That's not what it sounds like. Actually, "parade" is referring to another kind entirely (a band wagon, to be precise), but the word "parade" made me think "ha, remember the ass parade?", which I did, and here we are. But speaking of ass parades, I was sexiled (being evicted from one's dorm room so one's roommate can have a 'friend' over) again last weekend and ended up in the dorm I often do when sexiled. Ok, by often I mean twice, but both times I've been there to sleep on someone's floor, loads of people from that very same floor are in the same predicament as me (luckily, we haven't been forced to fight over floor space yet). I'm convinced that this dorm has an eery ability to get ass, and therefore has a very respectable refugee per capita rate. I wouldn't be surprised to see tents thrown up in their common room or choppers dropping off water and pillows for the sexiled natives.
The parade I meant to talk about is the 'I'm in college and therefore are going to be constantly excited about the next awesome concert' parade. Everyone does it because everyone seems to have an uncanny read of the indie music scene. Everyone here knows about loads of obscure bands I've never heard of, and I feel very left out. But now it's time to strike back! If fate smiles on me, I'll be heading to two Dispatch remnants, State Radio and Braddigan to kick off my Thanksgiving break. Plans to do this just came to my attention tonight, and six tracks into Year Of The Crow, I'm already giddy with excitement.
Good thing that ass thing came up, otherwise this would've been a pretty lame post.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Tryptophan High And Karmic Frosting
I think I was abducted by aliens in my sleep last night, it's the only way to explain why I was so tired this morning. Don't look at me like that, I've seen that episode of Star Trek where the crew is being dragged into sub-space while they sleep so weird aliens can run experiments on them. More to point, I took an innocent late morning nap (it was really more of a mid-morning wake up to do my homework anti-nap) during math today. When I woke up I didn't have enough time or appetite to go to lunch, no big deal. As it turns out, today was 'decorate your own cookie bar' day. WTF?! First of all, how out of character is it to have a cookie decorating bar, and second, WHY ON THE ONE DAY I SLEEP THROUGH LUNCH?!
Yeah...rub it in.
Yeah...rub it in.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Multiples Of Twelve
One of my dreams has come true. It was a dream largely inspired by this, but I have spent most of my life looking forward to it. What is this dream? To play Dungeons and Dragons with a legitimate group.
It's no surprise that any college would have such a group, and last Friday* I was lucky enough to find them. Disclaimer: despite the criticism that's about to follow, I still think I'm lucky to be in this group, think they're awesome, and am really looking forward to our next session.
Before we'd rolled a single die, I started to get the feeling this wasn't going to be the utopia I'd been imagining. The first hang-up was that our DM ("dungeon master" for you noobs, the most important person at any playing session) didn't go to our college. Apparently the guy organizing things here knew him from home, and figured it would be easier to play with an absent DM than find a new one? Um...okay. The next oddity to arise was that no one seemed to know anything about computers. What the hell kind of nerds was I playing with? (Also, how did they expect to pull off this absentee DM thing without any modern telecommunication expertise?). The problem was solved by yours truly who had to walk them through getting Skype accounts so we could talk to our DM through a better system than the speakerphone mode on cell phones.
Another disclaimer: if you don't know anything about D&D, much of the rest of this won't make any sense. Hopefully my righteous rage and geekiness will be funny anyways.
One of the very first steps in creating a character to play is getting their "ability scores" (these include strength, dexterity, intelligence, etc). There are six in all, each requiring a number between 3 and 18, which is gotten from rolling dice (specifically, rolling a typical six-sided die three times, or 3D6 as we say in the biz). The method I usually use involves rolling four dice and discarding the lowest to ensure that my character isn't totally impaired. The people I was playing with would roll the typical 3D6 six times, then discarded the lowest five. For each score. The result was awesome ability scores and, in turn, tons of bonuses for pretty much everything.
The kicker came at the end of our session, when our DM awarded us all a level up (for one, that's way too fast, plus he obviously didn't judge the quality of our play separately). On top of that, he doled out random magical weapons as rewards. I hate that. Enchanted weapons are not for new characters, nor should they be treated as trinkets without cool backstories. These silly, generic +1 weapons are just there to make characters a little better but not more interesting. Grr.
