Monday, October 25, 2010

Scar Night

I checked out Scar Night by Alan Campbell from the library a while back and really enjoyed it.

It's an apocalyptic type fantasy set mostly in Deepgate, a Church run city suspended by chains above what seems to be a pit into hell. The main character is the last Archon, the last angel in a long line that has served Church and city.

The story is about him, his protector and the beast that comes out each new moon to hunt the city and their fight against an evil that would destroy Deepgate.

The book is full of fast paced action in an intriguing setting with well developed characters. If you like apocalyptic fantasy, this is a good book.

Only after finishing it did I realize it was just book one of the Deepgate Codex. Scar Night still stands on its own well enough, coming to a satisfying conclusion. But there is obviously room to expand the story. I'll be checking out others.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Sadness

Yesterday I attended the funeral for a four month old.

It was a family from church - someone I knew from when I was a teenager in Wisconsin Rapids, in fact. At least, we knew each other's families. The father is about the same age as my brothers. He would have been somewhere around ten at the time. So we didn't actually know each other, but we know who each other was. His son was born right about the time that we moved to Green Bay this past summer. Then this last Saturday night they went out to celebrate the mother's birthday. The sitter went in to check on the baby some time after putting him down to bed and found him not breathing.

I haven't really attended many funerals. They've mostly been for people who were expecting it, though. Cancer, age. Whatever. Death wasn't a surprise. I've only ever been to funerals where most everyone there shared my religious beliefs. We have a faith in a loving God and a better place after this life. The funerals were somber, I guess, but not really sad affairs. Death was just the next step, you know?

A funeral for a baby is different. Everyone said the right things. God has a plan. The child was here for a purpose and brought love and happiness. There is so much we could learn even from his short time here. The family is eternal and some day they can be with their child again. Those are all things I believe and I'm glad they were said. But it was still a very, very sad service. It's just hard to lose a baby. For the whole community, but especially for the family. I just can't even imagine how hard it must be for them.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

WoW


Tabby wants to play World of Warcraft. Of course, she can't. Aside from the "T" rating, the game play is absolutely too complex for a three year old. However, she doesn't really want to play World of Warcraft, she wants to play with World of Warcraft . . . she wants to mimic me and her brothers. And there are aspects of the game she can play. Like exploring a section of woods or a city or changing outfits and pets. It's like having an electronic doll.

So I made a character for her. I actually put a bit of work into it. Levelled it up enough that she can stay in low level areas, fight small monsters and always win. She especially likes whacking giant spiders. She can ride a horse, a sparkly pony in fact, or she can ride giant cats. She can fish, pick flowers. She has a ton of small pets she can run around with and some cool looking dresses she can doll up her toon in. A couple of the outfits took some time to get. The best one is probably the rarest dress in the game, called the Formal Dangui. As I understand, it only spawns at its special in-game vendor once every few months. And I got it. There are thousands of players on a server, only one gets this dress every few months, and Tabby has it.

Then she deleted them all. Almost all of them. All the best ones.

I had been cleaning while she played. Went over to check up on her and noticed all her clothing icons we set up were dark, meaning the clothes were gone.

"Oh no, Tabby! What happened to all your outfits?"

"I gave them to my friend."

I quickly ran to a vendor to see if she had sold them, but none were listed in the buyback tab. So I'm thinking she just dragged them out of her bags, maybe on top of a computerized NPC, and pretended to give them away. Accidently deleting them in the process.

"Oh, I'm so sad," I told her over and over again. "That was a lot of work you just deleted." I showed her how to press "no" when the "are you sure?" button pops up as you delete items. I made sure she understood that if she deleted things they were gone. They didn't respawn, or just come back next time you log on. She didn't say much, so I wasn't sure if she understood.

Until today. She was playing again while I read and she suddenly called out, "I found her!" So I got up to check out what she found. Tabby was at the in-game bank. "I found my friend!" We clicked on the bank teller and Tabby's bank vault opened holding all the stuff I thought she had deleted.

"Oh this is great, Tabby! I'm so glad you found all your outfits!"

"Yeah! I'm so sorry I made you sad Daddy

I nearly started crying. "I love you Tabby. Thank you."

"I love you Daddy."

"Now let's get your bars all set up again."

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Autumn

The Mary Ann Cofrin Building, where I have my class, as seen across the field I walk through on my way from the parking lot.



Venus Drive, where it intersects with Sun Terrace right about at our driveway.


Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Book report

Becky checked out a book called Dead Reckoning: the new science of catching killers, by Michael Baden, M.D. and Marion Roach. She seemed pretty engrossed when reading it. I picked it up the other day to skim over the contents and could not put it down.

It is a fascinating collection of anecdotes illustrating what is forensic pathology and why it is important. If you're a fan of crime lab dramas, you'll love the book. This guy is the real thing. He's worked on JFK, Martin Luther King Jr., O.J., the Romanov's and a whole host of other high profile cases in addition to "normal" cases. The book is extremely well written. Smart, accessible, straight forward.

I really enjoyed it.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Potty Training

Tabitha has been in underwear for two days now with only one accident. She has refused to wear underwear for a very long time despite being good about using the potty. As far as I can gather from trying to talk her into it, she's simply been self conscious about having an accident.

Well on Sunday, Becky decided to push the issue with Tabby and put her in underwear. She came to me crying about how mean Mom was and please would I put on her diaper. After a bit of "no, you need to wear underwear" I finally broke down. "Tell you what, let's set a timer. You wear underwear for this long and then we'll put your diaper back on." She understands timers. We set them for how long the kids play on the computer. It seemed to work. The tears dried right up and she went to go play. Half hour later, the timer beeped. Of course, we decided to let her tell us she was ready for the diaper to go back on, and she never did. About another half hour later she said something about her diaper, I didn't hear it clearly, so I asked if she wanted it back on and she said, "No, I'll wear underwear."

Well, this morning she went to a friends house and insisted on wearing a diaper. Trying to talk her into it, I think she's worried she'll have an accident while she's there, so we made a deal that she'd wear underwear when she came back home. Personally, I'm kinda' glad we're doing it that way, so it wasn't too hard for Tabby to talk me into it.

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Happy Birthday Jack

That kid, right there? Turned 17 yesterday. He's a certified lifeguard. Now looking for work in the field. Bought that computer on his desk all by hisself. We're getting mail reminding us to sign him up for college entrance exams. Man, he's getting all growed up.