The Dream Library http://www.dreamlibrarian.com All the stories never written Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:29:09 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc en hourly 1 Honeymoon Part 2, Vacation Angst Edition http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2010/06/16/honeymoon-part-2-vacation-angst-edition/ http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2010/06/16/honeymoon-part-2-vacation-angst-edition/#comments Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:28:56 +0000 Triss http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/?p=100 Trying to get back on track here. This doc was originally dated 3/2/2010. Warning: angst alert. This was when I realized how little I could communicate with the locals.
Okay, I’ll keep this one separate from the accounting of the week.
Monday night, neither Becky nor I slept well – for me, it was roughly textbook insomnia – the airflow of the ventilation system sounded like someone running a car on the roof. Becky just couldn’t get comfortable.
How appropriate.  So armed with a lack of sleep, we set off as soon as we were both up and moving – I had not planned anything out for the day, and, indeed, I had forgotten the only guidepost document i had – a Plan du Metro.
We went to l’Arc du Triomphe first – access blocked by police.  Pretty from a distance.  Next, les Jardins du Luxembourg.  I remember them being lush,  and wondrous, and warm.  That was in late summer/early fall. They were dead. Statuary all looked correct, but the rose gardens were all naked, and every tree was stark and empty.  Probably didn’t help that a brutal storm had just come through (found out listening to the news that the windstorm we experienced? yeah, it killed people and broke seawalls on the coast. Not quite ’state of emergency’ stuff, but close.)
I was already feeling somewhat nauseous at this point – disconnected and uncomfortable – these things I remember so clearly were feeling terribly unfriendly this time.  Notre Dame.  Serenity and peace is something I associate with the great cathedrals of France, based on my previous visit – but oh, 20 years is so long.
Notre Dame was closed today from 12:25 until 5:30pm for some event – police again everywhere, an emphatic disconnection.
I arrived, at that point, at a certain sickness-at-heart – a form of panic attack, I think, where  I realized just how unprepared I was, how few landmarks and points of familiarity I had here, and how much it felt like an alien and unfriendly place.
Not exactly what I wanted to be feeling, here.
Here in France, I know Becky, I know the comforts of cooking and companionship with my lady. I know the Metro – even after 20 years, much of it is familiar, and in any case, it’s a familiar kind of puzzle with solutions I can puzzle out comfortably.
The museums are comfortable; anonymous browsing.  I begin to realize how poorly I deal with truly unfamiliar situations – I don’t like dealing with strangers when I don’t know the right rituals of communication.
My high school french, unsurprisingly, does me no good other than the limited sign-reading I can kinda pull off.
So today I spent much of the day in a state of overloaded isolation – hard to enjoy the world around me when it seems so very far away and so incomprehensible.
Next time I go to a foreign country, I’m bringing a friend who can help translate and bridge the culture gap. That was supposed to be my job this time; I underestimated the sheer, shocking alienness that I was kept safe from 20 years ago, when I didn’t understand the world much, anyway.
On a similar note, I found myself watching CNN this morning; European English CNN.  The news covered from Britain (upcoming elections) to Iraq (the same), to Chile(big earthquake), to South Africa (World cup countdown).  Having watched american CNN recently… I want to cry.  My country feels so jingoistic, so self centered.  I know there’s some reason, there – we have a big damn population, and a lot of interesting internal problems… but still, when the news spends as much time covering people with different cultural values _in different languages_, it feels a lot more worldly than what I’m used to.
So yeah. Feeling like a stupid american, feeling like I’m not very adventuresome, a little homesick, a lot foolish. Bit off more than I could chew. I look forward to Britain – more familiar, understand the language, at least.

Okay, I’ll keep this one separate from the accounting of the week.Monday night, neither Becky nor I slept well – for me, it was roughly textbook insomnia – the airflow of the ventilation system sounded like someone running a car on the roof. Becky just couldn’t get comfortable.How appropriate.  So armed with a lack of sleep, we set off as soon as we were both up and moving – I had not planned anything out for the day, and, indeed, I had forgotten the only guidepost document i had – a Plan du Metro.  We went to l’Arc du Triomphe first – access blocked by police.  Pretty from a distance.  Next, les Jardins du Luxembourg.  I remember them being lush,  and wondrous, and warm.  That was in late summer/early fall. They were dead. Statuary all looked correct, but the rose gardens were all naked, and every tree was stark and empty.  Probably didn’t help that a brutal storm had just come through (found out listening to the news that the windstorm we experienced? yeah, it killed people and broke seawalls on the coast. Not quite ’state of emergency’ stuff, but close.)I was already feeling somewhat nauseous at this point – disconnected and uncomfortable – these things I remember so clearly were feeling terribly unfriendly this time.  Notre Dame.  Serenity and peace is something I associate with the great cathedrals of France, based on my previous visit – but oh, 20 years is so long.Notre Dame was closed today from 12:25 until 5:30pm for some event – police again everywhere, an emphatic disconnection.I arrived, at that point, at a certain sickness-at-heart – a form of panic attack, I think, where  I realized just how unprepared I was, how few landmarks and points of familiarity I had here, and how much it felt like an alien and unfriendly place. Not exactly what I wanted to be feeling, here.  Here in France, I know Becky, I know the comforts of cooking and companionship with my lady. I know the Metro – even after 20 years, much of it is familiar, and in any case, it’s a familiar kind of puzzle with solutions I can puzzle out comfortably. The museums are comfortable; anonymous browsing.  I begin to realize how poorly I deal with truly unfamiliar situations – I don’t like dealing with strangers when I don’t know the right rituals of communication.My high school french, unsurprisingly, does me no good other than the limited sign-reading I can kinda pull off.So today I spent much of the day in a state of overloaded isolation – hard to enjoy the world around me when it seems so very far away and so incomprehensible.Next time I go to a foreign country, I’m bringing a friend who can help translate and bridge the culture gap. That was supposed to be my job this time; I underestimated the sheer, shocking alienness that I was kept safe from 20 years ago, when I didn’t understand the world much, anyway.
On a similar note, I found myself watching CNN this morning; European English CNN.  The news covered from Britain (upcoming elections) to Iraq (the same), to Chile(big earthquake), to South Africa (World cup countdown).  Having watched american CNN recently… I want to cry.  My country feels so jingoistic, so self centered.  I know there’s some reason, there – we have a big damn population, and a lot of interesting internal problems… but still, when the news spends as much time covering people with different cultural values _in different languages_, it feels a lot more worldly than what I’m used to.
So yeah. Feeling like a stupid american, feeling like I’m not very adventuresome, a little homesick, a lot foolish. Bit off more than I could chew. I look forward to Britain – more familiar, understand the language, at least.

]]> http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2010/06/16/honeymoon-part-2-vacation-angst-edition/feed/ 0 Honeymoon Posting Part 1 http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2010/03/14/honeymoon-posting-part-1/ http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2010/03/14/honeymoon-posting-part-1/#comments Mon, 15 Mar 2010 03:53:54 +0000 Triss http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/?p=91 In order to not announce to all those _really smart_ criminals that I’m wandering the world, I didn’t public-post anything about the honeymoon while we were out and about. Now that we’re home and the jetlag has receded to the point that I can imagine being caught up, here we go. This was all written at the time, often after a tiring day. I’m not much of a poet.

The plane trip in doesn’t deserve much remembrance, other than to say that Frankfurt airport is huge and we got to see it for an extra 4 hours thanks to a cancelled connecting flight.  The Kindles did _exactly_ what they were supposed to – I spent much of the time reading, as did Becky.
Phones, on the other hand,were a little hinky – when Becky turned on hers, it didn’t register as able to make calls for about an hour.  Mine registered, but wouldn’t complete calls effectively for about the same amount of time. Thankfully, we got one call off to Becky’s mom (at 6am Pacific time) saying “Help, we’re 4 hours late and don’t want them to give away our car!”.
We arrived at Charles De Gaulle Airport, where our rental was ready for us thanks to a call Debra had made for us, bless her.  Drove out of the city into the countryside, through Bailly-Romanvilliers, to the Marriott Village d’Ile-de-France.  Checkin was quick – the guy at the desk took one look at us and said  that while he had more information to share, we looked like we needed the rest more.
The place itself is pretty huge – a two story condo on an arc around a small artificial lake.  It’s well-acquitted, warm, and slightly foreign. I’m still trying to sort out the two-button flush thing going on.  My plot to have working electrical power, thankfully, actually worked – replacement cables for my laptop power supply and I’m in  business.
We spent Saturday recovering from our 30 hours without meaningful sleep – lazed about the house, went to Bailly-Romanvilliers for groceries, and watched a couple hours of Cartoon Network in French.  Loonatick – the edgy, reimagined Bugs-and-co show? Sucks in french, too.  It reminded me of what would happen if Frank Miller got sufficiently brain damaged to make childrens’ shows and decided to model all his plots off of the He-Man cartoon.  The Anime version of Power Puff Girls, OTOH, was almost comprehensible, given the fact that we just had to imagine it was in Japanese. Did I mention we had no subtitles, and we watched about 2 hours?
Sunday, finally, we went into Paris. It was windy and wet all day – we woke to wind banging, screaming, and rattling at the windows, and it continued to be so through the day. I got us lost almost immediately (Got out at Pyramides, started walking towards the first pretty building I saw, realized after a couple blocks it was the Opera house instead of the Louvre.)  Corrected, got back on the train and off at the Louvre, and spent the next three hours in the Louvre.  Got through a blazing fast trip through Denon and Sully wings.  I remember the Winged Victory from before, as well as the Venus de Milo, and of course, the Mona Lisa – lordy, but they’ve got a giant bloody wall for that teeny tiny canvas.  There’re a lot of striking paintings there that I wish I had enough background to spend hours staring at each one, or even that I had enough lore to identify more of the historical bits.  Some of the murals on the ceilings were so striking and iconic that I knew I should recognize them better (the murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra was one of them that I had a second reference for). Others were straight up unsubtle – there was one room where the ceiling piece was a series of angels – the topmost holding a scroll titled, I believe, “Le Siecle de Louis XIV”, with a few others in the middle, and at bottom, Victory herself laying the smack down on an old guy with a scythe.  Pretentious, much? naaah.
Right now, there’s a single piece of modern art in the Louvre, in the midst of the italians. It’s a great big 15 foot tall canvas painted black, with a series of light lines across it.  At the halfway mark, the light lines change – on the left, it’s made of thick glossy black paint that reflects the light from the window outside. On the right, it’s white paint.  I’m not sure what the guy did to deserve  a spot – even temporarily – in the Louvre, but I’ll admit, the painting’s technically pretty cool. I had to take a second look after reading up on it.
On the way through Sully, we got to look at the original foundations of the Louvre.  Big old stone. The curators have put up neon white cursive text along the  way with series of statements, most of which I couldn’t translate. One of them that was kind of cool, as best as I could translate, came out to “By being down here, amongst these old stones, you are participating in archaeology”.  My high-school french is worth just shy of nothing here – at least I’m able to read things enough to get some idea of what’s going on, but really, it’s about 4 words out of every sentence I can pull off with any confidence; the rest is relying on Latinate similarities.
The train station is still huge. They’ve got the upper floor locked off for renovations, so everything’s pretty much crammed into the first and second floor.  Impressionists continue to be my favorites – I guess I’d have a lot more fun with renaissance artists if I was a more avid follower of Christianity or history in general. Since I’m insufficiently educated in those fields to recognize many of the characters, I instead have to admire technique  - and I love the impressionists.  Pointillism, minimalism, some of the pieces that you look at and realize that they’ve really painted just enough to give you the right idea of what they were doing… Love it.
The Art Nouveau section was also gorgeous – the pieces were in every sort of medium, from architectural drawings, to furniture, to glass – all this highly decorated, intricately wrought stuff.  Screw modernism.  I need to find some nouveau furniture or something, it’s pretty.
About 3:30, we were plumb tuckered, and meandered our way home with a combination of RER and Metro travel. Caught a bit of the homeward rush, and didn’t get a seat on the A train until we were mostways out in the suburbs.
Turns out around here the parking structures expect you to handle validating your ticket before you get back in your car. Logical, though it threw us. Thankfully not many  people were attempting to leave, as we kinda ended up leaving the car sitting at the stile while we took the ticket over to the nearest machine. Whups.
Being functionally at a kindergarten reading level and nearly aphasic when it comes to speaking the language is pretty intensely embarassing; I’m sure it’s something I could get used to, but damn, this makes me want to refresh my language skills and take a conversational french class.
The weather on Sunday morning was apparently remarkably out of character for the area – there are places where roof tiles have come down here and there in the complex.  There’s no nearby weather station, but some stations bordering Paris reported 90km winds, so I’m guessing we got something like that.
We were bushed, after the cold, wet, rainy day in the museums – know how I can tell? We woke up at 10am after going to  sleep at 10pm. No chemical assistance, just pure tired. Jet lag’s almost gone, I think, though. This was honest tired.
By the time we rose to ’sorta ready to move’, it was noon, and really, it didn’t seem worth it to drag ourselves into town, even given the beautiful day.
We’ve been taking advantage of the little shop in the main building – it’s got all the basic cooking materials we could need. We have meats we purchased in the village, and have been cooking our meals, which is relaxing, to us, and taking full advantage of the timeshare.  Slightly strange to be eating out _less_ in a foreign country than we have been the last few weeks, but at the same time, I love home-cooked food.
]]> http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2010/03/14/honeymoon-posting-part-1/feed/ 0 A Holiday List of Expressed Desires http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/11/27/a-holiday-list-of-expressed-desires/ http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/11/27/a-holiday-list-of-expressed-desires/#comments Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:13:20 +0000 Triss http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/?p=84 Indie Games (www.indiepressrevolution.com)

  • Don’t Rest Your Head / Don’t Lose Your Mind
  • Spirit of the Century
  • No More Roses (Houses of the Blooded Soundtrack)
  • Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor
  • Godlike
  • Play Dirty / Shotgun Diaries
  • Dogs in the Vineyard (out of print – good luck finding it!)
  • Yellow Sign books by John Wick

Other RPGs

  • Almost any Chaosium Call of Cthulhu expansion
  • Does it have style? Should I know about it?  Will it make me giddy?

Video Games

  • New Super Mario Brothers Wii
  • Zelda Twilight Princess Wii
  • Zelda Spirit Tracks (DS)

Books

  • Order of the Stick graphic novels (other than volume 1)
  • Girl Genius graphic novels
  • Mouse Guard – Winter
  • Pulp fiction collections (Lensman, Doc Savage, and so on)
  • Patricia Briggs – Homecoming graphic novel
  • Robin McKinley – Sunshine

Music

  • Female-fronted metal
  • Stuff that might come up if you Pandora’d Blue Stone and Enigma
  • Jam bands (a la Bela Fleck or Sound Tribe Sector 9)
  • Norah Jones – The Fall
]]> http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/11/27/a-holiday-list-of-expressed-desires/feed/ 0 Houses of the Blooded http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/11/16/houses-of-the-blooded/ http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/11/16/houses-of-the-blooded/#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:42:49 +0000 Triss http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/?p=82 So I picked up Houses of the blooded for $5 at Indie Press Revolution – an investment I recommend to any gamer with any respect for John Wick and/or any interest in Narrative Roleplaying.

The game book is brilliantly written, with enough world to whet your palette and enough system to encourage a vivid and active world building narrative tragedy, from Conquest to Romance and Revenge (same word, different emphasis) to Mass Murder.

I’m going to have to go back and reread it a couple times to internalize it, but at this time, I have only respect for the ultimate effect.

It is, ultimately, an indie game, in that it doesn’t partake of the mainstream advancement philosophies, but I could hope that a lot of its ideas are adopted – a great many games would be richer for it.

Why don’t you have a copy yet?

