Random musings

Fri - April 18, 2008

Sobering realization

Some people actually read this.

I know what you're thinking: "Duh! I do!"

It just seems strange to me, is all. I keep having this experience where I'm trying to tell a story and the person I'm talking to says, "I know, I read that on your blog."

I can't decide whether that means I should stop blogging or blog more and forget about having actual conversations with people.

Which reminds me of another sobering realization I had recently. Stop me if you've heard this, 'cause I've told this story a couple of times recently. HA HA! You can't stop me!

Anyway, my big revelation recently was that I'm actually an extrovert. I've been saying for 12 years that a big part of why I left ministry was that I was just too introverted for the job. False. Big lie. I'm really an extrovert. Which probably explains why I'm talking about this on the internet, even knowing that some people are actually reading this.

So I was talking at lunch a couple of weeks ago about the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory, because some folks in the group had just done a leadership training session discussing it and other ways of understanding the different personalities that interact on a team. And we're talking about the important distinction between being sociable, congenial, affable, friendly and all that, on the one hand, and being an extrovert on the other. The key thing being what recharges your batteries—extroverts get energy from being around other people, while introverts might do a great job of putting on a social face for a while but need to retreat and be alone to recharge. And we're talking about how we're all relatively good at the social face—we go to conventions and talk to fans and keep up the energy as long as we can, but then we go back to our hotel rooms and crash and need to be alone before getting up the next day to do it all over again.

It wasn't until a couple of days later that I realized that wasn't true for me. When I'm at conventions, I dread going back to my hotel room and being alone. I'd stay out all night if I didn't have to sleep. I write my novels in Starbucks, for crying out loud, because I feed on the energy of the people crowding the place (and the free-floating caffeine in the air). I need face time. Extrovert.

I left ministry, in large part, because I hate conflict. And when I do feel, even now, that I don't like people and I want to be alone, it's usually because there's some kind of conflict situation I want to avoid.

I can be shy sometimes, and it's not always easy for me to keep conversations going. But the inescapable reality is that I'm a total extrovert. So that pretty well rules out going whole-hog on the blog and giving up on face-to-face interaction.

Speaking of faces, let's talk about Facebook. I joined Facebook because an old friend from Ithaca invited me, and then I had about four friends, all good friends from Ithaca. Then I did the address book thing and found lots more friends, and increasingly, people are finding me. I find it interesting that a lot of the people I'm connected to on Facebook are professional extroverts—people in brand and marketing, for example, for whom networking is a professional requirement as well as something they do naturally in their personal lives. I've never thought of myself as someone like that, but with this new-found realization that I'm actually an extrovert, it begins to make sense that I'm connected to these people.

But now Facebook is a source of guilt for me. I have 26 requests of various kinds that I don't know how to respond to. Some of my friends are really close friends, some are old college friends, some are people that I worked with years ago and knew kind of in passing. (I love you all!) I don't know what to do with Facebook. It's out of control. I'm considering quitting it entirely, rather than feeling guilty about the people I feel I'm slighting in some way by not responding to their invitations.

Speaking of beholders, did you see the one that's in Seattle?

Hey, I call it Random Musings for a reason.

It turns out I do not, in fact, know anyone in Chicago. But I did talk with Joe from ENWorld and Shawn from The Analog Gamer. Lucky Bill Slavicsek, though—he's on G4 TV!

Speaking of Bill Slavicsek, another great session in his game last night. We're a hair away from 5th level (this is Baredd, my paladin who died a few weeks ago) and getting started on Thunderspire Labyrinth. I also had a great time in Mike Mearls's lunchtime game yesterday—a really fun encounter with a trap and some skeletons. (I put a thing on my Gleemax blog about the character I'm playing in Mike's game.) It reminded me of something I told folks when I sat them down to run one of the adventures at D&D Experience in February: "This is still D&D. You can still try anything you can imagine." It's that whole flexibility thing again.

Speaking of flexibility, I need dinner.

Posted at 07:07 PM

Fri - March 7, 2008

Anyway, back to me...

Fantasybookspot.com posted a review (a "rising 6" out of 10) of Storm Dragon.

Check out the index of videos from D&D Experience. And in particular, hear me talk about the DMG:

I did a few interviews at D&D XP as well, so I'll try to keep an eye out for when they're posted and let y'all know.

