SkiFree was such an integral part of my childhood gaming experience that I couldn’t resist an offer to go skiing for a weekend at Sugar Mountain in Boone, NC. Greg, Deana, Meg, and I stayed in sleepy Blowing Rock (awesome food!) in a cozy little inn/motel.

Unfortunately, I was sick. Quite sick. Snotting and coughing and sneezing. All the classics.

When we arrived at Sugar Mountain on Saturday morning, I was feeling distinctly unathletic. A cold plus asthma generally makes for chill time. Deana was like, “No, no. Skiing isn’t really athletic. You’ll be fine.”

Okay, then!

As I watched people stomp around on their skis, I also got increasingly worried for my shoulder. My pain had generally been at a workable, low level for the month before, but all that poking and pushing with the ski-sticks (technical term!) could present a shoulder endurance problem. By the time we were filling out forms, I’d talked myself out of skiing, but was totally up for tubing.

The ladies (and Greg, although he backed off), made such a fuss about me not participating that I caved and shelled out the moola for skiing. I got fitted for all the shoes and such–the skis were much shorter than I expected–and we hobbled outside.

Greg and I? Never skied before.

Greg? Decided that instead of worrying about lessons, we’d try experimentation first.

By the time experimentation was over, I was sitting over on the deck crying and Greg was limping with a bad knee. We never left the bunny slope.

That was January 21, and my shoulder really hasn’t stopped hurting again since then.

So what happened? Well, Greg kept falling. And then trying to get up. Then falling again. Deana was coaching him, but is physically structured quite differently from Greg, so her directions didn’t really work for his weight distribution. His already barely recovered knee (he twisted it a week before) gave up the ghost.

I, once again, found a child in my path. Oh, snap, a kid! How do I stop? No clue! I’ll just sit down. (Even in retrospect, it’s not a bad idea.)

Protip: pick up the ski-sticks when you sit down.

My left stick stuck in the ground and wrenched my arm/shoulder back as I fell. Once I was down, I had to get back up, which involved a one-handed ski/boot disconnect procedure (with no leverage from planting my bad arm/hand) that made me want to scream in frustration, because at that point I was in the way of other skiers.

Greg and I spent the rest of the day chilling around the resort while Meg and Deana skied.

Everything else about the trip was awesome. Knight’s on Main makes a mean omelette, and Melanie’s stuffed french toast and home fries made me want to move in. Plus, Melanie’s had the best/smoothest coffee refills that I’ve ever experienced. I think I had 5 cups, but my mug never completely emptied.

The nighttime entertainment still makes me giggle. Twigs was within walking distance of the inn, and was the only place in Blowing Rock open after 22:00 on a Friday. (As I said, sleepy town.) What we encountered there was a live country/folk band and a lady who was amazingly drunk and flirty, and prone to trying (!) to grind. To country music. Not really our scene, but quite giggle-worthy.

Our Saturday night visit to Boone’s Char was a smidge less entertaining, because the DJ wasn’t very good. Major collegiate scene, though, which made me feel about 102 years old. Lots of people doing grindy dancing, which prompted an interesting observation of homophobia. Several gents in the club were play-dancing with each other in humpy/grindy ways, then laughing and playing it off in a very “no homo” sort of way. …But there were a lot of women there. (Who, ironically, were dancing with each other in a “come hither” way.) So… why not just dance together and be cool with that, or “go therether” after the ladies?

We got our dance on a bit, but left relatively early due to my cold and the bad music.

The rest of the trip was shopping and more shopping, including the purchase of nice, smelly soaps.

I like soap.

We’ll definitely go back out there some weekend when I’m not sick, although likely for hiking. Despite having not lived in Texas for the last 13 years, I still have the “there’s nothing geographically interesting within six hours of me in any direction” syndrome that is patently false in North Carolina. Four hours east can get you to a beach. Two-ish hours west can get you to a mountain. Either direct is just a weekend trip, and I’ll be doing more of those.

Related posts:

1. Debt Free
2. They Might Be Giants. Maybe.
3. Pyramid Apricot beer

Don’t ask where I’ve been. It’s been dark and full of things like strangely proud “humble views”, polka dots and stripes, mock objects, skiing, the IRS, gradients, and a strange dampness.

Still not sure where the dampness is from.

Getting back into the swing of things, have some links!

• Google’s Pseudonym Problem: New Implementation Revealed | ZDNet – Looks like Google's attempt to lighten up their real name policy on Google+ is something of a farce.
• How I see things / How my cat sees things – All I have to say is, "True dat."
• Why Indies Rock – Example #488 – Aside from the coolness of accepting the feature request, check the timestamps on the discussion in this post.
• Thrown off by Science – Male Pattern Fitness – The history of treadmills and stationary bikes apparently starts in the lab. Makes sense, but doesn't immediately disqualify them as good workout tools, despite this article.
• my culture is not a trend. – Amazing letter to a t-shirt company protesting the "Native American" imagery on one of their shirts. The impassioned protest got the shirt design taken down and reevaluated.
• Amazon’s Plagiarism Problem | Fast Company – Deals primarily with erotica, but I've seen books full of Wikipedia content, as well.

Related posts:

1. Two weeks’ linkage, ah, ah, ah
2. Weekly Linkage: Stockholm Trolls
3. Quasi-daily linkage

I’ve been struggling for a while to quantify something I’m taking issue with lately, and I finally think I hit the nail on the head.

Imagine, if you will, that you work with someone in a standard American corporate environment. Let’s call her Jane. (Jane’s a good, strong name. Speaks to her background.)

Now, you totally get that Jane’s probably a good person outside your work environment (yeah, sure), but at work, she’s a total loser. Can’t do her job, whines all the time, and really just gets in the way of progress. You’re there to get a job done, and Jane’s clearly just killing time and collecting a paycheck.

She’s absolutely worthless, and then has the gall to dislike you for being good at your job. Not your fault she sucks and you had to fix her mistakes.

I’ve seen this scenario played out a hundred different ways, and am not immune to it myself. Someone else doesn’t make the choices I do, doesn’t perceive themselves as I do, or doesn’t perceive me as I do, and that person loses their personhood to me. They get diagnosed as a Failure, Stupid, or Worthless, and that diagnosis is the reason why they don’t see the world as I do.

I’ve worked really hard over the last year to stop that hateful cycle in my own thinking.

I still don’t know what to do when I encounter it in others.

Someone being different than you doesn’t reduce their inherent worth and dignity as a person, even if they repeatedly make mistakes or screw things up.

It’s very, very difficult to sit down with someone and try to show them the other side. People throw up defenses, think you’re making excuses for the Janes of the world, and deny that there’s even a problem with the situation.

This is all far easier to handle when it’s a true friend, someone you can call a jerk to their face, point out the shit they said verbatim, and expect that even if they bluster their way out of the conversation at the moment, that they’ll think on it later and come back to either 1) argue against you more, or 2) never mention it again except in careful remarks on a different situation in the future (meaning your point was at least heard).

But what do you do when it’s someone you’re less connected to, like an acquaintance, coworker, or dance/book club/roleplaying buddy? On the one hand, I’m not super-invested in the person’s future. On the other hand, I do give a damn about them and the situation, and it’s very frustrating to be around vitriolic people who don’t realize that they’re treating people poorly.

Related posts:

1. Weekly Linkage: Games, Books, and People

On a whim this Saturday, my running partner and I decided to take razors to our heads and finish what we started when we cut our hair down short. The result was genu-wine baldness.

My biggest fear in shaving bald was razor bumps–with curly/kinky hair, that’s kinda the way it goes. It wasn’t as bad as I was afraid it would be; a few bumps and some discomfort, but nothing to write home about. I used a single-bladed disposable razor instead of a double-bladed, which I think helped.

Being hairless itself, though? Strange. My scalp was strangely rubbery-feeling and very high-friction. It was also a very striking look–far more so than my normal super-short look. Just skin, all the way back.

