| Sigh, I may have to stop reading Marvel comics out of Principle |
[Jun. 17th, 2009|02:30 am] |
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They just announced that they are doing something that they swore they would not do: They are bringing Steve Rogers back. And not even clone Cap, or anything like that, just cap resurrected. I had hoped that something billed as such a pivotal moment in 616 would stay that way. On one hand I uttery reject that the one person they promised would stay dead will come back, on the other, from how they are spinning this it seems like it may very well spell the end to Dark Reign. |
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| New Email |
[Jun. 3rd, 2009|08:46 pm] |
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so since I'm all graduated and stuff, the college has taken back the email account they gave me, to this end if any of you wonderful people want to email me, my new email address is: ABStocking@gmail.com. |
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| Blarg. |
[May. 11th, 2009|10:30 pm] |
Today has not been a good day. Due to back pain and insomnia I had only 3 hours of sleep, then I had work for 5 hours, wich would have been fine if I had a few more days worth of warning that the summer hours were starting before finals ended. So it was off to a bad start and has only gotten worse. last night I had found out that I had missed a final deadline on a paper with a no extensions policy, but I figured that my good grade in the class would carry through as a low C even after the -10% for missing t5he final. Then tonight I get an email saying that the actual deadline was in fact today, I missed it and that due to this I would fail the course. I am a bit angry at this because I had stopped working once I realized that I had missed the no late papers mark, and concentrated on my other finals. This email was a double surprise, it A) told me I had more time than the sylibus and moodle said I had so I could actually have done the paper, and B) nowhere was it mentioned that failing to turn in the paper would mean failing the class.
The worst part of this is the fact that other than a bit of anger at the situation I can't bring myself to care about this. Right now is not a good time for me. There are some things going on back home that have me rather deeply depressed and I find I really can't muster any enthusiasm for school right now. I don't need any of my current classes for graduation, and my GPA is already shitty, but not shitty enough that I am in danger of not graduating. Basically I have realized that I could fail every single class right now and it would have no significant impact on my life. Because of this I have the persistent feeling that everything I am doing now is meaningless.
I have completely finished the finals of two of my three remaining classes, and intend to wake up early tomorrow to finish off the last one, I'm not going to completely give up on my schoolwork, but this is mostly out of respect for the teachers and a sense of duty, not for grades or knowledge. I never thought that I would be ready to leave Beloit, but I really am. I can't wait to be done with all this shit. I would like to spend the next few weeks hanging out with my friends and enjoying their company in the little time I have remaining, but I am easily irritated these days and have basically just holed myself up in my room. I am hoping that summer will help with these feelings, despite it being out of character I could do with some sun and a nice happy glorious day.
I want to find something I care about doing, something that is more than simply going on. I am for the first time really debating whether to move to madison at the end of the summer or to go off somewhere new. I have felt that I am not ready to move on, and in all reality I am not ready for adult life, but I don't want to keep going judt because I'm afraid of the alternatives. In all honesty I probably should have graduated at the semester break and not finished out the last semester. I have greatly enjoyed the time spent with my friends, and learned a bit more about myself, but not enough to justify the money spent on this semester here. |
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| The CIA wishes to trade brick for wood |
[Mar. 13th, 2009|10:48 am] |
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Man, playing way too much settlers plus reading a like amount of Tom Clancy combined with only 3 hours of sleep makes for some really fucked up dreams. |
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| I like computer games |
[Mar. 8th, 2009|09:30 am] |
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So my entire evening (and night, and morning...) has been eaten up by playing a new game called the babylon project. The game is one of th3e best space combat sims I've seen, set in the Babylon 5 universe. It is entirely built out of the freespace 2 code, wich was publicly released to modders. Because of the original publishers releasing this code this game is fully legally available for free download off of its' website (if you are interested just Google the Babylon project). I have a lot of respect for any space sim where you can rotate your ship independently from your line of travel. Anyway, if you are a B5 fan and looking for a good, free game, you should look into this. |
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| I'm enjoying life (a general update) |
[Feb. 9th, 2009|01:39 am] |
Today has been a very good day. I woke up around 3:20, and walked with Claudia to Save-a-lot, which was a pleasant walk. There I got enough food to last me quite a while, and all for around $15. that is for 10 meals plus assorted snacks, all for such a low amount, which made me happy. I needed to spend another buck on a bag (they don’t actually have plastic bags, which was a bit of a surprise) but the bag is actually pretty good quality for $1.
