(cross posted to facebook)

No, this won't be a continuation of the one I did all those years ago. An entirely new game, one night only (Monday, October 27), so there's no big commitment.

All the PC's will be Californian high school students who go on a camping trip in the fall of 1959. You can make your own character, or I can make one to your preferences (greaser, quarterback, nerd, poodle-skirted pep rallyist, etc.)

Jenn's automatically in, I'm just looking for two to four more players. Comment here or facebook if you want in.

I've been doing those online surveys that advertise on Facebook, and I got some money from them in my Paypal account. Not much, but enough for a small download from e23. So I downloaded GURPS Character assistant. Not a bad little program. You still need a copy of the book to look up what all the advantages and skills do, but it keeps track of all your totals and does all the secondary math for you. I decided to try out the program by making an Autobot.

( Splashdown, an Autobot/Motorcycle/PWC triple changer )
I don't expect these stats to mean much unless you're already familiar with GURPS, but this does make Character Generation easier for GURPS Overproof. If you want to play, and want to get familiar with the system, you can download a pdf of GURPS Lite for free here.

Jenn and I have been upgrading our GURPS collection to 4th edition, which rendered several of my 3rd edition books obsolete. I wasn't sure how much I'd get for them at a used book store, so I asked my older sister in law if her eldest son might be interested, seeing as he turns 13 this friday. They're still fully usable, Jenn and I just want to be all set with 4th ed. for when GURPS Vorkosigan (eventually) comes out. Turns out Kev was quite interested, so I shipped them up on Saturday. The package was 5 kg, but the slowest shipping method was very reasonable, and only three business days to get to Prince George. They arrived yesterday, right on time, and apparently Kev has been pouring through them, and has already tried to get his mom to make up a character. Seems like it didn't take him long at all to catch the GURPLES. Atta boy!

Jenn and I also just bought a bunch of six sided dice, seeing as our tax returns just came in. Most of our tax returns are going on to our Visas actually, but I was surprised by the amount on our returns. They were both about $150 higher than I anticipated. I've found out why: neither of us wrote in the Employment Amount from line 363. Basically, if you earned $1000 or more at a legitimate job in all of 2007, you get an extra $150 in your return, and because I used Telefile, they automatically calculated that amount for us. Kind of a right wing attitude to reward people who are already stable, but combine that with the transit amount, and it looks like the Canadian government is actively supporting my lifestyle, so I shouldn't complain too loudly.

Now I'm going to attempt to infect my friends with the GURPLES. The Star Wars game is going to be taking a hiatus while Neal's away, and Jenn wants to start up Sunday Tea once she's got weekends off again, so I'm thinking Sunday Tea can be followed by a little game called GURPS Overproof! (Overproof meaning 70% action, a reference to my response to a questionnaire Derek made up for a 7th Sea game.) Basically, you make up any character you want (that can happen during tea), or use an existing one, and a random group of ever changing PCs take on a hoard of uglies (zombies, orcs, battle droids, velociraptors...) or a really big ugly (a T-Rex, Cthulhu's niece, a Sentinel Robot...) We'll pull out the battle map, whip up some pawns (probably paper, like what I'm using for Star Wars) and just do some combat. The object of the game is for Jenn and I to become familiar with the system for the purposes of starting an actual campaign of some kind, and also to give us time to read the books which should be arriving any day now, not to mention the ones we already have.

