Vista Issues

I haven’t been posting lately because of this continuing problem in Vista-land. Even more programs have “stopped working” for mysterious reasons. Some I have been able to nuance using the Vista compatibility tab under shortcut properties. You can force the program to run as Administrator or set compatibility back to XP or earlier. I was able to get Paint Shop Pro X2 to run with the XP compatibility, for example. But Windows Live Writer is still being stubborn. In fact, it seems to be more problematic with microsoftware than any other. For example, an Excel file that choked in Excel, works fine in Open Office. I suspect the macros are the culprit. I’m just hoping that other Vista users are having the same problem and MS is being inundated with error reporting.

On a brighter note, Amazon has a great deal on Windows 7 Upgrade if you pre-order. Which I did. I’m looking forward to the stripped down functionality of Windows 7.

What else is happening in our world?…

Gaming

Oh, the Stories from the Shelter game is starting up again on Sunday. I have some bare bones ideas for 2–3 more sessions before a final wrap up. I like the idea of finishing up before it drags on (ST:TNG anyone?). On the SftS note, Scott and I were kicking around ideas for a new title for the game (and hopefully comic script that he wants to collaborate on) and we’ve settled on a working title: Starlost. It is less descriptive than Stories from the Shelter, but is more evocative and certainly less of a mouthful. Even if it doesn’t end up as the final title, it at least will serve as a breaking away from SftS to allow us some distance from a decade old working title.

In more gaming news, Joel starts his D&D campaign on Thursday, which will interleave with Joe’s usual Thursday game. So that should be fun. New low-level characters to abuse. Also, I’ve dusted off a Rolemaster profession I was working on a few years ago. Some folks in our RM game are considering a character change, and that got me thinking about the Tomb Raider again: a cleric/thief semi spell-user of the realms of Channeling and Subterfuge. It has utility spells for helping with dungeoneering, undead repulsion, skill/activity enhancement, and healing. I just need to put together the last few spell lists and then see if Alan approves.

Family

Kaylin has been taking swimming lessons for the past week and is really loving it. She’s a natural fish, just like her mother.

Cougar has fitted into the family like a missing puzzle piece. He and Charm have become eager sparring buddies and Pixel just mostly ignores Cougar as he does Charm. But no middle of the night fights. No retributive spraying or peeing (that we’ve found!). So, all is well in felineville.

Okay. Gotta get K fed before swimming.

Slaintè,

Q

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

Sorry not to have posted lately. I’ve been busy with various things and just haven’t gotten around to it.

One of the things I’ve been busy with is setting up for a guest GMing for Joe’s D&D campaign. Several years ago I was playing in a D&D game at Colin’s when it looked like he might need to skip a session. So, I offered to guest run a side session, but that never panned out. Still, I had the  beginnings of a little adventure, so I thought I’d offer to do the same for Joe so he could continue to play his (usually) NPC character that he’s been running for the last couple of sessions while his dad, Joel, guest-runs an adventure. So, I pulled out my original, sparse, notes and started looking things over. I am modifying an old High Fantasy Adventure Series module (Fortress Ellendar) and as I go through it I’m having to modify it more and more. I already knew I wanted to expand the layout to make it larger and provide more possible entrances, but as I look over the module it’s obvious to me the author didn’t put a lot  of thought into making Ellendar a realistic fortress. I mean, I’m no fortress engineer, but even I can see the design is lousy. Anyway, it’s coming along, and I won’t get into the specific changes because I don’t want to bore you or give anything away to the players reading this. Suffice to say, the end product will only vaguely resemble the original module, which is good.

Heather is sick, poor thing. Possibly strep throat, but definitely sore throat with generalized aches and…and… just pleah. So, she’s kicking back in bed right now watching The Incredibles with Kaylin and hopefully sneaking a few winks. Sad thing is, Tuesday is her birthday, so we were going to have her family party today. But you can’t enjoy birthday cake with a sore throat.

What else…Oh, this could be considered an over-share, so you may want to stop here, but I’m kind of tired now because I didn’t get much sleep last night. I took two hydrocodone pills, and while they typically make one drowsy, they kept me awake. Why, you may ask, was Quentin popping synthetic opiates? That was so I could roll over on my side without pain. See, Friday afternoon I had a bilateral varicocelectomy. For those of you who are not M. K., that’s the removal of varicoceles, which are like varicose veins in your legs, except they are in the veins that return blood from the testicles. They are not always painful, and mine at least were only moderately so, and only occasionally, but removing them may help with reproductive problems, like deformed sperm cells. So, I’m sore from the two little incisions, but otherwise fine. I like to sleep on my side, though, but that stresses the incisions a little. I’ll just have to get used to back-sleeping for a while. It’ll all be worth it if we get a sibling for Kaylin out of it. But there’s all the healing to do before we can work on that, nudge nudge, wink wink.