Oh, and thanks to the guy at the show who, in reference to the Slashdot thing, pointed me to this crystal-clear explanation (language warning).

Posted at 07:24 AM

Tue - February 19, 2008

I feel better now...

Within the span of four hours after posting my little Slashdot rant, I received three encouraging emails that helped me get past that particular knot of frustration. One from a person in my office, one from a person at Slashdot, and one from a fellow Eberron novelist—none of whom I would have guessed read my blog regularly (what's to read?). Anyway, thanks, folks.

See, the great part is that I get to go to my game on Thursday night and enjoy the fruits of those years of work, throwing d20s around almost as fast as the terrible jokes, doing the paladin thing, kicking monster butt. It's the best D&D I've ever played, and I've played many different D&Ds since 1979.

I think it's my fault, by the way, that Steve Winter decided to play Biggie Smalls as the halfling Ron Jeremy. I'm still sorry. But my character (Baredd) insists on calling him Mr. Smallpenny.

Posted at 11:31 PM

Poo on Slashdot

DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed here are my own, and not those of Wizards of the Coast, blah blah blah.

I'm just cranky because I read a Q&A with Andy Collins, Chris Perkins, Scott Rouse, and Sara Girard on Slashdot, which was fine, but then started wading into the comments and got overwhelmed by obnoxious. We try to explain why we think 4e is a better game than any previous edition, and people willfully misread that as "We want you to spend more money."

Damn it, I've been working insanely hard for almost three years now to make the best game I know how to make, the D&D I really want to play, and it pisses me off to watch people dismiss it as a half-assed marketing ploy.

There, I said it. Maybe I shouldn't be saying it publicly, but I'm on vacation and my boss can't yell at me until . . . well, until I go play D&D at his house on Thursday.

Posted at 12:01 PM

Fri - December 21, 2007

Hella funny

This pleases my sense of symmetry. And it's hella funny, you might say.

That's my first-ever sudoku, by the way. Let me know if you get the joke.

Also hella funny: An interview with a tiefling and a gnome.

Posted at 08:25 PM

Thu - September 6, 2007

Things I've learned on my vacation

It's been kind of a strange week. It turns out that I really like writing, and I enjoy my job. And that actually makes a vacation a little strange. I've dipped my toes into a couple of novels, but they were both fantasy and thus felt like work. I played WoW until very late last night, getting my warlock on Argent Dawn up to 40th level and his felsteed. I'm not enjoying the game like I used to, though I did feel like I was achieving some degree of play skill last night in recovering the Troll Legends from Zul'kunda. But even so, playing a warlock feels like button-mashing—I'm hitting the same buttons in the same order for most fights, and the only issue is how low my mana is running. Hm. I should post on my Gleemax blog about button-mashing.

I watched news of the new iPod announcements with eager anticipation yesterday, and whooped at the announcement of the iPod Touch. I've wanted one of those since the first rumors preceding the release of the iPhone started circulating, and my old iPod is experiencing hard drive failures, and tomorrow is my birthday... I'm disappointed that it's basically a nano with a touch screen (i.e., very limited storage). I consoled myself with the realization that everything on my current (20 GB) iPod will fit on the 16 GB iPod Touch, but then I realized that I don't have any video on my current iPod. If I want to have all the season 2 episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender on my iPod, that will eat space. The practical course is to buy an 80 GB iPod Classic. But the iPod Touch is cooool...

And we've been spending a lot of time on the house, finally making what feels like progress. We ordered furniture for our living room/solarium. We ordered our kitchen cabinets. We've primed the solarium's 20-foot-high walls, painted the dining room, finished painting our bedroom. About the only significant decision yet to be made is what kind of countertop we want. (Well, bedroom furniture is the other big one.) So we're making progress.

I have learned that I'm not very good at painting walls, and that I don't like not being good at something.

On the other hand, I've been reminded that I like power tools. I particularly like disassembling things, and my new power saw is cool. Today I cut a big sheet of plywood to replace the one in my son's loft bed, which was moldy or otherwise allergenic. That was cool.

But what this is all circling around to is that I sometimes feel like I need a hobby—something that's not remotely related to work that I can do to rest and recreate. A vacation where I'm very intentionally avoiding anything that feels like work really drives that point home. I could be spending time (when I'm not working on the house) working on my next D&D campaign or writing the articles I owe DUNGEON Magazine or outlining my next novel, but those are exactly the things I'm trying to not do this week. What's left?

