"The week before SimuCon is the Simutronics version of Hell Week," I said. But it doesn't seem that way for me this time around. I'm focused, I know exactly what has to be done, when it has to be done (this Friday), and what priority everything gets. This is a refreshing situation. Usually what has to get done is "everything," when it has to be done by is "ASAP," and priority is anyone's guess. ;)

Hopefully, none of the people running around here like chickens with their heads cut off will kill me for saying that...

Much Diablo II playing got accomplished over the 3-day weekend while Steph was gone. I installed the Eastern Sun mod to give the game a little new life. It throws a lot more creatures at you (and by area, what appears is a lot more random), which are tougher, give more experience, drop more loot, and frequently drop "parts" such as hearts, brains, horns, fangs, jawbones, scalps, etc. from which you can make items. (Don't get excited about craft skills though, to "make" an item all you do is right-click on the original thing.) Low level areas I'm not sure about, but Act IV is a total blast with my level 30 Amazon (now level 34). Hordes and hordes of creatures and piles and piles of loot. You can buy gems (at outrageous prices), the gems do more cool things when socketed, and armor can be socketed. The main downside for my Amazon is the frequency of Fallen and their shamans... entire levels of hell seem to be dedicated to the nasty little freaks, and as a melee attacker, it's a chore to shovel through all the constantly-resurrecting imps to get to their masters.

The other thing I've done in my free time lately is ponder religious questions. I still have so much to learn about "Mom". (It's been about 6 weeks since I ordered that book from Germany... no cause for alarm yet, as it could easily be another couple of weeks even if they had the book in stock, which I somewhat doubt.) There are questions of interpretation -- such as the issue of whether Seshat records detailed histories on the leaves of the ished tree, or just names of kings -- and just what is the thing on Her head? :) And there are questions of appearance, of what things in the world are characteristic/reminiscent of Her. In many ways, I have a much clearer mental image of Names related to Seshat than I do of Herself. I don't want to make the mistake of assuming too much from context. There is a reason why Seshat is a separate name, rather than simply adding more attributes to Nit's collection.

I wanted a dream that answered my question; I got a dream about various stages of my life and the people I associated with during those times. People I haven't even thought about in a decade. If She's not writing it all down, perhaps She's at least taking good notes. Shorthand of the gods. ;)

We believe that God makes frequent appearances as a stranger we might run into at random. (Sometimes literally -- Kai-Imakhu Nakht told a story of rear-ending Aset in traffic. "No damage," She said, which is a pretty good approach to life.) Well, if I didn't see Nit at the airport yesterday morning, then it was a fine coincidence. African grandmother type, with short white hair, wearing a leopard-print shirt and white slacks, smiling -- no, beaming -- and though her luggage was apparently delayed in getting to the carousel, she was taking it completely in stride.

(To me that overshadowed the guy checking claim tickets who looked exactly like Stephen King.)

Back to the grind, I have images to resize, tables to rearrange!

Though my family has had its share of soldiers, none that I know of were lost in wars. Instead, this Memorial Day weekend I find myself remembering Nora.

Signs that Amber is not pleased by the Kai-Imakhu's absence:

• Looking around in confusion when Jeff and I return home from the office.
  
• Shedding. Everywhere. More than usual.
  
• Entering a vomiting contest with Kyoko. She hit the top of the stairs, two places on my rug, and the top of my TV, all down in the vents and everything. I stepped in two of those (don't ask why I was walking on the TV). Key responded by ralfing on Steph's bed. Funny how the two cats look so much alike, but their puke is distinctive.
  
• Getting friendly with me, as if she were Kyoko. Today she'll rub up against me, let me pet her, jump up in my lap, jump up onto my bed and try to eat my book, and even follow (or lead) me around everywhere just like my own cat. It's creepy.
  

Last night's D&D session was a blast! Well... once we got into action. The bit where we wandered around some trails, creeks, lakes, and clearings (it's all a little fuzzy) while Russ Collin mapped was a little tedious. But when we began to rescue a hostage from a family of ettins, things got crazy. :)

The highlight was when Jeff Saris got an excellent Random Action spell off, causing Papa Ettin to attack himself in the next round. But before the poor dumb beast even got a chance to beat himself up, Bubba Gerrit scored a critical hit with his greataxe, doing a vicious 40-something points of damage... and I Livia immediately followed it up with a critical point blank crossbow shot that did another 17 or so. Boom!

