amazingadrian

I've been very busy lately.

( What's up )

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Now playing: Savage Garden - Carry on Dancing
via FoxyTunes

So, it has finally come to this. It seems that all that fear mongering by the Republicans during the election has lead to a man killing three police officers over fears of an Obama gun ban. It's just discusting to think that good people are dead now because some brainwashed loony beleived whatever the Bush lackies where saying at the time of the election.


Also, check this out: A rare pink dolphin was discovered recently off the coast of Louisianna.

Also, it seems as though jobless benefits are running out, even though the recession is not quite yet reversing. This could make a bad situation much worse, depending on how the recovery is handled.

Even though I didn't actually go anywhere this weekend, enough happened online that I still feel emotionally exhausted.

( Weddings, Concerts, Death, and My Jaw )Then we went to the much neglected Club Geek for the "reception". This club was one of my prominent hangouts 3 years ago when I first got involved in Second Life, and was where I first met Almira and Purple. It has since fallen into disuse, but remains standing; a tremenduous feat in the constantly shifting nature of Second Life. Here we where treated to some LIVE MUSIC! The Invisible Band is shown here, and even though the audio stream kept cutting in and out for me, let me tell you, these guys where fantastic. They've been around since the early 80's, have over 20 albums under their belt, and are composed entirely of furries! After they played there set, there was another live musician but I am embarrassed to say that I got a little distracted by joining a group of drunken dancers dancing naked on the club bar. Don't worry though; In Second Life, the newlyweds encourage you to do this. X3 It was a lot of fun, with just the right amount of mayhem and hijinks to pay homage to these two great personalities.

Let's see, what else happened. Oh yeah. I got a new job as a DJ at another club in Second Life, to replace the one I had just lost. Clubs really are having a hard time lasting in Second Life now. I don't know if it's the economy or what, but so far every  place I've been hired at has gone down the tubes. Oftentimes before I can make a name for myself. That's ok though. I'm not trying to be a super-popular DJ like graveyardgreg . I guess I just want to get a small following of folks who appreciate my musical tastes. After all, I typically play songs that the radio won't ever touch: non-hits by popular bands, songs gleaned from the internet, independant artists...and it's all good. Mostly rock.

Outside of Second Life, things became a bit of a roller coaster ride. We've had what might amount to our first real player character death in ceg_lylat  since I joined. It was a very well played scene and emotions where quite high. The character who died was one that everyone unquestionably had some kind of investment in. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that he had come to embody the very game. It will be interesting to see how things play out, since my character is very hurt by it, and another character got on her bad side during the initial pandemoneum. However, it leaves some of us at a loss because of these heavy investments, not the least of which include the player of the deceased, who I feel a little bad for; this was her main, and it certainly wasn't planned. Still, in any rpg there's always that possibility there, and as long as fun is had, it can be worth it. It was still a fun session, and very interesting seeing how the characters reacted to it. There where a few surprises.
I've got a hunch it isn't the end for this character though. I think our GM has something in mind for him, though how long it will take to play out remains to be seen. The game was so emotionally charged though, that I didn't get any sleep at all last night, so I slept most of today. Curse you Richards! j_wolfman !

Also, there's no doubt about it now. My jaw is fucking shot. I can't even open my mouth wide enough to get a spoonful of cereal in without experiencing some pain, and solid foods like hamburgers and hot dogs are a real pain to eat. I'm not concerned about my health because the pain isn't bad enough that I can't eat through it, but it's damn annoying. I can't afford to see a doctor about it, so I'm going to just have to live with it for now, but I'm already tired of having to pry my mouth open every time I want to take a bite of some solid object. It feels like one of the muscles in there is in the wrong place, and I have to stretch it painfully every time I open my jaws beyond a certain point. It's probably easy to fix (if expensive), but I just hope it doesn't deteriorate before I can afford to have a professional look at it.

Oh, and I also heard about the death of </a></b></a>evil_dwagon, a prominent member of the furry fandom. I didn't know the guy personally, but he must have made one hell of an impact judging by the outpouring for him. He was one of the convention medical staff on hand for many years, and some people give him credit for saving their very lives. Quite a legacy. I wish I had the money to go to these conventions; then I could meet these people in person, before it's too late.</div>
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Now playing: Journey - Remember Me
via FoxyTunes   

We're all familiar with those loveable characters on The Muppets and Sesame Street by now, but did you know the origins behind some of the characters? I was surprised to discover that many of them had had gigs prior to their appearances in the aforementioned popular shows.

What do you do when you have a technical problem and don't have the skills or money to apply a technical fix? You find a way to work around it. Here are some surprising home remedies for dealing with fauly electronics.

A man in Boynton Beach was arrested after dialing 911 because the Burger King he was at had run out of lemonade.

So I kinda sorta joined another rp, this one based on Star Wars d20 Revised rules. The opportunity came up through Second Life, and I thought I'd look into it, if just to see how the GM would be putting it together. The group has already had two sessions, and while I missed the first to go to a deaf culture event for school, the second one ran last night, and I was able to go to that. The group dynamic is...weird. The GM is very condescending at times and patiently helpful at others. One rper made only high rolls (she actually never rolled any less than 18 the entire session) and left suddenly when someone called her on it, only to return later to bitch at the GM, claiming we "All spoke to her, saying that the game sucks". Another player is...highly energetic, almost valley girl in personality. She is clearly new at rping as she seems to take her character and her character's chosen proffession a little too seriously. I don't know whether or not the girl who stormed out of the game will be coming back or not, but if she does, I can clearly see some contention happening between these two players. The three of us remaining seem to get along ok, although the valley girl rper is annoying as fuck...

