My Rite of Autumn

One of the great spiritual truths I've gleaned from my Pagan path is that the Wheel of the Year offers a good model for timing some of life's bigger tasks that are not directly tied to religious liturgy or agrarian life. One of the things I have been doing annually between the Autumn Equinox and Samhain is taking stock of my life, cataloguing the wins and losses over the course of the year, celebrating goals achieved and identifying new opportunities for spiritual growth.

OK, New Years' Resolutions are somewhat universal, and in a way, this is exactly that.

(continued)

Daily Bloggery 2009-05-24: In Stockton . . .

Geeking out on assorted movies and playing WoW with Dakatirr on Draka. Kaj, HIB and Flick went out -- I was not interested in going anywhere. I am alone at the moment -- but not lonely.

My state of mind at the moment can be best described as calm. I'm focusing on the future, and yes, getting help for the identified issues I need to work. I have not broken down since Friday night, and with that I'm going to call it good.

Some of the lessons I am starting to grasp from this is a refinement of my search criteria for Ms. Right Enough. 1: I am going to be very very very careful with any lady who says she suffered abuse. If she admits to me that she has suffered abuse I will probe her relentlessly for triggering situations -- and avoid them. 2. Pagan-friendly and gaming-friendly is fine, no longer *has* to be Pagan and / or a gamer. 3. I'm going to look a lot more closely to how well we match emotionally.

Coda

What is now ended has been ended amicably and well.

There is sadness. . . and hope.

I look forward to the day when I can meet her again as "just" a friend.

Today was not "goodbye forever" -- it was "see you later." Too many good memories for anything else.

Thank you one and all.

Not so Daily Bloggery 2009-05-22: Withdrawls

The Daily Bloggery has ended for a time and will resume in a time.

This is not the time or place to emote.

Physically, I'm doing good, My leg wounds are healing well, thanks to the heroic efforts of two awesome nurses (is there any other kind?) at Kaiser and a terrific doctor. Holly and Yolanda exemplify the compassion of their profession in treating the Whole Person™ -- and Dr. Dao is a fount of great advice and ideas. Down almost 40 healthy pounds in 5 months.

Mentally, I'm facing depressive episodes and more. I've been leaning on my support network and getting help and good advice. All of you have come through: Kajir, HiB, Michelle, Katie, and Karen.

I'm looking forward to a good weekend.

Finally: for Gwenny.

I never meta grrl like you . . .

Meta-bloggery while waiting for the movie . . .

1. ISO a decent template for Blogger / Blogspot for this here blog. I thought I found one a bit ago, but is was just fscked. I found a number of blue/white WoW Wrath of the Litch King themes that were both smoking hot and Northrend-ice cool. However, I do NOT want a WoW theme; this blog is about more than WoW. Besides, I like green / yellow (my colors, natch). The "right" theme reminds me of what a former SCOTUS justice once said about pornography: I cannot define porn but I know it when I see it.

I failed my Will save against using an off-color joke: "How's the legal research going on that 1st amendment obscenity case, Mr. Chief Justice . . . ?"

The rest of the joke is left as an exercise for the mind's eye. Bring brain bleach if you need it.

2. I wish I had the mad HTML / graphics skillz to do my own CSS style sheet. I may know someone with those mad-level skillz . . .

3. Playlist: Presented herein is my "Crime" playlist. In the definition I include typical mano-a-man0 violence as well as piracy, roguery, highway robbery, etc. That's why the varous versions of "Whiskey in the Jar" make the list.


Finally, tomorow: I'm supposed to meet Erin somewhere for WoW discussons and planning for the guild. Or something.

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Now playing: The Rolling Stones - Tumbling Dice (Live)

Red Roses and Dead Things: an album review

Disclosure: I game with Seanan and consider her a friend.

Seanan McGuire's new CD (signed #147/300) landed in my Mac's optical drive last night.

My initial reaction after one listen-through: O.M.F.G.W.T.F.B.B.Q.

