Bucket o’ Updates

I really need to get back on board with blogging. It’s been so long…

I’ve re-enabled my subscription to HakerBoxes. So far, I’ve received boxes 54 (Smart Home), 55 (High Roller), and 56 (Demon Seed). I’ve created some project pages on my internal wiki, but have made no progress toward assembling the kits.

I have a large box of unpainted D&D minis sitting here next to me that were originally intended for a campaign I created for a bunch of friends. Of course, this was all before the COVID-19 craziness. We haven’t played yet, but I do want to start chipping away at painting all of these. Eventually we will use them.

About a month ago my main PC crapped out. I decided to do something I’ve never done before; spec out a high-end machine and order all new parts. I did such, and got all of the components from NewEgg, however the motherboard arrived with damage. I got a return RMA but, because of COVID-19, the RMA took a long time. I should be getting the new motherboard this Monday.

The main 37-gallon fish tank needed a thorough cleaning, so Cari and I took it into the garage and emptied it last week. I’ll be spending a good chunk of time today cleaning everything. I suspect that the tank will be back in place this weekend. Currently, the fish are is a surrogate 10-gallon tank.

Still working on the DeLorean model monthly. I received a special-order package of several mods for the kit. More to come on this.

Movies added to the library this week:

Sayonara

Last night’s D&D session went really well. We all had some fun and the characters are all now third level. Ulfgar got hurt really bad by a crazy mage who decided to throw a huge burst of fire at him. Luckily, Aydan was there to heal Ulfgar and bring him back into the action. Unfortunately Diana will no longer be playing with us, as she’s headed off to school in Tallahassee. We’ll miss her! Luckily her character, Azerad, didn’t do anything innately foolish and may yet again join the party at some later date.

I think I’m going to make a big batch of chili in the crock pot today. I’ve had a hankering for it lately. After I’m done writing this entry, I’m going to head to the grocery store, stop and pick up comics, and check the Suncoast Studios PO box.

Speaking of Suncoast Studios, the site is almost live. I believe it will be ready before Dragon*Con.

Sick Thought of the Day: She took one hand and placed it in his mouth and slowly pressed upward on his top teeth. Inserting her other hand as well, she grabbed the lower jaw. He winced with pain, and a small tear rolled down his cheek. As she began spreading his mouth open, the sounds of bone snapping, like dry kindling in a fire, emanated from his head. Small stretch mark began to form around his mouth as she continued to widen his maw. Her muscles tensed and she felt the limit of his flexibility growing near. Squinting one eye, she adjusted her hands ever so minutely, and popped her muscles into action. The jaw, skin, and most of the lower soft palette ripped from his skull. The hands that deal the blow immediately receded, and she dropped the saliva and blood covered mass of bone and flesh to the floor. He howled in pain as she stood back to admire her handiwork. The odd look on his face – that of worry with no frown – sent shivers up her spine. He grasped for was used to be there, under his nose, but could do nothing to rectify the problem. After several minutes of the howling, she could take no more. The pleasant look on her face turned to disgust, and she promptly kicked him in his manhood, rupturing a testicle and sending him, like a leap, to the floor.

* Footnote: As I finished writing this STotD, I began reading it to Shauna. Half-way though she made me stop by saying: “Stop it!” I said, “But, that’s only half the story!” and she replied, “I love you, but you’re done. Stop it.”

An Amazing Thought

Last night I finished up our itinerary for Dragon*Con. Everything’s booked and paid for and the roadmap laid out. I found this great website called TripHub that I’m trying out to see if it makes the vacation any easier. So far it’s pretty basic, but allows you to aggregate your flight info, hotel info, and trip itinerary all into an easy to use Web 2.0 interface.

Friday’s D&D session went really well. We started late because of some errands I had to run that evening, so we only played from 9:00pm to 11:00pm or so. There wasn’t much action, but it was still pretty fun. I need to start being a bit more assertive on getting the players out of “dead-end” scenarios – I need to force the story line along. Well, I’m sure I’ll get better about this over time as this was only our 4th session. Anyway, I spent several hours Sunday reading up on things, improving the module, and making some cool things for this adventure. This Friday should be a lot more fun.

I’ve been finding it quite satisfactory in creating to-do lists lately. I find they are the most fun when I can complete them.

Millard and I started back in on the movie recently – devoting more resources to it. We’ve almost gotten to the point where we’ve locked down the video tracks. Next up will be stills, graphics, titles, and then all the audio after that. Well, maybe not exactly in that order.

Yesterday I ate two huge, foot-long 7-11 hotdogs with nacho cheese all over them. Oh my god. I was in heaven.

Sick Thought of the Day: The pudding flowed freely from his ass, dripping onto the corner of her mouth. With tongue wicked-red, she flicked the magic off her lips to behind her teeth. Small worms arose from the nipples as green liquid gushed from the anus. Every cockroach in the building came out and began feeding off the tender vomit. Lazy fingers bumped into the rectum, making slight squeaking sounds and heavy smiles.