Okay. Time to check on my girls, then it’s back to Ellendar for a bit. One nice thing about insomnia is that I got to think a lot about Ellendar. Bwah, hah, hah, hah!

Slaintè,

Q

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

I'm just taking a quick break from some SftS writing. I've been going through the Aliens descriptions and trying to make them consistent in the way they handle stellar system descriptions. I had some with a lot of detail, and others with too little. So last few days I've been creating emphemera for imaginary star systems. Whoopie! Now I'm putting them into the manual in tabular form and adding text description where it was lacking before. Then I get to calculate travel times between planets in-system, and out-of-system for the few species that have off-world colonies. I have excel sheets for all this, so it's just a matter of cut and paste, adjust parameters, recalculate.

I had a good weekend. We took Kaylin to see Coraline on saturday. Definitely a show worth seeing, but I wouldn't bother with the 3D version. The story won't suffer from the lack of false depth, and the art might benefit from not having your eyes/brain trying to get used to a new way of seeing the screen. But, you get used to it before the end. Mostly.

Coraline was wonderfully true to Gaiman's original story and did a good job of conveying through action and dialogue what would have been gleaned from the close 3rd person limited POV of the novel. Not something that always is doable in an adaptation. So. Go. See. It.

On Sunday, Dan, MK, and Marshal came over for an afternoon of fun and some dinner. Dan helped out by making the meatballs. Dan makes good meatballs. Meatball. YUM.
I finally got to try out a two-player card game from CheapAss games — The Works — that I got a while back for Heather and I to play, but that we just never got around to trying. It was fun, quick, and had a neat mechanic. Come over some time and we can play.

Alright, I'm feeling refreshed, and the tea is kicking in. Let me get back to work before the school bus arrives.

Slaintè,
Q

They way they come to sit on your chest just after you've turned off the alarm, but before you're awake enough to get up, and the next thing you know it's an hour later and your daughter is crawling into bed to show you what the Tooth Fairy left her.

Poll #1347447 How do you read What Was I About to Say?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 4

How do you read this LiveJournal?

I didn't know wrpigeek was an ALP fan.

Well, since you asked…
I had actually intended to post this yesterday, but I got distracted working on Igooorrr! and other things.
So, what have I been up to recently? Let’s see…I guess the highlight of the weekend was having to replace the kitchen faucet. Again. We got a new one a couple of years ago because the lever of the one that came with the house just broke off in my hand one day. That was not good, as you can imagine, but at least the water didn’t geyser out when the handle came off, so it wasn’t a disaster. Anyway, we got this nice Moen replacement model with an integrated water filter. That worked quite well, but in the last few months we started having drip issues under the sink. Mostly just small drips at first, but then they got worse. It was hard to track down the source. We looked at the connections, tightened them. No effect. We removed the faucet, and caulked under it, since the design had a poor seal with the sink back. That helped, and we thought we had it. Then, it got worse again. I started noticing water coming out around the lever base when we turned it on, and the faucet sometimes wouldn’t flow when you first threw the lever, so you had to turn it off then on again to get water to flow. Some sort of gasket problem? Then, Friday or so, I noticed a puddle in the cabinet when I was taking out the garbage. Bad news. Water was flowing fairly freely from the innards of the faucet down there in the nether regions. So, I took off the maintenance cap and tried to see if I could get at whatever part had been slowly failing. I removed the single visible screw, and pulled up on the handle. Nothing. I tried harder. Still nothing. Damned thing seemed to be fused down. Maybe there was scale in there from before we got the water softener. Who knows. Whatever the cause, I wasn’t in the mood to fuck with it, so we went and got a new faucet.
I would have liked to have gotten a faucet with separate hot and cold knobs, since they are somewhat simpler in design, but we couldn’t do that and still have room for a sprayer and filtered-water spigot. So we ended up with a nice new Delta with one of those pull down sprayers that is housed in the neck of the faucet. I was able to splice in the old undersink filter from the previous model and attach the outlet to the new spigot. We were a bit leery about getting one of those because most of the floor models had problems keeping their faucet heads securely up in the neck. But this one has a mechanical twist-lock fastener, rather than a friction or spring-ring fitting, so I think it will last longer. And the ball valve has some kind of crazy Diamond-Seal technology that’s supposed to make it last longer leak free. We’ll see about that.
What else did we do…? Nothing special. Gymnastics Saturday morning followed by shopping for birthday gifts and faucets. Played some games with Heather and Kaylin. Did no writing or game design that wasn’t in my head. Oh, read some from a new author I picked up from the "If you liked Jim Butcher…" section. Rachel Caine’s Weather Warden series, book one, Ill Wind. It’s a fast paced light read. I’m liking it because of its female lead and because Caine seems to know her weather physics. She at least makes you believe she does.
Sunday was faucet installation and some work on Igooorrr! Monday was back to the weekly routine.
So overall, not too exciting, but somewhat challenging (I really hate doing plumbing under the sink).
Slaintè,
Q

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

Well, since you asked...

