Previously, in Trip's Life...
30 April 2009 - Thursday
Work: Hours of phone interview survived: 0.5.
Notices about my failure to sign my unemployment weasel responded to
with signature: 1. State tax refund checks received: 1.
Unemployed Barbie says, "Interviewing is hard! Let's go get jobs
through nepotism!"
Visual Entertainments: Third disc of Pumpkin
Scissors. The evil conspiracy is becoming more apparent!
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
29 April 2009 - Wednesday
Work: Phone interviews arranged for tomorrow: 1.
Gaming: Finished reading Swashbucklers of the
7 Skies which is pretty darn cool. Too bad I can't run PDQ games
to save my life.
Gaming, cont: Mike is in Boston, so instead of
playing Earthdawn we played Kingsblood. Ken and Dave won.
Food: Ken made us pasta with raab, sun-dried
tomatoes, and pine nuts; and also sausage. Yum!
Cats:
I feel bad about not paying more attention to Marmalade, but Ghirardelli
is the one who comes and pesters me for attention!
Writing: FAIL. Because I suck.
Make a comment!
28 April 2009 - Tuesday
Work: FAIL.
Visual Entertainments:
- Avatar: The Last Airbender 1-2: Yay non-honkie
characters! Yay extra surface area! Yay hexpenguins!
- Kaleido Star II 24: Well, okay, but what's left for
episodes 25 and 26 now?
- Bleach 127-128: Orihime and Rukia defeat everyone for
the win, I'm telling you.
- Black Lagoon 21: Surely this will end well!
Food: Yay eating less pizza!
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Writing: FAIL fail faility fail.
Make a comment!
27 April 2009 - Monday
Work: Sent followup queries to Yahoo! and the people
who I am studying up on performance for, but otherwise fail.
Visual Entertainments: Finished the second disc of
Pumpkin Scissors. Then, watched the first disc of
009-1, which is sexy cyborg secret agent action set in the
future but very 60s-retro in art, setting, and story. (This turns out to be
because it's based on a manga that ran from 1957 to 1970.)
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Writing: FAIL, always fail.
Make a comment!
26 April 2009 - Sunday
Gaming: One of the eladrin pansyboy fencers was lame
beyond belief, but the other one managed to put Roger down after enough
of a fight that he had to take him seriously. Then everyone went haring
off to the ancient tiefling city now surrounded by volcanoes, which I
hadn't expected. Orc berserkers distracted them from actually reaching
the volcanoes this session, so hopefully by next session I will be more
prepared. Also Naled will be completely confused by what his freakish
new friends have gotten him into.
And, level UP! Wow, two daily powers! I will have to send
more horrible monsters against them!
Cats:
Ghirardelli steals my seat every time I get up! He is adorably fluffy,
but pretty obnoxious!
Writing: FAIL.
Volcanoes by Rachel (Wed Apr 29 22:02:40 2009)
Damaia rules! Of course she'd head for a tiefling city and volcanoes. Everyone else was just pulled in her wake. Mmm, lava.
The orc berserkers were pansies too. Two, count them two daily powers!
Re: Volcanoes by Trip (Thu Apr 30 17:34:17 2009)
Did I mention that the volcanoes are infested with harpies, sodden ghouls, and madwraiths?
Re: Volcanoes by Jeremy (Mon May 4 23:20:13 2009)
Damaia can go first!
Make a comment!
25 April 2009 - Saturday
Work: Read the section on performance analysis and
tuning in The Linux Programmer's Toolbox, which is not like
becoming an expert but is like being slightly less ignorant.
Gaming: Blargh. Well, I have the Monster
Manual so I can always just make up an encounter once the PCs get
themselves into trouble.
Visual Entertainments: Started the second disc of
Pumpkin Scissors.
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
24 April 2009 - Friday
Work: Still no word from Yahoo!. Bah.
Gaming: I have to run D&D4 on Sunday, but I have no
real idea what to do. Bah.
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
23 April 2009 - Thursday
Thermions: Less plentiful today!
Work: I should be learning things, but I'm not. Bah.
Visual Entertainments: Disc two of Welcome to
the NHK. Hey, look, now they've got a romance plot. I wonder what
other genres we'll visit. (But poor Misaki. That is the densest male
lead I have seen in quite a while.)
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
22 April 2009 - Wednesday
Work: If the recruiter's client doesn't laugh out
loud when she sends them my resume, I might have an interview next week.
I better brush up on performance analysis and tuning under Linux.
Visual Entertainments: We have finished the story
episodes of xxxHolic, and they concluded with a good bit!
However, Ayse had to go home and sleep before we could watch the side
story episode.
Next time for sure!
Cats:
Maddie-cat still doesn't like me. Sniff.
