Through the underworld

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Tonight was Michele’s first shot at gamemastering an RPG. For several weeks, she has been hard at work researching and assembling an adventure for the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game.
I am of course quite biased, but it was brilliant. She incorporated a slew of Egyptian mythology, mingling it with the Cthulhu setting and sending our characters through the mythical Egyptian underworld. This underworld, however, was malfunctioning badly due to the ravages of Cthulhian entities. We had to find a way to escape the underworld by traveling through its guarded gates and facing the great serpent Apophis. I’ve never played a CoC game (or any game, for that matter) even remotely like it–Egyptian mythology, despite its popular appeal, is a surprisingly uncommon theme in RPGs–but by Hathor, it worked. After the adventure, we (the players) were just stunned, and immediately began grilling Michele about all the interesting Egyptian-mythology aspects of the adventure. It was also spooky as heck–travelling through the lightless underworld will do that for you–and our characters had their usual fun losing Sanity points left and right.
I’ll try to convince her to post some of her notes, or maybe a basic summary, over at her blog. I hope Michele enjoyed GMing, because as soon as she gets back from Israel, she’s going to be roped into running a sequel adventure for us.

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“Not even God could sink this ship”

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I can’t even begin to imagine the negative cosmic karma posting this is going to rack up for me…
…but I made it all the way through this last winter without taking the Fall.
I figure there’s no snow or ice around anymore, so it’s safe to mock Fate now.
Looks like I outwitted Old Man Winter this time around. You hear me, Michigan Winter? I’m down here laughing at you! You managed to kill just about everyone else, but… you keep missing the target!*
* bonus points for identifying that movie quote. If you know my movie-quoting habits, there’s really only about three movies to choose from.

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Two games that look cool

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I am most pleased to see that a new version of Red Orchestra is out. Red Orchestra is a fan-mode mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 set on the Russian front of World War 2. Among its features are a high level of realism and massive battlefields. I played an earlier version some months ago and greatly enjoyed it (although it was still pretty glitchy at that point). I have fond memories of multiplayer battles in a huge Stalingrad map. Can’t wait to check out this new version.
Another game that I’m really looking forward to is The Political Machine, a presidential election sim. It involves creating a candidate and then managing the different aspects of the election campaign. Looks to be pretty fun. Hopefully it will be out soon, so I can glean some enjoyment from it before endless election-year news coverage and third-grade-name-calling candidate back-and-forths cause my brain to shut down all sensory input in a desperate act of self-defense.
What was I talking about? Oh yeah–games. You should check ’em out.

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Fedora Core 2 dual-boot problem

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More discussion on that Fedora dual-boot problem. Sounds like it’s not limited to FC2, but crops up in other recent Linux distributions, too. Ah well–given the general pluckiness of the open source world, with any luck there’ll be fixes or workarounds available shortly.
I hope that when the problem is addressed, the Fedora Core people release an updated version of FC2 (as opposed to just a downloadable patch or something).
I did successfully upgrade my work laptop (dual-boot Win2k and FC) to FC2 on Friday without any subsequent dual-booting problems (although it did warn me during the install process about possible boot/partition problems). So far, I like what I’ve seen of FC2, but I haven’t yet spent enough time with it to come to any grand conclusions.

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Celestial chorus

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Do you have a particular song that strikes you as so so perfect, so sublime that just hearing it makes you choke up and weep that this broken world is unworthy of its beauty? I bet you do. For you, it might be Pachelbel’s Canon; for others, perhaps Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand” or Wagner’s “Ice Ice Baby.” For me, it’s Johnny Cash singing “The Wanderer” with U2:

I went out walking through streets paved with gold
Lifted some stones, saw the skin and bones
of a city without a soul.
I went out walking under an atomic sky
Where the ground won’t turn and the rain it burns
Like the tears when I said goodbye.
Yeah, I went with nothing
Nothing but the thought of you.
I went wandering.
I went drifting through the capitals of tin
Where men can’t walk or freely talk
And sons turn their fathers in.
I stopped outside a churchhouse where the citizens like to sit
They say they want the Kingdom,
But they don’t want God in it.
I went out riding down that old eight lane
I passed by a thousand signs
Looking for my own name.
I went with nothing
But the thought you’d be there too.
Looking for you.
I went out there
In search of experience.
To taste and to touch
And to feel as much
As a man can before he repents.
I went out searching, looking for one good man
A spirit who would not bend or break,
Who would sit at his Father’s right hand.
I went out walking with a Bible and a gun.
The Word of God lay heavy on my heart
I was sure I was the one.
Now Jesus, don’t you wait up
Jesus, I’ll be home soon
Yeah, I went out for the papers
Told her I’d be back by noon.
Yeah, I left with nothing
But the thought you’d be there too.
Looking for you.
Yeah, I left with nothing
Nothing but the thought of you.
I went wandering.

