So I am sitting here staring at my homework and I realize that it has been so long since I posted anything here that if anyone actually read this they might think I had died. I think the summer break changed up my schedule enough that I forgot to post anything here and when school started I was out of the habit.

The current semester is rapidly coming to a close and things have been going well for me. The homework stack is always high this semester and we are covering topics at a pace that's difficult for me to digest. Yesterday in class we talked about server clusters and network load balancing and It was one of the few times I have felt completely lost and everything being said was flying over my head. We covered the entire chapter in one day and then moved on, which is common for the topics we have been covering this year so far.

On top of everything else I need to be finding an internship for next semester, I need 140 hours of internship next semester to graduate. I know there are a few places of last resort that I could do it at but most of them are not very enticing ("Yes sir, I can help you with that issue over the phone, are you at the computer now?"). Hopefully I will line up a place soon it will be a huge relief for me.

I have two computers sitting within reach of me at this desk. My wife's computer is at another desk just behind me. The one I use the most is a liquid cooled beast of a machine that runs all my games and that does most of my work as well. Next to that machine I have my wife's old computer that we replaced about six months ago with the one she uses now. I have been using it to test Linux distributions and help me with my Linux homework for school. I had Gentoo on it for some time but for some reason it started doing some funny things that I couldn't seem to remedy.

The power likes to shut off here during the middle of the day; I come home and my computers have been zapped and rebooted to the login screens (I really need to get a UPS). Anyway, this repeated reset without proper shutdown caused my Gentoo Linux computer to act strangely; it would not start programs and would need me to issue the command 2 or 3 times before it would start the program, and it would not come out of sleep mode. It was set to start the screen saver at ten minutes then after two hours it would shut the monitor off and once it did that I couldn't get it to return. Nothing would bring back my desktop short of a reset. I thought this was a perfect opportunity to try a new flavor of Linux, so I decided to install openSUSE. Also, I wanted to try to get compiz-fusion working on it, I never could get compiz working on the Gentoo one because of driver issues with my ATI card.

So I installed openSUSE and started working with it and let me tell you its like Linux for dummies compared to Gentoo. Gentoo is powerful but it certainly isn't new Linux user friendly in comparison. I have had Fedora, Ubuntu, and Mandrake (now Mandriva) on computers in the past and have Sabayon dual booting on my Windows gaming computer so I have had the opportunity to see a lot of different Linux distributions even though, to be honest, I don't use them much because my main use for a computer, gaming, is sort of tedious and difficult on Linux. But my point is, I have tried several different versions of Linux and out of all of them openSUSE seems like the most oriented towards new and non-UNIX/Linux users of any of the ones I have tried, and that's really saying something because Ubuntu prides itself on being user-friendly. I have only had it installed for a day now but it's been frustrating so far because of how dumbed down it is. Maybe I just need some more time using it to learn how to customize it for my preferences.

I mentioned compiz-fusion and for you non-Linux or even non-computer readers compiz-fusion is a window manager for Linux that has some REALLY neat effects associated with it. My favorite part of all the effects you can do with it is the desktop cube. Most Linux versions, with KDE or Gnome installed, allow for multiple desktops to separate your work on, but with compiz-fusion installed you can have those desktops placed on a three dimensional cube that you can spin with the flick of your mouse. It has a bunch of other effects as well but rather then bore you to death with a lengthy description I will just provide a video that shows what I am talking about.



I tried to get compiz-fusion working on Gentoo and could never do it. My first attempt on openSUSE was successful, however, I had problems with my ATI card again, but I think it was my fault for accidentally skipping a few steps and not having the proper packages installed. It worked, it just rendered all of the effects slowly and it was fairly unimpressive. I am going to get it fixed and running properly over the next few days. Its mostly just eye candy and not overly useful, especially for the things I do on it, but dang its awesome eye candy!

So I spent the morning working on our current Warmachine/Hordes campaign, and planning for the next 6 months of events. I am really surprised at how well things have gone for the Warmachine and Hordes scene here locally. Last year at this time it was just a scant handful of players with most of them not playing very often. This year we have fourteen participating in the campaign and eighteen signed up for our next tournament (two are on a waiting list because we only have table space for sixteen players!). It certainly helps that Privateer Press provides so much support for organized play.

My campaign games this week were horrible, and then I topped it off with a stinker of a game on Friday, to make my record for the week 0-3. I get so frustrated with my play sometimes. Warmachine/Hordes is deep with tactics and strategy and can be very unforgiving to mistakes. When I am at the table my mind gets scrambled or something and I just don't seem to see the correct choices. I consider myself an intelligent person (maybe somewhat arrogantly) but at the table I feel like a bumbling idiot. I guess thats really the core of my anguish, my failure to play to my ability. Maybe I need to write up a short list of things I need to thoroughly think through on my turn, a checklist of priorities. On Tuesday I played a game where I forgot to allocate focus one round and in another round I placed one of my own guys right in front of my own charge lane, and not just any ol' charge lane, the charge lane that my entire plan for that round hinged upon. I tried to recover by killing my own model but by accident (with the same attack) I killed the model I was planning on charging, compounding my mistake. These are such easily avoided mental errors that I want to pull my hair out in shear anger at myself.

