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My dice finally arived yesterday. Actually, they got here much sooner than I expected. Right now I'm looking at the honkin-huge d20 sitting on top of my monitor. This thing is heavy! It doesn't roll very well, but I got it for the novelty more than anything.
In honor of this wonderous arrival, I give you one of my favorite Penny Arcade strips: The Skills!
This past Sunday, I got some play time in on Neverwinter Nights. I started going through a fan-made set of modules called Shadowlords. The story and pacing is excellent. I just wish they had put more time and thought into creating the interior areas.
A tip for DMs: please, Please, PLEASE leave out the pop culture references! You may think it's cute and funny, but it's rather jarring once you've gotten involved in a story and fantasy world.
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With all the extra work I'm doing, the days are all running together. Every so often, I get momentarily confused about what day it is--very disorienting. It's Tuesday, right? Yes, it is.
There have now been 4 episodes of the new Doctor Who so far. Wow, it's been a month since the first episode. It doesn't seem that long ago--my brain is spinning. Anyway, I want to give my thoughts about the new series. [Possible spoilers, so skip the next paragraphs if you haven't seen the new series yet.]
Episode 1, Rose, is awfully fast-paced. I understand having to appeal to the current generation, but this is a bit much. The Doctor is played very ably by Chris Eccleston, and any "off" moments he had could easily be attributed to the 9th Doctor's personality.
Episode 2, The End of the World, is much better than the first one. Unlike the first episode, it feels a little more like the the old series with latex-suit aliens and the like. The special effects are up to movie standards--just incredible. But, I still can't belive that they had the nerve to play a Brittney Spears song and call it a classic! Crap like that will not survive 5 BILLION years. I also have a hard time believing that a jukebox from the 50's would survive all that time--they should have explained it as a re-creation. It seems Gallifrey is long gone--destroyed in a war of some sort. Sadly this means that Romana, K9 Mark I, Leela and her consort, the Castellan, and the rest of the Time Lords are long gone. How very sad.
Episode 3, The Unquiet Dead, is solid gold and classic Who. I normally don't care for historical stories, but this episode is incredible--really great characters and a couple of neat/interesting twists at the end. I really liked Gwyneth--she was neat. Doctor Who is definitely back!
Episode 4, Aliens of London, is the worst so far. The Doctor says at one point, "Leave the domestics outside", or something like that. I wish this series would leave the domestics outside. Also, the alien "revelation" was a real shock. At first I couldn't believe that they'd think we'd accept THAT as a real alien. Thankfully, they explained it very well. Still, it was a shock at first. The worst of the episode was the real aliens. The juvenile crap they pulled while in "human" form really brought the series to a new low. Hopefully next week's episode will rise above these things, but we'll see.
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Wow, I haven't posted anything in a while. I usually like to post every Monday during lunch, but work has been crazy busy lately and has prevented me from doing so. I've also been working Saturdays, but this too shall pass once we get this big project done.
Did I mention that Minute Maid: Low Acid orange juice is like the best drink, ever?
Carolaina gave me a little bit of spending money, so I ordered some dice & stuff. I could really use the dice bag, but I got the honkin-huge d20 and the 3-in-1 d6's just for the novelty. Ah, Dungeons & Dragons, how I love thee.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get with Anthony lately to play D&D because of my busy work schedule. This also means that I haven't played any of my video games much lately.
I'm really looking forward to Pioneer Days up in Melbourne. Carolaina's dad's side of the family gets together there during that weekend (May 7th this year) and enjoys each other's company and the festival events. It's always so peaceful and (relatively) quiet up there at her Grammie's house.
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orange juice is liquid sunshine (Thursday, March 31, 2005 - 12:21:39 PM)
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I'm feeling really good this morning. I walked on the treadmill twice as long as I usually do and it's made quite the difference.
