• nanowrimo2020

    November is usually a pretty bad month for me. There’s usually a half dozen things going on. This year, it’s quieter than most, aside from the election down south, there isn’t much happening. Everyone is in hiding, due to the the recent uptick in cases. Or at least they should be.

    There’s a 30 for 30 going on, which I didn’t bother to enter, but that I’m doing regardless. Currently, I’m on day 3. First day was a nice hike in the woods, out at Green Timbers. Second day was errands, up to safeway and the bank, and around the neighbourhood. Third day was a walk due East, then back around to the house, in the light drizzle. Nothing fancy, but it counts.

    I’ve been doing some Beat Saber, but that’s been about it for my exercise lately.

    In theory, I should try to write something. Unfortunately, I haven’t really been inspired lately. There’s a few ideas in my backlog, but nothing with any real flow to it.

  • Quick Warning to Office Staff

    Earlier today, my partner went into her office to attempt to do some things that she was unable to do while working remotely. It took her several tries to get the systems to work correctly. This was of course because of the office gremlins.

    Normally, they are fairly benign and will primarily interfere with printers to gather space materials to line their nests. Especially if someone was helpful and took the paper recycling out recently.

    They are known to sleep on routers and other machines that are left running, as they enjoy the warmth. As anyone working in IT can attest, a gremlin sleeping on your router can cause some irregularities in the signal strength, especially if you get a restless one who keeps shifting position. Occasional they’ll dislodge a power cord, or bump the power button, but in most cases these deactivations are temporary, due to their preference for the warmth.

    They are also known to hoard office supplies, stealing pens, tape, staplers and other things that they can easily carry off. Little is known about the purpose behind these thefts, as no obvious use of the supplies has been observed. Further study has been attempted, but the cameras that were deployed kept going missing.

    However, since everyone has been working remote for the last six months or so, they’ve gone a bit feral. They’d grown comfortable on their diet of leftover donuts and other assorted desk snacks, including the large bowl of candy that somehow often seemed to be in need of refilling, despite nobody ever observing anyone eating from it.

    So, just a quick warning, prepare for extra time when attempting administrative tasks after the return to the office. Either that, or bring a box of donuts and tuck it somewhere out of your line of sight.

  • The Last Witch Hunter

    I think someone once told me that the movie was inspired by Vin Diesel’s D&D character, which is partially why my previous post was about D&D. A quick google shows a whole article/video about that, but since I’m watching the movie right now, I don’t really have the time to actually do the research. Or maybe influenced by?

    I’ve heard people say it’s a bad fillm. I’ve watched about 90 minutes of it now, and I’ve been enjoying it. Though some of the themes, especially the wiping out humanity to save the planet and a global plague, feel a little strange. If the bad guy was less cartoonishly evil, there might have been an “Are we the baddies moment?”, which might have made the whole thing more satisfying. Still, it was fun, more than I was expecting.

    Having finished it now, I have to say it’s not quite as good as Constantine, but a solid entry in that category.

  • D&D on my mind again.

    The other day, I picked up a copy of the new Icewind Dale book, a 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons adventure. I’ve not played much 5th edition. I’d done the two partial campaigns with Matt that I’d mentioned here, and that’s been about it. Before that, it was Pathfinder, which I did for a while though Dimestore and I found a few ways to break things in those. Before that, 3.5, with various folks, including the man who became Olaf. For someone who has been interested in D&D for so long, I haven’t really played all that much of it.

    Most of my gaming has been Shadowrun, which I find more narratively satisfying. The d20 system, always feels too random to me, while the d6 systems, where the better the skill, the more dice, feels like you still get a range of results, but the range is more closely tied to your skills. Though that might just be because I feel more in control of my destiny in Shadowrun. (I may have mentioned this in a previous post.)

    But, I’ve heard good things about this new set of D&D adventures, and I’ve been tempted to pick them up a few times. And this one, had some good buzz, and a great picture of a moose in it.