This approach is something typical of what we call a "munchkin". Munchkins are people who want to have extremely powerful characters 1) without having 'earned' it, and 2) at the expense of good role playing. Both of these things are anathema to me ("anathema" is my word of the month so I've been dying to use it, I'm not sure if this is right though...). I have a massive pet peeve about getting things you don't deserve (in life in general), and have an even massiver (yeah, I said it) peeve about D&D characters doing it. Having a weak character sucks, but you should have to go through it to help build their character and learn to appreciate power when you get it. That's my take anyways.
When I first started playing D&D, I was very young. My immaturity led to "slasher" campaigns that had nothing but fighting. As I grew out of that and towards the role-playing side of the spectrum, I developed a disdain for anyone who played slasher style games. Hence more munchkin hating. I don't hold all this against most of the people there because they're new and don't know better, but the other two I have a bit of a problem with. Knowing me, this is going to result in my chafing against all munchkiny things, so my character will suck in comparison.
*I know today is Friday, but I started writing this post on Tuesday or some such
It's no surprise that any college would have such a group, and last Friday* I was lucky enough to find them. Disclaimer: despite the criticism that's about to follow, I still think I'm lucky to be in this group, think they're awesome, and am really looking forward to our next session.
Before we'd rolled a single die, I started to get the feeling this wasn't going to be the utopia I'd been imagining. The first hang-up was that our DM ("dungeon master" for you noobs, the most important person at any playing session) didn't go to our college. Apparently the guy organizing things here knew him from home, and figured it would be easier to play with an absent DM than find a new one? Um...okay. The next oddity to arise was that no one seemed to know anything about computers. What the hell kind of nerds was I playing with? (Also, how did they expect to pull off this absentee DM thing without any modern telecommunication expertise?). The problem was solved by yours truly who had to walk them through getting Skype accounts so we could talk to our DM through a better system than the speakerphone mode on cell phones.
Another disclaimer: if you don't know anything about D&D, much of the rest of this won't make any sense. Hopefully my righteous rage and geekiness will be funny anyways.
One of the very first steps in creating a character to play is getting their "ability scores" (these include strength, dexterity, intelligence, etc). There are six in all, each requiring a number between 3 and 18, which is gotten from rolling dice (specifically, rolling a typical six-sided die three times, or 3D6 as we say in the biz). The method I usually use involves rolling four dice and discarding the lowest to ensure that my character isn't totally impaired. The people I was playing with would roll the typical 3D6 six times, then discarded the lowest five. For each score. The result was awesome ability scores and, in turn, tons of bonuses for pretty much everything.
The kicker came at the end of our session, when our DM awarded us all a level up (for one, that's way too fast, plus he obviously didn't judge the quality of our play separately). On top of that, he doled out random magical weapons as rewards. I hate that. Enchanted weapons are not for new characters, nor should they be treated as trinkets without cool backstories. These silly, generic +1 weapons are just there to make characters a little better but not more interesting. Grr.
This approach is something typical of what we call a "munchkin". Munchkins are people who want to have extremely powerful characters 1) without having 'earned' it, and 2) at the expense of good role playing. Both of these things are anathema to me ("anathema" is my word of the month so I've been dying to use it, I'm not sure if this is right though...). I have a massive pet peeve about getting things you don't deserve (in life in general), and have an even massiver (yeah, I said it) peeve about D&D characters doing it. Having a weak character sucks, but you should have to go through it to help build their character and learn to appreciate power when you get it. That's my take anyways.
When I first started playing D&D, I was very young. My immaturity led to "slasher" campaigns that had nothing but fighting. As I grew out of that and towards the role-playing side of the spectrum, I developed a disdain for anyone who played slasher style games. Hence more munchkin hating. I don't hold all this against most of the people there because they're new and don't know better, but the other two I have a bit of a problem with. Knowing me, this is going to result in my chafing against all munchkiny things, so my character will suck in comparison.
