Sorry for the lack of posts recently; I have still been sick.  Spent most of the weekend in bed.  Took Monday off and spent most of it in bed as well.  I’m back at work but hardly at 100%.  I hate being sick.

Still lots of talk on the boards about the new logo Louis came up with.  I don’t see what the big deal is.  So many people are worried that WOTC *might* sue them or some such non-sense it’s like the sky is falling.  The OGL is being quoted left, right and centre.  I say stick the damn logo on or don’t.  If WOTC doesn’t like it, they will let us all know in a hurry.  Also, we get that OGL is akin to Open Source and 3.5 and True20 are akin to Java and Visual Basic.  OGL should be in the logo, as well as the rule system the product supports.  It just seems to me that some people spend all their time worrying about what WOTC might or might not do so they do nothing.

My XBox is still out for repair, so I can’t play Grand Theft Auto 4, or Halo 3, or Rock Band or any other games.  Bummer.

My wife is headed back to school for her masters and has been studying up a storm for the past couple of months.  She’s taking the GRE this morning.  I suspect she will do fine; but she’s a bit worried.  It’s cute.

At work yesterday we had a small leak under a sink on the floor above us.  That sink just happened to be on top of a small server room where one of our projects has a server rack.  Six feet tall and crammed with computers, switches and RAID’s.  We must have pulled over a hundred drives out of that thing, some soaking wet!  We have all the various components laid out with fans blowing on them to get the water evaporated.  Time will tell how much hardware we lost to a leaky valve. Ouch!

We still haven’t found a house.  The couple we have really liked have already had contracts on them, and the other was a bit too rich for our blood.  We are gonna look at some tonight after work.  We can afford to be patient and find the right house.

I need to do more writing.  Make time for more writing.  This is one of my favorite things written by Brian Bendis on writing:

From the Powers Script Book Introduction:

I don’t have any advice on breaking into the business. If I’d known how, it wouldn’t have taken me forever to get in. I do know one thing, though: writers write! They don’t sit around wishing they were writing or talking about what they’re thinking of writing. They write! Because while you’re sitting around and talking about it, someone is out there writing their f***ing asses off. Someone is out there kicking your ass and stealing your dream job.

So read this while you’re on the toilet, but when you’re done, write something.

I will be.

Day two of the dog-and-pony show here at work.  I was in at 6:30 am in my suit and tie.  We are nearing the end.  I am only here in a support role; just in case something goes wrong.  So basically I am sitting on my laptop checking email and surfing the web while I am “on call”.  It’s a fairly easy gig.  I watched the last episode of Battlestar Galactica which I missed last week.  I tried to catch up on a few episodes of Jericho but every episode I try to watch craps out.  Tried them in IE and Firefox; still no joy.  I love that you can catch missed episodes on the web but if it’s not gonna work then what’s the point?  I’ve been trying all afternoon only to have one episode crap out right at the climactic ending.  Grrrrr; very frustrating.

The last house offer was rejected.  They came back with a price 25 grand higher than we could go.  I maybe could have scraped together another five G’s; but 25 is simply not gonna happen.  So we are going tomorow in the AM to look at some more.

I’ve been slacking on my releases for this month.  I did manage to get some editing done on the Wizards of Shadowfell PDF that will be our next release.  I’ll try to get it out this weekend.  Anthony has done some great art for it.  (As usual.) This class pays homage to the classic wizards of literature like Gandalf, Allanon and Merlin.

The house hunt is progressing. We looked at some single family homes in our price range; and all of them were just plain icky. So we adjusted our focus to townhouses and found one we loved right off the bat. We put an offer on it that night, only to find out that it had a contract on it already. My wife was bummed. So our agent was talking to a co-worker about how we just missed this townhouse with a one car garage and she says “I have one of those for sale in the same area.” This one is owned by the bank so it’s been foreclosed on. We went to look at it the next day. It’s much bigger than the other one, and the listed price is waaay out of our price range, but the bank’s agent thinks she can talk them into letting us buy if for the amount we are approved for. (Which is like sixty grand lower than the asking price!) So we wrote up an offer and are waiting for them to accept or deny it.

