Phoenix Hawk's Deep Core

So, we're having the problem with the lights again, so mom called Consumers. We figured they'd send someone out next week. No, the guy was here at 8:30 AM. UGH! Mom was still up, but the barking woke me up (Yes, I sleep in until almost noon most days. God, I need a job.) and I didn't get back to sleep until after 9.

That's when I had a horrible dream. It started normal (JRPG-esque) but ended in a vivid fight between myself and a ghost trying to possess me. Woke me right up, and I took almost a half hour to get back to sleep. It was so vivid and real that I actually freaked out for a moment. But now that it's faded, I'm a little less concerned. I just hope I don't have it again tonight. I wonder if this is some fear of mine trying to express itself? Or if I've just watched one too many of those exorcism specials on the History channel.

That's right, I am now runnig on Windows 7. HAve been since Wednesday. Still a few things to do (Install KotOR 1 & 2, HMP, MechWarrior, and a few helper programs.) But I like that there's less tweaking that needs to be done. Most of the powertoys were integrated into Win 7, so no need for that. Only problem is that there are no drivers for my scanner. And I still need some for this Epson printer, if I ever use it again. And, it can't see the HD on the IDE chain, because it's after the optical drives (Which I will fix this weekend or next week.)

But the future is here!

Shortly after Mom got the bankruptcy canceled, we got several letters from the lawyers of Wells Fargo (A local firm called Trot and Trot) as well as a bunch of "You're going to be foreclosed on in 14 days" letters. Mom didn't know why, and neither did I. But she read through the stuff yesterday. Apparently, Trot and Trot are suing for foreclosure themselves. Yes, the law firm, who should have no standing, are suing to get us foreclosed. Mom's calling Wells Fargo, Trot and Trot, and the court tomorrow to find out just what the fuck is going on.


Am I surprised that this is happening? Actually, yeah. Never expected this shit.

Wells-Fargo will now work with us for loan modification now that the bankruptcy is cancelled! With that being the only bill we were worried about (Mom's old CC was cleared first, apparently.) We're back to $975 payments until January, then if we qualify that becomes a permanent payment. Wohoo!

Now, to clear out the old garage and get that spare room built for Tiff when she winds up having to move in. Unless this means she's getting the job in Arizona...

There was also a forensic tech job I applied for. It's only limited term, but they said you could sub education for the extra experience. So I qualify for a For Tech E10. It's not much, but it's $15/hour for a year. Or better!

( Don't read if you are in a good mood. )

Well, if you read all of that, congrats. You now feel as bad as I do.

Well, here is my official report. To start, I left very late (Using Mom's car, because the truck still needs a fuel pump), and had to make a few stops, so I wound up missing the RPGA meeting. However, I was told there were few announcements, so nothing missed. Also, they gave me two GM shirts. Apparently, they changed the design, so they re-freshed the pool. The colors are the same, but now they say Dungeon Master on the front instead of GameMaster. They also have the D&D tag on the back, not the RPGA one. Meh. Parked at the museum again. Got no sleep, and I don't know why.

Day 1: I was supposed to GM all day. So, at 5 AM (When I realized that yes, I was going to get no sleep and have to run on fumes.) got ready and went to breakfast. Came back, got my stuff, and went into the RPGA room to run. The mod for Thursday, let's face it, was a cake walk for an average party of 2nd level characters. It's a free pass for anyone who has tweaked characters (goliath warden anyone?) and wasn't too hard. First table finished, but they dithered in one combat, so they ran a bit long. I got the second slot off, as we had 15 tables and 19 GMs. Got my Pathfinder book, and some others (Titan Games Buy 1, Get 3 free deal is great.) Should have waited for the All books $5 time, but I would have only saves $7, so that's not bad. Third slot went like the first, so quick.