]]> http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/11/16/houses-of-the-blooded/feed/ 0 Our sweet kitty http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/11/15/our-sweet-kitty/ http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/11/15/our-sweet-kitty/#comments Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:00:45 +0000 Triss http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/?p=80 On Saturday morning, around 9:30am, Bo started crying in the bedroom. We came to him (all of us, even Luke), and found him unwilling to move, clearly unhappy. Luke tried playing with him, but Bo wasn’t interested. Finally, Luke just settled for cleaning him thoroughly. We brought him to the vet at noon – he had moved a bit in the intervening time, to be near to people, but was still not doing well.

The vet noted his temp was low, and he was pale. Blood tests and X rays turned up nothing; at this point the theory at hand was that he’d eaten a string or somesuch – apparently the body doesn’t do well trying to digest something a foot long. The vet, unable to find something certain, but concerned, recommended we take Bo to the emergency clinic.

We did – took him up there, had the vet there check him out, and she quickly came back with a much more serious diagnosis – Bo had very poor circulation in his hind legs and wasn’t able to use them very well. She also looked at the X ray film and noted his heart wasn’t the right shape. The new theory was that his heart was failing, and he’d thrown a clot. If we could keep him healthy for a week or so, a cardiac ultrasound would be the next diagnostic step. Meanwhile, he was kept overnight at the clinic for observation. When I visited him before I left, he’d been given pain medication and IV fluids, and was pulling himself around the cage on his forelegs, his hind legs barely able to help.

We got a call last night around 10 that he’d progressed to full paralysis of the legs, but that his bowels and tail were still working.

This morning, nothing had changed, but he wasn’t doing well. The doctor explained that the prognosis really wasn’t all that good – blood thinners for cats don’t work very reliably, she said, and even if they did dissolve the clot, he’d likely be permanently incapacitated, on dangerous blood thinners, and we’d have no knowing when another clot would do more damage. As she explained the increasingly long-shot diagnostic steps, I had the appalling realization that we were losing him. That the cat we’d welcomed into our lives and our hearts was going to die before he’d even been here two years.

Becky and I went in together to say goodbye. He was listless, and had only gotten worse, even in the hour since I’d spoken with the vet on the phone. He was ours, though, and, bawling, we stayed with him to the end.

God bless you, Bo.

]]> http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/11/15/our-sweet-kitty/feed/ 1 Realms of Cthulhu http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/10/24/realms-of-cthulhu/ http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/10/24/realms-of-cthulhu/#comments Sun, 25 Oct 2009 01:27:54 +0000 Triss http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/?p=78 The following shall be considered More RPG Geekery.

With Eloria – Erich’s long-running world – ramping up, I’ve been getting familiar with the system he chose for this era – a lightweight pulp-oriented game by the name of Savage Worlds. Obviously, until I either run it significantly (I’m ramping up a small game in the Slipstream setting for this purpose) or get knee deep in Elorian play, I’m not going to know it fully. However, it’s got a striking appeal on the face of it.

Any idiot system can pull off skill challenges without causing brain hemorrhages. Some do it with panache, some make you faintly ill. In Savage Worlds, the question is: Can you roll a 4 on a single die? Oh, you’re a PC? You get a d6 to bolster whatever other die you’re using. There’s some color mechanics, but if your players can’t count to 4? time to go play Candyland.

Combat’s always complicated. Savage Worlds incorporates a critical concept: everyone must be important in combat scenes! If you’re not a gunbunny, then you’re sticking a leg out to trip the NPC, or conning the mooks into giving you the MacGuffin. Using your Agility or Smarts to trick the bad guys is a core mechanic and has a heavy impact on the flow of the fight.

So yeah, I’m enjoying the system for its simplicity, style, and flexibility.

I’ve ranted on and off about how awesome Trail of Cthulhu is. I’ve also commented that I’m not sure it’s playable. Fundamentally, to me, that means ‘Not fun to play’, or ‘gets in the way of story’. The presentation Ken Hite and Robin Laws make of investigative RP and of the Mythos is flawless. My problem is that the system is a little too nonintuitive for me. It’s lightweight, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t want the PCs thinking quite so much about whether they need to spend their screen time now, or later, and niggling over probabilities. They need to be encouraged to throw themselves foolishly into the maw of madness.

