Wow! I am a changed man forever! It’s a bit of an overstatement, but that’s generally how I feel about this fantasy table-top game. I’ve tasted the sweet nectar of Dungeons & Dragons and I don’t think I’ll ever be the same. A couple weekends ago I met up with some D&D players in Marietta, GA and played for about four hours. Within those four hours, to my surprise, all the D&D stereotypes were confirmed. It was an epic experience for me and I certainly look forward to more encounters as I level up in real life.

Be warned that I am going to make fun of EVERYTHING! It’s all in good fun, though. I had a great time and I have enlisted with my new Band of Brothers- my Campaign Desperadoes- into the mysterious world of D&D players.

Getting There

This reoccurring meetup “Return to Raven’s Nest” is held every first Saturday of the month at… you guessed it… The Raven’s Nest. It’s a comic-book store in Marietta, GA. Since I’m in Fairburn, south of the airport, I figured it would take me about an hour to get there. If only I left the house when I wanted. I basically left 20 minutes later than expected. Something to do with bathing (darn those natural urges), feeding the children, whatever. Well; I raced down the highway (more like raced up since I was traveling on I-286 North). I got around to the I-75 intersection and my wife called. I pulled over and talked to her for about 10 minutes. I had to tell her that, “I wasn’t there yet so let me go.” I got off the exit and soon realized that the main road Google Maps was telling me to follow was blocked due to that city doing a 4th of July parade! So; traffic was thick and I had to find an alternate route. It was 12:30 PM when I finally pulled up at the comic-book store. With my heart pacing a bit, I collected myself and checked-in via Foursquare…

First Impressions

I try not to be nervous about these kind of things, but everything was so new. If you can imagine, I’ve heard about D&D my entire life, but never played. I haven’t been to a comic-book store since middle school (and I’m at the ripe ol’ age of thirty-one). I walked through the door and saw a couple racks of comic books on the left and about four tables to the right. People were already playing and I tried to acquire the attention of a Dungeon Master (DM). I asked were table #1 was and someone asked if I was looking for the 4th edition table.

After finding a place to sit the DM Mike asked me if I had a character. I proudly answered, “No I don’t, this is my first time playing D&D.” I felt kind of stupid after saying it like that. I was then given a half orc ranger to play. I normally like to play elves as rangers (WoW equivalent to Elf Hunters) but I went along with the set I was given. After playing for about an hour or so I really warmed up to the idea of playing as a half orc. I think it was mainly because of the stock image provided. The half orc didn’t look as horrid as I thought it would. Now this half orc has sentimental value to me. He embodies my idea of being a deadly warrior (strength, accuracy, distance, and cunningness). Funny that I now see elves as silky pansy vegans. Odd, I know.

After a while I started to notice the stereotypes popping up as I played. A morbidly obese fella, a quiet middle-aged guy, young nerds that fight over stats and side chatter way too much, greasy-faced players, non-athletic women, etc. The list goes on. I’m no different. I’m just calling out the stereotypes. I could really care less who showed up to this momentous event! 

Momentous because it was my first D&D session. I don’t think I’ve embellished that theme enough in this post.

Continuing with stereotypes, I was surely the “token black guy.” Someone else could have easily mark me as an overweight African American nerd playing D&D. I was getting a little annoyed with the young-lings playing though. The DM kept trying to move the story along and they continually bickered back and forth about every little thing the DM said. In D&D, it’s OK to ask questions about the environment or the situation in order to grasp a better picture of what’s going on, but these guys were over doing it. Or so I thought.

We all ate candy, chips and whatever else the comic store stocked. The group didn’t take a collective break, we would simply get up to stretch, use the bathroom, buy more junk food, as we ended our turn and waited for the rotation. You can see how this is a “healthy” way to play!

The Heat of Battle

This is my first encounter. We fought spider and dog-like creatures in a tower to rescue two soldiers.

