a D&D potluck finale extravaganza to remember…

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Last night was pretty epic, both as a gaming session and simply with regards to gatherings of friends.

Recently our DM had to make the tough decision to move out west for family reasons, meaning that our Friday night campaign was unfortunately set to come to a close. Wanting to do a little something special for our final session, the group brainstormed behind his back (incessantly, I might add – with message threads exceeding Gmail’s 100-message cap, even!) and eventually we came up with the idea of hosting a potluck for our last supper, featuring representation from every corner of the food pyramid … although admittedly certain peak areas may have been a little better represented than others!

I made my infamous sweet & sour meatballs, someone else made jambalaya, grown-up pigs in a blanket and sheppard’s pie both made appearances … and then there was dessert. In hobbit speak, First Dessert was a delectable pair of strawberry cheesecakes from Perkins that were literally divine, Secondzies featured a custom cake that we had made by Publix with some of the photos from our games printed on top, and just in case there was any room leftover, I made sure to bring along a pumpkin pie, too, because well, that’s what I do…

Seriously, I don’t think I’m going to need to eat again until, like, Tuesday.

The game was a great final session as well – only just passing into paragon levels a game or two prior, we were nowhere near the strength to take on our main adversary (who was rumored to be around level 25), so we basically stuck to the storyline that we’d been pursuing and tied up loose ends in that regard, ultimately coming to victory and proudly ensuring that the Festival of Doors in Sigil would go off without a hitch! In between multiple food breaks, it was probably one of our longest sessions ever, with the dice finally coming to a stop sometime after 1:30am, but it was a fantastic time and I loved every minute of it!

Admittedly it was almost kind of bittersweet watching things come to a close because it was then when we all took a step back and got a chance to really look in on the world that we all had created from the outside. At the end of the evening, we all went around the circle and shared the full backstory of our characters, exposing whatever little secrets were still outlying, which ended up being some interesting hooks! It was kind of amazing to see the intricate adventures that had grown and intertwined out of everyone’s original stories over the 16 gaming sessions that we’ve been playing since last October.

It’s going to be a tough act to follow, not only for our next DM but also simply for all of us players to step up and create a brand new world all over again, but I think we’re all up to the challenge. We’ve actually already started discussions and one of the other guys has thankfully assumed the DM’s chair, so there will be no shortage of campaign gaming this summer as far as that’s concerned! Between the old and the new, it’s kind of gotten me excited about role playing once again – through faults entirely of my own, things have been getting a little stale and obligatory for me simply because I’ve been pushing myself so hard with writing lately that often times I’d feel guilty to take a night off to go play, but this session if nothing else was a perfect reminder of why I love playing – it’s not about tediously creating characters at the last minute or getting frustrated that my character isn’t working out the way I had intended, it’s about the friendships and the camaraderie around the table and everyone having a good time together playing something that we all enjoy.

Here’s to making the next adventure just as epic as the last…

Cleo Conquers Her Cage!

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Who would’ve thought that a week later not only would our beloved, little puppy not only be sleeping at night in her cage without any fuss whatsoever, but even seeking it out all by herself when she feels like taking a nap during the day?!


Somebody’s a good girl!

Frustrated with Copy & Paste Customer Service

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I know that we’ve still got a couple of days left to go, but so far this has been a bad week with regards to me having to deal with customer service departments.

Two different companies – my bank and the company that prints my books – and two questions that were admittedly a bit complicated, but still, not impossible to solve … I can say this because eventually someone in each company did finally take the time to really dig in and get me the answer that I needed. But my point is – it didn’t happen the first time, and that really frustrates me…

I’ve worked at a call center before and I certainly witnessed the bad reps firsthand – the guys who would tell the customer that “they could see it going through the system right now” and how it would conveniently be done just after their shift ended, or the girls who would take escalated calls as each other’s supervisors so as to keep their actual boss in the dark about the lackluster service that they were offering. I get that the job sucks and there are lots of reasons to be grumpy, but I still believe that you should still come in and give at least a decent level of service for the paycheck that you’re receiving each week.

In each of these instances this week, my first e-mail was responded to with text copy & pasted straight out of a help file, which would’ve been fine if it had actually addressed my problem, but it didn’t … it fact, I had already read that help file and it didn’t, well, help! That’s why I mentioned in my e-mail that I had already done this and that to try and circumvent the entry level, “WTF – RTFM!”-ish response that’s all too common. Just like how I try to reboot my cable box before I call because I don’t want to waste your time any more than I want you wasting my time…

The next e-mail after your typical, copy & paste response is tricky, though – you want to be firm and assertive, but not a total dick because you do still need their actual help! Sometimes I’ll say, “Please re-read my original ticket – issue not actually addressed.” or sometimes I’ll try and distill my original question down to its simplest form, “Why can’t I access this feature with my account???” Admittedly often times I provide as much info as possible when I open support tickets because I’d like to think having all of the pertinent info right in front of them would help to resolve my issue faster the first time, but of course, that’s not always the case!

