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Capitial Classic 10K

May 17th, 2009

I ran my first race ever.  Possibly my first organized physical activity since I was in school.  Official results aren’t out yet but it took about 79 minutes, which is a horrible way back of the pack time, which I am extremely proud.

Heart rate was higher than I was happy with, but I ran most of it only taking extended walks toward the end.  The 10K was about a mile longer than my longest training but I finished in about the same amount of time.  I had set an extremely achievable goal of an average speed above 4 mph and according to my calculations I hit 4.8, so wild success.

I picked up a new blister, but it didn’t kick in until the very end, so no real harm.

Now, I guess I need to find a new race to train for.

Life

Birthday

March 17th, 2008

Before the end of the day I should mention that it’s my birthday. Woohoo.

Last Friday I sent out an invite to join me at the Brickskeller on this Friday (my birthday, observed). If somehow, I know you and you read this blog, and I failed on have you on the invite list, please join me. Toss me an email to let me know you are coming, or just show up.

Happy Birthday to me,

Happy birthday to me….

Beer, Life

DC Gameday

March 17th, 2008

So Many DiceOn Friday, I was perusing livejournal of the creator of Story of the Century, Fred Hicks, and he had post about a game of SotC at DC Gameday in danger of being canceled and calling for interested players near Alexandria, VA. I’ve been wanting to actual play a game before trying to run SotC and while I was going to be running a game Nephilim Song in the evening, my morning was free.

I waffled a bit, you know gaming with random people, never sure what you’re going to get, but eventually signed up.

That night while prepping for Nephilim Song I made a character as an NPC that clicked and sadly I didn’t see her having a major role in the campaign unless I did some strong arming to bring her into the story where she didn’t belong. She was within striking range of pulp, so I wrote her up as a SotC character to use at the game.

The really odd part about the whole Gameday thing is where it was. Turns out they lost their original location and one of the participants offered up his work location, the work location happened to be the new location of the Motley Fool offices, and the person in question was Tom7, who I knew when I used to work at the Fool. It was a bit odd being back there.

But back to the game, I played Sashira the gypsy seeress with stolen eyes, well she didn’t have them anymore, because they were stolen. She had a history in the circus as a blind knife thrower and used her seer abilities to get around being blind. We did the novels and co-starring parts of character creation at the table. Sashira’s novel was Sashira Semper and the Escape from Death Island. You’d be surprised how many mystic rituals really benefit from the eyes of a true seer.

I was pretty happy with here especially since she was my first SotC character ever. I need to work on my aspect creation, I didn’t have much that could be generally compelled. I had stuff that could be used, social complications for begin a gypsy, circus performer, etc. and aspects that bad people would want to use her seer sight or her eyes for nefarious purposes, however since one of the other characters was an intelligent gorilla, he got the outsider compels. There were other things that I thought could be used for compels, but I think they were too vague to be used positively or negatively.

One of the other players did a write up for the game on his live journal. He liked my use of the I learned things in the circus to get on board a ship trying to exit. My favorite was the end where one of the other players tagged my aspect Seeress of the Gypsy to give me a vision of his success.

It was a fun game, though I do now see what some people complain about it being meta-gamy. I enjoyed it a lot and I still intend to run it, but sometimes the reaching for aspects felt unnatural. I thought in actual play there would be more maneuvers and declarations which would have flown better, but sometime the attempts to justify use of aspects was jarring to the action.

On the other hand I made an impassioned speech and got two minions to give up the fight. The thing that was really interesting is that no point during the game was deadly force used. I was throwing whatever happened to be around, I had daggers but It didn’t seem right to thrown them at people so I used my stunt which allowed me to use improvised weapons to throw debris lying around the dock. My companions used fists. So in the entire session no PC really used a deadly weapon. I tried to block the giant snake by throwing daggers, but that was about stopping the snake not damaging it.

Another thing I just realized was the players created the endgame in way usually not possible in traditional games. Our explorer made a declaration that temples like the one we were in have traps that destroy the whole temple. Gran’ok our intelligent gorilla took out the pillar bringing the ceiling down, blocking the bad guys in while we escaped.

All in all very fun. I would have liked to do something in the afternoon session, apparently there was a Truth and Justice game which I’ve heard interesting things about. However, as I mentioned, I was running that evening.

Perhaps next time.

Gaming, Life

Sorry

February 29th, 2008

I’m sure this will be the first of many apologies. I was hoping to write a post or at least update a page every few days, once a week on the outside. I, of course, failed. I’m sure I’ll fail again but I’ll keep trying.

