Trip's Life (Recent episodes)
15 June 2013 - Saturday
I went to brunch after all, instead of staying home and working on an
adventure. I didn't go very competently, but eventually I made it there and
we had foods. We tried to have Dominion, but were
foiled. Then, there was another shopping phase, and a pasta-with-shortribs
phase, and more Dominion, which must have been successful, because I won.
(Ken probably deserved to win with his clever Rats+Death Carts strategy,
but he never managed to draw a hand that had some of both.)
- Persona4 7-8: The infamous Kanji episode! I like Kanji.
- Hanasaku Iroha 24: Only two episodes left to fest it up
and save the inn!
- Steins;Gate 10: I guess the vegetables did have some
effect after all!
Tunnel Out of Death (Jamil Nasir) is the sort of vaguely
spiritual SF that I normally don't like, but it didn't bother me as much
as usual, possibly because it was sufficiently concrete in its fuzzy
existentialness. Still, meh.
See, cats, I came back!
Make a comment!
14 June 2013 - Friday
Yay! It's Friday!
Portal (Eric Flint, Ryk E Spoor) is also the conclusion to a
short series, but this one is fairly hard SF and only three volumes of
skullduggery and interplanetary adventure on the trail of the 65Ma-old
alien visitors. There is a conclusion!
Ayse wants me to have out-of-phase brunch in San Jose instead of
hiding under a rock with my kitties. Why do people move so
inconveniently?
Make a comment!
13 June 2013 - Thursday
Boss G3 is back, but not visibly improved.
The Night of the Swarm (Robert V S Redick) is the conclusion
to the "Chathrand Quartet", a reasonably entertaining fantasy epic with
sailing and magic and huge doom. More doom than that, even. Also talking
animals (which are part of the doom), a mage in the form of a mustelid, and
love which may or may not be true. Did we mention the sailing?
Twelve paws!
Make a comment!
12 June 2013 - Wednesday
I keep meaning to do stuff in the evening, but I am too stupid, so I
oppress the cats instead.
Make a comment!
11 June 2013 - Tuesday
Boss G3 is still out. This is not impeding our work visibly.
Library, why do you give me so many books?
What do you mean, I asked for them? What kind of excuse is that?
Hmph.
I hung out on Logrus with Ayse's friend Avalon, who is super-nice and
doesn't have enough people to hang out with. Marmalade helped by being
opaque.
Make a comment!
10 June 2013 - Monday
It's like Monday, only I spent the weekend not sleeping very well
because I was in a distant place which is not my lair. Also, customers.
Even Aspen thinks a day with gooshyfood is better than one
without.
Make a comment!
9 June 2013 - Sunday
Because Ken is a prince among vertebrates, he drove Dave and me (and Ja
Baby) back to Palo Alto in time for brunch and gaming. (Ta Baby and Ayse
followed later, after Ta Baby's morning nap.)
No one actually had anything prepared Immortal
Empire, but I was able to entertain people for a while by making them
put things onto blank city and palace maps. Then we searched for the lost
art of conversation. Also, there may have been cookies.
Hello, cats! You are not dead! I am not dead either! Isn't this
better than the alternatives? (Quiet, Aspen!)
Make a comment!
8 June 2013 - Saturday
Ken finally got people to play Lords
of Waterdeep with him, which I think made him happy even though he
didn't win.
We almost played a little Dungeon
World but then people had to go swimming. I got slightly sunburned,
which didn't happen last year. I guess my melanin is older and more feeble
now.
In the evening, I went with some of our hosts to see Much Ado
About Nothing performed by TNT.
(Others remained behind to get small children to sleep, which turned out
to be so time-consuming they never got around to joining us.) It was about
what you expect from community theater, with bonus silly intermissions
and sonnets between scenes.
The cats are totally fine, right?
Make a comment!
7 June 2013 - Friday
Yay! No work today!
Ayse had a clever plan to zoom away in the early afternoon and beat
the traffic, but this was foiled by Ja Baby exploding with
three-year-oldness. For a while it looked like we might not go, then we
finally left in mid-afternoon just as the traffic was starting up, then
it looked like Ayse might expire of annoyance at Ja Baby who was being
very difficult, but finally we made it to Roseville alive!
