I keep starting Blog entries...

The old brain is in a malaise here at the clanhold. I have become certain that everything bad has already happened and I can't get my head around it. Darned depressing. Everytime I actually research one of the "end of the world" scenarios they turn out to be wrong. Do any of these so called "news" people do any research? I always thought the National Enquirer just created titles for articles for stories and then made up a story for it. I am starting to believe the National Enquirer has become the supplier for all news. Then I noticed that news channels have laid off their research staffs. They really are making it up.

Saturday Off, mothers in hospitals, and so on.

OK, taking today off from work, but I think I will make a blog post. WOW! Here it is!

My mom is improving rapidly, her blood clot has disolved and she s in rehab getting her strength back. She needs it because she really needs to be able to take care of herself. She is one of those people who need to be able to tend to her own needs.

Sue's mom had hip replacement surgery yesterday. It went well. Sue is up there right now. She is in a better hospital. Sue and I have no breathing troubles there. The rehab is also much better organized and than my Mother's hospital. *sigh* Some hospitals are better than others.

I am not managing to keep a regular work schedule, but I am lining up projects and completeing them one at a time. The DS website is reworked. The Travels of Kit are up to date. Basic work on Sue's new comic (Familiar Place) is underway.

Our "Food Plan" has been difficult to maintain, but both Sue and I are dropping weight slowly. It is about time.

Enough for today.

Mother's, work and plans

My mother is in rehab to get ready to adjust for returning home. We have a "family" doctor visit scheduled for tuesday morning. We shall see. Sue's mom goes in at the end of the week for hip replacement surgery and then some recovery time. So we are in for more time consumption. What can you do. They are mothers.

As far as work, we have more to do than we can do. Therefore some work must end. Tomorrow I will be replacing the Dragon Storm site. It is shrinking and we are pulling the Deluxe cards entirely. I am also going to start dropping blogs and folding them together. The first blog to go will be the DS Beta blog. It takes too much time to track etc. I will be looking around for a place to make a combined game blog. Maybe "Game News from the Clanhold".

Plans, we making them. Step one is to assemble a complete core rules set for the new games.

OK, laundry is calling, must go.

Some days are hard to start

I wonder what it is that causes the mind to avoid the issues we really need to face? This morning I am having a great difficulty in getting to the work I know I should do. The kitchen floor and basement stairs are clean, dishes done, laundry started. All tasks that I have found while I try to get my mind to grasp the work I need to be doing. I can't seem to focus on a single detail to begin on. The tasks are appearing as whole with no handles. Many times I just sit during these freezes and do nothing but try to focus. Today I am going to try doing house cleaning chores. They need to be done anyway. Maybe it will help.

Mom, Webpage and other thoughts

Since Friday I have been spending the first few hours of my day visiting my mother in the hospital. She has a blood Clot in her lung, and pneumonia. She is doing better, but the process has weakened her, she may be staying for rehab.

I keep finding "things" that I feel I have to have in the new DS website before I can delete the old site and put up the new site. Very soon I am going to say that is enough and put it up. I can then add a page a day for a couple of months and be set.

I need to spend some time on the phone to the printer today arranging and making sure the sets I have in will be here soon. I also need to prep the next batch of sets and get them posted.

I have been visiting the hospital my mother is in for several years now at different times. Maybe because I just see "slices" in time I can see the slow degeneration of the hospitals efficiency. Little things, getting the diabetic diet wrong, and having to boost insulin to compensate. Not being able to find anyone trained to do my mom's type of dialysis, apparently it is too new, even though she has been on it for three years (through another local hospital). After the kidney doctor was in and heard some thoughts about the care I found him outside at the empty nurses station on the phone. He was upset. He found the fact that he was phoning from an empty nurses station unsettling, to say the least. Yesterday my mother said "I can't understand what has happened to this place, it used to be so good." So even she has seen the changes. Not good, but we are not living in the middle of the slow decline, maybe we can see it better than if you are in the middle of the chaos. To be fair we encountered several efficient, friendly staff members and they deserve applause for continuing to do good in a declining system.

