jcfiala

The Nancy Drew Mysteries: From the Beginning!

Sun, 11 Oct 2020 17:29:55 GMT

So, for her birthday, my daughter got the first three Nancy Drew books from my mother. And we've been reading through them.

The big shock for me was the absence of Bess and George. My (admittedly vague) memories of the books was that they would show up in nearly every book, but they haven't even been mentioned yet. Looking online, they apparently first appear in book 5, "The Secret of Shadow Ranch."

Nancy in these first few books is a pretty neat woman. She's young, but intelligent, pretty driven, and has a keen interest in justice. In the first book, "The Secret of the Old Clock", she happens upon a mystery involving a missing will - Josiah Crowley was a nice old man with a decently sized fortune who passed away after telling several relatives and close friends that he was leaving them some money - and the will that shows up after his death just leaves everything to one family, presented as unpleasant, rude, and snooty. Nancy focuses down to try and figure out where the will could have ended up, facing danger and uncertainty to do so. Naturally, she succeeds.

The second book, "The Hidden Staircase", features Nancy's friend in the first book, Helen, whose great grandmother is having 'ghost' problems at her old house. She and Helen join great grandmother and grand-aunt as they snoop around for how the ghost is getting in - Nancy and Helen never seem to think the ghost is really supernatural, and a lot of the time is spent trying to find frustratingly difficult to find secret doors. (To the book's credit, if they were easy to find secret doors, the book would be half it's length.) Nancy very much takes charge of things, pushing the investigation forward, keeping the local police in the loop, and although she's worried when her father disappears, she's able to rescue him at the end.

We haven't finished the third book, "The Bungalow Mystery", but so far it's in a similar vein. Helan and Nancy, caught in a bad storm while boating, are rescued by Laura, a fast friend who has family troubles of her own - her parents having passed away, she's uncertain about her new parents, who seem to have been picked for her by her mother, but who she hasn't met before. Personally, my money is on a couple who are impersonating the couple who are supposed to care for her, with a desire to loot Laura's inheritance.

Although set in the 30s, these seem to be printings of the 1959 re-edits. There's a Nancy Drew Wiki (of course there is) which lists all the various books and compares the differences. Reading the originals, I can see why they were re-written - there's unfortunately quite racist characters who have been removed in the newer versions. (Sadly, this apparently results in all minority characters being removed.) I would have been uncomfortable reading those bits to my daughter, although I suppose we would have stopped to discuss the presentation.

It's fun reading something like this from the beginning, and see how things have changed.

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The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency

Sun, 19 Apr 2020 14:08:17 GMT

So, I've been reading to my daughter most nights, like I usually do. Some nights we just both stay up way too late - last (Saturday) night for example - but most nights I get Rose ready for bed and settle her down and read to her, possibly while she's drawing. I'm not entirely sure what she's up to, as she's got this loft bed her mother got for her, and she's recently decided to transition to sleeping under it instead of over it.

Since I don't have to wake her up in the morning anymore, I don't mind.

Anyway, a while back she wanted me to read to her in the dark, which normally could be a problem except I've got a lot of ebooks on my tablet that I can read. Having finished up the last one, I hunted around for a book to read and rediscovered the Wollstonecraft Detective Agency series by Jordan Stratford that I had hidden around in Dropbox. I happily loaded up the first book and started reading to my daughter, who likes them a lot.

The books are historical girl detective stories set in 1826, starring Ada Byron (aka Ada Lovelace), aged 11, and Mary Godwin (aka Mary Shelley), aged 14. Now, in real life these two women lived farther apart in age - Mary Shelley was 29 when Ada Byron was 11, but the author thought it would be fun to pair up the first programmer with the first science fiction author, and adjusted things. I'm not familiar enough with either person to know how realistic the rest of the portrayals are, but they characters are fun.

Interestingly, the books are on my dropbox because I backed the book on Kickstarter back in 2012, thinking that eventually I could share it with my daughter. I only backed for the ebook version of the first book, which through the magic of stretch goals meant that I was eventually given the first three novels as ebooks for the low cost of $10. It's a little amusing that as someone who backed the book at the lowest level, I've received all of my promised rewards, whereas folks who for more items seem to be complaining in the comments about missing items. It's hard to say how many folks are missing out - there always seems to be some folks who are disgruntled about a kickstarter.

But, the books are a lot of fun. Ada and Mary's relationship is rocky at first, but once they become more friendly, they decide to open up a clandestine detective agency together, and use Mary's late mother's name for it. The mysteries are at the base fairly simple - as these are stories for middle school children - but are obscured by the social realities of the time and the usual self interest. Ada is presented as someone who stays at home and is focused more on books, science, and math and has trouble remembering names and dealing with new situations, but Mary's friendliness and patience helps to slowly pull her out of her shell as the series goes on.

