JoeGun

How Ram-Man got my son into RPGs.

2010-01-30T14:17:00.000-08:00

This is a story about Ram-Man, and more importantly how he got my son to play RPGs with me they way they are meant to be played.

First a little background: My son loves rolling dice, so he has been "playing" RPGs with me for a good 6-7 months now. Although at the tender age of 3 1/2 he is far from being an avid role player. Anyway, he enjoyed rolling the dice, and basically playing out combat. It worked out really well for me, as I got into Savage Worlds around this time, and he was my always available player to test out game mechanics that were new and unfamiliar to me; I'm looking at you Mass Battles, Chases, Raises and Toughness. So while he helped me do this, and we even managed to create him a Character and introduce him into a little makeshift gaming group comprised of mostly newbies ( my little sister, my 12 year old Daughter, my Son and my old buddy through skype ), he never really got into anything other than rolling the dice, and uttering things such as "I bust that guy up!".

Second some alternate background: Roll back to a little over a year ago, Christmas, my son is 2 and just got a playskool castle with some Knights, a King and the Knight you see above. As soon as he opened it we proceeded to play with it daily, for a good month we were tromping on plastic horseback across carpet laden fields looking for...the Flag! Yup see the Castle had a single yellow flag that could be taken off and put back on. This same flag also happens to fit quite nicely in the hands of said knight pictured above. This is the infamous Ram-Man, the evil Knight who wanted the throne. However since he had no army, the best he could do is sneak in to the castle, and steal their banner, then fly away on his riding dragon ( yes the set includes a red dragon, that has pegs in his back for Ram-Man to ride on, as well as flapping wings and a biting motion ). This brought us hours upon hours of fun, as my son would chase Ram-Man around the house with his Knights firing Cannon balls, throwing axes, and just tackling me, to beat up Ram-Man, secure the yellow Flag and take it back to the Castle, all just to repeat the process all over again.

Now fast forward to about a month ago: My son asked if he could play "Dice" and I of course agreed, and we proceeded to pull down the dice, and the books, I handed him his Character, and prepared for another 15-20 minutes of me trying to find excuses for him to roll the dice. Then I looked over across the Table and saw him laying on the edge of the table. Ram-Man! It all instantly clicked. We have a setting! We have catch phrases, trademarks, backstory already to go! So a quickly tell my son, you know what would really make this fun! If we used the Castle and the Knights to play dice! So we quickly grab the Castle and the Knights and the story took over. Soon my son was all into character and even helped evolve the story!

"But Daddy, if Ram-Man doesn't live in the Castle, he needs his own Castle"

"But we don't have another Castle, Caleb"

"So lets build one!"

"Awesome! I'll get the Legos!"

So now Ram-Man has a Castle that we MUST build out of Legos before we play "Dice". And now my son plays RPGs for real.

Finally after a long break!

2009-07-31T10:30:00.001-07:00

Well it looks like our RPG sessions might start up again after a longer than expected hiatus. It's annoying when life gets in the way of play, but it does happen from time to time. Anyway I've spent the morning making sure the server is running up to spec, and that the QJ is updated with the latest email questing Gnarr has done. I've setup a couple of sessions, hopefully we can nail both of them, but if we only get to 1 today, I'll be happy! I think it is time to ramp up the quest a bit, and push the story line a little faster. So hopefully there will be some good stuff happening in the next couple "lunch time power sessions"!

New Players!

2009-06-10T23:01:00.000-07:00

So I just got a couple more players interested in trying out our Lunch time Power session RPG experiment! It will be interesting for a few reasons:

1) they are my sisters
2) One has some limited RPG exp back about 10 years ago
3) the other has NO RPG exp at all.

That being said, I think the first couple of session will need to be in person so we can work through how to use our web based system, and just get the feel of how to play the game in general.

With that being the case, instead of rolling them into our current game, I think I will start them in a new game, and ramp them up a bit slower. Once they get ramped up, I will then roll them into the main game.

I think this will be really cool, as both of them will bring some very different perspective to the way the rest of my group has been playing.

