Teaser Post #2

*waves nose* It's coming...

Thursday Update

Frisbee again today. Apparently it got up to 103-107 in parts of LA (probably including Pasadena, though I haven't checked). Speaking as someone who was walking home from the dentist around 2pm, it sure was hot, past even my pretty high tolerance. Luckily it had cooled down some by the time frisbee came around, so the game was enjoyable. Which isn't to say that I did not drip 2+ buckets of sweat during the game.

Anyways... foot was a lot better while playing today, still a bit sore but on the whole it feels like it's healing up well. I even managed to pour on some speed on a few occasions in the game, which feels good when it's to outrun one of the people there who's usually regarded as one of the best runners.

Teaser Post #1

*waves hands* It's coming...

Ouch!

My foot has been hurting and I can't figure out why. It started at frisbee last thursday with no apparent cause, just was a little painful when landing on it or pushing off with that side. I don't really notice it at all when walking normally, or even light jogging, but when I went to play frisbee today it was definitely still around and just as painful to the same events. Oh well, I hope it gets better, if it persists past this weekend I will probably have it looked at. Frisbee today was especially rough: there's usually a smaller group that plays on tuesdays, but it turned out to be just five of us this tuesday. So we played 2v3, which is very exhausting. Fun, but we couldn't really play for as long as usual, so we ended up just tossing the disc around after.

Monday

Monday sucked, except for two conversations with people I don't talk to frequently, and a few other minor points (lunch). And I'm moving on to tuesday, which will hopefully be better.

Farmer's Market

I really like the Hollywood farmer's market. Enough so that one of the few reasons I'd want to get a car is to make going there every sunday easier. For those curious, the other reasons are: to visit Rissa in SF more, and ... I think that's it.

Today's visit was a good one, though I did feel really weird in the middle and had to sit down for a while, this was unrelated to the market. There were a bunch of excellent fruits: we got nectarines and pluots, and F got mango nectarines (they taste sort of like mangos, and definately unlike nectarines) and strawberries. There was also some japanese green leafy thing which the ratties really like eating, and a stunning idea: if I promised to wash all the dishes, I bet L would make the wonderful stew again! So I did so and we got all the various stuff to make stew, which I'm looking forward to. Lunch was pretty good: I got a bratwurst on a stick, which was pretty tasty. The same stand had a ton of different sausage types, and you could also get them cooked into a quesadilla with potatoes and cheese and stuff. Very tempting, but I'll save trying that for later. F had the jambalaya from the Cajun stall, which is what I usually get as I love a good jambalaya. L had fried plantains, and we all had various flavors of lemonade: I had strawberry lemonade, very tart and good, and there was also raspberry lemonade and watermelon lemonade.

We figured out how to get parking validated for the farmer's market as well, so after a few tries the parking situation there seems very manageable as all you have to do is park at the Arclite theater's parking lot, which is just a block or so away.

Pondering

On the way home from dinner today I had a stunning realization. I am very much blessed with family and friends. The thing that triggered this was L talking with Frances, and realizing that they would get along well if they had met (without me around) and would still be able to talk about very interesting things. Then thinking about this, I realized that between my sisters, brother-in-law, sister-in-law and my wife, we all get along really well and have great conversations. The same goes in a looser sense for our wider circle of friends, and that's really special.

Anyways, just a special thought that struck me on the way home from dinner. Thank you to all the family and friends, who are so special to me.

Group Meetings

We have had a few too many group meetings lately, culminating in nearly 4 in one week two weeks ago. After that we're down to a more reasonable one per week, but the timing has been changing each week, which is very annoying when one finds out that the one this week is at 5pm friday, which is the usual time for people to be leaving work on friday, not staying around for another hour and a half or more.

But one good thing did come out of the group meeting, I hit on a random idea (yes, it was sexy) relating to image analysis of some AFM data. Normally all the image analysis is done by hand, which is pretty tedious (can one say, 60000 tiles analyzed by hand?), but there haven't been any good ways (or people to implement them, perhaps) to do this in a more automatic way. I thought of one while in group meeting, and it seems pretty easy to implement and try out, and may even end up with some nice figures. So there's a bright spot, and at least it will be some programming that isn't dealing with energy model quirks.

