Tag: geek

I buy weapons

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek1 Comment

We spent a pleasant afternoon at the Niles Renaissance Faire today, or at least a pleasant hour and a half or so, and while I didn’t find a cool hat or a cool cane, both of which I’ve been on the lookout for, I did come home with a neat set of dice and a Kukri. I can now add to the pile of medieval weaponry that is currently sitting in the corner of my office, not on display or anything, just sort of sitting there, because I have no self-control at all and access to adult money.

How was your Saturday?

This, goddammit

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, moviesLeave a comment

This. This. This is Right and Correct and if I go see this movie and it disappoints me I am done with DC movies for the rest of my life. I talked some shit about the costume when we got our first look at it and I’m still not a hundred percent on board with some of the decisions they made there, but it looks like Gunn has gotten the core of the character right after decades of on-screen misrepresentation, and if that’s actually Superman on the screen they can put him in a French maid’s outfit for all I care.

I had like four different posts planned for tonight and seeing the trailer knocked all of them clean out of my head.

You’ve got me back in theaters for a superhero movie, DC. Don’t fuck this up.

#REVIEW: The Monsters Know What They’re Doing: Combat Tactics for Dungeon Masters, by Keith Ammann

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, Reading, Reviews5 Comments

This is a new one: I’ve started reviews before by pointing out that I know the author, but in this case, I really know the author, as in “he knows my real name, was in my ed school grad program, and he’s been to my apartment.” Keith and I essentially had the exact same day-to-day schedule for two solid years, and while we’ve fallen out of touch other than occasional social media interactions since graduating in 2005, it’s simply not possible for me to leave my relationship with him aside while talking about this book. The Monsters Know is, in a lot of ways, possibly the Keith Ammanniest thing Keith Ammann could possibly have written, and while that’s a compliment, it’s very likely not one that’s going to be salient to anyone other than me.

Here’s the tl;dr: If you play Dungeons & Dragons, and especially if you’re a DM, you’re highly likely to really enjoy this book. If you do any sort of fantasy roleplaying that isn’t exactly D&D but is D&D adjacent, it’s probably going to be useful anyway. The book– five hundred-plus pages– is filled with essays on what feels like the entire Monster Manual (it probably isn’t, but still) breaking down various fantasy monsters based on their provided stat blocks, and providing suggestions on how they might act, what tactics they might use, and how they might react to any number of possible actions by your player characters.

There is also math. I’ll get to that in a bit.

Now, to be clear, I did not read this entire book. Why? Because it’s more of a sourcebook than something you sit down and read straight through, and if I have a criticism of it it’s not of the writing or the subject matter but the physical format of the book, which looks like a novel or, like, a “regular” book, when I really feel like it ought to be formatted more like a roleplaying sourcebook of some sort. I probably read … half of the entire thing, skipping around to different monsters I was interested in and occasionally occasionally passing over sections that were a little more power gamey than I’m interested in. Ordinarily I wouldn’t review something if I hadn’t read all of it, unless it was an actual DNF, but again: that’s not what this book is. The section on the kuo-toa will be there whenever you actually decide to include kuo-toa in your game; you don’t really need to read every word of that to appreciate what the book is doing. I am fairly certain that if I told Keith, word for word, “I liked your book but I didn’t read all of it,” he would not be a bit surprised, nor should he be.

Let’s be a touch more specific, though: based on, for example, the description of a species as being high Dexterity but low Strength and medium Intelligence, and the different combat abilities that a species or monster might have, The Monsters Know might suggest that this species prefers to attack from ambush, using sniping tactics and a high likelihood of retreat once injured. From there the section might move more specifically into D&D language, suggesting that Dash and Disengage actions might be used frequently in combat, and sometimes it’ll go so far as to map out a model encounter of sorts. A lot of the time it’ll then get into the actual mathematics behind various attacks, spells, etc, using those numbers to suggest which abilities a monster might prefer to use and which would provide a bit more utility and a higher reward to risk ratio. A lot of the time it’ll suggest a hit point threshold at which point a monster might retreat, too. I haven’t DMed much at all, really, but this was still fascinating to read and to think about, and I may suggest my son look through it, as he’s starting his first homebrew campaign soon. The book loses me a bit when it gets super granular about the numbers behind the abilities, but that’s the beauty of a sourcebook; you can ignore the stuff you aren’t as interested in. I was never a power gamer, and was always more interested in the abilities that felt fun or cool than whatever might be strictly the most effective move at any given time, so that stuff isn’t for me as much.