So we shall see....

Lunch Time power sessions, and Email RPG

2009-05-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

So a group of my buddies started an RPG session a while ago. Due to the typical constraints of our lives: timezones, families, kids sports, chores, work, birthday parties, holidays, and life in general, we have been running what I like to call the Lunch Time power session! Our first issue is this: we live on different sides of the US right now, so physically getting together is pretty much not an option. However this is our core group of players that started back when we were like 12 ( ok some of us started around 18 but most of us around 12 but I digress)! The point is this is the group we wanted to play with. So I configured a server, through team speak on there, and got to coding. I created online interactive char sheets that calculate bonuses, attack rolls, saving throws, damage, ect, cleaning up all the crap that we always forgot to include anyway. Then we realized that getting together at night and having an online chat session was pretty much impossible too! So we tried conference chat during lunch time for some of us, and just after work for others. This presented an interesting flow. See basically this chunks up our sessions into hour long peices that just like watching a TV show need to either start and finish, or at least have a point to the session! The funny thing is, it really changed the course of the campaign and I think in all honesty it makes the game time more fun. See when we get to playing, there is no BS, we are there to work ( or play I guess ). So as soon as those char sheets come up, we are in the game zone! I'm running the game, so I realized very quickly that having something important happen in each session is crucial, and that combat wasn't always needed ( I noticed early on, that many of the standard combat type situations we have run into in the past took to long to really play well for our session ( unless we wanted to have an entire session of resolving combat....umm boring anyone? ). So usually every 2 sessions or so there is a combat. It's kind of funny, but it almost works like a TV show now. Well it has been a while, so a combat must be coming up! Or that guy is important because he is talking to us only 15 minutes into our session! Anyway that portion of it worked out really well.

Then it happened. One of our players got deployed! Yup you guessed it no internet access for a while! Now granted this is just a short stint, but a bigger one is coming up. So I decided to take this short guy to try some ideas. Since I have everything on the server, I can run his char if need be. But that isnt' nearly as fun.....So here is what I did.
1) split off the guy that isn't there, so he isn't working with the main group.
2) lunch time power session are only once a week, so not too much ground is covered.
3) started email RPG with the deployed guy.

So the email RPG was interesting. See we tried it before, and it was very short little blurbs, and we ended up basically having someone roll a die and report the number. If you were within 3 of the GM's number than it went your way. All pretty awkward and really didn't take into account anything that your Char had in the way of bonuses, ect. So I decided, hey you tell me generally what your plan is, and I'll run it through just like it was a regular session, rolling up skills, npcs, ect. after all I had access to the char in question, since it is all on the server. And then I just spice up the verbage on the email. Plus since we do it every day, it pretty much keeps the two groups in sync! So once a week I compile the emails we have and post them to our quest journal. It's all working out pretty good so far. We are 2 weeks in on the email front, and the funny thing is, we are getting alot of good char backstory, with all the free writing time. Pretty much every action has some sort of "lost" type flashback, explaining why the char does what he does. So far pretty cool, so hopefully the campaign can continue when he goes out for the big deployment!

Am I the only one?

2009-04-08T19:13:00.000-07:00

That Hates everlong by the foo fighters? I just heard it on the radio
and really don't get it. I'm reminded how much I hate it when we play
guitar hero or rock band and EVERYONE wants to play that damn song! Oh
well I'll just force them to follow it up with some crazytrain! Now if
I could just get the radio station to always do that....

Caleb's best friend list

2009-03-03T18:02:00.001-08:00

1 Charlie
2 auntie Chrissy
3 uncle russ
4 grandma
5 auntie see ya
6 uncle Riter
7 lily
8 Adam
9 auntie mermaid
10 we ran out of people to choose according to caleb

If I was on southpark!

2009-02-09T13:44:00.000-08:00

So I created my Southpark image and decided to post it up here. I still love Sho-Nuff to much to actually replace my logo for twitter, but if I ever get board of it, I think this is a good alternative. Long live Libre Fighting!

