Yeah, I know I haven't posted in roughly three or four millennia...
I've actually been kinda busy of late... finally landed a contract position... it *could* turn into something permenant, maybe not... we'll see.
Anywho, the reason I remembered to post was to throw a link at y'all...
My brother, Ben, put together a band up there in the Windy City, and they've just released their first EP.
The 4 songs from it are up on their website if'n people want to check it out... which is why I am making this here post, to provide my *vast* readership (okay, the 8 people who know I exist here in LJ-land ;) ) access to said website.
The band's name is "Doctor, This Virus is Silence", and you can find their website at: http://dtvis.net/
Enjoy and all of that jazz. :)
(hopefully, i'll remember to post more often... probably not, but you never know.)
-MechaGM
Current Mood: sleepy Current Music:Animate : Doctor, This Virus is Silence
Whee, Meme-Tastic! Well, what follows ia rather lengthy list of books that I've either read, or not read. It's kinda fun to scan through the list looking for books that I've read. Quite a few there. :)
It was held on a farm owned by one of Abby's (my bother's wife) friends' family. It was a lovely day, the weather was reasonably nice (I'd prefer it about 10 degrees cooler, but it was reasonable), and the ceremony was simple and elegant.
The one big surprise, for me, was that I was to be the Best Man. My brother forgot to tell me this at any point. Heh. :) So, I took care of the ring, came up with an extemperaneous toast (which was short, but everyone seemed to like it) and celebrated my brother getting married.
Abby's family are very nice people, and I'm glad to have met them.
Both my brother's and his wife's friends are all nice, interesting people, and getting to meet the ones I didn't know was a pleasure.
So Ben (my brother, and Abby left right after the reception to drive out to the airport to catch a flight to Florida, where they're getting on a boat for their honeymoon cruise.
I will say this, I spent way too much time on my feet today... but it was worth it. :)
So, I flew out to Chicago for the weekend... well, not exactly for the weekend... I mean, I'm here in Chicago... I'm here until monday, but I'm not really here for the weekend per say...
Rather, I am here because my younger brother is getting married on saturday.
I finally got to meet his fiance at the "rehersal" dinner tonight, and she's not only lovely, but she seems to be a wonderful person. :) The dinner was very nice, and I'm looking forward to the wedding tomorrow...
not sure what the plan is for Sunday, but Monday, we fly back to Boston.
I had a smidgen too much wine with dinner. :)
All and all it was a pleasant evening...
Though, I do have to say... I don't hate flying per say... I do hate airports though.
That's all for now... I may post more later. Or not. We'll see.
Interview last Monday went alright, but I didn't get the position. It was a bit of a stretch position for me, and, honestly, it had too much of a sales component for my tastes anyways, so I'm not especially broken up about it.
And now, I change topics without shifting!
I have to say, as much as I do enjoy watching people play Feng Shui for the first time and really get into it, and as much as I love GMing in that situation, there is one thing I truly do love more...
I love the look of dawning comprehension on my players' faces when they realize that despite the fact that I often look like I'm completely improvising what I'm doing at the table, and that I sometimes look like I have no plan... I do in fact have a plan for what is going on in the story I'm GMing, and that I've managed to tie several seemingly unrelated plot threads together into one cohesive metaplot. It's that sudden moment of clarity that some players have when they realize "Holy Shit, Peter's been planning this all along..." that I love to see...
...even when it's not entirely justified. :D
I do improvise... a lot... but I always have a general plan for what I think is going to happen, and I always try to hang any plot elements I have onto my general plan if I can. And I am also completely unashamed about taking player speculation about where things seem to be going and use that instead of my original plan if I think it will work better.
But I recently had one of those moments happen in a FS game I'm running, and I love seeing it happen... hopefully it will happen again when the players see the actual metaplot. Mwahahahahahahahahaha!
Eh-hem... excuse me. :)
-MechaGM
Current Mood: sleepy Current Music:Love and Rockets: So Alive
have an interview with Ameriprise on Monday morning, which is good... though it meant that I had to turn down a temp assignment.
Fmneh.
Ah well, hopefully this interview will go well, and I'll finally be working again.
'course, that would mean that I'd have to get back onto a sane sleep schedule.
I was up way too late last night. Ugh.
I've been making myself get up at reasonable hours over the past couple of weeks... I have to get back into the habit of getting up at 7am at the latest, as opposed to 9am (or later), which has been my norm over the past year or so.
*shrug*
Anywho, just felt like posting for some reason or another.
-MechaGM
Current Mood: tired Current Music:Sultans of Swing: Dire Straights
A couple of months ago, A&E decided to start showing this BBC televsion show called "Hustle." When I first saw ads for it, it didn't look very good, but I figured I'd give it a chance for two reasons...
