Drew's Pointless Livejournal

A shiny (and mildly radioactive) bauble

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:04:38 GMT

My weekend project.

I've built these before. There's nothing special about the design of this one, but this was the first try with the new jig to hold the frame in shape for soldering.

Those who will not learn from the past...

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 16:22:50 GMT

After quitting Champions Online in disgust I've been reading reviews of Bill Roper's previous project, the failed MMO Hellgate London. I'd never played it or even heard much about it when it was open, but I've been hearing Champions Online compared to it. Most of the reviewers agree that Hellgate London was a game with some interesting ideas and a lot of promise. The problems which ultimately killed it sound very familiar to CO players. These include:

Failure at world-building. The world of Hellgate London was a joke, literally. No attempt was made to give the world any depth, or to give any of the characters any personality or verisimilitude. Dialog was made from in-jokes, pop culture references, and frequent breaking of the fourth wall for cheap laughs. Immersion was impossible, and the players had no reason to develop any interest or connection with the world. Champions Online has exactly the same problem. If the developers don't take the game world seriously, how can the players?

Uninteresting and inaccurate scenery Hellgate London was set in London, but the actual game world had very little resemblance to the real city. This would have been acceptable if the developers had made their city interesting and epic on its own, but the actual game scenery was an uninteresting mess. A few real London landmarks were thrown in, but were poorly and incompletely represented. Champions Online is no different. The two starting zones, White Sands and Canada, are both uninteresting, confusing mazes of repetitive scenery, and both look almost nothing like their real-world counterparts. The game's main zone - Millennium City - has the excuse of being a fictional city, but the layout and surrounding geography completely fail to match the alleged real-world site. Combined with the terrible dialog and writing, this kills any world-feel the game might have.

Opaque and confusing combat and crafting The combat system in Hellgate London was according to reviews confusing and opaque. The crafting system had some interesting ideas, but was completely undocumented. Champions Online is having much the same problems, with powers whose actual effects are only vaguely defined and lots of trial and error needed to determine which power combinations actually work well. With a marginally functional respec system, it's easy to end up with an unrecoverably gimped character after guessing wrong when picking a power.

Terrible social/chat tools One reviewer said that Hellgate London had one of the worst chat interfaces he'd ever seen, annoying and useless. Finding and playing with friends was difficult and badly supported. Champions Online, again, has the same problem. A chat box with a fixed 7 line length and a barely functional scroll bar, and no tools for creating additional chat boxes or tabs or filtering the chat channels. It is also difficult to find your friends or determine which of the hundreds of server shards they're on.

Unresolved stability issues Hellgate London was buggy and unreliable, even beyond the normal flakiness we've been conditioned to accepts from newly opened MMORPGs. It continued to be buggy and unreliable until it was closed down. Champions Online's opening day was a complete mess, with an unreliable patcher that kept most people from being able to play, and continues to be unreliable and intermittently down.

A lot of what I've heard about both games comes down to a lack of respect for the game and the players, and a lack of appreciation (and in some cases, outright contempt) for what keeps people in a MMORPG long-term: friends who play with you, and investment in the world. Both games are shoddily put together, with little care for quality control or craftsmanship. If the developer doesn't respect the players and doesn't take the game seriously, why should I reward him by paying to play it?

So I've been playing Fallen Earth lately...

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:06:14 GMT

I started playing Fallen Earth about a week ago, right around the end of Champions Online's open beta. I only lasted a few days on CO before becoming fed up with it. I think it was after I decided I'd rather clean the dishwasher than play CO that my wife suggested that I try Fallen Earth. She's actually been suggesting I look at it for years. Hadn't sounded interesting enough to me, mostly because after having seen Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa I was expecting yet another MMO that was nothing more than new paint on the same old stale gameplay. Well, I was wrong.

Fallen Earth is different. It's nonlinear, almost a sandbox MMO, with many ways to advance other than just fighting stuff, set in a gigantic seamless world with more content than I've seen in any other MMO. (City of Heroes probably has more now, but not at the start). I'm very impressed, and have already pre-ordered.

First, the parts I find problematic. Fallen Earth's combat system requires manual aiming, like a first-person shooter. I'm still getting the hang of it, and I'm wary of ever engaging in PVP since I know my reflexes can't match the caffeine-and-sugar fueled 15 year olds who like online FPS PVP games. I decided to focus on non-combat content, which there's a lot of.

At the start of the game you're a normal person, with minimal skills and equipment. You get to do the tutorial at level 40, but are wiped before going into the real game. There aren't classes as such, you need to level up to gain skills and equipment to specialize in a role, so the only things that distinguish starting characters are the cosmetic details you can pick during chargen. They game does give you more freedom than most MMOs in your appearance, although it of course can't come close to CoH. There are about 20 faces to pick from, but somehow they all look pissed off. It also follows the common MMO practice of having your gear and armor determine what visible outfit your character is wearing. There does seem to be a decent number of options for normal civilian clothing, although there don't seem to be any clothing stores so you have to use crafting skills to make them. You can also have your character walk around basically naked if you want, although it's not recommended. Armor is your friend, and the armor in FE isn't of the chainmail bikini type some MMOs have – it's actually sensibly designed clothing.

The interface takes some getting used to. It's not as bad as Anarchy Online, which I ragequit and uninstalled from when I somehow managed to destroy my gun while trying to equip it, but it can be tricky. It took me a while at the start of the tutorial to figure out how to talk to the computer terminal that was trying to give me my first mission. Most of the questions on the New Player chat are “How do I do ...” issues with the interface. Once you get used to it it's not bad, but there's a lot going on that isn't intuitive to most MMO players.

The thing I think most likely to turn off players is that the game is a lot slower-paced than most MMOs these days. Unlike City of Heroes where you can go through Outbreak and reach level 10 in an afternoon, it took me two days of playing to gain a single level after the tutorial. Travel times are huge – it can take hours to walk to another town, although this does get better once you have a horse or vehicle. The simplest recipe I have, Craft Ragged Bandage, takes a minute per bandage, and something like a car can take days to craft. The game does let you do other things while crafting, and you go on crafting while offline, so you can queue up a few hours worth of crafting before you log out for the night, then log in the next day to find it all finished. I don't mind the slower-paced gameplay, but I can see how those used to the immediate gratification and face-paced combat and gameplay of most modern MMOs could get bored.

