Sporadic Maunderings

Vaszura Do'Ar, Chapter 3

2010-06-05T15:35:00.003-06:00

And here is the third installment, which will be the last until we play again. The primary purpose of this segment was to get the disparate characters forged into an actual team. Hopefully we interact more smoothly from here on out, but no guarantees. &-:

Zura wasn’t surprised when Belhrys fell in beside her as she walked towards the duke’s palace for her meeting with him. It was broad daylight for a change, and Zura had her headdress and veil firmly in place to block out most of the sun. That wasn’t the only change, though. Belhrys’s good humor seemed to have gone. “There have been a few changes in the political landscape,” he told her. “For now, I’m calling off the job. You performed admirably, but the political climate is not right for trying again. Not right now.”

“The duke is offering me a job today. Since he’s the one who wound up with the artifact, this could work to your advantage,” Zura said. Belhrys smiled faintly and shook his head.

“Sometime later, perhaps, when the political climate shifts again. For now, no. Still, you performed admirably. Even if you didn’t succeed, I think you’ve more than earned the rest of your commission.” He handed her a sack of coins. Zura gaped at him for a moment before taking it. She had botched the job by letting greed cloud her judgment. Still, gold was gold and she wasn’t going to complain. She decided to change the subject.

“You told me there would be a diversion at the ball. Did you arrange for the Monkeys to attack?”

Belhrys smiled ruefully. “You know, I almost wish I had. But, no. That was a happy coincidence. The diversion I had planned would not have been nearly as effective. Then again, my diversion also wouldn’t have resulted in guards storming up the staircase at just the wrong moment. Ah well. That’s fate for you.”

“Some secret staircase,” Zura muttered reproachfully.

“Come, come. I knew the guards were aware of it, but I had no idea that the countess knew of it as well.”

Zura muttered to herself. If she hadn’t had to waste time opening the secret door, she probably could have gotten out of there without being shot at. Belhrys shrugged, possibly in apology.

“I don’t know when I might see you next,” he said, “but I wish you well.” The duke’s palace was coming into view, and Belhrys seemed to take that as his cue to leave.

“Vedaust,” Zura said.

“Vedaust.”

It was only after he’d gone that Zura realized she’d never told him who the buyer was, and that he’d never even bothered to ask. It might have been an oversight, but something seemed off. She tried to think it through as she climbed the short flight of stairs into the duke’s ballroom and followed a guard to the meeting chamber. Then it hit her. In the port town, she’d met Rhyl’mur’ss right after meeting Belhrys. At the ball, Belhrys had appeared shortly after Rhyl’mur’ss had gone. Coincidence? Maybe. She hoped it was. She rather liked Belhrys and the thought of him associating with the likes of Rhyl’mur’ss lessened her opinion of him. For now, she put those thoughts out of her mind.

When she saw the meeting room, Zura winced. Bad enough that the silly human wanted to meet during daylight hours, he’d also chosen a room with a skylight. Most of the room was bathed in painfully bright sunlight, but there were stuffed creatures in each corner that provided some shade. Zura took refuge in the shadow of a large stuffed reptile, perhaps five feet long with a sort of fin on its back that was at least as tall as the reptile was long. It reminded her somewhat of a riding lizard, but the spine would make it useless as a mount or pack animal. She was the first to arrive, and while she waited she pulled out her hand crossbow and loaded it. She meant to give a lesson in manners if the deva showed up. As luck would have it, he was the next to arrive. She sent a crossbow bolt whistling by his ear, and smiled. “That is how you fire a warning shot,” she said, calmly lowering the crossbow while she waited to see how he would respond. He seemed genuinely surprised. She couldn’t quite hear what he said, something about not intending to warn anyone. Zura shook her head disgustedly. That was exactly the problem. When she was certain he wasn’t going to pull out his own crossbow to retaliate, she put hers back in its holster on her back. She had the impression he was trying to make some sort of point by standing in the brightest part of the room while Zura stayed in the blessed relief of the shade. She shrugged to herself. If he wanted to demonstrate that his eyes were less acute due to constant damage from the damned yellow orb, that was his problem.

They waited in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes, until the elf and the goliath showed up with the duke, and a rather peculiar looking fellow. He seemed to be covered in metallic dust for some reason, and there were odd stains over most of his exposed skin. As for the duke, he seemed quite pleased that all four of the interlopers had shown up again. He carefully closed the door before speaking. Zura didn’t see the point when there was a great big window in the ceiling, ready-made for spying. “My friends,” the duke began, “I am going to share something with you that only a very few people know. I have discovered that there is a traitor among my staff, and a plot on my life. You four are outsiders, so I can be certain you are not in on the plot. I need you to try and learn who is in on it, and who has betrayed me. More importantly, though, I need you to protect and train my son.”

Zura’s mind began racing. A plot on the duke’s life? Could the Monkey attack have been a part of it? Or … or perhaps that had been the original diversion Belhrys had spoken of, the one the Monkeys had interrupted. He had spoken of working for someone else, someone Zura was better off not knowing about. Suddenly she wondered about the timing. He had made certain to meet with her before this meeting, quite possibly to avoid awkward questions. She brought her mind back to the people at hand. The elf asked who stood to gain from the duke’s death.

“Unclear,” the duke said. “The island would likely descend into chaos within a few months, forcing the king to send troops from the mainland to restore order.”

“What other family do you have?” Zura asked. They were always the most likely suspects. “Sisters? Brothers? Cousins?” But the duke was already shaking his head. There was no one else on the island who could claim his position.

“My wife might manage to hold onto power for a short time, but I do not think she would last for very long, and my son is not yet of age.”

Son? Zura cocked her head to one side. “If I were planning this, I would take out your son before going after you,” Zura said. The duke’s face said he was all too aware of that possibility.

“That’s why I need you four to protect and train him,” the duke said when he had recovered. “He needs to know magic and he needs to know how to defend himself. But until then, he needs to be protected. That’s why Noonien Sungh is here with us.” He gestured to the guest who was covered in odd stains. “He is in the process of constructing a war-forged to help protect my son. The project is not yet complete, so until then, I will be relying on the four of you.”

Noonien Sungh took the floor and began describing in great detail the processes involved in creating the warforged. It mostly involved very intricate and technical magic, and Zura had never had much of a head for that sort of thing. While Noonien rambled, she pondered other options. She wondered how close the son was to coming of age. In a drow household, it was almost expected that the First-Daughter would go after her mother’s position when the time was right. She’d heard that humans often stepped down to allow their children to take over, so perhaps this didn’t happen as often in human society. Then there was the wife. Her absence was perplexing. She was the mother of the child they were to protect. She should have a say in their hiring. It was insulting not to include her. Zura reminded herself that surface dwellers had a bizarre habit of coddling females and keeping them from positions of power. Perhaps this one had had enough of being upstaged by her husband and thought she could do a better job. She may even have deliberately fooled the duke into thinking she was incapable to lull him into a false sense of security. From what Zura knew of surface males, mentioning this would probably drive the duke into a fit of rage, so Zura would have to look into it herself, discreetly.

Noonien finally subsided from his technical harangue, much to everyone’s relief. Zura wasn’t going to suggest the duke’s son or wife as suspects without any evidence, but there were other obvious candidates. “What of Belhrys and Rhyl’mur’ss, or whatever their real names are?” Zura asked. “Belhryss is very familiar with your palace layout and Rhyl’mur’ss was willing to carry out illegal business under your very nose.” Zura didn’t count her own attempted heist in the same category. That was stopping illegal business through good, honest stealing. She would have preferred not to mention Belhrys, but the others had seen him as well, so there wasn’t much point in trying to hide him. For now she kept her suspicions of a connection between him and Rhyl’mur’ss to herself. The duke shook his head, though. “I did not recognize the descriptions you provided, and I’m sure that the traitor is someone that I know.”

“Odd that the man in black, your Belhrys, only showed up after the man in red had gone,” the deva said.

“Not that odd,” Zura said, despite her own thoughts in that direction. “He had probably been waiting for me to deliver the package and became concerned when I was late and when the palace turned out to be full of Monkeys.”

“Speculation will get us nowhere,” the duke said. “For now, I want to move on to other business. In addition to protecting my son, the four of you will be sent out on missions to protect the security of my dukedom. You may or may not realize that the Monkey attack on the ball was completely at odds with normal Monkey behavior. They had to travel over a very long distance to get here, a journey that would take more than a full day, and their attack was completely illogical. The Monkey Mage’s speech would have been accurate a hundred years ago, but no one on the island has actively hunted or enslaved Monkeys since before I was appointed duke.”

“What about the Monkeys we knocked out?” the elf asked. “What happened to them?”

“They are imprisoned in a secure facility,” the duke said, “and they are all claiming insanity. This is hardly a surprise, but in this case I am inclined to believe them. They claim that they barely remember the attack, and that all events from the time they left the jungle until they woke up imprisoned are hazy in their minds.”

“Have you tortured any of them yet?” Zura asked, earning a glare from the scholar. Apparently shooting people for no obvious reason was fine, but torturing them for an actual purpose was not.

The duke hesitated for a moment. “Ye-ess… and they told us nothing new.”

Zura nodded, satisfied, though she would have offered her services if the duke had been too squeamish to order torture himself. There seemed to be little else they could do without first gathering more information. The others threw out various theories, each wilder than the next, while the duke outlined their mission. They were to go to the place from which the attacking Monkeys originated and find out what was really going on. Zura looked around the room and wondered if she really wanted to team up with a trigger-happy deva, an axe-happy goliath, and, gods-help-her, an elf. Strangely, she found she so far liked the elf better than any of the others, possibly because he was the only one who hadn’t tried to kill her yet. He also seemed completely indifferent to her drow heritage. Zura would have expected at least a glare or a questioning look—she’d certainly looked askance at him often enough—but it really didn’t seem to bother him. Better not to question her luck, she supposed. Still, she’d seen what they all could do in battle and it was impressive, so long as it wasn’t aimed at her. She’d have to watch her back if she joined forces with them, but that was nothing new to her. Only among her family had she been able to relax that constant vigilance, and even there not completely. She decided that she would join the duke’s team on this mad quest. They clearly needed the guiding hand of someone familiar with treachery and deceit, and who better to fill that role than a drow? She did decide on one small caveat. If the deva ever, ever, fired his crossbow at her again, she was going to slip a poisoned dagger through his ribs while he slept.

Vaszura Do'Ar, Chapter 2

2010-06-05T15:26:00.005-06:00

Here is Chapter 2. I tried copy/pasting into Compose mode this time to try and preserve formatting. I hope this doesn't cause loading issues, since I'm seeing a ton of code littered throughout. Anyway, this is where the campaign actually starts. Two of the other player characters are present at the beginning: Gar (the goliath guard), and Allonar (the deva artificer). This is the same Allonar as the previous campaign, but in a former life (since devas simply keep reincarnating). The fourth player character shows up in the battle with the monkeys (he actually had more to do with them than the rest of us, as he was in the ballroom when they first showed up). He appears as an elf bard, but is in fact a changeling bard. None of us know this IC; as far as we're aware, he's just an elf.

The day the transaction was to take place, Zura made her way up the secret staircase and hid in the canopy over the bed. She did not care for there being only two ways out of the room, but there wasn’t much she could do about that. A bookcase in one corner opened out onto the secret stairs when the correct book was pulled out. Opposite that was a mirrored dresser. There was also an armoire that matched the rest of the furniture and an old rickety table that didn’t. Zura didn’t know if the duke’s colors were blue and gold or if the person who had last occupied the room had just really liked those colors, but all the furniture except for the table had been lacquered in varying shades of blue and gold. The canopy was certainly not the only place to hide, but while most guards would look inside and behind things, they rarely thought to look up. She waited quietly, wishing the window in the room were better covered. She was just starting to get impatient when her prey walked in and set a lit candle on the table. The light from the window was adequate, more than adequate, for any sane creature, so Zura did not see the point of the candle. From a tiny tear in the fabric of the canopy, Zura could see that this was the infamous countess, a rather portly woman with an unhappy tendency to wear flimsy white dresses that would look better on someone half her size and age. Blast. A goliath guard, nearly twice Zura’s height, followed the countess into the room. Zura had seen the guard trailing the countess around, but she’d hoped he would be left behind for the transaction. She hoped he was as big and dumb as his size suggested, but knew better than to count on that. She was mildly surprised when he only looked around the room without bothering to look inside any of the cupboards or drawers, and more surprised when the countess didn’t call him on it. She could have chosen a more comfortable hiding spot.

It took Zura a moment to place the race of the next person to arrive. He was tall, though not as tall as the goliath, and slightly built with strangely glowing eyes. Glowing eyes… Zura realized that he must be a deva. The wicked crossbow on his back seemed out of place, as everything else suggested that he was a scholar of some sort. Behind the scholar was a human in a red cloak. Zura stiffened in rage when she caught a good look at his face and recognized Rhyl’mur’ss. She did not like being played for a fool. She found herself wondering if it was just coincidence that she’d run into him both in the port-town and now here. She schooled herself back to quiet patience. At the very least, she had to wait and see which of the two was the buyer before doing anything to interrupt the proceedings. Her best bet would be to wait until the transaction was over and follow whoever wound up with the object. She knew this. But if it was truly valuable, and she could act quickly, she might be able to get both the money and the object. It would make things more difficult, but she decided it was worth the risk. After the four were settled at the table, Zura softly leapt down beside the bed. The bed still hid her, and from here she could move quickly if she needed to.

The countess suggested that they begin. She opened the box she’d brought with her and pulled out an object roughly the size of Zura’s head and in the shape of a dodecahedron. Each side bore symbols similar to the one she’d seen on the monkey statue in the port-town. An unexpected calmness settled over her, telling her she didn’t want to fight. It was a very mild compulsion, and she had no trouble resisting, but she was certain it came from the object. It quickly became clear that Rhyl’mur’ss was there to buy it and that he’d brought the deva scholar to verify that it was real. Most of the time they whispered together, but Zura caught tantalizing hints here and there, including one that suggested the object would be useless on the mainland. This news seemed to disappoint Rhyl’mur’ss, but he still wanted to procure the object. When the bargaining started in earnest, Zura mostly ignored it. She wanted to wait for both the money and the object to be on the table before acting. Her ears pricked up when the countess called Rhyl’mur’ss a “king’s man.” For just a moment he seemed nonplussed, but then he challenged her to find a single person in the king’s employ who would recognize him. Then he looked at his scholar and suggested they leave if the countess was only going to play games. A moment after she threw the smoke bomb, Zura realized she’d moved too soon. Again. But it was too late to take it back now. She had thrown the canister straight at Rhyl’mur’ss, and was gratified to hear him start coughing as a black column of smoke formed around him. The others reacted more quickly than she’d anticipated. The Countess put the object back in its box and started running toward the apparently not-so-secret passage. The scholar tried to follow her, but the guard swung his axe at him. “Don’t follow us,” he growled as he himself got up to follow his charge. The scholar seemed shocked. Zura needed to catch up quickly, but the blasted countess had shut the passageway behind her. She leaped across the bed and raced over to the bookcase, ignoring the scholar and the hacking Rhyl’mur’ss as she reopened the passage and threw one of the flash-bangs down into it. That was when things went horribly wrong. The scholar pulled out his crossbow and took a shot at her. It wasn’t an ordinary shot, either. She felt the painful sting of acid burning her. She was hurt. Badly.

“I'm not here for you, foolish angel,” she said, practically growling. “But if you wish to die, by all means continue.”

“I cannot allow that artifact to fall into evil hands,” the scholar said. “By your actions, whatever you are, I doubt your intentions are honest!”

“Honest?” Zura spit and glared towards the man in the red cloak. “A fine word for someone who works for the likes of Rhyl'mur'ss. I would doubt it if he told me the sun was bright. I seek only to protect the Duke's interests. I'm sure he would not appreciate his upper chambers being used to fence stolen goods.” Inwardly, she smiled. Every sentence but one was true, and that one was nearly true. She was protecting the Duke’s interests, but that was not her only, nor even her primary, goal. The scholar was not convinced, however.

“I suppose I should trust a creature that lurks in the shadows and assaults people with incapacitating gasses? I know little of this man or the seller, but I know that artifact is not leaving my sight until I'm convinced it’s in the hands of the proper authorities!”

Zura fixed a smile in place. “Very well. Help me take it from these thieves and we can present it to the Duke together. Bring Rhyl'mur'ss along if you like, but don't let him out of your sight.” If necessary, she would go all the way to the duke himself and tell him she had only recently entered his service. It would be the simple truth. She would have entered his service when it became clear there was no way to get the object away from the damnable trigger-happy deva. With luck, though, there would be no need to take it that far. The scholar turned to his employer, who was already heading for the main staircase. “If you ever want that artifact in your possession, you will follow me.”

Rhyl’mur’ss paused for a moment, assessing the situation. Zura couldn’t read his expression at all, not even to tell if he recognized her. She’d left behind her cloak and veil this time, so perhaps he didn’t. Finally he shook his head. “Not worth it.” He continued down the stairs.

The sounds of Monkeys whooping came from the supposedly secret staircase. Zura didn’t know where they’d come from, but she was grateful. They might delay the countess and her guard long enough for Zura to complete her mission. She kept an eye on the deva as she entered the blessed darkness of the stairwell. The countess groped around blindly and didn’t seem to have heard Zura’s approach. Good. The flash-bang had done its job on her, though it didn’t seem to have affected the guard. Zura took the package from her easily, but now she needed to keep out of reach of the guard’s axe. She cast a cloud of darkness around her, letting it swallow the top part of the stair well, and she quietly dropped to the ground, rolled to one side, and became a part of the shadows. She held her breath as the goliath guard fumbled his way through the darkness and back up into the room, but he’d come nowhere near her. She smiled when she heard him ask the scholar where she’d gone. Time to move again. She stood up and stepped into the countess’s shadow and out of a Monkey’s shadow. Unfortunately this left her adjacent to the countess, and a dead Monkey. The countess recovered her senses just as Zura’s cloud of darkness dissipated and tried to grab the box back. With Zura and the box little more than shadows, her hands closed on nothing. Zura smiled at the countess, and wished she hadn’t when the woman began bellowing for her guard. She made room for him on the stair above Zura and he swung his ridiculous axe at her. If she hadn’t been in shadow form, that blow would have taken her out instantly. As it was, she was panting for breath and barely able to move or think. She had to get out of here. She teleported again, but could only make it to the opposite side of the monkey. She tried to run, but the battle-crazed Monkey managed to bite her before she could. It was barely a scratch compared to the axe or the crossbow, but she’d had next to nothing left. The world went black around her.

The next thing she knew, there was a vile taste in her mouth, and Belhrys was standing over her. Her ears were oddly sore, so he’d probably used a flash-bang while she was unconscious. Presumably the vile taste had been a healing potion. “Belhrys? What are you doing here? What’s going on?”

Belhrys gestured down the stairs. “There are some guards down there who insist we all accompany them to help fight some Monkeys who are causing problems downstairs, or else,” he sighed, “they will arrest all of us.”

Zura nodded vaguely and looked up the stairs. The deva with his damnable crossbow had pushed past the countess and her pet goliath. He seemed uncertain whether to point the thing at Zura or Belhrys. Zura resisted the urge to tell him exactly what he could do with it. She tried to whisper another question to Belhrys, but the potion had made her voice hoarse. “What do we do now?” she asked her contact, ignoring the deva’s glare.

Belhrys’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “We follow the nice guards down the stairs, fight some monkeys, and show what good, honest citizens we are.” As he helped her stand up, he winked, and Zura had to hide a smile. She was still weak, though, and decided now might be a good time to use some of her own healing magic. The energy rushed through her, undoing some of the damage the treacherous deva had done. She was still badly hurt, but at least she didn’t feel ready to fall over at the slightest twinge. She cast a baleful eye up at the scholar and the goliath, but they seemed equally willing to go along with the guards’ request. Even so, she didn’t like having them at her back as they traipsed down the stairs, but she put them from her mind as she beheld the chaos that the duke’s ball had become.

A dozen or so Monkeys like the ones on the stairs were busy decimating the buffet table. Larger ones were attacking a line of noble guests. It looked like most of the non-noble guests had managed to get out, though some of their corpses littered the dance floor. The duke led a contingent of guardsmen against the larger Monkeys as best he could, aided by a handsome elf wielding a fiddle. Zura braced herself, but the elf didn’t even bat an eye when he caught sight of her. Of course, he was busy trying to charm a Monkey with his fiddle at the time. Zura drew her sword and attacked one of the smaller Monkeys as it tried to break off from the buffet, and worked to put some distance between her position and the elf’s. There were a few elf guests in the room as well, but they seemed to be too busy screaming and running to pay a lone drow much mind. While Zura fought, she tired to keep Belhrys in sight. It wasn’t too difficult. All she had to do was follow the line of smoke clouds and listen for the flash-bangs. He threw the canisters left and right as if he had an unlimited supply. Then Zura saw him use the cover of one of the smoke bombs to dash behind the stage. Curious, she followed. He looked up as if he’d been expecting her.

“I need to get out of here before I have to answer too many questions,” he told her, “but I’ll contact you in 48 hours.” Zura nodded, and asked if he happened to have any more of his alchemical toys to share. Grinning, he handed her two of each before rushing out a side door. Zura hurriedly stuffed them into her backpack before rejoining the battle. At the duke’s request, they knocked most of the Monkeys out rather than killing them, though apparently some larger one with magical ability had already gotten away. Despite the apparent chaos, it was mostly a mop-up operation at this point, and it didn’t take long to incapacitate the remaining Monkeys. Zura looked around, wondering if anyone would notice if she, too, simply wandered off, but then she saw the countess and the duke disappear into a room with the box. At the very least, she would like to tell Belhrys who had wound up with the thing. She certainly wasn’t going to make another try for it until her wounds healed from this attempt. It seemed an eternity before the duke and the countess emerged again, but the duke now held the box and the countess seemed quite pleased with herself. Presumably the duke had paid her well for it. Zura sighed. It would probably be even more difficult to take the thing now that the duke had it. Instead of one goliath to get past, there would probably be an entire regiment of soldiers.

Before Zura could slip away, the duke called out for all those who had helped fight the Monkeys to stay a moment. Zura winced. She should have gotten out while he was distracted with the countess. The fiddling elf seemed no happier, oddly enough, though the goliath and the deva seemed merely curious. Zura glared at the deva but he didn’t seem to notice. When the four of them had gathered ‘round the duke to his satisfaction, he sent the rest of his guards away. “Most of you have heard by now that I am seeking magic users. You four have proven yourself tonight, and I would like to meet with all of you in a few days time to discuss employing you as a team.” Zura wondered what the duke’s guards had told him about the scene in the staircase. For that matter, she wondered what the countess had told him. “I will give you full details then, but I can tell you now that I pay very well.” That caught Zura’s attention. She certainly wouldn’t be receiving the rest of her commission from Belhrys, and she’d need to find some source of income before the rest of the advance ran out. It was certainly worth her while to show up at the meeting and see if the duke’s job interested her. Even if it didn’t, it would certainly be easier to steal the artifact back from him if she were in his employ and able to move freely around the palace.

Thinking about the artifact brought her mind back to the battle. The box holding the artifact had been open, and a strange sort of chain had gone out from it. Zura wasn’t sure of its nature, but it seemed to be more difficult to hit a target who was part of that chain. She didn’t know if it made the target stronger or weakened the attack, or something else entirely. The deva scholar might know, but Zura wasn’t about to ask him. By all accounts, deva were supposed to be good, honest creatures, yet this one had shot her in the back without so much as a warning. That was treachery worthy of a drow, and Zura did not mean it as a compliment. She would have fired a warning shot first, or at least tried to talk. The deva clearly had his own agenda with regard to the artifact and could not be trusted. She kept a close eye on him when it was clear the duke’s speech was over. He seemed to be negotiating payment from the duke, for what wasn’t clear. While they were occupied, Zura slipped out one of the side doors and headed back to her room at a nearby inn.

Vaszura Do'Ar, Chapter 1

2010-06-05T14:48:00.008-06:00

We've started Fibonacci's new campaign. It's been interesting. My account is a bit long to put into one post, so I'm going to break it up into several. Parts of this were worked out long before the campaign itself started. Really, the campaign starts with the second installment.

My character is a drow assassin, Vaszura Do'Ar. Vaszura means something like "blood exile", and Do'Ar translates to "Walkers in Poison." I actually generated the name "Zura" first then decided I wanted it to correspond to an actual drow name. I really like playing this character. She is in fact a good drow, but she's one who has had to live and work within the main drow society, so she has to be used to thinking like the more common drow do. This results in some curious notions and attitudes. Note: none of the other player characters are present in this part. Here's Chapter 1:

It was with some trepidation that Zura stepped off the boat onto the dock. Monkey Island was about as far from the Underdark as it was possible to get, and she felt a wave of homesickness pass over her. Gone were the dark spires and caverns of her homeland, perhaps never to be seen again. The sky above her was not nearly solid enough, and the light of the cursed sun made it seem more ephemeral still. Though it was certainly warm enough to go without her cloak and headdress, she kept them on. Both helped hide the ebon blackness of her skin. Her face was still visible through the veil, but she hoped the veil’s mottled colors would keep casual onlookers from noticing the color of the skin underneath it. If nothing else, it gave her eyes some additional protection from the cursedly bright sun. Her fellow travelers didn’t seem to mind the brightness, though Zura noticed she wasn’t the only one wearing more clothes than the weather really called for. Everyone has something to hide, she reminded herself.

Most travelers were burdened with various chests and satchels, but Zura had only what she’d been able to fit into her backpack. She could have taken more, only that would have required taking one of her family’s riding lizards to help carry it, and that would only have drawn attention when the beast was reported missing. Her family had been in enough trouble already, and not just because of Zura’s carelessness. She remembered the horrible sinking feeling when she’d had to report to her mother that she had been seen. In a noble family, Xullin’bryn Do’ar would have been considered the matriarch, but it was dangerous for a merchant family to use such a title where others might hear, particularly where the priestesses of Lolth might hear. If Zura had only waited for the signal before moving, her face would not have been seen, and she might still be back with her family in the blessed dark under the earth. But Zura, fresh from her training at the assassins’ school where nearly half the females in her clan had been educated, had been too impatient, too eager to prove herself, and she had moved too soon. Perhaps if nothing else had gone wrong that night, they might have been able to simply silence the two junior priestesses who had seen her, but there had been no time. They’d been lucky to escape with no one killed or, worse, captured. Zura still didn’t know the full extent of what had gone wrong, as she’d had to leave before hearing the full story. Now, she probably never would.

The wooden dock beneath her feet creaked and shifted with every footfall on it. The planks were in sore need of repair. The smell of fish and salt grew stronger the closer Zura got to the island proper, which seemed backwards to her, but she’d noticed the same thing boarding the ship from the mainland: the smell was worst just up from the water. She looked around at the hustle and bustle of the port town whose name she’d forgotten and sighed. There was no mud in the streets of the Underdark, as there was no weather there. She’d heard that a wizard of Menzoberranzan had once summoned a storm over the city to put out a fire that burned the stones themselves, and perhaps then there would have been mud, but there was certainly nothing like the oozing mess now masquerading as the street nearest the docks. There were some inns along that street, but Zura hoped to find one on a street that did not suck at her feet as she tried to walk through it.

The streets did dry out as she got further from the docks, much to Zura’s relief. She found an inn three streets in that seemed to fit her needs. She had seen similar places in the Underdark, though there the inn would be carved out of rock rather than built. Patrons carefully avoided looking too closely at one another, lest they themselves be examined closely, so no one paid any mind when a small lithe figure wrapped from head to toe despite the sunny island climate came in to ask for a room. The innkeeper did give her one quick startled look, but he recovered quickly and went back to looking bored and uninterested as he handed her a key. When Zura got to the door, she wondered why he bothered with keys. The lock seemed ready to fall apart with a gentle tap. She had her own ways of protecting the room, of course, but she wondered if the innkeeper would be grateful or annoyed if she did some work to repair the lock.

She pulled G’eld’s cage out of her backpack before doing anything else. The little spider, barely larger than one of Zura’s hands, had been locked up in it for the whole voyage from the mainland. She skittered out, eager to stretch her legs and hunt down some prey. Zura had learned quickly that surface dwellers feared even a tiny spider such as G’eld, and hadn’t wanted to risk letting her out to hunt on a ship where she did not have private accommodations. She often wondered what surface dwellers would make of the mid-sized spiders that roamed the streets of most drow cities. They ranged in size from a foot across to larger than a house, and she’d even heard stories of some spiders larger than mansions that had created an entire drow city from their calcified webbing. She hadn’t seen it before it burned, but even she found the idea hard to credit.

While G’eld hunted, Zura drew the curtains on the room’s one window, grimacing when that didn’t block out all the accursed light. She pulled the blanket off of the bed to help and nodded in satisfaction. There were still lines of brightness around the very edges, but it was no worse than the light-clocks used to keep track of time in most drow cities. That done, she settled into reverie to pass the time until darkness fell. When the room had darkened noticeably, she came out of reverie, carefully pulled the blanket off the window and opened the curtains. The sky bore the breathtaking mix of colors that meant the sun was not quite gone yet. Zura could think of nothing in the Underdark to match the play of colors in the sky at dawn and dusk, though she thought having to deal with the horrible yellow orb was too steep a price to pay for them. She waited, watching the colors fade into near-blackness. The stars made much better companions than the sun. Now she could go out without feeling like her eyes were going to burn off. After a moment’s hesitation, she left her longsword behind. She hadn’t seen anyone wearing swords in the streets, so wearing hers would probably draw attention. Her hand crossbow was small enough to hide on her back under her cloak, though, and she had four daggers that she was never without. She was more hesitant about the backpack, but finally decided to put G’eld’s cage on it and leave it as well. There was nothing of real value in it, and G’eld’s presence would likely discourage most casual thieves anyway.