The shaving itself was too much work for it to be a regular occurrence. Deana and I pipelined our shaving (since we started with clippers), and the whole shebang took about 45 minutes. And I’d have to do close to that much work weekly. Meh. I think I will experiment with shorter looks (guard-free on the clippers, for instance), but nothing that requires shaving foam.

It’s Tuesday, so I’ve already got a little hair back. I like the little burr better than baldness.

Related posts:

1. Tastee (del.icio.us) links! (December 3rd)
2. Going Natural
3. Ew, blades!

I ran a blitz Tri-Stat dX one-shot with my coworkers a few weeks ago, and they decided they wanted something more “traditional”, and with combat.

So this past weekend, we did a D&D one-shot.

It was far less successful than the Tri-Stat game (unsurprising in retrospect), but folks still had fun and got to hang out in the context of roleplaying.

I used a Chaos Scar adventure printed in an issue of Dragon, “Elves of the Valley”. It was a good adventure that showcased combat and skill challenges well, and I was able to scale the difficulty way down during combat when things started going downhill.

Let me say first that the social gathering itself went well enough for this group. Only one person was late, only one person had to leave early, dinner was well-received, and the birthday girl was pleased by the decorations and cake. I also think that everyone had quite a bit of fun, even if it wasn’t quite the fun I expected.

Unfortunately, D&D just isn’t a good fit for these gamers. Too many numbers and dice, the usage of powers was confusing, it demanded too much attention, and I think some of the background concepts and metaphors didn’t resonate with them. I know that a few of them had seen Lord of the Rings, and so I tried to draw some parallels with dwarves, for instance, but my understanding is that none of these ladies are sci-fi/fantasy readers or watchers.

For example, they didn’t seem to understand (until I made it explicit) that once they killed the evil tree in the middle of the forest, that the forest would heal of its blight. The concept of a “source of evil” or a “source of darkness” that the heroes can vanquish to make an entire area better is an idea from fantasy writing.

To add to the difficulty, they came in with a lot of wine. Urk. I was intending to (and told them ahead of time I would) provide a bottle of some of my favorite wine for the 6 of us to share (meaning very little per person), but they brought a bunch themselves and drank heavily enough to impact their attention spans and coordination. At one point, the birthday girl dressed herself up in the decorations we’d put up and danced around the apartment while her wife played her character for her.

I’m generally not a fan of getting tipsy during a roleplaying game (barring special games where it’s agreed upon that people will get tipsy), but now I’m pretty strongly against it. I hadn’t realized they’d go quite that far, and it exacerbated all of the issues we already had (attention span, interest, complexity).

With their difficulty in getting attached to the plot (the Tri-Stat one-shot premise of “save the children!” worked much better) and the fact that the character sheets seemed to be just full of words, they got bored, and that was the doom of the game.

Game ran about 30 minutes past time (we started about an hour late, but I cut out an entire combat), and I was again faced with a lot of questions to the tune of, “Wow, is the game supposed to take this long?”

I was pretty clear and up front about how long game would take (it was slated to run from 15:00 until 21:00), and emphasized being on time, that we’d need all the time, blah, blah. And they understood from the Tri-Stat game that two hours was way too short. Nonetheless, they marveled at how long a session could last.

The final blow was when they beat the final boss and let its minions retreat, and they asked, “So, how do we find our missing mentor?”

I wanted to cry. The fact that she was gone (presumed dead by the townspeople) was the reason they’d sent in such new recruits. There’d been no one left to save the town from the evil in the forest (etc., etc.).

But the mentor had been gone a week. It had taken them about 6 hours to get to the center of the forest. She was dead, and her sword was in the tree. I’d tried to imply and hint that she was dead every time I mentioned her, but they felt as if they’d failed the mission by not bringing her back out alive.

I should’ve had the damn tree transform back into their mentor at the end so they could take her home. I let my frustration make me inflexible.

There are no words to describe how glad I am that I didn’t write my own adventure for this from scratch. If I’d put in the hours I had in the Tri-Stat dX game and it had gone this poorly, I’d've probably had less of a sense of humor about the whole thing.

