The Lore Merchant

40 minutes well spent

Josh — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 05:52:00 +0000

It's been a while, I know...

Josh — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:17:00 +0000

So it's been a couple of weeks since I posted... what's been up with me?

Well, I've been in training at my new job for a couple of weeks now, and it's going well -- if a little piecemeal, for reasons I will get into later. I've been having intermittent computer troubles -- surely a sign that I need to start putting money away for a new one.

(Mary's already taken the plunge, and we have a beautiful new iMac sitting on her desk... it's made me set my eyes on a MacBook or -- funds willing -- a MacBook Pro. I have to go with a laptop of some stripe or other.)

More details will be coming out in the near future, but I wanted to share a strange little idea that came to me. At work this morning, some of my co-trainees were having a discussion about the various theme parks in and around Orlando, Florida (you know, Disney World and the like).

I've been to Disney World -- it was years ago (back when I was in high school), but here's the thought I had...

One of the sections of the Magic Kingdom is TomorrowLand, which is a kind of 1950s, idealized view of the "future", which is to say a bunch of pipe-dream fantasies that bear little to no resemblance to what has actually happened in the intervening 40 or 50 years.

What if (my brain said), they redesigned TomorrowLand to be more in line with... more recent science-fiction sensibilities.

The juxtaposition of that kind of image -- the garish, neon-splashed landscape of Blade Runner, for instance -- in the middle of the happy-family Mickey Mouse stereotype gave my brain a happy tickle, and I had to share.

Talk to you all soon (I promise)!

Time management

Josh — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 05:10:00 +0000

I totally suck at managing my time. I have three or four projects going, and rather than spend time working on any of them, I futz around on message boards, play video games, post to my blog (*grin*) and generally waste time.

Part of this, no doubt, has to do with being tired much of the time. I work until 9pm or so, get home closer to 9:30, and then only have a couple of hours before I go to bed... or at least, that would be the plan.

I don't tend to get to sleep until 1:30 or 2:00, and then Ty tends to wake up at the crack of dawn (6:30 or 7:00), and I need to feed her and take her downstairs. She'll play in her playpen, and I can generally get another couple hours of sleep, but I'm not getting a full, uninterrupted night.

Don't get me wrong -- it's a price I'm willing to pay, because Ty is such an adorable little munchkin (getting bigger every day). Still, there are times that I feel like I'm not accomplishing anything... aside from bringing in the money necessary to keep us all clothed, housed and fed (which is worthwhile, but not terribly fulfilling, creatively speaking).

Maybe once the new job starts in a couple of weeks, and I'm on more of a daytime schedule, I'll be able to manage my time a little better, and actually get stuff done...

Yeah, right.

End in sight?

Josh — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 06:29:00 +0000

According to the latest post from United Hollywood, there are information meetings planned for the guilds this upcoming weekend. When coupled with the rumors that a deal is close, are we looking at an upcoming end to the WGA strike?

It would be nice, but I'm not holding my breath. There is a lot at stake here, and while I would like to see some shows return (or at least, know that we'd have new episodes coming up this fall), I'm willing to trade that to see the right kind of deal offered to the writers.

Still... here's hoping!

Two posts in one night?

Josh — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 04:59:00 +0000

I know, amazing, huh?

But Mary pointed me to the Baby Blues comic from January 16. It describes my life.

Baby Blues is (c) 2008 Baby Blues Partnership, distributed by King Features Syndicate. No challenge is intended to the copyright.

So close...

Josh — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 03:12:00 +0000

Wow. That was a great game. It is somewhat disappointing that the Patriots weren't able to attain the perfect season, but full credit has to go to the Giants, who played some phenomenal football, especially their defense, who kept the pressure on Tom Brady, keeping things close right up to the end.

It wasn't until the fourth quarter that the Patriots were able to produce anything resembling the level of play they'd been maintaining all season. Kudos to the Giants, who pulled off what many thought was impossible -- beating the 2007 New England Patriots.