Zura headed back to the inn just as she noticed the sky growing light again. She’d spent most of the night just learning the ins and outs of the town, but she’d decided that there were far too many elves in it for her peace of mind. From what she’d gathered, the island was mostly populated by humans and elves, and she’d managed to land in a concentration of her lighter-skinned cousins. Thankfully, between the night and the natural variation in skin tones amongst the islanders, from a distance no one seemed to think Zura’s skin color particularly remarkable. Still, it would take only one elf getting close enough to see both her skin and her ears for Zura to find herself in real trouble. She sighed. Surface elves had driven her people underground and into Lolth’s arms. The first was forgivable, the second decidedly not. Neither side was entirely blameless, though, and unlike most of her kind, Zura held no particular grudge against surface elves, but she certainly didn’t trust them, either. Better to avoid them in case they took it in their head to attack her for being drow. To avoid them, though, she would need to get out of this town, and that meant deciding where to go next.

After spending half the day in reverie and the rest practicing with her knives and sword, Zura headed out into the island night again, hoping to learn of a nearby town that was not overrun by elves. Unfortunately, from what the human residents told her, most of the surrounding area seemed to be elf-territory. Up the river a ways, there was apparently a Capitol city run by some human duke who answered to a king on the mainland, and it had a larger concentration of humans than elves, which would still be an improvement. So far, only two elves had seen Zura for what she really was. The first one’s eyes had widened, but when Zura did nothing more threatening than keep sipping her drink, he’d simply backed away quietly and left her alone. The second had given her a rather nasty glare, to which Zura had responded by letting her face go completely neutral. It was a gamble, as some would see that look as a challenge, but the elf only wheeled around and stalked away, glaring back over his shoulder occasionally.

The bartender, a portly human with a neat mustache, had smiled faintly, probably relieved there wouldn’t be a fight. “If you went to the Banana Festival,” he told her, “No one would think twice if you covered your face. Monkey masks, banana masks, I’ve even seen some people dressing up like bits of the jungle.”

“What makes you think I need to hide my face?” Zura asked. She didn’t wear the veil at night, though she did wear the part of the headdress that hid her ears. Anyone seeing black skin and elven features would draw the obvious conclusion. Mostly people had either not noticed or not cared.

The bartender just winked at her. Zura took another sip and asked him to tell her more about the festival. It was apparently a celebration of Monkey culture, only it was apparently a celebration by humans and for humans, which seemed odd. “Do the Monkeys participate?” Zura asked.

“Oh, some do. The ones that live in towns, anyways. I hear the wilder ones won’t come in t’town until it’s over, though. Not that t’wild ones come in much anyways. Biggest celebration’ll be up in ‘e Capitol, o’course. People go plum wild there.” He continued describing the festivities while Zura listened bemusedly. The more she heard, the more she thought it sounded like a celebration based on what people thought Monkey culture was like, rather than on actual Monkey culture. No wonder Monkeys preferred to avoid it. Still, she was curious about the Monkeys, and seeing what people generally thought about Monkey culture could be a useful first step to learning about them. She could have chosen any small enough island to avoid the Underdark, but she’d chosen this one specifically because the stories of Monkeys had intrigued her. She hadn’t seen any in the streets here, but the bartender assured here there were more in the Capitol. “Not too fond o’port towns,” he explained. “Too far from ‘e jungle.” Zura nodded, thinking it sounded rather like drow and the caverns of the Underdark. The bartender kept regaling her with stories, both of the Monkeys and the Festival, until she’d finished her drink and was ready to go. She doubted any of them were entirely true, though she suspected that the most repeated themes were probably accurate.

She stepped out of the bar back into a narrow, poorly lit street. The best kind, in her opinion. There weren’t many others about, as it was getting late by surface reckoning. Silly surface folk and their fear of the dark. As she walked, debating where to head next, a small wiry figure in a dark cloak fell in beside her. “Vendui,” the man said in horribly accented drow as he pressed two fingers to his lips. Zura barely stopped herself from running. Had Lolth’s priestesses managed to track her even to this island? But, no. He’d clearly only seen the word written down, or he would have known how to pronounce it. “Vendui,” she responded, carefully overemphasizing the correct pronunciation. Though there was no need to make it a formal greeting, she also touched her lips and waited to see what he would do next. She mentally checked the location of her daggers, knowing she wouldn’t have time to get to the crossbow on her back.

“I've been watching you,” he said after a moment, “and I've been reading about the Drow. This is a long way from the Underdark.”

“Yes,” Zura agreed, “It is. That’s sort of the point.” One of her hands moved nearer a dagger, but she didn’t try to grab it just yet.

The wiry man nodded. “If you’re staying on the island for a while, you'll want employment. It's easy enough to find work as a dock hand, but I might have something more...interesting.”

Zura blinked for a moment, trying to figure out why a human would reveal he knew she was drow in order to offer her a job. Either he thought a drow’s abilities might be useful, or he thought he could blackmail her. She responded cautiously. “Indeed? I had hoped to find work as a guard, not a dockhand. Does your job involve guarding ... something?”

“Guarding? Not at the moment, although good body guards are hard to find. What I want is someone who can move discretely, gather information, and then obtain a certain item. Preferably without killing anyone who will be missed.”

“Interesting,” Zura said, but mention of killing raised her adrenalin level still higher. Had he also identified her as an Assassin, trained in the ways of manipulating Shadow? She kept her worries carefully hidden. “I take it you don't want the other Houses finding out about your operation. Do you work for a House or are you also in exile?” He carried himself with the easy grace of a noble, and having information to use against him would be useful. Strangely, though, the question seemed to amuse him.

“I'd have to say neither,” he said, not quite grinning.

Once again, Zura blinked at him. Though her family were merchants and mainly dealt in poisons, there were those in the great Houses who knew that many of the Do’Ar family were trained as assassins and sought them out for those talents. Any who learned too much were summarily eliminated, of course. But it was rare, very rare, for someone not connected to one of the great Houses to seek such talents, rarer still to do it in the open air like this. “In drow society, those are the only possibilities,” she said, not quite truthfully, but close enough. “Is surface culture really so different, then?”

“There's no one surface culture. On this island, things are very much clan-based if that's what you mean. But I was just being cryptic. It's better for both of us if you don't know who I'm working for.”

“Ah. This I understand.” It still seemed odd to deny connection to any House, but refusing to identify which House was a common part of the Game. If this human were more skilled in the Game, he would have given her the name of a rival House to try and cause trouble for it rather than denying any connection outright. “Very well, what are the risks and benefits to myself if I agree to work for you?”
“The benefits are that I pay well, and if you execute the job successfully it may lead to other jobs. The risk is that if you are caught trying to steal from the Countess De l'Hôpital...well, you aren't important enough to warrant a trial.”

“Trial?” Zura said, surprised again. “What is a trial? Do the heads of houses not simply execute intruders when they are caught?”

“That's precisely what they do...unofficially.” He seemed to be hiding a grin. “I think I like Drow society. It sounds so much more honest.”

“In some respects, perhaps,” Zura said carefully. Honest? Drow? She wondered what he could possibly have been reading to get that impression. No one told the truth unless it was to her advantage or she didn’t expect to be believed. “Your job offer does intrigue me, but before accepting I must ask whether you have any connection to the Spider Queen.” Given his naiveté in certain matters, it seemed unlikely, but she watched his reaction carefully.

“Spider Queen?” he said, sounding genuinely surprised. “I’ve met the Monkey King, but he likely does not remember me.”

“Lolth is the name she takes for herself, and she insinuates herself into every nook of drow society. She would stifle us and have us be nothing more than sophisticated barbarians.”

The man paused for a moment. “Lolth… isn’t that a goddess?” Zura nodded. “If so, I assure you I have no connections to her. Or any deity.”

“Ah, good,” Zura said, letting out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “Nor have I. I do respect Corellon for taking in the drow who wished no longer to be drow, but that was never an option for me.” While Zura understood all too well the desire to be out from under Lolth’s watchful webs, she could not comprehend why any of her kind would leave behind their heritage and birthright: their place in the Underdark. She had had no choice in the matter, but these no-longer-drow did have a choice. It made no sense to her. She looked up when she realized the human was still speaking.

“Religion isn't very widely practiced around here,” he told her, and paused. “Except by the Monkeys, but they worship the spirits of their ancestors.”

Zura tried to picture this. “Do the spirits actually appear?”

He shrugged. “I’ve heard stories about what happens deep in the jungles that make the blood run cold. And the Monkeys don't let outsiders into their temples, so who knows. Also, there are Monkeys and then there are Monkeys. They don't all wear clothing and run fruit stands.”

Zura nodded vaguely. “I’m afraid I’ve drifted from your job proposal. I would like more details before I decide. How much more can you tell me?”

“The Countess will go to the Capitol for the Banana Festival. All the heads of houses are there, and much business is conducted, both openly and behind closed doors. I have information, very privileged information, that the L'Hôpital estate has been suffering financially for some time, and the Countess is desperate for money. I have heard that she intends to sell an object of great value. I want to know who she's selling it to, why it's such a secret, and I want the object.”

“I take it that I will not know what this object is beforehand... How much time will I have to study the household and its habits?”

“The festival starts in eight days and goes on for a week. I don't yet know when or where the transaction is to take place, but I will contact you as soon as I do.”

Zura hid an eager smile. This was the kind of job she’d trained for. Normally she’d be expected to assassinate someone in the process, but it was still a chance to put her hard-won skills to use. “Very well,” she said, pretending indifference. “This job intrigues me, and I was interested to see more of Monkey culture anyway. I will agree to aid you in this for suitable compensation.”

It was instantly clear that neither of them was much good at haggling. The human offered her 200 gold. She considered a moment and asked for 400 instead. Shrugging indifferently, the human suggested 360, and Zura accepted. “With 90 in advance. I’ll need a few more supplies.” He handed over the coins without argument. Zura looked at him thoughtfully. “You give me this money with no specific instructions for contacting you again, beyond travel to the Capitol?” It was a strangely trusting thing to do. If he’d really been reading about the drow, his source had to be woefully inaccurate in many respects.

“If I've misjudged your interest in the job, the loss is my own fault. I'll look for you in the marketplace, at this time of night.”

“Curious,” Zura said, “But acceptable.” She looked at him a moment longer before saying, “Vedaust,” and bowing slightly. “I will look for you in the Capitol.”

“Vedaust,” he responded, pronouncing the farewell marginally better than he had the greeting, and then he turned and headed towards the docks. For a moment she considered trying to follow him, but there were rooftops and alleys all around her, and it seemed unlikely he would have approached her without someone keeping a close eye on things, likely someone with a crossbow. There were other ways of finding more information, especially here near the taverns. After waiting a few moments to make it clear to any unseen watchers that she was not trying to follow, she headed the same way towards a more disreputable tavern she’d passed on the way to this one. Thankfully it, too, was frequented mostly by humans. The reputable one was a better place for acquiring aboveboard, easily available information. Disreputable ones, however, were better if you needed underhanded, hard to come by information.

This place was about as disreputable as a place could get and still run something resembling a genuine, legal business. It was dim, smoky, and crowded inside. It was not as loud as might be expected for the crowd, likely because most of the discussions were about things not meant for other ears. Zura wasn’t interested in any of the groups. Instead she found a quiet, shadowed alcove and began looking around. In most places like this one, there would be a watcher sitting on the edges, where he could see all the comings and goings. She spotted a likely candidate sitting by himself in a dark corner, much like the alcove Zura had chosen. He seemed slightly out of place here, as he was older than most of the crowd. At first glance, Zura thought him frail due to his skeletal appearance, but then she noticed that he sat with his back ramrod straight and that he held himself with an air of confidence and strength. His red cloak pooled around his chair, probably picking up every bit of muck and dust on the floor. A simple silver brooch held the cloak in place. The clothing visible underneath the cloak was fine and in very good repair. Though he seemed lost in thought, Zura could tell that he was keeping a close eye on the other patrons, as if watching for anyone who might be paying attention to him. So far as Zura could tell, he hadn’t noticed her yet. She watched him for a few more moments. When no one else approached him, she cautiously moved out of the shadows and walked toward his table. His eyes were on her almost instantly. She couldn’t read his expression, but she thought he was waiting for her to speak. “I’m trying to find information about a human who approached me tonight,” she said. “Shall I continue or leave you in peace?”

“Continue,” he said, giving her a disdainful look. “I am unconscionably bored.”

“He is short and wiry with grey hair, and a curious sense of humor, and tonight he was dressed entirely in black, but I suspect this is common for him.”

“I can think of someone who might fit that description. He buys and sells information.”

“Curious. Where do his loyalties lie?”

“I’ve no idea, except to say that the word ‘confidential’ to him means ‘worth a higher price.’” Zura opened her mouth to respond, but then she caught an almost familiar gleam in the man’s eye. He was playing her, manipulating the conversation to some end of his own. Well, two could play that game. First to find out if he really knew her mysterious man-in-black.

Zura nodded. “Sounds like my kind of person. What can you tell me about his pronounced limp?”

For a moment, the man in red seemed inordinately puzzled, then he stood abruptly. “I've really never seen him that close. But I must be going. Affairs of, ah, things to do. Good day.” He began hurrying through the crowd to the door, looking back frequently to see if Zura was following. She gave him enough of a head start that the crowd might be able to hide her and did just that. He seemed to notice her anyway and quickened his pace. As she exited the tavern, she caught a glimpse of him turning down an alley and raced to follow, but she was too late. There was no visible sign of him as she rounded the corner. She hid herself in a shadow and waited for a few more minutes before deciding she’d well and truly lost him. She muttered drow curses under her breath and headed back out of the alley. She had no idea who the man in red had been, but the name Rhyl’mur’ss, “shadow spy,” suited him. His reaction suggested he did know the man in black, but Zura didn’t think she could trust anything the man had actually said.

The encounter made Zura even more anxious to get out of the port city. Something about the man in the red cloak unsettled her. She first put her advance to good use procuring lockpicks, footpads and camouflaged clothing, and then began looking for the best way to get to the Capitol. Naturally, the boats that carried passengers up the river only ran during the day. She found one that had cabins, at least, so she could spend the day in Reverie, away from the horrible brightness. It was slightly more expensive, but worth it she decided, especially for a journey that would take a full week. The Banana Festival would already be in full swing when she arrived. There were hints of the festivities even on the boat, and Zura watched curiously as otherwise sane-seeming people walked around in an odd gait apparently supposed to resemble the way monkeys walked and called to each other using strange whoops and howls. By comparison, the few actual Monkeys Zura saw on the riverbank seemed calm and serene.

That impression was only magnified when she saw the actual Festival in progress in the Capitol. People walked around dressed as bananas, trees, monkeys, and a few in costumes made to look like the statue Zura had glimpsed from the ship that had brought her to the island. It was probably supposed to look like a Monkey, but everything had been made with sharp angles, so it was hard to tell. On its stomach had been a curious shape. She hadn’t sensed anything magical about it, but that sort of magic wasn’t really her strong suit anyway. The costumes didn’t quite manage to get the angles right, but they were at least recognizable, which was more than Zura could say for many of the costumes. It was clearer when they wore only a fake monkey tail and ears, but somehow that seemed even less dignified to Zura’s sensibilities, perhaps because the wearer’s face was clearly visible. After walking around for a while, Zura realized she wasn’t the only one eyeing the reveler’s antics askance. When no one was watching, so did many of the Monkey residents. They smiled genially when they knew someone was watching but they didn’t always notice Zura standing in the shadows, and then she often saw weariness when they dropped their genial façade. She supposed she’d feel the same way about a Drow Festival where surface-dwellers painted their skin black and dressed up like spiders.

She’d been in the Capitol only one night when her contact approached her again. On a dark side street, he suddenly fell in beside her as she walked. It startled her less this time, though she still made sure she could reach all her daggers. “I know where the transaction is to take place,” he said by way of greeting. Zura nodded and listened. “The duke is having a ball two nights from now. The Countess De l'Hôpital will attend, and she plans to meet with her buyer in a tower bedroom. I happen to know that there’s a secret passage leading out of this room down to the servants’ halls.” Zura was curious but knew better than to ask where he’d gotten this information. She asked for more information about the layout, but that seemed to be it. One public staircase and one secret staircase, and a window, barred of course.

“If I’m up there alone, I’m going to need some way to create a distraction,” Zura said.

Her contact grinned. “Oh, there will be plenty of distraction later on. I’ll see to that. But it may or may not spread to the upper floors.”

“No, I mean up in the room. Something like… a noisemaker to draw people’s attention or a smokescreen to cover my escape.” As a drow, she could cast a cloud of darkness around her, but it didn’t last very long. She thought she might need more than that to pull this off.

If anything his grin grew wider. “Oh? I think I have just the things.” He pulled out some strange looking canisters. Four of them were black cylinders. Two were double red cylinders. All had a curious metal ring at the top, and were small enough to fit comfortably in one of Zura’s hands. “This,” he said, gesturing toward the black canisters, “is a smoke bomb. It blocks line of sight and will spread out to cover an area 35 square feet in about 24 seconds. After that it begins to dissipate. Be careful that you don’t breathe in the smoke, though. This one,” he gestured with the hand holding the red canisters, “is called a flash-bang, and it does just that. It will blind and deafen most opponents for a good long while. Both work the same way. Just pull the pin and throw it where you want to go.” He handed the canisters to her. Zura wondered what other interesting devices he might just happen to have with him, but decided not to ask. He hadn’t told her his name, but she decided Belhrys, fire-starter, suited him, and she told him so. The name seemed to amuse him. “Anything else you might need to know?”

“Is it possible for me to get into this duke’s palace and scout the area beforehand?”

“Yes. During the festival there are so many comings and goings that you shouldn’t have any problems.”

Zura nodded. “And once I have the object, how do I find you again?”

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that. I’ll find you. I might find you more quickly if you head straight out from the servants entrance when you’re done.”

Zura nodded and smiled inwardly. She found she was looking forward to the challenge. Belhrys took off into the crowd again, vanishing as quickly as he’d appeared. She let the smile appear on her face once he was gone. There was something comforting about his presence. Just as she’d felt an instant dislike for Rhyl’mur’ss, she felt an instant liking for Belhrys. She wasn’t foolish enough to trust him, of course, and she wondered how far he really trusted her. She could try to keep the object for herself. If it was worth paying to steal, it would probably sell for a fairly high price. Unfortunately, Belhrys was her only contact on the island and he had demonstrated twice that he had no trouble whatsoever locating her whenever he felt like it. Besides, he had done nothing to earn such a betrayal. Unlike most drow, the Do’Ar clan preferred to have a reason to betray someone.

Dissolution and Condemnation

2010-06-05T14:03:00.004-06:00

I finished the next two books in the War of the Spider Queen series. As far as I can remember, this is the first series I've read with multiple authors. It can be a bit jarring to go from one book to the next. Each separate author has so far done a good job, but there tends to be a slight feel of discontinuity between books.

Dissolution is written by Thomas M. Reid. Overall, his writing style is much better than Richard Lee Byers', author of the first book, with one glaring exception. Plotting, awesome. Description, very good. Characterization? Eh... That was one place where Byers excelled: creating vivid characters. In Reid's book they feel flatter and less interesting; the vibrancy is gone. Still, the skillful plotting and writing nearly makes up the difference.

Here we find our dark elf "heroes" on a journey to neighboring Ched Nesad, another drow city, to find out if Lolth has singled out Menzoberranzan or if she's abandoned all of her drow children. It's something of a pity that the city is destroyed by the end of the book, as I found the description quite interesting. Giant spiders, the size of mansions or larger, created a web in this large cavern, and some magical process was used to strengthen and harden the web so it could be walked on and built upon. Buildings there look like egg-sacs attached to the webbing. Not surprisingly, the lowest levels of the web house the poorest residents, and the nobles all reside in the highest tiers. Or, well, they did. Turns out that people who live on hardened webbing shouldn't throw stone-burning chemicals.

As far as the plot of the series goes, the important detail is that not only has Lolth abandoned all drow, she has also abandoned other races who worship her. So our anti-heroes now need to find out why. Their attempt to find a way to do so leads into the third book.

Condemnation, by Richard Baker.
Baker is good both at plotting and at characterization, though he didn't quite keep Pharaun's flavor the same as when Byers first established it (Byers' character was the better version, imo). My biggest complaint about Baker is that there are several places where he completely glosses over battle scene because the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Sometimes I agreed with this and didn't object overly much, but there was at least one situation where I was not convinced this was the case. I started to wonder if he was just incompetent at describing battle scenes, but those he did include were fairly well done. I think the omission would bother me less if there were a few sentences indicating roughly how things went. Blow-by-blow would probably be overkill. It just annoyed me when he just jumped to the next scene. It felt very much like a made-for-tv thing, where the commercials would fit into those gaps.

I won't go into too much detail about what they learn, save to say that it's a bad idea to bring a priest of a rival god into your goddess's inner sanctum. Admittedly, they had no way to get to said sanctum without help from the priest, but it was still a bad idea.

We also meet a scion of Elistraee in this book, who tries unsuccessfully to convert Halisstra (rescued from Ched Nasad in the second book) and pays a high price for it. Elistraee is a daughter of Lolth and tends to be the goddess of choice for non-evil drow. Or, well, did prior to this series. My impression is that either this series or its successor (Lady Penitent) will change that in a big way.

I now have the last three books in the series, but haven't started on them. I'm rather curious to see how it goes. Reviews of the fourth book on Amazon variously claim it to be the best or the worst book of the series. * shrugs * Likewise, several reviews say the series was good until the fourth book and then went downhill while others claim it keeps getting better until the end. I'll state an opinion when I've read them. :-)

Dissolution

2010-05-24T08:06:00.003-06:00

Wow, long time without posting. Basically, taking over as DM used up most of my creative energy that had been going into this blog. However, my scenario should end this week, and Fibonacci's begin, and I have nearly all the details worked out. A few still need polishing. I'll probably post something on that once I get back into the habit of posting. This post, though, is about a book I just finished reading. It's called Dissolution, and is set in the drow city of Menzoberranzan. I wanted to refamiliarize myself with the drow mindset, as in Fibonacci's next campaign I'm playing a drow assassin. She is not a typical drow, in that she's good-aligned, but she's also not going to be a whiny, angsty "can't we all just get along" drow. She's part of a merchant family dealing in poisons. They travel around the Underdark, and act as a sort of underground railroad for drow misfits. They would like to make drow society more cohesive, and less chaotic (meaning they don't serve Lolth), but mostly do what they can for drow who don't fit into the extant society. Anyway, that has nothing to do with the book other than my motivation for reading it.

The book is not perfect. There were places where I wanted to slap the author for sloppy writing and general pretentiousness. Nonetheless, the book is quite enjoyable for its characters and plot. We have Pharaun, a wizard outcast from his family but now tolerated for his high position in the wizards' school. He's something of a fop. Imagine James Bond as a drow wizard with little concern for bystanders. Then there's Ryld. He's a commoner who's risen about as high as a commoner can in drow society: he trains the city's males as fighters. He could be guard-captain of a noble house, but, as he points out, this would put him under the thumb of a matron mother and her retinue. Then we have Quenthel and Gromph. Quenthel is the high priestess in Menzoberranzan and Gromph is the high wizard. They're also siblings, and Gromph is plotting to kill his sister. This is not particularly noteworthy, other than the rank, as drow take "sibling rivalry" to the extreme; Pharaun's sister is also plotting to kill him, for instance. A few others become prominent later in the book, but it looks like they won't be truly major players until the second book of the series.

The cornerstone of the plot is that the priestesses of Lolth in Menzoberranzan have lost contact with their goddess, and no one knows why. As soon as some of the drow malcontents realize this, they set about taking advantage of the situation. Pharaun and Ryld are called in to track the malcontents, knowing only that they've disappeared. Gromph decides it would be a good time to try and kill Quenthel, since her powers will be diminished. Without giving too much away, all this eventually leads to a slave uprising in the city itself. All the goblins, bugbears, orcs, kobolds, and other "lower races" decide it would be a good time to rise up against their oppressors. There's more to it, but that would be giving away too much.

Now, I'd read some Forgotten Realms books before, but this is the first I've read since actually playing D&D. Certain details about the combat made more sense. I would find myself thinking things like "Nope, rolled too low," or "Must have made a saving throw." This didn't fit everywhere, as there were weapons being broken and heads being chopped off and knees being shattered, which is more specificity than usually allowed by game mechanics, but I was amused by the places where I could see it as fitting perfectly within game mechanics. I was even more amused when the book ended with a group of five drow being sent on a quest to find out what was going on with Lolth. Five adventurers, eh? Two priestesses, one wizard, and two fighters (one of whom may be a rogue; he only made three appearances, so it's hard to say).

Anyway, it isn't necessary to play D&D to appreciate this book, but it certainly gives some insight into the structure. If you want a story about scheming backstabbers whose sense of loyalty lasts until they see an advantage in betrayal, this is an enjoyable book. I'm hoping the next ones in the series will be as well. Oddly, all the books in this series seem to be by different authors. This one was by Richard Lee Byers. When he isn't being overly pretentious, he has a decent writing style, and he is very good at writing memorable characters.

Oh yes. One other detail that I found rather interesting. Drow "friendships" are more matters of convenience and familiarity than anything else. There is a place in the book where one friend betrays another, but the more I think about it, the more I think that a set of good characters would have wound up doing the exact same thing. The biggest difference is that the good character would have said "sorry," first, or, possibly, there would have been some conferring and they would have mutually decided that doing things that way would give them the best chance of saving the city. However, since there was a betrayal involved with these characters, it will be interesting to see if it changes the overall dynamic of character interaction in the next book.

Mystery Sprain

2010-02-24T06:27:00.002-07:00

I somehow managed to sprain, or maybe just strain, something in my thumb. It's not the joint that connects the thumb to the hand. I think it may be the muscles/tendons connecting the two other joints. I'm not really sure how I managed to injure it, but I have a few guesses.

It started on Saturday. My shoulder had been twinging, and at roughly the same time, I felt some tingling in the tip of the left thumb. At the time, I figured something in my shoulder was just pinching a nerve. Then Sunday evening, the area between the two outer joints was very sore and tender. By Monday morning, it was noticeable swollen. I made a makeshift splint out of a chopstick (broken down closer to lenght) and the tape from my desk. This was a trifle odd-looking, but it kept the sore part from moving and reminded me not to use that thumb. After I got done teaching, I stopped at the dollar store. No real thumb splints there, but there was some self-sticking wrap (the kind often used when people donate blood) and a package of tongue depressors. From that, I was able to construct a splint that looked a bit more professional, and kept the thumb immobilized for most of the day, and most of Tuesday.

It's quite a bit better this morning, though I'll probably immobilize it before heading to work, and I think I've figured out part of the cause. I'm still missing a piece, though. On Saturday afternoon, I went to Westwood Discount (they get damaged/clearance/overstock goods, mainly, plus some stuff like you'd find at a dollar store) and didn't bother to get a basket. I was holding my items awkwardly, and my shoulder was complaining from it. I suspect I was using the left thumb to put pressure on something to keep it from falling and either overworked or overstretched something along the back of the thumb. As it wasn't swollen the next morning, it wasn't actually injured yet. That morning, I printed out some D&D tiles and spent some time cutting them out with an Exacto knife and a straight edge (tip: get a straight edge with cork backing; they don't slide nearly as much), and probably used that thumb to keep the ruler from sliding. As the pain didn't start until evening, either there was some final thing that sent it from "overused" to "sprained" or it was just very slow coming on. My bet is on the former, but I have no idea what the final trigger might have been.

Ah well. It wasn't a major sprain, since one of the described symptoms is "unable to pinch thumb and forefinger together." I could pinch, it was just painful to do so for very long.

I've discovered a list of things that are much easier to do with a functioning left thumb, now. "Putting contacts in" is at the top of the list. "Putting ice trays in the freezer" is next; I'm much less proficient at that with my right hand and spill a lot more water. "Adjusting the left strap of a backpack." "Wearing gloves." "Buttoning trousers." I'm sure there'd be even more if it were my right hand, however.

And I keep meaning to post some of my self-made dungeon tiles here... I've borrowed freely from stuff I've found, so I might as well add to the available resources with the ones I've made.

My First Stint as DM

2010-02-09T06:30:00.004-07:00

We finished up Jeremiah's scenario last week. I put in a very brief segue to lead into my scenario, and this week we actually got started on my scenario. Everyone knew there would be shopping opportunities, so we took care of those mostly by e-mail, and, to make things simpler, I had a fair going on outside the town we'd be getting to. Among other things, it gave my character an opportunity to stock up on things before she gets disappeared for a while.

The story so far:
As the heroes ran from the halfling wizard's tower, it exploded. Most likely the fire (from the fire-elemental-in-a-stone) caught up to the odd randomizing device (among other things, used to switch John Theta's head with that of a goblin ... and back ... twice). They were far enough away that we were not in any danger. As it was cold and snowy outside, they took shelter in a cave. Inside the cave were some blue veins of stone called isildiril. They learned that this stone had teleportation properties, and was likely the source of many of the halfling wizard's powers, and Dovra found that when she cast her light spell on it, the stone would absorb the light and then emit it all at once.

As the sun began to rise, they heard whuffling and pawing outside the cave, and connected it to the wolf-sign they were suddenly noticing. Four gray wolves, two vicious dire wolves and two wolfogriffs (basically flying wolves) attacked. Dovra, keen to try out some new powers she had, cast a Zone of Avarice and used it to keep pulling the wolves away from the cave, and through the attack area of a Fire Pillar that she cast. The wolves were eventually slain, and skinned, and the heroes journeyed on down a path that led through a coniferous forest and to a water hole. Near the water hole was another cave, a sort of crack in the mountainside, and all the visible stone this time was isildiril. Rather tentatively, the heroes scouted through it and found that it was a tunnel going under the mountain to another forest clearing on the other side. When the scouts were convinced it was safe, they waved for everyone else to come through. As soon as everyone was inside, a magical light began rolling through the isilidiril. It teleported people as it caught up with them, taking them to a rather similar tunnel in a different mountain, but this time there was a village visible through the exit, and a fair going on outside the village.

