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Showing posts from November, 2012

Friday Mad Science: Three Looks at the Tablet Wars Edition

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Good morning, and happy Friday. Let's get to it, shall we? *** PFC Badley Manning in happier times. U.S. Army   PFC Bradley Manning  is expected to testify at his trial in the  Wikileaks  case soon, and apparently he's going to argue that he’s been “punished enough” given the nature of his initial confinement . According to reports, he was held in solitary confinement for eight months without clothes, blankets, or bed sheets, ostensibly because he was considered a suicide risk. However, repeated evaluations supposedly showed that after some time had passed, doctors didn't consider him at risk of hurting himself at all; it seems that he was just a very weird dude. And while I can confirm that I have no special knowledge of this case whatsoever, it's not at all hard to imagine that the military would treat this guy in whatever the worst possible circumstances were that they could justify. Given that he was apparently acting at least very strange, well... I'm

Friday Hair Metal: Sultans of Swing

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I looked for the version of this song played by that old bastard who owned that bar in Seoul--if you've ever been stationed near there, you have to know the one I'm talking about.  I can't remember it's name, but that's inevitably where we start our nights, before we were drunk enough that heading up The Hill seemed like a good idea. Anyway, this song has been one of my favorites ever since.

Clerics and Alternate Classes in D&D Next

One thing that I couldn’t help noticing in our recent  D&D Next Playtest  sessions was that my wife’s cleric character,  Melora MacGonagal , was vastly more powerful than the other characters in our game--at least when I was playing her.  That continues a trend that I first noticed in the  4th Edition  but which is probably a lot older than that, i.e. since it seems like nobody ever wants  to play  a cleric,  Wizards of the Coast  (WotC) has gone to a lot of trouble to try to make the class ever more attractive in order to keep it relevant.  And by more attractive, I mean more powerful.   Consider: Your Cleric can cast spells.  In fact, the cleric’s spell progression chart is virtually identical to that of the wizard.  And some of those Cleric spells are really, really good. But where the wizard has to wear robes and carry a staff, a cleric can wear armor and carry a shield. Also, where a wizard has to add spells to his spellbook in order to learn them, the cleric a

2012 Harvest Hustle Race Report

Over the weekend,  Sally  and I did the 2012 edition of  Big Boy’s  Harvest Hustle   10K  down at  Short Beach  in  Stratford, CT .  The race was originally scheduled for November 4 th , but thankfully it was postponed in the wake of  Hurricane Sandy , which meant that although the weather was much colder and windier than it would have been on the original date, the upside was that I actually got a chance to run it. Pre-Race When Sally and I signed up for the race, we’d meant for it to be our last real race of the year, and given that my training year had already been cut short once because of The Crisis at work, I was planning to try to really focus on this race and take it seriously.  Events, however, did not cooperate.  The last full week in October was a previously scheduled Rest Week for me, and at the time, I’d been doing a lot of interval work and felt like I badly needed the rest.  What I  didn't  know at the time, however, was that our second hurricane in two y

The Sorcerer's Tale (Chapter 2, Part 2)

Our Story So Far:      Nicholas Rasputin is a low-level history professor at Oxford University.  He's also the son of Andre Rasputin, Britain's last great wizard/spy and one-time leader of MI-6's Special Section, and he's the great-grandson of Grigori Rasputin, perhaps the most powerful and infamous evil wizard in all history.  However, none of that explains why two American Army officers have come to Nick's classroom to try to strong-arm him into giving them Durandel, the legendary Sword of Kings. *** I ’d finally reached the train station and  was on t he  escalator  t o the platform when a memory hit me so hard that it nearly knocked me over.  I was on the football pitch and had gotten into it with another boy.  I was twelve, the son of an aggressive man, and not naturally inclined to give ground when challenged.  The other boy and I had tussled several times already, though nothing serious, until I’d finally put my shoulder into his chest and knocked him

Every Damn Time...

It's been tough to be a Tennessee Titans fan this season, but in spite of that, I decided to catch up with the team yesterday because, first off, the Giants weren't on until the night game last night, and second, because it seems like Tennessee has been playing a little better since Jake Locker came back from his injury and team owner Bud Adams publicly called the team out.  I mean, they beat Miami pretty convincingly before their bye week, and I'd have sworn that Miami was gonna hand them their ass.  So I checked back in.  I've been burned before, but despite that, I let myself believe.  The Titans were playing the theretofore 1-9 Jacksonville Jaguar s yesterday, and I figured, well, no matter  how ugly the game gets, at least the Titans are probably gonna win.  I mean, Jacksonville has been God-awful all season. Wrong.   The Titans got six or seven sacks, got an interception on like the second play of the game, and basically had every opportunity you could a

Sunday Comics: Bronx Angel--Politics By Another Method (Page 6)

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Bronx Angel: Politics By Another Method , page 6. To see this page at full size, click here . I probably shouldn't say this, but this exchange between Angel and Spice is one of my favorite parts of this story.  Sally and I talked through this a lot while I was working to get it to read right, and now pretty much  every time I call her, and I haven't talked to her in awhile, I start off the call with, "Yo Sally.  I been callin' you, my angel.  Why ain't you called me back?"

Saturday Update: November 24, 2012

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The good news is.. I've been on vacation for a week, and I'm now feeling better than I have in a long, long time.  Rested.  Ready.  Relaxed.  Good all-around.  Moreover, Thanksgiving was awesome, and except for the part where we spent a lot of time in the kitchen, it was also pretty darned uneventful.  On top of that, I've run three times in the past week and ridden my bike once, and now Sally and I have a race tomorrow, and I'm very much looking forward to it.  And if that's not enough, it's also now the Christmas season, and yet I'm not worried even a little. Except for Sally, pretty much all of my shopping is done. We had Thanksgiving with our neighbors. With that said, this is why it's hard to finish anything. Last night Sally decreed that everyone in our family has to make Christmas gifts for everyone else in our family.  Of course, we can buy gifts, too--and God knows, I've bought gifts--but at least one gift must be handmade .  For ea

Friday Mad Science? No, this is Black Friday Madness!

You have reached Danno's Lair, Friday Mad Science Division. We can't come to the phone right now because we're out shopping for Christmas and boosting our nation's economy. Your call is important to us. Please leave your name and number and a short message after the beep, and we'll be sure to get back to you in the order in which you called. Thank you, and have a nice day. *BEEP*

Train's Drops of Jupiter

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This is what passes for Hair Metal on Black Friday. *sigh*

Danno’s Thanksgiving: Top 10 Reasons to be Thankful (Chrome-Plated Geek Edition)

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I have lots and lots of things for which to be thankful.  I have a great family, a house that I love, a job with decent pay and decent hours that doesn’t drive me crazy, and after something like thirty-five moves, I finally feel like I’m getting a chance to really settle down and settle in to a community where I belong.  My kids are great, and they’re smart, and they’re healthy.  My wife is beautiful and intelligent.  She’s blonde and thin and athletic, and she’s got a D-cup, and she can name the President of France off the top of her head.  Of course, every marriage is work, and ours is certainly no exception, but Sally and I are   both   fully committed.  Also, we’ve been hit by two hurricanes in two years, and we’ve had zero property damage and/or flooding in our house.  This last time we didn’t even lose power. With all of that said, and lots more unsaid, the point of this post isn’t to talk about what makes me personally feel thankful.  We’ve got a great life, and I think tha

The Chickadee Turkey Trot

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We ran a little neighborhood race this morning. Your overall winner? Sally Head!

D&D Next Playtest (Part 2): Elaina Emboo Visits the Blackraven Monastery

This is the second half of my discussion of our family's D&D Next Playtest.   The first part went up yesterday, so if you haven't read that bit, you might want to start there . Teaching D&D to a Seven-Year Old My wife Sally and Hannah, my older daughter, went on a Girl Scout outing the afternoon after Hannah, Emma, and I made our characters, leaving me and Emma the next afternoon.  This was Sunday, and there wasn’t much of a football slate scheduled, so I decided that the time had come to start really teaching Emma to play D&D. We sat down at lunch, and I went through the idea of Skill mechanics with her, and this immediately led to an impromptu Skills Challenge.  I established Emma’s character in a dark and spooky forest, and I said that she’d been traveling with a trading caravan that had been attacked by goblins.  She wandered until she came upon a fortress on the edge of a deeper section of the woods—the  Blackraven Monastery .  At this point, Emma d

Amazing Spider-Man #698

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Holy cow!   Comic of the year.  Easy.  Five stars, no question.   Wow.

D&D Next Playtest (Part 1): My Girls Make Their Very Own Player-Characters

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I finally got a chance to sit down and start teaching my girls Dungeons and Dragons over the weekend, and before we get too far into it, let me just spoiler the ending a little here and admit that we had a blast playing the game.  Now, I’ve gotta admit up front that my girls have a little advantage over someone coming into the game cold because we’ve played a couple of the 4 th Edition-lite board games, Wrath of Ashardalon and The Legend of Drizzt , and both of those games involve basic concepts that are fundamental to the full version of D&D.  Still, those games are definitely board games, albeit board games that involve to-hit rolls and Armor Class, and so I knew going into this that there were going to be some growing pains. The Legend of Drizzt is a terrific board game for D&D newcomers. I have two daughters— Hannah , 9, and   Emma , 7.  Emma is by far the more interested in all things geek.  She likes comic books, and she likes dragons, and last year when I