I’ve updated the blog to WP 3.8.

I also had a bit of an overloaded meltdown a couple of weeks ago. Basically, the working theory was that we weren’t going to work on the house or do anything until after the potatoes went in (which happens about the second week of July). At least, this is what I thought. After the list got stupidly long, and it had to be done sooner, rather than later, I basically just stopped doing everything outside work, working on the house, and being a fire commissioner. This made Liz sad, because she was looking forward to brewing beer, and I had told her not to get me any brewing stuff for my birthday, since I would not have time to use it and it would just take up space. I think that put a bit of a point on it, so she agreed to let me set the pace of things, and not set deadlines, and try to slow down. So, theoretically, we’re actually going to be able to do things like brew beer and sit and read…

At least, once the peas are picked and the potatoes are in. We picked and processed about 4 gallons of peapods today, and we’ll do our first picking of garden peas later this week. The replacement tomato, pepper, squash, etc. plants are all in (next year we’ll wait until the second week of June to plant them).

Fire stuff continues to be stupidly busy, with 3 meetings last week, and while there right now aren’t any this week, I expect there to be 2 by the time the week is out.

As I mentioned, I’m basically not gaming. Essentially, I’m not going to schedule anything recurring until it’s been a year and I’ve actually had at least one night free a week for a year where I can just read and play video games. I’m still buying game books, as I tend to collect them, and like to just read them, etc.

I upgraded everything to Jaunty, fixing the XFCE bad window placement problem by giving new windows focus. While it is not ideal, I spent several days poking different window managers and basically being disappointed by them. KDE4 is too unstable, GNOME is not configurable enough, and FVWM would take too much work to make it not make my eyes bleed. E17 is too unstable (though I may try the official E17.org Jaunty builds)

There’s more, but I think I’m going to break here for tonight. I finished reading Watchmen (there’s a pile of other books I need to review, and will do once I unbury them in the mess which used to be my office), and am now on to V for Vendetta.

Oh, as of right now, I’m planning on hitting Carnage, and will likely be bringing some homebrew. Since it’s not a regularly schedule thing, I likely will be able to find the time. If anyone else is going, let me know – especially if you want me to run something.

1. Dread
   This is a horror roleplaying game I bought though IPR. It’s very interesting in that it uses individual questionnaires for each player where the player describes things about his character. It’s kind of like the whole “the character sheet is a love letter to the GM telling him what you want out of the game”, but taken to the next level. These questions are designed to be leading like “What caused you to get in that fight last year”, which establishes that there was a fight and then opens it up for the player to tell something about his character.
   Another interesting facet is the use of the game Jenga as a conflict resolution mechanic. The idea is that it induces psychological stress on the characters and that affects the game.

1. The Official Handbook Of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
   This was actually quite good, provided you like a book which attacks socialists and hippies, which I do.

1. Iron Empires: Faith Conquers and Iron Empires: Sheva’s War
   I actually learned about these from buying Burning Empires. They have a very distinctive visual style, which I happen to like. The stories seem very familiar, reminding me a lot of some of Heinlein’s work. This is not a bad thing, just gives you an idea of the type of books they are.

1. The Gunslinger Born
   This is a beautiful, dark, well-written comic. Of course, it it based off the backstory from The Dark Tower series, so the story is pretty well established, rich and solid. This just fills it out a bit more and adds some very nice visual imagery.

• Of course, this brings up my book stack – this is what is currently on my bedside table:

Books

• I have some reviews of books which I’ve recently read, and plan to post about those.

• I’m also not going to worry about posting larger pictures in my blog… after all, kylecassidy does it all the time, and it doesn’t bother me, so I presume it doesn’t bother any of you folks.

• I’ll also be posting from Cold Wars, including photos, since I got a nice tiny little camera for Christmas, so I’ll actually carry it around in my pocket and take pictures.

• I’ve also got some stuff to post about my Dell Mini, minimal Linux distros, VM’s, and other such hackerish things.

I think that’s it for tonight – I’m headed off to Cold Wars this weekend, and I need to figure out what I want to play (lots of zombie games this year, with a bit of other interesting topical things, like BSG and such).

Anyway, have a Socks:

Socks!