Slow News Day

And today, in the slow news day we have the following items:

Frisbee is harder when you haven't played in two weeks, and one foot hurts for no discernible reason.

Buffy Season 5 starts out curiously and rapidly gets pretty interesting. Looking forward to this one, though just at a glance I think I'll still like Angel more.

I, too, am boycotting Gamestop. Perhaps will post reasons later, maybe will email/normal mail Gamestop with some of the complaints, though I dunno that it will do much good.

I have several DVD's I need to watch: Letters from Iwo Jima and Ocean's Eleven come to mind immediately, and I think there's a few more on my list as well.

It's a (Open Thread)!

Alas, a day late
perhaps too slow
or is it time?

One step too late
one step behind
or one step sideways?

Airport Visits

Our return flight was via Jacksonville to Houston to Los Angeles, on a completely different airline than our outwards flight. The first flight was really cold, but pretty short. Not much happened, I curled up on the seat and played a bit of Final Fantasy (PSP) and ate snacks and went ouch my tooth hurts from that. The flight was delayed by about 20 minutes leaving, and since we had approximately a 20 minute break between the arrival and our next flight on the original schedule, this was a cause for worry (which I am too prone to doing. I was also worried about the ratties, even though I'd called and checked on them and they were fine). We arrived and luckily the connecting flight had also been delayed, this one by an hour. So we got lunch and managed to arrive at the gate in plenty of time.

The next flight was pretty good, we were in the row all the way in the back of the plane, but the designers of this one (a 737-800) had left room so these seats could lean back! And with noone behind me, I didn't feel guilty and so went for it. Pretty nice, but didn't help my normal legs cramping problem, oh well. I got really tired about halfway through and dozed off, for maybe as long as an hour. Not really restful, but was too comatose to do anything else. I did get to see the approach into LA, figuring out which freeways I was seeing, and then managed to identify a critical interchange because of its familiarity (the 110/105 interchange) and did some traffic analysis, which proved to be pretty much useless as it took us a while to pick up baggage and make it out to the long term parking lot.

And now we're back, the ratties are happy, and Frances is visiting for a little since she's in the LA area. Went out to dinner and now I'm off to sleep. :)

Florida Wrap-Up

I'm writing this late tuesday night, from home where we have finally returned. Let me wrap up various threads and stuff that happened in Florida while visiting Mylanda:

RPG's: We played two different games of M's, the first being a D&D story we started on our last visit. I especially like my character for this one, though his name will go unmentioned (as I managed to get away with not actually telling anyone it this session). Very interesting to play all the crazy situations we get into. We spent a good part of an hour or more working out how to best attack a group of essentially mushroom-people. It ended up working out very well, and we managed to walk away with a small fortune in loot that may not have been apparent just from the mission statement. The second game is the long running Mage game involving world traveling in the 1940's and rescuing artifacts of all types. We finally continued our investigation into the Great Bear's Nail, an artifact from Lakota legends. Again, I really like the characters in this game which makes it interesting to play. Sadly we were down a few characters, but hopefully more will re-enter the game. We managed two pretty useful magical effects which involved nearly all the characters, allowing us to talk with the shaman from a vastly spatially separated tribe, in addition to working out exactly what trouble the artifact was in. Looking forward to continuing both these stories, hopefully at a faster pace if we can visit M more, or he can visit here.

Console gaming: Lots of Mario Strikers was played, it can get REALLY frustrating on the cup mode, as the computer starts playing very very well. Aside from that though, it's great fun on the slightly easier settings and the normal match play mode where you can set the difficulty. There was also some Guitar Hero monday evening, and we all wailed a bit. I don't recall any especially stunning solos, but one song I played left my hands crippled for that night.

Foods: Whoa, wings! We picked up hot wings monday night to cap off our food excursions, and M decided to test the place's Atomic wings. We also got hickory-smoked BBQ, Hawaiian (pineapple flavored, not exactly teriyaki though as that was another entry), Original Hot, and Cajun (much hotter than the original, in a more black pepper sort of way). I tried one of the Atomic wings, and I normally like pretty hot stuff, though not on the level of M or others I know. One bite later, I conceded defeat. Wow. That was pretty much pure concentrated burn. It took a while for it to cool down enough to make a stab at the other types, which were good (I had the two latter types).