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
21 April 2009 - Tuesday
Thermions: still DO NOT WANT.
Work: Resumes sent out: 1. Prescriptions filled
cheaply at Target instead of expensively at Long's: 4. Yahoo! interview
feedback received: 0.
Gaming: Finally I have Arcane Escalation
Guide Power! Now I can make Lycoris all-powerful! Or at
least make up for her being the weakest class in the game.
Visual Entertainments:
- 39-40: Eh, she wasn't using those lungs anyway. Also,
THE END.
- 23: Go Layla-san!
- 19-20: Black and withered though it may be, Revy does
have a heart, unlike Balalaika.
- 126: I think Rukia and Orihime should ditch the rest
of the cast and go solve the problem themselves. But perhaps I am not
quite the target demographic for shounen anime.
Next week, Avatar! Two weeks after that, Code
Geass! The week after that, something else! I should probably decide
what, and obtain it.
Cats:
Ghirardelli really doesn't like it when I try to get the mats out of his
fur, but his fur is so wonderful I can't resist trying to de-yuckify it.
:(
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
20 April 2009 - Monday
Thermions: DO NOT WANT.
Work: FAIL.
Gaming: In theory I could make something like this,
if only I were cool enough. Bah. (link via Carl)
Visual Entertainments: Finished the first disc of
Welcome to the NHK, which is still weird, but seems to be
settling into the "show otaku culture to the straights" genre.
Cats:
Some cats have a lot to say in the morning!
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
19 April 2009 - Sunday
Gaming: Now that the moving is really truly finally
over, we can play Thrace again! This session, Lycoris got to "magically"
disguise herself and infiltrate a hoe-down to look for necromancers, and
then we checked out the old graveyard hill and found not only more
undead, but gnolls, hyenas, traces of a ritual (zombie sacrifice?!) and
the entrance to a dungeon. Sadly, we used most of our daily powers in
the fight on the surface, so we may not be able to actually raid the
dungeon before the necromantic cult has a chance to clear out.
Food: Ken made Easter-with-rain-check dinner, and we
feasted! Ham! Glaze on ham! Leeks! Peas! Cheeses! Happiness!
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
18 April 2009 - Saturday
Work: Marith lured me into helping her coffee-shop
acquaintence Esfandiar set up a server and router in his apartment so they
can talk to the network and wake-on-LAN. Apparently I'm out of practice,
because I forgot the first law of networking issues: if you're so certain
that the problem is not with the cabling that there's no point in checking,
the problem is in the cabling. But eventually it worked!
Visual Entertainments: Started Welcome to the
NHK!. Weird.
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
17 April 2009 - Friday
Work: FAIL
Modern Medicine: Even though I've been stressedly
slacking off on eating properly, my ichor numbers are still quite good.
Yay me, I guess.
Cats:
Twelve adorable paws!
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
16 April 2009 - Thursday
Work: I spent all morning being interviewed by
Yahoo! people. It was in-depth technical interview, and showed quite
well that I'm a complete idiot.
Visual Entertainments: Final disc of
Ultramaniacs. Aww!
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
15 April 2009 - Wednesday
Work:No actual job-hunting, but I think I
successfully extracted money from my new-found old account.
Gaming: Earthdawn! But Ayse was sick or pregnant or
dead or something and went to bed early, and I was too sleepy to try to
outtalk Mike, so mostly we watched him almost get us all sunk to the
bottom of the river as spies. Also, there was a hint that we should be
dealing with the magically-enslaved steam pirates.
Food: Ken fed me chicken soup so I ended up not
eating cold leftover pizza after all. This is probably a win.
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
14 April 2009 - Tuesday
Work: Wait, that account still has money in it? Huh,
I thought it had withered away long ago. I guess things are not as bad
as they looked yesterday!
Visual Entertainments:
- Rose of Versailles 37-38: We expected that to happen
well before now.
- Black Lagoon 18: And the winner is... Benny!
- Kaleido Star II 21-22: If you want to be oppressed
properly, you have to do it yourself.
- Bleach 125: Why do I think they're not going to use
either of the two obvious solutions we came up with?
Cats:
Twelve fliffy paws!
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
13 April 2009 - Monday
Work: Interview requests acceded to: 1.
Visual Entertainments: Finished the disc of
Pumpkin Scissors, and watched the penultimate disc of
Ultramaniacs which GreenCine finally sent me after
I've had the last disc sitting unwatched for months.
Cats:
Twelve adorable paws!
Writing: FAIL.
Greencine sets by Carl (Wed Apr 15 00:25:33 2009)
You don't use Greencine's ability to define a set of discs and tell it "don't send the #2 disc until you've sent me #1?" I found that very useful, back before I dropped Greencine when they moved to LA and started taking 2 weeks instead of 1 day to send me the next disc. (They might have fixed that by now.)