...first, it was obviously a show about con artists.
...second, there were several good actors there that I recognized. (Robert Vaughn and Adrian Lester being the two I noticed)
So I watched the first episode... and I absolutely loved it. It was a fun show were out "heroes" made their play by being, basically, smarter than everyone around them. Sure they're fictional grifters... real con men are generally pretty slimy people... but they make a good point during the show... it's very hard to con someone who is totally honest. The whole point behind how most cons work is that the person you're trying to rook is greedy and is looking to get something for nothing.
So, I've been watching it as it's gone along and at the end of the sixth episode it really seemed to be the end of the season. Damn, I thought, this is one of those short season BBC shows. Fortunately, A&E seems to have season 2 also. (and they're starting season 3 in the UK on the 10th of March) Needless to say, I've managed to track down all fo the episodes of seasons 1 and 2, and have now seen them all.
I really do reccomend checking the show out if you can. It's not a deep show by any stretch of the imagination, but it's fun. (warning though, the first two episodes of season two aren't quite up to snuff in my opinion... but the show rapidly rights itself in the third episode of season two and cruises along merrily after that) The acting is good... all of the main cast are charismatic and are obviously having a lot of fun with their parts. Oh, and if I can somehow find the soundtrack, I'm getting it. :)
Just had to share my most recent television joy. :)
-MechaGM
Current Mood: amused Current Music:none at the moment
Godspeed, G'Kar Alsa, one of my favorite actors passed on recently.
I speak of none other than Andreas Kasulas. He played Tomalok on Star Trek: The Next Generation, he played the One Armed Man in The Fugative (the movie version with Harrison Ford) and, to me, most memorably he was G'Kar on Babylon 5.
I just found out today, but he apparantly died after a long battle with cancer on the 13th of February.
Things and Stuff Well, I seem to be surviving the first major snowstorm of 2006. Whee.
I spent most of today sitting here at my computer doing various things... mostly finishing off my run playing the beta of Dungeons and Dragons Online.
I can't go into great detail, since I'm not sure if the NDA has been lifted yet or not, but overall my impression is fairly favorable. It's the first MMO that I've played where it captured any of the feel of a pen-and-paper RPG. Sure it's a hack-n-slash dungeon crawl RPG, but it does have some of the feel of an RPG. It's also a pretty faithful interpretation of D&D 3.5, but with enough tweaks to make it a playable MMO. (and, for the most part, most of the changes make for a better game, IMO) I've had fun. :)
There is some bad to report... it's something of a performance hog... my poor laptop doesn't love running the game. (it gets pretty choppy from time to time) Note, I can run CoH on this thing no problem, and its graphics engine is much nicer looking overall. (IMO) *shrug* Also, the combat is a bit too fast-paced for my tastes, but it is still fun thought.
Overall, it's a solid game. I'd give it a B, maybe a B+.
I've been enjoying the Olympics so far... I'm hoping to catch the curling at some point.
Other than that, not much going on.
-MechaGM
Current Mood: tired Current Music:the Olympic Theme going through my head
It was the first time in a while where I had no interest in who ended up winning the game... before this game I usually had some sort of preference for who would win the game. (for instance, in the Bucaneers vs. Raiders game in 2002 I was rooting against the Raiders... good times) I was hoping to see an entertaining football game.
Ah well.
Neither team played well, the officiating was sub-par, and it was just an all-around poor game.
That said, I am glad for Jerome Bettis, Hines Ward, Bill Cowher and the good people of Pittsburgh... they deserved to enjoy having their football team win it all (especially after 3 very hard and very convincing wins in the previous playoff games). I can hold no animus towards them. Good on ya. :)
As for the Seahawks and their fans... y'all had a very good football team this year, hopefully they won't do what every other team that lost the Superbowl has done recently (which is to almost completely fall apart the following season). Good luck to you guys.
If more thoughs occur to me about the game, I'll probably share 'em.
-MechaGN
Current Mood: calm Current Music:David Bowie & Queen: Under Pressure
Been playing more Warmachine recently... been on a real win streak... I've won 4 games in a row, so I have to be due for a loss sometime soon, right? ;)
Alas, poor Shadowfist... things do not look good for my favorite CCG, though at least it's not being shut down completely. The long and the short of it is that between his real job, and running the board game side of Z-Man games, Zev Schlasinger just doesn't have the energy to work much on Shadowfist anymore. Given that it's basically just breaking even, it doesn't currently make a lot of sense for it to continue in the manner it was. So, what's happening is that a bunch of fans (and one or two of the old volunteer staff) are taking over a lot of the work on the game, and they're not going to be doing primarily direct sales (as opposed to selling it through normal distriubution channels)... and they're bumping Critical Shift back at least a year.