Lots of other stuff I could write here, but I'm tired and want to catch up on posts.

Sunday Best

I was pondering today how wearing different clothes can affect my outlook. I only have a small sample set for what things can make me feel differently. For example, yesterday and today, the particular t-shirts I was wearing have this effect: yesterday I wore the "I Survived Barrens Chat" t-shirt, which is a World of Warcraft reference, today the Final Fantasy concert t-shirt. The common theme is not actually the one which causes any perspective change, rather it's that both shirts are actually the right size (in that they fit snugly but not too tightly), as opposed to my usual t-shirts which are two sizes too large.

I feel a lot more self-conscious when wearing these t-shirts, as it is a lot more obvious that I'm pretty much a stick figure. Sometimes I also feel sexier when wearing them, but that comes and goes pretty much evenly with the self-conscious bit.

Maybe I'll expand on this topic some time, it seems fairly interesting.

Saturday Late

Saturday's post is terribly late! Tragic, but we were busy with playing D&D and that sort of thing. Great game, we stabbed mushrooms and they died. Thank goodness they were not immune to critical hits though, or it'd been really tough to do enough damage.

Arrived

We have arrived in Florida! The flight were uneventful, and for once my knees didn't even hurt after the last one. Ok, so the flights were sorta eventful: We saw Waitress on the second flight, and Mal was in it, and he was cool. Keri Russell did well, and Andy Griffith stole the show whenever he was in the scene.

Gone to Florida!

We are setting off on the journey to Florida today, to visit Mylanda and see picturesque Gainesville. Okay, so maybe not the latter, but the first is plenty! The whole gang minus one or two is going to be out there, so it should be a good time. Look for possibly infrequent posts here, perhaps punctuated by some guest blogging or live blogging, as I'll have my laptop around.

I am getting very sleepy...

Woke up way too early today to go to a meeting. Said meeting took about two hours (from the intended start time, though someone was fifteen minutes late), and the conference room was a bit chilly. By the end I thought I was going to end up frozen, and my thoughts had pretty much crystallized into a crawl. Good thing we finished up then, it took me a good thirty minute walk to thaw out, and I even managed to acquire lunch on the way back. It was another of Ernie's taco specials, this time a different type of pork, whose spanish name I have forgotten, but distinctly different from the usual carnitas and spicy pork tacos I have gotten. Very tasty though. This afternoon was hectic, turns out some of our big compute machines were down, and the only eight-node machine that was up had another grad student's processes running on it (eight of them), and they were nice'd up to altogether annoying amounts of load. So I ended up having to use the four node machine, which worked out okay, though I have left it running tonight in hopes of having enough cascade data to email out tomorrow.

This evening I called up F, as it is her birthday (Hi! Happy Birthday!) and discussed her plans to be out in the LA area. It looks like C+J are moving from Las Vegas now, and she is headed out there to help with the move / play with the baby and just visit people in LA. Should be cool, we'll hopefully get together when we're back from Florida.

Also today, in World of Warcraft, was a raid upon the dread dungeon Karazhan. Spooooky! I was leading this one and it worked out pretty well. Even better, the class make-up was such that I filled a dps spot as a retribution paladin, and I have to say did very respectably. Two were ahead of me in damage, and it was extremely close up til the end so it wasn't as if I was getting blown away. A lot of that had to do with having L's character Icespark in the group, as an enhancement shaman always makes other melee classes work well. One of the other two I was close to was also melee though, so it was a pretty fair comparison. Anyways, this was the last raid I'm leading until next week, and it's always nice to have a break from leading.

And... that's it! I've got a bit of other stuff to do before going to bed (it being 2 AM), and so I should finish up and sleep.

Demo Review

Played two different XBOX 360 demos recently: Blue Dragon and Fatal Inertia. I've also downloaded at least three more, so possibly you'll see reviews of those here once I get a chance to play them. This may not be til after the Florida trip though.