What do I love about this game? A lot.

First, the game is impressively nonlinear. The tutorial is basically on rails, of course, but once you get out of the tutorial you have a choice of half a dozen cities to start in depending on what you want to specialize in. Once you're in the game it doesn't funnel you along, but lets you wander around and decide what you want to do. There is plenty to do – I've never even come close to running out of quests available – but no giant glowing arrow pointing you at the next mission. This does lead to the occasional newbie complaining “I don't know what to do next!” on global help channels, but people looking for a more self-directed experience will appreciate not being led down a funnel.

The game world is HUGE. Apparently the devs took a chunk on the American midwest and mapped it one-to-one to their game world. You can walk for hours in a straight line without hitting an artificial boundary – none of this space compression you find in LOTRO where you can walk from Bree to Weathertop in ten minutes. It's not totally seamless as you do get periodic 'changing zone' messages as every now and then, but the world itself is graphically continuous from one end to the other. I still remember how disappointed I was with CoH when I discovered the city was broken up into little chunks by huge impassable immersion-shattering force field walls.

Huge, but not empty. There are something like a hundred actual towns, and as I walk from one to another I keep finding little settlements or ruins or scientific outposts with contacts offering yet more missions. I have to restrain my impulse to take every mission offered because even though the game lets you have a few dozen quests open at once it's still easy to fill them all up.

And despite being such a huge and open world, it doesn't feel as lonely as you'd expect. Although you might go a while without seeing another player, the game has a very good chat system. There are regional chats, and several global chat channels, which are world-wide. No worrying about if someone's on the same shard as you – as far as I can tell, there aren't shards at such. The global chat is active, and there's almost always been active GMs on the new player help channel answering questions.

I haven't tried teaming yet, although I know there is a mechanic for doing so. There's also a way to form player clans. The devs say they're working on player and clan housing. Normally I wouldn't care much about this as I tend to solo on MMOs, but somehow I've managed to make friends just during the week I've been on open beta. The community so far has been helpful and more mature than on some other games as well – more like what I'm used to on Virtue.

There's a lot of RP potential here. The world is very immersive – the devs have clearly gone out of their way to make the world well fleshed out. Compared to most MMOs I've been on there are very few times I find game mechanics breaking my immersion. You might think that an immersive post-apocalyptic world would be soul-crushingly depressing, but the missions that I've been on actually are positive enough to make me feel like going on with playing. By contrast the mission text of many Auto Assault quests made it clear that your character, no matter what faction you picked, was a monster making things worse. I don't know about you, but after enough of that I don't want to play the game anymore.

Although no game is going to match City of Heroes in the ability to customize your backstory and appearance, the devs did a decent job with what you can do in this setting. Unfortunately everyone is going to have the same canon backstory (set in the tutorial) although I expect that might get ignored for RP purposes. You do have a fair amount of ability to change what your character looks like. Face type, body size, and skin tone are fixed to what you pick in chargen, but tattoos and piercings can be altered at various shops, and you can change your hair style at any moment you wish. And there are a very good selection of well-animated emotes. My wife is jealous of the dance emotes – there are about twenty to pick from, and they're actual real-world dances rather than the bizarre spastic flailing Champions Online calls a dance. There are plenty of unused buildings and spaces to use for RP as well, some of which have already been picked out by the RP community as meeting places.

And then there's the crafting system. My god, what a crafting system. Unlike most games, the crafting system in Fallen Earth isn't some tacked-on afterthought to provide some additional content for min-maxers. It's an integral part of the game, as important as combat. From what I've seen so far, none of the good equipment in the game drops from kills. Killing animals might give you meat and leather, and killing bandits gives you the contents of their pockets, but if you want that uber machine gun or ceramic plate armor of invincibility you have to craft it. Or you can buy it from another PC who crafted it, and the game does have an action house and player-driven economy for that.

And although the crafting system does make you level up skills through practice, it avoids the “Landfill of Middle-Earth” situation by having nearly everything you make be useful, even at low levels. I picked Support for my initial specialization, and with the Medicine skill set I'm making bandages and antivenom drugs, which come in quite handy when I do need to fight something. I picked up the basic cooking skills (Fallen Earth doesn't make you have to eat, but if you don't eat anything your health and stamina recover much more slowly), and later on the Ballistics skill set so I could make ammunition for my weapons. Yes, ranged weapons in FE do need expendable ammunition, and if you run around shooting at every random snake or rabbit you find you'll rapidly run out of money, as the meager loot you get from them doesn't pay for the bullets or bolts it took to kill them.

There are a lot of recipes. Some come from stores, some are mission rewards, a few are rare drops. Many recipes include the ability to write recipe books, so that you can write them down and give (or sell) them to someone else. Provided you find or craft pen and paper, that is. It's a far cry from bind-on-acquire recipes that only mysteriously vanish from your memory after a single use.

Many of the recipes allow substitution of ingredients. For example, the 'Meat Pies' recipe I received as a reward for finding out what happened to Flaky Pete the piemaker allows any kind of meat to be used. Some recipes require as ingredients goods which are themselves the result of recipes – such as first using low-level recipes to make flour and butter, then another one to make a pie crust, and then a higher-level recipe to make the actual pie. I haven't reached it yet, but I hear the crafting process to make a car is a complex multi-day-long, multi-recipe task of gathering raw materials, refining metal and rubber, building up the frame and engine and tires, and finally ending up with something you can drive. Of course, fuel's not cheap either and also needs to be found or crafted. Finally, if you don't like or don't need a finished good, you can then break it down for raw materials to make something else with. It's the most complex and in-depth crafting system I've ever seen that still manages to be well-integrated with the gameplay.

It's also possible to level purely through crafting. Nearly any skill use – including crafting an object, harvesting a plant, or healing someone's wounds – gives experience. It's not as much as you get from completing missions, but still significant, and if you're making a crafting-heavy character it's not rare to queue up a lot of crafting jobs, log out, and then log in the next day to find you've gained a level while offline from crafting.

Another neat feature is that your choices and actions actually have repercussions for your character. The game has a complex system of faction standing, and doing a mission for one faction will raise your stat with that faction and its allied factions, while lowering your standing with their enemies. Some missions aren't available until your standing with that faction is high enough, but in the process of getting it there you may have pissed off another faction to the point that you can never get missions from them. Even little choices you make on a mission matter. When speaking to a NPC, you often are presented with choices of dialog, and how you choose matters. You don't expect a quest NPC in a MMO to become angry and attack you if you chose to insult him in the dialog tree, but that can happen in FE, and good luck getting any missions from him in the future. Your Charisma stat also comes into play, as well as various social skills available in the skill tree which I haven't had a chance to try yet.