The new guy, Chris Pardos, got killed outright (not just knocked unconscious) by Mama Ettin. He gets to stew for a week before finding out how his reincarnation will go. Will he wind up as a human... or as a brown bear, a pixie, a badger, a centaur? He could actually wind up with a very cool character, although he's specialized in ranged weapons so it'd be a bit of a loss to wind up as a creature with no hands.

Matter of fact, after looking at the info for that spell I almost want Livia to get killed and reincarnated just to see what she turns up as. It might well be worth losing a level. A pixie would make an incredible thief -- permanent invisibility, every attack is a sneak attack. Heh heh heh. And I wonder if a sorcerer can be reincarnated as an owl and still have an owl familiar... ;)

My inner rock star is Beck. Soy un perdedor, I guess. Heh.

Circling thoughts. Listening to that new Tool album a lot. Pondering. Being scattered.

I thought that a decade and a half ago, I got over worrying about what random strangers think of me as I pass by. It verged on paranoia, before I had a dream that shut it out like a roof deflects rain. I'm a little scared now of how scared I was then. Heh.

I recently noticed though, that when I'm walking I worry about people driving in cars, staring at me. What they're thinking, what they're saying to each other. What kind of person they see in that glimpse a few seconds long. Why it matters, I don't know.

And when I'm a passenger in a car, and there's a pedestrian or a bicyclist or someone passing by, I think the same thing.

Not when I'm the driver. Then, the car is like psychological armor.

Yup. Real coherent today, I am.

I think I've been reading too much Lum and Tweety recently. I found myself caught between wanting to rant, and remembering Ptahhotep. Thus a lot of things didn't get written yesterday that I originally set out to, and it's probably better that way.

It's frustrating sometimes not to try to refute a baseless rumor against you and your people. In a situation where nobody can prove or disprove anything, it seems like the rumor-mongerers always win.

How did the online gaming industry get to be such a stupid morass of us-vs.-them, anyway? Fun, people, FUN is what it should be about.

Speaking of fun... I deleted all my Diablo II characters a few nights ago, and started over. My sorceress was losing more experience in Nightmare difficulty than she was gaining, and that just wasn't fun. But this highly caffeinated spear-wielding Amazon is. She took down nasty old Andariel and Duriel before getting hit once by either of them. None of the places where I've traditionally had trouble have been a big problem, and yet the Tal Rasha tombs were much tougher than normal because she'd get surrounded by skeletons and have a very tough time fighting her way through to the Unraveller controlling them. It's a very different experience than the Sorceress was, or the fledgling Necro, Barbarian and Paladin I had started.

I check diabloii.net every once in a while to whet my appetite for the expansion. Yum!

Best Buy sent me a 10% off "Preferred Customer" coupon for a sale this weekend (something we could never do in the gaming industry because everyone who didn't get one would whine and bitch and threaten to sue) and it had its intended effect -- it made me want to get out and go to their store.

I pondered a couple of big-ticket things -- the 6-gig Nomad Jukebox or a PlayStation II -- but passed. SimuCon and the retreat are coming. (6 gigs though... that's an insane amount. The main hassle would be, after downloading all my MP3s onto it, ripping my 70 favorite CDs... heh. It blows my old MiniDisc Rant out of the water in most categories.)

I'm not too excited about any games that are out there now, except maybe UO Third Dawn just to give it another shot. (I haven't played since they made their PvP changes and I'm kinda curious.) So I bought music. Yay, music!

I'm actually kind of disappointed that Best Buy has dropped so much of its obscure bizarre stuff that I would actually want to listen to, in favor of giving Britney Spears and Hanson even more shelf space. Feh. What happened to the good old days when they stocked Pizzicato Five and Merzbow and Fields of the Nephilim and... what?! They don't even have Front Line Assembly anymore! Or Skinny Puppy! gah.

But they did have Autechre, so I picked up what I think is their newest, Confield. And it's good. Real good. If you like that sort of thing, which most people probably don't. I know Steph doesn't...

I don't know how I would describe this music, other than the obvious, it's electronic and abstract. It's usually got rhythm but it's usually the kind that would make a dancer's brain explode, and you can't count on it to stay steady. It's neither soft and gentle, nor harsh and nasty... I find it kind of soothing but it has teeth.

Feh. Fire up Napster or Kazaa or something, search for Autechre and download a couple tracks. Listen to them, then delete them and/or go buy the album. If you're me, you won't regret it. Most people aren't me (and it's a good thing too... that would be confusing).

