Blankshield

Ebeh!

It's less than 4 weeks until Christmas! I hate it when the Silly Season sneaks up on me like that.

Things That Need Doing During the Silly Season:

1)Finish sorting Lego.
2)Make a wish list. People will soon starting asking "so, what do you want..." and this year, I'm determined to not answer with mumbles and evasive looks.
3)Make candy (yay!)
4)Make sysadmin buns
5)Experiment with gluten-free sysadmin buns
6)Figure out if we're going to Calgary
7)Playtest Death's Door at least once
8)Clean and Stock the house for Old Year's Wake
9)Listen to Christmas music at every opportunity, because I can.
10)After Eights. Mmmmm.

James

Playtesting for Death's Door this Friday, woo!

I spontaneously drove to Lloydminister yesterday. At least I'll get milage. Sigh. Company That I Work For has clients with locations all over Alberta, and normally we arrange with a local company, technically called a Third-Party Vendor, but hereafter refered to in my blog as Companies Who Don't Know What They Are Doing. They screwed up a printer install at one of our clients, so I got to go out and figure out the problem and fix it. Ratio of driving time to working time yesterday? 3:1.

But hey, Lloydminster still exists, and that's comforting to know, because otherwise J&D would get lost trying to get here for Friday's playtest (woo!). That's me, always putting that positive spin on wasted time.

Gaming on Tuesday ended up not happening, for a variety of reasons including the Stomach of Doom visiting Aria. We sat and had good conversation instead, which was good too. Plus Star lost the bet she made, and now I get to decide what she owes me. If gambling was like that in real life, I'd be -SO- addicted.

Talked to a few People Who Know These Things about small business and the like (my boss, who while Company I Work For isn't a small business anymore, it was once, and an accountant) and learned that, for all intents and purposes, running as a sole proprietorship (which I is) basically will let me get away with murder for expenses, so long as I can connect it tenuously to my work. I can't claim time spent, but just about every dime is perfectly valid. The worst thing that can happen is, basically, the gov't says "no". What does this mean in the long run?

GenCon is a tax write-off! Hot damn!

James

This week has gone by in a bit of a blur, partly due to work.

Monday did some chatting online about Death's Door with forge folks, as my Dogs in the IRC is apparantly in a holding pattern. :/

Tuesday was Kung Fu and 7th Sea Riddle-y goodness. Andre and Camille managed to avoid starting any fights or killing anyone this week, but that doesn't seem to make our lives any less complicated.

Wednesday was a tired day. Went along to Raven's thing, and did a little bit of Lego sorting to say I'd accomplished something that day, and went to bed.

Thursday I sullied my soul and worked at home. I knew I wouldn't have time on Friday to get all my paperwork done, so I cracked out the laptop on Thursday night and spent the evening working. :/ I know, I know, many of you are thinking "Aww, muffin." due to a job that requires it somewhat more often than once in five years. But. It is very easy in the IT sector to get stuck in the trap of 'paged after hours' or 'off-hours work' or 'on-call', and I swore when I came to The Company I Work For that I wouldn't allow it, and it's really one of my singular accomplishments to date that I have not.

Friday was the Company I Work For Christmas party. We went out to a log cabin in the north end of Edmonton, about half-way between here and Nunavut. It was a really nice place, though, and the food was awesome. We had a fantasy casino, which was all play money and the like. Raven was a little leery of the whole thing, until the gangsters and their molls came in and started in on the whole "one of my gang is a fed, and I need your help to finger the dirty rat". At which point Raven turned to me with "Oh! It's not a fantasy casino, it's a LARP!" which made it all good." It was a lot of fun, and the actors for the most part were into their roles and having fun too. It was put on by Sir Unicorn, which I thought was pretty cool. I didn't know they were back in business.

Anyway, that was my week. Work is continuing to be a pain, doing the two jobs thing, but the new guy for That Place At Which I Work seems to be working out very well, and it may be as soon as the end of next week before I don't really need to be there except as a once-or-twice a week thing. Which, as the white-collar crime crowd are known to say, is a Good Thing.

James

As an aside, to anyone bored tonight, I will be sorting Lego tonight.

thanks,

James

Ah, the joys of sitting on hold.

