eddyfate

Just spent an hour and a half converting all my Requiem characters over for the reset. Here's the scorecard (barring VSTs requiring rewrites, of course):

Vitya: Due to a slight change in how I spent my dots to get much the same effect, combined with the very irregular play schedule of the Casablanca, Morocco game, I actually ended up gaining 30 XP, so I got to pick up some Celerity and buff out some of his Merits to reflect his growing criminal empire.

G.T.: I lost about 300 XP, but really it just gave me a chance to ditch some bloat so I could focus on important aspects of the character. So, still a win -- I don't think I'll play him any differently.

Capt. Jack Spade: Lost about 350 XP -- I think the extra two years of game time ended up balancing out how infrequently I play him nowadays. This means he lost a lot of combat capability and Theban rituals -- honestly, he looks a lot like he does when I first brought him into play. Which is awesome, because I'm looking forward to getting back to his roots and taking them in a new direction. But man, Jack's going to need friends.

Overall, I'm pleased how it shook out -- the character that needed a boost got it, the character that needed to lose some dots lost them, and the character that needed something to freshen him up is getting that.

So I have been doing more than just selling about a third of our book collection (yes, we still own about twice that many books).

Shopping: I've been picking up some new clothes for the job, mostly. I'm checking to see if I need a power converter for Iceland so I don't blow up my laptop. I also got some new LARP costuming for the first time in about two years, primarily a new coat for Jack Spade and a pair of glasses from Pearle Vision for Mr. Hudson. I looked at Halloween glasses, but they were all either nerd glasses or Harry Potter glasses, and I decided that I would spring a little extra for actual eyeglasses with demo glass lenses so they would last and be comfortable. Plus I can get them adjusted and cleaned for free.

House: I've been helping to clean up the house and throw away a variety of crap I've accumulated. I purged a lot of files, moved some of my references to virtual or PDF versions on my computer, cleaned out a lot of stuff in my office closet, and so on. I still have a lot of stuff stored in the basement I need to go through, as well as clothing and other sundries I need to sort out.

Old Job: I've been steadily going through all of my processes at my old job and writing them out as explicitly as possible. I'm also finishing up a few projects that it's easier for me to handle than train someone else on, and training my boss and a couple of other co-workers on what it is I actually do. I found that some old processes I did were needlessly complex, so I trimmed those down. I have six business days of work left, so I should be able to sort it all out in time (even if I have an annoyingly long data conversion project in the middle of all that).

New Job: I've been poking around at a few things prior to my start date, but mostly I'm getting things in order so I can hit the ground running on Oct. 29th. I have a new email account (eddy at ccpgames dot com will replace my old white-wolf address, for those interested), and I'm playing EVE Online a little bit now and then so I at least understand the basics of the game.

ICC Prep: During all of this, I'm trying to prepare for ICC. Most of my prep isn't that bad, like getting my characters in order and the like, but I'm also hauling a tub of books for people at the con, and I'm mentally preparing to run at least one seminar there. There's also a few scenes that people are setting up for the convention that I'm participating in. At the moment, it looks like I'll be able to play Requiem and Lost -- Awakening might have to get skipped (again) for various reasons. I still haven't written a friggin' background for Mr. Hudson, though, and I still need to get some Camarilla logistics sorted out at some point.

Exercise: I honestly haven't had time to do any exercising this week, which makes me feel guilty as hell. I'm hoping to get back on the wagon tomorrow, and maybe stay on it until Wednesday. I'll try to keep working out at the convention, but I tend to have about a 50/50 rate on that. I have been trying to eat less and walk more to at somewhat counterbalance my lack of exercise.

Breathing: I'm pretty sure I'm doing that in there somewhere.

So after a year of debate and money-pinching, I finally decided to spend a couple hundred bucks of my well-earned cash from MET Awakening and bought a rifle frock coat for Jack Spade. I figured since it was ICC, and there's no signs of him dying anytime soon, it was time to get him a proper coat. It's a shame the pockets aren't big enough to hold my bible, but otherwise the coat fits me well and is wonderfully good quality.

Seems my last wordcount post didn't make it to LJ for some reason. The word meter site I use is down, so I have to do this manually (lame):

99,115/185,000 words (53.6%)

I'm caught up again (had to miss writing on Thursday due to unexpected but pleasent company, and on Friday due to the Gangrel meeting Friday Requiem game). Dizzy spells are coming back, which is frustrating, so I'm going to take some time today to relax, read Watchmen, and generally not stress myself too much, after a few hours of wrangling with Fate spells.

On a side note, Casino Royale premieres Friday, November 17th. I am so going to be there, preying desperately that the movie is half as cool as the trailer makes it out to be (which appears to be fairly faithful to the book, all things considered).