Day 2: Wow, SO much harder. TPK in the third encounter, and only because one of the PCs
(The deva swordmage) crawled into and activated the third encounter (Five feet down the hall from the second one.) before getting blown away. Had the second slot off (Intentional) so went back into the dealer's area, picked up a few things (Minor. This year's collector's dice set, two cups of dice.) and sold off my Pokemon cards. I also played the Planeswalker's Challenge at the back (Giant Magic: The Gathering cards.) The new core set (2010) comes out soon, if not out already, so the cards were all from there. It was fun, got some free cards, and entertained people. (I tucked the enemy monsters in under the Sleep spell card like a blanket. Yes, silly. I also got to be a zombie token.) I was going to pull the car out onto the street, but the Colts game was Friday, so no parking to be had. (This would not hurt me much later, as the entire parking for the weekend cost me $19. Go public parking at the museum!) So I went back to run the third slot. Another TPK. But this group at least made it to the fourth encounter before being pulled apart. And I do mean that literally.

Day 3: Semifinals day! I ran the first two slots, both to a TPK. Both died in the same encounter. Despite now being 3rd level, these people died just as easily. I wasn't scheduled for the third slot, though I thought I was, and wound up running a morning team that had slept through their alarms. They actually made it through with a combination of good tactics and broken class/race combos. Started to lose my voice, I could feel it. Oh, and some jackhole pulled the fire alarm. The stories are that something smelled bad, someone collapsed, or someone wanted to be a dick. No matter what, it screwed with the time. So I got to bed late.

Day 4: The finals. The team I had were 4 rangers (one multiclassed to bard, one multiclassed to cleric) and an artificer. They kicked ass! Talk about Sherman marching to the sea, they beat the hell out of everything. Even though the mod was easier than the semis, still. Though, I think I pissed them off a bit when I said that they couldn't all use Disrupting Strike on one target to give him massive penalties to every attack roll he made with an area effect. But they still had a lot of fun. The first three places were separated by how many rounds it took them to complete the final round. The champs took 4 rounds, the second place team took 6 rounds, third place took just into 7. My team took about 7.5 rounds. Their team captain was pissed about something, talked it over with our overall coordinator and they were given the extra stuff from the prizes (Extra etched dice boxes from DragonFire crafts.) I was told it wasn't my fault, that it was something else, but I still have this fear that something I did pissed them off.

The champs this year got iPod Touches with "D&D Championship Grand Champion" or something similar etched on the back. They also (supposedly) had all of the WotC 4e books on PDF on them. They got a very nice dice box with D&D Championship etched into the top, packs of the new minis set (Which is not out yet, comes out in September?) a full set of the Players Handbook Heroes minis set, every published 4e product, and all the Power cards. Second place didn't get the iPods, and only two boosters of minis each. They also didn't get the PHB Heroes sets. Third place got only the major books, one pack of the new minis set, and the boxes. Not a bad haul.

COSTUMES: No pictures (I set my camera aside to charge it, left it on the desk.) but I saw several. Some were extremely unexpected. More older characters than I expected.

-A young woman dressed as Lulu from Final Fantasy X. It was a very good selection. (The girl had all the right curves in all the right places.) She even had the Onion Knight celestial weapon.
-Yuna from Final Fantasy X-2 in her default (Gunner) outfit. The girl was a little short, but it still worked.
-Rikku from FF X-2. This girl was good. Though, I think the hair was a wig.
-Auron from FF X. Complete with Celestial Weapon. A good one, but somewhere between Saturday and Sunday he lost the sunglasses.
-A young woman wearing a scale-mail bikini. When I saw it, I though She has to be wearing a thong or something under there. But when I got closer, the only thing I saw was the small cord holding the little scale mail front and back together. If she was wearing any underwear, it had to be flesh colored. And yes, she had the figure for it.
-Several different Bleach characters. The most popular this year were the captains. I saw a very good Soi Fon, a Kempachi (And the dude had the height and physique.) a surprisingly good Aizen (Pre evil-bastard mode), Gin, Rangiku, Komamura (The giant dog guy), Shunsui, and two Toshiros. Also several Ichigos in various states, and two Rukias (One complete with awakened zanpacto and the other in her school uniform.)
-About 5 different Kingdom Hearts people (The name of the main character escapes me.) Most okay, one good.
-A group of catgirls. Very nice. All in very tight outfits. Very tight. I could tell that all six of them shaved before the event tight.
-A couple of different versions of the Ghostbusters, from classic to the blue suits of the one cartoon, to the ultra-modern versions in the game.
-Snake from MGS.
-Zombie Pizza Delivery Guy
-A dark elf from WoW. (One of my players. She played the deva swordmage mentioned above.)
-Several random schoolgirls (A group of three in very short plaid skirts. Wow.)
-Two guys doing Spock. The funny thing was, one was Original Series, one was Movie. They said it was intentional. Something about Dueling Spocks.
-Boba Fett.
-Lots of idiots doing Naruto outfits. A few that were actually good, but most just put on the headband and orange jumpsuits.
-SpongeBob Squarepants as Light Yagami. Hilarious!
-A few Transformers.

