Timespike's Tirade

Are you a Gamer?

2010-01-20T17:11:00.001-08:00

If so, you may want to go check out what's going on at DrivethruRPG right now. Why? Well, here's their press release:

Gamers Help Haiti! DriveThruRPG Offers a Mega-Bundle to Spur Donations

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

DriveThruRPG announced a major incentive to the roleplaying gamer community today to incite donations to aid in rescue and recovery in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Called the "Gamers Helping Haiti Bundle," the product includes over a hundred products totaling over $1000.00 in retail value. For a simple donation of $20 - all of which goes to Doctors Without Borders to support their post-earthquake Haiti relief efforts - RPG fans can have this once-in-a-lifetime collection of gaming products.

DriveThruRPG already had opportunities to donate up and running within a day of the disaster. When publishers began asking how they could support the cause, the bundle was created to be an all-inclusive shared effort. Those who donated at the lesser levels won't be left out, however; gamers who have already donated $5 or $10 will be receiving a special coupon code that lets them pay the difference from their initial donation to get the bundle.

"We are humbled by the generosity of both our customers and our publishers," said Sean Patrick Fannon, Marketing and Communications Manager for DriveThruRPG, "all of whom have stepped up at this time of terrible tragedy to offer aid to a desperate people. We are also very proud to facilitate these collective efforts, providing the necessary tools and technology to bring it all together."

More than tools and tech, though, DriveThruRPG is really putting their money where their mouth is, so to speak. "We have always believed in the power of giving and sharing to make the world a better place," said Steve Wieck, President and co-owner of the site. "To that end, we are matching funds with everyone who's making a straight donation at the $5 and $10 level."

There is no set date for terminating the donation efforts, though the bundle will only be available until the end of January.

Anyone wishing more information about this effort, or about DriveThruRPG overall, should contact Sean Patrick Fannon at sean@onebookshelf.com.

Welcome to the Future

2010-01-03T11:01:00.000-08:00

2009 was a very hard year for a lot of people, myself at least partially included. But there's still stuff to be happy about. Incidentally, it's stuff like this that makes me scratch my head when people say they just can't take ANY country music seriously.

Technological goodness

2009-10-17T17:08:00.000-07:00

I'm all for the wisdom that comes with age, but when you want to know what tech stuff is cool, you can do worse than to ask a teenager. I've been using an old, creaky keyboard from an e-machines PC I owned many moons ago for years now and it was time for an upgrade. A 16-year old kid off some forums I frequent recommended the Razer Lycosa.

After having bought one, I now recommend it, too. The feedback is snappy, clicky, and beyond comfortable and it's PRETTY and feature-rich. Not a bad deal for what I paid for it.

Well, that was frustrating.

2009-10-04T07:58:00.000-07:00

I lost a perfectly good opportunity to game yesterday due to time constraints, lack of communication, and homework. Grrr.

Some improvements.

2009-09-08T08:56:00.001-07:00

When I built my computer back in January, I was on a limited budget, so I cut some corner on PSU and case. Back then, I bought a Powerup Case and 450W power supply for $50, but I knew that I shouldn't keep using that forever. As an aditional cooling measure, I pulled all the drive bay covers off the front of the case and aimed a standing fan in there to help keep things cool, but my HDDs still got pretty warm. Furthermore, I knew that using a cheap, off-brand PSU in a rig that routinely sees gaming probably isn't smart over the long run, so this weekend I took some saved cash and birthday money and upgraded both my case and PSU. My new case is a nice CM 690 mid-tower. It's got the red LED fan from my old case in the behind-the CPU spot and the one aftermarket CPU fan I bought for the old case on top as an exhaust fan. I'm eventually going to add some more fans (at the moment I'm thinking of using AeroCool Silver Lightning fans) but it still keeps things much, MUCH cooler than the old case did and has a bunch of very nice features the old case didn't. (Cable management clips, tool-less drive bays, and the "front panel" plugs are located on the top of the case, just to name a few.)

For a PSU, I really lucked out. Tigerdirect, my favorite computer store, period, had a very nice sale on a 650W power supply built by Ultra this weekend, so I put that in the new case, too. It's not a PC Power & Cooling Silencer, but it's a huge step up from what I had and should be more than sufficient for my fairly modest rig. I can finally stop worrying and just enjoy the system now.

New Blog

2009-09-03T22:13:00.000-07:00

I'm currently taking a couple of computer courses and am trying to find my way into the IT field. One of those courses, a network essentials class, requires us to blog about the chapters as we work our way through the book. I've decided to take it up a notch from what's required by the class.

If you'd like to learn a bit about computer networking with me as I learn, check it out.

How did I ever do it...

2009-08-26T20:29:00.000-07:00

...before I had my wife?

My wife is off at her parents' house tonight, helping her dad get started on his home business. (Apparently the entrepreneurial spirit is hereditary). It follows, then, that she's not here.

Nothing like her absence to make our cozy little apartment feel cavernously empty and deafeningly quiet. I don't hear the hum of the sewing machine, and if I wander into her craft room, she's not there. I didn't get a hug when I came home today, and the cat is wandering around looking kind of melancholy.

As they say, "absence makes the heart grow fonder."

I'm glad she'll be back tomorrow.

Side Benefits of gaming

2009-08-13T20:14:00.000-07:00

A conversation with a friend tonight reminded me of one of the biggest reasons why it is that I like being a gamer. One can meet some of the coolest people that way. My current gaming group was completely unknown to me only about a year ago. In that time, I have done some of the best gaming of my life and made a couple of really awesome friends.

I like being a geek.

Podcast

2009-08-09T08:02:00.000-07:00

A while ago, I teamed up with some other guys over on the Fear the Boot forums to start a podcast of our own. We're still hashing out the specifics, but here's what we've tentatively decided on so far:

We're going to review media from a gamer's perspective. Tentatively, our first topic is going to be Warehouse 13 and I've got some others I'd really like to talk my cohosts into.
In order to avoid podcaster burnout, we're going to be doing 4 10-week seasons per year with a 3 week break in between. One of the breaks is going to fall around Christmas, because two of us are Christians and celebrate the holiday, with all the family implications that entails.
We're probably going to pull a bunch of guest hosts from the Fear the Boot boards, so if you're a regular on there, be aware that we might be looking for you to come on at some point if you're interested.

Games I'd like to play in, games I'd like to run

2009-06-14T07:19:00.000-07:00

Based on this post over on Deconstructing Infinity (the blog of my current GM) I figured I'd put together a list of my own.

Run and/or play

Burning Wheel: I've been curious about this game since I heard about it on the Sons of Kryos back in the day, and I'm even more anxious to try it out now that I have the books. I have a couple of settings I really like in mind, and I love the lifepath character creation system.

Pathfinder RPG: 3e was my introduction to D&D, and this seems like what I've had a huge amount of fun with over the years with even more options tossed in. It's even more complicated in some ways, and the power level has definitely gone up, but it seems like tremendous fun.

Spirit of the Century: I borrowed a copy of this from my GM a while back, and I must say, I'm impressed with the FATE system. It looks like it's fast, slick, and tremendous fun.

Dogs in the Vineyard: I love the idea of teenage witch hunter gunslingers. The Situation of the game seems so cool. I got bitten by the mechanics in a previous Vincent Baker game I played, though. Good and careful planning, it seems, is no match for the fickle hand of fate in In a Wicked Age.

Play Only

Mouse Guard: I have no confidence as a GM in someone else's precreated setting, but this seems like such enormous fun. Plus I love how noble and courageous the little mice are.

Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition: Sounds fun, but I am not buying it, at least not until I reach a higher income level. My 3.0/3.5/d20 collection fills an entire bookcase.

Run Only

Mutands & Masterminds: Now that I've played it, I'd love to give running it a try.

First play through of a story game.

2009-04-11T19:13:00.001-07:00

So one of my friends from my current gaming group and I went to Forge Midwest today, and I finally got a chance to play a story game - in this case Vincent Baker's In a Wicked Age.

It was fun - in fact, it was great fun, but I can appreciate the pros and cons of both traditional and story games with respect to each other a bit more now. I played through a set of actions that, in a traditional RPG would have gone very smoothly, but in a this game got me killed because of a bad die roll.

Still, it was fun and I enjoyed it, and the game moved FAST. Also, this was the first time I ever did a straight PvP game, and I found I liked it okay. I'm not going to stop playing traditional RPGs by any stretch, but I know now from practical experience that I can enjoy a story game, too.

Supers game, sessions 4 and 5

2009-04-10T21:09:00.000-07:00

I posted about the first two sessions of the supers game I'm playing in over on the Sons of Kryos board a while back. However, since they seem to have podfaded (though Judd Karlman has been on the last two episodes of Canon Puncture), the traffic there is non-existant and I'm going to move my AP posts over here going forward.

The most recent session was last week. We found about half the hostages kidnapped as leverage by the vampires that were attempting to blackmail us into being their puppets dead in the previous one. The GM has driven home in no uncertain terms that his world is cold, hard, gritty and brutal, which makes for an interesting play experience, but also means that my PC has to play a lot rougher than I was originally planning for him to. Upon finding the leader of the vampires, he killed him in what could be called an "efficiently brutal" manner, utilizing his teleportation, flight, and super strength powers to drop him from great heights and then hang onto him and keep him exposed to the sun. It was a much dirtier and more visceral fight than I was expecting him to engage in, quite frankly. I created a PC who is very comfortable with violence, but I'm beginning to wonder if he's becoming ever so slightly unhinged at this point. Having innocents killed by terrorists (be they mundane or undead) in an attempt to manipulate you is not an easy thing for someone to deal with, especially when they have a background in uniform.

The players continue to get along well, and a couple of us have advanced our characters with group expediency at least partially in mind, which I think is fantastic. Our focus has been improving somewhat, and we've been learning to play off of each others' strengths and cover each others' weaknesses a bit, which I love.
We still tangent a lot, but I'd be lying if I told you that was a horrible thing. I have the fortune of being able to game with a pleasant group of actual adults, which, from what I gather around various gaming communities on the internet, is a rare and precious thing I should not take for granted.

The plot has gotten thicker. Apparently our flying brick's powers originate from a valuable piece of alien technology that the creators want back. Badly. Not good. After some very tense negotiations and the showing of rather too much force on my PC's part, we seem to have at least gotten the first group of people sent to retrieve the artifact embedded in her to leave us alone. For now. Ultra-tech alien mercenaries are no good, though.

A further note: waiting this long to post leaves me fuzzy on things I should be remembering. I'll have to get back to my old habit of posting in the first day or two after a game with the next one.

Supers game, so far.

2009-03-29T06:09:00.000-07:00

So I wound up creating a slightly less-edgy character for the supers game. My PC is a former cop, airman, and spy who now works for homeland security, has low-level flight, durability, and super strength and not-so-low-level spatial manipulation powers. The rest of the team consists of a National Geographic photographer with a powerful alien space suit (embedded crystalline stuff that generates forcefields and allows her to fly, etc.) an alien with invisibility, appearance changing, durability, plasma manipulation, and flight, and a darkness controlling veteran superhero from another dimension. The team is working well together so far, and we've gotten good at setting each other up for combo attacks, etc. The game is fairly gritty for a superhero world, but still utilizes "comic book science" a lot. For good examples of the feel, take a look at the recent writing of Warren Ellis and Brian Michael Bendis.

We've played through four sessions thus far, and it's going quite well. A very entertaining game with a good variety of foes. So far we've tangled with mercenaries (both mundane and power-armored), vampires (I hate those jerks, by the way...), a huge Godzilla-like creature, and some weird, shadowy people who want to kidnap at least some of us for God only knows what purpose.

More to come as the campaign develops.

And here we go.

2009-03-26T15:25:00.001-07:00

My annual performance review was today, and went well, so my wife and I are going to start moving on some of the "move up in the world" type stuff we've been looking at. Hopefully this sees us out of the apartment and into a house by the end of the year.

Playing in a superhero game for the first time

2009-01-22T21:13:00.000-08:00

My gaming group got together and did a pitch session last week. We wound up settling on a superhero game using Mutants & Masterminds. I decided to play a character not unlike a combination of Mr. Bennett from Heroes and Jack Bauer from 24, with a smidgen of magic. I've been toying with the idea of rebuilding the character to be a neutralizer, though. Shut down a hostile super's powers and then take 'em down cop/soldier style. The rest of the party is a darkness manipulator, a woman in an alien space suit, and an actual alien, all of which seem like they'll be great fits for the players playing them. The Situation is that all the "A-List" super heroes and one very important "A-List" have vanished, along with the city of Chicago, which has been replaced with Something Else - a new, weird city. The PCs are all young or lower-tier (B or C list) heroes that now need to step up and deal with things. Reminds me a little bit of the 52 storyline on a superficial level. Should be fun. I've never played in a supers game before. As a side note, I really like this group.

Thank you.

2009-01-19T21:41:00.000-08:00

I voted for you twice. You were an unpopular president, but you genuinely tried to do the right thing. Usually, you succeeded, and got vilified and demonized for it. You came to office in peace, and less than 8 months later had war thrust upon you. I only pray that the historians will be kinder to you than your modern critics. God knows you deserve it. You gave us seven years of domestic safety and may have successfully created another sane country in the middle east. You weren't the most articulate president we ever had, but you meant what you said. You created the most diverse cabinet in American history. You did untold good for AIDS in Africa. Mr. President, I salute you and thank you.

Job well done.

Witch Hunt!

2009-01-10T22:15:00.001-08:00

Ever since I read the excellent The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane by Robert E. Howard, I've had a soft spot for the virtuous witch hunter archetype, but I didn't really know of any other fiction that had that sort of protagonist. Most people are more than a little unnerved by the idea of witch hunters, and the puritans aren't one of the more popular historical groups among modern Americans. (A pity, that. If you're not quite sure what I'm talking about, read about Francis Walsingham and the Massachusetts Bay Colony and see if your mind doesn't change some; Her Majesty's Spymaster and The Wordy Shipmates should get the point across pretty well and both are very enjoyable reads.)

Anyway, I stumbled across Matthias Thulmann: Witch Hunter while I was receiving some books the other day and have been reading it. It's fun. The hero is grim and ruthless, but definitely on the side of good (at least so far; I'm not through reading) the villains are suitably vile, and the Warhammer setting is a very cool one to have stories set in. I never got much into Games Workshop's tabletop games, but their licensed computer games are a blast and this isn't the first piece of fiction I've enjoyed from one of their worlds.

Resolutions for 2009

2009-01-03T09:17:00.000-08:00

Life:
1. Move up in the world, or at least position myself to. More money and a house would be great.
2. Improve my relationship with my wife. This isn't so much a resolution as an ongoing goal. We're pretty happy, but it can always be better.
3. Get back into shape. I was doing really well for a while, but I've got 30 excess pounds to drop.