I’ve been sick as a dog for the last couple of days. I can’t take off work cuz I am filling in for someone and we have a big dog-and-pony show with the board of trustees and some big gummint’ muckity-mucks today and tomorrow. So I am wearing a suit and tie today, which I don’t normally have to do at work.

On the political front I found this on the intra-web…

We in Denmark cannot figure out why you are even bothering to hold an election.

On one side, you have a bitch who is a lawyer, married to a lawyer, and a lawyer who is married to a bitch who is a lawyer.

On the other side, you have a true war hero married to a woman with a huge chest who owns a beer distributorship.

Is there a contest here?

Headed out in about an hour to go look at homes.

Spent Saturday with my family; we started the morning with my parents by going to an Omish Market near Annapolis, MD for breakfast and some shopping.  Then back to my parents house for “the” birthday party.  With seven kids and numerous grand-kids they stopped having individual birthday’s a few years ago so now we have one birthday party for everyone.  Just about everyone was there, including my sister who lives up in Maine.  My brother scored a box of Dark Elves from someone and gave them to me since my daughter is working on a DE army for WHFB.

Big flap going on about weather you can support 3.5 if you want to put out 4th edition stuff.  Too early to get all worked up in my opinion; we will not see the license until June.  I am not going to waste my time with speculating about what I can or cannot do until I get to read the actual license. I get the feeling that Wizards is dropping the ball on this one.  First five G’s and early access, then no word, now its free and everyone can get in on it come October but you may have to scrap all your 3.5 support.

Apparently I will have to remove the D20 logo from every product by years end or some such.  I gotta tell you I am NOT looking forward to that if it’s true. I’ll go with the new logo LPJ came up with if that is the case.

Here is a collection o fimages my friend converted for our Star Wars RPG campaign.

Our characters and some NPC’s:

The Bull Rancor figure; unpainted and then painted:

Big news on the GSL front.  I won’t re-hash what we do and do not know at this point as others are covering it.  I am glad to hear that we will get access to the license/SRD shortly.  Still need to get a look at the *actual* licence to see what the paticulars are but I suspect there will be no deal-breakers in there from my standpoint.

How does this affect our plans?  Not much at all.  I still plan to support 3.5 as well as D20 Modern.  I have always planned to support 4th edition and whatever the next incarnation of Modern happens to be.  In the near-term I guess I need to think about my D20 Modern adventure arc and weather I want it to be D20 Modern, 4th edition or dual-stat it for both.

I am taking a half-day off from work next  Monday to go look at houses with my wife.  We are pleased at the number of options in our (very small) price range.  Should be fun.  One thing that sucks; I have been maxing out my contributions to my retirement program for seven years.  I have accumulated X dollars in there; quite a bit with the matching funds and the market the last few years.  Yet after they apply all their “rules” and run the numbers I can only get to a very small fraction of the funds to buy a house.  Like only 15% of the total balance.  So we are putting down quite a bit less than I had hoped, but still enough to help us out.

Louis is off and running with his Video version of the RPG Publishing Gauntlet. It was his audio podcast that got me up off my @$$ and publishing, so I am glad to see a newer version out there.

Some numbers to play with.  My cheapest product to produce so far: More Mighty that Steel.  (Which was our very first release.)  Total cost: ten bucks.  Five for the writer and five bucks of stock art for the cover.

Most expensive product I have produced so far: Mia Famiglia: The Lodovico Crime Family.  I spent $550.00 bucks on this short PDF.  I don’t think I’ll ever get my money back on it via PDF sales; but the art is earning well as stock art.

Did I mention that Anthony has been worth every cent I have ever paid him? I have the distinction of “discovering” him on Digital Webbing and having him do some art for us early on.  I introduced him to the PDF RPG market; and now he has started Shamman’s Stock Art and has freelanced for lots of PDF companies.  Go hire him if you get the chance.  I think good art will really make your work stand out; and Anthony provides that in spades.

I just posed our newest release to OBS: Epic Incantations…

This one has some really cool and powerful spells.  I especially love the Apocolypse Beast and Magic Missile Fullisade.