Next up: Tool, Lateralus. An album that Tool fans, especially those that thought Aenema was brilliant, might be a little disappointed in. My first reaction was "this sounds like A Perfect Circle." And it mostly does. Not bad, but doesn't hold you in awe. There are a few outstanding tracks though, and I think as I ease into it my appreciation for the rest of the album might grow.

Apparently there are two cases -- one fairly normal, and one super deluxe piece of art. I got the ladder. Everything except the actual CD is translucent -- the outer smokey black slip cover, the front of the jewel case, the booklet (which consists of alternating layers of anatomical drawings and swirly psychedelic mystic woowoo stuff), the body of the jewel case (with more swirly art, but you can unfortunately see the little magnetic anti-theft wart stuck inside). Trippy. Unfortunately you have to keep the slippery slip cover because the track listing doesn't appear anywhere else.

Moving down the list, and I do mean down... Isis, SGNL > 05. I bought it because the name and the cover art grabbed my attention, and I was intrigued by the mystery. I know full well that you can get burned that way. I came out of this one feeling a little scorched, but not terribly. The message in the music seems to be "gittars r k3wl." The album is very short and should have been priced to reflect that, but some of the tracks did have their moments. I'll probably listen to it again sometime but it's not exactly an instant classic.

And then there's A Tribute to Nine Inch Nails: Re-Covered in Nails 2.001 from Cleopatra Records... who are starting to become the Llywelyn Publishing of record companies. Trent Reznor is not exactly a great vocalist, but there are several covers by people who should not be allowed within 100 yards of a microphone -- and most of them would have been perfectly competent instrumentals. On the other hand, there are a couple of really stellar tracks where that almost-amateur sound really adds something. I dig Godbox's cover of "The Only Time" and wonder how well a good female vocalist could make something totally new of the other songs. I also wonder about getting a refund for the parts of the CD I don't like... wishful thinking I'm afraid.

(No disrespect to any of my friends at Origin or Verant or elsewhere. I'm just tired of being kicked.)

Simutronics has been around since 1987. GemStone existed ten years before Ultima Online. TEN YEARS. It's still expanding. People are still playing. Next month we're having our sixth official convention; as of May 4 there were 381 confirmed people attending (not counting those who didn't want their names listed).

We shouldn't have anything to prove.

And so when I see a press release say something like "Ultima™ Online, the first commercially successful subscription-based online game" I grit my teeth.

Here's a brief timeline:

1984: Islands of Kesmai
1986: Air Warrior
1987: GemStone
1990: Federation II
1995: DragonRealms
1996: Meridian 59
1997: Ultima Online, Lineage, Simutronics games become subscription-based

Depending on the exact timing of events in 1997, and on whether you want to include a game that was successful for 10 years before it switched to a subscription model, I suppose the statement may be literally true.

It's more likely that they just don't consider anything smaller than UO to be "commercially successful." The media sure doesn't.

This, friends, is one of many reasons why I want Hero's Journey to kick the industry's feeble ass.

My gunta drum arrived yesterday... the box was actually a little smaller than the one the Japanese snacks came in. Here's a mini-review...

The gunta isn't a traditional instrument, it's the invention of mad percussion scientist Stephen Wright. Some effort was made to make the thing look authentically folksy, but it falls a little short. The plug for the mic port is kind of tacky looking, but I'll forgive it because the mic port was such a good idea in the first place. The sound hole, side tube, jug neck or whatever you want to call it, looks a bit like an afterthought, obviously coil construction and not decorated, while the main body of the drum is very smoothly made and nicely decorated.

Not sure about these things as there was basically no information on them to be found, I opted for the cheapest model, the 10-incher. It's about 3.5" tall and the side tube protrudes about the same distance. The base of mine is decorated with a stylized sunflower (my understanding is that the base decoration depends on the size of the drum, so all 10" are sunflowers). There are a pair of little clay loops on the side which the strap runs through. The strap that comes with it is your basic, non-adjustable, duffle bag strap which you may want to replace with something nicer.

While the drum isn't ugly, it's clear that looks are secondary to function and sound. And it's got lots of each.

For ensemble playing, you either dictate the beat to everyone else, you lock into it with everyone else, or you play with it like a dolphin plays in a boat's wake. Any kind of drum is good. But for solo playing you want a variety of sounds at your command -- and a gunta will give you as much of that as you can handle.