Then there was Housing committee elections. Elections this years went very smoothly, despite having 20 people initially nominated, which dropped down to 15 in very short order. We finished elections in under an hour, which is nearly miraculous. In the end we have a very good Housing Committee: Karis, Maggie, Tanya, Jeremiah, Justin, Kristen, Chris and myself.
Then there was some hanging out and talking about who would likely be applying to live in house, which always engages the puzzle part of my brain and is therefore fun. After that I read comics and the topic of conversation drifted to a variety of topics. Now, for the first time this semester, I am feeling tired and sleepy at the proper time on a Sunday. I should be able to get a good night’s sleep tonight. On that note, I should get to bed. |
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| Ok, so my day so far: |
[Feb. 6th, 2009|08:13 am] |
12:00 AM: get out of Exalted, proceed to sit in lounge and talk about the game, as we are wont to do.
2:30 AM: Most everyone has left, but Robbie and I continue to talk about an ever increasing variety of topics.
4:00 AM: Robbie goes upstairs. At this point I remember that instead of needing to get up at 11 like I usually do (and would have gotten 7 hours of sleep), I need to get up at 7, and as such cannot get enough sleep so an all nighter it is.
7:15 AM go to breakfast.
8:00 show up to work. Discover that the person who gave me her hours had actually already given them to someone else, and that I could have slept in till 11.
It is currently 8:13 and I already hate the day. |
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| Might as well do this meme. |
[Jan. 8th, 2009|04:05 pm] |
When we role-play, we tend to pick up a variety of characters. They could be ones that we like, ones that we want to experiment with, or ones that we just end up making from scratch. Eventually, we come to associate with (some of) them in one way or another. Out of all the characters (past or present) I role-play, pick out the one I am most like and tell me why you think so. (And hey, add on any interesting insights you've got into the types of characters I play, similarities between them, and whether they can imply anything interesting about me as a person).
Changeling:
Ashan - An evil Eshu who looked like an angel. Was a manipulative bastard who cloaked every underhanded thing he did with the story of a torrid gay romance, because it made people uncomfortable and they stopped asking questions. Had the flaw "Dark Sercet: Not Gay"
D&D:
Lucanis Marathesian - A thoroughly evil and somewhat insane warlock who eventually became a lich and then ascended to godhood.
Aberrant:
Fitz - would have been a member of the Teragen if they existed in the world of that game.
Kenshi Yoshida - a mega int gadgeteer who has continuously upgraded himself with technological equivalents to many powers.
Exalted:
Satoshi - a low compassion chosen of endings, fully believed that the ends justified the means.
Tenaka - a night caste who did everything a night caste is supposed to do, only through sorcery and thaumaturgy.
7th Sea:
Fareem Al'Marikk - Die kruritter phantom guard who fell in love with every pretty woman encountered in the adventure. Had a thing for using various types of poisons. Masqueraded as a religious peot.
Vampire: The Masquerade:
Haji - Settite Sorcerer who ended up insanely powerful. Was the evil half of the Egyptian siblings in the LARP 2 years ago. He believed that he was liberating those he corrupted from the chains of slavery.
Kai - Coyote gangrel who rebelled against every authority figgure he ever saw. Also, he tore people's faces off when they were evil.
Mage: The Awakening:
Felix - An Acanthus lawyer who tried to right injustices with curses. |
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| General Update. |
[Dec. 28th, 2008|07:53 pm] |
It’s been over a month since I posted anything to this journal, huh. Oh well. Home is pretty nice actually, which is a bit of a surprise. I’m usually sick and tired of living with my folks by now. This winter I’m just content to be sitting around reading/futzing with characters/playing computer games. We have had glorious weather, including a snowstorm that left 4 feet of snow in some drifts. As a related note I had forgotten how heavy snow is, it looks light a fluffy, but a good snow-shovel full is nothing to laugh at. Today was an oddity for me, I went to two social events.
