Not much of a chance lately...

It's been forever, but honestly i've been up to my eyeballs in work and problems so i've been slacking. I started my job at the jetport in the middle of july and i've been trying to adjust to the idiocy of federal/state/municipal mandates all trying to live in the same building. As i'm sure that all of you have heard about the little terra issue in the UK, so of course that really weighed in on my job, making it hell dealing with the TSA, who see themselves as the defenders of the free world...for the moment.

Also there's a lot of union politics floating around here that is really crawling up my nerves, especially considering that it deals specifically with my job. this is gonna be quick since i'm on a work computer, my internet at the house has all but crapped out for the moment, only to be (hopefully) fixed wednesday by a tech, but i've got a big rant saved up.

just kill me now....

Hi gang...erm persons, person...small dog accidently pushing keys on the computer? It's been a while and frankly it's been because i'm sick as hell. It's been going on probably two weeks now and this ick isn't breaking up for anything. I've been coughing and stuffed straight up for a while now and have been just miserable. I haven't played a lot of games or anything, mostly been sleeping, getting up and going to work, and well that's about it. I've got nothing new or exciting going on on any front. same shit different day really. I had an interview out at the jetport for a HVAC assistant's job. it pays more than 200 a week more than i'm making now, and i'm essentially a helper. It's something that I don't know if i could get used to being again, but for almost 600 a week i'm sure that i can learn to suck it up :) not to mention it's for the City so i think i'd pretty much have to hijack an airliner in order to get fired. Anywho, that's my update for now. catch you guys later

Mahalo

Finally....

I figure that it's been long enough so I'll go ahead and update this thing. Things have been pretty busy around here lately to be honest. I'm working down at the City in the downtown district. Most days I'm pretty much a glorified garbage man for much of the day, but there's stuff like for festivals and such that we maintain downtown before it gets completely trashed. It's pretty fun to be honest. I get paid less than I would doing air conditioning, but i think it's been a fair trade off for that much less stress. I'm going to try and get down there full time after I get my CDL before this summer is over and done with. I've got a funky work schedule so if you haven't been able to get a hold of me then you know why. I work sunday through thursday 6am to 230pm. It seems like it would suck, but it gives me a weekday off and pretty much half a day everyday so it's not too bad really.

Also I just got back from Memphis for a meet and greet with the Eternals. The whole event was a blast. Was nice to put faces behind the avatars and everybody was cool as hell.

Been playing City of Heroes and World of Warcraft back and forth so i've been pretty entertained in my off hours. that's about all for now really

Mahalo

Open Thread

Discuss what you'd like. And as Atrios says "Try not to shoot anyone in the face"

Like the Prodigal Son I've Returned...

Sorry it's been so long, but I've been writing my ass off everywhere else but here. Nothing much new to report. I've been playing CoH and writing more in the continuing saga of IB and the SG i'm running around with, the Eternals. My fledgling little Kheldian is now lvl 29 and I've spent most of my time on her. I've been in something of a creative mood lately so I've been writing like there's no tomorrow. Nothing else much new to report on. I know, there hasn't been any snark or humor in a while, but the truth is that there isn't much going on.

My uncle brought his 'computer' over for me to 'fix' earlier today. He's got this P2 266 that he, for some reason, wishes to salvage. He's got one of those buddies that is a self-proclaimed computer god and he fixed it before it fell into my hands. Unfortunately most of my family is computer illiterate and so the bulk of the tech stuff falls on my shoulders. I don't mind because it keeps me sharp, but this thing unless you just want to play Free Cell is about useless. He's still running Windows 95 for god's sake. So I'm gonna upgrade him to Windows 98 at least, since he only has 64 megs of memory. I'm not sure if i even want to put it on my network for fear of contaminating it :)

Anywho that's my monthly report. I can guarantee that the next month will be pretty much more of the same. Perhaps I might even post up one of these stories that I'm writing. Who knows.

Mahalo

Blah

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blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. " blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. blah!", blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.


That is all.