Blue Dragon: Compile as many big names in the JRPG business as possible, put them to work on a 360 title to try and get more sales in Japan. That's the name of the game, and I have to say that the demo has me intrigued. The demo only lets you run around on two different fields (or dungeons, if you prefer), and gives you pretty powerful characters to play with. The field map is pretty nice, and you can always see enemies: if you choose to encounter them or they ambush you, you get taken into a battle mode with all the characters present. The neat trick here is that you have the option of encountering multiple groups of enemies that are on the field at the same time: you fight them in sequence, but after each fight completes you get a random bonus for the next fights. So it gets easier and easier. Battles themselves are very FF (early) style, with different commands for each character, an overdrive equivalent that shreds enemies and refills mana, and great graphics. I thought it was pretty fun, and though there's no direct story in the demo, there's hints about it: why do these characters have these freaky totemic shadows behind them? Why do those shadows sometimes materialize and kick massive butt?

Fatal Inertia: Wipeout style futuristic racing game, with weapons and stuff. The controls are funky, about what you'd expect, but the relationship between what I did with the controller and what the ship did on screen had me frustrated more than once as I slammed into walls. Maybe I need more practice, but I think if I've played this style of game before there should be some basic ability there, which certainly was not noticeable with how easily I rammed walls. The weapons are ok, except for the having no clue what they actually do. It's an icon! It looks like... horseshoes! It throws these piddly little bolts forward and does... I dunno? I think I hit something once, but it wasn't really clear what it did. The controls also led to frustration here: it was hard enough to stay on the track, much less actually aim any of the weapons. Some were really flashy, but ultimately the only one who was destroyed in each race was myself.

Shortness

Very short post today. Final Fantasy for the PSP is great, been playing it a lot. Also today our Kara raid managed to get Prince Malchezzar or whatever he's called, on our first try. Pretty nifty. Emailed out a bunch of data today, will have to see how that goes.

Murdered by pirates is good!

My top three movies are Princess Bride, Sneakers, and Much Ado About Nothing. That's in no particular order, and there hasn't been a movie in many years that has come close to taking a spot. The closest one that I can think of is Mystery Men, which I enjoyed immensely and still watch occasionally, but which didn't quite deserve a place.

Today I saw Stardust. My top four movies are Princess Bride, Sneakers, Much Ado About Nothing, and Stardust. There were so many excellent moments in the movie that I would have trouble commemorating them all here. The characters were excellent and really felt right to me: lately in movies where there's been a young man in the leading role, that character inevitably annoys me and doesn't feel quite right. In Stardust however, young Tristan, while doing a few stupid things, really felt like a person I could relate to in how he acted. Rather than being annoyed by the main character, I felt like I could identify with him. I could go on about the others: Robert De Niro, Claire Daines, Michelle Pfeiffer, Mark Strong and Mark Williams all deserve a comment about their particular roles. I will mention the narration: it was excellent. Having a familiar voice there to open the story is a wonderful thing, and for me it evoked memories of a story being told to a young boy, much like the way Princess Bride made that overt.

Possible spoiler warning: you may not wish to read the next paragraph if you haven't seen the movie. It doesn't spoil a huge plot point, but it is a special moment if you recognize it for yourself.

There was one moment that deserves special mention, as it really made the connection to Princess Bride for me, and while it may not have meant to, it was worded so closely that it didn't feel like a mistake at all: When captured, Yvaine lists her options as "Murdered by pirates", having her heart cut out by a witch, and being taken to see Victoria. A similar list of dreadful fates is given by the Narrator in Princess Bride as the story starts, and the boy listening to the story comments, "Murdered by pirates is good!". That was exactly my reaction to hearing it in Stardust, and was a special moment for me.

DVD Sale!

Today was the annual DVD sale at the local computer game shop, which also carries a ton of used stuff, including movies. Every movie was on sale for 15% off, and some had a bigger discount, the ones like Zombie Movie Horror Night 17 and whatnot. Maybe others too. This is a pretty good deal as they already have nice prices on used stuff (basically if you look on amazon/etc for a used copy, the price listed there is what you'll find at the store). The three movies I was looking for were Letters from Iwo Jima (which I have not seen), Hellboy (the movie, which I have seen, and for which a sequel is in the works), and Ten Items or Less, which is a great independent movie that was only in theaters for a very short time, and has since been released on DVD and is very hard to find.

