So, since I had chicken and potatoes already cooked and waiting their turn in the leftover plate I came up with the following -

Dennis’ Chicken Potato Coconut Curry Soup

Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a saucepan.

Add 2 tablespoons of flour and stir make a roux.   Let it cook a minute or two to cut the raw flour taste.

Pour in one can of chicken broth and whisk smooth.

Add one tablespoon of -

• Chopped Garlic
• Minced Ginger

Add in 1/4 to a 1/2 teaspoon of -

• Ground Cardomon
• Tumeric
• Curry Powder
• Red Pepper (ground or flakes)
• Onion Powder

Pour in 1 can of Coconut Milk, whisk smooth.

Add in 1.5 grilled chicken breast

Add in 1 cup roasted potatoes

Simmer till slow boil stirring to rotate the potatoes on top to the bottom and cut back the heat and simmer as long as you can stand the smell and not eating it.  About 30 minutes for me.

Salt to taste and spoon up in a bowl as a thick soup (my preference) or ladle over steamed white rice (Laura’s choice).   Top with a dash of red pepper flakes and spoon a dollop of coconut yogurt in the middle.

Try it, if you don’t like it then you’re just weird.

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In a year or so if they remove the DRM (and the price drops subsequently) I may consider it.

I have a ‘friend’ who bought Bioshock Uno and didn’t even unwrap it and instead downloaded a cracked version to avoid this bullshit.  My ‘friend’ refuses now to continue to support and pander to this kind of thinking.

<rant off>

I really don’t have much to say in regards to another year down and another year in the future.  I’ve had better years and worse years than the proceeding one and I’m sure this cycle will continue to repeat.  Without the downs there are no ups; you just have a flat line.  And flat-lined is generally not a great place to be.  A little cardiac failure humor there.

But I do wish for you a better year regardless of how good the past year was.  Or good it was not.  Just try to remember that People as a ‘whole’ generally suck although a Person can be the best thing about and in your life.  And Life really is out to get you.  And it’s going to get you in the end, the best you can do is fight a delaying action and hold onto it as long as you can.  Anything good that comes to you in spite of that should be that much more enjoyable as a result.

Anyway, best of luck to your and yours in the upcoming months -

“All good that a person does to another returns three fold in this life; harm is also returned three fold.”

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If you run into any problems let me know.

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It’s a USB mic so you’ll need a PC of some kind to use it and you won’t be able to feed the input through a mixer or anything like that.

Previously I was using the mic on a Logitech Pro 9000 webcam as my mic.  If you’ve listened to the podcast you can tell the quality isn’t all that and that’s after extensive cleanup and tweaking.

I think you’ll find the next podcast release to be significantly better in quality with everyone audible and without overload.  Probably doesn’t hurt that I parked the mic in front of me on the gaming table and put Temple at the far end of the table.

I’m not an audiophile, I don’t really know cardioid patterns or impedance or pickup sensitivity.  I do know that the recording with this mic is very acceptable to me and although I cringe at the price, its worth it IMO.

D

Honestly, the only reason it works for them is the fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent that wonder about the benefits of \/1@grA and would rather risk their money, credit card information, identity with someone who needs to send a billion spam emails touting their security and confidentiality than use their common sense.  It costs them $0 to send the emails.  If even a single person gives them money?  It’s a huge profit deal for them.

So think of the children trying to surf Nickelodean the next time you start to click a link to some chinese web site to get a little blue pill or some russian site that’s going to guarantee your high pagerank on google and just remove your hand from the mouse.

That is all.

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As they’re ‘alpha’ bare bones basic designs I’m thinking $25+shipping ($5 to $10 depending on zip for USPS) for them, its roughly $12 for materials counting waste and the rest is for my time which works out to well below minimum wage on an hourly basis FYI.  You’d need to have a Paypal account in order to pay for them as that’s the simplest and least risky for me and it’s strictly as supply is available on a first paid for, first served basis.

If the $12 seems high for materials well you try cutting 3/16″ slots in 2′ boards that are straight and uniform using nothing but a circular saw and see how much waste material you end up that’s good for nothing but template spacers.

The tower will include a catch tray that will be of a size that tower will nest into it when you’re not using it.  You could line it with cork, rubber, foam or felt to reduce the clatter noise but I’ve found personally that the noise isn’t too bad and anything but hard polished wood just causes the squarish (d6’s, d8’s, d4’s) dice to tend to pile up at the mouth of the exit hole.

They may be unstained or stained with black walnut or golden oak depending on what I want to try and will be coated with two coats of polyurethane (either gloss or semi-gloss depending on my on hand supply of poly).  The plexiglass will probably be left clear although I’m going to try a frosted look using an orbital sander on the inside portion and see how that looks.