And, yea, the heroes did go about their shopping with much gusto*, and learned that the volcano visible in the town appeared at the same time as a warlock disappeared, and that an evil warlock was controlling the elf who ran the magic-item-shop. They also met up with a dwarf blacksmith and his eladrin, artificer daughter**, whose experiments with area burst grenades greatly impressed them. The sun was going down as they made their way into the city, and the Captain of the Guard simply assumed they were yet another batch of heroes come to rescue Ridol from its curse*** and made them fill out paperwork indicating their preferred burial arrangements.

Next time, we begin in the cursed city with the sun down. ^!^

*I find it inordinately amusing that the only female character was happy to buy exactly two items, and otherwise stock up on necessities like food and alchemical reagents, and learn a few new rituals, whereas most of the males have gone overboard to get as much as they possibly can, particularly of magical items.

**No one seemed to find this odd, which I find extremely odd.

***The captain was designed to be as uncooperative as possible, but they finally managed to convince him that they really didn't know all about the curse already, and got more useful information out of him than I had planned on. So far they haven't drawn the correct conclusions from it, however, so it will probably still work out.

Final thought: I need to get Dovra out of the scenario as soon as possible. There's an exit planned for her, but I think I may activate it a bit sooner than originally planned. It was a bit disconcerting to be half-cheering at how well the pillar/zone combination worked and half-cursing at it for killing off all my beautiful wolves. Also, I think the group can handle rougher encounters than the one I used last night, so I've got a bit more leeway to ramp things up (heh-heh-heh).

Blue!

2010-01-30T19:44:00.002-07:00

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Found this on a D&D board. I don't think I've taken it before, but back when I was still fiddling with Magic The Gathering, I found I usually liked the blue cards better than the others, but I also remember that they required ridiculous amounts of mana even to play them.

Poison and Spiders and Bombs, Oh My!

2010-01-27T07:25:00.002-07:00

Really weird dream this morning.

It started out with me lecturing to a class (oddly all the students were male), and the classroom was in the old engineering/physics wing at CSU. I started hearing an odd noise, and eventually realized it was coming from the ceiling at the back of the room. It was a strange sort of ticking. I listened to it for a moment, and the more I listened, the more I became convinced that it was a bomb. I yelled for everyone to get out of the room, now. The door was stuck.

After enough of us slammed into it, it finally opened, and I saw that someone wedged a cloth under the door. I wondered if the device would have released poison gas rather than exploding. Then I noticed a very short, slight woman, with dark hair cut in a bob just past chin length. Her face reminded me of Ro Laren from ST:TNG, but she was much thinner and smaller, with angry red eyes and vaguely Asian features. She glared at me, and I knew that she was behind the ticking device. Before I could do anything about it, a missile crashed through the ceiling and into the corridor, exploding maybe 20 feet from where I was standing.

When I woke up, a female doctor was treating my wounds, which seemed to be mostly healed. There was a strange, x-shaped scar on my belly. For a moment I thought the missile had hit me directly, but then I realized I wouldn't be waking up if it had. The doctor would alternate looking at my wounds with petting a large spider in a jar. When she stuck her hand into the jar, the spider would act as if it was going to bite her, but then she would reach her fingers around to scratch the back of its abdomen, and it would act very happy. The doctor seemed obsessively interested in the spider, and there was something in her eyes that reminded me of the presumed bomber. I was convinced the doctor was under her influence.

*flicker*

The bomber-woman now tries to put a spell on Greg Dean (of Real Life Comics). It will make him obsessed with something (I think it was a black MP3 player) and allow her to control him. If he manages to pick up the object, he will have no chance to resist. For some reason, this is out in a grassy yard, and the object is sitting on a picnic table. I grab Greg and keep him from going for the object, trying to save him from the spell. The further I get him from the table, the easier he finds it to resist the urge to go back, but he still looks like an addict in need of a fix. We're going into the house to warn Liz when the bomber-woman appears.

That's when my alarm went off.

A few of the elements I can trace back. The spider looked a lot like a plastic spider I got to use as a D&D prop, and yesterday at Fred Meyer I came across a larger toy spider that supposedly "felt alive." Now, they were using the rubbery squishy material that does feel vaguely like "flesh," but spiders do not have flesh. They do have exoskeletons, but the only way you could feel the soft bits inside is if the exoskeleton were cracked, and the spider were either dead or dying. Claiming that a squishy spider "feels alive" is completely ridiculous.

I'm not sure about the sorceress/bomber lady. If you take Ro Laren and cross her with a professor at ISU (Gironella), you might get someone who looks like she did. Why she wanted to attack me and use mind control on everyone else, I don't know.

but then a missile crashed through the ceiling and into the corridor maybe twenty feet from me. It exploded and I blacked out, and woke up to find a doctor treating my wounds, which were mostly healed. There was a strange x-shaped scar on my belly that made me wonder if it had been put there to mark me as a target for the missile.

Ring Dream

2010-01-23T06:10:00.003-07:00

Last night I dreamed that I was working with Gandalf to hide the one ring and construct a character for a decoy to run a fake ring into Mordor. The real ring, we recoated in a dark grey metal and, I think, stuck inside a skull with a bunch of other similar looking rings. Then we started working on the character sheet for the decoy. All I remember for sure was that it wasn't a halfling, and he had lots of "hide" abilities.

I think that in this version, it wasn't possible to destroy the ring at all, so concealing it was the best bet. *shrugs*

Inner Character

2010-01-13T17:22:00.002-07:00

According to this site, my inner character is an Evil Eladrin Wizard. Not sure why I wound up with evil, but I'm rather fond of the eladrin race, and the arcane classes in general. ^!^ Actually, I may have wound up with "evil" because I picked the "lifedrinker" sword. Ah well.

Mistborn

2010-01-11T10:27:00.002-07:00

Hmmm... I never bothered to post a Happy New Year. Oh well. Consider this a belated one.

Between reading and cleaning and helping with things, I've had less interest in blogging lately. I suspect part of it is that I've finally come out of a cycle of depression and would rather be doing things than writing about them (unless the doing is also the writing).

Anyway, reading Mistborn took up a large chunk of that time. Here's the whole trilogy in one package. Depending on local discounts, this is probably cheaper than buying each book separately. Either way, they're well worth the price. I finished the first book and I'm about halfway through the second.

Mistborn is an incredibly intricate and well-plotted story. It asks the question, what happens if the prophesied hero fails? We find a society with an immortal, godlike "Lord Ruler." The common people are treated worse than slaves. The uncommon people tend to be hunted down and/or strictly controlled. The world is mostly brown due to ashfalls and the ash seems to be so pervasive that the sun always appears to be red.

Enter Kelsier and his merry band of misfits. They manage to do mostly as they like, despite being uncommon, and have decided that, for the ultimate heist, they're going to go after the Lord Ruler's stash of atium (an incredibly valuable metal, used by allomancers to see possible futures). Anything else I might say on that would quickly turn into a spoiler.

However, I do want to mention that magic system in Mistborn. It's fascinating, and unique. Some people have the ability to "burn" metals. Specific metals connect to specific powers. Someone who can burn only one metal (and hence having only one power) is a Misting. Someone who can burn them all is a Mistborn. So far as anyone knows, there is no in-between ... but a lot of "common knowledge" about Mistborns has turned out to be false. At the beginning of Mistborn, there were 10 known metals. Kelsier discovered a missing eleventh, and later we find that there are still others unknown, except perhaps to the Lord Ruler and his cronies. From a bit of scouting, it looks like there will be 16 total by the end (4 groups of 4), but they haven't all been found yet by the middle of the second book.

The other thing about the second book [SPOILER] is that Sanderson actually takes a realistic look at what would happen after the evil tyrant has been deposed. It is messy. Everyone who had power under the tyrant is vying to keep it/get it back. The few idealists are fighting a losing battle against indifference and fear. Even if the Lord Ruler was evil, things were stable under his rule, and some people would prefer stability to freedom. I have a feeling that Sanderson was influenced by the fall of the USSR in this. ^!^

The Gathering Storm

2009-12-30T16:12:00.003-07:00

I consider this book one of my Christmas presents, though my mom actually gave it to me just before Thanksgiving. I didn't actually start reading it until Christmas Eve, so I'm tying it to a tradition we used to follow of opening one present on Christmas Eve, and the rest on Christmas morning. I knew that if I started reading it while the semester was still on, I wouldn't get my papers written or my students' homework graded.

I wasn't sure what to expect. Hopefully everyone knows that after Robert Jordan's passing, Brandon Sanderson took over the Wheel of Time series. It was originally slated to be one book. Sanderson wound up breaking it into three, and Gathering Storm is the first installment. I'd read Sanderson's book Elantris, and enjoyed it, but that was his own world; here, he had to take over the reigns of someone else's world. I was quite impressed with his handling of it. It wasn't perfect, but that's not really a surprise. I have a few specific nitpicks with handling of some characters, but nothing worth pointing out here. Sanderson has the WoT world down pat, and also most of the characters. That's quite an achievement for a series that was already eleven books long.

The style, of course, is not the same as Jordan's. Sanderson is much more prone to explain the things a character does, rather than leave the reader to guess what's going on. This is both a plus and a minus. I miss Jordan's subtlety, but at the same time, it was often frustrating when he was too subtle. I think Sanderson, himself a WoT fan before being recruited, felt some of the same frustration, and decided that he would make things clearer. It's also nice to see some long-running threads resolve themselves, and to see hints to how some of the others may resolve.

I'll mention one of those hints. I don't consider it a spoiler, exactly, as I'm mostly speculating from what was given in the book. However, it might imply a spoiler or two, so you've been warned.

Lews Therin comes out with a hint as to what went wrong when he and the hundred companions sealed the Bore. In order to seal it, they had to touch the Dark One directly with their power, and this is what tainted saidin. Also, we see an unexpected character wield the "True Power" (the Dark One's power), accidentally. How this is possible is not explained, unless it has something to do with the former taint on saidin. Still, since the "True Power" comes directly from the Dark One, it can't become any more corrupt by touching the Dark One directly, and if it can be wielded by someone trying to seal the Bore, then maybe there's a way to seal it without tainting any other forms of power. However, this solution does not really fit with the way the book ends, so it may be completely wrong.

One minor complaint about the ending: I think the sentiments were good, but I think Jordan would have done a better job getting them written down without coming across as ridiculously maudlin or sentimental. It's a place where his subtlety was needed. Still, I don't think anyone but Jordan himself could have done a better job than Sanderson on the book as a whole, and it's a bloody relief to know that the rest of the books are on their way, with no illness to make the wait time drag on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on...

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-25T06:58:00.003-07:00

This is what Jilly would do were she ever to be brought to Santa Claus. According to LOLcat parlance, I guess Jilly is a basement cat (i.e. she's black), but all of my kitties were born in the basement, so they're all basement cats in imo ... except maybe the new one, Tux. She's mostly being tolerated by the other cats now, so long as no one is surprised. Jilly, predictably, is still the least tolerant. Somewhat ironic given that she's named after Charles de Lint's easygoing, supertolerant character, Jilly Coppercorn.

Anyway, Happy Solstice Festival of Glittering Trees, Overeating, and Overspending.

The Christmas Eve service last night was actually enjoyable, as it was about 90% music, 9% story-telling, and only 1% nonsense. Also, I was pleased that I managed to find the bass part (an octave higher) on the chorus of "O Come All Ye Faithful." It seems they finally have a pastor who understands what the Christmas Eve service is supposed to be. It should be a fulfillment of Mircia Eliade's notion of "sacred time," where the past comes alive in the present. When taken as the last word, Eliade's idea has some problems, but here I think it works perfectly.

Also, with it 90% music, I can distract myself from the nonsense bits by trying to find non-melody parts in each song (and probably annoying my mom no end when I can't find them and start making them up).

One Down...

2009-12-20T18:51:00.003-07:00

As usual, I was roped into turning pages for my mom for her church choir's Christmas Cantata. The music was less objectionable this year than in years past, but the narration was absolutely horrid. The last thing you want to think of during a Christmas cantata is a "used car salesman," but that's how the narration came across: as a sales pitch. Blech. Last year Kim suggested leaving out the narration, and everyone objected. I doubt Robin would have thought of leaving it out, but it would have been vastly improved that way this year.

As for me, I'm perfectly happy to see Christmas as a solstice celebration, with a "rebirth of the sun" theme that Christians take to a rather odd extreme. Something that still puzzles me... If there is only one Deity, and if that deity created everything, then if someone worships something other than said Deity, that something must have been created by the Deity ... so how can there ever be such a thing as worshiping a false deity under those premises? There's plenty more that puzzles me, but I'm not in the mood for making a list, let alone checking it twice. ^!^

It's only "one down," btw, because I also have to help turn pages at the candlelight Christmas Eve service. I like the candles, and generally the singing, depending on the carols chosen. The rest I can do without.

Some Things Are Best Left Locked

2009-12-18T14:25:00.003-07:00

Okay, the major part of the IC dispute has played itself out, so it is now safe to post this. Last night, we started with the post-long-rest-plot playing itself out. We made it to another encounter after that, but we're not even halfway through it, so I'm not going to post anything on that. I will comment that, both IC and OOC, I did think things were going too far, and Dovra's actions reflect that. Her plan didn't work, but I didn't honestly expect it to. I was hoping to irritate the gods enough that they would actually show up; Dovra's probably just as happy this did not happen, though Fibonacci told us that they were on standby in case things went completely pear-shaped. Apparently what the rock said when it set Shenron on fire to wake him up was, "Dovra just attacked you! She must die!", but it didn't roll high enough to force Shenron to attack her. Oh, the long conversation between Dovra and Allonar was an actual IC conversation, so John/Allonar deserves credit for his own lines. I fixed one minor error (Heian is a full elf, not a half-elf), but otherwise left them as they were. Anyway, the tale is below the fold.

Dovra slept uneasily after they managed to open the chest. It wasn’t the chest itself that haunted her dreams, but the screaming that had come afterwards. One scream in particular played itself over and over in her mind: the girl they had rescued from the cells below had died, and for no good cause at all. With every breath, Dovra breathed in the ashes from the fire that had killed her, had nearly killed all of them … except Shenron. No, the one who had foolishly started the fire had not been hurt at all. Naturally, he was immune to fire damage. But Dovra and the others, already hurt from dealing with the chest, had not been so lucky, and it had been enough to kill the poor frog-girl. It seemed strange that someone so capable in battle—Dovra still remembered the banshee cries as the grabbed the nearest monster and bashed it into the floor—would be so fragile, but the fire had killed her instantly. Shenron had tried to rescue her from his idiocy, but it had been too late. They had never even learned her name.

The scene froze as Dovra stared down at the dead girl, and then the dream started over from the beginning, with Heian and Dovra just beginning to work on the chest. It had seemed like a good idea. Dovra had always been curious about the halfling’s ice chest and everyone else seemed to be hoping there was treasure inside. It was a challenge to her magical skills, and she always enjoyed such challenges. While she and the rogue worked on the chest, the others had to fight off the monsters it kept summoning. The monsters were semi-transparent as if they weren’t quite fully there, but the wounds they inflicted were real enough. For the most part, Dovra was able to trust her allies to take care of the monsters while she remained focused on the chest. The black dragon’s screech, though, had drawn her attention. Thankfully Allonar had been able to unsummon it without fighting. Dovra started paying more attention to the battle in case anything else would be too much for the group to handle with everything else around them. A while later, there was a horrid stench that nearly made her gag. “Troglodyte,” someone said and went to go fight it. That she hadn’t worried about unsummoning, but the giant blind thunder lizard, which had barely fit in the room, was another story. That one she had unsummoned herself before returning to the chest.

While Heian worked his way up and down the dial, listening for whatever it was that told him when the correct number was being turned to, Dovra tried to ward the dials and gather information the only way she knew how: through magic. Sometimes the chest was able to block her, and she reeled from the backlash of its psychic attacks, but sometimes she got a tiny hint of information to make Heian’s job easier. Then, finally, she knew exactly what the first number of the combination was. The number 13 had appeared in her head, and she felt the chest’s awareness reel back, knowing it had lost the battle on that dial. As she summoned the mage hand to turn it to 13, there was almost a sizzling sound. One down, three to go, and the battle continued around them.

They had barely started on the next dial when a strange song began flowing through Dovra’s head. It was a wondrous, beauteous song, and it drew her towards its source. The source, though was an insult to the beauty of the song. The song needed to be freed from the horrid half-woman half-bird who had stolen it. The harpy had drawn every one towards it, so that it was surrounded, and it was dead before Dovra could do more than think about destroying it. It hadn’t stood a chance with enemies flanking it on every side. As if coming out of a trance, Dovra realized that a summoned Shadar Kai had also been drawn towards it, and was now adjacent to her. She tried to unsummon it, but the chest’s hold on it was too strong. Dovra muttered a prayer to Corellon under her breath. As if in answer, the room flickered. She sensed that the chest had been weakened somehow, and tried again to unsummon the Shadar Kai. This time it went easily.

Most of the rest of the creatures wound up in mortal combat with Shenron, with the strange new power he had picked up that forced a creature to fight him and only him. This kept them from attacking the rest of the team, so they could focus on weaker creatures or on the chest. Horgta stuck close to Dovra and Heian, pulling them away from the chest before its cold could overcome them. They almost had the second dial figured out when Dovra felt the numbers rolling in her head: the chest had overcome the ward she had placed on that lock, and she sighed, knowing it was going to change the combination now … but something strange happened. As the numbers spun in her head, they seemed to get stuck. The number 19 flashed in her consciousness and the second lock sizzled and opened. Dovra wasn’t sure what had happened. 19 had been their candidate for that lock anyway; possibly the chest’s attempt to change it had gotten stuck on that number. The last two dials went more quickly: most of the fight seemed to have gone out of the chest now that two of its locks were open. Heian thought he had the last two numbers: 14 and 16. He set the dials and tested the lid. It opened easily, and the remaining creatures vanished.

Dovra looked into the chest and wasn’t sure what to think. There was a clear crystal chalice and some sort of rock frozen inside it. Everyone gathered round, trying to figure out what it was. Dovra sensed a presence from it, as if the rock had some rudimentary awareness. She thought that, whatever it was, it might be dangerous, and was certain she’d never even heard of anything like it. Why had Phoenix kept it locked in a frozen box? Why had he had a sentient pet rock at all?

Shenron seemed drawn towards the rock in its chalice. “Hey! I bet my fire breath could thaw it out!”

The dream froze. Dovra had all the time in the world to look around the room and note all of the spilled potions and acids and chemicals. She turned and grunted in her sleep, knowing now how flammable they all were. Dream-Dovra tried to shout a warning, though she’d done no such thing when it had actually happened. Heian and Allonar did caution the dragonborn about thawing the rock at all, let alone thawing it with fire. Shenron ignored them. The preparatory inhale seemed to take forever, and the fiery exhale moved millimeter by millimeter towards the rock, and it spread millimeter by millimeter through the entire lab. When the fire reached Dovra, setting her on fire, time started moving normally again. In reality, she had moved towards Allonar, helping douse his flames. In the dream, she moved towards the doomed girl, hoping somehow to shield her this time, but it was no use. The girl shrieked once and died.

This time the dream didn’t start over. The shriek echoed and repeated over and over and over in Dovra’s head … and another scream from the depths of her memory rose up and joined the chorus. The new scream finally drowned out the girl’s dying shriek, but it wasn’t much of an improvement. “Moiah…” Dovra muttered in her sleep, and saw her not-quite-human friend plummeting into the chasm. There’d been nothing she could do but hope that their pursuers thought that Dovra had fallen with her. She hid and waited, trying to hold back the sobs. All of fourteen, she was only just learning how her powers worked, and she’d forgotten to warn Moiah that one of the planks in the suspension bridge was an illusion. It was her fault, her own bloody fault, that her friend had fallen to her death. One careless moment, and everything had changed. Just like Shenron’s careless flames had snuffed out a life. The dream switched back to the lab on fire. This time Moiah sat in the doomed girl’s place, and, as she burned, she stared into Dovra’s eyes.

Something touched Dovra on the shoulder, and she barely bit back a yelp. It was just Shenron, waking her up for her watch. She glared at him. She might have gotten a friend killed, but she hadn’t set the rest of her friends on fire doing so. He didn’t seem to notice. He seemed distracted and strangely bloated as he collapsed into sleep on what was left of the halfling’s work table. She wondered if he’d found more gold to eat. Then she noticed that the rock was no longer in its chalice on the table, and was no where else in the room. Surely he wouldn’t have eaten that, would he? She wasn’t sure. Regardless, he needed to take responsibility for what he had done. Dovra didn’t know what she could do, but something needed to be done. She kept a wary eye on him, and sighed. He had defended them against everything the chest had thrown at them. Without him, they might not all have survived. But he still needed to learn some caution and respect.

About halfway through the shift, she felt an insistent presence in her mind. The star around her neck began to give off a faint glow. She let it guide her to a bit of rubble that had somehow escaped the fire. Of their own accord, her hands began digging through it. At the bottom was a small vial. Her powers told her it was a frost grenade. It was interesting, but not obviously useful. ::You’re going to need it,:: Correllon’s voice said in her head. She was certain that, had anyone else been awake, they would not have seen the faintly glowing elf who appeared leaning against the wall across from her. ::And I need to point out to you that Shenron is under Bahamut’s protection. If things go too far…:: Correllon grimaced and made a throat-cutting gesture.

::Things? What things?:: Dovra tried to ask, but the image faded without responding.

She spent the rest of the watch trying to figure out what Corellon thought was going to happen. Just before it was time to wake Horgta, she heard a sharp, “Pst!” She looked around for Corellon again. “What?” After a moment, she figured out it was only Allonar. He motioned for her to come closer. Dovra did so bemusedly, wondering if she looked even half as confused as she felt. The deva gestured at Shenron, and Dovra grimaced. Was this what Corellon had been trying to warn her about? Surely they had to do something about the dragonborn.

“What he did last night,” Allonar said softly, glowing eyes strangely muted, “that can’t be ignored. He almost got us all killed. I specifically told him not to use his flame on the ice, but he did it anyway.”

“That he did,” Dovra agreed. “And he got that poor girl killed.” Dovra sighed, hearing the screams again. “We never even found out her name.”

“Indeed. I will not needlessly injure those who claim to serve good, but I'm beginning to doubt his 'goodness'. Her death needs to be Avenged. It is my calling.”

Dovra couldn’t read the deva’s eyes, and the rest of his face was under that strange mask they all seemed to wear. “I don’t know about the whole ‘good’ thing, but what he did wasn’t right. What did you have in mind?”

“I'm not sure what the end result should be, but he has to be forced to listen. You are capable of causing a forced sleep, correct?”

“Yes, but he can resist. I would prefer to have as strong a chance as possible of it working. He will only be slowed if it fails.”

“Hmm, what if he is asleep when you use it, would that cause him to wake if it fails?”

“No. I tried it on the Blue Dragon, and it failed, and he did not wake up right away. We just won't be certain it has worked without trying to wake him.” Dovra thought quickly. Surely Bahamut wouldn’t object to his paladin being put to sleep, but what else did Allonar have in mind?

“Very well. We will try it, then send the rogue to remove his weapons. Once he has taken (and hidden, the weapons), he can begin to remove the paladin's armor: that is sure to wake him if he is not supernaturally held. What say you to this idea?”

“Count me in.” Without his weapons, a violent conflict would be less likely. Hopefully Bahamut wouldn’t object to a peaceful solution.

“What is your desired restitution against this creature?”

Dovra thought for a moment. What did she want? “I wish for him to know the same pain and isolation that the girl knew. I wish for his power to diminish until he has learned his lesson and has found some way to put this right.” That seemed fair, though she had no idea how to make it happen.

“Very well. I will speak to the Half-Orc and also wake you and the elf before the Dragonborn has wakened. If he wakes, we may yet set upon him to teach him a lesson.”

“I will support you in this.” Yes, removing his weapons before dealing with him would be one way to avoid bloodshed. That might keep Bahamut from interfering.

“Very good. May your rest be satisfying until our plans come to fruition.”

“Yours as well.”

Dovra watched as the deva went to wake Horgta for the last watch. She lay down, but kept her ears open as the deva and the half-orc continued their plotting. The more she heard of their plans, the less she liked them. Yes, disarm him, yes teach him a lesson, but Dovra would not agree to humiliate and rob him. That would do nothing to bring the girl back or to heal their wounds. This was sounding less like it was about teaching Shenron a lesson and more like it was about out and out revenge. She wasn’t sure that the half-orc and the deva wouldn’t kill him, given half a chance. As she drifted into sleep, she decided that the plan needed a few alterations. She thought she felt Corellon wince at some of the ideas she had, but she ignored it. If he had a better plan, he could just tell her.

…

Horgta woke her sometime later and put his finger to his lips. Dovra looked up at him and nodded, feeling strangely giddy about what was to come. Everyone was quietly gathering around Shenron. Allonar was trying to change the plan at the last minute and have Horgta knock Shenron unconscious instead. She had to act now. She stepped back and cast the sleep spell so that it would hit everyone but her. They’d made it easy for her by circling around the sleeping dragonborn. Allonar looked at her reproachfully and shrugged it off, but she’d half-been expecting that. It hit Horgta and Heian, but it would take a few moments before it knocked them out. Shenron was sleeping so she wouldn’t be able to tell—except as soon as the spell reached him he burst into flame. Dovra stared in disbelief. “What in Correllon’s name…?”

The dragonborn bolted upright and stared around, realizing that he was surrounded. He gave Dovra a wide-eyed look, though she was not even adjacent to him to pose much of a threat. He seemed to be muttering to himself; more than that, he seemed to be arguing with himself. The only word Dovra could make out was, “No…” If he had gone insane, her plan would have even less chance of working, but it was the best one she had. Allonar and Horgta postured and made their threats. Heian slumped over, asleep. Wonderful. He would have been the most useful one to leave awake, and he was the only one the bloody thing had worked on. Dovra took a deep breath and began weaving the sound illusion that she hoped would end this. It began with a rumble of thunder. Then she wove in what she thought the voice of Bahamut should sound like, almost blending in with the thunder. It said “Shenron…” Her star grew cold against her skin, as if Corellon were warning her. For a moment, she thought she heard his voice again, saying, “No, don’t smite her.” She hoped she’d imagined it.

Shenron looked around confusedly for the source of the voice. He considered for a moment, but he seemed to trace its source to Dovra. Blast. This wasn’t going to work. She tried anyway, tried to get him to swear an oath that would be bound to Bahamut that any damage he inflicted on the group would be doubly inflicted on him. Allonar would have none of it. “That was not what we agreed to, and you attacked us,” he told Dovra, turning his back on her. Dovra frowned. Humiliating and robbing Shenron was not what she had agreed to. The deva had little room to complain. Given Corellon’s warning, it seemed best not to overdo things against Shenron, and she was convinced that the deva’s plan was nothing but overkill.

For no obvious reason, Shenron moved jerkily toward a wall, as if moving weren’t his idea. He inhaled and produced a larger flame than Dovra had ever seen from him. It filled the room, burning everyone but Shenron. Dovra irritably rubbed the soot from her arms. At least she hadn’t caught on fire this time. Allonar and Horgta moved to flank Shenron, and Allonar’s ghostly double appeared, blocking any escape for the dragonborn. They began attacking him with all they had. Dovra wasn’t going to attack anyone, but she did send her mage hand over to try and get Shenron’s sword off his belt. He reacted too quickly, and the hand wasn’t strong enough to overpower him. Maybe now would be a good time to create an illusion of the girl’s face in front of him. Was the dragonborn capable of guilt or remorse? That would be one way to find out.

Before she could try, Shenron began coughing violently. It reminded her of the way he had acted when he’d eaten all the gold. Finally, something came out of his mouth and landed improbably in his hand. It was the rock that had been frozen inside the chest. Allonar became even more enraged. “Drop your weapons, or die,” he said. Shenron complied, dropping everything but the rock. He tried to drop the rock, but his fingers simply would not release it. Dovra realized it must have enhanced his flame ability, and remembered that Phoenix had kept it encased in ice… “The rock, as well,” Allonar said, deliberately refusing to recognize that Shenron had been incapable of doing so.

“I may be able to help with that,” Dovra said. Everyone looked at her suspiciously, but she didn’t care. “Corellon led me to a sort of ice grenade last night, and I think this is why. I think if I can hit the rock with it, Shenron will be able to let go of it.” She moved in closer, ignoring the wary looks they gave her. She missed the rock, but the grenade hit Shenron instead. That was enough. His fingers slowly opened and the rock fell to the floor. Horgta started to poke at it with a sword but Allonar stopped him. Dovra summoned the mage hand once more and it grabbed the rock. As soon as it did, she felt its presence in her mind. “Let’s play!” it said. It tried to control her mind, but she was able to resist. The mage hand carried it back to the chest. As soon as it was inside the chest, Dovra dismissed the hand and gently closed the lid. “I just want to be friends!” the rock called to her faintly. Dovra shook her head. That kind of friend she did not need. The chest hadn’t locked again, but hopefully the rock couldn’t control anyone while it was out of sight and untouchable.

They took a long rest, and Dovra was mostly ignored, though she finally convinced Allonar to let her help him with his filth fever. He still had a cough from it, but so far it wasn’t getting any worse. She kept him stable, but was still unable to get him all the way over it. When he thought she couldn’t hear, he would glance at her and mutter about her going against the group consensus. Dovra looked over at Shenron, seeming rather pitiful without his armor on. Horgta and Allonar had insisted that he lose his armor if he wanted to live, and had taken his sword and replaced it with a wooden toy. That would only make him more foolhardy, and lessen his value to the group, as far as Dovra could tell. There had to be balance, yes, but overdoing things did not put them back in balance. She’d worked for evil wizards and good wizards, and on the whole she preferred the evil ones: they, at least, were under no illusions about what they were actually doing. This did nothing to avenge the girl’s death. If anything, it was an insult to her memory.

