Tag Archives: Gaming

Putting it all out there

Posted on by
3

Sometimes I wonder about the net benefit of keeping this blog alive. There is a lot of history here, and for the most part it is a pretty accurate representation of the major events of my life over the last 25 years.

But do I really want all of that out there for the world to see?

This came to mind recently when someone we know casually googled my name, found my blog, and decided to use what they learned through that discovery to initiate an unwelcome and unexpected conversation with my wife over some of the events of our lives together.

I want to be clear in stating that I do not believe this was done with any kind of malicious intent, but it was an incredibly bad judgement call and just not good form. I’m fully aware that anyone can search for me, and that there are probably a decent number of people who know me personally who have, but I’ve always thought it was kind of an unwritten rule of the internet that you didn’t actually talk about that kind of thing. Especially when the subjects involved are clearly very personal.

But here we are.

While I’ve done my best over the years to make sure the content here won’t get me fired or embarrass anyone (other than me), who knows how things I wrote back in the early 00’s could come back to bite me in the ass now? Who knows how many times I wrote things that I would regret having people read who know me now and didn’t know me then?

I mean, the chances of really bad poetry happening are pretty high.

I’m not going to do anything about this immediately. Just thoughts going through my head.

—

I recently wrapped up my first acting gig since 2022 with a performance in Trust Me at LAB Theater Project. To say that it was a satisfying return to the stage would be an understatement. Honestly? I thought there was a very real possibility that I may not have been able to act again. The fact is that I’m still very much recovering from my surgery last June. Don’t get me wrong – I have come a very, very long way and am in a notably better place than I was when I got home in August, but I still feel like I have a long way to go. My energy levels are still pretty low most days, and I haven’t been able to get the motivation back to start exercising again. I managed to make it through the rehearsal and performance process, but it was pretty rough.

Admittedly the solution to this is to get back to exercising to build up my strength and endurance, but one has to have energy to spend to do so and I’ve been very low on that front. I generally average 8 hours or more of decent sleep every night and I still feel like I need to take a nap every day just to get by. And if I’m being honest, just doing the show and having a slight uptick in physical activity from it made me feel better, so I really just need to get off my ass and do it.

—

In other news, and in no particular order…

  • I’ve been playing Star Trek: Fleet Command and have been absolutely loving it. I started last year not too long before I went into the hospital, but in the last few months I’ve really gotten into the groove of playing. What I like best about it is that, for the most part, it’s pretty passive. I send my little spaceships out, we do a few tasks, maybe mine for some supplies, and occasionally have some light PVP. I’m taking it very slowly as I progress through the game as I understand that the PVP aspect gets considerably more prevalent at higher levels and I’m just enjoying doing my own thing unbothered for now. It’s nice to have something I can kind of idly poke at throughout the day or while we’re watching TV together at night but that I can quickly put down when I need to. The “canon” of the game is kind of a riot, too. Basically, take everything from every show that has been created in the Star Trek universe, drop it in a blender, and you’ve got Fleet Command. I’ve got multiple versions of the same characters in my officers pool, have gone on missions set in both the Kelvin and Prime timelines, and am working on getting some of the crew from Lower Decks. I think the only show I haven’t seen represented (yet) is Prodigy. Hell, they even have content from Galaxy Quest in the game. In a way it kind of reminds me of EVE Online, but with fewer spreadsheets.
  • We celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary back in March, and that fact is kinda wild to me. We’ve been through a lot in the time we have spent together. Much of it good, some of it very, very bad. But in the end we’ve got each other and that makes all the difference. I don’t know if I believe that there is such a thing as a “perfect” relationship, and goodness knows we have our challenges, but I honestly cannot conceive if living the rest of my life with anyone else at my side.
  • We’ve been having some work done around the house, the big project being a new exterior paint job and replacing our front door (which I had to damage to get open after it was severely warped during the hurricanes last year). The house is looking great, and we’ve got a few more quotes coming in to not only enhance the visual appeal of the home but to make it safer in future hurricane scenarios (namely looking to have rolling shutters installed, but also getting a quote to put a drainage system in our back yard to prevent flooding there). We also had to have our fence repaired due to some storm-related damage, but really we were fortunate not to have suffered any more losses. Some of our neighbors were not so fortunate.
  • Lots of “exciting” stuff going on at work, which (if you work in the Business Transformation/Agile space) I’m sure you recognize as “holy crap the world is on fire” mode. Nothing bad at all, just lots of change happening and my team and I are working with the organization to try and make sure we’re still providing the value needed as we evolve.

    My God, that sounds so very corporate speak.

