One of my co-workers passed away today. He was only 59, and suffered a series of strokes. He leaves behind a wife and two boys. It makes me think about my mortality, but as a friend of mine pointed out, "Life Life Full Throttle." I like that.

RIP, Dan.

Tonight I will be babysitting my daughter, while my son is camping, and my wife is out. The rules for this evening are simple:
1) I will drink at least two drinks of the highest vote
2) I will count the votes at 1700 EST
3) Votes will be cast either in comments here, or on Facebook, or @ replies on Twitter
4) If I have to buy a bottle that costs more than $40, the drink is disqualified (however, I already have an extensive collection of different liquors at home)

That's pretty much it.

What should I drink tonight?

I had to generate a new key... it's been signed by my previous keys, and my signing key. Here it is for all the paranoid.


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also at http://www.linuxcowboy.org/~slacker/slacker.asc
fingerprint: AE22 3C4A 1449 39CD 4F67 F351 DC7A 55F8 F328 2827

Beck (18)
Red Hot Chili Peppers (12)
CAKE (11)
Radiohead (10)
Jane's Addiction (9)

I used to joke with my wife that I thought that our son wasn't really mine, but if it were mathematically possible to be 1000% sure of something, then I'm sure that he's my boy.

During the course of teaching and playing Dungeons and Dragons with my son, I dumped out my dice bag into the tray and started sorting the sets. Tobias then pipes up, "I like sorting things... Why do you keep them all in one bag instead of separating them?" This caught me off guard, because I like sorting things as well. I had to analyze my actions before responding, "If I do it this way, then I get the fun of sorting EVERY time that I pull out the dice."

I know, it's mundane, but that kid cracks me up, and frustrates me all at the same time. It's like what I've always said... If I ever met my own clone, I'd want to kick my own ass, and then buy myself a beer.

Saturday, I started the youngin's on a 0-level adventure. Here's the after-action report.

We had 5 players, and myself DM'ing. The Boy and I setup the table (though, we didn't find my battlemat until after everyone had left), and the first guests started showing up around 1145. All of the parents were VERY cool with the idea, which was refreshing. I was a bit concerned about the reaction, being in such a small, semi-rural town, but then remembered that the parents of the kids my son goes to school with, probably played D&D in the 80's with their parent's expecting devil worship to come out of it. I think that one of the dads is going to roll up a character, too!

The level of excitement was through the roof, and make me smile the entire time. The fact that these boys had been talking about this ALL WEEK at school, at home, calling each other on the phone and plotting character devices, deciding how they could best find traps, etc., made my job as DM super-fun.

Once everyone had arrived, I made sure that everyone had a set of dice, and they picked out minis from the massive pile I bought at Game Parlor on Friday. I had already built them characters, and explained a bit on how character creation works, so now it was time for a few examples on when to roll, what to roll, and what it all meant. A few rounds of mock combat followed, then explaining the difference between ranged and melee weapons, and pointing out to the player running the barbarian, that while he CAN throw his battleaxe, it's going to be a lot harder to hit the target unless he rolls very high.

The module they're going through, is one of Goodman Games Dungeon Crawl Classics, entitled "Legends are Made, not Born". Starting off the proverbial tavern, they got a bit distracted on deciding what type of booze to buy, and insisted that they be served meade. Unfortunately, the tavern only had ale, as the town of Dundraville has it's own brewery. Once we got the rumors out of the way, and they learned a bit about ROLE playing, they headed west to the ogre's cave, for some serious ROLL playing.

Saturday was a GORGEOUS day, and I wasn't going to keep these energetic 10 & 11 year-olds inside the whole time, so we did take breaks fairly regularly, so they could go get the boffer swords, and run around outside, all of them in a barbarian rage (even if they were other classes).

Around 1430, we lost our first player to karate class. His mother was again, very cool, and asked when the next session would be. It seemed that all of the fathers had played before, and were excited that their sons had access to the creative outlet that is role-playing games. One commented that they wished that their older son had been into it, but they never had anyone to DM games for them.

I loaned The Boy my copy of Dungeon Mastering for Dummies, and told him to read it through, so that he can try his hand at running a game. I would love to pass the gaming torch on, and I hope that their excitement level stays high, before they get too old, and real-life gets in the way of being able to game.

