Runester

I’ve boarded the plane and am able to make this update because the W-Fi reaches this far from the building. So, I better write quickly and hit post before we have to turn off our electronic items and/or begin taxing away from the gate.

SouthWest Airlines is pretty interesting, in that they do not have reserved seating. They have boarding categories. I upgraded to get an “A-1” pass (cost me an additional $20) so I was allowed to board right after those with a medical necessity. What does this, mean, though? There is no first class … it was just a “sit anywhere” advantage. So, I found a nice seat over the wing and next to the window. I like the window, because I rarely have to get up for a rest-room break, but I hate having people crawl over me when they do. Further, I’m big enough in the shoulders that I’m constantly being jostled by people in the aisles and the flight attendants with their big heavy carts. So, sitting near the window is a good option for me.

It’s also interesting to see who sits where. Mostly, because no one is ‘forced’ to sit next to you, unless the flight is full and the seats are all booked. This flight is not fully booked, and someone has already chosen to sit in my aisle … and now I have a middle seat, sitter. So, that’s a good sign. I must not look creepy or nutty or anything. I wonder if they realize I’m writing about them (in generalities) while they sit here? I hope not, or the ‘creepy’ factor may go up a notch or three.

Anyway, enough about this. I can’t wait to land in St. Louis and get to the hotel. WWWN is only a few hours away and so is a nice dinner and hardy “Hello” to a group of people that I haven’t gotten to see in a year.

[Southwest Flight 143 - for those that need to know.]

Interesting problem: when sitting in one of the more comfortable seats, where do I put the laptop? My lap is not really built for this and there are no conveniently places tables. I used to own a laptop stand that could be assembled into something free standing, but never used it while traveling because it was so bulky and heavy. I’m sure if I look online, someone makes a modern version of it, smaller and more travel friendly. The high seats have the advantage of a table in front of them, but are pretty tough on my hind end. The lower seats are very comfortable to sit in, but have no tables. I’m typing this, while balancing my laptop in my lap and trying to keep it from slipping onto the floor.

I know, “whine, whine, whine.” But really, this seems like the perfect kind of problem – created by modern technology, that modern technology should solve. I mean, we have no HAL9000’s or flying cars, at least we could get some ultra lightweight, collapsible laptop stands. I need top men to get started on this … TOP MEN!

Things sure have changed at airport gates! I was hoping to find at least one available wall-plug, so I could plug my laptop in and charge it up. Instead, I find special seats all over the place with outlets right in the arms and a cool ‘high top’ bar-style area where I can camp out, pull out my gaming books, and really get to work. If I find it too uncomfortable perched on top of a padded bar stool … I can lounge in one of the leather recliners. They even have special USB connector charging ports. Crazy!

Well, I’m off to a bumpy vacation. Of course.

First, I forgot that my flight this morning was at the ungodly hour of 7:50 AM. Last night I looked up my flight times, and had a really hard time finding them. So, I did a GMail search and found an email with the flight numbers and times, and printed that off. It reported a departure time of 11:00 AM … so I knew I had plenty of time in the morning to get up, clean-up, and pack before leaving.

Then, while standing (naked, no less) in the bedroom, digging through what clothes I was going to wear and what I was going to bring … I get a call from Tresi asking where I was. My first assumption is that I was on a later flight and we had just booked different flights. Didn’t really make sense, since we had booked our flights at the same time (while IM’ing each other) and had tried to coordinate everything. But, my documents couldn’t be wrong, could they?

They were.

I had found an email from 2009 – that’s FtC2 for those keeping track. Doing some more digging found the flight number and guess what? I was supposed to be on the same flight as Tresi. I had now completely missed it. So, I called Southwest Airlines up and had them change my departure to a later time. On the one hand, I’d have 5+ hours to work on the game I’ll be running Saturday night. On the other hand, I’ll be spending most of my day at the airport, hanging out, and I’ll be arriving about an hour or so into World-Wide-Wing-Night (WWWN) dinner. Blah.

I can’t complain too loudly. On the one hand, it was my own damn mistake for not being more careful and keeping on top of this. On the other hand, I’m one of the lucky ones who can afford to make a few mistakes and have the means and wherewithal to pay for the correction. So, my flight cost about doubled; I can absorb that. Other poor slobs had really wanted to come to FtC3 and couldn’t even come up with the bus fare. So, I’ll keep my grousing down to the a low rumble, mostly focussed on how scattered I can be.

And, I’m forty (40) years old now? I really thought I’d have a better handle on these sorts of things at this age.

This has been a high drama year, to say the least. I know that my last post of last year was quite cheery … but just a few weeks later Lisa’s sister, Doreen died. It was unexpected and very tragic. She had been sick with Hepatitis C for some time, and it was wearing down her body. When she got an infection, her immune system was no longer up to the task … she died in the hospital.

Lisa has now lost her brother and sister within fourteen months of each other, and feels very vulnerable and alone. She has other siblings, on her fathers side, and of course her mother and I … but it’s not the same as the kids that grew up with her suddenly being missing from her life. It also made her aware of the “babies curse” … the youngest child usually has to watch everyone else in the family (parents, older siblings) die.