All done but the Grading

2009-12-16T20:15:00.002-07:00

I was the first to finish both of my philosophy finals. Language took roughly an hour. Science took a bit over an hour. On both of them, I had reached the point where I had answered everything as best I was going to. I could have sat there and fiddled with wording for a while, but there didn't seem to be much point. I thought of one thing on the Science final that might have made a slight difference, but that's it, and there's no guarantee I would have thought of that if I had just stayed sitting there. I think I did decently on both of them.

As for papers, I did not care for my Philosophy of Science paper at all. I thought it was shallow and poorly conceived. It got an A. I thought my Philosophy of Language paper was much better and stronger, and I had a lot of fun with it. It got an A-. Whether that means anything beyond "different people have different reactions to things," I don't really know.

Since I got done early anyway, I stopped over at Galaxy to check on my laptop. I may not need a new one after all. It was a problem with the cable to the monitor that was causing the flickering. The cable will cost $30, which isn't bad at all. As for the random dying, they defragged the hard disc and fixed something else that I can't remember, but it was all basic maintenance. I'm still happy to have almost every file on it backed up, now. And I may spend the money I'd been expecting to spend on a new laptop on getting this blasted desktop running decently. It is ridiculously slow and the sound has never worked right. At the very least it needs more RAM. A faster processor would be nice. That might be enough to straighten out the sound if the only problem is low memory.

Anyway, I have two sets of tests to grade, and I'll do those tomorrow morning, then submit grades and be done. I've got one mystery no-show on a final, though. A student who had been doing very well did not show up to take the final. This dropped her from an A to a D. I haven't submitted her grade yet, in the hopes that she'll contact me and we can work out an alternate time. I've also got an extra final that someone took with my 025 students. I presume he was in someone's 025 class, but no one has claimed him yet. Oh well.

Random Pre-Philosophy-Final Thoughts

2009-12-16T06:55:00.001-07:00

(1) Rereading an entire semester's worth of both Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Language in 2-3 days is an effective way to make yourself go mad.

(2) LOLcats are an effective remedy for this sort of madness.

(3) Slow computer is sloooooooooooowwwwwwwww.

(4) Despite having spent less time on the material, I feel more prepared for the Language final than the Science one. I suspect this is because Pelleti's lectures are more organized, so it's very clear what he thinks the important points are. It is not so clear for Wahl.

(5) That is all. For now.

'Tis the Season to Get a New Laptop

2009-12-14T06:48:00.003-07:00

...unless repair costs for this one are going to be significantly under $300. A new HP netbook is currently going for $350 at CostCo, and this one also needs a new battery. All in all, I'm suspecting it will be much cheaper to get a Netbook. I've already pulled most of my files off of this one and put them onto an external 500gig hard drive (I calculated the other day that I'd paid roughly 13 cents per gig for the thing).

So what is my laptop doing? It started with the screen. When I adjust the angle, the screen will start reflecting across itself and producing overlapping duplicate images, which are completely useless as far as navigating the screen goes. There's just enough detail that I can see that it's a duplication/reflection thing, but not enough detail to use it while it's doing that. I finally found a reasonable angle to put the screen and figured out that, so long as I didn't adjust the angle at all, there was no problem. So no more shutting it to keep it out of the cats' way while I'm gone.

Yesterday, it started doing something worse: randomly dying after being on for about 30 minutes. I think it may be overheating, but I'm not really sure. No clue if this is connected to the screen or not. The screen may just be a loose cable, and the trick is to find a position where contact is maintained in spite of this. The randomly shutting down...? The only connection I can think of is if the loose cable is resulting in excess heat, overheating it, and shutting it down. That seems a bit of a stretch, though not impossible. So it's likely there are 2 separate problems to fix, plus the thing needs a new battery. I strongly suspect it will cost more than $350 for all that, which will result in me getting a new netbook.

ADDENDUM: As of late this morning, the laptop will not run at all. It tries, but never gets past the "loading your settings" screen. So it is now at Galaxy awaiting diagnosis. I'd been hoping to hold onto it until Thursday, but there's no point if it's not running at all. One caveat on the netbooks: no optical drive. For not quite twice the price, I can get a slightly bigger HP that does have an optical drive, and twice as much memory. That might be worth it, but it does up the "allowable repair cost" range.

I may hear back from Galaxy tomorrow as to whether or not the thing is even worth trying to fix. I got all but a few downloaded pictures off of it, and those are eminently replaceable. My only concern is if there was still a hidden cache of word processing files from the last time it had to be repaired. I think I moved all of those to be with the regular ones, but I'm not sure. Everything else is programs that can easily be reloaded (at least, easily reloaded if there is an optical drive...).

Fire, Ice and a Chest

2009-12-12T07:05:00.003-07:00

I've got a start on my account of our D&D group's adventure with the chest. There's a problem, however, and I don't think I should post anything specific on it until the problem is resolved. Short version: in-character disputes. A longer version will have to wait until some resolution is reached, hopefully at the next meeting.

ADDENDUM: Oh, yes. Two of us were at the concert last night (Philip to perform; I think I spotted him amongst the crowd of Camerata singers), and between us complaining and the current situation, the DM, aka Fibonacci, decided we needed to have everyone there for what is going to happen next. So last night John/Allonar was going to lead them in a one-time dungeon crawl, with gladiatorial overtones from what I picked up on the message board.

RE-ADDENDUM: I seem to be posting more now that lectures are done. I think I've just been too exhausted to post much here lately.

Acoustic Eidolon, plus Carols

2009-12-12T06:50:00.003-07:00

Last night was the ISU symphony's Christmas concert. It was quite enjoyable, especially since the first half featured Acoustic Eidolon. This is a husband/wife duo. The wife plays the cello (apparently one made by someone here in Pocatello) and the husband plays guitar and "guit-jo". The guit-jo is an instrument he designed that looks like a guitar with two necks. One neck is almost a standard guitar, with one extra bass string. The other neck is strung with a different kind of string that gives it a much higher, harp-like sound. He can play both necks at once.

I thoroughly enjoyed their performance, but Marky and my mom both thought that they were toning themselves down for the orchestra, and liked the two encore pieces (with no orchestra) better. I liked it all.

The second half featured two symphony pieces sandwiching a carol-singalong. I get rather tired of the carols when all ~~seven~~ five (seemed like seven) verses are included, but apparently the current director really likes the end verses of "The First Noel." I don't. I think the early verses bother me less because I can see them in a meta-mythological context that I am capable of finding inspiring, rather than nauseating. Still, the singing was fun. My preference would be for fewer verses and more carols, however.

I would have linked to a video of Acoustic Eidolon, but I'm not finding one, so here's their newest album: River of Fire. There should be an option to listen to samples there.

Gunnerkrigg Court

2009-12-11T14:18:00.003-07:00

I found the comic Gunnerkrigg Court through a D&D tips web-site. It took maybe a week and a half to race through the archives. It is awesome. It reminds me of Neil Gaiman's style of story-telling. This may have something to do with both authors being British. There are stories within stories within stories so far, but the gist of them all is trying to figure out what this world that people find themselves in actually is. There is a technological half that seems to be all city (even the seemingly outdoor parts in it are enclosed). There is a wild, magical half that seems to be all forest. Why this is still isn't clear, though there have been tantalizing hints.

At any rate, it's well worth checking out (and has preempted Garfield Minus Garfield from occupying 'G' in the list; it is now at 'K').

Poster, Please!

2009-12-11T09:03:00.000-07:00

This is from today's Schlock Mercenary. It would make an awesome (de?)motivational poster!

Tuxedo

2009-12-11T06:28:00.002-07:00

I seem to have acquired another cat. She's not quite full grown, and is what they describe as a "tuxedo cat", meaning mostly black with a bit of white on the chest. I saw her hanging around the yard in the fall, kind of getting along with my cats, and fairly friendly towards me. Two nights ago, I went out to change the cats' litterbox and saw her again, meowing plaintively from under my car. I guessed that she was hungry, and opened the garage and put a can of food in there for her. She gobbled it up in under 30 seconds, so then I put out a bowl of dried stuff for her. I saw her again the next day, and showed her the rest of the dried stuff she'd left behind, and gave her another can of food last night.

This morning, she rather insistently barged into the house. It's about -10° out there, so this is understandable, though it was actually colder yesterday. Anyway, I was most worried about how Dovienya would react, but Dovi just ignored her. Pouncer seems mostly interested, but cautious. The two girls, Princess and Jilly, are rather unhappy about her. They've been having staring contests all morning. I think I'd better lock Tuxedo (hopefully a temporary name) in a separate room while I'm gone, as I'm not sure what they'll do without me around to mediate.

She's got the same snub nose as Princess, and similar ears and facial features to Dovi, so I'm wondering if she's possibly related to Dovi (same mother?). If so, this might explain why Dovi wasn't worried about her.

End of Semester Observations (with Rant)

2009-12-09T22:21:00.004-07:00

I think I've decided that taking two full classes while teaching full time is too much. The schedule just wore me down continuously through the semester. On the, er, ambiguously positive(?) side, I suppose, next school year that won't be an issue, "barring a change in administration." I need to get applications in for grad school over break, if at all possible.

As far as I can tell, anyone who actually gives a damn about undergraduate education despises what the Frank Burns administration is trying to do, and anyone with actual experience in such matters knows full well that ISU is not going to become the MIT of the midwest (which is a misnomer anyway, since the midwest is further east than we are). I'm not sure how I feel about the situation at this moment in time. But my strongest reaction is still relief that I'll be out while Burns sends ISU down the toilet.

It will be interesting to see what happens when I put in my math program application. On the one hand, there's not much Fisher can do about the administration's machinations; on the other, he still needs instructors. As a grad student, I would teach one or two courses (they didn't have much choice but to up the load), which would still lose them at least three overall.

They've also been playing fast and loose with the definition of "full time" for faculty, as an excuse to decrease insurance benefits. At this point in time, I really wish I could send one of my evil fictional characters to go play with Burns and his cohorts for a while. Of course, then I'd have to find a way to get them back out of the real world, and, well, I created them, so I know they wouldn't cooperate. *sighs*

Rockapella Christmas Concert

2009-12-08T22:07:00.002-07:00

It certainly wasn't my favorite performance of all time, and it's not the kind of music that I would buy and listen to at home, but if you ever have the chance, Rockapella is a lot of fun. It's currently five male vocalists who provide all their own accompaniment, including one guy who is the drum set and another who is often the bass ... but also does an interesting Whitney Houston version of Silent Night (I could try to explain, but I don't think it's worth it).

At one point, they pulled a member of the audience up on stage to "help" them with "Santa Claus is Comin' To Town." They may have gotten more than they bargained for. She was a middling elderly lady, but she stood out by wearing a sequined santa hat. When they asked her what she wanted for Christmas, she replied, "Well, I'm single..." They convinced her to make do with one of their CDs instead. ^'^ She would get along well with the Coffee Gals in Akron, I think.

Anyway, Silver Bells was probably my favorite of the evening. This is the YouTube version that seems to have the same lineup of people as those who performed here:

Direct Link to YouTube
Alternate Silver Bells Line Up

27-degree Rain?

2009-12-06T07:17:00.004-07:00

From the weather forecast for Pocatello at NOAA:

Now, if it does rain on Thurdsay, and the high is only 27° F, I'm pretty sure it would actually come out as "Freezing Rain," not just "Rain." The forecast in words also said merely rain, so it's not a case of a mere typo in the picture coding.

Now I'm trying to think how it would work for it not to be freezing rain... The ground temperature would have to be above freezing, despite having no highs above freezing in the past week, or the rain would have to be saturated with something that would lower the freezing point below 27° F (probably further down than that, since that's the high). That just doesn't seem likely to me.

Antiremembrance Hazards

2009-12-05T21:07:00.004-07:00

I managed to forget that, in addition to checking on my mom's cats, I was also supposed to be checking on my dad's cat and dog. He wasn't gone, but he's a bit forgetful about these things. I made it over Tuesday, before the stomach issues hit, then completely spaced it until I talked to my mom tonight. They were both fine. Ji'e'toh still had food in her dish, though it was a bit low, and a bit of water. Buster gets more immediate attention, anyway, so he was at no real risk. So, no harm done. Thankfully.

My mom also said that her heating pad died en route to Las Vegas. Apparently it worked when she left home, but not after she got to the hotel. She's assuming the flight killed it. Not sure why the flight would have any effect. Presumably the heating pad would have been exposed to rather cold temperatures, but surely that wouldn't mess up the circuitry; it probably got shipped to Wal-Green's at similar temperatures. So...security scan, maybe? Could that have affected the electronics in the turn-on switch? If so, I'm not finding anything about it online. It was a few years old, so maybe something was just loose enough that rough handling or cold jogged it out. *shrugs*

Oh, and I finally got my Christmas tree up this afternoon. I'd meant to do it during Thanksgiving break, but other things took precedence. Other things still take precedence, but I wasn't actually up to doing them. Tomorrow I've got to get a philosophy of science paper written, and polish up a 99% done philosophy of language paper. As I was not up to writing philosophy today, I figured I might as well get the tree up and get some more D&D tokens printed out. It struck me while I was punching them out that you could use them as decorations on a very small Christmas tree. They would be rather odd decorations, saying "bloodied" and "dazed" and "petrified" and the like, but they would also be quite colorful!

Odd, Long (Oblong?) Week

2009-12-04T22:54:00.005-07:00

My mom's out of town, going to a class to keep her accounting license current, so I've been taking care of her cats. Meanwhile, I've had a slight cold or weird allergies or something, on top of some* food item disagreeing with me sometime prior to Wednesday morning, so I haven't eaten much in the past three days, and it's starting to catch up with me. Still, we finally got the chest open in D&D tonight, so now I have to figure out what all Dovra saw. She was mostly focused on the chest, except when the harpie summoned everyone closer to it (rather idiotically as it turned out), and when Allonar took a crack at the chest for one turn, so she finally got to use her Healer's Mercy.

Inside the chest? Some sort of fire-elemental-in-a-rock, as far as I can tell. No clue why Blue Cheese put it in there. It's friendly, and can enhance flames (though Dovra doesn't actually know that yet), but I suspect it may turn out to be more trouble than it's worth. As we quit for the night, it had lured our dragonborn, who was supposed to be on guard duty while the rest of us slept, out to go "hunting." The DM assures us that they won't actually find anything to hunt, but... *shrugs*

There were other activities going on at the meeting place (a sort of weekly gathering that some of the group go to independently of D&D), but lack of food was massively catching up with me, and there was nothing non-poisonous there to eat. So I went shopping instead. At 10:00 pm. Eggs tend to agree with my stomach no matter what, and I was out of them at home. Now that I've had a semi-decent meal (two scrambled eggs and an apple), I feel considerably better.

*AM UPDATE: I am about 99% certain that it was the turkey stew I made from my family's leftover Thanksgiving turkey that upset my stomach. I did not eat any on Thursday, and had no major problems on Friday. I ate a small portion on Friday, and had some problems today. I'm not sure if it went bad in the fridge, as it caused no problems at the beginning of the week, or if there was just too much of something-or-other in it and my body got oversaturated with that. Either way, the stew is now going in the trash.

Pirate Victory

2009-11-27T20:24:00.004-07:00

I'm not sure what brought this song to mind today, but I decided to track it down. It's from The Pirate Movie, which is basically an '80s rock opera version of The Pirates of Penzance. Some of the songs coincide, but some are new, and some are the old ones turned into rock opera. It was one of my favorite movies when I was little. This song isn't actually from the movie proper; it's before Mabel falls into the ocean and starts dreaming up the rest of the movie. Still, it's a fun one. I give you, Victory!

Song only

Jack Sparrow montage + Song (parts well done, other parts...meh...)

And finally, horriby misspelled lyrics!

Unfortunately, the only versions with footage from the actual Pirate Movie wouldn't load for me, or I wouldn't have bothered linking to the PotC one.

Further Piecrust Adventures: Cookie edition

2009-11-26T18:08:00.004-07:00

It's traditional in my family to make three pumpkin pies, so technically I only need three crusts, but I just double the two-crust recipe and have enough for four. The rest get rolled out into pie-crust-cookies. You roll them out, just like for a pie, then cut them into roughly cookie size pieces, and sprinkle with a mix of cinnamon and sugar before baking. They're quite tasty, and usually I make them at the same time as the pies, but it was late last night so I put the rest of the dough in the fridge to use this morning.

Well, the dough I make handles much better warm, so I was trying to cut the one large ball into several smaller pieces so that they would warm up faster. There was a lot of resistance to the knife, so, to get more leverage, I held the dough in my left hand with the knife in my right and started trying to cut through it. You can probably see where this is going... When the knife was almost halfway through, the whole thing suddenly gave way. The knife whooshed straight through the dough and into the middle finger of my left hand. It dug out a small chunk of flesh, maybe 0.25x0.5 cm at the extremes. Despite this, it didn't hurt much at first. It started to hurt when I started to wash it off. Anyway, it's quite interesting to roll out pie-crust dough while trying to keep pressure on a finger to stop the bleeding. I had to throw out one cookie, as I bled on it. I would have eaten it, but I figured my mom would have a fit about it.

The finger did eventually stop bleeding. It's still a bit sore, unsurprisingly.

Piecrust Adventures

2009-11-26T06:40:00.000-07:00

A few interesting conundrums whilst making the pumpkin pies last night.

(1) I had only one pumpkin from my garden. It was fairly small, and, when I cut into it, I discovered one part of it was rotten. I had my mom get some canned pumpkin as backup. I got 2 cups from the good parts of the real pumpkin, and had to fill in the rest with the canned pumpkin. Annoying, but workable.

(2) I could not find my pie-crust-bag. It was not on the top shelf of the closet where it's supposed to be, nor in any of the other places I thought I might have decided to put it. If it doesn't turn up, I'm going to assume it got thrown away accidentally and order a new one. The problem is that gluten-free crust is extremely delicate. You need the plastic to hold it together long enough to get it into the pan, and even then there are almost always cracks and holes to patch. So I improvised. I had some jumbo-size ziplock bags. I rolled the first crust inside the bag and then cut two of the edges open so I could extract it, then rolled the other crusts with the bag slit open. It worked better than I expected. I think the crust didn't stick to the ziplock as badly as it generally did to the pie-crust bag. However, the pie-crust-bag is reusable many times over, whereas the ziplock would need to be replaced each time, and the jumbo ziplocks are rather pricey.

(3) I ran out of sweet rice flour on the first crust. It's what Bette Hagman recommends be used for sprinkling on the inside of the bag to help keep it from sticking. I sighed, thought a moment, and used corn meal instead. Actually, I think it worked better than the sweet rice flour. I think the idea with sweet rice flour is that it's supposed to stick together better than other GF flours, so it should help the crust stick together. The problem is that rice flour is dry, and so the more of it you use for rolling, the more you need to add more liquid to the dough. The corn meal seemed to be better at keeping the dough from sticking, and it didn't dry out the dough as much. We shall find out today whether it causes any general weirdness in the eating. If not, I may just switch over to cornmeal for piecrust dusting.

And now, I have cornbread, coffeecake, roasted pumpkin seeds, and piecrust cookies to make.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Mad Munchkins

2009-11-25T07:10:00.003-07:00

No actual D&D this week, as our thief is out of town and we kinda need him to finish opening the chest, so we got together and played other games instead. Two of them I had never played before. The other, Othello, was a way to pass the time until the rest of the players arrived. Despite not having played against anything other than a computer for a very long time, I managed to win at Othello. It was a near thing, as I was nearly boxed in, and decided now might be the time to give up a corner in order to salvage something from the situation ... and wound up taking all the corners instead, as I was able to take the opposite penultimate corner slot and stop Fibonacci from getting the corner I had intended to give up.

Anyway, on to the games I hadn't played before. First, the Mad Magazine Game*, which is a Monopoly spoof where the object is to lose all your money. The spaces on the board have instructions like "everyone move one chair to your (left|right)", "switch money with a player", "roll the dice three times and go that many spaces backwards around the board", etc. It's a hoot. John/Allonar (since there's another John who comments here, I figure I ought to specify) wound up winning, due to fortuitous money shifting and landing on a space where he got to lose more money than he currently had.

Then John/Allonar also brought Munchkin**, and we played that. I'd never played it before, though I'd read some descriptions. It's basically a D&D parody. You start out as a classless human. If you draw a class or race card, you can choose to become that, at least until you get cursed out of it. Every time you defeat a monster, you go up a level. If you can't defeat the monster, you can get help from a fellow player ... but watch out, as they will only do so if it benefits them. The first person to reach Level 10 wins. John/Allonar won the first game, despite us valiantly trying to sabotage his last fight with as many curses as we could muster (cooperating to stop someone else from winning seems to be a given), and I squeaked in as winner on the second game. Amusingly, Andrew agreed to help with what seemed like it should be my last fight, expecting to sabotage me at the last minute with a "Drop 2 levels" curse card...except I had the wishing ring and made the curse go away. Something else had happened so I didn't win on that fight, but on my next turn, I was up against a Level 1 something-or-other, and everyone had used up nearly all their curse cards trying to sink other last efforts. Someone had a +3 to play on the monster, making it Level 4, and Abe had a "mate" card, so that put it to Level 8 total ... and I was sitting comfortably at 15 (17 -2 from another curse), including all the item modifiers I had.

Thus a fun time was had by all, but I suspect Allonar and I will be ganged up on the next time we have a non-D&D gaming night. ^!^

*The Mad game is out of print, but there are "collectible" versions for sale for $84 on up at the Amazon link if you really want a copy.

**There are over a dozen varieties of this at Amazon, but, afaik, we were playing the original card game version.

Random Holiday Rambling

2009-11-21T14:37:00.003-07:00

(1) Pouncer had a cold for a few days this week. I can't remember ever seeing a cat with a cold before; it took me a day or so to realize that's what was going on. First I noticed he was drooling a bit, and seemed to be leaving his mouth open more than usual. He also wasn't his usual "First!" self. I noticed that he seemed to have a bit of a runny nose and he was wheezing a bit, and then made the connection to his keeping his mouth open: he was breathing through his mouth because his nose was stuffed up. It lasted 2-3 days, and I just kept an eye on him and made sure it wasn't getting worse. It may have just been good timing, but it started to go away shortly after I shared some roasted chicken with him and the other cats. Probably coincidence, though it would be nice to think I cured him.

(2) I was beginning to think I wouldn't get any turkey this Thanksgiving, but my mom found a free-range Norbest turkey, which specifically said "gluten free," and their web-site indicates that all of their whole, uncooked turkeys are also soy-free. Gluten-free we had covered, but soy free is tougher, since every turkey I looked at had unidentified "natural flavors" in it. Technically "natural flavors" can include stuff made from wheat, but I never had a gluten-reaction to anything labeled that way. I have had several soy reactions. As far as I'm concerned "natural flavors" is equivalent to a skull and crossbones symbol.

(3) Apparently three weeks away from push hands was good for me, as Don and Mark both commented on how much more relaxed I have been the past two Saturdays. It seems backwards until you've tried it/experienced it/felt it, but being relaxed makes your attacks and defenses much more effective. Hmmm... possibly I should experiment with my dice and see if relaxed tosses produce higher rolls than tense tosses. Somehow I suspect that won't be the case, but it doesn't hurt to try. ^!^

(4) We still haven't finished with the chest in D&D, and we won't finish this week since our thief will be out of town. So even though I may start writing a narrative version of it, there won't be much point in posting it until we actually finish with the chest and I can include a conclusion.

Vampiric Pizza Delivery, Seaside Edition

2009-11-19T05:39:00.003-07:00

Very odd dream snippet from last night:

Fibonacci had ordered pizza, and was trying to offer me some. I asked if it was gluten-free, and it wasn't, so I told him he'd have to eat the whole thing himself. Despite the pizza already being there, there was a knock at the door, and it was a group of people there to deliver the pizza (counterwise pizza delivery, maybe?). There were four of them, and they started in on an odd sort of street theatre performance. Eventually I realized they were vampires, because they could move in ways that no human could. Also, there was some sort of "vampire look" in their eyes. They weren't threatening us; just dancing/performing for their tip, I think.

*flicker*

There are footsteps in the sand at the bottom of a shallow sea, and apparently human bones litter the floor, following the footsteps. A master vampire in black with a cape tenderly picks up the skull and sends some sort of magic into it. The bones partially reassemble, and the flesh/clothing reforms on those bones, revealing the face of a woman. The magic is not enough to bring her back; the light goes out of her eyes and the vampire screams his frustration into the sea.

[End Dream]

It was a fairly odd and eclectic mix of elements. I was not reading about vampires any time yesterday, though I did make some GF English muffin pizzas on Tuesday. *shrugs*

A Thought on Conspiracy Theories

2009-11-15T12:07:00.002-07:00

But the point is clear. The same people that peddle this crap are the ones who also assure us that no government program would work because it's so incompetent. Maybe they should just hire one of the many conspiracy groups who seem to be able to pull off extremely subtle and complex schemes without any trouble -- and even without any of us knowing about it (except for all the people who seem to be in on the secret and are blabbing it all over the internet).
~Revere at Effect Measure

My astrophysics professor once commented that the problem with supposed government cover-up of aliens was, well, that the same government was unable to cover up much more mundane scandals. The source article links to a longer article making much the same point. Still, there may be a related lesson to consider: if people put as much energy into finding solutions to real problems as they do into making up imaginary explanations for past failures, we might have a better functioning world, with fewer such failures to encourage ridiculous explanation. Or we might not, but it's an interesting idea all the same.

Driving Lessons

2009-11-14T15:04:00.003-07:00

I'd missed Saturday taiji three weeks in a row, twice due to my bout of flu (though the first time I didn't realize that's what it was) and once because Don had to have his knee cut open again. So, despite the inch and a half of snow and my lack of snow tires, I drove up there today.

I think these were the worst roads I'd ever driven on without snow tires. I hadn't really appreciated how much of a difference they make. I was cut down to 35 mph or so in some places, and never really made it above 55 mph. I tried once, and immediately slowed down again. It was an interesting drive. Also strangely peaceful and relaxing, except when idiots zoomed around me. I like the challenge of driving on slick roads. Why? I have no idea.

Still, I do plan on getting my snow tires put on this week if at all possible. Just because I like the challenge doesn't mean I don't want to be careful about it. ^!^ And the roads coming back were much better. Not quite bone dry, but pretty close.

As for Don's knee, apparently there was another, smaller tear in a tendon. The doctor wasn't sure how long it had been there, but I can only assume that it started to bother him during the time I was unable to come. His best guess was that it happened when his leg was dropped shortly after the first operation, as there had been a great deal of pain then. He's back in the wheelchair, but more cheerful than I expected ... that or he's good at putting on a cheerful front (based on prior experience, I expect it's the latter). It was more or less a seminar class, with Don critiquing here and there.

Among the Shaman

2009-11-13T22:08:00.004-07:00

I seem to have started a trend. With John's permission, I'm posting his IC explanation of his character's multiclassing.

Among the Shaman

Allonar stumbled forward in a cold sweat. The dream had come again. While he respected, feared, and served the Raven Queen, he was still living, and his dreamy jaunts into the world of the goddess of Death left him shivering; what with he was not quite certain. The dreams had become more constant, more vivid every time he channeled the divine power of the Raven Queen.

The dreams themselves weren't what disturbed him most. The existence of death was a natural process, one he had come to accept as merely another step in the life of a Deva. It was what was in the land of the dead. Not all of the things that are dead are good, and far fewer of them are content with their circumstances. He could feel himself slipping. Every hour as he had moved through the labrynth, and even now as climbed the staircase to meet the chaotic wizard, memories flooded to his mind of his life before. Like a series of torches glimmering in the distance, and as seemingly eternal as the steps he now climbed, spiralling upward, so were the lives he had lived, tracing their way dimly back to his time as an eternal being. But they were just that: dim. The thousands of years of good and kindly lives were darkened by the bright shine of memories that were his most recent life. The life purged from the brink of corruption.

He had been invested in the dead then, too. His desire for power had seduced his heart into making pacts with things far removed from the good he was to be seeking. The flame of love and kindness he had known and sought for generations had grown colder and colder still, until only a faint glimmer of truth kept him from the ultimate fall his kind had known. Like a drug, the control of the dead had made him become something far closer to the evil he had fought so hard remove than ever before: a rakshaza. Had it not been for the foresight of a fellow Deva -who saw what he was about to become and pierced his darkened heart to release the glimmer of light it still contained- his rebirth would have been an event of sorrow and pain for the world, rather than the joy and happiness he had brought once again.

But the pull was growing stronger. The door into his mind that was opened by his divine service to the Queen had become a battering ram into his mind, a hole in which evil could slip in and exercise itself in thoughts of bloodshed: not only of the evil, but of the wild, the wierd...perhaps even... the innocent.

He could not allow these thoughts to continue. His hunger for dark powers grew out of his previous life. It was like withdrawals of a drug, he yearned to feel it again, to know the service of good and evil alike, enslaved to do his bidding. He yearned for an earlier life, searched the line of torches and knew there was a hero against darkness in his distant past. But he could not be heard, not for the clammering of his dark life, for the clash of memories that cascaded and called him to be more than a servant of good.

But there must be another way. Why was it that only evil seeped in from the land of the dead. Surely the good rested with the Queen as well. Perhaps it was that the good rested peacefully, uninterested in the lives of the living. But perhaps they could be called. Invited to partake in the sufferings of his troubled mind. Brought back to reteach a Deva in need of truth, of wisdom, of perfection and inspiration.

He would be a servant! NO! A friend. He himself would serve the memory and teachings of the hero who had lived many generations ago. He who was the same being, the same entity that was Allonar himself, but from a purer time, and brighter time.