But I can't really complain I suppose, because of the nature of the game. I wouldn't be surprised if the game fell apart in the near future, but at least I did learn a little of how the Star Wars d20 rules worked. I have the old edition core rules (thanks codefox !), and now I finally have a game to play in.

So the character I'm playing is a Gungan. The GM recommended I play a male, so rather than importing Jennifer, my Sith Lady, I created someone new. He's a dead serious soldier type who is kind of between jobs at the moment. He seems to fit into the GM's game world rather well so far. Here are his stats:

( Character Sheet )
I still need to calculate his credits and subtract for equipment, although the GM pre-approved this equipment list. The character was made, by the way, entirely using this handy Character Generator. Links are down at the bottom for several different games, including Call Of Chtulhu, Ravenloft, and D20 Dragonlance, amongst others.

In addition to this game, we also met in the D20 Modern game, which was the first session in nearly a month (if not several months. It has been a while.) The grueling combat phase of the campaign seems to be finishing up, and Chakat Merideth was able to throw around her considerable weight with some good grappling skills. She's a special case character, so it was fun actually playing into her characteristics, like using her forelimbs to pin an opponent while disarming him with her upper arms, or simply trampling a guy with all four of her feet. Good times.

In ceg_lylat , we're splitting into groups to take out various targets, rather than all meeting for a group session. Not sure how long it will go on like this but it may take a while, considering that there are still quite a few targets left, and each player has to rp out their sessions on an individual basis. I welcome the change of pace though, and for an experiment, it will be interesting to see how this flies.

So yeah. I had all three of these games running last night. This includes the four private rps I was already in before all the gms said "Hey, everybody get together!" All told, I was playing in some 7 games simultaneiously last night.  Now, normally, I can get away with participating in several rps at once. The pace in the two rules-based games can get kind of slow as everyone has to resolve dice rolls during their turns, and sometimes turns can really drag out as the players make different proposals. That's fine, since it allows me time to rp casually with one of my buddies in IM. The problem with tonight was that I already had too many buddies in IM when the GMs all acted their games, at least two of which I were not expecting (since there was a hurricane storming up the lowcountry, I expected the d20 Modern to be postphoned, and the Star-Wars d20 had had a game the previous night.)  It was a mental exercise juggling all those rps at once, but I think I managed quite well. Eventually I did have to close down several of the minor rps going on to focus on the larger campaigns (the big three mentioned above). In the future, I think I need to manage my  weekend connections better.

This night of rping was sponsored by Sierra Mist.


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Now playing: John Mayer - Waiting On The World To Change
via FoxyTunes   

Here's another list of 101 Best Free Computer Software that I discovered. This one is different from the one I posted before.

I discovered the aforementioned site when I switched from Trillian to Pidgin, which, by the way, is scores better. If you are looking for a multi-client IM that can connect to nigh anything, send files to any other client, enable conferencing in any other client, connect with a few client specific widgets (such as direct connection in AIM), then Pidgin is your bird. While looking for ways to increase Pidgin's functionality in preparation for the Star Wars rp, I did a search for plugins and came up with a list of the 10 most useful ones.

Oh yeah, and check out this video from the Deaf Performing Arts Network: It's an interperetation of John Mayer's "Waiting On The World To Change" done in Sign Language.

I'm not sure what I did wrong, but I'm sorry.

I'm just concerned, and a little frusterated. I didn't mean offense. 

Gaming was intense last night in the d20 Modern-based game I'm participating in over Game Table.  Merideth, my adapted chakat character, got hit with a flak shell that pretty much reduced her to a blood stain. Thanks to her racial bonus that allows me to re-roll a bad stabilisation (because of the extra organs),  She was able to make the stabilisation roll. At -9 HP, she needed to make that stabilising roll, because if she hadn't, the next turn she would have passed on (1 hp is taken away for each turn you character spends with negative hit points. At zero, their status is "knocked out"). The first roll wouldn't have been enough to save her, so I had the option of using her racial bonus or the action dice. Odds were better, so I used the action dice and rolled a five. (1d6)

So...yeah. Pretty close call there, but I'm still in the game.

In ceg_lylat, I also had a character that nearly died.  Wasimah Mirhas, my buff tigeress Heavy Weapons Guy, was attempting to remove a boulder fom over a trap door when the thing collapsed under her weight. The roll was...bad. I missed the target by such a wide margin, that it would have meant instant death for her (j_wolfman said the boulder would have crushed her head). Now, I had no problem with character death in this instance, since I already had another who was slated to return, but I had no idea how to deal with something so gruesome in the actual rp for this character at that time, so I took the offer to re-roll the dice. It was still pretty poor, but at least it didn't result in instant death - The GM ruled her legs were crushed instead.  That I could rp, so I went with it. She's out of commission in the hospital now, and probably will be out of the rp for a while. Now I just need to get withj_wolfman about what is going to happen to her now, and possible character development opportunities that can come from this. I've already got an interesting idea or two...

In gamingguardians, I've set into motion some things that could turn out to be really really sucky for Amazing Adrian. We'll have to see what happens, since there's always a chance his teammates will bail him out of it. After this though, I'm not going to bail him out of bad situations that could result in character death. I did that once with strickland, and it left a bad taste in my mouth.

All in all, this isn't shaping up to be a good year for any of my characters.  It's still a good year for me though! :p


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Now playing: Journey - Like A Sunshower
via FoxyTunes   

Here's a list of pricey collectable games. These games are all legendary and rare, very hard to find on today's market.

Here's instructions on how to make a hamburger that will give you an extra life.