Previously, in Trip's Life...
30 May 2002 - Thursday
I don't want to be at work. I want to be at home, reading The
Scar.
* * *
Ha hah! Marith got reviewed!
Ha hah!
* * *
I had a plan of extraordinary cleverness for getting comics and
making it to anime on time, but then we had a more exciting and annoying
event than usual at work, so I didn't escape until 17:00. With more
optimism than calculation, I attempted to execute my plan. I succeeded!
(This is not a point in favor of optimism, since even with quick scuttling
from Lee's to Middlefield Rd I had to jaywalk egregiously to not miss the
bus; another thirty seconds of standing in line for comics and I would have
been hosed.)
Fortunately, power to the office didn't go out until after I
left.
* * *
I have finished The Scar. As expected, it is marvelously
inventive and makes me want to die in a pit. It is also amazingly dark, not
just in plot (no one who shows any general good intent, never mind actual
heroism, comes to a good end) but in every detail of the setting (squalor,
decay, ancient terror kept from returning by current oppression) and
characterization (names like Coldwine and Carrianne). I do recommend
The Scar, but those prone to nightmares should only read it
between dawn and dusk on sunny days.
Marith! by liralen (Fri May 31 13:39:54 2002)
Okay, not knowing Marith's Other Names, which is the review of her??
Re: Marith! by Trip (Fri May 31 13:44:20 2002)
She's referred to as Marith! You might need to scroll up or down the page to find her. Stupid stupid blog creatures.
Ah ha!! by liralen (Thu Jun 6 12:18:47 2002)
Stupid, stupid blog creature.
Make a comment!
29 May 2002 - Wednesday
Here, make
some undignified chorkling sounds.
* * *
In a fit of efficiency, I got off the bus early to shop, so I only
had to walk home from the store, instead of going home and then walking
to the store and back, but I am completely melted anyway. Blup.
But when I got home, my copy of The Scar was waiting for me,
just as I predicted.
* * *
It looks as though Dave will replace Emily in AQoJ, unless Earl a)
sends email about it (not very likely) and b) objects to gaming with
Dave (very unlikely).
* * *
I must be getting old. I put down The Scar and went to
bed even though I could have finished it and still gotten a good five
hours of sleep!
kitties! by liralen (Thu May 30 11:31:21 2002)
How cute! And crazy! grin
Melted. Hmph. It's low 90's here! And a mere six days ago it was SNOWING!
How crazed is that?
Re: kitties! by Trip (Thu May 30 12:33:38 2002)
I still make undignified chorkling noises when I look at the picture. :)
The sky gods stole your drugs!
sky Gods by liralen (Fri May 31 13:40:37 2002)
They did! All the good ones, too! Yeesh
Make a comment!
28 May 2002 - Tuesday
Editing my web habits page to accomodate more entries has not
produced an aesthetically pleasing result. Sniff.
* * *
Today's suggestion for a sociology paper: Regional Variation in
Design of Paper Airplanes.
* * *
Using to make HTML treat "Neilsen Hayden" as a single word
makes my columns somewhat more equal in length, as well as being the
Right Thing.
Make a comment!
27 May 2002 - Monday
Last night I dreamt about building a stairway of words because I'd
told Soula I would, and it went way up in the air even though I kept
having to take it apart or delete it and redo it better.
Then I dreamt about clockwork countries: big gears, miles and miles
across, suspended horizontally in the sky, with smaller gears around the
edges to drive them. One had a city under it, where flight was
forbidden, but I created a flying spell anyway, and got busted when I
crash-landed on a huge statue where the person who had originally gotten
flight outlawed had crashed, and got locked up in a prison high up, just
under the gear itself.
I escaped, or got sprung, and had to skip town, to another gear that was
divided into twenty-four sectors of different terrains, and which sector
you came up to and went down from determined where you ended up across at
least twenty-four widely-separated regions. Along with an athletic blonde
angel and a dusky-temptress-type brunette demon, I went to a third gear,
the entire top of which was a city, and became ruler pretty much by
stepping into a vacancy. Apparently certain powers went with the position,
since when we arrived in the city, we were all several times larger than
the inhabitants, but quickly figured out how to reduce ourselves to mortal
stature.
The rulership had apparently been vacant for a while and not filled
very effectively before that, because the city and the gear it was on
needed a lot of upkeep, but otherwise it went pretty well, and the angel
and the demon (who didn't have real names, just "Ange" and "Dev") and I
settled in to life as the royal family. At some point, the ex-wife
(widow?) of the previous ruler joined us, which was sort of awkward, but
we all got along so we figured it would work out.
