You hear that, Mr Andersen?

Dogs, DBs and Immanent Warming

While Dinosaur Comics is awesome in its own right, it also gets kudos for pointing me at a blog all about dogs this guy meets while he's walking around San Francisco. "HYPNOBASSET ENGAGING OCULAR DEFENSE SYSTEM". Heh.

***

We had the other database shoe drop on Tuesday, by the way. We had both the replicas on the same blade, which everyone agreed was a bad thing, and that we'd change that after this weekend - but then one of the AC units broke, and that caused the blade the replicas are on to overheat and start acting bizarrely. Which meant that a whole lot of stuff that use the replicas (like the intranet, the command to get phone numbers, some steps in rendering) broke.

This was in the middle of the day, and very very bad.

We were able to get back up and running fairly quickly, we learned some useful things, and I didn't have to miss my Tuesday game - so on the scale of Terrible Things, it's not so bad. But when the problem initially came up, and we thought it might be a MySQL 4.0 problem, I thought I was in deep, deep trouble.

But it must have been fairly painless, since we're now talking about upgrading from 4.0 to 4.1 in the next month... :)

***

The Tuesday game was interesting, as usual. I'm a little disappointed with myself - Gino offered an awesome opportunity (a young girl my minion character had befriended saying, "I won't let you do this, even if I have to become like you to stop you"), and I choked, and was unable to raise my game to meet the opportunity that was provided. On the other hand, there were some good, memorable moments - being able to suggest that the reason the pope turned into a giant tentacle monster in the first game was because he was a nightmare monster from a previous attack, for example.

However, overall it often felt we were fighting against the system - but that may just mean we weren't playing the kind of game that it was meant to facilitate. I'm not sure whether it's just the way this particular game was run, but the system seemed to be geared towards players having individual scenes - which isn't my personal preference. So... while I thought Gino ran a good, interesting game, I don't think I'd be interested in any more My Life With Master.

I've agreed to run a Changeling game in about a month; I'm considering trying to convert the rules from The Shadow of Yesterday, since my grasp on the WW mechanics is limited at best, and I have no real desire to improve that grasp. I'm not entirely sure how to deal with Transcendence, but hopefully it won't be an issue, since the game should be fairly short. Originally I didn't have a very good idea of what I'd actually be doing with the game, but I had a nice chat with my brother last night that brought up some interesting ideas. :)

***

I'm a little nervous about the party tonight - what have I forgotten? Who have I not managed to contact? Will there still be people there when the contingent of friends who've told me they'll be there really late arrive? Will I manage to get everything done before people start arriving? (Well, I know that the answer to that one is reliably "no". ;)

I tend to overcater, and I've tried to restrain myself; but that just means I'm worrying that I haven't got enough food. I'm pretty sure that I'll be fine; and if not, there are two all-hours supermarkets just down the road. I dragged Mum along to Moore Wilsons today and bought a bunch of bulk foods (samosas, brie, corn chips, etc), so that should extend things. If (as I hope) there's plenty of food, I'll get the opportunity to cook with my favourite ingredient - leftovers. ;)

***

The Big Primate-sponsored wrap party is Saturday after next, in the set of 1920s downtown New York that's sitting in the Hutt. I'm currently planning to take my father, if he's free - he hasn't gotten to go to anything yet, and I figure it might be interesting for him. Unfortunately, while the invite talks about bringing "your immediate family", it means your partner and children, rather than your parents and siblings. Bah.

The next big party will probably be in about eight months, for the wrap of the digital effects. I selfishly hope that I have a partner by that stage to take, but I suspect I'll just end up taking something random again. (I'm sorry, Morgue you're out of the running - you got to go to my first wrap party, as I recall. ;)

Posted by svend at March 10, 2005 9:15 AM