House of Leaves, gettin' tougher

As the book sort of, changes, in the 100's it has become obviously more difficult to read. Not that the subject matter is tougher, but the physical act of reading the book has become borderline, annoying.

Not real big annoying, but enough that I am discouraged to read it in bed at night which is when I usually read. Lots of page flipping and axis shifting, etc. I still like it, and I 'get' what's happening and how the story and book are sort of running parallel (I think), but still. I still likey, of course.

I actually picked up Storm of Swords again (in House of Leaves protest)last night and I never finished it the first time and really there is no point in trying to continue on - I need to at the very least start the book over to refresh wtf is going on.

So I did. And now I feel like I need to restart Clash of Kings too, so I can get the back story to SoS. Cool! I just need to read roughly 1500+ pages to catch up with where I left off last time! Wheeee!

Happy Father's Day

... even to those individuals on the Action Team, who may be using family and fatherhood as a shield, a "beard" as it were, to deny the homosexual impulses that throb in their loins. (Hint, it's not Art.)

Various things:
- My own dad is 70 in a few days. Holy shit. Still partying hard and ready to attend bachelor parties in my place, though.

- How is it possible that this year is almost halfway over already?

- After playing Ancients with Aeryk at the con, I got inspired to start playing Command & Colors games again and dug out Battlelore with the intention of painting the guys I'd primered so long ago. Only to discover... something weird happened to the primer. It became glossy and took on an unpleasant, tacky texture. No way it would hold paint. No idea what happened there because it definitely wasn't like that when I threw it in the box (and I'm pretty sure it was fully dry when I did so).

- After many dry years, I'm finally working on a piece of writing that I have a feeling is, actually, good. In fact, the feeling unnerves me because I like it so much and I'm scared I'll fuck it up. Still plugging away at it though. Right now my job sucks hard so I'm basically taking hour and a half lunches, writing during that time, and considering that my "real job."

- Earthdawn 3rd edition! Fuck and Yeah!

Bioshock is great! I came back to it last night but unfortunately, I think I might have to restart it, because I'm in the middle of this chapter where I don't really remember what's going on, or the layout, and so I'm kind of bumbling around and the momentum has deflated somewhat. But, I think it would be fun to restart too, so that's cool.

Eric, my offer to lock you in my back room until you have painted all my miniatures still holds, if you need something to do... I'll even prime them first.

Salutations!

I do believe I will be able to attend the khan.

Can't make any promises about bringing painted minis. Oh how the miniature gods weep. But there is just so much internet porn to get through you can't really blame me.

Jon - Infinity you say? Hmmmmm... Are you interested in any particular army? I have the rulebook (only skimmed its contents though). I'll bring it along and we'll try a game or two. If I can get my ass moving, we might even have minis to use. Don't be surprised if it ends up with lint and wads of tissue paper as figures though.

Here's their site with in case you haven't seen it. Has PDF of the rules in the download section too.
linky link

Fuck you forever, (name of project)!

My project is FINALLY FUCKING FINISHED.

Jesus. The last two months of my life have been crazy. Filled with more OT, more corporate bullshit, and more stress than any other. But it's finished! God Damn!

I cannot even begin to express to you guys how relieved I am to have this thing done with.

I'm at home and the sun is still out! Holy fuck!

This is my first significant project where I was in a management position. Normally in QA, you get tired from the long hours at the end, you're sick of the product. But at the end of the day, you find a crash bug the day you're supposed to ship, it's no big deal. But this was different. It was my project. Every bug had me wondering how we could have possibly missed this stuff before. Sick days, nah. Optional overtime, no. I mean I could skip out. But it was my show and my ass on the line. At the end, I still liked the product, but I was actively sick of it. Today when we were trying to find final stop ship bugs... I may have ignored a couple of things that I saw. Whereas normally I am the most obsessive compulse bug writer of all time.

At this point I'm so happy to be done. The only thing that would ever induce me to go back in tomorrow and work on it more is if I heard about a bug that would blind any kid under eight or something. Even then... I might not go in.

I got the afternoon and tomorrow off, so I'm gonna hang out, drink beer, play video games, and possibly check myself into a mental asylum.

Monday I start working on the patch.

D'oh.

Attention people with big fat heads.

That is fine by me. Should I also expect certain people named after floor coverings from Asia using an antiquated colonial regional reference?

I presume that you are still vaguely familiar with the system, so I will send you the short version. AirBART from terminal to Oakland/Coluseum BART station ($2.00). Buy a BART ticket for $3.35. Take the BART train (SF, Daly City, Millbrae, or SFO bound) to Embarcadero. Exit BART portion of station and make way to SF MUNI portion of station through turnstiles ($1.50, coins only). Jump on an 'N' outbound. Get off at $ixt33nth Avenue. You know the rest I think.

No Kombat Drop Kommanders yet. I presume we will get to bust it out sometime soon.

Too bad about GenCon SoCal, not that the signs were not already there. Certainly the letter helps shed some light on things.

D>M>

Wow, a plethora of blogtastic delights awaits!

Yeah, Children of Men is great. Especially the scene in the warzone at the end. Don't want to pump it up to much but that was well worth seeing. The scenes of chaos all through the movie rang really true for me, too. Constant Gardener: I've been meaning to see this one based on the reviews. Now that somebody I know has seen it and liked it, I'll add it to the queue!

Aeryk: You should go to the convention on the 11th, 12th, and 13th instead. Because that week up to and until March 7, I will be stressed out as fuck and probably working 20 hours a day trying to get my goddamn project out the door. And after that I will be really happy and probably really drunk. Oh well! Pour one on the curb for me. What kind of convention will this be, anyway?

I haven't tried out Kombat: Kommander: Keurope yet. I have punched about half the chits and read the first two pages of rules... baby steps! I am pretty excited about it. Maybe Enron can help me with it since he has actually played it.

What I also picked up and am actually just as excited about is the expansion for Twilight Imperium (boo...). It addresses a common complaint of the base game by making it more of an out-and-out wargame with some Euro elements, instead of the other way around. It also provides a means to shave about an hour off the front of the game. All changes I'm excited about! Hacan, rrrrrowr!

Change, we fears it!

Google blogs wtf.

There is an open letter from Peter Adkinson at the SoCal Gencon website (RIP). Fairly interesting. Long story short, didn't make money, attendance dropped in the last year. All hail Creator.

I bought that game at Endgame. They mentioned the designer coming out sometimes. Apparently he lives in some Godawful backwater near Bakersfield? Anyway if I see him around I will definitely recommend that he add some Warmachine and Puerto Rico subsystems to the game. Also all the chits should be replaced with featureless wooden cubes. This is just my opinion but I strongly feel, it is right!