Jim’s Brain Online

Posted by Jim at November 29th, 2004

Just jumping on the bandwagon… (via Ed and Nate)

What is the first RPG you ever played?
Dungeons & Dragons’ Basic Edition. The one that came in a box with a red dragon on the cover, contained the “In Search of the Unknown” dungeon and allowed you to go up to level three before forcing you to buy Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. I did this within 2 years of play.

What RPG do you currently play most often?
Owing to the time requirements associated with combining a job, graduate school and parenthood, I play basically nothing at the moment. I desperately want to change this.

What is the best system you’ve played?
That’s hard to say. I don’t get particularly attached to systems. I do this to create stories/characters. If I had to pick a system, I’d pick Amber. This is less because it’s an innovative gaming system than because the rules fit the feel of Zelazny’s stories pretty well.

What is the best system you’ve run?
Amber, again and for the very same reasons plus one more… Amber’s rules are simple and don’t get in my way when I GM. In the interest of honesty, however, most of the games I’ve run in the last few years have either included no rules or minimalist rule systems that are stylistically similar to Amber.

Would you consider yourself an: Elitist/ Min-Maxer/ Rules Lawyer?
This brings out some contrasting sides to me as a player and gm. If “elitist” refers to someone who’s into the storytelling side of RPG’s, I guess that I’m there. If not, I’m not. As someone who DM’ed first edition AD&D for many years, I could be something of a rules lawyer in that system–if only because I knew the game so well.

If you could recommend a new RPG which would you recommend? Why?
A new RPG? Sadly, I haven’t played many new RPG’s in a while. The ones I have played haven’t awed me.

How often do you play?
Under normal (not overworked) conditions, I generally play monthly.

What sort of characters do you play? Leader? Follower? Comic Relief? Roll-Player/ Role-Player?
I’ve played a lot of characters that are a hero with a magical background. This ranges from paladins to princes of Amber to bards… I’ve also played a fair number of mages–typically with a dark past.

What is your favorite Genre for RPGs?
I’m flexible, but I like non-standard fantasy. When reading, I generally prefer science fiction to fantasy, but since pretty much no one I know actually runs science fiction, I don’t have any playing experience to back that up.

What Genres have you played in?
Science fiction, horror, fantasy and superhero. Probably more, but I can’t think of them at the moment.

Do you prefer to play or GM? Do you do both?
I prefer to GM. Much of the joy I get out of gaming revolves around creating the setting and the story. You just don’t get to do much of that as a player.

Do you like religion in your games?
I’ve nothing against it. Though a lot of campaigns I’ve run probably contain religious themes, they haven’t been overt. Indeed, the one time anyone suggested I do something overt (something about the fruits of the spirit, I think), I managed to be very polite and avoided gagging.

Do you have taboo subjects in your games or is everything “fair game”?
I don’t think I’ve got any intentional taboos, but there hasn’t been a lot of sex or an in depth exploration of a romantic relationship. I know I’ve made some political observations here and there, but again, not particularly overtly.

Have you developed your own RPG before?
For a while there, it seemed like I developed one for each campaign I ran. That is, of course, when there was any system at all.

Have you ever been published in the Gaming Industry? If so, what?
Nope. I’m unpublished for the moment. Perhaps I can make an attempt at that after I work on finishing the novel I was writing before going back to graduate school.

Posted by Jim at November 28th, 2004

Anyone who hasn’t spent most of the last few years under a rock has probably noticed that many people and organizations are now refering to this period of the year as “the Holidays.” This allows them to acknowlege that Christians aren’t the only people celebrating something.

All in all it’s a good thing, but, there are times, I think, when you don’t have to be inclusive.

I saw a great example around Easter of last year. The grocery store I go to was advertising “great deals on ham for the holidays.” The holidays? Let’s see, who celebrates holidays that time of year? Christians (Easter). Jews (Passover). I’m not sure if Muslims do or not (Ramadan seems so mobile that I’ve never figured out when it happens).

Of these religions, which one traditionally eats ham on Easter? Christians. The other two are forbidden from ever eating ham.

I don’t think they would feel bad about not being included. Similarly, if some store was having a great deal on Menorahs, I wouldn’t feel left out if they marketed specifically to Jews.

Posted by Jim at November 25th, 2004

In 1998, a friend of mine passed along a tip that some new dot com was giving out their stock for free. Mind you, this wasn’t real stock and there was no guaranty that the company would survive, but, what the heck? I went and got some free stock.

A few months ago, I noticed that the company had survived, and, briefly wondered what my stock was worth (if anything). Last night I read an article in Wired.