This album is an exploration of mad science, romance and horror, both real and fictional. From rockers like the (totally!) NC-17 rated "You Get The Tickets" and "Maybe it's Crazy" to the Schoolhouse Rock style tune "The Black Death" (a nice Leslie Fish-esque teaching song) and "Another Mad Science Love Song" a duet with Filk Hall o' Famer Tom Smith, Red Roses and Dead Things delivers. Every song simply shines with Seanan's love of mad science (or is that MAD SCIENCE!), mind-blasting horror, and sweet sweet romance. RR&DT definitely puts the "romance" back in Necromancy!

And all of this just in time for St. Valentine's Day (as in the massacre . . .) for a mere $16 USD.

Musical details such as Seanan's vocals, the arrangements, insturmentals and general production values are much improved over her debut studio album, 2007's Stars Fall Home. On some of the songs on SFH, the insturmentals almost overpowered the vocals at times -- my favorite song from SFH, "Still Catch the Tide," suffered badly from this -- but there was a much better balance on RR&DT. Seanan's strongest musical virtue is her lyrics. Poetic, playful, sensual, evocative and at times downright randy -- Seanan's lyrics are, to paraphrase the words of another friend about cooking, an alchemy of phrase, word and rhyme. The front cover art -- a sexy drawing of Teh Blonde dual-wielding a deer rifle and pump shotgun, ready for action in the a zombie apocalypse and a hot date -- and the illustration on the back are quite nice, but the song list and printing of the lyric booklet need a bit of work. The type on the inside of the lyric booklet is small, and the song list on the inside and back covers are a very low contrast hard to read black-on-brown. Fortunately the song list lyrics to almost all of the songs are available online (thank Loki for text-scaling web browsers!), so this is but a quibble.

On balance, you owe it to yourself to get this CD. Even if you're not not mad about Science!
Or dead things.

Red Roses and Dead Things...

You know you want it.

"It" being one of my favorite "Full-of-WIN" people, newest album. Seanan Mcguire has more raw singing and songwriting talent in her toenail clippings than 99.95% of the human race has in an entire body. You owe it to your CD player, your iPod, and yes yourself to go hither RIGHT NOW!! to her site on teh innerweb and order a copy of this awesomeness.

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Listening to: Seanan McGuire - Evil Laugh
via FoxyTunes

For Seanan...

Zombie Day at the Mall t-shirt design @ © SplitReason.com



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Now playing: Rockapella - Zombie Jamboree
via FoxyTunes

Happy Birfday to Teh Iz

DunDraCon 32 Report

DDC Con Report

For the first time in three years, I've made it to a game con . . . and I feel fine.

That has not always been the case with respect to gaming the last year. I was very very close to writing a repeat of last year's April Fools post – and that post not being a joke. I've been feeling burned out on all fronts of the hobby, missing the fire and passion I used to put into my games. My game world was in a virtual stasis, I had all but ceased writing anything for it and I kept asking myself “Why bother with working on a game anymore – or even playing?”

This weekend reconnected me with why I game. I originally decided to attend DunDraCon 32 as a kind of last huzzah, a farewell of sorts. I'd run a game as I always do, and I'd play as many as I could. If the old magic wasn't back by the end of the weekend, then I'd leave the hobby for good.

I got to the con on Saturday morning just minutes before the start of my con-sponsored game. I had put that game together in what had become my usual style the last year or so; with a bit of background info and an outline as to possible events. When I came up with the game-world event that would frame this adventure a few months earlier – having the party put an end to the misconduct of a mercenary company – I did not have a clue as to how this would happen. I floundered for weeks looking for an important game world consequence of failure . . . .

Sometimes I feel as though I am channeling the game world, not writing or running it. Stuff flits into my conscious mind, my “this is cool!” alarm triggers, and an idea hits the pixels. Three separate bolts of deep channeling hit me a week before the DunDraCon that got me the skeleton of a plot and some approaches the party may take in completing the adventure. On Saturday I had more pages of players notes than I did DM notes. This was a bit of a worry because the DM I was two or three years ago was hyper-prepared. I'm a good improviser, but was I good enough?

Apparently I was.