I can only do so many sudokus in a day before my brain starts to melt. The non-fantasy books waiting to be read are borderline academic, and that doesn't feel very vacationy, either. Scouring the internet for any reader reactions or reviews of Storm Dragon seems like a monumental waste of time.

So tonight I finally started to get a glimmer of the whole wide world of the internet that's out there. This is actually kinda funny. I stumbled on Yet Another Damn Blog some time ago, completely at random, and found that I liked some of what this guy had to say. He's a self-described "average redneck feminist poet woodworking database geek. With a goofy hat." Much of it means nothing to me, but I keep checking back. So today I found a link to this story, which is wonderful and eye-opening and thought-provoking and . . . I don't know what. Read it and reflect.

So maybe there's more to this internet thing than the eleven web sites I visit every day. More even than Amazon and Google and Wikipedia. More than the random musings of friends and colleagues. There are ideas out there . . . lots of them . . . thought-provoking and interesting ideas put out there by smart and interesting people I don't know.

You know, now that I think about it, there are smart and interesting people on the net that I do know, and maybe I should spend a little more time keeping in touch with them as well. Huh. Maybe I'll do that now.

Posted at 07:33 PM

Wed - September 5, 2007

New list of my writings

Back on the old site, I had a list of all my publications. It was updated through mid-2004, and then I switched over to blogland and it withered away. I tried setting up an Amazon astore, but that was unsatisfying. So I finally turned that list of publications into its own blog. Every product I've worked on in the last ten years is there, with some editorial comments, links to the relevant pages on wizards.com, and links to buy the books from amazon.com. You can filter by year or by category. It seems to be working pretty well.

Check it out!

Posted at 12:23 AM

Wed - June 27, 2007

Been a while... Here's some news

Yeah, no excuses. Life's busy; life's always busy.

Some news:

Storm Dragon comes out in about two months. I have two advance reading copies, which Wizards sends out as publicity and to solicit reviews and maybe blurbs for the dust jacket. The cover will look a lot better than what's on amazon.com, and the title will be more readable than what's on the ARC. And I fixed the last line before the final book went off to the printer. I had a lot of trouble with it.

I'm waist-deep in the second book of the trilogy, Dragon Forge. Here's exactly how deep:

44,467 / 120,000
(37.1%)

And we bought a house. We're trying to get the house ready to move into, thinking about getting ourselves ready to move into it, and also thinking about getting my mother- and sister-in-law here from Michigan to move into our old house. Craziness.

On the plus side, I spent a pleasant evening playing Pokémon Battle Revolution with my buddy, my son. Life is good.

Posted at 10:54 PM

Sun - March 25, 2007

Math things that make my head explode:

Are there more even numbers or odd numbers?

Clearly there are more of either than there are prime numbers.

Different sizes of infinity make my head explode.

This is more fun than head-exploding: Counting by nines is a palindrome:
09 18 27 36 45 54 63 72 81 90

Have I posted that before? If so, I couldn't find it, and I apologize.

Posted at 09:56 AM

Wed - March 14, 2007

Coffee cup thought for the day

The Way I See It #204
Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure. Never forget your Personal Legend. Never forget your dreams. Your silent heart will guide you. Be silent now. It is the possibility of a dream that makes life interesting. You can choose between being a victim of destiny or an adventurer who is fighting for something important.
—Paulo Coelho
Novelist. His works include The Alchemist, The Zahir and The Devil and Miss Prym.

I really believe in the notion of identifying your dreams and working your butt off to achieve them, practicality be damned. My wife and my sister-in-law both use me as an example of how you can get a job doing what you love if you're willing to work hard enough for it.

Interestingly, the last sentence of that quotation is also a reasonable summary of the theme of Storm Dragon. Which is finished (as far as I'm concerned), by the way. In the editor's careful and loving hands.

So I'm in Starbucks with my profound coffee cup, grateful that the guy behind the counter didn't hear me say "for-here," and working on the outline for Book 2 of The Draconic Prophecies.

It's a great life. Despite these 12-1/2 hour work days.

Posted at 05:48 PM

Wed - January 24, 2007

Whee! We got a Wii!