Re: Greencine sets by Trip (Wed Apr 15 11:21:43 2009)
Like many automated processes, it works great until a human gets involved. :(
Make a comment!
12 April 2009 - Sunday
Gaming: Earl has somehow not been put off gaming
forever, so his wizard was available to provide flaming spheres for the
Palo Alto D&D4 game. Despite that, Naled was the only survivor of an
enconter with one sodden ghoul wailer and two mad wraiths that was later
determined to be a dream sequence. After that hideous vision, the party
went into the dungeon without any wraith seeds civilians
and managed to have the fight in the large control room instead of the
cramped sewers, which made it a cake walk (for suitably painful values of
"cake").
The fight against the horrible things in the paddock of dead cows was
allegedly of the same level as the disastrous first fight, but none of the
PCs was in even slight danger of dying. I think monsters with auras should
have a split level rating, depending on whether they're in an enclosed
space or not.
Visual Entertainments: First two episodes of
Pumpkin Scissors. So far it's following the manga pretty
closely.
Cats:
Ghirardelli likes sitting in the new chair, perhaps because it is black
and makes him look even more chocolatey and splendid.
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
11 April 2009 - Saturday
Vacation: Ayse and Ken and Dave and Marith and Earl
and Cat and Carl took me to Santa Cruz to celebrate my ancientness, only
three weeks late! Yay gaming stores! Yay bookstores! Yay Perg!
Food: Brunch at Zachary's!
Yum! Dinner at Mobo
Sushi! Extra yum!
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
10 April 2009 - Friday
Work: Resumes sent out: 1. At least I got an
autoresponse.
Labor: Helped Ayse and Ken finish getting stuff out
of their old place, which is now entirely empty. Yay!
Gaming: Despite moving things yon and hither, we got
to San Jose in time to play New World for a little while. The PCs found
an immense canyon with more bug-monsters but no life-sucking nature, and
an obvious water leak on which they can blame all their troubles. Then
they asked the gods for advice, so I have to come up with a cryptic
vision by next time we play.
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
9 April 2009 - Thursday
Work: FAIL.
Visual Entertainments: Donnie Darko was
a very strange movie. But I think
<spoiler>
vg jnf npghnyyl n gvzr ybbc bs fbzr xvaq, abg whfg na bpphenapr ng Bjy Perrx orqebbz
</spoiler>.
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
8 April 2009 - Wednesday
Work: Phone scream with Yahoo!. I am still quite
stupid, but sometimes I can realize when I have been stupid and correct
myself. I'm not sure if this makes me more or less employable, since as
we all know correcting yourself is deeply unAmerican.
Gaming: Earl told me about a two-page microgame he
played last weekend, Ghost/Echo
(PDF), which seems to handle something I've been thinking about for a
while: Pyrrhic victories (aka "yes, but..."). In Ghost/Echo, when there's
something you need to roll for, you have a Goal and some number of Dangers;
you roll as many d3s as you have Goals and Dangers combined (or maybe one
more if you are "especially well prepared"; and you assign one die to each
element with 3 being good (goal achieved/danger avoided), 1 bad (goal
failed/danger comes true), and 2 partial (goal partially achieved and
opportunity remains for next roll/danger comes partially true and remains
for next roll). This also lets the player choose when to get a "yes,
but...", which is additional goodness.
I must ponder how to steal this and/or die in a pit of game design
failure.
Visual Entertainments: Ayse and Ken went to Neil and
Stacy's seder instead of coming to entertain Earl and Cat with the rest
of us-DMT, so we watched Porco Rosso without them. It was
swell!
Cats:
Twelve paws of high quality!
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
7 April 2009 - Tuesday
Work: Arranged a phone scream for tomorrow.
Visual Entertainments:
- Rose of Versailles 35-36: It's not looking good for the French
aristocracy.
- Kaleido Star 20: Oh, were you starting to feel sympathy
for Yuri?
- Black Lagoon 16-17: I think this character has been
imported from another show. One with more underwear and less sense.
- Bleach 124: All special training, all the time!
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
6 April 2009 - Monday
Work: FAIL.
Visual Entertainments: Pani Poni Dash!
still makes almost no sense.
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
5 April 2009 - Sunday
Labor: Helped Ayse and Ken remove unwanted objects
to the dump, then helped Ayse and Ken shop for tables at Ikea. They
bought me a computer desk and chair, because there is no escape from the
generosity!
Ikea has string dispensers in the loading zone, for people who need
to tie their trunks closed after filling them with oversized flat boxes.
That is cleverness and win.