I got what had to be the best group of players I've had outside of my home groups: no power-gamers, no stat-monkey munchkins, no spotlight hogs. Players who actually took the time to read the background I'd created and integrated it into their roleplaying. While not up to the deep-character / deep verse style of the Kitsune Chronicles players (the best damn roleplayers I know, period!), I was floored by the quality of player I'd gotten, and I was as underprepared as ever.

My players made all the difference. They managed to scheme, sneak, dissemble and when needed fight their way to victorious success in the scenario. As in years past, I created a convention adventure where party failure at this convention game would drive major plot threads, or in this case, literally enact a cosmic change in the game world.

Their play took my breath away. I found myself challenged to keep up with them, even when I was the DM, the supposedly all powerful demigod in charge. I still don't know quite how it hppened, but I walked out of the game a new DM.

My D&D game was only the setup for what was to come next. The next day I finally got to play a game I bought some time ago as a convention break-game – SJ Games' Munchkin. Reading a review on a website saying “Munchkin is cool!” or hearing a friend tell you “Munchkin is cool!” pales next to the moment when you get to play and finally get to say to one and all “Munchkin is cool!”

Munchkin is a card game of old-school dungeon-crawling: kick open the door, kill the monsters, steal their stuff, stab your buddy in the back and steal his stuff too. Be the first to get to level 10 and you win.

I got the box out and one player (me) became three (me, Iz and another) became five. It's a game that's pretty easy to learn, hard to master. You must be ruthless in ensuring that your buddies get the backstabbery they soooo richly deserve. While I did not win, I came very close and managed to pull off some pretty ruthless moves. At times I think they need to call this game “You Bastard!” because that's what you'll say when someone ices your perfect plan to kill the last monster you need to win. A willingness to engage in High Treachery is needed to win. If you aren't looking for a way to fsck your buddy, you aren't playing to win.

In meta terms, DDC seemed a much smaller con than it was back in 2002-3. The dealer room was tiny, the con less spread out. I suspect this is due to macroeconomic issues and worries.

The facilities in San Ramon were awesome as usual, the hotel staff was friendly if a bit bemused by the eclectic crowd that is Gamer Nation. The on-site food options were not insanely overpriced. I would have given a random testicle for decent bandwidth, though.

Finally, early Monday morning I was interviewed for a podcast: “Heroes of Science Fiction and Fantasy.” In it I discuss my adventure “The Agony of Kessel” and my favorite sf and fantasy media.

Update to PotCO review

Michelle pointed out to me that PotCO cannot suck more than Bush / Cheney because you can walk away from a video game but not them.

You may not be able to walk away from their evil, bit at least hi gas an expiration date of 1/21/09

There and Back Again . . .

There's a good reason for the gap in my posting: I was in the hosptial for swelling and infected wounds in my legs. While I had my MB with me, I had no way to connect it to the Internet --I guess we're still a few years from what EarthLink founder Sky Dayton called "packetspace."

Ten days of almost no Internet (I had the browser on my cellphone, and that's it), coffee or TeeVee did not quite leave me a gibbering idiot. I was a near-run thing, though.

The most noteworthy aspect of this stay was that they (Kaiser) transferred me to a Kaiser-run skilled nursing facility (KPPACC) in San Leandro, about 100 miles from my current digs in South Sacramento.

I was not amused.

Highlight of my hospital visit: I successfully suppressed the urge to throttle by roommate at KPPACC. Idjit would have the remote for the one TV set the room had and play the most mind-destroying teevee other than political campaign ads or Fox News Channel: soap opeas and sports. Not only that, he'd read the damned paper with the fscking teevee on!

Whotta asshat. I wanted to stuff that remote down his throat, I was so pissed. I chose instead to employ my iPod -- stuffed with tunage from Leslie Fish, The Elders, Seanan McGuire and Flogging Molly -- and headphones to block out the sound; fortunately I had Civilization 3 loaded on the MB, a perfect non-Internet game for whiling away large blocks of time.

I also had The Sims 2 on my phone, another very good game. I'd never had the chance to play the game much until this trip to the hospital, and I got my money's worth from it during the ambulance ride to San Leandro.