*I know today is Friday, but I started writing this post on Tuesday or some such
Monday, October 08, 2007
With My Head Under Water
I blame my recent hiccup in post frequency on my being home too much lately, which is my fault, so ultimately that's not an excuse. Whatever. The point is, I have spent the last two weekends back here instead of at college. The reason for this is a combination of bad timing and bad planning (respectively), and so far I lack any good stories regarding being back. Hence the lack of posts. Mostly my time has been taken up with dealing with specters from the past and this new spin on the concept of "moving on". Wouldn't we all love to believe that the moment we left something, a place, a person, anything that was an important part of our lives, that it would all fall apart in our absence. Not out of malice, but we want to feel as if we were vital, and that people would really miss us. Evidently, this is not the case. Life marches on with a disturbing lack of grief and it takes old teachers a minute to realize you even left. Old friends make new friends who seem to replace you, maybe only because you're all too scared to admit you miss each other. Nostalgia becomes a sign of weakness because no one wants to be the one who hasn't moved on.
About a month ago, a friend of a couple of my classmates killed himself. I never met him, never even herd of him before, but I've thought about him a lot lately. It was totally unexpected; he was well liked by everyone, perfectly happy. Then he went off to a very respectable college, fell into deep depression, and was found dead in his family's vacation home. Now, if you look through the facebook profiles of his friends, he's in virtually every one. The whole town has a backdrop of sadness. It's a familiar feeling; it comes up every time local high schoolers die, but never like this.
No one knows why he did it. No one was there. I can't imagine any of the friends he made in his brief time in college knew him well enough to see what was wrong, and of course everyone from back home had been scattered across the country. Now they're all left to wonder and try to find some solace in their shared, if distantly, grief.
Life marches on. That must be what they hope for each of their old friends now. 'Who cares if they forgot me, as long as they're doing alright'. Maybe dying is the best way to get remembered; it's hard for their lives to march on when you just took your own?
Suicide is a waste of opportunities to live. Wasting opportunities is like suicide. Carpe diem.
About a month ago, a friend of a couple of my classmates killed himself. I never met him, never even herd of him before, but I've thought about him a lot lately. It was totally unexpected; he was well liked by everyone, perfectly happy. Then he went off to a very respectable college, fell into deep depression, and was found dead in his family's vacation home. Now, if you look through the facebook profiles of his friends, he's in virtually every one. The whole town has a backdrop of sadness. It's a familiar feeling; it comes up every time local high schoolers die, but never like this.
No one knows why he did it. No one was there. I can't imagine any of the friends he made in his brief time in college knew him well enough to see what was wrong, and of course everyone from back home had been scattered across the country. Now they're all left to wonder and try to find some solace in their shared, if distantly, grief.
Life marches on. That must be what they hope for each of their old friends now. 'Who cares if they forgot me, as long as they're doing alright'. Maybe dying is the best way to get remembered; it's hard for their lives to march on when you just took your own?
Suicide is a waste of opportunities to live. Wasting opportunities is like suicide. Carpe diem.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
LaserJet Blues
Security is important, but at some point it becomes too much. When I sat down at this computer (which is in the IT center), I had to enter my username and password to use it. Fair enough. To access my school e-mail, I entered the same username and password. To get into my Japanese class' site, I had to enter it again. Yeah, again. Then I had to print some writing paper, and we get charged for printing stuff so guess what: username and password again. It's not even different accounts, it's all my school account. Why can't I just be logged into everything (maybe not e-mail, that I can accept redundancy on) when I access the computer itself? And guess what? I also had to print a paper, which required that username and password four more times.
Why four? Well, the first time I printed it, I only got the first three pages. Hm. I tried printing the last seven (don't be impressed, most of it is data tables) and it didn't print anything, just the coversheet telling me I'd been charged 35 cents for the seven pages I didn't get. Fuck. So I tried again, and got the last four pages. The last four?! What the fuck? How does that happen, after I got the first three before? AHHRG. The fourth try, thankfully, was successful, and now I have my paper, after entering that stupid password eight times. Sigh...
Why four? Well, the first time I printed it, I only got the first three pages. Hm. I tried printing the last seven (don't be impressed, most of it is data tables) and it didn't print anything, just the coversheet telling me I'd been charged 35 cents for the seven pages I didn't get. Fuck. So I tried again, and got the last four pages. The last four?! What the fuck? How does that happen, after I got the first three before? AHHRG. The fourth try, thankfully, was successful, and now I have my paper, after entering that stupid password eight times. Sigh...