So Jenn left for work at 8:30 this morning. Around 12:30 I get a phone call from A&W asking where she is because she's on the schedule for 1:00. This is disconcerting. I call her cel phone, and there's no response. I phone the store back using the call display redial, asking if anyone's seen her at all, is she just doing an onion ring run, etc. No, she hasn't been there all day. I'm calling her cel phone over and over, no response at all. I'm thinking, should I call the police? I've heard there's a 24 hour wait for missing persons, but when someone doesn't show up for work when she left the house hours ago and isn't answering the cel, could this be special circumstances? I'm thinking about what could have happened: if there was a bus strike, or if the road was closed, she would have taken a cab or come home. If she'd been hit by a car, or had some kind of spontaneous medical problem, she'd be in the hospital, and I would have been notified. The only logical solution is that she's been mugged, viciously assaulted and left in an alley or behind some bushes or something!!! Maybe if the police can't help me I should phone my dad, and we can cruise around the bus route and see if we can spot her. Well, I'm phoning Jenn's cel so frequently that I'm missing all incoming calls, but I'm checking the messages that get left. The last message is the person who I spoke to at A&W explaining that they were phoning the wrong Jenn. In fact, they aren't even the A&W location that Jenn works at, they just have her number on file from when she worked there for two weeks in December. So I look up the phone number for Jenn's actual location and give them a shout, and who answers but Jenn herself. I'm so wound up I can't even spit out what I'm trying to say properly, but yes, she made it in to work just fine, she's been there all day, and she told me she was going to laugh at the Queensborough Landing people the next time she sees them.

The thing is, my biggest fear is that the world won't let me keep Jenn, so I'm glad she was ok, but it was still unsettling.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need a drink.

So, after selling my broken Xbox 360 on eBay, I had a nice little sum of money on Paypal. Unfortunately, you can't just transfer Paypal money to your credit card, and transferring it into your bank means putting up your account info, and they charge money for it. So, I went to Warehouse 23 and ordered some GURPS books instead. I also just got my bonus cheque from work, as well as a paycheque from A&W which I wasn't expecting, so I put it all on my Visa so as to order a couple more. Also, I've been downloading free pdf's from E23. Which brings me to my next topic:

Those of you who DM, GM, or ST, take note! There's a free pdf which offers complete rules for the use of Lava in all systems! It's brief, concise, and has all the information you need, as well as easy to use diagrams and charts which you can print off and hand to players for easy dispute resolution! Even if you're just a player, this is an absolute necessity, and it's TOTALLY FREE! Go here to download it!

Last but not least, Jenn and I have been batting around ideas for a fantasy setting. We were talking about dragon kin, and I remembered a bit of an afterword in a Ben Bova book of mine, which led me to an internet search, resulting in this video, and a corresponding article from BBC News.

cross posted from Facebook:

I'm going to have a spot for a drop in character for my next Star Wars game on wednsday, the 26th of March. Just the one session, first person to claim it on my wall on Facebook gets it.

The other day I looked up one of my favourite NFB cartoons on Youtube, and showed it to Jenn. It's called The Apprentice:



I also looked for another one of my favourites, called Juke Bar. It's not on Youtube, but then I found out that the NFB site has about 70 animations up for public viewing. So, follow this link for Juke Bar: http://www.nfb.ca/animation/objanim/en/films/film.php?id=18042

I wound up getting sucked into Youtube, here's a couple more things I wanted to share:

When I got to work friday morning, a coworker told me that someone I used to work with at the PetroCan on River Road was dead.

"Body identified as that of missing local woman"

Kataryna was from the Ukraine. She was one of my favourite co-workers to be shifted on with, especially for an evening shift. In the evenings things would get really slow, and once everything was cleaned and stocked, you wound up having to talk to whoever you were on with. Her english wasn't very good, so she was always asking me questions about grammar. What does this word mean, how do you pronounce it, how do you use it in a sentence? She was also very curious about all the stuff we sold, what are the different fluids used for, where do they go, what do the numbers on the oil cans mean? She would also tell me about growing up in the Ukraine. She liked the bread much better over there, and thought the bread you bought in supermarkets was terrible. Her mom used to call her a monkey because she used to climb everything, and had a liking for bananas. She seemed to find a lot of humour around her, because she was almost always smiling. If we hadn't been co workers, I would have been tempted to ask her out, although I'm glad I didn't because I might not have wound up with Jenn if I had.

