Frak, Frel and Other "F" Words

Interesting video: Will a Walmart Huffy survive a Downhill Mountain Bike Trail? | Skills with Phil Honestly, as someone who has bought a Wal-Mart bike (or three), I'm not sure why this is such a surprise. Of course they're not as good as the $1000 bike. Anyone surprised by that is an idiot. That said, not all of us have $1000 to drop on a bike so we end up spending $200 on a much cheaper one. Duh. Speaking of ... I need to get my bike fixed so I can start riding it to and from work again...

Well stated. Greg Gutfeld: Brexit's babies - Why the Leavers won and the losers can't stop crying I haven't really posted much about this because, as an American, I simply don't have the knowledge base to declare whether this is truly a good thing or a bad one. Given the political leanings of most of the people screaming bloody murder over this, though, I tend to think its a good thing.

Honestly, I dunno how "professional bloggers" are able to do it. I've missed what? Three days? And it never really occurred to me that I was missing them. It's that whole Office Space thing - "I wouldn't say I've been missing them, Bob." Right. Thoughts. More "Religion of Peace" attacks, this time in Turkey. Seriously, just exterminate these cockroaches. The more we do the "Oh, its just this small minority who are contorting a peaceful religion ..." the more this kind of shit is going to happen. Read the Koran, people. Islam is not a religion of Peace. They are in desperate need of Reformation or maybe a New Testament entirely. And that's coming from someone who is as agnostic as they come. Murderman v Mopeyman ultimate edition came out ... and I have zero interest in actually watching. Which, as a Superman fan, just depresses the snot out of me. Suicide Squad is up next from DC and I'm not actually planning on watchin

Recap for the session.

Using Fantasy Grounds 2. Session went pretty well and I learned more than a handful of neat tricks, not the least of which being the capability to record a TeamSpeak session ... and man, I do not sound like I thought I did. Fricking bizarre. Thought I did not have quite enough planned for the session but ending up skipping an entire fight for time because the first actual fight took a lot longer than expected. This was the "second neat trick" that I learned - I can share NPCs with select players so they can help me run the characters. Awesome. So, overall, I'd consider it a success with a couple of places that need improvement. 

So, today begins Casus Belli , season 2. I'm only partially ready. Which really means I'm ready, I'm just not enthusiastic about running a game. Anyway, weighed myself after morning exercise (which still consists of walking 3 miles and doing some situps. Need to change that up, dammit!) and hey, I'm down almost 11 pounds. Sure, that's immediately post workout so it means very little but I'll take what I can get!

After listening to them on YouTube, I went ahead and purchased both soundtracks for Captain America: The Winter Soldier (still the best Marvel movie made) and Captain America: Civil War (the second best Marvel movie.) And it makes me wonder all over again: how is it that Marvel actually gets Cap while DC actively seems embarrassed over Superman? Seriously, Cap feels more like Supes did in any of his movies (or the two Avengers ones) that Supes did during either Man of Steel or Mopeyman vs Murderman. No wonder DC is having to do a major reset with their "Batman and his Less Than Super Friends" movie they're calling Justice League...

Interesting times ahead. When I went to bed last night, Remain was ahead. Imagine my surprise when I got up this a.m. As someone who does not entirely grok the vagaries of the English government or the European Union, I can only say that I'm not too terribly surprised. If the EU leadership is anywhere half as corrupt and incompetently tone-deaf as the Americans, it makes perfect sense for a considerable portion of the population to want out of it. And from what I do understand, it is definitely a "no taxation without representation" kind of thing with EU taxes being mandated on British citizens without them ever having a say in the matter. That sounds vaguely familiar for some reason...

Just finished reading Battlefront: Twilight Company , which is a Star Wars tie-in novel based on the Battlefront video game and ... wow. This was a surprisingly good book, especially for a video game tie-in. It was tense, brutal, violent and really showed what the actual war would be like. Very cool book.

Drop one Player, add another. Ugh. At least this player's character is a lot easier to work with. Gah. Saturday is rapidly looming ...

