Category: Uncategorized

Aryntha and Rai are here for a day or so getting away from it all and utilizing the relaxing powers of the Cannibal Special… It truly is a mighty thing, the hot tub.

Aryntha spent most of the evening trying to convince a pile of scrap parts that it was in fact a computer and after several hours of fiddling did manage to get said pile to boot win2k. The things some people do for relaxation. 🙂

I worked a bit on the iButton to world shim, and then did a bit on my winamp powered “now playing” graphic creation plugin. Basically the plugin just takes a few lines of user text and runtime variables and superimposes them onto a graphic of the user’s choice. The resulting .jpg is then uploaded to a specified web server every time the song changes. There are a few plugins out there that do a similar task, but require a php web server and a knowledge of script languages to get it to work… Not many people can do all that for a graphic so I’m writing one for windows users who, by nature, don’t code or compile.

All in all it was a simple, low impact evening that ended around 2am… I have to go into the shop for a few hours, but should be back at the house at around 2pm; about the time Aryntha and Rai wake up. 😉

Newsflash!

The Cannibal Special is back in business.

It turns out it was a faulty temperature sensor just as I had surmised. The main thermistor had gone south and was reading 5.45 ohms (140 degrees by it’s specifications) at 40 degrees.

The hot tub guy was here, double checked my findings ($50) and replaced the thermistor ($65) in about 10 minutes ($50)… Again, I’m in the wrong business.

Anyways, those of you who both read this and are close enough to visit; let it be known that the hot tub is back online. I just changed out the water, the filter, and did all the chemistry and it’s at about 108 degrees right now.

Oh, and a new cover is on order which means I won’t be changing the water so much anymore. That’s a good thing in my opinion.

In other news; between the hours of oh, 7:30 in the morning and about 5 pm you can get a look out of my window on the south side of the house. The camera runs 24/7, but right now I’m running a camera I found and it doesn’t work all that well in the dark… And it gets dark early here and sun rise is usually 30-45 minutes later than the rest of Colorado. Yay valley living!

I’ll eventually have a much nicer camera online and might even interface a little iButton weather station to the whole thing just for S&G’s. Of course that means writing software, but I haven’t done any code in a month or so and it might be fun. It’ll be very similar to the web site – PegaThing interfacing I did for Peg’s yacht back in Baltimore.

You can see the current incarnation of this marvel of technology (and recycled parts, duct tape, hot melt, and left over Sticker Station code) at: http://home.comcast.net/~rihahn/

Right now the whole thing runs off of a cheap $19 digital camera that has kludged streaming video capability, but I want to improve that by using an old BT848 video capture card and an NTSC camera. I can get away with this because NTSC is 512 x 384 and I’m sending 320 x 240 images to the web site…

Anyways, the BT card I have, but I’ll need to dig up a composite camera somewhere. I might even include a web page controlled PTZ (pan tilt zoom) so everyone out here in WebVille can play with it and look around.

If I go that far I’ll mount the camera up in the roof of the game room upstairs (4 stories in the air) in a dome. This’ll give folks a 360 degree view of the valley with tilt and zoom… So you can all peek in on my neighbors or count the cars over at WalWorld. (grin)

Yes, this is just this weeks “point of interest”… Makes one wonder what I’ll be into next week…

More snow this morning. I love it!

Was reading a few news portals this morning and came across a little blurb that read: “In a settlement between Sears and customers with improperly done wheel balancing, the lawyers got $2.45 million and the customers got $2.50 per tire.”

Hmm… Seems a little lop sided to me. So I went on a quest to see what else I could dig up…

There was a $3.7 million settlement between Jim Bakers’ “Praise The Lord Ministries” and 165,000 defrauded believers. The lawyers got $2.5 million and each victim got $6.54.

One other was a settlement between customers and a cosmetic manufacturer and retailers. The lawyers got $24 million on that one and each customer got a free cosmetic.

Yeah… I’m in the wrong business.

Now this little news excursion led me to a note about two American Legion posts and two other veterans groups in Pleasanton California who sponsored a class on dowsing…

They are trying to determine if it’s possible to identify domestic terrorists by pointing sticks at suspicious people and seeing if the sticks move. One of the brains behind this idea was quoted as saying “You can’t wait for the FBI and police to come up with solutions when you have the bad guys living among us.”