I also can't wait for the next session. I think we're shooting for the first weekend of April. They still have to kill off the ***** and the *******.

I'm getting a bit excited...

My son had a sleepover this weekend, and his friend noticed one of my Dungeons and Dragons posters on the wall. This started a line of questions about my favored character type, and pretty quickly had me asking the two of them if they wanted me to run a game for them.

We spent the next few hours building characters for the two of them, and once they both had plenty of rope in their backpacks, they kept pestering me to play... I have some really low level modules, but they are all geared toward parties of six or more, so I put it off until this coming weekend, and told them to recruit more players at school.

I'm happy to announce that they now have a full party of six, and it's pretty well rounded:

  • Klarcke - Level 1, half-elf cleric, NG (played by my Boy)
  • Clupix - Level 1, gnome rogue, CG (played by the Instigator)
  • Badush - Level 1, half-orc barbarian, CG (I've been informed that this player wants to also be a wizard, which would be a cool multiclass)
  • Leo - Level 1, elf ranger, CG
  • Benjamin Prospel - Level 1, human wizard, LG
  • Aaron - Level 1, half-elf fighter, TN
Those are the character names, in case there was any confusion. I'm also very pleased to note, that my son figured out some cool things I'm going to work into the plot, just from reading the character sheet. He noted the "Languages Spoken" section, and goaded two of his friends into the elven races, so that they could have "private" conversations.

I've run him through at least one dungeon crawl, but I never taught him that stuff. I'm going to have to make sure that I use that as a plot device.

I'm just now realizing that it's literally been years since I DM'ed a game, and I've got a lot of work to do before Saturday. This is some work that I'll definitely enjoy.

I've never been much of a writer... In fact, I've never been very creative. All of my creativity seems to stem from problem solving ability, which I'm sure has some fancy name, but to me, it's just, not creative.

I've been carrying around a pocket notebook for 4 years now, and I normally use it to jot down notes for work, funny quotes, set lists, network sketches, but I think I'm going to start using it to journal more. I doubt that any of what I write in there will make it to the Internet, but if I find that I get more witty by writing more, I may share some.

Maybe, it's that I've never really output any of my thoughts in any sort of organized fashion (or unorganized, for that matter) is why I feel I have no innate creativity, so maybe this will be a step forward.

As it stands now (which I can mostly do on my own) I think that breaking my ankle did something to my head as well. Not being able to fend for one's self is quite humbling. I've haven't had too many traumatic experiences in my 32 years, and this one was, far and away, a bad one.

Now I'm just rambling... Let's just stop now, and I'll concentrate on watching Spooks (MI-5), and wait for my better half to get home.

What's the strangest thing you've seen living out here in the relative sticks?

Well, since my folks were both from the sticks, not much has surprised me, but the strangest thing I have seen in Front Royal, was a pick-up truck, well used, with a rifle rack in the back window, and a slew of very left-wing bumperstickers. Front Royal seems to attract left-wing transplants, and the indigenous right-wing population. It's a great mix, in my opinion.

Ask me anything

It's a Sunday night, and I'm up for it.... Ask me anything http://formspring.me/lnxcwby


I know... that was a horrible pun.

I got the cast removed today, and I've got an Air Cast now. I am supposed to be able to start putting weight on it soon, and the doc reckons I may be able to drive my Subaru next week. THAT I am happy about.

I've found thatI have very little range of movement in my ankle, in fact less than I was expecting (though I didn't really know what to expect). I have maybe 5% of movement, moving my toes towards or away from my knee.

I do love the fact that I can have my foot FREE!

I also love the fact that I can STAND without my crutches, though I did make kind of an ass of myself while demonstrating this in the living room, where I dropped my crutches to the ground, directly out to the sides, then looked in dismay at how far away they were. Luckily, while my wife was laughing, my six year old daughter rescued me, and picked up the crutches.

I do still have a long way to go. I am going to be in this brace for at least 6 weeks.

That's all for today. I'm gonna go stretch my ankle out.

it's snowing, but I am nothing but scared of it. This broken ankle is really cramping my style.

also, this is my attempt to blog when I've been failing to do it, and just falling back to the Twitter.

I'm out of things to say for now, but I need a few more people to sign my cast. I want it to be full before they (hopefully) take it off on Tuesday.

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