M&D also brought me some spare underwear and Guinness pajama bottoms before I was shipped off to KPPACC. I wore the PJs for most of my stay at KPPACC. The tangerines helped stave off the hungries from the notoriously small (and utterly flavor-free) portions of Hospital Food® and the sugarless Jelly Bellies and Gummi Bears were treats I savored.

I managed to read William Gibson's Idoru as well -- I wouldn't say it was better than Neuromancer but it was better than Count Zero or Virtual Light.

At Kaiser South I encountered some utterly awesome nurses and a wonderful doc.

My daughter, bless her, came to pick me up and bring me home. Our first stop on the way home: Starbucks.


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Listening to: Sun Green & The Imitators with Neil Young & Crazy Horse & The Greendale Chamber of Commerce - Be the Rain
via FoxyTunes

Yet another reason I love iTunes

A $25 music card was left on my desk yesterday. I used it to complete my collection of albums from The Elders.

Hard to go wrong with a song about the Irish Brigade in the American Civil War, IMHO.



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Listening to: The Elders - True Believer
via FoxyTunes

What Am I Thankful For?

A very partial list . . .

Physical: A great job, a roof over my head, enough cash to pay the bills, bandwidth and the means to use it.
Social: Mom, Dad, Ron, Sophia and Sam. Friends like Michelle, David, Kayla, Matt, Richard, Sammy, Duncan, Isabel, Tim, Kate, Sue, Rachael, Don, Rob, Kajir, Heather, Dave, Diane, Gene, Aries, Nika, Mystique, Harley, Rita, Bug, Shalyn and Hillary.
Other: An awesome health care team led by Dr. Nelson . . . the fact that the evil that is Shrub will be out of office in about a year . . . RT and e-Tran . . . PCJ and Panera . . .the music that helped save my life this year: Seanan McGuire, The Elders, Emerald Rose, Leslie Fish, James Blunt, Tempest, Escape Key, Flogging Molly, Roy Zimmerman, Loreena Mckinnett, Niel Young and Weird Al Yankovic.
Media: Serenity / Firefly, D&D, World of Warcraft.

The very best thing about Leo . . .

Two words: TIME MACHINE.
Time Machine is the very best single reason for a Mac user to buy and install Leopard . . . and of you are a Windows user, the very best reason to go get a new Mac. Time Machine is a backup and restore utility. In a word, you can, at need, "go back in time" and restore your entire system or even a single file from any 1-hr increment in the last day, any day in the last month and any month thereafter. So, if in the middle of writing your master's thesis your MacBook Pro's internal HD packs it in, if you have TM and an external hard disk, you can restore the last backup (not to mention OS X, all your preferewnces, email, etc) of your thesis once the hard disk is replaced, and on you go.

You can restore a single file, your whole iTunes Library or thw whole fscking startup partition. No more need to use Target Disk Mode and another Mac. No more "log in as root, drag and drop your Home folder (c:\Documents and settings\yourname for you windows users) and HOPE you got it right." For some users, enabling the OS X "root" account is like handing a drunk with Tourette's Syndrome a greased grenade . . . only "sudo rm -R /* is capable of more damage in less time (think dropping to DOS, cd c:, then del *.*). No more Retrospect, .Mac backup 3.x (not a bad program, but it's about as intuitive as brain surgery when compared to TM) or needing to rely on a non-Apple solution.

Best of all, TM does this silently and automaticly..

Windows, by comparison, has "system restore" which is great for restoring Windows system files . . . but it does nto do jack about your master's thesis or your email, pics, music, videos or porn.

I had been looking forward to buying a new external hard drive to try this feature out once my finances allowed for it. Fortunately for me, I won a nice 250 gigabyte USB 2.0 drive today for quarterly sales performance. This is plenty of space to allow me to back up the 100 GB drive in my MacBook (currently about 40 gigs free). I'm going to put at least three partitions on the disk: one OS X for TM (I'm going to names it "HD Welles"), one also OS X (one just big enough to serve as a 10.5 startup disk, probably named "DaVinci" -- as in Leo-nardo) to install Leopard so I can boot off this drive at need and one formatted for FAT32 (Disk Utility does not speak Windows NTFS) so my good friends Michelle and David can back up their docs/music/pics/etc/omg/wtf/bbq.