Ok, finished the great room reordering and I’m much happier now.

Periodically I’ve found that I have to turn my environment upside down and mix it all up. Otherwise things get stagnant and I get edgy.

New room features include moving the speakers to amore correct sonic configuration especially when sitting at the computer. Right now I have Oingo Boingo playing and Danny Elfman is *in* my head which is a spooky experience let me tell you. Another fringe benefit of the new speaker placement is that my big Sony’s get to load the corners of the room better which creates some nice, tight, bone-rattling bass without loading the whole room.

Another feature is that the amps in the speakers are now fed via fiber optic from the very cool little external SoundBlaster box that connects everything to my PC. Prior to this arrangement the speakers were too far away from the PC and I ran everything via copper… Light is better, trust me.

Above all it gave me a chance to clean, organize, box up and store, and otherwise straighten out my space here. This is a good thing and for me it’s like getting a whole new room.

So, yes, my neat-freak quotient has been satisfied for another year.

In other news it appears we are heading for yet another format war:

Sony (love those guys) and about eight other hardware manufacturers have developed this thing called “Blu-ray” which they hope will replace current DVDs. Basically Blu-Ray is a name for a new DVD standard which uses blue-violet laser instead of old red laser discs used in CDs and in DVDs. This allows manufacturers to store more data using the same amount of disc surface. One Blu-Ray disc will hold approximately 27GB of data (compared to 4.36GB on regular DVD) on one side/layer of the disc.

Video will be stored using MPEG-2 technology, just like in DVD-Video discs, but in much higher bit rate. Currently DVD-Video discs can have a bit rates up to 9.8Mbps, but Blu-Ray discs support bit rates as high as 36MBps. The down side to Blu-ray’s format is that it isn’t backwards compatible with current DVDs, but who cares. That $4000 HD-ready TV you bought over xmas has to do some real ugly stuff to get your old $15 DVDs to look good anyways.

Ok, now everyone who isn’t one of the nine companies in the Blu-ray development wants their piece of the pie too. Enter the recently ratified HD-DVD format presented to the DVD forum by Toshiba and NEC. Again, like the SACD / DVD-A war Sony has the better format by forging forwards rather than only going half way for all the “hangers on” out there.

Ok, so just about everyone I know is behind Blu-ray when suddenly Korea and China decide they want their slice of the pie as well. Enter EVD…

So where will the madness end? Who knows.

Chances are, much like the DVD+RW/-RW debacle and the SACD/DVD-A war, we’ll eventually see hardware that doesn’t care what format it’s in. But until then, some time in 2008, you’ll have to be like Aryntha and buy a different player for each media just to hedge your bets that when things shake out, you’ll still have something that works.

Yay money…

I got another illo done last night and once again was lamenting the loss of my Wacom.

The up side to not having my digital pen crutch is that I’m getting back into practice with the mouse… Back in the old days when we used to carve CPUs out of wood, my ex talked me into getting an Amiga to replace my Atari 800xl. (bless her) The mouse was all we had, not to mention a max of 320×200 and 4096 colors if you pushed it real hard (HAM); yet we turned out some pretty neat-o work with it.

So here I am almost fifteen years later. I have gone from 8 Mhz to 3 Ghz, 1.5 megs of ram to 1.5 gigs of ram, 1meg floppies to almost a terabyte of HD space, 320x200x4096 to 1600x1200xMillions… and I’m still doing art with a mouse. (chuckle)

An interesting side note to the above was that the original Amiga 500 cost $595 which is about the cost of a middle-of-the-road 2+ Ghz computer these days.

Well, here’s the art. It’s a commission for a character portrait of a Kirin as envisioned by her player:

Let’s see, what else? Oh, getting ready for the Ullr Fest up here… What’s “Ullr Fest” you ask? Silly flat landers… 🙂

Ullr is the Norse god of snow. Legend has it that Ullr was displeased with the people up here because they didn’t appreciate his snow making efforts and so he left the valley. To lure him back we throw a big party in his honor every year and it seems to work as we get about 300 inches of snow every year… If it ain’t broke we’re certainly not gonna fix it.

This year will see the Budweiser Clydesdales in the parade (and around town for a few days) so I’ll be sure to have my camera fully charged and several memory sticks handy…

Other than that it’s supposed to snow some more today and tomorrow. The skiers are going bonkers with the quality and quantity of the snow we’re getting this year.

