30 Con Questions
Bob Snare put this test up on Facebook, and since it didn’t ask me for all my FB profile data first, I decided to go ahead and take the test:
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1. Fan, fen, geek, gamer, otaku, or other (if “other,” what)?
Gamer geek fan.
2. First con attended?
RoVaCon 7 (1982), late Sunday only. Took a while for me to forgive my dad for that one.
3. At what age did you attend your first con?
I’d have been in my late thirteens.
4. Suffer from “post-con depression?”
Not so much. I’m often kinda relieved to turn life back down a few notches.
A warm morning at Pad 39A
The website We Choose The Moon is covering the Apollo 11 mission “live” (with a 40-year audio delay). There are countdown and mission timers, Flash presentations of facts and images, and Twitter feeds of CapCom’s and Columbia’s (and eventually Eagle’s) statuses. Looks like they’re planning to follow the mission all the way to the landing, at least. I’ve got the audio feed running in the background at work.
Launch is in just under an hour, and I’m spamming this to all my social networks, because that’s the kind of dork I am.
Corporate Shenanigans
Seems that I have two VHS copies of the “Gentleman’s Agreement” Shadowrun movie. I found the better of the two, but I still played with the brightness settings a bit in iMovie to make Jerry’s Toaster work show up better. The initial team meetup scene remains dark as heck, though.
This is Part One…
Starfleet 101
I suppose this had to happen eventually.
A new friend down here in Virginia Beach and I speak much of the same fan dialects: anime, gaming, even art and writing. But she’s never seen a single episode of Classic Trek, or even any of the movies. (Yes, I can hear joints creaking all over my flist from here.)
She’s interested, though, and will get a dose of Khan’s Wrath as soon as we have two hours to set aside. But, she wants to see some episodes too, and I’ve never sat down and watched the show with a complete newbie; I’m not even sure where to start. We all know the legendary episodes: City on the Edge, Doomsday Machine, Tribbles, and more. But I’m not sure any of those is right for her first experience. On the other hand, “The Cage” and “Where No Man Has Gone Before” might not be the best, either.
So, I’m turning to you, Friends List. With which Classic Trek episode would you start a noob, someone who doesn’t know Balok from Sarek, impulse drive from warp?
Grace me with your input!
You can’t make stir-fry without breaking a few chickens
Catchup gaming session last night to get back on our two-week schedule. I had the first episode of the new adventure plotted out, so of course we spent the evening copying characters to the new sheets and spending karma and nuyen. Still, the socializing was good as always, so it wasn’t a wasted evening. Must remember to give fixitup and/or ptownhiker ‘gamemaster bribery’ karma for bringing the Oreos.
The new sheets went over pretty well. I still have to fix the cyberdeck section before I’m at the 1.0 version, but since none of the players physically present are deckers, I can finish that before I send a copy to Amy. Celia came over with her guy Rip to get character descriptions from folks; she wants to do portraits of our runners to get back into her art groove. Looks like she’ll start with Jesse and unit_9. She may play some NPCs for me or do ‘special guest star’ duties when we’re missing a player.
Inspired by a comment of rattrap‘s, I ran the old “Gentleman’s Agreement” Shadowrun short film to close the evening. People were exclaming, “That’s Kim Green! That’s James Dunson!” The Video Toaster CGI received compliments as well. Sadly, the copy I showed is overly dark and heavily compressed; if I can find a cleaner one, and no one involved in the project objects, I’ll try to put it up on YouTube.
We still need a team name for this group. Maybe we can come up with one in the next two weeks.
Play them off, keyboard dragon.
Finally finished running “Maria Mercurial” for the new Shadowrun group Monday night. I have learned many things doing this. For example, the adventure plotline fit the old TeeFivers better than they fit the new group. Frankly, I think this group had the most fun when I threw out the last remnants of the old plot and wrapped it all up my way.
They did get to kill a dragon (well, were involved in its death) and scored some nice boomsticks, nuyen, and Karma. I think I need to give them fewer, but more epic combats, and definitely more role-playing opportunities. (I know, gamers role-playing. What an idea!)
We definitely need new character sheets, though, and backup copies of the characters too. I’ve given up resurrecting the file with the old TeeFive Shadowrun four-page character dossier I constructed, and I’m rebuilding it from the hardcopy. This means of course that it’s not coming out quite the same, as I’m using Quark instead of PageMaker, and not quite the same fonts. But I did the first page and it looks pretty good so far.
Yeah, that was probably the best night of GMing I’ve had in half a decade. I just got a reference book for the next little adventure I’m sending them on, which hopefully will be even more fun…
Writer’s Block: Firsts
My first entry dates back to October 2001 (holy heck) and is titled “Secrets”.
Such a strange feeling it is to go back through the time capsule of what was in my head seven-and-a-half years ago. My weird was goofier back then… I almost feel as though I’ve been refining it over the years.
One major event
Okay! I’m tanned, rested, and ready. Well, not tanned, and after the weekend I can’t say I’m rested. But I’m ready to catch up a bit!
On June 13th, Starr and I got married in the atrium of Senara Obici Hospital in Suffolk, Virginia. yubbie was kind enough to officiate for us, and we had a gathering of blood relatives and a few friends.
I think Starr and I may have been under more strain than we’ve been since we met. I was behind in nearly everything I needed to do for the day, and Starr of course was in charge of a million things. Had it not been for kind, generous folks who pitched in, this would never ever have happened. But it did indeed, and we have proof:
Here we see a mind-bendingly stunning bride, standing next to her doofus groom. Of course, we see Starr in fashionable cat ears in nearly every published picture, and this is no exception: Owen presented them to the two of us at the end of the ceremony.
I especially want to thank sir_alf and faekitty here: with practically no notice at all, they volunteered to pick up my mom from Roanoke, bring her to the ceremony, and give her a ride back. As well, they helped her with many things during the weekend that I hadn’t even put in the job description: they were two of many that went over and above the call. I cannot thank you both enough, nor tell you how much that meant to both my mother and I.
I have awesome (and work-safe!) stories to tell from the honeymoon, but those will need to wait until I can sit and cull the photos. No one wants the LiveJournal equivalent of 200 vacation slides.
But, woo! Wedding!
