NockerGeek's Journal

I've made the switch over to Dreamwidth. Not that I post much, but maybe I'll start that back up with some tabletop gaming stuff - just kind of spit out ideas or something. My brain needs somewhere to put all of those random thoughts, I imagine. I am nockergeek over there as well.

Believe it or not, I'm still here and around. I need to update this more often; I blame Facebook for taking my time away. Not that I have the time at the moment to write, but I have every intention of making a new post soon.

More background for my D&D players. Last time, I described Dalmasca. Now, it's time to cover the goddess that helped found that kingdom.

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Some background for the Dalmasca from my Ivalice D&D game. Since not all of my players have played FF12, and since I've taken some liberties by merging in the generic 4E background and the gods of Pathfinder's Golaria, it should still be fresh to FF12 veterans as well.

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Comments and critiques are welcome!

It's been a long, long while since I've done one of these memetastic quizzes.

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Hi there, LiveJournal! Miss me? Probably not, but here's what I've been doing since we talked last.

- Christmas was fun. The snow we got on Christmas, not so much. The follow-up snow around New Year's, even less so. Between the foot or so of snow we had, and the brutal cold that kept it around, the last vestiges of it didn't fade away until the end of January. And now, February has dumped two more snowfalls on us (although they have been much less extreme, and the temperature has been warm enough to keep it from sticking around.)

- I played in my first 40K tournament in almost a year in late January. Didn't do phenomenally well; I went 0-1-2, but that still placed me in the middle of the pack. evildennis  placed fourth, though, so it was a good day for him! Everyone had a good time, and I got to play against army types that I'd never faced before. I got a lot of painting done in the lead-up to the tournament, and I've turned out some of my best work yet (which still isn't amazingly good or anything, but I'm proud of it). I took some time off from painting this past week, but I'll be hitting it again this week as I start painting my first Chaos army.

- Work on the house has resumed! With some help getting started from my dad, I've been working on getting our drywall patch done. I think I've got one more batch of sanding to do, and we might just be ready for repainting. Then we get the kitchen counter done (and I have the laminate for that), and all the major work is done. There's a couple of minor touch-ups we can do afterwards, but nothing that will keep us from putting the house on the market.

- It's been a big gaming month. I played through Bayonetta at the end of January, and really had fun. Then I started up Mass Effect 2, and that has been an utter blast. I finished it last night/this morning, and it's joined its predecessor in my list of Most Favorite Games Ever. Tight gameplay, great characters, fantastic story and writing, and an ending that starts off with a blast and never lets up. Fortunately, I managed to keep everyone on my team loyal and alive, so no one got left behind. Now I can tool around the galaxy as a Big Damn Hero. Next up on the list is The Saboteur, and after that, I may just pick up Dante's Inferno. Still need to finish GTA4 sometime as well. Oh, and Dragon Age...

Merry Christmas, everyone!

As dictated by my daughter:

"Once upon a time, there was a girl named Andromeda. She walked into a spiderweb, and she scared the spider. She got the spider to tickle her. The spider ran away over his web. Andromeda tap-danced. The spider climbed up a ladder and kicked a drum. The end."

It's that time of year again, when people will ask what I'd like for Christmas. So, here it is.

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Hi there, LJ. Miss me? The holidays are almost here, so I might as well take a moment to breathe and go ahead and update the world on what I've been up to.

On the home front, things are progressing. The large dent in the hallway drywall has been replaced with a new section of drywall. I still need to put up joint compound and tape (and hope I've done everything right so far), which I may do this weekend. This is mostly unexplored territory for me, so I've been moving forward with some trepidation. Not so much that I haven't been doing anything, but it keeps me from taking the initiative as much as I probably should. I'm probably being overly cautious; I'm just afraid of screwing this up. Also, the house is a bit healthier - the_z and Andi have been vaccinated against the H1N1 flu, so hopefully we can start going back to church (we'd been avoiding it because the children's area would likely be one big disease vector). I haven't had the H1N1 shot yet, but I've had the seasonal flu shot, so between the two of us we're immune to most of what's going around. At least one of us should be healthy at a given time.

Outside of office work (which keeps me busy, but not in a bad way) and house work, it's been a gaming month for me. I celebrated getting my laptop back by getting a copy of Borderlands. As expected, I'm lagging behind my friends, who have all finished at least one playthrough, but I'm making progress and getting near the end. Monday nights have been good - between evildennis, richman1, and myself, we have three laptops with the game installed, so we just LAN party out at Richard and Dan's place. The fusion of FPS and RPG is reminiscent of Fallout 3, but with more emphasis on the former than the latter, and with Diablo-style random loot, it's got me hooked. Also, I've been playing around with Torchlight, a budget-priced Diablo clone from the developers of Diablo (surprise, surprise) with some WoW-ish features thrown in for good measure. Finally, Z found a copy of GTA4 on clearance at Target last week, so I've finally been getting back to the adventures of Niko Bellic in the seedy underbelly of Liberty City.

I've also joined the Cult of the iPhone. I've been wanting one for a while, and last week I received my 2-year anniversary bonus at work, which was just the right price to get me upgraded. (On a side note - two years. Has it really been that long? It's gone by so fast.) I am still no fan of the Mac (and I'm a bit annoyed that the iPhone app SDK is Mac-only), but I can't deny that Apple makes a great GUI. The phone is just wonderfully intuitive. I was surprised by the lack of a real manual for the thing (compared to the ones that came with my past Nokias and HTC), but after playing around with it I've realized that it's not really necessary. It's slimmer than my old phone, easier to use, and far more powerful - what's not to like? I haven't gone crazy in the app store yet, although I did pick up Button Men for nostalgia value (and because I needed a game on there). I'm sure I'll pick up more over time, but for now I'm just enjoying exploring what the phone can do.

Thursday is Thanksgiving, and then my holiday season begins in earnest. Of course, Christmas items have been in the stores since before Halloween, and it creeps back earlier and earlier each year, but I'm trying to remain steadfast when it comes to the "traditional" holiday window. This means it's time to put up my Christmas list, get the tree out, get some lights up, and figure out when to do my shopping so I can surprise Z again this year...