Not to Fret

That mood from the last post has very much passed and I'm in a stupendous mood at the moment. That is all

Mahalo

Emotional Low Ahead...Watch Your Head

As I sit in front of my computer, Whitesnake and Queensryche plays in the background. The clicking of keys and the rock voices of Ian Astbury and others drift over the sound of Starcraft and The Little Einsteins in the background. The glass in front of me contains 1 part Cruzan rum and 1 part coke. The pack of cigarettes stare me in the face, begging me for just one smoke. Just one and the world will be a better place. I don't want a cigarette. I don't even want to smoke. I barely do now, only under two circumstances: Instances of incredible stress, and instances of depression. My mood darkened and finally fell to black approximately 30 minutes ago. The sound of ice preceding the sound of the rum falling from the bottle. Ice cracked and rose as the glass slowly filled. I went from flying so high today. But like Icarus my wings have melted and I have crashed to earth. To earth with a realisation of some sort. My mind tries to find what conclusion it has come to. It's as clueless as I am. I haven't been really and truly depressed in a long time. Especially in light of the happiness I've felt recently this strikes me as odd. Am I manic/depressant? Am I just simply caught in a funk? Is there no communication in this car? We can't stop here, it's bat country.

I long for new words from Hunter S. Thompson. I crave to hear the Gonzo report from the frontlines of the American way. I'm pulling the plug on my RPG playtest. I had only one person that responded and he is now in Great Lakes making possibly the second biggest mistake of his life. The first was not taking my advice 3 years ago. I've decided that this RPG is not going anywhere. I've been writing and pushing for this thing for close to 3 years now. I'm tired. I'm spent and paper thin as far as my dreams for this thing go. I want to sleep. I haven't slept for 3 nights now. No one knows this. When you're in the middle of sleep deprivation everything is a copy of a copy of a copy. I want to feel the warmth of the sun and feel the rumble of thunder. We can swim out to the ocean. Leave them far behind. Swim out past the breakers. Watch the world die.

The glass is empty, only melted ice and the diluted mixture of dark estate rum and coke intermingled with the water shed from the disintegrating ice cubes. The son winds up his plastic puppy and watched it lurch across the floor. The sounds of Protoss Carriers releasing their payload of Interceptors all performing an aerial ballet to a soundtrack of Lords of Acid and Tool. Ian Astbury still sings sings of his Fire Woman and tells us that She Sells Sanctuary. All will be right with the world tomorrow I am sure of it.

City of Heroes update.

Just throwing up a quick post because after close to 18 months i've finally gotten IB to Security Level 50. He is now 'Hero of the City' It's kinda hard at the same time too. It's not that I can't play him anymore, but that there's no real need to aside from helping people out if they need it. But there's no more advancement for him. That's it. Now he just gets to sit around and look pretty. Though with getting him to Level 50 it opens up the epic archetypes to play. Though IB's been something of a favorite of mine in that game. He exists on several servers and now thanks to the RP section of our forums now has an incredibly complicated backstory and future. Here's the screenshot I took of the last time IB's gonna ding



Also here is a pic of the Kheldian who is taking his place. It's his daughter from another time and dimension. As I said he's got quite the complicated story surrounding him now and it's kind of coming to fruition now.



I think that's about all of the updating that I can handle for one day on the subject. Just nice to say that i've finally gotten a character, a Controller even, to lvl 50.

Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition...

So i had an interview with the City of Portland today. Now what really amazed me is that it probably could have been. I applied for a job as a plant engineer, which is essentially a glorified title for a service tech. I was expecting a one on one interview like with any other job...no I got to sit with a virtual jury of supervisors to answer vague questions about whatever they might have been thinking. There were no questions like 'Tell us about your experience working on boilers.' there was stuff like 'tell us about maintenances.' hell if i knew i was gonna be giving speeches i would have prepared something.

So I dunno if I got that job but I felt there wasn't a need to be interrogated by five people. Hell I've seen some of the people that work for the city, you'd think they'd just have a drop box and whatever name they picked out they hire. Don't get me wrong there's some good guys working for the city but a lot of them don't have licenses for DUI and such and some come in looking like they just woke up in the dumpster behind the building. oh well i'm sure there'll be something pop up sometime...

mahalo

strange vibes

I've been caught in something of a strange mood all day for some reason. I've been thinking back on a lot of stuff for odd reasons and I've realised that i've done a lot of bad things to a lot of people over the years. Yes, we all do bad things at one time or another, but there's people out there that had done nothing wrong short of loving me in one form or another that I've ultimately done wrong in some way. Again I know that we hurt the ones we love and all that but I really can't help but feel bad about them. Why this presses on me now I'll never know but if I've done something to you in the past then I apologize. There are just some things that I can't explain so that others will understand and I really can't help the way that my heart and mind travel.