If you contact me while I still have unfinished towers then you can try requesting specific finishes and stains.   As mentioned the only stains I have on hand are black walnut and golden oak (I might have a honey oak somewhere) and for finishes I have semi-gloss and gloss in polyurethane and I might have a  semi-gloss in crystal coat which adds very little coloring to wood unlike poly which has a tinge of yellow.  Really on matters for unstained wood in either case.

If you’d simply like a more detailed photo log of  the process I use to make them so you can build your own I’ll be happy to post that if there’s any interest pending me getting more raw materials as all the material I had on hand I cut already over the weekend.

Use the contact form to send me an email or you can send it to my anti-spam account which is spam at armsnake dot com.

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UPDATE – I think the worst of the bugs from the upgrade are taken care of.  I need to figure out why the RSS feed from Wizards is fubarring my CSS but other than that I think we’re okay.

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Side View

Anyway, I didn’t have much else going on that I’m willing to share but I thought people might be interested in the status of the new gaming table.  Well the top to it.

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It’s constructed of two sheets of 1/2 ’smooth one side’ or rought craft grade plywood.  I went cheap here for a couple of reasons, one they didn’t have 1/2 oak or birch plywood at the store, I’d of had to order it special and I didn’t want 3/4″ as it was too thick.   Two, the top piece is going to be covered in something with a plexiglass mapping sheet on top of that so good wood would have been wasted.   The bottom piece I’m going to paint white for light reflecting purposes so again we’re wasting good wood under paint.

Now the center piece that separates the two pieces of plywood I did make out of oak, primarily for strength and just because I was able to get precut pieces that are perfectly square which makes the parts go together stronger.

The two sheets of plywood are exactly 35″ by 64-3/4″ and fit inside the well in my gaming table with about a 1/16″ gap on all sides to allow for expansion and easy removal.

I’ll be screwing the center divider down onto the lower piece of plywood.  The top will be attached to the divider by a peg and wedge system so that I can take it off easily just in case.  I’ll attach some 2x blocks of oak to the underside of the top that will fit inside the divider snuggly and then drill a hole through the divider and into the blocks and use pegs to affix them to each other.

The reason I want to be able to take it apart is I’ll be mounting a power strip inside the divider and running the wiring into it so there’s only one cord coming out of everything to power the lights.

The light is a cheap little 24″ flo I got at Lowe’s for $9-$10 as a test to see if it works well enough.  It’s not actually that ‘hot’ a light, the picture just contrasts it that way but still I’m not sure if I’ll be adding one to each location or one to each side.  (4 lights versus 6).  6 would work ‘best’ but not sure if it’s necessary until after I get the wood painted white and see how it all reflects.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing with my evenings the last couple.  Working with wood is a slow process as you’re always waiting for glue or stain or poly/varnish to dry before you can continue working and those generally run into the 24 hour blocks for best results.

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The topper will be constructed of 1/2 plywood probably oak but maybe birch.  One piece will fit into the existing playing field indent to bring it level with the rim of the table.   I may leave it ‘unfinished’ i.e. just sanded, stained and then a few coats of poly on it to protect it or I might use some poker ’speed’ cloth on it since it doesn’t pill up.

The bottom will be screwed and glued to the stand which will be 8″ high.  The stand will be cross braced and corner braced (I hate fragile things) on the interior.  This will then have another sheet of plywood screwed and glued on top of that.  I’ll then cover that most likely with green felt that I have left over from another project that will wrap around the edges.  The stand and underside portions I’ll sand and prime and then paint a bright white for light reflecting purposes.

For lighting I’ll put in a 40″ (ish) inch florescent fixture on the sides and a 16″ (ish) fixture on each end and mount these under the edge.

And that should give me the functionaly I’m looking for.

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Right now there’s just too much contention for map space from player’s paperwork for any encounter room of significant size. This gets their items off the actual map field and if nothing else adding lighting directly over their bits and pieces makes them easier to read.   And it’ll give them a creature’s eye view of the battlefield which might be interesting.

It’s going to be damn heavy though.  I build things tough so there’ll be something like three sheets of hardwood plywood there.  1/2 inch minimum.  I want it to be removable you see so it has to be tough enough to handle being taken off and put back for when I want to use the table as a board game table or card games etc.

Anyway, just thought I’d share.

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In the paraphrased immortal words of Loomis – “Please god! I need a feedtool!  One lousy fuckin’ feedtool!”

But I persevere.

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One of the things that’s bugged me about our house is the the cabinet doors and drawer fronts are all this heavy old world solid oak, literally an inch thick with a lot of recessed areas.  I’m sure it was ungodly expensive when the house was built back in the late 70’s, the story is our house was the development owners house and I do tend to believe it, it’s got a lot of high end woods in it and is the biggest house in the development in terms of rooms and square footage (3200) but still it’s not very attractive to my eyes.  The 30 year old vanish/lacquer is not in the best shape in the lower cabinets/drawers in the kitchen from water splashes over the decades and general bumps and bruises.