The weekend was surprisingly good. Played Requiem Friday and Saturday locally, but skipped Forsaken so that I could get some wordcount in. We had a number of people come to visit (most of which I don't know the LJ nicks for), and Sunday we spent some time having lunch or dinner with them - 14 out-of-towners in total. It was a lot of fun, if a bit too expensive for our pocketbook (but the Scottish Arms is just so good, and they have fantastic ale). There was a lot of talk about the Requiem game (of course), but also a fair bit of enjoyable talk on other topics, and some people were nice enough to let me babble about Mage for a while. However, that did mean that I got no wordcount in last night (although I did finish Tome of the Watchtowers and jot down some notes). This week, I'm hoping to get back into the groove of hitting 2,000 - 2,500 words like I was late last week, because I'd like to get that debt close to gone so I can move some of that wordcount to working on my playtesting documents.

The kitchen also gets finished today, but it was looking really nice Friday (it's just details that need to be done today). So glad that I'm not washing dishes in our bathtub anymore, and our new microwave and dishwasher are nice -- both really good deals, and now all of the kitchen appliances are black. Our house is pretty much back in order and we won't have any more huge expenses that we need to worry about in the near future, which is a relief.

Looking forward to (and simultaneously dreading) ICC.

Haven't updated seriously in... well, a while. ( Here goes... )

There's a background scene posted in my Camarilla IC journal (wod_fate) for Jack Spade. Note: I won't always post something here when I update that journal, but since it's new I thought I would give people a reminder.

Some people complain that Requiem is becoming "superheroes with fangs." However, I have come to remove doubt over at least one element of this assumption. Superheroes, when they help someone, get a lot more respect and thanks. That, and they write a LOT fewer letters.

Random Vampire X: "Oh elder Y, we need your help. Here's the situation, written as a long, boring, and rambling email-that's-really-a-letter."

Elder Y: "Do this, this, and this. Impressive signature."

Random Vampire X: "But we don't WANT to do that, elder Y! Mind you, because you're far more powerful than me, I'm not arguing with you, just, you know, not agreeing. Now I'm going to suck up for a few more pages while secretly telling you more how you suck."

Elder Y: "Fuck off."

I made a post requesting advice on Jack Spade's costuming over on wod_fate, for those who are interested.

Weekend was fairly tame, all around.

* Played Requiem, and had a surprisingly good time, even if I spent half of it out of character. I got to help a new player out (which I always like to do when I can), and helped push some local politics into motion while sparking some interesting RP for others. Got swamped and frustrated with Requiem email, though, so I'm putting it off a bit today. Really moving on putting Jack Spade into play soonish - have a small bit of Lancea Sanctum and religious reading I need to do first.

* Went shopping and ate sushi for greebotrill's birthday. She said it was a wonderful birthday, so I'm very glad she's happy.

* Watched UltraViolet (the US movie, not the UK series), because garchangel said the badness had to be seen to be believed. And it's bad. Really, really, really bad. Almost entertaining in how bad it is. But really bad.

* Started by diet today, and will start my exercise program tomorrow. I'm hoping that this works out for me.

* Lunch beckons, and I obey.

I need good sound sources for a Cajun accent so I can practice. A variety of sources is preferred. Any suggestions?

* I decided to cut my hair. It's now slightly above shoulder-length when dry, and so much easier for me to handle. I think it looks a lot better, too.
* I decided to finish moving the bookshelf into my office. I had to lose my Transformers display shelf (sad), but it'll find a new home in the new workout room. I'll have to repaint some of the office, though.
* I decided to stop trying to force myself to work out and use a personal trainer instead. I'll be working out with greebotrill and garchangel, which will make things easier, and conforming to a schedule by someone else will make it easier than trying to self-motivate (since I already have to do that for work, for school, and for my writing -- I only have so much willpower).
* I decided to put some more RPG books into storage (and thus make more room on my shelves). I think I may decide to sell some of them as well.
* I decided not to play Jack Spade at Neglect. I don't think I quite have a feel for him yet, and I think it's best to try him out at a few local games before I drop him at a con. Besides, I don't have the right hat for him yet.

Be careful: I might make even more decisions before the day is out!

I'll still waiting to hear from a few people about Jack's character sheet, but I do have his basic background pretty well fleshed out. If anyone's interested, you can read about Jack Spade here. I plan to do a major push for PC ties in the near future, but I won't turn away people wanting to throw around ties now (as long as they don't create a CoI for me as Nick).

Picture from EClipse of myself (as Nick Ebon) and banzaigrrl (as Evelyn Robertson). ( Big picture )

Captain Jack Spade now has a draft of a character sheet and a revised background. If you're interested in ties, drop me a line. As mentioned previously, a lot of it is up in the air, but I'm getting closer to bringing him into gameplay. I'm particularly interested in Gangrel, Lancea Sanctum, and Carthian ties.

Edit: The roles of "sire" (banzaigrrl) and "mentor" (mrogre) are already taken, BTW.

Long day at work, and long night at school. Lots of bits swirling around my head for "Bete Noire" tomorrow (and many thanks to those who have offered criticism), as well as a couple of ideas I've jotted down which might be the germ of a second story. Requiem and other Cam crap going on that I could really care less about, although the local Forsaken LARP (and VST) has some serious potential, and the rest of my pack will be at Eclipse. I'm growing more introverted again, preferring to dive into books rather than go through the effort of being social. That's positive, though, because if I wanted to be social, I probably wouldn't have much option except for being stuck in books. :)

Thursday: Exalted. Some homework.

Friday: Get other class syllabus, and realize I need to read something like 150 pages over the weekend. "Chapter social" that ends up being almost exactly the same group as the Exalted game. Some fun Magic games occur, but very little homework.

Saturday: Finish one book. Take Puck and Trillian to vet, end up staying for two hours. Bring them home, and try to read some, but end up having to make sure Trillian eats (as she hasn't been for a few days). Go to Requiem early and try to study some more, but I end up sucked into meetings pretty much when I get there. End up staying out later than I wanted to chatting with cool out-of-town visitors, and end up giving local-ish member a place to crash.

Sunday: Start to work on the 120 pages I need to read today. Thinking I have all day, I take a break to chat with person who crashed and run errands. Find out that a D&D game was scheduled that I was never told about, so I now have to skip the game to make sure I get all my reading done.

Monday: Work, dinner, class, bed.

Tuesday: Get started on the story that's due in February that suggests 40 hours of work be put into it (ha!).

Last night was very, very small LARP. It was entertaining and mildly productive.

Today was the format and reinstall of my computer. Having done this a few times, I expected it to take most of today and part of tomorrow, but things actually went very smoothly, and nearly eight hours later I'm pretty much done (except for the little nitpicky things that I'll uncover during my normal computer usage). Putting the second 80GB drive was an amazing help, and now I have a drive that will do a complete backup (instead of a partial backup on my slow-as-shit 30GB drive).

Today garchangel and greebotrill got sick of the carpet constantly pulling up by the front door, so they ripped it up. There's linoleum floor under the carpet and padding, a subfloor under that, and another layer of linoleum before the original hardwood floors can be seen. I expect we'll be working on the floors now for at least a few weeks.

Did a little bit of work at home (mostly editing a review, although I didn't edit it nearly as much as it needed to be edited), but didn't get much more accomplished due to the combination of an impromptu ST meeting breaking out in my house (prompting garchangel and I to haul out our old Magic: The Gathering decks) and greebotrill migrating her computer over to her new laptop and allowing me to salvage her hard drive. Now I have two 80GB drives on my computer, so I can wipe the new drive, copy all my files over to it, then reformat the old drive and do a fresh install on it, something it's desperately needed for a couple of years now. That will likely take up most of my weekend.

There's a LARP scheduled for tonight that I have no real interest in attending. I debated statting out my second primary for the game instead (Jack Spade), but on reflection it will cause exactly the kinds of problems I wanted to avoid by having two active characters at the same time. And besides, I don't have the Lancea Sanctum book. So, I'll probably drag Nick out there, and likely have an okay time anyway.

And in other gaming goobery, RPG gamers who like silly sci-fi and Iron Chef will probably appreciate Intergalactic Cooking Challenge, which actually has some pretty interesting mechanics to reflect the "cooking entertainment" atmosphere.

"So I thought you were going to drop off the earth?"

Yeah, so did I, but my script writers like to juxtapose my intentions with my situation. The potential is still there, though. One project (codenamed "IndyPirates") has hit a snag, and I can't go forward until I get a piece of information sorted out. Another project (codenamed "PunkRock") I could work on, but it's a project I want to focus on instead of picking at every couple of days. cynthiacm is working on project "Money" slowly, and somewhere in there I need to start looking at projects "Dime," "MovieCheck," and "FunnyPages."

Along with that, I was supposed to work with banzaigrrl and greebotrill to put together the Requiem game for this month, but we're all stupidly broke and pressed for time that we can't come up with even a token decoration effort. Luckily the game premise is supposed to be relaxed and low-key, but it's still aggravating because other players have both time and money. Combined with minor drama and stress involved with the game (in the Camarilla? NO!), Requiem has been a bit more of a drain than an escape for me.

Further, I've been thinking a lot about my future. Current long-term plans indicate that if I want to get a degree, I have to stop screwing around and get it in the next two to three years. So, instead of my current schedule of one class a year, I have to try to take classes in Spring, Summer, and Winter, which will take up even more of my time. I enjoy school, but I dislike not having at least some free time, which means that some hobbies will be downsized to make time for it.

Finally, I've been feeling antisocial lately. It would be easy to blame the weather or "seasonal depression," but in reality neither is a constant impact on my mood (although I do hate the cold as much as I hate the heat). What's really going on is that I'm once again focusing on one of my flaws and trying to work past it, which is a painful process. In being honest with myself I'm learning that some of my previously-held assumptions are no longer true, and that many of my problems are due to my own inadequacies. The more painful part is that most of the flaws I'm targeting stem from the fact that I'm too much of a nice guy. I don't like the feeling that people don't like me, but trying to be everyone's friend is making my life more complex than it needs to be. Once again, I need to reread Lao Tze.