A Window, A Light...

..today. Not that it was awful or anything, since it wasn't. Just... unimpressive. Maybe seeds from today will improve tomorrow. I guess there are worse things to hope for.

The deck prototype I worked on failed pretty awfully. It's still a seed of a clever idea, but it's not really anything close to good in its current incarnation. I slapped together something else, and I don't really like it. It's a quick win in theory, but I feel it has a glass jaw.

I've gotten home and it's pretty late, so I don't feel like I've got any time for any meaningful writing. Anything I put down would just be a token to appease my desire to write daily, but I'll probably do it to keep writing something consistently.

And tomorrow's Thursday, which is my easiest day. Plus, I've got some discounted cards coming in the mail, and I think I'm supposed to get my yearbook in (which leads to my driver's license, and I'm not sure if that's a story I've told yet here but that really is a whole different issue).

Have I said anything about Disney buying Marvel. I know it's old news, but I like to rehash that shit a bit because, hey, with new stuff happening every day, it's easy to forget something like that. Or maybe just easy for me. Anyway. There are people that are bent out of shape and people that are enthusiastic (and we geeks are usually pretty negative as a matter of course but...), then there are people like me who instantly realized that Wolverine can now fight along side Sora or whatever in Kingdom Hearts 3: Infinite Cash Franchise. I make a joke like that because KH does pretty much plant a money tree as it's basically just weird Disney/Square-Enix fan-fiction, but people eat it up. But hey, there's nothing wrong with fan-fiction in principle, and the games arn't too bad, so go crazy, Square.

If you like KH, don't tell me you're not dying to see Nightcrawler and Cyclops fighting with Squall, Cloud, and fucking Donald Duck. But seriously, our media has really become myth, and that is the only way this shit could ever happen. And that is something I am dying to research now that I've written down. It is never going to get out of my head.

My, what an exciting day today!
Ok, no. But it was ok. It was pretty good. On a day to day basis, you wouldn't expect a much better one.
I totally found some stools that were what I was looking for, except 6 inches too high. I can swap them out tomorrow, but the good news is that they add something to the space, and it was what I was hoping for, and have unlocked counter space in what may be the lamest in-game achievement ever.

The sad thing is that the is the only furniture I've bought since I got my coffee table, and I'm actually pretty excited about it. They, uh, will improve my quality of life. I wrapped up my evening with a Magic session at the card shop, where I didn't perform spectacularly. I didn't draft anything interesting and I didn't open anything great in my prize pack. (shrug)

Kingdom Hearts added itself to my 'completed titles' list today, and it ended kind of like I expected. (Especially considering that is has several sequels.) KH, like many Square games before it, has a fairly long end-game where you can re-visit zones for items, zip around in your spaceship, and fight bosses. I forwent all of that stuff, since it didn't promise to reveal anything but more levels and equipment. I've played a bunch of these games and have realized that you can blow through the end pretty easily if you want to, so there's no need for that kind of time sink. My speculation proved as accurate as I had guessed.

What to move on to? I guess it doesn't really matter, but I do have KH2, so I might as well. I'm going to skip on Chain of Memories. The plot isn't engaging enough to spend more money on a DS game when I can already guess how it goes.

Sadly, I don't have a Sat. PAX ticket, so I have to wait.

I do this very rarely. I've been juggling projects, so I feel like it might be good for me.

Active Projects:
Unnamed novel. - very rough draft, started
Unnamed Serial Experiments: Lain fiction - research, locating previous written work, layout, conceptual drafting
Tournament prep, R/G/B Standard - There's one Standard tournament, and I'm wanting to go. To that end, the deck is mostly finalized, but the project isn't over until I wrap it up or drop. 

Back-burner:
Layout for Dream, RPG - I just haven't done it. I'm rubbish with art, so I wanted to use some photos, but I've had to put those on the back burner as well until I fix my computer. Considering dropping all art, altogether. My concept for this is fragile. It's so generic that it's hard to associate art with it.
Structuring of NWoD Adventure - No real incentive. Just doing it for kicks. Briefly considered submission of project.
Exalted Game & Website - May move this up to an active project if the game looks like it'll become active again. Seems like a godd excuse to work on web design chops and writing.

