My buddies and I that do a monthly-ish geekfest have off and on played pen-and-paper RPGs, but never gotten a campaign to really stick. I’ve given it a lot of thought (I’m generally the game master in these things), and I think it’s at least partially due to the meta-work needed. I’m an old, experienced game master…but at this point in my life, the emphasis has to be on the “old”; it’s been 10+ years since I’ve GM’d a game regularly. I still have all the skills, but they’re optimized for old systems. In the meantime, I keep trying different stuff with my buddies, because we all of course like novelty. Some of these guys are old-school pen-and-paper types, but some aren’t…inflicting a new system on them every 6 months isn’t doing anything for their ability to get into the campaign. So I needed to re-strategize.

(Plus…I gave away my 1st edition rulebooks back in the early 90s. That didn’t help!)

So I finally decided that ideally, if I could replace my old rules and just DM an old-school 1st edition campaign, it’d be the minimum extra work for me, and for most of the players (half of them used to play back in the day). And lo and behold…my co-geekfester Steve and I were out putzing about yesterday, and look what they had at the local game shop:

They didn’t have a Player’s Handbook, but I tracked one down on eBay; no worries. It’s on it’s way. And the Monster Manual isn’t necessary straight off; basic monster stats are in the DMG, and I mostly know them all anyway. Let the gaming begin! This should be fun.

(Aside: I’m one of those old cantankerous RPG-types that thinks even 2nd edition AD&D was blasphemy, so 3, er, 3.5…4th edition was Out Of The Question. Just to clarify. *grin*)

Light post today…I’m doing some Saturday stuff for work, so my SCOTUS post can wait until tomorrow. *grin* I did want to note, however, that a) my Disqus comments are live, fire away folks! *grin*, and b) leaf/lawnblowers make podcast listening impossible!

Let me explain. Podcast listening is something that happen in many environments…you can listen at a PC, pump it to the stereo, with an MP3 player, etc. People listen while working, at the gym, in the car, or wherever. Much like radio, it doesn’t require full attention, unlike video podcasts or TV. I personally tend not to listen to podcasts while working…I’m too easily distracted. I usually listen to music while coding or working (watch me code on last.fm!). I listen to podcasts in the car, on mass transit, out doing errands, and running. I like the fact it’s such a flexible medium, though!

Anyway…so I listen to a LOT of podcasts while running. I’m no marathoner, but I do 15-20 miles a week when there’s nothing stopping me, and I’ve been doing it for 20 years. So since the beginning of podcasting, I’ve LOVED listening to podcasts while I run. In fact, I had started about a year before; in 2003, I started recording BBC news streams to listen to on a 64 meg CF card player. Ah, those were the days. *grin*. But now, it’s podcasts…lots of podcasts.

And podcasts vs. lawnblowers don’t fare NEARLY as well as music vs. lawnblowers. Not like this is a new phenomenon, but I’ve for some reason noticed it a lot more lately. I get a lot of lawn care types out near the park that I run at and the neighborhood nearby where I live. Music? Music survives 10-15 seconds of absolute overwhelming blower noise. After all, they’re probably songs that I love and know completely by heart anyway. But a podcast, especially a technical one, or a presentation? Blam. Conversational thread lost. So lawnblowers suck. *grin*

So that is my rant for today. More fun tomorrow!

Dodd: Does America Stand for the Rule of Law, or the Rule of Men?: This link includes both the video and text of Senator Dodd’s remarks on the floor today before the votes on amendments to the FISA bill (which were all ultimately shot down), and the subsequent vote on the bill itself (which passed). Senator Dodd has been steadfast in his opposition to the retroactive immunity grant to the telecoms included in the bill, and had already once helped block it’s passage (late last year). His efforts were ultimately unsuccessful today, but he is much appreciated. His words are also a powerful reminder of the risks we are taking with our liberty in service to imagined security. From his closing:

Mr. President, allow me to close with one of my favorite quotations – one I have recited on this floor many times. It is from Justice Robert Jackson’s opening statement at the Nuremberg trials. And it reads:

That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.

Mr. President, the tribute that Power owes to Reason is as clear today as it was when those words were spoken more than a half-century ago: that America stands for a transcendent idea.

The idea that laws should rule, not men.