I had actually intended to post this yesterday, but I got distracted working on Igooorrr! and other things.
So, what have I been up to recently? Let's see...I guess the highlight of the weekend was having to replace the kitchen faucet. Again. We got a new one a couple of years ago because the lever of the one that came with the house just broke off in my hand one day. That was not good, as you can imagine, but at least the water didn't geyser out when the handle came off, so it wasn't a disaster. Anyway, we got this nice Moen replacement model with an integrated water filter. That worked quite well, but in the last few months we started having drip issues under the sink. Mostly just small drips at first, but then they got worse. It was hard to track down the source. We looked at the connections, tightened them. No effect. We removed the faucet, and caulked under it, since the design had a poor seal with the sink back. That helped, and we thought we had it. Then, it got worse again. I started noticing water coming out around the lever base when we turned it on, and the faucet sometimes wouldn't flow when you first threw the lever, so you had to turn it off then on again to get water to flow. Some sort of gasket problem? Then, Friday or so, I noticed a puddle in the cabinet when I was taking out the garbage. Bad news. Water was flowing fairly freely from the innards of the faucet down there in the nether regions. So, I took off the maintenance cap and tried to see if I could get at whatever part had been slowly failing. I removed the single visible screw, and pulled up on the handle. Nothing. I tried harder. Still nothing. Damned thing seemed to be fused down. Maybe there was scale in there from before we got the water softener. Who knows. Whatever the cause, I wasn't in the mood to fuck with it, so we went and got a new faucet.

I would have liked to have gotten a faucet with separate hot and cold knobs, since they are somewhat simpler in design, but we couldn't do that and still have room for a sprayer and filtered-water spigot. So we ended up with a nice new Delta with one of those pull down sprayers that is housed in the neck of the faucet. I was able to splice in the old undersink filter from the previous model and attach the outlet to the new spigot. We were a bit leery about getting one of those because most of the floor models had problems keeping their faucet heads securely up in the neck. But this one has a mechanical twist-lock fastener, rather than a friction or spring-ring fitting, so I think it will last longer. And the ball valve has some kind of crazy Diamond-Seal technology that's supposed to make it last longer leak free. We'll see about that.

What else did we do...? Nothing special. Gymnastics Saturday morning followed by shopping for birthday gifts and faucets. Played some games with Heather and Kaylin. Did no writing or game design that wasn't in my head. Oh, read some from a new author I picked up from the "If you liked Jim Butcher..." section. Rachel Caine's Weather Warden series, book one, Ill Wind. It's a fast paced light read. I'm liking it because of its female lead and because Caine seems to know her weather physics. She at least makes you believe she does.

Sunday was faucet installation and some work on Igooorrr! Monday was back to the weekly routine.

So overall, not too exciting, but somewhat challenging (I really hate doing plumbing under the sink).

Slaintè,
Q

I have a best friend. And who doesn't, really, best being relative. But my best friend Scott has been my best friend since I was fourteen or fifteen. We met when I was thirteen, I think, through our mutual friend Jeremy (from whom Scott eventually usurped best friend status. But that's okay, because Jeremy had usurped best friend status from Daryl not too long before. So it goes.). There was some friction at first, as is often the case when one person brings together two friends from different circles. But we rather quickly formed a tight trio. There was much to learn on both sides of the triangle. Jeremy and I had our pet pastimes; so did he and Scott. It was fun and exciting and sometimes a little boring exploring each other's worlds, seeing what we all liked to do together. Your typical adolescent role play was a hit, as were movies, comics, music, video games, and food. Playing with Star Wars figures, not so much. I just never got into that.

I was always fascinated by Scott's imagination. He was often the driving force behind our roleplaying. He had the ideas for the plots. He had the ideas for the settings. He always had to be Luke when we three played Star Wars, though. And Jeremy had to be Han, so that left me with Chewie, or Lando, or even Biggs. Never Obi Wan or Leia, though. Kids. But in rural south Louisiana, a white boy pretending to be Lando was a pretty big cultural stretch.

