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I've been without a land line for years now. It makes me think about how kids are going to be communicating in the future - with no common landline, there's significantly less chance I'll be able to monitor their communications, know who they're talking to, without some fairly wily monitoring software. Leads to a situation where the question is: Where do you draw the line of trust? How do you teach kids that you have a valid need to know who they're communicating with without making them want to hide it from you? How do we prevent another generation of 'Stranger Danger' paranoia, isolating us all from our neighbors (who, statistically, are decent folks, but we've been taught to believe are all rapists and serial killers by media)? We have a hugely open communications venue in the Internet, and personal communications are becoming trivially available, _and_ more vital every day. Is it ethical to monitor kids' communications online, since they're minors and aren't necessarily fully cognizant of their actions' impact? Tags: writer's block
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Being someone who sits at a computer all day, both by choice and for pay, and someone who hasn’t yet replaced their hands with bionics or a mind-machine interface, I’ve been slowly moving towards the ergonomic interface accessories.
I’ve long since gotten used to the moderately bad-sci-fi appearance of the average ergonomic keyboard, mostly because they’re damn comfy. My new mouse, however, looks like something out of … damn, I can’t even think of a movie ref. Schlocky, though. It’s the Logitech Revolution MX. I needed something that wouldn’t suck batteries like my current bluetooth mouse did, and came home with a rechargeable mutant mouse.
It’s got a wing on it so my thumb doesn’t drag on the desk (ooh, luxury…?), and in the ‘wacky feature’ category, a weighted scroll wheel that notices when I’m scrolling quickly and throws a _solenoid_ so the wheel goes from ratchety to free-spin mode. What the hey.
If it weren’t for the lack of flying cars, I’d think we’re in the future.
(crossposted from The Dream Library)
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Work Update
This last couple weeks has been rough. Due to really remarkably poor planning on the part of the client and our contract writers about 18 months ago, my employer laid off six people from our contract two weeks ago, including my boss and most senior team member. Overwhelming bitterness aside (for the team member, not the boss), I’ve been buried the last couple weeks trying to make a new balance. I think we’ll be fine eventually, but there’ll be some hiccups.
Horrors Unknown
I’m going to have to blame Candace for interesting me in Lovecraftian horror so long ago. For the last few months, I’ve been collecting Robin Laws’ Gumshoe games. It started with Ken Hite’s Trail of Cthulhu - an updated Lovecraftian horror game with a very different design philosophy than the lousy BRP system Chaosium uses for their stuff, and also distinct from Candace’s fiat diceless system. Desiring more material to use to understand the system’s philosophy, I followed up by purchasing the other Gumshoe games - Mutant City Blues first, which is less horror, more police procedural + superpowers. After that, I had to go to Indie Press Revolution to get the more obscure stuff, like Esoterrorists and Fear Itself.
Having collected all of this, I’ve started losing Stability and possibly Sanity reading disturbing modern horror stories and questioning: Why do I like horror? What makes it horrible and what makes it appealing?
I don’t have any answers yet, but I’m not done asking.
Next: I need to go find R. Chambers’ King in Yellow stuff to use for game research.
Fewer Preservatives
The media’s been doing its thing - I keep reading horrible things about high fructose corn syrup - prime cause of intraabdominal fat, eevil glycemic index, so on. So I’ve taken to avoiding it when I can, in favor of real sugar, or sucralose on occasion (curse you, energy drinks). But I’ve also started seeing an interesting trend - sugary drinks with _real sugar_ are popular again. It started with Red Bull Cola - the cola you can identify every single ingredient of as being natural. Now I’m seeing Pepsi Throwback (Cane Sugar), Pepsi Natural (Identifiable ingredients), and recently, Ice cream with no weird stuff in. Haagen-Dasz 5-ingredient ice cream is tasty.
Now, the question is: will this trend stick, and what will that mean? I like reasonably natural stuff…
(crossposted from The Dream Library)
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The last month has been a bit of a whirlwind - we decided to look into a local move shortly before the end of February; I decided that I was uncomfortable with the idea of moving to a new job with the economy sending everyone running for cover like it has, and the failback was a nonoptional “get the hell out of this tiny little box” move.
It turns out that the local base housing got opened up for civilian use, including contractors like me. For about $400 more than we were paying at SunBay, we’re able to afford a place twice the size! It’s a duplex, with the other unit damaged and unlikely to see use in the near future, and it’s built to military spec, so it’s so solid a couple doors actually do stop sound.
We started moving in on the 7th or so, and the last three weeks have been a whirlwind of bureaucracy and physical labor. We finished moving out of the old place on the 22nd, and this weekend has been the first real swing at emptying the mad squad of boxes we have here.
We now have an office, about 40% less boxes in the front room, and by the end of the night, we’ll have a floor in the bedroom.
I’ve been occupied digging around in all the books we’ve freed up; getting familiar with the basics of Savage Worlds for Eloria, recollecting a bit of Changeling, and reading In Nomine again. We have a lot of books. They should keep us occupied for a good long time.
Work has gotten interesting as well. An 18 month clock has started, roughly, and we’ll have to rearchitect everything in 6 and move everyong off the old system in the 12 months following. It’s likely to be exciting times. Here’s hoping.
Becky’s sorting through all her old clothes boxes, the ones that were in storage. She keeps wandering in here in this and that - cloaks and whatnot. She’s having a lot of fun.
(crossposted from The Dream Library) Tags: life
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Heya, new year!
I’m starting to cast about for improvements in life along with my lady - possibly new locations, we’ll see. Bosses know, and appear to not care. I think they’re expecting me to go out searching for a job, realize the economy sucks, and not have to worry about how irritated I am at my current location.
On the game front, looks like Shackled City is wrapping up shortly. That has been one _hell_ of a game. Between solid writing and a skilled Storyteller (I’d say GM, since it’s d20ish, but Storyteller fits better), it’s in the top 3 games I’ve played in.
This does not mean True20 is leaving me, no no. In fact, I’m converting my Keep on the Shadowfell game to True20. My party complained a bit about 4e and its trouble with ad-hoc gaming (It’s a Minimally Multiplayer Offline Role Playing Game. If you can’t push a button to make the effect, it’s pretty much all emotes.), so I persuaded them that a system change wouldn’t suck too much. So far, so good. I’m collecting up the house rules and optional rules that Erich uses (thanks, Erich!) and working towards a gestalt I like. I’m going to be careful, though - I tend to break systems I like by finding untenable warts. I don’t want to break this one, just … mold it.
Listening to numetal angsty brain candy, and the lyrics find no purchase, though I enjoy the sound. Life is good. Thank you, everyone who has made it possible.
(crossposted from The Dream Library)
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triss's journal
ecstatic
Holy cow, Fiancee!
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