Dragons, Sluts, and Spaceships

Friday night’s session went well. We all had more fun, I think, since I adjusted the rules. Shauna wasn’t up to playing due to a rough week at work, so her character, Aydan, stayed at the tavern while the rest of the party ventured back to the silver mines. All-in-all, the players kicked some ass. The rules are a bit more balanced now that I’ve adjusted the encumbrance limits, the encounter possibility frequency between Silverton and the mines, and the fact that I added a magic shop in town. This allowed them to buy some healing items that would otherwise have made it really difficult to go back into the mines without a healer.

Saturday night Shauna and I both enjoyed several red-headed sluts.

I met with Millard Monday and we went over the remaining tasks for the DVD feature. I was able to put together a CD with some low res videos and stills and game him a copy of Premiere so he could do some rough editing on his won, then send it to me for tweaking.

Tonight we’re going to watch the Battlestar Galactica mini-series.

Sick Thought of the Day: Crush the finger till the tip splits and the red and white puss comes out.

Catching Up

It’s been quite a while since I’ve blogged. Mostly, that’s because I’ve been lazy, but some of that is because there hasn’t been much to talk about…

I’ve been doing some editing on the feature and have delivered a second rough cut to Millard. I’m also working on another part of the DVD now and expect to have the first rough cut of that done this weekend. The script’s been finalized as well. I have a big stack of stills to scan in to bring me up to date too. I really plan on stepping up this next week to really start hammering out this project, as it’s starting to slip too much and drag on.

Speaking of “drag on”, I booked the hotel and flight for Dragon*Con the last couple of weeks. Shauna and I will be heading up there on August 31st and will coming back September 5th. It should be a lot of fun. If you plan on attending, e-mail me and we’ll hang out. That is, we’ll hang out as long as I’m not in the film track. I plan on spending a lot of time learning while I’m there.

And continuing with the dragon theme, we’re all getting together for D&D Session 3 tonight. It’s been several weeks (a month?) since we campaigned and I’m itching. I’ve got a great game planned and I think everyone will be happy with it.

I’ve been meaning to add more to my site here, but time (and initiative) has not been on my side lately. Expect to see more soon. I’m also gearing up to launch another project, which will be announced here in the near future as well. This new project is exciting for me, as it’s a culmination of efforts stretching back to 2000.

A couple guys from work and I decided to have some fun and create a new website for all of you who love to goof off at work. Check it out.

Sick Thought of the Day: Dirty old man finger in the sacred hole of the bung.

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Another week (more!) has gone by and another update is due…

This past week has been pretty rough on me. I’ve been more tired than usual. I think that I need to sit down and really regiment my working out (it’s been slipping a lot lately) and the whole “eating habits” thing. I wolfed down shitloads of Taco Bell last night. Not good. I mean, it was GOOD, but it’s not good for me. On top of all this I’ve been sleeping lightly (read: poorly). I think some of my problem is that I’m starting to get more involved with projects I normally wouldn’t. I’m in the process of developing a web portal with some people I know, I’ve got the feature to work on with Millard and then there’s the little side projects like updating chewbode.com and such. I think I need to re-organize my free time to allow for the personal things that I need to do (working out, eating right) and then prioritize my projects. Well, after I go see Superman Returns tonight, I’m gonna do all that. Get my shit in order.

What’s been happening this week? Well, I put together my new PC and it runs pretty awesomely. I still have this intermittent problem with the system just outright crashing (not even a BSOD – it just shuts off). As soon as I figure that out, I’m golden. Anyway, I tested the system by playing some Half-Life 2 and a few other games, and it’s smooth as silk. The new video card just does the work it needs to do – no questions asked.

I think I need to spend some time tonight getting ready for the D&D campaign tomorrow. I need to get all the stuff set up for the miniatures and need to get re-acquainted with the story a bit.

Well, time to head home (at the office now)…

Sick Thought of the Day: Naked men standing at attention; milk flowing heavily from the nads.

Week In Review

Man, am I ever a lazy mutha. I haven’t posted up here in over a week. A week! Sick. Well, this post should make up for it…

The last time I posted I mentioned that the editing began on the feature Millard and I am working on. Well, the first rough cut of it is now done. I toiled away at the keyboard for quite some time (about 35 hours or so – it’s like another full-time job!) and produced a 65GB AVI file. All day today I’ve spent converting it to a 500MB MOV file and am currently uploading it for Millard so he can see it. I imaging he’ll look it over for the next couple of days and send me his thoughts on the edits. There’s still a lot to do: hire the voice talent, create the commercial bumpers, and create the teaser. Of course the final feature stills needs to be edited down and the music and stills, etc. will need to be added as well. In due time, I suppose.

