The Knight in Shining Skull T-shirt

Ugh. You know where I get stuck with my game designs? I hit a point where I'm like, "Shit. This isn't fun."

That might be why Tiki Wars is, like, my only completed (but unplaytested) design. I just went balls to the wall and had fun with it.

Everything else gets stuck in this point of, "Man, even I don't want to play this." The problem is I think all games hit that point. From what I hear, there are many games that start off with some horribly not-fun playtesting.

Seems like more than anything else I need to keep finding a way to feed fuel to my own excitement. Otherwise I get discouraged.

I know the first game I'm buying for my new PC.

Bionic Commando Rearmed

>:)

HeroQuest 2.0 - The rules rock, and now you'll be able to play other settings using them. I've pinned Rifts on this system for quite awhile, though I'd be happy doing all sorts of things.

Project Donut - Posthuman sci-fi where technology has rendered people immortal so everything comes down to social maneuvering and yadda yadda.

Maid - You play a maid. Fuck yeah. Yes I'm serious. More games that don't involve swords or guns or lasers or robots or orcs or whatever please. (Addendum: This game can involves guns and swords and lasers and robots. But, you know - maids.)

Yay my parts are out for delivery!

My parts might not make it here today after all. The package shipped out of Latham this morning at 4AM. I'm not sure what kind of processing cut-off time it would need to make it a part of the day's deliveries. I'll remain optimistic, though.

Bob's been nice enough to offer up use of his screwdrivers and that thing that hooks to your wrist and grounds you. D&D is canceled tonight on account of my having a late night upgrade tonight. While I hate the frequency D&D is getting canceled with, that might give me a small window of time to do a little work on the PC.

Criticisms of Vista are abundant. I know what I'm getting into, but I'm jumping in anyway. My reasons are in part professional - gotta know this shit if I'm going to be working with people who have it. But shit, I have two hard drives with a total of 370 GB of storage space. I'll probably just hook up my old shit, format it, and install some other OS to it and boot from that if I absolutely must.

Anyone else going to try out the Warhammer MMO when that comes out? I know me and a few other peeps are. I'm not exactly hardcore MMO'er though so I don't know if I'll stick with it. I just really want to play a Black Orc for awhile.

Ellen is moving to Ithaca.

My computer parts should be here tomorrow.

Fall is coming.

Games involving deception, finagling, conniving, arguing, debating, and scheming need to be played in person and at a table. Otherwise, the boundaries start to blur.

I have a stress headache and I'm sweating a lot. Over a game. It's silly.

For my lunch today I purchased A Taste of Thai's microwavable peanut noodles. I have a number of complaints:

- I have only a one hour lunch. I spent half an hour driving to the nearest grocery store, purchasing the noodles, and returning. This made the product extremely inconvenient to use.

- Noodles took 5 minutes to microwave. How am I expected to be able to eat the noodles with only 25 minutes of lunch break left???

- Having experience in cooking, I chose to prepare the noodles in a way not consistent with its directions. The noodles came out mushy in some places and crunchy in the others. The instructions need a warning that this will happen if one does not follow the instructions.

- Noodles burned my mouth when I ate them. Let me just say that the manufacturer is lucky I do not want to sue them because I would have a very strong case!!!

I cannot recommend this product, and will tell all of my family and friends not to buy it!!!

Listening: I'm glad I own Autechre's Incunabula because everyone once in awhile a desire to listen to it settles in. It's nice background music.

Playing: Well, I was playing the shit out of Pokemon having perfect EV-trained a Turtwig and a Chimchar (I'm working on a competitive fighting team called "Welcome to Sinnoh, Motherfuckers") but then my charger broke. It's, like, $15 for a new one and I'm all paranoid about spending money now because of how much I sank on my PC parts. I have enough to get me through the month but I can't mess around.

Reading: So I haven't touched The Miracle of Mindfulness in over a week. Since my DS situation isn't working out, though, I might actually pick it up on lunch breaks and dig through it.

Watching: I watched a crap-ton of movies over the weekend. The Isle, Reservoir Dogs, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and tried to watch the first season of The Simpsons but uh that show's not good. Once my new PC is put together I can watch shit on Netflix's Watch Instantly which will let me check out some series I've been wanting to. But at the moment, I have nothing going on.

Planning: Ellen's moving down here sometime so I'll bug her. Jere's birthday party is soon. Oh and I'm planning to build my motherfucking computer. Yeah boy.

Oh and check out my new shirt.



It's hard to tell but it's this big monster robot inspecting and caressing a plant. You can take a better look here. I want to wear it every day, and I think I have since I got it.

Newegg shipped my order at 6AM. Those guys are FAST. So I fully expect to have my order sometime tomorrow. However, there's D&D Tuesday night. I don't know what's going on on Wednesday but since it's been quite awhile since Nobilis happened I may be able to work on it then. Honestly, I want everything in my life to come to a halt when it gets here so I can set it up right away.

I read the instruction for the Arctic Silver I got. They're a little scary but not a paralysis-inducing. They're just full of warnings like, "It only takes 5 seconds for a modern CPU to be damaged by overheating," to which my mind responds with, "Oh God, what if I put on too much? Not enough? My CPU will be totally fried!" But the directions are pretty straightforward. Apply a thin line down the middle of the CPU, slap on the heatsink, wiggle it to smear around the Arctic Silver, done.

Oop, gotta go to work.

I am so excited about my computer bits coming. I made the order yesterday. It's like Christmas. The idea of being able to surf the internet freely or, shit, play recently-released games is kind of exciting.