There were some problems, like breaking one of the subsidiary gears
when trying to rev it up to keep the main gear rotating, but also some
breaks, like getting to go hunt enormous louse-vermings that infested
some of the remoter gears, so overall it was going pretty well when I
woke up.
* * *
Yay national holiday! But I had to get up at a relatively sensible
time anyway, to catch the holiday-scheduled (ie, runs every hour or two,
if you're lucky) train up to Millbrae, where I mostly talked to Norm
about multiple personality disorder and not about parasites being too
lame to get chicks. Then I ate at the okay Thai restaurant between
Norm's office and the train station and got to the station twenty
minutes before the once-every-two-hours train arrived.
It is very hot today.
Dreams by Dor (Tue May 28 06:55:07 2002)
You dream fascinating dreams, Trip.
dreams! by liralen (Thu May 30 11:29:58 2002)
Mmmm... gears. I really enjoy your dreams, Trip.
Make a comment!
26 May 2002 - Sunday
Oof, stayed up until almost 02:00 reading Fallen Dragon by
Peter Hamilton. I don't know that it was really good enough to justify
it, but it kept seeming like it was getting to the really cool
climax...
* * *
Today was the Multi-Purpose Party: the Bertani-Youngs' housewarming,
Ambar's birthday (Ambar for President!), Ambar's shiny new AS degree in
Mathematics, and probably one or two more events I'm not recalling.
There were many many people, some of which I knew, and insane quantities
of insanely good food produced by Ambar's boy Richard and divers others.
Very little of it was anything I should have eaten, but I sampled pretty
much everything anyway, and it was Good.
I stayed through the tail of the exponentially decaying party,
convincing Chrisber to really make a TT character
and getting briefed a bit more on the whole Ayse-Hope-et-al situation, but
finally had to leave when the host and hostess ran off to take the hottub
reservation Ambar and Richard were too wiped out to use.
* * *
The Vampire Princess Miyu TV series keeps seeming like it's
going somewhere, but very very very slowly, which is a little
frustrating. The individual episodes are good, though, and I still like
the opening music and closing song a whole lot.
Make a comment!
25 May 2002 - Saturday
Blorf. Lethargic parasite. But I have done some reading, including
Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan, which Earl recommended and
amazon.co.uk provided. It was in fact pretty good post-cyberpunk noir,
because Earl wouldn't lead me astray. Much.
Make a comment!
24 May 2002 - Friday
I met up with DaveChristyChrisberMarithAyseJim for yummy Thai dinner,
and indeed, it was yummy! Then there was some confused attempt to get
tea, gelato, or some combination, which was less successful. We met
one of Ayse's other personalities, Hope, which was confusing and alarming,
because no one ever warns me of these things ahead of time.
Just a parasite.
Make a comment!
23 May 2002 - Thursday
Kit's page crashes my browser again.
* * *
Now Kit's page doesn't crash my browser, so either she fixed it
again, or it was actually a coincidence that my browser crashed just
then. Anyway, now I can read a first-hand account of the terrible end
that bipedalists come to.
* * *
We have now watched all extant episodes of Those Who Hunt
Elves. This is not quite the same as finishing it, but I suppose it
will have to do.
Defining quote from Record of Lodoss War (said by the cleric
to the fighter): "Never pass up a chance for experience!"
Make a comment!
22 May 2002 - Wednesday
amazon.co.uk claims to have shipped my copy of The Scar.
Judging by the last order, it should arrive on the 29th. I guess we'll
see.
But I am not distressed, because I have "The Amazing Screw-On Head"
by Mike Mignola (of Hellboy fame), who is hereby promoted to
the rank of Twisted Genius. Buy it. Read it. Your life will be richer
for it.
Also, although I had a weak deck and made some suboptimal choices, I
won Mythos because everyone else got terrible draws.
Make a comment!
21 May 2002 - Tuesday
My huge pile of British SF from amazon.co.uk arrived! China
Miéville's latest, The Scar, did not arrive because
amazon.co.uk are idjits, but hopefully it will arrive in the near
future.
I sort of miss the days when I had an hour-and-a-half commute each
way.
Make a comment!
20 May 2002 - Monday
Work? Yah, I guess I did some of that. But more importantly, I bought
Nobilis!
* * *
Also, I watched the first five episodes of Saber Marionette J to
X, but I am not motivated to purchase more.
Make a comment!
19 May 2002 - Sunday
I slept in to the last possible moment before meeting the other
Sovereign Powers players for lunch at Bueno Bueno Burritoria, because I
could.