Work:
1. Work harder and more efficiently. I wouldn't call my work ethic a liability by any stretch of the imagination, but I can always do better.
2. See if I can advance within B&N.

Gaming:
1. Play more. Of anything. D&D, Indie games, whatever. 2008 was a very lean gaming year.
2. Run either Burning Wheel or Sorcerer for a group.

I'm glad THAT'S over.

2009-01-01T07:57:00.000-08:00

2008 was not such a nice year. $4.00 gas was just the tip of the economic iceberg, and it kinda went downhill from there. Here's hoping '09 turns out a little better.

Happy New Year

2008-12-31T20:39:00.000-08:00

To all reading this, happy new year. Let's hope 2009 goes a bit more smoothly than 2008.

Companies that have done right by me, part 5.

2008-12-31T20:15:00.000-08:00

Games Plus: I suppose this should be "businesses that have done right by me, part 1." because I don't think this privately-owned brick & mortar game store is technically a company, but for the purposes of this blog post, we'll keep 'em in the series.

Games plus is my go-to place for physical RPG product. They're located in Mount Prospect, IL, right by the train tracks, which is an awesome place for them to be, because the trek out there takes me an hour, and I'd rather be on a train than grumbling in traffic, particularly on the return trip when I have new gaming stuff to look over. They are almost ridiculously well-stocked. When I was playing GURPS, they had it. When I was playing d20, they had it. When I got interested in indie RPGs, they had it about half the time, which is more than can be said for any other physical game store in the region (and by "region," I mean something like a 100-mile radius.) If they don't have it, they can usually get it. If they can't get it, they're almost comically sorry about it. The staff is friendly and professional. You can stand around and talk gaming with them, but they can also just get you rung up and on your way when you have a train to catch. And they know their stuff. You can walk in and ask for something fairly obscure, and chances are, they'll know it. If you ask for something really obscure, they'll know where to look. Like most physical game stores, they don't discount, but they do have a nice frequent-buyer program. I like them so much, that I favor them over a much more convenient game store that is about half as far from me. If that's not a recommendation, I don't know what is.

Companies that have done right by me, part 4.

2008-12-31T20:07:00.000-08:00

Noble Knight Games: Noble Knight is my primary online source for actual, physical gaming materials, and they're a joy to deal with. Because of their close proximity to where I live, I've been able to drive up with a bunch of trade-in stuff and peruse their stock directly from the warehouse. Their prices are fair, their staff is courteous and friendly, and when you do have them ship something, they take pains to insure it arrives intact. The last package I got from them sat in a couple of inches of melting snow in the bottom of my mailbox for several hours due to a combination of bad luck and bad weather, but once I got through the outer two layers of packaging, I was relieved to discover my books were bone dry.Any communications with the company via email goes straight to the owner, who is a very courteous and helpful man. Oh, and they have almost everything you can think of, including a lot of out-of-print product. Noble Knight will continue to have my business for many years to come.

Companies that have done right by me, part 3.

2008-12-25T20:53:00.000-08:00

Country Companies: Even by the standards of the other companies I've mentioned, my car insurance company, Country Companies, has done right by me and my wife. To an almost absurd degree, in fact. Certainly more than we would have expected them to on at least one occasion. They have gone to bat for us on a couple of occasions, have given us back our full deductible when the insurance company of an at-fault driver wouldn't, and have just generally been a pleasure to deal with. They are a fantastic insurance company, and I would recommend them without reservation to anybody with a car.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-25T20:52:00.000-08:00

To any and all who read this, I hope your Christmas was a happy one.

Companies that have done right by me, part 2.

2008-12-23T21:16:00.000-08:00

T-Mobile: T-Mobile has been my cellphone provider for the last couple of years. Over that time I have had... ...no problems with them.

Take that in for a second - no problems with a cellphone carrier. My calls get through. When they're dropped (an exceedingly rare occurrence) the phone beeps to let you know the call's been terminated and you can get them right back. Good network coverage, good reception, very reasonable prices, and, oh yeah, their customer service, both face-to-face at their retail locations and over the phone has been superb. When our contract was nearing the end of its life, my wife & I did some comparison shopping, nearly did a spit-take at what the other companies wanted to charge us for a worse plan, and gleefully re-upped for two years. They're not all full of the latest tech and gizmos, but if you want a good, reasonably-priced cell phone, I'd suggest checking out T-Mobile.

Companies that have done right by me, Part 1

2008-12-22T21:24:00.001-08:00

With the economy being what it is these day, I figured I'd give some positive publicity to a few companies that I feel deserve it. This will be a series.

Barnes & Noble: Barnes & Noble is my employer, and has been for the last 7+ years. I started out as a part-timer to make some money while going to school and am now in charge of the receiving department of the store I work for. During that time, the company has treated me quite well. I have almost ridiculously good benefits, a fair wage for the retail industry, and a corporate structure above me that, for all the grumbling we on the front lines do about it, really does have its collective head screwed on straight. Knowing what I do about what goes on behind the scenes would actually make me feel more secure as a customer. B&N truly puts its money where its mouth is.

Traditional RPGs to Indie RPGs in less than a years' time.

2008-12-22T20:23:00.000-08:00

Have a seat, dear readers. I've got a tale to tell. Quick note: none of the links in this post are ads; I've provided links to the various stuff of interest as it comes up in case you want to check it out.

This January, if you'd asked me to name an indie RPG company or designer, I would have given you a blank stare. (I would have Stood and Drooled, as it were.) If asked to name game designers I admired the work of (even by reputation), I would have gone to Monte Cook, Jason Buhlman, Steve Jackson, David Pulver, and Sean Punch, rather than Luke Crane, Judd Karlman, Fred Hicks, Ron Edwards, and Vincent Baker.

What I did know was that the evil Wizards of the Coast had "updated" the perfectly good D&D3.5 to 4e, and I wasn't going along with it. I already had a massive (MASSIVE) d20 library, you see, and the new rules weren't backwards-compatible. But Paizo Publishing was doing a continuation of the 3.5 rule set, and releasing their own, upgraded, but still backwards-compatible version. I immediately glommed onto this and became an avid poster on Paizo's forums. There, I ran across a couple of links to podcasts that various Paizo employees and freelancers were on. Then an adventure writer of theirs, Nick Logue, spun off his own game studio called Sinister Adventures. As part of the new website, there was a podcast about the new company's products. "Cool," I thought. "I'll listen to this at work." (My job is solitary; I'm the receiving manager for a Barnes and Noble store. Due to the size of the store, I'm essentially a one-man department.) In the podcast, Goblin was mentioned. I headed over there and listened to their one episode of the Goblin Podcast and everybody mentioned the Sons of Kryos. After going through "Suns of Crios" and about 50 other variations, I found them and voraciously listened to their entire backlog of podcasts in about 3 weeks' time (I can chew through 30+ hours of podcast material per week at work alone, and that doesn't count commuting and listening at home on the weekend.). I then ran out of SoK episodes and proceeded to make a pest of myself on their forums, chomping at the bit with other fans of the show for the new episodes. When they announced they'd be switching to videocast format, I branched out a bit, finding Canon Puncture, Narrative Control, This Modern Death, The GM Gourmet, The Independent Insurgency, and the occasional episode of Voice of the Revolution or Have Games, Will Travel to be, if not a replacement, at least a good substitute for SoK.

