Bleah And Double-Bleah...

Slept by the power of Nyquil, here at work by the power of Dayquil.

Not much got done after I got home. Between being sick and my knee, I really did not feel up for much of anything.

Awakening in the morning, the knee is better but my sinuses are not happy. I am hoping that things can get better soon as there is too much work to do to be laid low for too long. Chief among it all is the reworking of the grand MtG experiment. What we had done made it easier for us, but it has almost entirely killed our card sales. So, we are going back to the drawing board and keeping what works currently while modifying things so we can rejuvenate the card sales once again.

As it goes, though, Loquacious is coming in after her day job and possibly relieving me. We'll talk about it when she gets here.

I may post more later, or I might just go curl up and die in bed... Not certain either way, yet.

-- GopherDave

Sick, Wobbly, But Still Going...

Last night, my left knee (the worse of the two bad ones) started giving issues. It wasn't stable, and many times the joint felt Daniel-san in the one-legged Crane stance on the dock post. Totally wobbly and just unsure of itself. Oh, and painful. Very, very painful. When I went to bed last night, I was hoping that some rest would help it.

The rest did help the knee, but it still hurts. Also, I woke up with the beginnings of some sort of head cold. Yay. So, basically, I'm feeling like crap, but I managed to drag myself into work today (though I did have Skribl on stand-by, just in case).

Looking over the ruleset that I've been working on last night, there are only a few more things to do before I begin working on the setting/genre modules. Most of what is left should be simple. As for the setting stuff, the hardest one I have to work on is pretty much complete as far a rules go. Fantasy that has any form of a magic system is typically the most difficult genre to lock in place in terms of rules. However, since the rules are being extracted from a fantasy game I ran a few years back, the bulk of the work is already done. I just have to fine tune it all. The western stuff should be easy as it is grounded in a "mostly realistic" outlook. The bulk of the modern-day stuff should also be a snap.

Really, the largest bulk of work will be the science-fiction/space opera thing I have going on. Work on races other than human (the fantasy world I have is totally human-centric), psionics, and vehicular space combat are the big chunks of work that will need to be done. I'm fairly certain I can get it all done. I just have to do it...

...And being sick doesn't help me get it done. Bleh.

Birthdays And Anniversaries...

Shipment day at the store was fairly easy today. We reworked the schedules at the store, and the way things are set, I am back to entering orders in by myself. I don't mind typically, as long as nothing major goes wrong (see Friday/Comcast) during the time. Today, it was pretty simple, if a bit slow.

Today was also the eleventh anniversary of, well... that. It was also my father's 73rd birthday. I called him and wished him a happy birthday, and we talked for a bit. It was nice.

As for the other thing, it started something that still haunts us. I wrote something a piece about it a year and a half ago. I can't say that my feelings have changed much in that time. For some reason we are still involved in a conflict that can have no clear winner.

Zero-sum games are never productive. Take it from someone who sells games for a living...

-- GopherDave

Wandering Monsters

Things are what they are. Sundays at the store tend to be slower, and today was no exception. Did meet some new customers in the form of new university students who said they had no difficulty finding the place. That's always encouraging.

Once I get some of the store business taken care of, I will spend some time working on game stuff. How much I get done will depend entirely on my motivation level and brainpower. Currently, things are good, but that is always subject to change.

I received an e-mail from Comcast customer service in regard to our issues on Friday. It's more of an invitation to open dialogue for there really isn't much left to fix. about the only thing I can see is the internet seems slower than it used to be. Part of that may be the new wireless router I installed as part of the "repair". I'll check with Ranger (our main tech guy) tomorrow and see what his opinion is.

Beyond that... nufin'.

-- GopherDave

(Not) Just Another Day Of Nothing...

When I first started this entry, it was early in the morning, and with the exception of about six orders coming in and Friday Night Magic later tonight, I figured it to be a pretty normal day.

Then the small lightning storm hit at around noon or so, and the store lost Internet and the ability to take credit cards. Comcast was called. The tech showed up around 3PM. Looked at things and pronounced out wireless router was screwbarred, and it needed to be replaced. I scratched my head a bit given that we still had a wireless network, but the router and the cable modem were not on speaking terms, so I went with it and picked up a new router.

It wasn't the router...

Turns out, three of the four ports of the cable modem were blown and it needed to be replaced. Comcast said they would send someone out right away. I called back at 7:35PM and was assured that a tech would show up between 7:30PM and 11PM Friday night. At 11:05, I called them back as no tech had shown up... then things get ugly...

It turns out that they had NOT sent the request down the line, and that we had an appointment set up between 7:30AM and 10AM Saturday morning. That was the first I had heard about that particular appointment, and things spiraled from there as I ran into the most unhelpful people I've ever encountered in my life.

Apparently it was my fault for thinking they would be out on Friday night when not one, but two of Comcast's own representatives told me they would be.

The only good thing out of it was we were able to wrangle credit card capability out of the one working port, so we were not up the creek there.

I used to sing Comcast's praises. They honestly had not really given me a bad experience in terms of service before tonight. Tonight, though... Well... Let's just say that it has washed all goodwill away on that front...

-- GopherDave

Are We Ready For Some Football..?

I originally going to post some long, drawn spiel about game design, but nothing like that happened last night.

Instead, for the first time in forever, I watched an entire football game from start to finish. Dallas Cowboys vs. the New York Giants...

How 'bout them Cowboys?  [GRIN]

It's early, and with the amount of penalties the 'Boys were drawing I mentally phased out for moment and thought I was watching the Raiders, but I'll take the win...

Football season in America... The only time of the year where screaming at your television for three hours straight does not make you certifiably insane...

-- GopherDave

Too Manic...

You ever get so wound up to work on something, you end up not being able to work on it? That happens to me more than I'd like, and it did so last night.

See, here's a confession of sorts. I, GopherDave, suffer from mild, rapid-cycling bi-polar disorder. It is an unmedicated condition for I also have heart issues, and anything they can give me that will actually help with my particular bi-polar condition will also screw with my heart in a dangerous manner. Given the choice of moody, but breathing and level-headed, but dead, I've chosen to live with it.

It's not easy sometimes, especially not for Loquacious, Skribl, and Pumpkin. They have seen me at my best, but they have also seen me at my lowest, the lows aren't pretty sometimes. Me, I've kind of learned to live with it.

I am currently in the midst of a manic cycle. It's mild in that I am not bouncing off of the walls, but it ramped up my thinking last night to the point of having so many thoughts and ideas crashing through my head in such rapid succession that it was difficult to grasp and remember any of them. Through it all I managed to work through six "skill definitions" for the Dicebag engine I've been working on for a bit. In a lot of ways, doing that was borderline painful as I forced myself to think about what I was doing long enough to type coherent sentences.

I do believe I have worked through it all for this cycle though, and am back to a nice, mild manic that doesn't interfere with my thinking all too terribly much. Depending on what is happening tonight. I'll probably get some more work done. Once I get done with the barebone skill definitions, I'll go through and see what, if anything, needs to be added to the "main rules" to actually run an ongoing game using this engine.

From there, I'll start laying out some of the genre documents, including one I can run a campaign in, because I need to run a game again. It's part of who I am.

Husband... Father... Friend... Store Owner... Gamer... Sweater-Vested, Local Icon... =P

-- GopherDave