    I’ve been learning more about PowerBI and Product Management since I’ve been back to help, and if I’m being honest I’ve had a blast doing it. I’m using Prompt Engineering to help enhance my data transformations, and a lot of that has resulted in learning more about Python. My big frustration is that I’m no longer a developer at my company and I don’t have the access rights I did back when I worked in IT so a lot of my code ends up getting blocked by our security software. Frustrating, but I totally understand why. There’s a possibility I may end up having a virtual desktop created so I can play in our sandbox at work and go through the “proper” code review scenarios, but for now I’m still doing my own thing as much as I can.

—

I could probably go on but this is getting lengthy and I’m kind of just rambling for now. [insert promise to write here more often that will go unfulfilled]

Trish Stratus gets in the fitness gaming ring

Posted on by
2

Trish StratusYou know, it’s not very often that I get the opportunity to post a picture of a rather attractive and scantily clad woman here on ShrinkGeek and still have the right to claim that my doing so is in the realm of “legitimate” reporting.  Today just happens to be one of those days.

Fitness model and former World Wrestling Entertainment superstar Trish Stratus announced on Thursday that she is partnering up with Frima Studios to produce Stratusphere, an exergame that will focus on using Yoga as a “real workout.”  The game will use the Wii Balance Board along with other peripherals and include video segments of Stratus encouraging the players on.

Continue reading →

*tap* Is this thing on?

Posted on by
1

Ok.  Yes.  I suck at updating.  I’ve gotten used to doing all my updates in 140 characters or less over the course of my day and have spent all of my verbose writing energy over at ShrinkGeek.  You caught me.  I’m a horrible person and it’s perfectly justifiable that the number of people who visit my site every day has dropped to about 6.

I fail at internet celebrity.  Seriously.

I could say that my life has been exceedingly busy lately and I wouldn’t be lying, but I’ve used that excuse before and promised that I would change.  I mean it this time, though, baby.  Come back to me.  It’s going to be different.  I love you more than I love that silly old Twitter business.  She means nothing to me.  All I give her is a bunch of cheap, quick hits.  You?  You get all the depth and breadth of my soul.  My innermost feelings.  The very essence of what it is to be ME.

Just ignore all those workout posts.  I was going through a phase.

Umm…Did I just anthropomorphize my blog?

Is that even a word?

So anyway.  Updates.  Right.

Got back in town on Sunday from the (now) annual excursion to Indianapolis to attend GenCon with Alex.  We has an absolute blast.  The highlight of the con was our participation in the NASCRAG tournament, and I’m proud to say that our team managed to snag both the best name category (“We Have 3 Virgin Men”) and Third Place overall.  Not only that, but Trish took home the prize for MVP in her portrayal of Sexy Kobold Left…or was it Sexy Kobold Right?  It was really hard to tell.  For those of you who are too lazy to click the link, NASCRAG is an annual role-playing tournament at GenCon in which rules take a back seat to having fun.  The focus isn’t on who knows the game mechanics but more on who plays their character the best and puzzle solving.  We had so much fun we’ve already determined that NASCRAG is a definite for next year already and our team is already starting to form.  We also managed to snag a few spots in a Second Edition Paranoia game loosely based on the Star Trek universe called Paranoia Trek (a GenCon tradition, apparently).  I managed to win a prize for role-playing in that one for my stunningly accurate portrayal of Kate Mulgrew as Kathryn Janeway.  I’m not entirely sure if I should be proud of that one.  We continued the silliness in a rousing game of Luchador : Way of the Mask, and Alex enjoyed that one so much he actually purchased a copy for himself and wants to run it at some point.  Finally we got to try out the latest edition of Call of Cthulhu in a scenario known as “Beatings :  The Musical” (which was, apparently, the censored title….the original title was “Buggery Hoedown on the Gaza Strip.”).  That was a very entertaining mix of the silliness we’d been participating in all weekend with some good old fashioned Cthulhu chills.  Yes, we died at the end of the adventure.  But, hey!  We did NOT go insane AND we managed to prevent the world from being destroyed for another 100 years or so.  Go team!

