Not all that much new with me in the last several months. I'm enjoying my apartment's location and design a lot, although I wish the building weren't quite so hot. I can counteract that now that my A/C unit has been unsealed, but of course that costs money. I've taken advantage of the extra space to host a small group of friends for what in theory will someday become biweekly tabletop roleplaying sessions, although at this point we're at one abortive campaign that never got off the ground, two improvisational one shots (using the nifty indie RPGs Fiasco and In a Wicked Age, respectively), a lot of goofing around, and characters created for a Call of Cthulhu run through the classic campaign Horror on the Orient Express. Alas, while we did accomplish that, last week was meant to be the start and instead UPS fucked up delivery of my spiffy new monitor, I took advantage of friends with cars to try and pick it up and they fucked that up too, and so we wound up eating at Obento-Ya in the back patio garden instead. Turned a lousy evening into a pretty decent one (I even managed to eat with chopsticks), and after a spritz of rain we had the patio to ourselves. But it didn't get Call of Cthulhu going. This week I had the monitor salted away (23" IPS LED, 1080p res, speakers and HDMI and the whole nine yards) but because it was a shift to our schedule, only one of the three players remembered to show up (naturally the one that lives over an hour out of town). Hopefully two weeks from now, we'll actually get things going. (BTW, we do have room for one or two more people - I can't imagine too many people here know me well enough to be comfortable gaming at my apartment, but hey, y'never know.)

I also picked up an ipad 2, which is a far more convincing argument for the usefulness of a tablet than my Android device. It's light years ahead in both hardware design and engineering, and app selection. I have some definite quibbles with how they handle files and purchasing apps (to wit, it's insane for every app to have its own walled garden for the same files a dozen other apps could potentially read if they were using a sensible file structure; and it's silly for every app to be a final purchase with no method for trying the app out ahead of time, especially for utility apps), but it's ultimately a significantly better experience. I break it out almost every day to play games, read comics, brush up on RPG rules, or watch Netflix. It does have a Kindle app, which I've poked at a little for magazines, but the Kindle is still king for most reading - lighter, better battery life, and a screen that's readable in normal sunlight.

Speaking of which, a couple months ago I managed to overload my Kindle to the point where it was crashing and freezing on me quite regularly. It seems that having 1000+ titles all at once with no collections or anything breaks things. So after a hard wipe, I decided to at least temporarily stick to stuff I've actually acquired directly from the Kindle store instead of, um... "other sources". The result has been finding out about some honestly pretty amazing independent books. A few recommendations include: Hugh Howey's The Wool Omnibus (5 books worth of post-apocalyptic goodness); B. Justin Shier's Zero Sight and Zero Sum (supernatural academy tales in a post-peak oil America); Zachary Rawlins' The Academy and The Anathema (also supernatural school, but with heavy Lovecraft, cyberpunk and anime influences, and a bleak worldview); and Scott Fitzgerald Gray's We Can Be Heroes (exciting and emotionally resonant thriller about high school students inadvertently stealing an experimental former Soviet tank from an arms dealer). Please ignore possibly questionable covers and a certain amount of lack of polish. The meat's good.

I am still around, although my days of posting regularly to either blog or boards are apparently over. Also, I'm moving on Saturday. I knew it had to happen one of these days. This place is just too small for me and it wasn't really intended to be a long term living arrangement, so I've long missed things like having my own thermostat, having a real kitchen, and so on. Come Saturday, that will change. I'm moving to a pretty snazzy 1br (a mere $625 a month, not that much more than I'm paying for my cramped little studio now) much closer to work and with a grocery store within walking distance. Downsides? Well, I'll have to figure out all of my transit arrangements and delivery options over again, and I'll have to pay per load for laundry. Other than that it should be an all around upgrade. I just hate moving so much.

Man, way too many of my friends here have expired accounts.

In more exciting news, the third edition of Nobilis approaches at long, long last. This makes me so very happy, and I immediately preordered the limited, signed edition that's available here. Why? Well, Nobilis is almost certainly the best RPG ever made. Don't get me wrong, it's not going to supersede your D&D or your Shadowrun or your Vampire or whatnot. It's not about what most RPGs are about. But it's purely, thoroughly beautiful in concept, execution, and writing. The sheer richness of the ideas involved makes me tingle. And, because it also seems to be cursed, it's been out of print for some time now as every RPG company that's taken over production has gone out of business. I sincerely hope this time it manages to stick around and make an impact. I'm not counting on it, and I intend to hang onto my copy very tightly, much as I've done with both previous editions.

This whole budget crisis thing is driving me absolutely crazy. Not only do I work for the government, meaning that every spending cut might cost me my job or make me work harder for the same money, but the sheer ludicrous fuckedness of the priorities is making me incandescent with rage. We've clearly got to cut $1 billion in funding for healthcare, education, and economic aid, but oh! $750 million for a new Vikings stadium? $150 million in Target Center renovations? Absolutely must happen. No -possible- better use for that money. It's not like they've got perfectly usable stadiums right goddamn now, or like the vast profit engine that is professional sports could possibly afford to pay for it themselves or with the help of those other monolithic corporate entities that are buying naming rights to these things. No way.

