Generally speaking, I’ve been involved in RPGs to one extent or another since I was around 11 or 12. While many people disparage them, thinking of them only in terms of Satan or nerd-dom, the reality is that I learned a great deal and expanded my horizons far beyond what would otherwise have happened.

I’ve played many different games, although I started out with the Basic and Advanced D&D books. I moved on to AD&D, Traveller, Space Opera, Boot Hill, Gamma World, and many, many others. I tend to identify myself as a geek, however, as I generally understand the inner workings of things, not just the rules and regulations associated with nerd-dom.

I’m an avid reader and RPGs only increased that vice (can reading be a vice?). Over many years, I learned a great deal from fantasy, sci-fi, and non-fiction. Much of what I learned was then expanded into further learning, often resulting in much deeper study.

As it happens, I’ve ultimately moved away from RPGs slightly as there is little time these days to engage in such activity. Truthfully, so many games exist these days that it’s a daunting task to take them all in. Frankly, some of them are crap anyway, but it’s hard to spot them sometimes without study. What amazes me is the number of games that seek to capture that D&D (Greyhawk, Original books, Red and Blue book), AD&D, or other feel. Many of the games seem to be devolving because the rules have become so overwhelming that people simply can’t deal with them. Of course, at $100+ for initial entry (basic book, monster book, and game master book) required for many games, it’s no surprise that people are backing up and re-thinking this concept. RPGs are great, but the companies tend to be blood-thirsty in their pricing.

More to come…

I recently enrolled with Columbia College (http://www.ccis.edu) to work on my Computer Information Systems bachelor’s degree, following a successful 2010 graduation with a Business Administration associate’s degree. Classes began on Monday (Ethics and Programming I), which should keep me busy for the next couple of months.

Columbia College is nice in that they are regionally accredited, offer a brick-and-mortar presence with real sports teams, and do not market their degrees as “on-line” like so many other institutions. Further, my experience was that the classes were at least as comprehensive as those I attended at the University of Kentucky several years prior. Oh, did I mention that they are very veteran friendly and provide a lower cost per year than many other institutions? Depending on your goals, Columbia College might be a good option.

Unity is an interesting development, but it’s very distracting to me so I wanted to disable it. However, quite a few instructions I found weren’t terribly clear. Basically, you need to login to Ubuntu after specifying to use Ubuntu Classic. If you are already logged in, simply log out. Once the user prompt is shown, click on the user name and then look at the bottom of the screen. The login type will be shown as Ubuntu. Click on it and then change to Ubuntu Classic. Now login normally and you’ll get the window manager layout that you are used to.

I’ve decided to offload my homebrew and vintage items to http://obsoletekit.marstella.net in order to organize things better.

Accidentally purchased an Apple //c last week on eBay. I never expected to get one for less than $20, but figured I’d take the chance… Due to incorrect title, the thing never got another bid, so now it’s mine!

Anyway, it came with a disk containing a couple of games, but in very poor condition. The //c itself is yellowed (of course) but otherwise seems pretty good. Something I hadn’t noticed was the UK keyboard instead of US. No big deal. Running print peek(64447) reported 255, so it’s the original ROM version.

Since I had no disks, I was wondering how to create one from a PC when I found the ADTPro project on sourceforge. Turns out that since Apple II series was designed for potential cassette-based loading, there is a way to load the O/S through the serial port and then write out to disk. Fortunately, I’ve scrounged several 5-1/4″ disks from around my old stash, so now the only problem is that I’m getting an error every time I try to transfer the O/S. I just haven’t found the right speed, or my cable isn’t sufficiently shielded. But it does work. I get the ProDOS screen after transferring, although it craps out depending on what you try to do (due to the transfer error). Still, I’m on the way.

Pics later.

Well, the sugar gliders now have new homes. The boys (Max and Boba) have a blue frog, while the girls (Zoe and Munchkin) have a pink frog and a pink condo-block. Jess made these and the ‘gliders love them.

The Condo-Block

Zoe and Munchkin

Max, Boba, and The Frog

Recently, I needed to install Server 2008 R2 on my MacBook for development purposes, but I found the wireless driver doesn’t work out of the box. For anyone experiencing this, make sure you have the latest BootCamp version installed (so the drivers are present). Then, use the Server Manager, select Configuration from the left side tree, then Services. Scroll through the list until you find a service called WLAN AutoConfig. It will probably say disabled at this point, so double-click on it, set it to Automatic, then click Start. You might have to reboot, although my system enabled after a few seconds delay. At that point, Wireless networking should work much like Windows 7.