aqua fortis

Sunday, September 26, 2004

Geeks Gone Wild, v. 1.3

Oh, man. I have no idea how to go about this, but since I'm attempting a major organizational overhaul of my life at the moment, part of that is catching up on all kinds of crap I have been failing to do, such as update my Adventures in Geekdom. The fun ones, not the ones involving JavaScript and brain meltdowns.

So I borrowed this chart which one of my fellow D&Ders put together noting our daily activities as a party (I told you this was Geeks Gone Wild), which will make a quick summary of our recent adventures much easier. I have to assume that the following, according to Ross's notes, is where I left off with me and Eretria turning to stone: "August 24th: Lizard Negotiations. Fight Medusa. Poor Womenfolk."

Well, we poor womenfolk have been back on our feet and not-so-poor for quite some time. After getting un-stoned by a priest in the big city, we had to repay our debt to the un-stoner by going on a mini-quest for his friend the spymaster and track down a missing spy. In the process, we got to go underwater to find the ship which sank with him on it, and I got to Wild Shape into a Large Shark. That was fun. I got to be bitey. Everyone else had to have Water Breathing cast on them. We fought evil mermen and aquatic elves and other nasties, found the spy on the sunken ship, explored a nearby island for no good reason, and then finally our debt was repaid.

For some reason my memory of the following events is poor. I might have missed a day of gaming. But there's something about negotiating with a party of hobgoblins and then helping them, which I vaguely remember, and then apparently we encountered a dragon at some point (Ross's notes: "Dragon is a Wuss") and fought some more mindflayers. These mindflayers have been a pain in our butts, but we always do fun things to them like Magic Missile and Call Lightning, and beat them with swords, and make our Will saves, and so forth. Then we encountered an Ursinal, which is a divine bear-angel-thing from the Celestial plane, telling us we'd be able to awaken a helpful force underneath the lake. So we go under the lake--mostly me, as a shark--and try to interrogate fishes and sea plants. Instead we find some underwater buildings with evil things lying in wait who apparently got there before us. More bashing.

Then we do find a golden dragon in there, and wake her up so we can defeat the evil lich-dragon that's building its forces in the creepy ruins, but I seem to recall the golden dragon getting killed while we fought something else on the ground. After that, we took a goofy side adventure back in time to the heyday of the giant city (now the creepy ruins) and found out more about the area's past, which may come in handy one day. Upon our return, we had to help solve some intrigue in the town of Redgrove, involving a councilman's werewolf manservant--after breaking into his house while he was gone (we like to shoot first and ask questions later), we found he was housing all manner of dark creatures and was quite possibly undead himself. So we locked his werewolf in a room and finally took off, telling the rest of the court about the councilman's deception. At least I think that's what happened.

The most recent exciting thing, though, is during a routine skirmish at the Grontsburg city wall, Sahel got sucked through a magic mirror and some crazy half-dragon woman came through in her place. She does kick major ass, I'll say that.

Thursday, September 23, 2004

New Addition to Blog List

Please note that I finally put Ben's Temporary Caveman-Like blog, Who Digs Ben, over there in the sidebar. I was under the impression I'd done this already, but apparently not. Oh well. be sure to scroll down in the frameset (argh!) to find the latest entry. Also, don't miss finding out Who, in fact, Digs Ben.

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Unemployment Fun

Since I currently don't have a long-term job (my web design fun is almost over), I've been combing the job websites. Mostly it's been an opportunity for me to realize yet again that there's not really much I actually want to do, even for money. But I did find something rather amusing on Craigslist.

On an aside about Craigslist, how come Fresno gets one and Modesto doesn't?

Monday, September 20, 2004

Vile Substances

So, there's this new Mountain Dew Pitch Black flavor--an inferior-tasting yet caffeinated grape soda--which allegedly turns your poop green. The amazing, digestion-altering science of food dyes!

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Beta Testing

Well, after many weeks of kicking my butt, the much-complained-about JavaScript slideshow is now online at the website I've been designing. If you're interested in taking a look, please do so, and let me know if there are any problems.