Negatives of the con?  I attempted to pick up a copy of Call of Cthulhu along with a few GURPS supplements from Atlas Games and had the very embarrassing experience of discovering the Chase had decided to cancel the credit card that I took along for goodie purchases the night before (after I had used it to pay for dinner).  This is not the first time the Chase has screwed me over, but it was the worst and will be the last.  I have one card left with them that has a zero balance, and as soon as I’m able to make sure I have another “emergency” card on hand to take its place I’m canceling that one.  We also had a lovely experience with Alex’s blood sugar on Sunday morning due to the fact that he ran out of one of his types of insulin and didn’t tell me about it because he thought I’d be mad or something.  He had high levels of keytones in his blood and was vomiting before we got on the plane to come home.  I was able to get his blood sugar down to a reasonable level with what we had on hand and we made it home without incident, but it was a real pisser of a way to end the vacation.  It was also another reminder that he is not completely mature enough yet to handle his blood sugar related issues without being monitored closely.  I know he hates that, but until he proves we don’t need to anymore it is how things have to be.  There was also a snafu with the hotel bill that caused my bank account to be overdrafted, but that managed to get fixed and I’m being sent a coupon for a suite upgrade for next year.

Overall, though, it was a fantastic time and as usual I have come home with a renewed desire to get together with the family and friends to do some more table top gaming.  I have also walked away from the weekend finally able to see a picture that has been forming in my head ever since I made a concerted effort to actually read the Fourth Edition Dungeon Masters Guide from cover-to-cover.

One of the things they pointed out in that book is that a good Game Master never says “No.”  On the surface that seems like a truly disastrous statement to make, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that it was a completely true statement.  The fact of the matter is that in many ways a role-playing game is just an improvisational theater game.  You have a set of rules, you have an established character, and you have one person setting up the scenarios you will encounter who has an outcome in mind.  The fun comes in the getting there, and as part of that the players are just as important to telling the story as the game master.  Accepting that an RPG is a form of improv theater it makes sense that the “never say No” rule of improv carries over to table top gaming.  This is not to say that you let your players get away with completely running over your story, but it’s imperative that you let them actually take part in shaping it.  The best game masters I’ve ever played with did this, and I saw many fine examples of it this previous weekend as well.

I am inspired to do the same.

On another acting note we’re still in the midst of casting the 2010-2011 Jobsite Season with all the angst and anxiety that goes along with it.  I have at least one more show to audition for on August 31st and I’m still waiting to hear about another one.  I have already landed a few roles and gotten very close on a few others (including one that, unfortunately, I REALLY wanted…and not just because I could use the extra paycheck).  I am thinking that, next year, I need to at least go to the Tampa Area Unified Auditions at the Gorilla Theater.  Jobsite has been my theatrical home for the last 7 years and as far as I’m concerned they will have my eternal loyalty but I wonder sometimes if I’m doing myself a disservice by not at least seeing if anyone else would like to use me.

I was, however, reminded of something yesterday by a fellow actor and parent.  Every role that I miss out on is one more opportunity to spend time with my son before he’s grown up and out of my house.  I have plenty of time in my life to act after he is gone, but I will never get these years back.  The role I was gunning for hard this year would have prevented me from going to GenCon with Alex in 2010, and while I was prepared to make that particular sacrifice I think in the long run the time Alex and I spend together will be a much better investment.

Humana Games For Health Wants Your Exergame Ideas

Posted on by
1

InsertCoinIf the video game industry worked the way my naive mind believed it did the steps involved in the creation of a new video game would look something like this.

1) Come up with an awesome idea for a new video game.

2) ???

3) Profit!

Step 2 probably involves all kinds of, you know, work.  The kind of thing I generally try to avoid as much as I possibly can.  Fortunately for slackers like me the folks over at Humana Games For Health are having a contest that pretty much fulfills my game design dreams.

Continue reading →

Somebody pass me the damn Cheetoes

Posted on by
Reply

I’m itching to do some table top role-playing again.

It’s been a long time since our group has gotten together to do so.  In fact, I don’t think we’ve actually played an RPG since well before Dragon*Con last year.  Between

[info]draxzaster

and

[info]princessloki

having a baby and the acquisition of Rock Band our gaming groups have been sporadic and largely taken up by eating and drinking with the occasional mini-concert thrown into the mix.

Note that there is nothing wrong with just hanging out while consuming good food and having a good time.  At all.  I do, however, get the urge to actually relive my childhood days on occasion though.

I have an idea of what I think would make a pretty decent campaign in the Star Trek Universe, but would need to pick up some new books to do so.  I have a few of the Last Unicorn Star Trek RPG books, but they were done by series and what I’d need to do would require stats from different eras.  I think the Decipher game covers that.  I’d also like to take another stab at running the Drow War campaign that

[info]cavalorn

wrote.  We just started that when our gaming group got sporadic and never really made much progress in it.

I dunno.  It’s hard these days.  People have real lives and shit.  But at the very least we now have much more comfortable furniture in the living room for gaming on. 

Time to dust off my spandex?

Posted on by
Reply

Cryptic announces Champions Online, their new superhero MMO

I am pasting the comment I made to this story here..

