funny thing is, they're really quite pleasant one on one but if you get the whole pack together, they start acting like hyenas. Ugh. I'll try to type/talk more later when I have some time.

Nice ornaments below.. woot!

Hey keeds!

Well, it was nice to see approx. 3/4 of The Action Team the other day, especially the elusive Dr. Michael Anderson! Big-Ass Wok is always good for a big-ass stomachache. I hope everybody had great holidays. I got some awesome adult-type stuff like a Swiffer, some socks, and a lasagna pan, and was honestly thrilled to get every one. Also some anonymous wag in my family gave me a gingham apron to celebrate my move to San Francisco.

Despite missing my flight by an hour and twenty minutes, leaving my keys at home, and interminable transit delays, I'm finally back home in my newly-Swiffered room enjoying a fine cup of hand-roasted coffee. I hope you LA kids can come up to the Bay Area for a mammoth Action Team event! As long as you don't mind sleeping bags, there is a -ton- of room at my place. I can make espresso upon demand, and you can admire my roommate's fine handmade rugs.

It was nice to see Azeroth once again as well! :( I'm sure I'll play again tonight, although my participation might be limited because one of my roommates is threatening to run D&D.

Oh, and here's a fine picture from the car ride to GenCon that I thought I would share, to demonstrate the depths of depravity found in Enron's pervmobile.

HAppy Holidays!

I've been too lazy to do a proper Blog post, but thought I'd give it a go. Anyways, how you been Art??? How's the family? You guys have a mellow xmas or what?

Jael: How'd that bidness trip go? You get some T.H.'s or what? ;)

Mike: Dude, sorry I missed the gamin/lunch today, but next weekend I should be pretty free so maybe u eric and I can hangout!

WoW related: You WoW peeps need to get the Cosmos UI Mod: www.cosmosui.org It gives me a left and right vertical spell bars (instead of flipping thru the lower one) and all kinds of other goodies like being able to make MAP notes (like for Greenwardenm, etc) AND it even has an alarm clock, so I can set it to one hour to make sure I don't game too much! :) slash cry

-Rico

well merry x mas yall, we all old enuff cept for dennis??
Oh PS.: Jon are these the gnomes that you are talking about? becuz SIGN ME UP!

1) One time I went with Eric to Rubio's and I ordered a meal and an additional fish taco. When I went to unwrap the addtional fish taco, I soon realized that it wasn't a taco at all, but just fish. Fatass that I am, I ate the breaded fish anyway.

2) WoW, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah... I don't get it. But I am sure if I started playing, I would get addicted, so I won't start.

3) Hope Santa doesn't steal any shit from you when he comes down the chimney and invades your house. Scary man.

-Scrooge.

Happy Holidays to all and to all a good World of Warcraft

1) Rubios is 2 blocks from my house and rocks the world to its knees if you like fish tacos. So good. It's actually kinda like another addiction... I get cravings for it from time to time that need to be satisfied or I get all grumpy and murdery.

2) See thats the thing about WoW, you don't have to fight zombies to level up, infact when you reach certain levels, creatures that are lesser levels than you provide no XP at all as an incentive to get out of that area and fight something more your level or higher. Also quests work in a similar way, if you finish a quest that you are a minimal level for, you get TONS of XP, if you finish it and you are outside its XP range at all, ie its too low level for you, you get no or very little XP at all.

Its a great system for a really fun game. Quit denying yourself the pleasures!

DocNorvell and Stampy
25th level Hunter and 20th level pet

Guitars to wowshares?

It'd be impossible to catch up to your 500th level characters by now, and I dont' really feel like going through another game killing goblins and orcs for 2 XP points, when you need 5 trillion to get to level 10. That's one thing I never understood about NWN. At 14th level, I still had to fight against zombies and skeletons which didn't really do anything except annoy me and waste my time. Pretty sure WOW is the same way.

More on the jam session: I was telling the dude (justin) about the previous band, and the cover song that was almost played (twisted sister). Not a whole lot of skills and techniques used in that song. Maybe a reunion tour should happen sometimes, however unlikely... The Fans Demand it!

Theyre opening up a Rubio's around fremont. I don't remember having rubios in LA, but everyone says it's pretty good. Guess theyre expanding pretty fast.

Jael.

Crazy guitar session!

Dude, I just had a major jam session with this cool engineer/guitarist. Actually I didn't jam. He did. I thought I was good/ decent, but nope, that's not the case.

Im sure this is old news for rudy and eric, but jeez, he was teaching me all the jamming basics, pentatonic scales, minor, major, theory etc. Interesting.

ok... it's 3:49 now and I'm tired. goodnite yall.

sweet dreams.
J.

Stuff

Well, sorry it has been so long since my last post. I have not really been in a posting mode for a while. Anyway, Ja-El Woot.com is pretty cool. I have almost bought a lot of things from there, then I realize I am poor and decide it is a bad idea. There can often be really good deals.

Motobyke. I dont know if I will get to see you. Booo. I am heading back up to SF on sunday the 26th. Id stay longer but Aimey has to be at work on Monday.

The project Elrock and I were working on was pretty epic. We just started plowing through it in one of the most productive single sessions of terraineous maximus eVaR. If I dont get to play on it, hopefully someone will.

D>M>

That site is a kind of cool idea. (Although did you see their FAQ? "We anticipate profitability by 2043" :) ). I'm sure more expansion could be done with it.

Have you guys seen the trailer for the Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? It looks crazy!

Old school new news.... har har

Have you guys seen Woot.com? kind of a neat retail concept. I've been toying with the idea of retailing on the internet. It doesn't have to sell electronics. Take woot.com and make it more into a QVC style shopping where you still only have 1 item, but change it every 10 minutes. OR have a downloadable shopper bar and stream a different item on the desktop. It's NOT invasive because the shopper bar must be turned on, like turning the channel to QVC.

Thoughts?

Johnny

Can't wait to see MmmmmMMMMmmmm *breath* MMmmmMmIKE!!!

Aaron and I are working on a special little project that we think you will enjoy Mike. We spent 7 hours straight, with a 30min Rubio's break, yesterday, and I have at LEAST that much time left, but the hopes are that it will a) be finished by the 26th so Enron can relish the glory that is The Project in its finished state, or b) be finished at all!

Good Times!

In other greedy hockey player news related to nerds: this link.

DocNorvell
22nd Level Dwarf Hunter, hailing from Cold Ridge Valley, Khaz Modan, Dun Morogh.

Cool Party
Sounds good! Count me in!

Myke

Yeah!!! MMMMMMMMike!

Awesome! I'll be in town from night of 23rd-night of 27th. Is everyone free on the 26th? Let's all get together!!!!!!! On the 26th!!!!!!!!!!

Compare & Contrast: Staining Furniture vs. World of Warcraft

Staining Furniture:
Pros:
You end up with some furniture that is colored differently than when you bought it.
Cons:
All other aspects of staining furniture.

World of Warcraft:
Pros:
You have lots of fun with your friends (especially last night).
You get to live out your childhood fantasies of staying up until 4:00 in the morning, every night.
Cons:
After 14 consecutive hours, your chair begins to smell.

Killing ogres last night was really really fun. I'm glad that I'm within spitting distance of your characters' levels, finally. Although I'm going to take a break for the next day or two... got some other shit to do.

Myke Report

Will be back in LA from the 23rd, not having submitted thesis yet... doh! Not sure how long I'll be around (as I've no return ticket yet) but hopefully will get a chance to see some or all of you whilst there. UCLA job has been offered, so will be teaching in LA again from April until the end of June - maybe longer if I get another job. Glad that Con went well, it pained me greatly not to be there...

Ok, I can't think of anything else to write. Hope to see you. My numbers will all be the same, and I gather that by now I won't have any of yours so ring me. Please?

Myke

Yesterday the ladyfriend and I drove down Highway 1 to Santa Cruz. This is a beautiful drive down a coastal road with magnificent trees, stunning coastline, and attractive and varied geographical features. The entire time I kept thinking: "this zone is great!" and how great it would be to get out of the car and run around on all the hills, presumably looking for ore to mine.

Pretty pathetic! Unfortunately for me, she is going to stay at her uncle's for the next couple nights, giving me unfettered access to Azeroth.

Aeryk: Thanks for the precious gift of leather! The gems were very handy as well. I ran out of screws so I couldn't build your gun this morning (in the few furtive moments I had while my girlfriend was in the shower), but I'll get to it tonight. (Screws are easy-peasy to make, I just need to mine some copper first.)

All youse guys: unless you need the cash (and I'd understand!), mail me any malachite, tigerseye, or assorted other gems you find. You can charge me for postage. Also, obviously, if you find any engineering plans mail 'em over.

The Blog is dead, long live the Blog

Since World of Warcrack has entered our lives, the poor blog is being neglected. I can attribute this to a few things:

1) The most active posters are spending all their time playing WoW and talking to each other in game and have no need for an update of their realworld lives.

2) The least active posters are not playing WoW and are continuing the status quo of not posting anyway.

