Liked last night's episode of Buffy, though it wasn't quite as amusing as the season seven premiere. James Marsters did a good job being crazy-scary Spike.
Finished Ringworld Engineers. Haven't gotten seriously into Ringworld Throne yet. Been busy with stuff. (My time has been siphoned away by projects for anthropology, redesign of the Superluminal Goddess for Star Wars, and rumblings of a Stargate game and my subsequent need to re-work the mechanics of the gate system.) I'm glad this Friday is Fall Break.
Incidentally, the title of this entry is a reference to one of those old VCR games one of my friends has. This one is about monsters. The narrator dreadfully overacts, listing the mummy as "Khufu, (pregnant pause) Da Moomie!" (sic).
This coming sunday, October 6th, is Mad Hatter Day, at least in the US. (Mad Hatter day is June 10th in countries that use European-style dates. Or European-style raisins...)
By using this same logic, we have determined that those other countries celebrate St. Valentine's Day, Halloween, and Christmas only once every two to three years. (The second day of the fourteenth month, the 10th day of the 31st month, and the 12th day of every other december, respectively.)
Luckily for us, all countries celebrate President's Day on the same day, thanks to Nixon's foresight.
Everyone in the world celebrates New Year's Day on the same day (that being the first day of the new year), even those pesky Chinese and the wacky people on the other side of the International Relationship Line.
Which is not, despite rumors to the contrary, any more or less a "hot" line than any other imaginary boundary that happens to cross the equator (including the equator itself). Or Ecuador. So all those who keep calling should stop being so surprised when you don't get free phone sex.
Thank you. Please move along. Fnord. Nothing to see here.
Last friday I suddenly decided that I was going to install Linux on this machine's spare partition.
Now, I've not had good luck with Linux in the past, partly because the tulip-chip NIC drivers dislike my other machine, which has two Linksys cards in it, and partly because I'm the sort of user who almost always knows enough to be dangerous, but only usually knows enough to fix it.
I've used several distros, including Corel, Debian, and Slackware. I've also tried using NetBSD.
This time, I decided to use Mandrake 9.0. I also installed it on the new Dell, which only has one NIC, and that is a 3com.
So far so good. (I'm running under it right now.)
If only I could get it to recognize my tablet, then ... well, I'd probably use it at least a bit more often. There's still Lightwave, Paint Shop Pro, and Painter 6 to think about.
We are once again planning to resurrect the Stargate SG-4 game. Your friendly webmaster will be playing the role of the original Hephaestus (among other smith-gods).
Yesterday, I picked up a router for the LAN I set up at the Geek Palace*, a new CD drive for Ming the Merciless**, The Buffy roleplaying game, and the Starships of the Galaxy sourcebook for Star Wars.
I really need to work on my impulse-buying tendencies.
* This is my roommates' name for the house we live in.
** Ming is my old Pentium 200 computer, so named because of the red and gold paint job I gave it; the cd drive was a replacement for the one I broke in the process. Now I can install Linux on it and move it into my room for use as a remote terminal (as soon as I get around to running wiring that far away from the "bridge", which is the area where all the other computers are).
We are currently debating candidates for the game system for Stargate SG-4. I will briefly cover each proposed system.
In the following text, Stacy is the GM of the original game, and also this one. Ray, Jenna, and yours truly are the currently actively interested players. Scott Bowden, who runs Star Wars, is thinking of playing as well.
* The original, homebrew variant of west end's Star Wars D6 system crossed with MGI's DC Heroes (the acting/etc attribute pattern).
Pros: Well, we've done it before. We also have my character sheet design already made.
Cons: both stacy and myself find this option a bit boring.
* A version of WotC's D20 system.
Pros: We are currently playing Star Wars under this system. There's a lot of sci-fi-ish stuff (gadgets and such) that could probably be adapted. There's also a modern D20 book coming that would cover the Tau'ri civilization (i.e., Earth guys). I also own the Farscape RPG, which adds even more to the mix.
Cons: The d20 system is a bit heavier, mechanically, than I prefer. Classes and Levels.
* GURPS
Pros: Lots of setting material for GURPS that would be useful. Ray likes the detail and realism provided by the system.
Cons: The setting material is also useful to other systems by design. At least two players (myself and Jenna) really dislike the focus on realism and/or the heavy crunchy mechanics involved in GURPs. Chargen annoyed me last time I tried it, and the Vehicle Design system is a nightmare of Lovecraftian proportions.
* BESM (Big Eyes, Small Mouth)
Pros: It's pretty easy to use and learn, and there are levels of detail to the system (like skills) that one can use or ignore. It's multi-genre to some extent, having several different setting books that it has been applied to -- everything from Sailor Moon to Demon City Shinjuku to .
Cons: Nobody has actually played it yet. It does tend to have a distinct anime flavor to it (by design), which is great for stuff that is not Stargate.
* The Window
Pros: Narrativist oriented (well, this is a pro with at least two of the three confirmed players). Simple to learn and adapt. Extremely multi-genre. Arbitrarily detailed for those who want lots of things to roll.
Cons: The lack of crunchy mechanics and open-ended chargen may put off Ray, who favors GURPS.
* QAGS
Pros: Several people involved actually work for Hex. Simple system. Presumably easily adapted.
Cons: At least one player (me) feels that, while the system is probably fine in terms of complexity, characters themselves seem TOO simple. Even the Window can have arbitrary complexity in that regard. I also tend to regard it as more than a little undignified to play a system that touts itself as "quick-ass" (which is almost synonymous with "half-assed" in my book) and uses a mechanic called "yum-yums". I'm all for sardonic humor and not taking yourself too seriously, but there's also such a thing as "not seriously enough".
I managed to break my Dell's installation of Mandrake. I was reconfiguring and recompiling the kernel (again) in order to try and get my wacom tablet working. (It doesn't seem to have helped.)
Now Linux does a kernel panic and complains about not being able to find init. This is even if I use the failsafe mode.
See what I mean about knowing enough to be dangerous but only occasionally knowing enough to fix it. Bleh.
Anyway, I think I've found out how to fix it. We'll see tonight.
I have posted synopses for all of the recent games. Logs may or may not follow soon, depending on if I can remember enough details to write them. I'll have to start at the end and work backwards, though.
Yes, I managed to get Linux fixed last week. Eventually, though, I ripped Mandrake out and installed Redhat 8.0 in its place to see if that would get the tablet working (slightly ... I can now click on things, but still no pointer control).
Redhat seems to work slightly better than Mandrake (once I got past the three or four installations I needed to perform to get the thing to boot properly). At least, it seems to read my burned CDs more reliably.
I was annoyed by its lack of NTFS support so that I could mount my Windows partition, which seems to be some weirdo political decision on the part of Redhat itself (in spite of their stated reason for not including it). Still, that's easily solved by a page I found on the net. I am also having a harder time configuring certain things under Redhat, but I assume that'll go away in time.
Yay. I fixed the problem that was keeping me from logging in. Stupid file permissions got garbled on the one file that absolutely needed to stay the same.