Time-Related Disappointments

Well, it's been an interesting turn of events the past few days... couldn't be expected, but it's not horrible, just means I have to wait a little longer for what I want.

Got my last box of computer parts yesterday. All of the boards, memory, storage, graphics, and other such things arrived from Newegg. I put it all together, turned it on, and nothing. Now, I made sure to follow the instructions and everything so there is a chance that something came busted or I missed a plug, but my friend is coming over to take a look at it after work today. Still need to pick up an OS (I'm thinking Windows 7, possibly dual booted with some flavor of Linux) and some speakers. Once (and if) it starts running I'll get to have some fun with it. 

Waited until midnight last night for the email from the folks over at Clarion. When that didn't come I got simultaneously confused and a little upset just because I felt a little ignored, but thankfully I re-checked their website. They extended the date of notification until the 22nd, which I can completely understand but still I want to know what's going to happen. Otherwise I've started writing a new story: nothing particularly cerebral or deep but it's entertaining to me. 

I've also started reading a new web comic: Gunnerkrigg Court. The art style didn't impress me much at first (not that it was bad at all), but it dramatically improves into a beautiful illustration as the comic continues. The plot is thick with minimal dead-ends, and good characterization. Urban fantasy that delves into both High Magic and High Tech at times, but never to a ridiculous(-ly undesirable) degree. It's been around for a while but it has a reputed 30(!?) comic buffer so that there is never any missed days, or so I've been told. I'd highly recommend it.

I'll keep in touch amigos!

Night's Ink

Just having a very unrestful night, so I thought I would update before I tried to sleep again. It's been a good week back at school, and I feel that the break helped raise my spirits quite a bit. Been running at fencing practice to help build some cardio, but the week off dulled my blade-work.

Hosted Catan night today, where I cook dinner and we all play Settlers of Catan. We haven't been able to do it because of the rash of tournaments and breaks, but hopefully we can get it back into the swing. I made jambalaya and cheddar chive biscuits, which all took far less time than I thought they would. There was even enough left over for munching during the week, which is a marvel when cooking for three other guys.

I've switched over from short stories to campaign writing, which is nice change to be able to actually GM a game. We're using mini-six, which is a light D6 system (instead of using tons of odd dice, it only uses standard six sided dice). I tend to do more laid-back mechanics and try to let the story flow how the players want to go. I'm going to start documenting everything on Obsidian Portal to see how well it works, and that'll be updated weekly or as well as I can do so.

I was starting to write out all the mechanics and everything (I'm pretty damn proud of what we've put together), but I realized that it would dominate the post. So if you want to see what I'm working on I would look at the Obsidian Portal page here: Sunder Lands.
(Note that I'm in the process of fill this out so forgive me for slow updating.)

It is also St. Patrick's Day and being my name sake, I fear that I may be very popular tomorrow. So I will do my best to hide until they drag me out kicking and screaming (at least give the impression, otherwise they'll think it was too easy. I do have a reputation to keep up.) Hopefully it will be sunny and beautiful but otherwise I may be fine with running around in the rain.

Well, I will write to you soon and hopefully I'll get some sleep tonight.

Edit: I would like to note that because a campaign is a collaborative effort, not all of the writing or ideas were written/imagined by me. There are several co-authors that helped build the initial setting without which it would have been impossible.

The Spring Break Wrap Up

Hey there everybody,

This will be a two parter as I had an unfinished post that was going to be posted last Friday but life happened and I became to busy to finish it. I will post that once I get finished with this one.

The weekend went well as far as MFCs (Midwestern Fencing Championships) go. Big tournament with lots and lots of teams and fencers from all around, including both Varsity and Club fencers. We finished in 8th place overall (around 20 schools were there) so we did fairly well. Our men's sabre squad finished 7th, which is a vast improvement from our standing last year. (It turns out that winning schools is important to doing well.) I personally ended up in 22nd place out of 70(-ish) sabre fencers, which is 2 places better than I did last year (yay improvement!). The entire thing was very close to going much, much better or much, much worse and a few touches here and there would have had dramatically different results, but that is just how life goes.

I'm now on spring break for the rest of the week. I've got a few days of relaxing and composing that will end in my birthday this weekend. I was given a book, "Treason" by Orson Scott Card, from a friend and will start reading it once I have some time to myself. I like Scott Card, but he does tend to get a little bit too philosophical in his novels as they progress. We'll see how this one turns out.

I'm going to take a nap and read a book. Take care everyone!