Since the disk will be partitioned three ways, I think I'll call it "Gaul." Of course, people will look at me funny (not that they don't do that already . . .).

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Listening to: Styx - Suite Madame Blue
via FoxyTunes

D's doing good . . .

Major relief here for that.

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Listening to: Sun Green & The Imitators with Neil Young & Crazy Horse & The Greendale Chamber of Commerce - Be the Rain
via FoxyTunes

Why I love Sundays and other stuffs . . . .

1: Coffee at PCJ, a good Internet connection and some time to play WoW, and blog.

2: M's Mantra: "Serenity NOW...please? I'll make dinner." Hot Indian cuisine, double-plus-über good. Does my palette good to crawl out of its comfort zone. She needs it, especially this week. Candles are at the ready . . .

3: Earworm de Jour: Fire in the Hole, The Elders.

Install / Restore fest, Dreams, and Music, 2007 version

Got up this morning to the sounds of screaming sore legs and to the sounds of a screaming psyche. The legs I am keeping elevated per doctor's orders. The screaming psyche is the result of a bizarre dream I had last night. Apparently someone had hacked a World of Warcraft server -- the one where I often have 1st person dreams of being a WoW character. Anyway, I was being chased across Elwynn Forest by some kind of Nazi Troll Shaman (I am a human in this dream, not a blood elf as usual). I was getting seriously ganked, corpse-camped (kind of like my days on Maelstrom) and graveyard-camped by this guy. The next scene had me out of WoW and on a German Ford Tri-motor transport plane (like the one in one of the Indiana Jones movies). I was in POW garb, and this same troll from the game was sitting behind me, all decked out in his Waffen-SS uniform. The leggy blonde Aryan goddess-stewardess brings me a huge cup of hot coffee to drink while this troll keeps taunting me from behind about how he pwned me like Hitler pwned Poland back in '39. I turned around in my seat and spilled the entire liter-plus of steaming hot coffee all over his nice oberstrunfurther's uniform. The next thing I remember I was learning of the joys of free-fall from 10k feet, sans parachute . . .

I have a very long list of must-install software for this MacBook. Almost all of it is work-related. I am refusing to reinstall install WoW or any other game or RPG app until the work-related software I can install at home is installed (some of the proggies I need to put on this machine can only be done at work).

To wit:
All OS X updates done,
X.11 (needed for OpenOffice, not part of standard OS X installation) installed
OpenOffice 2.x installed
BootCamp Assistant installed (in case I have to nondestructively undo the Windows partition)
iTunes library AND playlists restored to iTunes; iPod content restored
Firefox 2.0.2 installed and updated, bookmarks restored
Flash Player for Intel Macs installed
AirPort Utility installed and tested
Gutenprint (gimp-print 5.0.0 print drivers for Epson printer w/o OEM drivers) installed and tested
Stuffit Expander (needed for other installs, think "Winzip for Macs") is installed and tested
Palm Desktop is installed and iSync Palm Syncing is activated. Palm user restored
Old contacts, calanders, etc synced to iCal and Address Book via .Mac
Flip4Mac (successor to Windows Media Player for OS X) installed.

Yesterday I mentioned Seanan McGuire's new album of filk awesomeness, Stars Fall Home. Oh. My. Fscking. GAWDS. I've known Seanan since the start of the worst year of my life (1995) I'd just moved to Lodi after spending almost 2 decades in Sacramento to move closer to a job I was to hold for only a few months and away from my then-best-friend, who had less than six months to live (neither of which I knew at that time). One night while perusing a used bookstore I met Seanan, who flounced into said bookstore, saw I was looking at science fiction and immediately proposed marriage to me. Being a red-blooded male, I accepted . . . as did the small platoon of other fiancees she was going to marry at the World Science Fiction Convention that year. My kind of wierdo! Right after that I met Michelle, who was working at the Pizza Hut across the street. Hard to not like this creative, insane wonderful young lady . . . and in the twelve years since she has grown into a wonderful singer, songwriter and (Real Soon Now, I hope) novelist of staggering awesomeness.
Summer 1995 was the Absolute Worst Summer of My Life. I lost both a decent job and a the aforementioned best friend in the span of a month. Combined with my sudden withdrawal from the SCA, I was more depressed than Weimar Germany's economy in the 1920s. What relieved the strain and kept me from ending it all was Michelle's constant stream of books and the sheer joy of Seanan.