So, that was a sobering development.

Then, on 4-March-2010, I turned Forty (40) years old! Though some people call forty the new thirty, I’m not sure that means much unless I get to live to be eighty. Hard part about aging, to me anyway, is not the gray in my beard or the change in skin texture around my eyes and in my hands, or the aches in my knees, etc. It’s the constant, ever present knowledge that so very, very little time is left. How many more, healthy, years do I really have left? What do I have left to accomplish, and how long do I have left to accomplish it in?

Honestly, I probably only have another two (2) decades or so left. If I don’t lose weight and correct for my families history of heart disease, I won’t even last that long. To a young man, twenty years seems like forever! But, at my end of the season, it barely seems like enough time to get started, much less complete any great work.

I’ve already had to give up so much – mostly my own expectations of how my life would be. For example, it’s almost certainly impossible for me to produce a child now and even if I could, it would be inadvisable for a couple as old as Lisa and I to do so. If we wanted children, we’d have to adopt. Even if we adopted, we’re so old that the child would become a teenager when we are in our mid to late fifties. Living long enough to see an adopted child get married? Unlikely. So, the odds of ever being a parent are very slim and that’s not how I imagined my life, back when I was in my twenties.

There are other differences, most don’t really matter now. And, I’m not complaining. Every day I’m thankful for what I have and how incredibly fortunate I am to live here, now, and have the health and community I do. So many hundreds of millions of humans live in such absolutely deplorable conditions and suffer so greatly – and due to nothing but the misfortunate of their birth – that I must consider myself one of “life’s lottery winner’s.”

But, being thankful for a good and comfortable life is not the same thing as having accomplished anything of worth and the time draws short. So, if 2010 and 40 will mean anything … it’ll have to mean a redoubling of focus and effort and the hope that, that’s enough.

I’m just testing out a new application I purchased, named MacJournal. It allows me to write my journal entries on my mac and then publish them to my blog with a push of a button.

Let’s see how good they look, embedded graphics and all.

Here I sit, in my comfy seat, wearing my most comfortable PJ’s and slippers, in my living room on Christmas Eve, 2009. Looking back at the year, a whole lot has happened. Here are a few of the highlights.

• Got laid-off from my employer, but immediately hired back as a part-time contractor
• Got hired as a full time contractor at a new employer
• Incorporated myself (S-Corp)
• Got hired as a full-time employee, where I was contracting
• Married my long time (and long suffering) fiance`
• Sold my condominium
• Had a wedding reception in Michigan with family and friends

Wow! That’s a lot. Further, looking back, my blessings become ever more apparent. For example, when my last employer laid me off and converted my status from full-time salaried employee to 20 hours-a-week contractor, I was a little worried. Was I going to be able to find another job? I was pretty confident that I could, but the issue – as always – is time. When? Well, to my surprise and delight, I followed up on some previous contacts and leads and found a full-time contract position very quickly. I started on 15-January-2009, and hadn’t even spent all of my severance. Ironically, I made more money those months then I had made before! Think of the irony of getting laid-off and having the experience turn into a financial boost? Great!

The next enormous blessing was when, over the span of just two weeks in November, I completed the two (2) year effort to sell my condo, and I got married, and I got hired as a full-time regular employee! In fact, I was hired just in time to take advantage of the employee perk of the Thanksgiving break and now the Christmas/New Years break; time I would not have been paid for as a contractor.

Not all of the blessings this year, were mine. My brother and sister-in-law had their baby and I got to see my little nephew! So many good things have happened to our family, that those few things which challenge us seem like speed bumps on the freeway and not really obstacles at all.

We’re looking forward to 2010. We’ve got big plans, projects, goals, and things are really looking great for us. We’re wrapping up one great year, and preparing ourselves for an even more amazing year to come.

Last week was very hard. I stayed up late on Wednesday night at my D&D (e3.5) game – and we had a blast! I stayed at work very, very late Thursday and didn’t get home until almost 11:00 pm. I was able to have a pretty good Friday but still didn’t make up enough sleep and Saturday morning I was up bright and early at 5:00 am so I could get over to Tresi’s and pick him up and drive us to JiffyCon. We made it on time!

I was tired, but JiffyCon was still fun. During the morning session I played in Tresi’s Paranoia game. It was the first time I’ve ever played that, even though it’s been out for many years and consistently makes various “games you must play before you die” lists. So, I was eager to try it out and get the whole ‘paranoia’ experience. “The Computer is Your Friend!” etc. It was fun, and the amount of mayhem we (the players) were able to create by being completely paranoid of each other while bootlicking the Computer every time it appeared; it was a total blast! I’m not sure you could really run this as any kind of extended campaign, but boy does it shake the RPG cobwebs out of your head and get you thinking very differently about your character and your characters place in a setting and a PC group.