It's a fun series, and I suggest folks give it a try if they've got a child in their life who might enjoy some mysteries.

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The Westing Game

Sun, 08 Sep 2019 04:24:43 GMT

The Westing Game is a fantastic young-adult mystery novel with many characters, many puzzles, and a surprising amount of depth for a 40-year old mystery. I've got an old dog-eared copy that I've had for years, and when I came across it I quickly moved it into my daughter's room for her to enjoy.

We've been reading it before bedtime for the last couple of weeks, and we're right nearly at the end - a position which is bad for my throat, as I tend to try to keep reading it, wanting to get to the ending. We may finish it tomorrow night.

I've been reading to Rose since she was tiny, and I love doing it. Before The Westing Game, we were reading Anne of Green Gables - a somewhat melancholy choice, as Tammy as a huge fan of the BBC production. I'd never read the books, although I'd watched the BBC show a number of times in the background as my wife re-watched it. I was a little surprised - the language is really lush and a lot of fun to read.

Reading to my daughter every night has really improved her language skills and made her a big fan of reading, and it's one of the decisions I'm most proud of regarding her.

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13 months in...

Fri, 06 Sep 2019 16:47:43 GMT

So, it's been 13 months since my wife died.

I'm apparently not the most demonstrative of people - losing my wife was a shock and felt really bad, but it hasn't really dragged on. I partially chalk this up to my wife having been sick for so long in the hospital - I had to get used to living (and taking care of my daughter) without my wife long before she was going to die. This also happily has sheltered my daughter a little - by losing her mother a slice at a time, as it were, the final loss was very sad but... she's bounced back pretty well as well. Given that Tammy got sick when Rose was, what, 4? And then died when she was almost 7, I'm guessing that a majority of Rose's memories involve having a sick/missing mother. Sigh.

So now, I'm mostly... lonely. Not entirely alone, since I've got my daughter with me so much of the time, but still - a young daughter is not the same as an adult. Not sure what to do, really - I wasn't all that great at dating back when I was young, and now there's streaks of white in my beard.

One thing I'm doing - partially to help this, and partially because I'm the only parent left - is that I joined Weight Watchers at the beginning of the year, and have been sticking with it. So far, I've lost more than fifty pounds. I'd lost some before WW, which surprised me as I thought I'd been overeating.

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Being sick before Christmas is terrible

Sun, 16 Dec 2018 21:42:12 GMT

I've got so much to do, and all I can do is slump and blow my nose. Thank goodness for the legion of auntees, they're helping out with Rose today which will let me collapse for a while.

But I've given up on Christmas shopping for anyone other than the kids, because my brain just cannot think.

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Busy, tiring day this weekend.

Sun, 07 Oct 2018 14:16:36 GMT

Last night, Rose's friend Eva-Jo had a birthday, so I drove out to their house on the east side of town - a house I'd never driven to on my own before. Happily, I was able to find it, although they had sneakily changed the color of the building on me. Had some chicken nuggets and some birthday cake, and then left Rose there for the night to come home and watch a silly anime about a vampire haunted by a human.

This morning I slept in like I usually do, as Rose is perfectly happy to let Daddy sleep in, and then ran out for some breakfast before returning home and meeting up with my friend Carol for some chores. We went through a bunch of stuff that had built up by the front door - bags, purses, gloves, coats, gloves, hats, and some gloves. Then we went through some paperwork, sending off a few things that needed to be sent off. Progress! But tiring.

Then Rose re-appeared from her sleepover, and we went over to her friend Ruby's birthday party, where there was mexican food and a gang of 7 and 8 year old hooligans ^H^H^H^H^H^H girls. Apparently, I could have dropped her off and gone off by myself for a few hours, but I didn't get to that part in the parenting manual next. So, after all that craziness we returned home and I grabbed a nap before finishing up the day watching Wall-E while drinking coffee.

Thursday marks the 2nd month since Tammy passed. So far, holding it together. Sortof.

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I'm lonely, and tired, and grumpy.

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 02:08:25 GMT

Today I had to take my daughter with me to the dentist. The appointment was for me, not for her, but I'd scheduled it for 5pm because I assumed my wife would be around. So, I had to get off work early, pick up my daughter, and dragged her to the Dentist.

It generally went well. The ladies in the office thought she was wonderful and cute. Rose got to look in while I was having my teeth cleaned and got to see that it wasn't bothering Daddy. I need to bring her in for her own appointment, but we set it up for November because I still haven't gotten the insurance switched. I need to do that.

No one told me how much damn paperwork would be involved in having my wife die.

The social security folks want a bunch of paperwork from me to get possible money from Tammy's account. But as part of that they a) want a reply in 5 days (already past) and b) a copy of my marriage license. But you know, the copy I have is the original, and I just don't want to send it out. So I sent off some money for a certified copy. They can wait. I don't need that money that badly.