Turns out, I am in fact the best father in the world. Sorry to all you other fathers out there reading this who might believe you have a claim to the title. I know it must be disappointing.

OK, just kidding. But I earned enormous brownie points. See, Monday was my son's birthday. We had talked about getting a Wii for Christmas, but it didn't happen—largely because I pooh-poohed the idea of going and standing outside of Best Buy for hours before they opened. And we figured they'd be easier to acquire after Christmas, and my son's birthday is in late January. Seemed easy, right?

Well, demand hasn't gone down, but supply is starting to rise. And I happened to see in Sunday's ad fliers (which I've been checking from time to time) that both Best Buy and Target were advertising new stocks of Wiis. So Sunday morning I got up and went to Target five minutes before they opened. Ha! So from there I went pretty much straight to Best Buy, an hour and a half before they opened. I was about the 30th person in line, with maybe 10 people in line behind me. After about an hour, they came down the line and gave out tickets, and I got one. We gave it to my son on his birthday, and he was just stunned. It was awesome.

So Mike Mearls has talked quite a bit about the Wii phenomenon over on his blog. And I have to say I agree with him. It is incredibly cool and innovative, and I think it's seriously awesome that my son and I can play on more-or-less equal footing. My mother, in town for the birthday, took a little more getting used to the controls, but she beat us in bowling once, too. And the hard-core gamers I work with want Wiis too. That's really cool.

But the coolest thing about the Wii? Well, the Starbucks cup I held through all that time I was waiting in line sums it up pretty well:

The Way I See It #198
You can shower a child with presents or money, but what do they really mean, compared to the most valuable gift of all—your time? Vacations and special events are nice, but so often the best moments are the spontaneous ones. Being there. Every moment you spend with your child could be the one that really matters.
—Tim Russert
Host of NBC's Meet the Press and author of Wisdom of our Fathers

Because the coolest thing about the Wii, much like our experience with World of Warcraft, is that we play it together. And we're buddies forever.

Posted at 09:25 PM

Mon - December 4, 2006

How to treat your customers... and their kids

A couple weeks ago, my son dreamed up what an Apple smartphone might look like. (He was inspired by a billboard in O'Hare Airport advertising some Windows smartphone.) He drew a cool picture, and we put it in the mail to Apple. It was almost certainly less than two weeks ago that it went in the mail.

Today he got a letter back:

Re: Submission of an Idea to Apple Computer, Inc.

Dear Carter:

Thank you for your letter to Apple about your idea for a smartphone.

We're glad you are interested in Apple and our products and wanted to send us your ideas. We value innovation and creativity. And while we cannot review new product ideas sent to us from outside the company, we appreciate your wanting to share your ideas with us.

We encourage you to keep generating new ideas for yourself, your family and friends, your interests and studies or schoolwork. We know you'll be successful!

Very truly yours,

APPLE COMPUTER, INC.

(signed)
Mark Aaker
Senior Counsel
Apple Law Department

That, my friends, is class.

Posted at 10:05 PM

Fri - November 24, 2006

Carter's view of Thanksgiving

We had a nice Thanksgiving, with four folks from the office over and a very fine meal. But Carter really wanted this group of people to play Vegas Showdown with him, which I had brought home from work the day before. He and Amy and I stayed up late playing on Wednesday night. Unfortunately, only five people can play that game, and the seven people we had were not particularly interested. We were happy sitting around the fire, digesting our food and talking about a wide variety of topics.

So Carter wrote out and delivered (standing on a chair) a speech. Here it is:

Talking. Talk, talk, talk. That's what talking is. Well, Vegas Showdown is much more . . . talkative. Well, there's talking, talking, and . . . Oh! Talking. So, will you reconsider?
(response) . . . . . .
I'm waiting!
(response) . . . . .
Come on, answer!
. . . . .
* sigh*

What does it say about his experience of the day that he wrote in, before delivering the speech, what he would say when we didn't respond? Poor kid. It's tough being an only child, especially when so many of our friends don't have kids. (And the ones that do have families around to have Thanksgiving dinner with.)

