Random Thoughts
Here are a few random thoughts that have popped in my head since Sunday morning:
Will we be having twins? They run in Kiara’s family, and I found out from my mom when I told her about the baby that her mom had twins (that died in infancy) and that my great-grandmother was a set of triplets. I didn’t know any of this before. I guess we’ll find out in the 6-8 week mark.
Maybe it’s the darker side of my psyche, but I hope nothing bad happens to Kiara during the whole process. While I want a child, I don’t want to “trade” Kiara for a newborn. If something happens, I’ll deal with it, but giving birth to a child is no small feat. I worry about these things.
Will I have a son or a daughter? I’m hoping for a son, but I’ll be just as happy with a daughter. I’m thinking that it will most likely be a son. My grandfather is 1 of 5 sons. My dad is 1 of 2 sons. My dad has 3 sons. My genetics seems to have a strong leaning towards boys. I guess we’ll find out around the 20th week.
Will my child have genetic problems? I’ll love any child that I have, but, like any parent, I hope for a healthy, happy, intelligent, caring, and wonderful child. If something less-than-perfect happens, I’ll adjust, and I’ll love the child just as if they were “perfect.” Then again, maybe that will be God’s vision of perfect for my child. We’ll have to find out.
I’d like to raise my child with some religious grounding. I’m not talking a Bible-thumping, God-fearing, Christ-is-all type religion. I want them to know that there is a God, that Jesus can be a source of wisdom, learning, love, and guidance. My child will get all of the science, evolution teachings, and other stuff like that in school. I want them to know and love God. That means finding a church, getting them baptized, and actually going on a regular basis. I’m hoping to find a small church. I don’t want to go to some big church that is more like a corporation than a House of God. I don’t have any religious friends, so I don’t have anyone to ask. I guess I’ll have to start “shopping around.”
Speaking of school, I think I want to home-school. We’re still years away from figuring that out, but it’s something to think about.
Will I raise a child that cures cancer?
Will I raise the next Ted Bundy?
Maybe my child will be the first human to step foot on Mars?
Names. Names. Names. We’ll need to know the sex as soon as possible. Every time we’ve gotten a new pet, it’s taken a few weeks to come up with a name. We can’t do that with a baby. I’d like to pick a name that means something to us. Like “Denise” as a middle name if it’s a girl after my little sister. If it’s a boy, I’d like “Luveal” to be his middle name after my grandfather. It’s something that we’ll have to work out. We’ll have about 20 weeks to figure out the name once we know the sex of the baby.
The due date is November 21st. Will we have snow around that time? Will we be able to get to the hospital when it comes time for the baby? We’ll have “Big Red” (a 1999 Chevy Suburban) by that time, so we’ll be able to handle most snowstorms unless it’s really bad.
Will my child be good at sports? Will he/she want to try?
I want to teach them chess, but I’m not going to push it on them. Maybe they’ll want to play and learn from me.
What kind of hobbies will my child have? Will I have the financial security to support them in all of their endeavors like my grandparents supported me through all of my “I’d like to try that” moments?
I bet my child will need braces. I needed braces, as did Kiara, and so did my father. I’m not worried about the cost, but kids can be cruel, and the jokes can be endless.
Speaking of the cruelty of children… Will my child be kind and generous or mean and spiteful? I’m going to do my best to instill in them a desire to help others, but I have this slight fear of failure. Maybe this fear of failure will help drive me to do the right things when necessary.
Godparents. Do we need godparents? What are godparents? How do we pick them? How do we ask them?
What happens to my child if both Kiara and I are killed before they are able to grow to adulthood? I assume we’ll set something up in our wills, but how do we pick the new guardians? How do we ask them? How do we pick one couple over another without hurting anyone’s feelings?
Speaking of a will, I guess it’s a good time to get one in order.
Saving money. We’ll need to save money for all sorts of things. I’m going to quit smoking for good. That will save me about $15 a week. I’m going to take that $15 a week, and put it in a jug for the child. What will I spend it on? Not really sure, but it will be there for them when they need it. It’s not enough for a college education, but it might be enough for a used car by the time they turn 16.
Will they share the love of animals that Kiara and I have? I hope so because the child is going to be stuck with sharing space with lots of cats and a few dogs. I’m sure that they’ll do just fine with them.