All of these podcasts are very into indie RPGs. Eventually, my curiosity got the better of me. I purchased a copy of Don't Rest you Head in PDF form from Indie Press Revolution. I picked up a copy of Burning Wheel at my Friendly-but-sadly-not-so-Local-Game-Store. I sat on that copy of Burning Wheel for a while. Flipped through it a few times, then decided to really get down to brass tacks and read the thing. That did it.

At this point, I'm officially a goner. The indie gaming scene has made a convert out of me. Now I just need to get some more gamers to play the stuff with.

To any gamers that haven't given the indie gaming scene a look, have a gander at the podcasts I mentioned, particularly Sons of Kryos and Canon Puncture. It's neat stuff.

Greatness wears camouflage

2008-12-17T21:36:00.000-08:00

"Vice Stirs up a war, virtue fights." -Luc de Clapiers de Vauvenargues

"If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen, a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath, a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? What do you have then? A sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero's path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed." -Lt.Col. Dave Grossman

I had an encounter with the mother of a former high school classmate today. I've talked with her (the mother) on a number of occasions; apparently her daughter and I have very similar taste in reading material (fantasy novels) and the mother would ask me for recommendations to send over to the daughter in Iraq when she was deployed. Anyhow, I found out today that the daughter is now one of the pilots that flies Marine One on occasion. Even though I haven't seen the daughter in over a decade, and was an acquaintance at best when I was going to school with her, I'm proud of her. That's quite an achievement.

She's hardly the only impressive person I know in the military. In fact, there are several people who I am connected to only by degrees of separation that I am also impressed by. And so, to any of you who have served, no matter how long ago: thank you. It's not Veteran's Day, Memorial Day, or Independence Day, and it's not the anniversary of Pearl Harbor or 9/11, but at least one American citizen had a small, quiet moment, and feels very humbled by all that you've done for us.

Elliot Ness? Try Patrick Fitzgerald.

2008-12-09T18:01:00.000-08:00

In my previous post, I expressed my delight over the snaring of Illinois gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, but I didn't give any credit to the man who took him down. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is probably one of the most impressive lawmen in U.S. history. He's been pounding corrupt Illinois politicians into the slammer for years now; including Betty Lauren-Maltese and George Ryan. He's utterly intractable, and it looks like he's nabbed the biggest corruption fish of all time with Blago. So Kudos, Mr. Fitzgerald. It's nice to see the law's still got some teeth in it, and that you're not afraid to use them to bite the bad guys.

Now this, THIS is awesome!

2008-12-09T11:44:00.000-08:00

From the moment I woke up, the indicators were pointing to a rough day. I slept poorly last night and woke up feeling stiff and cranky. I walked out the door into a nasty morning of freezing rain. The highways were covered in half-frozen slop, and as the day has progressed, the freezing rain has turned into snow. I got to work early and my delivery was late. I had to kick ice out of gutters to help get a roof leak under control.

None of it matters, because when I turned on my car radio this morning, I got some of the most awesome news ever.

Rod R. Blagojevich (or "Blago" to us Illinoisans) was arrested this morning on Federal corruption charges. From the sound of what the formidable Patrick Fitzgerald said at the news conference this morning at 11, they have a bevy of charges to level at the governor and are actively soliciting for people to come forward with more. The time is fast approaching where that corrupt, sleazy moron will never be allowed to work in politics again. This is absolutely fantastic news!

For those who are unaware, Blago may be the worst governor. Ever. And I mean ever ever. Like, go back to the Romans. He is corrupt, incompetant, ineffective, petty, and stupid (not necesarily in that order). He's a Democrat, but that's of little-to-no consequence. Even his own party is putting snow chains on the bus so they can be sure when they throw him under it. I hope they stuff him away for a very, very long time.

A challenge

2008-12-07T09:08:00.000-08:00

Watch this, remember it, and try not to complain about the petty things in life nearly as much.

Drat! Part 2

2008-12-02T06:35:00.000-08:00

In a previous post, I mentioned that I'd be trying National Novel Writer's Month next year. What I didn't mention is that, crazy as it was of me to do so, I tried it this year anyway. I managed to get over 10,000 words written in a six-day span that included several of the busiest work days of the year and Thanksgiving, but I (unsurprisingly) didn't hit the 50,000 mark. I'm still tempted to finish it, though. I've discovered that I do indeed like the setting, and would happily set more stories there.

Thankful

2008-11-27T06:18:00.000-08:00

As it's Thanksgiving here in the states, I figured I'd take a few moments and list some things I'm thankful for, by category:

Warm and fuzzy:

My wife: We've been married for only about 4 years and a couple for only about 8 (okay, almost exactly 8; the 8-year anniversary of our first date was just a few days ago) but I'm not sure what I'd do without her sometimes. She is a dear, sweet woman, funny, talented, and kindhearted. I am privileged and blessed to have her in my life.

My family: I come from a clan of warm, loving, good-hearted people who accepted my wife with joy and open arms when we got married.

My in-laws: I married into a clan of fun, laid-back people who are a blast to hang out with. They welcomed me into their family, too, and I enjoy their company.

My friends: I don't have a lot of them, but I'm pleased to say that I make up for in quality what I "lack" in quantity. I have known a few of them for a very long time indeed.

My cat: My wife, when we got married, wanted a little companion to keep her company during the times when she was alone in the house and picked up the cute lil' bundle of fluff we call Storm from a local animal shelter. That little creature has completely revised my opinion of cats.

Fun and practical:

My job: I'm certainly not getting rich working at the bookstore, but it's stable, relatively secure, usually pleasant, and Barnes & Noble treats us pretty well. I have 3 weeks of paid vacation, good medical insurance, and a host of other benefits.

My coworkers: With very few exceptions, (none of them my peers or superiors!) I work with a very nice, fun, and hardworking group of people. Being let down at work is very infrequent, and being stabbed in the back is unheard of.

My hobbies: As a gamer, I have managed to find untold hours of fun and enjoyment out of a few dice, some sheets of paper, some books, and the company of some friends. Now that's what I call a fun pastime. I also feel very grateful to live in a society where I can be such a raging geek and the worst I have to face for it is a few eye rolls now and then.

Sobering and profound:

My country: In spite of my dismay over the results of the last election, we had an election. This country has been, and for the time being, remains, the greatest bastion of individual liberty the world has ever seen. It is also prosperous and safe. My wife and I aren't wealthy by American standards, but by comparison to the rest of the world, we live like kings.

The U.S. Military: I am privileged to know and call friend a few of the brave people who make up the fists and shield of liberty, and it is humbling indeed. These are some of the most profoundly decent, courageous, and honorable military personnel in human history. We are blessed indeed to have them standing in our defense.

My salvation: As a Christian, it is very comforting to know that, through the sacrifice of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, that I do not face Hell when I die. To any militant atheists who read this far and just now rolled their eyes: the evidence isn't as clear as you'd like to believe it is.

Drat!

2008-11-24T20:05:00.000-08:00

I discovered the National Novel Writering Month or NaNoWriMo about three weeks too late this year, but it sounds like a blast for next year. I've already given myself a calendar reminder in one of my email addresses for mid-October of 2009 so I have plenty of time to get a plot outline together, etc.

My current thought would be to write a story about one of my home-brewed RPG setting worlds, but we'll see how I'm feeling next fall. Regardless, congrats to all of you out there who are participating. I wish all of you the best.

Change, whether we want it or not

2008-11-17T06:27:00.000-08:00

And I'm not just talking about the election.

