Beyond the Void.

As you can see I am not really doing that well updating this blog. That's ok I guess, since this is mostly for me anyhow.

On the gaming front, our game of Dark Age Vampire is going rather well. My vamp, Wilhelm has answered the challenge of my buddy Tims vamp. They are supposed to duel to the death, I sort of feel bad considering that Tim will have to make a new character after this. I think its what he wanted though. I don't say this out of arrogance though, its just that I am pretty sure I can't be beat by him in out little duel. Being able to become pure shadow and unable to be hurt by mundane weapons while still being about to harm him gives you a certain amount of confidence to your words when you say things like "I will win".

Other gaming news: I got Galactic Civilizations. Its a fun game. I am still in the middle of my first game of it. So far I have yet to go to war in it. Should be interesting when I do though. Its of the same type of game as MOO and Space Empires.

I'm looking forward to New Years. Nothing really special about it this year, its going to be the same as always. But at least we will be with friends, and it should be a good time. I only wish we didn't have to travel 80 miles to enjoy being with my wife's friends.

I am a A Heliotropic Dragon!

Hey, I took the http://dragonhame.com online Inner Dragon quiz and found out I am a Heliotropic Dragon on the inside.

In the war between good and evil, a Heliotropic Dragon tends to walk the fine line of Neutrality....
When it comes to the powers of Chaos vs. those of Law and Order, your inner dragon walks a fine line between Law and Chaos....
As far as magical tendancies, Your inner dragon has the ability to conquer the world of magic, but it will not be easy....
During combat situations, whether by spells or by claw, your inner dragon will do whatever it takes to get the job done....
Instead of scales, Heliotropic Dragons have a thick hide to cover their body. At the early stages of life, the Heliotropic Dragon is green with red speckles that resemble blood spots. When fully grown, the dragons color changes to any number of variations of violet, but predominantly they have a deep, reddish purple color with streaks of azure blue and magenta.'
This unusual skin type also gives them an unusually sleek appearance and allows them to move with greater speed and freedom both in air and under water. These Dragon's are known to be highly competitive.'
They often meet with other dragons to compete with each other for sport. NOTE: A few small villages have been destroyed by being so unlucky as to be in the path of a speeding Heliotropic Dragon taking a shortcut to gain an advantage over it's competitor. Heliotropic Dragons are well known for their protectiveness, but also are known as loyal friends and allies. They make true friends rarely, but those friendships that they make are well chosen and long lasting.
'
This Dragons favorite elements are: BloodStone and Valerian Root

http://Dragonhame.Com

Tis the season to be busy! Its been almost a week since me last blog! Bad Blogger! Bad Blogger!

Anyhow, with work and Christmas I have been really busy and really tired. I have not even really played on the comp at all this last week. I've been reading, watching TV or sleeping at night. Yeah sleeping at night how novel. Well it is for me it seems as I normally stay up until I just cant stand to stay awake any longer then Go to bed.

So lets see what happen this last week? I went shopping and bought most of the presents for my Wife. What's funny is I had bought one thing for her at the Mall, and it cost an arm and a leg, $58. I got it from one of those kiosks in the mall. I thought that was sort of high but I figured she knew what she was getting into when she asked for it. However when I went to work the next day I looked up how much other places were selling it for, $26 at normal places. Wow I felt really ripped off. So I went back to the Mall to return it. I was SO expecting a fight with this girl over returning this "item". There was no fight to it though. Just a simple exchange of goods for cash. I need to buy my Wife one more thing and I am going to hunt for that tonight. Hope I have good lucky finding that last item.

I also saw "Return of the King" this last weekend. What a great Movie. I thought it did a good job of following the book even if there were a few parts that got a little too creative. Oh well. Not many things will beat the sight of seeing the Black Gates open with Sauron's eye off in the distance over looking the battle. That scene shot elevated the movie to a new level of epic. I was very impressed.

Our kitty cat KotyKatz Thunderin' Thor aka "Thor" is one year old today. He is by far the coolest cat I have even owned. I think thats because he is really dog like :)

Anyway click on his name to see pics of him. Also visit his breeders site to see his brothers and sisters.
www.kotykatz.com

Well it looks like Supers is going to be replaced by our on again off again game of Dark Age Vampire. I am really looking forward to getting to play Vamp again. Justicar Wilhelm Von Krieger of Clan Lasombra rides again.