Being a non-traditional drum, there is no wrong way to play it. After some experimentation, I found I like to throw the strap over my right arm, set the drum on its edge on one leg, use the my right hand on the drum head and my left hand on the sound hole. I'm no acoustics expert but it seems to me that the drum has two sources of sound -- the bright ringing of the clay body, and the boom of the air space inside the drum. Striking the edge of the drum head will give you the ringing sound, while the center of the head gives more boom. It doesn't take much force, it just takes the right kind of glancing blow to make sure your hand isn't supressing the vibration of the head (unless you're doing it on purpose). In that way it's somewhat like a doumbek or a frame drum.

You can modulate the boom (but not the ring) by covering and uncovering the sound hole. You can strike the sound hole with your hand to get a more subtle but interesting boom, something like a ghatam or udu "clay pot" drum. You can also tap the tube or do whatever. Possibly you can put water inside, though I wouldn't guarantee that the head or mic port are waterproof and the head might be damaged by water. I even tried blowing across the sound hole and holding it out the car window, but it's a little too deep and soft for that to work well.

My doumbek is ceramic and happens to also have a 10" head. In comparison, the doumbek is very bright and crisp, while the gunta is deeper and has more sustain though it's less than 1/4 the height of the doumbek. I'm curious to try the larger sized guntas -- are they deeper, louder, more resonant, brighter? It depends on how taut the head is, the aperture of the sound hole, the thickness of the clay, and other factors beyond the volume of the drum itself, and I don't know those variables.

I'm also curious to see how well this drum holds up in an ensemble. I'm guessing that sound hole slaps will be lost, but the booms and chimes will carry through. I'll get to find out in August. :) For solo fun though, I have to recommend at least the 10" gunta as a nice drum for its compact size and relatively cheap price.

Music is pretty overwhelming, isn't it?

I was raging over the sink this afternoon, because for some reason I can't wash the dishes without getting really pissed. Maybe it helps me get through it, more likely it's just a big waste. At any rate, it's a good thing the roommates were at the office during the event. At one point I thought I heard a noise in Jeff's room and was hit with a brief wave of sobering embarrassment, thinking he'd overheard my oratory on rinsing, weird slimy stuff, and "I'm not touching that."

(Aside: there are lots of noises to hear in this house. Poco occasionally doing laps in his cage, the cats knocking stuff over, things going ping! and tunk! in the air ducts (which carry sound throughout the house)... but I also hear the upper floor creak when I'm sitting downstairs and nobody else is home. Is Amber really that big, or...?)

But anyway, after I finished with that and took a shower, I sat down and drummed. And drummed and drummed and drummed. And had thoughts like "my hands shape the music and the music shapes me" which sound a little goofy now. My hands may hurt now, but I feel better than I have in days.

This is only the latest of many times that music has set things right for me. I don't practice much, haven't even touched a violin or actually tried to play a keyboard in years, left a guitar and a harp behind in Florida when I moved... but music is still there for me.

And now I'm sitting here listening to great music in amazement. Music reaches into us like nothing else, changes us and makes the colors of the world brighter. Whether it's some guy banging on a drum and spontaneously shifting and changing the rhythm whenever it strikes his fancy, or whether it's Rhys Fulber remixing a distorted Skinny Puppy chant into a complex scientific cathedral of sound. Whether there are lyrics that tell a story, lyrics that set a mood, or no lyrics. Whether we know what the music is saying or not, it still communicates with us... like God does.

After that I guess it's kind of an anticlimax to talk about Diablo II. My sorc killed Diablo and is struggling with the Nightmare level now. She's got some decent equipment and just hit level 30, but *!#$@^ skeleton archers really mess her up, interrupting her spellcasting with every hit. You'd think 50% chance to block would help, but I wonder if no shield at all would be better... maybe it's that blocking that's interrupting the spells and she'd be better off just taking the damage. Hm.

I am still excited about the game in theory, wanting to try different training regimens and such. An all-lightning sorc, a non-summoning necromancer, etc. But in practice, I don't want to go through the same old areas again... mayble I'll try a multiplayer character. I've been avoiding it since... wow, pretty much since the beta test. Those early lag problems and a tendency for 1 in 5 people to declare hostility at random.

Happy Mothers' Day. :) I called mine and we talked about cats and nothing in particular for a while. With the Sardine having moved out last weekend, the nest is pretty empty. Hopefully she'll get a chance to come visit sometime or vice versa.

I'd heard that Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead, but today I discovered Kasugai Cola Gummy is very... refleshing.

(If that's not enough for you... let's get a power of fruits!)

The box from asianmunchies.com was so big I thought it might have been the drum. But nope... just a very well protected bag of Karl, some gummies, instant yakisoba and really bizarre coffee jelly candy.