Unsurprisingly, I ended up with the first one of those three, and they did not have a copy of Hellboy on hand, and had not ever had a copy of Ten Items or Less in stock. I did look at some other movies while there, but none seemed especially interesting. Though one was almost worth it for the packaging: Bubba Ho-tep limited edition, the packaging was... a real elvis shirt! Or something like that. It was a truly gaudy white shirt-like thing inside a transparent DVD box. I can only assume that the DVD would be placed inside the shirt.

There was a great find in the used console/handheld games section: Final Fantasy 1 and 2, for the PSP! I've only played these a little (the original versions), but it seemed like a great deal to pick up both, and with new CGI and revamped graphics.

I've also observed some amusing things with respect to Xbox 360 used games. They don't actually have a lot in stock, as I suspect that Gamestop and the like get a lot more of the used games, since they can exchange for credit to buy new ones. Because there's usually only ten to twenty titles in stock, this means that I can see which ones are there time and again, and which ones disappear pretty quickly. So far, the winner in the not reselling category is FIFA world cup soccer. They've had two copies on the shelf for a few months now. Also up there are things like Call of Duty 2, which apparently is a great game, but there's already a sequel out (which I never seen for sale used) and thus gets less attention.

Fatality

Rest in Peace, SCO:

"[T]he court concludes that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights."

This pretty much puts a nail into SCO's coffin, as a huge portion of their actions against Novell and IBM hinge upon the copyright question. It's a relief to me because it was decided as a matter of law, rather than a matter of fact. The difference being that matters of law are decided by the presiding judge, where matters of fact are decided by jury trial. Not that I think Novell would have lost, but there is definately additional uncertainly and length that would have gone into a jury trial on this issue. One of the other things decided by this summary judgement was whether Novell had the authority to waive SCO's termination of IBM's SVRX (unix System V) licence, which is one of the sources of the SCO vs IBM actions. The result there was that Novell did have that authority.

Lots more could be said about this, but I will direct you all to the blog which has been covering this from the start: Groklaw. I've been reading it since nearly the beginning of the lawsuit (how many years ago was it? Whoa...), and it's always been a very interesting read since I don't know a lot about law, lawsuits, intellectual property issues, and they are good at explaining those to technical people like myself.

Whoa, nice catch

Just checked the box scores for thursday's games and saw the Braves won 7-6. Then I read the recap and watched the video of Willie Harris taking away a game tying home run in the bottom of the 9th. That was a great catch, and very helpful in not letting the game go to extra innings. Check out the video here if it's still up and my link works, it's to the recap which has the video in a side box. That game brings us back to 3.5 games behind the Mets, and we won the series, though a sweep would have been nicer, I'll take what we got as it looks like that ending was pretty demoralizing, not to mention that we've won every series against the mets and are now 8-4 vs them.

August Doldrums

I feel like most of my posts in August have been fillers, because I'm too tired to come up with anything to say. Oddly, there were two which I didn't feel that way, and one was very short. Anyways, I'm not sure quite what to do about it, there just hasn't seemed to be anything interestingly amazing to say, so instead you get the boring news from today:

Group meeting today was interesting. Programming today was bleh. Frisbee was also today, and went well, except I think I hurt my thumb fairly badly, my ankle feels weak and I'm very sore. I ran and played a lot harder today than I have been, which was nice, but it didn't really feel like I did any better. The ankle feels weak because I've been moving to make faster turns, but my shoes aren't getting the traction to actually do so and it feels like that stress goes to the ankle. So maybe I need to find my cleats or something.

Played a little Overlord today, it is awesome and my minions are doing very well. Except when they all die and I start outfitting a new squad with such diverse elements as pumpkin hats, spears, morningstars, a king's crown, and a unicorn horn. Except I didn't find the unicorns, L did, but I'm gonna go there so one of my guys uses one.

Tomorrow morning is yet another dentist appointment. Hopefully not as bad as some of my previous ones in terms of length, but I'm not sure at the moment whether that will be the case.

Return of the Xbox!