Gaming: After travelling and gaming and more
travelling and stuff, Ayse and Ken were not up for Thrace. I can't
really blame them.
Visual Entertainments: Pani Poni Dash!
looks familiar, so I guess I probably did actually watch disc one before
starting disc two, but I sure don't remember anything about it. Also, it is
extremely surreal. Huh.
Food: Swedish meatballs, with Swedish cream gravy!
Cats:
Marmalade was so very very excited to see Ayse when she came to find out
why I was too incompetent to get directions to the dump off the intertubes!
He's not a shy cat, but for that kind of reaction, I think he must actually
remember her from when he was little, not just be interested in a new
person. Aw!
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
4 April 2009 - Saturday
Gaming: More Ptolus!
When our characters went back into the Underground Lair of Gnollish
Death, there were no more gnolls, but they found the villain of the lair at
home and he whupped them with a web spell and some spider-based
abominations. Erika got to mock Shilukar by not dying, but the group ended
up having to leave Raul as a hostage while they reported back to Castle
Shard. Shilukar ended up getting in, but at least he couldn't make
abominations there. For their efforts, the group got paid and were made
official Friends of Castle Shard.
The drug dealer who they had retrieved the Watch of Doom for let them
know that someone had hired one of his guys to whack one of them as a
warning to stay away from Phon. Because they had done business together,
the drug dealer was willing to help them set up a fake murder, and even
tell them when and where his guy was going to get paid. Karl got "stabbed"
to "death" in front of witnesses, with a bit of illusion, and Erika trailed
the runner who delivered the payment to find out where the orders came
from. It turned out to be Phon's former boss, brother of the guy who had
hired them to investigate the Idol of Gnollishness, and probably the person who had Phon
hidden away by the Fateweavers. Since they had been leaving Phon alone,
this was kind of mysterious, but whatever.
The priest/activist who had hired them to look into the idol failed to
return to Ptolus after the two weeks he had predicted, but there wasn't
much anyone could do about that.
Karl's ancestors suggested that the time for the box to be opened was
coming up, so he went to the temple of Niviril to ask about the Nineteenth
Key. After ascertaining that he is the legitimate owner of the Nineteenth
Lock, they told him for a moderate fee that the Key is in the House of the
Pythoness. Also, there are apparently deep connections between the blue
gnolls and the history or fate of Ptolus.
The House of the Pythoness was a brothel until the Knights of the Pale
raided it three years ago and extirpated the chaos cult Crimson Coil that
was lairing there. The nine-story castle-like building has been abandoned
since then, waiting for heirs of the cult leaders to claim it. No one
was really surprised that it was being used as a lair by
illusion-wielding undead (not too much of a problem) or an assortment of
rat-monsters of various sizes (problematic until the PCs had a chance to
recover spells and buff before going back in).
Next session, we resume the dungeon haunted house crawl
with a good five rounds left on the buffs! And when we finish that,
LEVEL UP!
Food: Gaming munchies all day. Oog.
Cats:
Still twelve paws when I got home! They hadn't even eaten all the
crunchyfood I left them.
Marmalade snuggled in my arms quite extensively!
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
3 April 2009 - Friday
Work: FAIL.
Gaming: No New World because Neil had some religious
obligation, so we-ADKT just drove up to Roseville at a sane hour.
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
2 April 2009 - Thursday
Work: Contracting companies talked to about a
position at Apple: 1. Technical quizzes given by untechnical recruiters:
1. Technical interviews where the person failed to call me for no
apparent reason: 1.
Gaming: Looks like no New World on Friday, so I
can't have Marith's character eaten by bugs. Darn!
Cats:
Yah, that's about
right. (via Carl)
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
1 April 2009 - Wednesday
Work: Phone interviews scheduled for tomorrow:
1½.
Gaming: We all knew gamers would go to great lengths
to game, but who would have through they would even do physical labor?
Anyway, we cleared enough space in the House of Boxes that we could play
Earthdawn, and Ken even got to sit in the Grotty Yellow Chair of GMing
(formerly resident in the garage (they have a garage!)).
The eight-legged giant crocodile turned out to be a double-ended
monster assembled from two slightly more ordinary dire crocodiles, which
was just as horrible as it sounds, but we prevailed with many pointy
objects and even got back to town despite our native guide getting
attacked by pirates with explodey weapons (or so he says). Rat-bastard
Therans stole the dead crocodile, for which they must pay even though we
weren't going to carry it back.
Next session, we journey toward the fabled mosquito-free paradise of
Throal! Unless we get attacked by pirates with explodey weapons, of
course.
Food: I lent Ken my pocketknife to cook with, so he
shared bowtie pasta with bacon, asparagus, and peas. Yum!
Cats:
Twelve paws!
Writing: FAIL.
Make a comment!
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