Planning a heist

First off, I’m not actually planning a real heist… I’ve made some progress on a Table Top RPG I’ve been writing. The games working title is High Crimes and Misdemeanors. I doubt that will remain the total but rather than putting congestive bandwidth on such things, I’ll wait to the end and figure that out later. Because of the political climate and timing of this post, I didn’t want to put that in the title but I will probably use HCaM in the title if I post more about it later.

I love Tabletop Role Playing games. I’ve been them playing since 1994. They were a major part of my life at various points in time, and unfortunately absent from others. Some of my best childhood memories are of my characters. Just last week I was taking with Justin about characters we had in game it was literally no different than talking about old friends. RP has a deep personal connection for me, that I am happy to share with others.

Because the way life works out I don’t get to RP as much as my group, my son or I want too. The time required to prep for the game and the dedicated 3-5 hours to play a session in our current weekly cycle of work, school, family events and other peoples similar proves to be difficult. My travel schedule always seems to get in the way of it as well. I’m not unique and a work gaming chat room (we use Google Chat at work where anyone can create a group, we have a Role Playing one) has many of us that talk about the same problem. This gave me an idea…

In the early naughts (2000s) there was an Indie RPG scene that focused on smaller compact RPGs. They were exploring different genres and play styles that were different from other games at the time; D&D, World of Darkness, GURPS, Travelers and so on. Games like Prime Time Adventures, Dogs in the Vineyard, and Dread were pioneering different experiences in different ways.

With that stirring in my head, I have been fascinated with a creating what I think of as one-shot games. My definition thought on this is that creating characters, learning the rules and playing the game all happen in one sitting, ideally 3 – 4 hours. This isn’t much different than many German-style board games, nor is it unreasonable amount of time to RP. Each group an session will be a different length of time, but that’s the goal. Additional, the games should be replayable, meaning that you can play it multiple times and feel like you are getting a different experience.

I will see how this goes and I have a lot more to do and a lot more to learn. However, I am excited by the premise. I am nearly ready to start playtesting. If you are interested let me know.

Fear Inoculum

Anyone that has talked to me about music knows that I am a huge Tool fan. Hell, I have a tattoo of the eye from the album Ænima on my arm. It’s been 13 years since they put out an album. They finally are on streaming services now, woot, and they release a new song for the upcoming album to be release at the end of the month.

I’ve listened to this song several times and I’ve gone from “what the fuck is this” to “wow, nailed it”. Their music is so complex and layered that I had to digest different parts a couple of times to really get the “feel”.

I though I’d put the lyrics to the song too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7DfQMPmJRI

Immunity long overdue
Contagion I exhale you
Lying I opened up to you
Venom in mania

Now, contagion I exhale you

The deceiver he says you belong to me
You don’t want to breathe the light of the others
Fear the light
Fear the breathe
Fear the others for eternity
But I hear them now inhale the clarity
Hear the venom, the venom in what you say — inoculated
Bless this immunity
Bless this immunity
Bless this immunity

Exhale, expel
Recast my tale
Weave my allegorical elegy

Enumerate
All that I’m to do
Calculating steps away from you
My own mitosis
Growing through delusion from mania

Exhale, expel
Recast my tale with my allegorical elegy

Forfeit all control
You poison
You spectacle

Exorcise the spectacle
Exorcise the malady
Exorcise the disparate
Poison for eternity
Purge me and evacuate
The venom and the fear that binds me

Unveil now
Lift away
I see you running
Deceiver chased away
A long time coming

Lyrics by: https://loudwire.com/tool-fear-inoculum-song-lyrics/

Update July 15th

There have been some updates happening in my life, but I haven’t had a lot of free time in front of the computer to provide updates. Here is a quick recap of my life in the past month. I’m trying to remember to take more pictures to make my post more dynamic, but I am not good at remembering to do it. I am hoping I get better.

Boat Towing. I had the sail boat towed up to our slip from Herrington Harbour North to Maryland Marina. It was suppose to be a day where Melissa and I were going to hang out on the boat but she got sick :(. The one time we got towed any distance, because our motor stopped working and sail power wasn’t getting us anywhere, we took on water in the galley and a non-trivial amount for about a 30 minute tow. My theory was that we had to much weight in the back and the water was coming though the bilge hole, because of the wake and the weight of us sitting in the back put the bilge hole under the water. However, as a precaution, I wanted to have someone with me to help with the manual bilge if needed. Great news, my theory was correct. I graciously asked Billy to sit in the galley with me while we were being towed and we didn’t have to manually bilge once. It was a long relaxing day on the boat. The tow was semi expensive but every day it was at Herrington Harbour it was costing us money. Money well spent.