Please bear in mind that the site is still in progress, and I'm still working on the splash page (scrolling images to come), the intro page (photo to come), various accessibility-compliant features, and the final validation (so I can put that nifty "XHTML, CSS" thing at the bottom next to my name).

Monday, September 13, 2004

Game Geeks Gone Wild

I found this channel called G4TV on our satellite guide this morning. Gave me IGN flashbacks--the good kind. Nothing like watching a show about the top ten controversial video games and feeling nostalgia about playing Doom. Too bad they're in L.A. or I'd apply for a job...

Saturday, September 11, 2004

I Call the Big One "Bitey"

I got this massively itchy bug bite on my right ankle about a week ago. It was pretty good-sized (though not abnormally large) and it itched like hell for a few days. Then it got smaller and stopped itching...until today. I looked at my ankle and saw this 1-inch blotchy red ring around the area of the bug bite. The tiny spot that was the bite itself is now a darker color, and the whole thing is slightly itchy. Too weird. So I went online to make sure I didn't get bitten by something truly hideous, requiring immediate hospitalization (though the chances of that are rather small, considering it's a week after the fact). And I found something truly disgusting: a website with links to pictures of insect bites. The first one I clicked had this horrible series of images of adverse insect bite reactions. Not for the squeamish!

I wouldn't want to leave you with those sorts of thoughts without also providing some useful preventive information. I've concluded that I probably got bitten by a spider, but not a black widow or brown recluse, or else I probably wouldn't be sitting here typing this right now, but spazzing in a nearby hospital.

Sunday, September 05, 2004

Rob's Upcoming Solo Show

Rob will be filling the walls of the Modesto Junior College art gallery with new and older works in his first solo exhibition, "Works in Series" (as noted in the Modesto Bee Arts Calendar). Fantastic!

If you're in the area, the opening reception is Thursday, September 9 from 12-3 pm. The show lasts from Sept. 9 - 30. See some great etchings, an experimental animation, and the prototype for a collaborative artist's book featuring his images with my short story, "Mathematics."

Thursday, September 02, 2004

Today's Poetry Selections

Dated 5/7/92:

A man who they thought was sadistic
Turned out to be quite feministic
With women he wished
To, in peace, coexist
In a society quite chauvinistic.

A member of the Viet cong
Once tried smoking pot from a bong
He quickly got stoned
(The people bemoaned)
And danced around in a sarong.

Personally, I give my 15-year-old self kudos for incorporating a parenthetical aside into a limerick. That's pretty good. If you want to read real poetry, you'll have to go somewhere else.

Cross-Cultural Fun

So I've got two things. The first one I've been meaning to post for a couple of days, and it comes from Corey's blog. It made me laugh so hard I just about started crying. The sad thing is, I'm almost cracking up now just thinking about it. Not much amusement in my day today, I guess. See below about JavaScript--I ended up having to accept my personal limitations (a two-day JavaScript self-tutored crash course...meaning I basically still know squat) and then I was much happier and more effective. I'll show you the result in a week or so. Anyway, go visit Rock, Paper, Saddam for some non-PC fun that doesn't actually cross the line into poor taste (at least, not by my standards...).

This PDF file of "Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames (French speakers: say that aloud) is also pretty damn funny. Thanks to Google (is there anything those guys can't do?), you can also view an HTML-ified version.

Wednesday, September 01, 2004

Cup o' JoeScript

I've just spent my evening getting my ass kicked by this JavaScript slideshow I'm trying to put together by combining scripts from A List Apart, Dasme.org, and Rebecca's Beads (all kind, sharing folks), after spending the last couple of days getting generally acquainted with JavaScript. Argh. Time to quit for the night. Time for today's flashback poetry selections.

Dated 5-7-92:

There once was a gal named Suzy
'Twas rumored that she was a floozie [sic].
Till one with no grace
Told her to her face
And she took out the town with an Uzi.

There once was a Communist pig
Who wore quite a nice powdered wig.
Since he had no remorse,
As a matter of course
He assigned all the citizens trig.