In this week’s twin stories – one of the two companies got back on the ball on the second try. My printer answered my original question and apologized for not catching it the first time … same rep, as far as I can tell … but for the bank, also the same rep’s second reply was even more nonsensical copy & paste BS that didn’t even apply to my situation, so at that point I threw in the towel and ended up calling them to get an actual answer. It turned out that there was indeed a technical problem from when my account had recently transitioned to them over the weekend and after making a couple of changes, suddenly I was able to refresh my screen and see what I had expected to see in the first place clear as day. Finally!

Customer service in this country measures itself on all the wrong metrics – I don’t care how long you keep me on the phone, as long as you’re polite about it and you’re actually fixing my issue behind the scenes. I don’t even care if you have to hand me off to another team, as long as the turnaround is still reasonable and somebody actually calls me back when they say they’re going to. I don’t expect everything to be right the first time – mistakes happen, but when somebody calls or sends an e-mail to bring them to your attention, you owe that customer at least as much time as they put into writing the e-mail to you in the first place.

Copy & Paste responses are fine for those ignorant customers who don’t bother to do any research on their own, but for the rest of us, actual insight and troubleshooting into our issues is both expected and appreciated.

Thin Post : If You Give a Fat Man a Cookie…

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Chances are he’s going to want another one!

He might even want three, if he thinks that he’s been eating fairly healthy and doesn’t realize just how ridiculously fattening said cookies actually are … or so I’ve heard…

So tonight I had a revelation with regards to chocolate chip cookies. You see, I’ve been eating at Subway a lot recently as an aversion to instead eating at the handful of other local fast food joints that are a whole lot worse for me in the calorie department. I feel pretty comfortable with what I usually get there now as a regular lunch:

  • 6” Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki on Wheat (381 calories, 4.5g fat)
  • BBQ Baked Lays single serving bag of chips (120 calories, 3g fat)
  • Total: 501 calories, 7.5g fat

Even if I eat late and span both lunch and dinner with a foot-long sub, it’s still under 900 calories for the whole thing, which I think works for me.

Unfortunately, what doesn’t work for me is when I feel like I’m doing good so I decide to reward myself with the treat of a cookie, or three! And as much as I hate to admit it, for a couple weeks I have been indulging on three because I was caving in to the marketing ploy of “1 for 79 cents, 3 for $1.50!” The thing is, until today I had never done the math to realize that each of those cookies is actually 210 CALORIES AND 10 GRAMS OF FAT!

EACH!!!

So in essence, munching on $1.50’s worth of cookies after lunch is actually adding more calories than I ate in the entire meal, and they’re not even that good of cookies! I mean, they’re delicious when they’re nice and warm and fresh out of the oven, but we all know that when you’re dieting, it’s not good enough to just be delicious – a food needs to be both delicious and worth the calories that you’d have to burn to work it off! Eating three of those things is literally the equivalent of eating three Hershey’s chocolate bars in one sitting, which anyone in their right mind would deem crazy … and yet because the deal is three for $1.50, somehow it’s mentally ok to go to town because really, they’re just tiny, chocolate chip cookies, right?!

Another comparison, as long as we’re talking about cookies, I thought it would be interesting to compare today’s lesson to a few other snacking options:

  • Subway Chocolate Chip Cookie (210 calories, 10g fat)
  • Oreo Cookies (1 serving = 3 cookies) (160 calories, 7g fat)
  • Otis Spunkmeyer Chocolate Chip Cookie (170 calories, 8g fat)
  • Panera Bread Chocolate Chip Cookie (440 calories, 23g fat)

One of the delis nearby sells Otis Spunkmeyer cookies, which are usually bigger and better than Subway’s, and they’re less calories to boot! Or even grabbing a bag of Oreos at the store and having a couple with lunch would be ok. And I’ll admit – yes, the Panera cookies are ridiculously fattening and I don’t really eat them anymore, but anyone who’s ever gawked at their bakery case also knows that they’re HUGE … doesn’t justify it for the guy who still has 40 lbs to lose, I know … maybe I’m more or less just reminiscing at this point because I used to get these all the time…

*ahem*

Anyways, I guess ultimately the lesson here wasn’t necessarily that I need to avoid Subway cookies in general, but so much like anything else, moderation is key and I shouldn’t be looking to their sales board for any hints as to what is actually reasonable for me to eat on their menu. A single cookie here and there, albeit still almost half again the calories of the meal, should be ok; a handful of Oreos instead would be better, but only once I build up the self control to actually have a package in the house without plowing through an entire row of cookies at a time!