4th of July weekend. On the 6th Melissa and I got a date night. We went to the *Melting Pot* and it was a wonderful dinner. When we were done we went and hung out on the boat. We were going to go sailing and watch the Martins State Airport Fireworks on the boat but it was starting to thunder. They decided to do the fireworks early because of the thunderstorm, but it worked out we were able to see everything from our marina. We watched the fireworks with thunder above and behind it. Very interesting and cool. 🙂

The week of the 7th, I was in Boston MA for some meetings at work. The IBM Acquisition closed while I was in the office. The office was a buzz of activity and discussion about what’s next and where things are going and so on… I watched the announcement from the Westford Cafe where we had some of the executives. This is an interesting time in our (Red Hat) history. Let’s keep on keeping on. I chose to come to Red Hat (almost) 5 years ago because I agree with their mission and I believe in the product set. It’s been a company I have been proud to say I work at, and I just hope that continues to be true. All indications are leading to that being truth, but we have to keep on keeping on. I’m proud of my accomplishments and the work I’ve done and will continue to do here. This was also the week I got my new sail. It’s nice. I can already tell the improvement differences. It took some re-working to get it on and it’s rigged differently, but it’s much nicer than the previous one.

Finally, the weekend of the 13th. We had my sister-in-law, brother-in-law, niece, and niece-friend come to MD for a baby shower and vacation. On Friday, after a late start I took them sailing. This was the first time, due to a working engine, we successfully went out on the boat and didn’t require assistance to come back in. YAY!! The engine needed some work and it wasn’t without it’s drama and scares, but it preformed when we needed it too. The first time I can say that in totality being true. It was all of us and the 4 people mentioned above. Running a 10 person boat, on a 24 foot sail boat is quite tight. However, we got up to 5-6 miles per hour multiple times for quite a bit, and that was majorly fun. Every time I take the boat out I learn something new. Our next trip out I’d really like to focus more on relaxing and being able to enjoy everything, rather than the stress of time. I’m hoping that will be this week.

On the 14th, we threw my other sister-in-law a baby shower. Us males were relegated to the basement where we played *Arkham Horror* 3rd edition. I had not played this version it is quite different than the version I own (1st edition I think). This game was brutal to us. We started out ok, but the second round we got smacked pretty hard and the game never let up. I was killed twice, my second character didn’t last 2 rounds. Overall, I don’t really care for the game. For a period of time I really like the version I own, but I don’t think I will purchase this one. It suffers from the biggest problem I have with the version I own, it’s too fiddly. There are so many different pieces and piles of cards and stacks of things. It requires to many steps to complete a round. This makes setup, tear down, and mechanically playing the game to fiddly. You have to do to much that the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. If the game were a video game and it handled a lot of it for me, I might change my mind. As it stands, to much of the game is on auto-pilot except you are the pilot. Individual actions on turns can be very inconsequential but things like Mythos phase are not. The game wants to play itself and you are just here for the ride.

Quick yacht update

This is an update and continuation of Day with Melissa post that I made last week. When Melissa and I attempted to go sailing the first time… we realized the boat had some problems…

This week has been frustrating and expensive. Since we bought the boat from a charity in a auction… paying $305 for the yacht was an extremely good deal. It wasn’t like I didn’t come into this expecting to have to put more than that into it. What frustrated me the most is that the former owner was either actually clueless or played it up that everything was totally 100% fine. The short version of the story is that our motor needs a new carburetor, because of a small piece broke on it and we need a new mainsail, because some of the stitching is coming undone.

I took the motor to a Honda dealer in Essex, but the part is on back order from Honda. The dealer hasn’t got an update from Honda when it will be back in stock to ship. I’m hoping that this motor issue doesn’t stretch out too long, but the price to get it fixed was under what I was fearing I would have to pay.