Aunts and Uncles. Kiara is an only child, and I only have three brothers left back in Texas. Our baby is really not going to know his/her uncles too well, but there is going to be a huge support team of friends here in town. I grew up around tons of friends of my mom and dad. I knew that they were not blood relatives, but they were like aunts and uncles to me. Our baby is going to have the same. I thought about listing everyone here, but I knew I would miss some people. I’m just looking forward to my child falling in love with all of the people in my life just like I love them.
How many cavities will they have as a child? I had my fair share, but I hope that their teeth are not going to be as bad as mine.
How many times will they run away from home? How far will they go before they decide to come back? Will I know about it?
What about sneaking out at night? I did it. I’m sure Kiara did it. Most people that I know did it. I know that they’ll do it, but I hope that they don’t get into too much trouble or danger while roaming the night.
What will they laugh at first?
What will be their first word?
I now have even more reason to live a good life, and I hope that they can be proud of me as their father. I’ll always love them, but I also want them to live a life that lets me brag about them to my friends until my friends get tired of hearing about my children.
How tall will they be?
What color will their hair be?
Will they look like me or Kiara?
What will their birthmark be? Where will it be?
What will they do for a living?
Will they go to college?
What kind of grades will they get? Will they take some weird math that they need help with, but it’s over my head on how to do it? Will I have to go back to school in order to properly help with homework?
If I have a son, will he want to run around, play sports, do Boy Scouts, and be active? Or will he want to sit in front of the TV and veg out?
Speaking of TV, it will not be the babysitter in our house.
As soon as we figure out the name, I need to get a domain name, and an email address setup for the baby. I’d like to email him/her my thoughts on him/her as he/she grows up. I think it would be interesting for him/her to read when he/she gets old enough.
If I have a daughter, will she also be active in the world? Will I be invited to participate in stuff like the Girl Scouts? I’d hate to be excluded from something as fun as that just because I’m the dad.
I enjoyed acting quite a bit when I was younger. Will they share this joy with me? Will they want to go to movies with me and enjoy them as much as I do? Of course, I’ll have to be more discerning about what movies I go to if I have a child with me. Most of them will probably be cartoons.
Speaking of cartoons, I guess I’ll have to get over my aversion to animation and start loving the world of computer and hand-drawn movies. I guess Kiara will now get her wish to start collecting Disney movies. I just hope that they continue their habit of re-releasing classic cartoons, so that our child can enjoy them. Maybe I’ll actually get to see the end of Bambi in the future without falling asleep. (I’ve seen Bambi about 5 times, and I’ve never made it to the end. I have no idea how it ends.)
Will Kiara’s folks (who are about retirement age) want to move to Colorado to be near their grandchild? I’m not sure how I feel about this. Sure, the extra help would be nice, and I like them well enough. I’m not sure I could handle seeing them every-other-day, though. If this does happen, I’ll adjust to it. Lots of changes in my life are coming, and this is just a small one.
How old should my child be when I have the sex talk? The drug talk? The talk about how to avoid certain people?
There is evil in the world. I want my child to be able to recognize it when they see it, and avoid it if possible. I have a friend from back in Texas that was not raised with this ability or skill. He’s been taken advantage of many times, and I feel sorry for him for this lack of his education. I hope to avoid this with my child, but I don’t want them to be paranoid, frightful of the world, or overly cautious. They need to love to live life without fear, but it needs to be tempered with a good dose of wariness.
What other questions will I have? I suppose they’ll come to me when they come.
First Books
Last weekend, I decided that I needed to clean off some of my bookshelves. I packed up about 60 pounds of D&D books, 5 years worth of Dragon magazines, and a good sized (30 pounds or so) of old technical books. I sold the D&D books and Dragon magazines for $155 in store credit at a local store. I probably could have gotten more money out of them on eBay or something like that, but I was more in the mood to get rid of them than get rich off of them.
I knew that no respectable book store would take the technical books that I had because they were all from the late 1990s. I ended up recycling the books, and it kind of pained me to get rid of them. Among the books that I tossed out was my first Javascript book, my first CSS book, my first HTML book, my first PHP book, and my first Sendmail book. There were lots of firsts that I threw out, but I’ve replaced all of them over the past few months with more up-to-date books. It’s not like I’m throwing away knowledge. It’s just stuff that I either already know by heart, or is so outdated that it is no longer worth it.