Sure I have done some big things with this character, but I fear I have even bigger things to do with this character. Stay alive… err dead… well undead. Rise in power. Punish those that are working against me. That’s probably the biggest task, not that its hard to punish my foes, its that I can’t thing of anyone that’s not working against me.

You can read more about our game by clicking on the link on the left.

"And here it should be noted that hatred is acquired as much by good works as by bad ones, therefore, as I said before, a prince wishing to keep his state is very often forced to do evil"
Niccolo Machiavelli - The Prince

Every week day I go to work. It starts with me parking the car in the parking garage, and then I cross the street, walk half a block and enter our revolving doors. Then I walk past the security desk and on to the slowest elevators known to man.

Today followed much of that same pattern, all the way up to walking past the security desk. Today something caught my eye. On the security desk laid a pair of keys. These keys looked like my wives keys; in fact they were my wives keys!

I knew she had a meeting in my building today, so this was entirely possible. I was just surprised that she had dropped them. So I scoop up her keys, tell the security guy that these were my wives keys and stepped on to the elevator.

Luckily my morning banter with my wife included asking her what floor her meeting was on. So I punched in that floor to go find her. Now here is the freaky part, when the elevator opened for her floor, she was standing right in front of it when it opened. Like she was just there waiting on her keys. Too freaky.

I'm starting to worry for the safety of my wife, in the last few days she has sliced her thumb, fell on the ice, and lost her keys. I hope she makes it to Christmas.

My wife lost. Sure she drew first blood (juice) but the Orange finished the fight.

Ok here is how it went down. We had an orange that lived in our fridge, so on Friday my Wife plucked it from its home. Snatched it from its friends the apples and cheese and assaulted it with a knife. The Brave little citrus having been cut in half did the only thing it knew to do, and caused my wife to cut her own thumb in some Jacky Chan Fruit fight type move.

After that the Orange was returned to the fridge, knife still in its grip to fight another day. My wife however got rushed to the hospital as the loser of that fight. The Nurses and Doctors were pretty understanding, and even though they took 3 hours to sew her up, they still seemed to care. We both were very glad they were not more busy then they were.

Almost all kidding aside, my poor wife! After she cut herself she did sort of a "pee pee dance" only it was a "I cut myself" dance. She ran it under some water, while I sat watching TV. I didn't think it was that bad at first, then I realized that she was still going on about it 30 seconds after it happened, so it couldn't be just alittle nick... I thought she *might* need a bandaid. So I ran upstairs, to get a bandaid and the super glue, while she danced around with her finger under running water. When I came back down to put a band aid on her thumb I got to see it for the first time... It didn't need a band aid, it needed stitches!!!

I really thought she nearly cut the tip of her thumb off. Although I say this only having seen half the cut... What I didn't know was it was a lot more shallow then it looked at first. So off we were to the emergency room. Lucky for us there was only one person in the waiting room with us. So the wait wouldn't be that long right?

Well it only took them a half hour to get us to the HAZMAT room in the ER... It was like going to a hotel and being put in the broom closet. I was really wondering how much doctoring they were going to do in here. Anyhow not long after we got there we had a nurse like person come in and give my wife gauze. He also made sure to tell us some really gross and nasty stories to make sure we knew it could have been worse... If my wife would have been retarded and using a grinder, instead of intelligent and fighting Kung Fu Oranges.

2 hours after that, a doctor showed up to sew her thumb back on... Well not really. It really wasn't that big of a cut, it was deep however and it would not stop bleeding. No slight to my wife, as she had every right to be in pain over this, but I had NO IDEA that her threshold for pain was so low. I felt really bad for her and would have gladly went through this whole thing for her. The look on her face while they sowed her up was so heart breaking . Up to this point I had done my best to keep her entertained and laughing... But I couldn't do much during this part of our visit to the hospital to distract her. .

So after she was all stitched up and cleaned up, we got to go home.

The moral of the story? No idea.

-We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.
Alan Watts

So last night with the sudden change of venue and everyone's lack of ambition to play supers... We stopped the campaign. I think it was a combination of the D20 Super Heroes rules being overly complex, my lack of prep time leading to some really sub par sessions and the hectic environment that all lead to us not caring to play it anymore. It happens. I'm glad we are not playing it anymore, I really wasn't into it. Which tends to be a problem when your the one running the game.

I'm not sure what we are going to be replacing it with... I think it will be something with Vampires in it. Not sure what it will be though. I do however know I wont be running it.. And at this point that's a very good thing.