JL Set Visit So ... this is pretty much a rehash of the Justice League cartoon, which might as well have been "Batman and his Less Than Super Friends." My interest in this movie has seriously waned ... although, to be fair, Murderman vs Mopeyman kind of ruined that for me in the first place...

Looks pretty cool.

I have to admit, this movie is better than I recall. Pretty much all of my issues with it just seem like nitpicking and Kylo Ren doesn't seem to be as bad as I remember. His comment to that officer reporting about Rey and Finn and BB-8 escaping makes me laugh. " The droid ... stole a freighter? " That has such a WTF are you talking about feel to that. Interestingly enough, I noticed this time that Rey's knowledge about the Falcon is entirely due to the modifications made to it on Jakku that Han was unaware of. They actually call this out a couple of times in a way that made sense... And man, Daisy Ridley ... I can't look away from her when she's on the screen...

Upped the exercise routine slightly - added sit-ups and managed 60 of the bastards in 10 set intervals. Still haven't started running though. Yesterday was bad in terms of calories; I was still under my cap, but it was still too high. Still, with the portion control and exercise, I am seeing results: down 8 lbs as of my most recent weigh-in. Kind of neat: since I cut out the soda entirely and have drastically increased my water intake, I am seeing a significant increase in energy and my sleep patterns ahve greatly improved. I no longer have (as much) trouble getting up on time and am going to be trying do the Army morning routine at some point in the near future.

Well, one player down. He won't be able to join us because he's running his own game on Saturdays, which thankfully, is easily handled. That player was running the potential problem child PC - a fairly high-ranking Churchman currently being swayed to darkness by an unbound Fae - but fortunately, he penned a letter to the Holy See during the previous run of the game so its easy enough to have him be summoned to Rome. If the player never returns, well, that works out nicely too because then the unbound Fae can corrupt other members of the Church and explain why they turned into such douchebags during the Middle Ages. Of course, that complicates the character's ultimate fate - I'd established in my Friday "Dresden Files" game (that exists in this same universe) that the would-be druid PC (who has recently started to learn how to cast spells) will ultimately kill the priest PC after said priest embraces the "Dark Side" ... but I never said when.

So, it's confirmed. Next week, I resume running Casus Belli. Cue the panic.

So, in my continuing preparation for Casus Belli , I purchased and watched "The Last Kingdom" which aired on BBCA recently. It was pretty decent (apart from some occasional shoddy CGI work in wide army shots) and definitely gives me some ideas. Its also about 4 centuries too late which makes me wish they would have done The Warlord Chronicles instead since that at least is the right era. Alas. Nothing for my 5th Century England needs apart from that atrocious King Arthur movie with Clive Owen.

Down 6.4 lbs, so that's a positive. Also, the 3 mile track (well, the two laps of 1.5 miles each) is no longer kicking my ass quite as bad as before, so that's another positive. And, since I want to remain positive today, there are a handful of attractive, super fit women who seem to live on that track (or at least have similar schedules to mine.) Granted, they're constantly lapping me, but early days, right? Plus, I ate waaaaay too little yesterday - don't think I even made my 1200 calories for the day - but whatever. Good vibes.

The Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell. These are really, really good and I wish I'd read them before I started GURPS: Casus Belli because I would have probably changed some things to fit this series (not the least of which being that Morded is Arthur's half-brother and Uther's legitimate heir and that Arthur isn't king in this, but the equivalent of "War Duke"). Cornwell does a great job of twisting the original story to fit his narrative and I love what he's done with some of the characters. Lancelot, for example, is a cowardly shitbag who has awesome PR. No, seriously, he's paid heralds and bards to talk him up to the modern take on him, which is awesome. I am making some minor adjustments to existing Casus Belli stuff due to this, but fortunately most of that are things that the players haven't encountered and won't for a while. The stuff they will run into are mostly the religious strife - Christians versus pagans, which will be in

With all the stupid infecting the culture, I really need to purchase some more firearms. Would that I had the money. Bright side, though, is that my car will be paid off in December (woot!)

I guess I should have said that I meant to pull the trigger on the gym membership today. I'm still looking - ideally, I want a gym that actually has a pool so I can fricking swim. I miss swimming. Hmmm ... that track I visit is outside a YMCA ... I should check into that. If they've got a pool, that might be the perfect solution, even if I'd prefer it was not so far away..