Associated:
NExalted - Fan project that Brantai is working on. It's not even really for release, I don't guess, but if he finishes it, I suppose it may - may - be on a website. It's a game mashup. It's pretty wicked cool. He's busy and it's not really my vision, so I really only contribute when he brings it up. I don't think I'm currently associated with any other projects.

I've read a series of books this year. Maybe already 10 times what I read last year. If there's any interest at all, I might post a reading list. Allandros, from rpg.net, did on his LJ and it was interesting to me. I don't know how others feel. There were a bunch of books I borrowed though, and I can't remember all of those anymore. So I guess it's be a little sketchy.

No real reason for posting today. I just wanted to kind of write this out and see what I was really focusing on. I was going to limit it to paper journal, but I re-read and see these a little more and wanted to keep it in mind. It goes on LJ because this is my gaming-stuff and work blog. I mostly keep personal musing on Xanga, which I'm debating these days.

I felt like pulled a little too thin when I got off work today, so I settled in for a quiet night with a shower, eating some ice cream, and buying about 15 dollars worth of grab-bag material off a website for causal Magic decks. Things being what they are, I'm unlikely to do anything else productive tonight. Everything I got was just fun shit. Cheap, casual, and fun. Basically, if I'm going to blow a little cash on something like this, it's one of the perfect selections. I'm excited about getting my cardboard in the mail.

As long as I was online, I figured 'what the hell'. Someone at the game shop had encouraged me to invest in playing Vintage, which is just a Magic format that uses every set instead of the most recent ones. In the past, I played this format because I tended to buy newer packs and trade them when their value was at their highest for cards from older sets whose value were still accruing. In this way, I never acquired the most expensive cards, but I did get a substantial body of what you would consider 'must plays'. If you play Black, you must play Demonic Tutor. If you play Blue, you are running 4 Force of Will. Since I'm getting back into the game, I briefly considered pricing some of these must haves. Back in the day, I had a deck that would run these cards to good effect. I look at the price of Force of Will now and realize that I can get four beat up copies for just over a hundred dollars.

Swell. There is no way I am about to drop a hundred dollars on four cards right now, regardless of my love for the game.
The real shame is I had no idea how much the prices on these cards had gone up. I had traded for them specifically for that reason, but basically I would say that the value of that stolen binder has doubled by now. If I had it today and sold its contents online, I could probably pay off most of the rest of my car. (frowny face)

Well, such is life, right? I only killed about 10 minutes doing that, so it's not worth fretting about, but it is an interesting consideration. I hope the guy that stole those cards had the good sense to hold on to them and sell them now. You know what I bet, though? They got stole at Archon, so I bet the goon that did it played them without sleeves and they're all wrecked today. XD It's serve that person right!

I'm in desperate need of a haircut and a new wardrobe, but I'm going to have to settle for the former since I 'm short on paychecks this month. Things are going to pick right up starting July 1, though, meaning that I'm actually way ahead. It's a tough call between buying new clothing and paying more money off on the car, so I'll probably settle for some clothing I really like and then split the difference.  Tomorrow morning is hair cut day, and to beat traffic, I'm going into Issaquah for the game way early. I'm planning on maybe having lunch out then taking photos. I think I'm starting to get a decent eye, so I'm really looking forward to the practice.

In addition : Oh, I didn't realize I already had a photography tag. Neat.
Part 2 : Reading this over real quick, I noted that I never found out who stole my stuff, so I purposely tried to avoid assigning a gender to the thief. Obviously I slipped, though, because in the sentence right before I refer to said thief as 'guy'. So, there's your assumption of a male when no gender is known for ya.

Bought a small series of Magic cards online that I'd had a difficult time finding. The deck I'm playing now is a bit rubbish, but I'm really excited to see how it'll run once I get the new tech in for it.  Until I do, though, I get to set the cards aside and focus on some other stuff. It's not uncommon for me to have a few things I do at once, but I tend to obsess a bit, which doesn't actually lead to an increase in the quality of my work so it's a moot point.