Longer story short I’ve started taking off the doors and drawers and I’m using a fine grit pad on an orbital and hand sanding on the convulations to get the top layer off and then restaining it with golden oak stain.  I wasn’t really sure what it would do, the first one was an experiement as I really want to replace them all anyway.  But to my surprise they ‘healed’ right up very well.  The stain recolored the wood where the old coating had worn away and you literally cannot tell the difference.

I’m also going to be painting one of the downstairs bathrooms, the ‘public one’, which still has the old texture paint from the prior owner.  Her idea of painting was heavy faux finish done really badly.  I can only guess that she did this bathroom last because it was only ugly, not OMFG THAT’S HORRIBLE LOOKING!!!?! ugly.

When we moved in I repainted everything except that one bathroom.  By the time I’d gotten to it I was just too tired to care and it didn’t look so bad after painting 4 bedrooms, kitching, dining, two living rooms, halls and a playroom as well as multiple ceilings which as far as I can tell have the original %R@)*%!*& popcorn from 1978 and coat of paint.

Anyway, I’ve fixed the horrible job of patching they or someone did in covering up screwholes for towelracks that had been yanked out of the wall and taped all the edges off and hope to put a coat o’ primer on tonight and a nice Misty Lake tinted premium which is a pale foggy green aka greenish grey.

DnD news has been pretty light of late.  I guess everyone’s just doing their thing rather than talking about it.  I still don’t have a copy of the Players Handbook 2 but the Avenger class that Wheaton aka Al played in the Penny Arcade Podcast sounds interesting and worth a look.

It’s just rather disheartening to see the power creep that keeps on edging in.  But I guess it’s inevitable.

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What does this mean?  Nothing much, it’s a geek thing but for the end users (you and your brethren) this means the page will load faster.  Of course you still have to pull in all the images which if this is your first time here can be costly.  1&1, my host, recently screwed up something and now my thumbnail generation doesn’t work so all the images for the last few posts are resized full size images rather than actual thumbs.  This isn’t the first time they’ve screwed this up.  We’ll see how long they take to fix it…

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In other news which I’ll go into more detail later, ran my module.  We got through 4 combat encounters and a couple of non-combat encounters in about 4 hours.  That includes children interuptions, unfamiliarity with their powers and such.  I’m pretty happy with that right now.  With experience that should easily drop to 3 hours even with the multiple bad guy encounters.

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AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php

This forces your server to use php 5 rather than defaulting to php 4 when it does the image upload/resize/thumbnail create.

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One thing that some people are doing is ’speeding’ up game play.  This has taken a slim variety of paths but it seems to fall into the allowing players to use their encounter powers more than once per encounter and their dailies more than once per day.  Getting rid of or altering healing surges is another prime candidate for change or using them as currency to allow more frequent usage of their powers.

One thing that struck me as interesting is one group’s removing the long rest and instead make their powers ‘episodic’.  You get what you get at the start of the gaming session and you don’t get more until the start of the next one.  BUT they’re also doing average damage (end result is the same but it does remove a great source of low and high points to me) and they’re making Dailies once per encounter, Encounters at-will.   They seem to be having fun with it but the DM admits his group is a bit on the power gamey side.

I think, now that I bother to think about it, that most of the people for whom ’spamming the same two attacks at-will) is lame, lame, lame are the ones who’s idea of RPG’s are MMOG’s.  Anyone brought up old school where every combat round was, except for the mage and to very lesser extent the cleric, *roll d20 and see if I hit* and just repeat that for however many attacks they got.  The cleric was typically, roll a d20 to hit maybe, run around and cast Cure [blank] Wounds primarily.   To us actually having two different attacks on top of the basic attack which is all anyone ever used to get triples our options.

If you’re a fan of Zombies, computer games and first person shooters then Left 4 Dead can’t be recommended enough.  And you can get it from Amazon right now for only $46 which is a small bargain with free shipping.  Of course you could get it from Steam for $49 and not have to pay shipping either or taxes or wait for it to show up in the mail.

If you have a friend or two then I’d recommend getting your own dedicated server.  They’re $12 a month most places and you’re gaurenteed low latency, availability and the like.  Split that 4 ways and you’re only paying $3 a month each.  Unless you have a horse of a machine and a lot of outbound bandwidth trying to run a listen server on your desktop while you play is going to suck for anyone trying to connect, not to mention going to the trouble of getting the right ports forwarded through your router and unblocked at  your local firewall etc.  Heck for $12 I’d rent my own personal server if we didn’t already have a group one.

I’ve been working on hacking L4D mapping out while we wait, impatiently, for the real mapping tools to be released and have working maps but they’re not quite ‘there’ yet.  The navigation tools aren’t working so you can’t build your navigation areas quite properly.