    In theory, there’s a plan to run it for some friends online, though before that, I will probably be running a few games to get my familiarity with the system back. For whatever reason, running games seems more appealing than playing in them, at the moment.

     

  • 2020 update – August

    Back at the end of June, I was finally able to get in to see an eye doctor for a post operative care appointment. My vision is now confirmed to be 20/20.

    Since then, I’ve bought some nice sunglasses. A few pairs of Goodrs. I like them. Maybe I’ll post pictures.

  • 2020 Status update – early March

    For Christmas, I received a handmade gift certificate for eye surgery from my family. My father had worn glasses most of his life, until cataract issues resulted in his vision improving, and he decided he wanted me to have that experience.

    After a decent amount of research, visits with a few different doctors and some planning, I settled on getting my eyes done over the March break, as I can ensure that I’ll have someone able to drive me and take care of me during my recovery.

    While getting prescriptions related to the surgery, I took the time to get weighed. I’m sitting at 340lbs, down 6lbs from October. I’ve been both lower and higher in recent years, and given the amount of exercise I get over the winter, it’s slightly better than I’d expect.

  • How Bright the Night.

    That idiot Professor Engelhart is convinced that he’s going to figure out why natural light will kill a vampire, and yet no matter what they try, how ever much they try to mimic it, powerful artificial light just stuns them. I tried to explain to him, it’s not the light that harms them, it’s just the light that allows them to be harmed but he seems to think I’m just a kook with mystic theories.

    I suppose a big part of that comes from the fact that he’s only ever dealt with them after they’ve been muzzled or sedated. His “safety protocols” don’t exactly allow for much communication. Not that I’m sure he’d be willing to listen, even if they did want to talk to them. But hey, that’s researchers for you; never ones to get their hands dirty.

    Certainly not the sort who’ll take advantage of a convenient St. Andrew’s Cross after capturing one hunting in the local goth scene. Cybergoth, if you can believe it. I suppose it makes sense, those masks are probably the least conspicuous way to hide their fangs that I’ve run into, outside of the air filtration masks that get popular whenever a forest fire breaks out.

    Anyways, with her properly secured to the cross, my bad mood, my natural sadism, and her bad attitude, well, it was a great recipe for a bad night. For her anyways. I had fun.

    Surprised vampire bottoms aren’t more popular with the truly sadistic, really. Though I suppose the fact that nobody believes in them is at least partially to blame for that. Oh, and the fact that they tend to try to kill you when they can, that too. Not to mention some of their other “enhancements”. Still, they do make a great bottom.

    I say bottoms, because there is little to no chance of them being submissive, not to a human anyways. Maybe to one of the older or stronger vampires. Not that we know much about those. Just rumours, really. And while I’ve seen a few of them that love combat, I’ve yet to actually run into a real masochist yet.

    Logically, they are probably out there. It stands to reason, they used to be human, it’s a common enough quirk in humans. The whole pain wired into pleasure, or more commonly brain chemistry that turns pain into addictive endorphins; shit still hurts, it’s just the pain brings along a friend that makes it all better. But maybe that part gets lost during that transition from what they were into the strange creature that they become. There are plenty of obvious changes, easy enough for some subtle ones to slip through. It’s not exactly like anyone has enough “subjects” to really do much research, and good luck getting access to an MRI or any of the other fancy tech to get a peek inside.

    Not that Engelhart and his cohort are totally lacking in real science gear. It’s just a little random what they’ll have access to and for how long. They seem to have some funding, the conversion on their vehicles can’t be cheap. Kinda wonder what they tell the folks they hire to do the work, assuming of course they are even curious about why they are installing a cage on rails into the back of a cargo van. Maybe they figure the worst, and just prefer not to ask questions.

    Not that I’m sure how far away from the worst what they do really is. It’s not human slavery, but mostly because they don’t consider their targets to qualify as human any more.

    Whatever the hunters think, and how ever much they try to claim that it’s just animal cunning, the vamps are still intelligent. A little alien maybe, but it’s there. Though maybe that says more about how we view animals than it does about vamps. We know pigs are smart, but most people deny it, and they keep being eaten; the vamps are smart, that gets denied, so they keep feeding.