My wife's job is probably going out of business, and she's probably quitting in either case to go into business for herself.

My dad is quitting his job and going back to school to pursue medical imaging certification.

I have an appointment with a career councilor this Wednesday to discuss possible options for the future.

My brother-in-law's business is starting to get really slow from the sound of things.

This next year is going to be really interesting.

Why do I do this to myself?

2008-11-12T22:18:00.000-08:00

My brain, it seems, is incapable of formulating anything but nightmare scenarios. My parents just sent me a very excited-sounding email that promises a free dinner and some news they're obviously eager to share about the new year, and the first thought through my head is "I hope they're okay." Of course they're okay! If it was something bad, the email would have been different and probably much more detailed. Maybe at some point in my second thirty-year block I'll learn to shake that reflex.

Maybe.

Sigh.

VOTE!

2008-11-04T00:01:00.000-08:00

Get to a polling place and vote! It's election day.

This goes double if you're a conservative. We really can't afford to hand this country over to the Commu- I mean Democrat party in an unopposed fashion.

Fallout 3

2008-10-30T20:16:00.000-07:00

So I just got my hands on Fallout 3. It's awesome. So awesome, in fact, that I'm going to stop burning minutes on blogging and go play.

Wow.

2008-10-23T20:33:00.000-07:00

Gun self defense
by secretstory

I'm always amazed by good hand-to-hand skills, and this guy's are pretty amazing. No flash, no showboating, just simple, effective control of the weapon and the opponent. Brilliant. This is why I like to play RPG characters with really high hand-to-hand skills. Guns are nice. Knives, swords, crossbows, hand grenades, and flails are nice, but never, ever underestimate the awesome combat effectiveness of a pair of human hands.

Cheap fun!

2008-10-07T18:36:00.000-07:00

Since I'm on a streak of plugging things I like, I may as well add one: gog.com. Gog.com (which stands for Good Old Games) sells older PC games, often bundled with their soundtracks and other goodies, DRM free, for about $6 apiece (or, in some cases, about $10). Right now the catalog is limited (but it does include Fallout 1 & 2 and Fallout Tactics...) but they're adding new stuff and they have a wish list. Since PC games definitely fall into the category of "they don't make 'em like they used to!" if you like older games, you may want to check it out.

Burning Wheel

2008-10-06T18:17:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the Sons of Kryos I've picked up Luke Crane's innovative RPG, Burning Wheel. It's really cool stuff. In fact, I'd really like to try it out; it's much grittier and more versatile than d20 in terms of what kinds of adventures you can use it for. It's also far less pricey; there are currently four books you'd need to have the entire system for the purposes of a fantasy game. They have a combined cover price of $70. (Two of them come bundled together). By way of contrast, D&D 3.5 PHB, DMG & MM go for $90, and the 4e versions go for $105. But it's not really the price that has me all interested. It's the game itself. Burning Wheel uses a "lifepath" system for character creation where you trace your character's history from their origins to the present through several lifepaths. For instance, a typical starting game might have a bunch of 5 lifepath humans. The party's "warrior" could take any number of different routes through life to get there. two opposite ends of the spectrum:

He could be born into a noble family, become a page, then a squire, then a knight, and finally a captain in the king's army.

Alternatively, he could be born as a peasant, be conscripted, become a foot soldier, get promoted to sergeant, and then "retire" to a village as a guard.

These two characters will look very different, and that's not even taking beliefs and instincts into account.

Beliefs are just what they sound like; three things (sometimes four or even five) that the character believes that drive the story in some way. Instincts are three reflexive behaviors the character has, from "When attacked, go aggressive" to "Always keep ingredients for soup handy". The players make these up from whole cloth; there's no list to pick from.

Social conflict and combat also follow an innovative system.

Very cool system. It would be perfect for any sort of gritty low fantasy you wanted to do. The works of J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, Glen Cook, and the Thieves' World anthologies would be especially well-suited to adaptation.

Shameless Spousal Promotion

2008-10-06T17:59:00.001-07:00

If any of the three of you reading this aren't already aware, my wife has an online craft store. She sells all kinds of very nice handmade leather and fabric crafts (her specialty is leather flower pins) for what I keep telling her are ridiculously low prices. If that sounds at all interesting to you, go check out her shop before my suggestions to raise her prices take root.

Food!

2008-10-02T19:22:00.000-07:00

One of my other interests, besides gaming and politics, is food. I like cooking, and I like eating. Because of this, I've uncovered a few neat tidbits that might be interesting:

Cooking by Numbers
-Check the boxes and see what you can make. For when you want to cook, but don't want to shop.

The GM Gourmet
-Gaming AND food! Recipes for feeding hungry gamers.

Good Eats
-As far as I'm concerned, the best cooking show on earth. Alton Brown is entertaining and educational at the same time. He's the mad scientist of cooking.

All Recipes
-A collection of recipes for just about anything conceivable. If you had something at a restaurant or friend's house and want to know how to make it at home, start here.

And one more: how to make dulce de leche out of canned sweetened condensed milk.

Marriage is awesome, part II

2008-09-28T08:13:00.000-07:00

My little sister just got married yesterday. She's been with the guy for 10 years and they've been cohabitating for several years, so the impact is somewhat diminished over the "now you live together!" my wife and I went through, but I wish her the very best. I hope being married is as good to her as it's been to me.

And now, for some humor.

2008-09-24T17:31:00.001-07:00

This is one scary, depressing year. A cartoon's not going to change anything, but watch it and laugh anyway. (While you still can!) JibJab always does a nice job of lampooning everybody equally without getting too offensive, and this is no exception.

Time for Some Campaignin' | Funny Jokes at JibJab

Introspection

2008-09-18T15:15:00.000-07:00

It has been a long week, in more ways than one. Work has presented its share of problems, but that has, in many ways, been the backdrop. My personal life and plans for the future have undergone some tremendous upheaval in the last several days, and I'm feeling a little listless and lost. It's ironic that the post below this one is what it is, because I've put a lot of thought into the cost of a career in law enforcement lately. Do I really want to spend thousands of dollars in application fees and fulfilling the various demands of various agencies, go through the huge battery of testing, have to deal with the skeletons in my closet being dragged out in the background investigation (probably several times) and all the emotional raggedness that will cause me and any other involved parties, take multiple polygraph tests and psychological evaluations and go through a boot camp-like academy experience in order to get a job where I have to deal with all the petty messes of modern society, see very little of my beloved wife, and occasionally risk my life for middle-class wages? And then there's the "harbinger of doom" aspect. Most people realize that once the cop is talking to them, something bad has either happened, or is about to. I think that would be one of the hardest aspect of that job to take. My friend Chad (whose word I trust) mentioned to me in a phone conversation a while back that he worried about my ability to deal with the ongoing horror of the job; my inability to be desensitized. Back then, I blew him off. Now, I'm not so sure. Do I really want to do this?

Maybe, but I'm beginning to feel more and more like the answer is "no." Maybe it's my recent birthday, but I'm beginning to feel like my pursuit of a career in police work was due to three things: guilt over past misdeeds and an attached desire to somehow redeem myself, youthful bravado, and the whiz-bang aspects of police work.

I am feeling very much like I want to do something else. In fact, where I am now, here's what I want out of a job:

I don't want to sit constantly. I like activity and being kept busy. Jobs where I'm not allowed to do something drive me batty, which is probably why the security jobs I had only lasted 2 months each. I just can't make myself sit there all day. It feels like my workdays are twice as long as they actually are. Long periods of patrol, especially in the winter, with nothing going on would probably be almost intolerable.