Sometimes seeing these incidents makes me look around to see if I can see a decline in other organizations around me. I believe I see it. I think our general standards are declining around us, but it is best if I shut up and get back to work. My paranoia is high today.

Yes, weight goes down and change is coming

The new "food Plan" is working so far. Sue and I have stuck on it three whole days. Both of us are on edge a little, but overall it is not bad. Dropping a pound a day, probably too fast, but it may be the only way. I have 10 pounds to lose to get down to average BMI.

With all of the changes in Dragon Storm brought on by converting to the Standard cards it will require a complete change to the website. I might just as well take the jump and replace the whole thing. For the past several years I have just hung more on the old framework. It is now so jumbled that I can not even find stuff. Time for a change. The plan is to start with just a few pages and then rebuild a page or two a day until it is all back. I am going to go ahead and pull all of the deluxe cards except for the few we will be keeping. I am also going to size the pages for the coming of the Ipad, and all of the tablets which will follow it. They will still run on computers just fine, so that will work as well.

I think the idea that a table top rpg gamer can get to the full web will have some very interesting results. It should be possible to create entire scenarios that can be played off of the pad with just dice and paper to track damage, cast attitudes etc. I am not sure how that will work, but I am looking at it very seriously. Being able to sit down and dial up a game for the night would be interesting. All you would have to do is modify it for your style on the fly and play.

Tomorrow work begins on reworking the kitchen. The kitchen sink water pipes blew in early january. They go out of the house to the sink. Rather than repair a system that will just blow again, we are moving the sink to the other end. Plumbing, counters and some electrical work is coming my way. I am certain that once it starts coming apart that I will find way more problems than I expect. It is always like that.

A time for a new "food plan"

Both Sue and I have been stalled in our weight loss. Therefore we are trying a new "food plan". We shall see if it works and if we can maintain it. We are eating small amounts of good food several times a day. If it works I will tell how we did it.

WOW! first player for tonights game is here, time to go.

Far too much going on in my mind

I seem to have too many thoughts floating through the old brain bucket. I find myself following one string after another across my mindscape. Unfortunately my attention wanders and I become entranced by another fleeting thought. Well, the result is several dozen unfinished ideas. Far more than I can actually follow.

I will see what I can do about exposing a few of the ideas.

A subject I spent far too much time mulling over is: does one play a character in an alien world or are they playing the rules with a characterization? In one case a person is immersed in the world and they stretch themselves to see from a new viewpoint. In the second the player is surfing the world on top of the rules. Both are valid and fun. In reality the acting community acknowledges these styles as Method Acting and Classic Acting. There are, in both role-playing and acting, a blend of these in every session.

Why, you ask, do you consider such questions? I wandered into this one while I was working on a campaign background for the new game. The players and GM's need different information for different styles. If a player's character is played as if it was a real world, then specific rules references may interfere with there game. At the other end a person riding the rules with glee finds extensive descriptions and emotions a pain, they need the rule to go by. They question for us is how do we balance these demands in setting up everything from a single encounter to a campaign region. To be able to balance our output we need to understand the ways people are using that output.

So, there you go. If I had any sense I would actually review and rewrite these pieces, but I think I will just go on spitting out rough gems rather than carefully polishing them.

Updating the system

I am checking out all my regular programs here. I finally upgraded to Snow Leopard. So far it is looking really good.

I reworked the DS Sets page to include PDF sample pages of all the cards. It will give people a chance to try them all out and see what they think.

OK, off to check more.

Prop eyes open, poke head up, look around, back to sleep

I seem to be able to do exactly half of what I schedule for each days work. I either have to work more or just admit that I can not do it all.

I have the elemental cards and a set of Mighty Madspawn to finish cleaning up for DS. Then I need to get something else done, I just can't recall what it is now.

It looks like we have about a dozen prints and commission characters to get done. That should just about finish off my night.

Back to work.

OH! I had a great birthday!