I heard on NPR news this morning that Terri Schiavo has finally died. After hearing all sides of the argument and reading a PDF of the report of a "Guardian Ad Litem" (whatever that is) assigned to try and work out the differences between the family and husband, I came to realize that it's the height of human arrogance to try and extend life beyond what we're meant to have. If God intends for it to be my time to go, I would hope that the doctors and my family would respect that. If we can ever find an impartial witness, I'll be signing one of those living wills. I will even write more on it to make it abundantly clear that I do NOT want my body kept alive if I'm brain-dead and already gone. I believe that Mrs. Schiavo had been "technically" dead for quite some time. The reports of MANY doctors showed that she had somewhere between 60% to 90% brain damage (most of her brain had even liquified!)--she was long gone with no "recovery" possible. It's just sad that her biological family couldn't come to terms with that fact. If one court after another tells you NO, don't you think that you could maybe... possibly... be wrong? Just a thought.
After 4 am this morning, something set off all the dogs in the neighborhood. Before long, like a nuclear fission reaction, they continued barking because they were feeding off of each other's hysteria. They finally quit about an hour later. It's a good thing I don't have a gun. If I did, I would have been seriously tempted to wear all black, sneak out into the neighborhood and permanently teach all those dogs the value of SILENCE. I have to remind myself that most dogs are big, dumb doofuses that just don't know any better--much like the backwoods, redneck population of Arkansas!
I watched the first episode of the new Doctor Who series over the weekend. They seem to have gotten it mostly right. My only gripe was that the show was too fast-paced. I understand having to appeal to a modern audience, but do we really need to the ADD, 2-second, quick shots? That kind of thing only perpetuates short attention spans. Also, the show had it's story finish within the one episode. Most story arcs in the old shows would take at least 4 episodes to go through. I prefer a story to unfold slowly--more dramatic and mysterious that way. There's hope, though: I'd read that most episodes in the new series would be two-part stories, with a few going to three episodes. The new, 9th Doctor reminded me at times of the 4th (Tom Baker) Doctor's manic energy and at other times of the 5th (Peter Davison) Doctor's quiet resilience.
UPDATE [12:41 PM]: I've just read that Christopher Eccleston (who plays the Doctor in the new series) has decided to quit the role! His last appearance will be in a Christmas special. I guess we shouldn't get too attached to the 9th, because the 10th will be here before you know it. What a shame!
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Happy Birthday to Me! (Monday, March 21, 2005 - 12:42:49 PM)
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Today is my birthday! Happy to me! At 5:56 this morning, I turned 31 years of age. At that moment, I think I was laying in bed waiting for the alarm clock to go off.
Over the weekend, Anthony, his wife and their baby boy, Chase, came over to celebrate my coming birthday. I was in the kitchen all morning cooking for the event. Anthony had mentioned a couple of weeks ago that he had missed the jumbalaya I had always made. So, I cooked that and made the wookie-cookies again for us all. All that chopping and meat-cutting made my hand sore, but it was well worth it.
Anthony got me an anime movie Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. It was as excellent as I was expecting, since its a pre-Studio Ghibli film by Hayao Miyazaki. When I got here to work this morning, I found that Andrew had given me his old Atari 7800 system and games! Woohooo!!
Now for a bit of local news: Early Wednesday morning, a building here in downtown Little Rock burned down. It was the old Mosaic Templars of America building. I had worked on the page for it on the Arkansas Heritage website a couple of years ago, and it's really sad to see such a bit of history lost like this. I took this photo of the building's remains from the top of the Met Bank building's parking deck (formerly the TCBY building) Friday morning.
I took this picture of Hobbes on Friday morning before I left for work. He has certainly grown a LOT since I took the first picture of him back in late October (right after we first got him). He is as cute as he can be, but he's also getting into everything. Yesterday morning, we caught him up on the table eating green beans off of Carolaina's plate. We had only turned our backs for a moment. That kitten will eat anything--whether it falls to the floor or not!
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