Geek Perspective

Here I am at the San Diego airport again, ready to fly back to San Francisco for my next battery of classes at AAU.

One of AAU’s 32 bajillion buildings. They’re basically a real estate mafia at this point.

I had a nice, long break. I nearly did everything on my winter break bucket list, although I had to replace “go to a water park” with something else because apparently San Diego suddenly thinks it experiences winter (it doesn’t). The only unchecked item was going to the park on a sunny day to see how many cherry pits could fit in my mouth. I guess I’ll just have to find time to do that very important thing.

Also, I’m happy because I got a perfect A in the class I took during the intercession, Art History through the 19th Century. My transcript hasn’t been updated yet, but I think my cumulative GPA is now above 3.8, which should put me on the President’s Honor List. It’d be easier to stay on there if A-’s didn’t push you off. I wish my school would weight A-’s the same as A’s. Oh well. Right now I’m on the list, and I’d proud of everything I accomplished even if I wasn’t.

As for this upcoming semester, I finally heard back from the swim team. It’s a deal. I’m on it. I’m sure it’ll be a while before I’m able to keep up with them, but the person I talked to said it would be okay. I’m also going to be taking advantage of the Body Sculpting and Yoga classes my school has started to offer. If I can stick to all of that, then I should be able to partially compensate for all the chocolate I eat whenever I come home.

Oh, and for anybody following the D&D campaign I’m running, you can check out the map (PDF) I made. I tried to make all the names of places fun to say out loud, so have fun.

And now, time to board. See ya.

I’m starting to DM (“Dungeon Master” for those of you who don’t have blogs with names like “Geek Perspective”) a campaign for a group of people over in New York. They all get together, and then I appear on their laptop with the magic of modern technology.

They all seem really excited, which in turn makes me really excited. After we met for the first time last Friday to go over the basic rules and start building character sheets, I knew I wanted to really give them the deluxe storytelling experience.

If anybody wants to follow along, you can check out the campaign premise (PDF) and read up on the character King Remwald (also PDF, read this one second). Also, you might get a kick out of an old post I wrote about the different types of D&D players.

If you are a player in this campaign, then don’t worry, you don’t need to make fancy PDFs when you write your character’s backstory or anything like that. If you feel inspired, then go for it, but just have fun and leave the work to me.

If you aren’t a player in this campaign, then feel free to leave comments, but know that we’ll ignore you if you try to do any backseat driving, and I’ll delete those comments when I see them. No, you don’t get to be “a voice in their character’s head.” I’m posting this stuff because I realized players from my previous campaigns as well as friends of the current players might be interested, not because I want the internet to swoop in and do the thinking for my players. So please don’t spoil anything by posting your theories, non-mechanics advice, puzzle solution ideas, etc. If I feel like we have a problem, then I just won’t post campaign materials publicly. We’ll see how this goes.

Good luck, players!

A few months ago, I started thinking about all the things I got from other people. I noticed things like how I have different laughs that come from different people. When I started making the list though, it turned into mostly what I’ve learned from other people.

Without further delay, here are some of the lessons other people have taught me and other things I picked up from them.

I’m done with another semester at AAU, and holy smokes does it feel good. I flew home yesterday right after my last class. Every few hours, “I’m done” pops into my head and I smile.

So here’s a selfish list of random things I want to do, preferably with wonderful friends just like you.

This is very important.

1. Grill some steaks and/or have a Star Wars marathon.
2. Go ice skating in the temporary rink at the Hotel del Coronado.
3. Have a lazy picnic on a sailboat some afternoon, preferably with a piña colada and a bucket of chicken wings in addition to whatever else we decide to bring. (Don’t judge me, Mason. I still want more wings.)
4. Watch every remaining episode of Kitchen Nightmares.
5. See Sherlock Holmes.
6. See Avatar.
7. See Princess and the Frog.
8. Go to Knott’s Berry Farm.
9. Find a new coat.
10. Go to a Charger’s game.
11. Convince my dad to make his unbelievable rack of lamb one night.
12. Get down to Clayton’s for chocolate chip pancakes, and maybe some corned beef hash too.
13. Eat a bowl of Applejacks, just because it’s been like ten years since I’ve had a bowl and I was reminded of them recently.
14. Make cookies— from scratch for once. With lots of chocolate. And spices.
15. Spend a sunny day finding out how many cherry pits fit in my mouth.

Bonus: Shave my beard so I can see what I look like without one for the first time in years.

Also, I’ll post up the final versions of all the stuff I made for my design classes plus the video presentation I made for my art history class. But that can wait. Stuff from my narrative storytelling class is already up anyway.

Update: I uploaded the work to my Deviant Art. They wouldn’t take my video files though, so you can watch them here. Watch out, they play kinda fast. It feels that way especially because of chaotic camera movements, but hey, not bad for having used that particular program for only two weeks, right? I’m happy with all of them.