I don't know about that coffee jelly. It's scarier than the black sesame daifuku Steph bought, with none of the redeeming qualities.

Sometimes it's the little things, the gimmicks and gadgets and fun stuff, that one is most proud of. Here's my most recent, and favorite, contribution to the new HTML FE project, codename Some-Famous-Wizard-From-a-Fantasy-Novel:

The Progress Bar

If nothing else it's a sneak preview of how decadently tasty the thing will look.

I went drum shopping. Online. I thought I wouldn't ever actually buy a drum that way, without seeing and hearing and holding and playing it, but I did. A 10" gunta from Bang a Drum. Just based on the appearance and description, it seems like the perfect musical toy for me... and it's about a half to a third of what I was considering spending. If I fall in love with the thing when I get it, I might have to go for a larger one as well. In any case, when it arrives I'll review it for the benefit of anybody looking forward to drumming at the House retreat as much as I am, or anyone who just happens to find this in a search... there's not exactly a lot of info out there about this weird-looking little drum. ;)

My other possibile candidates were the Wave Form Drum from Wildwood Instruments, an ashiko, a cheap darabuka, an udu, tablas... heh. Better keep myself reined in or I'll have a basement full of exotic drums and a couple of maxed credit cards.

At least in online terms, I don't have to go far to come up with other frivolous things to spend money on, if I really wanted to. Tokyo Marui has finally released the FN P90, and though I've gotten out of the airsoft world and am selling the FAMAS to either Bubba or Eric, I will admit to drooling a little over this piece. And KSC's version of the M11. And the Marui MP5K, still. And the WA BladeMaster. And Maruzen Micro Uzi. For some reason I just like small things that spray little plastic bullets all over the place.

Compared to that, drums are practical.

Finished Soldiers Live. Started Holly Lisle's Vengeance of Dragons. I wish it didn't, but it lacks something. That special sense of humor I'd come to associate with her (and with many Djehuty children) isn't there -- neither the overt hilarity or the subtle off-the-cuff "hang on, was she serious?" wryness. And the focus of the whole quest seems a bit lost now, along with the driving need to keep reading just one more chapter. It's still decent reading, but at halfway through I don't think I've laughed at anything yet, and I'm mostly just continuing to see if my guess is right about one particular betrayal.

I'm losing the excitement in Diablo II, but am still looking forward to the expansion set.

One thing that is definitely gaining in excitement, though, is work. Forward progress is happening. Can't say more yet about HJ, but even my attitude toward play.net 2.0 is improving as we get closer and closer to that mythical thing called completion.

It's all religious thoughts in this entry, so skip it if you're not interested.

Most people who believe in God think of Him/Her/It/Them as a distant, remote being. Most people believe their prayers are heard, and some expect them to be answered at least part of the time. But few people expect to be able to just ask a direct question and get a direct, immediate answer.

And few people have had the experience of sitting in an IRC chat room with God, being gently chided for being too chicken to ask a question.

In Kemetic Orthodoxy, most of the time we actually don't expect a direct, immediate, clear, simple answer. My prayers are, at their core, no different from the prayers of any Christian, Jew, Hindu, or Moslem. I give thanks, I give praise, I ask for help. Once in a while something happens that makes me believe I'm getting an answer.

But one of the features of our religion is the Saq or "appearance" -- in which we meet face to face with one of the Names of Netjer. And sometimes He or She opens the floor for questions.

I found I didn't have any questions before Nit.

I have this same issue with divination too. Most forms require a specific question, or even a question with a yes/no answer. Usually I don't have one.

I don't know everything and never will. But we learn more than we ever expected to as time passes and life happens. Why ask now about something that you will learn when the time comes?

Though I had no specific questions, I did ask for general advice -- and was told to keep doing what I'm doing. (A simple answer, and yet it means more than just one simple thing. Being aware of the power and consequences that our words have is an important concept in Kemetic Orthodoxy; it struck me last night that nobody uses that power more effectively than Netjer.)

So I'm on the right track. Doesn't mean I'm finished -- to keep doing what I'm doing is to keep trying to improve. And one area where I need improvement is in conquering my fears and anxieties. Fear is an obstacle, and the Kemetic Orthodox God does not want to be feared. (And has told us this many times.) There's an important difference between cowering on the ground in fear, and in bowing to the ground in deepest respect. I know it, but my emotions are still not quite sorted out. That will take time.

