Things other than WoW have taken over my life

It's been a while since my last update. I can see the dust starting to settle around here.

There is a little more to report on the car front. I was going to pick up Eunice from school last night when I heard a very loud "CLUNK". The car seems fine. I think something may have hit the side of the car --it being a Saturn, it doesn't dent very easily. Hopefully the Vehicular Fortitude saga is over for now.

I did find one disturbing thing while trying to locate the source of the noise. I was looking around in the trunk and saw that my emergency roadside kit was soaking wet. It turns out that entire little corner of the trunk is soaking wet. There is even some standing water. I didn't find any evidence of anything having exploded, so I have to wonder how all the water got there, and how I'm going to get all the water out. Our complex has an industrial strength vacuum --we'll be trying that in a bit.

Eunice's computer died and was later resurrected. Her power supply quit working on us, right when she needed to write a paper. Fortunately we were able to replace the power supply and the computer felt significantly better. The new power supply has 2 fans and is louder than the last one. That'll take some getting used to. At least she has her computer back.

Last weekend Eunice and I went to visit my sister. Eunice needed a dress hemmed, so we used that as our excuse to go for a visit. We had a lot of fun, except for the part where I was stunned by a wasp. It turns out that 40 degrees is indeed warm enough for some wasps to be out. It got itself caught in my pullover and stung me when I tried to take it off. At least now I know that I'm not allergic to wasp stings.

Eunice and I finished watching all 4 Samurai X discs. Samurai X is part prequel and part sequel to Kenshin, and is much darker. You find out why Kenshin is the way he is, and you get an ending to the story that is much better than the ending supplied by the original Kenshin series. If you're a Kenshin fan I'd recommend it, but be warned. The tone is completely different from that of the series.

So, with Kenshin over we moved to a new set of movies in our Netflix queue. We have jumped in to Jeremiah (the showtime series). We're enjoying it so far. We just saw episode 8 (Firewall) and it's starting to get good. I did enjoy the earlier episodes in the series, but the series really gets good around City of Roses and Firewall.

I have some high expectations for Jeremiah. J. Michael Straczynski is involved. And if you don't know, JMS did Babylon 5, my favorite sci-fi series of all time.

Of course, in doing my research for these links I've just found that Jeremiah was not renewed for a third season, and that JMS declared he would never work with MGM again under it's current administration. It also appears that season 2 isn't yet out on DVD.

I'm sure I'll have more to say about the series the more I watch it.

Finally, I've been busy reading Arcana Evolved. It's very cool, and deserving of it's own post (again).

Anyway, I'm off to watch The Return of the King with Eunice, to celebrate Easter.

Happy Easter everyone!

Vehicular Fortitude, part 4

So I went to pick up my car on Tuesday. It is nice to have the car back, even though I am about $1600 poorer.

The first thing I realized as the car shot forward was that the friction point on the clutch had changed significantly. It went from somewhere around halfway up to about 2 centimeters off of the floor. The next thing I noticed was that it became a whole lot harder to change gears. I had to pull on the stick shift pretty hard to get it to move.

So, in one of my not-so-bright moments, off I went towards home, shifting painfully and trying to cope with a clutch with an instant friction point. After a couple of miles I could no longer get the car in to any gear at all. I missed one light cycle trying to get the car into any gear except reverse.

Did I mention that the road I was on is very, very busy, almost all the time?

Before the next light cycle came around I managed to force the car into second gear. I used a side street to turn around (and almost got stuck in neutral once again) and headed back towards the dealership.

The folks at the Saturn dealership were very nice. They sent me on my way with a rental car and a promise to fix the car first thing in the morning.

They delivered. The next day my car was as good as new. Or at least the clutch was.

Hopefully this will be the end of the Vehicular Fortitude series for a while. My pocketbook can't take much more of this.

Gaming tables evolved

Ok, despite the title this doesn't have anything to do with Arcana Evolved.

This gaming table setup is pretty awesome.

Someone else has a similar setup, detailed here.

All I can say is that once I'm independently wealthy, I'm all over this.

Vehicular Fortitude part 3

Sadly, there is now a part 3 to go along with parts 1 and 2.

This month my car is 7 years old. Apparently in car years that's somewhere near 1 million, or at least that's the point where everything starts to fall apart. I admit that I don't really understand what they need to do to the car. It has something to do with some crazy leaking, replacing the clutch, and moving either the transmission or the engine out of the way to deal with the crazy leaking. All this to the tune of nearly $2k.

So today the car is at the dealership, and I have the fastest, most maneuverable car in the world as a replacement. That's right, a rental.

I'm sure wackiness will ensue.

Old News

I may be unfit for duty in the Israel Defense Force. Not that there was any chance at all of me joining the IDF.

The article is actually talking about LARPing, where players dress up as their characters and live the role. Sometimes they hit each other with foam weapons.

I've never been into LARPing. I have been at cons where LARPs have been present. I even went and watched one LARP that was run by a buddy of mine. I'm perfectly happy saying, "My character makes camp for the night," rather than actually making camp. Most people who know me know that I don't get along with the so-called Great Outdoors. On more than one occasion I've said, "The Great Outdoors would be better if it were inside, temperature controlled, and bug-free."

My gaming sessions tend to be more like this.

Stabbin'

Stolen blatently from my buddy's blog! Here is the perfect gift for someone who likes stabbin' stuff!

The Order of the Stick

I was browsing the Arcana Evolved messageboards (here and here) and found a link to a great web comic called The Order of the Stick. It's pretty funny. It's funnier if you're a gamer and have read or played d20, but that isn't a requirement.

The site also has various articles and other resources for d20 gaming, though I haven't yet had a chance to dig around much --I've been too busy laughing at TOotS. The guy who runs the site is named Rich Burlew. Apparently he was one of the runners up in the Wizards of the Coast Fantasy Setting Search contest, so based on that alone the site is probably pretty good.

Regardless, I've found a new comic to keep from working, err, I mean amused.