Tetris Achievement

Nice, nagging back pain today, the result of moving boxes. I’m packing everything into those folding white “banker’s boxes” so that they’ll fit easier in the cars, and so there will be more of them safe for me to lift; but it doesn’t mean my body’s used to it, oh no. The funny thing’s that I didn’t do any lifting at all yesterday, because I was simply out of energy. Why does my body keep waiting 24 hours to start announcing muscle pain?

Also, sore throat. Yay weather changes.

Starr and I continued to run around Azeroth for a while last night hitting the candy buckets at the inns. I have the feeling we’ll be spending more time before the expansion collecting Achievements than attempting to level, which is absolutely fine with me. The more ‘ways to play the game’ Blizzard can add, the happier I’ll be to keep forking over my subscription, especially since I’ve never exactly been a speed leveler, and just am not really sold yet on the whole raiding thing.

After I went to bed, Starr got recruited by a group shooting for the Leeeeeeeeeeeeeroy! Achievement. Seems it didn’t work out; but I’d have been mightily amused if it had.

Surrounded by boxes

On Friday, one of my co-workers walked into the room looking for another of my co-workers. Seeing him at his desk, she said, “Hey Dave, it’s Joan. I have a question for you…”

I thought to myself, “Errr, Dave probably knows it’s you, seeing as you’re standing right here.” Of course, the next thought that flashed through my head: “Harriet Jones – Prime Minister.” “Yes, I know who you are.”

Bummed to have once again missed Rising Star. I had a nice streak of attendance, reaching past the first RS in 1992 to 1982’s RoVaCon 7. It sounds like the convention’s doing incredibly well these days, but I just can’t swing the travel (seven hours one way). Yes, I feel guilty about that. Hope everyone who went had a good time.

I myself am packing up for another move. This has a lot to do with the Stuff Reduction Plan – at least this time, there is noticeably less stuff to pack, and I’m Freecycling / eBaying / giving away even more stuff in the next week or two. Weirdness. Didn’t change living quarters for decades, and now I’m in my fourth move in 5 years.

Tunnel drive

In general, I like living in Hampton Roads, I honestly do. Last night did not provide a good example…

There are three bridges in my Metro area that can take me from work to home. Assuming no heavy traffic, the Monitor-Merrimac bridge-tunnel does so in about 40-45 minutes; the James River bridge adds about 20-25 minutes to that; and the Hampton Roads bridge-tunnel adds about 20 minutes to the MMBT. (I have a bad tendency to refer to them as the Mimbit, the Jerb, and the Herbit.)

Unless it’s 1am, though, there’s probably going to be an additional 10-30 minutes of heavy traffic on the Herbit, and the Mimbit is a crapshoot: sometimes I fly straight through, and sometimes I sit waiting an extra 15-20 minutes. We have handy electronic signs alerting us to congestion on the Mimbit and Herbit, but because of geography, by the time I see one, the Jerb is already out of the question.

Yesterday, the signs warned me that the Mimbit was blocked by an accident – based on reports I’ve heard, an idiot trying to cut off a fellow driver. I had a quick decision to make – wait in blocked traffic there, and hope the accident is cleared within an hour (it usually is) or join all the additional traffic to the Herbit, probably incurring a 90-minute delay. I joined the queue of blocked traffic.

I took 2 hours to reach the tunnel entrance for the Mimbit, only to find that the tunnel remained blocked and that traffic was being forcibly rerouted back to the other two bridges. I don’t know the Jerb route well enough to ensure I wouldn’t get lost, so I joined the crowded line for the Herbit. 90 minutes later, I was finally home. 3.5 hours to make a 45-minute commute. (Turns out that the Jerb was just as bad.)

Starr, aware of the situation thanks to cell phones, had pizza and chocolate waiting. I love this woman.

Senior officers to the Bridge

Paramount has released several stills from next year’s Star Trek movie. Of course, since I want everything on that big screen to be a surprise, I was able to resist checking them out…

… for all of about twenty seconds.

But I'm cutting it, since I love and respect you guys

Tiny tiny tsunami

Once again, utility appliances strike cruelly. Not an oil furnace this time, but my hot water heater, choosing to burst and fill the downstairs apartment with water at quarter-of-six this morning.

The maintenance person shut off and vacuumed up the water, and left to fetch a new heater. Wanting to stick around in case there were further issues, I called in to work and stretched out on the couch. I woke up on the couch at my mom’s house 300 miles away, very disoriented and wondering how the heck that had happened. Knowing I needed to head back to the apartment, I found my keys and wallet and went outside, but while there were strangely dozens of cars in front of the house, none of them were mine.

Then, of course, I woke up for real on the couch in my apartment, doubly disoriented for a few moments. The dream of being awake had been very convincing, even though my mom’s house hasn’t looked quite like that in years.

Shortly thereafter, they came back to work on the water heater some more. It’s noon, and I still have no hot water. Ahh, well.