A few weeks ago some of us from the office were having lunch at Tachibana and talking about the old standby debate of Christian philosophy: whether one gets to Heaven through belief, through living a good life, or both. One of those things where it depends on who you ask. I just listened because it isn't an issue in my religion.

But it led to the topic of good people who don't think they're good. I used to worry about it myself when I was Christian... probably since age 6. I know I'm not perfect, I've done some minor bad things, and I've passed up the chance to do lots of minor and major good things. Was I "good enough" or did I have to try harder? Was it already too late?

I'm glad I don't think that way anymore. Instead of worrying about "good enough", I keep myself busy with "better than yesterday."

Guilt and shame are necessary... as are fear and pain. They keep you from doing stupid things. Put your hand on a red-hot stove and it hurts. Take it off, and most of the pain subsides; the part that doesn't tells you how much damage you just did. As your hand heals the pain goes away. Does anyone see a reason why guilt shouldn't work the same way?

Wasn't me Peryt, I can't draw either. :)

Suz and Bruce, congratulations on the house! At least from here, it looks like a great place and not just a step up from a small apartment. :)

Congratulations are due for my sister too -- she graduates with a BA (I think?) in Illustration from the Ringling School of Art & Design on Saturday. And is wasting no time, moving Saturday afternoon. ;)

I've been waiting for something like Drempels for quite some time now. It's an animated screen saver and/or desktop wallpaper. There's no reason Windows should have a static background, right? :)

I expected something like this to use Active Desktop. Instead, it chooses a particular color from the pallette, and instead of actually displaying it onscreen it draws an animated texture instead. Which is really bizarre if you happen to choose black, white, or any other interface color. You also get quite a surprise when you try to take an ordinary screenshot -- since it's just the background color, your screen shot animates too... until you close the program and it reverts to a solid color. Funky.

Wish I could install it on my web page... instead I'd have to create a fantasically huge animated GIF to approximate what this thing does, and believe me, none of us want that. :)

Tabla Beat Science rocks. Anyone who likes the music of India, or the Act II music from Diablo II, or just showoff drumming, or trance music that isn't just dully repetitive, should check it out. (Just ignore the 'Theoretically, they could play more rhythmic talas than any drum machine is capable of' line on that website -- it's BS. More lively and natural, sure.)

For the more electronically inclined, Two Lone Swordsmen, or at least their album Tiny Reminders, is a lot of fun too. It's the kind of music you can easily put in the background and ignore, or listen to more closely and realize how much detail is really in there. One of the attributes of most of the music I like, actually. :)

Going on right now in my life:

· Still working on play.net 2.0 and hoping to get away from that ASAP.

· Occasionally working on HTML for the new front end. It's kind of a distraction from play.net 2.0, which can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the mood and task of the day.

· Brushing up on C++ with Accelerated C++, the first good book on the subject I've ever encountered. I'm embarrassed to say that -- despite all the programming classes in college and much experience in FoxPro and GSL -- within the first 30 pages I learned a new concept regarding something as simple as loops. And how tricky it is to get a modern pure C++ "Hello, World" to compile in a 5 year old implementation. Aiee!

· Starting to learn German. Wo ist die Katz? I'm starting with German in 10 minutes a Day and See It & Say It in German -- meant for travellers really. I figure "reading" the Budde book is going to be a slow, torturous process involving Babelfish, a German-English dictionary, and copious note-taking, but getting a few of the basics down first will help. If not, Amazon has a couple books meant to help readers of German scholarly books... maybe even one that's not expensive or on backorder. ;)

· Reading Soldiers Live, the latest (and maybe the last?) Black Company novel. In which everyones' fortunes get reversed, it seems...

· Playing Diablo II, of course. My sorceress got 0wned by a single Oblivion Knight... cursed her and then killed her in one hit. No way could she make it through the whole seal opening ordeal in that case, so I'm taking her back through Upper Kurast and Travincal repeatedly, with an occasional tour of the false Tal Rasha tombs, to build up experience and loot. She's almost level 28, I figure I'll go at least until she's 30 before going to the end again. She found some great items for my spear-wielding Barbarian, so I'll have to set up a game on the home LAN to trade stuff around.

· I'm in better financial shape than I had been in the past few months. A tax refund, the final car payment, and eating more home-cooked meals instead of going out have all helped. But I need to get my car fixed, Simucon is coming in June and the retreat in August, and I should get new lenses for my glasses with some tinting and no AR coating.

· For those that know what the heck I'm talking about... there's a Saq of Nit tonight, and I'm more excited about it than usual.