It does unfortunately mean that it is impossible for any one character to experience all of the content in the game. But Fallen Earth seems to have so much content I don't expect that to be a problem.

Anyway, as you can see I'm loving this game. It has depth, immersive world-feel, an amazing crafting system, and a lot of potential for RP. I haven't been hooked in a MMO like this since City of Heroes, and I'll probably be playing it a lot once it opens. It is clearly a niche MMO however, and I do have some concern as to whether there are enough other players out that like this style of gameplay. I have heard that there are a lot of pre-NGE SWG players planning to join it, and I've also heard of favorable comparisons to Asheron's Call. I'm hoping this one makes it.

GenCon!

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 18:42:21 GMT

This year's GenCon was possibly the best one I've had so far. Three solid days of gaming events (nearly all of which were very fun), some good acquisitions and previews of games in the dealer's room, hanging out with some old friends and possibly making some new ones. I was able to spend some time showing off the robot, although not as much as I've have liked to. Even the drive out and back wasn't bad - the weather was mostly nice, the traffic was unusually light, and music and good company made the trip easy.

This year I originally intended to take it easier than last year, signing up for fewer events and leaving more time to relax. In that goal I failed, but at least the events I spend way to much time going to were higher-priority, things I really wanted to do. Mostly.

I heard about True Dungeon last year from some of Laurie's friends and decided to try it out, first with the True Dungeon 101 seminar and the "Getting In" miniquest, then with the main "Five Aspects'" event. Wow. Not what I expected, but a lot of fun. I can see why some people end up spending hundreds of dollars on gear and item tokens, although it seems to me the best way to do well is to be good at solving puzzles and the shufflepuck-like combat resolution system. I seem to have a knack for scoring critical hits, although I never got the hang of two-handed combat. Going back next year for at least one session, possibly two. Yet to be seen if Laurie will join me.

I managed to get into all three RoboRalley events run by a fellow who brings his own hand-made custom maps each year. Quite surprised at getting into all three as his events typically fill up in minutes after registration opens, but I wasn't passing up the opportunity to try them all. "Tomb of Twonkahamnen", "Factory Freeze", and "Paint by Register" were all great fun. I didn't do well in any of them, but that really wasn't the point. It was just fun to try out the new game mechanics and maps he introduced, as well as meeting again some of the people I've been seeing at RoboRalley games at previous GenCons. Getting into whatever events this guy runs next year will be a high priority.

I also tried the entry event for the "RoboRalley 3D" tournament. This was not so fun. It was overbooked (10 people signed up for a game which supports 8 max), run on the smallest and most difficult and annoying map that came with the game, by a GM who set everything up and then basically said "This game doesn't need a GM to run, so you're on your own now". The "RoboRalley in 3D" gimmick consisted of custom 3D tiles for all the conveyors and walls and such making up the map, which actually made the game harder to play as the robots and other game pieces didn't fit properly on the map anymore, and we kept having to look at the original game map to check which way the conveyors ran and such things. With 10 robots on the "Malestrom" map at once it was impossibly for anyone to make any progress with making it to the first flag essentially a matter of luck. This one I'll be skipping next year.

I also signed up for a "Run for your life Candyman" event at the end of the con, but bailed on that. Overbooked and crowded with annoying people.

I had the robot out and about several times during the event, but couldn't show it nearly as well or as long as I'd have liked. The $9 import wonder servos had a lot of reliability problems - not with gear failures like I'd expected, but with dead motors and cracked servo mounts. Worse than that was control problems from the terrible accuracy of the servos and limited range of the radio I used in an environment full of cell phones. More details on that are on my tech blog. I'm not sure yet if I'll try to redesign and rebuild it for next year, or come up with something completely new.

The dealer's room seemed a bit less well attended this year, probably due to everyone's recent economic problems. I did pick up some bone and horn dice for my collection of dice of unusual materials. We also bought two copies of the 6th edition Hero system rules, and a copy of "FoxBat for President" signed by the author. I was able to try the demo for Champions Online at the Cryptic booth. It was fun enough for me to pre-order a month of gameplay. From what I've played since then I don't think I'll be getting a longer-term membership.

The one regret I have over GenCon is the large amount of my limited vacation days it takes up. I'd almost consider flying out next year, but driving still has enough pluses to make it worst spending the two additional days traveling. There are half a dozen other conventions I'd like to go to as well, but so far I only have the money and time for one non-local con.

Back from the convention.

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:05:02 GMT

Just arrived and am unpacking. As usual, the last five miles have worst traffic than the entire rest of the trip. Welcome to NJ.

Fun fact: The air conditioning on the Honda Fit when run for five hours straight in hot, humid weather will ice up and stop working. The only way to get it to work again is to turn it off and let the ice blocking the heat exchanger melt.

Will post more detailed report when not so tired.

An odd question arose over dinner...

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 23:42:57 GMT

Does middle-earth have coal? Coal implies millions of years of geology, forests being covered by rock and transformed by time and heat. Arda was created only a few tens of thousands of years ago, far too little time for coal deposits or any other kind of interesting geology to develop. Which is why you don't see strata in Moria. I don't recall any mention of coal in the books. When Saruman decided to equip his army, he had to chop down a forest to burn, and getting fresh wood to burn hot enough to make steel isn't easy.

On the other hand, a world created ex nihilo by the gods can have whatever kind of minerals in it they want, and if they wanted it to have coal veins it would.

When my wife finds coal in LOTRO, she mines it out of magically self-regenerating ore nodes sticking out of the ground. I don't recall those from the books either.

Drew versus the kitchen sink

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 23:11:25 GMT

This weekend, being my last free weekend before GenCon, I decided to finally tackle replacing our old and leaky kitchen faucet (one of the few original furnishings left in the condo) with the fancy Consumer Report's best-buy model my wife picked out months ago. What seemed in concept like such a simple task beforehand became a weekend-consuming job, eventually including:

*Determining that, in order to shut off the water supply to the existing faucet I will need to disconnect and remove the disposal. Digging through the file cabinet where we keep the product manuals for the disposal manual. Reviewing that, and then removing the disposal, then finally disconnecting the feed lines.