Allonar called. He had opened the door in his mind, this time travelling willingly into the world that belonged to the Raven Queen. He spoke, first timidly, then powerfully, calling forth the Spirit that both was him, and was not him at the same time. He began to lose hope. To think that perhaps it was not to be possible. Perhaps he should just give in. Lose the fight, allow a stronger being to emerge, to fill the hole he had left in his mind. These thoughts overwhelmed him.

But then a slight glow dispelled the evil that had crept upon him. There before him stood the image of a Deva. Fair of skin, and fairer still of demeanor. But there was power there as well. A heart and mind of such purity, it shamed him to think he had ever considered the chaotic path. Together they returned to his mind. He had hope. He had brought it with him back to the land of the living.

Allonar realized what he had become. They called them Spirit Talkers. Creatures so in-tune with the dead that they are able to physically manifest their presence, and who were able to seek the guidance of beings from the millenias past. Though weak in his abilities still, he was very clearly one of them. He was among the Shaman.

We're Here to Rescue You

2009-11-13T22:00:00.002-07:00

(but who's going to rescue us...?)

Good session last night. Dovra even managed to fail one death-saving throw, but thankfully she had one more healing potion on her that could be poured down her throat.

I closed this as we started to work on opening a chest, because we're not even halfway finished with it, and it seemed like a reasonable place to close off this narrative. The chest started out with 6 dials, but that's been whittled down to 4, largely because it was taking longer than the DM anticipated.

Dovra woke with a start, surprised to realize she'd drifted off again while watching over Allonar. She still had the Orb of Imposition, so the puzzle hadn't been a dream, at least. She found herself reaching compulsively for the Star of Corellon in her pouch. Maybe she needed to get a piece of leather and keep it around her neck. It was strange to think that a deity actually cared about her, or, well, that anyone actually cared about her. Other than some temporary alliances, she'd been on her own for as long as she could remember. She wasn't quite sure what she was doing with this group of heroes. She'd followed them into the cave more out of curiosity than anything else, and now, good or ill, she didn't have any way back. Her hand crept into her pack for the other object that she cared about, but she wasn't ready to pull it out yet. Maybe not ever. She wondered if it was sacred to Corellon as well, if that was why he'd taken an interest in her.

She noticed someone else up and moving around. It was Shenron, and he had removed the cupboard that was blocking the tunnel below the lab. Dovra wondered what had come up out of the tunnel, and what it had done to Phoenix Darksoul, poor Blue Cheese. When he wasn't getting carried away with his experiments, he'd been likable enough. Of course, he'd been getting worse and worse, and then there was that business with the cats... At least making the dwarf photosynthesize might have been useful. Potentially. Maybe. Okay, it was completely silly and pointless, but it had at least been interesting, unlike all the hybrid nonsense. An odd sort of munching emanated up from the tunnel and brought her back to the present. She wondered what hybrids Phoenix had been working on down there. Shenron, at least, seemed determined to find out. Some of the others were starting to wake up as well. Oh, there Heian was. She must have been asleep by the time he made it back into the lab.

"Heian! Shenron didn't eat you!" Dovra called out.

"What?" Heian said, giving her a startled look.

"Well, you know, you were arguing, then Shenron came back, and you didn't, so I thought..." Heian looked at her like she'd gone insane. Maybe Not Evil people didn't generally eat one another. She filed that bit of information away.

"Yeah, er, call of nature and all that." Heian seemed to consider this sufficient explanation and turned back toward the tunnel.

Dovra considered what he'd said. She didn't think he meant that he'd been called into beast form; as far as she knew, he was just an elf. Perhaps he'd needed to get outside the tower and back into the more natural cave, though it seemed strange that he would risk running into the blue dragon for that. It must have been a very strong call indeed. Perhaps this was what he and Shenron had been arguing about. What would Heian do when they were further up inside the tower, with no way back down to the cave? Possibly they would need to start tying him up while he slept ... but that was a concern for later.

Right now, everyone was converging on the trapdoor that led to the tunnel. Dovra wondered who had brought the ladder back in, as she had simply left it by the balcony. Well, she supposed it was time to find out what her former cohort had wrought down there. Or rotted, perhaps. There was a rather unpleasant smell. She was one of the last down the ladder, which was perfectly all right with her. It put her out of the direct line of fire. It also meant that she couldn't see very well, but there seemed to be cells on either side of the hallway as far as she could see. Heian took point and began sneaking down the hall. When he got to the first set of cells, he stopped and motioned for everyone else to stay back. Shenron and Horgta ignored his warning, and the elf seemed exasperated as they came up beside him. Allonar came up behind them and hid his sunstick under his cloak. Dovra crept up as well, just to where she could peek into the cells. The one on the right was empty, but the one on the left had an odd, floating creature that seemed to be all eyes, mouths, and tentacles. The mouths gibbered constantly, though it was mostly unintelligible. Then she heard it say, "Why is a raven like a writing desk?", before dropping back into gibberish. It didn't seem to have noticed them yet.

Dovra's ears pricked up as she recognized Deep Speech coming from two cells down on the left. It had been a long time since she'd been around anyone else that spoke it. She was a bit rusty, but she thought it said, "What is it? What is coming? Is it food? We hope it's food. We're very hungry." Dovra spoke as quietly as she could, "Uh, whatever's in the third cell down is hungry and thinks we might be food." Heian sneaked closer to that cell, and almost made it past, but one foot suddenly caught on a bit of rubble. Now that Dovra thought to look, she could see that there was a lot of rubble at that end of the corridor. Had something broken out of one of the cells down there? It was hard to see from here, and Heian didn't seem happy about whatever was in the cell closest to him.

Dovra let the others move up before she did. There were some oddly dark shadows in the cell next to the gibbering thing. Suspiciously dark, in fact, but nothing was moving there. There were also some glowing red runes on the wall between the sets of cells. She examined one, and realized that pushing it would open the cell next to it. There were similar runes next to all the cells. When she could see into the third cell, there was another floating thing. Only one mouth this time, but with lots and lots of eyestalks, most of them pointed at Heian right now. Dovra decided she might as well try talking to it since it knew they were there. "Uh, hello? What happened that put you in this place?" At least, she hoped that was what she said. Several of the eyestalks rotated to point at her.

"There was this little runt of a wizard," it said.

Hmmm, so this wasn't one of Phoenix's constructions. It didn't really fit his style, but neither did keeping this thing in a cage. "Ummm... is there any way we can, er, help you?"

The thing seemed to grin at her. "Yesss... you can let usss out ssso we can eat you and your frrriends."

"Er, no. I can't do that."

"Yesss you can. Jussst pushh the niiice red runessss."

Dovra sighed. Talking to it wasn't going to help. The creatures would probably just get worse as they went further down the corridor. They might as well turn back—

"Hello? Is—is somebody out there?" A female voice came out of the fifth cell on the right. It sounded very faint, and very scared. Before Dovra could decide what to do about it, a giant spider emerged from the shadows in the cell between the two floating eye things and spit acid at her and Allonar. It burned, and seemed to keep burning. Dovra ran towards the female voice, more to get away from the spider than for any other reason, and made it past the second thing with all the eyes just before it attacked Horgta. The gibbering thing hadn't seemed to like light, so maybe casting light on this thing would make it go hide. She tried it. It responded by attacking her, and the world went black.

Sometime later, a surge of healing rushed through her, and she looked up at Shenron's scaly face. A moment later the acid burned through her again and she lost consciousness again. She woke up to the same awful taste as with the crossbows. Surely Phoenix could have made his potions taste, if not pleasant, at least not nightmarish. Then again, she remembered his adventures in cooking, and one memorable night when he'd had to coax the dinner out from behind a bookshelf after it was cooked. She hadn't eaten much that night. For now, though, they seemed to have gotten the girl out of her cell, and had her most of the way down the hall. This seemed like a good time to make an Expeditious Retreat. The world blurred around her as she shifted past the cells at double speed. When she stopped, she noticed Horgta was carrying a green cloak. Maybe it belonged to the girl. Only, the girl had Heian's cloak wrapped around her. No, wait. Dovra had seen the green cloak before. The day she'd met up with this odd band of heroes, the one the trolls had grabbed had been wearing that cloak. What had his name been? Feta? No, Theta. John Theta. He was what had brought the heroes here.

She waited for the rest of the group to make it back to the ladder. The gibbering thing gibbered at them, and seemed to daze several of her companions, but they were headed out anyway. As they wrapped the girl to carry her up the ladder, Dovra noticed that her skin seemed to be covered in some sort of slime, like a frog's. She sighed. Phoenix again. What had happened to the fun projects that didn't really hurt anyone? Dovra very much doubted the girl had wanted to become part frog. They'd gotten the dwarf's permission before trying to make him photosynthesize, though he might not have really understood what he was in for. Maybe Dovra just hadn't been any good at being evil. She didn't seem to be much better at being Not Evil, however, as she'd been completely useless down in that tunnel. Everyone had made it out in one piece, but no thanks to her. She'd been a complete and utter liability.

They rested for a while after returning to the relative safety of the lab. The girl didn't say much, and Dovra couldn't think of anything useful to say to her. What could she say? "Sorry for helping Phoenix work out how to give mammals amphibious skin?" "Look, it made sense to have dogs that could work in a marine environment, sorry he decided to try it on you?" No, better not to say anything. The others seemed to be uncomfortable around her as well; at least, no one went over to try and talk to her. Dovra wondered why the girl couldn't move on her own. There was nothing obviously wrong with her legs, and the amphibious skin procedure shouldn't have affected her legs. What else had Phoenix done to her? Chances were that the girl didn't even know.

Just as Dovra was trying to work up the nerve to talk to her, Allonar's voice echoed out from inside a cabinet. It was the same cabinet Dovra had slept in before they'd gone down into the tunnel. "Ah-ha! I thought there was something peculiar about that panel." Dovra went over to see what he'd found. Behind a panel in the cabinet there was a chest with ~~six~~ four dials on the front of it. "I remember that chest," Dovra said. "Blue Cheese used to put his lemonade on it in the summer to keep it cold." There was some sort of cold spell on it, but that was all she really knew about it. She'd never seen Phoenix open it.

"There also appears to be some equipment behind the chest," Allonar said. Horgta and Shenron went to go look at it.

"These belong to our friend, John Theta," Shenron said. The three who had known him well looked somber, but at least the gear was all intact. Dovra wondered what Phoenix had really wanted with Theta, and how human he would be when, if, they found him.

For now, though, they needed to focus on opening the chest. It wasn't going to be easy. Heian moved towards the chest as if in a trance. "The chest is going to fight you," Dovra told him after checking it out as thoroughly as she could. "Even if you find the right number, the chest can change the combination while you're working on it. I think I may be able to lock the dials in place, but the chest will probably fight us on that, too." Heian groaned, but still seemed happier than Dovra could ever remember seeing him. "Oh, I think it may also be able to summon monsters." That dampened his spirits a bit more, but Horgta, Shenron and Allonar formed a protective ring behind Dovra and Heian as they settled in to work on the chest.

Shenron interrupted for a moment and commanded the chest to open in the name of Bahamut. Nothing happened. For good measure, Dovra commanded it to open in the name of Corellon, with similar effect. Good. No gods were going to interfere. Comforting as her star might be, Dovra was used to being on her own.

Strange Students

2009-11-10T22:12:00.002-07:00

As part of the correspondence stats course I helped develop over the summer, I get various things to grade. I had one student e-mail me with a long harangue about what she didn't like about the course, and didn't even realize that she'd attached her first nonautomated assignment to the thing. Then she sent the long harangue again the next day. And the next. I stared at it, and decided to ignore it, still not noticing that she'd attached an assignment to this nearly incoherent rant. So...that assignment was late being graded, and my partner in crime, who did most of the actual work developing the course, is going to take over grading the rest of her work. I'm both relieved and annoyed by this development, but, given that I just cringe when I see her name on an e-mail heading, it's probably for the best.

FYI: the assignment was also nearly incoherent, but not incoherent enough that she didn't pass. You could tell that she thought big words were impressive but had no idea how to actually use them. If this were an English class, that would have had more of an impact on her grade. As it was, I docked a point here and there for the more egregious absurdities, and otherwise just hunted for the relevant information.

I have now reached the point of the semester where I'm ready for it to be over. It usually happens late October, but I was a bit too busy being ill to notice it then. One symptom of this is that I'm quite happy to see Christmas displays popping up like weeds in stores.

Obscenities

2009-11-06T14:14:00.005-07:00

tendons break, joints creak
scalpel carves continually
caustic uncontrol

*sigh* Don had to have his knee operated on again. It had been coming along well, though he had complained of a sort of indent where he wondered if a tendon had come loose again. So no taiji tomorrow, and no idea about next week. He still sounded groggy on the phone, but that's rather understandable.

Gargoyles, Walking Crossbows, and a Rat (Oh, my)

2009-11-02T21:44:00.008-07:00

When Dovra hit level 4, I had her take a Divine Channeler multiclass feat. This gives her a healing spell, but requires IC explanation. I was a bit disappointed that the full group wasn't there, but there was one IC witness, and one OOC witness. I'm expanding it a bit from what happened in game, but not by too much.

For a change, I'm trying to write it out in narrative form, and it wound up rather long, so it's below the fold. It is very nearly unedited, so think of it as a "stream of consciousness first draft." A few OOC notes: Abe/Shenron was late, and Heian/Philip didn't make it at all.

After being pulled into the death snail's repulsively attractive aura, Dovra felt sickened, disgusted, and even angry. She kept wiping at her arms, trying to remove the feel of contamination from them. She followed the group as they went into what was left of poor Blue Cheese's lab, and managed to confine herself to muttered grumblings as they searched it. She knelt in the wreckage for a while as one by one her newfound allies departed. Only Horgta remained, and she could take it no longer. "That was the most disgusting thing I've ever felt. That, that thing had no purpose but death. Do you realize that I've killed more hings since becoming Not Evil than I ever did when I was actually evil? Do you? Look at all this." She gestured to the mess of the lab, and started picking up items at random, not really looking at them. "See this? It's to make it easier to kill something. And this?! And this!?! All for killing! The only thing in this place not designed for killing are those blasted healing potions over there!"

She continued ransacking the already ransacked lab, while Horgta the half-orc just stared at her. The more damage she did, the more agitated she became. "This, and this, and—" Suddenly the object she'd grabbed began glowing, and she stopped and stared up at it. It was a star, silver and with eight points. She recognized it as Corellon's symbol, and the light spread down from the star and through her body. She could no longer see the lab, so bright was the light surrounding her. She heard a voice whispering faintly to her. It said, "Heal... Heal...," and she felt a new power grow within her, a power of mercy that would allow her to do more than just kill in the midst of battle, but would also allow her to provide aid and comfort.

The glow faded, but the calm sense of peace remained. Dovra's hand closed on the star and she tucked it carefully into her belt pouch. She noticed Horgta still staring at her. "Anyway, shall we keep searching the lab, see if there's anything else useful here?" Horgta gave her a funny half-smile and slowly backed away from her, keeping a close eye on her as if he thought she might be dangerous. Dovra was puzzled by this, but before she could think to ask, she heard a muffled cry for help. "Did you hear that? It sounds like someone's in trouble. Where's the rest of the group?"

Horgta stared at her for a moment before deciding he believed her. He rushed out of the lab. With the door open, Dovra could see Shenron and Heian off in one corner, arguing. Where was Allonar? He'd tried one of the wizard's atheletics potions and gone bounding up on one of the balconies. The stairs had burned when the fire snail got too close, but hadn't there been a ladder in the lab? Yes. She grabbed it and got to the wall just as Horgta pulled himself up the hard way.

"You could have waited for the ladder," Dovra said, trying to be helpful.

Horgta stared down at her from his perch on the wall. "You mean you're not crazy? I thought you were crazy with all the yelling and glowing."

Dovra gave him a confused look but decided to shrug it off. She climbed up the ladder and they both turned to the right, to the narrow corridor that led off the balcony. There was a small room at the other end. Dovra caught a whiff of a very expensive poison gas before she saw Allonar standing dazedly next to a large key on the floor; he was surrounded by what appeared to be living stone gargoyles. Around the room there were also things that looked like walking crossbows. He croaked out a warning about the gas before becoming stunned. The gargoyle creatures took the key and placed it on a square further back where all eight of the could surround it. The crossbow-creatures seemed to lose interest once the key was guarded, but there was still the gas in the room.

Rope. Both Dovra and Horgta had rope. They tossed one end towards Allonar and Dovra summoned her mage hand to tie it around him well enough that they could drag him back. He came to after a few minutes. For once, it was a relief to see his oddly glowing eyes. Allonar explained that he'd thought he could just jump in, grab the key, and jump back out—he suspected the athletics potion might have affected his judgment in this matter—but the gargoyles had come to life the instant he touched the key, and then the crossbow-creatures had begun emitting the poisonous gas. "Even worse, when you're dazed, those gargoyle creatures are no longer visible to you. But I think we need to acquire that key. It may open the door on the other balcony."

Dovra was dubious, and pointed out that no one had slept since dealing with the dragons. The creatures weren't doing anything now that they had the key again, and Blue Cheese's lab was probably safe enough. They needed a long rest. "No, no. We need to get that key first." Dovra muttered to herself, but the gas had cleared enough that she could get close enough to the key for the mage hand to tie a rope on it. She held her breath as it began tying knots, but the gargoyles didn't react. The other end of the rope was around her waist, so as soon as the key was tied securely, she ran for all she was worth, dragging the key behind her, and drawing the rope in as she ran. Allonar untied the key and ran off with it while the gargoyles and crossbows started following. He and Horgta made it out of the narrow hallway relatively intact, but Dovra was hit multiple times by the crossbows and fell unconscious.

She felt something being poured down her throat. It tasted horrible, but she could feel her strength returning. She could sit up. Someone, presumably Horgta since he was next to her, had pulled her out of the way. The creatures didn't seem interested in them so long as they stayed out of the way. They only cared about the key. Across the way, they could see Allonar on the other balcony. From the looks of things, he must have jumped the gap. He was almost to the door, but he suddenly stopped. "There's no keyhole!" He turned abruptly and ran the other way, jumping down from that balcony to the main floor before disappearing into the wizard's lab.

Dovra didn't remember anything with a keyhole in there, either, but she was a bit too distracted to worry about it just now. The walking crossbows were shuffling past her and toward where the stairs used to be. Where were the gargoyles? She saw Horgta fighting something that she couldn't see down on the main floor. Wonderful. Well, she could see the crossbows at least. She let loose a shock sphere at the two still on the balcony. They turned and fired back at her. One of them hit, and she groaned. She still wasn't feeling well from their last attack, but they kept moving forward. There was a crunch as they moved off the balcony and hit the floor, but it wasn't enough to slow them down much.

She stayed on the balcony and kept lobbing spells at the crossbows. For a short while, her mind cleared and she could see the gargoyles again. She cast light on the nearest one. Almost immediately it targeted her with some sort of spell, and she could no longer see them, but she could see the glow given off by the one she'd lit up. She kept targeting the crossbows. When her mind cleared again, she saw that the gargoyles were all headed into Blue Cheese's lab. They had to be trying to get the key back. She was no match for them, especially not when she couldn't see them, so she held back, and hoped Allonar had the sense to give up the key if cornered.

It seemed to take forever to take out all the walking crossbows. Horgta fought in and amongst them, while Dovra provided covering magical fire. Just before they finished them off, Allonar burst out of the lab and began desperately trying to hold the door shut. Well, he was alive, at least. Where in the blazes were Shenron and Heian? Shenron suddenly materialized from the staircase that led back down to the caves and the labyrinth, but there was still no sign of the rogue. Maybe Shenron had eaten him. It seemed unlikely, but Dovra wasn't entirely sure how trustworthy dragonborn were about such things. He'd eaten all that gold, after all.

With Shenron back in the game, it didn't take long to finish off the crossbows. Almost at the same moment, the gargoyles pushed their way past Allonar's hold on the door and burst back onto the main floor. One of them now had the key. From the looks of things, they were trying to get it back to the room it had started in. Dovra climbed down to the main floor, but she was quickly hit by another dazing blast that hid the gargoyles from her. Thankfully, Shenron seemed to be immune, and other allies were missed, so they could tell her where to direct her attacks. She didn't need to aim her thunderwave so much as point it in the right direction. Presumably they were whittling down the ranks of the gargoyles. At least, the ones who could see them were still fighting, and seemed to change targets regularly. Finally the dazing wore off and she could see them again.

Allonar was busy pursuing the gargoyle with the key. When maybe half the gargoyles were gone, he managed to grab the key and run for the door again. This time he tried pointing the key at the door, and apparently there was a keyhole now, since he inserted the key and turned. Dovra looked towards him as he froze in place, threw the key in, and slammed the door shut again. "Rather large rat in there!" he called out. Judging by the look on his face, it must have been even bigger than the dire rats they'd run into in the labyrinth. A loud thump at the door sounded more like a bear than a rat.

More fighting. The gargoyles knew the key was behind the door, and they fought their way to it, and opened it. The rat ran past them and attacked the first thing that got in its way. It was the size of a small bear. Dovra muttered to herself. She'd told them to take a rest before playing with the gargoyles and crossbows, and now they were all exhausted, and here was a bloody great rodent to top it all off. It seemed like only a moment later that she realized there was only one gargoyle still moving. It was badly hurt, but it still had the key. Dovra didn't pay much attention to who was fighting what, but when that gargoyle was dead, she moved close enough for her mage hand to come in and grab the key. Chances were good that Blue Cheese wouldn't have made a key that large that did nothing more than open a door. She'd have to take a closer look at it after the battle.

The only enemy still moving was now the rat. Everyone but Shenron wanted to barricade themselves in and let it wear itself out, but Shenron wouldn't listen to anyone, and kept fighting. Dovra sighed. She could throw phantom bolts at it from a distance without putting herself at any risk. Shenron and Allonar had it trapped on the balcony with the door, after all. Still, her heart wasn't really in it and most of her attacks missed. Finally she got fed up and scored a critical hit against it. It was only a tiny drop in the bucket, but it cheered her up a bit. When the rat was finally dead, she glared at the idiot men around her and stalked back into the lab. She was tempted to barricade the door against them, but decided against it. She did barricade the trap door with one of the mostly intact cupboards before climbing into a different cupboard and drifting off into a much-needed sleep.

Someone tapped on the cupboard just as she was starting to wake up. It was Shenron. "Er, are you any good with healing? Allonar got bitten by that rat thing and his filth fever's getting worse." Dovra sighed and sat up with Allonar while the fever raged through him. It took two tries, but she managed to pull him back out of it. To pass the time, she played with an orb puzzle that Blue Cheese had laying around, only puzzle wasn't the right word. It gave mostly useless information and then she had to make a guess. She managed to pick out one orb correctly, but the other three were destroyed. Still, an Orb of Ultimate Imposition was a nice find. She looked around and realized Heian was still missing. Maybe Shenron really did eat him.

Swept Under the Rug

2009-10-31T08:07:00.003-06:00

When I took the course on Existentialism, we read some Heidegger. If you can slog through the word-salad of his book, there seem to be interesting and even useful ideas in it. Even before we started in on it, though, Dr. Levenson warned us about Heidegger's history, and commented that generally when Heidegger was mentioned in public forums, the conversation tended to degenerate and focus solely on what he called "The Catastrophe," rather than on Heidegger's actual ideas. The Catastrophe was that Heidegger, whose philosophy seemed to offer a broad and nuanced view of humanity, fell in with the Nazis.

For a while, the tendency was simply to claim that, well, he had no choice. He was an intellectual in a Nazi-run country, so of course he had to appear to conform to the mode. Sometime in the '70's, that view was overthrown by some of Heidegger's own writing and speeches coming to light. These were not merely spouting the party line, but willfully and cheerfully advocating it. Complicating the picture, Heidegger apparently engaged in a long, torrid affair with a Jewish woman, who ardently defended him.

Dr. Levenson, himself a Jewish rabbi, said that the thing that troubled him most was that Heidegger never recanted any of his pro-Nazi propaganda. He also claimed that Heidegger was against the extermination camps. So Levenson tried to take what he saw as the good in Heidegger's philosophy, and mention, but otherwise ignore, the fascist tendencies. I have a few problems with this. First, somewhere I ran across a claim that Heidegger's primary work (Being and Time) was translated into Japanese and used to justify the extant fascist regime. Second, the English translation is, as I said above, mostly word salad. If you think you find a thread of an idea, you can then look for it in the rest of the salad and probably find similar enough threads that you think you're justified in thinking that thread was intentional. I don't know if the original German is any better, though Dr. Pelletti claims that it's just as bad, but the English translation... I saw some of the parts with threads that seemed to suggest a near-humanist philosophy. I also saw some that could much more easily be taken as fascist.

I don't feel like beating my head against the wall of his text to go dig up examples, but I suspect that the truth of the matter is that the apparent humanist strains were accidental, artifacts of the difficulty of translation and Heidegger's own peculiar use of language, and the fascist strains expressed Heidegger's actual ideas. I could be wrong. Possibly he himself was confused, and reasoned to something more humanist, but simply couldn't get past his own fascist tendencies. The result is a confusing, beguiling text, with hints of greatness obscured by darkness.

There's a great deal of irony to think that a fascist helped shape, and even begin, a philosophical movement that is very much humanity-based. What brought all this to mind this morning was an article discussing new revelations about Heidegger and his Jewish mistress. Some of its claims directly contradict Levenson's. I don't have the source-material to know which is the true account, but I suspect Levenson is determined to give Heidegger the benefit of the doubt, due to the positive threads he sees in his work, while others without that axe to grind are likely to be more objective. HT: Evolving Thoughts

Dream

2009-10-30T09:27:00.003-06:00

Bit of an odd dream segment last night. I have no idea why, but I was driving a van, and Fibonacci and Abe (Shenron's OOC counterpart) were passengers. It was late at night, and we were in the parking lot of a veterinarian. I had received a notice that I'd been hired by this place (and even in the dream I was puzzling over (a) the fact that I'm not remotely qualified for such a job and (b) the fact that I couldn't remember applying for a job there), and if I didn't respond quickly, I would lose the job opportunity. The problem was that I was still under contract to teach at ISU, so there was no way I could take the job right then and there.

So I go into the vet's office. It's after midnight, but there's still someone on duty keeping an eye on the place overnight, and there are hundreds and hundreds of games, CD's, and DVD's on shelves lining the walls in the office, presumably to help this caretaker stay awake. That's all I remember about the inside of the place. Fibonacci complained that there was no place there that he could practice his speech for the next day and was very agitated to get some place where he could practice it. I told him that if he was that antsy, he could walk, but that I had to get this job-thing settled right now. I remember a conversation to the effect that he might as well wait, since the walk would take at least as long as getting the job sorted out. Not sure what Abe thought about all this. He mostly seems to have been set dressing.

I have no real idea where any of that dream came from. The van might be Andrew/Horgta's van, and the shelves of DVD's reminds me of the one time I was at an astronomical observatory on nightwatch (might have been interesting, except the equipment was cantankerous and the head researcher swore at it nearly continuously), but the rest? No real clue.

Ain't It the Truth

2009-10-30T06:33:00.003-06:00

Okay, they don't always get their statistics straight, but they're more than willing to take another look at something they've previously believed was settled, and that makes all the difference.

Better, Mostly

2009-10-29T06:09:00.004-06:00

I seem to be 90% over whatever I had/have. My mom is still feeling pretty lousy, though. She's got the sinus symptoms on top of everything else. A few odd things that I've noticed. With most illnesses, when my blood sugar drops below some threshold, I suddenly feel 10 times worse. This one started off that way, but since Tuesday, it's been the opposite. If my blood sugar rises too quickly (say from drinking something sugary, like juice), I become light-headed. I didn't realize that was what was happening on Tuesday, or I might have had a more pleasant day. Yesterday, I had some juice and shortly after that felt dizzy. Later I started on another serving of juice, but felt the same thing start, and stopped before I'd had more than a sip. So...no juice, or massively sugary snacks, until this thing is well and truly gone.

Caffeine helps, but I know better than to subject myself to large doses of caffeine too often. If I get too much, when it wears off it triggers a much worse case of dizziness than anything I've had from the flu. Think seasickness, where it feels like the floor is moving, but on dry land. I try to limit things containing large quantities of caffeine to once or twice a week because of that.

I did finally develop a very mild fever, but it was so mild that I don't know if it even counts. This was certainly not the worst illness I've ever had, but I may have just been lucky. And the more I think about it, the more I think it actually hit last Wednesday, not Saturday. Wednesday my head was feeling odd and somewhat painful, to the point that I debated not going to my philosophy classes after I was done teaching. I did go, and made it through them. Thursday I felt somewhat better, Friday somewhat worse again, then Saturday I felt like death warmed over. Lacking a fever, I assumed it was allergies...until I talked to my mom Monday and found out her diagnosis.

So the progression for me looked like:
(1) Sudden sharp back pain (about a week before the rest hit)
(2) Oddness in the head with headache.
(3) Fatigue, lethargy (felt fine so long as I didn't move much)
(4) Very mild fever
(5) Milder fatigue, occasional head twinges
(6) Subsidence

I have no idea if that's typical, though I have read that swine flu does not consistently produce the high fevers seen with most cases of flu. On the plus side, I've just caught and gotten over the worst disease known to be going around this year, so I should be scot-free the rest of the year. Hopefully. ^!^

Caught

2009-10-26T21:41:00.003-06:00

It's probable that I have H1N1/Swine flu. My mom went to see a doctor today, and the doctor told her she had it. My symptoms are very similar, but milder. No lab test, so I'm still somewhat reserved about the diagnosis, but all in all it seems quite likely to be correct. My mom's case first manifested as sudden back pain. She thought her back was just out of whack, but neither a chiropractor nor some pain meds helped very much. Apparently this was the "muscle ache" phase of the illness kicking in, and the rest hit her about a week later. Mine started similarly. Week before last, I got a sudden twinge in my back while giving a lecture. No obvious trigger, and, by concentrating on relaxing the muscles in my back, I was able to make 90% of the pain go away. That was the extent of the muscle ache portion for me, and I didn't think any more about it until I heard my mom's diagnosis tonight. Other than that, I've had fatigue, headache, and very mild nasal symptoms. The headache is gone now, thankfully, and the fatigue is subsiding.

