I finally got the tally of NAR members in Nevada: 14. Eight of these might be considered to be within close enough geographic proximity to one another to be willing to enter a club. Two of these are me and eldest. Of the other six, three are certified for high power rocketry — it’s unclear if they’d want to enter an NAR section when they’re already (likely) members of the Tripoli Aero-Pac prefecture.
Anyway, I now have this contact information. Not sure what I’ll do with it, though.
So, the two issues interfering with me using Bluetooth FTP on the Palm Tungsten|E2 were:
1) The OS load does not directly support Bluetooth FTP. This is fixed using Softick’s Blue Files server utility.
2) The SD memory cards were bad. Which is what I get for buying off-brand/on-clearance. I’ve picked a couple more reputable cards and they work fine.
So, I was able to use OS X’s Bluetooth File Manager app to shuffle files back and forth. But, as I should have seen coming, Bluetooth was never made for shuffling big files around. So we’ll stick to doing that the usual ways.
Wireless is cool, though.
The Lady’s cough is now largely under control.
Eldest continues to pull more or less straight As, though she still has issues around assignments involving a lot of writing. She’ll be doing summer classes to help that.
Youngest is still amazing, happy, clever, and cute.
Me? I’m starting a new schedule tomorrow which includes a half-hour walk immediately upon waking. My office chair broke, so I’m going to replace it with an exercise ball — cheaper, promotes better posture and less comfort. Maybe I’ll spend less time there and more doing other tasks.
And now it’s off to the grocery for a mess of shopping. Then tax returns and some DVD burning action. Such is the life.
So I’ve finally test-driven the D-Link DBT-120 Bluetooth 2.0 USB Adapter. ‘Cause while my Mac mini has Bluetooth hardware built-in, the older eMac does not, and retrofitting it would have cost lots more than this $30 plug-in widget.
What else can I say? It works. I’ve rescued movie files off of the cell phones, moved a BIG MP3 onto the phone’s memory card… veddy easy, veddy simple. Alas, I haven’t worked out how to browse the PDAs. Yet. A quick Google shows me plenty of solutions, so I’ll have to do a bit more research before I pick one.
For those who didn’t know, Paizo Publishing is developing its own cleaned up version of the D&D 3.5 rules rather than follow Wizards of the Coast into the 4th Edition. To which I say, good for them. I’ve looked at the Pathfinder RPG Alpha 1.1 Playtest draft and … well, it’s tight enough, and clear enough. The next year of open, public playtesting should do them a world of good, if it doesn’t give the design team ravening ulcers first.
All that said, Pathfinder is still not a game I’ll play. Apparently the d20 game I want does not yet exist, and probably won’t: something with the front-end of microlite20, but with an equally lite back end to match. Ah, well. Lots of other games to be played.
I’ve finally reached a breaking point on assorted issues in my life. So I’m going to make a bunch of changes, and I’m going to drag the family along and insist they cooperate. If successful, we’re all going to be happier, healthier, and less stressed. If not, I’m going to go stark raving mad.
One of the first major changes (for me) is to get regular exercise. I hate exercise for its own sake — I don’t mind exercise in service to some other purpose. So basically I’m starting a walking exercise program, but I’m hiding it under the excuse of taking The Dog for a walk. The Dog is an Australian Cattle Dog (“red heeler”) and needs regular exercise, too. So I’ve got to map out a few one-mile, mile-and-a-half, and two-mile routes. The program is designed by the Cooper Institute, and it’s rather gentler than the walking exercise program described in Cooper’s “Aerobic Program for Total Well-Being” book. That’s a twelve-week kickoff mission, and then re-evaluate to set a new plan, probably to bring me up from there to 10,000 steps/day. Subsequent twelve-week plans will bring core strength & flexibility, upper- and lower-body, push the walking intensity, and so on.
Last time I did this, I made a huge daily diary form … I still need to keep records, to keep myself honest, but for the moment it’s just a basic time and distance log. One step at a time, and the step that needs taking is not diet but exercise.
Thanks for taking the time to peek over here and see how things are. Feel free to comment, so I can see how the commenting system works and what happens. I’m not moderating this first set of comments… which may be more risky, or may not, but I’m sure you’ll let me know.
The adventure continues…
I have worked out what I did wrong in my original attempts at starting up this blog. Most of this comes from not actually understanding what my host was doing behind the scenes. And so now I have a personal install of the software, which is needlessly duplicating some of the host’s resources.
I suspect I shall just let it be. It’s working. It’s not duplicated the database — which is the primary resource hog. And I know now how things are being done so that when I bring the Gallery pages into view, I know not to repeat the mistake. (Truthfully, I don’t think I could anyway. Gallery’s a different animal to Serendipity.)
I spent some time looking over Microlite20, GreyWulf’s extremely stripped OGL d20 rules. I thought I was going to like them, and I did, until I realized that the changes were all out at the “front” end — character creation and action. The “back” end still required use of standard core d20 products to develop challenges and rewards. So, all those downloads go straight to the digital wastebasket.
I’m intrigued by the notion of using PocketMod books as a delivery system, though. I might put that to some use. Maybe not in the gaming arena, but … ideas are percolating.
Too bad, you failed your save. This is where I’ll end up going on and on about adventure gaming, a hobby I’ve been enjoying since 1980. That was when I got my first copy of the Star Fleet Battle Manual (Gamescience). I bought my first Advanced Dungeons & Dragons books that summer, but didn’t really get proper use of them and didn’t really get a clue about roleplaying until the following spring. As I’ve noted elsewhere, 1 April 1981 was the date I count as my first valid RPG experience, and it’s been a lot of wild, silly, educational, emotional, growth-inspiring, skill-developing fun ever since.