Stuff

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Okay, how many times do I have to try to edit the template to get my link list to show up on the top bar. This is getting as annoying as the CNN web pages!! (but that's another story) Well I looked and my links are still there. No idea why they're not showing up but it's getting annoying enough to become "strike one" (an old, particularily bad joke). Two more and this place is history!

It looks like I missed posting last week. Or I was lazy. Not that I really care one way or the other.

Lorie and I (and a few others) went to a new Chinese place last Friday called "Q's". Awfully good food at a reasonable price. And Columbia hasn't had any really good Chinese places for a long time. Maybe we'll see a movie this weekend. We both want to see "Gods and Generals" but it's supposed to be three hours long. No soda for you!

Work

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The same as always. I need to get some documentation done this week and it seems like everything is conspiring to prevent it. Oh well, I'll have the Op Center twice next week and that should give me time to get it done. Tuesday I was out, some strange intestinal problem that you don't want to know about. And I need to clean this damn desk off.

The War

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I don't know anyone directly who was shipped over there. At least I hope I don't. My two best Army buddies are both Lieutenant Colonels now so presumeably they wouldn't be too close to the fighting but a SCUD doesn't care what rank you are. Neither does a mine. But snipers look for officers. Well they both survived the SandBox the first time ...

I was reading Joe Heck's blog the other day and he was talking about a reporter who had put a young lieutenant on the spot not realizing that the reporter owed his potential survival to this guy. Smart. About as smart as a lot of the journalism professors I've been exposed to (which explains why the journalism students are more moronic than other students). Best not say much more or I'll get a new one opened by Management (so to speak). Some mailing lists I read have had some things to say about the coverage. Images of bad things happening or announcements about a soldier from some place being killed with little regard for the families this leaves in agony until the Military gets the notification done and they know. Morons. Or perhaps its more vindictive than that. Perhaps it's not stupidity but rather callousness, that they don't care what effect their stories have on the people back home. If that's the case then we can only hope they (as Mr. Garrison from "South Park" says) that they die and they go to H*ll.

Games

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Well Wednesday was the completion of my first month working as a Battlemaster. It kept me busy those nights and was fun. I signed up for the ones in May and Katie told me she'd let me take over the two tournaments she has scheduled for next month. But how will we get a swiss rounds tournament done in three hours? Well, we'll figure something out. The volunteer part of the WizKids forums are getting to be a place where people whine a lot instead of a place to go to get advice or anything. "Waa coach, I don't want to wear the pink polka dotted shorts!"

We play Midnight again on Monday. This is supposed to be our last session, we'll die or finish the quest. I would post the URL for the journal again but Jeff thinks that Greg (the line editor for Midnight) wouldn't like my giving away the story before the book is even out. So you guys will have to wait. The main book is back from the printers and should be making it's way to a store near you, if you're interested. There's also a Yahoo group about the game. http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/midnight.html

'Puters

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Well I bought some ebooks to read on my Axim. Pretty slick. I got a new Star Wars novel and discovered there were two others in between that one and the last I had read. So I went looking for them. One is still in hardback but the other was an ebook. So I got a bunch of them and it's pretty slick reading them this way. Until you run out of power that is! ;-P

I still haven't installed that 80 Gb drive I got on the home machine. And it looks at first pass like it won't happen this weekend either.

Well the Midnight game was fun last night. Although at the end it seemed that the only thing that happened was that Odrik, the dworg (half orc, half dwarf) chopped down a really old tree (nine feet in diameter). We forgot that we fought a horde of ungrell (undead) and a legate (the Bad Guy's priests) who should have handed us our b#tts. But with this group of players it's always a hoot no matter what happens.

Work

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Work is the same. I need to clean up one of the databases I wrote a script to populate but that's no biggie.

Games

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The Star Wars game got preempted by a balky mailing list server and a sick player. We didn't play. And two of the players are leaving for a vacation so it looks like all my clever GM tricks are going to have to wait for a week or two.