I want to solve problems. I like being thrown a good curve ball now and again. Being able to solve things makes me feel pretty cool.

I want to work during the day, Monday-through Friday like a normal member of the workforce. Occasional exceptions to this rule are fine; I'm not adverse to an occasional flight or drive to somewhere for training or a conference, a bit of overtime, or the occasional Saturday shift. I want holidays off. I want to be able to spend time with my wife. More and more, I find that my role as a husband is becoming extremely important to me. More and more I realize that no matter how fulfilling my job is, it's not going to matter as much as my family.

I want to pull in a decent wage and live a middle-class lifestyle. In today's economy, a combined income of $75k-$85k per year between me and my wife would be great. I want a house, a car that's less than ten years old, and some spending cash. I do not need a sports car, a palatial mansion, a second home, a boat, and a stack of gold bricks.

I nominally prefer blue collar to white collar. I like wearing jeans, working with my hands, and the like. I'm not, however, especially fond of all-male work environments. The crudeness level tends to get very, very high as I experienced when I was working in the machine shop. This isn't a major deal, though. I could do white collar too, if it met the rest of the criteria here.

I would like to use my degree. It's just an AAS from a community college, but I did work for it and pay for it almost entirely out of my own pocket. I liked the material, and I think I could do something that would make use of it. At least, I hope so.

I want to be able to have time left over to accomplish something for the betterment of society. If I'm not going into the emergency services, I'm going to want to get into some sort of charity work on at least an occasional basis, or something similar. The "I want to help" part of my personality is very much intact.

I also want to have time left over to have fun. I have hobbies (as I'm sure anyone reading this will immediately realize) and I'd like the time to indulge them.

And whatever it is, it needs to be somewhere around here, because my wife isn't going to consent to relocating.

Problem is, it's taken me much too long to figure this out. I'm 30 years old, I have a 2-year degree in Criminal Justice, a long history in retail (and only a year in management), and that's about it. I have no credentials, no experience - nothing.

And then there's this wrinkle:

I've been at the police thing for a long time. I've been talking it up to everyone I know. I've been taking classes for it when I could have been doing something else. At the peak of things, I was really, really psyched. The problem is, that was a while ago. I've used it as a talking point, a conversation starter, and so on. I did find my criminal justice classes incredibly interesting. But I don't want to do that job at this stage of my life. I feel like if I change my mind now, no matter how much I want to, I am letting basically everyone I know down, and/or I'm a hypocrite.

Why did it take me this long to have this conversation with myself? My friends Devin and Chad were both on this trajectory and realized for whatever reason it wasn't for them much earlier in life.

What do I do now?

Through the flaming hoop!

2008-09-13T08:56:00.000-07:00

Applying for police departments isn't like applying for most other jobs. You basically run a gauntlet of testing and produce paperwork that verifies everything about you. There are stacks of waivers, and they sometimes want you to go in for a physical, or in one recent case, an eye exam. There are also the application fees, which run $10-$25. Not all departments charge them, but a lot do. Many require notarized documents and official copies (not photocopies) of your transcripts and birth certificate. This makes the task not to be approached likely. For example, here's the bill for a department I applied for recently:

Application fee: $25
Eye Exam: $49
Notary Seals: $2
Copy Fee: $.31
Gas to drive to all of these places: $8

Total: $84.31 just to get to the test. This isn't all that uncommon. If I'd needed to get a fresh transcript & birth certificate, it would have been an extra $15 or so. Now, for future departments that want my eyesight certified, I should be able to just go back and get a stamp & signature, but this isn't something to do unless you really want it.

9/11

2008-09-11T18:18:00.001-07:00

Lots of people have spent lots of time telling you what 9/11 is. So I'm going to focus on what it's not:

9/11 is NOT old news
9/11 is NOT a U.S. government "inside job".
9/11 is NOT irrelevant to today.
9/11 is NOT unimportant.
9/11 is NOT a sign we should back down.
9/11 is NOT an indication that this an evil nation.
9/11 is NOT going to leave our national consciousness any time soon, if I have any say in the matter.

The battle is NOT over, the matter is NOT settled, and we should NOT give up.

Nice to be needed

2008-09-09T11:24:00.000-07:00

I came back from vacation yesterday to a "thank God you're back" note and a mess. It's nice to be needed.

Work and vacation

2008-09-06T07:04:00.000-07:00

There have been times when I really needed a vacation; work was highly stressful, I had about a zillion things up in the air, and I just really, really needed to not be at work for a few days. This past week wasn't one of those times. My company runs on a "use it or lose it" system with respect to paid time off, and I have to use up all the remaining vacation and personal time balances I have before the end of October, or they're gone. Okay, okay, twist my arm. I'll take a week off. It's been a nice week. I had a birthday and a few family celebrations that went with it, got some spending money as a result of several of those and have enjoyed spending it. It has been nice to be able to just go to bed whenever and get up when I felt like it.

All that said, I'm actually kind of glad to be heading back to work on Monday. Oh, the week has been fun and relaxing for certain, but I've gotten a bit of a sense of why retired people take part time jobs. A bit of responsibility can be good for getting one started in the morning and into the sack at a reasonable hour later that night. People sometimes say that we here in America have way too industrious of a society, and that we don't take time to relax. That can be true, but at the same time, with the plans the wife & I have (we're paying down our debt at a rapid pace so we can start saving for a house; we'd like to get into the housing market while prices are low) I don't have a huge reserve of cash to go traveling with. I also don't have the small army of friends some people have, so relaxing at home, while fun, gets boring. My job, on the other hand, really isn't bad. I have a very cut-and-dried set of responsibilities, clear benchmarks for success, and I work with and for good people. Going to work can be, and often is, a decent way to spend one's day. There is more to work than just soul-sucking toil. Work, as long as it isn't exploitative, is a good thing for the human spirit.

Thirty.

2008-09-02T06:59:00.000-07:00

Sometime in the wee hours of the morning last night, I left my twenties behind me. As I look back on them, I think the biggest regret I have from the years of 20-29 is that I wasted a titanic amount of time I could have used to better my career standing. My wife and I aren't impoverished, but if I'd just gotten my rear in gear and started testing for departments at age 20, I'd likely be a cop by now. (Or if I'd taken a different route, I'd probably be making $50,000-75,000 a year doing something else). However, I have one huge achievement I can look back on, and that's my wonderful wife, and thankfully, she's here to stay.

Sobering responsibility.

2008-08-26T19:52:00.000-07:00

For the first time in my life, I have to review the performance of other people at work. Fortunately, the people I do have to review aren't real trouble cases (indeed, a couple of them are very solid performers) but it's really sinking in that while I'm not the boss, I am a boss. To this end, I've solicited the advice of my boss, my dad, who was a supervisor for many years, and my friend Chad, a sergeant in the U.S. army. They were all gold mines of information, and thankfully, none of it was contradictory. So thanks Chris, Chad, and Dad. You helped a lot, and I'll be taking all of the advice into account as I write the reviews this weekend.

Best. Session. Ever.

2008-08-24T20:30:00.000-07:00

This week in my occasional Sunday campaign, my two players (my wife and my friend Kevin) did something so spectacularly unexpected and unexpectedly spectacular that I have to share it.