*shrug*
I'm glad the game is not officially dead... but I am not confident about what's going to happen in future... and I'm pretty sure Zev's not done the best job marketing the game that he could have.
Ah well.
Anywho, the job search continues... had an interview at Raytheon last week for a 2 month contract position... hopefully that will pan out. At least the various headhunters and staffing agencies all have said that they think that they should be seeing an uptick in positions for me. So I am moderately hopeful.
That's it for now.
-MechaGM
Current Mood: moderately hopeful Current Music:Kompressor & MC Frontalot: Rappers We Crush
So, apparantly, on Nodwick.com this link was posted... it's a series of clips from many different anime series, all of which are humorously set to random songs/alternate dialogue. In my opinion it's rather funny (brilliant at times)... the one flaw is that it's over an hour long. It's worth checking out though. :)
Before I forget... So, a friend of mine fired me a link to this web "game". In it you are a psychaitrist for stuffed animals. It's really good. Check it out here
asheron's call: Ahh... the first Massively Multiplayer Online RPG I ever played, and still, in many ways, the best one I've played. It helped that I had a large group of rl friends who all played the game also... we had many discussions about the way the game worked and things that were going on in game. Good times. I played it again for a while this summer... still a great game.
battletech: Ahhh... Battletech. The game that got me into wargaming in general and miniatures wargaming in particular. I loves me some stompy robots. Naturally I still play from time to time. I should bug some of my buds about digging out some record sheets, some figs and some maps and blow the bajeebus out of each other.
champions: I love Champions, and more specifically Hero System, less these days than I used to. That said, Hero is still the best generic RPG system out there, and Champions is the most flexible Superhero game out there. (You really *can* design any power) All of my Champions games are currently on hiatus right now though.
computers: As is the case with most people I know... I use computers... a lot. And I have a decidedly love-hate relationship with them.
good eats: The best cooking show on television. Period.
I love to cook, and I enjoy some cooking shows. Alton Brown's Good Eats is a fantastic blend of showing you how to make a particular recipe, explaining why some of the things that you do while cooking do what they do (Science!) and tons of pop-culture references and general humor.
Great show. (and his "cookbooks" are also really good. I highly reccomend them)
hk action flicks: If I am going to sit down and watch an action movie, I generally prefer the ones from Hong Kong. I understand why some people have trouble with them, but I just love them.
madness: My favorite Ska band of all time. They may not be as influential on Ska as their contemporaries, The Specials (whom I also love), but Madness wrote and performed many of my favorite songs of all time.
movies: I do love movies. In theory. I am very picky, in general, about most movies. I dislike more movies than I like (and, frankly, most movies get a "meh" from me), but the movies I love I am unabashed in my love for them.
scifi: Okay, I've been a huge fan of Science Fiction since 1977. (yes, I was four years old, and I bet you can guess what I saw in 1977 that made me love Science Fiction) I enjoy reading well-written science fiction, and have a particular love of a lot of the classic short stories written during the 40's and 50's.
the specials: My other favorite Ska Band. :)
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Current Mood: Achy Current Music:Baggy Trousers: Madness
Merde! So, I spend a chunk of today doing random stuff... doing prep work for the Feng Shui game I run occationall on Tuesday nights, baking cookies to bring to gaming night, spraining my ankle on the way out the door to gaming night...
oh, right, that last one sucks. >.<
Seriously, I had forgotten how mothereffing much a real ankle sprain hurts. (ie, not just a twisted ankle... this is a full-on sprain) Ugh.
"Hi, my name's Peter and I'm in a super ammount of pain right now."
So, needless to say, after talking with a neighbor who saw me go down in a heap, and doing a quick check to make sure nothing was broken. I head back inside the house, call my friends to tell them that I would be at home this evening with ankle elevated and iced.
Sigh. I was looking forward to gaming tonight.
Anywho, I'm probably very lucky that I didn't break anything. I can put weight on the ankle without collapsing in a heap.
...Walking on it is a different matter. I don't collapse, but it hurts like a sonofabitch... and I'm positive that putting my weight on it right now for extended periods is doing it no favors.
Hopefully I'll be mobile enough by Friday morning that I can get myself to my interview at Intex.
:: crosses fingers ::
Still.. goddamn, this hurts
:: grumbles ::
-MechaGM
Current Mood: In a Super Ammout of Pain Current Music:A Love Supreme: John Coltraine
More Mashups! So, I was pointed to a website with more mashups!
This particular one is a bunch of mashups of songs on Green Day's "American Idiot." It does include the brilliant "Boulevard of Broken Songs," but a lot of the other stuff is really good too. I highly reccomend checking it out here.
Also, a happy Thanksgiving to all of you out there. :)
-MechaGM
Current Mood: amused Current Music:Boulevard of Broken Songs, Dance Mix (2005)
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