Ellen was here! We hung out and played Pokemons and watched Avatar and made tofu scramble and sushi and she listened to my Legends of the Internet. She's going to be moving here soon which is like whoa. I told her as soon as she gets the last stuff unloaded from her U-haul I'm going to show up and raid her fridge.

I cannot get my ass out of bed on Sundays for zazen anymore. I need to try like Hell to get to bed earlier or something. I end up sleeping until 10:30 or later.

Nothing to do today except pine for my parts, play Pokemon, and watch Amadeus.

Video Card: EVGA 512-P3-N801-AR GeForce 8800

Sound Card: None. Mobo comes with onboard sound. Good idea? Bad idea?

DVD-RW: LITE-ON Black DVD+RW 8X DVD-ROM 48X

HDD: Seagate 250GB 7200RPM 3.0GB/s

PSU: Now, this is where need some advice. According the Newegg wattage calculator, all my shit will use up about 448W. A 450W PSU is a little too close for comfort, so if it were me on my own I'd probably pick up this guy. 500W. The LED is silly but the reviews are solid. It doesn't support SLI but if I ever decide to use SLI I'm gonna need a bigger PSU anyway. Thoughts? prime thian, I seem to remember you talking more in the 500-550 range. Am I going too low? If I look at how much I eventually intend to run, we're talking 670W or so, so it seems like maybe I should wait until I have those upgrades in hand and buy a new PSU. Or, I could just put the money in up-front and bring in the upgrades sometime over the next couple months and get this.

OS: Windows Vista Home Basic 64-Bit. I thought it was pricey but then realized there's simpler versions that run 64-bit. Still, I'm on the fence. I hear 64-bit is rough.

Miscellaneous: Arctic Silver

Addendum: Even if I buy the bigger PSU and 64-bit Vista, I'll be able to buy everything else I need with this paycheck. So, like, once I make some final decisions I'm gonna order and totally build this shit.

Addendum II: After some conversation and consideration, I'm thinking of starting with 32-bit, sticking with my 4GB of RAM, and buying the smaller PSU. That can be my machine until I really want/need to upgrade and then I can upgrade to 64-bit. Unless someone makes a compelling argument in favor of going for broke. (At this point I'm just waiting for prime thian to weigh in)

I sat two fifteen minute periods yesterday. Then I got incredibly hammered. When I sat this morning it was hard concentrating. Gotta mind that No Intoxicants rule.

My check engine light came on. Guess it's time to take it to the shop.

Dogs session 2 last night. I think things hiccuped towards the end maybe because I was so very drunk, but I think I did okay GMing for the state I was in. I did forget something that was pretty important, but I can either bring it up when they revisit the town or just let it drop.

They came into a town where some of the Faithful men were openly frequenting a whorehouse because their wives weren't interested in sex any longer, Brother Eli's niece was being a maniac and not acting a proper girl, and a young girl was very clearly browbeating a young man into marrying her.

Brother Eli sent his sister and her daughter off to his mother's to teach his niece to be a proper woman since she was tear-assing around all over the place and being a total tomboy.

The Dogs convinced Pipe Woman, a Mountainfolk madame, to turn away the Faithful if they came to her brothel.

They stabbed the crap out of the "men's prayer group" leader and major whorehouse fan, putting the fear of the King into all of them.

They told the Steward's wife that she needed to talk to the women about their duties as wives.

They told the couple they couldn't marry until the dude got a job.

Fun game. I'm consistently super-excited about it.

And they nearly made a Steward faint by bringing up sex in polite conversation.

The Book of Love - The Magnetic Fields
El Phantasmo and the Chicken-Run Blast-O-Rama - White Zombie
Dust Bowl - The Magnetic Fields
Skweetis - Melvins
Super-Charger Heaven - White Zombie
Kalpol Introl - Autechre
I Have the Moon - The Magnetic Fields
California Girls - The Magnetic Fields
A Song About Measurement - Shael Riley Some asshole
I Want to Be the Boy to Warm Your Mother's Heart - The White Stripes

"Bret, we just billed your credit card $100 for shit you'd completely forgotten about, probably overdrafting you. Have a great day!"

fuuuuuuuuck

I sat two fifteen minute meditation periods today. That doesn't seem like a lot. I used to sit half hour periods. But it's more than none which has been my habit recently.

Don't listen to anyone who says that when they meditate they're not constantly thinking about boners, because they are.

D&D last night was... rough. Two PCs killed, and then the game broke down into discussion of 'what the fuck?' It was two third level traps (magic crossbows) and they killed one PC each salvo. It sucks because I've been merrily throwing third level encounters at the first level PCs for awhile without any problem (they've pretty handily stomped every one), and now all of a sudden this.

In the end, the group leaned towards "roll with it" so now we have two corpses and two new PCs incoming. Jeff was pretty okay with it. Andy was grumpy. This is why D&D scares me. You can be rolling along happily and then one poorly-tuned encounter or an encounter with rather good rolls sends things into a spin. And as DM it's all on me pretty much.

I'm going to tone down future encounters just in case.

A Core 2 Duo and 4 gigs of RAM are headed my way. Come next paycheck I'll be looking at video cards and other things. prime_thian, I don't know if that video card w/rebate you threw my way is still available.

Once I get the video card, everything else will be a pretty simple purchase I think. I doubt I'll have it together before the release of Warhammer Online, but I think I hate MMOs anyway.

What I'm learning from weplaynomic:

Any legal system based on interpretation of written law is totally fucked.