We played a total of three encounters and it took roughly four hours. It felt like a much longer time though. The first encounter was our group traveling to a tower to save some guy and bring him back to camp. We ended up acquiring a hermit Mage that was hanging out by an apple tree. We fought spider-like monsters, some four-armed dog-like creatures with two sets of mouths and a group of rival adversaries trying to gain back our rescued soldier. Even though the encounter was told in words with visuals being on the board and miniatures… the real battle took place in our heads. I could clearly see the tower, the monsters, the prisoners, and my epic arrows flying cross my comrade’s golden hair, whizzing by him to strike our opponents. It was truly an experience I will soon not forget.

While rescuing the two prisoners, we were spared from the horrifying “cloud of destruction” that took over the land. We went back to camp to see that everyone was dead. The other ranger in our group was sorely upset that he didn’t have time to loot the corpse of the general that recruited him on this mission. He needed to be paid. Four years past since that encounter and our next scene led us to a city in the sky. The DM said that we gained about 500 gold pieces within those four years and we were now meeting up in this amazing floating city.

The 3rd encounter. We attended a ceremony four years later after the first encounter.

The DM staged a ceremony and I knew a fight would be brewing. As we positioned our miniatures I made sure mine stayed far back. As a ranger I’m most deadly from a distance. Sure enough as the ceremony commenced a shadowy figure began attacking and we sprung into action once more. It was this encounter that I tasted the victory of stacking attacks and multiple dice-roll damage. I used a daily power with an encounter power while querying my foe. It was quite satisfying adding up d8′s, d6′s, and d10′s all in one turn. Our group brought down fiery vengeance upon the attacker… and then it was over.

Wraping It Up

We ended that session and I stuck around just enough to peruse through some of the comics and chit chat with the DM and other Game Masters packing up their tables. I inquired about getting my own miniature and dice. I looked through some of the game manuals. I left and went home to tell my wife of my adventures. Since then I’ve been looking for Half Orc Ranger miniatures on the web, playing with the Character Builder and getting stats help from the Meetup group. Here’s my latest character sheet [PDF] on Gaaki, the Half Orc Ranger. I can’t wait until next time!

Oh man! I finally get my grubby little hands on a next-gen gaming console and NOW I can’t even find the time to play it! It’s kind of eating me up inside. I do have certain family-related responsibilities so it’s an eternal battle between good and evil, yin and yang, Vader and Luke! On the lighter side, the kids are getting great use out of it because of our Netflix subscription. They have an endless library of kiddie shows to consume. The wife and I can watch old movies and whatever else is available in my “instant queue”. On the darker side… I’m just not playing as much games as I’d like.

As of date, we have a couple decent games in our collection (my son and I):

• Grand Theft Auto IV
• Lego Batman
• Lego Star Wars: The Complete Collection
• Pure

My main motivation to get a next-gen system was to experience GTA IV. The irony of my purchase is I feel very outdated whenever I post a microblog or status update about it. So; all the fun I’m having with GTA, I have to keep it to myself. The Xbox came with Lego Batman and Pure. We presented those games as a present to my son, Alex, for his birthday (over the weekend). So; now we’re playing those games.

I’ve also tasted the sweet nector of “Game Demos” with such titles as:

• Mass Effect 2
• Batman: Arkham Asylum
• Just Cause 2
• Split Second
• Forza Motorsport 3
• Iron Man 2

I first tried Iron Man 2 with the thought that maybe this could be a good mini-game for Alex to play with. Wow; what a god awful game! I quickly removed it from my system. It actually felt nice cleansing my system of such a badly created game. My brother ranted on and on about how awesome Arkham Asylum and Just Cause 2 is. I can certainly agree. Arkham Asylum is a lot more fun that I thought it would be and the darkness of that world is very engaging.

Funny; while writing this post I realized that I actually have played a lot of games, but in my head… I want MORE!

Rub it in Why Dontcha’

To make my late purchase even worse, about two weeks after I finally bought an Xbox 360… the NEW Xbox 360 was announced at E3! It has 250 GB of hard drive space compared to my 120 GB AND it has built-in wifi. I paid $100 for that stupid wiki adapter I have plugged into my console! Damn I feel more and more outdated!  So; we’re going to see if we can give back the outdated Xbox to BestBuy and get the new console. It’s releasing this week.

Engaget has a good article explaining what’s new with this slim version of the console.

