The Dream Library

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?

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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.

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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…

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