Any maps/campaigns I do I’ll post here for your bemusement as well.

The car picture is an example of the 67 mustang I’ve got and working on restoring.  It’s a slow process, I’m spreading out the expenses of parts over the long haul and the waterfall costs never seem to stop.  To run a set of air tools and possibly repaint the car back to it’s original color is going to need a good sized air compressor.  That’s going to require a 220 volt circuit in the garage.  That’s going to require a new sub panel off the main panel and wire run from pretty much as far a point in the house as you can get.  The panel is on the diagonally opposite side of the house from where the outlets would be needed.   Of course a 220 would also be needed for a decent mig welder.  So it’s always one thing after another.

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It looks quite useable and if you have something like CutePDF installed you can could just print it to a PDF and have it printed out at your local print shop and save your ink cartridges.  Remove any copyright notices though as some places can be a pain in the arse about that.

The official forums are down so the usual chain reaction of servers going down is going on so there’s not any news not that there seemed to be a lot when I was able to glance through them.  Things are slowing up definitely as people get more familiar with the rules, the initial flux of “Oh this is missing, I have to add it.” content folks have gotten what they wanted made and in general things are just a little slower.

I’ve got Adobe InDesign installed, the company has extra licenses actually and they didn’t have a problem with me using one with the caveat that if they ever need it back I give it up.  Being in such a large company you can sometimes get perks like that but you also have a lot more stringent policies on licensing.  And as I’m one of the ones that has to enforce things like that among other things I really shouldn’t be one of the ones breaking the rules.

I mention this because it’s so ungodly nice using a real page layout program.  I was getting just so incredibly frustrated with Word since I’ve been a casual user of Quark and Pagemaker among other layout programs.  I started with an awesome layout program back in 85/86 or so on a Commodore Amiga that put the current iteration of Pagemaker at the time to shame.  It could print high res output on a flipping dot matrix printer.  Although it did use up a ribbon pretty quickly.

So now I’ve transferred my labor of painful effort on Word 03 and 07 to InDesign and am working on a premie module.

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Obviously you’re not going to be giving the intraweb to your employees anytime soon in a DnD world, well I suppose if you steampunked it or it was Eberron *lip curl* then you might but typically the internet isn’t going to be available.

But anyway here you go (NOTE: I didn’t write this although I’d change a couple if I had an I haven’t a clue as the originator of the original is thanks to Mdonle for pointing this out if your interested in the origins of this list):

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The Top 100 Things I’d Do
If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

1. My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.

   
   

2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.

   
   

3. My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.

4. Shooting is not too good for my enemies.

   
   

5. The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.

   
   

6. I will not gloat over my enemies’ predicament before killing them.

   
   

7. When I’ve captured my adversary and he says, “Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?” I’ll say, “No.” and shoot him. No, on second thought I’ll shoot him then say “No.”

   
   

8. After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks’ time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.

   
   

9. I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labelled “Danger: Do Not Push”. The big red button marked “Do Not Push” will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labelled as such.

   
   

10. I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum — a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.

    
    

11. I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat.

    
    

12. One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

    
    

13. All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The announcement of their deaths, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.

    
    

14. The hero is not entitled to a last kiss, a last cigarette, or any other form of last request.

    
    

15. I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.

    
    

16. I will never utter the sentence “But before I kill you, there’s just one thing I want to know.”

    
    

17. When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.

    
    

18. I will not have a son. Although his laughably under-planned attempt to usurp power would easily fail, it would provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point in time.

    
    

19. I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero’s rugged countenance and she’d betray her own father.

    
    

20. Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it’s too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.

    
    

21. I will hire a talented fashion designer to create original uniforms for my Legions of Terror, as opposed to some cheap knock-offs that make them look like Nazi stormtroopers, Roman footsoldiers, or savage Mongol hordes. All were eventually defeated and I want my troops to have a more positive mind-set.

    
    

22. No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field bigger than my head.

    
    

23. I will keep a special cache of low-tech weapons and train my troops in their use. That way — even if the heroes manage to neutralize my power generator and/or render the standard-issue energy weapons useless — my troops will not be overrun by a handful of savages armed with spears and rocks.

    
    

24. I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line “No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!” (After that, death is usually instantaneous.)

    
    

25. No matter how well it would perform, I will never construct any sort of machinery which is completely indestructible except for one small and virtually inaccessible vulnerable spot.

    
    

26. No matter how attractive certain members of the rebellion are, there is probably someone just as attractive who is not desperate to kill me. Therefore, I will think twice before ordering a prisoner sent to my bedchamber.

    
    

27. I will never build only one of anything important. All important systems will have redundant control panels and power supplies. For the same reason I will always carry at least two fully loaded weapons at all times.

    
    

28. My pet monster will be kept in a secure cage from which it cannot escape and into which I could not accidentally stumble.