You would think after 16 years!!!!!!

2009-02-09T13:09:00.000-08:00

I wouldn't leave my friggin ATM card in the ATM machine! I swear I'm an idiot sometimes! It's funny I always give people crap for losing their stuff ( wallet, keys, car, ect ) because I NEVER lose things like that. I take pride that I always put my stuff in one place when I come home, so if it isn't on my person it is in that ONE location! As for losing my ATM card, I have never EVER done that! But sure enough I pulled out some cash my wife wanted asked me to pull out, then I hurried off to the store to finish off my shopping for the day. ( Note I was doing great on time! handled Costco, and Walmart in under an hour, and was on my way to finish the trifecta at VONS! ) Of course after a breezed through VONS and was in checkout 10 minutes after my arrival! I realize I don't have my ATM card....where could it be? O CRAP! still in the ATM machine at the bank anyone? Ok well there is no real meaning to this post other than I'm a dumb ass! And now I have to walk my sorry ass in the bank anytime I want money, until my new card arrives. EPIC FAIL!

RPG experiences as a player instead of a GM

2009-01-16T09:27:00.001-08:00

So with my new project and our current adventures, I'm currently the main GM for the group of players I have. It's a small group, only 3 of us including myself. But we have played together for a long time so the adventures are usually pretty full even with only a couple of players. Since we play as a small group the GM usually has a Character in the group as well, this allows for some extra firepower as well as if we ever want to rotate GM's we don't have to introduce a new char. Anyway, we got to a point in our adventure in which my Char ( a Kobold Wizard, 3rd level ) was separated from the party. Now playing in character my little wizard has an obsession with magic, and we were at the time inside an Elvin palace, so I decided the little guy would take this time to go out and find some magic ( hopefully a scroll or two to pick up some new spells ). So I talked to one of our players who has done some GM'ing in the past and asked him if he wanted to GM this section for me. Not to mention it would ramp him up on the GM tools I had created in my project, and see how someone else feels they work. So I load up my Char sheet and think to myself "wow, it's so much easier when your just worrying about this one sheet!". Anyway the GM starts and has me running away from some guards. I have only heard them but have not seen them yet. I end up running into a room that I had detected some magic from, and headed towards the source of the strongest magic I could feel. It was a small statue of a wolf sitting on a shelf. Now as a player and GM I knew exactly what this was, but being true to the game, I rolled my Magic Lore skill and epic failed it. So I think, hell yeah I just scored me a magic statue so I pick it up. So it grows into a huge hulking Wolf! So we roll init and I get the first go. I cast up my magic armor and prepare to parry with my trusty dagger. The first couple of rounds totally go my way. I do notice though that my spells only seem to be doing 1/2 damage. So I decide to play it smart and I cast telekinesis and start raining down furniture on the head of this thing. Using heavy object causing lots of damage. At this point I'm thinking to myself "yeah bitch suck it! No 1/2 strength crap is gonna slow me down!" at this point things start to go down hill. The GM feels that I am walking through this fight because the wolf has only hit my armor and not really caused any damage to me yet, so he decides that the chair I've been using to smash this wolf breaks, so I look for another chair ( after all the room was described as a waiting room filled with chairs and couches). I try another chair but now all the rest of the chairs are cheap knock offs and cause little damage, and break after one hit. Not to mention the wolf wises up and destroys the rest of the furniture, leaving me with nothing to attack him with except my dagger or my 1/2 power magic. At this point my roles start to go a little south, and I notice my PPE ( magic power ) starts dwindling. So I start switching from Magic power to my dagger, and now the real dilemma starts to show. See I'm a tride and true wizard with no real combat skills so I have a whopping +1 to my strike rolls with my dagger, and it only does 1d6 points of damage. Add that in with my low rolls and if I hit the damn thing I was only doing 1-3 points of damage :( ( for the record after the encounter I found that it had 80 HP and 80 SDC. so I had to deal 160 damage to this thing! So then the wolf actually gets past my magical armor and hits me, knocking all of my SDC and most of my hit points off. Now the GM sees the real issue here. See this guy is usually a fighter, and so he is used to taking hits and shrugging them off. He didn't realize that if I EVER get hit, it pretty much prepares me for death, after all I'm a wizard I can't take a real hit! So now the GM starts scrambling. I don't have enough magic energy to cast a spell, my magic armor fades away ( damn 1/2 duration! ) and I only have about 10 HP left. Basically 1 hit and I'm a dead man ( er kobold ). So the GM has me roll Lore Magic and I finally get it ( took about 3 tries! ) and I notice a magic crystal that seems to be draining my powers. I run over there and smash it, this frees up my spell strength issue and give me back 80 PPE. So I quickly summon my magic armor back and proceed to slam into this thing over and over with my magic bolts, finally bringing it down. However at the end of the encounter I am left with 2 PPE ( so no magic for me ) and back down to 20 HP and no SDC. We stopped playing after that because we ran out of time, but it was funny talking about it later, as the GM learned that Magic users are pretty powerful, but they do have weaknesses too, so if you take away the only power they really have, they are just bait :)

