Runester

I spent the entire day yesterday prepping for my Truth and Justice game, titled The Mystery of the Bell! First, I didn’t come fully prepared, so it was my own fault that I had to drop out of my slot 4 and slot 5 games in order to be fully prepped for my own slot 6 game. Second, I was really hoping that, since Slot 6 is at the end of the day and at the end of a long weekend and that not only is everyone tired, but there’s a lot of beer flowing … that I’d get some players to show up. In fact, I got all four!

The game itself went very well. They got the system (PDQ) and really grokked the setting (Silver Age comic hook super hero’s). The more over the top my description, the better they loved it … and one player complimented me on my creative and interesting villains. When I saw how quickly they resolved the first conflict, I got really nervous about having enough material for them to fill the time slot … but the pacing was actually pretty good and we only wrapped up about fifteen (15) minutes early.

I do not regret spending my day prepping – the end result was more then worth it, and I feel that it was a good experience for the players. Mission accomplished!

Here’s a few more photo’s of the con … (more after the photo’s).

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After the con I went to a little “after con party” at bafadam’s house. I finally got to meet Adam/David and his wife Melena and some of their friends. We hung out with Rob Justice and Mike from the Bear Swarm podcast. We even got to eat White Castle sliders … something I haven’t had since leaving Michigan. It was fun, if more then a little chaotic and offensive … but only in the most hilarious way imaginable. We were there when Daylight Saving Time rolled the clocks forward an hour, so when we left our clocks all read 3:15 AM . We made it back to the motel by 3:40 AM, and with checkout at 11:00 AM – were never so happy to get to bed.

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.

Lisa and I went to Town Hall to apply for a marriage license, it won’t be available for three more days.

Then work – which was OK.

Then Jeb’s GURPS Zombie game wrap-up. This was fun, despite me getting my character to a safe, and therefore boring, place. Finally we all died and blew up the oil rig with us! We’re pretty pumped to come back and restart his GURPS Psi game, albeit with different characters and in a slightly different version of the setting. I think it’ll be a lot of fun.

Both Luke and Matt expressed interest in running a game, each. Hopefully we can (eventually) schedule that in, too.

Hey! When I got home the stuff I ordered was here. This included my wedding band, some clothes, and a new pair of New Balance shoes. I immediately installed the speed-laces I’d bought so very long ago, and then tried them on. Cool! The shoes fit and the laces work as advertised and I now have comfortable black shoes to go with my black work pants.

I have a 6:00am change tomorrow morning, so I need to get as much shut-eye as possible.

Got up late; talked Lisa into making me a couple fried egg sandwiches. Then I went to our bulk shopping store and dropped around $500. Besides cases of bottled water and the protein shakes I enjoy for breakfast, I also picked up a new “all in one” printer from HP, the “OfficeJet 6500.” One of the features that caught my eye “besides double-sided printing” was that it is wi-fi compatible. So, hopefully, we don’t need a print server attched to it. Because, if we do, than I would be better off fixing Lisa’s old desktop and hooking her old printer up to it.

We’ll see.

In other news, Lisa finished addressing the invitations to our reception; she’ll drop them in the mail tomorrow. We go to apply for our marriage license tomorrow morning. So, while we’ve been dating dating for years, and engaged for a couple of years – the actual marriage is rushing up on us. Not nervous, just excited. Looking forward to accomplishing another important milestone we set for ourselves. Each success builds our confidence and brings forward momentum for the next; and we’ve got quite the list!

OK, enough for now. Time for sleep; the end of our weekend and the beginning of a brand new week!

I played D&D last night and even getting to the game late, it was really good! The encounters were unique and challenging, the information we leared along the was was disturbing. Then it ended with a giant evil tree, festooned with dead and sying bodies, bearing sown on us! Cliff-hanger!

Unfortunately, after the gamer ended and I got on the road, around 11:30pm, I became lost. Without my trusty GPS to fall back on I ended up wandering around I’m the middle of the night. It took a couple phone calls and much needed directions from Lisa to find my way back home – and that at 1:10am! That’s 100 minutes of frustration and wasted time.

Anyway, what with the very little sleep I got last night, I’m knocking off early tonight. Like right now. Good night, Thursday!

Today was supposed to be the closing on the sale of my condo. Instead, it was delayed … for up to a week. Oh, well. I’ve been waiting nearly two years – what’s another week? The primary difficulty is in getting my primary and secondary lender on the same page at the same time. Luckily I have a great lawyer and real estate agent working on my behalf. With even more luck, everything will fall together next week and this time then, I’ll be reporting my joy at the completion of this interminable process.