*Removing the cabinet door to give me more room.

*Reaching under the sink, stretching my arm around behind it, and groping around for the bottom of the faucet. Finding what felt like a threaded base with a large hex nut anchoring it to the sink. Trying unsuccessfully to loosen with my fingers.

*Borrowing my wife's flashlight and hand mirror. Carefully arranging them so that I can see the base of the faucet. Indeed, a large hex nut seems to be holding it in place.

*Reaching in with the channel-lock pliers to try and loosen it. Determining that it will be impossible to get a solid grip, let alone turn the nut, from outside.

*Taking another look at the old faucet. Noticing the plate on top of the knob can be pried off to reveal a screw head. Happily deciding I don't need to unscrew the nut under the faucet to remove it after all. Spending a while disassembling the complex puzzle of the faucet and valve mechanism.

*Realizing that disassembling the faucet gained me nothing, as the faucet base is still bolted to the sink by that one hex nut.

*Asking my wife to find an old ratty blanket due to be thrown out that she won't mind being ruined. Arranging said blanket to cover the bottom edge of the cabinet opening to make crawling under the sink less horribly uncomfortable.

*Crawling under the sink. Discovered that through a difficult and uncomfortable series of contortions, sucking in my gut and holding my breath, that I can actually manage to fit my entire torso under the sink, in a position where I can see the base of the faucet and get both my hands on it, with some room to work. Also with water and bits of dust and grout falling in my face as I tried to work.

*Working through channel-lock pliers, vice-grips, and adjustable wrench in failed attempts to get that nut to move.

*Noticing, while I was down there, the dozen T-nuts that hold the sink in place. Considering simply removing the sink before noticing the grouting which also holds the sink in place.

*Driving to the hardware store with the idea of getting some kind of crescent wrench or basin wrench or something. Finding the one guy there who seemed to be knowledgeable about plumbing. He advised me to remove the sink, and then break or cut apart the old faucet.

*Climbing back under the sink and unscrewing all dozen T-nuts. Verifying the sink will not budge as the grout is quite solid.

*Using a chisel, hammer, and putty knife to break the grout seal and finally removing the sink.

*Determining that even with a solid grip on the hex nut and the significant physical strength of my wife assisting, the nut would not budge.

*The two of us driving over to a friend's hose to see if he had any appropriate tools for breaking free a nut that size. He did not. Hanging out a while, going to dinner and ice cream, and discussing strategies to free the stuck nut.

*Returning home, realizing that it is now ten in the evening and the next steps in the process are quite noisy. Drenching nut in WD-40 to soak overnight, then going to bed.

*The next morning, attempting to break nut free with channel-locks, chisels and hammering, without success. Deciding enough is enough, grabbing Dremel tool and cutting the damn thing off. Finally removing the old faucet.

*Taking wife out to IHOP for breakfast because the kitchen is still a disaster area.

*Cleaning off several decade's worth of rust and grime from around mounting holes on sink. Also chiseling away as much of the old grout as possible, wire-brushing any parts of the sink that looked corroded, and while I was at it cleaning the counter surface around and behind where the sink had been.

*Installing the new faucet in the sink. (The easiest part of the whole process)

*Placing the sink back into the countertop. Realizing that the existing feed lines are too short and have the wrong fasteners anyway. Driving back out to the hardware store to buy fancy new steel braided feed lines.

*Removing sink, applying new grout to sink edge and placing it back in the countertop. Twisting and folding myself back under the sink and fastening all twelve T-nuts back down. Wiping off excess grout.

*Hooking up feed lines. Turning water back on. Re-installing heavy and cumbersome disposal. Reattaching cabinet door. Testing faucet, verifying with relief that I guessed right on which pipe was hot and which was cold.

*Putting away tools, returning flashlight and mirror to wife, sweeping up broken grout and other trash, taking trash out to bin, and otherwise restoring the kitchen to usable condition.

Started the job noon on Saturday, and finished late Sunday afternoon. Exhausted, but accomplished and glad to have the job done. Harder than I expected, but I had set the entire weekend aside to do this if needed.

Results of the fossil hunting expedition

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 22:46:33 GMT

Five shark teeth (likely one porbeagle shark and four crow shark)
Two vertebrae (one small bony fish and one shark or ray vertebrae)
Two small and very fragile fossil bivalves (apparently Choristothyris)
A large number of fossil squid pens (most are probably Belemnitella americana)
A rock with a shell impression (likely Choristothyris again)
A rock with a pebbled impression, possibly from something's skin.
A piece of petrified wood.
A roughly cylindrical rock with a suspiciously regular concentric hole which I think might be a piece of fossil bone.
A few roughly conical objects with clearly defined surface layers - possibly parts of fossilized teeth?
A few other unusually shaped rocks that might be bone fragments, or just funny-looking rocks.
A few funny-looking rocks.

Fossil hunting, and a strange revelation.

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:34:26 GMT

I have been invited on a fossil hunting hike a few weeks from now, a day trip to a local park to explore some of New Jersey's rich marine fossil deposits. The trip promises to be an entertaining afternoon division. The discussion about the trip with my wife beforehand may have been more revealing than anything I'll find on the trip.

My wife will not be going on the trip. Lack of interest in paleontology and expectation of mosquitoes and other insects are her entirely understandable stated reasons, but more than that I think she simply does not share my desire for exploration and learning. Her comment on my desire to go on the expedition, as well as many other things I've wanted to do, is that I wouldn't want to if I'd explored and experienced more while I was in college. I didn't think about it much when she said it, but on it seems she and I have very different views on life.

I don't believe that there is a point in life where you should stop exploring, experiencing, and learning. To me the point of life is to learn and experience all that you can during the short time you have to live, and to encourage and enrich the lives of others while you do so. To me reaching a point where I no longer want to learn or experience new things and am simply satisfied to sit back and be comfortable with stasis is essentially equivalent to being dead. I simply don't agree with the notion that once you reach a certain age you should lose interest in new experiences and adventures.

This doesn't mean that I advise being childish and irresponsible with life, or that I don't appreciate the work my wife has put into planning for our retirement. But when my wife states that I only want to go on this trip because I didn't explore enough in college, it makes me think that she really doesn't understand me. Seeking new experiences and exploring the world isn't some phase I'm going to grow out of. It's who I am and how I choose to spend my life.

