For Love and nothing else

There is the possibility that some of you may have stumbled on this little part of the web by accident.

Although I mainly talk about geek things and random trivial nonsense, I have been quiet on my family life, even though it's supposed to be a portion of this blog.  Talking about personal things on any medium is difficult for me by my very nature, so other than some outspoken opinions on tech and geek stuff, I find it hard to discuss my own family life.

For all you little geeklings out there, take heart, I married the cheerleader, who also happened to be Prom Queen.  I love her for her raw inventivness and ability to see the best out of everything.  We married young in my career, when I had almost given up, so belive me when I say everything.  A few times, we had our lights turned out for non-payment, a little hustle, extra hours, and help from my ever-forgiving parents, got us the money to turn them back on.  Especially now, in this economy, more and more young couples are facing this situation, but let me tell you, it's pure hell, but with a good person by your side, you'll get through this.  I have an 18 year old son, going through the same situation, and he needs to take heart that his parents went through this.

We have our fights, as I believe most couples do, over some serious and some not so serious issues, but with my sarcastic personality and her sunny optimism, we will continue to grow as a family, flawed, but loving.  We can get through anything, our individual strengths complimenting each other, and our family survives and goes through challenges, together.

So keep heart, and remember you get through this life for/with love, and anything else is trivial.

I love you K, now and forever.

Blog layout updates

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to start messing around with the layout of this blog.  For now, you'll notice that I've moved the Labels section to the top of the post so that my regular readers (Hi Mom and Dad!) can skip posts that may not be things they are dying to hear about.

Current examples include:
Dungeons and Dragons, which is obvious and So Bad It's Awesome, where my horror movie reviews and Aqua music videos will be crammed.

And Now We Do the Dance of Joy!

This is for the D&D fans out there, and essentially no one else, so, sorry about that.  Apparently I'm behind the times as the 4th Edtion D&D team has announced their newest Campaign World back in August.  Are you ready for this?

That's right, Dark Sun is the newest world to be updated to 4th Edition rules.  I can tell you, back in the old days, when I was still a wee nerdling and the 1st level characters dropped dead at the hands of overly clever Kobolds, we liked our vicious and dangerous worlds.  First an aside.

For the record, this is a shot of a Kobold:

They travleled in packs, and while many people played them stupid, their stats suggested a certain feral cunning.  With a good DM, who wasn't expecting you to go out and slay dragons after a few levels, they could easily become feared creatures.  People who remember being viciously killed by these things were Dark Suns target audience.  We want our fantasy vicious and dangerous, more Beastmaster, more Krull, more Sword and Sorcerer.  The good guys may win, but the body count is going to start adding up if you're not clever.

But I digress, Dark Sun.

To those of you not familiar with the world, think Thundarr the Barbarian, or even perhaps John Carter: Warlord of Mars and Conan.  Magic is dangerous, and a good sword and reliable friends are about the only things keeping you out of the ground.

Basically the premise is a dying earth setting where abuse of magic has stripped the planet of it's very essence and the sun itself is burning out.  The world is a giant desert ruled by horrible sorcerer kings and regular cleansing of the "non-human scum" is a part of it's history.  Obviously much of this setting seems to have been derived from "Let's take the fantasy role playing genre, and base it in the Middle East instead of European history."

It's a vicious and horrible place, and not in the sense of the Ravenloft setting, which was abysmal dread caused by obviously supernatural sources (Vampire Lords).  This is a place where casual players who forget to buy trail rations and water will soon learn about why the game has encumbrance rules.  This is a place where being caught out in the open in a sandstorm will kill your character dead.  It's not for everyone, of course, the game I'm trying to run for my children would have no place even crossing paths with this setting.  But for the hardcore dying worlds fans out there, grit and grim heroes just trying to survive the world iteself, Dark Sun is one of the all time greats.

Here are the covers of the video game adaptations of the Dark Suns world:

Now, generally I think video game adaptations are about as accurate to role playing games as a movie of the week version of a Reader's Digest version of a classic horror story, these covers both show you something of what this world was about.

Time to break out the pewter and find a group of people who'll let me be a player again.

Apple on the ball for Windows 7 launch

Now, let me state first and foremost, I'm a Windows developer.  I run Vista Ultimate on my home computer and at work, using .NET 3.5 for professional and casual development using Visual Studio.

That being said, I'm still quite put off by the Windows Vista "experience" and I've had a number of issues from day 1.  Regular users of Apple products that I've talked to have always spoken highly of the products they use and seem very happy with them.

Now, having said all that, there is one constant in the Microsoft / Apple war.  You remember the horrible ads for Windows?  The ones with Jerry Seinfeld?  I hope not.  Personally I don't know how Jerry keeps finding work, he's a one note comedian whose claim to fame is being hyper aware that he's not all that funny.  Anyway, that's neither nor there.  Microsoft's ads are horrible and or insulting, depending on who you ask.  Apple, on the other hand, has always marketed itself as being "cool".  That's a pretty bold move for a company that makes hardware, no matter how good it looks, in my opinion, but it's worked for them pretty well.

And that bring us to the Windows 7 launch. (What, no "catchy" name this time?  Which reminds me, there's a pretty clear delineation in Windows' names (think Bob, Vista, Me), let me get back to that another time.)

Apple launched their newest "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads the very day Windows 7 launched.  And they are hillarious.


Broken Promises: It's different this time, I swear!



Teeter Tottering: I have to restart from scratch anyway. Doesn't mention the fact that for us Vista sufferers, that may not be 100% true, but funny as heck anyway.



PC News: Pretty much just snarky, but still funny, and who doesn't like snarky?



The fact that these have come out so close to the Windows launch just nails the point home that no matter what, Apple has and will continue to win at advertising. Considering that the vast majority of home users (including my wife and youngest son) use the computer mostly to connect to the internet, picking which box you use pretty much comes down to which one makes you feel good about blowing a lot of money, and Apple is totally winning that war.

Programmer Joke

A really funny geek comic, however some of them are a little risque: Geek and Poke

I've hidden the comic as it does contain some cussing, but it's worth checking out.

A Dungeons and Dragons table for Microsoft Surface

Microsoft Surface developers have come up with a way to visually represent Dungeons and Dragons, including stats, characters, monsters, dice, and maps.

For the low low price of around $10,000, I can get a big-ass interactive table to replace the thousands of dollars I've already spent on pieces of plastic and metal I currently use to DM my game.

As much as I may snicker now, you know I am actually wondering how many "second" jobs I'll need to take for the sole purpose of buying this thing. The iPhone dice roller has met it's match.

Very interesting band

Beyond my unreasonable appreciation of Aqua's music, I do occasionally stumble onto some bands that really deserve attention. This band, Poets of the Fall, I ran across while on YouTube, listening to songs from the Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure soundtrack. It's a really incredible sounding group out of Finland. The video itself is amazingly directed and is worth watching for the cinematics alone.

Here's a link to the band's page on youtube, another fast favorite of mine is "Lift".




Edit: I should note, the band wasn't on the soundtrack, there was a fan video using scenes from Bill + Ted, which was kind of cool. Also note, after listening to them for a bit, my favorite of their songs has to be Locking up the Sun.

The most Awesome video ever