If she had died of an accident, like a car crash or house fire, or if she had died of a natural cause, like cancer, the news would be easier to take. I hadn't really talked to her for about seven years, although when I started at Seaside Paper she worked at the Chevron nearby and I'd see her around sometimes. When you're on that level of acquaintance with someone and you find out they've died, you're saddened, and you stop to think about them every now and then, but for the most part you keep moving on because fate hasn't drawn your number yet. The thing that's wearing on my mind right now is the fact that Kataryna should be in the same boat as the rest of us. She should be hearing about other people who have died of natural causes or accidents, and getting on with her life. Fate never called her number, someone chose to intercede on Fate's behalf. She's dead because someone chose to kill her. I just can't picture it. Even if her killer didn't mean for her to die, I can't picture anyone wanting to do her harm. I'm having a hard time believing it's real.

Also, I'm not sure how strongly I'm supposed to react. I find myself second guessing the way I feel. It's been years since I've seen her, and we weren't any closer than co workers who had casual conversations, am I dwelling on it too much? But I was attracted, I cared at least a little, should I be more distraught? I'm not falling to pieces, I don't need to take time off work or anything, but I keep thinking about her and feeling sad. I guess that's about right.

Another thing that makes me feel sad is that I don't think she had many friends. I could be wrong, I hope there's more than a handful of people who are going to miss and remember her, especially people that knew her better than I did.

Jenn and I looked at our finances, and decided that with my upcoming bonus cheque, we can afford an Xbox 360 arcade version. It was $100 cheaper than buying a unit that replaces the one I have, but that's because it's missing duplicate accessories, like a 20gB hard drive, headset communicator, and ethernet cable. Seeing as those parts are all fine, I don't mind saving the $100. Also, I got a 256mB memory card, so I can take my profile when I'm gaming elsewhere, and a third wireless controller, which I can sell to recover some of the money, although I don't want to part with it untill I've gotten two weeks functionality out of the console. I bought their in store two year coverage though, so I'm not too worried.

Also, I've taken pictures of the old console, inside and out, to put up on eBay, "as is". It looks like they usually go for about $40, but I'm hoping that the inclusion of parts for doing the X-clamp replacement mod will maybe boost it a little. We'll see.

Either way, I'll have to try the whole "have people over for video games" thing again sometime.

Tonight was my birthday party, and in cleaning up the place I found the receipt for Guitar Hero 2, so I took it to the store and got it exchanged for a new, sealed copy without hassle. The Xbox was misbehaving too badly to play Guitar Hero anyway, so the point was kind of moot, but I'm glad it got dealt with. On the other hand, we had some four way action with Marathon 2 for about 45 minutes, that was great fun. I always wanted to try multiplayer when I first had it in high school, but none of my friends had a Mac. I had a whale of a time, and the only reason why it stopped after 45 minutes is because we wanted to switch to Guitar Hero. It just won't stay fixed, I've decided that there's nothing for it but to buy a new console, but I'm still really really happy that we all played Marathon 2 for a bit.

It wasn't exactly the wildest party I've ever had, but it was pretty nice. In lieu of playing on the Xbox we stuck on the third season of Samurai Jack and just let it play, I enjoyed that. We didn't get around to playing any board games, but there's always next time. Also, it was great just to see everyone, so I'd just like to say thanks to those who were able to make it.

The other day, when the Xbox was working, I was playing some Guitar Hero 2, when I heard *tick tick tick tick*, and then an error message popped up saying that the disk was unreadable. For some reason, I got the notorious circular scratch on the game disk I was using. The console wasn't standing on end, I didn't move it, it just scratched the disk.

The good news is that I bought the game new at EBgames, and I also purchased their in store protection plan, which does cover these scratches.

The bad news is that I can't find the receipt. Sure, I can find grocery receipts going back to november, Christmas receipts from two years ago, the receipt for the spare controller I bought for the old Xbox last year, just not the one that I need.

