FCBD - you had me at Free

Saturday, May 2 is Free Comic Book Day.

Once a year, the industry gets together to try to get more comics in the fans of potential fans. Current, uber-fans take advantage of this day to try to score as many copies as they can. Even still, it's a good excuse to try and make it in to your local comic book store and check it out.
With the economy as it is, I am sure they could use the new faces. Since most of the stores have diversified over the years, and now carry toys, games, videos, as well as other lines, they should have something that you are interested in that they would be very happy to sell to you.

The link above has a part where you can find which stores are participating in FCBD in your area. Hopefully a few of our local ones missed the listings as we don't seem to have too many this year.

We'll try and hit a few. I can look for Monsterpocalypse figs at the same time.

Barbarian needs food badly

So, now that our computer is stable again, I have been able to go in and play Diablo 2 again. I had put it on hold years ago when the kids starting taking up more of our time. Plus, since it’s really Shan’s game, I was waiting for her to take out Diablo first.

Years later, I’m still waiting.


Recently, I have been playing around to complete my maps and trying to level up. I’m playing a Barbarian (Big Axe Man!) as that better suits my playing style. I finally managed to get to level 30 and was able to put some of the skill points I had been hoarding to use. I finally got Natural Resistance and War Cry.

I cleared the entire area, opened 4 of the 5 seals – killed off the specials. I didn’t go after Diablo – much to my kids’ dismay. I do realize that I will have to reclear the area to release Diablo. I was worried about dying and not being able to recover my corpse and get back my stuff. I may try to level up to 31 before I give it a go.

Blackmoor no more

I’m a bit delayed with this – so most of you might already be aware that Dave Arneson passed away on April 7, 2009. While not getting the same reaction in the gaming community as the passing of Gary Gygax, Dave’s passing was still noted.

He didn’t get the same name recognition as Gygax, but his Blackmoor campaign was the basis for Dungeons & Dragons with Gary’s Chainmail rules.

When we met him at Gencon he was very personable and friendly. We had tried to bring him up to Wincon for a few years. He cancelled twice due to his health and once because he was going to Prague to help with the Dungeons & Dragons movie. We joked that we had to stop inviting him in an effort to help keep him healthy. When we met him at Gencon after this, he was at the D&D movie booth and showing off the props.

Red Light Cameras = money grab?

Up here we have these cameras at certain intersections. They take pictures of your vehicle and send you a ticket if you speed through the intersection or if you enter the intersection after the light has already turned red. The police then use the picture as proof and send a ticket to the owner of the vehicle.

I always hear people complaining that the red-light cameras are just a money grab. If that’s how people really feel, there is a very simple solution to beat them – don’t speed through those intersections or run through the amber lights. That will teach the people who put up the cameras.

When they first introduced the lights, my daily route took me through four a day. Now my route goes through five a day. I have not received a ticket from them yet.
Are people actually upset that they are getting caught breaking the law? Would they feel better getting a ticket from an officer instead of through the mail?
The intersections are clearly marked – if you can’t obey traffic laws through the entire city, can you not be extra careful in those few places where the cameras are?

Maybe when the monthly camera revenues are zero, then we can work at teaching drivers how a 4-way stop works.

It lives! again

Everyone seems to have a computer guy. That is, a friend or relative who is more knowledgeable than them about computers and whom they ask for help whenever some computing issue comes up. For my mom, that's my brother and I. Shan's the one for her mom.

With us, that's my good friend JP. The 'Franken Puter' we currently use was originally created from parts close to 10 years ago by him. I have swapped out the power supply a few times and added a dvd rewriter and a video card, but any real issues I get him to check.

Shan had gotten an old computer tower from work. It had been free but she figured we could use at least some of the parts - and we have. I hap popped the case and tried to fire it up but had been stopped by being unable to create or find a boot disk.

JP had taken both towers and had been able to upgrade what we're been limping along with. He kept our tower, power supply, dvd drive and video card and replaced the cpu, hard drive, and motherboard. So now instead of a tired and flaky 128mb/20G computer, we seem to have a clean and stable 512mb/40G platform. The memory is not yet an issue - we hadn't even filled half of the old one in the 10 years we were online with it.
It's nice. It's working very fine. I can update this at home now and Diablo 2 plays stable without the video locking up every twenty minutes. We're very pleased. Now if I can just keep the rest of the family from loading tons of games on it.
A very special thank you to JP and thanks to the computer guys everywhere. You guys do good work and we really appreciate it.