-The first condition of immortality is death.
Stanislaw J. Lec (1909 - 1966), "Unkempt Thoughts"

http://www.quotationspage.com/

Check this out. Its something I plan to use for the blog.

-The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Tonight we are playing Silver Age Sentinels tonight. [ My Supers Site ]
[Official SAS Site] I'm running the game, and while its not my favorite system mechanically... I do like Super heroes, so its over all ok. I think we may have too may people playing, although I don't know how we could have less. I work best with 2 to 4 people if I am running a game. Add in the fact that some people don't have a clue what to do, and others are very take charge... And in my eyes we have an imbalance in GM attention.

Anyhow...

The game tonight should be interesting. The group is going to face a foe (Juggy) that is far beyond them in power, but if they pick out his weakness and exploit that... they will win. Also and while this may seem like a rough first big encounter for them, its really just opening up something larger. They already have pieces of whats to come though. However like all players they are bastards... They can and will wreck a carefully planned gaming session by doing things you don't expect. I better start planning for the worst. Like... will they jump ahead of where I want them to be in the story. Its VERY possible. Hmm maybe I will make a flow chat...

I'll post about how the session went tomorrow.

Thats how it feels, like I am paddling up stream. For the 1, 2, 3, 4... 4th day in a row work is having networking issues. Part of my job involves an application that is net based. Its all internal but it does require the network to work properly. It would be stellar if they could get things working today... but I think its going to be an all week sort of thing. Faith is not something I have for the folks runnnig the network.

The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
James Baldwin (1924 - 1987)

www.battlestargalactica.com
www.scifi.com/battlestar

I watched the BSG mini series last night, and I really liked it. Now granted I have never seen the original 70's series, so I probably don't feel the same disgust that many do, but that's ok. I liked the program last night for what it was, not for that the show used to be. I really hope they make that a regular series.

-Make it so

I went to a Work Christmas Dinner last night and got talking to one of the guys there about the games we play. Poor guy doesn't have a regular game, or regular game group. Anyhow he used to play Mage by White Wolf, so at least he is on the right track. I have only played Mage once at a convention [GENCON] and I had a pretty good time with it.

Anyhow I wanted to talk about the games I am currently playing. Some folks on this blogs list what music they are listening to at the time... I am going to list games.

I am currently playing Final Fantasy XI, and Space Empires IV . FFXI is new and hot. One of the best looking games I have ever played. Not sure its the most fun though, as its hard sometime to find good groups of other people to play with you.

On the Table top I am playing Bloodbowl, which is sort of a Fantasy Football game. Although in this case Fantasy means Orcs, Trolls and Dwarves! I'll talk more about this is later posts. The other game I am playing... Err running is Silver Age Sentinels. Its a super hero role playing game. Currently the group is about to square off against Juggernaut and hit friend Black Tom. Links to the websites for both games are to the left.

I am also very into the game Exalted . Although I am neither running it nor am I playing it at this time. I was running the game for almost 2 years, but put the game on hold this summer. I would like to start it back up at some point but Supers has to run its coarse first. I have been using my Exalted time off to think of things that we can do to further the story, keep it more local to the south and still feel epic. More large scale battles, more politics and more saving the world.

I also have been trying to think of some short stories to write about the setting. I have some ideas about a power mad God Blooded who is leading a nation in his Solar fathers absence. The story would tell the tale of the fathers return, alone with his Sidereal advisor, and how the Solar deals with his sons folly. The story will be told from the point of view of the Sidereal advisor though, and that really will be the catch. The Sidereal might get some ideas on how to deal with the Solars as the great curse embraces them.

- Sailing the Seas of Cheese

First Real Post on the Blog. Welcome to the 00's? It feels like I am now part of some whole new class of computer user. Some new brand of geek. Maybe I am getting a bit too excited about this blog. Well it does seem to be the new rage.

rage ( P )
n.

Violent, explosive anger. See Synonyms at anger.
A fit of anger.
Furious intensity, as of a storm or disease.
A burning desire; a passion.
A current, eagerly adopted fashion; a fad or craze: when torn jeans were all the rage.

I guess someone can be upset over Blogs. They seem to be used by the techno savvy and as a group I would say the Techno savvy are a pretty sarcastic group... So if you were the target of our sarcasm... I can see where the rage comes in.

Anyhow this is more or less just a place for me to vent and rant about the stupid things I see every day. That sounds alittle negative... its a place for me to talk about nothing at all. Good now I sound more like Sienfeld. Hmm maybe I will change the name of the blog to.. A Blog about nothing. Sounds like a winner.