Event 1 was a D&D game that I stopped by at. The game crew these days contain only 3 people I know, only 1 I know well, and their games are crap-tastic. Someone I didn’t know was running the game, and they were very obviously just reading the description in a dull monotone voice, everyone looked bored and were glad for an opportunity to chat with me. I left after a short while as the GM was glaring at me.
Event 2 was a neighborhood party. The youngest person there besides me was 50 or so. I left after 45 minutes and having the same conversation with 6 people.
While I’m pretty happy here I do miss folks from Beloit. I miss the company, as well as the game and game talk. In the meantime I am doing some things that could be seen as preparing for school, which keeps me sane. I’ve been plotting for my games, all three of them, as well as lamenting the games I cannot run. I have a number of ideas that I really want to run, but frankly don’t have the time (running three games is more than enough).
Games I want to run
Shadowrun: Good Guys (the PCs would be a fast response Lonestar or Knight Errant team).
A Game of Thrones
Aberrant: The Directive
Trinity
Pendragon: the Winter King (based off the books by Bernard Cornwell)
Scion
An unfortunate number of games that I won’t get to run while at Beloit.
I’ve been loving the internet speed here, when I started writing this post I had just started downloading 7 D&D books, and they just finished. I’ve been using this shamelessly to download comics, and have been reading all the current ones as fast as they come in. there are some awesome new comics around, including a run on volume 5 of iron man that is doing its’ best to turn Tony into a hero again.
On a related note, I forgot my mouse in Beloit, so I left off playing ultimate Alliance, but then I saw a PS2 version on sale for $5 and grabbed it. I do love that game, and wish to share that love with other BSFFAs who might well get a kick out of playing some of their favorite marvel characters like Deadpool, Iron Man, Luke Cage, Spidy, Cap, Nick Fury, and the Silver Surfer. To the end of maybe playing this at Beloit, I have been playing through with the express purpose of unlocking everything in the entire game, including alternate costumes. So far I’m 4/5 through the game and have unlocked every character you can before finishing the game, as well as all but 1 costume for all of those characters, still working on unlocking the final Mrs. Marvel costume, but I’m really enjoying the game. It has some issues, in that some characters are just worse then others (although that is realistic for the Marvel universe). I feel strongly enough about this game to write a review, which will happen once I finish the game.
That is about all I’ve got to report. Hope all of you are enjoying the holiday break.
EDIT: add a 4th edition forgotten realm game to the list. I just read the Forgotten realms book for 4th ed and it is great. |
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| A note to those of us who were voicing our complaints about LARP... |
[Nov. 11th, 2008|02:57 am] |
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I went and talked to the STs tonight and it did actually help put my mind at ease about several issues. I'm not completely satisfied, as much more of the shit we are dealing with is PC driven then I had thought and they obviously have no control over that stuff. That being said I do feel better about LARP having talked to the STs about the problems I have been having, and I urge you to do the same. I will freely admit I was among several of us who mentioned dropping LARP due to being unhappy with it. Then I realized that if we don't bring our concerns to the STs and then drop LARP because we are not happy, that would definitely fall into the category of passive aggressive behavior, and none of us want to be there. So please, those of you who felt as I did, go talk to them, if you are not having fun talking to them can't hurt and it might help make the game more fun, which is kinda he point of the game. |
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| So, Chris asked all us LARPers do take this quiz... |
[Oct. 22nd, 2008|04:38 pm] |
You Are a Witch (or Warlock)
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You are deviously brilliant and a perfect manipulator.
You somehow always end up getting what you want - without anyone knowing you're working behind the scenes.
Crafty and cunning, you can work your way out of any jam.
And it's easy for you to get people to do what you want, whether you're working for good or evil.