Their goal was to eliminate the presence of a Zaryxan embassy in a lawless area of the game world called the Blood Isles. Some quick background: Zaryx is an oppressive Lawful Evil tyranny. The Blood isles are a northern archipelago that's best described as a cross between Mos Eisley and a 17th-century pirate haven like Toruga or Port Royale, but with much colder weather.

In other words, Zaryx represents tyrannical authority and the Blood Isles is a lawless place where all authority, tyrannical or not, is viewed as intolerable.

Going into this, I expected them to basically do a Mission: Impossible/Metal Gear-style combat infiltration, where they took the demolition charges they'd been given by the person who tasked them with the job in the first place, snuck in, and blew the place up. What happened was far more spectacular.

They turned the entire region against the Zaryxians.

To begin with, they spied on the Zaryxians, and managed to copy down some Zaryxian documents. Then, they started spreading rumor that Zaryx's true aim in the Blood Isles was to conquer it by degrees. Following that, they impersonated Zaryxian officials and backed up their own false rumors by "dropping" forged documents, hiring people at great expense and billing it to he embassy, and even conducting "inspections" and putting in offers to buy key pieces of real estate. The beauty of all of this was that Zaryx was attempting to conquer parts of the world at the time, just not the Blood Isles. (In fact, they'd wanted to use the Blood Isles as a place to resupply, rearm, and hire mercenaries.) They even created a purely fictional character, Guddrick Leadbender, a dwarven freedom fighter from the besieged land of Stormhold. (In fact, Stormhold is under a Zaryxian blockade at this point in the story.) In short, they told the most believable lies possible to the most sympathetic audience they could hope to find. The result of this was about what you'd expect. There was minor violence. There were insults. And then someone threw a bottle at an important Zaryxan Emissary and touched off a massacre. At that point, the PCs stood back and just let things percolate. As far as they were concerned, the more casualties on both sides, the better. (Considering the contenders were basically the Nazis on one side and a murderous outlaw motorcycle gang on the other, this wasn't a particularly bad view to have.) In the riot that eventually ensued, they joined the mob that rushed the gates of the embassy, looted the treasury and armory, sank a Zaryxian ship in the harbor, and then blew up the embassy, with all number of bad guys still inside. In one fell swoop, they dealt a major blow to Zaryx, weakened the pirates operating out of the Blood Isles, and assured that those groups would never again work together.

And they did this all in about 3.5 hours of real time and less than a week of game time.

Mechanically speaking, In order to keep things moving, I played pretty fast and loose with the rules; I implemented a jury-rigged skill-challenge system based entirely off of what I could tell about skill challenges from episode 62 of the Sons of Kryos, and allowed them to do other, minor stuff for circumstance bonuses on the rolls that "counted". Every time they made a roll that "counted" I gave them some narrative based on what they were doing and its success or failure. It worked out really well.

Best. Session. Ever.

RPGs have theory?!

2008-08-24T07:17:00.000-07:00

For any reading this who don't know, my current job is as the receiving manager for a local Barnes & Noble bookstore. One of the aspects that I like about my job is that it's primarily physical, and that it's in a rear area of the store, which allows me to listen to whatever I feel like listening to. I usually listen to streaming talk radio on my laptop, but I also have a play list of fast, heavy music for when I need to work especially fast, and I also have a couple of favorite podcasts that I like to listen to. Of the podcasts, my favorite, far and away, is the Sons of Kryos. Jeff, Judd, and (sometimes) Storn discuss role playing theory in great depth and detail, and do so almost entirely without cursing or crude humor. This makes the podcast both "safe" and informative. They're up to 62 episodes, plus a huge pile of interviews, a call-in show, and some other miscellaneous recordings. If you're a gamer, I'd strongly urge you check them out.

In the strangest of places

2008-08-24T06:58:00.000-07:00

Along with providing me with a stable, loving home, a healthy marriage modeled before my eyes, experience with technology, and a sense of humor, one of the coolest things my parents did for me was introduce me to an author named Bill Peet. Mr. Peet worked for Disney, and was the major creative force behind the characters and humor in 101 Dalmations and Sword in the Stone. He also wrote ad illustrated a great number of picture books, and his distinctive and beautiful colored-pencil illustrations always made the books something special. Of his work, one of my favorites is Cyrus the Unsinkable Sea Serpent. It's been described as an anti-peer pressure book by a few people, and while there's a scene of that at the beginning of the book, the real story is what I feel to be one of the greatest stories of courage and self-sacrifice ever to be disguised as a childrens' book. Spoiler warning: I am going to divulge the plot of a childrens' picture book in the next few sentences. Feel free to stop reading if this bugs you. The book begins with a very bored sea serpent swimming around, restless and wanting something to do. Within moments, a local sharp puts him up to the idea of attacking a sailing vessel and eating everyone onboard, calling him a coward when he shows reluctance. In a fit of pique, the Cyrus swims off to look for a target and spots a Mayflower-like colony ship getting ready to sail for the new world. When an old man curses the ship as it's leaving, Cyrus takes offense and instead of attacking the ship, he becomes its guardian, shepherding the ship and its passengers safely through the worst the ocean can throw at them, occasioannly at some personal cost. I'd recommend any of Bill Peet's books to anyone, child or adult, in a heartbeat, but I have a special place in my heart for ol' Cyrus. Sometimes true stories of heroism can be found in the strangest of places.

Music

2008-08-23T15:47:00.000-07:00

I listen to music primarily for one of two reasons; either I like the way it sounds, or I like what the message is. In the former category, we have artists like Disturbed, Linkin Park, Megadeth, Metallica, Five Finger Death Punch, Bullet for my Valentine, Judas Priest, and various other loud, aggressive bands. I love me some good heavy metal. Music that gets the ol' adrenaline surging is great. Problem is, these bands have a tendency to sing one of just 6 basic songs:

I hate myself, and want to die.
I hate you, die.
Whoa, man. These drugs are something else.
I'm quite evil, you know.
I like sex.
I hate authority.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have artists like Johnny Cash, Toby Keith, Daryl Worley, Martina McBride, Aaron Tippin, Brad Paisley, Petra, Whiteheart, and other country singers and Christian rock bands. These bands have a much different set of songs, and it's much longer:

I love my spouse/family, and am very committed to them.
I love my country.
Singing is the best job ever.
My love life is pretty crummy.
Life can really throw some curveballs at you.
There is injustice in this world. Why don't we fix it?
I love God.
Let me tell you this funny story...

I really wish I could somehow combine the music of set A with the values of set B, because then I'd have what I would consider the Best Music Ever; a metal band with Country Lyrics. On second thought, only 2 and 6 would probably work in that mix....

Every once in a while one of the heavy bands tosses out something I really like lyrically (the title track off of Disturbed's latest album Indestructible is a perfect example of this) but the overlap is too few and far between. The closest I get is Hammerfall, and while I'd only rate their songs a 6 or 7 at best in either category, they often get it in both.

What this world needs is a good, talented, conservative rock band.

1 in 25

2008-08-23T13:07:00.000-07:00

I admit it. I'm an RPG geek. I play Pathfinder, and have played and/or run D&D, GURPS, and In Nomine. I'm itching for a chance to play Dogs in the Vineyard, Don't Rest your Head, Burning Wheel, Aberrant, Mutants & Masterminds, and Shadowrun. I eat the experience up. Why? Because it allows me, at least for a while, to toss all of the encumbrances and ambiguities of the real world, stare down pure evil, and spit in its eye. RPG settings offer a refresing opportunity to erase much of the gray from the world, take up a heavy object of stark white and in the words of an infamous D&D parody, attack the darkness. It's no substitute for doing good or fighting injustice in the real world, and in the real world, one cannot use the methods of a typical RPG PC, but, like a good crime thriller or fantasy novel, it allows you the satisfaction of doing so without any of the real-world consequences of doing do in the most efficient way possible, except it goes one better than other pieces of fiction and puts you in the story. I realize that others get something else out of the experience, but for me, having my paladin draw his sword, walk through the flames, and send the villain screaming to Hell is what it's all about.