I don't really want any money. I just want my wife back.

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Things to organize if you're afraid your spouse is going to die

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 16:30:20 GMT

Wow, there's a lot of paperwork you need to do when your spouse dies. Here's a heads up on things you might need.

1) At least one certified copy of your spouse's birth certificate. (Social security wants this.)
2) At least one certified copy of your marriage certificate. (Again, social security.)
3) List all the automated stuff your spouse has signed up for that's a monthly charge - World of Warcraft, HBO Now, etc.
4) Get a list of their passwords for things. At the very least you need to be able to get into their computer and phone.
5) Their Social Security Number
6) List of bank accounts, 401Ks and anything else holding value.
7) Similarly, list of credit cards and other debts.
8) A contact to HR at your spouse's employer.

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My Wife has Died.

Sun, 05 Aug 2018 03:16:39 GMT

My wife, Tammy Fiala, has died today after a two or three year long struggle with leukemia.

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2018, Hopefully

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 17:30:19 GMT

So, 2018 finally.

Personally, 2017 was an improvement over 2016 in that my wife didn't collapse to the floor of the hospital, but otherwise it was rough. It started off with me being laid off on the first Friday after returning from my holiday, which wasn't auspicious. Happily, my wife's insurance for her cancer treatments wasn't based off of my job, and even more happily I managed to land a new job before two weeks went past. For once, the new job wasn't using Drupal, the CMS I've been working with for nearly 15 years now, but was a general PHP job with a marketing company named Monigle. The job's been interesting and not too difficult, and I'm looking forward to returning to it tomorrow. It was a little sad to step away from Drupal, but with various events happening in the Drupal community and with me no longer able to attend any Drupal-related events, it's kind of been nice to step away from it all.

Health-wise, we've been 2 for 3 throughout the year. My happy little daughter Rose has been healthy throughout the year, with only one day home from school for being sick this year. I've also been mostly healthy, although I had a nasty stomach bug (picked up from work) and a nasty case of hemorrhoids (which, I suspect technically I got from sitting too much at work). Nothing terrible there. Of course, my wife's battle with Leukemia has kept us busy during the year. Early in the spring she had a blood marrow transplant, which involves using chemo to try and kill off the patient's bone marrow, then injecting bone marrow stem cells from a donor, which then grow in the marrow to produce healthy blood. (In this case, since the donor is one of my wife's brothers, her blood is genetically male.) The procedure itself is a pain. Having to stay in the hospital for at least 20 days is a pain. And then once you get out, there's an additional 80 days of not being allowed to be alone along with constant checkups. Happily, my wife's family and my own stepped up, flying into town and spending a serious amount of time in hotels to help keep an eye on my wife so I could continue working.

And then, once it was done and everything looked good, suddenly her leukemia showed up again and Tammy had to go back into the hospital two times, once for a few months of chemo to get the Leukemia under control, and a second time for a second bone marrow transplant (from her other brother this time) which we're still recovering from. This time they really hit her hard with the chemo, and it was much rougher on my wife. This now makes two years in a row where she got to celebrate her birthday in the hospital, which we agreed we're really tired of. Hopefully, this will be the end of it.

On the positive side, a number of good things happened. My daughter's on the Honor Roll at school, which is nice. I'm enjoying my new job more than I was the old one. I've spent a lot more time with my family than I normally would. And although my wife's health has been a big source of stress this year, I can't point to anything else that's been a problem - money hasn't been a problem thanks to my wife's good insurance, for instance, the house hasn't fallen apart, the cars have been working fine... and so on. Indeed, we've managed to pay off all of our debts aside from the mortgage.

So, it's been a stressful year personally. With my wife needing a constant presence, I haven't really been able to game much this year, aside from one campaign (for Dungeon Crawl Classics) which has suffered from inconsistant attendance. I've also discovered that my wife being in the hospital causes me to go into a frenzy of game-buying, which means that we've got piles of games around the house which haven't been played yet. Hopefully she can stay out of the hospital to prevent this from happening again. I also haven't been able to do much miniature painting this year, although I continue to buy up minis and supplies from time to time. Hopefully in 2018 I can get more time for myself.

So, 2018. Hopefully a better year than the last two.

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Merry Christmas, all!

Mon, 25 Dec 2017 17:43:47 GMT

I hope everyone's having a nice holiday of whatever sort they like, even if it's just sleeping in and sitting around in pajamas.

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My wife survives!

Mon, 02 Oct 2017 15:00:19 GMT

Well!