It lives.

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 01:13:18 GMT

I have tamed the bees of the ether and taught the funnel to do as I command.

It lives
Still, there are many tricks it must be taught, and much detailing and dressing to do. I may teach myself leatherworking soon.

Turkey!

Thu, 28 May 2009 14:54:52 GMT

As I stepped out of the office for a moment this morning, I met a remarkably tame wild turkey on the front steps. It didn't mind me standing a few feet away and taking photos. In fact, I think it may have been following me as I went to my car and back. "You're lucky I'm not a hunter" I told it. It did not reply.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11257550@N04/3573514212/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11257550@N04/3573514164/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11257550@N04/3573514040/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11257550@N04/3572707901/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11257550@N04/3572707731/

A piece of death, a piece of power.

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:11:12 GMT

A week after Halloween, I attended a Samhain rit with a local grove. The theme of the rit was on dreams and death, and at the end everyone was given a reminder of the theme. In this case the reminder was a small uranium-glass marble, described by the hosts as "a piece of death".

I can see why they would chose that association. Radiation, nuclear power, and uranium are fearful boogeymen among the public today. The average person on the street is likely to associate radiation with death, images of nuclear weapons wiping out humanity and nuclear disasters like Chernobyl. When I show the uranium-glass marble to my friends, the usual first response is fear and alarm. There's barely enough radioactive material there to make a Geiger counter click, but the name alone brings up a seep-seated superstitious fear.

I don't think it's a fair assessment, however. I prefer to think of my little ball of uranium glass as a little piece of power, and a lesson in the fundamental forces of our universe.

Your daily existence is ruled by the electromagnetic force. Gravity holds you to the ground, but you can overcome that weak force with your muscles and walk across the room. Your movement, and your very thoughts, are the end result of a vast chain of chemical reactions, tiny electric charges causing molecules to form, change shape, or break apart as your body converts energy stored in chemical bonds into heat and movement. The floor you walk on depends on chemical bonds, electrons and protons attracting to give strength to materials. Electric fields push electrons along copper wires, delivering the power to create electromagnetic waves which you perceive as light illuminating the room.

These interactions, all controlled by the same force, are similar in strength. Size and arrangement of atoms change just how strong the total force is, but there is an upper limit to how strong something made of atoms can be, or how much energy can be contained in a fuel powered by breaking chemical bonds. Evolved in a universe controlled by electromagnetic forces, we are intuitively used to the forces and energy levels involved. Even before understanding the physics involved, we were used to the rules by which electromagnetism plays.

Nuclear forces don't play by the same rules. Just as the electromagnetic force is vastly stronger than the gravitational force - allowing a the muscles of your legs to overcome an entire planet's worth of gravity - the nuclear forces are vastly stronger than the electromagnetic forces. This is why a softball-sized lump of uranium can power a nuclear submarine for years, or why a single nuclear bomb can do more damage than thousands of conventional bombs. This thumbnail-sized glass marble contains only trace amounts of uranium, but even that tiny amount of uranium could yield more energy than a barrel of crude oil if burned in a reactor. It's why used nuclear fuel can still contain enough energy to remain dangerous for tens of thousands of years, or why a microscopic particle of radioactive debris can kill you.

It's understandable that people fear radiation. Invisible, and not fitting with the physics evolution has prepared us for, it's like some kind of supernatural force. It's not surprising that some environmental groups treat nuclear power as intrinsically evil, like getting energy via selling souls to the devil or something.

While I understand the fear, I don't for a moment agree with it, or that we should let that fear rule our choices. Nuclear energy has great power to do harm, but it also has great power to save lives and do good. There's the direct life-saving use of radiation to treat cancer, of course. More often overlooked is the benefit of nuclear power, and how it compares against coal. Despite all the development that has been put into alternative power sources, coal and nuclear are still the only choices for large-scale baseload power generation. Coal power has an indisputably high cost in terms of lives, health, and environmental damage. Nuclear power has the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives, between the direct benefit of eliminating dangerous coal-mining jobs, to those suffering from lung ailments from coal exhaust gas, and even in the long term all the deaths and displacements caused by global warming. As a humanist, and someone who believes in using technology to better the world, I believe that harnessing the nuclear strong force for peace and progress is something we should be doing.

I look at this green marble in my hand and see not death, but power. It seemed a shame just to let it sit around. I have no way to directly harness the energy in the uranium, but I can at least put the material to some artistic use. Uranium glass glows green when illuminated by ultraviolet light. I had a handful of ultrabright LEDs, left over from a bulk mixed-color buy off Ebay. Surely I could do something interesting with them. Messing around with copper wire, I would up with a radial arrangement similar to an old radial airplane engine. Originally I had planned to simply wire all the LEDs on for maximum illumination, but the radial arrangement inspired me to try and see if I could get them to light in sequence. Easiest way would have been to use a microcontroller, but a centralized control didn't fit the aesthetic I was aiming at. I put together a ring oscillator, built up of discrete components, and integrated it into the radial design. The result is a little glass-and-copper bauble, with a constantly changing green glow coming from the glass ball in the center. I'm happy with the results, although I think I can improve on it yet.

Now if only I could figure out how to make it self-powered...

Recycled Meme

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:17:18 GMT

First five people to respond get a nifty hand-made thingie. It could be any kind of thingie. Feel free to post this in your own journal, or not.

Robots....

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 03:23:50 GMT

After watching WALL-E for the dozenth or so time, my wife asks me, "You can't build EVE, can you?". Sorry. Even other than the artificial intelligence and death ray arm cannon, she floats on magical force fields. And the parts of her body aren't actually connected. Maybe if I had room-temperature superconductors to work with.

"How about WALL-E?" Well, WALL-E is at least mechanically plausible. All his parts fit together physically, and you could conceivably build an unpowered, poseable WALL-E model matching the movie. He does have an awful lot of moving parts for a mobile trash compactor, but I guess when you've got the near-magic technology and massive resources of Buy-N-Large, and a culture of pointless over-consumption, you design trash compactors with dozens of degrees of freedom. The main problem with building WALL-E (other than the artificial intelligence and implausibly effective solar panels) is the complete lack of any space to put functional parts, motors and batteries and such. His inside is hollow - filled with his arms, head, and tracks when he's folded up, and used as a trash compactor when he's working. Even the wonderfully jointed arms and hands and clever tracks don't have any provision for motors or actuators or such. There are some functional WALL-E models out there as toys or promotional media, but they haven't a fraction of the function of the one in the movie.