As it is, though, I think I’ll stick with simpler, less plan-heavy, more narrativist systems/games, like Lady Blackbird for groups like this, although there’s still the problem of understanding the setting/domain knowledge.

Related posts:

1. A New Home for Children: A Tri-Stat dX One-Shot
2. Left for Dead (2)? Maybe left behind
3. The dissolution of a game

Just a few links and a vibeo as I get back into the swing of things.

• The Complete Rules For Games | Rock, Paper, Shotgun – How can one not like do's and don't's for games? Especially when so many ring true?
• Lots of people can’t fire their insurance companies | The Incidental Economist – "[L]et’s unpack the idea that if individuals have their own insurance, the “insurance company will have an incentive to keep [them] healthy”. That’s totally backwards. The idea that people might fire their insurance companies is exactly why they don’t have an incentive to keep you healthy."

This guy's pretty damn good. The De Niro impression got me, as I was just watching Ronin a few days ago.

• Detecting and Preventing Lifestyle Creep – A fun money reminder for the start of the year.
• Kill Screen – The Year in lyrics – Explaining the "(GUCCI!)" to Greg as I read this made it all the better.
• adventures in birth control, or: emily has a small uterus | Emily Nagoski :: sex nerd :: – Ah, the ol' IUD insertion.

  Don't let that sound nostalgic. Mine was hell, and so was hers. (I teared up in reading her account, remembering my own.) My OB/GYN was quite the asshole, although I tried to rationalize it as professionalism at the time. The insertion procedure was the last time I saw him. I now go to an office where 8 of the 10 women have IUDs and all of them have a dose or 5 of compassion.

Related posts:

1. Weekly linkage
2. Financial Advisor: Not This One
3. Health Insurance Confounds Me

Back in December, I ran across and fell in love with the idea of Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1 program. After my weights arrived, I wasted no time crafting up a plan spreadsheet and getting rolling.

Again, wow.

As a refresher, the program focuses on four main lifts–military press, deadlift, bench press, and squat–one per day. Add assistance exercises around those to complete the workout.

Core Lifts

I’ve had to make some interesting adaptations over the month. I have no bench and no squat rack, so those are the two exercises I’ve had to be the most careful with. I hunted for a way to avoid learning how to do a power clean in order to do the squat, but I haven’t found a good way around it. And really, it’s not that bad (scary picture aside), although I still worry when the weights come off my chest a bit in the process of doing a front squat. I think my elbows aren’t high enough, resulting in a lower and less stable bar.

I tried the hack squat as an alternative, but it turns out my body really isn’t structured for that. The best I could manage was a sumo (wide-stance) squat that was awkward, wobbly, and very bad for my shoulder’s bone spur. A combination of short arms and wide hips made it impossible to get the bar up and down without scraping every bit of skin off the back of my ankles, bowing my back terribly, and rolling forward and down my shoulders. Screw that. I’ll take my chances with the clean + front squat, thanks.

My bench press 'setup'.

The military press (an overhead movement), hasn’t bothered my shoulder much at all. I still need to ice my shoulder after any of these workouts, and the military press doesn’t make that any worse, unless I’ve already had a rough shoulder day.

The deadlift has been perfect as-is, and has helped me learn better form for lifting things, particularly in keeping my hips low and driving up through the heels.

Assistance Exercises

I’m definitely trying to keep these to about 2-3 per major lift. I still get quite sore, so I’m not killing it too hard on the assistance work. Here’s some of my assistance regimen:

• Military Press: my external shoulder rotation exercise from rehab and planks.
• Deadlift: good mornings (OMG, best exercise ever!) and Russian twists.
• Bench Press: weighted full sit-ups, tricep kickbacks (I tried a dip… once; I cannot imagine a more stressful or painful motion for my shoulder), and dumbbell rows.
• Front Squat: lunges and the absolutely hilarious self-assisted hamstring raise (hilarious because it was initially more a flop for me).