Turns out that I’m owed some cash. Bearing in mind that I never bought any stock, I almost feel guilty taking the money, but not that guilty. I’ll be sending in my paperwork tomorrow.

Posted by Jim at November 23rd, 2004

I do a bit of contracting. Some of it basically turns out to be technical support. Some of it turns out to be more interesting than that.

Unfortunately, the tale I’m about to tell falls into the former category. One of the people at ACCESS was having trouble with her email program (Microsoft Outlook). The program was taking an age to open, and, when it did the program would only show her archives–nothing recent.

Here’s why: Symantec’s Anti-virus program had quarantined her Outlook file because it contained a virus. Mind you, the virus couldn’t do anything in the file, but, because it did exist and the program couldn’t remove it, the Anti-virus program decided to get it off her computer.

Moving it out of quarantine did no good. It would just be quarantined again as soon as it came out. This was made more annoying by the fact that it was an old computer running Windows 98, 32 MB’s of RAM, a 200mhz CPU, and a nearly full hard drive.

In short, it crawled. Just restoring the outlook.pst file would take 5 minutes.

After much frustration and fussing about, I managed to solve the problem by excluding outlook.pst from “realtime virus protection.” Symantec’s program will still catch viruses if you click on an email, but will no longer quarantine the file on the basis of a virus existing in the file.

What made things particularly ironic is that Symantec was responding to a virus that takes advantage of flaws in Outlook Express. She doesn’t have Outlook Express on her machine. She’s got Outlook. Thus, she was unable to use her email for hours due to an Anti-virus program quarantining her mail file because it contained a virus that couldn’t do her any harm.

As someone’s who’s never had a virus on his home machine (and very seldom at work), I sometimes wonder if anti-virus programs are worth the trouble.

Posted by Jim at November 21st, 2004

One thing I found particularly interesting in sociology and anthropology was looking at the relationship between a group’s available resources and their ways of thinking about the world.

Thus it’s been rather amusing to watch the Republicans and Democrats “discover the wisdom” of the other party’s beliefs on particular issues. For example, the Republican party isn’t pushing term limits quite so hard now that it’s the party of the incumbents. Then, of course, there’s also deficit spending. As the party in power, deficit spending is awfully tempting when you’ve got something to accomplish and you don’t have the will to either

a) cut spending, or
b) raise taxes.

Another area of amusement for me is the change in the area of ethics. When the Republicans came to power, they decided to hold their leaders to a higher standard–one that they’ve just repealed. Now Tom DeLay can be indicted, but, still keep a leadership position–just like the Democrats could have.

Democrats in turn have discovered that deficit spending is a bad thing and according to Salon Democrats will have to turn to state’s rights arguments to allow Democratic policies that differ from federal (Republican) policies.

I’ll be curious to watch these changes continue. Will the Republicans become the party of big government? Will the Democrats suddenly become big on defense spending?

While I don’t believe that people’s circumstances entirely dictate their belief system, I do think that the amount of power a party has affects their ideology. For example, being against deficits gives you extra leverage when the other party proposes something you don’t like. Not only is that thing bad, but you can tell people that we just can’t afford it.

Whatever the case, we’ll get to see just how strongly the parties hold to what some people regard as unchangeable characteristics of each party.

Posted by Jim at November 19th, 2004

Just another electoral map. This one uses county election data, mixing red (Republican), blue (Democrat) and green (other) to decide the color of the spot.

A more accurate way to view things (I think) than the big blocks of blue and red we all saw on election night.

Posted by Jim at November 18th, 2004

More than anything else, people’s tendency to reduce “The Other Side” to a two dimensional caricature worries me. I’m not much bothered by electoral competition. I’m not even bothered by negative campaigning if the negative campaigning brings attention to a real problem with a candidate.

I worry, however, when people manage to remove any respect from their thoughts of “The Other Side”–whatever party that may be.

I like to think I have an appreciation for my limitations (perhaps too much). I know I’m wrong on occasion. I believe this probably true of all people and all ideologies as well.

Hence, I tend to believe that compromise and respect for “The Other Side” is a necessity. They’re going to be right when you’re wrong sometime (or perhaps you’ll both be wrong…).Contempt does no one any good.

Thus, I pass along a couple links (via Centerfield):

Perverted, God-Hating Frenchies vs. Inbred, Sex-Obsessed Yokels
Dean’s World: Good Beliefnet Piece

Both pieces are perspectives on the conservative/liberal divide and the entertaining lies we tell about each other.

Posted by Jim at November 17th, 2004

Abby is almost entirely trained. Rebecca can now almost make it through the day without disaster. It’s a bit of a shock.

They still need diapers at night, mind you, but things are much better than they were.

Still, I can almost imagine a point in my life in which diapers will be a memory–as will their exhorbitant cost. One thing that has particularly annoyed me for the past 3 years is that we cannot use cheap diapers. Our kids just end up getting rashes. Thus we basically had to buy name brands. I make no effort to do that in normal life, but it is particularly annoying to do that when the ultimate destiny of the object in question is to be filled with nastiness and thrown away.

I’m beginning to wonder if using pull-ups (which are supposedly for kids doing potty training) actually slows potty training down. Though thinner than diapers, they are absorbant (and more expensive than diapers). We used pull-ups on Abby for months after she showed signs that she might be able to use toilet. She did not improve at all.

By contrast, after just a few weekends of wearing underwear (which does not absorb much of anything) and Abby was using the toilet regularly. Rebecca (16 months younger) began to make much more use of the toilet once we did the same thing with her.

It could be just coincidence, but at the moment, I’m feeling like pull-ups are a total scam.

Posted by Jim at November 16th, 2004

I’m still screwing around with XML and Java and will likely be doing so for quite some time.

One thing I’m currently meditating upon is whether or not to use recursion in the function that allows me to find particular nodes in my XML document.

On the one hand, all the examples I’ve seen use recursion and I like the elegance of recursion. The simplicity of it appeals to my sense of aesthetics. On the other hand, I’m aware that recursion is often slower than a less appealing iterative design.

Aesthetics or speed? The code will be evaluated by CS profs who probably like recursion themselves. But… if I’m lucky enough to have it evaluated by actual users, the speed might matter–or it might not. These are web pages after all. Not novels. Chances are, the files will be small enough that using recursion won’t slow things down measurably.

I plan to come to a decision sometime soon.

Posted by Jim at November 14th, 2004

During the past year I’ve attended far too many weddings. I’ve wanted to attend all of them, but I’m beginning to wish that my friends and relatives would have spread out their Very Significant Events a little bit.

This weekend included another one. Fortunately, it was a little different from most of them. First, this wedding took place in Chicago. Second, it included recent Polish immigrants in addition to Kristen’s relatives (second or third generation Dutch or Norwegian/Swedish persons).

The wedding turned out to be in a Catholic church. Kristen and I were comfortable with the liturgy because our church follows one very much like it. It also included mass, but, only if you happen to be Catholic. We aren’t, so we just watched.

They held the reception in a banquet hall named Camelot. I’m guessing that not everybody in the hall spoke English since everything was announced in both English and Polish. The wait staff also seemed to be bilingual.

Unlike the weddings I’m used to, they did not serve punch. Every table did, however, have it’s own bottle of vodka, 2 bottles of soda, and a bowl of ice. In addition to coffee cups, each table setting included a shot glass–presumably for those who preferred their vodka straight. During dinner they served white wine.

Anyone dissatisfied with their choices in alchohol at the table could go up to the open bar and order a wide variety of mixed drinks.

The food was great. It included kapusta (similar to sauerkraut), various breaded meats (pork and chicken), sausage, vegetables, mashed potatoes, and a potato dish that reminded me of gnocchi (Kopytka?).

Abby and Rebecca would only eat sausage and mashed potatoes. They spent most of their time with the other children, running from the front to the back of the dining hall.

After dinner, the DJ had everyone stand, hold their glasses of wine and sing a song that seemed to be named “Stolla, stolla, stolla.”

After that came the dancing. Struggling to get people up on the dance floor, the DJ tried things ranging from wedding standards (”YMCA!”) to polkas to oldies to dance music that I was entirely unfamiliar with–some of which were in Polish.

Some of the people there were really into the dancing and quite good at it. I was not one of them.

One of the DJ’s choices particularly amused me. The DJ was bilingual in Polish and English, but didn’t seem to notice that he’d included a song that used the single most offensive word in the English language.

In his defense, offensive language doesn’t hit you as hard in a second language as in your first langauge. This song told the story of some guy who had lived for 24 years next door to a woman named Alice and never had the nerve to ask her out. Finally she moved away.

This is a fairly typical (even boring) song subject except for one thing–the (constantly repeated) chorus. Here’s it is:

ALICE? WHO THE F–K IS ALICE?

The DJ apologised for that one, but not until after it was finished.

Soon after that we left. We weren’t offended, but it was 10 pm and we had a three hour drive to get home.