I did my taxes last night and it turns out I am gonna owe Uncle Sam a few more dollars than I thought.  Yikes!  I even owe a few bucks to the state.  Nothing drastic, but enough that it will hurt a bit to write the check.

[Subliminal Blog Message: Please buy some stuff from us!]

No update on the house-hunt.  Still waiting for some paperwork to come in the mail.  We have been checking listings online and it is truly a “buyers” market out there right now.

We played our Star Wars RPG campaign on Saturday.  Mission accomplished; we are now full-on 7th level Sith!  (But we didn’t get to kill the Bull Rancor and his two companions.)

Still no word on the GSL.  Patiently waiting.  Still.

I see that Gareth has started everyone reminiscing about their first comic book.  My introduction to comics is a bit different.  My older brother was really into comics before I was.  I can’t say I remember the first ones I ever read; but he would bring a stack of them home every few weeks, and I would go through them and read the ones that interested me.  But when I heard they were turning one of my long-time favorite toys into a comic; I began collecting with issue #1.  This was the first comic book title I ever collected:

From there it was mostly Marvel titles.  The only DC comic I ever really dug was Sgt. Rock.  On the indy front I was a mean Groo fan as well.  Loved the TMNT!  (Old school Black & White turtles, not those wimpy cartoon dudes.) Loved X-men and New Mutants. Deathlok had me going until they drew him sitting on a plane with a trench coat and hat.  A seven foot tall Cyborg with a half-metal face saunters past airport security (even pre 9-11)?  Come on, just give him a hover bike or a jet pack.  Sheesh!  One of my all-time favorite comics was the New Mutants Special Edition #1 written by Chris Claremont drawn by Arthur Adams. This comic really inspired me.  The artwork is just plain awesome.

Fromm Larry over at Monster Hunter Nation…

So, the question you’ve got to ask yourself is this… if a bad guy did walk into your classroom, would you A. rather have somebody like one of my people there, able to fight back,  OR  B. hide under your desk and pray to God that you’re not the next one to die?  Option B does allow you to have wishful thoughts about how the police will be here in any second, as you hear your friends and classmates choking to death on their own blood.

If you answer A.  Good for you.  If you answer B.  Sorry, you fail Darwinian Evolution 101.  The correct answer is C.  Get your own damn gun, and quit waiting around for somebody else to come save your ass.

Amen brother!

-The Mangement

My XBox 360 died the other night.  Red ring of death.  So last night I went through the troubleshooting steps on the phone with XBox Support and they are sending me a cardboard coffin so I can ship it out for repair.  I’ll be without it for about three weeks or so.  We were using it as the main DVD player on our living room TV, so now I have to hook up a regular DVD player in the mean time.

Still working on the house thing.  It’s coming along well.  I am waiting on my retirement program to mail me some paperwork I need to determine how much money I can pull out for a down payment.  There are a lot of houses out there in our meager ball-park price range.  I am fairly excited about it.  (Or as I said to a friend of mine ” I decided I have too much time and money on my hands; I think I’ll buy a house.  That should rectify the problem!”)

Look for a PDF on Epic spells tonight or tomorrow to be released.  Two more short PDF’s on deck after that.

Lots of big happenings going on around here. The Werecabbages are starting work on our D20 Modern Adventure series. Chris Field and Otherverse games is also working hard on the Psi-Watch Campaign setting. Anthony is illustrating a pre-view script for the Pandora Project. I have several small projects on deck as well. I’ll try to get another one out in the next couple days. I also expect [SECRET PROJECT] to be ready for initial unveiling in a week or so.

In other news my wife and I have decided to look into buying a house. With the market going down there are some very good deals floating around out there. I faxed over some financial paperwork to a guy today to see how much house we qualify for. Once we get “the number” we can start looking in earnest. Making the payments should be no sweat since I make Zillions of dollars PDF publishing!

I picked up Rock Band for the XBox 360 last week. My wife played while she was out of town and loved it, so I just had to buy any game my wife actually wanted to play. So last night my wife, daughter and I formed a band and started touring.

Still no word on the GSL. Nadda. Zilch. Nothing. Waiting.