There was Chinese food.
Later, Ken and Dave arrived separately. Marith is too flat to join
us, but this is no use to me because now she lives in San Jose and
cannot reasonably look in on my cats!
Make a comment!
6 June 2013 - Thursday
It's Thursday, but it's like Friday because I am taking tomorrow off!
Wheee!
My reread of Negima! is halfway done (19/38) and now
starting the plot arc that will take the entire rest of the series.
Marmalade did not seem super-interested in the warm laundry. I guess
it is no longer the appropriate season.
Make a comment!
5 June 2013 - Wednesday
The three-ring circus from last week is still going strong. Every
manager and every sales person who thinks they have a stake in it must
have their say.
Alien Tango (Gini Koch) is very much like Touched by
an Alien.
I do not have enough brains to work on Empire World. But I can
sometimes pet cats.
Make a comment!
4 June 2013 - Tuesday
Tuesday is not that great either.
Touched by an Alien (Gini Koch) is extremely goofy,
almost completely fails to subvert the gender binary, and is generally
lacking in literary merit, but it doesn't take itself seriously and the
protagonist saves the day by figuring out things people don't want her
to.
Twelve fuzzy paws!
Make a comment!
3 June 2013 - Monday
Nobody likes Monday.
Twelve paws!
Make a comment!
2 June 2013 - Sunday
Today, the call came at 4:15. This was annoying, but the great tragedy
is that it disrupted my morning routine so much that I never gave the cats
gooshyfood.
The automation I wrote yesterday is not anywhere near complete, but
what there is, worked and was useful. Therefore, we probably will not
need to perform this particular task ever again.
Otherwise, I was pretty useless today. I meant to work on Empire World,
but mostly played Ascension
and went blblblblbl.
Blblblblblbl.
Twelve paws do not go blblblblbl! They go miau miau miau!
Make a comment!
1 June 2013 - Saturday
6:30 is after I usually get up, but I was trying to sleep in because
it's Saturday! But no, the customer had to call about their problem so I
had to call someone from Engineering (who probably didn't appreciate it
any more than I did) and then try to do all the necessary investigation
before the customer lost patience. I had some trouble with the VPN so I
didn't get my part done in time, although I think it was not the more
important part. Still, I spent a few hours trying to automate the
process for tomorrow, with slight success.
We have run out of Sherlock, but have not yet decided
what else to watch that Ken will put up with.
- Cross Game 9-10: Sadly, the Evil Coach will probably
not actually have a stroke and die from his handpicked minions failing
him.
- Persona4 6: I've heard about this guy. This should be good.
- Hanasaku Iroha 22-23: Awwww! But there are still
plotlines left to resolve before the end!
- Steins;Gate 9: I'm pretty sure these operations are
irreversible.
Twelve paws!
Make a comment!
31 May 2013 - Friday
Yesterday's problem was not resolved when I got in (despite, or possibly
because, all the managers involved stayed up all night), but we managed to
get the system back into the correct state and handed back to the customer
by the end of the day. I think they will be okay, but if they aren't, I'm
the one on call this weekend anyway.
I'm not sure I can give a better description of
Planarch
Codex: Dark Heart of the Dreamer than the introduction:
This is a planar supplement for Dungeon World,
World of Dungeons, and other games of dungeon
adventure. It is modular, so use the parts you like.
- FERAL ANTHROPOLOGIES provides new GM guidelines for
playing in settings where culture matters.
- CORSAIRS AND LOW BRIGANDS describes the pervasive
scourge of planar banditry and how to take part in it.
- THE RAVENOUS CITY introduces the monstrous planar
metropolis of Dis and its inhabitants.
It is swell.
Yike, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha has suddenly gotten
dark!
Twelve paws!
Make a comment!
30 May 2013 - Thursday
At 8:00, I came in to a customer issue that cow orker D needed help on, and
was still working on it when I left for home at 19:30. Around 16:00, I
ran into my manager while looking for a developer to answer a simple
question, and he immediately escalated it into a huge deal, which as far
as I can tell did not result in anything other than what I was planning,
but did add a tangled web of management to all actions.