To fix this problem I offer this solution:

Those of us playing WoW need to get out in the world and experience life and blog about it! And those of us not playing WoW (the fools...) need to up their posts for a time being to take up the slack for all the WoW crackfiends. We have a problem, we understand that, we just need some time to work things out, okay!??! Is that okay with you!?!/ No, you know what, YOU have the problem, not ME! How can you say, MY best interest, I went to YOUR schools, YOUR churches, YOUR institutional learning facilities so how can you say that I'm crazy...

All I wanted was a Pepsi...

gggggggg rrgrgrrrgrrg..... paint soooo tasty, like suckling straight from the teats of a paint cow. Oh the colors.....

Salutations Art! We have not been formally introduced. I'm Denis. Jon won me at a raffle and hasn't had the heart to put me out yet. So they let me into the Action Team as the team gimp.

As to your question, Jon's right in trying the forum at RPG.net for more informed opinions. That said, if I may put in my 2 coppers. I think the open license d20 system has the broadest reach. The number of products published for the system is larger than any other. I don't know much on the legal side, but it seems it might be easier to put out a product with that system than trying to get a publisher to use outside source material. The actual game mechanics outside standard fantasy D&D I don't know much about. Though 3rd ed. did move more toward a skill based system, I'm not sure if it's enough for your needs. If you have a chance, take a look at the "D20 Modern" series. I'm not sure if that is open license, but you could get some ideas. Not so much class reliant, just basic archetypes and I think more skill based. Plus I think it has gnoll pimps! That alone is worth the price of admission. Oh yeah maybe d20 Star Wars for more sci fi stuff.

One more announcement. You BASTARDS!!!!!!! I'm all twitchy from the crack. The crack that is World of Warcraft. Female Night Elf Hunter - Kasiopaeia (Draenor server). booooooooo!

i a,mun. i mean drunl. drunk. i say hi to art and denis and jael and i am goinhg to play some wwoww rarcraft right now. i am the king of nihght rlgd - u guys dont know how hard it is to type rtight now. i wil l win all.

erg.

Adventures in job-searching, from a Christian movie casting post: We pray before every shoot and believe God will anoint the actors with performances that will stun theatrical audiences. “Gravity” is a family motion picture that will be enjoyed by theatrical audiences worldwide even if they have no Judeo Christian experience. Fuck yeah, prepare for anointment, bitches!

Art, to answer your easiest quest, Gurps is a skill-based point-buy system. I'm not all that knowledgeable of it myself, despite buying 3 billion books at the Gamekeeper fire sale, but essentially for most rolls you roll 3d6, trying to roll under either your stat, or your skill.

For your OGL/business questions I would head over to www.rpg.net, register for an account (free), and post your questions in their Business forum since I think for the most part The Action Team knows fuck-all about the business end of RPG publishing. (Although Eric has researched the brick-and-mortar end quite a bit.)

As far as skill-based systems go, GURPS is the classic, and they just released their new edition so for the next year or so new releases in that line will still seem shiny and exciting. I have no idea how their licensing arrangements work, though; all of their books are published by SJ Games, and most of their books are either general-use (Romans, Dragons, etc.) or are tied to already-existing fiction licenses. I haven't seen a lot of new, original settings coming out of there.

I personally am a fan of Savage Worlds as well, which is also a skill-based system and from my brief research offers pretty good publishing deals. Of course they have a much smaller slice of the RPG pie than GURPS has (which itself has a much smaller slice than D&D/d20). However, they do pretty well for themselves, and they have a small but active fanbase.

SW has a pretty specific philosophy, which is that their system is geared for fast, finite campaigns, which a good amount of tactical crunch but simple and fast combat and record-keeping. If you are planning for a d20 level of complexity then they're not what you're looking for.

Need your opinions..


So the project I'm working on is simultaneously looking to release a RPG version of the concept at the same time as the first person shooter game.. or maybe a little before the computer edition. Anyone know much about the Open Gamers License system and/or d20 "open-source" licensing? I'm wondering if you guys have used any self-made systems in your many travels through gaming-land and have an opinion on them OR.. if you have a potential alternative in mind for creating a custom RPG world.

Essentially, they want to use more of a skills-based system (along the lines of Warhammer) instead of "levels", and the setting is going to be futuristic in nature with plenty of gunplay and whatnot. I was thinking of suggesting GURPS, but I don't honestly remember what the underlying game mechanics are like. Does it use percentage-rolls, and would it support a skill-based advancement of characters?

Ideas?

PastramiCon and Beyond

O rugs: I dont think you understand the situation fully. You have been nominated to rent AND fly us to GenCon AT YOUR EXPENSE. Just one of those kind things we do to use, accomodate! Yeah... To accomodate the virgin GenCon goers.

Seriously though, GenCon Indy was brought up this past weekend and there seemed to be a good deal of interest. Of course that would be heavily dependent on financial situations for those involved. Particularly Jon and I. We really aught to make a determination on that one by the end of february. Jon and I need to land jobs between now and then.

Dennis, well we always knew their was an evil side to him. No gamer is without one. Dennis you would make a ruthless, perhaps even insane general.

D>M>

Denis

You would never expect such behavior from relaxed, vegetarian, demure, well groomed, unassuming, meticulous at painting, Denis, but truer words have never been blogged before:

"Also, don't fuck with Denis because he will fucking go crazy on your ass."

Ruthless. Just ruthless. In fact, I don't think I can hang with that guy anymore, I saw a side of him that just disturbed me, so Denis, please don't call me anymore. Unless it's to play Blood Bowl....

Again, congrats on the painting contest!

Aaaaaaron with the random object up the nose manuever!

That totally sounds like a great time was had by all, even if Aaron was shoving things in bodily orifices yet again.. hehe.. I'd be totally down with flying peeps out to Indy but that's a looong way to go! In all honesty, it'd be a lot cheaper and a lot faster to go commercially unless a "road" trip sounded like a lot of fun. With three passengers, we'd be lucky to pull 150kts the whole way.. so that'd probably take a couple days each way in the smaller aircraft I'm rated for. =/

The idea sounds fun though. =)

On the software development thing, it's all just really in the beginning stages, but I do know they're looking for some 2D/3D modellers. Any of youse guys good with that and interested in some freelance work? When they've been hiring out piecemeal for some of the artwork and concept designs but I think they want to get a steady relationship established with some peeps.

I'm going to be working on the project at night and on weekends for a while until it looks like things are getting more involved. We shall see!

Best,

~T.

Jon's Con Report

This was a good con! We all won tons of swag. WoTC had a very large booth with tons of demo games. (D&D Minis, MLB Showdown, etc..) You could go to the prize booth and get a "character sheet," and then do demos. For every demo you did your sheet got a stamp... when you were ready you could go back to the prize booth and roll a large, foam 20-sided die. The goal was to "hit" monsters at increasing DCs. The first one got you some Magic cards n' shit, the second one got you some D&D/Star Wars miniatures, the third roll got you a D&D rulebook or boardgame, and the fourth roll got you a bunch more of the above. Well, all of us got the first two rolls, and everyone except Eric, I think, got the third. So we all got some form of board game or rulebook plus a bunch of other shit.

So yeah, I won Risk: Godstorm, Rudy won the future version, Aaron won Betrayal at House on the Hill (a very fun, sorta cheesy, "horror" board game... very good win). A good few additions to the boardgame pool.

And yeah, I bought Twilight Imperium 3rd ed on the first day. I decided to get my obscene purchasing over with. We tried to play it on Saturday night, only to discover that due to a printing error we were missing an important piece. Fortunately I was able to go to the booth on Sunday and get a replacement.

(BTW, I've had TI from way back! I still have the 1st edition with the crappy chits, somewhere. I think it's a great game. They made a -lot- of changes to the rules for this edition so that it's a little quicker [<5 hours] and so that everyone is involved more often. You go 'round robin activating actions and systems, rather than one person taking his entire turn at a time.)

So we played Godstorm instead. It was extremely late by this time and we were all beat, and I overturned the board halfway through, but it was a good time. Johnny, you'll definitely like it. Oh, don't be red because Aaron stuck two pieces up his nose, in retaliation for which I yelled "take it take it take it take it" whenever he made a move. Also, don't fuck with Denis because he will fucking go crazy on your ass.

Aaron, Denis and I stuck around on the last day to see the results of the miniature painting contest Denis entered. It's a good thing we did because he won! His mini kicked ass over the rest of the competition and he won a shitload of paints. The best part of -that- was when they were taking a picture of him and Aaron was yelling "Denis, smile! Smile!"

We finished it off with a fine meal at El Gringo. Ah, nourishment.

(By the way: did anyone win an MLB Showdown starter? That game was actually pretty fun. I'd play it again, despite knowing nothing about baseball....)

Sounds like the Con was ON!

Sorry I missed it.. but in all reality, it was probably for the best with the whole office-fire thing we've been dealing with for the last two weeks and on top of that, our office-support person has been out for over a week now because her husband had to go in for an emergency surgical operation. Bleh.