Have a great day out there in ’net land folks. Take a few minutes to learn something completely useless today, like the flight speed of an unladen European swallow! 😉

Last night I started working on a new three-panel comic that I think I’ll make web-able staring Flint and Ravik. They’re kind of like the “Odd Couple” but more polarized as ‘good’ and ‘evil’ rather than ‘neat freak’ and ‘slob’.

I’m sure they’d rather not be roommates but they’re sort of stuck and simply have to deal with one another. 🙂

It’s also easy to come up with a continual stream of material as they’re always going at it with one trying to “convert” the other or simply just annoy them. Flint is by nature “good” and doesn’t really *try* to do anything to Ravik, but his general outlook and innocence are enough usually to get old Ravik foaming at the mouth. Ravik on the other hand is always plotting to do something to Flint, but Flint somehow manages to bumble his way though it… They say someone looks out for innocents and children and Flint is walking proof.

Fortunately they gave up fighting one another openly years ago as neither could make any headway against the other. So now it’s a sort of grudging co-existance with little feints and dodges at one another rather than open warfare.

And they have been rubbing off on one another over the years. Ravik’s quiche addiction is Flint’s fault, just don’t ask what’s in it. While Flint’s like of techno is Ravik’s fault though Ravik is more “Icon of Coil” and “Delta 9” where Flint is into happier stuff like “Scooter” and “Apoptygma”…

I don’t want to kill myself on this project though so don’t expect to see a comic but maybe once a week. Maybe I’ll do an inked one on Wednesdays and a color one on Sundays… We’ll see.

Ahh yes, making the most of your psychosis… (laugh)

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Disclaimer: Those of you with an overwhelming fear of the unknown will be gratified to learn that there is no hidden message revealed by reading this journal entry backwards, so just ignore that sudden desire to run down the street naked carrying a fax machine over your head. However, by pouring a complete circle of salt around yourself and your computer you can ensure that no harm befalls you and your equipment.

I got the snow melt system for the driveway working enough to hold out till Scott the boiler repair guy gets here Monday and the hot tub repair folks should be here Tuesday.

Now if I could just get Comcast to work I’d be a happy person… Well, can’t have everything. Though it would be nice to be able to post to the old Journal here without retrying for two hours…

Weather update: Don’t drive in the Colorado Rockies today…

I love snow.

Well, gee… Today isn’t looking like it’ll be all that great if this morning is any indicator.

The neighbor’s dog got into the trash *again* and has strewn it all over the driveway, the snow melt system for the driveway seems to have developed an issue and one of the lines has stopped working, the boiler has once again developed some bug that is preventing the production of hot water, and Comcast is sucking again with 200-300ms ping times to just about anywhere and 20-30% packet loss… Umm, in non-geek that means –if- a web page comes up, it takes 3-5 minutes to do it.

Everything but Comcast, and maybe the neighbor’s dog, is fixable. I keep thinking I need to call Comcast and ask them how much *working* cable costs per month as what I have is only $45 and obviously that isn’t enough. After all, over the last month Comcast has averaged 2 hours a night of non or near-non operation, which is always handy.

Ehh, just grin and bear it right?

Other than that, there isn’t much in the way of new news to report. It’s still snowing, which is good as it keeps the flatlanders on the ski slopes and spending money. Yesterday held a beautiful example of flatlander vs. snow as a car with Illinois plates wound up parked on top of the Wal-Mart roundabout. Yes, on top of it. No one was hurt thankfully, but the four guys in the car did get laughed at by about 300 passing motorists before the tow truck managed to extract the car.

Fortunately for them the aspen trees were only planted two months ago and the snow is deep enough that there was little damage to the car and they drove it away even though they hit the roundabout at around 40 mph…

Well, with the weather outside being perfect for the skiers and the last two days being mostly champagne powder, I seriously doubt the store will see any customers. I think I’ll take today off and try to stave off entropy around here for a little longer.

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Disclaimer: Unless the word absquatulation has been used in its correct context somewhere other than in this warning, it does not have any legal or grammatical use and may be ignored. No animals were harmed in the transmission of this journal entry, although the German Sheppard next door is living on borrowed time, let me tell you.

There was a full blown blizzard last night which is still carrying on, in a lesser form, this morning. I’m glad I got the Wag running as I have to get groceries today.