There are others I missed, or only saw parts of, so couldn't tell who the character was. Don't know if it was meant to be a costume, but I saw a lot of girls in yukatas. It was hot (90s) but these were white girls. Still, didn't expect that.

MY SWAG:
The ones given to all GMs.
-1 box of the new D&D Minis set. I got an Elder Iron dragon as my visible, and got a Psychic Spirit (?) as my rare. It looks cool.
-1 set of the promo cards for the con. I can now play a kenku PC. Now, I need a copy of MM2. (For doing 8 slots)
-The boat tile set exclusive from one of the other adventures this year. Neat tiles.
The ones I chose
-Adventurer's Vault 2
-Players Handbook 2
-Arcane Power
-Power Cards set: Ranger (PHB)
-Power Cards set: Ranger (Martial Power)

I didn't take MM2 or the Dragon Mag Annual. They were low on AV2, and I needed one. As for not taking MM2, I didn't know the Kenku card was in the promo set. Meh. I can build it online, apparently, so that's not a problem. I think a rogue. Or perhaps a warlock.

STUFF I BOUGHT:
-Pathfinder Core Rules
-Blackmoor main rules (Softcover, has the Monk of the Fallen Star in it. It was cheap)
-Magic of Arcanis - For LA at CARP. They didn't have Forged in Magic, though.
-Ssethregore - For Arcanis
-City of Secrets - For Arcanis
-Clear 1" gridded battlemat from Chessex (They're discontinuing them)
-2009 Collectors set of dice from Crystal Castle.
-2 cups of dice from Chessex. Got 4d4s. Lots of d6s, d10s, and d20s. Some d8s. And 9d12. With 4e having more weapons that do a d12 of damage, that means I need more. I will, however, be scooping some of these extras that I have lots of to either give out or just do something with.
-A large d20. Just so I can have one.
-Bathing Suit Rei. (Pictures will be going up of her in the next few days.) The guy only had the orange suit, but hell.
-Lots of business cards. I can sell off my Star Wars minis for a lot, from what a couple of guys told me.

Books to add to the list I need:
-Shadowrun: Seattle 2072
-BattleTech: Jihad Hot Spots 3076
-Faction books from Pathfinder
-Legends of the Shining Jewel campaign book (Coming soon, via Paizo, for Pathfinder)

I'm sure I missed several. Still wiped, recovering from the trip. Sleep dep FTW!

They require you to press 1 if you're 18 or older. Never got to hear that, but now I know. However, I did not get chosen today. But at least I know that I haven't been completely screwed.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming of angst and hellfire.

Mom got a call yesterday. Apparently, because we missed a payment on the bankruptcy, they want $8,000 by the 15th or so, or we go into foreclosure. Now, they won't lower our payments (Which are $400 above what our mortgage payment was) and now they want $8k AND a $500 processing fee. WTF? Mom's looking for assistance sites right now, and we've asked for help. So far, nothing. Anyone know if those "Help me, I need cash" websites that people have put up in the past would still work?

...And the FUCKING ANSWERING MACHINE picked up because my mother didn't want to listen to her messages. GAAAH! That may have cost me $14,000! Damnit, Mom, LISTEN to your messages! My only hope is that no one wins it today, and they call me back tomorrow.