As for the Patriots... there's always next year. *grin*

Good news

Josh — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 07:11:00 +0000

Quick update. I went into work this afternoon, and received some good news.

I got the job in the customer service office upstairs. Training starts sometime in February.

This makes life easier. The pay is about double what I'm making now, and is a M-F 9-5 type of job. No more nights and weekends for me!

Stupid Cam...

Josh — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 07:08:00 +0000

I need to vent a bit.

I have been a member of the Camarilla for many years. I have (mostly) enjoyed playing in the game. The two characters I have created and played in the game have been a lot of fun, and have drawn many compliments. My tenure as local Mage storyteller was well received.

On the other hand, I have often hated the stupid, petty, niggling administratrivia that cause no end of frustration when it comes to dealing with most of the larger aspects of the organization.

Case in point... I was the administrator for the Cam's Northeast Regional e-mail list. It is a position that I as given back in 2004. It was a position that I had until yesterday.

It was a position that, in the end, I got no credit for.

History lesson... back in the first half of 2004, all of the Camarilla list moderation -- national, regional, and domain level -- was overseen by a national officer in the coordinator chain (one of the ANC-Techs), and the list moderators reported to that individual.

In the latter half of 2004, the List mod overseer changed how it all worked, consolidating the national lists among a smaller group of moderators and passing oversight of the regional and domain level lists to the appropriate coordinator levels: a domain-level list was overseen by the domain coordinator, etc.

I was given administrative control of the NE-Regional list in the first half of 2004. When the changeover happened, I contacted the NE Regional Coordinator at the time, explained the changes that were taking place, and asking what she wanted to see from me in terms of reports and the like. I got a response indicating that she had no problem with me continuing to moderate the list, and that I would continue to receive prestige (the Camarilla's administrative 'currency') for the job.

That was the last successful contact I had with the RC staff for nearly four years. I sent multiple e-mails to the RC trying to get some kind of response, with no luck. I didn't consider it a big deal -- it was a pretty easy job, wasn't worth much prestige, and I wasn't in it for the prestige anyhow.

Then, at the tail end of last week, one of the current ARCs posted a message to the regional list asking for information about the active regional lists, who was in charge of them, and so forth. I contacted her, telling basically the same story I just related above, and got the following answer:

I spoke with... our current RC, and unfortunately he has no record of you as the list mod or your hiring. Therefore, he cannot validate your claim. I'm sorry.

This was the beginning of the end. Mildly annoyed, since anybody who had been paying any attention the past three and a half years would know I'm the list mod, and a simple check of the administrative info for the list (available to any member of the list) would show that I was the admin, I replied with several pieces of information that supported my claim, stating that the lack of administrative record on the RC's part didn't mean I wasn't the mod, and hadn't been doing the job since 2004.

To make a long story short, I was not only told that I was out of luck, but it was implied that I was making the whole thing up, and fabricating evidence (in the form of multiple emails I had on record) to support my claim that I had been trying to get this whole stupid mess sorted out with regional for the past four years.

It is precisely this kind of tin-hat emperor attitude that always bugged me about the Cam. The insular buddy-buddy nepotism that so often taints the relationships in the game, and drives otherwise rational people to react with such heightened emotion that everything gets blown way out of proportion to its actual importance (I mean, it's a game, people).

So anyhow, this whole affair has soured me on the Cam (at least, for the foreseeable future). I haven't been to a game since last April as it is, but my membership is set to expire in March, and I have no interest in renewing, because returning to game, ultimately, means having to deal with all the administrative crap and out-of-game interpersonal politics that I have no interest in.

Anyhow, there's my first post for the year. How about those Patriots, huh?

Mary is going to kill me for this...

Josh — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 04:22:00 +0000

New from Kelvin Crime...