Blargh. So the Xbox only worked for about a week. Saturday night it worked, and I played on it every day untill wednesday, without incident. Thursday I was too tired to play when I got home from work. Friday night Jenn and I tried to play more Marvel Ultimate Alliance, but it crashed before we could start a mission. This isn't the first time it's done that, either. For some reason, whenever there's a week or two stretch of working, it crashes if I leave it alone for a day or two. It's like it gets bitchy at me for ignoring it.

Yesterday I took out the copper shim and trimmed off the gpu heat sink fins where they blocked the screws that hold it together, which ought to eliminate the need for a heat sink. I also adjusted the washers between the mother board and the gpu, so that if I were to put in just one more the heat sink wouldn't contact the gpu anymore. I played the demo for Guitar Hero 3 without issue. I put in Marvel Ultimate Alliance, and it chugged in a couple spots, but it never froze. Then I put in Guitar Hero 2. It froze before the first song started, and that was it, I couldn't get any more activity out of it. This morning I pulled it apart again, and re-did the thermal paste between the heat sink and gpu, thinking that it was a little sparse before. I got it to turn on, but when I started the Conan demo it froze during the opening cut scene. I know there's enough thermal paste, I know the number of washers is correct, I know it doesn't need a shim, I just have to get the screws holding it all together to the right tension.

I don't want to spend any more money fixing this stupid thing. I've spent $15 on thermal paste, $20 on screws and washers, and $30 on a third party internal fan. If I buy anything else, it will be a new Xbox 360. From a store I can trust. The good news is that I can save $100 by buying the "arcade" version, which comes with a memory card instead of a hard drive, seeing as there's nothing wrong with the hard drive I have. If I sell the controller it comes with, as well as my old Xbox "as is" on eBay, I can even get a little money back. Although if it comes to that, I'm going to wait untill the spring or summer. There's a chance that Jenn and I might have moved by then, into a new place with level floors and a less wiggy electrical supply. We'll see what happens.

The teaser trailer for Star Trek XI is out on the apple website now. IMDB also has a lot more casting details than the last time I looked.

Captain Kirk will be played by Chris Pine (never heard of him, but he looks right)

Uhura will be played by Zoe Saldana (never heard of her, but she looks right)

Bones will be played by Karl Urban, who played Eomer in Lord of the Rings.




And now the real reason why I'm now stoked to see this movie...

Sulu: John Cho. You know, Harold, from Harold and Kumar.

Scotty: Simon Pegg. That's right. I almost died laughing. Screw the rest of the movie, I want the adventures of Sulu and Scotty played by John Cho and Simon Pegg.

I really hope that the people who make this movie don't try to make it too serious or AWEXXXOME!!!, because that would spoil the fun.

Either way, I have to wait untill December. In the mean time, why not entertain yourself with this image.

So I posted once in December, now January's almost over, and I'm posting again. The holidays were good, I got to see lots of people, and I got everything I wanted for Christmas (beer, turkish delight, AND macadamia nuts!)New Year's was awesome, although I had to buy a suit. Then again, I got it at the Sears clearance centre by Lougheed Mall, so it cost about $80, which isn't bad at all, and I now have a suit, so it's all good.

On the Xbox front (since I seem to have stopped talking about Lego) I've done the washer fix three times now, the third time I hammered a piece of copper pipe flat to make a shim to go between the GPU and its heat sink. That third fix worked great for about two weeks, then it started getting finicky. My brother gave me and Jenn Marvel Ultimate Alliance for Christmas, but the Xbox died a minute after I put it in. After a while it started crashing for all the graphics intensive games, which meant I was limited to playing Marathon 2. Eventually it would crash for that, and every time it was a 0102 error code, which usually means a GPU error. I assumed that the problem was the GPU overheating, mostly because the air blowing out the back was really hot. On Dec 27th I ordered a Talismoon fan to replace the fan that the Xbox comes with, and it finally arrived last friday. I put it in right away, of course. I also cut away the mesh over the fans and on the left intake side to try to increase the airflow. I couldn't get it to work that night, but Saturday after work, I made some adjustments to the screws holding down the GPU, and Presto! It worked. I played Rumble Roses XX for an hour, without crashing. Sunday night I popped in Marvel Ultimate Alliance, and played that for an hour and a half, I would have gone longer, but I was really tired after work, and shut it off and went to sleep. Yesterday Jenn and I played Guitar Hero 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance for well over two hours, again with no problems. Given that the air coming out the back is significantly cooler, I'm really hoping that I've got it fixed for the long term now.