I’m aiming for balance here, but there’s an important exercises that I’m missing: a “pull” back exercise, like chin-ups/pull-ups. That’s a hefty portion of my back that isn’t really getting worked, but I have no chin-up bar (yet), and no table suitable to use to work from the floor. We got gift money for Amazon for Chrimmus, so I may get a bar.

I started my second month yesterday, and the only things I’m shifting around are to put the tricep work with military press (to keep that day all upper-upper body), and add a few little sets of pushups to the bench day.

Progress

Blah, blah, exercise lists! So how’s it really going, right?

Excellent. Superb. Amazing. I recommend it to anyone who wants to be better at picking up and putting down heavy things.

Not only is it fun, but I’m getting significantly stronger, most noticeably in body weight stuff like the self-assisted ham raise, but also in my core strength and posture, my chest/shoulder/arm endurance, and my running power. The degree of change in my lower-body strength is slightly less, but I’m limited in my ability to squat by how much I can safely clean (get off the floor) and keep up on my chest. Being a quad-heavy person, though, the deadlifts and good mornings (OMG again!) have done wonders in balancing my leg strength.

Do I sound like I’m raving? I feel like I am. Eep.

Maybe just stark raving mad.

This month, the max on the upper body lifts go up by 5 lb, and the max on the lower body lifts go up by 10 lb. We’ll see how it goes.

Related posts:

1. 5/3/1: First Two Workouts
2. Setting up for 5/3/1
3. Physical Therapy: Consultation and Fun Treatments

With the arrival of R’lyeh last week (my very first Luftpost!), I was super-crunk to redecorate my living room.

The pretty blue frame Verena/Jonas sent the picture in didn’t survive the Luftposting, but a quick trip to Ikea (where the original frame was from) would fix that. The picture was A4 size, though, and Ikea in the U.S. was like, “Here, have letter size.” No, I’m not going to cut a damn inch off the picture. “But, but, we have letter size!” Fine, then, a bigger frame it is. Add a black fabric backdrop, and I think it turned out quite well.

Getting it on the wall required some furniture shifting I’ve long wanted to do. We had this terrible tall black stand on which we kept DVD/game cases and miscellaneous crap. I’m not a fan of dark furniture (anymore), and it was sucking up what little light we have in the living room. That wall also had no pretties other than the clock, not helping with the drab, post-collegiate look.

(Entertainment stand already moved.)

When I started these shenanigans on Saturday night, I also took down a clever but dark and hard to read poster representing the 2011 U.S. federal budget that floated above the couch. Again with the light usurpation.

Greg-the-cat wants to move to R'lyeh, despite all the pesky water.

We also picked up a bunch of mirrors during our Ikea visit (they played loud country music the entire time we were in there). My parents often put up (very heavy!) mirrors in their living rooms, which always made the room much brighter and more elegant. Totally hijacking that idea (with more movable mirrors), I created an ensemble of mirrors above our couch on Saturday night, having all sorts of fun climbing over the couch, using a level and power drill, and drawing on the walls. Greg was out until the wee hours of the morn, so I blasted British rap on the PS3, ate popcorn for dinner, and had lots of disorderly fun.

Greg-the-cat has some good design skills. He also likes DS9.

The finished product of the TV wall (complete with happy cat):

I’m still getting used to the mirrors (yes, I do startle myself), but I love, love, love the amount of light that bounces around now. I still want a ceiling fan/light in the living room (we’d take it with us when we moved), but this is quite nice.

Related posts:

1. Cats and wall hangings
2. 2011 Gardening: The Start of Awesomeness
3. Snip, snip

Okay, not “already”. 2011 was long as hell and busy.

I resumed going to church fairly regularly. Had my perspective on interpersonal communications majorly shifted. Got married to a great fellow. Got a running partner. Made good progress on my novel. Learned how to incorporate a business. Paid off my student loans (!!!). Lost some weight. Got stronger, more fit, and resumed dancing. Made and held to some good financial plans. Blogged pretty regularly.

