A Couple of New Movies

Carolyn and I went to two movies (so far) this weekend. It's our first weekend off together since coming back from vacation. For the record, Miu is kind of doing better. She isn't eating yet, but she does drink and if you put food in her mouth she does eat. We just need to figure out how to kick-start her chowing down on food again. Force-feeding her is just so much fun.

We got back from seeing the Simpsons....that was pretty cool. It really felt like a triple length TV episode. They poked fun at everybody and everything, inculding themselves. Good stuff. They have a pretty good website to, definately worth poking around a bit.

Here's a screen shot of the website. You can visit several places in town and even if you just lay about the main page there is plenty to do. Clicking on Bart makes him shoot at the cans and birds on the Welcome sign.....the birds come back to roost. You can also make up your own Simpsons avatar/character, which I did to the best of my ability.

Ok, the Simpsons was the good movie, and Transformers was the bad.

Actually the Transformers movies wasn't that bad, but a lot of things "ruined" it for me...right off of the bat. I really don't want to get into details, but to put it bluntly, they should NOT have had a Combat Controller in the movie. It should have been a TACP. That would have been more realistic and then maybe they wouldn't have screwed up the controls....the A-10s attacked from the wrong direction (I'll give the CCT dude credit for giving the right direction, but the idiot should not have announced the color of the smoke marker), shot off their missiles (AGM65's I think) dumbly, and seriously.....if you are running across the desert, do you really give a damn about keeping a WOOL beret on?! Wow, the Army guys had appropriate head gear, but the Air Force weenie was out of regulation wearing a physical training (PT) shirt with his fatigues (I know they call them something else now...). Ok, all that stuff was stupid (and the messed up FOB, but that was more of a dramatic license I'm sure), but the Sector Seven idiot took the case.

I'm not digging on the actor at all, but whoever wrote or was in charge of wardrobe should be taken out back and beaten. If they had one....ONE fricken military advisor they probably could have gotten some of the very basics straight. The Sector Seven dude is shown wearing a USMC ring, you know..one of those Josten type rings. The ring was very noticable (probably because it was gold, had a big "USMC" clearly legible, and stood out from the drab colors he was wearing) and let's face it.......nobody from another service is going to wear a USMC ring. When we see the same guy on top of Hoover Dam, the idiot is wearing a Combat Infantryman Badge......the CIB is an ARMY award. Not an Army award that other services can earn....in fact the regulations (check out the Wiki entry) are quite clear on this. First of all he is not in a military uniform, looks like a rag-tag conglomeration...second he's not in the military period. Even if his character was in the Marines, he'd not be able to earn/wear the CIB......even if he was in the Marines and then joined the Army he'd not be able to wear the CIB when not in Army uniform....period.

Screwing up things like this is simply insulting to the US military.

I don't expect them to make everything "accurate"....like the guy magically turning a computer monitor into an old HF radio morse code interface....that magically turns the morse code into text he can see on the screen. Wow....in a few minutes he not only jury-rigged the contraption, but he managed to code a program to show the morse code as screen text! I do expect that if they use any military "stuff" they get a fricken advisor and try to keep it close to real.

I had no problem suspending my disbelief in the Autobots and Decepticons......the Tango Uniform military stuff "ruined" things for me in the first few minutes.

What I'm working on....

I have a couple of projects in the works: some adventure rehashing, pre-gen creation, and some GM aids.

Carolyn and I shipped all of our books out to Origins and there were some problems shipping them back. Luckily the hotel has been pretty cool about working with FedEx to get them shipped out and now they're on their way home. Any projects I try to work on need to be done using my PDFs or be something I can work on without needing my books.


The Little Outhouse on the Prairie adventures went pretty well, but I think they've been played out. Fortunately I haven't turned in two of the adventures for points so if I finish them up I can gets some UPS points and Carolyn will make level 3 as a GM. I also have a Roll-N-Run adventure that just needs to have it's Tournament Scoring sheet done. Last year I was told by Steve Johansen (part of the KenzerCo D-Team) that he'd like to see some original adventures fleshed out and turned into more of a campaign guide/setting/sourcebook. I heard this agin this year, but not first-hand. I'm seriously considering re-working the adventures into a month-long adventure "hook" for levels 2-5. The old tournament adventures occur on specific days and in between the adventures there will be plenty of things happening in the local area. The idea will be that the PCs can mill about quite freely (even leaving the area if they so choose) and they'll get a sense of community and that time is passing for them.

I also "need" to use my new blank PC sheet to use and start building a large bank of pre-gens. It's a bit of work, but I need to update my current Little Outhouse pre-gens and level them up to 10th. This way I could have whatever pre-gens I need for a tournament. My table generator program has a lot of the information I need that would make things easier for PC generation. I probably need to add another table or two for spellbooks just to speed up that process. Actually that's not a big deal, but I like tinkering with the generator and adding the spell lists to the blank spellbook generator might prove difficult and I'd enjoy wrapping my head around that one.

The last project I'm working on is a 4x6 GM card where the GM can put down the pertinent PC info he might need to look up during a game. The little line on the GM shield isn't enough and the only other thing I've seen "out there" is about as big as my PC sheet to begin with. There isn't too much that needs to be on the card, but I keep coming up with little tweaks needed. To make it a bit more appealing visually, I'm going to use some clipart to denote what the info is used for so it'll be easier to find that one magic bit of info on the card.


I'll use a heart to denote HP, for example. I have a bunch more icons already selected, but then I realized I need to tweak them all in photoshop.

I'll make sure I post a pic of the "final" product.

Sick Kitty

My cat Miu is currently sick and at the cat doctor getting IV fluids and a series of tests. I don't know how bad she is.....the vet promised to call me tonight with an update, but she didn't. For $600-$700 for the tests and care, I should have gotten the *&^#%@ update.

We returned from vacation Monday and everything seemed fine, but Tuesday she didn't seem to eat or drink any. By Wednesday she was pretty compliant. She'd simply sit whereever you put her and she wouldn't put up any resistance. Stuff that would warrant a quick nip or at least a growl or thrashing tail went totally ignored.

I managed to get a little water in her last night using a small squeeze bottle.....and a little more this morning. I tried to get an appointment with the vet at the humane society, but they couldn't fit her in and couldn't locate our pet records. Lucky I could get an early afternoon appointment with the Cat Doctor here in town.

I told myslef I'd never "waste" that kind of money on a cat, but when presented with the bill I simply couldn't say no. Lucky I have an extra paycheck this month. That money was slated to pay my boss back for my vacation hotel bill, but I'm sure he'll let me take care of this first.

Hopefully Miu will be fine. I'll draw the line at any surgery......I just wish I knew what was going on.

Back Safe and Sound from Origins 2007

Carolyn and I are back in Boise after a couple weeks of vacation which culminated in Origins 2007. I'm a bit tired to give a full posting, but I've updated my kill sheet and am going through my mess of photos.

I was prepared to run all four "episodes" of Little Outhouse on the Prairie. I only ran the first and third tournament adventure, but I did have some show for all four events. The second event wasn't run because while I had four players, they really wanted to play in the second Tournament of Champions qualifier ( I would too!). Only one player showed for the final adventure (I think my favorite one), but that's not enough, so he went and volunteered his time for the Learn to Hack session.

Origins 2007

Another Quick Update

Carolyn and I are spending the night in Moline before heading out to Columbus in the morning. We've done a little bit of driving so far, visiting friends and family. We saw a lot of cool places and are kind of sad that it all has to come to an end.

Fortunately we still have almost a week of vacation left and we get to fly first class to Ohio! Also, we plan on seeing the new Transformers movie when we get there. Hot damn!