I was absolutely in love with City of Heroes when it came out, but eventually got really tired of the fact that the game was insanely repetitive. I understand they tried to fix a lot of that in the years since, but I still hear it’s basically the same thing over and over all the way through endgame. As grindy as WoW can get some time, it still has enough variety that it’s kept me interested for 3 years now.

If Cryptic can take all the good that they came up with for CoX and correct the repetitive factor…oh yeah…I’m there.

MMORPG = Many Men Online Role-Playing Girls

Posted on by
Reply

Despite my rugged good looks and generally man-whoreish behavior, there are many things that my fellow brothers do that I have never really understood. Sports is one of them. I enjoy the occasional football game, and have even been known to have head explodey moments when watching my home team play, but I’ve never been one of those statistic-rattling, season ticket holding, paint yourself team colors, get drunk, and go stand out in the snow with no shirt on types. It’s just not my thing.

I’ve also never been big on watching porn with other guys.

It happens on occasion. Bachelor parties, that kind of thing. A bunch of guys will get together, get drunk, and watch titty flicks. This makes no sense to me. See, cuz when I watch porn it’s generally for one reason, and I think it’s fairly safe to assume you all know what that reason is. It’s pretty much why any of us watch porn, isn’t it? I mean, it’s certainly not for the artistic value or any crap like that (thus why the plotless DVD’s with back to back sex scenes are becoming so popular). So if I’m sitting in a room watching porn with a bunch of guys, it’s fairly safe to say we’d ALL be doing that if not for the fact that we were in the same room with each other.

And there’s just some levels of intimacy I don’t wanna share with my bros, yanno?

How, might you ask, does this tie in with the title of my post? Well, ya see, I hear quite often that guys play female characters in MMORPG’s because of the fact that they find male characters “ugly.” They often say things like “If I’m going to stare at an ass for 6 hours straight, it might as well be one I like.” Well, ok. I can get that. I certainly can’t cast any stones about getting turned on by animated characters – I’m a pretty big hentai fan myself. Here’s the problem, though. See, if I’m playing a character and attempting to maximize how hot “she” is for my own benefit, it goes without saying that other men who are like me will also find her hot.

So…theoretically….if character is all super hot and sexy, especially when I stand around in common areas and jiggle my cyber boobies, there’s a chance that SOME GUY IS JERKING OFF TO MY CHARACTER.

What’s worse is that if you actually let yourself get roped into the whole “City of Warcraft characters are the sexxy” thing, it means that you’ve looked and gotten turned on by characters who are played by GUYS. If you’re one of those types who has actually crossed the threshold into self-pleasure while playing these games, it means that you’ve likely diddled yourself to a pixelated version of some overweight, sweaty guy with a bag of fritos in one hand and his dwarven hand cannon in the other.

See? Not so much with the sexy now, is it?

So, yeah – Not so much my thing. I’m not beyond flirting with the opposite sex when I’m playing an MMO, but when I do it’s because I know for a fact that the person on the receiving end is a woman. Generally, one that I know because I’ve met her in real life. Beyond that? As far as I’m concerned all the dancing night elves and mini-skirt wearing schoolgirl superheroes out there are played by dudes…and as such, my “I’m not going to participate in wank activity around you” boundary applies.

In the realm of internet discourse, it is now appropriate for me to say “Your Mileage May Vary.”(1)

(1) This is internet-speak for, “I’m right, and you’re a dumbass if you don’t agree with me but I’m pretending to be reasonable.” This is in the same realm as the infamous “In My Humble Opinion,” which is generally far from humble, and has the same implication – “You’re an asshole if you don’t believe every word I say”

Point/Counterpoint

Posted on by
Reply

Recently got an email from ross_winn pointing me to an article he wrote on RPG.net about games like World of Warcraft and how they compare to classic “Pen and Paper” role-playing games. You can read the article here.

I felt the need to respond to some of the points he made in his article, so I wrote him a long rebuttal. I’m not sitting down and writing much these days, so I thought I’d re-post my thoughts here just to prove that, yes, I do still occasionally take the time to do more than play video games.

Cut for her pleasure

But…why is the rum gone?

Posted on by
Reply

The good news – Next year there is going to be a Pirate themed MMORPG.

The (maybe) bad news? It’s being put out by Disney, and is based on Pirates of the Caribbean.

Not much to see here, as of yet.

Has anyone played the Disney Toontown MMORPG? Is Disney the new Sony, or is there actually a chance that they are putting out decent product?

Shame, though…If there was ever a game that didn’t need to have a “family oriented” company running it, a Pirate MMORPG is one. All the bad guys are probably going to be supernatural beasties.

Ah well.