Saturday is here. No surprise in that.

Sue and I have already been talking about politics, the world, the future. No answers were forthcoming, but sometimes it helps just to talk.

Interesting articles on "flash" memory ideas. My interpretation is that Trauma causes the memories of the traumatic experience to be created using the emotional side of the mind. Those memories are powerful and persistent. They are also usually wrong in the details, or totally false, it is not the emotions job to be logical or reasonable. It would explain why accident viewers disagree on what they saw. This is also used by con men who take a piece of data out of context and shout it loud. They cause Trauma and false powerful memories.

I will not go into examples, but I will say that we need to look carefully at our own memories and rationally modify them with the actual facts. That means researching the original information rather than accepting the words of some strange "expert". Whenever people quote a second source I feel the need to actually look up the original quote to see what the original speaker was actually talking about. I expect people to mold their words to their own perspective, whether they mean to or not.

New Wolf art is on the way.

Sue has just turned over a new wolf painting she has completed to me for scanning and prep for printing. I am liking what I see here. Scanning and assembling large paintings is something that I set aside a good deal of time for. If everything goes well the job is done in an hour, but if it turns weird on me it can take several hours and be a whole day job. I just never know. This one will start as four scans.

Yesterday was one of those days. A bunch of trifling "stuff" kept coming up and I let it get under my skin. I always waste a lot of time once I become agitated. I need to learn better self control. Oh well, too busy learning other new tricks.

I did get a new Crypt Crawl RPG item sheet completed. This one has several items that are used with the animals I have been putting up on the blog. Now that I have all of the pieces ready I can go through and do the Beastmaster cards. (Thought pops into head. Excuse me, but I need bandages on the next sheet.) OK, back, bandages they will be on item sheet 2015.

I have found that once I have 12 or more programs running, on 8 different desktops, my portable starts to slow down visibly. I suppose the two screens and two printers do not help any. I usually end up adding programs as I work, like working on this and skipping to bandages. Right now I am at 14 programs running. I am wondering if I can set up an old machine with skype/canary/chat. I will need to look into that.

I have started slow cooking some chicken. Sue will make chicken soup tomorrow. Then we can have chicken meals sunday and monday.

Enough of this, on to other work.

The morning routine.

It is a good thing that I have a lot of coffee as I wake up. Since I am never sure what to post, I am going to do my morning routine. This is partially for you readers and partially to help me remember what I am supposed to do.



start e-mail, respond or act as necessary. (I immediately post card ideas for the DS blog from our e-mail links on the card submissions page, etc.).

Start Skype, check for messages, check open conversations for new comments. (My skype is markeharmon if you want to contact me that way.)

Open ichat for our internal communications and aim contacts (AIM is markharmon@mac.com).

start Netnewswire. This checks for blog updates. several game blogs, DS people I know who have revealed they have a blog. I also pick up the science channels and blog news. Sometimes I get bogged down here. (Did you know that some frogs can cross species breed? Neither did I. A little Dragon's Blood in them maybe?)

start ical calendar to see what is on the menu for today.

Start Canary, my simple Twitter app. Check local flint news. (My Twitter is markellisharmon)

start itunes a set it to pick up new podcasts.

start Awaken and set daily alarms.

Fire up Yojimbo, good program for holding snippets etc.

Check for on-line orders, print and pull them.

Log into Etsy to update and check for patron conversations. Did a renewal too.



During this process I get Sue here coffee, make breakfast, get herbs in us.

(Herbs are a side effect of being uninsured. As self employed our last estimate for a decent plan was $14,400.00 per year. It has not gone down.)

Do a few minutes of work out. Making time for this is difficult, I skip it way too often.

Walk Mocha. She needs a short trip outside in the morning. Check her food, water and emergency pee pads. (She uses the pads occasionally if we don't respond properly. It is all our fault, of course.) Then I take a few minutes and explain to Mocha everything she needs to get done during the day. While she may not be very efficient with her assignments, she provides a great excuse for why "stuff" did not get done.



Finally I open MarsEdit and write a pithy blog post on one, or more, blogs, which is what I am doing now. And, I am doing it now to avoid doing the dishes *sigh* I doubt that is going to work, I can not make excuses forever. Besides, Sue likes to cook in a clean kitchen. I clean it and she cooks in it. Good deal really. Ahhh, I need more coffee, that will buy me a couple more minutes.

Pulled orders, need to pack them. Sipping coffee. A moment to relax.

It has now been four hours since starting today. Dishes are still staring at me. I see that the garbage needs dealing with and that I am out of vacuum bags.



For the rest of my day I have a shopping trip to do and I want to spend a good amount of time working on the Whispering Village for Crypt Crawl. I still have a lot of web updates for DS, so I will "break" by doing some of that. Now I will post this and get to work. Time for a second work out stint.

Home Again, Home Again

We are safe and sound back in the Secret Clanhold. The quiet hallways and rooms seem, somehow, almost dangerous. Hopefully the Pylos Agents lost our scent and went off to Disney World. That should take care of them.

Taking today off, obviously the mind has not arrived back yet.

Sunday Morning at PentaCon

Here we are, Sunday morning and I am considering the effects of keeping the same body for all of these years. *sigh* I think the new one is still on backorder.