Had a bit meeting with my wife's doctor last week, and it turns out that things dramatically improved in two weeks. I had been wondering if I'd need to buy her a Christmas present this year, and now it looks like I will have to. :)

Bone marrow transplant in a shockingly brief 3 weeks - happily a donor (her *other* brother) is already there and seems healthy, although he flies into town next week for a quick physical at the hospital. We want to get her undergoing treatment as soon as possible, before the leukemia comes rushing back to kill her again.

Mind, she might die anyway. They're not kidding around this time - the really hard chemo and radiation treatments are on tap, and having a second one of these is chancy. But it's a fighting chance, so we're going forward with it.

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Worry

Tue, 26 Sep 2017 17:17:03 GMT

Tomorrow night my wife and I have a meeting where we find out whether the doctors think it's worthwhile to continue to fight my wife's leukemia, or if it's better to just let her go home from the hospital and slowly die in a more comfortable surrounding.

We'd thought we'd beat it. She had a bone marrow transplant last March (from her brother), and up until the end of July, all the tests showed that she was clean. And then she wasn't clean, and had to go back into the hospital, where she missed her daughter's birthday and just enjoyed her own birthday in the hospital. Things didn't look good with her last biopsy, so they're doing another one today.

I worry.

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Oz

Thu, 13 Jul 2017 03:49:43 GMT

Last night, I finally read the last few chapters of "The Wizard of Oz" to my daughter Rose. Honestly, the last chapter isn't much of one - it's two paragraphs of Dorothy finally seeing her family again. And the two chapters before that... well, it feels like poor Mr. Baum was running low on energy. It's fun having the wizard blow away without her, it's nice to see her and her friends joining up for another leg of their quest, but what really happens after that?

They meet the china town with the china people inside, which is cute.
They meet the forest beasts, and the Lion kills a horrible monster in it's sleep.
They reach the hammerheads, which they can't apparently go around, so they use the final wish of the Winged Monkeys to arrive in the South, where they then walk further to meet Glinda. (I'm really not sure why they didn't just fly all the way down to where Glinda lives.)
And then Glinda wishes them well, promises to use the Golden Cap to use the Monkeys to send the three companions to where they want to live, and then tells Dorothy to use her shoes to go home.

As fond as I am of the book, I've got to say, the Movie's ending has it's good points - you get the funny bit of the wizard leaving without Dorothy, but then a witch slides by and tells her to use the shoes.

Today, we started on The Marvelous Land of Oz, where we met Tip and watched him create a Pumpkinhead to scare his guardian with. It's amusing that his Guardian, Mombi, is very carefully not a witch, as the Good Witch of the North doesn't look kindly at other witches muscling in on her turf. (She is at best a Sorceress, or a Wizardess, but heaven's no, not a witch!)

Highly amusing. I wonder if we have a copy of the first movie around here?

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She's Eight

Wed, 19 Apr 2017 14:41:10 GMT

That time when an off-hand comment on dreamwidth sends you off searching to find out how old Sophia the First is.

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Current Kickstarters - 4/15/2017

Sat, 15 Apr 2017 16:00:53 GMT

I like crowdfunding. Especially Kickstarter.

I love the idea of it. It's hard to make something interesting and cool these days - it costs serious money to make something, even something that's not meant to be pernament, so why not come up with a way to let a lot of folks who are interested put in a little money to help make it happen? If you can't find 1000 fans to put in $10, then maybe you should try something else, and if you can find those thousand people - or two thousand, or five, then something really cool can happen.

I back creators on Patreon, and I've backed projects on Kickstarter since July of 2010, when I backed my first project - The One Page Dungeon Codex, Print Version. One page dungeons are interesting ideas - an entire adventure written up on one 8.5 x 11 page, map, encounters, background, a mix of art and presentation that ranges from the basic map and monsters to works of art depicting flying ships or characters in a mystery. (I've also backed occasional projects on IndieGoGo, but only a few.)

That was kickstarter #1, and I haven't slowed down since. Sure, there's been projects that haven't come through - sadly, these things happen - but I've apparently got enough of a feel for these things that I've not lost much on any project, and I think there's only 10 or so projects that I don't expect to deliver, out of more than 300 backed.

But enough on that - what I thought I'd do is list through some of the kickstarters I'm backing now and why. Maybe they'll be interesting to you!

Amsterdam Coffeeshops - a coffee table book by Andrew Looney - This isn't a book I'm backing, as I'm not really interested in Amsterdam coffeeshops, but Andrew Looney is also the game designer and head of Looney Labs, a game company that puts out some really interesting games, such as Pyramid Arcade, a set that was kickstarted last year. I put a dollar in to keep an eye on the project, which has happily funded. If you're interested in a qwirky book showing off the marijuana coffeeshops of Amsterdam, you could do worse than drop $40 on this, and since Andy Looney's already fulfilled one kickstarter, this one would be a safe one to back.