Eventually, around age fifteen, we developed enough trust that he let me in on his big secret: he was creating a TV show. And what a world he had invented. We sat for hours one night while he unfolded the grand setting he had been working on since he was eleven or so. The Tales of the Teppups (now known only as the Usari) would have it all: science fiction, girls, action, sex, adventure, sex with girls. We were fifteen for pete's sake. But the setting captivated me the most, along with the intricately plotted backstory, taking a small team of humans across the galaxy to topple an empire. Story arcs fit for three or four years of twenty episode seasons, all linked together coherently. And this was well before Babylon 5, mind you. At some point he or Jeremy must have suggested we try playing in that world, and "doing Us" was born. That's what we called it, or little code. "C'mon, let's go do Us." Us, because, as you might guess, we weren't playing Star Wars characters, or Indiana Jones, or James Bond. We were just us, on a grand adventure to rescue the girls and defeat Relnek once again.

We eventually stopped this freeform LARPing, more for lack of time than anything else. There was work, then college in another state, then internships, graduate school, and careers in yet more states. Scott never made his Tales into a TV show, but the dream has always been there, on the back burner. His Ibsenian life lie. But through it all, we've kept close, seeing each other only every three years or so on the winter vacation rotation. Of all my old friends, he is the only one who I still have things in common with, who I can carry on an hour long conversation about nothing with. We still have congruent tastes, we still manage to introduce each other to new things, to surprise each other and comfort each other.

So, what is the imminent excitement to which I alluded in the subject line? For the last several years Scott has become increasingly disgruntled with life in the South. He chafes at the conservative attitudes of his peers, the small minded injustices that persist to this day. He has made noises often about moving here, but has never followed through, even coming to the point of making plans for packing and transport once and backing out, succumbing to the fear of change that can easily overcome the financially insolvent. My (secret) attitude has been, "I'll believe him when he walks through my door."

But, that may all soon change. I just talked to him a few days ago and he has officially not renewed his apartment lease, which ends March 28, and apprised his boss of his plans. The current plan is for him to stay two or three months with his parents after that, to save some dough and get rid of items he can't really travel with, then head up here in the summer, cramming his life into his car. I'm getting excited, but at the same time, I'm waiting for the hammer to fall. I can hear the excitement in his voice, though, coupled with apprehension. After all, this isn't exactly the best time to pull up roots, even as tenuous as his, and move to a new location without the clear prospect of a job waiting for you. He'll stay here with us while he job hunts and looks for an apartment. Of the whole venture, that aspect is the one we most fear going sour. I have no illusions; I love Scott, but I have always known I could never live with him for long. While our tastes are congruent, our day-to-day lives are not very. I worry most about the stress on Heather. She's a very solitary person, and when she's stressed she wants nothing more than to retreat to her cave and not deal with people. Just having visitors for christmas was enough to give her a fit, after coming out of several killer weeks at work. And Scott will be moving up here right about the time she switches over to the new job at GE's new fabrication plant in RPI's tech park. There's enough stress with that, without extended company. But hey, it was her idea in the first place that he move up here. 'Course, that was like five years ago.

Anyway, that's my excitement that I'm trying to quell. I just don't want to be disappointed again. My faux-bro is coming to town and I can't wait to show him around.

Q

I recently set up an account at last.fm. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s a music website similar to Pandora.com. You can enter an artist or band and it’ll generate a station based on that. Or, you can upload the library on your computer (well, the index of the library, really, not the files.) and it can generate stations based on your listening preferences. They have a function called scrobbling that feeds what you’re listening to on WinAmp, Media Player, iTunes, etc. to the website and that shows in realtime on your “What I’m listening to” space.
Anyway, if you’re interested, here’s my last.fm page.

Slaintè,
Q

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

Here's a wonderful bit of dead-pan british humor that Neil Gaiman posted on his blog.
No idea who this fellow is, but he cracked me up several times.


Ah, Peter Cook is his name. From Wikipedia:

Peter Edward Cook (17 November 1937 – 9 January 1995) was an English satirist, writer and comedian. He is widely regarded as the leading figure in the British satire boom of the 1960s. He has been described by Stephen Fry as 'the funniest man who ever drew breath'.

Cook is closely associated with the anti-establishment style of comedy that first emerged in the late 1950s.

So, I went to Genericon this weekend, and it was a blast again. The most entertaining games I played were kattw's Pan-reality Scavenger Hunt and wrpigeek's Console: Sidearm.