I've also made a New Year's resolution regarding the Xbox. I'm not allowed to play between 9:00am and 6:30pm unless I've been to the pool in the last 48 hours, and practiced on the accordion that day or the previous one. The exceptions being when I'm sick or injured, or when I'm entertaining guests.

Anyway, because the Xbox is working now, I've ordered two wired controllers, so as to have four controllers by the time my birthday comes around, and we can get some four player mayhem going on, though I only have four games for four players: Big Bumpin, Pocket Bike Racer, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, and Rumble Roses XX. I also have two guitar controllers for Guitar Hero 2, and while I haven't unlocked much, I have found a cheat code that I can at least unlock everything for the party.

Speaking of which, the party is on Feb. 9th. A pyjama party, mostly because I want to slob about in my PJ's. I'm doing the invites through Facebook, and I've noticed that you can invite people who aren't on Facebook via email. They get a personal link to rsvp, although they can't view the full guest lists. It's functional at least, although I don't have Mimi's email. I also may have forgotten some people, leave a comment if you didn't get an invite and would like one.

Dear Santa Claus,

The last couple years, I've tried to wax philosophical to you, and for all my enfeebled attempts at being highbrow, I actually learned something last year, and I'd like to share it with you. It starts with Christmas 2004. Up until then, I'd always spent Christmas morning with my folks, in only two different living rooms for 24 years. However, 2004 was the year I moved in with Jenn and her sister, and that Christmas morning I spent with Jenn, Kimba, and Beth. They weren't family at the time, but I figured it was close enough since I was marrying Jenn within the next three months. Christmas 2005 Jenn and I were alone in our cozy little basement suite, our first Christmas as a married couple, and it was perfectly lovely. Last year was our second Christmas as married people, and we spent it alone again. And without the romance of it being our first, it was a little lonely and anticlimactic. That's when I realized, for all my bluster about what Jesus means, the part you play, and how Christmas fits into my religion, it all means nothing without a warm, friendly, clan of people to share it with. I know it sounds incredibly trite, like I'm just reciting the moral from a holiday special or something, but it really is true. And really, that's the long and short of it.

As for whether or not I've been good all year, I'm not sure how to answer that. I think I've contained my temper quite well in the face a disappointing consumer experience, and while I've complained in my LJ quite a bit, I haven't yelled or threatened anyone, and I haven't taken any illegal action against the company, but that doesn't put me in line for sainthood, does it? Mind you, I've been putting in a small amount of volunteer hours with my church's sunday school, and I helped the BC Renfest with their Halloween fundraiser. Not exactly Mother Theresa type stuff, but I hope it means I'm not all bad...

So, straight on to the point of any letter to Santa: what do I want for Christmas? To be honest, I'm not sure how much point there is in telling you, seeing as I'm already getting lots of things that I want. I've already made arrangements with my folks to spend Christmas morning with them, and Christmas evening I'm spending with my father in law. I don't know when I'll see my sister in law and my mother in law yet, but I look forward to seeing them too. With Jenn's new job, I know she'll also be available for everything. I've been wanting to do dinner and a show on Granville Island for Christmas ever since I did it the first time in 1996, and it's finally happening again this year, I have the ticket tucked away nice and safe, and Jenn and I both have the night off. As an added bonus, I've even been cast as the villain in my church's Christmas pantomime, and I've been wanting to play the villain in a small scale production since high school, so this is great for me. So really, there isn't much more I can ask for that will make me happier.

Having said that, I can never have too many macadamia nuts...

