This includes 3 failed SBS installs, 1 storming nic taking down the network, all file permissions needing to be rest, 2 isps giving me the wrong IP information, and 4 failed dns updates.

Its not all in the can yet, but I am taking a break to go sit shiva for my Great Aunt Selma. She was great in every sense of the word.

More on her later because she deserves a post of her own.

I am a pretty novice roll player, and I am playing in one of my first games in years. The game details are fairly basic, Epic Fantasy, an original world (more game details behind cut if you are interested).

My character — for ease of description — is a High Priestess of Chaos. I have a fairly large amount of magical power gifted to me by my Goddess. *BUT* I have NO control over how it manifests. (HEE!)

I can control when it manifests (I call upon my goddess for help). But the results are . . . well . . . a might unpredictable. I am looking for as much creative help as I can get as to what might happen when I call upon my Goddess for help.

As I said above this is an Epic Fantasy campaign, the world is technologically “standard fantasy low tech” with not much magic available to the general populace. There are a whole bunch of gods, who are organized into sets of 3 (Order, Change, Balance for example). We will be playing in Heroes System. I have a variable power pool that is available to be expressed in a variety of powers including things like “energy blast”, “psychic attack” “physical damage” etc.

My intention for how to play it is to take all of the collected suggestions and sort them into lists that match my available powers. Then I’ll roll a die to represent which power gets used, and a die to indicate which thing on that power’s list happens. I am aiming for as little control over the result as possible.

And if you would like to some ideas to spark your creativity:

here are a few things on the list already –

Magic Flaming Arrows
Nibbled to Death by land piranhas
Pile of Bird poo drops out of the sky on their head obscuring their vision
Blast of Fire
Buried in Butterflies
Pelted in Avocados

As you can see –

I am looking for everything from traditional magical attacks to anything as bizarre as people as cool as you can come up with.

I know I filtered all the folks who are in the game off of this post, I think I also got everyone who might spill to other folks in the game. If I didn’t please don’t tip off my fellow players (MikeG., MarnieG. HelenM, DaveM, Rich,). This will be way more fun if they encounter it in game.

Angels was very interesting, I am really curious about the original material now, I loved playing spot the actor for all the people who played more than one part.  To me in general it seemed a bit strange timing wise, it seemed like a show whos message/point was dated.  And yes I know it aired a while ago, but I mean more dated then that.    OTOH sometimes I realize I live in a “pervert” ghetto, the general percentage of folks that I am social with who live some sort of alternative lifestyle is fairly high.  It scares me to think that mainstream america might have needed to see that to understand that in general you can’t go backwards.  I can’t think of a time in history where any country has successfully held off progress forever, without becoming totally isolated, and that is certainly not what I want or what I see for our country’s future.

On a more frivolous note, Dr. Who is turning out to be quite a bit of fun.  E and I watched the first 3 episodes.  I have not history with Dr.Who and almost knowledge of the original shows, except bad effects, something called dalleks that look like diaper genies, and that there were numerous actors wearing big long scarves.  So coming in as a total n00b these are very fun, the effects are quite nice if not flashy (I think that makes them better), stories so far are quite engaging and the acting pretty good.  Now I need to DL more so we can watch them.

Wondefalls brought the DVDs over, and we are 2 episodes from the end, and I am sending death vibes to the folks who canceled this show.  It is SO good, and now I am hoping that I dig up a strong and devoted fan community that will feed me fan fic!!!  Recently we rented Joan of Arcadia which lots of people have said they enjoy and lots of people compared strongly with Wondefalls.  IMHO WF is so much better, quirky and “off” in a delightful way.  I have only seen the first 3 or so of JA so maybe it grows more in the following eps, but right now it reads a little too all american happy family go gettem style for me. Give me dark and quirky any day!

on the TIVO front:
QAF is entering its final season and I watch hoping against hope that I’ll get a nice closure and wrap up – the general fannish foofaraw generally makes me think that my hope is in vain.  But I’ll hold out as long as I can
Just started watching The Inside, right now I am yet to be impressed, OTOH with his recent luck maybe Tim has given up on outstanding strong female characters. *snif* wondefalls, firefly etc.
Enjoying Numbers quite a bit though I like the science and math, I like the procedural aspect of the mystery solving, and like just watching the male scenery

/end more about my TV viewing habits than anyone is interested in . . .