As for gaming goodness, I just don't have the required time to put in to make a MMORPG like WoW do-able.. =(

Here's one small vote for continued attempts to make NWN workable for everyone on Sunday evenings. This upcoming weekend is not going to work for me, that much I know already. However, once the holidays simmer down a little bit, I think we'll be cool to get going with this full-swing in a few weeks if anyone is still interested that is.

As a bit of good/interesting news, I've been offered a share of a start up software development company if I run the business end of things for them. I dunno where it's going or if it will even work, but why not.. if it doesn't go anywhere, my end of things is relatively small. If it does go places, then my responsibilities start growing exponentially, but so does our income. The basic premise is to design and develop a complete new game based on the half-life2 engine. The computer fellas have been banging away on the artwork, models and storyline/gameplay for a while now in expectation of the release of HL2 and are now starting to code. More or less, it's about a civil war between Mars and Earth.. the story line sounds pretty cool thus far. Let's hope it goes nuts, we all make millions and retire at 35. Hehe.. hey, we can dream, right?

=)

Late,

~O.

I'm back from time to wreak havoc once again!

- First off, Godsstorm?? risk 2210?? Duelmasters card game? 400 dollars of free games? Please elaborate... I want to play godstorm! Give me an in depth description of the game play! Also what's this about Jon buying twilight imperium, a strategic combat only game? It sounds like the con set some new precedencts into uncharted territory and a whoppin jolly good time. Sorry I missed it!

- SFO EVENTS -- Let's do another BBQ/ Gamesday/ one of these days before Xmas break. What's everones work plans and schedule?

- MP GAMING - Is anyone still playing NWN or is that over and done with? I take it, the new fad is WoW?

WoW

Certainly has some server issues, no? I know Rudy was on when I was and the servers went down AGAIN. Boo. Whatever, I guess there will be growing pains as the game gets more popular and more people keep flooding in... and it really is all Jon's fault for picking an eastern server.

GenCon was a success, with some highlights including:

- Take it take it take it take it...
- The retail value of all the crap we won for free at the Wizards booth probably totalled over $400, including such fine goodies as: Betrayal at House on the Hill, Risk 2210 and Godstorm, Star Wars Miniatures starters and boosters, D&D Miniatures starters and boosters, D&D basic set, Eberron campaign setting book, GI Joe, Duelmasters, and Star Wars card game starters...
- Beer on the convention floor
- Jon's purchase of the $80 3rd edition Twilight Emperium, and subsequent failure to play it due to factory defects.
- Being in the absolute farthest room possible from the con, and finding the silver lining by stealing new rollaway beds nightly.

Good times. Also, Ryan is the first new member of the as of yet unnamed band that we are starting to play next years GenCon. So far, we already have a song written called "Desperate Hour" originally performed by One Beer Mary. All we need is a band a few more songs....

Well..

Jon, it is sort of an involved answer. What the codes 30330 and 25440 mean is the latency settings of your RAM. In breaking down the "30330" code, the "30" means 3.0 CAS latency, the following "3" is 3 TRCD latency, the next "3" denotes a TRD latency of 3, and the final number of "0" is the SPD spec version. Likewise the 25440 means 2.5 CAS, 4 TRCD and 4 TRD. Latency is the number of clock cycles before a certain action can be performed within memory. Long story short the new RAM is both faster and slower. But only nominally. What you really need to be wary of is that the Mac runs stable on both sticks. It should set the memory timings so that both sticks operate within specs. If your system is unstable, then it may not be setting them properly (Not entirely unheard of with older Macs). If it is stable, the performance loss will be negligable, something on the order of .5% - 1%, depending on the type of application. Just watch you stability. CAS latency is the most important of the three for performance deltas.

Twas a great time at the Con. Sorry that Art, Johnny, and Motorbyke couldn't make it. Kublacon! Everyone mark the Memorial day weekend of 2005 on your respective calenders.

D>M>

Great con, guys! Rudy, I'm glad you could make it. Did I show you my new "Circa Footwear" sweatshirt? I'll show it to you next time I see you....

Question for you techie guys: I just bought some new RAM and put it in my computer's empty slot. It's a different manufacturer than the other. When I put it in the speed of the original reads: "PC3200U-30330." The speed of the new one reads: "PC32000U-25440." Does that mean the new RAM is slower than the old? Should I return the new memory?

Hey Rude--what is your character? I'm Borst, on the Dalanar server.

Hey Eric, I found Blizzard's WoW site handy for some tactical advice.

Can't play the game, so I guess I'll read about it....

Sound Off: Enron

I will be ready to go whenevar on Thursday. I will be Jon's ride of course. Elrock, why dont you call when you are leaving for Anaheim so that Jon and I can head down when you do.

D>M>

Oy! Aaron and I got home a few hours ago. I am going to sit by the door with my games until Thursday. I will be ready to rock at whatever time the rocking is scheduled to begin at.

I'll bring some Savage Worlds bullshit so we can RPG if we're up for it.

We should play some 4-player HeroScape! And maybe Game of Thorsn as well! and maybe puerto rico

World of Wargarbage

It's up to you d00d. WoW is a terrific game, and I am sure that WWIIOL is too, I just haven't had the same experience as you have yet, but I will play both. WoW is, as Jon more or less put it, "like Everquest without all the lame stuff". It's like synthesized MMORPG goodness. So fun.

I will do both, however it is much easier to log on to WoW for 15 minutes and accomplish something than it is for WWIIOL.

Missed your calls Rudy, phone was in the car. Denis and I plan on leaving sometime midday on Thursday and Enron and Jon are travelling right now I think from SF, but I think their plan is similar, though Enron might work and then they will come Thursday night. I will be there early afternoon.

Alas, my world is Draenor

So I think that means we can't play together, I'll try it out and see, but I don't think so. Bummer! I'm gonna go try right now!

Well, World of Warcraft is fun. It chugs a little since I'm below the RAM spec but it's not too bad at all. I created a Gnome Warlock on Dalaran (is that the right server?) and got him to level 5. The best part was when I grouped up with two dwarven Hunters. We called ourselves the "firing squad" and marched into the troll caves.

My character's name is B... O... R... S... T... BORST.

Yee-ha!

Denis, what is your female Night Elf called?

It's so hot! Milk was a bad choice!

Tonight..


I'm still looking to be in tonight, but not until 8-8:30pm or so. Are we using the same teamspeak server as before Eric? If not, I have a backup server we can borrow. Bummer on NWN.. dang.

I could do some bloodbowl I guess, but I don't have any software and won't be available to do downloading and installing and whatever else until after 8pm. Sooooo.. if you guys wanna get hooked up before hand and get started, do so.. I'll catch up with you as soon as I can on teamspeak and we'll get the rest of it hammered out.

Late,

~O.

NWN Disks AWOL

I can't find the NWN disks so we are left with Blood Bowl, or something that doesn't require disks....

Incase it is BB, I made a team of more humans, The Marienberg Rivermen, and they are fully approved and ready to play, so all we need are you two guys and then we can TeamSpeak and BBin'. What time?

BTW World of Warcraft is teh shizzle. So, Jon if you are wondering which to do, get WoW, of course if you want to do XBox Live too, that can also be arranged... but seriously, WoW is SUPER FUN! And I hated Everquest! Yar! More combat and quest driven so far, I am a 3rd level Dwarf Warrior! Big Surprise!

I'm down for Blood Bowl - it's a great game. BUT, I'd also love to do some NWNing - do you know how to let your computer run a server eric? My fuckin' brain hurts from trying to figure it out myself - I'm afraid I'm gonna fuck some shit up if I start opening ports I have no idea what they do. ANd someone hack me a wwii online account plz! kidding... :(

Blood Bowl

You guys wanna play Blood Bowl tonight? We could all hop in a game together and show Art the ropes? Walk him (you) through the setup process and rules and all that? I think you were born to play Blood Bowl, d00d.

I'm down for whatever you fellas wanna do. I'm so BUMMED! There are no more free WW2 offers right now - my last one just ran out, and when I went to make a new free trial, they aren't offering anymore! I'm negative money in my bank account right now (typical for me) so I can't just subscribe or anything - i think i totally would too. At least the 30 day $20 activation fee - it's a great game and I was JUST starting to get good at it.

so, if you guys wanna do some NWN I can at least still play that. If you wanna do some fantasy shit, I'm in. If you want me to run a little mini-adventure in space, I'm also down. Either nwn thing we do, we need someone to run it. I bet eric could figure it out though. So ya, I got a meeting with the label guy at 5:30 (no photo-shoot today - good!) but I'll be back here well-before any gaming commences. Do it, yadda yadda yadda!

Sunday Night Midget Madness


From the looks of things, I should be a go. The Raiders are playing the night game, but by the 3rd or 4th quarter they should be getting their asses handed to them so badly that it won't matter if I turn it off. So.... how many confirm/no-confirm peeps we have for tonight? I really wish we had someone that could host a module.. I think we really need to fire up Penultima, equip and play together for a bit. If nothing else, it'd be a good place to level up and buy equipment for our characters that isn't rediculously overpowered. OMG VORPAL SWORD PLUS TWELVEZORRZ!!!1!