Even though I threw out lots of old technical books, I still could not bring myself to throw away my first two Linux books that I bought way back in 1996 when Linux was just emerging on the scene as a possible operating system for the world. I’m sure that both books are horribly worthless in technical knowledge, but they’re going to stay on my shelves for now.
Bookstore
Yesterday some friends of mine and I were talking about the benefits of going to a locally owned business over a “big box” store that is owned by stockholders and run by a CEO. I’m all in favor of going to smaller, local businesses for my purchases in order to support them. If I have the option of going to a small business over a large corporation, I’ll pick the small business. This isn’t always an option, though.
Anyway, this conversation must have invaded my dreams because I spent most of the night dreaming that I was in a role-playing shop. It was in my hometown, and run by one of the rudest owners that I’ve ever met. However, I still shopped there when I lived back in Texas because it was pretty much the only place to get what I wanted to buy.
In my dream, the owner had taken these really large role-playing books (over an inch thick each), stripped them apart, photocopied them, and rebound them. He was selling the original books for normal price, and he was selling his copies for $1 less than the publishers’ copies. I guess he was trying to turn an extra buck. That’s very much the attitude of this guy.
I remember getting very upset at him for piracy of the publishers’, authors’, and game desiners’ works. I wanted to refuse to buy anything from him, but he was my only option in the dream. I wanted to buy this new role-playing game that had an orange cover, and all of its supplements (which also had orange covers.) The problem was that I could not afford any of them. I remember dejectedly looking through the books and marveling at how wonderful they were.
I spent most of the night reading through these books and lamenting over the fact that I could not take them home. This is pretty normal for me when I lived back in Texas. I had a hard time staying at jobs, and, consequently, I had very little money for luxury items. I’m glad those days are behind me (both the job jumping and the shortage of money.)
Muscle Men
Wow. Just had a another flashback to my childhood, and I have no idea where it came from. It came unbidden from the depths of my memories like a baseball bat to the back of the head. You don’t see it coming, and it hits you hard.
There were these cheap toys called “Muscle Men” that came out when I was around 10 or 11 years old. They were these tiny little men made of flesh-colored rubber. There were all sorts. I loved playing with them. I had several dozen, and I was nowhere near to collecting all 200+ different ones. I’m not sure where my mom found them, but I loved playing with them all the time.
Now for a bit of geekiness. I decided to make a tournament ladder for all of the Muscle Men. I had names for them all, and I setup a tournament-style competition between them all. I would make them hit each other, and tackle each other, and do all sorts of wrestling moves for them. I never would decide who would be the winner before the fight. I would let my imagination run free with the fight, and one of them would always win. I would note the winner on my tournament tree, and move on to the next fight.
I had a great time playing with all of them. I don’t know what happened to them. They got lost somewhere along the way in one of the many moves of my childhood. Ah… well… Such is life.
Totally Lost
After leaving the D&D game last night, I wanted to take a different route home, so that I could go by a convenience store to get something to drink. The only one between the D&D game and home was quite a ways away, so I was going to head a little south to one that was close to Jasmine’s house. I ended up getting totally lost on roads that I’ve never taken. I somehow ended up on Hwy 24 heading east. Yep. Towards Kansas.
I looked at the streets on Google Maps this morning to try to figure out where I went wrong. The route that I was trying to take is pretty simple. I’m just not sure where I messed up. Even looking at the map this morning, I still can’t figure out how I got all sorts of fucked up on my drive.
Normally, I have a really good sense of direction. I delivered pizza for years, and I rarely got confuzzled about where I was at. I always seemed to be able to navigate strange neighborhoods with a minimal of guidance. That’s what makes this whole trip so frustrating. I just don’t see how I managed to get as lost as I did.
OOTS Adventure Game
I bought the Order of the Stick Adventure Game last Tuesday, and we got together to play it Saturday night. We had Bobo, Kolvedic, Craing, Jhianna, Jasmine, and myself playing. I had read the quick start rules (actually, it was a comic, which was kind of funny), but that didn’t really give me a firm grasp on the rules. I read the rules while we were setting up the game, and we had to refer to them quite often. Fortunately, Bobo is a quick learner, and he helped with the rules.
