Still waiting to hear back on our latest house offer.  Turns out that another bid was placed alog with ours so we are in a wee bit of a bidding war.  I went to what I felt comfortable with, and found out we are better qualified than the other bidder.  (Meaning we are pre-approved.) We’ll see if they go for it; and if not then there are plenty of other houses out there.

Saw Iron Man on Friday.  Great flick.  They nailed it with this one.  Keep up the good work Marvel!  I may take the wife to go see it tonight.  (I think the guy that played Ben Sisko on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is a better choice for Nick Fury than Samuel L. Jackson, but that’s just me.  Stay for the end of the credits and decide for yourself.)

Interesting news from WOTC regarding the GSL being by publisher line, as opposed to by publisher.  Still waiting to see what the actual licence will look like.

Saturday I drove to one of the best little comic book shops in my area for Free Comic Book Day.  I picked up the latest Powers trade paperback, the Hunter-Killer TPB and the latest issue of Ultimates.  Plus all the free stuff.

I loved the X-Men free issue with Pixie in it; well worth the read.

My XBox was waiting for me in the mail when I got home last night. I was very excited, so I hooked it up, played a very bad game of Halo 3 and settled in to wait for my friends to get on. I downloaded a few episodes of Jericho via XBox Live and watched them. Very cool. So 9:30 rolls around and I try to get on with my buddies, but my NAT was not playing nice and would not let me join the party! Very frustrating. So I spent all night fritzing with it until I got that issue resolved; my XBox is now reporting an “Open” NAT so I think that fixed. Now I need to pick up Grand Theft Auto!
We put an offer on a house the other day. It was only on the market two days, and we were the first to get some ink spread on it. They were “entering it in the system” yesterday as of about 3:30pm. So we should hear something either later today or early next week. Fingers crossed.

My wife did well on her test; as I knew she would. She is the kind of person that makes a great student. (Me, not so much.)

Going to see Iron man tonight with my friends. My brother saw a sneak preview and sez it rocks. Be sure to stay until after the credits as there is some bonus footage in there apparently.

At work they are re-assembling the server rack so we can switch it back on today and see what didn’t survive the flood. Fingers crossed. I moved around tiles on raised flooring (steel 2X2 tiles filled with concrete) this morning so that when the rack goes back in it will not be under the leaky sink anymore should something like this happen in the future. That was fun.

On the PDF front I have the Wizards of Shadowfell and the North Side Spiders on deck. I have all the art and writing ready to go for them; they just need to be laid out. I am also working on a Dept. 7 Armory Update; which is a weapon locker type book with a bit of a twist. Instead of just listing a big “catalog” of guns and gear I am detailing the guns employed by Department 7, and exactly WHY they use these guns. Too often gamers will just look through the weapon selection and pick out some guns they think “look cool” when in real life you would be laughed off the SWAT team if you showed up with a MAT-49 SMG or two .50 Desert Eagles in thigh holsters. True story I am embarrassed to say; way back in the day (like Jr. High School) my Top Secret SI character had a Mat-49 cuz I thought they were the coolest looking SMG I had ever seen! I was too young and stupid to realize I was toting around a FRENCH gun. Oh the shame! (One of the neat features of this gun is that the magazine well folds up under the barrel so its out of the way; intended for paratroopers while jumping out of planes.)

One of my other friends is guilty of the paired Desert Eagles gag.  Trust me, try shooting just one at a time and you’ll see what I mean.  They look great on film, but are hardly the tool of professionals.  So the Armory Update will get rid of much of the chaff listed in the armory books and focus on what the real professionals (Police, FBI, Special Operations Units etc.) use and why. Not sure if I’ll have that out this month but I would like to.  That one will also be cheap; I can’t see charging much for a weapons book when the stats for all of them are almost identicle.  I may even do it as a free PDF, not sure yet as I will need to re-coup my art costs.  More info soon.