Work is grating. I actually feel myself going backwards! If I finish five cases, I get assigned six more. In order to keep up with the cases, my project work suffers. In order to meet my project deadlines, I have cases sitting in pending states and not being closed for days – or longer. Each day I start with the good intention of grinding through as much as possible – and each day something comes up, another meeting, another crisis, another meeting to discuss the latest crisis.

Our saving grace is that management understands this situation and has not been pushing too hard. That, and that fact that we have two new co-workers! One started on Tuesday the other in another week. It will take some time for them to get trained and fully operational, but the faster that happens the faster that the work load can be distributed and higher the output our group can produce.

Know what would be really nice? If we could get through this deployment / migration phase and return to maintenance. A nice quiet period where we spend most of our time taking care of the few issues that come up, the occasional upgrade, and then the rest plotting and trying new and cooler applications! I’m told that was how things were before Exchange was mandated. Perhaps, if we work hard enough and stick with it, it’s how things will be again. That would be great!

Really, what more has to be said? My brother & sister-in-law have just successfully had their first child, the only one in our family & possibly the only one our family will ever have. He’s a father! I’m an uncle! Our parents are “finally!” Grandparents!

And little Stavros Tammer Jarjoura is a healthy little baby experiencing the very first day of his entire life. Amazing!

– — Stephen A. Jarjoura http://runester.com

Not sure why, probably the work that kept me up Sunday night / Monday morning coupled with the gaming session last night and all of a sudden I’m dragging ass. I was tired in the morning when I left for work and I was doubly tired when I left work on my way for home.

Blah.

On the other hand, it was a quiet night and we had steak and salad for dinner. Always a favorite. A little reading before sleep and then I’m off to lala land.

Sunday’s are usually very quiet, solemn days for me. I don’t know why, I haven’t been to church in months so it’s not a religious thing. But, if there’s a day for self-reflection and the contemplation of ones mortality and accumulated failures – then it’s a Sunday.

The thing that helped move me away from that depressive state, was that I needed to run some chores. I did them by myself, and it meant getting out of the house. From the trip to work, to use their printer to print off the receipt for my car registration renewal, to the shopping at BJ’s to pick up the cases of water, soda pop, etc. that we need for the next couple of weeks. I had things to do.

Furthermore, I listened to my podcasts while driving around and one in particular really appealed to me. It’s supposedly an erotic fiction podcast named Erotica a la Cart, and I say supposedly because though it does contain ‘adult’ content with some sexual scenes, the stories are as far from ‘porn’ as I guess a Ruben is from Hustler. Many of Philippa Ballantine’s stories focus on supernatural creatures like witches, vampires, and faeries. Her characters often have a sort of sensual delight in their life and their freedom to move through nature and be part of it. They revel. That’s something, right there, that probably makes them supernatural. When was the last time a normal human reveled?

Anyway, if you’d like to enjoy a really great story – read to you, no less – and you’re not afraid of a little adult content, then check out The Thirsty Earth. It’s hard to be in a funk while listening to such a story.

Saturday’s done. We didn’t do a lot, but we did get out. We went to IHOP for a very late breakfast, then Newbury Comics. I bought a stack of books and comics, Lisa bought a couple of DVD’s and a few CD’s. Weird, the guy double checked my ID when I presented my ATM card. Maybe I looked shifty or something.

After that came the 60+ minute debacle trying to get Lisa’s printer to work with either my laptop or hers. No luck. Damn HP website had a detailed list of instructions (all of which I tried) and ended with a “download and use the Printer Diagnostic Utility” … which I could not find anywhere. Follow all of the instructions as much as you want … you won’t actually find the damn utility. So, no utility, no diagnostics. I checked their forums and guess what? Their support suggests that you download the diagnostic utility. No explanation as to how, though. I called in for support, but gave up after fifteen (15) minutes on hold. Apparently 7:40 PM on a Saturday night is a busy support time because “all of our operators are busy assisting other customers” … really? Or do you just have the one person manning the weekend 3rd shift?

I eventually gave up and quit. It may just be time to buy a new printer. This time, it’ll be a network enabled printer that doesn’t need to be either directly connected nor have a dedicated print server. That would be cool.

Have you seen this site? There, I fixed it! It goes a long way to explain why there are so many safety regulations in the world … and why, despite all of them, someone, somewhere, has done something strange.