So anyway I had a really good time playing, and I think it was a good experience all the way around. I just hope next time, I don't have to use everything I got just to get past 1 silly statue ( or at least roll my magic lore skill before I pick the damn thing up! )

Am I the only person out there that likes GHWT better than Rock Band 2?

2009-01-12T09:10:00.001-08:00

So I guess the first thing I should say is: I only own a wii ( no XBox360 or PS3 ). And having 2 kids and a wife means my gaming time is not all that much. So for XMAS we got GHWT the full band kit and RB2 the game only ( since the instruments from GHWT work with RB2 no issues ). So right out of the box we fired up GHWT with the family and had a great time. We threw in the cheat code to unlock all the songs so we could choose from a bigger selection in quickplay and it was a blast. So after about 2 weeks straight of GHWT goodness, my daughter and I decide we should throw in RB2 and see what it takes. After all, according to everyone on the net, GHWT instruments are better but RB2 the game is WAY better! ( so they say ). I mean this is exactly why we bought it in the setup we did. Anyway we popped in RB2, threw in the unlock code so we could try out our favorite songs. It seemed to have a more eclectic taste than GHWT, and a couple of the song selections I actually preferred RB2 to GHWT ( Battery vs Trapped under ice anyone? ) But that being said I really didn't enjoy playing RB2 as much. Maybe it is the fact that my first entry into these games was GH3 and the RB2 interface just bugged me a but. Not sure. So a couple days later I decided to give a solo shot a go and played around a bit more. It was a little better but I still enjoy the layout of GHWT better. And the drums seemed more fun to play. ( For the record I was playing medium drums on both ). Anyone have any insight into how I might enjoy RB2 more? Maybe I just prefer circles to rectangles? I dunno....

Time to ring on the new year

2008-12-31T13:45:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone has a great 2008. See ya in 2009!

Sent from my iPhone

Best Buy Rocks!

2008-12-31T09:53:00.001-08:00

Ok so in today's society it is very rare for a consumer store to impress me. Usually the customer service is rude, and the sales people don't know what the hell they are talking about. However the exception to the rule for me this year was Best Buy. I bought GHWT for my daughter for Xmas back in November. From there it sat up in my attic for over a month and was wrapped up nice a pretty for her come Xmas day. Anyway the day after Xmas the clip on the drums that hold the drumsticks broke off on the inside. Now I give Best Buy a call and I talk to a girl and ask her if they have any more GHWT for the wii in stock. She says no but to call back in a couple of days. I ask if I need to bring in my busted one now, and they say no, just wait for more to be in stock. So yesterday I'm cleaning up my garage and see the GHWT box sitting there and I think to myself ( Games and stuff come in on Tuesday I should call Best Buy ). So I call and they have GHWT wii in stock. So I tell the guy my problem and that I don't know where the receipt is. He asks for my phone number and pulls up my receipt for me. He tells me that I bought it on 11/25 and in theory that is over the 30 days to return it, but tells me to hold for a second. He comes back on and says just bring it in and we will swap it out for you. I ask him if I need to bring in the whole game or just the drums. He says just the broken part. So I bring the top of the drums in and they give me a new one right out of the box. In and out of the store in 5 minutes. Everyone I talked to knew what they were talking about, friendly, and solved my problem. So like I said in the title Best Buy Rocks!

