News Archives: July 2008

Friday, July 25, 2008

Quick Update

Quite a lot has happened this week, so I thought a quick update might be in order.

Claire's car is still at the garage, and we're not sure when we'll get it back. The verdict was that the water pump had seized, which trashed the timing belt. We seem to have been lucky, and the cylinders haven't been damaged, so is just about worth getting fixed.

I won the argument with Dell, and a replacement charger turned up on Tuesday, with a phonecall that afternoon to make sure it had arrived and was working. Dunno if I'll get away with that again, though.

Tara was back at the vets this evening. She's been limping again - same leg that caused all the problems before. This time she's showing pain when the hip joint is flexed, rather than the knee. She'll get an xray on Tuesday before we find out exactly what's wrong. Current thinking is probably arthritis.

The final changes to "Murder at the Greydog Inn" are nearly finished. Some of the characters are ending up quite different from the first run. I should be sending character sheets and "What My Father Told Me" to the players this weekend. Next week's job - write the pub quiz...

Finally, Claire and I have been asked to be god-parents. I'm slightly in shock that anyone would ask themselves "who's the most responsible, sensible couple we know?" and include me in the answer. After quickly checking that there was no actual "god" part involved, we agreed.

Posted by graham @ 09:36 pm

Monday, July 21, 2008

Eurmal's Revenge

Well, that was a bloody awful weekend. On Saturday afternoon I ran "Murder at the Greydog Inn" for the first time, and it was scrappy. Most of the characters had enough to do for the two and a half to three hour game I thought I'd written. Shame it ran for nearly five hours... Hopefully it'll be a bit better at Continuum, as most people will have something to do afterwards, so the game should move faster. But I need to add some hard deadlines - I'm thinking rituals that must happen at certain times, with the last one being the out for the murderer if not caught by that point. There's a couple of characters that need more to do, and a couple more have little to do if their players aren't proactive enough. There's also needs to be a chink in the Orlanthi conservatism, a cost to the status quo, otherwise a couple of the Lunar goals are pretty much impossible. Finally, there's a couple of bits of information that need to be clearer. A bit more writing needed.

Still, the game was the highpoint of the weekend. I'd borrowed Claire's car, as it was parked behind mine. After the game, I was about four miles from home when the car lost all power. I coasted on to the hard shoulder, called Claire, and she towed me off the motorway. This morning we dragged it up to the garage. Their first thought was the timing belt had snapped, but when I pointed out they'd replaced that at the service two months ago that changed to the alternator having failed. I'm currently waiting for the final verdict, and how much it's going to cost.

Sunday was no more fun. The laptop suddenly stopped charging. There's a broken connection in the charger, so I need a new one. This'll be the third I've had for this laptop in fifteen months. Seems a bit of a design flaw to me. I'm just off the phone to Dell tech support. They've been playing the "out of warranty" card, I've been playing the "not fit for purpose" and the "your fix under warranty didn't work" cards. I think I've won, and should get a new charger tomorrow. Hopefully it'll last more than seven bloody months.

Now for fuzz therapy...

Posted by graham @ 12:01 pm

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