I could build MO. Not too many moving parts, lots of interior space for batteries and motors and such, and spherical wheel balance drive isn't hard to do with modern processors and solid-state accelerometers. I could probably even add a functional floor-cleaning mop function. But nobody cares about poor MO.

Chocolate and Samhain: My weekend

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:34:40 GMT

I had a busy, tiring, yet deeply enjoyable weekend.

Saturday - got up at 6 AM, an hour earlier than I usually get up for work. Grabbed breakfast and coffee on the road, and headed over to aiskon and yduras's place. We took the early train into the city (got to ride on one of those new double-deckers!), then the subway to a station closer to Pier 94. We walked down to Pier 94, arrived before the show started, and then got into the already fairly long line. There was some confusion - there were two different events going on at the place, and both people with tickets and those who needed to buy them were put in a single line, split into two groups, and then made to stand around until the organizers figured out who needed to go where. There was grumbling and complaining. Eventually we made it to the proper line, and discovered that they were only taking cash and checks, not credit cards. Fortunately yduras's was able to cover for me until I could get to a suitable ATM.

The chocolate show itself. Pretty damn cool, at least if you like chocolate. Chocolate bars, chocolate ganache, truffles, toffees, hot chocolate and chocolate teas. Chocolate-themed vacations, chocolate skin cream. Also bulk chocolate, chocolate processing machines, and molds for candy makers. There was even the chocolate fashion show - not terribly practical clothing apparently partly or wholly made from chocolate.

I sampled, I gathered pamphlets and catalogs for later holiday gift selection. I pocketed wrapped samples, and purchased half a dozen different exotic chocolate bars, and some chocolate skin lotion for my wife. yduras's and I were tired out early, so we waited on comfy white cushions while aiskon shopped and chatted.

By the time we were all ready to go, it was pouring outside. Rather than walk we took a taxi to Grand Central Station. New york traffic being what it was, it would have almost been faster to walk - but at least we were dry. We had lunch and visited the Grand Central marketplace, then took a subway back to the path station, then a train back to Rahway.

After returning home and appeasing my wife with an offering of hot soup and exotic chocolates, it was time to head off to the GOG Samhain rit. I briefly panicked when on reviewing my emails I realized that I never actually got directions to the rit. I'd been there before and knew where it was, roughly, but I didn't have the address or directions. A call to coyotegrrrl cleared that up, and I was off.

Samhain was satisfying. I'm still not sure just what exactly it is I'm really getting out of the rits. As an atheist and a skeptic, I can't actually believe in the literal truth of any of the spiritual or supernatural aspects of it. On the other hand, I can enjoy the process and the feeling of community, enjoy hanging out with strange and interesting people, and even appreciate the gods and beliefs in terms of archetypes and ideas. While a few years ago I would have scoffed at the idea that I'd ever be enjoying attending pagan rituals, I'm actually enjoying myself and glad I joined.

Wow.

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 03:13:26 GMT

"We are no longer a Christian nation ... we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, and a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of non-believers"

Obama on secularism

Wow. A president who realizes that those who are not Christian are also a valued part of this country. One who acknowledges atheists as equal to the religious. How cool is that?

I'm still trying to come to grips with our new president-elect. We seem to have somehow managed to elect someone who is both a decent human being and competent at the job, and who publicly acknowledges that our laws and our country aren't actually based on the Bible after all. (Oh, and he's also black.) I'm not even excited or overjoyed so much as baffled - part of my brain is simply rejecting this situation as being totally contrary to the political process I've come to expect. It's as if I got up in the morning to learn that PZ Meyers had been chosen as the next Pope, or that someone had discovered an easily reproducible and completely safe form of fusion power, or something equally wonderful yet utterly improbable. And after the last few decades of American politics, seeing a politician who doesn't immediately assume that all laws and morality are Christian in basis and that Atheists should even be considered actual people, let alone good citizens, is that amazing and unexpected.

I'm used to politicians being universally corrupt and evil. (Living in NJ may have something to do with that). My best hopes for a president is to do as little as possible, as most decisive acts I've seen by presidents have only made things worse in the long run. So I'm still describing my opinion on Obama as cautiously optimistic, and resisting the urge to get excited and hopeful. Yet I have to admit this is the coolest election result I've seen in my whole life, and the best I've felt about the future of our country.

I'm going to have to get used to this strange, alien feeling of actually liking the President.

A new day

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:15:13 GMT

For the first time I can remember, I actually feel pretty good about the results of an election. Instead of feeling I've voted for the least unpleasant of two options, I'm actually somewhat optimistic about Obama.

I also feel physically better, seem to have shaken off some of the malaise of the last few weeks. I started taking some of Laurie's magnesium pills this week, which might be helping there.

Upcoming weekend plans

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:19:21 GMT

Halloween: Nothing planned. Laurie bought candy, so I'll probably be needed for door-answering duty, even though we get few if any tick-or-treaters at the condo. Most likely we'll be left with a pile of candy that I really shouldn't eat.

This weekend is the Sugarloaf Crafts Festival. We'll probably be doing that Saturday afternoon. Laurie has coupons. Our favorite toffee vendor should be there again. Sunday we may be going up to see her father, so I can fix his lamp.

Next weekend we will be traveling into NY for the 11th Annual Chocolate Show. We're planning on taking the train in from the New Brunswick train station. Anyone else going want to coordinate on this? That evening I've been invited to the Grove of the Other Gods Samhain ritual, although I'm not sure I'll be back in time to attend it.

Stupidest doomsday plot ever: A petty rant.

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:50:05 GMT

Normally I wouldn't complain about the plausibility of an episode of Sarah Jane Adventures. It's a cute kids show, and a spin-off of Doctor Who, which never bothered to even try to make scientific sense. But the doomsday plot of the villain of the second season opener The Last Sontaran was so deeply implausible in half a dozen different ways, it broke my suspension of disbelief beyond repair and took me completely out of the episode.

The Last Sontaran warrior, survivor of a failed attempt to convert the Earth into a Sontaran breeding ground, has a plan to redeem his name by taking revenge against humanity. He plans to take over a radio telescope, use it to hack into every satellite in orbit, and command them to come down and crash into nuclear power plants, triggering a global catastrophe that wipes out all life on the planet.

