Thomas' Blog

Yesterday was my wife and my 19th anniversary. Didn't seem like much anything special. I do have a new wedding ring ... silver (I like it better than gold) and fits better on my finger. The last one I've had since our first year in marriage, and it was just getting way too tight.

We went out for dinner at Tick-Tock's. For the area, it's about the only fancy restaurant. The prime rib I had was permeated with fat, and the brandy sauce with peppercorn wasn't all that great. But I got to spend an hour with Kelly in a nice setting with some live music playing in the background.

All in all, we spent probably an hour and a half together, since she worked during the day, and I had a 12 hour shift in the evening. But they say absence makes a heart grow fonder.

I went to the doctor today to find out why I was feeling this pain in my shoulder for the past month. I mean, it's nothing big... but it concerns me that it doesn't go away. I thought arthritis first, but it doesn't change with the weather. So the doctor says there is a common ailment known as bursitis, which is an inflamation of the burca, or a liquid area that surrounds the joint in question. It gets inflamed especially with a lot of movement or stress of the joint. I figure it's probably hereditary. My father has a bum shoulder that put him out of the drywall business.

The doctor says if I treat it with some anti-inflammatory medicine for a couple weeks and ice it down before going to bed and it should be all right, for a while... although it will probably return again later. There is treatment that will last longer, but its a steroid injection. The pain isn't that great that I'm willing to consider steroids. Maybe there's some herbal remedy that would do better.

But for now, I'll work with the anti-inflamatory and ice and see how it fares after a couple weeks.

Well, here we are, just a little over a month left before termination from my job... when Loral Skynet pulls the old plug on their Hawley facility and sends all of us out here packing. I've sent out probably a dozen resumes in hopes of picking a nice job here or there... but who knows what fate has in mind for me.

Tell you what, for a facility winding down its operations, I've never been so busy. Most of the time it’s cleaning up after our Canadian replacements. They are so unprepared for this transition, it's not even funny. But that's one thing I won't have to worry about. I'll take my severance check, apply for unemployment if I don't get a job right away, and be happy.

I just wish my family up in Michigan wouldn't keep getting sick. Seems like every week someone else is in the hospital, and it's a long way from Pennsylvania so visiting them in the hospital isn't exactly a convenience I can afford. Now if they'd all stock up and get sick at the same time, that'd be ideal. But do they think of me? Nooooo.

I'm joking, of course.

We have 42 more days until this place closes for business. Funny... with as little as we plan on being responsible for things as Telesat in Canada starts taking things over, you'd be surprised at just how busy we've been lately. But by near the end of this month, we should be shadowing only and have no real operations. Then we get to see if the Canadians sink or swim in their new added commodity.

I think the gravity of the matter is just starting to hit me. I had something lined up - a friend in the D.o.D. said he wanted me on his team, but now it appears he has no room for new employees. So I start to look around for other possibilities.

It'd be nice to stay where I am for a few reasons. First of all, the Poconos are a beautiful place. Secondly, house sales are way down right now - we'd definitely take a loss if we sell our house. And finally, my son finally has some good friends and is getting into this stability he's experienced over the past 7 years. Before that, we were moving every 1 to 3 years, so he didn't really get beyond the stage of being the 'new guy'.

There are other options. My parents live up in Michigan, along with most of my immediate relatives, and all my friends from school. Living up there would be nice, but there simply isn't much call for Satellite Communications up there. Still, I have my feelers out. I could put that IT Degree of mine to use and get a networking job or something. Who knows.

My wife's family and friends all live on the western side of PA. I know Pittsburgh has room for someone of my qualifications.

Heck, I'd be willing to relocate nearly anywhere so long as I could get my security clearance back and establish myself in a government job. 9 more years and I could get a pension from the government. That would be pretty sweet, huh? I'd still be young enough to get another job at that age... maybe in the line of computer programming, where my heart really lies.

Well, who knows what the future holds. I'm still hoping I win the lottery and don't have to worry about all this rot.

~ Thomas

A short while ago I started a game called Serenity. It's using the Serenity RPG system, and based on the Firefly TV series and Serenity movie (which were effectively the same thing). Liked the movie, loved the TV series, watched them in that order.

It's caught on pretty well, with six or seven interested players. We're already well into the story, as everyone gets to know each other and stocks up for the trip to their first mission.

Now the thing about Serenity ... it's definitely Sci-Fi... but it has a distinctly western feel. This is because although advanced technology exists, it hasn't made it out so much to the terraformed planets that the pioneers are settling, and that means these pioneers are reverting back to a simpler time for the most part. Anyway, I highly suggest watching the TV Series if you have the chance. The cast of characters are a hoot.