Virtual Storage-bin

For years, I’ve been using Gmail as a storage depot for mailing lists, emails from my other domains, etc.  I’m starting the slow process of removing the things I really don’t need.  The mailing lists are the easiest. As of June 1, 2010 I’m using about 2840 MB (38%) of 7461 MB storage Google set me up with.  Let’s see how long it takes me to get that number down.

Today, May 25th, is known by many devout Star War fans as “Day of the Jedi“.  Yet after doing a little bit of research I now know that today is really “Geek Pride Day“. I like “Day of the Jedi” better! I missed posting something on the epically-coincidental “May the fourth be with you” Day (May 4th) so I made sure not to miss this opportunity.

What is “Day of the Jedi”? For those poor Star Trek souls that don’t know, I’ll shed some light on the subject. Or you can look it up on Wikipedia like I did.

The Profound Meaning of Day of the Jedi

The release dates for the original Star Wars series were Episode IV: May 25 1977, Episode V: May 21 1980, and Episode VI: May 25 1983. So; choose the common denominator (May 25)… and there you go! Now go out side or on the Internet and show Star Wars even MORE love than you already do!

Rights and Responsibilities

What really made me want to write a post were the “rights and responsibilities” of Geek Pride Day. You can find it on their Wikipedia page.

A manifesto was created to celebrate the first Geek Pride Day which included the following list of basic rights and responsibilities of geeks.

Rights

1. The right to be even geekier.
2. The right to not leave your house.
3. The right to not like football or any other sport.
4. The right to associate with other nerds.
5. The right to have few friends (or none at all).
6. The right to have as many geeky friends as you want.
7. The right to be out of style.
8. The right to be overweight and short-sighted.
9. The right to show off your geekiness.
10. The right to take over the world.

Responsibilities

1. Be a geek, no matter what.
2. Try to be nerdier than anyone else.
3. If there is a discussion about something geeky, you must give your opinion.
4. To save and protect all geeky material.
5. Do everything you can to show off geeky stuff as a “museum of geekiness.”
6. Don’t be a generalized geek. You must specialize in something.
7. Attend every nerdy movie on opening night and buy every geeky book before anyone else.
8. Wait in line on every opening night. If you can go in costume or at least with a related T-shirt, all the better.
9. Never throw away anything related to geekdom.
10. Try to take over the world!

Why is this Post Categorized as Linux-Related?

That’s a very good question. 1.) I put this paragraph (or disclaimer) here because this post will be picked up by Planet Fedora. 2.) I could be over-generalizing, but I’m assuming that there are more Star Wars fans within the Linux community than in Windows, Mac, or whatever non-Linux community is out there. 3.) After posting this I realized that TODAY is the release date for Fedora 13 Goddard! Now that must tell you something about the Fedora Project folks. They know how to release a distribution in style! Enjoy this very special day of the Jedi and go install Fedora!

So; today, May 6, 2010 is my thirty-first birthday. It started out pretty good; I even had lunch with some guys from work. We headed out to the usual spot — Mellow Mushroom for some good ol’ pizza. We all geek’d out a little bit by “checking in” with Foursquare. I realized finally experienced how fun social media could be when you’re actually participating with people you know. I’ve been socializing with complete strangers for years.

Once work was finished, I picked up Leeanne from school and headed home. My wife planned a small gathering with a neighbor and my mom. So; their kids came by and it was typical noise four children make… NOISE. I don’t think there is any other word to express… the… well… noise.

Facebook

To be frank; I’ve been pretty bad with wishing people “happy birthday” on Facebook. I seems like a chore… roughly every day is someone’s birthday. I barely log on or do a lot of interaction. So; I’d have to allocate time just to wish someone happy birthday… it seemed like too much work.

Well; I’ve changed my tune. I received a decent amount of birthday wishes today and to my surprise it warmed my heart. Since I’ve experienced it, I’m going to try a little harder to share the love.  So; thank you to all my friends and family that wished me happy birthday. It was well received.

Remainder of the Evening

After dinner, homemade ravioli, we had some cake and ice cream. I posted some pictures on Picasa and Facebook.

I stumbled upon this site after seeing a tweet from @emperor, “This is not according to my design…” These are the coolest set of pictures I’ve seen for stormtroopers… and even better, TOY stormtroopers!