ARRHYTHMIA
A fragrance to make your heart skip a beat

Some good news

Josh — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:12:00 +0000

Well, a small degree of uncertainty has been lifted from the saga that is the pending closing of our call center. It's still being closed, but I found an emergency exit.

They've opened 50-odd positions with customer service, and while many people in our office are not trying to move over, there are some that are -- myself included (I can't afford to be out of work, and I especially can't afford to lose our health insurance).

Yesterday I took the qualifying test to see if... well... I qualified for the position.

I did.

There's still a structured interview to get through, but I think that will go just fine. Training for the new job would start sometime in January, and the new job comes with a very nice pay increase.

There is still some uncertainty, of course. It looks like the sale of Verizon's land line service in northern New England (Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont) is going to go through, and it's safe to say that a lot of folks are nervous about what this means for us, the employees -- Fairpoint is required to honor Verizon's current contract with the IBEW and CWA, but that contract expires in August of '08 -- less than a year off -- and there is a lot of talk that Fairpoint will go to the negotiating table with the intent of cutting as much as they can from the next contract.

Much of this talk, to be honest, is coming from the union. While I don't doubt that Fairpoint would try and negotiate the best deal possible for them, the rhetoric being presented to the employees by the union is heavily influenced by their agenda (because they have one, and it isn't always 'putting the workers first'). Scare tactics, while the reasoning behind them may have some merit, do not impress me.

I guess that I find life itself to be uncertain, and I have never harbored the idea of working for a company for 40 years and retiring with a pension (or something). I've held a bunch of different jobs over the past dozen years, and I've always approached it with the thought, "This is what I have now, it might be gone tomorrow."

Certainly, it's a bit tougher now, with a family to look after and bills to pay (gone are the days when I could be out of work for a couple of weeks and be fine), but worrying about something I have no control over... it doesn't do anything but drain energy and focus from what I can control -- getting up, going to work, and doing my job to the best of my ability.

I'd like to keep my job (and benefits), but if I don't... well that would suck, but we would figure something out.

Update to Character Spreadsheet

Josh — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 03:13:00 +0000

As I mentioned a few days ago, I have been working on an Excel-based spreadsheet for creation and tracking of Earthdawn characters.

After some tinkering, I have a new version (v2.1) available for download. This version corrects a number of problems that were in the previous version. This version also includes the long-planned User's Guide with information about the sheet, and some guidelines on how you might modify it for your own use.

You can download it here. (275kb zip) The full-size spreadsheet is 1.03 Mb. Any comments or questions, please feel free to e-mail me.

"The Bare Bones"

Josh — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 07:11:00 +0000

I spent my November working on an article for RedBrick, looking at the Step System for Earthdawn and running a break-down analysis of the different parts of it.

This is an analysis that I originally did years ago, but I hadn't ever put it into a coherent, well-written essay before (with accompanying graphs, because we all know graphs are cool).

You can find the full article at the Earthdawn website.

PS -- RedBrick's latest Earthdawn release, the adventure Burning Desires is available in electronic format from RPGNow and DriveThruRPG. The print edition should be available early next year.

Something to occupy your time, since the writers are still on strike

Josh — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 07:29:00 +0000

Stranger Things

If you like the trailer, be sure to visit StrangerThings.tv.

Speechless

Josh — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 07:03:00 +0000

UnitedHollywood.com

Earthdawn Spreadsheet

Josh — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 06:56:00 +0000

Look at that! More than one update this month!

I've had an Excel spreadsheet that allowed the creation and tracking of characters for a few years now. The original sheet was developed for use with First Edition, and I did some debugging and data entry to add in material from some of the sourcebooks and expansions FASA released. When Second Edition came out, I worked on a conversion for that.

I have been pecking away at a conversion for RedBrick Ltd's edition for a number of months now, and have decided to make it available for download so I can get feedback and assistance in finding the last few errors and whatnot that are no doubt hidden away.