Your greatest power: Mind control
Your greatest weakness: Making people your puppets
You play well with: Ghosts
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| This Walloween should be awesome |
[Oct. 7th, 2008|06:42 pm] |
So I usually put off thinking about a Halloween costume until the last minute. But this year there is a plan. And that plan is the Avengers Initiative. It all started when Indy made an arc reactor heart, and now we have a large group costuming as the Avengers. So far we have:
Indy: Tony Stark
Andy: The Mighty Thor
Claudia: Captain America
Nick: Beast
Abe: either hawkeye or ant-man
Chris: Hulkling
Robbie: Loki (Ok, not an Avenger, but he is the founding Villain)
This should be hilarious. |
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| Analysis and Ranking of L5R schools |
[Sep. 23rd, 2008|06:42 pm] |
So, I decided to do a write up of the L5R schools just like I did for 7th Sea, as such here it is. This post will just cover the bushi. The next post will cover scouts and ninja. The one after that will be Courtiers, then shugenja/other.
As a note, so far this just covers the Bushi schools in the Core book. I will later be adding in the supplements.
( Read more ) |
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| of Injury and Intrigue |
[Sep. 16th, 2008|05:01 pm] |
Right so, the last few days:
We had rush last Sunday, which I enjoyed quite a bit, despite some complications and consequences. And now a breakdown of my thoughts on rush, in grade format:
Shooting/kills: C+/B-: I’m not the best shot with a nerf gun in tower, nor will I ever claim to be such, but I got off a few shots that were pretty good, and so I rate myself as a bit above average, but not by too much.
Survivability: C-: This was a bad year for my kill/be killed ratio, I got hit more then the average person, sometimes seeming to live on 3rd floor due to getting hit quite early on.
Weaponry: A+: I brought the Vulcan into lounge where it stayed, sometimes manned by me and more frequently by others, and man is that thing good for stopping a push in its’ tracks.
Personal Safety: F: I managed to hurt one of my feet quite badly on one of the final pushes. But this is my first Rush BSFFA related injury in 5 years, so I really can’t complain.
The creepiest thing is that after going to sleep that night half-convinced that my toe was broken and being in excruciating pain, when I woke up I couldn’t feel a bit of pain in it. I have full range of motion and no pain whatsoever. Man I like being me.
Also last weekend was the first session of LARP, which I greatly enjoyed. I was worried at a couple of points that I might not make it to the second session for political reasons, but all that got worked out. I am dismayed by the actions of several of the mages and man do we need to have a talk to some of our own about what we mention to others (No Celestial Flange rumors!!!) and some of the mages seem willing to set aside the good of the mages as a whole for some excitement, so there is work to be done, and fun to be had.
Annoyed by the college, due to the sports center doing weird things with my paychecks (like submitting one timesheet when my time is tracked and paid differently for two positions) I don’t have money right now, something I hope to remedy tomorrow, although it will take a fair amount of hassle. |
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| School type things |
[Sep. 10th, 2008|05:37 pm] |
So Things are going very well today. I started the day with less sleep than I wanted, but managed to get up and do the reading before class. The reading was almost insulting, it was the most basic directions on how to use a compass to determine which direction north was, and then using that to figure out where east south and west were. Then I got to class and found that those with any orienteering experience at all had, like me found the reading uselessly self explanatory. The problem was that those students in the class who had never held a real compass before hadn’t had the experience needed to understand the reading. So if you knew the topic is was insultingly simple, but if you didn’t it made no sense, probably one of the worst devised readings I’ve seen here. But then the class broke into pairs, to do distance and bearing exercises. I (since I had orienteering experience) was paired with one of the least experienced girls in the class. I can’t for the life of me remember her name, but we share two classes and get along quite well.
For the distance tests (learning to estimate distance by our steps) we were off by 6 centimeters off for 10 meters. That was just pacing out and trying to put a marker at 10 meters. Then there was a quasi-competitive project to estimate the distance between a tree and a sign. When the groups compared numbers no one else, including the professor was anywhere near ours, but we were pretty confidant we had it right so we stuck with our answer. We were exactly right, not off by a single centimeter, which in a public forum/competition is always fun. Then we broke off into the orienteering part and I discovered that while my partner knew nothing at all of compasses to start with she was a fast and a good learner. I have never quite appreciated how much fun it can be to teach someone something they enjoy learning when they are a good learner. She made quite good progress and by the end was the second fastest to get an accurate bearing in the next test (I came in first). All in all a very enjoyable class for something that has been dull, dry and boring up until now.