We played the shortest game possible (supposed to run 3-4 hours,) but it took us close to 6 hours to finish the game up. I think this was mainly because we were unfamiliar with the rules. It didn’t help that the rules were a little convoluted, and hard to follow. About 2 hours into the game Kolvedic gave up on it and walked away. I don’t blame him one bit. I was about ready to do the same, but since I had shelled out $40 on the game, I wanted to see at least one game finished.
I had a hard time killing monsters without help. I was playing Elan the bard, and he really sucks in combat. The schticks that I started out with made me a great support character, but it wasn’t until the end that I really got to kill something to earn more schticks. By that time, it was really too late for me to try to win the game.
Bobo ended up killing Xykon the lich, and the dungeon started to collapse, so we all ran to the dungeon entrance (per the rules.) We all made it out of the dungeon, and counted up our points. I came in last (but only 4 points out of the lead, somehow.) Jhianna was next, then Craing. Bobo and Jasmine tied for first place, but then Jasmine recounted her Loot, and she came out 1 point ahead of Bobo. Go Jasmine!
When I got home with the game, I threw it into the closet with the rest of our board games, and it will probably stay there until the end of time. If I’m going to get together with my friends to play a card game, it will either be Munchkin or Illuminati. However, I will say that the game was amusing all the way through to the end. Rich Burlew did a wonderful job with keeping the comedy in the game. I was kind of worried about that. Regardless, the game is barely above average, and will probably not be played again by this group of people.
Food Drive
In my Saturday night game, Craing’s character (Baerzon) is the brother of my character (Daerzon). During a fight, Baerzon got dominated into attacking our fighter, Meera. Meera faught back with her sword of sharpness, and managed to lop off Baerzon’s leg. Fortunately, I had an artifact with me that could regenerate his leg, so I used it. I was told not to use it, but this was a special circumstance.
The key healed Baerzon’s leg, but Daerzon is now cursed(??) with an insatiable appetite. He must eat 6 times more than a normal person or suffer from horrible hunger pains. Prior to this happening, he purchased a Murlynd’s spoon, and a decanter of endless water. Those are two stock magic items that I always get my hands on when I can in any game. I rarely use them in most games, but in this case, I’m digging into the bowls of gruel that the spoon produces, and drinking almost non-stop from the decanter. I’m very glad that I have those magic items.
However, most days, I don’t have to eat the cardboard-like gruel that the spoon produces. Daerzon is a cleric, and is of sufficiently high level to cast create food and water. He’s able to feed up to 21 people a day with this spell. That means that I can feed myself (18 meals a day!!!) and the rest of the party with a single casting. Good thing I have that spell.
Also, we’re traveling along a river, and I actually spent a non-weapon proficiency on fishing. If I lose the spoon, forget my spells, and run out of rations, I still have the ability to feed myself from the fish from the river. What a setup! Sounds like Daerzon was already very food-oriented before the curse of the artifact, but it’s even worse now.
I guess it’s a good thing that I’m not a halfling with that curse!
Plot Line
I started to write a blog about work, but I decided against it. Blogging about work has gotten other people fired, so I’m going to avoid that pitfall. That’s ok. My work really isn’t all that interesting anyway unless you’re a hardcore Linux admin, Perl programmer, PHP engineer, or web developer. If you’re a computer geek, then you might find it interesting.
Anyways….
I’m running a D&D game on Thursday nights. My original premise for the campaign was pretty straightforward. As the game has developed over the past couple of weeks, I’ve picked up some ideas and hints from the players that I’ve talked to outside the game, and I’ve decided to change the game somewhat. I know that my players read my blog, so I’m going to avoid giving out any details here.
Let’s just say that the plot will thicken, twist, warp, and get very fun. Jhianna may not like it because the bad guys will get darker and more vile as the game goes on. I’ll have to do my best to keep it as light as possible, though. She doesn’t like it when games get really dark.
If you’re interested in reading more about what is going on in the game, you can always read the adventure log of past games.
Tim Hildebrandt
A person that was greatly influential in my life passed away recently. There was an article in the September 2006 issue of Dragon Magazine about the passing of Tim Hildebrandt. I never met him, and I’m sure he never knew of my existence, but he changed my life forever. He was an artist that did fantasy works. I never knew his name, but in his obituary, the article mentioned that he had done (among other things) the cover of the book Sword of Shannara.