However, this very concept is also why it's important to maintain the line between fantasy and reality. Unlike many people these days, I do believe that true evil exists in the world. There are people out there that are utter sociopaths, who will steal, kill, and abuse their way through the populace for no better reason than that nobody has stopped them yet. About 4% of the human population, if I remember my reading, can be classified as sociopaths. That means that, at any given time, there are about 260,000,000 remorseless monsters in human skin walking the planet. Add another 40 million and you'll have roughly the population of the United States. Praise be to God that they don't all live here. That also, however, means that there are twenty-four times that many people who aren't as likely to shoot you as shake your hand out there. As I test for police departments, I routinely hope that when the time comes, I have the wisdom to distinguish the one-in-twenty-five from the other 24, because unlike my paladin character, as a sworn law enforcement officer, I will not have the luxury of simply smiting those who have done evil upon the world and walking away. In the real world, thinking oneself judge, jury and executioner is a really good way to join the ranks of the 1-in-25.

What's in a Name?

2008-08-23T12:57:00.000-07:00

I go by "Timespike" on the internet. (And by the way, it's "Time Spike," not "Time's Pike"). Occasionally someone asks me why, or where it came from. Sadly, the answer's not profound. Timespike was a superhero I came up with back in high school for a GURPS Supers game that never happened and was then tossed into a superhero universe that I'd created with occasional help from my buddies Paul and Greg. I was very passionate about it at the time, but somehow was never quite passionate enough about it to actually do anything with it. I might some day, but probably not. At any rate, I use it now for the simple reasons that I like the way it looks on screen (and sounds off the tongue) and that nobody else uses it. That's it. Pretty boring, huh?

Marriage is awesome

2008-08-23T12:37:00.000-07:00

I'm going to take the time here to plug one of my favorite blogs: I am Husband. I think any of my readers who, like myself, are husbands can benefit from reading it, and would encourage them to do so. The tone is very conversational and guy-to-guy, and the advice is rock-solid. I bring this up for a couple of reasons:

I am happily married.
I want everybody else who is married to be at least as happy as I am.

The benefits of a secure and happy marriage are numerous. Having someone you can trust, a longer lifespan, and a partner to stand by you through hard times are the old cliches, and many other have written about them better than I ever could. I'd like to get into the lighter side of things today.

First, marriage is fun if you let it be, and I'm not just talking about sex, here. Having someone around that you are that good of friends with is worth the effort a strong marriage takes all by itself. Chances are, if you made it to the altar, you spent a lot of time enjoying each others' company on the way. My wife and I have built up an impressive store of mutual pastimes, inside jokes, shared fond memories, and a few common friends. My relationship with her has enriched my life in ways I never would have expected it to.

Second, marriage widens your circle of people. My wife and I were fortunate; we both like the in-laws and the feeling is mutual all around. It's a great experience to be part of two cool families instead of just one, but even if your in laws aren't your favorite people in the world, marriage probably at least carries the benefit of a few new friends into it. I've also found that it's easier to be friends with other married people when you yourself are married, and as I get older, that group of "other married people" gets bigger all the time.

Third, marriage provides me with someone to keep me on my toes in all the little areas where I'd otherwise totally slack off. I find dirt and clutter far less obnoxious than my wife does. As a single guy, I lived in an environment where vacuuming was an annual occurrence at best, dishes sometimes sat in the sink for weeks (yes weeks, plural) between washing, bills got forgotten occasionally, and so on. I wasn't a complete troglodyte, but the presence of mess really didn't bother me, either. My wife has changed that. Mess bugs her. She gently pushes me towards excellence in other ways of my life, calls me on it when I get crazy ideas in my head, and rounds off my rough edges. I wouldn't be a bottom-feeder or a danger to society without her, but I'd be a liar if I didn't acknowledge that I'm a better person for her presence in my life.

No. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never Compromise.

2008-08-23T11:57:00.000-07:00

Warning: If you have not read either Watchmen or Astro City: Confession and intend to do so, do not read this post unless you want all kinds of spoilers! You have been warned!

I just finished wading through the massive tome that is Watchmen, the only comic ever to make Time Magazine's list of 100 best novels. I can certainly see why the book made the list, but while the raw narrative talent of the two men who put this work together has earned my respect, I found the worldview that the work espouses to be one that I cannot agree with. It paints conservatives to be, by default, foaming hatemongers who despise anyone who isn't white and Christian utterly. This is demonstrably false; in fact, it's almost the opposite of the truth. I'm not going to go into a huge listing of prominent black conservatives, a lengthy discussion of just which side of the political spectrum support for Israel falls on, or the like. Suffice it to say that those on the left often have better P.R. than we on the right do. But even beyond what I consider to be an essential fallacy there, I also disagree with the bleak, hopeless painting of a world sliding inexorably towards a Godless oblivion. There were parts I liked; Rorschach's talionic punishments of some truly fiendish criminals were gratifying in a cathartic way, and the quote from him at the end that makes the title of this post was similarly cool, but the overall message and tone of the comic was depressingly nihilistic. The "savior" of the Watchmen story sacrifices his own morality and millions of innocent lives to achieve the "greater good," in this case, a unified world. In the end, he gives away that which does not belong to him to force the world to do what he believes is best. He kills millions of people "for their own good." And then, afterwards, he profits from the apocalypse.

Contrast this with a graphic novel that I really did like, the Busiek/Anderson collaboration of Astro City: Confession. In Confession, the hero also makes massive sacrifices; in this case, his own comfort, his public image and his own life. And he does so willingly and knowingly, because it is the right thing to do. He even does so under startlingly similar circumstances. The aliens in Confession had provided a very similar set of circumstances in Confession to the ones provided by Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen; people had turned on each other, and the innocent were in peril, but instead of taking the easy route, manipulating others to do what he feels is necessary to achieve peace, the Confessor takes the hard road. He sacrifices himself. He gives away things that actually belong to him; his life, his future, his reputation. Ozymandias, at the end of Watchmen is alive, thought of as a good man, and comfortable, yet millions of innocents are dead. The Confessor, at the end of Confession, is dead and reviled, yet by his selfless sacrifice, millions of innocents are saved. Sometimes, the greatest heroes are the ones who we never find out about.

First post

2008-08-23T11:47:00.000-07:00

Hello, to anyone reading.

This is not my first attempt at this newfangled blogging stuff that all the kids are doing, but I'm hoping that it will turn out better than the last one, which trailed off rather ignominiously.

A few notes about me:

I'm a man starring down the barrel of his early thirties (less than two weeks from now, I'll no longer be in my twenties) living in a small town in Illinois. As one can tell from the sub-header of the blog, I'm just your average married Conservative Christian who is trying to start a career in law enforcement, listens to heavy metal, reads comic books, and is into tabletop RPGs as his primary hobby. The topics in this blog will be somewhat disjointed as a result. I have serious doubts that anyone who reads this blog will be interested in more than half of it at any given time, but hopefully any of you who decide to wade through it will get at least something out of it.