You can download the file here. It is a Zip file that contains the 1.2Mb Excel sheet. There isn't a user's guide for this yet (it's on my to-do list), and there are a few features that don't work quite right (the list of available knacks does strange things as you hide/unhide talents on the build page), and these are on the list for debugging (if somebody can figure out a fix, let me know).

Any questions, comments, or feedback, let me know.

Writer spotlight posted

Josh — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 07:13:00 +0000

Just a quick update before I head off to bed. RedBrick Ltd has been posting a series of Writer's Spolights, an interview (of sorts) that highlights the people who work on the Earthdawn game. Mine was recently posted, and you can read it here.

I'll try to have more updates soon, but I've been really busy with work and everything. Until next update!

Eight days a week...

Josh — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 01:46:00 +0000

Or at least, that's what it feels like. Our entire office (about 60 people) is on forced 6-day work weeks. On top of that, we're often looking for incidental overtime (15 minutes here, 30 minutes there). All in all, it results in a bunch of frayed nerves, shorter tempers, and fatigue-driven slips.

What I do isn't really a difficult job, but it is constant, and can be stressful at times. While the majority of our calls are straightforward, and those customers are satisfied with our service, there are those who don't understand what we do, how we do it, or the technological and regulatory limitations involved. These are the customers that drive us crazy, and that power the frustrated ventings during breaks and lunches.

NaNoWriMo starts in a couple of hours, and I'm not taking part this year. My overtime heavy work schedule, coupled with a 7-month old daughter (who is doing great, by the way), and commitments to Earthdawn development mean it isn't in the cards.

I am using the month as an opportunity to refocus and rededicate. I hope to update my blog a bit more regularly than I have been, and get some writing and/or editing done for Earthdawn (next up, a series of articles looking at the Step system and the probabilities involved). Stay tuned, and hopefully there will be more to see here over the next few weeks!

Television reflections

Josh — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 05:08:00 +0000

Hello. The summer "reruns" are winding down, and the new fall shows are being trotted out by the networks over the next couple of weeks. Not only is Heroes returning for its second season, it is part of what looks to be a truly geekalicious Monday night on NBC.

The summer saw some interesting shows as well. Most notable was Burn Notice on USA, which turned out a lot better than I expected. I'd capsule it as a cross between The A-Team and MacGyver -- the lead character is a former intelligence agent who discovers that a "Burn Notice" has been issued for him. This means that his contacts ad support are dried up -- no expense account, no official backing, and no life to speak of. He gets dumped in Miami and begins tracking down the reason the Notice was issued -- taking freelance Private Eye-type jobs to make money in the meantime.

The writing on the show is pretty good, but it's really the cast that made this show shine. Wonderful performances abound, including a great turn from Bruce Campbell (the reason I tuned into the show in the first place) as a former Navy SEAL, now more concerned with maintaining a posh lifestyle financed by his lady friend.

No doubt USA will be rebroadcasting the shows at some point in the future (they have confirmed a second season for next summer), and a DVD set is probably in the offering as well. Give it a look -- it's worth the time (and at only 12 episodes for season one, not a huge investment of time).

Anyhow, look to this blog over the next couple of weeks for impressions of other shows (new and returning) as I catch them. I'm looking forward to seeing what the networks do with all the genre shows they're putting out there, and I'm interested in seeing how many last through the year.

That's all for now!

Long silence

Josh — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 19:07:00 +0000

Hey all. It's been a while since my last post. I thought I would post a quick update with regard to what's going on in my life.

The most pressing (and major) financial crisis passed, though not without some headaches. We've resolved several of our past due accounts, and are trying to make arrangements that we can afford for the remaining ones. House payments, car payments, and property taxes were all brought up to date... we're still in some deep water, but the undertow is n longer threatening to drag us under.

In Earthdawn news, editing continues on Kratas: City of Thieves. It will be out later this year (no firm date has been set yet). Our next release, Burning Desires, is an adventure by Andrew Ragland, and should be out within the next month or so.