Weekend went well; went viking on Saturday in the pilot episode (part 1 - it's a two-part pilot) of Davyd's viking game. That went well; there was fighting and slaughter and betrayal. While all the players are fully cognizent of the betrayal, so far the characters only have cause for suspicion, except mine, because right now I'm one of the bad guys. Fortunately my principles will drive me to join the good guys and warn them (hopefully) in time to avoid total disaster; just enough to spark a series. I had a good line too: on the raid when everyone hit the shore and poured out to attack the town, our boats sat in the water and watched. After a few minutes of people looking at each other uncertainly, I spoke up. "Why is it that they are viking while we are fishing?"

Sunday, what with the weather being so nice this weekend, we had the last barbeque of the season. I made ribs with a marinade from my Company's Coming BBQ book, and it was tres fantastic. It's also got stealth coffee for when you want to subvert the mormons in your life. (Which I don't do, having mild religious dietary restrictions of my own, I respect those of others. But that isn't to say it's not tempting.)

Also woke up in the middle of the night last night and couldn't get back to sleep, so I got up and did some writing for Death's Door. All of the sidebars are done now, which leaves only the full example of play and character sheets to get out of my head and onto paper, and the game is playtest ready. Char sheets will be supa-easy, and most of the example of play already exists, just not on paper.

So: playtesters wanted! I am actively soliciting playtesters for Death's Door! If you are interested, e-mail me or post in the comments!

thanks,

James

Everyone who has ever run laundry has two lists:

A)Things I probably shouldn't run through the laundry.
B)Things I will never ever run through the laundry for damn good reason.

I would like you all to move "disposable diaper" from column A to column B.

Trust me.

Not much of significance to write of this week. Tuesday gaming was fun, and yet another shining example of Andre and Camille Are Not Allowed In Public. We have this bad habit of killing people, it seems. Not just illegal, but in the restaurant we were attending, terribly gauche. And to follow it up with "by the by, this here dead body in the doorway has the plague", well. Let's just say Andre's not exactly launching himself into the "top 10 minor nobles to be seen with" listing.

Yesterday spent a quiet day; went to visit Raven's Opa and Oma with the kids in the morning, and spent the rest of the day at home. Did some Lego sorting, did some playing with the kids, went to bed on time. Tonight seems likely to have Game of Thorns talk as the major gaming focus, so I'll likely get some more Lego sorting done, and/or work on Death's Door. The only major textual requirements still missing are the complete example of play, one of the sidebar essays, and character sheets. At this point, I'm mostly waiting for my copy of InDesign to come in the mail. Although (poke POKE) I've still not had feedback from several of the people I gave copies of the rules to, I have had good strong feedback from a couple, which has helped me immensely. Not so much in terms of doing things differently, but definately made me thing about "Why did I do it that way?".

Punctuation is a funny beast. The end of that last sentence is (depending on the school of grammar) both totally correct, and absolutely wrong. See, the sentence as a whole is a complete thought, and a statement, so definately ends in a period. However, there's that darn quotation. It's also a complete thought, and is an interogative, so ends in a question mark, no two ways about it. And then there's the rule about keeping punctuation within quotation marks. But boy would ?." have looked wrong - and been wrong, to boot. So I am required, to violate one rule of grammar to maintain another. Because everyone knows that ending a sentence with more than one punctuation mark is wrong. Wrong, I tell you! Wrong!!!

James

I had an excellent weekend, how about you?

My brother Dan, one of the awesomist people in the world, was in town with his daughter Rosa, and we went out to Hugh & Loretta's on Saturday for a family dinner which was excellent. They also came out here last night for a visit, and we were able to do some catching up, although not nearly enough. They are intending to come out again this summer though, hopefully for a longer visit.

Project Sort Lego made great leaps and bounds his week, mostly from the aid of the fantastic team of super people that came to my aid: Other Mike and Myrna both helped me sort on one of the weeknights and on Saturday afternoon as well. This week I'll be sorting again late on Wednesday and also (probably) on Thursday afternoon/evening, but I'm not sure on that later. I may have to work on at least part of Thursday.

Speaking of work, I'm back out at That Place I Used to Work At. It seems that, in my absence, Lazy CoWorker Guy discovered that he couldn't hack it, found another job, and quit. Fortunately we've already hired his replacement, and he'll be starting next week, so I should be back to refering to This Place in the past tense by the end of November. In the meantime, I'm working two jobs again, and it sucketh.

Dogs! WOOOO! We did character creation on Sunday; Teacher's Pet had to bow out with a paper due, but everyone else showed up, and we even got started more-or-less on time. We have a great bunch of Dogs and I can't wait to take 'em on the road and run 'em through some towns. I'm planning to post characters and accomplishments in the Lumpley games forum on the forge, and I'll link when I do.

