Caldoom as it was

Recently I wrapped up my latest D&D campaign, it lasted over 2 years and I was planning for a year before that. The PC's all made 20th level, which is a record for us. The story itself actually started 35 or 36 years ago when I decided I wanted to merge some game worlds together, mine, Bruce's and Stomper's, so characters from all those places could play in my campaigns. That campaign ended with on of the characters blowing the horn of destiny which merged all three worlds into a new Caldoom. This latest campaign ended with another PC blowing the horn again, this time splitting those worlds out separately again. Below is my original map, that I drew in 1979 or 1980 side by side with a new updated map I made a couple of weeks ago. I am thinking our next campaign will begin with the 5E update of Into the Borderlands, which was the first module we played back in the day, a good kick off I think.

Wow, I have went a long time between postings

June 5th was the last time I posted anything and that was just a short "I hate my life" post. I kind of feel guilty for neglecting it for so long. On the other hand its not like I have been all that consistent about posting for a couple of years now. Anyway, I will try to get better at this.

I know, I know!

I realized a couple of days ago I have not written in my blog since June 5th, which is much longer than I normally do, especially when I go someplace like Billings, I usually post some pictures or something or have something interesting happen in a D&D game, which several fun things have happened in the last two months. I am not sure why I have it go so long, I really rarely let my life pass without some sort of comment. Looking through my FaceBook posts for the last couple of months, I really do not see much there to get excited about

This is not to say I have not written at all, I have written several things, but that stuff is not the things I am inclined to write about and allow others to read. No, its not porn (Jeeze), but rather, inner thinking, observations about some of the things that have went on around me, thoughts on my own actions and the actions of others. Some of it, written in the darkness of 3AM, deals with my demons, but mostly not. I have even pushed out a short story, so its not like I am not writing at all or that I have writers block

Maybe I am just being overly introspect right now or maybe I am saving my energy for the moment when something truly creative will make the leap from my head to the written word. I don't know, but I do know this, my 2nd processor has been fairly quiet since I came back from Montana, I'd like to say maybe I have just found some sort of balance that is working for me for the moment, but I am not sure that is it either, because I am still fretting about things, I am still having those mild anxiety attacks (thank god I am medicated or those would be much worse, I am sure) and I don't think I am anymore happy or unhappy than I was before Montana

I suppose it could be that I am putting so much energy into work, I am certainly working much harder than before, I am not on autopilot for 80% of my day. While my new job is not as intellectually challenging, it is more emotionally challenging because it requires me to interact with far more people and helping them deal with their problems. Now days instead of unfucking computers and software, I unfuck people and processes.

Nuff said

Some days I really fucking hate my life.

Weekend Update

Last weekend I tried to install Arch Linux, which I have done before, but ended up having several issues with it. The Arch Linux kernel build is trash, sorry, but its the truth. So I went back to Ubuntu, although usually I use long term support versions, I decided to instead use the latest version 19.04, simply because it is using the most current kernel version 5.x.

The reason I wanted to go to Arch Linux was it is supposed to be the best distribution for using GPU pass through. For those who don't know what that is, it is basically isolating a 2nd video card for exclusive use with a virtual machine. The reason this is done is because you get 95% of a bare metal install of Windows, this is useful for running games or any application that requires serious video rendering. I spent 6 hours last weekend trying to get this done in the midst of my system locking up, including recompiling the kernel from scratch.

This weekend after installing Ubuntu 19.04 last week, I decided to try to get GPU pass through working on Ubuntu. It literally took me an hour to do, and most of that time was spent installing Windows 10 into a virtual machine, and the whole thing works flawlessly.

Now if I could just remember what exactly I needed Windows 10 for.

Nurseferatu Podcast #5

In this week's episode we start with Viagra and end with hemorrhoids.

https://nurseferatu.net/2019/04/30/ask-a-nurse-practitioner/

Just as an insight into this weeks show, I literally made up those questions 5 minutes before we started recording, Leigh had no idea what I was going to throw at him.

Roll20 and The Fantasy Trip

I spent some time building a character sheet for The Fantasy Trip on Roll20. At this point it is pretty crude and only really supports Melee and Wizard.

• Download TFT_html.zip from the link below and extract it.
• This should give you a file named TFT.html, open it in a text editor.
• Now goto Roll20 and create a new campaign, type in the name you want and under Choose a Character Sheet, choose custom from the drop down menu and press the Create Game button.
• Once at your new games home page, click on the Settings drop down and click Game Settings.
• On this page scroll down to Character Sheet Template and you should see a black editing box, make sure you are on the HTML Layout tab, copy all of the text from TFT.html and paste it into the editing box.
• Click Save Changes, then you can click on the Preview tab and if you did everything right, you should see the character sheet.
• You can now launch your game and add characters.

I am not sure how much time I am going to have in the future to improve this, but I will certainly take feedback. Eventually I will make it available on Roll20's github. I make no claims to this code, do what you want with it, all I ask is if you make improvements, you give back to the community.

Download link:
https://carnifex.org/downloads/TFT_html.zip

Edit:

I have updated the sheet over the last couple of days. I removed all the obsolete table tags and replaced it with more modern CSS code. It looks more or less the same, but it should make maintaining it easier going forward. I have placed it on GitHub, the download here on my website is now obsolete, I am leaving it there purely for historical reasons.

https://github.com/cjstoddard/roll20-character-sheets/tree/master/The%20Fantasy%20Trip

It has been accepted into the main branch, this post is completely obsolete.

Nurseferatu Podcast #4

https://nurseferatu.net/2019/04/15/this-weeks-podcast/

Nurseferatu

Leigh Sampson-Seitz invited me to co-host his podcast, to add a laymen view point on medical healthcare. While I know nothing about healthcare, I do have an opinion on just about everything, which makes me at least as qualified as Jenny McCarthy to talk about such things, so I readily accepted the invitation.


https://nurseferatu.net/2019/04/02/podcast-3-better-than-2/

Sigh! Bored Now!

WOW, it has been over a month since my last post. I have not really been doing much, which is probably why I have not posted much. Today is the last day of my spring vacation. I did absolutely nothing of value. I spent most of the week on my computer wasting time. I did get a little writing done and I added a 2nd monitor to my computer, not really because I needed to all that much, but more like, I have these 3 monitors laying around not doing anything.

My next vacation I am going back to Montana, that will be in June. I decided to go back during the summer this year, because holiday travel kind of sucks and I do not really want to risk being exposed to a lot of snow, I got lucky the last few trips back. I am also going across a weekend so no one has to take time off from work. We can have a family get together over the weekend, then I can spend time with some old friends and make a day trip to Bozeman.

I wish I had more to talk about, but I don't.