Other than that it promises to be another day. Jack should, in theory, make it into the shop today but I seriously doubt any customers will… It’s a “powder day” as the term goes up here and few businesses will be open due to all the employees being on the slopes.

And I just finished the last book I had to read… Today is gonna suck.

Well, I have to get rolling, get some breakfast, and get out into the great white world.

Just got back from the dinner party over at Tina and Rick’s place… Jack is a damn good cook.

The prime rib was perfect. Jack is now officially the only person on Earth who can make 4 cuts of prime rib, medium rare to well done, simultaneously with one chunk of meat. I dunno how he did it, but everyone got exactly what they wanted and the 6 pound chunk of boneless meat was only in the oven for an hour.

He also has discovered some way to make real baked potatoes in the microwave in less than 15 minutes.

I think the only thing he prepared “normally” was the corn on the cob which was prepared via a big blue enameled pot of boiling water.

He got there at 3pm on the nose and had the entire meal served by 4:15, and that includes the sautéed mushrooms and onions and tossed salads.

Anyways, after stuffing myself I spent a few hours hearing all about Jack’s exploits up here in Vail back in the 70’s from Tina and hearing all about the latest conspiracy theories from Rick. All in all it was a pleasant evening even if it was in *another* smoke filled house.

They do have this cool “smoke eater” thing which does a pretty nice job of clearing the air and I found myself sitting right next to it while we chit-chatted. Though even with the cool gizmo I’m hacking up a lung and I smell like I’ve gone walkabout to all of the local bars tonight… Sigh.

All in all I had a lot of fun. I’m not the world’s most social being and it usually takes and act of divine intervention to get me to go out somewhere, but Tina and Rick are pretty earthy people and I find them to be pleasant to hang around… After all, anyone who has a “hippie room” which has no furniture but a mattress in the middle of the floor, a stereo, 12 kinds of lava lights, tie dye tapestries on the walls, black lights, and lots of really neat 60’s artwork all over the place has got to be cool. That and they like Yes which immediately adds 2-3 points to your “cool” score. 🙂

See, Tina and Rick are real hippies. I mean *real* hippies… Tina says she’s around 50, but she never lost her penchant for Lennon glasses, tie dye, and all the other things that the 60’s were known for, if you get my drift.

Well I got out of there at about 8:30 and Jack is so sloshed he’s spending the night there. If I hadn’t forgot my scotch I’d probably be spending the night there too.

And with that I think I’m going to sign off for the night, take a hot shower, and burn the clothes I’m wearing.

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The “Wag” lives again!

After sitting for three months, the throaty growl of the ’74 409 cubic inch monster was heard rumbling though the neighborhood again… Much to the chagrin of my neighbors I’m sure.

Needless to say the battery charger still works and managed to shove enough electrons back into the battery to get things going again. She fired up on the first click of the key.

Man I love old Jeeps.

While the engine room got up to temperature I brushed snow off of the hood and windshield, and then it was time for the really expensive part of the ritual… Gas.

I climbed back into the beast, which is tricky if you’re not used to off-road vehicles as the bottom of the door is two and a half feet off the ground, and chugged out into the street. Oil pressure at 60psi, temperature at 150, pyros reading 700, fuel/air mix reading average… So I goosed the Wag a bit: I was in 2 wheel and the Wag lit up the tires and shot out down the snow packed street out front, obviously happy to be moving again. I pulled onto Highway 6, which is dry and free of snow, and was immediately tailgated by some bozo in an Audi A6 so I did what any sane man driving a 400 hp pre-runner would do… I put my foot in it!

The Wag responded by roaring through its dual 3-inch glass packed exhaust, dropping a gear, and pulling the front end up as we shot from 15 to 50 in the time it took for me to register that I was speeding. The side effect to this show of mechanical testosterone was that a foot thick, four foot wide and 8 foot long slab of snow slid off the roof and onto Mr. Audi’s hood and windshield, effectively burying the little car.

Needless to say he didn’t get within a dozen car lengths after that.

Ok, on to the gas station. I pulled into the local Gas Haus and proceeded to fill up; $20 rolled by, $30 rolled by, $40 rolled by… About this time the station attendant comes out to make sure the pump isn’t leaking or something. At $48 dollars I stopped and he looked relieved, until I took off the other gas cap and started filling again.