Hehe.. but, as usual.. I'll be down for whatever! NWN, WWII Online .. whatevah.

sexy photo-shoot

Ya mangs, I gotta do a photo-shoot tomorrow! omg i = sexay. it's for the cd, and I think it's gonna be an all-day thing (driving to different "lo-cals", that's photo-shoot lingo fellas)and we're prolly gonna get some night shots too. BUT, since it looks like it's DYING to rain this weekend, maybe we'll do it another day or not. I dunno - gonna talk to him later. But, I want to be done with it by our usual gaming time [at least me and Art's gaming time :( ] Eric, if you're not going to a sea-donkey game or whatever tomorrow night, and if art is free from teh fam, we should play some games damit! If you two (and jon maybe later?) wanna try out that Firefly shit, I'm SO down. Fire up that module, make some guys, it puts u in a room where u get dressed and lvl up to 5, and then save your characters. Oh, has anyone figured out how to run a server for nwn? I don't think I can - I checked out the support pages for router shit, and couldn't find my POS dsl modem - the characters need to be in the servers "vault" folder b4 game because of the mods to nwn. i'm all out of breath - check in later.

Jael! Bummer about being alone out there dude. Maybe you can meet someone to kick it with at that mega-mall or something. See if they have teamspeak or skype in those internet cafes and listen in on us if we play or someting.

Eric, joo are a bad man for making me spend de moneys

I have some Fry's and GameStop store credit I can use. So I could either use it on Halo 2 + Xbox Live, or Worlds of Warcraft + more memory for my Mac. (Worlds of Warcraft = works on OS X = yay Blizzard!) I'll let you choose!

You guys should play NWN/Firefly tomorrow night! Aaron and I are driving back to SF tomorrow, so if we're home in time I could join in the fun! My lack of playing makes me sad. Almost every night I do nothing, so it is odd that I end up having something to do almost every Sunday! Argh.

Halo 2

Infact I have Halo 2 already, but I held off on XBox Live. 2 is fun, but it is more geared toward a serious multiplayer game, rather than a silly warthog-a-mania game that we are so find of playing, so in that regard I don't like it as much. The warthogs explode after numerous beatings in multiplayer, and so far I can't figure out how to give unlimited grenades and only rockets, so I am bummed. The single player missions are fun, but since the day I picked it up, I have not returned to play because I have been infatuated with Half Life 2 and GTA:SA.

As far XBL, I would totally be in, I just thought it would be even better playing with friends as opposed to joe shmoes. If you are interested though, I can always be convinced....

Also, is anyone other than Mr. Absent (Denis) interested in World of Warcraft or Evercrack II? I have been thinking about both of them.

GenCon awaits!

HEY FELLAS!!! Day of absolute boredom

I have absolutely nothing to do this weekend on saturday. One it's a weekend and there's no office. It's also a long 3 day weekend for all phillipinians, descendants of the Macedonians (uh not), so I'm basically sitting in the mall in an internet cafe. On the other hand, this is the absolute biggest mall I've ever seen. There are 5 independant malls that are linked by bridges. The owners are 5 independant companies who decided to merge together the mall in spite of obvious direct competition but I guess it opens the floodgates both ways. But the result of the combining, is a vast expanse and so far this morning I was able to explore only 1 wing of the mall but I plan on exploring a little more. On one hall there are 10-12 restaurants in a row. Talk about doing things in extremety. The food court is big too.

I'm also here alone because of poor planning. My dad told me to go to Manila, but he didn't say when! Without question I booked a flight when I had the time and here I am ONLY to find out that my uncle is in Taiwan and won't be back till next week. Which makes sense because it's a business day. In the meantime, then I'm spending the weekend pretty much alone.

On top of that, because of the rush planning, all the hotels in a decent price range are booked full for the Xmas season and the only place that was reservervable in a decent area is this Condominuim hotel next to the mall. Let me just say, the hotel stinks. That's all I can say. Personally I would have preferred, if I knew a more definitive schedule, to have booked the entire weekend in Singapore.

What compounds the loneliness, is that fact that I'm stuck in a huge AWESOME mall with no one to hang out with. Even worse, everyone is with their dates, friends, loved ones, family and I'm here sitting in an internet cafe doing some Happy hour blogging. (dion't get me wrong, I love blogging to u guys). This is the one time I wish I had a friend.

So, I haven't done my fantasy football deal, but I see that I only lost 1 game to Enron. not bad I'd say.

Well I hope things are well with everyone, and HAPPY T-0ikey DAY!

JAEL

I dunno if you've ever played with the OIC named Ricemag, but he rules! I was a part of his crew, and we went in with 6 tanks, maybe 12 inf (in diff teams) and awesome air support. Took a town - went SO smooth. I was a part of the 2nd recon team, and when the orders came I nabbed a depot, and held it till we owned that town. After the town was ours I went outside kinda goofin around, and some enemy dude steps in front of me! We both shoot - we both go down - i was injured, he was dead. It was rad. Then today when I checked, that town was owned by the axis again - oh well! :) it's such a fun game. Today was kinda burnt - went on a 2 hour mission! Rode a boat out to a secluded island that had a enemy base, when we finally got close (i was riding on a tank) a 110 nailed me a few times (almost dead) and then I got popped a few minutes later. Dude, 2 fuckin hours to get there, and its over like that. Communication was wack - having an awesome OIC really makes a difference.

Oh, and turkey-day was cool. Stuft my fat-ass to the limit, and beyond.

Art and the Art of Blood Bowl Maintenance

I think you would be the perfect candidate for some Online Javabowl Blood Bowl goodness! Blood Bowl is the best game ever made by anyone, hands down. Yes, better than World in Flames, Ticket to Ride, Reichstar, Elixir, Oi! Dat's Me Leg, and Cootie. It is infact so fun, that you should play it. We played a mini tournament that actually has yet to be finalised, I think the championship game is between Enron's Smoking Tacos and my Leather Chaps. Do these things:

1) Go to bloodbowl.com and download the Living Rule Book and read it if you want.

2) Go to fumbbl.com and download from the downloads/essentials section the proper Java Runtime Environment, the Javabowl Engine, the most recent patch, and then create a user account on fumbbl.com.

3) Contact me and we we can meet online and I, or someone else will show you how to play and open your eyes to a new world you never knew existed.

Seriously, I think you will like the game. It's free, fun, and somewhat quick once you get the hang of it (1-2hrs max.). Do it!

Geeksgiving?

Hey guys, Aaron and I are coming home--I'll have some free time from about 12-6 on Friday and Saturday. Would any of you guys like to get together for some gameage? Perhaps at Eric's fine young cannibalistic house?

Hey, by the way.. about WWIIOL


If you do kill something, make sure you stay alive and stay IN game for at least 10 minutes so you can get your "mission success" and collect your rank points! Staying alive for 10 minutes at a pop as an infantryman is the key to sucess and rank advancement so you can get the cooler equipment like the sub-machine gun, light machine-gun, grenadier, and anti-tank rifleman. I was browsing through your combat stats and records briefly and noticed your mission time was only 6 minutes on that bf110 kill. =(

------------

Re: Fantasy Fooseball.. hehe.. yeah, that was definately a down to the wire kind of thing. I've actually lost a game by a tenth of a point before if you can believe it... talk about frustrating! I actually do enjoy playing with "partial points" enabled a bit better for this reason.. I think it adds a bit more fun when every play can add little bits of points and you aren't depending solely on reaching certain milestones. I love playing Fantasy Football.. weeeeeeeee!

~O.

Sweet!


I have to admit, taking down planes is my favorite thing to do in WWIIOL whether I am flying another plane, or shooting them down from the ground. For some reason it's just entirely and wholely satisfying to the deepest of levels. Just wait until you get a little bit of rank and can spawn light machine guns on bipods.. hehe.. WEEEEEEEEE!

Can you spawn cmle38's yet? Those are kick ass anti-aircraft guns with a high rate of fire. you'd have to use your gamepad probably, though.. try practicing offline with the cmle38 and see how you do. Also, give the anti-tank guns a try. The Frenchies have a bad ass gun in the "1937" and the Brits have the standard 2-lber. If you can get the hang of those (especially the '37), you can take out any German tank at just about any range if you connect-four.

BTW.. I've completed phase one of my consumer hands-on testing of digital cameras thanks to the generous return policy at Costco. The first contender was the Olympus C-60 and I have to admit I was a bit underwhelmed on the whole. I took it back tonight and picked up the Fujifilm S7000 and have been immediately impressed with the quality of the camera and have even managed to take some seriously low-light images that came out reasonably well despite my having nearly zero knowledge of photography other than what I've been reading up on voraciously the past two weeks. I set the film speed down to 400 and it picked up an image of my wife and daughter on the couch with all the lights off in the room except for the TV and you would have sworn that I actually had ALL the lights on by the image itself... very weird but very exciting. I can't wait to learn more about what the hell I'm doing so that I can really make use of the camera. I get the feeling that I'm going to need a really nice digital image editor like Photoshop so I can crop and manipulate the images before getting them printed up real nice-like.

