Saturday, June 14, 2008

project report

Most of my first full week off from students was spent painting our bedroom and bathroom. We just moved all the furniture back into the bedroom; putting the fixtures back into the bathroom will have to wait until tomorrow, as I have to go buy a couple shorter bolts for the new light and because mounting the towel bars & such will require use of the drill. Needless to say, at 9:45, Leo's asleep.

Pictures coming sometime relatively soon, after everything's put back up, including all the art.

Monday, June 9, 2008

Summer!

It's the first full week of my summer break, which won't be much of one. Tomorrow I'm going to start painting our bedroom (one of two that we didn't do right after moving in), and expect that it'll be a 3-day project. After that's done, I get to start working on writing the lab manual for my AP class for next year. My goal is to have at least the first semester, and really the entire year, done when kids walk in for the first full day of class.

I'm back at Centennial next year, but am still dealing with some annoyances related to the out-of-state license, and if I can't get it sorted out, then I may not be able to go back for year 3. Unfortunately, it seems like I'm probably going to have to go through a lateral-entry program again.

The weather has been very, very, very wet around here, although we've survived it relatively unscathed. The biggest problem has been unrelated to the weather, which is that last weekend I was working on re-doing the guts of one of our toilets and cracked the tank.

Incidentally, between the move and a provider buyout, my e-mail address has changed a couple times in the last year. For those without a post-NC address, it's the same handle, but now at comcast (dot) net.

Saturday, March 8, 2008

In memoriam (not family) / reminisces

I'm probably slower than many people in writing this, but let me add my voice to those mourning the death of E. Gary Gygax earlier this week, in Lake Geneva, WI. This post is, sort of, about the effect that he had on me -- even though we never met.

My introduction to role-playing games (old-style "Red Box" Dungeons & Dragons) came about in Oklahoma City, OK, on the last trip that we made to see my great-grandmother Pulley. Her next-door neighbor had a boy who was about my age, and he had an older brother. I'd been a fan of the cartoon, and the game looked neat. I didn't actually get to play much (at all? -- maybe 30 minutes) on that trip, but I was hooked.

It was probably a 2-year fight with my parents, who'd heard far too much about "the kid at MSU who lived in the steam tunnels because he thought it was real." Nevertheless, in 6th grade (the year after my parents split), the school librarian persuade my mother that there wasn't anything wrong with it. In the apartment building that my mother had, there was a high school student downstairs who was a gamer, and I became friends with one of his buddies. Many years later, I introduced Eric (the latter person above) to the woman who eventually became my wife.

My father didn't have as much problem with the hobby as my mother, and actually picked up German editions of a Gamma World and a Star Frontiers adventure when he went to Germany with his father a year or two later.

It was one of my high school teachers who broadened my RPG horizons beyond "hack-and-slash" style D&D, both to working on creating a consistent persona for a character and introducing me to other game systems. (At the time, it was principally Call of Cthluhu. However, he was the first person that I knew who had something published by White Wolf Game Studio, now the 2nd largest publisher in the RPG market.)

I continued to do RPG gaming through my undergraduate graduation. I've sold most of the things that I spent so much time and money acquiring when I was younger, although I've laid in a small stock of a few things against the day when Leo gets old enough to really participate. On and off, I've helped contribute to Project Aon as an editor or an XML markup typist. I actually really want to get a copy of The Prince's Kingdom sometime in the next couple years. It's a game that was written by somebody specifically for adults to play with their children. He's a little too young to understand now, but around his 4th birthday, it'll be a present to me.

Thank you to everybody who's been mentioned or alluded to here, even if I can't remember your name anymore. My imagination has become richer for your efforts, and it's a gift I hope I can share with my son. Someday.