I usually make it all the way to the last verse–where he goes out looking for one good man–before being overwhelmed by sorrow at the sad state of this world. By the time we learn that he told her he’d be back by noon, I’m usually a weepy emotional wreck. Johnny Cash, we’re not worthy.
How about you?

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Color me biased

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I thought this was a thought-provoking essay on the general topic of our biases and how we should go about choosing them. Lots of interesting ideas in there, but what particularly struck me was the idea that since we all apply biases to our understanding and relaying of information, we ought to be able to clearly identify the ultimate goal towards which that bias is working.
The essay does talk about Abu Ghraib and related issues, though, so if (like me) you suspect your head might explode if you read one more take on that, approach with caution.

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Updating the Illiad

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In case you were wondering what actual archaeologists think of the movie Troy, here’s your answer. Expressing indignant shock and horror at Hollywood butcheries of literary classics and historical accuracy feels somewhat passé these days, but it’s still good fun to read this sort of critique.
What actually caught my attention in the article the most is this statement, made in reference not to the movie Troy but to a History Channel documentary on the subject:

Less satisfactory is the hamfisted and oversimplified comparison of the Trojan War with Iraq.

And here I was getting sick of people comparing Iraq to Vietnam. Now they’re comparing it to the Trojan War? I am amused.

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1d6 random observations

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Beautiful rainy spring morning today–I’m working at home today, and I much enjoyed tapping away this morning at the computer to the pleasant background noise of a nice rain. We bumped into many patches of rain on our cross-country trip last week–just enough rain to really bring out the bright greens and that unique rainy-spring smell, but never so much that it interfered with our plans. In other words, just about perfect.
I don’t have any epic essays written today. Instead, we have a random assortment of interesting (to me, at least) links and other miscellanea for you to peruse.
Random thing #1. I was excited to see the release of Fedora Core 2, the latest iteration of my Linux distribution of choice. Unfortunately, I may sit this one out and wait for Fedora Core 3, unless they can do something about the “minor” glitch that prevents you from booting into Windows XP on a dual-boot machine. That would be a pretty major problem for some of us. Hmmmm.
#2. Taking long road trips, especially road trips that involve going near Chicago (travel tip: if your road trip will take you within two states of Chicago, add about 10 hours of traffic to your estimated travel time), has cemented in my mind the idea that most people with drivers licenses are horrible people who shouldn’t be allowed near a bicycle, let alone behind the wheel of a 1+ ton block of metal traveling at 80 mph. So after several days’ worth of driving uber-cautiously and ranting about the horrible driving habits of other people, what’s the first thing I do upon my return to Grand Rapids? I swerve into another lane without looking first and force another car to brake madly to avoid hitting me. I guess I’m just another one of those terrible people you always hear about.
#3. Joel passed me this link to an interesting series of essays discussing the basic concepts behind the Japanese language. Very fun read.
#4. I’ve really been enjoying GetReligion.org, a blog on the topic of religion and the media. Pretty sharp commentary, and politic-y without being too pundit-y. If you know what I mean.
#5. It turns out my wife has pretty good taste in music. Ever since she introduced me to Tom Waits, I’ve been listening to him whenever I get the chance. How can you not like a musician who writes lyrics like these? Unfortunately, Michele’s taste isn’t perfect–she has not yet acknowledged that Extreme’s III Sides to Every Story is the album than which none greater can be conceived. Ah well, she’ll figure it out eventually.
I think I’ll stop with five random observations for now. Wouldn’t want to go overboard.

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Back on track

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We just got back from a brief vacation into the wilds of the Midwest. Much fun was had all around. Most importantly, Michele has already written up a good vacation summary, so I don’t have to. I will definitely be posting a bit about some of the observations I had in the course of our grand road trip, though, so you have that to look forward to.
It’s great to be back in Michigan, which now that I think of it is sort of like Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana, except that it has more trees.

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