Chrisber finished writing up his mentalist Total Recall, and we got
the crap beaten out of us by someone with radioactive mutant caterpiller
powers. If we hadn't had the egoist, we would have been so toast.
Vaguely triumphant, we went with 12057295 people to eat sushi. It was
very loud.
I finished watching the first DVD of Real Bout High School
which was somewhat entertaining despite the high frequency of GPS.
Make a comment!
18 May 2002 - Saturday
If Marith had spent a mere three minutes less wandering aimlessly in
search of breakfast, or Rebecca hadn't forgotten her gaming stuff, we would
have arrived in Roseville before anyone expected us! Oh well.
Amazon Quintet of Justice IIIb: "Attack of the
Zombies!"
Last month: Our Heroines had found a ruined temple in which to
cremate the fallen villain, hopefully luring the other set of
necrotheologians in to be ambushed. Sophia and Serenity volunteered to
serve as bait, since they needed to give the deceased proper last rites
anyway.
After some time, a small band of armed men made its way through the
rubble, under the watchful eyes of the hidden Amazons. When they reached
the temple courtyard, Sophia called on them to surrender. One produced a
wand and let fly with an impressively useless Color Spray, and then fell to
the ground with an arrowhead in either atrium of his heart.
The rest of his party attempted to flee, but Amaryllis conjured a dirt
elemental to block the narrow path through the rubble, bottling them up
long enough for Solara to reach them. One of them tried to do something
rash with a wand, and lost his hand for his troubles, whereupon the rest
surrendered.
Meanwhile in the courtyard, a huge flaming infernal equine appeared as
it broke its invisibility by attacking Sophia, Serenity, Alyssa, and Hearth
Lady, shortly followed by several necrotheologians (including the one who
escaped the previous ambush) and their horde of zombies.
The shield-maidens of Pelor formed the core of the fight, assailed from
all sides by all manner of villains but never yielding ground, while the
rest of the Amazons took advantage of the villains' unguarded backs
(Alyssa, Solara) or unleashed arcane missiles and acid arrows from afar
(Amaryllis). The zombies, bolstered by the dark will of their master, were
difficult to turn, but Fresa put a few to flight, and made a few of the
living villains into prisoners instead of corpses.
Most of his companions defeated, the main villain took to the air to
escape. Arrows and sling stones followed him until he was out of range,
and Amaryllis flew after him, scoring a few more hits with
long-range spells. Then he blinded her with a curse, pummelled her with a
morningstar, and sent her stumbling back to her comrades. With another
Fly spell and a potion of Expeditious Advance, Solara gave chase, but
eventually was paralyzed by a spell, which didn't remove her ability to
fly but did prevent her from being able to do anything when she caught
him, so she also retreated.
Our Heroines gathered up the prisoners and hurried back to their camp,
where they laid low. Dwayne, the villain who had surrendered most abjectly
succumed to heroic dialogue from Solara during the interrogation, and
attempted to join the forces of good. After he spilled the beans about Lord
Octavian and Lord Carleton and where their wagons were and so forth, he was
put on probationary probation.
The next day, after Moradin's grace had restored Amaryllis's eyesight
and everyone had their spells and hit points back, Our Heroines (and
Dwayne) went to the wagon train of the refugees, where they were greeted by
Lady Octavian (who knew of their coming from the one villain who had made
tracks all the way back to the wagons), who graciously volunteered the
Quintet to escort her party back to town: since Lord Octavian and Lord
Carleton had been carried off last night by someone who matched the
description of the flying evil cleric, those not so deeply committed to the
necrotheological cause were heading back to civilization. Stephen was with
them, having been originally kidnapped by the evil lords but not
rekidnapped by the evil priest. While considering the issues over lunch and
a bit of interrogation, Our Heroines were set upon in another dastardly
attack!
Zombies shambling out of the woods to attack the noncombatants and
fire arrows shot into the wagons caused a lot of chaos, but the few
remaining able-bodied fighters with the wagons (including Runaway and
Dwayne) and Thad, backed up by Serenity, held the line
against the zombies while Kara and Solara dealt with the devil bats. The
others concentrated their efforts on the cleric who had conjured the
rest, and with the destruction of his protective and enhancing magics by
Fresa's spell he was quickly brought down.
The vanished lords Octavian and Carleton were among the zombies, so
the Amazon Quintet concluded that the necrotheologians had been
thoroughly extirpated, and returned triumphant to town.