This makes my fourth game currently ongoing. Lands of Mystery (D&D) is my oldest, followed by Tegel Manor (Also D&D and my second attempt at running it online), and All This and World War II (a Marvel Superhero game that is very slow paced) is my third.

As most of you probably know, I was on a cruise through the Caribbean over the last week. We left February 22, flew to Miami, FL, then cruised around Cuba, hitting Jamaica and Grand Cayman before sailing back to Miami.

The morning we were setting out, it decided to snow. Dumped some 6 inches on us already before we left - so my vacation started out with me shovelling the driveway. Nice, huh? But you know, I'd rather shovel the driveway before leaving than after coming back (which is what happened on one of my previous cruises). We headed to the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre airport, a dinky little thing really far as airports go, and prayed the snow and freezing rain wouldn't ground the airplanes. Luckily, it didn't. The flight left after a short delay to de-ice the plane prior to take-off. Damn the snow, full speed ahead!

So we reached our next destination, Cincinnati, OH, just a little behind schedule. The airport was a bit under the weather as well, experiencing more freezing rain and light snow. Our flight was delayed an hour. We found out the Atlanta, GA terminal was closed - all flights were cancelled through that airport. We thanked our lucky stars that this time we didn't select flights that went through Atlanta. Really was quite fortunate. I guess Georgia was experiencing some really bad thunderstorms at the time. After counting our blessings, and spending just a little while more than we had anticipated, we boarded our flight and flew to Miami.

That trip was a bit rocky as we hit quite a bit of turbulence along the way. The pilot said he would adjust altitude to try to find a smooth patch of air as we flew. I guess all things considered, he must have done pretty good. I've had bumpier flights, that's for sure. But let me tell you, those seats on the Delta airplanes were terrible! It was like sitting on a tiny toilet seat the whole way. The center of the cushions were pushed down, and the outside edges were up. Very uncomfortable, but a small price to pay. Just get me there in one piece, eh?

From Miami, we stayed in a hotel not too far from the airport. It was rather noisy, what with the airplanes flying so low overhead, but they had free shuttle rides to the cruise port. We ordered some delivery, and they charged us almost $10 for delivering, if you can believe that. Didn't even say anything about delivery charges on their flier. The food wasn't even that great. We pushed on, happy with the fact that the food quality would only get better from here on out.

The next day we were shuttled over to the Celebrity cruise port where our ship (The Century) was waiting patiently for the passengers to board. I found the process of boarding through Celebrity much less tedious than Norwegian - the cruise line we sailed with three times before. In fact, I must say Celebrity really had their crap together when it came to getting passengers on and off. But other than that, it was a mere photocopy of our other cruises. Seemed they all follow the same script. They offer the same entertainment. They have the same amenities. An art auction, a photographer that snapped your picture here and there and you got to choose if you wanted to keep it or not, trivial pursuit gaames, a chess, bridge, shuffleboard, blackjack, Texas-hold-em poker, and slots tournaments, guess the fake gemstone drawings, special 'deals' at the ports - available through prearranged agreements between the cruise line and the shops, the entertainment crew with their magic, dancing, and singing shows, a professional comedian, a professional juggler/comedian... seems like a lot, but it was all available on our last cruise. It was like deja vu.

Our first port of call was in Ocho Rios (8 rivers), Jamaica. It is a pretty island country, but many of the people are quite rude when it comes to holding their hand out. We spent the morning climing the Dell River Falls, a 600-foot cascading waterfall. It was very fun, and very wet. After that, we spent some time shopping throughout just about every shop in the village. My feet were killing me. One of our first stops was to buy new socks to replace the wet ones I was wearing and lessen the blisters I knew I was getting.

Our second port of call was at Grand Cayman, a small island known for their tourism, rum cakes, pirates, and beautiful reefs. The last time we went to Grand Cayman, we snorkled and spent some time at Stingray City. This time, we snorkled again... the water is great there, the reefs are breath-taking, and the fish are pretty fearless so they swim right up to you - even try to eat your jewelry if you're wearing any. We explored an underwater ship wreck, and then over to Cheeseburger Reef to play with the fishes. After that, my feet rebelled against the idea of chasing Kelly around shopping again. So instead I hung out at the Hard Rock Cafe sucking on some brewskies while Kelly went shopping.

The last day at sea was a rough one. Cloudy skies and scattered showers the whole way. Waves were probably up to 10 feet, which I think is pretty cool personally. I don't get motion-sick, so I was digging it. The bad weather had caused them to cancel several activities from the schedule, which left us with a whole lot of free time and nothing to do with it. Most of the passengers took their sea-sick pills and vegged out anyway, but I was left wanting. I purchased a beer and watched some people try to learn how to ballroom dance with the ship pitching like it was. At least that was worth a few laughs.