    
    

29. I will dress in bright and cheery colors, and so throw my enemies into confusion.

    
    

30. All bumbling conjurers, clumsy squires, no-talent bards, and cowardly thieves in the land will be preemptively put to death. My foes will surely give up and abandon their quest if they have no source of comic relief.

    
    

31. All naive, busty tavern wenches in my realm will be replaced with surly, world-weary waitresses who will provide no unexpected reinforcement and/or romantic subplot for the hero or his sidekick.

    
    

32. I will not fly into a rage and kill a messenger who brings me bad news just to illustrate how evil I really am. Good messengers are hard to come by.

    
    

33. I won’t require high-ranking female members of my organization to wear a stainless-steel bustier. Morale is better with a more casual dress-code. Similarly, outfits made entirely from black leather will be reserved for formal occasions.

    
    

34. I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.

    
    

35. I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.

    
    

36. I will not imprison members of the same party in the same cell block, let alone the same cell. If they are important prisoners, I will keep the only key to the cell door on my person instead of handing out copies to every bottom-rung guard in the prison.

    
    

37. If my trusted lieutenant tells me my Legions of Terror are losing a battle, I will believe him. After all, he’s my trusted lieutenant.

    
    

38. If an enemy I have just killed has a younger sibling or offspring anywhere, I will find them and have them killed immediately, instead of waiting for them to grow up harboring feelings of vengeance towards me in my old age.

    
    

39. If I absolutely must ride into battle, I will certainly not ride at the forefront of my Legions of Terror, nor will I seek out my opposite number among his army.

    
    

40. I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.

    
    

41. Once my power is secure, I will destroy all those pesky time-travel devices.

    
    

42. When I capture the hero, I will make sure I also get his dog, monkey, ferret, or whatever sickeningly cute little animal capable of untying ropes and filching keys happens to follow him around.

    
    

43. I will maintain a healthy amount of skepticism when I capture the beautiful rebel and she claims she is attracted to my power and good looks and will gladly betray her companions if I just let her in on my plans.

    
    

44. I will only employ bounty hunters who work for money. Those who work for the pleasure of the hunt tend to do dumb things like even the odds to give the other guy a sporting chance.

    
    

45. I will make sure I have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what in my organization. For example, if my general screws up I will not draw my weapon, point it at him, say “And here is the price for failure,” then suddenly turn and kill some random underling.

    
    

46. If an advisor says to me “My liege, he is but one man. What can one man possibly do?”, I will reply “This.” and kill the advisor.

    
    

47. If I learn that a callow youth has begun a quest to destroy me, I will slay him while he is still a callow youth instead of waiting for him to mature.

    
    

48. I will treat any beast which I control through magic or technology with respect and kindness. Thus if the control is ever broken, it will not immediately come after me for revenge.

    
    

49. If I learn the whereabouts of the one artifact which can destroy me, I will not send all my troops out to seize it. Instead I will send them out to seize something else and quietly put a Want-Ad in the local paper.

    
    

50. My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.

    
    

51. If one of my dungeon guards begins expressing concern over the conditions in the beautiful princess’ cell, I will immediately transfer him to a less people-oriented position.

    
    

52. I will hire a team of board-certified architects and surveyors to examine my castle and inform me of any secret passages and abandoned tunnels that I might not know about.

    
    

53. If the beautiful princess that I capture says “I’ll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!”, I will say “Oh well” and kill her.

    
    

54. I will not strike a bargain with a demonic being then attempt to double-cross it simply because I feel like being contrary.

    
    

55. The deformed mutants and odd-ball psychotics will have their place in my Legions of Terror. However before I send them out on important covert missions that require tact and subtlety, I will first see if there is anyone else equally qualified who would attract less attention.

    
    

56. My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice.

    
    

57. Before employing any captured artifacts or machinery, I will carefully read the owner’s manual.

    
    

58. If it becomes necessary to escape, I will never stop to pose dramatically and toss off a one-liner.

    
    

59. I will never build a sentient computer smarter than I am.

    
    

60. My five-year-old child advisor will also be asked to decipher any code I am thinking of using. If he breaks the code in under 30 seconds, it will not be used. Note: this also applies to passwords.

    
    

61. If my advisors ask “Why are you risking everything on such a mad scheme?”, I will not proceed until I have a response that satisfies them.

    
    

62. I will design fortress hallways with no alcoves or protruding structural supports which intruders could use for cover in a firefight.

    
    

63. Bulk trash will be disposed of in incinerators, not compactors. And they will be kept hot, with none of that nonsense about flames going through accessible tunnels at predictable intervals.

    
    

64. I will see a competent psychiatrist and get cured of all extremely unusual phobias and bizarre compulsive habits which could prove to be a disadvantage.