While Our Heroines were preventing the resurrection of ancient dark
gods, Connor's party was rescuing a strayed princess, in celebration of
which the royal family was holding a grand ball. As saviors of the city,
the Amazon Quintet will of course attend...
* * *
I returned home with Earl and Emily, which became more exciting when
we encountered the sign saying "680 closed"! The 238 then betrayed us by
turning to run parallel to and between the 680 and 880 instead of
connecting them, but finally we saved ourselves by using the 84.
Make a comment!
17 May 2002 - Friday
The very clever plan of driving up to Roseville tonight so we can be
bright and crazed for AQoJ tomorrow has fallen through because the
airline has cruelly betrayed Rebecca. So we will have to get up early
tomorrow and go up in the morning, hopefully not arriving much later
than we would have gotten up anyway.
So I can sleep in my own bed tonight, and maybe even go to bed early
(hey, it could happen!) and not be quite as dead for the rest
of the weekend.
* * *
I have decided I like Songs in Red and Gray, Suzanne Vega's
most recent album.
Make a comment!
16 May 2002 - Thursday
At least watching Record of Lodoss War prepared me for D&D
on Saturday.
Make a comment!
15 May 2002 - Wednesday
<TBG>
Woot! Spiffy new shield, spiffy new warp drive, acceptable new cargo
pod, and extra favor income of all four types!
</TBG>
Make a comment!
14 May 2002 - Tuesday
Hey, cool, Kit's new page crashes my browser.
* * *
Devil Hunter Yohko is very silly. And also cheesy.
page by kit (Tue May 14 17:43:46 2002)
not anymore! er. well. at least the main page. don't try to leave comments. :) i haven't gotten that fixed yet.
Re: page by Trip (Wed May 15 13:12:55 2002)
It's a very pretty page. But yah, if you send bad HTML, you should not expect browsers to be able to render it. (Crashing is a bit much, though, it's true.)
Make a comment!
13 May 2002 - Monday
Betrayed! Cruelly betrayed by my mushroom soup!
At least the IT guys didn't mock me too much when I had to
ask for a new keyboard.
Make a comment!
12 May 2002 - Sunday
Ice Age had some good side bits, but the main story was, as
Chrisber put it, very American. We shall have to flog Adam for giving
bad advice. (Okay, maybe we'll let him off on a plea of advanced
age.)
Having dinner with Chrisber and Christy and Marith is fun. I should
do it more often. I should probably not eat quite so much dairy while
doing so, but how can one resist carmelized pear & gorgonzola pizza?
Make a comment!
11 May 2002 - Saturday
Just got back from seeing The Scorpion King with Chrisber.
(Sniff! He only pays attention to me when Christy is out of town!) It was
much as advertised: good guys, bad guys, lots of fighting, chainmail
bikinis. But it didn't take itself too seriously, and how can you go wrong
with Akkadian ninja?1
1: Clearly researched by the same historians who
brought you Xena.
Make a comment!
10 May 2002 - Friday
Okay, now I've seen all three endings for Neon Genesis
Evangelion (original, "Death & Rebirth", and movie), and I still have
only the faintest idea what went on. I'm pretty sure the movie ending was
much like the original ending except with more visuals; I'm entirely
uncertain about "Death & Rebirth".
Make a comment!
9 May 2002 - Thursday
Today, I broke everything at work. Er, except for the things that my
cow orkers broke. This has not been a glorious day for Ops.
Make a comment!
8 May 2002 - Wednesday
This is pretty cool.
Make a comment!
7 May 2002 - Tuesday
Look, entries now are labelled with day-of-week! Isn't that cool?
* * *
Angie noticed that I was wearing a new shirt today. I hesitate to
assign significance to this fact. :)
* * *
After much too long, the Lettergame lives
again!
* * *
Gretchen reviews the things she reads, instead of just giving them a
one-character rating. This is because Gretchen is cooler than I am.
days of the week by kit (Wed May 8 10:13:40 2002)
Days of the week! cool!
Make a comment!
6 May 2002 - Monday
Oops, there was a planned power outage over the weekend, which I
completely failed to shut down my unix box for. It doesn't seem to have
suffered any catastrophes as a result, though.
But, to make up for that, a couple of important disks filled up over
the weekend and exploded many of our SSH keys, making our servers so
secure that even we couldn't get into them. But we have l33t
5y54dm1n 5k1llz, so everything is better now, and the ticket queue is
clear, and everything. We're so cool.
Make a comment!