Post from my iPhone

2008-12-29T18:59:00.000-08:00

Ok so I'm testing the ability to write a blog on my iPhone. So far it seems to work pretty well. Just for the record the iPhone kicks the blackberry's ass any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Blackberrys suck ass!

2008-12-29T14:08:00.000-08:00

So a bit of a rant here. So for starters I do NOT own a blackberry, my wife does. Let me set the stage:
About 2 months ago my wife started looking for a new phone. She had an old razor that was working for her, but she needed something more. As the family schedule maker, group party planner ( for all of our extended family and friends ), she really needed a PDA type phone. Now at the time I had the Samsung Blackjack which I think is an awesome phone. I had reconfigured the entire home screen via the xml files, added apps for yahoo, syncing lotus notes email, then gmail, then gcal, yahoo cal, ect. At the end of the day with my cheappy little winmo device I had every app I needed for work and home without even using a memory card! Anyway she asked me what phone to get. I said I really like my phone, the only issue I have with it is when you try and dial phone numbers not in your addy book it is a pain because the full keyboard is always there. I recomended something that had either a touchscreen, or a dual slider, or combo of those ( tilt, G1, ect ) to fill the void. She looked at me and then said she would ask our friend who works at a cell phone store.
After talking with the guy he pushed the blackberry perl. It fit her requirements ( or so we thought ). It was a full pda, it was small, and it came in pink ( yes that was important! ). She asked me what I thought of blackberrys and I said " well I have only helped a couple people configure their mail on them, and I thought the interface looked cheap, but alot of people swear by them, and I have never really USED one so I dunno".
So she bought the phone! The blackberry perl to be exact ( you know the one that doesn't have a full keyboard ). Anyway she gets the phone and hates it for the first week, because the keyboard is weird. But she got used to it and proceeded to use the phone.
So here is the funny part, she chose the phone for the PDA power. She chose the phone because it had the ability to run her calendar. Wouldn't you think it could sync online with her yahoo calendar? NOPE! The "bad ass" enterprise business phone needs to be plugged in to a computer to sync to yahoo calendar! Are you fricking kidding me! what a POS! My cheap ass original Blackjack could do that out of the box! Anyway so my wife asks me to figure out how to sync it. So I think, well maybe they have a really cool app to use to do it. So I search......They have Yahoo Go! it's even a partnership with RIM! survey says! no syncing, but you can view your cal in yahoo's slow ass interface! Lame!
So I start researching today. After about 45 minutes I come up with the following "workaround" ( or hack depending on how you look at it )
I took my personal server and installed outlook 2002 ( my home version I have ), installed yahoo's desktop sync app to sync the calendar to outlook. Then I created a gmail account, then downloaded another free app to sync google cal to outlook ( note I couldn't use googles sync tool because my outlook version is too old! Finally I need to install the blackberry google cal sync tool on my wifes crappy ass phone when she gets home. So I take the following notes:
1) Blackberrys do in fact suck ass! ( unless you work for company that uses them for work, and you have a corp exchange server with rim server software installed )
2) yahoo needs to work on their toolsets
3) google kicks ass
4) good thing I have a server :)
5) I really love my wife - if it was my phone I would have taken it back and got something else!

Narrating text based rpg session

2008-12-03T22:07:00.000-08:00

So I"m pondering something. Lately my crew and I have been doing some online chat RPG sessions. The first session and the latest session ( session 7 ) were audio sessions, however sessions 2 - 6 were all chat logs. The latest audio session we recorded and created an mp3 file. The nice folks over at rpgmp3 mentioned that we could post in on their site, however I realized that that single session wouldn't make much sense as you don't have any of the previous sessions to go over. So my ponder was this: What if we got the crew together and narrated the chat sessions ( as well as an overview of the first session ) and created audio sessions for these as well to post? I mean it isn't real game time, but it might actually add some thespianism to the whole thing. Anyway anyone have any comments?