Now that the project is “over” they have finally decided to proof read, and make complaints – I mean the person who is going to spend the most time on the site, never even looked at the admin section until after we went live. GAH! 
The project that just “finished” was building 2 sites to go live at the same time.  4 days after we went live, the Boss hands me enough changes to the smaller site, that I will have to completely redo the top navigation bar, to accommodate a new show.  The new show also requires me adding a whole new registration section to the site.  But wait . . .
I am already into the following project, that is due in 1/2 the time the previous one was, with some new and fun technical challenges.  Happy Happy Happy

And there has just been a pile of small shit raining down on my head (I suspect this might be what people mean when they say Nibbled to Death by Ducks)
I am going to miss the two upcoming housefilks, due to too much life. I took my herbs outside and the temp dropped below freezing after mother’s day and I lost a bunch, feeling tired all the time, blah blah blah etc. etc.

OTOH

]]> http://alyse.org/home/2005/05/19/a-slice-of-real-life/feed/ 0 http://alyse.org/home/2005/01/17/odd-comparisons-and-reflections-and-a-little-memorial-of-my-own/ http://alyse.org/home/2005/01/17/odd-comparisons-and-reflections-and-a-little-memorial-of-my-own/#comments Mon, 17 Jan 2005 18:00:00 +0000 Alyse http://alyse.org/home/2005/01/17/odd-comparisons-and-reflections-and-a-little-memorial-of-my-own/ [...]]]> I wanted to thank everyone for their advice for the visitation and memorial service.  I tried to employ as much as I could, and we all made it through.  Its amazing to me sometimes, how the subtle differences in cultural traditions really make a difference. 

The visitation was a tad strange, being more used to the in home and non-viewing aspects of sitting Shiva.  It seems that the visitation puts more more of a social burden on the grieving family.  Being that no one will know all the people visiting as well as the people who are closest to the deceased, there seems to be a constant requirement of being “on” to greet people, and chat and talk etc.  My experiences with sitting Shiva, is that there is less needing to be “on” and more of a buffer for the family, keeping them from needing to handle some of the extra social niceties.

For the memorial service, I am sure that it was my Jewish past and my current Pagan bent that really reminded me how different I/we are in some views.  I was told that for the people there that were practicing catholics, it was a beautiful ceremony.  I know I and a few of my contemporaries were pretty horrified.  It seemed that the service was much more about Jesus, and not much about Louise at all.  The Deacon who spoke used a horrid pastiche of weird bible verses to “prove” that Louise was a devout woman and perfect wife and because of such she would enter into heaven.  Plus according to him, she could have been awful, but she believed in Jesus so all was okay anyway.  I know part of it was just his stilted delivery and bad phrasing, one of the other speakers, used almost the exact same psalm as he did and delivered it beautifully and made it really mean something in context.

Food – in my experience when you have a death in the family, the community comes and offers support, one of the ways is by sending/bringing/making etc more food than you can possibly imagine, making sure that the grieving family doesn’t have to do anything but what they need to for grieving.  So it seemed odd that David’s family provided food for everyone who had been at the memorial.  We had a lovely luncheon at a local hotel.  And at the end, they were trying to give away food, instead of taking it home.

In any case, it was obvious that Louise was well loved, by family and friends both.  That she created family around her wherever she went.  Her family and children and grandchildren are all warm and loving and have learned the family creating skills that she practiced.  She certainly will be missed.

I know that some of this prompted Evan and I to discuss a bit what we would want done, even if in some cases was – just not like X or Y.