Similarly, at a federal level we've absolutely -got- to hand off billions of dollars in extended tax cuts to the richest 1% of the country for them to sit on that money and gloat. And we clearly have to continue pouring trillions into futile, unproductive wars that are killing thousands. But we can't possibly afford to pay to heat the homes of our poorest citizens so that they don't fucking FREEZE TO DEATH in harsh northern winters. No sir, that can't be done.

In conclusion: fuck the fuckityfuck fuck fuck fuck.

You know, it's amazing to me just how many facets of the world my 17-year-old self was blithely oblivious to. I mean, I thought about things like food and towels and bedding and furniture and places to live, but only in passing, as things that, for the most part, were simply there and not my concern. I was occasionally asked to take an interest - do laundry, help shop for groceries, offer opinions on houses or apartments or whatever when we were looking for a new residence - but even then it just wasn't really part of my world.

I certainly would never have envisioned being happy to have purchased new towels or stocking my cupboards with new foodstuffs for some tentative forays into this "cooking" business. My money went (and still largely goes) to books and videogames, and, now and then, gadgets. Nothing else except perhaps junk food really registered particularly. And yet, here I am. I have big, fluffy new towels, and I am prepared to love them. I have warm, comfortable new slippers that haven't been beaten all to hell by over a decade of irregular use and abuse. I have an antistatic throw, because, at least for now, I am actually sometimes cold enough at home to need one (I think the previous renters tended to run the thermostat higher). I have new shoes. I have a new pillow. Life is good.

(And I am flabbergasted that I have them already. I ordered them on Sunday, Monday was a holiday, and they said 1-2 days processing, 4-7 days shipping.)

Like many people, I've kind of lost interest in WoW until the Cataclysm rolls in. That said, I got a chance to roll with a very good friend's elite WoW raid team this weekend in Ulduar. Result: I got the Firefighter achievement and, shinier still...the Starcaller title. Yessirree, I have successfully defeated Algalon. This pleases me. If I can swing one more run with them, Glory of the Ulduar Raider (10 player) and my Rusted Protodrake may yet be a possibility.

I'd been eyeing an HTC Evo even before they came out, but when they did I wasn't yet eligible for an upgrade and anyway they'd sold out everywhere. With more time and attention paid, I became a bit more skeptical, and now that I'd become eligible, it was starting to look like upgrading was going to be more expensive and less beneficial than it was worth. On the other hand, Sprint acquired another new, shiny Android phone with 4G, this one with a hardware keyboard, the Samsung Epic 4G. Unfortunately, when last I looked, Sprint wanted to charge me $350 even with my upgrade discount (with a $100 rebate on top of that, admittedly, but while it's better to get $100 back later than not, it doesn't help at all when raising the funding to make the initial purchase), which just wasn't really workable.

Then Radio Shack called me. They'd missed entirely the phase of my cell phone owning career where my little LG Rumor's screen died and I went insane and paid $500 for a no-contract Palm Pre, also the part where I was now a Sprint Premier customer with once-a-year upgrades. But, they said, I was now eligible for that two year upgrade. And as it happened, not only did they have the Epic 4G for a much more reasonable $220, no rebates necessary, but they offered me $50 or so trade-in for my Pre. Well then, said I.

And so, here it is. I have it. And it is wondrous. Oh, the Pre had a slightly better keyboard layout in one or two respects (though the Epic's keyboard is otherwise much nicer, substantially roomier, number keys accessible without modifier and ARROW KEYS - god how I missed those on the Pre. Made it impossible to edit anything I typed, had to delete everything after the mistake if I wanted to correct.), and some interface niceties that I miss - gestures and such. But it's so much faster in every respect, it's got some very nice built in capabilities, a GORGEOUS screen, the aforementioned 4G (which I can't get in my basement apartment, sadly), and oh yeah, it's Android-based. Which has opened a whole world of apps to me that drop my jaw. Nobody developed for WebOS, and while I have an iPod Touch, it's a sad truth that that plucky little thingamajig has no camera, GPS, or cellular internet, which lack means even if there are comparable iOS apps, I can't use them.

For example, Google Goggles. Holy shit. Point it at something, take a picture, and much of the time, poof, it will magically identify it for you and point you at helpful links like an Android Market page or sales pages online. It can recognize and even translate text. It is -amazing-.

Or Shazam. Hold the phone near a source of music and it will identify the music for you. Poof.

Or Google Translate, which I am reliably informed will actually do real-time audio translation. WTF. MAGIC.

I just...wow. I loves it.

Up way too late, doing a For the Horde group for the umpteenth time...except this one wasn't fail and I've actually earned For the Horde at long last. And this after clearing Sunwell Plateau and Black Temple. So happy right now.

Wombat.