So, I wondered: Can you run Call of Cthulhu in Savage Worlds? The key, hallmark element of games based on Lovecraft’s existential horror is that the Truth is not something human minds can deal with. The world _does_ hate you, because its most powerful beings are uncaring, horrible monsters. So when the pseudopods of their plots and schemes and heartless accidents intrude on your world… you’re pretty much guaranteed to go partly or completely mad.

The basic mechanic of wounds in Savage Worlds seems perfectly extensible to this concept, which is why, of course, noone went there. The Sanity system in Weird War II was just tacked on, and Deadlands, bizzarrely, is too pulpy for it to make sense there.

Reality Blurs decided they were going to get it right, and right they got it. Realms of Cthulhu presents us with a world where Fate is Unkind (rolled snake eyes? you may not spend a benny there), and Mental Anguish is the measure of a failed Guts check. Sanity is limited by your Corruption, whether you gained said Corruption by vile acts or by reading books to gain Knowledge (Mythos). It hangs together prettily on paper.

The next thing I want to do is iron out, for my own sanity, guidelines for handling investigations in Realms. I want to use the core Trail concept of never making players roll to get important clues. I think the system in Savage Worlds might be tight enough to allow investigative skills to be important even at a d4 – narrow, but usually rolled at an effective +4 – you will get the clue, and raises will get you more color. Still thinking. Just enjoying the prettiness of the system, still.

Yeah, I know I’ve not posted anything significant since July. I’ll see if I can’t get better at that.

]]> http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/10/24/realms-of-cthulhu/feed/ 0 Continuing Improvements http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/07/12/continuing-improvements/ http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/07/12/continuing-improvements/#comments Sun, 12 Jul 2009 19:31:29 +0000 Triss http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/?p=76 Hobbies and entertainments are keeping me sanish in the face of the new state of my job. Beyond attempting to thoroughly internalize Mutants and Masterminds (and start sketching out game ideas), I’ve also gotten a new computer – a desktop to keep in the office. It’s a great beast of a thing compared to any computer I’ve used before – 64-bit Windows 7 with 6gb memory and 4 cores means I’ve got the horsepower to run virtual machines and whatnot with no effort.

I’ve also taken notice of the ease of using Remote Desktop – I’ve been hanging out in the living room and punching into the office computer to check downloads , and vice-versa for tinkering iTunes or whatnot. It’s neat, as is the Win7 Home Group polishing of the workgroup concept. easy and less annoying than workgroups.

Finding time for the amusements I wish to partake in is a constant pain. Can’t someone invent an 8th day for the week, please?

]]> http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/07/12/continuing-improvements/feed/ 1 Frooom the Fuuuuture! http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/06/01/frooom-the-fuuuuture/ http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/06/01/frooom-the-fuuuuture/#comments Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:05:54 +0000 Triss http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/?p=74 Being someone who sits at a computer all day, both by choice and for pay, and someone who hasn’t yet replaced their hands with bionics or a mind-machine interface, I’ve been slowly moving towards the ergonomic interface accessories.

I’ve long since gotten used to the moderately bad-sci-fi appearance of the average ergonomic keyboard, mostly because they’re damn comfy. My new mouse, however, looks like something out of … damn, I can’t even think of a movie ref. Schlocky, though. It’s the Logitech Revolution MX. I needed something that wouldn’t suck batteries like my current bluetooth mouse did, and came home with a rechargeable mutant mouse.

It’s got a wing on it so my thumb doesn’t drag on the desk (ooh, luxury…?), and in the ‘wacky feature’ category, a weighted scroll wheel that notices when I’m scrolling quickly and throws a _solenoid_ so the wheel goes from ratchety to free-spin mode. What the hey.

If it weren’t for the lack of flying cars, I’d think we’re in the future.