See, the Wag holds 50 gallons of fuel in two tanks and won’t even start on less than 90 octane gas, so I have to buy the expensive stuff which right now is $1.98 a gallon.

So, about $100 lighter in the wallet and about 300 pounds heavier in the back end of the Wag, I headed back home by way of the highway. I blew the carbon out of the exhaust and made sure the transmission was still tight with a 100mph pass down I-70 from Avon to Dowd Junction… Yep, I love old Jeeps.

That’s my day so far.

At 3pm I’ll be heading over to Tina and Rick’s place for dinner, but after that I have a sketch to get done before midnight… Sheesh!

Later…

About fifteen minutes to go till the end and I’m fading fast… Bleh. I just can’t punch the old vampire time clock like I used to.

I did get some good writing done tonight though and I finished the last ‘03’ illo. I have to remember to put ‘04’ on the next one which should be the character illo for Wolf’s Ki’Rin. Then I have to finish the illo for ZeZe’s “Lynzie” character which was supposed to be a Christmas present but I got derailed in the process of getting something down on paper. Sorry…

My ‘04’ resolutions are to do a sketch per day, a finished ink per week and a full color illo per month regardless of work loads and worldly pressures. I dunno if I can do it, but I’m sure gonna try. I like drawing but it’s just so hard to drag something “out of head” and “onto paper” when the demon Reality is standing behind me and thumping the back of my skull with a large, gnarled finger all the damn time.

Well, I’m about to impale my keyboard and wake up with 45 pages of “g” again if I don’t head to bed so I’ll wish you all out there in ‘net land a happy new year and I’ll see you on the other side of 365.25.

It’s been a fairly productive night so far. I went and removed the foot or so of snow off the hood of the wagoneer, broke all the ice free from the hood, pulled the battery, and brought it into the garage to put it on the charger for the night… Too bad it looks like someone ran over the charger while I was away. (bleh)

(Just got the “if you don’t eat I’m gonna crawl up your spine and strangle your brain” message from my tummy so… Pause for dinner)

(Un-pause from dinner)

I went over to “Fiestas” in Edwards for dinner and had the most excellent chicken enchiladas with their signature white jalapeno sauce; a very good way to warm up on a cold night.

I plugged in the battery charger when I got home and nothing sparked, smoked, or otherwise led me to believe that the unit was dead so I hooked it up to the battery and will check on it throughout the evening… I figure the battery will have a nice charge some time next year.

I think over the next few days here I will box up a lot of the excess junk in my office/bedroom and put it down in the garage. Then I’ll re-arrange things a bit by moving the bed over into a corner rather than the middle of the room, moving my two wardrobes to the west wall, then going and getting myself a much bigger desk.

This will give me some much needed desk space, let me put my speakers on either side of the computer desk rather than off to my right, and let me put my nightstand near the sliding glass door to the deck where I can put the web cam computer and the camera to get a good view of the mountains across the street.

Oh, and I’m gonna take down the goofy 70’s art in here!

I got all this “ok’d” by the resident interior designer, Vivian, who has this –thing- for 70’s era décor which I personally can’t stand. But hey, it’s her thing, and in this day and age people with any sort of “desire” are few and far between so I just go with the flow.

Either that or I’ll just box up the junk and leave well enough alone… We’ll see how I feel about it Monday.

Well, that’s it for this post. A bit over 3 hours to go till the new Gregorian year and as I’m attempting to stay up for it, I’ll probably post again tonight.

The best parts of the holidays are the days off… We closed up the shop early today and won’t be open tomorrow. This lets me spend the evening in front of the fireplace with a glass of fine single malt and enjoy the evening rather than worrying about getting up early tomorrow.

Tomorrow should be fun as Jack and I will be going over to Tina and Rick’s place for a New Year’s dinner at around 3pm. Jack will be making his famous Prime Rib and Bakers dinner and I’ll be supplying the sodas, iced teas, beer (for Rick and Tina), cognac (for Jack), and a small bottle of Laphroaig for me.