And now, at work things are going great. For reference: I work front desk at the sports center. I was trained to be a supervisor last year, but for various reasons I decided to stay at the front desk. Yesterday the Supervisor came over and started asking me questions about how the sports center works, and has been redirecting people with questions and problems to me. This is a rather nice ego boost for one, and secondly my record allows me liberties not enjoyed by other workers. We are not supposed to use our computers for anything other than schoolwork upon threat of being fired. The bosses don’t care that I play computer games and read comics, because they trust me to be attentive. This leeway is great, and is a sign of trust that the other workers don’t enjoy, and hey, I can never resist someone saying “have some special privileges because you are better then the others” Man talk about feeding my ego nicely. |
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| So, current status update: |
[Sep. 5th, 2008|04:34 pm] |
Things are pretty good for me personally, although there is some drama running around tower. Most of my games are going well so far. People seem to be enjoying both my Exalted and Hunter games, which is a good sign. I’m pretty sure that I made a few minor mistakes in exalted, but nothing too big.
Classes are going. I’m interested in my Museum studies class, it is basically exactly what I expected and wanted, which is fine by me, as my Archeology Theory and Technique class is rather disappointing. The teacher is not one to inspire her students, and so far the sum total of what I have learned is two definitions (Provenience and Provenance) and that I only learned because a student called her on it when she used the wrong one, she had thought they meant the same thing until she checked with one of the Museum Studies Profs. The rest of the class might be useful to people who had never heard of Archeology before, but since it is made up of people who want to do it, we have all been bored out of our skulls. The teacher doesn’t even know what many of the slide in her power point presentation are because she is using the slides that the last teacher to teach this class used without bothering to learn anything about them.
Sociology on the other hand is going along pretty damn well. I am enjoying the discussions, and when we divided into group I got put in a group of 5 where 4 of us actually care about doing any work. The other guy spent the entire group prep period talking to a similarly disinterested guy from another group about airsoft. Even with one dead weight I do believe that our group did more work today than any other group, we were actually able to wring more good points and discussion out of the 9 pages of introduction we were assigned than most of the others got out of their 30 page chapters, all in all an enjoyable contrast from the last time I was forced to do group projects and no one else cared at all.
I am enjoying myself immensely here now that everyone is back. My class schedule is so perfect for me that I can stay up until 4:00 talking with folks, then get 8 hours of sleep, wake up at noon, go to lunch, and then have an hour to do any last minute homework or finish up any readings I need to do. I am loving college, and if it weren’t for the one bum class this would be pretty much perfect. There are very few things that could make this any better for me right now. |
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| Classes N'stuff |
[Aug. 29th, 2008|04:26 pm] |
So I have classes, I feel I should post a bit about them hereon the off chance that anyone cares.
Class 1: Intro to Museum studies. This looks like it will be quite fun. I am quite possibly the only person in the class who doesn’t actively enjoy going through museums. I don’t have anything against them, and I actively enjoy working in one, as well as the how and why of the displays, but I might have been the only person in the class who didn’t list enjoying going to museums in the reasons why there were in the class. That being said, while I may not be the exact type of person the class was designed for, it is focusing on exactly what I find enjoyable about museums, the how and why. What is the most efficient way of displaying a collection, how can we use these materials and information to better educate the visitors, that sort of stuff is what I want to learn and is exactly what they are intending to teach, so I’m looking forward to this class.
Class 2: Archaeology Theory and Technique. This looks to be a dud. The teacher has never taught outside of a community college before and isn’t nearly as good at lecturing as she should be. She can’t really seem to run anything resembling a discussion and all of her experience is practical experience. Now that would be a good thing if she were teaching us the practical aspects of archaeology, which you might expect from the name. But we are not actually going to be doing any hands on work in the class, not even a mock dig (something I have been doing and even setting up since something like 6th grade). So I’m a bit disappointed in the class, but the teacher is nice enough and I appear to have won her over by being the only student in the class who was familiar with the book Motel Of Mysteries, a silly kids book about archaeologists in the future. Basically I’m thinking of this class as an easy A as long as I pay attention.