Wednesday Shauna and I went down and picked up Melissa and she stayed with us for several days.

Friday was our first full D&D session. In attendance was Brad, Diana, Millard, Shauna and myself. Shauna cooked up some Mexican food and I introduced the players to the story (Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics #1 – Idylls of the Rat King) and the party actually made it into the dungeon and is now just beginning the quest. We finished up pretty late – around midnight or so. I think that we may go ahead an decide to cap the night around 11:00pm or so, as by the time we ended the session, everyone was pretty glassy-eyed. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. The only downside was that the miniatures we ordered on Monday hadn’t arrived yet. So, I improvised and grabbed a bag of the little green plastic army men. We got four out, grabbed a Sharpie, and put the first letter of each character’s name on the helmet of the soldiers. I then took a handful of army men and that same marker and colored their helmets totally black – these were to be our monsters. I then designed 1” x 1” grid paper in Photoshop and printed out several sheets. Using a green highlighter pen, I drew out the landscape each time the party encountered some creeps. All in all, it went well.

Saturday was a beautiful day. A couple days prior, I had reserved four seats on the LeBarge dolphin sightseeing cruise. The LeBarge is this big old party boat the docks at Marina Jack’s in Sarasota Bay. People can rent a seat on the boat for a few hours and go out on the water and have fun. We chose the dolphin trip since Melissa’s a huge dolphin fan. Millard, Shauna, Melissa and I went out and, of course, I had to be Mr. Director and try to get some good footage on the camera. And I think I succeeded to a degree. Melissa took some footage on her camera as well and we also got some stills (I’ll post shortly). We saw several dolphins that day. I’ll eventually edit the footage and burn a DVD for Melissa before she leaves to go back home to Scotland.

Sunday we went down to John’s and then I came home and began testing different output methods for the feature. I also decided to upgrade my PC and bought a dual layer DVD burner, some blank discs, an AMD x64 Dual-Core 4200 processor and accompanying mobo, 2 gigs of RAM and an nVidia 7900GT SLI graphics card. This sunofabitch will scream! All that shit will be in this week and, time permitting, I’ll assemble the new machine Saturday.

So, that’s what I’ve been fucking around with. I think I’m going to go play some GameTap now. Peace out, beotches.

Sick Thought of the Day: Penis pimple bursting blood.

Oh How The Time Flies

I haven’t posted in awhile. Shame on me. I’m a fuckin’ jerk. This past week has been a whirlwind of activity.

Millard, Shauna, Diana, Brad and I all decided it was time to dust off the manuals, open our bags of dice, and sharpen our pencils and play some Dungeons & Dragons. I know, I know. Totally geeking out, but some of the most “gaming” fun I’ve ever had was playing D&D when I was a teenager. It brings back some fond memories of creativity and was one of the reasons I wrote The Yellow Emerald and now am into films. So, late last week we all decided to start playing on Friday nights. While Millard finished up his adjustments on the script for the feature, I began combing through my DM’s Guide and Player’s Handbook trying to convert my Second Edition rules over to the newer 3.5 rules. And it’s hard making that immense leap. I also ended up building a D&D portal on my site (sorry, only registered users that are playing with us (ha-ha) can gain access). This is what kept me busy through Tuesday night.

Wednesday night Shauna’s niece, Melissa, flew in from Scotland. We went down to Venice and picked John up and came back up to Sarasota to pick her up at the airport. I think Melissa is in town until July 8th or so. Obviously, she was pretty wiped out after being on planes for some 18 hours. We dropped her off with John (she’s staying with him for the month) and got home and got to sleep by 2:00am.

I had originally planned on beginning the editing on the DVD Thursday, but it made no sense to start that and then not work on it for a few days. You see, Shauna and I invited Melissa up for the weekend, so we knew Friday night would be D&D night (we rolled our characters and played a little bit to get everyone used to the system) and then Melissa would be here Saturday (today) and we’d want to hang out with her and take her to see the sights and so on. So, I figured, why would I start editing Thursday and then wait until Sunday or Monday to continue? Yeah. So, I didn’t do that Thursday, but worked on the D&D campaign instead.

Editing will begin tomorrow afternoon after I visit John and deliver Melissa back to his house.

With Melissa up here, we took her out grocery shopping and all and then came back home. She went out and sunned herself by the pool for quite a while this afternoon. Afterward, we went downtown and had dinner at Two Senioritis (I got the marinated chicken burritos… again) and then we walked around City Park hoping to see dolphins playing in the bay. We didn’t see any, but got some great photos, which I’ll post here soon. We came back and watched House of the Dead and The Gospel.

I’ve also started an Action Figures section in the Digital Archive.  I’ll continue to update over the next few weeks.

Sick Thought of the Day: Yellow diarrhea in the toilet.