    
    

65. If I must have computer systems with publically available terminals, the maps they display of my complex will have a room clearly marked as the Main Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage Overflow Containment.

    
    

66. My security keypad will actually be a fingerprint scanner. Anyone who watches someone press a sequence of buttons or dusts the pad for fingerprints then subsequently tries to enter by repeating that sequence will trigger the alarm system.

    
    

67. No matter how many shorts we have in the system, my guards will be instructed to treat every surveillance camera malfunction as a full-scale emergency.

    
    

68. I will spare someone who saved my life sometime in the past. This is only reasonable as it encourages others to do so. However, the offer is good one time only. If they want me to spare them again, they’d better save my life again.

    
    

69. All midwives will be banned from the realm. All babies will be delivered at state-approved hospitals. Orphans will be placed in foster-homes, not abandoned in the woods to be raised by creatures of the wild.

    
    

70. When my guards split up to search for intruders, they will always travel in groups of at least two. They will be trained so that if one of them disappears mysteriously while on patrol, the other will immediately initiate an alert and call for backup, instead of quizzically peering around a corner.

    
    

71. If I decide to test a lieutenant’s loyalty and see if he/she should be made a trusted lieutenant, I will have a crack squad of marksmen standing by in case the answer is no.

    
    

72. If all the heroes are standing together around a strange device and begin to taunt me, I will pull out a conventional weapon instead of using my unstoppable superweapon on them.

    
    

73. I will not agree to let the heroes go free if they win a rigged contest, even though my advisors assure me it is impossible for them to win.

    
    

74. When I create a multimedia presentation of my plan designed so that my five-year-old advisor can easily understand the details, I will not label the disk “Project Overlord” and leave it lying on top of my desk.

    
    

75. I will instruct my Legions of Terror to attack the hero en masse, instead of standing around waiting while members break off and attack one or two at a time.

    
    

76. If the hero runs up to my roof, I will not run up after him and struggle with him in an attempt to push him over the edge. I will also not engage him at the edge of a cliff. (In the middle of a rope-bridge over a river of molten lava is not even worth considering.)

    
    

77. If I have a fit of temporary insanity and decide to give the hero the chance to reject a job as my trusted lieutentant, I will retain enough sanity to wait until my current trusted lieutenant is out of earshot before making the offer.

    
    

78. I will not tell my Legions of Terror “And he must be taken alive!” The command will be “And try to take him alive if it is reasonably practical.”

    
    

79. If my doomsday device happens to come with a reverse switch, as soon as it has been employed it will be melted down and made into limited-edition commemorative coins.

    
    

80. If my weakest troops fail to eliminate a hero, I will send out my best troops instead of wasting time with progressively stronger ones as he gets closer and closer to my fortress.

    
    

81. If I am fighting with the hero atop a moving platform, have disarmed him, and am about to finish him off and he glances behind me and drops flat, I too will drop flat instead of quizzically turning around to find out what he saw.

    
    

82. I will not shoot at any of my enemies if they are standing in front of the crucial support beam to a heavy, dangerous, unbalanced structure.

    
    

83. If I’m eating dinner with the hero, put poison in his goblet, then have to leave the table for any reason, I will order new drinks for both of us instead of trying to decide whether or not to switch with him.

    
    

84. I will not have captives of one sex guarded by members of the opposite sex.

    
    

85. I will not use any plan in which the final step is horribly complicated, e.g. “Align the 12 Stones of Power on the sacred altar then activate the medallion at the moment of total eclipse.” Instead it will be more along the lines of “Push the button.”

    
    

86. I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.

    
    

87. My vats of hazardous chemicals will be covered when not in use. Also, I will not construct walkways above them.

    
    

88. If a group of henchmen fail miserably at a task, I will not berate them for incompetence then send the same group out to try the task again.

    
    

89. After I captures the hero’s superweapon, I will not immediately disband my legions and relax my guard because I believe whoever holds the weapon is unstoppable. After all, the hero held the weapon and I took it from him.

    
    

90. I will not design my Main Control Room so that every workstation is facing away from the door.

    
    

91. I will not ignore the messenger that stumbles in exhausted and obviously agitated until my personal grooming or current entertainment is finished. It might actually be important.

    
    

92. If I ever talk to the hero on the phone, I will not taunt him. Instead I will say this his dogged perseverance has given me new insight on the futility of my evil ways and that if he leaves me alone for a few months of quiet contemplation I will likely return to the path of righteousness. (Heroes are incredibly gullible in this regard.)

    
    

93. If I decide to hold a double execution of the hero and an underling who failed or betrayed me, I will see to it that the hero is scheduled to go first.

    
    

94. When arresting prisoners, my guards will not allow them to stop and grab a useless trinket of purely sentimental value.

    
    

95. My dungeon will have its own qualified medical staff complete with bodyguards. That way if a prisoner becomes sick and his cellmate tells the guard it’s an emergency, the guard will fetch a trauma team instead of opening up the cell for a look.