The mainsail is one of the most important parts of a sailboat. Making sure it’s in the best condition possible is one of my priorities. Having a faulty mainsail could spell trouble. Safety is my number one concern when I have the kids and other people on the boat. Because of that reason I opted to get a new mainsail instead of repairing the old one. I had Quantum Sail Design Group go and take a look. These guys have done an amazing job so far. Extremely responsive and accommodating. Ultra professional invoices. They sent me an information packet, via email, about the sail before talking price with me. It was customized to my sail and felt extremely high quality. These guys really seem to have it together.

The new sail is going to take an estimated 4 – 6 weeks to get made. This puts a delay in getting it up to Maryland Marina, but overall it will be a safer trip. He told me truthfully that I can sail on the old one in lighter winds, and that’s what we intend to do until the sail is complete, but we are paying a lot for Harrington Harbor. This week has lead to a lot of stress on my part, but this week is over… almost.

Day with Melissa

Yesterday was a day of fun and little frustrations. Melissa and I get to spend most of the day together, alone. We planned a trip to the boat and were going to take it out on our maiden voyage. However, things didn’t go quite as planned… any part of the day.

I had my shower and I was making my coffee. My current favorite coffee brand is Illy. I love it, but it only comes pre-ground. In order to use my Keurig I have to put it into this special thing. After washing it out Nyx and I look at each other. Is that water running? Sure enough, a river was coming out from under our sink. Oy. I grabbed some towels and mopped it up. It was the connection from our disposal that was leaking. I don’t do much with plumbing, as a rule. I don’t like it and it doesn’t like me. However, instead of trying to call someone on a Saturday to look at it and costing me millions of dollars, I’d just try to fix it myself. It turns out that for $2.70 I was able to get the part and with only about 3 tries, put it on right. Plumbing crisis averted.

We got the kids ready for their grandparents house. The little girls went to my mom’s and the big kids went to Melissa’s. We packed stuff for the boat and were ready to go. After dropping off we headed to Annapolis for lunch. We had Zoe’s Kitchen, a place I really like but almost never think to go too. The kids are not fans, so that could also be a reason. Good, healthy lunch.

We get to the boat and load it up. I had Melissa help me with the rigging and setup. For her first time, she didn’t seem to overwhelmed. There is a lot of new terms, but I was mostly trying to focus on the action and function. I don’t think she confident enough to do it by herself but I think she got most of it… this is when the “fun” starts.

So we have everything prepped and ready to throw lines. I start the 5 HP Honda we have and it is screaming. For a 5 HP motor it seems really loud. I turn the throttle down and still screaming. We throw lines, I put it in gear and WHAM! we are moving full tilt. I scramble to figure out why we are moving so fast, and turning the throttle and trying to get the damn thing going the right way… it didn’t work out… We are heading for the boats right across from us, I turn the wheel quick and manage to shift us into pinons instead of the boats. I throw the motor in reverse and it jumps out of the water. Things are not going as expected.

From the dock a guy was shouting at us to turn the throttle down. I showed him it wasn’t making a difference and he ran over some boats and jumped on ours. After a few second of inspection he realized the linkage/connector from the throttle to the motor were missing and the throttle linkage bar was swinging free. The carburetor was on full open with nothing controlling it. With a few tries he manually adjusted the carburetor so that we could back into our slip. He works on outboard motors she he had some idea what’s going on, but he works for a Yamaha shop and not a Honda. We spent a number of hours last night trying to figure out the part we need. We manged to find a shop that’s not super far from Harrington Harbor, but they want us to remove the motor and bring it in. If we can find the part, Eric (our rescuer) said he’s do the work for much cheaper. I’ve thrown the idea round of just rigging something up myself, but none of these options are ideal. We were on the slip for a couple more hours looking things up and getting it all packed up for the day.

We got changed into nicer cloths and were back to Annapolis for dinner. I lover French food. I think it’s one of my favorite cuisines. We found ourselves at Les Folies Brasserie. The restaurant itself was very old and stuffy. The customers were all much older, 50s, and nearly every table had someone 70+ sitting with them. It was kinda strange. I wanted to leave, but Melissa didn’t and said the place was highly rated. Apps, dinner and dessert were all actually really good. I had the escargot, crab cake and these amazing doughnut things with ice cream in it. Melissa had onion soup, rack of Rosemary lamb and Beignets”Pets de None” with Vanilla Ice Cream, and Caramel sauce. That was also quite good. I was happy I stayed.

All and all, a good day and a little adventure.