A refurbished Xbox 360 unit arrived today, luckily the UPS read my note and left it, as I was stuck in meetings for several hours. It had a note saying that since repairs would take a while, they are just sending a refurbished one, with a new warranty and so on. L play tested it today on Overlord and it worked fine, as did an episode of Angel later, so I'm happy that it's finally back.

Sharing Knife

I finished reading _The Sharing Knife: Legacy_ today. The first book I had read a while back, but reread it before starting this one. The author is by Lois McMaster Bujold, one of my favorites for both the Vorkosigan series and the Cazaril series (ok, I know it's not his series, but I always think of it that way and don't recall the official name).

I thought it was good, and better than the first. I hesitate the recommend these two books though, both of them started out with scenes that left me decidedly uneasy, and while the rest of the books were usually a whole lot better, the openings were still a bit weird. The characters were pretty interesting, though I thought the female main character had extremely rapid personality changes, though that's based on the odd events at the beginning and could just be me. The good part was in the world building and societies involved, the Lakewalkers were well described and interesting, and the basic premise they were built on (seeds from a mage war centuries ago spawning new mage-creatures) was well developed. I think I'd like to see more books set in the same world, but from different points of view.

Yeah, I know I haven't said what the books were actually about, but I think that's not really necessary. If you haven't read any Bujold, I'd recommend you go read _The Warrior's Apprentice_ or _The Curse of Chalion_. If you have read Bujold, you may like this new series too, though it feels different from them in a way I can't quite place.

Taco Review

Today I review a delicious taco, the monday special at Ernie's truck on campus: Tacos el Pastor. Forgive my spelling if I remembered it wrong. These are spicy pork tacos, and one of my favorite specials at Ernie's. Today, however, there was a slight twist on the usual special.

Normally these tacos are served with rice and beans on the side, and the tacos themselves are two small flour tortillas, with the spicy pork and a bit of hot salsa inside. The twist today was there was also a slice of avocado in each. Now, normally I can't stand guacamole, mostly due to the texture, but I do like avocado a whole lot, so this was an excellent addition. The tacos were very spicy (and I added some extra hot salsa), but the avocado cut the spice really well and made for a great taste.

Future Selves

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if a future version of myself could come back and tell me things. Today I realized that I was that future self, who could go back ten years and tell my past self all the things that were important, things I should have worried about but didn't, and things that I was way too concerned with, that would work out anyways.

I was going through a lot of stress back then, and there didn't feel like many ways to cope with it. I ended up coping with it by seeing a counselor, and doing a whole lot of gaming. I was told many things by many people, but always discounted them as coming from someone else who didn't know my position. The closest I came to listening was to my counselor, as she didn't try to tell me how to change, she listened to what I was going through and offered support if I wanted it. Still, it was a tough time and looking back with my experience now, I see it could have been a lot worse without the support I did have, and could have been a lot better if I'd let my own perspective change.

My question to myself is this: If my future self had shown up back then, and told me of his experience and how things could work out, would I have listened? What if there was another person with the same experiences, would I listen to them?

I know I would now. But I still don't know if I could listen back then.

Sleepy Day

Today has been a very sleepy day. Between the late night game of OOTS (see previous post) and getting up early to take Ris to the airport, there was not many hours to sleep. After the airport trip an adventure began, as L, Ryoga, and I stood in line at Fry's: We were talking about how sad it was that there wasn't a Fatburger in Burbank any more. Yep, the same Fatburger that we took my mother to, once. Alas, very sad, except the guy in front of us heard us and said that there was another nearby! It was in Studio City (yes, apparently that's a city?), and he gave us directions which we promptly committed to memory and then forgot. This lead to us remembering exactly the first two turns of the directions, and not much else, so we meandered in the general direction for a while. Google was queried for help via text message, and that led to certain people being distracted by other neat features of their text message reply service, though we did get an address out of it. Anyways, the easiest way to describe that trip is to say that Ryoga was driving, though navigation certainly wasn't his fault. At one point we did two U-turns in a row, as right as the first was made we saw a sign for the 101, which was a clue that we should have kept going rather than turn around. Once we spotted the Fatburger, which was in a shopping center next to the street we were on at the time, we made 450 degrees worth of turns to enter the parking lot. It was a very enjoyable trip though, and the burger was as delicious as I'd expected.