EDIT: The guy won. And it was a softball question. GAAAAAAH!!! Mom and I are going to have a long talk tonight. I should have played the machine when I got up.

Zombie coroners.





Think about it. The job gets done, and then they eat the body after. No muss, no fuss.

Well, I didn't win the money on GSN today. Will keep trying, but it'll take a while to get back up to 10K like it was today. Going to look into a few other things, but if anyone knows of any way for me to make ~$1000 before August 10th legally? I have nothing to sell, and cannot travel too far. More would be better, though. I need at least that much to fix my truck ($450 for a fuel pump) and to have money for GenCon. And I still owe a few presents to people.



Oh, and, again, it has to be LEGAL. I know of several ways to make that much before then illegally.

Now that I'm a bit out from it, I think I should have waited a few days before posting. On reflection, it's an okay movie, not a great movie. Sure, when you're there, you get pumped and there's lots of fun. But now, after reflection, I not only see the holes in the story (Well, more than I saw then) but also that it really had far more problems than upon first look. It's like the car you see on the side of the road for a cheap price. Sure, it may look nice, but when you get to look inside and under the hood, you see that it needs a new engine, radiator, interior and the like.

So I take back my rating and replace it. 2.7/5

One word: Rockin'! There are a lot of thrills and some pretty tense moments. Perhaps I should do this like Chris does over on his reviewing blog... Maybe.

Well, the movie starts with the Autobots fighting some Decepticons in China, along with the new recruits (The twins, who start as one ice cream truck, Sideswipe, who is woefully unused, Arcee and her bike clones), and we also find out that Team Autobot is working with the US military. One of the baddies mentions the Fallen before he dies. Prime and the team return to the special air base made just for them, where they meet their new boss, who happens to be both the douchebag and part of the comedic relief for the movie.

Now we see Sam (Shia LeBouf) getting ready to go to college. While cleaning up the last of his stuff and talking to Mikehla (Megan Fox) over the phone, he finds a fragment of the AllSpark that was trapped in his sweatshirt (Which he kept, like you'd keep the jersey you wore when you won the Super Bowl. Meaning he hung it up in the closet and forgot about it.) After he touches it, weird things happen to him. This also causes some havoc in the house, and we get Bumblebee smashing his way out of the garage to take care of problems. Sam tells the Bee that he can't come to college with him, and there's some touching scenes here. We also get to see Megan Fox take her clothes off. Which is a bonus.

Sam arrives at college, meets his new roommate, his roommate's co-workers, and starts seeing Cybertronian writing. There's a party, to introduce the skimpily-clothed girl who's hot for Sam. And there's some nice foreshadowing.

Well, not to spoil much, but we get to see some old favorites in new forms. Well, old favorites to those of us who grew up on the original Transformers. It's neat being able to pick out the individuals, but it's hard at times because they changed forms.

Overall, it's a good movie. There are some problems with it (Like the first one) but some of those are more to do with Michael Bay either not seeing the racial stereotypes he creates or he doesn't care. It's 2 hours 30 minutes long, and most of it is pretty good kick-ass action. Go see it. Or I will have to hurt you. 4.25/5

Went to AutoZone, the Service Engine Soon light was off, but the diagnostic unit said it's a semi-faulty 02 sensor. Meaning that the wire is lose or the sensor is going bad. However, the truck wouldn't start on me. The guy spent a few minutes with me, and decided that the fuel pump is going bad. Since we had it replaced in November of 07, it may still be under warranty. So, looking into it.


However, this may mean I need to find a ride to GenCon, and won't be able to visit my sister who lives near Indy. Sigh.

Oh, and I watched the replay of the Sauske 22 tournament on G4. Was a real shocker. But, Rie Komiya competed this year, and she didn't do too bad. And she was wearing a very nice tight top and short shorts, which doesn't hurt....[/dirty old man]

The truck stalled out on Mom today. I think we're going to have to just replace the entire battery. I knew I shouldn't have gotten the cheaper one at Wal-Mart last year. Should have gone with the one the stupid book on the shelf recommended, not the one the guy told me would work just fine...