    
    

96. My door mechanisms will be designed so that blasting the control panel on the outside seals the door and blasting the control panel on the inside opens the door, not vice versa.

    
    

97. My dungeon cells will not be furnished with objects that contain reflective surfaces or anything that can be unravelled.

    
    

98. If an attractive young couple enters my realm, I will carefully monitor their activities. If I find they are happy and affectionate, I will ignore them. However if circumstance have forced them together against their will and they spend all their time bickering and criticizing each other except during the intermittent occasions when they are saving each others’ lives at which point there are hints of sexual tension, I will immediately order their execution.

    
    

99. Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size.

    
    

100. Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with free unlimited Internet access.

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Bear with while I send a snippy request for someone to look into it off.

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We had a pretty good time although the drive was one major ass suckage, 15+ hours one way so pretty much two of my vacation days were spent in the car.

We played several board games, Last Night On Earth, Settlers of Catan, several Munchkins, and some Guitar Hero Aerosmith, Rock Band and a few Wii games in general.  We also got in a few games of paintball and I was able to break out my Line SI Bushmaster complete with Airgun Designs Six-Pack.  Very old school shit but it still shoots like the sweatheart of a gun it is.  I took my Automag but it ended up leaking down the powertube (seal issues) and the seals I have are old and have taken a set so I’ll have to see if you can still get them and get some.  It would be shame to have such a legacy in a condition unable to shoot.   I didn’t take my Autococker or Autococknocker as we called them back in the day.  There’s only so much crap you really want to take on a vacation.

The host of this year’s gathering did an excellent job but took way too much on himself to provide food, cooking several really good meals for everyone but at the expense, in my opinion, of his own entertainment and enjoyment.  I’m going to try and make a point of it to stress that doing one breakfast and one dinner is extent of any host’s permissions to take unto himself and everyone can fend for themselves as they see fit.   And that’s optional.  Seriously delivery pizza would be preferable if it means everyone gets a good time.

I’ve spotted some updates and news thingies I want to make note of and I’ll get to those tomorrow, it’s been a long day.

And it appears my appeal to my hosting provider (www.1and1.com) has fixed my issues with image uploads in my absence.  I’m assuming they repaired the security issues with the tmp folder for the anonymous access account to allow the use of the ‘crunch’ of the uploaded images properly.

Addendum, while looking for an image to put in this post I found out that according to someone, apparently less than 150 of the AGD six-pack’s are known to exist.  Well I know about 2 of them personally that I can attest to working perfectly.  I also have a Micro-CA that works perfectly well as well.  The Micro-CA is the littlest brother to the Six Pack.

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In the picture here the top safety film is still in place so it’s a little hazier and less translucent that it will be in actual game play. With three small children used to playing on the gaming table with my miniatures, dice, their miniatures etc. I left it on so the first actual game usage would be relatively scuff, fingerprint, and scratch free. After that it’s all bets are off as usual around here.

I drew a grid on the ‘underside’ of the lexan using metallic sharpie. I tossed around the thought of using a dremel tool in a little homemade jig and a routing bit to scribe lines in the lexan to make them permanent and probably a little better looking but the plastic isn’t that thick to start with and I could easily see it just fracturing along those scribe lines when I lift it up to put things underneath it leaving me with a bunch of broken pieces.

So one asstastic amount of grid lines later I’ve got the tabletop on the table and it doesn’t look too bad. Given the size and the fact I was doing this on the floor not all the lines are perfect and the ink flow from the metallic sharpies wasn’t all that standardized so. And one of the pens had a very hard time writing on it. But over all I think it came out very much okay.

Cheat Sheet

I still need to ’stonify’ the gray matte paper underneath, but I need to do some testing to figure out what I can use that won’t eventually or immediately stain or discolor the lexan that’s going on top of it.

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Also in doing so I found the ‘elfwood‘ site that I remember from a long time back. The artwork ranges from child like scribbles to some pretty great stuff like this image here.

You can check out The Best on the site to find things that the majority of people have ‘tagged’ as favorite and in general barring ballot stuffing will let you find some nice things depending of course on your tastes and level of need for nice things.

Like this one for you orc lovers. Or maybe you need a pair of a paladin love birds? Or something from the darker side of life? Or that Big Bad Evil Guy that your players are going to be facing off with next?

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I’m also trying a lot of oddball little plugins. Apparently WordPress doesn’t really have a Private Message system they can incorporate into their code. Which is really odd IMO as that’s pretty much a staple. Even when I wrote my own CMS that would be the thing I’d put in after I added the ability to add and edit posts.

Anyway you can use the Contact Me link over on the right somewhere. If you feel a need to contact me.

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In addition I’ve had to update my existing plug ins and as a result of finding new versions I’ve added some others that I came across so there are some new things there.