Jack and I can’t get too sloshed as we need to both drive home afterwards and get to the shop and be relatively cognizant Friday for a few hours at least… Although that’s never impeded Jack too much. 🙂

Other than that it’s the end of another Gregorian Year… Yeah, so the rest of the world is a week and a half late in the “New Year” department, but it’s still an important demarcation for them so I’ll participate a little. After all, even though life is trying at times and sometimes we get buried under all the problems of the world, there’s always the free annual trip around the sun to look forward too right? That and despite the high cost of living it still remains quite popular…

Let’s see, what else has gone on around here? Oh, I *still* haven’t found a copy of the expansion for “Shadowbane”… I looked all over the place down in Denver to no avail and of course it’s not available up here anywhere. I was really hoping to create a Minotaur cleric for use this coming year…

Bah! Video games are bad for you anyways right? I don’t personally believe that though. I mean, if Pacman affected us as kids, we’d all run around in a darkened room with neon lights, munching pills and listening to repetitive music…

Oh, right… Never mind…

Hmm, what else? Oh, I had an odd thought today at lunch: Jack and I went to a local pasta house and while I was sitting there looking over the menu I wondered what would happen if one were to eat pasta and anti-pasta at the same time? Would you explode violently or just be hungry still? I’ll have to try this experiment some time…

I was also informed by the cook there (a friend of Jack’s) that he finds that spaghetti sauce simmers best when you play opera at it…

This reminded me of Aryntha and his building a repartee with the chicken breasts that he was cooking and led me to believe that all great cooks are completely whacko. 🙂

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this document are not necessarily those of the author. Some may belong to the small hairy man who lives in the moldy shoebox at the bottom of his garden, and who probably uses his vast technical knowledge and uncontrolled access to the author’s digital cable to tap into his Internet account and post all manner of weird things without his knowledge or consent, or at least that would explain a lot of things.

“I must not have fun. Fun is the time-killer. Fun is for inferiors, servants and the help. I will ignore fun. I will work through it. And when the fun is gone only I will remain — I, and my will to win. Damn, I’m good.”

–The litany against fun

(Most often heard spoken by Management and as an opener to high level board meetings)

I’m back on my mountain again and enjoying the really nice snow we are getting up here.

Not a whole lot to report really. Lyon dropped me off Sunday afternoon and I’ve been in meetings with Larry or fixing things around the house ever since.

I took yesterday off from work to set up all of Larry’s new road-warrior gear and while I was at it I hauled the *huge* Christmas tree out and refilled the cannibal special… The problem with the hot tub is that the thermostat is still broken… I really have to call the hot tub company to get it fixed and no more poking around out there seeing if I can do it myself. Well, the tub will stay at about 40 degrees right now, which is fine as it keeps it from freezing, but that’s also just warm enough to make it steam and it looses water due to this… Well, if the level drops below the intake it sucks air and the heat exchanger stops working…

Larry knows the tub is broken so he didn’t pay it much mind while I was gone so this is the state it was in when I got to it Monday. There was about 3 inches of ice covering the water that was left but the water in the piping was still moving so nothing was broken, yet.

This means that it’s time to fill the tub right? Too bad the hose was frozen…

Ok, haul the hose into the 120 degree dry sauna while I run downstairs and cross connect plumbing that isn’t supposed to be cross connected. I hooked the output of the hot water reserve tank to the cold water in the house so I could get 140 degree water out of the spigot out back.

Needless to say I saved the hot tub and all of its plumbing from freezing… Today I will call the hot tub guys and have them fix the darned thing too. 🙂

Wow, the snow is really coming down now…

Jack should be here shortly to give me a ride to/from the shop as the Lincoln is still down in Denver getting fixed and I *still* haven’t gotten a battery for the Wagoneer… I gotta get my act together. Durn Holidays! 🙂

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Disclaimer: Any resemblance between the above views and those of my monitor or the view out my window are purely coincidental. Any resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic. The question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold them is left as an exercise for the reader. The question of the existence of the reader is left as an exercise for the second god coefficient. (A discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope of this article.)

I got to experience “fondue” for the first time last night. It was a multi-course affair that started with raw veggies and cheeses and ended with cubed steak and mushrooms in a nice beef broth. I was personally fonder of the meat/mushroom/broth part but the whole thing was quite good.

What I think is the neatest aspect of the whole “fondue experience” is that the Swiss designed it to be a social affair wherein everyone sits around a simmering pot of stuff with long poky-things and chats (or in our case, games) whilst the food cooks. I can see why the event was quite popular in the 70’s as it was a very social decade.