We were back in Miami by 6 AM the next day. I was outside taking pictures of the sunrise, but man was it cold! I guess with the wind chill, it must have been about 45 degrees (F) - unbelievably cold for Miami. All of the locals were wearing their heavy coats and scarves. I was happy with a wind breaker. It's nice sometimes to be from the northern states.

Our flights home were rather uneventful. We made it home around 9:30 - 10 PM, safe and sound.

There you have it, my trip in a nutshell. The weather was beautiful except for the last day, and we made the best of it, but I'm glad to be back.

Cold / Flu season hits once again, and my wife brings home Strep... yee-haw. Now I'm starting to feel it. I just hope I don't spread it at work when I go. I should, theoretically, take a sick day, but the people at work would be more upset with me for doing that than spreading germs. Finding a replacement for the Flight Director spot is getting exceedingly hard to do as the end comes closer. We've already lost one person from our team of five. My boss is now working weekends, which I didn't really expect, but there's no way around it so long as people still take vacation.

Kudos for him... for doing what needs to be done.

For the past couple weeks, I've been taking time out from my Call of Duty 4 game to play Oblivion pretty heavily. It's a great single-adventurer role-playing game. The world graphics are really quite stunning. I was really getting into it too, until I came up to a door that I couldn't get through.

Oh ... it wasn't locked or trapped or anything like that. Every time you pass through a door into a building, it loads the new area. So the screen says "Loading" ... only in this event, it never loaded.

I cleaned the disk off and tried again with no luck. Well, I figured there was another entrance to this place on the opposite side, so I ran around and tried from that side... and the same thing happened. Since then, I've been trying to get some help on how to fix this problem. Obviously it's a bug. I don't expect it's a bug for everyone because there's only really a handful of people complaining about Oblivion's load screen freezing up on them, and no one thus far has identified the place where I'm stuck except for me.

They don't plan on making any patches until they start making expansion sets, apparently. The big problem with this (aside from forcing me to buy an expansion set) is that I can't progress on the main quest of the game (to close all the oblivion gates) if this problem remains. So I've been haunting a couple forums (the PlayStation Underground, and Bethesda Games - the game website - http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=805540) to see if they can help me. Thus far... doesn't seem likely. So I asked who I speak to to get my money back, or a replacement disk... whichever. I mean... why should I settle for an inferior product, right?

If the Bethesda or Playstation doesn't come through for me, I could try to borrow someone else's disk and get past the part I'm stuck on that way. Might work, huh?

It's so cool. I finally managed to get rid of all my NPCs in my games. We have a new cleric to take over in Lands of Mystery (Andy's playing the part of Jacob) so I can get rid of the Dwarven cleric that someone abandoned a while back. We have Bundles taking over Doran (the cleric) in Tegel Manor. Mynx's player Bergie has withdrawn from the Tegel Manor game, so Mynx and Orianis (her IC brother) can be written out of the story. Plus it also makes room for a magic-user. Thorn has joined in the group just today.

Oh that reminds me, I need to go over her character sheet and make sure it's all good to go. Probably is. She's a bright gal.

Dang, I just remembered... I have one more NPC to get rid of. Zoanthrope in my Marvel Super Heroes game... he was abandoned around the time we jumped to the new server. Don't blame him, really. This character just seems so under-powered compared to the others. But part of his problem was they require a FEAT check whenever he wanted to shift into an animal and he kept failing that roll.

Now that I've taken the Marvel Super Heroes game and made it more freeform, he's not failing the shifts anymore, and I think that helps level the playing field a tad. They still use the game system to identify their limitations, but I'm not making them roll anymore. I just decide on what succeeds and what doesn't ... for the good of the story behind the game.

I've got a new player in Lands of Mystery to replace the Cleric I've been NPCing... yeah! Andy has stepped up to the plate and decided to introduce a new guy which will be showing up within the next few days (real time... mere minutes in the game). It'll be nice to have someone take over that task, one less voice to make.

In Tegel Manor, one player hadn't posted in two weeks... somewhat of a habit for her if you ask me. I've been very forgiving up until this last one. After two weeks with nothing ... my standard rule is to find a replacement player or write the character out of the story. The party needs a spell-caster more than a ranger anyway. As soon as I mentioned that's what I was going to do, wouldn't you know it? She sounds off. Figures. Now, the question is, be a nice guy and let her continue to post once a week (if I'm lucky), or stick to my guns and look like an ass. The way I see it, she's not being fair to everyone else, because they are missing out on the opportunity to role-play with an active participating player... so if she goes, it benefits everyone who remains. However, if she becomes more active, I may be more forgiving.

~ Thomas