Ludicrous Speed

Yeager crewmembers: on this day, 61 years ago, Air Force Captain “Chuck” Yeager flew the Bell X-1 in the first verified supersonic flight. Decades later, there are no civilian aircraft in service that attain this speed in normal flight.

Brief updates

  • 17:25 Why is it that in every late-80s picture I have, I look disheveled? #

Sent subspace radio by LoudTwitter

Little powdery people

WoW FigurePrintIn case you hadn’t heard, we have indeed invented the Star Trek replicator. Of course, it’s expensive, slow, and only works on solid objects, plus the results are a bit fragile. But, one step at a time, right?

A company known as FigurePrints is using this first-generation technology to sell gamers unique figurines of their World of Warcraft characters. The service is so popular that they’ve had to establish a lottery for accepting orders, even with round-the-clock production. Customers dress their characters in their favorite gear and submit the orders; the figure company retrieves (with permission) 3-D model information from Blizzard, then does a little touchup to cover gaps and clipping artifacts. In a bath of extremely fine powder, something much like an inkjet printer head sprays layers of colored glue, and after some hours, the figure is gently removed from the bath and cleaned up a bit. The result looks like the picture on the right (click it to embiggen).

So, if you play WoW, would you pay $130 for one of these? Does your character have the outfit you’d want to see it in? Would you get one if it were available for another game? Would you get one when the technology gets a little better? Expound!

Time to update the firmware?

Speaking of gaming, the WWII superhero game is over in an appropriately cool Big Boss finale. Kudos to ptownhiker for running a great campaign! But he justifiably wants a break, so we tossed around some ideas.

Next game night we’ll be sticking to quick card and board games, but after that we want to start another RPG campaign, and because I’m a crazy crazy man, I volunteered to run some Shadowrun if people were interested. (After all, I ought to do something with all these gaming books, otherwise they’re just dust catchers. Someday I want to run more Paranoia and Deadlands as well.)

Several of our group liked the idea, so now I need to return to an earlier concern from my last failed campaign attempt: which edition should I use?

2nd edition pros: I have almost every sourcebook available. I know the system backwards and forward, and could practically run it in my sleep, plus I have a raft of adventure modules from which to steal elements. Cons: This edition is long out of print, and people would be dependent on my books. Hacker characters, an integral park of cyberpunk settings, are awkward to run.

4th edition pros: This edition’s currently in print, so people can acquire rulebooks and sourcebooks simply. Hacker characters are much better integrated. Cons: I have only the core book, and might desire to add sourcebooks (they’ve gotten more expensive). I have some issues with the new rule system, it’s a tiny bit less cinematic and flexible than it once was. (OTOH, perhaps I can house-rule that.)

Hmmm, decisions. I’m really glad to be back in a gaming group; I worry that I’m getting a bit anti-social these days, not because I dislike spending time with my crowd, but because it’s just easy to slip into a constant state of being tired and busy. I don’t want to go there; the best parts of my life have involved my friends. When I look back on all the crazy stuff I’ve done in fandom, the memories inspire me: I’m determined to keep making more!

Next box has the Ark of the Covenant

Local weather is trying to be obliging. “You don’t have a light jacket right now? Okay, we’ll just drop the morning temp to 45 degrees so you can wear your winter coat, does that help?”

Had a very weird dream the other night where I climbed down a narrow drainage pipe to find myself in a secret underground studio where they were filming the return of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” to the cable channels. I was privileged to sit in on one of the sessions where they watch the movie and write the jokes; I started ad-libbing along, and they hired me on the spot, causing me to draw the wrath of one of the other writers for some reason. Any dream interpreters wanna take a shot at that one?

In the ongoing Stuff Reduction Plan, I did some heavy game materials archaeology yesterday. I found my copy of Amber Diceless, a fascinating take on RPG mechanics that uses no random chance at all; Star Warriors, a fast-paced, careening tactical game of Star Wars fightercraft; and Ogre, light infantry and vehicles against a robot tank the size of a small city block. I’m keeping those. (Actually, I fear the Ogre set may belong to rattrap.)

Going away is the stack of official Star Trek fan magazines, which will be probably be trashed; and raininva has dibs on the bigger stack of West End Star Wars RPG and Indiana Jones RPG books. Battletech 3025 scenario and source- books are going; Battletech ‘Mech listing books are staying. I’m not sure whether I’m keeping Castle Falkenstein, or the hardcover first-edition copy of White Wolf Mage. (Starr, a onetime Vampire LARPer, may give me permission to keep that.) However, I will divest myself of the two Last Unicorn Star Trek RPG hardcovers, and the Traveller: A New Era core book. I have a lot of gaming stuff.

Last treasure unearthed: my Wireframe Babylon Project books and GM screen. The savvy fan will find the names of jsciv, yubbie, and impink within; and down in the playtesting credits, a listing for some doof that goes by mikailborg online. Yeah, I’m keeping that one.

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