Seawitch (Kat Richardson) is the Nth in the series about a
Seattle private eye who gets astral travel powers by temporarily dying. The
first books had significant horror elements, but the series is shifting
more toward fantasy as the protagonist adapts to her new life.
After I got home, I had another two hours of work. It was successful,
and even went faster than I expected, but it was not really what I
wanted from my evening.
The cats tried to help, but I cruelly prevented them from leaping
onto the laptop.
Make a comment!
29 May 2013 - Wednesday
I guess I did work stuff today, but overall it was not a stunning
example of effectiveness.
Game design is hard, let's go watch anime.
Twelve paws!
Make a comment!
28 May 2013 - Tuesday
Virtual Monday is somehow not quite as bad as a real Monday, this
week.
The Queen is Dead (Kate Locke) is the sequel to
God Save the Queen, in which our heroine(?) accepts her
position as queen of the underground cannibals and kicks ass in an
alternate-historical London with hot werewolves and slimy vampires.
Nanoha's rival magical girl's minion is quite something for a kid's
show. Wum.
Twelve fuzzy paws!
Make a comment!
27 May 2013 - Monday
Memorial Day is actually a Teradata company-wide (well, US-wide)
holiday. There aren't many of those!
Sadly, someone forgot to tell the customers, and Cow Orker D, in
addition to having to be on call for an extra day, got an entire
busy weekend's worth of calls backed into today. :(
Instead of doing anything even slightly useful, I tried to create a Dungeon
World hack that better fits the current
alternate Sunday campaign. Fortunately now I have five example
characters to turn into playbooks, which helps a lot in conceptualizing
what kinds of moves I need to support. DW already has only a few combat
moves, so mostly I need to expand the selection of social moves, and add
mechanical consequences other than losing hit points. Also all the things I
haven't even thought of yet.
I am under no delusion that people will want to ditch the thoroughly
play-tested Fate
Accelerated for this gross kludge, but I'm not getting very far with
"Eclipse World" so perhaps this simpler problem will enlarge my brain.
I'm watching Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha (at some point I
put it in my Netflix queue, probably because I vaguely remembered someone
recommending it, and now it is arriving), and I'm not sure this rival
magical girl is redeemable. She zapped the kitty!
Fortunately none of my cats were watching to be traumatized.
Make a comment!
26 May 2013 - Sunday
Dave's enthusiasm for Dungeon
World is heartening, but everyone eventually agreed it wasn't right for
the campaign
we wanted, which is not so much with the dungeons and the looting. For lack
of a better suggestion, we went with Fate
Accelerated, although it was not anyone's ideal choice. We even made
characters and had them mugged in a bar (and then rescued by a handy NPC
when being outnumbered by better fighters with better gear seemed to be
going poorly).
I think I can come up with problems for each PC (except mine, because
my characters are always lame — maybe I should make her a secret
cultist or something), and sufficiently insoluble problems are like plot
hooks, right?
Apparently Marith and Ayse experienced Ja Baby Drama instead of an
additional day of Baycon. Perhaps
the con in Sacramento on Independence Day weekend will be less plagued by
drama.
Cow Orker D, who is on call this weekend, was oppressed and abused by
customers until he had to get me to take some of the heat off. As far as
I can tell, the answer to the customer's problem is, "Don't do things to
specifically make the cluster not work correctly", but of course that's
not acceptable.
Twelve fuzzy paws of fuzziness!
Make a comment!
25 May 2013 - Saturday
Marith came over today, and Aspen permitted pettins! The Box of
Coziness is truly powerful!
Marith, Ayse, Ja Baby (and Ta Baby, although he is still not in a
position to express much volition) stopped by
Baycon for a little while.
We spent most of the time stalking the remote-controlled robots which
both fascinated and alarmed Ja Baby, but Marith registered so she could
check out the dealer's room. They plan to go back tomorrow, but I am
already scheduled so I will not be there.
Ja Baby has a badge name now. Ayse was so proud!