Oh! Ooooh! Speaking of links, here's one that people were bugging me about a while back - the pics and so forth for the Lego train show we did are up. I actually got the e-mail letting me know a couple weeks ago, but they said "wait until we do a public announcement before posting the link" and then I forgot. But it's there now, so go and check out our kick-ass Best in Show 2004 layout.

James

Alergy alert: This post may contain trace elements of painful honesty.

--

I am thankful, deeply thankful, for my stable biochemistry.

A number of my friends and family are on various regimens simply to stay on an emotional even keel. Someone I know (who will remain anonymous here) recently became defacto guardian of their child because the other parent is rendered effectively unstable by biochemistry.

That being said, however, I sometimes envy my biochemically challenged friends the intensity of their emotions. Not very often, and not for very long though, because well, envy is an emotional state.

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity"

To The Worst, while it is a toast I believe in and share in every year (in the spirit in which we have adopted it, not that with which it was written), I cannot claim that it is a toast which really encompasses me. I toast the philosophy, not it's realization.

Now, do not get me wrong - I do not consider myself emotionally stunted or lacking. I experience the full range of emotions, and some of them are shallow, and some of them are so deep that they cut through every layer and facet of my life. But few of them are ever intense, and even when they are, the intensity doesn't last. So when I do see someone in the grip of their emotions - yes, sometimes even when that emotion is bone-crushing depression - I feel a stab of jealousy, because I simply can't do that. Even during what was one of the hardest times of my life, when my mom died, I was functional. While I am not so detached as to declaim "Mother died today. Or was it yesterday?", I do identify much more strongly with L'Etranger than with Uncle Walt Whitman. While I might stand on my desk and declare "Oh captain, my captain!" I would do it from priniciple, not because I was moved to do so.

I think that explains in part my fascination with all things schmultz and why the movies that yank extra hard on the heart strings are ones that appeal to me: I watch, that I may know.

James

Update-O-Rama

Haven't been out much lately; mostly keeping my head down and trying to grind through my backlog of a To-Do list. Spent about half the weekend excessively sick, which didn't help, although Raven was fantastic and let me sleep a whole lot on Monday morning, which contributed vastly to getting anything done the rest of the day. Finally got the garage winter-ready so we can both park inside now; took a load to the dump and now have a vanfull of cardboard to drop off at recycling sometime this week.

I'm slowly plowing through the Lego in the basement, but I have a long way to go before my pool table will be cleaned up. Note to folks who've offered to help (You're the awesomest!) This week I'll be sorting Wednesday night (late, after 9:30), Thursday night as soon as the beasties are in bed, and Saturday both during the day while beasties nap and in the evening after they're in bed. Drop by any of those times and I'll be more than happy to turn you into slave labour. Give me advance warning and I even promise to feed you yummy food.

Dogs! Yay Dogs in the Vineyard! Through a diligent program of slavish fanboy behavior, I've convinced enough people to play, and this Sunday is the first session! Woo! 1 o'clock, and come ready to get your Righteous on. We'll do character creation and initiations this week, and in two weeks meet again for the first town.

Death's Door! It's "done", as noted in the news on Blank Shield Press. I've diligently refused to look at it for a couple days to give myself some distance, and then I'll be revisiting it with a very critical eye. This would be a [poke poke] to the folks I gave/e-mailed a copy to to do the same. Once I've done that, and gotten feedback, it'll be ready for playtesting! A copy of InDesign is on it's way to me, courtesy of Ken (Mr. Ad Astra hisself), and should be here in the next couple weeks, at which point I can start layout for print. Holy Hannah, I'm gonna be a game designer! That is SO weird.

Blank Shield Press. Go! Visit! Feedback! My @blankshieldpress email is lonely. Tell me my webdesign skilz are da bomb! Or that they suck. But tell meeeeeeeee.
My BSP goal this week is to convert Brick Battles to a .pdf format and get it online so my website isn't quite so empty. Heck, I may even get off my butt and do the Very Large Armies supplement to BB that I've intended to for quite a while. No promises, though.

I'm contemplating moving my weblog, but it's probably too much bother. Out of curiosity, how many people have linked to me that would have to update their link? I know of a couple, but that's it. And hey, while I'm poking my vast readership (insert self-depricating smirk here), who all reads my weblog? Comment or e-mail.

Ok, enough rambling... more some other time.

James