Posted at 12:47 PM

About my Dad

I spoke at my father's funeral last weekend, which was even harder than I expected it to be. Here's what I said:

In the first few days that my dad was in the hospital, the thing that kept rattling around in my head was all the parts of him that I see in myself. Initially, I was thinking only of the sort of big-picture things, but almost as soon as I arrived here and started talking with my brothers and Mom, we’d start talking about the little things—things like his workaholic tendencies, or put a different way, his sheer delight in his work. Or like books needing to be in just the right order on the shelves. Or the idea that if you want something done right, you need to do it yourself, which is why Dad wrote his own obituary and planned his own memorial service. And each time something like that came up, I’d say, “Adding that to my list...” It’s become a running joke this week, something that we laugh about as we three sons of David Wyatt see so many facets of him in ourselves and in each other.
I suppose any of you that knew him well have heard him talk about his sons. Several people have told me in the last few days how often he spoke of us, how he positively beamed with pride at the mention of us. I’m sure you’ve heard him say that we all love language—we enjoy the interplay of words, appreciate a fine pun or shaggy dog story, spay with ploonerisms—sorry, play with spoonerisms—and take delight in crafting sentences and paragraphs and narratives lining up words in just the right order, like those books on his shelves. That’s on my list.
And you’ve heard him say that we all love music. We all have our different tastes and our different skills as performers, but we all of us perform and listen and compose we bathe in music the way our father did. All of us had the pleasure of appearing on stage with Dad at least once, and all of us have stood beside him in church, blasting out carols on Christmas Eve, then later gathered around the piano to sing more quietly together. As we were pulling together the music for this celebration, following Dad’s directions, I observed that Dad had great taste in music. And I should know, because I inherited it.
I’m pretty sure Dad also boasted about how the three of us all use computers. We can certainly trace that back to the first Texas Instruments computer he bought and plugged in to our television. We all played games on it, wrote programs on it, and worked our way to a comfort and familiarity with computers that has helped us all make our livings as adults. More importantly, we all—father and sons and mother, a little later on—came together around computers like nothing else in our lives. And that’s true to this day. Let me tell you, we got quite a kick out of gathering here this week and each pulling out our Apple PowerBook laptops: Doug has the big 17-inch PowerBook, Andy has the medium-sized 15-incher, and I have the little 12-inch.
And that’s really the most important thing, right there: family. Dad was fiercely devoted to his family—to his parents and brothers and sisters as well as his wife and sons. He spoke the other day about how he has been blessed with three generations of saintly women: his father’s mother, his mother, and his wife. His brothers and sisters, my uncles and aunts, and all their children, were some of the most important people in my life during my childhood, a fixture of every family vacation I can remember. I will count my life a success if I can manage somehow to be the kind of son, the kind of husband, the kind of brother, and the kind of father that he was.
Here's a story about the kind of father he was. I have a vivid memory of the day my first dog died. She was clearly very sick, but I had plans to go—gosh, I feel like it was skiing. Maybe that's why I never went skiing again. Dad took her to the vet while I was gone. When I returned home, he tearfully told me that she was gone. I remember being struck by his tears. Dad didn’t used to cry much, and I never thought he was very fond of that dog.
So back in May, my son lost his first pet. It was a triops, a little crustacean akin to both horseshoe crabs and Sea Monkeys. We hatched it in April, and it grew to be about 2 inches long. Then one Friday morning in May, after he left for school, I noticed that it was on its back and not moving its legs much. That night Carter and I were out late, and we came home and put him straight to bed, but I noticed that the triops had stopped moving entirely. I didn't tell him until Saturday morning. He took it very well, I guess because he always knew that it wouldn't live long. He alternated between tears and talk of mummifying it, all actually very sweet.
And I finally realized that Dad's tears all those years ago had almost nothing to do with his feelings for the dog and everything in the world to do with his feelings for me.
That was my father: he delighted in our joys and accomplishments, and grieved in our sadness.
In his notes for his memorial service, Dad suggested a way to introduce these eulogies. But I want to use it to end them. He started off with a snippet of dialogue from Man of La Mancha:
"My friend, I have lived almost fifty years, and I have seen life as it is. Pain, misery, hunger . . .cruelty beyond belief. I have heard the singing from taverns and the moans from bundles of filth on the streets. I have been a soldier and seen my comrades fall in battle . . . or die more slowly under the lash in Africa. I have held them in my arms at the final moment. These were men who saw life as it is, yet they died despairing. No glory, no gallant last words . . . only their eyes filled with confusion, whimpering the question: ‘Why?’ I do not think they asked why they were dying, but why they had lived. When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Too much sanity may be madness. To seek treasure where there is only trash. Perhaps to be practical is madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is, and not as it ought to be."
Dad went on to write, "Now, that’s rather cynical; but the real point is in the final sentence: that is, that I rather quixotically have refused to see life as it is: I prefer life as it ought to be. And there is hope for Humankind so long as some still tilt at that particular windmill."
That was my Dad.
Life as it ought to be. That is, without a doubt, the most important thing I have inherited from Dad: his defiance of what is, his hope for what can be, and his willingness to live his life as it ought to be: passionately and compassionately, joyfully, energetically, courageously. Dad lived for a decade with MS, never letting it slow him down or keep him from traveling the world and pursuing the work he loved. That’s how life ought to be. His sense of humor, skewed as it sometimes was, his ready laugh, his kindness and concern—that’s how life ought to be. That’s how all our lives ought to be.
I look around this room, full of people whose lives have been touched by Dad’s life, and I see how profoundly he has left the world a better place than when he entered it. Through his teaching, his life on the stage, and especially as our Dad, Mom’s husband, a loving brother—Dad made the world more like what it ought to be. His students carry on that work. His fellow performers, maybe even his audiences carry it on. And his family will always strive to do the same, in his honor and his memory.
Thanks, Dad.