Today will be my last day here at Lyon and Wolf’s place because I have to be up on my mountain and back at work tomorrow morning. My transportation back up the mountain is a bit of a mystery yet as the USS Lincoln is still in the shop, Larry who was supposed to be here in Denver yesterday never made it, Lynx has offered to drive me back up which will be a religious experience (chuckle), and if all else fails Lyon will take me back up. I’ll make it, just not sure how yet. If Larry postponed for a day and will be here today, that’s the best option as he has to go there anyways and it won’t be a 200 mile round trip for someone just because of me.

All in all this has been the best Yule/Christmas holiday I’ve had since the age of 16 when I left home and never looked back. This holiday season had humor and revelry, new stuff to experience, old friends, and things to remember… It was really a great time and it’s great to have friends like Lyon and Wolf who took me in to their house and shared the holidays with me.

Thanks guys, I really appreciate it.

And with that I’m going to pack up my stuff and the holiday loot I received, and see about getting home.

Wolf is out getting some groceries for tonight and tomorrow. Tomorrow night will be a lot of fun as we get to try out Wolf’s new fondue set!

I just finished creating my first AD&D character in, oh, 20 years. I have to say the game rules in general have come a long way since the box set I got in 1976. Now just about anything is possible within the bounds of the rules while keeping everyone on an even playing field.

In general I’m not much of a rule-monger, preferring my games more free form due to the varied and complex natures of the characters I create. But I also enjoy the challenge of working within the bounds of a system and having a physical advancement of the character… So far the 3rd edition AD&D rules seem to fit the bill (hehe) nicely.

We have yet to stress the bounds of the 3rd edition combat system, but it seems pretty straight forward now that AC isn’t how hard you are to hit but it rather how hard you are to damage… After all, as any SCAvian will tell you, someone in plate mail is almost impossible to miss, but just as impossible to seriously damage.

Lets see, what else has gone on… Oh, last night I got deathly ill as a result of spending a few hours over at Wolf’s parents yesterday. They, the parents and the other folks who were there, smoke like chimneys and while I got tight-chested a few times while I was there, I spent some time outside and thought I had a handle on it… Wrong.

Lyon, the med student, tells me that what happened was that I got enough second hand smoke while I was there to stun the cilia in my lungs and I got a king-sized dose of smoke because of it. Well about 5-6 hours later, when all those cilia woke back up and saw the state that my lungs were in, all hell broke loose. I was short of breath, coughing like mad, and eventually wound up with a headache that could split granite.

Fortunately Lyon is also an asthmatic and knows all about shortness of breath and whatnot and had a lot of good advice… Had things gotten out of hand he had this nebulizer gizmo ready to go too. It’s nice to have a friend who’s also a med student. 🙂

I’m fine today though, a few hot showers and some respiratory pill from Lyon and I’m right as rain again.

Well, Lynx is on his way over here to visit and I should sign off. There’ll definitely be another post today though as Lynx causes lots of space-time issues, and things are always interesting whenever he’s around. 😉

Just got back from a holiday get together at Wolf’s parent’s place. Had a lot of fun, ate a lot of good food, and got a really cool African board game from Wolf’s oldest daughter, Antelope… All in all it was a pleasant few hours.

I had to repair one present to Wolf and Lyon that was damaged in shipping (a simple gear train adjustment) and configure one of Antelope’s presents which is a cool NIST time receiving wrist watch that Wolf’s dad gave her.

The funniest moment was when Wolf’s mom asked me if I’d like a slice of pie (Pecan pie, Mmmm!) and of course I said, “Yes, please.” … What I received was a four pound, three inch thick slice of pecan pie that bugged my eyes and caused me to make a distressed version of one of those Unicorn sounds that leak out of me every now and again. This set everyone rolling with laughter.

Seriously, that slice of pie was in danger of overloading the structural integrity of the paper plate it was sitting on.

I eventually came to terms with the slice of pie by agreeing to eat all the pecans and some crust as long as I got to leave most of the filling. We then parted ways, but it was really good… I can see where Wolf gets her culinary skills from.

My other Christmas present today was a Celtic tarot deck from Wolf, which is really neat. I don’t do much divination, but the deck is cool enough that I might give it a whirl a few times.

Right now the family is at round three of the holiday get-togethers only this time it’s with Lyon’s family. I’m here at the house fighting the idea of taking a nap and sleeping off lunch.