But 630 calories of cookies after a 501 calorie meal?! Oops.

LEGO Lightning McQueen, BIG Version!

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As if this wasn’t cool enough, check out this awesome life-size model of Pixar’s racing legend, built from over 250,000 bricks weighing in at nearly a ton…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaQ_ptflWLs

They also have another cool Behind the Bricks video showing the construction of a life-size Jack Sparrow model that was created out of LEGOs for the Pirates 4 toy line premiere earlier this year. Hopefully these will become part of a larger series as Disney expands its relationship with LEGO – I’d love to see some behind the scenes footage of the construction of the new models around the LEGO store that was just remodeled at Downtown Disney (although I’ve specifically avoided looking at any pictures online because I really want to see them in person first!).

Even though I’m not sure that I’d have the design skills for it to be able to craft something like one of these in 3D, I always thought it would be cool to work as a LEGO Master Builder to bring these sorts of giant-scale creations to life. I’ve played around with their online designer that lets you create and then order your own set, and it’s kind of neat … again, for the design literate! … but even just getting to help put one of these things together based on somebody else’s design I think would be a real treat!

I keep telling myself that one day I want to really dig in and try making something from scratch on my own – maybe a medium-size-ish Bart Simpson figure or something. You know, start small so that by the time I’m ready to retire, I’ve worked up to where I can take up the entire garage working on my life-size LEGO Stegosaurus or something…

Cleo’s Caged Slumber Conniptions

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This weekend we began a very trying, but also a very necessary change – we’re trying to get our puppy used to sleeping in her own cage instead of sleeping in the bed with us.

And I’ll be the first to admit that we were probably just being lazy by letting her sleep with us to begin with – I think after a full day of chasing the anxious puppy around and seeing how clingy and hyper she can be, we realized that the only way we were ever going to get any sleep was by just caving in and keeping her with us all night, too. Which is fine if you don’t mind being reminded at 4am that she thinks she might want to pee or being reminded at 8am that IT’S TIME FOR HER TO GET UP AND START ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL DAY!!!

Also, not for nothing but it kind of made, shall I say, intimacy between a loving husband and wife pretty much impossible, so that wasn’t exactly working for us, either!

So Friday night was her first night sleeping alone and she didn’t like it one bit. She probably barked for a solid 30 minutes, upon which my theory is that her brain eventually just shut off motor control to her larynx so that even it could finally get some rest.

Saturday night – still unhappy, but maybe 15 minutes of barking, and even that was only after she finished the treat that we had given her and saw through our ruse that we weren’t technically even in the room anymore.

Sunday night – 5 minutes, at best

And finally, tonight?! Jackpot – maybe a few stray barks as I turned off the lights and closed the bedroom door, but by the time I’d gotten ready for bed she was quiet. She still wasn’t exactly crazy about getting in her cage and even snuck back out one time while I was trying to gather up her toys for her, but at least I have my own bed back now and boy, has it been nice to not wake up to something chewing on my ear at the stroke of 8:00am every morning!

Banter About Backups

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I found this story, or at least the comments anyways, kind of amusing. The discussion stems from the idea of the people behind the Internet Archive making an effort to create physical backups of 10 million books by way of printing out copies to keep in giant climate-controlled storage containers. And what amused me was what I think can be distilled to the old school vs. new school crowds arguing about the reliability of digital files as a medium over the long term…

Some argue the new age angle and proclaim that digital files are here to stay, and that this is a tremendous waste of time and efforts when mass storage in the terabytes can exist in personal computers for less than a hundred bucks.

Others argue that while not only do technologies evolve and replace outdated formats, the concern also needs to be considered for a world where suddenly technology itself becomes obsolete – i.e. your e-readers will do you little good without electricity, but this paper still reads just fine.

What I think is lost on the new crowd is the idea that this is essentially a backup of a backup – a failsafe for the miniscule chance that over time the luxuries to various scales which we’ve grown accustomed to may eventually dissipate, either by force or simply by time. They’re not suggesting to get rid of our digital copies and go back to paper, but redundancies in data backup are never a bad thing! Like most, I could certainly stand to do a lot better at this myself – I have some of my original writing files backed up online from over the years, but I still stand the chance of losing a lot … and that’s just if this flash drive that I always carry around with me one day goes kaput!

Take, for example, the very first “book” that I wrote for my 8th grade English class back in 1993. I don’t actually have a digital copy of that thing anymore because I wrote it with a word processor called WordStar, which ran on the old Apple II clone that was my first computer growing up. Not only does the app no longer exist, but the computer probably got thrown away and I highly doubt that I could even find the 5¼” floppy that it was saved on, anyways!

But my paper copy still reads just fine…

So yeah – that was only 18 years ago, and the true archive that they’re talking about creating is intended to persist over dozens or even hundreds of years. I can count on two hands the number of storage mediums that have faded away even in my own lifetime, so it’s silly to think that Blu-Ray discs, even with their massive 50 GB storage capacities, will still be accessible 50 years from now. 15 years ago 100 MB zip disks were all the rage, but I think mine died out while I even still had the drive!

I think I need to go make some more backups.

2011 Superhero Movie Status Check – 3 Down, 2 to Go

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So after going to see X-Men: First Class last night, I did a little count and realized that at least of the ones that I’m aware of, we’re officially past the halfway point of new superhero releases for this year. As such, here are my thoughts thus far…

Green Hornet
Had my doubts, but I actually really enjoyed this one – it was very slapsticky and reminiscent of the 1960’s Batman that I love so dear! And it was refreshing to see a superhero movie that took more of the lighthearted approach instead of being so heavy on special effects and the hero’s all-too-often dark past. It’s a lot easier to stand out when you try something different!

Solid A, mostly for daring to be a comedy movie in an action-dominated genre.

Thor
…and then there’s Thor. My best review for this movie – it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t terrific, either. It certainly had its bad ass moments – namely the scene when Thor finally reclaims his hammer, and basically any scene with Heimdall in it! Still, I felt that it sort of glossed over a big part of the movie – his first attempt at getting the hammer went on forever (in a cool manner, mind you), but then it sort of felt like his change of heart came about really quickly when wouldn’t you think that would take a lot longer??? Plus, I kinda thought that Loki could’ve been a little better defined as a bad guy – half the time it was hard to tell if it was all part of his ruse or if the writers simply forgot that he was the bad guy for a while…

All in all, I give it a B.

X-Men: First Class
What can I say? This movie very much so lived up to my expectations – a shining example of what a prequel should be! Honestly, I think it’s a real testament to how good the other three X-Men movies were because it was really interesting to see all of the dots connected to show relationships that I never knew existed, but they definitely make sense! It really makes me want to go back and watch the others again now to better appreciate how Magneto and Professor X interact, and even more so to see the vibe between Charles and Mystique … who knew that they used to be best friends (or more?) growing up?!

So far for me, anyways, this one is posed for best superhero movie of the year, and the only complaint that I have against it is that it so could’ve done without all of the cheesy lines that popped up at the end. I mean, it was odd, but understandable when the kids were sitting around “choosing their codenames,” but seriously, for the stars of the movie, it didn’t need to be pointed out and honestly I felt like it sort of cheapened the moment when the camera panned back to Erik in his helmet and red cloak as he said, “I prefer the name Magneto.” Same with “You’re not just men – you’re X-Men!” The movie was freaking awesome – why ruin it with lazy writing at the last minute?!

I’ve gotta dock at least a few points when one of the actors says the name of the movie … but still, an A- that would’ve been a fulfledged A (maybe A+?) had it not been for the unnecessary cheese…

Green Lantern (premieres next week)
That said, if there’s one movie that can knock X-Men out of first place for best superhero action movie, it’s this one. I’ve been loving the trailers even more having seen them on the big screen twice in the last week before Thor and X-Men, so my fingers are just crossed that this isn’t a prime example of all the awesomeness of 90 minutes fitting neatly in the 90 second trailer.

Captain America (premieres mid-July)
Frankly, I don’t have nearly as much faith in this one – I’m not too keen on the whole war story and honestly, I just don’t get the scene in the trailer where Captain America comes charging in holding a pistol and flanked by five other soldiers on each side holding identical pistols. Why does this SUPERHERO need a gun??? I guess we’ll find out in another month or so, but who knows – maybe it’ll end up surprising me.

I can tell you one thing, though – I know that we’re definitely staying through the credits to see the final teaser for The Avengers after this one! We didn’t do it for Thor and I immediately went home and scavenged around on the Internet until I could find a crappy camcorder version on YouTube to give me the gist. And it looked good!!!