The scavenger hunt was set in D&D's planescape setting, so we had access to an infinity of worlds to search for our items. The thing I liked best about the session (and last year's) is that we were encouraged to metagame, and the character sheets were just for flavor. Whatever we knew, our characters knew, whatever clever interpretations of the scavenge list we thought up, we could use. So, basically it was a light trivia-romp.

Sidearm is Colin's next edition of his widely popular Console CRPG-parody tabletop game. It's set in the old west...in a CRPG kind of way. What I liked best about this session was, the people I played with (mswae, tabulus, and Kevin Sadvari), and the hand-of-cards conflict mechanics. For each combat, every player gets a five-card hand (refreshable) that they play into a communal "hand" of five. Each class gets special trump cards that do good things for them when played, and forming poker sets in the communal hand provided bonus status effects. It was much more engaging than tossing dice, but then, I like card games over board games.

Colin's Sufficiently Advanced session was interesting, but we spent too much time on CharGen and I goofed up and made a social butterfly for a trip to a Cargo Cult world where he pretty much had to hide his identity. So, I mostly sat and watched the others beat up the bad guys. But, I did get to save the day when my early-session socializing allowed us (via the Theme Comprehension: I know a guy, who knows a guy...) to find the ticking bomb the bad guys left behind after the rest of the team scared them off. W00t! for the carousing nightclub owner.

Okay, gotta go get K from school.

Slaintè,
Q

Last weekend, before we found the kittens, we took Kaylin for her first view of Howe Caverns. She loved it and immediately wanted to go back in. She thought it was a little creepy at first, but quickly warmed to the novelty of the situation and just had a ball. Here are some photos:

Some of them are a bit blurry, but you try holding stock still while the shutter goes click...................shut.

Q

So, as you know, I have two major sections in the manual: the Players’ Section and the Narrator’s Guidelines.

I’ve been worrying that the implied distinction might be off-putting to general players, as though the NG section is off limits. So, I was wondering if anyone had some suggestions for alternate section names. Or if you think it’s fine the way it is.

Q

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.

Hi all,
I found a new online source for music purchases yesterday while lurking at Thermal and a Quarter's website. It's CD Baby, a little outfit in Seattle that handles only indie releases (and they're cheaper than Amazon). If you've got a favorite indie group/artist, check it out. Some artists to try are TAAQ, the above-mentioned band, George Hrab and Jonathan Coulton.

TAAQ is an interesting fusion band from India. They've released their album Plan B free for download at their website.

Coulton's a Geek-folk-rocker who's been running an interesting experiment called Thing a Week, where he challenged himself to produce a fresh work each week for posting. All that's at his website. What's geek-folk? Err...well, check this song out for an example.

Hrab is similar to Coulton, in a way. He's been compared to a fusion between David Byrne, Frank Zappa, XTC, and Robert Fripp. I found him from an interview on Skepticality, a wonderful little podcast about...skepticality.

That's all for now, folks. Back to the grind.

Slaintè,
Q

Today is ending up a good day. I started off feeling like an ass (hell I wen to bed asinine) about the previous post and how it was being received at the Forge and Story Games. Upon review, it just wasn't what I wanted. A rant is fine here as a way of starting of a subject, but just reposting it wholesale, not so good. Live and learn.

But I've gotten some good, well reasoned responses to my posts, further buffing my faith in and respect for the folks involved at both sites.
I've also gotten a few hits on the community cess proofreading pool idea, and I've got some thinking to do now. I've started something, now I just need to figure out how to see it through.

Anyways, I was feeling happy/chatty and thought I'd post. Cheers to everyone!

Slaintè,
Q

Okay all,
Let’s try to get something started. I’ll try to post everyday before writing, that way I can have a smooth segue from Dad@Home to Writer@Home. A moment of Zen. An induced golden hour. Let’s hope.

So, what does one write about in these journal thingies? Guess I can tell you about my day so far.
We checked out a nursery school for K. It was nice. Big, open, clean. Reasonably priced. But booked up for the appropriate time slot. Of course. Sad state of our preschool education in this country. Vey, don’t get me started. The only reason we won’t be home schooling K is she’ll need the social interaction.

So…goals for this afternoon’s session:

• Finish the Marksmanship side bar (Every little reorganization forces me to think about disparate aspects of the game, so it’s taking longer than I expected…)
• Reorganize Marksmanship groups
• Edit Pilot to reflect groupings
• Whatever else I can squeeze in

At some point I’ll need to decide whether I need a separate development journal for the game, if I seem to be confusing with a mix of topics.
Q

Originally published at Quentin Hudspeth's Journal. You can comment here or there.