The responses to Crypt Crawl have been good, so I need to complete the next several pieces of the game. Converting our experiences, notes, cards, memos and audio into a useable form is taking a good amount of time. The strange part of this is that I am enjoying working on a new game and world. I want to start by completing the Crypt Crawl Animal types so I can do the Beastmaster Expertise. Mounts, rodents, crocodiles, fish, snakes, birds, spiders, squids, sharks, insect, scorpions, crabs and ants should do just fine. The monstrous forms of these would be in the Horrors or Spawn listings.

I also need to formalize our Terrible Two charts. We are using a 1 to six by 1-6 format, giving 36 equal possibilities for each chart. We are working on a general chart and optional charts for attacking, defending, skill use and initiative Terrible Twos.

OK, my mind is swimming just a little too much. Need to eat breakfast and pack.

Friday at Pentacon, A day at the Convention

We arrived at PentaCon at about 1PM. Gaming had started at 9AM so there was a good number of people at the Con when we arrived. People were friendly and it was good to see familiar faces. Sometimes when working in solitaire in the hidden Clanhold makes me forget why I do all this work. Seeing our people makes me remember. Our patrons were good to us today, much cash was collected.

The air in the convention center is not having much of a negative effect on me, so I will be running Crypt Crawl at 2-5pm and 7:30 to 10:30. I plan on running for about an hour and a quarter, take a break and do another hour and a quarter on the session. It will run up the characters to, probably third circle.

Several people here at the con have already played in the Crypt. As usual I will forget most of the comments from people at the show. I am hoping they will follow up with e-mails from the Crypt site about there experiences in the Crypt.

The card sets are going well, but people are still having trouble adapting to them. Several times people have picked up 3-4 Deluxe Wizard or Valarian cards. I have had to point out it would be a better deal for them if they got the standard sets instead.

Right now it is 5 AM, I awoke and now I think I will go get some sleep.

just a quick note on PentaCon

As usual, I am slow getting going, but we should be on the road in 30 minutes.

Wake up procedure engaged

Morning stream of thought: Heat shoulder, stiff this morning, make coffee, walk dog, get coffee to Sue, check weight (yay! finally dropping!), check e-mail (looks like a junk this morning.),

check blogs (Yes, I have an RSS reader, and I check the DS peoples blogs and ours, Hi Pixiejorge, and others! I see you! I just don't respond much, but I am interested.). OK, need more coffee, NOW! Vibrator for shoulder, still stiff, got to be careful with it - card cutting rough on joints.

Sip coffee, second mug black. Good quality coffee. I am cutting down on my cream in coffee.

Considering todays work. Not going to be able to cut many cards, so no sense in printing a lot. Packing for Con, Sue wants some prints, maybe I can get to some of the web work I have missed. Need a DS blog update. I got another Crypt Crawl monster up last night. I am writing them up a little more complete based on what people want in the Monster Parade.

I would love to work on CC dungeon and village, but I am going to bet against that. I need pages for all of the new cards. I think that is 12 write-ups. Since we are doing the Wizard Set I should get something up on the 20 wizard cards. That would be 32 pages of writing... I don't think so.

Time to shut down this station and move to the primary work station.

I am never sure what to do in a blog, but here it is.

The Shoulder says it is time to call it a day.

Printing, laminating, typing, cutting and cornering has proceeded through out the day. The arthritis in my right shoulder has begun firing shooting pains as it moves. I am thinking that that is the end of the work day. I could go further, but tomorrow would then be a true pain.

I do have the new releases from October printed. Plus we have new sets 5, 9, and 10. We also have three new Spirit Walker cards.

Not as much new as I would like for DS, but there you go.

What we will also have is a couple of Crypt Crawl rules books, 40 demo characters, some character sheets and a chance to see what people think. I will also have all the pdf's on a CD for people to load them to there computers.

Well, see you in the morning.

Today's schedule is, well, goofed up

I am getting a good start here, but I am, as always, behind. I will have new DS cards and sets at PentaCon, but the restock is not going to happen. I'm afraid that the time to put up the Crypt Crawl beta has already worn me down, so I am not going to push. Life is too much fun to bury my head in work and miss what rally counts.

Had a fun game last night. Yeah, that is right, I played several hours of Crypt and did not work. Experimenting with some politics along with the normal smashing and bashing. The group found a Horror trapping a farm family. They, of course, stepped in and saved them. The family was in general poor condition. They talked and found out these people were tenent farmers on the local lords land. They get "survival" level food and goods, and that is all. Two of the players befriended and healed the farmers. Then one of the characters hired the farmers to look for herb ingrediants, paying in gold. They made friends, the word will spread.

Today I have to go shopping for PentaCon food, cut and corner cards, put prices on the card sets and stare at the wall and think. I have a long piece I am working on for the Crypt Blog, (What is Table Top Role Playing?) but it is taking time, not a simple question. I think I will work on starting animals for the crypt and put that up on the blog. I also need to do the web for the new deluxe cards and the Rogue card set.

OK, time to take this machine out of the bedroom, stop staring at the pretty Sue and get to my work station.