I would feel a bit better at my mistakes if I could blame them on my misunderstanding of my opponents force but unfortunately in almost every case my mistakes stem from getting ahead of myself, failing to know the limitations my own force, or just plain handing the game to my opponent. On Monday I played with my Trollbloods horde. I had my opponent on the run and felt like I was in a really good position to win the game. On the round I lost, I moved my warlock (Borka) up to try and threaten my opponents warcaster (Siege). I could have (and should have) sat on four fury to keep Borka difficult to kill (allowing me to transfer damage done to Borka to my Warbeasts). I had already slammed his cavalry with my Troll Impaler and had him basically against the ropes. But in a mad fit of complete insanity I spent all four fury on a spell that had less then a 30% chance of doing what I wanted and it failed. Even if it had succeeded my opponent probably could have still brought enough of his force to bear on my warlock to kill him because I had wasted my fury and would not be able to transfer the damage. My actions were completely foolish and equated to throwing the game into the open arms of my opponent. I look at it now and its perfectly clear how poor my decision was, but at the time it seemed like a great idea!

I did have one good thing happen this week; I got my report card from school. I got straight A's again and have maintained a perfect 4.0 GPA since returning to school. It feels good to have my hard work rewarded with great grades. I still have a lot of work to do to finish my schooling and I have a lot of school related goals that I have not completed, but it is encouraging to be on my way towards completing all of them.

Today was my last test for finals week at school. I have one more test to take but its taken online and I can take it at my leisure. It feels good to be finished with this year of school and only have one more to go. Hopefully next year will be as good scholastically as this year has been.

I would like to thank everyone who has expressed concern and sympathy for my dog. Its been a few days now and other then his eating habits not being back to normal he is very active and quickly returning to full health. He is obviously still sore and we have to be careful with his wounds but his attitude and personality have returned. For the first couple of days if we put him in the back yard for him to relieve himself he would just stare at us like he was being punished so he had to be taken to the front yard. Now he has become more comfortable with the back yard again and is willing to walk around and explore.

Tonight is my Wednesday night gaming group and we are going to be starting something new. We finished our World of Darkness campaign a couple weeks ago and it will be missed a little. I think my players will miss it more then I will, but regardless it was a lot of fun. We played the game for several years and it covered a very broad range of events and the players went from being highly secretive government employees to highly sought after fugitives. In the player characters travels they covered most of the United States then went to places like Copenhagen, Moscow, Ulan Bator, Lhasa and finally the Himalayan mountains. The characters personalities developed significantly in that time and I think we all enjoyed the story immensely.

But now that the campaign is complete we are going to play a short campaign using the Savage Worlds game rules. It will probably only be one or two adventures long and will be centered on time travel. As I have said before in this blog I want to eventually make a time travel RPG, and this foray into the genre will give me a lot of insight into possible problems and issues I might face. In this short campaign the players will be forced to travel through time and I'm starting to wonder if that's not a better solution for a game overall. Motivation in a role playing game can make player characters do some odd things and the problem I keep returning to in a time travel sense is: If you could travel through time, would you? Ethically it brings a lot to the table. Just attempting it could destroy the universe as we know it. Would knowing that your current lives and world around you might not ever be the same again stop you from attempting to travel back in time? You may never see your loved ones again. Your interference with the past might change the course of humanity forever. (see Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder)

However if the player characters are shoved back in time without any understanding of how long they will be there or even why they are there it provides them a situation that they must deal with. It's unfortunately a bit of what some gamers like to call "railroading". However it makes for a great storytelling device and a great television show. So I am going to try it and see how it goes. If the players are trapped in the past leaping from time to time solving problems I think it will solve all of the moral issues with time travel and why in so many time travel settings there is a need for time police (although players being time travel police is also a great option for a time travel game).

I have been incredibly busy this week with school, with the board gaming convention that starts today and with the RPG convention I am helping organize for this summer. I wanted to sit down and write something but things have just been too crazy.

The Idaho convention for board gamers starts today and I am running a Warmachine event at the convention. Its been completely frustrating. When we first started planning the event I really wanted to see a lot of the local people participate and wanted some out of town people to participate as well. I planned for sixteen players which is more players then we have here locally but not by much. I keep a database of all the local players, what faction they play, and their contact information. I have seventeen players on that list; granted some of those players are not very active, but my goal was to get ten to twelve local players and then get the rest from out of town. In order to get people interested from out of town we decided to provide a 50$ gift certificate to the overall winner. Its been almost two months now since I began advertising for this tournament and I have a grand total of seven people signed up. ARGGGHHHH! I have gotten absolutely zero interest from out of town and several of the people I expected to support me in making this tournament a success are refusing to participate. So what this boils down to is we spent over a hundred dollars on prize support and I don't think we are even coming close to covering our costs.

I am helping organize a Role Playing Game convention this summer as well and we wanted to have fliers and tickets for iCon (the board gaming convention). So I have been swamped the last two weeks with finding some graphic artists willing to help, delegating tasks to others, dealing with logistical issues and even creating some of the graphics myself. The gaming community here in Idaho Falls is absolutely great. People have jumped at the opportunity to help with this convention and without them it would just not be unfolding like it is. As of right now the venue is secured, the tickets are printed, the fliers have been printed, and I have a dozen events committed and being created for the con. Its been a hectic week but seeing this develop has been amazing and I am very excited to see how well the convention goes.

Even though I have been busy, things overall (other then the lack of committal warmachine players) have been great. Yesterday in the mail I received notices from my college letting me know that I have been awarded two scholarships, a total of 1500$! This was absolutely great news as I have been leaning heavily on my dad to help me with tuition costs and I feel somewhat guilty about it. I wouldn't have felt guilty ten years ago but I'm thirty now, own my own home, and have two kids; I feel as though I should be self sufficient at this point, but obviously if I was self sufficient at this point I wouldn't need more schooling. Cyclical I know, but regardless of the argument for not feeling guilty, I still do.