I have to (sheepishly) admit that I bought Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball for my Xbox a bit ago. Lots of jiggly women playing volleyball and laying out in the sun. The volleyball game itself is okay, even fun once you get the hang of it. The other parts are gratituous at best. But the dialog is all in Japanese. I spent awhile trying to figure out if I had inadvertantly set something wrong but I can't find where you can change it. Ah well, it's not like it's a real game anyway. I'll just go back to the Buffy game and interspace it with Mech Assault (which I'm stuck on).

I need to get back into Dark Age of Camelot some more. My main character is now trying to raise his tailoring skill since I'm the primary tailor for my guild. That's not nearly as exciting as hunting things but it has it's own rewards (that's what I keep telling myself anyway!). I'm one of the founding member of Nature's Shadow. :-)

I ran (was the BattleMaster) the league game for MechWarrior game at Valhalla's Gate this week. If I do it all month I'll get one of each of the limited edition figures. Pretty slick since when I play I can never manage to win so I wouldn't get more than one of the four (you get one of two for participating) otherwise. And I had a blast running it and helping people out. I may shift over to more running than playing for this game. I even wrote up some news items I wanted to announce. Then I decided to type them up so they'd be easier to read and that morphed into a newsletter for the game. Okay, I'm a freak, I know it!

'Puters

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The Axim is pretty cool. Erik made me some cheese wallpaper for the main screen and I loaded all my game documents into it. So now when we play I have the Midnight info right there. I also put the spreadsheets I use to keep track of my MechWarrior figures on it so I can see what I have when people want to trade. Cool.

Stuff

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The Lady I'm seeing is going out of town this week. She's into the SCA and there is a big war she's going to attend. I did my best to convince her that she should go and have fun and now I find myself missing her even before she's left.

I need to get back to the gym and work out like I did before the accident. I feel all gooey and sloggy. But they're doing renovations on the gym and the nearest showers are in the next building over. Maybe when it gets warmer I will get off my b#tt.

Okay, since Erik gave me this thing I suppose I'd better put something up here, otherwise it'll be as lame as 90 percent of the other web pages out there.

Work

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Work is going the same as always. I finally got put back onto the Op Center rotation but I'm only up there half a day this time instead of the whole day. There aren't any calls to speak of and most of the systems run well most of the time so it turns into quiet time to get other things done. But of course everything you have to do is downstairs in your cube!! This is going to be the least informative section of this thing since one of my compatriots got smack around pretty badly for things he wrote about work in his blog.

Games

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The Midnight playtest is going well. I missed last week but Jeff timed things so the party only actually got to the river toward the end of the evening. It's supposed to be a big deal because my character is half dwarf, half gnome and the gnomes are the river trading folks. It should be fun. H#ll the whole game is a blast and I can't wait for the main book to get back from the printers so I can part with some more money!

I've been playing Age of Wonders 2 lately. I'm into the third scenario and it's getting a bit tougher. Not a bad effort.

The Vampire campaign is winding down since Andy started Law School and is short on time. Next week we're attacking Hardstadt, the Ventrue clan leader and nominal leader of the Camarilla. He doesn't mess around with small plot devices! But then we are playing eight hundred year old vampires, not your typical player characters.

The Star Wars game is scheduled for tonight. It should be fun.

'Puters

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The Axim is working out well so far. I still need to learn the tricks and the owner's manual was of little help but I'll get there eventually. I did order another power adapter and cradle since it nearly ran out of juice over the weekend.

I finally got that 80Gb hard drive I ordered months ago from Office Depot. Now I just have to get off my b#tt and send in the rebate form. Sooner or later I should install it and set up WinXP also since I do have it now. Ah well.

Stuff

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I've been dating a woman for a couple of weeks now and it's going pretty well. Last night we went to see Shanghai Knights. I loved the first one but this one suffered from what many sequels do, it's not the original. Ah well. Tears of the Sun opens in a couple of weeks and Gods and Generals is here now.