The site shouldn’t have been down for more than about 10 minutes, the time it took to dump the files up and overwrite the existing ones and do a database upgrade. FTP from a network location in Vista is dog ass slow. Which is a strange phrase really but my aunt says it a lot, she’s around 87 now I think and if I live to be 67 with half the ability she has still I’ll be happy.

Anyway sorry for the brief outage to anyone that was visiting trying to get some the PDF’s I’ve posted recently. If you use them for play testing I’d love to hear about them as I haven’t had a chance to play test either the Half Orc race or the Bard class.

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Anyhow I just found this very strange that out of all the True20 sites out there that the first time I search on a phrase I came back with my own site as the first hit. And I thought I’d share.

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Not sure where I’d put the camera, I think directly overhead would make the most sense but then I’ve got a webcam stuck on my ceiling. Perhaps in a corner of the up on the wall pointed down at an angle? But first I’ll need a pretty long USB cord. I went on CompUSA’s web site and that showed them selling 15′ cords for $3.49. And yet when I went to the actual store they were more like $34.95. For $3.49 I’ll be happy to avoid going through my storage boxes full of cords to see what I’ve got stockpiled. For $34.95, not so much.

I’ve been looking for a new theme to put up on the site. I’d like something ‘undeadish’ or ‘horror’ based but man I really don’t want to sit down and spend the few hours it would take to do the design, layout, css and graphics. Such is life.

I’ve been reading through True20 and angling toward a NoTLD thing or actually it would be more a Dawn or Day of. Perhaps an Evening of? I’ve really got to point buy up some characters (no rolling involved with T20) and go through some basic combats and such as more than a few of the powers don’t seem balanced very well. In specific Cold Shaping lets you deal damage equal to half your power rank which I’m shakily assuming is your ranks of Adept levels. But Fire Shaping gives you a +2 damage. That doesn’t seem very balanced at all. Especially given that fire will damage something a LOT faster than cold will given an equal energy expenditure in real life.

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If I get the time this week I’m going to write, direct and produce and stick in a little side adventure as well while they’re on their way back from town. If you’ve played my only released NeverwinterNights module it’ll be based on the crypt sequence I put into that one.

As for yesterday we played Munchkin of which everyone won one game and someone won two. Who the someone was I don’t remember other than I don’t think it was me but I could be wrong. We played Super, Star, Impossible, Fu, hmmm maybe everyone only won one game as I can’t remember the other type of Munchkin we played. Oh well.

I think I’m going to pick up Zombie Town (ratings)as well. If nothing else it gives me 100 zombie miniatures to use in our DnD campaign. And from the people who bothered to review it, they enjoyed it. What’s not to like? It has zombies and PVP?

We tried again to find the Order of the Stick boardgame but were unable to. We’ll probably have to just buy the silly thing from some place like FunAgain which I’ve used in the past. Reasonable prices and so far at least reasonable customer service.

Anyway that’s how we spent our third weekend in a row without any campaigning because too many people couldn’t make it at the same time.

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D

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So I’m looking at track lighting that I’d like to put up there, I hate overhead lights but I need something shining down from above on the table for lighting purposes and track lighting is different enough that perhaps I won’t hate it completely. I’d actually prefer cove lighting in order to bounce indirect light off the ceiling and downwards but then I’d have to cove the whole room and that’s expensive.

But… there’s no way to run wire to the location that doesn’t entail knocking holes in sheet rock and removing a large chunk of the ceiling because of the way the joists for the second floor run versus the points of access.

Now I’m looking at having to run that ugly wire conduit up the side of the wall and across the ceiling. Granted I could paint it to match the wall, crown and ceiling to help it blend it a bit but it’s still ugly.

I need something really cheap (termite prevention and new guttering killed my disposable income for the year and then some) but attractive. Get your mind out of the gutter please.

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Brandon will be joining us hopefully next time. He’s Greg’s son, my nephew, which if you’re doing the math makes Greg my brother. I’ve rolled him up a ranger (and yes gd’it rolling applies in this instance unlike the term’s usage in MMOG’s). His favorite World of Warcraft character is a hunter so I thought he’d like a Ranger as his first foray into PnP gaming.

I’ve been reading ahead in the module (duh) and also going through rules and such to try and familiarize myself from a DM’s point of view of the 3.0 version of Dungeons and Dragons. I also (shhhh don’t tell anyone!) downloaded pdf’s of the 3.5 books. If I print them out it should only cost me about $100 a book. What a bargain!

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As the characters lay sprawled about, so nigh death that they were hearing angelic chorals in the background, Temple said, “What are you going to do next?! Key our cars on the way out?” referring to the fact that that was the last battle for that night’s gaming session.

Temple has a lot of good quotes really. One day I’ll perhaps post them here for posterity.

[Ratings]

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