I was just at Target and they have standard 4x6 images for like 26 cents apiece which seems like a pretty sweet deal when you figure you're only printing off the ones you really like. 8x10 glossies for $3 a piece too! Can't wait to take some of these down there and see how they come out.

.....interlude.....


I am SO jonesing for some NWN madness! We *MUST* fucking play some NWN this weekend. Even if it's just a jonsey-jones hack/slash maniac mod or something.

I hate the Patriots.

~O-rugs, out.

Well, re: the two 110's, I was the ONLY person spawning at that fb. And they were just fucking around taking turns swooping down on me trying to nail me. So, one of them, I kept plugging away, and these dudes were flying LOW trying to get me - I led one into the trees and he crashed. The other one just exploded eventually. So, i got one 1 and it says I damaged the other. It was bad ass. Then later I went into a town under attack, and we were getting SO fucking smoked. Couldn't even get out of spawn. They had tanks surrounding the spawn - it was bloody. The bridge that connected to that town was blown, so no support came. Later on, I was with one other inf, and he took me under his wing, and we had this plan to sneak into a town, and TRY and take it by ourselves - we snuck into the 1st depot, started to take it, and then we got killed. It was awesome though. So tense! Ya eric, you gotta get in on these. Art - with my shitty joypad, I'm able to at least drive trucks pretty good. Did that for awhile. No planes for me (I don't know how to fly em.)

Eric - I doubt my cd will be manufactured by GenCon time, but once it is, I'll gladly hook u d00ds up. We GOTTA play some NWN someday! Fuck, it's so frustrating.

I Have Returned From Teh Grave!

So, I am now swingin' with my own computer, and "lovin' it" McDonalds Style. I wanna play WW2OL too guys! I still have my account setup so we should TeamSpeak, WWII, and kill some Nartzi's!

TW, Half Life 2 is the rox0rz. System requirements are as follows: Recommended - 2.4 processor, 512RAM, Direct X Level 9 graphics card. Minimum - 1.2, 256, DirectX Level 7. So, it's not too brutal, though it is a resource hog on the higher graphics settings, I am running 1024 x 768 just fine. Get it! It is a worthy followup to the greastest game ever made! And did I mention that included with the install is Counterstrike: Source, which is the old Counterstrike with better graphics, so we should play that too!

The only weird/intrusive thing is that an internet connection is required to install the game, because it decrypts files during install, and also installs this "Steam" service on your machine that must be running to play....

Worth it though!

Can't wait to hear the CD at GenCon Rudy! Can we buy a pre-release version there? I don't want one for free, I want to buy one! Do it! Also, sorry about the cell phone last night, I went to an Ice Dogs game.

World War Too Online!

Yes, it's very addictive. Hehe.. I remember many a night staying up until 2-3am fighting to capture a town. It's a whole new experience once you get involved in huge firefights. I'm just bummed that none of my transport missions resulted in you guys getting safely to target.. but that's what you're up against when you've got an entrenched enemy. It's damned hard to crack those defenses! Still, I think we had a good time in just a few hours. Hard to believe how fast time flies when you're playing that game. Next time, when there's someone shooting at you, keep your head down and crawl backwards into cover.. standing up to run is generally going to result in eating a bullet 90% of the time. =]

Good job on the two 110s! That's not easy to do. I'm not knocking your confirmed kills (that's NOT easy to do), but keep in mind that sometimes you might score the first hit on a critical internal component (in a non-lethal level), then someone else follows up with a big hit (like 40mm bofors anti-aircraft) and blows them up.. but you get the kill credit. It's one of the little annoying things in the game that sometimes you don't get kill credit for something even if you really did destroy the last 99% of the thing, because someone "tagged" it first. The developers are working on a better functioning kill-credit system.. but it's not a show stopper so I don't forsee it happening anytime real soon.

If we do WWII Online again in the next few weeks, I'll see about reactivating my account so we can multicrew some bombers and tanks and shit.

CDs Done! (almost)

Just gotta make 2 small changes, but then the music is done! I named 2 songs game-ish: Pickpocket and Detect Mode. Also have a song called Palaver (but thats mostly from the Dark Tower books.) Heh. Next weekend gotta spend the day doing photo-shoots. Ew. But, I'm so stoked it's basically over. Good times ahead! Now, off to my shitty job. b00!

RUUUUD-AY!!!


I'm emailing you my cell number. Call me.

Duuuude..


It is a moral imperative that we play games this evening. My blood alcohol level commands it!

I have a teamspeak server we can borrow for the eveining to play with as we like. NWN, WWIIOL, whatever.. but even if it's just the two of us losers, we need to hook up and have some fun one way or another.. but not in the S.E. Asia prostitutional way, if you know what I mean. LOL.. mooooooore Guinness!

=]

~Drunkard O.

b00

Hopefully we'll hear from eric by 8 or so, but haven't gotten a hold of him yet. So, probably no gaming tonight. *sniff* *sniff*

RE: Firefly. Assuming we'll have 3 players in the game (art eric jon) you'd want at least 1 character with some good piloting skills (and engineering), someone with some medic background, and then maybe some kind of jack-of-all-trades/merc/rouge kinda guy. To make your guy, fire up the module, and it helps you make yer dude. You get to pickout some outfits and it also levels you up to 5th level. THEN, save your character, and email the *.bic file to me: rudymangual @ gmail.com - because the game uses custom classes/rules, I need to store the characters on my machine in "server vault" area. Also, I've modified the module quite a bit, so b4 we play I'd have to get you guys to d/l my version of the mod. But, let's wait and see if we'll be able to do anything tonight anyways.

Never Give Up!

Art! Well, Jon is out for the night (no internet and he's watching a movie) but I haven't heard from Eric yet. MAYBE (just maybe) he's online again and the 3 of us can play something. Gonna have to wait till I hear from him, so don't give up hope! If it IS just the 3 of us, we can use teamspeak and maybe eric can setup a server, etc. We'll see. BUMMER-MAXIMUS (maybe.)

Regular TV on the weekends is SO bad! OMG, nothing to watch.

I'm gonna mess with the Firefly stuff today, and if we can get eric in, I should be able to run at least a short intro-module for us. Alright - I'll check in lat4er

Fireflizzle..

I'm downloading all the hacks and module now.. we still on for this one tonight? I've got a green light from the wife for gaming to-night. Yeehaw!

two questions: We using teamspeak tonight or the other application? If not, we aught to figure out who is hosting, what the name/password is going to be well in advance. Also, the module calls for level five characters to start, but I'm not sure if building a character for this module is giong to be different than the typical NWN character or not.. ? Should I just wait until we're all on teamspeak to get the character thing worked out? Also, what kind of mix of players should we have?

I guess that was more than two. Blow me.

Hehe..

~Cap'n O.

sk8r!

Dudes, I got a friggin skateboard! I'm so stoked. My cousin has this company:

www.performancesk8.com

And I saw him at a party tonight and he gave me a deck! It's rad man. I gotta go with someone who knows skating to buy trucks and wheels, but then i'm good to go (nowhere fast.)

Rad that you moved into a gaming house! They should do a reality-show about it! :) Some quasi-celebrity gamers I just found out about are Chris Hardwick (from Singled-Out and Shipmates fame) and Patton Oswalt (from King of Queens "fame".) I've seen them both do stand-up, and they're really funny! Good shit. After one show, my friend Stan heard them talking out in the parking lot about how they were worried that their Dungeon Master was gonna quit the group. Supposedly he was jobless, and they were talking about how maybe they could PAY him to keep DMing their group. That's too rad. From Chris Hardwick's website:

*I know discrimination. In sixth grade I was the victim of a hate crime. Four white kids attacked me simply for the color of my velvet 100-sided die side-pouch. Using my D&D “Fiend Folio” as a plunging device, they stuffed me into a lunchroom trashcan. Because I am a positive person, I noted that the can was half-full, yet I couldn’t help but feel like a 9th level loser with a +5 sadness.

Gaming is the best!

Well, I'm in for the convention. But if Rudy can go for two nights, that would really help. That would reduce our costs to about $65 a head (assuming the room is $100), which is workable.

We should ask Peter if he wants to go, too. He's seemed interested in conventions lately, and that would bring our costs down as well.

I will be poor and will expect to basically be making myself sandwiches the whole time, but I'll be there.

So let me tell you guys a little about my roommates. When I first checked out the place, there was a Player's Handbook on a shelf in my room, which I made an off-hand comment about; I figured it belonged to the guy who was moving out, or something. But actually, it seems that I have inadvertantly moved into a house full of gamers. I've got three roommates and they all love D&D and Call of Cthulhu from way back.

When I pulled up in my U-Haul, my roommate Scott was around and he helped me moved in. I mentioned to him that the two huge Sterilite containers housed my board game collection. Well, his eyes just lit up. I mean, literally, golden beams shooting out of his eyes. The containers were in the garage for the first five or six days I was here, and every time Scott saw me he said, "You know, I don't want to rush you, but whenever you want to open up those boxes, I'm there."

Scott, Allen, and a couple of their friends used to play tons of Axis & Allies, it seems. Scott even has the new version. (Scott's wife, Heather, is also a D&D player, but as a board-gamer is more the Scrabble type.) So a few days ago Scott and I hauled up the containers and I taught Scott how to play Battle Cry. He really liked it, so last night we taught Allen how to play as well and I ref'd them through the First Bull Run.

Ironically, I think that they would both really like Blood Bowl! It almost makes me want to pick it up at some point. I definitely think they'd like Space Hulk, and for some reason I have a good feeling about Necromunda as well.

So, yeah, that worked out.

(The obvious question is: do they want to go to GenCon? I don't think any of them can afford it--Heather and Scott are a one-income family, and Allen just bought a TV and PS2 so he probably doesn't have much to spare. Oh, well.)

I'm buying a weekend pass for the con, but I'm almost positive I won't sleep over all the nights. If I could just pay for like two nights (friday and saturday night maybe) then I'd sleep over - it'd at least lower the cost a little for the rest of you. What's the exact cost for the rooms btw.

JAEL! We'll miss you dude! That sucks, but it sounds like it's out of your hands. Take care of your business( and cock.) I don't think legalizing prostitution makes things evil. It's going to exist no matter what - at least with legalization (like in nevada - not vegas) certain safety restrictions, regulations and things can be put into place for the betterment of everyone involved. BUT, no matter what, you're always gonna have men paying women for sex. Oldest profession dude!

Suck about Johnny

Too bad you can not make it Ja -El. Ummm So it is Eric, Dennis, Jon, and I. What say you all? What is full retail? 100 per night for three nights? That would be 75 a head plus the 50 con badge. 125 for attendance. Im in if it is the four of us. What is the verdict boys? Jon you were planning on going right? I think under four would be the breaking point. Especially since I wouldnt have a passenger to spread out the cost of Ass for the drive there and back. It's like 90 dollars for the gas now.

D>M>

Ass, ass, or ass. No one rides for free. -BluRst Bumper Sticker EvAr

GenCon

Should we even do it at all this year? Can anyone pay for the rooms? Are Denis Aaron and I the only ones going? Should I cancel the room, cause see the thing is we DID pay full retail and now there are only three of us.

This sucks.

Sorry guys, I can't make it to the convenshun this year around.

Something just came up and I have to fly to Manila phillipines after my trip is done here. So I'm leaving Sing from the 26th and will be spending the good half of Christmas Month until the 6th. There is no earlier flights home, all booked for the winter months, but I have to stay there anyhow for a good week. I'll miss you all. Lucky my special rated didn't apply to the hotel eh? You guys would have to have paid full retail or worse not be able to get a room at all, seeing that when I was booking the rooms, the hotel was packed.

Okay, I'm rambling.

Disturbing thing to note: Prostitution is legal in Singapore (to an open extent). quick fyi, just for those of you who didn't know. It's a regulated commodity. So what i've noticed is that it attracts the "most likeable" breed of business folks and tourists. Uh.. NOT. Jeez, it seems, foreigners and locals alike understand and prey on the concept of profiting or indulging in the services. It's way too routinal in conversation which makes it quite disturbing. Taxi drivers are urban pimps. KTV's are all too common, one can't go anywhere without seeing one. Outside the busy streets of my hotel are strewn with women in scant clothing (not assuming all of them are prostitutes, but common sense says otherwise). I'm pretty sickened by all this really. Never make prostitution legal in a country. It never brings anything but evil. Vegas is pretty bad too I guess.

Jael

Review: Jon vs. Espresso Maker, round two

Oh man, I created a really fuckin' great triple espresso! I had it two and a half hours ago and I'm still wirred!

FINAL RATING: 10/10

Review: My first attempt at using the espresso maker

Rating: 5/10. Espresso was output, but not before I let it overboil, thus spewing half of my precious essence all over the stovetop. It goes down fine, but is leaving a funny taste in the back of my throat, not so much an aftertaste as a peculiar backtaste.

LOL.. check out this song..

It's the first one on the list "talk to me".. click the "listen" icon. Not safe for work.

http://www.whatarerecords.com/artist/stephen_lynch/discography.html

Oh man, most people probably haven't heard about Firefly anyways. It was a tv series from the guy who made Buffy and Angel that was cancelled after less than one season aired. You can buy the series on dvd. It was cancelled because it was basically too good for the fools at Fox - they didn't get it. But ya, the setting in a nutz shell (from the guy who made the mod):

A "space Western" if you will. Western, Asian, and sci-fi themes blend in a convincing mix of what the future may be.

So basically you guys would have a ship and be traders or bounty hunters or whatever fits yer fancy. There's cities, other ships, homesteads, astroids, palaces, and shit like that for locations. And lot's of guns and fisticuffs. I'll prolly run it once and it will be disast0rz, but I wanna at least try.

Erm..

I don't actually know this "Firefly" thing at all..(I'm so embarassed!)

But, it sounds like a cool concept! Space Cowboys, more or less? Kind of like a futuristic-ish Star Wars kind of universe but more Spaghetti-Western than tech oriented?

Space Punk!

First off, have a great trip Jael! He's on his way to Singapore today - good luck on your trip dude!

I've been messing with the toolset for NWN some more, and I'm getting more confident in running a sci-fi western for the group. In the hak-paks/modules you can download for Firefly, the guy does a good job in building the main Firefly ship, BUT it's all disconnected, meaning you walkthru a door and you have to load a new area for a corridor, for example. I think it kinda sucks. Makes the ship seems WAY bigger than it actually is. I think he did that to give the impression of different levels - there's lots of stairs up n down, BUT it can kinda make the ship seem confusing. SO, also in the hak pack, someone made a smaller, one-map ship that's pretty cool. I'm gonna personalize it, then that could be youz guyz's ship.

There's guns in the game - I guess they're just reskinned bows n arrows, BUT they have appropriate fx and look pretty bad-ass. If we do play, I think I'd stress hand-2-hand over shooting anyways. SO, I should get started with it by next weekend!

Here's the file's you'll need - (seems like a lot, but they're not too huge or anything)

Hak 1 38.11 Megz
Hak 2 36.6 Megz
Hax 3 41 Megz omghax!
Update hax0rz! 7.45 baby meg, i luv u!
And FINALLY the module/campaign setting (which has all the cool maps):
Module, Bitches! 3.51 megazordcheapz! (This also has a players-guide pdf, so check it if we play)

There are a couple of music haks too, but I'm not even gonna download them. I love music n all, but I'm not into the game music so much. Sound FX is good enough for me. Maybe I'll add some of my highschool songs to it.

The game uses a D20 Traveller set of rules, where you can get the free Lite version here: Traveller D20 Lite rulez

So, let me finish this whole record deal thing, then I wanna run this disaster!!

Fellas..

Sorry, but I've got to attend to baby/wife matters tonight and won't be able to make it unfortunately. We'll plan for a big "everyone" week next sunday I guess. Who knows, now that Aaaaaaaron is working days, he might even be able to make it.

Skype

Yo! To confrence call, we need each other's screennames. Mine is rudymannings , jon's is at_ragnar , Jael's is jonnyrockt , don't know what art's is. Anyways, once everyone's got the prgm turned on, search for those names, they come up, add them to your contact list. Then someone (i'll do it) initiates a confrence call, and thats that!

Talked to eric - he's still sans-computer. He'll try for next sunday. Ya mon, I wish I would have got the platinum edition to begin with, BUT I wasn't even sure I'd like the game, so I didn't. Haven't seen a cheap way to get the 2 expansions, so I'll wait a little while and see if something comes up.

KIDS ON COFFEE!!!

Hey guys! I can meet everyone online tonight after dinner. 8:00-8:30? Don't know that I'll have time to prep anything though (I'm cooking dinner). What time are we meeting? I still haven't got a mic either. DOH! I promise I'll get one soon....

After we've got a few more games under our belts we should all get the expansions... opens up a LOT of content.

Anyway, what are we playing? I'll look around the vault... otherwise someone post an idea plz ok thx.

By the way... if we're all one group... I wanna be a monk!

Should we try Diablo tonight? It's just Diablo but on the other hand... Diablo's fun for everybody! Le'z try it. If you haven't already, go to this page and download the first three selections, and also the music pack if you want old-school Diablo music.

Then Johnny, if you can run the game again tonight, it should be pretty much like usual.

I think you get xp for talking to the townspeople, so talk to all of them, even if you just blow through the dialogue.

Anyway, that should be fine. If anyone knows a better mod, that's cool too. See you all tonight!

The Only Crimes

I have heard of Only Crime. I am going to go see them at the Henry Fonda Theatre in December with The Strung Outs. Tickets are $25 online though. Suck.