Going to go ahead and pull the trigger on gym membership this evening after work. The track I've visited the last couple of days is just too far to drive at oh-dark-thirty in the morning and the Planet Fitness I've been eyeing is literally within walking distance of my apartment.

Inching closer and closer to just closing my Facebook account entirely. So tired of the bullshit. At the rate I'm going, I'm going to have to "Unfollow" everyone .

Finally figured out the length of the walking path I've been visiting - 1.5 miles (which is a really weird length to me. Why not 2 miles? Why not 1? Why 1.5?) This means I did 3 miles on Sunday and yesterday. Tried jogging a bit and yeah ... definitely gotta build myself back up to that! Problem is, the drive to that walk path is kind of too much, which only accelerates my need to join a gym. Might do that tonight after work. Also, contemplating doing the Nutrisystem thing again but that's kind of expensive. The advantage with that is I don't have to do a lot of shopping, but the disadvantage (beyond price) is that the moment I get off the diet, bam, the weight piles back on. So, need to dig into best diet options...

Sooth. Sooth.

Well, progress continues. Slowly, but it continues. Now down officially 4.2 lbs which I guess isn't terrible for a week, but still not as much as I would like. Need to remember "slow and steady" ...

Watching this on Netflix .. man, its like I've been returned to my childhood.

Not down appreciably - 3 lbs for the week frankly kind of sucks, IMO - but then, as stated before, got the craptastic scale that is so wildly inconsistent that I have to weigh myself nine or ten times and take the weight that appears most frequently. Still haven't pulled the trigger on the gym membership yet. This a.m., I went to a local walking path and spent most of an hour making two laps. Tried jogging a bit, but whoa buddy. That kicked my ass straight away so I'll need to ease back into that. Ideally, I'd like to end up where I was in my senior year of high school (pipe dream, I know) where I actually enjoyed jogging and did so nearly every day. But the fact I've gotten up at a reasonable hour on both days of the weekend and done some form of physical activity (walking in both instances) is definitely progress. Baby steps, man. Baby steps.

Urgh. See-saw is irksome. Advantage of cutting out my caffeine intake is a noticeable improvement in sleep patterns - I'm able to get up earlier than normal without trouble and actually sleep through the night. This a.m., got up and walked into work because I left something there yesterday, then walked back. The other advantage to this is that when walking, you see unintentionally (maybe, maybe not) signs like this:

Picked the first season of this BBC America show up from Amazon and watched the initial episode. Pretty solid ... definitely hoping it will help inspire me for GURPS: Casus Belli, even if it is set about 300 to 350 years too late.

I've sort of been steering clear of Facebook and Twitter lately, which has pissed off at least one friend of mine because I'm not responding to messages. My reasoning is pretty simple: I'm tired of them. I'm tired of the deluge of political bullshit that always shows up, or the pissy passive-aggressive actions of certain family members of mine toward others, or the religious posts by the more devout friends of mine and the almost immediate posts by the atheist friend who has to argue any and everything vaguely religious ... "how do you know someone is an atheist? They'll tell you. " So, yeah. Steering clear of those timesinks and trying to concentrate on things that are frankly more important in life: "Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women." Speaking of, I need to do some more crushing of my enemies and seeing them driven before me...

Ugh. The see-saw begins. According to my potentially crap scale, I'm back up 2 lbs from where I was. This is the part I really hate. Looking at gyms in the region - kind of wish the Planet Fitness that is literally just minutes away from the apartment had a pool because I kind of miss swimming. PF is $10/month, which is definitely affordable ....$20/month lets me us any Planet Fitness location, but I think I'll stick with the lesser one for now. Wow. Did I just talk myself into this? Interesting.

Picked up one of these "Nuband" tracker things to hopefully assist with this. Will be interesting since I've gotten quite accustomed to not wearing a watch.