Proud of my wife

2008-12-03T00:07:00.000-08:00

So I'm a little late in posting this, but I've been a little busy lately. So my wife walked in the 3day breast cancer walk. She had to raise 2200 bucks and then walk 60 miles, sleep in a tiny tent with her sister, eat crappy food, and be away from her family when she really needed their support. Now don't get me wrong, we were there at almost every checkpoint, bringing propel, stickers, signs, and just plain encouragement. On the second day in, she had to have her feet lanced so she could get her shoes back on and finish the walk. The medics took so long that they wanted to bus her, but she just sucked it up, ran up the hill, got yelled at for running, proceeded to walk really fast, to beat the buses, and made sure she walked every step of the way. I have no inspiring words or awesome way to finish this, because everything I wrote above is the awesome part. I'm just the dude writing it down.

Good Job Honey! I love you!

Kids are the best comedians

2008-11-13T10:33:00.000-08:00

So I have to start by saying this: My wife is walking in the 3 day. For those that do not know what that is; it is a 3day 60 mile walk to support research for the cure of Breast Cancer. I'm very proud of her for this, and I think it is an amazing thing, but not the point of this story....

Anyway most of the planning meetings for the walk are at our house, where the girls discuss shirts to order so they match, what shoes to wear, stuff to take to tent ect. Anyway they have these meetings and the kids are around so they pick up on things you don't think about.

So the other afternoon, I'm talking to my 2 and 1/2 year old son:
"where is mommy?" he asks.
"She is at work." I reply.
"Why?" he retorts....( currently Why? is his 2nd favorite saying on the planet - next to "Yo Joe!" )
"Because she is making money!" I answer back.
"For her BOOBIES?" he asks completely straight faced!
at this point I could not respond because I was too busy laughing my ass off!!!!!

Canned adventures redux

2008-11-11T13:39:00.001-08:00

So I went ahead and tried the whole "create a canned adventure" for the Session we are currently doing. I mean I basically had a good idea of where I wanted the adventure to go and what not, so I started typing it up. On the good side, it really helped me design a quest that used the strengths and weaknesses of the chars that are currently playing. However even with spending as much time as I did planning out all the possible outcomes, they went and did something I didn't even think about. Here is where I think the "canned" adventures throw me. When your GM'ing and you are doing it off of a vague idea, or a basic set of notes, you are pretty much prepared for anything that the chars throw out there, because you are not expecting them to do anything. However when you write up the way the story "should" unfold, if they don't stick to the (your) plan, it is easy to feel like a deer in headlights. That being said, I think I'm going to continue to create notes and basic ideas of how the quest should go, and layout combat (create monsters, villains, ect), but try not to detail every little thing, and have the chars do what they want and fit the story to them. Because after all, the story is about them, I just provide the backdrop :)

Paper pushing pansy

2008-10-27T07:49:00.000-07:00

I'm officially a paper pushing pansy. I spent my Sunday morning and afternoon, laying Sod in my parents backyard. We laid about 1600 sq ft, and by the time we were done, I was exhausted and my back was killing me. Outside of being injured, I've never really been that sore before. It was terrible. After I got home, got cleaned up and then we took the little guy to the pumpkin patch with some friends. By the end of the night I wasn't swore anymore, but I was ready for bed by 8pm. So It's official I am now a Paper Pushing Pansy......

pregenerated adventures vs. top of the head adventures

2008-10-23T22:24:00.000-07:00

So in the realm of RPGs there are two main times of GM'ing:
1) PreGenerated Adventures aka "canned"
2) Top of the head Adventures