Digital Camera Question(s)


So, we're getting a family subsidy towards purchase of a nice digital camera so we can take quality shots of Haylee and family-type stuff. Being that I know very little about the hardware (but I'm learning, been reading-up for the last few days something fierce).. I'm wondering if you peeps have experience with any particular models/brands and what your opinion might be of:

FujiFilm S7000
6.3mp
6x Optical Zoom
RAW format

It takes AA batteries.. which some people seem to love, and others seem to not love.

So far, the reviews I've read say that it's a good mix of noobie automation and pro-features for the experienced guy (which ain't me, by any stretch.. yet)

You fellers have opinions or thoughts on cameras?

I can get this model on sale for $449 this week.. and have $400 in family subsidy to blow.. so it will only cost me $50 net. But, I don't want to buy it if it isn't a solid performer.

Late,

~O.

P.S. Aaaaaaaaron.. that sucks man. But, you don't need me to tell you that. Why don't you get hooked up with yahoo or google? Aren't they up your direction? I know they're always looking for computer-tech geniouses and pay out the ass. Of course, you'd probably prefer American Dinars instead of ass-pay.

Good find on the chat proggie..

We'll have to give that a go tonight. As for Tara Reid.. she'd never been real high on my list of attractive people. I've never been a big fan of fake boobies, either. I mean, don't get me wrong.. they're nice to look at in a bikini and all (sometimes), but when it gets down to business.. no fun. You know, it's funny.. I've never really been much of a boob man, but I wound up marrying a double-H sized woman. I actually feel sorry for her, they're just way too big and cause back strain. When we're done with kids, she'll probably go in and get a reduction.

Did you know that breast reductions are the most common plastic surgery procedure in America? I thought that was an interesting trivia bit.

Anyhow.. do we have a module picked out for tonight? I was thinking of the Eye of the Beholder dungeon.. what do you guys think?

You know...

This is ass. Now my sleep schedule is screwed. After four straight late ass nights 2:00am, 2:30am, 4:30am, and 5:30am. I couldnt stay up past 8pm Saturday eve. Now I am wide awake. Great. I have to switch to day shifts on monday. I need a new job.

Man was that "Fuck the South" bit a lot of sour grapes. The worst part is I feel myself agreeing with a lot of the comments. Harsh. You know I think the divide will get more intense in the next few decades. I mean most (Sans California) of the blue states are not growing in population as quickly as the red states. But even california is an issue. I mean most of the growth in the CA is coming in the more republican sururban and rural areas of the state. Counties like San Bern, Kern, and Orange. I donno. I guess the question is will most of the growing middle america cities mature like NY, Chicago, Bawston, SF, LA and gradually become more liberal, or will they pull a Texa$$ on us and remain staunch conseratives even in high density areas?

Okay, I am going to make myself sleep.

D>M>

gross

I just heard about Tara Reid's boob slip the other day, and I went to a site full of pics: http://thatsjustnotright.com/movies/hires/tarareid/ (The site isn't a pron site, so no worries on pop-ups, etc)

Anyways, she's dirty. Look at that nipple - makes my dick soft. Garbage.

Ya mons, me and jael talked it up tonight - shit was sweet. I bet the program is a bandwidth hog, but we ought to give it a shot tomorrow night. I'm down for gaming. Jon, get skype and let's give it a shot. Eric - where u at? Mike - you're almost done dude!

way for all of us to chat online

Well, I think this will work and is fairly harmless. It's a program called Skype:

www.skype.com/

It's a chat program where you can confrence call with up to four of your friends, which I believe would be all of us crew. It's cross-platform (osx, win, linux) and it's free. Now, they have a service where you can call actual landlines and cellys, but that cost some cheddar. Just the straight vox-chatting through the program is free. Er, let's try it maybe? Comeone, I hate typing. Well, not really, but if our DM was doing the character voices n shit, that'd be some good laughs. :)

Erm.. I gotz pwnzedorrezed!!!11!1!


Pretty sure it's actually www.teamspeak.org and not .com OR NOT.

www.goteamspeak.com it is.

LOL!


That was funny, even if a bit harsh. I read it in the voice of Dennis Leary for added punch.

Hehe.. HEY.. about tomorrow night's gaming. I think we aught to plan ahead so we can hook up this week. Is the teamspeak server going to be up and running? If not, I think we really need to figure this out ahead of time. I was thinking of maybe trying out the Eye Of The Beholder player module as a group? Not a lot of roleplaying, I don't think.. but plenty of puzzles, hacking and slashing to take on.

Does that sound interesting to anyone else?

BTW.. I finally finished Honor Amongst Theives. I estimate that there are at least three to four alternate endings.. wow.. very very cool! In my ending, I managed to get the entire city destroyed and every inhabitant killed. LOL.. whoopsie. Can't wait to go back and try it again in a different style/flavor.

Fuck the South!!!

Gurps Server

Ugggg... Hours of sitting on my arse waiting for our server to stop choking on its own vomit. YeeHaa. Anyway after tonight I go back to day work on the road for a week. I dont know which one is worse. Getting home beat from a day on the road or getting home beat at 3 or 4 am.

Jon: Daly City Train. Maybe we can hang tomarrow if you are about. Ill call you since I will not be up until afternoon.

Futbol: Sucks to be in your world right now. I give you serious props for the ultimate in academic endurance. You'll have to bring your final product back to the states and share so we can all peruse your pain.

Elrox-off: My impressions with Cable modems have overall been pretty good. Never had complaints about the one in El Segundo. They seem to have rockin' transfer rates. Latency can be a tad higher. Maybe (tiny population sample).

Back to work... Sittin on my arse.

D>M>

PS Jon: I know you sang 'Daly City Train' out loud a few minutes ago.

PPS: JA-eL: When are you leaving overseas?

Old news but I got my Microphone,

so I have to play catchup with the rest of ya on chat. I have Yahoo Messenger chat but you guys are probably using some different chat program.

Rudy: Where's my check dude??? I guess you can pay me at the con now.

Hehe.. funneh!

Why You Don't Post Your Picture On The Internet

Yon's Rape & Sodamize!


Some new and interesting news from the WWII Online developers! The old online barrier of 32 visible (64 tracked) players seems to be breaking down.

VISIBLE PLAYER LIMITS INCREASED

And.. some discussion as to the future of other development issues:

DEPLOYMENT AND THE FUTURE OF WWII ONLINE


Weeeeeeeeee!

~O.

to blAVe!

Update: Draft Finished: Supervisor thinks finishing by Christmas is likely, but noticing how long it takes to print out a copy, better make that next February! Well, as I'm waiting for the colour laser to stop having a virtual cigarette, I thought I'd email you guys and let you know that I'm alive... or at least what you call living on 5 hours of sleep a night.

Hope to see you at Christmas, even though I realize most of you have moved away! :(

Will keep you posted, because even if you're not interested - I am.

Myke

Only Crime

Eric and Ry, you heard of this band yet? It's a new band with people from old bands (Bill from All, some dudes from good riddance, bane and some other bands that sound familiar), and they're working on their cd now for fat wreck chords. They got two songs on the site, one i really like, the other one, s'ok.

Saw good the bad and the ugly on the big screen tonight - it was awesome. That movie is SO different seeing it in all its 70mm glory - I haven't seen it since i was pretty young, and it's really funny and violent. Good shit. They're showing 2001 soon there too, so I'll definately check that out.

Fun-zor Z!!!

Well, I'm in my new place with some rudimentary furniture (still have to knock together the Ikea shelves and so on)... got my iMac version 2 (added feature: "monitor works"), NWN purrs like a kitten, GameCube is here for when NWN won't give it up... good stuff. Now I just need an actual income source.

But while I'm job-searching, this is a pleasant diversion. A port of a classic Commodore 64 game, very much in the Nethack vein....

Rudy, a Firefly campaign would be great. Watch that show you guys! It's only 11 episodes and is great! And we can all see the movie together next year while holding hands!

LOL! Too funny.. check it:

Congratulations, Art!Your IQ score is 73

This number is based on a scientific formula that compares how many questions you answered correctly on the Classic IQ Test relative to others. Your Intellectual Type is Inventive Inquisitor. You have the unusual distinction of being equally good (and by equally good, we mean you are about as dumb as a box of rocks.. and too dim to realize that equally good also means equally bad, which is great.. because we're going to try and sell you a full report on just how stupid you really are in a minute here!) at math and verbal skills. This means you are a creative thinker (pants first, THEN shoes!) and are uniquely good at teaching others through experiences (Stupid is as stupid does, after all). You are also a great improviser (meaning: able to use your bare hand in the absence of toiletpaper) and very good at handling change (as in switching from Elmers to just regular glue-paste.)

Find out more in your personalized 15-page IQ Report. It's ready right now!

***CHA-CHING!***

(Give us your $10, you drooling, mouthbreather!)

Hehe..

~O.

Eating healthy..

