Sam's L33t Journal

Things that happened in the past week or so:

Nikki was in town and DJ and I were her guests at her aunt's Christmas party in NH, which was something to behold: There was a bonfire, caroling on a horse-cart ride (a neighbor had some gigantic draft-horses used to haul lumber), fireworks, and more cookies, pies, and extended family members than you could shake a stick at. On our way up, we beheld the wonders of the NH State Liquor store and bought some interesting meats at The Healthy Buffalo.

Monday, got back to climbing. Still unreliably working at about 5.7+/5.8.

Tuesday was Squares. Spent some time hanging with Ames and Dante on Wednesday. Thursday morning worked with my trainer and Thursday afternoon had my yearly physical (I was up for a tetanus immunization booster, and my shoulder is still sore).

Thursday evening was venison chili and Amélie (excellent movie, don't know how I missed that for so long given how much I love Jeunet's stuff) with DJ and Michelle. Friday, saw The King's Speech (excellent, character-driven film, great acting and direction) with Julia. Friday, had Dim Sum at Hei La Moon and saw True Grit (great, a must if you like westerns, now I need to see the original) with lbmango and Co. In the afternoon, I shamelessly flaunted my Christmas orphan status until Michelle took pity on me and invited me to her extended-family celebration (coincidentally, right in my neighborhood; delicious Cajun dinner, energetic little cousins, one creepy robot cat, Pillow Pets™, and a game of Bananagrams).

Still have some clothes-related stuff in progress: Got back my first shirt ordered from MakeYourOwnJeans (perfect in some dimensions but needs a bit of adjustment in others), put in a second order. Still waiting on TailorStore. Also still waiting on Daswani, but already regretting my choice of color on the additional button-downs (in addition to white dress shirt and blue Oxford, went with the tailor's advice of burgundy and brown button-downs, which I now feel was ill-advised).

Currently, getting in one of Xave's very infrequent games of D&D via Skype.

Pi-Con is going very well, and I'm looking forward to the concluding events tomorrow. I've been to a lot of panel discussions, including some very interesting ones on dystopian fiction, "reaching a post-scarcity world", polyamory, law, obscure anime, free speech and technology, and "hedonism in the modern world". I bought a book and some other things. I played some video games and board games. I played a quick game of DnD 4th edition with pre-made characters, which went all right, despite setbacks. The 4th edition rules are disappointing, they seem to have doe a rather good job of simplifying the game, then re-complicated it in a way that is not necessarily an improvement.

On a somewhat related note: Apparently geek is the new counter-culture.

This week was busy, but the weekend was lousy. There were two LARPs I wanted to play in, but I was wait-listed for both and didn't get cast in either. Also, showing up meant missing other things. On Saturday, I would have something better to do if I'd checked my email half-an-hour later. On Sunday, I missed the chance to play DnD (and now that campaign is now officially dead, due to lack of interest; let the record show that I was one of the interested players).

More content-ful entry later maybe...

Rene's DnD campaign, from yesterday. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like either campaign will be meeting for another while.

( Plot )

This night: Another DnD session for Xave's campaign. I'll write a few notes on that later (especially because it's likely that group won't meet again for some time).

Last night: Late night IHOP run (with Dan, Markos, and Nick). Is it bad that's still on my mind? Mmmmm...

A few things, in no particular order:

• The show at anime club on Friday was Mahou Shoujo Tai Alice, and it was better than I expected. The world is pretty creative, and the animation is really well done. (As a side note, they actually pronounce the main character's name as "Alice" so as to really hit the viewers over the head with the literary reference, which, as the main character literally falls into a magic world, is quite apt.)
• Barnes and Noble University is having a class on Dungeons and Dragons. Amusing.
• The Red Cross is considering a new emblem.
• Check out this site on the Stanford prison experiment. It's one of the more interesting studies that's been done in the field of social psychology.
• "Back in my day, our quantum computers were measured in qubits. A qubyte was some kind of newfangled experiment."
• Finally, this infuriating blog entry on homelessness. Actually, the entry isn't that bad (it discusses a news special where panhandlers seem reluctant to work for money), although its analysis of the situation is weak (it neglects that a lot of homeless people are mentally ill and it neglects the sketchiness of the whole situation (as one Anon puts it: "... imagine you have no social support, no one who'd notice if you're missing, and no cell phone. A stranger pulls up and asks you to get in his car for $20. Do you really think this is a wise decision?")). It's the comments that are infuriating. Apparently, quite a few people think the homeless should be enslaved or slaughtered, and many more seem to think that people have a right to never interact with those they find unpleasant.
• Finally, check out this excellent parody piece on intelligent design and language. (Of course, as is often the case with good parody, reality beats it to the punch.)

Got a lot of work done today. I fell into a coding trance and was at the office until 10:45.

Played a bit of DDR, too. Beat Insertion and Matsuri Japan Re-venge on Heavy.

( Meme, for no reason... )

That's all.

Nordom's DnD campaign finally met again today. This entry contains plot from the last few sessions, but most of the plot is from the most recent one.

( DnD-ness )

From DnD yesterday, an in-character post (because this character is fun to play around with):

( In-Character DnD-ness )

More DnD-ness, from Xave's campaign:

( Cut for Length... )