DCC Lankhmar - DCC is short of Dungeon Crawl Classics, a fantasty roleplaying game with an old-school feel. This project supplies rules and background for playing in Fritz Leiber's class world he used for his stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser... it's something I've been looking forward to. Goodman Games was a bit slow on the last kickstarter by them that I backed, for the core rules and a bunch of free adventures, but what they produced was magnificent, and I'm curious to see what they're going to do next with this kickstarter. I've enjoyed Fritz Leiber's stories, too.

Every once in a while I back something not because I expect to get something from it, but because I think it's something that would be good to have done. The Mana Boardgame Tavern is one of those - I used to live in Pittsburgh, and I think the idea of a boardgame tavern there would be great. Sadly it's not doing very well - they don't seem to be promoting it much, and I don't think my five dollars will be collected. But who knows?

The Solar Grid is a graphic novel about space, and I found out about it from Warren Ellis' newsfeed, which was enough of a recommendation for me to back it. You can read the first three chapters of it online, so take a look! Sadly, this one's underfunded now as well, but there's still 18 days to go to pick up more support. Ganzeer, the creator of the book, is moving to Denver later this year, and I've been slipping him news about various indie comics events happening here.

Gloomhaven is a boardgame kickstarter success story already - the first kickstarter for this game raised $360,104 to print the game, which went on to great reviews (currently #7 on Board Game Geek) and there weren't a lot of copies to go around - 200% markup at least. So this second campaign for the dungeon game has now raised more than two million dollars for a game that's already been produced once. This game combines dungeon crawling action with euro mechanics, using legacy mechanics to show how characters advance through the game. Personally, I'm really excited to see it.

Monkey Minion Press' first kickstarter was for a children's book about scientists who changed the world, which I backed to get for my daughter. She's a little young for it so far, but it's a great book, with interesting art and summaries of the life of 20 different scientsts. Now they're back for Beyond: An Art Book of Mechanical Space Exploration, and I'm happy to back them a second time. This book concentrates on the machines used to explore space (manned and un-manned) such as Curiosity, Voyager, Mercury, Sputnik, and more, along with desriptions of what they did.

I have a weakness for interesting Tarot decks, and Kickstarter has not been helpful with controlling that weakeness. Kayti Welsh is creating her fourth deck through kickstarter, and 78 Tarot Astral is the third one she's created that I've backed. The really interesting thing about her decks isn't that she does a whole deck - instead, she gathers 78 different artists and has each of them do a different tarot card that matches the theme. You'ld think this could come out with a mess of different pictures, but she's really got a good handle on this - I was really fond of her 78 Tarot Carnival deck.

Bill Mantlo's best known creation is probably Rocket Racoon, but another of his creations is Swords of the Swashbucklers, a Marvel graphic novel and 12 issue follow-up series that features teenager Domino Blackthorne Drake who gains a strange power and then she joins an interstallar pirate crew. This reprint not only brings an interesting story back, but it will also help support Bill Mantlo, who was the victim of a tragic hit and run that's left him needing constant care. So, you both get a cracking good story and help support someone who needs it.

And finally there's MST3K - it's not being kickstartered right now, but it's something I supported at the tail end of 2015. Not only has it released the 14 episodes I backed to me, but they've been picked up by Netflix, and (depending on your country) the new episodes are available to subscribers to watch. Go take a look - Joel's said that the more folks who watch it through Netflix, the more likely that Netflix will decide to buy another season.

That's everything I'm backing right now. Take a look - there's a lot of good things here, I think. Later on I'm planning on going into some of my successes and failures when backing kickstarters, as well as a rundown of some of the cool Tarot decks I've collected.

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Hello Dreamwidth!

Tue, 11 Apr 2017 17:36:12 GMT

Well, now that I'm formally over here, maybe it's time to start posting again. It's been a while.

Hello, Dreamwidth! I'm John Fiala. I'm 47 now as I post this. I have a wife, Tammy, and a daughter, Rose, who is 5 and a delight. (for one, she goes to sleep when put to bed.)

So, last year my wife almost died from Pneumonia in the spring, and then in the fall we discovered that she has leukemia. Wow.

Happily, she's doing well. She just had a bone marrow transplant, and is doing just about perfectly - considering what's been done to her. She's even home from the hospital, where her parents (on loan from North Carolina) and myself are taking care of her. While this is going on, our daughter is staying with her aunt and uncle in North Carolina, as unfortunately five year olds are not the best thing to have around during immune system problems.

I miss her. But at least I have my wife back!

Beyond that, life is fine. Work is good - I got laid off in January but found a job very quickly - and I'm enjoying it. Went and saw a great movie over the weekend - 'Your Name.'. Lovely. It's got a limited american release this week, so try and see it if you can.

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O Maryland!

