Another Roanoke Valley Saturday
Yesterday was quite productive, I got four other people in my office to Talk Like a Pirate.
dot/Hack definitely has raininva and myself sucked in, I’m up to seven hours of play, and I’m not sure how many Rain has. The “game within a game” aspect appeals greatly to my interests in metareality, and I’m pretty impressed with the emotional range of the characters – not something that most of my PlayStation games do much with.
Our Kellan Colt promotional figures for Shadowrun: Duels came this morning, so now we have a truly complete set of Series One. I’ve noticed that there’s already a FAQ posted on the official site with clarifications and errata. What did we gamers do before the Internet?
Rising Star has a staff meeting this afternoon in Blacksburg, and I’m looking forward to discussing ideas for the Emcee skit with rattrap and yubbie. I know that there will be other, less entertaining issues raised at the meeting, but I have a great deal of faith in RS and the people who make it happen. I see no reason yet to change my opinion.
Look! Bigfoot!
Two of my co-workers were excitedly passing around an e-mail reprinting a quote from Chapter 9, Verse 11 of the Koran predicting that an enraged Eagle would cleanse the lands of Allah. Needless to say, the e-mail’s a hoax (as a quick online check confirmed), but they were pretty disappointed to discover so. I then had to inform them that no, neither Mister Rogers nor Captain Kangaroo were Navy Seals or Marine sharpshooters.
Hmmm… I think I need to make something good up for them and send it to them through an anonymous remailer. Any suggestions?
My anniversary was quite good… nice and quiet; raininva and I lead busy, interesting enough lives that a low-key evening counts as a welcome vacation these days. Invisifest was a lot of fun, too, though I discovered that it’s unwise to try to learn Amplitude while DDRMax is pounding away behind you. The XBox game with the full ‘Mech control panel was cool-looking, but I’d rather play it sometime when I can sit and actually learn what’s going on.
I’m almost finished (finally) Red Faction on the PS2; when I do, I can start the first episode of dot/Hack. Rain bought me all three for our anniversary!
I’m still not sure what my costumes will be this year for Halloween and Rising Star Emcee, though Jerry’s suggestion of a rather desperate Tokyo Civil Defense worker as my costume for the latter was pretty good. Less than six weeks to get them together…
Cinco ano
As raininva likes to point out, five years ago last night, I was extremely wound up, and hoping I was making the right decision for our future together.
I worked through the tension that night by playing Quake for quite some time. 🙂
These last five years have, without a doubt, been the happiest years of my life. I want to thank not just Rain, but all of the friends who have supported us.
Here’s to many many more!
Addendum to last post…
I’ve just noticed that “plectrum.net” no longer comes up in my web browser. I hope Keith only let the hosting lapse, but kept ownership of the name. We can find new hosting with no problem, but I see no reason to let the site evaporate just because White Plectrum’s taken some time off. Heck, there are websites out there for bands that haven’t released music in half a century!
Reboot!
Ever actually noticed your brain’s chemical balance shift?
I’d been fighting thick, heavy depression for several days, and though the battle was going well by this weekend, the war hadn’t been won. Then yesterday, it was as if I blinked in mid-afternoon and suddenly felt fine, up to dealing with my personal issues and being pleasant company to others around me. I felt the change, it was sudden and slightly disorienting.
Strange how a funk like that can be like a poorly-designed, ill-maintained roller coaster that you didn’t realize you’d gotten on until you’re screaming down the first hill. You don’t want to be on this thing, but you can’t work out any way to get off immediately, and you’ve got to ride it until an opportunity for escape presents itself.
With my 5-year wedding anniversary coming up, and Invisifest to boot, at least I should now be in a frame of mind to enjoy them properly.
Congratulations to jdunson on his birthday Monday, and to raininva for having been WizKids MechWarrior Rules Arbitrator for five days now and not having killed a single gamer fanboy yet! A further hello to the friends page of the filking blog dandelionreport. I look forward to the White Plectrum reunion at Rising Star 12!
badger badger
Since a few people still may not have seen the Flash animation that was a major topic at the VTSFFC New Member Picnic, here’s a link: http://www.jengajam.com/r/Badger. You’ll need Flash, of course.
Issuing a ranged combat “suggestion”
Went to the VTSFFC New Member Picnic Sunday, but missed most all of the new members and just hung with the old ones for a couple hours 🙂 Now, I’ve been attending VTSFFC meetings for well over a decade and a half, and raininva‘s been doing so for about a third of that time; yet as we walk up the path to the Duckpond, someone (I never did find out who) yelled, “Hey, it’s Rain… and, uh, that guy!”
Sigh. As has always been true in fandom, the hot girls get all the attention.
Spent most of the weekend getting my Lexmark printer to work right, and a lot of the rest annotating the MechWarrior:DA rulebook for my own reference. (The firestorm that incautious use of the words “attack” and “order” can cause among MechWarrior players is nothing short of incredible.)
New Heinlein novel!
New to us, anyway. Bibliarchaeologists have discovered a copy of a novel Robert Heinlein wrote even before “Lifeline” had been published; “For Us, the Living” had been deemed too racy for publication in the 1930’s, and the few people who had known of the novel believed all copies of the manuscript destroyed.
Since the manuscript’s rediscovery, Heinlein’s estate has approved publication. I can’t help but think that this is likely to be higher quality than the usual “we found an outline under the sofa and the author’s kid ghost-wrote it” that SF and fantasy sees all too often. (Even Anne McCaffrey, who ain’t dead yet, is going to do that this year.)
Now, as long as we can keep Paul Verhoeven from making a movie of it…
Who Quizzes
According to Doctor Who quizzes posted by snidegrrl and rattrap, I am the “Patrick Troughton” incarnation of the Doctor, and I have a secret crush on his companion “Zoe Herriot.”
Kind of amusing, since I’ve never seen an episode with Zoe (not counting the “Five Doctors” reunion), and little more of the Second Doctor. I think I saw half of “The War Games”, and the “Three Doctors” and “Five Doctors” reunions he was in.
But yeah, Zoe did have good taste in clothes 🙂