Warmest wishes,
Stephen Elliot Brown

Yesterday Jenn and I went to the Toys R Us in Coquitlam to start Christmas shopping. We had time to kill before the bus came, so we went to the electronics section to tease ourselves. We came out so frustrated, that we decided that it was time to give up on MDG and the BBB and just fix the Xbox 360. I spent the rest of the afternoon getting supplies, and came home ready to go.

( How to fix an Xbox 360. )

This morning I got Jenn up at 11:30 so we could finally bottle the mead we cooked up near the end of June. I had placed the carboy tilted on a counter on thursday night, so it had two days to settle. The clarity was really amazing. We sanitized our equiptment, drew a sample and set it aside, and started bottling. It didn't take long at all, mostly because there was only enough to fill six 750mL bottles! Then we took the sample's readings. Apparently, our brew is 9.8% alcohol by volume! Ah, but how does it taste? Put it this way: we are kicking ourselves very hard for only making six bottles! It's sweet and spicy, in a very Christmas like way, so I'm very glad to have it ready for December. Of course, I have no idea what mead is supposed to taste like, so I want to share some with someone who knows, but other than that, I don't think there's enough to go around. We'll have to make a quadruple batch (at least) for next year.

Heard this song on late night CBC the other day and thought of Derek, even though I only had a vague idea of what the lyrics meant.

Just thought I'd share.



udpate:

Hey Derek and Kyle, here's a random grammar question for you:

Is there a reason why the preposition that goes with the transitive use of "going" is "to", but for "looking" it's "at"? Just thinking about how they're both the same word in french...

Ha ha ha!

I bought Lego on my honeymoon! So did my honey!

I just filed a complaint with Advertising Standards Canada and the Better Business Bureau of Vancouver against MDG. Here's what I put in the BBB complaint:

( Read more... )I haven't actually taken apart my Xbox yet, so if something does come of this it can still be returned. If it doesn't work out, I can content myself with having a broken toy to take apart and put back together, so I can (hopefully) be satisfied no matter what the outcome. One of the reasons why I've posted this is so that I can copy and paste the complaint into any customer review type website (as well as any MDG related groups on Facebook).

Still no word from MDG, but yesterday I had a thought. If I call the 360 a writeoff, Jenn and I still have a hard drive, ethernet cable, and wireless controller, which were free. In other words, we have the stuff that doesn't come with the Xbox 360 Core System, and surely those must be really cheap now that the regular system has come down in price. Getting one of those would give us a new console with an intact warranty, not to mention a second controller. After work, I went online to start looking at prices... only to find that they aren't sold anymore. However, I did find an ebay auction for a repair guide in pdf that was going for about $15 cdn.

I talked to Jenn about it, and I downloaded the guide. Basically, you take apart the console and hit the motherboard with a heat gun to try and improve the soldering. The guide also provides links to forum posts on how to analyze the general hardware failure and in there I found some alternate fixes at this site: http://rbjtech.bulldoghome.com/pages/rbjtech_bulldoghome_com/XboxHome.htm These would only set me back about $20, and make it more sturdy than it would be if microsoft fixes it. I think I'll try these before I buy a heat gun and point it at my Xbox's insides, but the guide from eBay has detailed instructions on how to disassemble the unit, so it's not a total loss. Plus, the warranty is already voided due to "evidence of tampering", which means that I can't even pay microsoft to fix it for me, so it's not like I'll be able to make things worse. Furthermore, this means that I can paint the console, which is cool. I'm actually quite excited about fixing it myself, so at this stage in the game I'm content to let MDG hide in the corner and be useless. I'm still mad at them, but now that there's a chance that I can fix the problem myself the quotient of impotent rage has drastically reduced, and really it's the impotent part that bugged me the most.

I still want to make official complaints about MDG, but I don't think I can bully them into doing anything. At this stage in the game, doing what I can to hurt their business and educate the public against them is more satisfying. I'd rather try to fix the console myself, and if that doesn't work, take it to the electronics repair guy down the hill and see if he can do anything.