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 18:39:12 GMT

So, I'm originally from Maryland, so when I started reading a thread on Christmas and came across someone talking about the Maryland state song, I was amused to find out that it uses the tune from 'Oh Christmas Tree' but has lyrics about resisting the Northern Oppressor.

Apparently a few decades ago some thought was put to change this, and naturally the folks at All Things Considered decided to 'help' with their own lyrics:

1.

We've got some hills, we've got some trees,
We sing in four-part harmonies.
There's shopping malls and city halls
And cats and dogs and ponds with frogs.

But none of us has ever meant
To overthrow the government.
From Baltimore to Hagerstown,
Just take your car and drive around.

2.

We touch four states and several bays,
The highways mostly run two ways,
We hope you come and say hello
And maybe stop and spend some dough.

We're near the nation's capital
But we are not stuck up at all.
So take a stand and shake the hand
Of every crab in Maryland.

3.

I have a dog whose name was Jack.
I threw a stick, he brought it back.
My sister had a cat, I think.
My mother had a kitchen sink.

My father was a decent man
And we all lived in Maryland.
O Maryland! O Maryland!
O Maryland! O Maryland!

4.

Our nights are dark, our days are fair,
We're right next door to Delaware.
Our song before was full of gore,
But then the Union won the war.

We're sorry if we made you mad.
It was the only song we had.
O Maryland! O Maryland!
O Maryland! O Maryland!

These were apparently written by Larry Massett, and are copied from "Every Night at Five. Susan Stamberg's All Things Considered Book". Enjoy!

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Rolling Freight and Pathfinder

Sun, 27 May 2012 01:17:45 GMT

Boy, having a kid changes how you do stuff.

Way back a year ago, before I had had to stop freelancing to get insurance, I was a fairly early user of http://www.kickstarter.com/, enjoying searching the site and finding things to put money down on. This was way before the explosion of board game kickstarters, and so when the kickstarter for Rolling Freight showed up I was all in on a copy. For one, my wife runs the train gaming at GenghisCon and is a major train gamer, and I thought she'd probably find having a copy of this useful. For another, I had a lot of disposable income when I was freelancing. I figured it would have been a great Christmas present for Tammy last year, but production of the game dragged on, and amusingly enough I got the package only a few days shy of the first anniversary of when the kickstarter finished.

But, however much time it took to finally get the game, it did finally arrive, and recently (after Rose was abed) Tammy and I dug it out for a quick game. We liked it, so we brought it along to a gaming meetup locally and gave it another try, although we weren't able to finish the game because of Rose needing to go.

Basically, it's a fun game. The system involves rolling a bunch of color-sided dice for 'resources', but a fair number of things can be bought partially or totally with just generic dice, so a few bad rolls don't set you too far back. Unlike the crayon rail games, the possible tracks are fixed between towns, and it's the demands that are set and the supply of goods that is (mostly) random.

It's a lot of fun, but if I were to put down one piece of advice, it's this: The rules say you can only deliver one load per turn... so that means that on every turn, it's important to try and deliver a load. You won't always be able to, and there might be good reasons not to this turn - but it's something you need to get done.

In other news, I'm refocusing my regular gaming on online games. It's getting difficult to play games in real life, because that involves a regular chunk of time out of my life where I need to leave home... which is something that my wife frowns on because she'd like some company in the evenings. Or, it's a game at home, and then my wife gets pretty distracted by babystuff and doesn't really get to game.

So, when a coworker of mine proposed an online Pathfinder game, I decided to go for it. I've never really played Pathfinder before, but I've got piles upon piles of 3.5 manuals, so it's not that different. I enjoy wizards, often, so this time I went with trying out the Summoner class, which is a sorcerer variant which is able to summon something that levels with him, in addition to piles of Summon Monster spells. It's a bit complex to build, as I'm effectively creating two different characters, but we played our first game last week and so far I'm enjoying how it goes.

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Things to be thankful for: My parents

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 20:24:21 GMT

John Scalzi is doing a bunch of posts this month about things he's thankful for, and I thought I might follow suit.

I'm thankful for - my family.

Really. They're great. I never met my Grandfathers that I can clearly remember, but both of my Grandmothers were helpful, supportive, and loving. My parents are great parents - again, supportive, loving, fun, helpful, etc. My Mom would pull me out of school to go to the first baseball game of the season. My Dad was willing to stop whatever he was doing and explain anything I had a question about. They respected my privacy and personal space when it made sense to, and intervened when necessary, such as the time I hid a report card in my closet so I wouldn't have to deal with the low grades. (Yeah, that's stupid, but I was a kid, y'know.) My brothers are fun too - I don't talk to them as much as I should, but then they don't call me much either. And besides, I suspect Bill's upset at all the times I would jump out of dark corners at him, still.

I hear a lot of crap about other people's families, from a to z, problems and confusions and issues. Me, I won the lottery of families, and if I can manage to be as good a parent to Rose as my parents were to me, then I'll have done a good job.