Note that the new vaccine was not available here until after my mom and I started exhibiting symptoms, so there wasn't much we could do. I'm very glad that I stayed home on Saturday and hence avoided exposing Don to it. I actually thought it was just allergies, then, but I was unusually tired for allergies. At any rate... neither my mom nor I are getting any of the major complications thusfar. Hopefully that continues to hold true.

Oh, one other item of interest. I have not had a fever from this. If anything, my body temperature has been lower. No clue what that might actually mean.

Forging Ahead

2009-10-24T19:10:00.004-06:00

Part of the reason I haven't been posting much here lately is that I've been working on maps for my eventual D&D campaign. Most of them would give plot points away if I posted them, but this one shouldn't. The players already know that the next campaign will be in a small town of some sort, and I assume most of them will want to look for weapons, etc, on which to spend their gold, so today I worked up a blacksmith's shop. I've been stealing shamelessly from tiles posted online, btw. In fact... everything but the grey anvil, the swinging door, and the weapon tables at the side of the room was taken from dungeon tiles I found online. The side weapon tables are from the Adventurer's Vault, the grey anvil was from a page on blacksmithing, and the swinging door was a shape built-in to Printmaster. If you look closely, you'll notice it's a curvy arrow, but I thought it worked well as a showy metal door. I did not post the full-size version of this, mainly because I didn't want to worry about loading time, but you can see something close to full size if you click on the image.

Elemental Escargot

2009-10-23T06:26:00.005-06:00

On the way up the stairs to the tower, Shenron disappeared*. IC, we had no idea what had happened to him, though the speculation was that he had probably been teleported somewhere by the wizard. The rest of us made it up the stairs and into a room with a magic symbol in the center flanked by two staircases up to higher levels. The symbol was glowing, and an arcana check told us that it was connected to the four elements. Allonar was being extra cautious, and planning to climb over railings to avoid the symbol. Horgta was impatient and just pushed him into the symbol (OOC explanation: "Shenron isn't here, so someone has to act rashly"). This summoned four elemental snails: red for fire, blue for water, white for air and green for earth. They didn't do that much damage, partly because Allonar multiclassed as a shaman when he leveled up and his spirit-guide stayed in close to draw fire, but they were very difficult to hit. Also, they left slime trails which we couldn't cross without taking damage, and that they could suck back in and regain hit points if necessary.

While this fight was going on, Heian was trying to pick the lock on a door leading out of this room to... somewhere. After his first successful pick, his next attempt resulted in a lightning attack from the door, so Dovra went over to help with the Arcana aspect of the lock. I can't remember if it took 3 and 3 or 2 and 2 thievery/arcana attempts at it to get it open, but we did get it open, and found Phoenix Darksoul/Blue Cheese's private room, complete with alchemical kitchen. He was not there, and from the looks of things, leaving wasn't his idea. The room was a shredded mess: papers and broken glass everywhere, along with an icky brown substance trailing across most of the room. There was a trap door at one corner from which disturbing beastly noises emanated. As there wasn't anything immediately useful to the fight, Heian and I left the mess and headed back to work on the snails.

We finally took all of the elemental snails out, and then the bodies were drawn back into the circle and reconstituted into a Death Snail. This thing has an aura that makes you want to stay close to it, and does an attack on anything not close to it to make you want to get closer. Luckily, Allonar has a rather powerful radiant attack, and it was vulnerable to radiant damage.

Dovra, muttering to herself about the death-snail-aura, went back to the lab to search it. There were quite a few goodies, and some puzzles that we'll have to look at next week. She also leveled up during the fight, and the setup couldn't have been better. I'm having her multi-class as a cleric to get a heal-spell, and I needed an IC reason for her to do so, as it doesn't obviously fit with her established character. I'd already planned for her to have a fit about all the killing, and how she's killed more things since becoming Not Evil than ever she did when she was Evil, but the death-snail-aura was the perfect thing for sending her over the edge in this direction. More on that after it plays out in-game.

*Oops. Forgot to add in this sidenote. Shenron's OOC counterpart had a conflict, so he went on his own private adventure earlier in the day. Apparently he ran into four copies of himself (two of which eventually turned evil), several dinosaurs, and enough gold to make himself sick. Literally. He completely filled the bag of holding, his backpack, and his stomach with gold. It was both amusing and unpleasant when he showed up with gold leaking out of his backpack and, well, himself. On the plus side, he did share. I'm sure Dovra was fastidious enough to avoid the predigested bits. Even after paying Allonar back for his share in her cloak, she's got 1000 gp.

Of Dragons and Ants

2009-10-15T22:35:00.004-06:00

A much more productive night tonight. We got out of the labyrinth, intending to take another long rest before confronting the blue dragon. This time we holed up in the secret room we found there and got through the long rest uneventfully. As it turned out, the blue dragon had recruited some rock monsters (not sure if that's the technical name or not; they can generate rocks and fling them, creating difficult terrain) and used them to dig its way out of its cave, and some goblin hexers to try and reverse the portal that had taken us to the cave in the first place.

So, we wake up from the long rest, poke our heads out, and discover the blue dragon, four hexers, four warrior bodyguards, and something like six rock monsters are now just outside the secret room. We send our thief to sneak around, and he sneaks the opposite way and finds Shenron's bag of holding (minus the gold and a mouse familiar that Shenron was very attached to), which negates most of the reason for confronting the dragon in the first place. Meanwhile, the hexers succeed in switching the portal, and we discover that the burrowing has collapsed the tunnel that led to the other three dragons, so we go back into the labyrinth to get back to that cave and switch portals with them. They had the "out" portal, and we traded them so that they now have the "in" portal, and can use it to get out if we open up our end of it. We're only likely to do this if we think we need them in the wizard's tower, as we're not entirely sure we trust them. Actually, no. We're entirely sure we don't trust them.

Anyway, by the time we get back through the labyrinth to where the blue dragon had been, all the rock monsters are gone, the dragon is asleep on the portal, and there's one hexer keeping watch. Shenron is still out for blood, and we have a bit of an advantage with the dragon asleep, so we, tentatively, try to attack. Dovra's sleep spell does not hit, so there's not much chance. The sentry rolls a natural twenty for perception when our avenger tries to stealth past and deliver a coup de gras. At that point, everyone but Shenron is ready to give up and head through the door to the tower, which is now open. Finally he gives in and comes with us, and, conveniently, that happens just as it's time to quit for the night anyway.

So next week, we get to find out what's in this mysterious Wizard's Tower. Meanwhile, I need to get my city map finished enough, and get enough random encounters set up, that the group can get started there. The city is called Ridol (ri-DAHL). I'm thinking "The Riddle of Ridol" would be a good name for the campaign. ^;^ Hmmm... I also need to work out the details that will lead to the final location. There are still a few snags in it.

Oh, one encounter involved giant ants, and wasn't otherwise interesting enough to describe, but they made for a good title.

Cats, Ladders, and Heights

2009-10-15T22:35:00.000-06:00

I had to rescue Jilly from the roof of the garage this morning. I'm not entirely sure how she got up there, but when I went out to get the cats in, there she was. My best guess is that she climbed up the neighbor's fence and jumped from there. She was meowing plaintively, like she didn't know how to get down, so I went into the garage and got the ladder. I don't like ladders, but I can use them so long as I feel stable enough on them. I got her down, found Princess hiding between the garage and the fence, and took off for work with the wrong set of keys. Thankfully, the secretaries get here before 8:00 am and have keys.

My first real indication that I have a minor problem with heights came when I was seven or eight and at my grandma and grandad's house in Akron, Colorado. There was something we had to climb up onto the garage for, and I got nominated because I was the smallest and lightest. I hated it. Give me handholds and rocks and ledges, and I'm perfectly happy. Put me on a ladder and I'm miserable. I think it's the same issue as with the stairs: all the open space makes me feel unstable. On a ledge, I feel more secure because I have the rock-face/building/whatever right next to me.

Interestingly, having the cold and medication nullify the effect for a day seems to have resulted in it mostly abating. Or, it might be more accurate to say that I've found a way to feel stable despite the open air of the staircase, and I think that I would not have done so without that moment of drug-induced clarity. That let me know that it was possible for me not to feel the effects, so I went looking for a way to duplicate the "cure" without the drugs in my system. Essentially, it's a mental image of dropping my root into the structure of the stairs, rather like the sensation I get whilst rooting against a taiji push. I wonder if that would work on the catwalk at the Minidome?

In rock-climbing, we climbed up the catwalk, which runs across the very center of a large stadium. It's probably a 100-150 foot drop. Climbing up the catwalk was much harder for me than rappelling down from it. Okay, the first time I said something like, "I'm a little bit terrified here," to the person who was helping me secure my harness, but, seriously, the rappel down was fun. The climb up...not so much. Incidentally, part of the reason I took rock-climbing was to work on my fear of heights.

Sleeping in a Depot

2009-10-10T06:46:00.003-06:00

Our party needed a long rest last night. Since we were still in the labyrinth, we decided to take the long rest in the labyrinth. Turns out, this isn't a good idea. We've modified the official rules a bit, in that we take 9 hours, with watches in 3 hour shifts, and the person with the middle watch is still considered to have gotten sufficient rest. Which would be all fine and good, except that we kept having creatures wander in while we were sleeping. On the plus side, Dovra leveled up and is halfway to leveling up again. On the minus side, the entire evening was spent alternating between trying to sleep and fighting off creatures that wandered in. We didn't even make it to talking to the blue dragon again, let alone to the wizard's tower. Still, we did finally make it all the way through a long rest last night, so next week we can attempt to confront the blue dragon, and hopefully then head for the tower.

I have to say that it is very handy to have a ranged attack that is vs. Will rather than Reflex or AC. Oh, we found out after all this that having all the gems activated increases the probability of encounters in the labyrinth. So it's definitely not a good place to sleep. We don't know this IC, but presumably the four encounters while we were sleeping will convince us not to sleep there again anyway.

Looking at Stairs

2009-10-09T14:18:00.003-06:00

This has me wondering about my reactions to high, unenclosed spaces. The linked article discusses cases where the sight of stairs triggered seizures in some people. Now, it's not the sight of the stairs themselves that triggers my reaction; rather, it's the sense of being unanchored when I'm up high with no support structures in my field of vision. At least, I think that's what's going on.

But it has me wondering. Is vertigo itself a kind of seizure, triggered by a visual cue? Apparently there are cases of epilepsy where the form of the seizure is an intense sensation of vertigo, but that doesn't mean that all vertigo is connected to seizures. The thing that really puzzles me is the way it just disappeared last Friday when I had the cold coming on and was full of cold medication. If it were nothing more than a fear of heights, why would a physical change affect it? Also, I'm much less likely to experience vertigo if I'm up high on a naturally occuring structure, like a rock, or mountainside, or even a cliff face.

Okay, I've been habituating myself to the open staircases, but you expect gradual change from that, not a sudden reversal. It's come back somewhat since then, but not as bad as before. The cold is mostly gone now. I'm sort of wondering if the vertigo will come back full strength when the cold is completely gone.

Hmmm... one other possibility comes to mind. Vertigo can be linked to inner ear problems. Possibly I have these constantly but only notice when I feel unsteady due to external circumstances, and the cold medicine cleared out the inner ears enough that I no longer had problems. I don't know enough to know how plausible that is. *shrugs*

The Five Browns

2009-10-08T22:41:00.002-06:00

There was a concert tonight at ISU, and it's one of the best I've ever gone to. The Five Browns are a family of five siblings, and all were piano prodigies. They started learning at age 3. It's awesome to hear a symphony piece rescored for five pianos. I found a few YouTube clips on them. Be warned, the pianos in the clip are a bit out of tune, but you still get a feel for how good these guys are.

In the Hall of the Mountain King:

I was trying to find them playing Beethoven's Fifth, as well, but if it's there, I'm not seeing it. That one was awesome.

XDM

2009-10-06T21:38:00.004-06:00

Fibonacci loaned me his copy of XDM: Extreme Dungeon Mastery, as it's likely that I'll be DM for the next adventure. "Likely" because another player had asked for it, but he's the one currently out of commission due to Life Circumstances. Back to the book. The story is that the Hickmans had shopped the idea around but couldn't find any publishers who wanted to take it on, then at some point they met up with Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary fame, and he suggested they do a self-publish module. Now, the book isn't bad, but it really could have used some professional editing. Among the more glaring mistakes are spelling errors that any decent word processor should have caught.

The good: In the main, XDM is a fun, light-hearted look at what makes for a good RPG. It's full of random footnotes, most of which are there for humor value, and awesome anecdotes. Mostly, the advice to DM's is helpful, though sometimes presented in such an over-the-top manner that it's hard to figure out what the advice is. The artwork, of course, is entertaining, but that's no surprise considering the artist.

The bad: The merchandising jokes got old fast, so old that it was hard to think of them as anything but advertisements. The sections on atmosphere and random tricks felt like an interruption, and would have been better put in an appendix. Worse, some of the card tricks were so poorly described that it's unlikely anyone without prior experience or an outside source of information could figure them out. They needed to do a novice test: pick someone who's never done any card tricks, give them the instructions, and see if said instructions are actually usable. That the authors came across as ridiculously egotistical makes this all the more glaring (the egoism was, I think, intended to be humorous; I got tired of it). Finally, typos, typos, typos, typos, typos.

The questionable: Is the simplified XD-20 game better than the games that require extensive purchasing of extra manuals? Er... not necessarily. Simpler, yes, and easier for a player to get started on, but it's rather handy to have a world already built to use. Otherwise, the DM has to come up with everything, and that can be a bit of a pain. With a framework in place, it's a lot easier to get things going. In the campaign I'm attempting to build, I'm perfectly happy to be able to just take stuff off the shelf from the D&D books without needing to modify/simplify it. I've got enough work trying to get a believable town constructed without also having to construct the world that contains it. Fine, you can insert any material you like into the XDM system, but if that system is your starting point, you're not going to have any such material to use.

So, overall... worth reading, some useful advice, but annoying in many aspects.

Self Experimentation

2009-10-05T10:41:00.004-06:00

The annoying staircases at the Rendezvous Center on campus have given me a chance to play around with my minor fear of heights. I've figured out the combination that results in vertigo almost every time: looking up while being in a high, unenclosed location. The main staircases there are lined with a sort of mesh that does not block the view much at all. The lack of enclosure is what makes me feel unsteady when I look up towards the ceiling on those stairs. I have no problem looking down.

For comparison, I tried one of the enclosed staircases in the same building. Looking up from the midway platforms there doesn't bother me at all: those staircases are enclosed, so I feel steady. I'm not sure why looking down doesn't bother me on the open staircases, but maybe it's because the solid ground below also provides a sense of stability. I've also played around a bit on the way down the open staircases. There are some lights mounted high on support columns. So long as I'm looking down at them, I'm fine. But, even on the way down, as soon as they are higher than I am, I get that unsteady/vertigo feeling again.

In general, to go up those open staircases, I have to keep my eyes focused down on the surface of the steps below me and avoid looking towards any part of the railing that provides an upwards view. Amusingly, on Friday I had a cold coming on, and wound up climbing up those stairs. I could tell as soon as I stepped on them that something was different. That time, I could look up freely and feel no more vertigo than I do when looking down (not quite zero, but close enough). Between the cold medication and the cold, whatever it is that induces the vertigo wasn't functioning. I have no idea what to make of that, except to note that it's actually a rather nice view when it doesn't make you nearly lose your balance.

The Princess and The Squirrel

2009-10-04T07:54:00.004-06:00

I looked out the window yesterday afternoon to a rather surprising sight. There was a squirrel eating spilled birdseed from the bird feeder, completely unaware that Princess was less than two feet away from him, behind the sack of sunflower seeds. Princess watched the squirrel intently, and I kept expecting her to pounce, but she seemed to be waiting for something. As far as I can tell, she was waiting for the squirrel to notice her and run. So either she wasn't interested in catching the squirrel—she only wanted to chase it—or she doesn't quite get how one actually would go about catching something. I'm really not sure which.

What makes it even funnier is that Dovienya passed about eight feet behind the squirrel, and he turned to keep a close eye on her, completely unaware of the cat much, much closer to him. After about five minutes, he finally noticed Princess, and scurried up the clothesline pole. Then when I went out to get the cats back in, he used the distraction to make a mad dash for the elm tree. Princess scampered after him and up the tree, finally getting her wish to chase him. I don't feel like going to the trouble of putting a caption on it, but if I did, it would be "Run, dammit! I want to chase you!"

Note that the picture was taken through a window and its screen, so it's a wonder it turned out as well as it did. This is after Princess had worked her way out from behind the sack:

Zucchini Bread

2009-10-02T09:03:00.002-06:00

For the first time in a while, I tried making zucchini bread. I'd been having a problem of it not getting done, so I modified the recipe a bit. To convert it to gluten free, I'd been adding an extra egg (adds protein and helps hold it together), but, on the suspicion that there was too much liquid in the mix, I did not do so last night. Instead, I added two teaspoons of dried egg. I also increased the leavening (from 1/4 t baking powder and 1 t soda to 1/2 t baking powder and 2 t soda + 1 t egg replacer) and replaced half the oil with butter. The resulting batter was considerably thicker than the batter I'd gotten in the past, and seemed to bake much better. I was still cautious and only put one inch of batter in the bread pans, but, as it got done with no problems, I think it would be safe to increase that depth next time. Oh, I also increased the baking temperature from 325° F to 375° F. So here's my grandmother's zucchini bread, modified to be gluten free:

Gluten Free Zucchini Bread

3 eggs
1/2 c oil
1/2 c butter (softened)
2 c sugar
2 t vanilla
2 t soda
1/2 t baking powder
1 t egg replacer (or other leavening agent)
1/4 t salt
2 t dried egg whites
2 t xanthan gum
3 c featherlight rice flour mix*
3+ t cinnamon
2 c grated zucchini
1 c chopped pecans or walnuts

Preheat oven to 375° F. Grease pans and dust with rice flour. Put the eggs into a stand mixer and let them beat while you mix soda, baking powder, egg replacer, salt, dried egg whites, xanthan gum and flour together in a separate bowl. Add the oil and butter to the eggs. Add the sugar and vanilla. Slowly add the flour mix to the mixture. Add the cinnamon. Add the zucchini. Add the nuts. Mixture will be very thick. Distribute amongst three 8" by 4" bread pans and bake for 1 hour.

Note: If you make smaller loaves or muffins, you'll need to adjust the cooking time. I only needed 45 minutes last night, since nothing wound up more than an inch deep.

*Featherlight rice flour is one of Bette Hagman's mixtures. I've modified it a bit. Instead of white rice flour, I use brown rice flour. Instead of potato flour, I use rice protein powder. Since a lot of the GF flours are low in protein, I figure adding a bit in, particularly rice protein to a rice mix, is a useful thing to do.

Five Six Signs There's a Paper Shortage in the Department

2009-09-30T09:12:00.006-06:00

I mentioned before that the math department's paper budget is currently barely enough to cover printing tests for classes, let alone anything else. Here are some of the effects. And, yes, I've done all of these.

6. You raid the paper recycling bin for paper only used on one side.
5. You post everything to Moodle so that students can print it out on someone else's paper.
4. You start hoarding all abandoned papers and notebooks in classrooms.
3. You find an envelope on your desk and hoard it for scrap paper.
2. You look at the envelope and are pleased to note that if you unfold it, there is another blank writing surface on the other side.
And finally:

#1. You get junk mail in your mailbox and are ecstatic to see that one side of each page in the junk mail is blank.

On the Way to the Tower

2009-09-29T06:18:00.003-06:00

We did manage to find the blue dragon last night, when we finally had a Door Three show up in Room Three. We had planned to get all four dragons together and possibly get them to help us out against the Wizard, as none of them was too happy about being turned into a guardian statue. Blue, however, freaked as soon as he found out the other three dragons were on the other side of the portal. We didn't have a full out battle with him, though he did stun several of us for a turn. So we all left, and our dragonborn was last (Yeah, he managed to convince us not to kill him. It may have helped that Dovra opened with "So are you evil now?" when he came out of the dragons' lair. I love having a character who has no compunctions about asking questions like that).

However, because he was last, he got robbed, and he was the one with the bag of holding so we've lost a bunch of stuff. There's a plot afoot to go get it back. Dovra's mostly indifferent, as none of her stuff was in the bag of holding. While we were separated in the maze, the other group found a Robe of Scintillation (Level 7 cloth armor, +2 AC) and Dovra agreed to give up a decent portion of later treasure in exchange for getting to keep and use it. She needs the AC bonus, and it does some weirdly neat stuff. Also, I'd realized that she would consider it an insult to her magical abilities to wear mundane armor, so this was about the only way she was going to get armor she was willing to wear. I owe the DM a bit of thanks for planting it there, though it took some doing to convince the finders not to sell it. ^!^

We ended in the middle of an encounter, because one of our folk had to leave at 9:30 pm. Flaming bats don't sound particularly bad, but they do a lot of damage, particularly to a level 2 character. Dovra was unconscious and on fire at one point. The rest of the group convinced Shenron to stabilize her and put the flames out. We need someone else with healing abilities in the group. We had someone else, but he's currently MIA due to Life Circumstances. Anyway, once Dovra was conscious, she got well away from the fire bats and not close to or in line with anyone else (the bats like attacking anyone in a lineup), and then she used Force Orb for the first time. One of the bats was adjacent to two goblins, and the Force Orb makes a secondary attack against all adjacent enemies. It also does more damage than most of the rest of Dovra's arsenal. She finished off one of the goblins and did a decent amount of damage to the bat and the other goblin.

Next time we'll finish that encounter, possibly confront the blue dragon, then it's Off to see the Wizard! The Maniacal Wizard of the Maze! Er, yeah.

Numbers and Habits

2009-09-27T21:50:00.003-06:00

Via Mind Hacks, I came across an article discussing how long it takes to form a habit. In part, it depends on the type of activity, but overall the results are fairly consistent. There's a fairly rapid increase of habitualness at the beginning which then levels off, and the average time to level off is 66 days. After that, the habit is as set as it is ever going to be.

This interests me partly because my practice has now become such an ingrained habit that it would not occur to me not to do it ... unless there were some physical constraint preventing it. I started with the relatively arbitrary figure of 36 days. It's significant in Chinese thought, and, to be honest, I'm not sure why. I know that traditionally the Chinese listed 6 major organs and 6 something else, and multiplying those results in 36, but I have no idea what, exactly it's supposed to mean. I also know that Cheng Man Ch'ing consistently arrived at 36 moves when counting the moves in the form, but that his labeling was not necessarily consistent beyond the figure 36. It was a number, that's all. A very minor habit might be established after only 36 days. I don't think my practice was.

My other benchmark has been 108 days, and that's well into the level part of the habituation curve. I'm not sure it was completely established then, either, but it had come closer. There were still times when I would actively resent that I couldn't just go to bed, that I still had to do the practice. Now when that happens, I'm mainly irritated with myself for not getting it done sooner, not with the practice itself.

As a point of interest, there's a traditional Chinese idea (at least, Don tells me it's traditional and Chinese) of "the practice of 100 days." In essence, you try something out for 100 days and see what you think of it at that point. If it's something you're capable of establishing as a habit, that will most likely be enough according to the research at the link. If by the end of 100 days, it hasn't become a habit, it's likely that it never will. This isn't the rationale given in the traditional idea, but I think maybe there's a connection.

And now I'll stop rambling.

Fishing for Stars

2009-09-27T06:32:00.002-06:00

I liked this poem from Three Quarks Daily well enough to post it here:

The Solitary Angler

One day I woke up
And did not fear the old gods.

I called the number on my fridge
And when the movers arrived

I gave them everything.
On my way out of town

I spat into the wind
And did not linger to see where it landed.

Who can say for sure
If the dream has ended or begun?

A frail dimness rims my craft.
Stars swim up to the surface

Of a bottomless well
And sink back when I take my eye off them.

There is no greater calamity
Than to underestimate the strength of your enemy.

The ancients saw the stars
And called them angels.

They turned everything else into a clock
I say wear a watch if you must.

But don’t count on it.

by Suzanne Buffam

I'm not sure what it is that I like about it. It's not the kind of texture that usually appeals to me, but there's something in the imagery that grabs me. Click below to expand to the full poem.

The Amazing Maze

2009-09-25T06:14:00.002-06:00

I hosted last night's D&D gathering. This meant that I spent most of yesterday getting the main public rooms into presentable shape. Part of me thinks this means I should host more often, as it will induce me to keep the house in better shape. Part of me thinks this means I should avoid it as much as possible. Either way, I got it into better shape than I actually expected to, and had everything ready well before most people showed up.

We found out last night that the door numbering is fixed in every room of the labyrinth, and that when we're also in a numbered room, the door corresponding to that number leads out of the labyrinth. Also, some of the numbered rooms connect directly to one another. The problem is that whether or not there is a door in a particular spot is completely random, so just being in a numbered room doesn't guarantee you can get out. If the door out doesn't show up, you can't. There are also rooms containing gems, and those rooms seem to be hubs. Whichever door you choose after that will lead to the room corresponding to the door's number.

There were seven ways into the labyrinth from the originating cavern. There should be eight, so there's a hidden passage or something somewhere that we still haven't found. We're pretty sure it's door three that's missing, so we've been going back into the labyrinth, trying to get to Room Three, so we can go out Door Three and find out where it actually is. So far, Door Three has not been available any time we've made it into Room Three. We've been in there three times, so it's not particularly unlikely that this would happen, but we are starting to wonder if there's something else going on there.

Oh yes. We now have two dragons who are awake: Green and White. We found out that if the gem next to the dragon has already been touched, then touching the corresponding gem in the maze not only wakes the dragon up, it also transports us directly to the dragon. The white dragon was not as friendly as the green, and Horgta rolled poorly on diplomacy, so White decided he was a spy for the Wizard. Then he asked us if he could eat Horgta. All of us but our dragonborn said "No." Possibly jokingly, our dragonborn said, "Yes." Unfortunately, he has higher diplomacy than the rest of us—why? only his god Bahamut knows—so White decided to go after Horgta. Fortunately for us, the portal was open at our end and Green opened the other end, plus Horgta had higher initiative than White and got out of the way, so White left before he had much of a chance to go after Horgta.

So we're already a bit annoyed with Shenron, our dragonborn cleric, and he goes over to the cavern that now has two fully awake dragons and one still frozen, and offers to serve them. OOC, I'm pretty sure he's just going to gather information. IC, I think we're all rather suspicious and disgusted. However, at that point it was time to quit. Next week, we'll probably go back into the labyrinth and keep trying to find Door Three. Well, all of us but Shenron. He's trapped in with the dragons at the moment, and I don't think any of us are averse to just leaving him there at this point.

Swine Flu Is Here

2009-09-23T20:18:00.002-06:00

By here, I mean, in Pocatello. More specifically, at ISU:

POCATELLO - Idaho State University announced a student has contracted the school's first reported case of the H1N1 Virus, or Swine Flu.

A worker at the Student Health Center said it is a mild to moderate case. The results took about five days to return. Since then, the student has recovered.

The student does not live in university housing. LocalNews8

I can't remember what prompted it, but somehow the topic of being sick came up while I was going over some review material for a class, and one of my students commented that ISU now had a confirmed case of swine flu, so I went looking. Based on the information at Effect Measure, I would consider it worthwhile to get the vaccine when it becomes available, largely because having asthma puts me at greater risk for complications should I contract swine flu. I'm going from memory, so my figures may be off, but about 1% of people who get swine flu have it infect something deep inside the lungs, and at that point there's about a 50% survival rate. If you don't have it get deep inside the lungs, it seems to be no worse than regular seasonal flu.

1000 Days

2009-09-22T21:01:00.003-06:00

I thought I had two more days, but I just checked my calendar. I've had 1000 straight days of practice (taiji, yoga, chanting, meditation) as of today. I wasn't sure I'd make it 10 when I started, let alone 1000. I really think the practice saved my life. It was a minor but useful thing that I could do even in the depths of depression and feel a sense of accomplishment.

There have been times when I did the bare, bare minimum just to check it off as done, but lately I've been expanding the practice. I'm up to 22 minutes of standing meditation now. Cheng Man Ch'ing is supposed to have said that one shouldn't even learn the taiji form until one could make 30 minutes; it strengthens the quads and teaches proper skeletal alignment. I can probably jump up to 24 minutes in the next week or so.

Anyway, this song seems appropriate, though I doubt I'll be around long enough to make it to 1000 years. I suppose it's conceivable, but incredibly unlikely ... unless there really is something to the Taoist elixir of immortality nonsense and I've chosen the correct practice to find said elixir. ^!^

Blazing Chapel

2009-09-21T21:26:00.005-06:00

My mom's church had a fire on Sunday. It was actually the top story in the Idaho State Journal today, though I haven't found nearly as much coverage online. Here's the sequence of events as I've heard it:

(1) Just as the 11:00 am service was getting out, people heard a fire alarm going off.
(2) The majority of the people left.
(3) Marky, Mike and a few of the ushers went looking around to try and figure out what was up with the alarm. Marky is my mom's secretary.
(4) Marky opened the doors to the small chapel and found the fire. Someone called 911.
(5) Mike attempted to use a fire extinguisher on the flames. Here I have conflicting information. My mom told me yesterday that he got it out ... the news report indicates that the fire department got there just in time to keep the fire spreading to the whole building. I'm thinking that my mom misunderstood.
(6) The fire department arrived, got the fire out, and spent the rest of the day trying to clear the smoke out of the building.

Here's one of the online reports:

POCATELLO, Idaho (AP) - Pocatello fire officials say the chapel of the First United Methodist Church in Pocatello was damaged in a fire started by a ceremonial candle.