5 May 2002 - Sunday
I was earliest, but everyone else was early for brunch too, so I
didn't have to sulk. Then we rescued twenty-six innocents in twelve
seconds flat, or at least the other PCs did: Fulgurite couldn't use his
power without setting off the building early, so had to settle for
saving the raccoon minions and innocent little kittens and some evidence
from the villain's lab. Then we flushed the villain out and beat the
snot out of him in about three seconds, because Fulgurite stunned him
with mighty pheromones so everyone hit the first time instead of missing.
Warden got hold of him, and that was pretty much it.
Then I successfully coordinated with Rebecca, Dave, and Marith to eat
salad and go see Spider-Man. As advertised earlier, it was not
great but okay. It did focus a lot on the personal, rather than
superheroic, aspects of the story, but from what I know of the source
material, that's pretty accurate. And Kirsten Dunst does a
remarkably good job of looking like an old-style four-color
comicbook chick. There were parts where it dragged, though, and the
effects were only so-so in a lot of places. But overall, worth seeing1.
1: Bonus points for Kirsten Dunst being thoroughly
soaked and awfully cold, if you like those sort of things.
* * *
Nothing I did today is even remotely like grocery shopping.
Make a comment!
4 May 2002 - Saturday
Amber High School today, whee! Our Heroes went up the moonlight
stairs to Tir na Nogth, the reflection of Amber in the sky, where they
had assorted spirit-journey experiences which mostly told them to walk
the Pattern, but not just yet. Then there was dealing with the fallout
from that, and then we ended on a cliffhanger: first day of classes,
first day of Cadet Officer duties!
Something I snacked on during the game didn't agree with me, and my
Cajun blackened catfish at Fish Market was somewhat too blackened, but I
didn't actually die.
Make a comment!
3 May 2002 - Friday
<TBG>
Extrawoot! I successfully swapped a fighter I couldn't maintain for a
yummy shield-enhancing artifact, and paired with the person I need to
give stuff to!
</TBG>
* * *
But this is the real
wootage!
* * *
GURPS Cabal is great! It's got the thirty-six Decans! And the
ten Sephiroth! And the four Realms! It has a vast ancient magical
conspiracy, but avoids the two WW traps of making every single incident in
all of history the work of nonhumans and of anti-rational ranting! It has
bizarre and frightening magical ecologies springing up on the underside of
the bridge that leads across the Abyss to Heaven! It admits that Hermetic
magic was invented by taking a bunch of stuff, stirring it together in a
big pot, and seasoning to the individual magus's taste! It has astrological
modifiers!
It is a work of genius1! Buy it! Read
it! Use it for evil!
1: But not twisted genius; it is too well-rooted in
"real" Hermetic magical theory for that. But perhaps that just means
it's genius of a higher order, like The Stress of Her Regard
and Declare!
* * *
The first three episodes of Oh My Goddess! were very cute,
but not as interesting as the manga; less characterization, especially
of the goddesses. Skuld was a pretty good obnoxious pre-teen, though.
Make a comment!
2 May 2002 - Thursday
The four victims for Tokyo Tower appear to be Christy, Marith,
Chrisber, and Carl. I'm so doomed!
But I can't be thoroughly doomed until they send me characters and
image choices and rationalizations for image choices and some idea of
what they each want in the game.
Hint. Hint.
* * *
Yay! Christy sent me a character for Tokyo Tower! Her image is the
three apples! Yay! Perhaps other people should learn from Christy's
excellent example!
* * *
Angel Links has been removed from the Whisman Station Anime
schedule by a vote of 1-0 (6 abstentions). We don't yet know what will
replace it.
Make a comment!
1 May 2002 - Wednesday
I made an extra 100 seconds' pay by interpreting the relevant man page
to tell Bruce why his script wasn't working. Yay me! :)
* * *
Unsubscribed to four comics, subscribed to one (which may have been
on my list already). Definitely a step in the right direction.
* * *
Marith doesn't love us because of work, Jim and Cera love each other
more than they love us, and Rebecca and Angie and Ray are
just plain antisocial, but we had Fun anyway. So there!
Devil Bunny didn't get a ham, per se, but might have been able to
improvise something from the remains of Dave's second sous-chef.
Fun by Tamago (Thu May 2 10:37:42 2002)
And I proved that, really, all you need is Love... and some help from the other players.
Re: Fun by Trip (Thu May 2 11:14:40 2002)
Yah, Christy loves us! Or we love her! Or something.
hey! by Angie (Fri May 3 07:55:23 2002)
I was just differently social! Five people came over and watched hockey and ate pizza at my place, that's quite social. ^_^ Wednesdays will just be all hockey-busy until the playoffs are over, which hopefully won't be for a good long while.
Make a comment!
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