I hate my life sometimes...

$40 bucks later, and the starter-kill unit that was part of the old security system (There was an after-market unit installed and removed before we got the truck) has been removed, and was most likely the culprit (It had a loose wire that fed straight into the starter coil.  The guy at Dukes said that if it grounded, it could be shutting the car off.)  The Service Engine Soon light even turned off.  Woooo!  Now, I need $50 for the front end alignment, and then just money for GenCon.

Anyone want a 3/4 set of 1985 Topps baseball cards?

Well, I got the truck back.  My uncle found out that the problem was my remote entry system.  Apparently it was an after-market item, and is improperly installed.  So I have the truck for this week.  Maybe.  WE might have the car back by the weekend, when my uncle will remove the unit and do something.

The thing I worry about is that my owner's manual lists a remote entry system, so it could be an original part.  But I don't know.  Argh.  Why can't these things just fucking work?  Hope the truck doesn't die on us this week while we have it back.  And that the repairs on my mother's car are quick and cheap.  Then we can get the truck fixed, maybe.  GRRRRR.

Good:
-My niece graduated.  Highest honors.  12th overall in her class.  Not bad at all.  Certainly better than me (39th) and her mother (100+ or so.)
-Found three more jobs that I can apply to.  Applications in prep now.
-I now have 8 (Yes, 8) complete adventures for my campaign at CARP for my players to choose from.  Or me.
-Speaking of my home campaign, I'm another 4% done with the campaign sourcebook.  Still a lot to go, but I think I will be done with the 1.0 version by Feb.  Still need to hand-draw all the maps, so have to pick up a sketchbook.

Bad:
-The brakes on Mom's car are acting up again.  We just got them fixed.  I have to drive it tomorrow.
-My uncle knows what's wrong with my truck, but needs a sensor scanner to find out which sensor is bad.  Oy.
-We did 6 total files for May, meaning we have 0 cash incoming.  I really need a job soon.

Ugly:
-There's an argument going on at 3 of the places I visit on the Internet.  One is pointless, but the other two have real issues at their core.  I'm staying out, but reading anyway.
-The dogs have gas again.  They haven't had the fish oil pills in a few days, and it's still pretty bad.  (Yes, you needed to know this to understand the strange gagging noise you will hear while reading this entry.)

That's about it.  Yeah, boring compared to some people, but it's my life.  Time to go finish making dinner.

Wow.  I mean, I know I let this thing sit for a while, but I usually have posted SOMETHING.  Well, a quick update, then.

-We got my truck back, I drove it one weekend and then it died when my mother drove it to Farmington Hills.  It's back with my uncle, and I am carless again.
-My niece graduates high school this week.  Thursday is the actual ceremony.  They had a lock-in at the school, where the kids could win one of 2 high-end computers, a plasma HDTV, an LCD HDTV, an MP3 player (Which my niece won, despite having one already) and cash.  Why the hell didn't MY school do this when I graduated?  WTF?
-My laptop is slowly going downhill.  If I can get some extra $$, I can get RAM and a DVD-ROM/CD-RW unit for it off of eBay for under $50 total (With shipping)  But the HD is still small.  I really need a new one, but it will be a while.
-I have an app in for a job at the Michigan Department of Information Technology.  I'm hoping to get it, as it pays $30/hour and has a guaranteed 40 hours a week.  Even with all the cuts at the state, they are still going forward with the job.
-I start my volunteering at the Bridgeport State Police forensics lab in July.  In a few weeks, I'll be setting up the schedule.  It should hold until September or October.

Yeah, that's about it.  Oh, and I will be posting baseball cards up on eBay to sell, as soon as I get them scanned in.  Yeah, I've been saying it for a while now, but with GenCon coming, I'm going to need something.  And I owe my niece a graduation present.

www.examiner.com/x-6911-Hartford-Gaming-Lifestyle-Examiner~y2009m4d8-Dave-Arneson-cocreator-of-Dungeons--Dragons-passes-away

Yes, this one is the real thing.