Pocatello Battalion Chief Tom Sanford said firefighters were able to quickly knock down the flames, containing the fire to the room.

Sanford said the blaze apparently began when a ceremonial candle fell off a table after the congregation left the building Sunday, the Idaho State Journal reported. A church staffer noticed smoke and called emergency workers about 12:30 p.m.

Sanford said the chapel sustained extensive fire and smoke damage, and the rest of the building had some smoke and water damage. KHQ-Q6

That church uses two kinds of "candles." One is oil-filled with a wick. I'm told that the fire would have been much worse if it had been one of those that fell over while lit. The other is a spring mechanism. There's a white cover, and the candle sits inside on the spring. The spring pushes it up to where it can be lit, and the cover makes it look like a brand new pristine candle forever ... or at least until the spring gives out, the flame slips below and into the case, and no one realizes that the candle has not actually been blown out. Then something happens to knock the candle into a guitar case, and well...

Only one pew was damaged in the fire, as well as one guitar, all the hanging tapestries, a $5000 Kurzweil (electric piano), the altar, and who knows how much carpet, wiring, etc. My mom was making some noise about the cross on the wall not catching fire, which is a bit silly. Yes, the tapestries were just as high off the ground. They also catch much more easily. The cross is solid wood: the flames can't just lick across it to catch it on fire. The pews are also wood, and not that much thicker than the cross, and only one of them burned, despite being on the floor. Oh, there was also a regular piano in there. Despite most of the frame being burnt through, the keys were undamaged and it still plays just fine.

Minor historical note: that was originally the only chapel at that church. At some point, probably before I was born, they built onto the church and added a larger chapel. For the time being, that's going to be their only chapel. To be honest, I never cared much for the small chapel. It always seemed too crowded to me, even when there were very few people in it. I'm sure they're going to rebuild it. I'm not sure I see the point to rebuilding it, but I don't see the point to a lot of things associated with churches.

Non-Attachment

2009-09-20T20:15:00.004-06:00

I've just started reading Duhem for Philosophy of Science, and came across a rather beautiful quote (which, strangely, does not seem to be in any quote databases):

Men who have an excessive faith in their theories or in their ideas are not only poorly disposed to make discoveries but they also make very poor observations. They necessarily observe with a preconceived idea and, when they have begun an experiment, they want to see in its results only a confirmation of their theory. Thus they distort observation and often neglect very important facts because they go counter to their goal.

At least, I think the quote is from Duhem himself. It's in quotes in an article written by Duhem (Physical Theory and Experiment), but the only source cited is a book also written by Duhem. * shrugs * Whoever the real author is, I agree with the sentiment. "Excessive faith" might also be described as "attachment." A good scientist must remain detached from any particular result.

ADDENDUM: Google books has the article/chapter in question here. The section we're reading starts at "Section 1" preceding the place the link will go to.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T-?

2009-09-20T07:56:00.003-06:00

Via Effect Measure, I came across a piece entitled, "My God Problem." It's an interesting read, and highlights some disparities in public discourse. Compare the two bolded sentences, expressing sentiments from the same person.

Consider the very different treatments accorded two questions presented to Cornell University's "Ask an Astronomer" Web site. To the query, "Do most astronomers believe in God, based on the available evidence?" the astronomer Dave Rothstein replies that, in his opinion, "modern science leaves plenty of room for the existence of God . . . places where people who do believe in God can fit their beliefs in the scientific framework without creating any contradictions." He cites the Big Bang as offering solace to those who want to believe in a Genesis equivalent and the probabilistic realms of quantum mechanics as raising the possibility of "God intervening every time a measurement occurs" before concluding that, ultimately, science can never prove or disprove the existence of a god, and religious belief doesn't—and shouldn't—"have anything to do with scientific reasoning."

How much less velveteen is the response to the reader asking whether astronomers believe in astrology. "No, astronomers do not believe in astrology," snarls Dave Kornreich. "It is considered to be a ludicrous scam. There is no evidence that it works, and plenty of evidence to the contrary." Dr. Kornreich ends his dismissal with the assertion that in science "one does not need a reason not to believe in something." Skepticism is "the default position" and "one requires proof if one is to be convinced of something's existence."

Anyone else see a problem there? To be consistent, he would need to say something like, "In science, the default position is that there is no god. One requires proof if one is to be convinced of something's existence." He could then add some nice platitudes about quantum mechanics and the Big Bang, and say something like "Certain formulations of God are not incompatible with scientific knowledge," but he should still add, "but God as a concept has no place in science." I don't mind that he is a "compatibilist" (to use a recent phrase, almost always used condescendingly, unfortunately), but it bothers me that he bends over backwards to avoid criticizing the idea of god, while he just stomps right down on astrology.

So the question becomes, why is religion (supposedly) entitled to more respect than astrology? As far as truth-values go, I consider astrology and religion equivalent. Both make strange claims about the nature of the universe and how certain things will influence us both now and in the future. The primary difference is that most of astrology's claims are testable, and such tests never come out in its favor when run by people without a stake in the truth of astrology. It would be fair to say that astrology has been falsified. Now, some religions don't make any testable claims, but plenty of them make patently false claims. Shouldn't religions that make patently false claims receive exactly the same amount of respect as astrology, i.e. none?

Even for religions that avoid making testable claims, I would state the accommodation as something like, "If a religion makes no testable claims, science cannot prove or disprove it. Still, skepticism is the default position of science and one requires proof if one is to be convinced of something's existence." To say that scientific reasoning should not play a part in religious thinking is absurd. Of course one should reject a religion that makes false scientific claims.

The question remains, then, why does religion get more respect than astrology? It's not because religion is any more true than astrology. I can think of two potential reasons. (1) Religion is perceived as serving a useful social function. (2) The majority of the public are religious, and scientists have to deal with the tyranny of that majority. I actually think it's a combination of (1) and (2). Whether the "perception" in (1) is true or not isn't something I want to get into just now, but it's a point that I haven't seen brought up much. (2), though, is a problem. It has nothing to do with whether religion deserves respect and everything to do with a mob mentality. There also seems to be more than a touch of moral relativism in the culture, and not just regarding criticisms of religion. Criticizing anything is seen as somehow "wrong" ... except, perhaps, criticizing those who criticize. That's a problem, because some things need to be criticized.

Thus, I don't think respect should be the default position for anything that happens to be labeled "religion." Respect must be earned. Then what should it take for a religion, or even a single church, to earn respect? (1) The first criterion has to be that any institution wanting respect must in turn respect others. Intolerant hatemongers need not apply. (2) The second criterion is that it must not make patently false claims about the world; in particular, such claims must not be part of its dogma. (3) The third is that it should provide one or more genuinely useful social services without making those services contingent on proselytization. That may or may not be a complete list, but it's a good start. Certainly any religion failing to meet (1) and (2) deserves no respect. Likewise, a church that makes its services contingent on conversion deserves no respect. I think an institution meeting (1) and (2) without offering social services deserves simple tolerance, and no more. A church or religion that meets all 3 criteria is deserving of respect.

Yar.

2009-09-19T21:46:00.002-06:00

I've just been reminded that it's Talk Like A Pirate Day. This seems an appropriate token of festivity:

I might be more enthused had I not been subjected to ginger tonight. I tried a new meal at Chang's (Szechuan Three Delight, or some such) and realized too late there was ginger in it. I wasn't tired or depressed to begin with, thankfully, so it's just made me mildly tired and a bit maudlin. Tasty dish...but one I should avoid in future.

Weird Days

2009-09-17T18:07:00.002-06:00

I've got a somewhat bizarre schedule this semester, and it's wreaking havoc with my sense of time. On Monday and Wednesday, I'm on campus for almost 12 hours: 7:30 a.m. to about 7:00 pm. On Tuesday and Thursday, I'm on campus for three hours (not counting taiji). This has led to me thinking of Monday and Tuesday as a single unit that ends Tuesday before noon, and that whole unit becomes "Monday," while "Wednesday" starts then and goes until Thursday before noon, at which point it becomes "Friday." It's a bit surreal, in point of fact, especially when it's still technically Wednesday and I keep thinking that "tomorrow" is Friday.

D&D has contributed a bit to this, at least when it's on Monday night. I drink yerba maté so that I have enough energy to play as a non-zombie, and while it's not strong enough to keep me from sleeping, it doesn't fully wear off until noon of the next day. This contributes to the feel of Monday through Tuesday noon being a single unit. Not much I can do about it except remind myself every so often what the actual day of the week is. *shrugs*

Lucky Diplomat

2009-09-14T22:07:00.003-06:00

Okay, our party is currently split, and all in the Labyrinth. Dovra and Heian are together, as are Alanar, Shenron, and Horgta. If we were all together, the encounters would be easily doable. As is, Heian and I are at a disadvantage, as we have no one with us good for taking the hits. So Dovra's been talking to the goblins, and is very pleased she took the language feat when she leveled up so that she actually speaks Goblin.

Despite having only +5 to Diplomacy, she talked their way out of an encounter with two goblins and a bunch of little things being herded by the goblins, and even got some information from the goblins by rolling a natural 20. Then they ran into another goblin with two flaming bats and...two something elses. She rolled an 18 for diplomacy twice in a row, and got them out by trading away some food rations. No XP, but also no dead characters.

Oh yes. Dovra's opening lines.

(1) "Boy, are we glad to see you guys!"
(2) "Hi, how are you doing?"

I swear, she sounds like Jack Burton, only she doesn't have a machine gun with her to just blast them, which would have been handy tonight, actually.

We made minor progress on the labyrinth, finding out that the doors are numbered. We don't know yet if the numbering is consistent from room to room, though.

And now, I have things to grade.

More Pirates?

2009-09-13T09:01:00.003-06:00

Well, the proposed fourth installment of Pirates of the Caribbean now has a name: On Stranger Tides. There's a Tim Powers book of the same name that involves pirates, so it's possible the story will have some connection, but it's also possible that they just liked the name.

It's not even in production yet, so anything can change, but it looks like Knightly (Elizabeth) and Bloom (Will) won't be returning. As their story is rather settled for the 10 years after World's End, that shouldn't cause significant story issues, though their characters will be missed. So far, it looks like the returning characters are planning to go with the hunt for the Fountain of Youth, as implied at the end of World's End. Taken on face-value, that sounds rather boring, but given what they've pulled off in the other three installments, I'm sure they'll find a way to make it bizarrely interesting. I just hope they find some more balancing characters to fill the gap left by Will and Elizabeth. Oh, and that they don't try to bring back the "same" characters played by different actors.

Speculation: We can probably count on undead monsters of some sort either guarding the Fountain of Youth or something needed to find the Fountain. Since they went over the edge of the world in the third film, I'm sure they'll try to find some metaphysical theme to match or top that. If they actually find the Fountain, it will probably be cursed. Assuming Bloom does not return, I would probably include a one-off scene where they see the Flying Dutchman (but not its captain). Not sure what else. Since the theme of World's End was that the world was becoming "smaller," and maybe too small for pirates, it's hard to say where they'll go overall.

Imre Lakatos

2009-09-12T06:19:00.002-06:00

Our next reading for Philosophy of Science comes from Imre Lakatos. This reading made a lot more sense to me than any of Kuhn's stuff. As it turns out, Kuhn argues strenuously that his theory of science is not a stepstone to post-modernism, but most people who look at it think it makes even less sense taken that way.

This article compares Kuhn, Lakatos, and Laudan (whom we haven't read yet). Wikipedia has a decent summary of Lakatos's ideas:

The scientists involved in a programme will attempt to shield the theoretical core from falsification attempts behind a protective belt of auxiliary hypotheses. Whereas Popper was generally regarded as disparaging such measures as 'ad hoc', Lakatos wanted to show that adjusting and developing a protective belt is not necessarily a bad thing for a research programme. Instead of asking whether a hypothesis is true or false, Lakatos wanted us to ask whether one research programme is better than another, so that there is a rational basis for preferring it. He showed that in some cases one research programme can be described as progressive while its rivals are degenerating. A progressive research programme is marked by its growth, along with the discovery of stunning novel facts, development of new experimental techniques, more precise predictions, etc. A degenerating research program is marked by lack of growth, or growth of the protective belt that does not lead to novel facts.

As the comparative article points out, not all of Lakatos's criteria are well-defined, yet I found myself nodding agreement through our reading from Lakatos, so I think he's onto something even if it needs to be fleshed out more. The problem with strict Popperianism is that, given a refutation, scientists usually don't throw out the overarching theory, but instead try to adjust it. Popper seems to say that such adjustments are always ad hoc and to be avoided. Lakatos says that if such adjustments lead to novel predictions independent of the monkey wrench that induced them, then there's no problem with them. For instance, variations in the observed orbit of planets resulted in the hypothesis that there was another large planet in the solar system. The result? Neptune's existence was predicted, and it was later found. That didn't work so well with Mercury's orbit, though a similar tack was tried.

The question for a strict Popperian is why, when it failed to find an explanation for Mercury's orbit, was Newtonian gravity not abandoned. Lakatos has a partial answer: an overarching theory won't be abandoned unless a rational alternative exists. Thus Mercury became an "unsolved problem" until Einstein's modified theory of gravity came to the fore. Still, note that Einsteinian gravity theory has not really replaced Newtonian gravity theory. In most frames of reference, Newton's methods give accurate enough results. When more precision is needed, or in cases where relativistic effects become significant, then Einstein's version is used.

I may have more to say about Lakatos later, but I found that he's also contributed quite a bit to the Philosophy of Mathematics. Non-Deductive Methods in Mathematics gives a taste of his work there.

Status Report

2009-09-11T22:12:00.003-06:00

The cold seems to be 99.9% gone now.

We killed the cavern chokers, and Heian eventually found their stash of loot ... while Dovra attacked walls with thunder randomly, once learning that a particular section was ten feet thick, and once dazing herself. Strangely, thunder isn't good to use against walls in very small, narrow tunnels. The rest of the party wandered off into the labyrinth, and managed to defeat 4 "wolfogryphs" (part wolf, part eagle), a giant ant, and two bloodrat-spiderswarms. No luck solving the labyrinth yet, but Dovra will head in there next time we meet. She's a bit irritated at the moment.

I gave the same test to two classes this morning. In the 8:00 am class, I had 10 or so students still hanging on as the class ended, and very very few who left early. I figured that meant I had made the test a wee bit too long. In the 11:00 am class, I only had 3 students still there at time, and only 2 kept working for the five minutes before I felt like I had to let the next class into the room. That's a reasonable number; 10 is not. I don't know if the 8:00 am students were less awake and thus slower, or if the 11:00 am students were just more interested in lunch and thus ready to give up more quickly. I'll have to consider grades very carefully on these.

In the Math 108 center, today was the first quiz deadline, so I figured we'd have a steady stream of business. We didn't. We never had more than 5 students in there at once, and for most of the time, it was just one student at a time. Usually in the fall, everyone's a bit panicked and coming in for last minute help, particularly on the very first quiz. I'm not sure why this semester is different.

In other news, apparently our misbegotten president, aka Frank Burns, has been quoted as saying he wants to turn ISU into "the MIT" of the something-west. This is a bit like saying you want to turn your rickety old garage into the Taj Mahal. The translation of the statement is that he wants ISU to become a top-notch research institution. To do that, apparently, lots of graduate students are required, and qualified instructors are an unnecessary luxury. It's worth noticing that he waited until after his 3-year contract had been renewed to start axing people randomly. The current thinking is that he's trying to pad his resume to get himself a cushy job somewhere far away from here when those three years are up. I want to see him crash and burn for this. ISU has been primarily an education institution. I don't object to increasing its research capabilities, but I do object to doing so at the expense of basic education. Also, Burns has overlooked one rather important detail: you also need faculty to, ya know, teach and supervise the grad students. Maybe he thinks that grad students just show up and create research with no guidance. Who knows at this point.

Dexter, Season 3

2009-09-08T17:45:00.003-06:00

Well, one nice thing about being sick over the weekend, I didn't feel like moving much, so I've now made it through all 12 episodes of Dexter's third season. I found several comments from people saying they didn't like Season 3 as well as the first two. I liked it at least as well as Season 1, and probably a bit more than Season 2. I just got sick of Lilah in Season 2, but I have to admit that the end-drama with Doakes was very well done. Warning: There are a few spoilers below the fold.

Season 3 finds Dexter and Rita with a baby on the way,while Dexter struggles with a botched kill which eventually leads him to a questionable partnership. I do notice a continuation of a theme here. In Season 1, at the very end he finds someone who can relate to him (almost) perfectly ... and has to kill him. In Season 2, he finds someone who can accept his darkness unseen, and still accepts him after it is seen, but he has to kill her. In Season 3, he finds someone who could be an equal partner in his darkness, and, well, ... Each time, the relationship is developed a bit more, but the theme is that Dexter is unique in his ability to maintain an ethical code around his darkness. Everyone else just gets consumed by the darkness.

There were a lot of awesome moments in S3, but one favorite is just before the wedding. Debra is wearing a dress for the first time ever on the show, and says, "I feel like a transvestite." Since that's about how I feel in a dress, I loved that. I also loved when Debra was desperately hunting through the case files for a clue to their latest serial killer, and was there all night. She found something and was trying to explain to her fellow cops. She sounded exactly like me when I've had too little sleep, too much caffeine, and cold medicine on top of it. When asked how much caffeine she'd had, she said something like "a mothertruckload" while sort of bouncing and pacing. She probably used a more vulgar term than that, but I found it amusing anyway.

One thing that is missing compared to the previous two seasons is that Dexter never seems to be in any genuine danger of being exposed, which cuts the drama factor down a bit, and that may be why some people didn't like Season 3 as well.

I've seen bits of the first ep of Season 4. My speculation is that this new Trinity killer will go after Rita or Debra towards the end of the season, and I would guess Rita just based on the tiny glimpse I've had of his M.O., and because Debra's been targeted directly already in Season 1. I have nothing to support this other than a gut feeling and the fact that it would add a lot of dramatic tension. The question would be whether Dexter could rescue Rita without exposing his Shadow Self to her. Pure speculation. Hmmm... anyone want to place bets? ~/^

Russell v. Strawson

2009-09-07T07:33:00.003-06:00

For philosophy of language, we've read Bertrand Russell's On Denoting, and Strawson's response, On Referring. I wanted to lay down a few thoughts here before I read Russell's response to Strawson.

For the first half of Strawson's article, he seems to be making reasonable points. But then we get to this example:

Let me now take an example of the uniquely referring use of an
expression not of the form, "the so-and-so ". Suppose I advance
my hands, cautiously cupped, towards someone, saying, as I do so,
" This is a fine red one ". He, looking into my hands and seeing
nothing there, may say : "What is ? What are you talking
about ? " Or perhaps, " But there's nothing in your hands ".
Of course it would be absurd to say that in saying " But you've
got nothing in your hands ",he was denying or contradicting what
I said.

My response? Of course I would be contradicting the speaker if I said "But there's nothing there." It doesn't matter if it was in pretense or not. If I take the speaker seriously, and say there's nothing there, I at least believe that I am contradicting an assertion. The article was pretty much downhill from there.

I think that Strawson is trying to make an argument for how we use language, and tie that to its meaning, while Russell is interested in the meaning itself, independent of usage. Strawson wants to take context into account; Russell wants to explicate the context using quantifiers. Strawson somehow tries to argue that the context itself is not part of the meaning of the sentence, even though he is rather adamant that we use the context to determine the meaning. Russell seems to think that if it is required to determine the meaning, then the context itself is part of the meaning, and, again, must be explicitly included.

I tend to side with Russell. One more example from Strawson and then I'll go see what Russell has to say about him. Strawson argues that these two statements are completely equivalent: "Napoleon was the man who ordered the execution of the
Duc D'Enghien." & "Napoleon ordered the execution of the Duc D'Enghien." Nonsense. Even if I accept the premise that only a human can order an execution (which I do not), the first sentence indicates the gender of Napoleon and makes it explicit that Napoleon refers to one person rather than to a group of people. No. Those are not completely equivalent. If we already knew who Napoleon was, we could use them interchangeably, but only because we already knew that Napoleon was one, and only one, man.

Take a less familiar name. (A) "Trimnald ordered all handkerchiefs to be burned." Is Trimnald a man? A woman? An organization? An alien invader? (B) "Trimnald was the (x) who ordered all handkerchiefs to be burned." Now we know that Trimnald was an x. That sentence gives extra information. To suggest otherwise is absurd. Strawson might argue that in the context where A is written, it is clear what Trimnald is, but that would be the meaning of A plus its context, which would need to be explicitly given.

One of my earlier lessons in writing math proofs was to indicate where everything comes from. So if I want to use x, I can't just insert x and go from there. I have to explicate it as something like "Let x be any real number," or "Let x be any positive integer," or even, "Consider the irrational number x." If I want a decent proof, I cannot allow any of that to be inferred from context alone. If we want the meaning of language to be clear, we must be equally careful not to assume context when it's not actually given.

Okay, going to read Russell's response now.

POST-READING: Mr. Strawson On Referring. First, wow. This is a 5 page article, much shorter than either of the previous ones. It's a bit like a roast, actually, in that Russell, while using the most scholarly of language, manages to call Strawson a dishonest idiot, without ever using those exact words. And I meant to bring up that Strawson analyzes "The King of France is wise," while Russell's example said, "The present King of France is bald," which is a different beast altogether, especially, as Russel points out, if you specify the year.

The terminology is different than I used in my analysis, but I think when Russell mentions "egocentricity," he is referring to what I called "use," and when he refers to "descriptions," that is what I called "meaning." Russell says that, fine, he didn't deal with egocentricity in Denoting, but he did in plenty of other places, and shouldn't Mr. Strawson have read them before going off the deep end? Likewise, Russell would like more precision in language when it is used in philosophy than when it is used in everyday life, just as every other discipline has its own unique jargon.

The Volt

2009-09-07T06:56:00.001-06:00

Plug-in hybrids are a new class of car. You can't really describe their efficiency compared to a conventional gasoline-powered car using a single familiar figure. You could present energy efficiency in terms of a unit like "distance per kilojoule", but most people won't have a clue of what that means. The honest way to describe it is to say "Up to 40 miles without consuming gas, and then 50 miles per gallon". That's not so horribly difficult, now is it?
~MarkCC at Good Math, Bad Math

If and when Jean Luc gives out, I would strongly consider getting a hybrid. My current favorite pick is the Prius, but if the Volt or something like it were at a similar price, I'd certainly take a look. Last I heard, the Volt was going to be $40,000+, which is a wee bit out of my reach. Either way, it's nice to have accurate info on it. I wonder how much this little gem would up your home electricity bill...

Bizarre Cold

2009-09-05T21:36:00.002-06:00

I was feeling all right on Thursday morning, but, when I glanced in the mirror, I looked awful: sunken eyes with dark circles. That afternoon, a dizzy spell hit me. It felt like the kind I get when I've overindulged in caffeine and the withdrawal starts to set in, so I expected it to pass. It did, but then morphed into a sort of cold. I say 'sort of' because there's almost no sinus drainage. There's a mild headache, a mild fever, and fatigue. The really weird thing is that my breathing is just fine. Usually that gets considerably worse when I've got a cold.

So I stayed home from taiji today, not wanting to infect my classmates or teacher, and ventured out once to see if Wal-Mart had Dexter, Season 3. They did, and at a cheaper price than Amazon. It was money well spent, and I'm about halfway through the season now. Still, that was about all the wandering I wanted to do today: on the way back to the car, my body let me know that little amount of walking around had overstressed it.

I'm wondering if this is the same cold that Melissa had earlier in the semester. In her case, it first manifested as a migraine, and it took her a while to realize it was actually a cold. So, inappropriately generalizing from a sample of two, perhaps this cold enhances some existing painful tendency as it begins, before settling down into a monotony of tiredness.

It seems to be better tonight, as I made it through 20 minutes of standing meditation with only a tiny bit more 'heat' than usual. Maybe tomorrow it will break and I can get back to a semi-normal routine. The problem is that I was feeling pretty well most of Friday ... pretty much until my blood sugar dropped too far for too long. That's classic for me and colds. So we shall see if this respite is in fact a sign of recovery.

Idiotic Bureaucracy

2009-09-04T17:25:00.003-06:00

Okay, the title is redundant. Sue me. I found someone else in the math department who got the "terminal" letter this summer. I won't use names since I have no idea how anonymous he wants to be, but he had a chance to talk to Fisher about it, and there are three of us total. Neither of us knows who the third is. Now, losing 3 full-time lecturers currently means that they will be short by 15 classes next fall, so they need 15 more graduate students. The graduate student offices are full, and even if they convert the three presumably vacant offices, that still only houses 6 of them. Now, if they'd put sensibly sized desks in the offices, they might get three to an office, but with the monstrosities currently in there, there's no bloody way.

There's another issue, however: to attract and keep that many graduate students, they would need to build up the department; i.e. hire more tenured faculty to teach said grad students. Whatever their excuses, the administration is not going to save money under this scheme. All they're going to do is alienate every department on campus. That might actually be good for those of us "terminated" under this one, though I'm honestly still thinking it's time to do something else, so I may go back to grad school regardless.

ADDENDUM: Oh, yes. I have declared this the Frank Burns administration, for obvious reasons. Whenever Frank Burns was put in charge of M*A*S*H 4077, he implemented bizarre policies that made no sense. A few random examples: decided to move the camp across the road one day, and move it back the next day; declared the camp 'dry' ... this lasted until his policies backfired and he gulped down a drink; not while he was in charge, but he once spent an entire afternoon getting the condiments in the mess tent perfectly lined up and in order by height and popularity; the list goes on. The more I hear about what this administration is doing, the more it reminds me of Frank Burns. Thus I hereby name the President and all his Compatriots 'Frank Burns' for the duration.

Sleep Paralysis, Again

2009-09-03T15:55:00.003-06:00

I was thinking that this was take two, but hunting through my 'dreams' tag posts, there was one other instance of sleep paralysis that I'd forgotten. Anyway, this dream started off perfectly happily. I was sitting on the floor of my grandma's old house watching Mythbusters while my mom puttered around in the kitchen. I remember hoping that she was going to cook sausage the way that Grandma used to.

There was a running gag through the Mythbuster's episode, where someone kept trying to kill the narrator. This would be illustrated by cartoons or sound effects. The only one I remember in detail had the camera focused on the interior of a boat. As the narrator spoke, the screen slowly started filling up with blue-tint, and cartoon fish started swimming by. When the screen was mostly full, the narrator made gasping noises like he was drowning, but then it drained again, and everything was okay.

Mom came in and shook her head, complaining about the number of explosions in the episode. I frowned and told her this one had been pretty tame that way. I was standing up at this point, and turned back to face the tv again.

*flicker*

Next I found myself on the boat that had been in the Mythbusters scene. It was careening all over the place, spinning around in the water, etc, and I grabbed the steering wheel, trying to right it. I couldn't get the steering wheel to budge. The boat was about to crash into something, maybe a bridge pylon, and I tried even harder to turn it. It did turn this time, but, well, momentum kept it moving towards the pylon. I braced myself for the crash, but just as it hit...

*flicker*

I found myself in my bed in my room. At first I thought I'd woken up, but Sawyer from Lost appeared for a moment, then disappeared again, so I decided I was still dreaming. I realized I couldn't move, and I wondered if I was having another bout of sleep paralysis. As soon as I wondered that, something dragged me off of the bed, whirled me around, and flipped me back and forth, as if warning me that it could have dashed my head against the floor. I tried to call for help, but no sound came out. I was whipped around some more by the unseen force, but I finally managed to make a sound. It was nothing more than a wordless yell, but it broke the paralysis and woke me up.

After waking up, I realized I was still feeling dizzy. I think maybe that's why I kept dreaming about being lurched around: that's how my head felt anyway.

Sleep Paralysis II
Sleep Paralysis I

Death by Processed Food

2009-08-31T16:47:00.003-06:00

Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks that fast food places are out to poison people.

Of course, I know they're out to poison me. I don't mean that they have a conscious intent to do so, but that they have such a ridiculous neglect of allergen information that they may as well be consciously intending to poison me.

Not just fast food, either. I had a package of Del Monte lightly sweetened peaches. I debated whether to even try it, since "natural flavors" were listed as an "ingredient." I should have trusted my instincts. In less than 20 minutes, I had the pain and upset stomach of a soy reaction. From PEACHES. Seriously, what the bloody hell is wrong with food companies?

A Bit More on Kuhn

2009-08-31T16:03:00.003-06:00

I asked Dr. Wahl about Kuhn at the end of class today. Essentially, he thinks that there is a body of assumptions that contribute to the decision about how to test a hypothesis, and some of those assumptions are ones that no one would ever think of questioning.

On a certain level, he's correct. In the normal course of things, such assumptions exist. However, every time they are used, that is a test. If a consistent difficulty is noticed by many researchers, in many different labs, the assumptions will eventually be looked at. Examples that come to mind immediately are the orbit of Mercury and Newtonian gravity's failure to explain it and Conservation of Mass (which does not hold when mass changes to energy or at speeds near c). Yes, assumptions were made and held onto tenaciously, but, in the end, those assumptions were overturned.

So I profess myself still unimpressed with Kuhn.

ADDENDUM: I'll probably have more to say after class next Wednesday, but I finally got some idea of why Popper might need some criticism from Dr. Wahl yesterday. The problem is that Popper leans on falsification to the exclusion of all else. In his view the goal of any test done by any scientist should be to falsify the theory. He wants to downplay any role of confirmation/corroboration. In other words, if the test goes as the theory predicts, Popper would see it as a failure.

So possibly what Kuhn is getting at is that the first reaction of a scientist who gets a result that does not accord with the prevailing theory is not to discard the theory, but, rather, to see what else might have gone wrong. But he still writes as though the theory itself is sacrosanct, which just isn't the case. It's held as true until some discrepancy becomes noticeable, and then it's either adapted or replaced. The process may be slow and painful, and full of argument, but if there is a genuine discrepancy, it will eventually be examined, and, more eventually, fixed in some fashion.