Thanks guys.

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Python Notes

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 21:51:38 GMT

Trying to install py.test in order to get stuff tested in trying to convert Byakhee over to python, and to do that a few links were useful.

1) http://stackoverflow.com/q/4750806/9143 told me the basics for installing pip, which is needed to install py.test.

However, that lead to other problems, because the Windows 7 64 bit doesn't register the program the way that the easy_install installer thinks it should.

2) http://tech.valgog.com/2010/01/after-installing-64-bit-windows-7-at.html contains instructions on getting Python installed properly. All I had to do was to copy the python script into a file (which I named register_python.py) and run it.

Step 2 let me install the easy_install installer from step 1, which let me install pip. And now, that let me install py.test.

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Just Between Friends - Consignment Shop Happiness

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 03:43:34 GMT

Had a lovely day out today, including some time spent at our friends Mike and Anna's house for some gaming and conversation.

Couldn't stay late, though, as we had a free invite to a 'Just Between Friends' event. I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but it's pretty awesome for a new parent - they're a periodical consignment shop entirely about the new parent. We'd already bought quite a lot of great baby stuff from them, but one of the things they're really wizard with is clothing - outfits for 1-4 dollars apiece blows away the prices in the malls. This time we went through and got:

A new carseat and base for $15. (I was going to get just the base, but those were $20. Go figure!)

A box of about 166 size 1 diapers for $20.

About 15-17 outfits, god knows, really

A changing table pad to put Rose on so she doesn't roll off downstairs, $4

And a little plastic cage to wash baby bottle bits in, for a buck.

Basically, in total, $86 for what we bought, and another $5 for the parking, as it's over at the National Western Stockshow, and there's no free parking around there. But if you're in Denver, they're around for about a week.

Used clothes (and other baby stuff) is a life-saver when you've got a kid whose clothes sizes are rated in months. Yay frugality!

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Babies, Byakhee, and Zombies

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 22:30:38 GMT

So, being a Father has continued being fun. And it really is, mostly. Rose is a 'quiet' child, which doesn't mean that she doesn't have those times when she's screaming her lungs out, but does mean that there are nice, long stretches of time when she sleeps.

When we're lucky, she sleeps during the nighttime.

Happily, my wife Tammy is being very generous and mostly lets me sleep through the night unless it's a really bad night and she needs another man on deck to handle the baby while she gets some rest, which happily doesn't happen that often. Otherwise it's feedings - mostly Tammy's responsibility, since we're breastfeeding - diaper changes, and so on. Diaper changing is mostly pretty easy, although occasionally you run into a problem with her deciding to go while you're changing her... whoops!

This is why they sell the diapers by the crate. I figure the small sizes of diapers are for when you've got an emergency on the go, or something, and just need to get a diaper, just like when you go by the convenience store and lay down an astronomical amount for four eggs, or for milk.

She's growing really well, and we can feel her progress as we pick her up or as we try to fit her into her clothes. She's stretching some of the newborn sized outfits now, so I won't be surprised when we move on to the next stage, the '0-3 months' sizes. If you haven't looked, really young kids clothes are sized by age.

Back in May, I talked to the folks at Sourceforge about becoming a project admin for Byakhee, an old free character creator for the Call of Cthulhu RPG, and then ended up doing almost nothing with it. The program had been created and updated by David Harvey for a number of years, and then he'd mostly dropped off the face of the earth - undoubtedly he's got other interests now. In any case, before he disappeared he'd moved the code onto sourceforge and set it up as an open source project.

The original code is Microsoft C++, a language I'm not vary familiar with, although from exposure with Java, C, and other C-descended languages I can get by in it. The problem is that the version then available for download (3.01, I think), it didn't actually work on Windows 7.

Happily, I've got a copy of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional that I got at (of all things) Drupalcamp LA two years ago. Basically, Microsoft was a sponsor of Drupalcamp LA, and as such had a couple of sessions where they presented on things. I (and about four other people) showed up for one of these sessions, at the end of which they handed out copies of Visual Studio. I cranked it up, and happily it held me by the hand and showed me where in the code it couldn't work, and I was able to use the error messages and some googling to update the code to the point where it now works.

Unfortunately, I don't know how much further I can take it. The code is generally pretty good, but I'm just not interested in learning enough in how to do things to add new things to it. Also, there's people who want to use it with Macs, and I don't think there's any reasonable way to do that. So, I want to rewrite it in Python. After some investigation, I think I'm going to use the 2.7 version - there's a os-independent windowing system ( http://wxpython.org ) which I want to use that wants 2.7, and it seems that's the version that Macs are more likely to use.