Caffeine withdrawal symptoms have abated. Unfortunately, this means I'm pretty much just drinking water right now and ... blech. Well, water and the occasional beer thing ("Henry's Hard Soda Ginger Ale") which is slotted into my calorie count. Rah. Unfortunately, my weight scale is shit so I can no longer trust it. I literally saw ranges of 20 lbs when I weighed myself this a.m. - bounced between 248 (no way in hell I'm that light yet) and 270. That's absurd. So clearly, I need to get a more accurate one... Toying with joining a local gym as well, but man, I hate working out. Really, really, really hate it. Going to try to use just this calorie count and portion control thing for the time being but who knows? Maybe I'll suddenly find the energy to become the gym guy ... unlikely, but possible, I guess.

Steam had "Arkham Origins" on sale for like $20 the other day so I picked it up and played through it. Yes, the irony of me playing a Batman game based on my general exhaustion with the character is not lost on me, but I must admit, the games he gets are pretty awesome. If you liked Arkham City, this is pretty much the same only earlier in the timeline. It includes Joker's first appearance and he's the final villain as well. Seriously, though, I would make a terrible Batman. As much as I disliked the Ben Affleck version of Batman in BvS:DoJ - nothing against him; he did a great job with what was written ... I just hated how he was written - he's a lot more like what I would be. Joker would be dead the second time he popped up, Riddler would be dead the moment I got my hands on him because of how irritating the riddles are, and so on. What really struck me, though, is that this engine would make for an awesome Spider-Man game. Please, Rocksteady, make it so!

According to my tracker thingy, I've lost 4 lbs in the last couple of days. Sadly, I'm currently at the weight where that isn't noticeable. Still, it's progress, I guess.

Urgh. Serious caffeine addiction withdrawal headache last night. Its still there now, but less intense. Will definitely be glad when it has gone away.

So, here we go. I'll put the nitty gritty details behind a jump break so the automated bots who visit the blog can skip these posts.

Co-worker is getting married today. Because I need that reminder again, right? Meh. Whatever. Been playing Arkham City the last couple of days - yes, the Batman is really overexposed and I'm frankly bored of him but man, he has the best video games. There's some quite appealing about clearly a room of armed thugs without any of them seeing you and noting that the last guy is "Terrified". Still, I'd love to see a Superman game with this level of quality. The problem, I suppose, is one of power level. I'm not sure how one would go about doing such a game without having to straight away through Darkseid at you. Maybe have the Prologue of the game involve some sort of Luthor scheme that temporarily robs Kal of his abilities and they have to recharge over time (hence the "level up" effect)?

Okay, look. As I've grown older, I've transitioned from hardcore conservative to hardcore libertarian (as in "leave me the fuck alone, Uncle Sam.") And when I look at the two (likely) mainstream choices for POTUS this year, I'm frankly horrified. Trump is pond scum, the lowest of the low, and yet, somehow, Hillary makes him look like he should be up for sainthood. Even still, I abjectly loath the two and fully intended on throwing my vote away this year by voting third party ... But bullshit like these leftist anti-Trump riots really make me tempted to vote for the guy with the mindset of "if those clowns are so against him, maybe I should give him a second look." Just saying...

Regardless of how one feels about this movie, this particular trailer is fricking awesome.

The Saturday after next (June 18th) although it may be the next week depending upon game events next week, I'm scheduled to resume my GURPS: Casus Belli game. This game is basically low-fantasy (for now) that is currently set in north Wales, circa 457 A.D. ... so during the era of the historical Arthur. Interestingly, I have set it in the Dresden Files universe because ... for reasons. There are currently way too many players, which is not something I can really resolve as this is using the Saturday Fantasy Grounds group, which existed in its current form before I ended up talking myself into running this game. All characters (except where noted) are traditional Celts who have backslid into the "old ways." Some character notes: Bradan - he's the "leader" of the group and is played by the usual GM of the Saturday group. Put simply, this character is something of an asshole but that was intentional so as he's planning on evolving into a much more rat

As stated previously, I'm trying to get back into the correct mindset so as to actually write. I've made some tweaks to some existing stuff, but haven't done anything new for a while. Can't put my finger on what exactly the issue - just ... wildly unmotivated about way too much. Gaming, television, movies, writing, etc. Maybe its a chemical imbalance or something. Or maybe I'm just in a really, really, really shitty mood.