One sidenote. We discussed the case of Mercury in class, and Wahl pointed out that the response of 19th century scientists was not to abandon Newtonian gravitation, which, if they operated according to strict Popperian principles, they should have. After several failed attempts to solve the problem, it was largely ignored, until Einstein's theory of General Relativity turned out to give the correct solution. The problem with simply throwing out Newtonian gravitation was that it worked in most situations. The one discrepancy revealed its limitations, but it had so much corroborating evidence from other sources that no one was going to just give up on it. In other words, falsification is not the whole story, but it's an important part of the story.

Thomas Samuel Kuhn

2009-08-29T19:54:00.002-06:00

I haven't found the entire article online yet, but much of it is available through a Google Books preview. Skimming through the preview, it looks like we only have the first part in our book anyway. The article is called, "Logic of Discovery, or Psychology of Research?" It argues that Popper's view of science, while it has its place, is not how science is actually practiced on a day-to-day basis.

I haven't read enough of Popper or Kuhn to be sure that Kuhn isn't demolishing a straw-man, or even just dissembling about the meaning of "falsification" and "test." Kuhn argues that science is more about "puzzle solving" than it is about "problem solving." His main point seems to be that in the normal run of things scientists simply assume the currently accepted theory and work within it. At least in this excerpt, I get the feeling he's missing a crucial point.

Yes, in any run-of-the-mill lab, a groundwork of theory is assumed. The puzzle-solving involves figuring out how that theory applies to whatever work the lab does, whether the work is growing cells, or running current through vases, or whatever. But Kuhn seems to miss that the run-of-the-mill work will be a test of the deduced application. If it turns out to predict different results than those observed, there are three possible culprits: (1) Bad data; (2) Bad interpretation; (3) Bad theory. In the majority of cases, the first two are the most likely. Assuming that instrumentation problems can be sorted out, and enough trials are run to make chance systematic errors extremely unlikely, (1) can be dealt with. The next level to check is (2). How can the interpretation be modified to fit what has been observed? All of this fits in the realm of Kuhn's "puzzle-solving", but fits equally well with Popper's "falsification." Level (3) will only be engaged after levels (1) and (2) have been exhausted, but it takes more than one research group to really effect a change on level (3). Multiple groups have to have similar problems before anyone credible will seriously consider mucking with level (3).

My biggest issue with Kuhn so far is that I don't see how you can possibly have "puzzle-solving" without of necessity having "falsification." How do you know when the puzzle is solved, otherwise? Part of the puzzle solving is figuring out what the accepted theory says should happen in a situation, and that automatically creates a way to falsify the interpretation. I will grant that it takes a lot of broken puzzles before an accepted theory is itself called into question, but that's almost the point. If all it took was one "problem," then every time a machine malfunctioned we'd have a paradigm shift.

Some of Kuhn's examples also make me question his reasoning. He writes that "many theories, for example the Ptolemaic, were replaced before they had in fact been tested." Now, the Ptolemaic theory kept having to add in more and more epicycles to account for the observed astronomical data, and that, to me, would be a sort of test. The more data came in, the more the Ptolemaic system had to be modified. It was never sufficient as it was to explain every aberration. Also, the ad hoc adding of epicycles smacks of Popper's "irrefutability," since, given any conflicting data, more epicycles could be tacked on to "explain" it.

I'll be curious to find out in class if there's more to Kuhn in stuff that we didn't read. It's possible, and maybe likely, that we got the simplest version of his ideas, and that they don't really make sense until they're fleshed out a bit more.

Further reading on Wikipedia:
Kuhn
Popper

Fluttering

2009-08-29T07:08:00.004-06:00

There's a series of math talks on Octonions this semester in the math department. The first one was yesterday afternoon. It dawned on me there that I do still have an interest in math for math's sake, particularly when it has interesting applications. Octonions turn out to be useful in string theory, which I found in a general hunt yesterday, and the Wikipedia article mentions special relativity and quantum logic as well.

It's also the first group I've come across that is neither commutative nor associative. Commutative means the order doesn't matter: 3*5 = 5*3, 6+8=8+6, etc. Subtraction and division by themselves are noncommutative, but since subtraction can be seen as adding a negative, and division is multiplying by the inverse, you can get around that. Matrices are the first things most people see where order really does matter. AB need not equal BA for two matrices A and B. Associativity means, roughly, that where you "put the parentheses" doesn't matter. So:

3(5*4) = (3*4)5

In the first case, I get 3 times 20, which is 60. In the second I get 12 times 5, which is still 60. Multiplication of real numbers is associative. In fact, I can't recall ever encountering a group operation that was not associative until reading up on the octonions.

The other thing I noticed at the talk was that, despite not taking any upper level math for the past several years, everything still made sense to me. Also I was a bit amused that the current grad students, who have all taken algebra more recently than I, didn't immediately recall that you generally use divisibility to establish that if a prime divides a product, it must divide at least one of the multiplicands of the product (Yes, multiplicand is a word; I just checked). The other nice thing about math is that I know the majority of people in the department and I might get away with not moving my office again, particularly since we've had several people retire and the temporary dean of Arts and Sciences (the bastard who sent out the gods-bedamned 'terminal' notices) is against hiring any more lecturers.

Still, I'm going to keep working through my old physics books. I wonder if it's possible to do a crossover math-physics doctorate here...

Karl Popper

2009-08-28T17:09:00.003-06:00

The second reading for Philosophy of Science this semester is Science: Conjectures and Refutations. It's a beautiful thing. Now, there are some problems with defining 'scientific' solely in terms of falsifiability, but it is certainly an important feature to note in any theory. I particularly liked that what brought Popper to use that as a criterion was that two competing psychological theories (those of Freud and Adler) were sufficiently vague as to be able to explain any conceivable set of behaviors. He had at first been impressed with their seemingly endless lists of confirmations...until he noticed that there seemed to be no behavior that could be taken as falsifying either one. The link above is to the full article, but I just thought I'd post his summary list. Closely related: Confirmation Bias. I've bolded a few of the parts that I find most significant.

1. It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory — if we look for confirmations.

2. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory — an event which would have refuted the theory.

3. Every "good" scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.

4. A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.

5. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.

6. Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in such cases of "corroborating evidence.")

7. Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers — for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status. (I later described such a rescuing operation as a "conventionalist twist" or a "conventionalist stratagem.")

One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.

Shorter Popper: A scientific approach to any idea is to throw rocks at it and see if it breaks. If you throw marshmallows, you're doing it wrong.

Redefinition is trickier. There are cases where the breaks simply indicate the limits of an idea, rather than its overall refutation, and it might be able to be modified to account for those breaks. There are also cases where lunatics liberally apply duct tape and declare it as good as new.

Stimulants, Cave Chokers and Labyrinths

2009-08-25T14:06:00.002-06:00

Last week, I discovered that two full scoops of yerba mate drunk in tea at roughly 6:00 pm will keep me completely awake and alert until about 1:30 am. I'm just as glad to have discovered this before school started (which was this morning). Last night I dropped it down to one scoop and that was just about perfect. It was just starting to wear off as we called it a night (with 7 Cavern Chokers still alive and blocking the way), so I had no trouble sleeping.

So last night we climbed down a hole to a teleporting ladder rung, found a dragon frozen into a statue, scared off a bunch of R.O.U.S's, lost one player to a labyrinth when he wanted to go through a door to see what was on the other side, and explored the one non-magical doorway only to be attacked by cave chokers. There's also a magical lock, which seems to require us to find sufficient magical gems to unlock it (unless the other "half" requires something different), only I've started wondering if getting it unlocked will be what releases the dragon. Possibly I'm just paranoid, but I think Dovra will want to do several more Arcana checks next time, specifically asking about a connection between the dragon and the lock.

We'll probably all need to go into the labyrinth at some point. OOC, we've all seen the strangely mutating door locations and appearance of runes and/or gems in some of the rooms. Philip thinks that the number associated with the symbol gives information about which door to go through, while I wondered if it might be a distance indicator (like how many turns it will take to get out from that location). I also kept some rough notes, and looking at them there is a potential pattern. Our hapless half-orc was following blue-light, and it looks like each time the door had rotated one door counter clockwise from the prior door. The problem is that I didn't keep notes on the green light, so I don't know if the pattern held there as well. It's something, at least.

Circling

2009-08-23T08:24:00.003-06:00

Over at Not Exactly Rocket Science, there's a discussion of a study on how well people do at moving in a straight line. Answer: very well if they have obvious visual cues to follow (the sun, the moon, a trail, some mega landmark), and very badly otherwise.

I was curious about this one because I became lost once in a forest with no trail to follow, and I realized I'd gone in a circle when I came across something I recognized (I think it was a large, distinctive, rock). I managed to reorient myself and get back to the group once I started paying very close attention to the landmarks around me. Thankfully, I hadn't wandered that far from the group anyway. Interestingly, it was cloudy that day, so I couldn't use the sun as a directional guide.

Here's the thing, though: there are usable landmarks in a forest. Yes, they're not ones most of us are used to paying attention to, but they are there. So now I wonder if (a) forest tribes would do better at this, since they're used to recognizing those landmarks; (b) people who spend a lot of time in forests would do better, for similar reasons; (c) people could be trained to use those landmarks. An empty field or a trackless desert? There I'm not sure that training or familiarity would make much difference, but it might, and it would be worth investigating.

Also, how can I get in on a study that drops you in the Saharan desert and instructs you to walk a straight line?!? That would be fun!

Girl Genius, Etc.

2009-08-21T20:02:00.003-06:00

Fibonacci, who also happens to be our DM, put me onto Girl Genius Comics this past week. It's a touch weak at the beginning, but it doesn't take long before it really hits its stride. It has a very steampunk feel to it, though it's not quite something I would label as steampunk. You've got a world where some percentage of people are "Sparks," meaning they have a certain compulsion and ability to create devices. Unfortunately, a lot of sparks go mad, so the world is a trifle unstable...particularly since "the Other" left his/her/its mark.

As usual, though, it's the characters and their interactions who make the comic for me. I particularly like it when an antagonist can be presented as genuinely trying to do what he thinks is best ... even when nearly everyone thinks those actions to be completely and absolutely wrong. I also appreciate it when apparently disparate plot points suddenly converge and, more importantly, work. I am a bit curious as to what, besides clockwork, powers the mechanisms in the world. There have been some implications, but nothing too definite. Probably just as well. Harder to overanalyze and get irritated when something doesn't pan out. ^!^

As far as my life goes, I've made it up to Chapter 6 in my intro physics book, with very few difficulties. Everything is coming back much more readily than I expected it to. So far, at least. Now, when I dig out the more advanced books on the same topics, the ones where you have to integrate to get the answers, and work out the correct d-nonsense for each integral, then I'll find out how well I really remember it. First year stuff, though, is no problem so far. In fact, I think it's making much more sense this time around ... which just might have something to do with the fact that I'm actually reading the text in the book. I seem to recall scanning through it for equations, skimming the examples, and completely ignoring the text when I was in the class. But, wait, no students ever do that, do they? * blinks innocently *

Fictional Exploits

2009-08-20T16:12:00.002-06:00

Well, Dovra has now helped in a futile attack against trolls attempting to kidnap a member of the existing party she encountered (and joined up with), been attacked by a stirge. Shenron (dragonborn cleric) got it off of her, but I think she did deal the killing blow to a different one with a Thunderwave spell. They managed to find the trolls, who no longer had the person they'd kidnapped but were more than happy to let the party into a cave ... with the understanding that they would not let us back out.

There we were attacked by cavern chokers hiding on the walls. I realized that Dovra's attack spells had a wee flaw in them: they were all blasts and bursts, which is problematic in close quarters and/or when one of the party has been grabbed by something. However, she did make herself useful in that encounter. The cavern chokers blend flawlessly into the background when they're not moving or attacking. While she could see one, Dovra put a bright red X on it with Prestidigitation so that it couldn't do that. Well, it could vanish... but the X remained visible. That one didn't disappear again before it died, nor did the second that she marked, but the third one did try to vanish once... and the purple X stayed visible (I used different colors for each one; the next one would have been neon green at the request of our half-orc, but there wasn't a next one) so that it could still be attacked.

So then we kept exploring the cave and came across one end of a teleportation key, which took us to meet the Big Bad of the campaign... whom Dovra knew relatively well, having worked with him before she became Not Evil (she always says it that way; so far no one's commented on it). Amusingly he asked if Dovra wanted to work for him again, but since he proclaimed that he was "still SO evil," she declined. We were running out of time at this point, so I'm wondering if the rest of the group are going to question her about this. I mean, they only just met her. Sure, she's helped them fight off giant mosquitoes and such, but surely they ought to be a bit worried that she's worked with the guy who coordinated the kidnap of their friend. Ah well.

(Apologies for the mixing of pronouns in this; I've realized that any specific action that my character takes I tend to think of in third person, especially if it's a spell, but any generic action of the group, like going into the cave, I tend to think of in first person. That's...oddly backwards, isn't it? I could clean it up for consistency, but I think it's an interesting record of the way I respond to the fictional set-up.)

Claritin

2009-08-18T21:15:00.002-06:00

Now, I understand the concept of "tolerance," where the body becomes accustomed to a certain medication and requires more of it to produce the same effect. I seem to have "reverse tolerance," if there is such a thing. I'm needing less Claritin to take care of my allergies. I tried a half-dose today... next time I need one, I think I'm going to try a quarter-dose.

Unlike Zyrtec, the physical side effects are fairly minor. I do get some itching with it, but it lasts less than 20 minutes, and is useful because it tells me that the Claritin is just wearing off. No heartburn. More of a dry mouth than with Zyrtec.

The mental side effects are starting to irritate me, though. The last time I took a full dose, I felt restless and anxious for most of the day. The restlessness I'd had before, but the anxiety was new. This last time I took a half-dose, and felt unsettled rather than anxious. Once I realize it was the medicine causing it, I settled down a bit, but it's still irritating. The half-dose was plenty for my symptoms, so maybe a quarter dose will knock it back down to just restless and still be enough for the allergies.

I just don't get why the effects have suddenly gotten worse when I've been taking the stuff all summer. I've been more careful with the Claritin than I was with Zyrtec, in that I never take a second dose until I'm sure the first has worn off. Generally, this is about two days later, despite the bottle saying it lasts "24 hours." I can tell due to the aforementioned minor itchiness. I also give any allergy symptoms about half an hour to go away on their own before taking it; any longer, and the Claritin won't work at all if I take it.

So... is there such a thing as reverse tolerance? I have no idea, but it sure doesn't sound right.

Soy List

2009-08-16T21:50:00.002-06:00

I found a rather comprehensive list of possibly soy-derivatives to avoid in ingredients. The page is Living With a Soy Allergy. Amusingly, I'd already been avoiding many of them due to the possibility they were made from wheat, but "Glycerol monostearate" is a new one, and I'm not too happy to see "guar gum" on the list, as it is often used in place of xanthan gum to make gluten free products stick together. "Natural Flavors" have been iffy, because they can contain gluten, but they almost always contain soy.

Reading some of the comments on the site, I'm just as glad that I don't have a contact-allergy to soy. I have noticed soy lecithin having minor effects on my asthma, but no out and out asthma attacks, and I have to eat the stuff for it to have that effect.

One final comment on the site: Most of the info I'd found up to this point contained some nonsense about "most people with soy allergies are not sensitive to soy oil or to soy lecithin." Looking at the comments on the linked site, I'd say that's complete and utter garbage. I first noticed problems with soy oil, then with soy flour and soy lecithin. Admittedly, it's a self-selected sample, and people with similar stories are more likely to comment, but I don't see anyone chiming in with "Oh, I'm okay with oil and lecithin." Not a one. It doesn't prove anything, but it's rather suggestive.

Soy, the Other Poisonous Food

2009-08-13T21:57:00.003-06:00

One of the current theories about food intolerances is that people are born with a genetic susceptibility, and that circumstances, particularly stress, determine whether or not it actually develops into anything. I've had a minor sensitivity to soy for quite a while now, but it seems to have turned into a full-blown intolerance. I'm pretty sure it was the stress of getting the terminal contract notice that did it, too. It would be amusing if I had enough medical documentation to sue the university over it, but I have no proof whatsoever (unless chocolate wrappers with the ingredient 'soy lecithin' count as proof that I wasn't strongly sensitive until recently), so there's no case. However, this incident definitely lends credence to the susceptibility/trigger theory.

Soy is at least as hard to avoid as gluten, though I've already been minimizing my exposure as mush as possible. It used to be that only soy protein and soy oil caused a strong reaction. Now, it's pretty much anything with any sort of soy in it. People ask me if it's hard not to "cheat" on eating gluten, and now soy... It's not hard at all when the moment you eat it, you start feeling so sick to your stomach that you don't want to eat anything else for the rest of the day. The only major sticking point for me right now is chocolate. I'm going to have to start stocking up on the few soy-free chocolates that I know are out there, or else I'm going to go completely nuts. I'll probably links to the sites at some point. Whole Foods Market carries several good varieties, and there's also Enjoy Life.

Physics, Chapter 1

2009-08-13T21:47:00.003-06:00

I made it through all the odd problems (i.e. the ones with answers in the back) from Chapter 1 of my first physics book today. I'll probably slow down in later chapters, but this one was mainly vector notation and unit stuff, which just came right back to me even though I haven't done it for several years. It's strange how easy and obvious it all seems to me now, though I remember struggling with vectors at the time. It's also rather nice to have numbers to plug in. Yes, higher level physics, like higher level math, tends to run on straight formulas and symbols, but it's so refreshing to have numbers right now. I'll get to the more abstract stuff soon enough.

The funny thing is that I'm going through the textbook with the same attitude as I do when I get ready to teach a new class, or an old class with a new book. If I can maintain that feeling through the rest of the chapters, I'll be doing well. If I feel like I could potentially teach each and every chapter, I will be happy. That will tell me that I know the material. Now onto Chapter 2, the kinematics equations! I remember helping out some of my classmates in that first physics class, and so so many questions could be answered simply by looking at the kinematics equations and figuring out which one(s) applied. ^/^

What does it say about me that I found my biggest empty notebook and am hoping that I can completely fill it with work on physics problems? Seriously, I am totally enjoying this.

As Lando Calrissian once said...

2009-08-12T06:45:00.003-06:00

"This deal keeps getting worse all the time."

Okay, so it's not 'garrison-troops-at-my-house' worse, but as part of the ongoing budget crisis the state-board has decided to change the way the "15-hour" rule is enforced. Full-time employees at ISU are supposed to be at 15-hours each week. The way the math department had been filling the extra 3 hours was by having us work in some sort of tutoring lab (math and learning center or math 108 center). Apparently that is no longer acceptable, and 15-credit hours is now considered a full teaching load. For those of us teaching 108, though, Fisher bumped it back up to a full class (3 credit hours), but with the catch that we have to work extra time in the math 108 center, so that each 108 class can count as 3 credits towards our load.

I'll be honest and say that Fisher's personality grates on me, but he's been handling this situation about as well as anyone could be expected to, and I overheard some stuff that I would not want to share online that makes me a think a lot better of him than I used to. Suffice it to say, he's doing the best he can for his department in an impossible situation. However, I'm suddenly feeling even more relief than before that I should be out of it next year. At the moment, almost anything* sounds better. If the budget ever stabilizes, they might be able to put a sane system back in place, but for now... YECH.

And I'm still thinking that physics is the way to go. I see more places I can go with it than with math at the moment—at least, more places that I want to go—so I've dug out my old physics books and I'm going to start working through them again. I even found my old GRE-physics prep book. I should try to find some more recent versions of the test, but it's a decent starting place. If I don't get a decent assistantship with physics, there's still math, but I'd much prefer to make it into physics.

*anything not requiring me to work closely with gluten, at least. So, no fast food.

Free Energy!

2009-08-11T08:32:00.001-06:00

My laptop has apparently solved the mystery of free energy, as it has run for about 70 minutes on zero battery power. It's a miracle! That, or, just maybe there's something wrong with its power sensors. D'ya suppose that's more likely? *blinks innocently*

Huh.

2009-08-11T08:02:00.002-06:00

From out of the blue this morning, it dawned on me that if I go into a graduate program next year, it does not need to be in math. I double-majored in math & physics as an undergrad, so I've got a B.S. in both. Admittedly, my physics is rusty (so is my ability to spell physicis... that's the third time I've mistyped it, and I'm not fixing that one), but here's the thing: a doctorate in math will just put me back in the same situation I'm in now, unless I'm willing to take any university opening in the hopes of establishing tenure. I'm not. I have very specific areas of the country that I want to be in (Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado... more reluctantly, Montana, Oregon and/or Washington), and that's just not very compatible with an academic job search.

But physics... We've got INL right here, and they do busing out to their site. Having experienced INL rush hour once, I'd be just as happy to ride and save both stress and wear and tear on my car. Now, since I have been out a while, there's no guarantee I'd be accepted to the program, though I'm thinking if I brush up and take the physics GRE and do well enough, I'll be okay. I'll still apply to the math program, but the physics one gives me a heckuva lot more options when the future comes due. Also, the thought of physics courses fills me with curiosity and interest, while the thought of math courses just fills me with...um... See, there's a certain level of abstraction beyond which I stop giving a damn. I need to see a purpose to the thing I'm working on, beyond "it's part of your grade." So some classes I absolutely love, generally applied things like statistics and combinatorics, while others I get sick of as soon as I open the book. Yes, there's abstraction in physics, but there's a point to the abstraction.

FYI, my mind's been doing so much jumping around the past month or so that I may change my mind in another week. Still, this is one of the more plausible ideas I've come up with. It's also a tad ironic. My dad was working on his doctorate in physics at ISU, and his thesis project went screwy, and I guess he just gave up. It was something to do with DNA (using a laser to split it? I'm not sure.), and the foul-up, er, fouled up the department's air for a while, as in it stank to high heaven. I don't know why he didn't try again, or try something else. I'm not going to ask, either, because he's so deep in his schizophrenic paranoia that there's no telling whether what he said would have any resemblance to the truth or not. Hopefully it won't drive me mad. ^/^

Dovra Lawyndro

2009-08-08T19:24:00.004-06:00

After something of a hiatus, I'm back in a D&D group. For no particular reason, I decided to create a rather neurotic character: the half-elf wizard Dovra Lawyndro**, who used to be evil until she found* the Flute of Unbreakable Balance, which can "only be wielded by one neither good nor evil," and decided not to be evil any more. She's a poorly socialized half-elf, who is a bit like Anya from Buffy in that she doesn't quite "get" normal behavior. We've only just started the campaign, and she encountered the extant group of characters for the first time last Tuesday. She announced, "I'm not evil!" at least three times, possibly more. Then proceedings were interrupted by the DM for a duel between his character (from the campaign when he wasn't DM) and a goblin. At that point, it was time to quit, as they'd had to finish the old campaign before they could begin the new one.

I actually got to participate in the old campaign, albeit with a missing player's character, so that they'd have at least one wizard on board. Turns out it was a good thing I did. I/Galadriel (Yes, an elf-wizard named Galadriel; the actual player is a rather young girl, so go with it) managed to successfully cast a sleep spell on the big bad in the very last encounter. There was a lot of luck involved. I got higher initiative, so I was able to try before the big bad transported to his circle of power, where his stats would have been just out of reach of the spell. Even better, he had enough time just before the spell took effect to transport to the circle, which was right next to a portal which we'd been told would kill any living creature who passed through it, so rather than hack the big bad repeatedly for a dozen turns, they just had to drag him to the portal and push him in.

*I'd actually intended that Dovra just be looking for the Flute, but there was a miscommunication with the DM, and he thought she already had it, so I went with it. As she's not convinced yet that she's neither good nor evil, she's not going to try and play it any time soon, but she'll probably annoy the other characters by trying to play the ordinary flute that she bought, figuring that learning to play it will help her play the other one. I have no idea whether this is true, and Dovra hasn't the faintest idea what the Flute actually does. I doubt she even knows why she wants it. I can speculate OOC: she hasn't had a particularly happy life up to this point, and figures that anything that would "balance" that out must be a good thing. I'm leaving it up to the DM what, exactly, the Flute really balances, but it's probably not even close to what Dovra thinks.

**I'm lousy at coming up with names, so I've got a bot with several sets of syllables that can be combined in random order. The generated names were actually much longer than just "Dovra Lawyndro," but by removing a few I wound up with what I consider to be a decent name. It will be amusing if the other character try to call her "Dovi," as that's what I call the cat who adopted me, short for "Dovienya."

Go Get the Axe

2009-08-08T18:21:00.004-06:00

I heard this song on a Bugs Bunny episode, and had always assumed that it was one made up by the writers, as the lyrics were so screwy. It turns out that, no, it's a real song. One site lists is as a Scottish/Irish folk tune. The lyrics are easier to read here, but beware the automatic midi-play of the melody. There's no off-button on the site itself, but if you've got adblock, you can block the .mid file and make it go away. Anyway, I'm posting the full lyrics, just because of their sheer bizarreness.

Peepin' through the knot-hole
of grandpa's wooden leg,
Who'll wind the clock when I'm gone?
Go get the ax
There's a flea in Lizzie's ear,
For a boy's best friend is his mother. (cont. below)

Peepin' through the knot-hole
of grandpa's wooden leg,
Why do they build the shore so near the ocean?
Who cut the sleeves
Out of dear old daddy's vest,
And dug up Fido's bones to build the sewer?

A horsey stood around,
With his feet upon the ground,
Oh, who will wind the clock when I'm gone?
Go get the ax,
There's a fly on Lizzie's ear,
But a boy's best friend is his mother.

I fell from a window,
A second-story window,
I caught my eyebrow on the window-sill.
The cellar is behind the door,
Mary's room is behind the ax,
But a boy's best friend is his mother.

I wonder if the thing was supposed to be nonsense, or if there are actual meanings in it if you're familiar with the sayings and expressions of the time it was written.

ADDENDUM: After a bit of hunting (Wikipedia's ordered list was quite helpful), I finally found the cartoon where Bugs sings this. It's called Hare Trigger, and is also the very first cartoon to feature Yosemite Sam as we know him today, though there were prototypes in earlier cartoons. Once I knew the title, finding it at YouTube was easy. The song starts at about 1:05.

ISU Insanity

2009-08-06T21:11:00.002-06:00

So, it turns out that the university's ~~brilliant~~ ~~stupendous~~ stupendously idiotic plan to get its classes taught without full-time lecturers is grad students. Now, a graduate student will only teach one class per semester. That's it. Their class-loads are too great to do anything else. A full-time load for me is four classes (five if I've got 108, as those only count as "half" a class towards my limit).

Let's look at some numbers on that, shall we? A Master's student in math with a teaching assistantship earns about $9400 for the school year. Four such students would earn around $37,600. My salary is just under $30,000. But wait, it gets better: they'll need two offices (two grad students to an office) instead of just one. And if they've got four doctoral students teaching the classes, they shell out about $49,000. This is not a way to save them money.

There is more to the plan, however. They want to bunch up the introductory math classes into big lecture halls. Now, these are the students who need the most help with math. Shoving them into a big lecture hall is, effectively, smothering any chance they have of passing. In the smaller classes we currently have, there's usually a 50% failure rate or higher. I've heard talk of using them as "weed-out" classes, but in that case, why don't they just have, oh, say, admissions standards??!?!?

None of this is the fault of the math department. I overheard our chair in the hall discussing how bad the situation was. Their budget for office supplies is $700 less than they typically spend on copies alone. They're under pressure not to open up new sections, even if there's enough student demand for them. The list goes on. I have no idea what's actually going to happen for the 2010-11 school year. I'm sure the math department will fight a lot of these changes, but unless the bastard Otter restores something resembling a reasonable budget, there won't be much they can do.

There's also an issue in that there are some faculty who just "don't like" the idea of full-time teaching faculty who are (GASP!!)not full professors, and I suspect they're taking the opportunity to try and weed us out. But what are departments without graduate programs supposed to do, hmmm? Just die? Hire professors who have to be paid more? Yeah. These idiots are clearly not capable of cogent thought.

Oh, yes. I should probably add that these views are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the rest of the math department ... though I would be surprised if they weren't at least similar to the rest of the department (and that's my opinion, too).

Deby's Carrot Cake

2009-08-05T19:57:00.003-06:00

At Deby's bakery, she had various kinds of cake, packaged theoretically as single servings (as well as full cakes). I couldn't resist getting a piece of carrot cake, though I actually cut it into four slices as it was almost 4 inches square, and I didn't need that much all at once. Looks like the carrot cake isn't available for order on her web-site yet, but there are some carrot cupcakes on the "order" page at her web-site. It's not giving me a direct link to the order page for some reason.

But I couldn't resist the carrot cake because I have very fond memories of always buying one of the little slices of carrot cake for dessert whenever we went to Skipper's when I was little. Now, I can't even eat at Skipper's any more, and I never seem to get around to making carrot cake myself, so it was nice to finally have it again. Deby's version is pretty good. It needs more spice, imo, and a bit less frosting, but overall I'd recommend it. One warning: the label did say "contains trace amounts of soy." I usually don't react to small amounts, but anyone extremely sensitive should avoid, well, most of Deby's products actually.

**Just noticed this on the order page: "Note: all Deby's breads are Gluten Free, Dairy, and Egg Free, and contain only a trace amount of Soy (from the nonstick pan spray)." Blasted soy-lecithin strikes again. I'm half-tempted to buy one of the good refillable spray bottles and send it to her. At Bed, Bath and Beyond I found a metal refillable spray bottle, and I swear that, other than the pumping, I cannot tell the difference between the way it sprays and the way the aerosol, soy-laden, store-bought ones spray. It holds the pressure much better than the old plastic one I had, and the spray is much, much finer. It is one that you have to pump, as it uses air pressure to send out the spray, but, again, it works much better than the plastic pump one that I had before.