For lunch we went to a Thai restaurant, and met a few new people from the con. Then during the afternoon session Tresi played “Misspent Youth” and I played “Labyrinth’s and Lycanthropes.” The L&L game I was in was interesting, sort of an exercise in minimal set-up, fantasy dungeon crawl. The players and the DM work together to generate the monsters, using playing cards that specify the type and level. Then they work together to draw a fantasy map and add cities and towns, and finally one dungeon/maze/castle/labyrinth per player. So, we had four total, that’s four labyrinths. The game is supposed to be comedic, but all of the comedy has to come from the players, and we were tired. The comedy ran thin rather quickly, but the game system itself was still interesting. We ran through a single labyrinth (Office Space themed with file-cabinet golems, and attacking secretaries in wheeled office chairs). It was fun to see how a clever system could turn some ordinary decks of playing cards into an afternoons game of bashing monsters and looking for clues. I, personally, think this game would be great for kids or people not interested in the full 350 pg D&D experience, or are only likely to play once. For example, at a Thanksgiving Day family get together.

I felt pretty terrible on Saturday, due to seasonal allergies. My head was stuffed up, my sinuses were constantly draining, and I felt tired and winded. I kept taking Benadryl, but this gave me cotton mouth and made me drowsy. I feel that if it weren’t for the antihistamine I probably wouldn’t have been able to make it through the whole con, but because of it I didn’t have the energy to really socialize and make the experience everything it could be.

Today, Lisa and I went to see 2012, the end-of-the-world movie. I liked the beginning and the special effects were pretty damn special. The movie didn’t fall apart, for me, until the end. They spent way too much time creating arbitrary suspense, where none was really needed. On the other hand, they spent almost no time exploring any of the hard questions that this plot made available. Questions like, how much are people willing to sacrifice to see that humanity survives? How desperate will people become to survive? What kinds of hard choices have to be made to allow anyone at all to survive? Most of these issues were only mentioned in passing, or glossed over. Then, everyone the audience was groomed to care about survived. The ending had no teeth, and it cheapened the feeling of “this is the end” which any good apocalypse is supposed to have.

Oh, and the science was such utter crap I won’t even mention it.

Today was a quiet day, and not too much happened. Certainly nothing worth reporting here. I did get to see another photo album worth of pictures of my Brother, Sister-in-law, and Nephew. That was great! I’ll be able to see all of them in person when Lisa and I visit Michigan in a couple of weeks.

In other news, I’ve added a couple of new podcasts to my list, including several from Joseph Selby. Remember him from that time I met him over lunch down in Boston? Well, he’s started a podcast network, Game Locus,  and five (5) different podcasts! The one that I’ve listened to and enjoyed the most is SemantiCast – a gaming podcast, of course. Though Impolitic, a podcast on all things non-gaming, also sounds interesting once it gets going. So, congratulations, Joe!

Finally, it’s that time of year, again … for JiffyCon! It’s coming up this Saturday in Greenfield, MA. I’m already registered and have arrangements to drive up with Tresi who’ll be running a game of Paranoia. The two times I’ve attended JiffyCon I’ve had a blast, and expect no less this time. Though it may feel different, being hosted in a UU Church! I’ll try to snap some photo’s and write up the experience, if nothing else.

So, that’s not bad for a Monday, huh?

I was pretty shocked at the news revealed on the latest Kicked in the Dice Bags. Part of me knows that break-ups, infidelities, and heart-breaks happen. But I always want to assume the best, because each time a relationship ends like that … it feels like “another one gone.” Something valuable, rare, and precious was lost.

Also, parts of the story hit close to home, with certain similarities between Jonathan’s story and a close friend or two.

Apart from the actual topic of the episode in question, is the side topic of privacy in the new age of mass publication. Jonathan and Chris chose to share something that is usually considered private. What they did is not new, nearly every memoir dishes dirt on affairs, drug use, infidelity and other ’sordid’ events. The tabloids make their profits by exposing these details in the lives of others. So, why shouldn’t modern publishers – bloggers, tweeters, podcasters – do likewise and share everything (or near enough)? Besides, hasn’t most of the shame already been rubbed off? Is there really much embarrassment left when a couple has a child out of wedlock, or a man admits to a long standing affair, or when in-the-bedroom matters are discussed and shared? The answer is no. For better or worse, we live in an age in which privacy is shrinking, at least among a certain age/class and this loss of privacy has nothing to do with Big Brother putting a camera in every TV and everything to do our innate desire for attention and voyeurism facilitated by a technology that lets us publish anything … even our dirty laundry.

On the other hand … how many secrets should have been told? How much unhappiness is the result of keeping a secret; of not admitting that we are unhappy with a relationship, or that someone has suffered abuse, or that a close friend/family member has an addiction problem? In other words, if there is any silver lining to this trend (which I’m not convinced there is) then I’d look for it there – the shedding light on those secrets that corrupt and corrode by being kept.

But, still. Modesty evolved along side human civilization for a reason. Maybe it’s archaic and withering as no longer necessary. Maybe it allows the social lubrication, the ‘illusion of goodness’ that let’s us form peaceful social groups and accomplish great tasks. Maybe, without this illusion we won’t be better off, but so jaded by ourselves and our fellow’s that we’ll turn away from congress with them in disgust.

Wouldn’t that be ironic? If the bitterest poison was not lies or propaganda or secrets but the raw truth?