Read his obituary in the New York Times and the L. A. Times. Both are more accurate than the one in Bangkok's The Nation, which was unfortunately picked up by the AP.

Posted at 11:08 AM

Wed - November 15, 2006

David K. Wyatt, 1937–2006

DAVID KENT WYATT died 14 November 2006 at the Hospicare Residence in Ithaca, New York, at the age of 69.

David was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts on 21 September 1937. He spent his childhood in Waterloo and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He was the oldest of five children and is survived by his brothers John Wyatt (Easley, SC), Richard Gist (Columbia, MD), and sisters Deborah Stanberry (Prosser, WA) and Penelope Saulnier (Fitchburg, MA).
David took enormous pride and joy in his wife of 47 years, Alene Wilson Wyatt, their three sons, Douglas, Andrew (Barbara Cain), and James (Amy), and their five grandchildren, Eric, Simon, Tim, Sarah, and Carter.
David graduated from Harvard College in 1959 with a degree in philosophy, and received his Ph.D. in Asian history from Cornell University in 1966. He taught Southeast Asian history at the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London (1964–69), and then at the University of Michigan (1969–70).
In 1970, David accepted a tenured position at Cornell, where he was promoted to a full professorship in 1975 and the John Stambaugh Professorship of History in 1994. In his years at Cornell he served as Director of the Southeast Asia Program (1973–76) and chairman of the Department of History (1983–87 and 1988–89). He also served as President of the Association for Asian Studies in 1993–94.
Wyatt’s publications exceed a hundred items, including eighteen books. His Thailand: A Short History, now in its second edition, has been in print since 1984, while his most recent book, Books, Manuscripts, and Secrets will be published in 2007. His academic work established him as one of the preeminent historians of Thailand, and his former students hold positions at universities around the world.
He derived great pleasure from a long career on stage. He sang leading roles and chorus parts with equal delight in countless Gilbert & Sullivan operettas produced by the Cornell Savoyards. He played the role of Cervantes/Don Quixote in the 1983 Ithaca Players production of Man of La Mancha, and also appeared in various operas and dramas.
A celebration of David’s life will take place at Kendal at Ithaca on Saturday, 18 November at 4:00 p.m. Memorial donations can be made to two funds at Cornell established in his name. The David Wyatt Fund of the Southeast Asia Program will be used to bring students from Southeast Asia to use Cornell resources (c/o SEAP, 180 Uris Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853). The David Wyatt Fund of the Echols Collection will be used to acquire additional resources for that collection (c/o Marisue Taube, 701 Olin Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853).

Posted at 05:41 PM

Net Peeves, vol. 1

Belief and behavior... in gaming!

Making Connections

What I learned in Starbucks today

If I'd had a blog in 1998...

High School

Scientific Complexity and Public Debate

Single parents, I don't know how you do it

I am "the equivalent of semi-naked babes"

More books, both reading and writing...

Why I love D&D Miniatures, part 17 (with visual aids)