Class 3: Intro to Sociology. I tried taking this class first semester last year, or maybe it was second semester the year before, anyway, it was atrocious and had a very bad teacher. The three classes I attended before dropping it were boring and useless. Now taking it with a different teacher it is everything I had wanted it to be. The class is too big for the type of discussions that would make it perfect, but considering that only 3 or 4 of us talk at all, that is a moot point. The first session on Class was today and it perfectly complimented a long discussion in lounge that I had had just the previous night, in short this class looks amazing and a part of me wishes I could have taken it years ago when I might have been able to go more into the field.
So, there are my classes, it should be a relatively light semester work-wise, which is perfectly fine with me, while being decently fun. Oh, and the best part? I never have class before 1:30 PM. This schedule wins hard.
On a more fun note I recently discover that more Runaways exists than I had previously thought. Including some written by Joss Whedon. This makes me happy. |
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| General Update |
[Aug. 20th, 2008|12:13 am] |
well, I haven't made a general update post in a while so I should probably write some of this stuff down before I forget.
I'm back at Beloit and fully moved into the Dungeon, which I had missed. i am gonna be sad when Abe asks for his fridge and microwave back though, I had never really known how damn useful they are when you are making your own meals.
Freshmen are seemingly swarming BSFFA, I've seen something like 15 different freshmen already and the open house hasn't happened yet, this makes me pretty happy, I always like club doing well. And while meeting new freshmen is nice I can't wait for the upperclassmen to show up, basement is kinda dead with only me in it.
On a similar but less enjoyable note freshmen are flooding the sports center with no clue as to what they are doing. I have given more directions in the last 2 days that in the entire rest of the summer. And some of these3 freshmen are so young looking that I mistook them for the children's swim group that sometimes uses the pool, there is one who I would swear wasn't a day over 14, if that. Bah, I'm gettin' old.
Tonight for the first time since my computer died (not counting the vacation to Maine) I did some reading for fun. I usually spend 5 or 7 hours reading at work and then don't really feel like any more after that, but tonight I couldn't put a book down. I started it yesterday, read it for the 5 hours of my shift, read it for five hours at work today, then came home to read some more, I only finished it at 11:00, for 15 hours of reading time. Considering I usually chew through a standard paperback in 4-5 hours this is pretty remarkable to me. The book was Clear and present Danger by Tom Clancy. I have decided that I really like Tom Clancy's work. This is the second of his books I've read (the first being Hunt for Red October) and I have throughly enjoyed both of them. They appeal to me on multiple levels There is a bit of action, but the conflicts are shown on every level, starting from the individual to the tactical to the strategic to the political. They are wonderfully put together and create a multitude of characters that you can actually care about as well as being fascinating tales of combat and political intrigue.
On a completely different note I just ordered a new laptop today, not having Galen still makes me sad, but the shiny new laptop only cost $50 more than getting the motherboard replaced, and there were a number of small idiosyncrasies that would likely start to be problems soon (missing keys, weird glitches and all that), so I'm glad that I'll have a brand new machine, but I really do regret the passing of my old computer.
All in all I'm doing quite well, I'm pretty happy right now. Life is good and there are no emergencies or even really serious concerns for a while yet, right now I'm allowing myself to dwel on the games I'n in this semester, more so than I was during the summer anyway. I am activly looking forward to every single game that I am part of, and that is better than average. I went through Chargen with the LARP STs and had to make some serious chsnges to my intended character sheet, but I am not too unhappy with all that, the bigger changes were honestly a good thing for the character and will make some things much easier. The only real problem I have is that the STs were heavilly discouraging skills at 4 that weren't absolutly critical, and while I fully understand their reasoning I will admit that I like having at least one high number on a character sheet, now the highest stat is a 3 with a specialty, but og well, this is more an issue with NWoD then with the STs, and isn't a huge deal anyway.
I think that is about all, now back to reading the Hunter book. |
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