Order of the Stick: Comedy Gold

We played the Order of the Stick board game last night. It was a bit confusing at first, and the rules were sometimes hard to track down. I wonder if this was intentionally modeled after the D&D experience, as I wouldn't put it past the creators to do exactly that. Anyways, our first game was interesting, and we ended up calling the game after realizing the length of time it would take.

Today, the great W (who is being waited for, in the test chamber) came by and we played another game, this time with four players rather than the five in the previous game. It took approximately six hours to finish the game, but it was a blast! We ended up having a great roadblock, where the only room that was explored on the third level of the dungeon (explored by me, playing Roy), had a huge stack of monsters in it, with a pair of demon roaches at the bottom. Demon roaches are special in that they are henchmen: they support every monster, and have a range of 2, and they are always at the bottom of any stack of monsters (which means they can support all the types above, for example, if there's an ogre king, then a goblin king, then a kobold king, all of them will get supported by the roaches until you manage to get through all three to kill the darn things). This meant that no-one wanted to explore any adjacent rooms, because the demon roaches would support any monsters that dropped in those rooms too, and thus this led to a giant roadblock, where the whole party meandered on the second floor rather than getting closer to Xykon's lair. There was also some hijinks involving a shadowdancer, a pair of dragons, followed by a dark room (with a beholder in it) and a chasm. A fireball was added to the mix, but unfortunately it wasn't able to cure the situation. This was later eased by the dungeon collapsing and the monsters running for their lives.

Anyways, the game was highly entertaining to play, and it held my attention pretty well for the whole time, which says something about it: a lot of long games can cause me to lose attention, the only exceptions I can think of are this one and Arkham Horror. A notable one which does cause attention span loss is the world of warcraft board game, which is fun, but since each side is relatively disjoint from the other's moves, it's easy to go off and do something else during the other team's turn.

Finally, the title of this post reflects one of the pieces of loot that dropped as Xykon died: "Comedy Gold", which shows Roy (team leader) slipping on a banana. Since it was Roy who killed Xykon, this seemed especially appropriate to the situation at hand.

I recommend anyone who has played RPG's before to go read Order of the Stick. Anyone who hasn't, go read it anyways as a lot of the humor is probably still pretty accessible.

Guest Blog!

Today we have a very special guest blogger! This is Carissa, L's sister, who has been visiting us this week. I think we will do an interview style guest blog, so I'll preface my questions and stuff with a Z, and she gets a R.

Z: Hi! To get started, how about telling us about yourself?

R: What?? You want to know about me? No thanks. I'll pass. Next question! Ok fine;) I guess all I can say is my life is pretty much ballet and school. After highschool I want to get a job as a ballet dancer in a company so I have to train a lot.

Z: Sorry, that's such a typical question I asked, but it was all I could think of at the time. Luckily, you have given me a great lead-in to a question I promised the blog readers I'd have you talk about: You were at a summer program with the SF ballet the last few weeks, what was it like? (I know, I probably got it all wrong and it wasn't a summer program and whatever, but feel free to correct me!)

R: No, no you're right. It was a ballet summer intensive (if you want the official terms) um...well it was, as you might have guessed, in San Francisco and you had to audition in order to go. I think they took about 150 students this summer out of a few thousand or so, which is pretty typical for a summer program that has a year round school and company attached. Basically, if you want to get into a company you have to go to summer programs and try to get noticed by company directors. It's kinda hard to explain. Anyways, our classes were I think in down town SF. I know the studios were about 5 minutes from union square so as you can guess we did a lot of shopping. Coming from an itsy bitsy town in MI, SF was awesome!

Z: I'll get back to asking about the ballet program in a later question, but for now it's the traditional third question non sequitur: You've been watching a bunch of Buffy episodes while you visited us - What's been your favorite episode? How about favorite character? Favorite scene?

R: haha ok yeah I've become sort of addicted! I've only ever seen out-of-order repeats on late night TV so I couldn't help myself when I saw you had EVERY episode. Hmm, not sure I have a favorite character I just like how their personalities clash. Favorite episode? Don't really have an all time favorite but I did like the one called halloween (use to have dreams that that would happen so you could say that one is close to my heart:)) favorite scene? That's easy! Any scene with Angel in it lol.