Happy Birthday to me!

Yesterday was my Birthday. I turned 36 years old. My how time flies. I had a good day and thank you to my family.

Since it was my Birthday and I’ve lost so much weight this year, it’s time for a cheat day. Melissa, Eve and I went to Dangerously Delicious Pies for lunch (pictured above). We shared 2 savory and 2 sweet pies. We got Spicy Chicken Cilantro and a Chicken Pot Pie. The chicken pot pie was my favorite savory pie and I was really looking forward to the veggies and starch. We also got the Baltimore Bomb and a Chocolate Pecan pie that were over the top good. Since I’ve gone on my diet, my relationship with sweet foods has dramatically changed… they nailed the sweetness level for everyone. Great place, and Baltimore staple. A must if you are in Mobtown.

For dinner I had been looking forward to one of my favorite foods… burritos. I toyed with the idea of gong somewhere a bit nicer, but Rose pushed me to go to Qdoba. My idea and give in meant that we could quickly get in and out and get to dessert. Didn’t quite work out that way and dessert turned into a disaster. I wanted to hit the bakery near us, Yia Yai’s Bakery. I’ve been making and they do a variety of things. We got a number of different things but Rose really was determined not to have fun or get anything. Later she will learn that she was cutting off her nose to spite her face… but not until later. Yia Yai’s had a good selection today and I got to talk to the Macron maker about how they do it there. The time I made them my tops were all broken. They use an oven temperature of 330, so I will try that next time.

In an effort to cheer up Rose, we took our desserts to the marina were we are going to keep our boat. This was a good chance for Gabe to see it as well, since he’ hasn’t seen it yet. The kids played, we ate some dessert. Rose cheered up a little and realized she didn’t get anything for her self… She threw a fuss about that but we eventually got her under control.

When we got home, the kids got me a small present for me to open on my Birthday. That was sweet. I told Rose the other day that anything sailing or baking related would be a good present so she chose a picture of an old time sailboat (pictured above). Nailed it. 🙂

Thank you to my family, I love you.

Lastly, I also managed to pass the final exam on my Boating Safety Course.

We bought a sailboat!

On May 15 we officially bought a sail boat. Today, May 22 2019, I got the title officially put in my name. It is a 1979 C&C Yacht 24′ sailboat. It’s a little rough and there are a few smaller projects I need/want to do to make it nicer. The outside of the boat looks good. I absolutely can’t believe the deal we got on it. The boat currently doesn’t have a name and that is going to be a hotly debated topic.

It is housed down in Harrington Harbor at the moment but the new home will be Maryland Marina in Bowley’s Quarters, Baltimore, MD. I like that marina because it checks a lot of boxes for us. There is a playground, private parking, restroom services w/ showers, laundry, and prime slip positions. Maryland Marina is a majority sailboats and the specialist for sailboats in the area. There is a restaurant on the property when we want to stop in and get a meal.

The boat is in Harrington Harbor, it’s going to be a long sail to Maryland Marina. Over the next few weeks I am hoping to go sailing a few times in preparation for the move. I’ve been convinced that my first sailing experience shouldn’t be a potentially 6-8 hour sail. I can probably do it but, let’s be safe and not sorry. Since I am the one with the most sailing experience, I don’t think that adventure should also where I teach my crew to sail for the first time. Gabe and I went though to the same sailing class, but I’ve read a lot more than him and I’ve gone sailing since. However, Billy has never been sailing. I’m going to make sure he goes out once with me and I show him what I know.

Finally, I am looking forward to this adventure. Both the adventure of my first long sail and the general adventure with my family into something new and fun.

The Beginning

Welcome to my personal blog.

I have chosen to create a separate controlled spaces for me. Due to the increasingly toxic nature of Facebook, I pulled away a number of years ago. That was an amazing feeling. I want a space where I can post updates about myself and share moments, but without seeing the overly toxic and political post from everyone about every idea. The Facebook platform has become a shouting arena. I once told Melissa, my wife, when I was younger that Professor Xavier had my favorite super power. I thought it would be amazing for me to read peoples minds. Since being on facebook… that is the last super power I want.

This is my space, under my control. If you want updates on me, I will do it though this platform. I will let people know via facebook that I made a post, but I am not going to continue to fuel the algos of Facebook and I am going to control my space (pun not intended) a bit more.

Welcome!