What Stormtroopers Do On Their Day Off – Part 2

Here’s a list of other related sites:

• http://wildammo.com/2009/08/09/what-stormtroopers-do-on-their-day-off/
• http://actionfiguresbuff-jon.com/star-wars-the-secret-life-of-toys/

The wife and I finally got a chance to look at some documentaries on the American food system. Through the magic of Netflix, we rented King Corn and Food, Inc. If nothing else, it’s been a gigantic eye opener into how much control we must have over our own lives. Americans still think that the government is always on their side or doing what’s in our best interest. This isn’t always true, it’s a fine line, especially with the food system.  Because Americans demand cheap food, the government is literally providing cheap (as in quality) food.

I’m going to give you a simple synopsis of each movie and how it has changed my family’s way of thinking and acting, in order to preserve our lives.

King Corn

This movie starts off with two young men getting some sort of DNA test (I forget what the actual test was). To their surprise, the main component that shows up in their hair follicles is “corn”. How the hell do they have corn as a high ingredient in their DNA? So; they start researching this and end up growing about an acre of corn in Idaho and following its process. What we learned about this is the corn grown is not edible fresh off the farm. This corn has been genetically modified and it’s simply used to create byproducts, such as feed for animal, high fructose corn syrup, and many more items. I was shocked when I learned that. The farmers that grew the corn can’t even eat the corn.  Also; farmers actually lose money when growing corn.  I still don’t fully understand what subsidy is, but the government is the ONLY reason why the farmers make ANY money.

Overall; corn is literally in EVERYTHING. For example, the hamburger you eat at McDonalds is from a cow that’s mostly fed corn, the fries are cooked in some sort of corn oil, and the drink is loaded with high fructose corn syrup.  If you look at any product in the grocery store, you’ll find corn in it.

Food, Inc.

I’m writing this weeks after I saw the movie, so not everything is fresh. This movie talked about how ‘effin bad the American food system is.  In the 70′s (I think) there was a big movement to increase productivity in the food market. It was promised that Americans would have a great amount of food in supply. The one thing they failed to mention was how they would accomplish this.  If “mass production” is the key for the American food system then the quality of the food will dramatically go down.  Chickens are raised in such a way that they are no longer healthy for you.  In the end, support your local farmer’s market. They still grow “real” food and we need to take control of our diet.  The government, the farmers don’t care about your overall health.  It’s big business. I thought the farmers were on our side, but they only care about the paycheck.  Your local farmer has a higher purpose and is growing real food.

It was also mentioned that American families, now-a-days only spend about 20% of their earnings on food. That includes the grocery store, eating out, etc.  Families in the past spent way more on feeding their family.  The all the money saved on food, we spend the rest of it on recreational things. What that said to me, is, it’s OK to buy the expensive organic meat, fish, and chicken. We need to realign our priorities with living healthier and not crippling our kids because we put all our eggs in one basket, the government.

The Solution

The solution to this is simple, but the execution may be a little difficult. You kind of need to get off the grid with your groceries. Stop buying prepackaged products and start making your own things. We found out that even plain canned peanuts have corn and 3 other ingredients. It’s just peanuts for Christ sake! Every city, in some shape or another has a farmer’s market. Start shopping there. Fresh products will benefit you in the long run, instead of saving some money.

It’s been a tough journey, but my wife and I agreed to make this change. We feel better about what we’re eating and how our kids are being raised — to appreciate natural foods, farmers, etc.  We make our own pasta, we cook with organic meats, we eat more fresh fruits and vegetables.  It helps, your sanity, if you buy the right tools.  It’ll make the creation process a little easier. So; make the investment into making your own meals. If you want more details feel free to leave a comment or chat with me on Twitter — @FergatROn.

There was a short segment on NPR’s Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! podcast; they were talking about 3D movies and how people will actually miss watching movies in 2D. So; I got the idea to write this. I actually agree with them. In the distant future, we will become so used to the 3D emersion of movies that actually watching them in 2D will become a novelty. So much so that the young hipsters will schedule a “1999 2D Movie Party” and VH-1.0 will host a series titled “How I Loved My 2D Movies.”  Just a thought.