I remember seeing the cover of the book at a garage sale that I was at with my grandmother, and I instantly knew that I wanted the book. The cover depicted three men standing in a stone chamber around a glowing sword that was embedded in a block of stone. I was probably 8 or 9 years old at the time, and I had no idea what science fiction, fantasy, or anything of that nature was. I just knew that I was drawn to the book, and that I had to have it.
I managed to talk my grandmother out of a quarter (or maybe two), so that I could get the book. We spent the rest of the day driving from garage sale to garage sale, and I spent most of the time in the tan Buick station wagon reading the book, and falling in love with Terry Brook’s work.
As soon as I finished the book, I hit the local library in an attempt to find more books like it. At the time, the fantasy section of the library was woeful to the point of non-existence. I was greatly dissapointed, but there was a used bookstore called Miss B’s Books that had tons and tons of fantasy and science fiction novels. I begged a few dollars from my grandmother, so that I can could get more books. She was gracious enough to give me the coinage that I needed to indulge in my new-found love.
When I first saw the Dungeons and Dragons red basic box set in a magazine ad, I knew that I had to have it. I didn’t know what it was, or even that it was a game, but the cover made me desire it. It looked so much like the genre of fantasy books that I had fallen in love with. In order to get the box set, I had to collect 10 “points” from Captain Olympic Greeting Cards. Each set of cards that I sold earned me one point. I quickly sold enough cards to collect my 10 points, and I sent in my order, and eagerly awaited my prize.
It was a long two weeks, but I managed to wait it out until the box arrived for me. I opened it to find these strange dice, a crayon (for coloring the numbers on the dice), and two books. One was for players, and the other was for dungeon masters. I didn’t know what either one was, but I figured out that it was a game. I read the players’ book first, and loved every moment of it. I then went on to read the dungeon masters’ book, and I knew that I wanted to play this game.
I was in the Cub Scouts at the time, and I managed to get a few of my friends from the Cub Scouts involved in the game. Some stayed for just a single session, but I was lucky enough to snag a few people that had a passion for fantasy like I did. We’d play during Cub Scout meetings, during lunch at school, on camping trips, and every other chance that we could get. I was ten years old at the time, and I’ve been playing (almost) non-stop ever since that summer. That was 23 years ago, and I’ve made tons of friends, have thousands of wonderful memories and stories, and I’m very glad that one of my hobbies has brought such great joy to myself.
Without Mr. Hildebrandt’s artwork, I would have never found Sword of Shannara. Without Sword of Shannara, I would have probably never found the cover of the Dungeons and Dragons box set interesting. Without Dungeons and Dragons, I would not have the close-knit group of friends that I have now. It’s all one long chain of events that start with Tim Hildebrandt’s artwork back in my childhood.
Tim Hildebrandt, you didn’t know me, but I still thank you from the depths of my soul for your work. Without you, I may not have turned into the person that I am today. Your work has brought immense joy to my life, and I’m glad you were in this world for the short period of time that you were. God bless.
Perl to the Rescue!
My last post lamented about all of the world that I needed to do for data entry for the cities in my world. Turns out it was much quicker than I had anticipated, and after only about 3 hours of work, I was ready to run my script. The script took all of 5 minutes to run to generate the crunch about 460 cities. I was quite impressed. I figured it would take much longer than that to get it all done.
Once the 460 cities were regenerated, I went through a few of them and re-inserted data that I had already used the game world (a few inns, a tavern, etc.) It didn’t take long at all to get it done.
Once I was done with that, I made a copy of my city generator and hacked it to generate Korean names, so that I could generate cities for the Empire of the Sun. That didn’t take long to do since I already had the code for generating Korean names. I just had to copy, paste, and modify a slight bit. After about 20 minutes of coding, I was ready to finish off the rest of the cities on Tarkuris.
After about an hour of data entry, I had my cities all done! Yay! I’ve made a backup of the data in case something horrible happens. I really don’t want to have to go through all of this again.
Now on to the hard part… The fluff. I can do fluff, but there is so much of it to do, that it will probably take me years to get it all done. I’m going to start with the nations, and once the nations are sufficiently fluffy, I’ll start in on the cities. Of course, this would go much faster if I had some help. Maybe I’ll try to recruit some friends to help me out with things.