Then we ate sushi until
it came out our ears.
- Persona4 5: Wow, she's obnoxious.
- Hanasaku Iroha 21: Does that count as a cliffhanger?
Probably.
- Steins;Gate 7-8: I'm not sure I've ever seen time
travel used for that before.
- Cross Game 8: That is one downside of encouraging
competitiveness, yes.
Despite the lack of Sherlock, we only watched five
episodes because that was the auspicious alignment with the train
schedule. Maybe we should have pushed on to seven or eight episodes,
though, even though I would have been crushed beneath the sleepies.
Adventures
on Dungeon Planet is a Dungeon
World hack for what the author calls "science fantasy" — the
genre in which the phrase "alien wizard" would not be out of place. The
adaptation isn't very difficult, since both genres are fantasy adventure in
which exotic scenery and novel dangers are key. But now, you can face those
dangers as a robot!
Make a comment!
24 May 2013 - Friday
I interviewed a potential future cow orker in India. I dunno. I can
only point to one thing that worries me, but that some of my existing
cow orkers got hired makes me nervous.
Cow Orker M is out sick today, again. Fortunately the natives are not
too restless.
Twelve fuzzy paws of fuzziness!
Make a comment!
23 May 2013 - Thursday
When I got in this morning, one customer was exploding and both the
ones from yesterday were reporting that they were not fixed. But,
eventually, we got all of them calmed down, or at least put off until
tomorrow.
I guess I sort of feel like I accomplished something today, but most
of it should have been accomplished yesterday.
Make a comment!
22 May 2013 - Wednesday
I meant to help Customer X, but then Customer Y called and took up all
the time until my scheduled meeting with Customer Z, and then some.
Stars
Without Number is almost exactly Basic D&D
plus Classic
Traveller. The world generation is more story-oriented than
Traveller's, and there is a system for organizations (which the PCs can get
involved in at 9th level), but overall it's pretty old-school.
Some Apocalypse
World hacks are just diffs from AW, meaning you have to have it to
play, but Monster of the
Week is a full-fledged indepedent game, and a pretty good one. It seems
like it should work fine for any Buffy- or
Supernatural-style game, although it would need some tinkering
to work for Shadow Unit. The major
change (aside from new playbooks and moves) is Luck, which lets you
auto-succeed or negate one hit, but never comes back once it's used up,
ensuring that characters have finite arcs. I
was going to mention the open-ended magic rules, but they're actually not
too dissimilar to the wizard move in Dungeon
World.
Anyway, I would probably play it, or even run it, if I had gamers.
Twelve fuzzy paws!
Make a comment!
21 May 2013 - Tuesday
If I were clever I would try to arrange to get more brain inflation,
in hopes of being less tired. But I am not clever.
Curiosity drove me to download the D&D Next playtest packet
(plus it was free). Unfortunately, I think it should be called "D&D
Previous".
3rd
ed and 4th
ed both brought something new to D&D, but 5th ed not so much. It
adopted some ideas from 4th ed, but otherwise the system is pretty
comparable to a somewhat streamlined 3rd ed. Actually, it might be even
less new than that, since the rules gave me a definite OSR vibe (although
that could be from them not being finished), and two of the adventures in
the playtest packet are ones I remember from my Red
Box/Blue
Box days. If D&D is trying to cash in on the OSR, maybe it's
time to dub it "D&D Last" and move on to Dungeon
World or Fate.
Twelve paws!
Make a comment!
20 May 2013 - Monday
But I was only useless for two days! How can I be expected to go back
to work already?!
The Six-Gun Tarot (RS Belcher) is pretty entertaining
horror/Western, but I object in principle to mixing the Cthulhu mythos
with Christian mythology.
I'm only up to volume 6 in my reread of Negima! (Ken
Akamatsu) and the Kyoto story arc, which seemed so major at the time, is
already done! There really is going to be a huge amount of magical world
arc later.
Twelve paws!
Make a comment!
19 May 2013 - Sunday
More uselessness! Yay!
I have run out of El Cazador de la Bruja to watch.
Sadness. Woe.
Twelve paws!
Make a comment!
|