Work remains much the same... holding pattern. There is a public hearing before the Public Utilities Commission next month, so the public can voice their thoughts and opinions on the (still pending) sale to Fairpoint. No other news for now.

Ty contiunes growing. She will be five months old on Monday. Our friends Pat and Leanne had their daughter, Kira, a couple of weeks ago, and it is hard to believe that Ty was once smaller than Kira is now.

That does it for now. I'll try and post more often... but right now I need to get ready for work.

PS -- Wil Wheaton gave the keynote address at PAX (the Penny Arcade Expo) this past weekend. It was an awesome speech, and you should listen to it. You can find it here. Enjoy.

Bent over, without lube

Josh — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 03:52:00 +0000

Holy crap, this weekend held a firebomb for us.

As I've mentioned here before, Mary and I have been going through a tough financial situation over the past few months. Some of our credit cards have gone unpaid for several months, and we've been getting calls from collection agencies trying to get their money.

To try and stabilize our financial situation somewhat, Mary has applied for a supplemental student loan that will effectively act as a kind of debt consolidation; the money from the loan will go towards paying off our high-balance, high-interest credit cards, and change it into a lower interest loan with payments deferred until after she graduates. It looks like we're going to get the money (thanks to assistance from my Dad, who cosigned the loan), which is good.

This past week, we got a call from one of the agencies who has been after us, threatening legal action if we didn't settle our outstanding debt. I got back in touch with them, and explained that while we didn't have the money right then, we would be getting a cash infusion from a loan that should come through in early July.

I set up a plan where we made a good faith payment of $150 on Tuesday, with the balance scheduled on July 26th -- one month later. When we received the money from Mary's loan, we would call and reschedule the balance payment. While we got a couple more calls from them wondering how the paperwork for the loan was going, everything appeared settled.

Then...

On Saturday, Mary stopped by the Wal-Marts to pick up some formula for Ty, and when she went to check out the debit card was declined. This was a little odd, as she had made a deposit just a few minutes earlier. She popped over to the bank branch in the nearby grocery store (conveniently open on Saturday) to check the balance.

It was in the red. Red like hemorrhaging blood -- a fitting analogy for the state of our accaount.

A semi-panicked call to me, and a visit with the bank person, turned up the reason. The firm I had scheduled the payment with earlier in the week -- the payment that was scheduled for July 26, was submitted for payment on Friday. It cleared (because we had some funds in the account), but left us in the hole, big time.

The bank was very helpful, filling out the paperwork to challenge the withdrawal, and even gave Mary cash for the money she had deposited earlier so that we could buy groceries.

A call to the firm later that morning revealed that for some reason, they thought I had authorized payment for the full amount, knowing that it would bounce.

Let me repeat this point, I knew the check would bounce.

W-T-F?

Why, in the name of all that is good and decent, would I authorize payment when I don't have the money? Why would I subject myself to overdraft fees, other bounced payments, and dig myself into a deeper financial hole? The idea is, to put it mildly, complete and total bullshit.

So, I composed an angry, pointed letter to the woman I had been dealing with at this firm over the past week (she wasn't there on Saturday), stating that I did not authorize the change to the payment plan, the idea that I would authorize such a change was ludicrous, and that I expected the problem to be corrected at once, or I would pursue action with the appropriate authorities.

Needless to say, Saturday afternoon and evening were not a whole lot of fun in the Harrison household.

An Earthdawn BOGO!

Josh — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 04:40:00 +0000

From Tuesday, June 26 to Monday, July 2, DTRPG is offering a large Buy One, Get One Free (BOGO) sale. RedBrick is joining in the fun, offering the Earthdawn Player's and Gamemaster's Compendiums for the price of one book!

That's $80 worth of books for only $27.95! Why not buy now?

By the Passions, it's been a while!

