Tonight PW and I are headed to Denver to see Meniskus at the Walnut Room.  I’m off to stuff myself with pizza! 🙂

I was on production support today, which was annoying but necessary.  I tend to be frustrated that we are in the situation of having code that requires production support, but I acknowledge that it is a part of life in IT.

After work, I rolled up a Deadlands character, had some tacos, and then headed to game night with the guys.  Much of the session was spent just hanging out and trying to understand a different gaming system but we did have a fun encounter and got a bit further into the adventure.  I’m rounding out the night doing some graphic design for a new project, which has proven to be extremely fun so far!

That’s all for now!

Today was a good day at the office, but I couldn’t help but detect the crisp fall air when I headed to D&D.  Looking at the weather forecast, it looks like I’m going to have to drain the sprinkler system tomorrow night and get it as winterized as I can before we start to dip into the 30’s at night.  I don’t want a repeat performance of last year, where I waited too long to turn off the sprinklers, it froze, and I had to repair it in the Spring.

All that aside, it was a good night of D&D in our new Encounters group.  Tomorrow night is my new Deadlands group, and Friday night is a Meniskus show at the Walnut Room… a busy but fun week!  Not much else to report tonight.

Tonight we continued our previous lesson on Unsu, focusing this time on the remaining half of the kata.  Before we did all of that, we worked on some sparring combinations.  The main combination we focused on was rear leg front kick, stepping back into sparring stance.  That was followed up with a rear leg roundhouse kick stepping forward, landing with reverse punch.  Then we reset our sparring guard and finished with a reverse punch to the face.  After we got done with learning the combination, then we did it with partners for awhile.

Anyway, back to Unsu.  We got through the rest of the kata, as I mentioned before.  A few subtle differences from what I can remember of doing the kata in the past.  Sensei Tarrant recommended setting up for the jump in back stance instead of fudo-dachi, however he acknowledged the fudo-dachi variation that I was more familiar with.  The setup did not make me more capable of performing that jump, but at least I have something to work on.  I think I can get through the whole kata on my own now, albeit clumsily.

Sensei Tarrant told the class that he considers Unsu one of the few katas that can seriously improve the rest of the katas  in Shotokan karate, but he went on to say that it doesn’t seem to work the opposite direction.  He explained that in his experience, Unsu has a stigma about it that it is often considered too difficult to practice or only the truly skilled instructors work on it exclusively.  Thankfully, he’s out to remove that stigma and make everyone get value out of knowing and practicing the kata, if for no other reason than not to be nervous about it.

That’s all for now!

There’s just not a lot going on tonight.  I got off work, still somewhat on edge from the end of a long iteration.  Not being able to relax, Tasha and I went to dinner and then came home and watched Dancing With The Stars.  I’ve whiled away the rest of the evening surfing the Internet and watching TV.

Tomorrow night is karate, and then it’s gaming on Wednesday and Thursday night.  I have no idea what is going on at the end of the week, hopefully it turns up quickly!  That’s all for now.

The Muse show was great last night!  They didn’t play as long as I would have hoped, but they certainly did bring their hits right out of the gate.

Tonight, Tasha and I are going to visit Paul and Kara.  I have agreed to watch the kids for a short time tonight while Paul Ballew goes to pick up Jenny at the airport, so it’s going to be a very “visiting friends” style Sunday.  We have to head to the store to get a side for our cookout with Paul and Kara, so I’d best be going.  More soon!

At long last, tonight we get to see Muse!  We were supposed to go in March, but it got canceled at the last moment due to their inability to get farther than Vail in their tour bus due to snow in the mountains.  I’m looking forward to this show, I’ve heard it is one of the best live performances going right now.

This is the last concert in the 2010 lineup for us at this point, so it is somewhat bittersweet as a result.  I don’t know if we’re going to get to see too many shows for the front half of next year with the new baby coming, but that’s ok!  That’s it for now, more soon!

Tonight was a good night.  I got out of the office early (thankfully) and got a good nap in to begin the evening.  After that, Tasha and I headed to the bank and grocery store for the beginning of the month shopping.  After that was done we rounded out the evening with some TV, catching up on our backlogged Big Bang Theory episodes.  I finally broke into my Ervin Somogyi books and DVDs on guitar building, the DVD was great.  He reminds me a lot of Mr. Wizard, only focused on the science of guitars.

The books are going to last me a long time, there is a lot of material to learn in there.

That’s all for me right now, time to catch up on some sleep before the Muse concert tomorrow night!

Tonight was game night with some of my friends from Total Escape Games.  We opted for my first foray into Savage Worlds, specifically Deadlands Reloaded.  I had originally played Deadlands back in college with my dormmates and I am pleased to report that it is very much the same game with slightly simpler mechanics.  We were beginning to get the gist of combat and gameplay after just a few short hours, and I was already beginning to identify ways I would make my own character differently to maximize my enjoyment (we used pre-generated characters for this introductory game).

I played “Shady” Doug Liveaux, a New Orleans huckster.  The huckster class is very interesting and still retained my favorite gameplay mechanic of the old Deadlands game: casting spells by drawing a poker hand and assessing the result.  I don’t know if they included these mechanics in the old system and we just didn’t know it, but as the game progressed we realized that you could counteract wounds with Vigor rolls.  This significantly reduced the high mortality rate that I experienced in previous incarnations of Deadlands, and you could always use Fate Chips to shake off wounds as well.  I was pleased that despite some difficult run-ins with manitou’s during spellcasting, “Shady” made it out of the night largely intact.

I enjoy the tactile experience of this game, being able to shuffle a deck of cards and play with poker chips really increased the immersion for me.  The one-sheet campaign that our DM ran us through was interesting and helped us learn the mechanics with just the right amount of storyline to follow.  Next week we’re going to generate our own characters that will carry on into an ongoing Deadlands campaign, where we will trade off the Marshalling (i.e. Dungeon Mastering) duties.

The Savage Worlds game mechanics take a bit of getting used to if you’re as used to D&D as I am, however I found it equally easy to get ramped up and learn the basics within one session as I could in D&D 4e.  I’m enjoying the change of pace, so expect to see the occasional Savage Worlds related post (perhaps some compare and contrast) as the weeks march by.

After game night was over, I stopped by the gas station to find that the lights were on, but the store was closed.  I got in a conversation with a lady that was also attempting to fill up her tank to no avail, and I absentmindedly left my gas cap on the trunk of my car so now it is gone.  Time to order a new gas cap, oh boy.

Today was another long day at the office, but not quite as long as yesterday.  I only ended up with 12 hours on the clock today, making a grand total of 29 hours in two days.  The good news: we got all of the unit tests passing, India is going to test tonight and I think we’re home free.  Even though we had to work like crazy to get this done, I’m proud that we were able to bring this project in on time (providing no crazy issues tomorrow).

I got home around 8:45 pm and had some dinner, happy to find that my books by Ervin Somogyi showed up!  They’re really substantial books in a nice case, so I’m excited to dive into them.  I also got his DVD on voicing the guitar so that should be good too.  Now I just have to find some free time to read/watch them…

Hopefully the long workdays are done for awhile!