Still feel like I only did about half of what I “should have”, of course, but I’m happy with the year, overall. I succeeded at most of what I wanted,

I’m going to finish my last sliver of debt. I’m going to finish not having a long-term financial plan. I’m going to get married. I’m going to finish my novel. I’m going to finish not being happy enough,

and made good headway on what I didn’t finish.

Regardless, 2012 shall be a more adventurous year, featuring new employment, two trips/vacations, and a plethora of writing, coding, financial management, and gettin’ fizzit.

(Update on the 5/3/1 weight lifting program soon–I’m in the deload week of my first month, so I have all sorts of giddiness to share.)

One of our vacations will be back to our secluded honeymoon spot in the mountains, but I’m still looking for a good option for the second. I’d love to cross the country (or leave it!), but that “new employment” thing makes me hesitant to plan for an entire week-long vacation. I’ve no idea if I’ll be a contractor (meaning no paid time off), or, if I’m permanent, whether I’ll have paid time off available so soon.

I’d love workable ideas, though, so please lay ‘em on me. Anything from Costa Rica to Germany to San Fran to L.A. to New York is potentially viable, depending on costs, but we don’t want to travel just for a specific event (New Year’s in Times Square, fer instance). We want it to be exploratory and fun.

Related posts:

1. A Letter to 2011
2. A Financial Advisor: What Am I Even Looking For?
3. “Entering Valhalla” posted

I’ve resumed playing Galactic Civilizations II (GalCiv II), which I haven’t played since the olden days when the mornings were light and the afternoons long.

Back in that long, long ago, I played on less-than-normal enemy intelligence and experimented with extending my reach through cultural influence and economic power. I read no manuals. I read no strategy guides. I micromanaged no economy.

Why bother? The enemies were dumber than a box of rocks. Just play like it’s Civ 4, and be done.

Returning to it, I (unsurprisingly) find myself wanting more challenge. I fired up an easy game and did a quick military conquest, my first. Not boring… exactly. But, erm.

Then I realized that despite it being a downloaded game, there’s a manual in the directory. And tutorials (in screencast style) within the game. Add an enticing strategy guide, and I’m really learning to play. I’m, like, messing with taxes and stuff.

Now that I’m actually learning the basics, I want to play against someone! Greg is, of course, my first pick for a lamb to slaughter—I mean, jovial and fun opponent. Then, I’m thinking Devin, a minor deity in the original StarCraft. (Does real-time strategy translate well to turn-based strategy? Actions per minute don’t really matter in turn-based, but the underlying strategies are certainly similar.)

But, but… there’s no multiplayer. Not even “take turns at the same computer” multiplayer. (I read an entire novel once in a hot-seat game of Civ 4 with Greg.) Wikiscratch tells me:

A major focus of Galactic Civilizations II is the artificial intelligence of its opponents, due in part to the deliberate omission of multiplayer in favor of the single player experience. The game’s maximum skill level (“intelligent”) is two levels above “normal”.

So… I totally get that, especially from a development standpoint. (Greg scoffed at this, but small company making a game and needing to get it out the door? Can’t have everything. Besides, I think—and my experiences so far with Magicka are painfully bearing this out—multiplayer is still hard to implement well.) Having only played on the early difficulties, I can’t speak much to the quality of the AI yet, but I’m looking forward to working my way up.

That said, the game’s totally lonely. Not only is there no multiplayer, but there’s probably no way I can convince Greg to keep me company when I play. One, he’s not as interested as I am at co-piloting games, and two, it’s a damn turn-based strategy/4X game. There’s very little to see.

(Side note: I’m currently co-piloting Deus Ex: Human Revolution, though, and that mess is so beautiful and fun to watch, especially when Greg gets fidgety with sneaking and does stupid stuff.)

What saves GalCiv II is that I can lose myself in it for hours. I’ll start a game, and look up a bit later to find it’s been 3-5 hours since I last took a break. That’s a (not “the”) hallmark of a good game to me.

Related posts:

1. The Pressure of Existence
2. Assisting in Story Telling: Fun But Complicated
3. Now I’m a Minecraft Player