I woke up feeling shitty, and it took some effort to get out of bed. Not wanting to talk to anyone doesn't bode well for a job in customer service, but I can't really afford to take time off and still accomplish the financial goals I've set for myself, so off I go. I've been getting more sleep lately, but I haven't been eating right, so I made sure I went off to the grocery today.

I've been spending more time on the internet then I want to, so aside from jotting my thoughts on occasion or a few other things which I actually need to do, I'm more or less taking some time off from it again. I was more productive and felt like I had more time before I spent my evenings on the glowing box, and I've just been defaulting to hanging out on forums by inertia.

There are several projects on the books. I haven't decided what my next one is. I'm cleaning house today, so plenty of think time.

I blew my weekend off to do whatever, and if you've got lots of things you want to accomplish, then I recommend it. The actual details of 'how' involve a stack of aluminum cans and a daunting amount of stacked cardboard which can be followed by checking the linked entry on my Facebook. It's true that I enjoy finding new ways to repeat myself, but I assume you wouldn't get anything out of that.

While it remains to be seen if I'll actually have the time to keep up with this kind of thing, I renewed my Cam membership (I hadn't actually realized it lapsed, but the point was moot) in the hopes of maybe playing the same old character or branching out. I feel like I have a few ideas I could bring to Requiem that'd be fun and I'm juggling concepts for Mage. There's something about that prick Atol that makes me want to return to his character, but I've had several concepts that keep popping up. Many of them seem surprisingly mundane, like I can't get past playing someone who was really steeped in being normal and things just became progressively weird about everything else.

Since I signed back up, I need to bring Atol back though, if only because I don't feel like he ever really got a resolution. Without going into it forever, he started off as a terrible character (not a bad person, just kind of two dimensional) and got better. Then I turned into a terrible player, which is something I've got my reasons for, anyway.

So yeah, I've sent out some messages, because my copy of my prestige is hopelessly corrupt and won't open. I had backed it up, but it seems I backed it up post-corruption, so that doesn't seem to do me any good. It was probably out of date, anyway. Without it, I don't have a record of any MC, which is tangenital, but irritating. If the VST Coordinator/Mage VST doesn't have records of it somewhere, I might have to bug Stephanie, who certainly isn't obligated to worry about it anymore, anyhow. It would be kind of funny to have this character from 2006 without any recorded playtime. My information in the CRD was very accurate until the reset, at which point I rely on it to have exactly nothing more then my starting point-buy. Even that doesn't look accurate to my recollections. 

I got a package from my father and picked up my booster box on Friday showering with years of collected bits of cardboard that I'm surprisingly excited about. I haven't felt this excited about Magic since before college.

My weekends are starting to get a little more busy. Friday was internet and gaming night, which went well. Mage: the Awakening played out almost exactly like a Guy Ritchie movie, featuring the protagonists and their cable of hard drinking ex-cops and cons named 'The Aristrocrats' (snap).
Today I was thinking of logging onto FFXI to play, because my internet is hooked back up, but I've decided to go out to the tournament again today because I didn't go yesterday and it's draft today. So, probably playing until 6, and then out to dinner at a randomized location.

Sunday is work and Monday is meeting up with a different group for Magic: the Gathering again. I know one or two guys from work and the rest I've never met before, but I got invited when I mentioned that I was getting back into it so it was as easy as that.

Magic players have always gotten kind of a bad rap. There certainly are skeezy ones, I won't even argue. And ones without social graces. But generally I've found them to be a pretty diverse and cool group of people. In many cases, it's as simple as bringing a deck and saying, "Hey, I'm here to play." In that regards, it's not unlike kindergarten. Pull up a chair, friend.

I'm really looking forward to the next Mage session. This one ended when I looked at one of the antagonists character sheets. It's Hideki Oki from the core book, and he's kind of a badass, but he's not a good magician. He's a troubled and mentally unbalanced killer, instead, so while nobody could tell who he was by scrying, he didn't expect someone to use magic and then cross reference a police database to check his plates. I gleefully told them he lived alone in a small apartment in Seattle, and they broke in silently. What followed busted me up.