    If someone was willing to listen to them, without a gag or muzzle, and was patient enough to wait til the initial stunning effect of the halogen lamps to wear off, you’d hear what I heard. A disjointed narrative about something in their head, images, memories maybe, but not their own; someone else’s, they are very clear on that point. Well, clear as they can be while disoriented and babbling. They are in the body of someone, staked out, ropes tight on their wrists and ankles. Despite blinding light, they can see sand and sun, another body staked out nearby, and two tall figures standing over them; two winged figures. From the description, most people would call them angels.

    But really, that makes a fair amount of sense, if you believe their creation myths. Assuming you can get one talking, eventually they’ll claim to be refugees from Heaven. And the ones who burnt in the sand, those were a pair who tried to reconcile with the “Forces of Light”. The memory was burnt into the entire species, some sort of ancestral PTSD, which is why they freak out.

    And it isn’t the sun light that kills them, it’s that the sun light is where the “Forces of Light” can spot them and deal with them. Pop goes the vampire. Well, sizzle, crackle, then pop, usually.

    But hey, don’t take my word for it. Try it yourself. Or dismiss it like Engelhart. Rather a strange coincidence, a hunter with that name, if the myth is true.

  • Conversations of the solo variety

    Yesterday, I thought twice about buying a foam case for this laptop, so if I dropped it, it won’t get damaged. Then, last night, I dropped it in the parking lot and chipped one of the corners. No real damage, it just looks a little roughed up now. Not quite as slick as it did before.

    I’m sitting here, listening to Weird Al playing on the apple tv, after having run some random errands. Last night, I fell asleep watching black mirror, apparently missed the end of the Striker’s episode. Then I got comfortable, and slept for about 6 hours. That’s pretty unusual for me, since lately I’ve been waking up every few hours to take a leak. I went back to sleep, and slept til 11 or so. In theory, I should reactivate that sleep tracking app on my cellphone to capture some data to go along with the data that the CPAP is already capturing. Especially since their data isn’t exactly easily accessible at this state. Some of the other CPAP machines have automatic syncing with their own online services, but this loaner doesn’t have that feature. My next appointment is next Thursday, at which point some of the issues will get addressed. I suspect instead of the basic nasal hose mask, I need a full face mask, since I suspect I’ll still be breathing through my mouth, which reduces the effectiveness of the CPAP.

    Tonight, a group of us are going to go see Brightburn, partially thanks to some free tickets I won via Facebook, from Tazmanian Comics. Which is nice, since it’s one that Dee had wanted to see. I’d been interested in it since it was James Gunn, and he’s generally been pretty entertaining. From what I’ve heard, it’s pretty solid.

    Recently, I got a message from someone overseas about one of the writings I’ve put up on another site, one that I hadn’t published here. It was strange. Somehow she found the piece, and it resonated with her. I’m debating moving a copy of it over here. Though it’s not quite the same tone as anything else here; it’s got an odd flavor to it. And it’s got a few errors that need to be cleaned up. I’ll probably do that later this week.

    Polka is strangely happy music, especially when it’s Weird Al converting modern music into Polka.

    Lately I’ve been playing Persona 5 on the PS4, slowly working my way through that strange slice of student life. I’ve fallen off playing Warframe, for some reason. Possibly because I installed it on the PS4 and the Switch, and while most of my progress is on the Switch, the PS4 looks just that little bit better and loads so much faster. Especially since I swapped the regular HDD on the PS4 with an SSD. (Those two acronyms have always bothered me. Hard Disk Drive, Solid State Drive. Of course HDD used to be HD, before High Definition became a thing.)

    In theory, I’m also playing Final Fantasy XII : Zodiac Age, on the switch, as well as a half dozen other switch games that I’ve bought that I’ve started and not made much progress in. Including Civilization VI, a game that I continue to bounce off of. I think it’s because I find it hard to judge how I’m doing, both relative to previous attempts and to my opponents. The majority of the game, I feel like I lack that feedback to figure out how to improve.