1995 finally ended; I got through it and over it, finding myself in the process. Seanan went on to grow up into an accomplished young woman. Last year Seanan released her first album, Pretty Little Dead Girl. PLDG is a live recording of her Guest of Honor concert at the 2005 Ohio Valley Filk Festival; it got me through my hospitalization last year (Thanks again, Michelle . . .). SFH is her first studio recording (as far as I can tell) and it is AWESOME. Some of the tunes appeared on PLDG, but the new stuff . . . "Evil Laugh" is very nicely upbeat, reminds me of "Maybe it's Crazy" from PLDG . . . and I defy you to not weep when you hear "Still Catch the Tide." I cried when I read the lyrics; Seanan's voice wrung at least twice as many tears from me with the same words. You see, not too long ago, under similar circumstances, a woman I once loved spoke words like those to me . . .

Anyway, SFH is great. Get it. OK?

The Mac....is BACK! (some assembly required)

Got my better-than-ever, new topcase/heatsink/combo drive MB back this evening.

Since the Mac Genius wiped the OS X partition as I knew he would need to, it was up to me to install OS X. Fortunately, this is not rocket science.

Unfortunately, after I installed the drivers for my Bluetooth Mighty Mouse, the beast starting kernel panicking once again. And, it would KP right after POST. The machine would boot into safe boot just fine, and the damned BT mouse would work fine.

Of course, Windows XP on the BootCamp partition loaded fine. This ruled out hardware

Strange.

I nuked the poor OS X partition from orbit...only way to be sure. The second install is less problematic. I refrained from loading the Mighty Mouse drivers and focused on updating OS X and the iApps (mouse still works fine, but without the granular control you get from the Mighty Mouse software . . .). Current theory is that OS X needed to be updated to 10.4.7 (system shipped with 10.4.6) before wireless mouse software install, since back last year I'd updated to 10.4.7 or so before getting the Bluetooth mouse.

As of this writing I am updating OS X to 10.4.9 with all the bells and whistles; including iTunes 7.2. Stars Fall Home is already ripped . . . I cannot wait any longer to hear Seanan sing "Still Catch the Tide." Nor should you.

Firefox is reinstalled now; next big reinstall is WoW. Email works fine now (thank the GODS for IMAP!).

The few, the proud, the antisocial . . .

Hello. My name is RichO and I am an antisocial misanthrope.

Over the last couple of months, I've gone into a mode where I am not particularly interested in talking to anyone, no matter how close our relationship may be. Some of this has been my less-than-optimal health; pain in my legs will do this to me. At other times it's an overpowering urge to climb into a hole and pull it in after me.

I know, this is really strange coming from someone who spends his workdays talking to people on the telephone and his recreational time playing D&D or WoW. I don't really understand why this is so. I just don't feel like going out to the movies (most of which are excessively loud, overly expensive and just-plain-obnoxious), or hanging out with friends, barhopping / drinking (I tend to be a morose drunk that starts singing obnoxious songs like "Men of Harlech" in what I believe is the original Welsh from a bad recording of the movie Zulu) or doing the kinds of spur-of-the-moment things I'd grown accustomed to over the last year-plus. Of course, I don't feel like watching the evil that is television either.

What I want people to know is this: it's not about any of you, or my relationships with any of you. If I have an issue with you, I'll tell you all about it. It's about me and a need I'm feeling for isolation and control in my life. If I don't return your calls and my entry on your AIM buddy list is dark, it's not because I'm mad at you. Or crazy. Or involved in a new relationship. Or being recruited for a bizarre cult. Or recruiting for a bizarre cult. Or joining a mercenary company. Or commanding an elite strike force of GMs. Or modeling pants made from cabbage . . .

Music to muse by: True Believer, The Elders.