]]> http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/06/01/frooom-the-fuuuuture/feed/ 0 Horrors Unknown, now with fewer preservatives! http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/05/30/horrors-unknown-now-with-fewer-preservatives/ http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/05/30/horrors-unknown-now-with-fewer-preservatives/#comments Sat, 30 May 2009 17:26:12 +0000 Triss http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/?p=69 Work Update

This last couple weeks has been rough. Due to really remarkably poor planning on the part of the client and our contract writers about 18 months ago, my employer laid off six people from our contract two weeks ago, including my boss and most senior team member. Overwhelming bitterness aside (for the team member, not the boss), I’ve been buried the last couple weeks trying to make a new balance. I think we’ll be fine eventually, but there’ll be some hiccups.

Horrors Unknown

I’m going to have to blame Candace for interesting me in Lovecraftian horror so long ago. For the last few months, I’ve been collecting Robin Laws’ Gumshoe games. It started with Ken Hite’s Trail of Cthulhu – an updated Lovecraftian horror game with a very different design philosophy than the lousy BRP system Chaosium uses for their stuff, and also distinct from Candace’s fiat diceless system. Desiring more material to use to understand the system’s philosophy, I followed up by purchasing the other Gumshoe games – Mutant City Blues first, which is less horror, more police procedural + superpowers. After that, I had to go to Indie Press Revolution to get the more obscure stuff, like Esoterrorists and Fear Itself.
Having collected all of this, I’ve started losing Stability and possibly Sanity reading disturbing modern horror stories and questioning: Why do I like horror? What makes it horrible and what makes it appealing?
I don’t have any answers yet, but I’m not done asking.

Next: I need to go find R. Chambers’ King in Yellow stuff to use for game research.

Fewer Preservatives

The media’s been doing its thing – I keep reading horrible things about high fructose corn syrup – prime cause of intraabdominal fat, eevil glycemic index, so on. So I’ve taken to avoiding it when I can, in favor of real sugar, or sucralose on occasion (curse you, energy drinks). But I’ve also started seeing an interesting trend – sugary drinks with _real sugar_ are popular again. It started with Red Bull Cola – the cola you can identify every single ingredient of as being natural. Now I’m seeing Pepsi Throwback (Cane Sugar), Pepsi Natural (Identifiable ingredients), and recently, Ice cream with no weird stuff in. Haagen-Dasz 5-ingredient ice cream is tasty.

Now, the question is: will this trend stick, and what will that mean? I like reasonably natural stuff…

]]> http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/05/30/horrors-unknown-now-with-fewer-preservatives/feed/ 0 Catching up then. http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/03/29/catching-up-then/ http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/03/29/catching-up-then/#comments Mon, 30 Mar 2009 01:44:00 +0000 Triss http://www.dreamlibrarian.com/2009/03/29/catching-up-then/ The last month has been a bit of a whirlwind – we decided to look into a local move shortly before the end of February; I decided that I was uncomfortable with the idea of moving to a new job with the economy sending everyone running for cover like it has, and the failback was a nonoptional “get the hell out of this tiny little box” move.
It turns out that the local base housing got opened up for civilian use, including contractors like me. For about $400 more than we were paying at SunBay, we’re able to afford a place twice the size! It’s a duplex, with the other unit damaged and unlikely to see use in the near future, and it’s built to military spec, so it’s so solid a couple doors actually do stop sound.
We started moving in on the 7th or so, and the last three weeks have been a whirlwind of bureaucracy and physical labor. We finished moving out of the old place on the 22nd, and this weekend has been the first real swing at emptying the mad squad of boxes we have here.
We now have an office, about 40% less boxes in the front room, and by the end of the night, we’ll have a floor in the bedroom.
I’ve been occupied digging around in all the books we’ve freed up; getting familiar with the basics of Savage Worlds for Eloria, recollecting a bit of Changeling, and reading In Nomine again. We have a lot of books. They should keep us occupied for a good long time.
Work has gotten interesting as well. An 18 month clock has started, roughly, and we’ll have to rearchitect everything in 6 and move everyong off the old system in the 12 months following. It’s likely to be exciting times. Here’s hoping.
Becky’s sorting through all her old clothes boxes, the ones that were in storage. She keeps wandering in here in this and that – cloaks and whatnot. She’s having a lot of fun.

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