    I haven’t played many board games recently, played a couple of kickstarters when they came in a week or two ago. Towers of Arkanos, a cute little dice drafting game that perhaps deserves it’s own review. And we played Tiny Town, which is a city build that reminds me of the bear game, Triple Town. You are placing blocks in shapes that convert into a single space building and then block one of those spaces. So the trick is to build the buildings in a way that they don’t block the other building layouts.

    I really should get a haircut. I’ve just let it grow out and become shaggy, since there isn’t any real reason not to. But with the head straps, the hair gets in the way. On one hand, I’d like to get it cut into something stylish, take advantage of the fact that it’s longer. Then again, I don’t have a barber anymore, and it seems like a simple cut might make life easier.

    I’m not sure what the purpose of these longer rambling entries is, since very little of the information is useful or helpful or meaningful to anyone. Though I suppose it’s good to have notes, with my memory being what it is lately.

  • Recaps – conflict and consideration

    In theory, I should have been writing up Shadowrun recaps and posting them to the blog. Rocky wrote up his, and they definitely have his voice.

    The game continues, thought recently it’s occurred to me that we might have a problem that I’ve been minimising, in how one of the other players treats the rest of the group. The player and I have personal history, so it makes it hard for me to be unbiased, or even compensate for my bias.

    A couple of years back, he was the supervisor who asked me to sign a document saying that I agreed that I had violated the attached code of conduct, that I understood that further violations would result in my termination, despite the fact that the copy didn’t actually have a written code of conduct, certainly not one that was attached to the letter I was being asked to sign.

    Prior to that, he was a coworker with a tendency to make jokes and slack off. Then again, pretty much everyone who worked there had a tendency to slack off and try to do as little as possible. It’s been a few years, and I’m not sure how accurate my memory is, but that’s my impression of the place now.

    After I refused to sign the letter, a friend of mine offered me work in film since I was frustrated with the way the office was being run. The original plan was that he’d put together the code of conduct and I’d sign it. In theory, this also ensure that other people in the office would be held to those standards. Strangely enough, that didn’t happen, and I worked in film for a bit. The long hours were a bit of a problem sometimes.

    He’d been in a group with us in the past, when we’d done Shadowrun. I’m having trouble remember much of that campaign. I recall we had some difficulties with people flaking out.

    But, as he’d been part of the group in the past, when we started up again, he was one of the first to respond to the question on Facebook.

    His previous character was a stealth infiltrator, I recall that much.

    His current character is a bit of a tank, a big heavy troll who can absorb a fair amount of punishment. To the point where it’s a bit disruptive to the game, trying to have anything show up that would be able to threaten him, that won’t just kill the other party members.

    At the same time, he’s also been antagonistic to the other players. Mostly in character. A few sessions ago, his character choked another player’s character, due to being frustrated. His character also has anger issues, some sort of berserker rage, though it hasn’t really been a factor yet, directly, though indirectly it’s been used for justification as to why the character should get his way.

    Though two characters have been replaced, one of the ones he was in the most conflict with, has switched out for someone more social. The other character was more of a character issue.

    Two of the players seem concerned about it, one of the players was absent for the choke and doesn’t seem to have a strong opinion, and I’m restricting myself from having an opinion, since I think it’s tainted by personal issues. Though some would say, with that history, why would you be playing with that person in the first place?

    One obvious solution is to start including an X card. Basically, it allows players to signal that they are uncomfortable with content, without it needing to be a big deal. But that’s mostly because of my concerns some of the content the other day, with the snuff films that they were trying to track down.

    The biggest issue with the internal violence, is that it feels like it isn’t quite severe enough, that it’s something that can be ignored. And that’s uncomfortable in it’s own way.

  • CPAP and a Nap

    Picked up the CPAP machine, grabbed tickets for Brightburn tomorrow night. Got home, got the machine set up, watched TV for a bit while breathing through it. Eventually fell asleep. Woke up several hours later, mildly disoriented. Hard to judge the quality of the sleep.