So yeah. My buddy wrote a book. If you’re into the same kind of nerdery we are, you should definitely check it out, and you can also go to Keith’s blog (the source of a lot of this material) at themonstersknow.com. If you’re in, he’s on his … fourth or fifth book by now, I think, so there’s a lot more where this came from.

…okay, Marvel? Let’s not.

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, PoliticsLeave a comment

I am fully fucking aware that, lead times being what they are on comic books, this was definitely written, if perhaps not completely drawn, before the Current Unpleasantness actually began. But once we realized we were going to publish it during the Current Unpleasantness, and that it scans as really fucking unsubtle given the Current Unpleasantness, maybe we reconsider the entire fucking thing? Because I don’t need this shit in my life at all, much less in a medium that’s supposed to be fucking escapism:

And fuck me dead if this very same Fantastic Four comic book doesn’t use vampires as a persecuted minority that Doom is scapegoating later on in the damn issue. Using Doom as a stand-in for the shitgibbon is one thing. Using vampires as a stand-in for trans people is deeply fucked up.

I recognize that there is literally no way that Marvel is gonna reconsider or reschedule any of this, but I wanted to register my protest anyway.

Some snippets

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek2 Comments

Got a new book from Amazon today, and the damned thing was mis-bound, with the cover a good quarter inch or more off from where it was supposed to be. Ultimately it’s no big deal, because I can just exchange it, but I’ve never seen this in a new book before. (Entirely possible that this is because Amazon specifically has never sent me one; no brick and mortar bookstore would even let these make it out to the floor; they’d have been damaged out immediately once they came out of the box.)

I survived my first day back, although I do mean “survived” in the most specific meaning of the term, certainly not one that implies any teaching took place. I foolishly neglected to take any drugs before leaving the house other than my antibiotics, which meant that the first thing I did when I left work was go to a drugstore and buy the methy kind of Sudafed, the one you have to ask for and have your ID scanned. I do actually have an ear infection, according to my school nurse, but she says the antibiotics I’m already on will take care of it. We’ll see!

Let’s see, what else? Spent the evening fighting off the urge to buy another fountain pen or two. My rapid cycling through obsessions and hobbies is fucking breathtaking, y’all. I need to become obsessed with saving money for a while. The world economy is about to tank (mental note: save $1,000 as quickly as possible, withdraw it in cash, and keep it in the house) and even if that wasn’t the case (or if I wasn’t already first against the wall as an atheist, outspokenly liberal teacher running the gay kids’ club in a rural area of a red state) my kid is gonna be driving in a couple of years. You’d think I’d at least be able to sock money away for a car.

Alternatively, we’ll be scrounging the wastelands for food in a couple of years, so why not buy fountain pens now while they’re still being manufactured?

Shit.

In which I cave

On By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

Dammit.

You might remember a few months ago where I went back and forth endlessly for a little while about watches. My existing Apple Watch was starting to have battery issues and I was getting tired of constantly having to pay attention to my wrist. So I ordered a nice analog watch and committed to a less connected life. Or at least I tried to.

So, yeah, I went and bought a new Apple Watch today. I’m not, like, throwing the old watch away, or anything like that, and I think I’ll continue to wear it on days where I need to dress up a little bit, but I’m going back to the Apple Watch for daily wear.

Why? Turns out the Apple Watch was useful for way more than just notifications, and part of it is definitely my fault for picking the wrong watch if I was going to walk away from a smartwatch. For example, I went super minimalistic on the new one– no visible numbers, no date, no complications at all.

I don’t think I realized, at the time, just how many times I look at my watch in a typical day, and just how often I am capable of forgetting the date in any given day. I am, as it turns out, not very bright! And I also write, with no fear of exaggeration, somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-30 hall passes each and every day, all of which must have the current time and the date on them. And that means that 20-30 times a day I’m forgetting the date and needing to look at my wall clock.

And I probably should be embarrassed about this part, but with no numbers at all it takes a second or two to parse the exact correct time on an analog watch. I’m not sure if “a second or two” makes me slow or not, but when it happens over and over again over the course of every single day it makes me regret at least not buying a watch with numbers around the outside. I didn’t think it would make a difference at the time– I can tell time on a clock– but if I’m writing a pass I want to be done writing the pass immediately because I have more important shit to be doing. Even just a couple of seconds each time adds up.

The analog watch had no light on it, and it turns out that I frequently want to look at my watch in the dark.

(I am not buying a digital watch that isn’t a smartwatch, by the way. I realize that a number of those issues could have been solved with the same kind of digital watches that have been available since I was in fourth or fifth grade. I just don’t want one of them.)