Josh — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 04:27:00 +0000

It has been quite a while since my last post. No real reason, other than a lack of significant news in my world. Ty is growing (two and a half months old now), and I've been posting pictures of her up in my Flickr account. I also have a set of pictures up there from the wedding of our good friends Pat and Leanne.

This is my favorite recent picture of Ty:

In other news, I've been working on the next Earthdawn book from RedBrick -- actually, not the next one, but the one after that. Kratas: City of Thieves is due in Fall of this year, and will be the first original sourcebook we've put out for the game. There is still a lot of work to be done on it, but I think it will rock on toast when we're done. Before that, we're looking for the adventure Burning Desires to come out this summer.

In other Earthdawn news, a review of the Player's Compendium has been posted on RPGnet. It's a pretty good review, all in all, but it has sparked a bit of a follow-up debate in the connected thread about how realistic the geography of Barsaive is.

I am doing my best to refrain from getting involved -- it is not cool for a writer/developer to get into a thing with a reviewer (except to correct obvious factual errors). I know we have another set of books out there with a reviewer, I hope he comes back with a review soon. I like hearing what people think!

That's all for now. I'll see what I can do about updating a bit more regularly.

Heroes

Josh — Tue, 01 May 2007 02:08:00 +0000

If you haven't been watching Heroes... you are missing out on one of the best serial dramas that has been on TV in recent memory.

You can catch up on past episodes over at NBC.com -- and you really should, because... holy crap...

If you watched tonight's episode, you know what I mean. If not... get caught up and come to know what I'm taking about.

Josh — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:02:00 +0000

From Savenetradio.org:

On March 2, 2007 the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), which oversees sound recording royalties paid by Internet radio services, increased Internet radio's royalty burden between 300 and 1200 percent and thereby jeopardized the industry’s future.

At the request of the Recording Industry Association of America, the CRB ignored the fact that Internet radio royalties were already double what satellite radio pays, and multiplied the royalties even further. The 2005 royalty rate was 7/100 of a penny per song streamed; the 2010 rate will be 19/100 of a penny per song streamed. And for small webcasters that were able to calculate royalties as a percentage of revenue in 2005 – that option was quashed by the CRB, so small webcasters’ royalties will grow exponentially!

Before this ruling was handed down, the vast majority of webcasters were barely making ends meet as Internet radio advertising revenue is just beginning to develop. Without a doubt most Internet radio services will go bankrupt and cease webcasting if this royalty rate is not reversed by the Congress, and webcasters’ demise will mean a great loss of creative and diverse radio. Surviving webcasters will need sweetheart licenses that major record labels will be only too happy to offer, so long as the webcaster permits the major label to control the programming and playlist. Is that the Internet radio you care to hear?

As you know, the wonderful diversity of Internet radio is enjoyed by tens of millions of Americans and provides promotional and royalty opportunities to independent labels and artists that are not available to them on broadcast radio. What you may not know is that in just the last year Internet radio listening jumped dramatically, from 45 million listeners per month to 72 million listeners each month. Internet radio is already popular and it is already benefiting thousands of artists who are finding new fans online every day.

Action must be taken to stop this faulty ruling from destroying the future of Internet radio that so many millions of listeners depend on each day. Instead of relying on lawyers filing appeals in the CRB and the courts, the SaveNetRadio Coalition has been formed to represent every webcaster, every Net Radio listener, and every artist who enjoys and benefits from this medium. Please join our fight for the preservation of Internet radio.

Hotlink to Photo Gallery (7)

Josh — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 03:06:00 +0000

Since pictures and such eventually drop off the front page, I thought I would set up a hotlink to a gallery over at Flickr. If you click on the picture on the right-hand side, you'll be taken to my gallery, where you can see the pictures I've uploaded.

Right now all I have are pics of baby Ty, but now that I have an account there, I'll finally upload those pictures from Origins that I've long intended to have posted online.

So... at some point I should have those up. Stay tuned!