One of the things I've found myself doing is holding Rose when Tammy needs to sleep. Friday night was a really heavy night for that. I found that if I sit down, with pacifier at hand, I can cradle Rose until she goes to sleep, and then hold her while she sleeps. (If we set her down to sleep too quickly, she starts to cry.) So, I sit back and watch trashy anime that Tammy doesn't want to see. Starting Friday, I started watching 'High School of the Dead'. Basically, it's the zombie apocalypse, and a bunch of high schoolers are trying to fight their way to safety. Really, only the first two episodes involve a high school, but the name still works. It's really trashy - there's lots of gratuitous death scenes, 'kill me before I turn into a zombie' scenes, and tons of shots of the various girls' breasts and panties. Lots, and lots... let's just say they could use the same opening credits if they ever made a XXX-rated parody of the series.

But, you know, trashy guilty pleasures are still a pleasure, and when you're holding onto a baby at 3am so she'll fall asleep, you need something simple and easy to follow, and this sure fits the bill.

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Diet Update - March 31st

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 15:01:24 GMT

Well, it's now two full weeks since I started on this diet, and so far things are going fairly well.

For the first week or so I was staying between 2000-3000 calories, but for the last week I've been able to stay around 2000 each day, which is great, considering that Fatsecret wants me at 3100 and other sites suggest about 2800. I'm a little astonished at how easy it's been to keep my calorie intake so low this time. Will I get bored and backslide later? I don't know, maybe.

Exercise is really the thing I need to start working on now, and I'm hoping that with the arrival of warmer weather here in Denver, it'll be possible to get out during lunch and after work and get some walking in. I'm still huge, so heavy exercise isn't a good thing (especially for my knees), but if I can get in some walking every day that'll help push up my calorie requirements a little. We'll have to see.

Moving to working in Boulder mid-month will help with that too - Boulder is a lovely town to walk through.

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Changes in My Life

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 15:00:41 GMT

It's hardly a secret among people I know personally, but I've fallen out of the habit of blogging, so I haven't posted it here. After being married for nearly eleven years, my wife Tammy is finally pregnant! We've been terribly happy for months now as the news has sunk in - first keeping it to ourselves through the first trimester (which we were told was the most iffy part of the pregnancy), and then slowly starting to tell others - first our parents on Christmas, then friends, and now Tammy's been posting to facebook with updates.

To answer the question that usually comes up at this point - yes, we do know, and it's a Girl.

This is probably one of the biggest changes in my life. Getting married wasn't this much of a change - at the time we were living together anyway, and were pretty effectively married in thought even if we hadn't gone through the ceremony yet. But this... this is going to change everything.

We're starting to clean out the second bedroom to make it into a child's room - first moving the bed out of there, then cleaning it out so we can re-paint it a softer color. Thanks to my mom, we've got a changing table and crib already. We're starting to go shopping a little, stopping in here and there to pick up things that catch our eyes. My mom couldn't resist stopping and buying some clothes before we even knew the sex of the child. We've just become big fans of consignment shows and shops, thanks to a timely bit of advice from a co-worker: Just Between Friends had a sale in Aurora this weekend, and we loved picking up outfits for two or three bucks, and splurged on a bedding set with animals on it for $100 which included all sorts of things, including a lamp. (So, yes, if you want to match the kid's decor, use animals.)

I'm also working on my weight. I've been overweight all my life, and the biggest chance I got at reducing was back in 2003, when I got down to about 270 lbs from a starting point of 360, which is where I tend to hover. That run at losing ran aground on the economy and getting laid off - without the regular support of Weight Watchers and the exercise habit I'd been in, I slowly gained that all back. But this is it - a kid is damn important, and I want to be able to participate in her life, damnit, not just sit by and watch it. I'd already decided to lose weight (and had been working on it informally), and then came across a link mdlbear posted to his livejournal to http://www.fatsecret.com/, which is great. It gives me an easy way to track my food intake and my weight, it lets me choose from almost a dozen different popular diets (I'm just eating fewer calories), there's android and iphone apps for on the go, and it's got lots of Web 2.0 community features.

It's not perfect, mind - the site's suggestion for calories/day to lose weight is about 300 calories higher than what other sites have suggestions. And the navigation around the social area of the site is pretty weak and could use some work. But it is helping me keep track of what I eat, and it is helping me lose weight - as of my last weigh-in, I was at 330.5 pounds. My first goal is to get down to 300 pounds, which I think we can all agree is a nice round number. My second goal is to get down to 290, which is a point where my weight is considered 'acceptable' by insurance companies - at that weight, I can buy insurance for myself and my kid pretty easily. (My wife's history of diabetes gets in the way of her getting insurance, sadly, but there's a more expensive option if the insurance broker I've been talking to can't find something else.)

So, there we go. I'm gaining a daughter, and losing a lot of weight. And happier than I think I've ever been.

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