I use a data-heavy watch face, too, and it turns out that I frequently want to know what the temperature outside is. That image to the right there is my current watch face, and I genuinely after four months was unable to check my urge to look at my wrist every time I wondered what the temperature was. The Spotify song-identification app comes in handy a hell of a lot, and that’s my calendar in the top left. I feel like I had one more piece of information on the old Apple watch– my activity circles, maybe– and I might go back to that after a while, maybe instead of the Messages icon, since I’m supposed to get notifications anyway. I don’t need that on there all the time.

Driving and using a map app with the watch on is significantly easier and safer than using the phone, and my car isn’t new enough for CarPlay or something similar.

But yeah. I feel like four months with an analog watch should have been enough to cure me of my bad habits, and it wasn’t, and on top of that I was constantly missing notifications that I wanted to get– like texts from my wife to come help her with something, for example. I kept my phone muted because I can’t stand getting a beep or a chime all the Goddamn time, and the vibrate on the actual phone itself wasn’t strong enough (and hasn’t been on any phone I’ve owned for probably a decade or more) to consistently make me notice it if it was anywhere other than on a hard surface or in the pocket of a pair of jeans. I’ve had comfy pants on for most of the last several days. I haven’t noticed a single damn notification through the pockets of those pants.

So yeah. Back to being tethered to technology, I suppose. If I get annoyed with my wrist buzzing at me all the goddamn time I’ll figure out what apps don’t need to ping the phone and go with that. But the analog watch experiment is done, unfortunately.

Well, he needs a friend, who’s he going to talk to?

On By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

I had another twelve-hour day today and have been grading since I finished dinner, so enjoy the newest addition to my utterly ridiculous assortment of pointless collectibles.

My palate is crap

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocy5 Comments

I’ve talked about Importin’ Joe’s Coffee around here at least a couple of times– they are a local small business that is somehow also an Ethiopian coffee company. They first came across my radar when they delivered a bunch of coffee to my school a few years ago, and every so often they send me an email at exactly the right time and I order some more coffee.

This happened last week, and I didn’t realize until after the coffee had been delivered that I’d inadvertently ordered whole bean coffee rather than pre-ground. And since the only way I solve problems nowadays is by throwing money at them, rather than tossing the unusable $15 bag of imported Ethiopian coffee or, God forbid, attempting to return it, I spent $80 on a coffee grinder.

A secret about me, or maybe I just think it’s a secret and it’s been completely obvious to everyone who has ever known me: I would like to be a snob about something. Something. I don’t care what. I want there to be something where my tastes are refined and classy and shit, and I turn my nose up at the lesser versions of, I dunno, whatever that thing might be.

I don’t drink alcohol, so that leaves out whiskey and wine. I don’t smoke, which eliminates cigars. I cannot convince myself that clothes are important enough to start dressing like a fancy person. And I’ve got to admit that part of the attraction about buying a coffee grinder– and not some cheapass $20 coffee grinder, no, it’s mid-range or nothing for this guy– was that fresh-ground coffee beans are supposed to be a lot better than pre-ground. And, like, I thought that was supposed to be an obvious difference? I already know to avoid instant coffee like the plague, but I think everyone kind of knows that already, and the simple fact is that since I became a coffee drinker in 2015 or so, if instant is all the coffee that’s available, fuck it, I’m drinking instant. My tenure at the furniture store proved that. Shit, I already drink my coffee black, and that’s pretentious enough, right? Let’s go to the next level!

Y’all, I absolutely cannot tell the fucking difference between fresh-ground coffee and pre-ground coffee. I can barely tell the difference between the different coffees we have in the house. I mean, I can; the Meijer house brand’s “Michigan Cherry” flavor smells strongly of cherries and I suppose kinda tastes like them, too? I like chicory? But the particular Importin’ Joe’s coffee I ordered claims to have “tasting notes” of fudge, toasted caramel, and cherry “on the back end,” and I literally do not know what the fuck any of that means. It tastes like coffee. It doesn’t taste burned like Starbucks coffee does, which registers in my head as “good coffee.” I ground the beans for the Michigan Cherry for the last couple of mornings and I can’t taste any difference. I happened to be at the grocery tonight and picked up some Colombian coffee, because Colombia. But my wife is going to do a blind taste test on me this weekend, and I’m gonna lose it, and I’m gonna lose it so, so badly.

Is there a way to train yourself for this shit? I don’t smoke, again, which would make me think I’d be able to identify basic flavors, but I’ve got nothing over here, and I wanna be a damn coffee snob. Somebody help me. Surely if I can train myself to like black coffee I can figure out how to identify a “note” of “toasted caramel,” right?