After breaking in and rolling successful stealth checks, one of them decides the sleeping baddie needs to be unconcious, so he pistol whips him, doing a little damage and waking him up violently and turns on nightsight. The other guy decided to use a tactic he saw on television and start shouting at him to get up to disorient him while grappling, but he rolled his Composure + Resolve vs. Intimidate + Manipulation and avoided the grab. The third guy didn't have Stealth as a skill, so he was waiting in the hallway as backup. When he came in, he didn't realize that one of the characters is wearing what are effectively night vision goggles and flips the light, prompting everyone to groan and try to remain unfased.

The character that burst in, as he flips on the light, brings his pistol to bare and takes a shot at Hideki, whos' grazed, but spends a willpower to open the window and tumble out, knocking over a planter filled with mud and some sad looking ex-flowers. The dumpster diving corporate espionage guy grabs him through the windows and beats him about the neck and sholders, while captain nightsight is back on the ball and takes a quick shot (minus the penalty for cover) and puts a bullet through the killer's eye. Hideki tumbles back over the railing of his 5th floor apartment, setting of car alarms and angering stray cars and neighbors.

Queue cursing and frantic morality rolls, as one character is excited at the kill but dubious why he's rolling for a Morality 3 degeneration check while the others are trying to remember if they wanted to kill this guy or not, while looting the room for electronics or evidence. So, there's going to be a police chase next, probably, and it's going to be a riot at the Concilium meetings. I laughed my ass off.

So, here I am at work again. Where I was initially considering calling in sick, because I woke up fairly miserable, things cleared up pretty well after I sat up and moved about a little making me assume that it was mostly sinuses. Now, a fella' will want two days off in a row if he can get 'em, but failin' that, it's alright to go to work and get paid, so that's what I'm up to today.

Moving to this new shift almost put a moratorium on my gaming, but my players really came through. I'm always worried that I don't run a very good game, but if people didn't want to play, this really was the perfect time to say 'Well, that's the only day that's really available, so we'll have to stop." and nobody did, so that's kind of my indirect proof. My games are slowly getting better, and I've really learned that running games is a learned skill. So, Mage is this Friday and Exalted is next week.

I still don't have internet access at my place, and I'm still not worried by that. I haven't even made the call yet. Really, I feel like I'm taking a bit of a vacation from all that, even though there have been at least two moment where it would have been really useful to have access. A simple walk or drive down the street gives me a free connection that's as strong as I could ask for - until it gets late and I get kicked out of Starbucks, that is. Probably this week, I'll go ahead and pony up the cash to get basic cable and a connection, but until then, I'm not really sweating it. I'm not really more productive (probably a lot less then usual, actually, since research is a lot harder for me), but I'm pretty relaxed. I re-watched all of Stand Alone Complex for the first time in maybe a year, and it was totally worth it.

On Friday, feeling a little restless after work, I ducked into Crossroads mall to see if they had Infernals for the Exalted 2e line yet. I run a 1e game, but frankly, I'm interested enough in the book to backport certain parts of it to suit my sinister need for villains. I haven't quite decided if Abyssals or Infernals are going to get the nod as the big bad, but I'm leaning towards Abyssals, making Infernals an intriguing idea for anti-hero NPCs to either be sided with or against in resistance to the necrotic Deathlords. (thunder cracks in the background). As usual, it wasn't in, and I didn't really expect it since it was just a ruse to kill time. Instead, I saw on the board that there was a Magic: the Gathering draft at 6 PM and I was just in time to sign up. It's been a few years at this point, but lacking anything better to do, I put down some money and drafted with everyone else.

First of all, the draft was huge. There were three tables full of players, so the CCG scene here is alive and flourishing. Second, I'm terrible at Magic. I didn't draft enough spells and I ended up losing 0-3-drop. Still, it was fun and I met some new people, and there's a pre-release draft this upcoming Saturday that I'll probably go to. Neat.