The idea that the Constitution does not get suspended for vengeance.

The idea that when this nation begins to tailor its eternal principles to the conflict of the moment, it risks walking in the footsteps of the enemies we despise.

For, as Margaret Thatcher said, “When law ends, tyranny begins.”

Today, let us pay the tribute that Power owes to Reason today – in this moment, with these votes.
I implore my colleagues to vote against retroactive immunity…against cloture…and above all, for the rule of law.

Thanks again for trying, Senator.

So…one of the neat things about FriendFeed is that it highlights services for me that I don’t presently use, but that keep showing up in the feeds I follow. For example, I checked out GoodReads based on seeing a couple of people using it, and it’s nifty. I’ve got an account there now, in fact (wiring it up to LibraryThing comes later). FF supports a lot of services that I haven’t used ,but I think the most interesting thing I’ve seen is Disqus. So interesting that I think I’m moving my comments there.

Weird, eh? I mean, I live for running my own stuff. I host my blog myself, host my mailserver myself, host my wiki myself, host my…we’re seeing a pattern here, aren’t we? *grin* So what’s different?

Well, a couple things I think. One is simply pragmatic, but it enables the other. Firstly, in a pragmatic sense, pushing my comments out into the cloud is a fundamentally different thing than hosting my email there. My blog is public, and the associated comments are by design, public as well, so there’s not the privacy and 4th amendment issues associated with my personal email. For email, this is still a show-stopper for me…it would require serious crypto-wizardry for me to store my full email corpus in the cloud. For comments, not so much…which means I’m willing to at least entertain the idea. And once I do, it’s pretty attractive.

Disqus provides a lot of cool features for both a blog owner and a commenter (and hey, I’m both!). For a blog owner, it provides nice conversational management tools, good spam filtering, dashboard management, etc. Nice to haves. But it really, IMO, shines for the commenter. You suddenly have a persistent identity across thousands of blogs, allowing your reputation and ID to become a much more useful online tool. You can also use widgets and services like FriendFeed to easily highlight your witty remarks from any tenth-rate blog (like, say, this one *grin*) on your own site or in your own feed. Nice!

There are also comment ratings, and the ability to email into a thread, the ability to backup posts (in case the service, you know, goes away), and an API. They also make it clear that they claim no ownership of your comments, which I find kinda important. *grin*

PLUS…it supposedly runs on Django, and they use Firefly characters in their features tour. I mean…geek bonus juice aplenty right there.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m sure it’s not perfect. But I’ve been giving this your sites as loosely coupled components scattered across the cloud model a lot of thought lately, and Disqus fits in well as training wheels for a trial run (how’s THAT for tentative? LOL). So I think if I can get this wired up pretty easily, I’m going to give it a whirl. Let’s see where we end up! Comments welcome (and appreciated). What do you think? Have you used Disqus? Do you like the idea?

PS: It certainly isn’t live yet…as of now, these are still my old-school comments. I’ll make it clear when I’ve switched over (though it should be pretty obvious). I’m just making the decision now…

UPDATE: An important note. I want to make clear that the persistent identity benefits I’m so enthusiastic about above are optional. I will NOT be requiring any commenter to register with me, or with Disqus. I think it’s of value, obviously…for both me and you. But I understand anyone who doesn’t wish to do so. I will still have the ability to post anonymous (well, unnamed; I have your IP address) comments, and I always will, barring some unforeseen Internet calamity that makes it impossible. So don’t worry about that.

It’s really been quite the excellent long weekend so far *knock on wood*. On the 4th, we went to the Georgia Independence Day Festival in Hampton, GA…a really fun local 4th of July festival with music, historic reenactors, fair food, friends, and of course fireworks! A good time was had by all!

Photos here: GIDFest 2008

Then yesterday we decided to finally visit the Kangaroo Conservation Center in Dawsonville, GA. It’s been on our list for awhile, but we finally made it there, and it was a lot of fun. The center is dedicated to kangaroo preservation through captive breeding and public education, and they currently exhibit over 300 kangaroos of 9 species (in fact, apparently the largest collection of kangaroos outside of Australia). It’s an AZA-accredited zoo, and has been for over 20 years, so this is no roadside animal attraction. The habitat is beautiful and spacious, and the animals look very relaxed and happy. I’m sure we’ll be back!