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Staphylococcus On Rye
Today is a French day, or at least a little bit of a French day. I don't know why they happen, but ever since I stopped taking French classes, I occasionally have days when a fair amount of my thoughts end up being expressed in French. I was thinking "je suis tres malade" on my way to Japanese class this morning (my disease has shifted from impairing my voice back to making me cough up a lung).
On a totally unrelated note, I was thinking about movies that suck today and happened upon this thought: everyone always says we need more than one word for "love" in order to distinguish between filial love, romantic love, friendship, etc. I disagree. While I admit to all those being very different, I don't think they should be distinguished between any more. My theory is that a person only has so much deep emotional commitment that they are able to give at any one time. For example, if a girl is really tight with her parents, then she won't be as committed to her boyfriend because it might take away from her relationship with her parents. Or if someone has a really crazy close friendship, and one of them starts dating, that friendship is going to suffer because all of a sudden emotional commitment is going elsewhere.
Think abut the Oedipus complex. Aren't we all supposed to be competing with our fathers for the affection of our mothers, even though the nature of our relationship with her if different than our father's?
On a totally unrelated note, I was thinking about movies that suck today and happened upon this thought: everyone always says we need more than one word for "love" in order to distinguish between filial love, romantic love, friendship, etc. I disagree. While I admit to all those being very different, I don't think they should be distinguished between any more. My theory is that a person only has so much deep emotional commitment that they are able to give at any one time. For example, if a girl is really tight with her parents, then she won't be as committed to her boyfriend because it might take away from her relationship with her parents. Or if someone has a really crazy close friendship, and one of them starts dating, that friendship is going to suffer because all of a sudden emotional commitment is going elsewhere.
Think abut the Oedipus complex. Aren't we all supposed to be competing with our fathers for the affection of our mothers, even though the nature of our relationship with her if different than our father's?
Monday, October 01, 2007
It's Funny Until Someone Gets A Hole In Their Throat
A combination of sickness and yelling rendered me almost totally speechless over the weekend (I can talk now, it just sounds funny). After cheering as best I could through two races on Saturday, my ability to speak just vanished to the point that I would start statements in an ugly, raspy whisper that would trail to "fuck" as I couldn't finish a single sentence. Until this morning, I've been communicating in a whisper interrupted by smoker-like coughing fits. Two people have been very sympathetic. Everyone else has laughed at me mercilessly.
I came across a breakthrough yesterday when I found that, if I pressed me hand against my throat in a certain way, I could talk louder. The practice was short lived because I was afraid I was damaging my trachea in some way, but while it lasted I looked like one of those post-op smokers who has to hold something to their throat in order to talk. I was amused. Actually, I found the whole thing amusing for the first couple hours. At this point I'm, sick of it. Thankfully, I'm bouncing back well and hopefully should be close to normal by tomorrow's IM soccer game, during which I may well lose my voice again.
Speaking of soccer, I had another (nearly) two hours of practice today, probably giving me the title for most practice by any IM soccer player. I think I take silly little things, like IM soccer, more seriously than (allegedly) important things, like classes. Oh well, I figure there's people counting on me to give them a fighting chance in our games, so I better not disappoint. Plus, soccer (even getting my ass kicked in goal) is fun, and I've heard that's a good thing. First game is tomorrow, time to get PUMPED.
I came across a breakthrough yesterday when I found that, if I pressed me hand against my throat in a certain way, I could talk louder. The practice was short lived because I was afraid I was damaging my trachea in some way, but while it lasted I looked like one of those post-op smokers who has to hold something to their throat in order to talk. I was amused. Actually, I found the whole thing amusing for the first couple hours. At this point I'm, sick of it. Thankfully, I'm bouncing back well and hopefully should be close to normal by tomorrow's IM soccer game, during which I may well lose my voice again.
Speaking of soccer, I had another (nearly) two hours of practice today, probably giving me the title for most practice by any IM soccer player. I think I take silly little things, like IM soccer, more seriously than (allegedly) important things, like classes. Oh well, I figure there's people counting on me to give them a fighting chance in our games, so I better not disappoint. Plus, soccer (even getting my ass kicked in goal) is fun, and I've heard that's a good thing. First game is tomorrow, time to get PUMPED.
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