The bane of always moving

Hilarious conversation with British Airways representative when trying to retrieve my frequent flyer info:

"Address on the account for verification?"
"Somerville."
"Try again."
"Woburn."
"No, try again."
"Pennylvania?"
"No try again."
"hmmm.  Cambridge."
"Nope, try again."
"That's all I've got."
"...."
"Boston?"
"You got it!"

Timeless Adventures

Back when I was a wee little tyke of 15, some of the kids in my "enriched" class were talking about D&D and I was totally into the concept.  (I just watched the Big Bang Theory the other night and Sheldon is on the comp using an emulator to play Zork....I immediately went online to see if I could find it.  I couldn't).  But the cartoon and LotR and those comp games were just starting to ignite my imagination. I played some games with these teenage smarty pants D&D kids but they were at  demi god status and having dragon battles and I didn't know what the hell was going on. 

Around 16 I met Carl who actually taught...like literally taught me how to RP.  He also made me read the dragonlance chornicles which is by far the best thing anyone has ever made me do.  On a side  note, he also would rebuild MGB's which is the least geeky thing someone can have in the arsenal.

Carl and his MGB back in 1991.

 Carl was older than me, in college when I met him - and our short and whirlwind romance consisted of a few kisses, a few love letters and long drives in his MGB convertible.  He drew me Raistlin after my love of the character and to my horror my parents had it framed (I think they thought it incredibly romantic that he drew it for me and dropped it off with a red ribbon).  You might wonder why my parents were so ok with me dating a college boy which reminds me of the other part of the story - our parents were old friends and they used to joke that Carl and I had used the same crib and that somehow tied us together.  I think it was kind of messed up.


Teaching someone to play D&D is not easy.  The mechanics are overwhelming (this is also AD&D era, aka version 2.0 which is much harder to learn than 3.0 and 4.0) and the roleplaying itself is very hard to get used to.  Carl and his brother and my sister and me would sit around the Bussler table rolling dice.  We would say something and Carl would instruct us, "is that really what your boss ass warrior would think?"  It was hard at first and I felt very self concious.  After playing Carl would take me on a walk.  He would reset the stage for me from a scene from the Dragonlance chronicles.  "Carl, I'm so cold, let's go back..."  to which he'd say, "No, imagine you are Laurana and you have to get to the army before Kitiara...."  It sounds so stupid and childish now but in truth it was the foundation for everything I have for tabletop gaming since that time. 

This is all a long intro to say that Carl will be self publishing a pathfinder RPG supplement.  I am going to be picking this up, maybe it's something I can run.  Carl started me on a path of 20+ years of amazing friends, adventures, and memories.  The least I can do is buy his own creation.

http://www.timelessadventures.com/

Kinect Love

Okay, so I got a Kinect and yes I love it.   I could go on about all the cool things it does but the truth is it does a lot of cool things only moderately cool.  See, I'm not so much in love with the Kinect as it stands today as I am in love with the idea of the kinect.  It's like a really unhealthy relationship. 

However, this is not to say that it isn't an object of beauty (it looks really sharp by my TV) or that I only half like it when I'm playing it (I LOVE IT!  I feel like Tom Cruise in minority report!!!  Except being like Tom Cruise isn't that cool.  But you know what I mean).  But there is a slight delay on it and after the 3rd calibration of the system you are like...WTF just remember the play area, ok??  But overall I do love this thing, because what it is isn't so much a motion sensor as it is a leap forward in technology that is going to allow for all sorts of future technology right out of 2001 (which, btw, it is 2011 and we are super behind...thank you microsoft for getting people's asses in gear for better miracles of modern science in the years to come.)

Accessible motion sensor technology and voice/face recognition should have been done years ago.  Kinect makes it affordable and the gamer community will continue to hack and bypass it which will make the technology better for when we use it for products with security requirements.  That's why I love gamers and I love the gaming community.  We make better technology, just for fun.

In the meantime, I'm very happy I spent money on such a worthwhile leap forward.  One of the more shocking components of this product is that it takes pictures of you while you are doing stupid ass moves (which it knows you are doing because it's making you do it) and then shows it to you afterward.  I will not be posting those.  However, you can record living statues -- making your avatar do something and recording your voice.  That seems like a worthwhile sharing moment: