Notice to Phillip, Drew, and Hanwool: Wednesday night around 6:00 pm. Also, I assume our larger group will organize something to help Justin move this Saturday/ Sunday. I'll be there with a truck.

LAN party details: I'm getting a big table tomorrow morning. Still need to fix the file server. Should have room (read: tables and chairs) for 9 ppl total in the long room (the one with the blue and white walls), others can go in the living room (right now, have tables there for up to 4). Invite other gamers! Right now, I only have 5 ppl confirmed... it'd be nice if we had at least 10. Please IM me (hjo333 on AIM) or e-mail me () if you plan on coming. It's not required, but it's appreciated.

Now. (Notice the driven-over stakes.)

After the application of many steel caltrops. This particular spike is hollow and can puncture a self-sealing rubber tire.

Apparently, I forgot to mention some things in post #338. Fortunately, some anal retentive watchful players caught my mistakes. (1) Duran, Archer, and Takem were played by Justin, Ryan, and Drew, respectively. (2) Sometime while everyone else was in stasis on the trip to the Capellan jump-skirt, Duran popped the tech from Capella V out of stasis (they had taken him with them) to torture him. For four days. Then the tech died, so Duran flushed him out the airlock.

Hopefully Hanwool will be running HDHC this weekend, but it's not a sure thing since his cousin (a chemist from CA) will be in town. ION, I just got back from taking the jet skis in for service. Looks like they'll be done next week. I stopped at 7-11 and got some of this Japanese melon soda (pictured below). Well, I have work to do. Later.

Well, I ran my space game last night. I don't know how the players liked it, but I enjoyed it. I think some of them were probably bored by the calculations, physics minutia, and astronomy details, but I like that kind of stuff. The game was very useful to me for figuring out balance issues with space combat and interplanetary travel. This'll make it possible to generate plausible background material now.

A quick summary of the game: The PCs (played by Hanwool, Phillip, Justin, Ryan, and Drew) ended up on a jump-capable shuttle together. Hanwool's character, Rhee, had won the ship's lease in a high-stakes poker game with a well-to-do merchant. The outdated (about 80 yrs. old) robot in the cargo bay, ZAMWO-112882 (Phill), came with the ship. In pursuit of quasi-legal profit and knowing he'd never be able to keep up with the ship payments, Rhee headed for the frontier. Along the way, he picked up a crew member named Archer who turned out to be a good, but impulsive, pilot. In anticipation of their piratical activites, Rhee and Archer stopped at the last established colony to pick up a couple mercenary-types. Luckily, they stumbled across Duran and Takem, a couple of mercs willing to work for cheap (apparently, they were in some sort of trouble, probably of the legal sort).

Anyway, they dock at Mong Lo station (just a deep-space collection of cargo pods, old hulls, etc. welded together to form a habitat of sorts; zero-gee, no spin) to meet a contact of Rhee's. They go through quarantine, find Susan M., and trade her a $1200 tool kit for a "hot tip" about some unattended automated terraforming equipment in a nearby system. They take off for Capella, a nearby (well, 21 ly away) Sol-like system with a cold terrestrial world and four Jovian gas-giants. Unfortunately, due to solar phenomena, the jump-skirt is about 92 AU out, so it took them 1.68 years to get to Capella V at constant 1 G acceleration (of course, it didn't take all that long from their perspective because of stasis).

They arrive at the planet, receive a message from another slightly larger shuttle (the standard "Don't come any closer, we're doing stuff" recording). Apparently, two technicians were on the surface doing maintenance on the 600' flexibody super-terraformers. Everyone, except Archer and Zamwo, gets into stasis. Then Zamwo "breaks" the life support unit. Archer radios the techs for emergency assistance, permission to land. They grant it. Rhee's ship lands, everyone's ordered to evacuate to a half-mile away while one tech takes a look at the life support.

On his way out, he sees Rhee, then others running towards him. He starts jogging away, then seeing that they're still pursuing him, takes out a holdout blaster and fires a warning shot. At this, Duran takes aim with his blaster rifle and blows half the guy's face off at 440 yards. They loot the body and, with the aid of TL10 medical technology, keep the guy from dying. Skip ahead a few hours, they take out a few incoming missiles, blow up a terraformer (and the tech working on it), and crash their shuttle in a forest (Archer decided to try a barrel-roll at 40 mph... on a ship with no streamlining and 1 G of acceleration on a planet with 0.97 Earth-gravities).

Fortunately, there didn't seem to be any damage (hey, the thrusters still fire, right?), so they got into orbit and tried to dock with the techs' shuttle. When they touched docking clamps to it, it radioed a "stop or face offensive measures" message and a countdown timer. Rhee disconnects, then reconnects. This time he just waits for the timer to run out. Of course, the techs' shuttle then fires a barrage of missiles (presumably, LE). Somehow, Rhee's craft survives the explosions, only losing its right-facing armor. In the wreckage, they manage to find a 9-ton chunk of reactionless thruster and fifty rE-cells. They inspect the 7-ton orbital (used for coordinating terraforming, gathering planetary data, etc.) but decide its not worth hauling back for sale.

Everyone goes back into stasis to get to Capella's jump-skirt, but Zamwo wakes Archer up six months into the journey because a micrometeor had breached their hull (since they had no armor on one facing) and taken out 4 rE-cells. Of course, they don't really have the skills for it, but they manage to cut the ship's thrust and repair the damage/ replace the powercells in 12 days (good thing they had some replacements handy). Archer goes back into stasis, they get to the system's "edge" and make the four jumps back to Mong Lo. They manage to sell off the remaining cells and thruster parts for $325,000. Of course, $80,000 goes to pulling the ship into dry-dock and repairing the armor. $10,000 for manuals, databases, and schematics. $20,000 in other costs. The PCs split the rest of the income; $43,000 each. Not a lot of money to show for four years time, but a fair income if you consider that most of the PCs were only conscious for one or two days during that period.

That took longer to type out than I thought it would. Anyway. Below is a composite of a few renders I made of a model I built in Maya 4.5. It's supposed to be Hanwool's character's shuttle, the "Red Dwarf" (hey, I didn't name it).

Fireworks. I got a sort of grab bag (the yellow box). Phill got the heavy-duty quasi-professional sorts (mortars and launch tubes). Jason had a bunch of neat little ones.	I think this one was called "Twitter Glitter." It's one of the few pics I got of fireworks in action since I kinda got caught up with the fuse-lighting and whatnot.
Some idiots down the street from us tipped over a mortar and set a lot on fire. About a third of it got burned up before the fire dept. put it out.	Hanwool and his sister in front of said fire.
A couple hours after the first fire, this one broke out at the end of the street, behind the train tracks. It looked hard to get to; don't know how long it took them to put it out.

Him: you're wrong about crt's and lcd's, sorry to say. i don't care what your link says, it's a fact. gamers use crt's because of their sharpness and detail. educate yourself before you mis-inform people

Me: No, gamers use CRTs because of their lack of a ghosting effect. As for the CRTs being sharper... that's just wrong. LCDs have individual, sharply defined pixels. That's why their dot-pitch is usually higher than CRTs... CRT phosphors glow fuzzily...

And I am _not_ misinforming people. I don't know why you're so hostile about a rather unimportant subject anyway. Next time, do your research before you accuse ppl of ignorance.

Him: not hostile. no research needed my man, i own a computer business and been a computer tech for over 5 years and work with very seasoned professionals (old men). cmon man, i happen to know my stuff, this is not questionable, it's a darn fact. regarding the ghosting effect you're talking about (seems like you are piecing together info), passive matrix LCD's can suffer from ghosting but no one makes them anymore. CRT's do NOT have a ghosting effect unless they are garbage. CRT's have always been a gamers and graphic designers choice because of the sharpness and clarity of the picture. sorry if you disagree, but that's the truth.

BTW, there is no reason why we can't have a normal discussion/debate about this, so dont get upset and call me hostile.

www.[removed*].biz

*I don't want him threatening me with libel suits or something just because I mentioned his web site. (Not sure why he's so proud of it... it's poorly designed and has virtually no content. E-mail me if you really want the URL.)

Me: Ah, so since you own a business, you don't need to research anything? That's awfully arrogant. Aside from your brag about being a tech 5 yrs. and working with old ppl, do you have any qualifications? Those would make me put more stock in your opinions (and they are opinions; I haven't seen you reference any credible web sites or texts) than simply having worked in the field a while. I've known some really terrible techs who've had their jobs as long as 8 years.

As for your hostility, you called me uneducated and may have implied that I knowingly lie to people. I'm not upset, but I'm not exactly eager to talk with someone who treats me so rudely.

You also acknowledged that you won't accept actual evidence I provide just because it's contrary to what you think. (" i don't care what your link says...")

I really don't know how we could even begin to "debate" a topic when you've flat out said that you're unwilling to consider that you might not be totally correct.

So anyway, the guy's a jackass. People who expect you to agree with them just because they tell you how wonderful they are really tick me off. I'm sure there's a Latin phrase for that kind of logical fallacy, but I've got better uses for my dwindling internet time than googling it.

The Cobalt Flux is awesome, but it takes some getting used to. Going to bed early cuz I have to go meet with these museum ppl tomorrow about making their web site.