Weekly Diary, June 23, 2019
Jun. 23rd, 2019 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petrea_mitchellSo I'll try this weekly notes thing and see how it works.
It's late June and I had to turn on the heat this morning. Ah, summer in Portland.
This is Phosphor. He's 9 years old, more active than any other 9-year-old cat I've known, and huge. He would be the king of all he surveys, except he has no assertiveness at all with other cats. As a kitten, he was the first feral cat we captured from the backyard, and he's helped tame subsequent kittens.
The weekly anime commentary happened. This week's reason to be glad for being in lots of fandoms is that I wouldn't have known about the Ikkō Ikki if not for signing up for a game involving them at my first Enfilade!.
I was very excited when Spikecon was able to distribute preliminary schedules a little over a month before the con starts, but the long wait since then for final schedules has been agonizing. It's been two weeks since the deadline for acknowledging the preliminary schedules. I'm checking my inbox and the Spikecon site several times a day to see if I can find out which of my panels I'm moderating.
In better news, after almost two years of trying, I've managed to reestablish official contact with Orycon's programming department. I got a new invite! I filled out the survey! I got to make my perennial panel suggestions! This year's reason why none of them get run will probably be that most people who've already filled out the survey won't come back to check whether new panels have been added to the list.
On the paper front, mostly puzzle magazines this week because further reading was blocked by needing to blog about my two summer reading projects.
On TV, the usual anime, plus I got in a viewing of the Brent Walker version of The Sorcerer. This is reputed to be one of the best of the videos, and I can see and hear why. The staging is imaginative, the voices are all great, and the actors are clearly having fun. The only weak point is where supernatural events meet 1980s British TV special effects.
I've made a list of where to find all the monsters in the first half of Puzzle & Dragons Z, to help find the resources to evolve your monsters. The difficulty curve in the start of the second half is still ridiculous. If I'm still stuck in the same place after a few more tries, I may put it aside for good.
I think I've found my limit for number of simultaneous Pathfinder Society play-by-post games I can handle. I think I shouldn't be running/playing more than two total at a time, though running two tables of the same scenario can count as one.
That doesn't stop me volunteering for more down the road after all my current ones are over, though! I've taken the next step as a GM by signing up to run a game in the next PbP convention.
I took Sezan to the weekend KeyForge tournament at the Friendly Local Gaming Store and did fairly well. This is the second time, actually, but apparently there was a problem uploading the results from a couple weeks ago, so I got to play it without a handicap this time. Next time we'll really see what it can do.
If you live in the US, the 2020 election is already living in your head and it's pointless to pretend otherwise. However, I'll try to keep this bit to informative links, and I'll hide it down at the bottom and put it behind a cut.
It's late June and I had to turn on the heat this morning. Ah, summer in Portland.
Cat
This is Phosphor. He's 9 years old, more active than any other 9-year-old cat I've known, and huge. He would be the king of all he surveys, except he has no assertiveness at all with other cats. As a kitten, he was the first feral cat we captured from the backyard, and he's helped tame subsequent kittens.
Fandom
The weekly anime commentary happened. This week's reason to be glad for being in lots of fandoms is that I wouldn't have known about the Ikkō Ikki if not for signing up for a game involving them at my first Enfilade!.
I was very excited when Spikecon was able to distribute preliminary schedules a little over a month before the con starts, but the long wait since then for final schedules has been agonizing. It's been two weeks since the deadline for acknowledging the preliminary schedules. I'm checking my inbox and the Spikecon site several times a day to see if I can find out which of my panels I'm moderating.
In better news, after almost two years of trying, I've managed to reestablish official contact with Orycon's programming department. I got a new invite! I filled out the survey! I got to make my perennial panel suggestions! This year's reason why none of them get run will probably be that most people who've already filled out the survey won't come back to check whether new panels have been added to the list.
Books and media
On the paper front, mostly puzzle magazines this week because further reading was blocked by needing to blog about my two summer reading projects.
On TV, the usual anime, plus I got in a viewing of the Brent Walker version of The Sorcerer. This is reputed to be one of the best of the videos, and I can see and hear why. The staging is imaginative, the voices are all great, and the actors are clearly having fun. The only weak point is where supernatural events meet 1980s British TV special effects.
Gaming
I've made a list of where to find all the monsters in the first half of Puzzle & Dragons Z, to help find the resources to evolve your monsters. The difficulty curve in the start of the second half is still ridiculous. If I'm still stuck in the same place after a few more tries, I may put it aside for good.
I think I've found my limit for number of simultaneous Pathfinder Society play-by-post games I can handle. I think I shouldn't be running/playing more than two total at a time, though running two tables of the same scenario can count as one.
That doesn't stop me volunteering for more down the road after all my current ones are over, though! I've taken the next step as a GM by signing up to run a game in the next PbP convention.
I took Sezan to the weekend KeyForge tournament at the Friendly Local Gaming Store and did fairly well. This is the second time, actually, but apparently there was a problem uploading the results from a couple weeks ago, so I got to play it without a handicap this time. Next time we'll really see what it can do.
Politics
If you live in the US, the 2020 election is already living in your head and it's pointless to pretend otherwise. However, I'll try to keep this bit to informative links, and I'll hide it down at the bottom and put it behind a cut.
- "18 Questions. 21 Democrats. Here's What They Said.": The New York Times puts most of the field on video. Some of the questions are meaningful policy ones. The one notable no-show is Biden.
- "Democratic Candidates Answer Yes-Or-No Questions About Criminal Justice Policy": From FiveThirtyEight. A mere 15 candidates this time, missing Biden and Harris.
- "DNC, NBC announce first debate lineups": Yes, you've already read about this, but only Politico has a handy names-and-faces listing (about halfway down; use the images at the top to quiz yourself and admit that you really don't know who some of these people are).
- Bonus Brexit link! Why are the Brits throwing around the term "constitutional crisis" when everyone knows the UK doesn't have an actual written constitution? The Economist explains that the UK does too have one, it's just scattered around in bits.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-24 10:57 pm (UTC)