You know, I never realized just how easy (and tasty) it is to eat healthy until I met my wife who has some digestive issues that more or less mandate that she eats a low fat diet. I guess it helps that I enjoy cooking as a creative process, but it's really very, very easy to eat well and eat good at the same time. Most anything I make takes very little preparation or complex cooking technique. Fast, easy, cheap and good. Yeehaw! If any of you are aspiring psuedo-chefs like myself, or interested in swapping ideas.. let's do it!


And now for something completely different:

You guys ever do the stupid Tickle tests? I just did for the hell of it and thought they were interesting. Here's what I got... although, it occurs to me that they're not likely to tell you that you're dumber than a box of rocks and a real a-hole when they're trying to get you to shell out an extra $10 for the full report. Hehe.. it might be fun to try and retake those tests with some decidedly BAD answers. =]

http://web.tickle.com/

IQ Test:

Your Intellectual Type is Visionary Philosopher. This means you are highly intelligent and have a powerful mix of skills and insight that can be applied in a variety of different ways. Like Plato, your exceptional math and verbal skills make you very adept at explaining things to others — and at anticipating and predicting patterns. And that's just some of what we know about you from your IQ results.

Personality Test:

Art, you're a Chosen One!

Your personality is actually determined by two personality sub-types - your primary, or dominant sub-type, and your secondary sub-type. You are a Chosen One which means you are a Golden / Seeker Your primary sub-type is defined by "Golden" characteristics and your secondary sub-type is defined by "Seeker" characteristics.

That means you're warm, giving, knowing, and patient. Chances are you're not afraid to actively pursue your goals and dreams. As if all that weren't enough, you pretty much set the standard for emotional health by being filled with positive feelings and energy.

How do we know all this? How do we know that you'd be a great person in an emergency? Or that you always return phone calls? How could we have divined that you're no fair-weather friend?

Because while you were taking the test, you answered four different types of questions — questions that measured confidence, apprehension, willingness to take risks, and your focus on experience versus appearance — the primary traits that determine your personality. Based on your responses, we determined your personality type, Chosen One.

And that's just scratching the surface.

(LOL... I-I-I-I... I WANT THE KNIFE! PLEEEEEEZE?)

Career Test:

Art, the Right Job for you will allow you to be:


Analytical and Creative

As an Analytical type, you don't want to be limited by established rules and regulations. Your inquisitive nature demands that you sometimes question authority. Otherwise, you might not be able to find fresh approaches, or come up with new solutions to a problem. It's not that you act without weighing the pros and cons of a situation — it's more that you're more willing than others to take justifiable risks if they'll further your career success.

You're smart enough to know when you need help and are confident enough in your abilities to ask for it. You understand that sometimes there are no clear right and wrong answers, and that's just fine with you because you tolerate gray areas better than most. In fact, pondering potential outcomes can sometimes be more interesting than coming up with the definitive solution for you.

No, I can't say that I have been affected positively or negatively by GTA:SA, especially not last night after the food debauchery. I did have megazord regret this morning after waking up and realizing that I have become a turd. Something has got to give. I need to be healthy really fucking soon.

No internet yet. Still waiting for Vorizon not to suck. I'll be waiting a long time, methinks.

Amendment to Article II:

As good as GTA:SA is, do not under any circumstance, play it for a lot of hours in a row, eat a Philly Cheese Steak and fries, followed by Ben and Jerry's, and then play some more, and then go to sleep. Your dreams will be haunted by the spectre of GTA, it will feel like you are in game a little too much. Or was that just me? Ryan, thoughts?

I have woolly boogers

O rugs: Thats a bummer. I was hoping to see you down there but it looked kind of jacked from the begining anyway so I didnt hold much hope that you would be able to make it. Bad timing I guess. Anyway, you will have to make plans for the next one. Memorial Day weekend. San Francisco. Kubla Con. Last couple years were great. All you see is racis' facis'.

jAEl: I would love to game it up on Friday, But we have been handed mission of death on Friday night. Looks like I will be working well into the wee hours of the morning Friday night. Tonight is supposed to be a real pain in the butt too. I guess I shouldn't complain too much. Last week I only had 23 hours. Got sick. D'oh.

Jon: Did you make it up? I hope you arent still sick. I still have little flavors of being sick right now. What a grizzly virus. Fugger!

D>M>

Jacked back In, sorta

So, the idiots at Verizon never actually put in the change of address transfer for their shitty DSL service, what they did was change of address BACK to the Highland house effective two days ago. Brilliant. I spent an hour and 20 minutes being transferred through 8 people before they could definitively tell me this. Needless to say I cancelled service with those pendejos, and got me a cable modem again! I have to pay for it this time, but I was messing around with some download.com stuff last night, I I hit 1.31MB a sec transfer rate.... teh holiest of shits! So, I got that going for me, which is nice.

Other news:

- My computer is not hooked up yet, this is Leslies, so no gamin' for me in the near future, not to mention that I have to go to the Pennywise wedding in Mexico this weekend, and probably won't make it back and to play Sunday night anyhoo, but I'll try.

- GTA:SA is pretty fun after you become numb to the rampant racist stereotypes and Mega Black on Black Violence virtually performed by a white guy in Manhattan Beach.

- Halo 2 is also fun, but no doubt way better in deathmatch!. Has anyone ever thought about XBox Live? I know not everyone here has an XBox, but those that do, ever thought about it? $70 and you get a years subscription and all the parts needed to play. It seems neat, but I don't think I want to do it just to play schleps, I'd rather play with and against The Action Team!

- Moving is brutal on both the body and the mind.

- That sucks Art. You gotta do what you gotta do, and remember there is always Kublacon in May, which is actually a better con so far, and will be had to beat. Next time!

Well.. fuck.


My plans to attend the Con in early December just took a major turn for the worse because of my in-laws making the mother of all F-ups. Sigh. I got clearance to take some time off from the boss around Christmas to go down to Vegas because the inlaws said they would help us out financially with Michelle being out of work for 3+ months and our budget being really, really tight. Well, instead of having us leave Thursday morning prior or Wednesday night and coming back on Tuesday morning... they bought tickets leaving at the crack of dawn on Wednesday and coming back on the red-eye (3am arrival, feh!) which more or less means I gotta now go BACK to the boss again and rearrange days off and fuck with everyone's holiday schedule.

Because they insist on buying such tickets from brokers, there is a fee to change the tickets for the broker AND the airline, which would cost a minimum of about $200 to fix this mess.. not including any increases in airfare.

So, it looks like I'm going to have to give up my 3 day weekend trip for the Con weekend in order to try and mend some of this up with the boss, fellas.. sorry. =(

Feh. I'm not happy about this at all.

Chill Redux

Ya guys, I REALLY wanna try and run a NWN game for the group. I'm almost done with my album (1 week maybe?) and then I'll be free to waste my time doing jack SHIT! And anyways, I'm really digging all the stuff in the Firefly Mod for NWN, and I'd like to give it a shot. I don't know shit about Traveller D20, but there's a free Lite version available, so I'll check that out, AND I'm gonna try and get into one of the Firefly campaigns someone is already running, just to see how combat and the different skills work out. The few campaigns running are supar-roleplaying stylee, ie lots o' acting, etc, but I'm more interested in seeing how the mechanics work. The files that the guy gives in his campaign hak include the main ship, a few others (shuttles, etc) and a HUGE town, some smaller ones, and some bases. I'm just now starting to watch some tutorials on the toolset, but if this actually gets close to being something I can do, I'll dive deeper into (and ask jon n crew lots of questions.)

Easy-Bake synopsis for those who ain't familiar wit the show: You'd basically be a crew of smugglers/traders/adventurers-for-hire in a realistic sci-fi/western setting. Ya. We'll see. I wanna raid my old Buck Rogers modules for some ideas. Also, someone is using the ModernD20 mod for a Fallout mod that looks pretty sweet - they're german's though, so who knows if/when/and how the english version'll turn out.

Going to the Eygptian Theater on Thursday for a Wizard of Oz/Good' the bad, and the Ugly Double Feature! YAR!

Oh.. and from the "WTF?" files..


I got accused of being a racist today by one of our customers because I relayed a message to him that the inspection company guy couldn't get near his home to take pictures because of an unrestrained, agressive dog in his yard. When I tried to call him back to figure out how, exactly, he came to the conclusion that I was a racist, he wouldn't talk to me and hung up mid sentence.

This was a bit disturbing.. and very funny to everyone else here in the office that constantly gets corrected by me for saying ethnically insensitive things such as "gyp" and referring to asians being "oriental". Sigh.

Oh well.. you can't win them all I guess. I sent him a letter trying to clear the air, with the supposition that perhaps he was mixing up whatever inspection guy was out there with me on the phone as being the same guy (we've never met in person), especially when our phone conversations have always been very candid and friendly. Anyway.. the whole thing is pretty bizarre. I can't wait to receive the inevitable phone call from the District or State office asking about this one.. lovely. This definately ranks in my top three most bizarre phone conversations of all time.

Regards,

O-Rugs The Cracka