I’ve been busy. I flew down to Florida for my Grandmother’s 90th birthday. We threw a party and 140 people came. My grandmother has many more friends and is much more popular than I am. I spent most of the time tending to the food and putting out chairs and similar tasks, which is fine as I don’t do all that well around a dozen strangers, much less 140.

Once I got back I went straight into a week long training class. I haven’t even really had time to  keep up with the going ons in the world, much less have something to post.

But I’m back now.  Lets see if I can keep my schedule.

Life

Ten Things

January 24th, 2008

A recent blog meme is something along the lines of ten things I’ve done you probably haven’t. I find this difficult because I rarely think anything interesting happens in my life. But I figure I’ll give it a try. For this definition of “you”, I’ll be using average American, I don’t know how that correlates with people who read this blog.

  1. Explored the archtypical ruins of the Aztec and Mayans (Tikal and Machu Picchu)
  2. Lived a 18 months in foreign countries (Guatamala, Equador and Peru, six months in each).
  3. I was denied baptism by the Catholic Church (not sure it counts as doing something, but I’m listing it.).
  4. Wrote my own role playing game.
  5. Rolled a car over and crawled away.
  6. Been thanked by name on a message board as someone announced they were an atheist.
  7. Run a webserver out of my house since 1996.
  8. Worked with a database with over 1 billion rows.
  9. Lost 45 pounds (I’m up 10 pounds from that now, but still).
  10. Got a letter to the editor published in the Washington Post.

Life

Christmas Back Home

January 14th, 2008

This is what it is like everytime I visit my parents:

Christmas Back Home

Holiday, Life

New Year’s Eve

January 1st, 2008

This was the First New Eve where I didn’t seem to have any friends to invite me over to some sort of party or similar event. Not sure how it happened exactly. It saddens me. I went out to the Dogfish Head brewpub. Had a bottle of Pangea which I recommend highly. Toasted in the New Year with a glass of 90 minute. I’m not a fan of champaign so the last few years I always look for a quality brew to toast the new year. I did 90 Minute last year, since I was at Dogfish Head anyway, I went with the 90 minute again.

So I think the toast for this year is,

“To friends forgotten, friends of the past, friends of the present and friends of the future. May we each have each other and find a year of belonging, a year of prosperity and a year of glory.”

To everyone…

Throwing in Neil Gaiman’s traditional New Years wish:

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

Beer, Life

Morning

December 19th, 2007

I had to wake up ridiculously early this morning for a meeting, but the meeting was canceled. Due to waking up early I showered soon after my roommate and had no hot water. I’m tired and can hardly keep my eyes open. Hopefully I’ll become productive once we enter normal working hours.

Life

Funeral

August 3rd, 2007

So I ended up going to the funeral, I’m still not sure if I belonged, but I’m glad I went.

It was a fairly small affair. I thought about writing about the funeral but choose not to. It is sufficient to say that there were people who loved him saddened by the loss of such a bright light.

Life

Jeremy Blake

August 3rd, 2007

So one of the guys around the neighborhood that I grew up in, grew up to be famous. He was in my brother’s clique more than my own, so I knew him but really not that well. Sadly, he’s made himself more famous by committing suicide.

At this point I don’t think I would have recognized Jeremy if I saw him on the street, I don’t think I’ve seen him in 15 years, but he was probably involved in my first ever game of D&D, two of his paintings that he did when in was in high school (or before) hang on my dining room wall. It was clear even then that he had great artistic talent. He’s gone on to show that in various ways.

He’s done a little bit for everyone. He’s spent that last several months up until his death as a graphics designer for Rock Star Games. He did an artistic sequence in Punch Drunk Love a movie starring Adam Sandler. His art is part of the permanent collections of both the SF and NY Museums of Modern Art among others. He was scheduled for a solo show at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in DC in October (I hear it will still happen). His Suicide made the front page of the Style section of the Washington Post. Googling him provides a wealth of information about his life and death.

His funeral is tomorrow at 1pm and I may acquire the information on the logistics of it. I feel a need to go, but I’m not really sure what drives me. I normally have a rule about funerals, I don’t think it’s proper to attend if I’m connected to the person by what they did rather than who they were. With Jeremy, I’m not sure whether it’s an issue of what he did or who he was (or I remember him being).

I do know hearing of his death saddens me.

Life