Then on the way home, we stopped off in Dahlonega for some shopping and dessert. Two thumbs up for dessert! *grin*

Photo set: Kangaroo Trip

Two very full days of fun, and still a day left…joy. Now Sunday will be some wind-down…online (uploading photos and such), get some running in, do some chores and some other hobby stuff. Nice. Good friends, fun events (and nice weather) make for good memories. This will definitely be one to remember!

Plumbing isn’t glamorous, but it’s a critical piece of modern infrastructure. Regardless of the design of a house, the landscaping, or it’s location…it needs plumbing under the covers, and reliable plumbing to boot. And the analogy holds in other realms; I often consider sysadmins and DBAs (my tribe!) the plumbers of the IT world, keeping things working behind the scenes. This scales even to large-scale infrastructure as well, and on multiple levels.

In one sense, you can consider (of course) the backbone IP providers and such the true plumbing of the Internet. That’s valid, but limiting. If we pop up the stack a bit, you can see that “cloud computing” providers like Amazon, Google, etc. will be the plumbing providers of raw “service” (storage, db, etc.) to developers. It’s a great step in simplification…but we can go further.

Another level up, and things start to get really interesting. Many web sites and services have been about providing a real-world service (everything from Amazon and book sales, to Basecamp and project management, to muxtape and playlists)…but more and more interesting services are popping up that are, for lack of a better term, plumbing.

Everything from open protocols (like OAuth for authentication, OpenID for identity, and microformats for data) to full-fledged services that you can wire into your app. Twitter was (and is…it ain’t dead yet!) both a microblogging app and something more; a prototype messaging bus for the web. Tweets have been remixed and consumed in ways that no one could have imagined at the start. And that’s a good thing; as painful as the Fail Whale can be, Twitter certainly has been driving innovative ideas.

And now, a new crop of plumbers appears, learning from the old. Gnip is here to try and re-architect the message bus into a scalable and manageable model, Identi.ca makes microblogging open, federated, and Free (Software), and FriendFeed is flat-out the next level of meta-conversational tool.

The fact that plumbing is hot right now makes me very happy. Good tools enable great ideas to be born. I think we’re getting ready to see some great stuff. Vive la plumbing!!

So with all the FISA fun and such going on, I’d normally be making more posts. But home has been hectic, and my neck is still sore from my basal carcinoma removal (not sleeping well)…but mainly, I spend my energy right now worrying about our cat Thomas. He’s almost 16, and dealing with either hepatitis or the onset of liver cancer. The past several weeks have been vet visits, exams, tests, and such. We decided last week NOT to biopsy his liver; it requires general anesthesia (which is a risk), and we’re not going to put him through chemo even if we did determine that is cancer. So he’s on another medication that will treat both hepatitis or cancer (though for cancer, it’s not as effective as chemo), and we’re dealing with all that.

He’s just about the friendliest and most people-loving cat I’ve ever met (even non-cat people like him; they say he acts more like a dog), and it breaks my heart to see him all shaved from tests, losing weight, and generally tired. He’s been acting more aloof the past few days as well, which has really worried us…it’s just not his nature. Today has seemed better, though. I just want him to feel secure and loved, and know that he’s cared for. I want him to live another 10 years, of course…but I’m not going to let him suffer. He’s been too good a friend.

We’ve been together about 14 years, and he’s been a faithful and loving pet through some of my darkest days. I hope he makes it through this. Here’s to you, Thomas!!

UPDATE: Thomas passed away on August 3rd. He was a great cat, and will be missed. I love you, Thomas. Rest in peace.

Well…THAT sucked. H.R. 6304 passes with little problem today in the house; the vote tally is here, if you’re interested. In one sense, I’m not too surprised (though bitterly disappointed)…but in another I am. The Democrats in the House have fought this for months, only to capitulate today after holding out for so long. And to suggest this was a carefully crafted compromise is simply disingenuous; there is no question that the judicial overview described in this bill is simply a rubber stamp for anyone with a note from the President, which we already know the telecomms have.

Sad. Still, we’ll have to see how things go in the Senate next week, I guess. Much thanks to the EFF, ACLU and others who worked so hard on this.