At times I've been called a prick, at others I've most likely been called far worse. I am all of these things. I'm sure that we all have skeletons in our collective closets; some worse than others. But the point is that everything weighs on you whether you believe it does or not, or whether you meant to do something or not. The choices you didn't make, the selfish choices that you did make. All of them leave some sort of mark on you. Some of these people ultimately learn from and correct so as not to hurt somebody else like that again. Some people shut others out so entirely that no one can understand what goes on behind those eyes. And this will be some people's downfall. I'm just as guilty as anybody else. I don't like people to read me because I don't like lending out more of myself than I really have to. Some people just make me open up just by being there. Strangely enough most of these people live in other states.

I couldn't really tell you why any of this weighs on me now like it does but perhaps I can feel a little better about things knowing that this is out here and that if you are in a similar situation then know that you're not alone and that some things you can't make amends for. All you can do is move on with your life and hope that things work out for the best for everybody else involved. I have a strong belief in Karma. This is not why I say all of this now, however if you feel like your life is turning to shit and you don't know why...apologize to someone you've wronged. It may not change your life, but you'll at least feel a little better about yourself.

updating and such...

I've done absolutely nothing for the last couple of days. It's been kinda nice but kind of depressing at the same time. There's a sick little one at the moment that is absolutely miserable, and so everybody is miserable. I've been playing CoH and kinda being a little depressed. The state of Maine has been kind enough to remind me that I've been unemployed for three months now. It's one of those things where you know you're doing what you can to fix the situation and yet no good is coming of it. I had to go to a career workshop two weeks ago and aside from being a complete waste of my time aside from satisfying the state's requirements for me to stay on Unemployment, the lady said something about not being depressed about being unemployed. And they all have the canned speech about how they've all been there before and such and they know what we're going through, like it's some sort of AA intervention. Well I am depressed about it and the kind people at the state can't seem to figure out why. Here's the skinny. I've now worked for two different AC companies in the last 2 years since I've moved up from florida. When I moved up I needed to get my gas and oil licenses in Maine. Both companies hired me, for essentially nothing, under the pretense that they'd get me these licenses. Two years and two companies later I still don't have either. As soon as things get tight I get laid off for either lack of work or not having my licenses (!) So my prospects of working in anything that doesn't involve taking orders for fries seems to be pretty slim. This is especially considering that the state won't help me go back to school. So which part of this am I not supposed to be depressed about? That is all

Mahalo

Updates and Dev Digest Week 2

I tacked the second week dev digest because there was nothing that went on in the group. A couple of characters trickled their way in but no other activity. Hopefully there will be more activity soon or I'm just gonna have to run the story myself. No planned revisions in the works. There's some stuff I plan on implementing but I want to wait to see how the current systems work together

Other than that it's been pretty quiet around here. Been playing some CoH and talking on Trillian with a friend, sometimes two. I've been writing a lot lately and really can't turn the valve off for some reason. I took a couple of weeks off of writing so I could address some issues here at the casa and such and once again, once I start i can't turn the frikkin thing off. Damn I need a vacation from being unemployed...

Mahalo

Dev Digest - Week 1

Well as I've mentioned before I've got a yahoo group set up to playtest my RPG. There are things that I should have been very aware of before I set about this thing. The first thing is how badly I organised the book itself. I sat through and just like any regular player attempted to create a character by the book. It was nigh impossible. I've got information scattered all around the manual and if i didn't have an intricate knowledge of where things were located then I would have just thrown my hands up in frustration. So I've added a character creation Quick Ref sheet to put the numbers and steps that you need to create a character in one spot. So that issue was resolved but I'm still gonna need to go back and reorganise the book, almost in its entirety.

Second I've realised a small error in judgment on my part. I've looked over the system and actually played through some mock combat with some random creatures. There was no really chance. either i killed something with no real effort, or it killed me with the same ease. So I've written up, but not yet introduced a simple dice system and even created a tiny dice rolling script for it. The system is very simple and just creates a modifier to either add or subtract to your ability numbers to introduce some chaos to things. I didn't really want to use dice with this system because I had originally created the systems around PBEM games where i didn't want to trust someone else's integrity on their dice rolls. But it didn't really lend to an interesting system, so I felt a very simple dice system using just 2 6 sided dice would work best.

On the coat tails of that I felt that I'd screwed up with my initiative system as well. It would have been a pretty dynamic system but I felt that it didn't take advantage of the streamlined, fast action type narrative game that I envisioned. So there were a couple of changes to that and the reflexes attribute. For those in the group who may be reading this, I'll be posting the revision sheet wednesday.