So which one is better? Coming from a Palladium Fantasy background myself, we always did top fo the head GM'ing. Usually our quests revolved around whatever our current favorite movie was, or something we saw in the book and wanted to throw at the players. We only tried a couple of the "canned" adventures, and they were always way to complicated to navigate the pages, and it seemed to slow down the story. So I used to be very against them. Anyway, I have since started listening to rpg podcats, from penny-arcade, as well as rpgmp3, and I have noticed that they are using "canned" adventures. I have to say, that they adventure itself moves very fulid and the story is really good. So I though to myself, maybe I just wasn't ready for "canned" adventures when I was young. So I found myself an adventure ( actually a free DnD 3.5 adventure, and I'm going to mix it into my current campaign and see how it goes. ( currently converting the stats and items over from DnD rules to palladium rules :). So I'll post more feedback on my thoughts about which one is better and why, when I finish.

Why am I that guy?

2008-10-21T23:47:00.001-07:00

Why am I the guy that is always fixing everyone's computer? I don't even do hardware anymore, yet every time one of my friends, my wife's friends, or my family's friends computers break, they end up on my desk. Ugh! So here I am just finished up with my actual work, to be greeted by a busted laptop that won't even boot to windows. So I look around in the case....they had to send their OS disk, so I can run a repair right? I mean do they really expect me to have Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 just laying around? O wait these are the people that send me their computers, of course they expect me to have that lying around...... O well I guess it's another night of little to no sleep.

Why do people blog?

2008-10-21T20:38:00.000-07:00

I found myself wondering about this very question a couple years ago. My friend asked me to create a myspace page, because he was posting a book he was thinking about publishing as blog posts on the site. However you need to have a myspace account to read it. So I complied, and like any certified geek, I tried really hard to adapt the new "social networking" site into my life.....it didn't work! It was my first step to feeling like an old man. "My wife has a myspace and she lives on that thing" I thought to myself, so I tried even harder. Filling out stupid surveys, questionairs, updating my profile over and over, and tried to add as many people I knew to my friends list.....and nothing! It did nothing but suck up time....by the time I realized what I had done, I had a facebook, and a myspace, and people giving me crap for not "socializing". Now I consider myself a pretty verbose and friendly guy, so for ME to be anti-social, there must be a problem. So I solved it. I removed myself from both services. No more myspace, no more facebook....and my life was simple. So on to blogging. I read certian blogs, yet outside of people that provide some service to the public....web comic artists, actors, politicians, ect. I never really saw the reason an average everyday user would have a blog....I mean who cares what joe nobody is doing at 2am in the morning? And what is with all these problems and stories people post? Then I realized what it is.....it's a place for people to vent, and talk about things they can't talk about with the people around them. For me, it is my nerd side. My wife is normal, my kids are normal...I on the otherhand am a complete and total nerd. I read about 10 web comics daily, I live on my rss feeds, and love tabletop RPGs. Unfortunatly not many people whom I "socialize with" share these interests. So I realized I needed a way to share my feelings on these nerd'isms and found the perfect outlet....a blog. I don't care if anyone reads it, I don't care who knows about it. It's just my free shrink to share my nerdy thoughts that nobody cares about.

your friend,
joe nobody :)

Interesting Day

2008-10-21T18:17:00.000-07:00

For the first time in a while, I actually felt really productive at work today. I usually get the same amount of work done, but for some reason, I actually felt ahead of the game today and it was really nice. Hopefully this trend continues. As everyone in the tech industry is probably accustomed to, there is this desire to cut back workforce so that everyone is doing as much as they possibly can. I went from a team of 3 to 1 a few months ago and since then I felt like I was just treading water. A few days here and there felt productive, but today I actually felt like I was ahead of the game, not just having a good day :) Ironically I think part of it is the time I have been spending working on my personal dev project at home. I only get sparse sections of time to work on it, with work, family, and sleep getting in the way of making too much progress, but in the last week or so, I have made progress on this project in leaps and bounds. I think this is what is giving me the drive to push past the hump and work. So basically I get to kill 2 birds with 1 stone. yeah me!

First Blog

2008-10-21T10:59:00.000-07:00

This is my first attempt at a blog. Don't really have much to say right now, but I'll work on that later.