Wow. Where to start with this one?

We'll assume for the moment that Sontaran can use the radio telescope to take over all the satellites in orbit. That's implausible enough, but even if you handwave that there are plenty of other flaws in the plan.

Satellites can't do that. Most of the satellites in orbit can't de-orbit on command. The idea of deliberately bringing a satellite down in a safe and controlled manner is a fairly recent concept. Usually they're left in orbit until they stop working, then come down randomly when their orbits decay. Over 100 metric tons of man-made material comes down totally uncontrolled every year. Even those which can be de-orbited on command aren't aimed precisely, but rather use their orbital maneuvering thrusters to lower their orbits until atmospheric drag can finish the job - bringing them down more or less randomly. Contrary to what was stated in the episode, the point of deorbit isn't to control where a satellite comes down, but to reduce the danger of orbital debris to other satellites.

Orbital mechanics don't work that way. A satellite coming down can't be aimed at any arbitrary point on the earth's surface. The reentry point is limited by the satellite's orbital track - it can't come down at a spot its orbit wouldn't pass over anyway. Geostationary orbits - used by most weather and communications satellites - can only be near the equator, so those satellites could only be targeted at equatorial nuclear power plants. Which there are few, if any, of. Polar orbits (used by reconnaissance, scientific research, and mapping satellites) do eventually pass over every part of the earth's surface, but you might have to wait most of a day before it's in the right spot to target a specific point.

You can't aim them that precisely. As pointed out, the de-orbit capabilities of satellites are intended not so much to bring them down at a specific point as to bring them down eventually, somewhere random. Even those that are specifically brought down over an ocean don't need to be aimed accurately. The Pacific is a hard target to miss. But even if you assume that the Sontaran can somehow precisely target each satellite precisely at a reactor on the ground, the chances of hitting any are still low. No matter how precise the targeting, once that lightweight, un-aerodynamic satellite hits the atmosphere it's going tumble randomly and be pushed around by unpredictable upper-atmosphere winds. Forget course corrections - solar panels and antennas will be the first things to get torn off, and the plasma sheath that builds up around any reentering object will make radio communications impossible anyway. It's going to be an unguided re-entry, and you'll be lucky if it comes down within sight of the target.

They won't reach the ground anyway. Satellites are lightweight. They have to be - every ounce counts when putting something in orbit. Anything going into space has had every last bit of unnecessary material shaved off, all parts only just as strong as needed. That kind of construction doesn't survive re-entry. Over 100 metric tons of material comes down every year, and the vast majority of that completely vaporizes in the upper atmosphere. Times when large debris have made it to the ground are the rare exception, and usually are the result of space stations or other large structures coming down. Bringing down every object in orbit at once would result in a spectacular light show and very little else.

Nuclear reactors aren't that fragile. Nuclear reactor containment domes are designed to withstand being hit by jet airliners. A few lightweight fragments of satellite debris won't do more than scuff the surface. Maybe if that satellite was still moving at orbital speed it might have a chance, but passing through miles of atmosphere will have slowed them to subsonic terminal velocity. And even if the debris somehow penetrated the containment dome, the most likely result is a damaged reactor, emergency shutdown, and some repair work needed to get the reactor back online.

Meltdowns: not actually all that dangerous. So far we have only seen two real-world examples of full-scale reactor meltdowns: Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. The Three Mile Island meltdown ruined the reactor, but caused zero deaths or injuries. If every nuclear reactor in the world melted down in similar fashion, the worst result would be the sudden loss of electrical power and collapse of power grids dependent on those reactors. The meltdown and explosion at the Chernobyl plant was the result of a long string of bad design choices and ill-advised operator action, and would be very difficult to recreate even on purpose. But let's assume, for the sake of worst-case estimation, that every reactor on earth were to undergo a Chernobyl-style explosion. The explosion at the Chernobyl plant killed 56 people, and might cause an estimated 4000 cases of cancer worldwide. Multiply that by the 400 or so reactors in operation worldwide and you have a terrible global catastrophe, but you're still pretty far from wiping out the human race. Even if you were to set off 400 actual nuclear bombs around the world, you'd have a terrible mess and a lot of deaths but humanity would survive.

So there you have it. Normally I wouldn't complain, but the sheer implausibility of the villain's doomsday plan just took me right out of the episode. It also hits on a major peeve of mine, the tendency of television writers to assume that nuclear reactors are ticking bombs waiting to explode and kill everyone at the slightest upset. I kept expecting the usually on-the-ball main characters to look surprised and say "That's the stupidest plan I've ever heard!" or something similar, but that was not to be. I know it's a kid's show and a Doctor Who spinoff, but they could at least try to get some basic facts right.

Ascend a Tourist next, she said...

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 23:04:07 GMT

So I did.

Truth is there's not so much difference in the classes. Tourists start out with crap equipment, but that only matters for the early game. Once you manage to find a few pieces of armor and a decent weapon you'll barely know you're playing one of the weaker classes. And the Tourist makes up for it your quest artifact: the Platinum Yendorian Express Card. Which, when invoked by a Tourist, can act as a blessed Charging spell, and never runs out. Having essentially unlimited uses of Wands of Death and Teleportation makes the endgame much easier.

Ways Spore could have been a better game:

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:38:41 GMT

Make a single good game instead of a bunch of mediocre games tied together.

Spore is essentially a series of minigames, where how you chose to complete each game somewhat influences your starting abilities in the next. The problem is, none of the minigames is very good or deep. Most of them are similar to games already out on the market (the Tribes section, for example, is pretty much a standard RTS) but years behind the curve when directly compared to them. The Creature game is probably the most novel and interesting, and even that is fairly shallow in content.

A sandbox should not be linear.

For a game presented as an evolutionary sandbox, Spore is annoyingly linear. There's a limited amount of content in each segment, and the game moves you from segment to segment quickly and relentlessly. Although you can ignore the game's prompts to move on and remain in a stage, there's very little point in doing so. Once you've completed a stage to the game's satisfaction, there's no interesting content left - there are essentially no side missions to explore other than the main, linear path. The only part of the game that's really open-ended is the interstellar empire endgame. I haven't played that section much, but from what I've heard it's actually annoying and requires far too much micromanaging.

Don't unnecessary limit player creativity.

One of the big appeals of Spore was the ability to make your creature look like whatever you wanted. Everyone loved the Creature Creator tool and the amazing versatility it gave you. Unfortunately the actual game isn't as versatile. While you can technically do in the game everything you could in the creature creator, the severely limited in-game resources and requirement to build your creature's stats in order to advance force you to choose between looks and useful game stats. Having four legs costs twice as much as having two and doesn't add anything to your capabilities. Likewise more than two arms, or more than one head or mouth, is a complete waste. Any successful creature is going to be simple - forget building that centipede or spider-like monster you wanted and still being able to get anywhere in the game. And if you want the top stats, you have to choose the right body parts to get them, even if you liked the look of some of the lesser-stated ones more.

Creature capabilities based on the actual design, rather than equipped loot.

Apparently, early on in the development of Spore your creature's physical abilities would be determined mechanically from how you designed it. Speed and dexterity from body shape and leg placement, reach by arm length, health by size, that sort of thing. Somewhere between then and the release version all that was dropped for a simple equipment-based model. If you stick feet with +5 movement stats on your creature, you will have +5 running, no matter what the shape or design of your creature. The form of your creature is completely cosmetic, having no effect on its abilities or survival.

The same is also true of the vehicle and building designer tools later in the game. Now I love the vehicle designer, and could spend hours playing with it. But in the end it doesn't matter if I've designed a low-slung, armored tank, or a ludicrous top-heavy unicycle - they'll perform the same. Likewise I could make sleek jet fighters, or blimps powered by flapping wings. It doesn't make much difference to the final performance of the vehicle.

Evolutionary progression.

In Spore, you develop new abilities by loot farming. Creatures sometimes drop parts when you defeat or befriend them. You can also find new parts in glittering skeletal fragments scattered around the landscape. Once you've unlocked those parts you can add them to the next generation of your creature. Those parts don't need to have any relation to your creature's current form or lifestyle, and it's possible to completely redesign your creature from scratch at any generation.

This is, of course, nothing whatsoever like real evolution. Had they actually wanted to model a real evolutionary sequence, new body parts would become available gradually over time based on your current creature's design. With each generation you'd naturally see a range of available parts, each of which was a slightly modified version of a part already on your creature. That would have allowed players to guide their creature's evolution while still being more similar to some sort of actual natural progression. As it is now the gameplay feels disappointingly similar to the same kind of "Kill things, take their stuff, get better gear" gameplay you see in MMORPGs these days.

Actually have an ecology.

The first time I played Spore, I built a mean predator. While wandering the world, I came across a nest of harmless little bunny-things. "A source of food!" I thought, "But I had better be careful not to kill them all lest I drive them extinct!". Silly me. Driving other species extinct is the goal in Spore when playing as a carnivore. Never mind that carnivores that successfully drive their prey extinct, go extinct themselves.

In Spore, each different species spawns in precisely one spot on the map. They will spawn there forever, regardless of whether there are any of them actually left. They only stop spawning if you kill off a certain number of them, at which point every remaining member of that species magically vanishes. Yes, you actually get assigned missions like "Kill 3 Fnordlings to drive them extinct!" as a carnivore. Pacifists can instead of killing befriend other species by singing and dancing at them, but it's still the same mission-based gameplay.

It's really quite disappointing. I was hoping for a life simulator sandbox with real evolution and ecology. Instead I get a RPG with shallow gameplay.

No rootkit-based security.

This is the big one. Spore uses the SecureRom rootkit for copy protection. It installs itself permanently in your computer, interferes with various pieces of software that might be suspicious, and regularly calls the game server to make sure it's still allowed to run. You can install your game precisely three times before it won't work anymore, so better not have to reinstall it more times than that. Of course, before the game was even available in stores cracked versions of it were floating around the web, with quite a few people choosing to download them rather than deal with SecureRom. It's again a case of a security system inconveniencing the honest users while doing nothing to stop the pirates.

A modest proposal...

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:42:29 GMT

So here I sit, trying to nurse my dying laptop along until my new one arrives and working on the Mad Science campaign that popular demand demands that I run. It's going to be a challenging campaign, for both the players and for me. Not much combat, for one thing. Not much use of powers. Mostly roleplaying, skill rolls, and puzzles. I know this is going to bore some players. I'm going to have to make the plots and NPCs interesting, I know, and encourage roleplaying. Which is something that I feel has been lacking in some of the games I've been in lately. I'm wondering if laptops might be partially to blame.

I don't mean to sound like the grumpy old man talking about how the kids these days don't do anything right, but back years ago when I started roleplaying we paid a lot more attention to the games. We didn't have laptops, PDAs, cell phones, Playstation Portables, or other electronic distractions at the table, and pretty much had to pay attention to what the GM and other players were doing. (And we had to walk uphill both ways in the snow to game, with pages falling our of our 4th edition books...) And it did seem to me that the RP was a lot more involved and intense. Granted our GM at the time was hyperactive and obsessive about detailing his world. But it still seems to me, from my own experience and observation at the games I'm in now, that people are a lot more inclined to be interested in the game when they don't have a laptop screen in between them and the rest of the table.

I've pondered having a "No laptops at the gaming table" rule at games I run. I can hear the screaming and visualize the torches and pitchforks already, but I really do think it would help everyone focus on the game itself. The few things that laptops are used for directly relating to the game - character sheets, rolling dice, and passing notes - can be pretty well done without. And maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I still prefer rolling physical dice to getting numbers off a computer screen.

It's a strange module....

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:19:51 GMT

with ninjas and ghosts and robot monkey pirates, and a shaggy bull at the end. But it's coming along well, and should be fun to run.

Perfect timing.

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 22:54:55 GMT

The backlight on my laptop chose today to fail. Two days before I leave for the con.

At least it gave me enough warning for me to save all the notes for the game I'll be running onto a thumb drive.

Therapy session

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 02:28:24 GMT

Laurie and I had our first session at IPG tonight. Not a therapist that our insurance covers, but one that came well recommended for the issues we are having.

Have a list of things to work on and think about. I need to work on assertiveness, honesty, and standing up to confrontation. And make an appointment with a urologist. Laurie isn't anywhere near as controlling and abusive as I've sometimes made her out to be, but does have some abandonment issues.

On the plus side, the magnesium supplements are doing more good for her than I ever dreamed. We're even talking about her getting a part-time job soon.