Z: Nifty, Halloween is definitely one of my favorites too. Okay, moving back to the realm of ballet, one of the big pieces of news before visiting us was that you got into the school associated with the summer program you went to. What does that entail? Is it like a job, or more like a tryout or training before you get a full position?

R: Getting into the school just means you get more/better training which should help you get a job when you graduate. There are pretty much three schools that are known for having the best training and San Francisco Ballet is one of them. So that means I won't be getting paid (sob) but I will have to move there in order to stay. It is pretty expensive to move but worth it cause there are a lot more openings for jobs in a big city like SF than little MI.

Z: So it's roughly like a college equivalent for those in ballet? Are you finishing your high school degree or is it already finished? How do you feel about the move to SF? Yeah, I know, that's three questions wrapped up into one! Don't worry, the next one won't be nearly that many. I think.

R: Yep. Most people go to college after they get injured (around 25-30 years old) or retire. So I still am preparing to go to college, just later. Although by then I'll probably have forgotten everything but oh well! Um, what was the other question? oh yeah have I gotten my high school degree? No. I'll be a senior in high school in the fall and will be doing on-line/homeschooling to finish. Ok next question. How do I feel about moving? Totally can't wait! Have already started my packing list. Well, I guess that's not saying much since I only have about a week and a half before I leave for SF. I found out I was moving last week so I haven't even thought of everything I have to do. Like find housing! Yeah, still working on that one, lol.

Z: Well, hopefully that will go well. Onwards to the next question: I heard rumors that you were thinking of starting a blog, talking about your move to SF and what it's like to be going to the ballet school there. Care to comment on that?

R: hahah very funny! That's news to me. Perhaps I should elaborate. For all who don't know me (so pretty much everyone reading this) I'm not too fond of blogging. The part where you type about yourself kinda bugs me.

Z: Ok, so rumors equals I made it up on the spot. It's actually not so much about yourself in some kinds of blogs. I find that it's usually easier to write about experiences, or subjects I have an opinion on, rather than any sort of introspection. Or, just post pictures and everyone is happy! At least if they are pictures of ratties, which I have been deficient in posting recently. Anyways, on to the next question: You've gotten to play a bunch of console games while visiting, any favorites there? Any you haven't gotten to play? (Those are always good because then you have an excuse to visit again.)

R: Oh didn't you know? That's why I came to visit in the first place. Ratties and wii games. What more could a person want? But seriously, you really do have the coolest games ever. I guess I'm easily impressed since the extent of my wii/game cube games played is basically non existant. Hmm...love guitar hero, of course. That's a given. Oh and that one wii game where you get to crash trucks repeatedly. That's a good one too. Don't know if there are any games I haven't played yet but am eager to find out!

Z: Alright, time to wrap up! Have any last thoughts for those reading? Anything you are thinking about the trip and so forth?

R: Hmm, let me think. Nope! Ok just kidding. Um...well I hope I wasn't too boring for whoever is reading this and I'll ask you to please overlook any and all misspelled words...oh no, I hope that didn't draw attention to them:/ Oh well, I sort of flunked spelling in grammar scool. So, that's all! Thanks for having me guest blog, it was actually sorta fun. Sort of. Have a great rest of the summer!:)

Z: That's it! Hope all you people reading this liked it, if you have questions, please post them in the comments and I'll try to convince her to reply. :) If anyone else is interested in guest blogging, or an interview thingie, let me know.

New Month

Things I will be doing, or want to do, in August:

1. Visit Mylanda in FL
2. Write more - specifically thesis writing, which hasn't gotten very far, but I feel less apprehensive about.
3. Write even more - short stories, maybe poems.
4. Sleep.
5. Get a basic logic running for complex output feedback in my simulator.
6. Eat more (I think I've averaged somewhere between one and two meals a day this month. Not good.)
7. Write down more of my RPG ideas, rather than keep the plots all in my head.
8. Watch more Angel episodes.


I think that's mostly it for my ambition this month. How about the rest of yall? Anything interesting on your agenda?