It's Western Commercilism Day!

Ok, I know christmas shopping is expensive. I know that capitlism is far too inscribed in our society to change it...but this whole afterthanksgiving sale thing is getting nuts.

My parent's showed up at Cicuit city today and the customers had broken the glass doors and obtained access before the store was even open. THere was yet another bloody fight at Best Buy and over 200 police officers were assigned to keep the peace. Mardi Gras generates less violence than this X-X

All said, I spent the day wokring tech support and helping people fix thier brand new routers brought home from the sales. THe call volumen was'nt too bad, but almost all the cusotmers had thier blood agitated by the agression required to actully obtain the product on today. I had to tel one cusotmer they were going to have to return a product to the store that they had physically fought over and I think they were going to cry....

This effectivly proves, I think, that western Culture is by nature at odds to the Christian one :p

Thanksgiving

mmmm......Ham........

mmmmm.....Turkey....

Mmmmm.....Stuffing...

Mmmmm....Stuffed!

Everyone gathered at my Grandparent's place to celebrate Thanksgiving this year. This meant a large farmer meal and some good times spent hanging out with blood. I got to see my two new cousins, Annabelle(5) and Sophie(1years old). I also spent time with my Uncle Michael and Aunt Katya. Aunt Katya, btw seems to have adapted to American food pretty well. Last year we realized that she didn't even recognize half of the foods on the table. You really don't realize how much of what we eat is truly American food until then.

The women also held there War Meeting for tomorrow. Wish lists were gathered and filled out(forcibly in the case of the two Roberts...Who were imitaing each other waaay too much again). Discussions ranged from scheduling which store to show up at and which store should my Father be sent to> (My father is usually assigned one of the stores to solo as his 6'5" frame always him to fight crowds better. The rest of the time he forms a traffic shield for mom, who just moves in behind him.)

There was a debate as to whether or not Best Buy should be attempted. There was several injuries and at least one trampling last year.... As for me, I'm starting to be gratefully the company is asking me to do overtime tomorrow. I'll be shopping EBay :p

Kearney Park 2005 Day2

What a great way to end the Season :) The action started right off the cuff, with the Dublin Garrison showing up to deliver a message containing long letter and...a human head... IT turned out Tigre Ui'Niall's brother had been arrested for cattle rustling and summilarly executed with certain parts sent to certain places (I'll spare you the details). This lead to the messagers being tied up (back-to-back, with a apple in their mouths.) We were going to send them to their captain, but the constanble happened to want to know why several armed Irishmen and two tied Englishmen were walking about the shire(especially seeing as we were in England at the time) Unable to persecute them according to Irish law, we then warily handed them over to the English constanables under charges of murder. (still tied up)

Laughing merrily, we proceeded to make a fool of ourselves by:

*Marching like the guards from the Wizard of Oz (goose steps)

*Having a Mug and sword fight

*reenacting WWII scenes with an English Halbard

*Watching Thurmond harass RJ the fire eater/juggler for shouting "free Beer" (as a joke) by demeaning actual Beer

* throwing spear at the jousting targets

We then proceeded to court to present our charges against the Dublin Garrison. I held the grisly evidence while Dun Tare (Tigre Ui'Niall) made his case and pressed charges of murder. The Dublin Garrison commander of course, denied everything and mocked the lord Ui'Niall. Tigre then assaulted the Garrison commander and the constanable, while our valiant Irishmen charged the English Garrison. The Royal court dived for cover as the scene quickly became a complete brawl. After breaking from a fist fight with a pair of Englishmen, I had to pull out with my fellow kennochs and make an ordely retreat. Unfortunately the darned English brought muskets, so we had to completely book it. While we did lose the battle, we mysteriously had gained possion of the Garrison lord's sword and several other English weapons. :) We the proceeded to start a game where the whole encampment would dive for cover and hide whenever the royal court proceeded by.

eventually the Dublin Garrison decided to follow up their minor victory by attacking the encampment. I almost got a chance to re-engage Master Black, but had to settle for some English pirate who thought he was some kind of dual-knife wielding ninja. Things got rougher when I realized that the Ninja-Pirate had not been fully trained for live steel fighting. (I had to train for roughly 6 months to qualify for live-steel, but some guilds use a quick half-hour primer.) After some initial strikes, the poor guy asked out loud "are you supposed to die or am I?" (noone was), since the audience heard him, I gathered up my Galloglas character and shouted "I'm paid to die!" and proceeded to look as menacing as possible while bringing my swordplay down to his level. Things worked out well, Prince Edward showed up and interrupted the fun by declaring the Lord Ui'Niall hostage :p . The whole royal army of England only outnumbered us 10,000 to 1, but the Lord Ui'Niall ordered us to obey.

All in all we kept the crowds interested and the Girls managed to add to the fun by hiding huge chunks of bread in their Liene sleeves and hurling the bread at the Englishmen. (a pity Lacey was;nt there, she usually carries a gun and threatens the Englishmen alongside us. All in All we had a very fun very active day.

Pictures

Hanging out

Hung out with Dwight and Christina at thier house today. Dwight will be able to start work on my Chainmail soon, So I hope that :Maybe: by next renfaire (after kearney and the 3month off season) I might have my own armor. I also hope to have trews by then too :) While I'm not to crazy about spending cash on such tight pants, I'm the only galloglas running in the battle with a breeze.

I had a really good talk with Christina and recieved the highest compliment a Presbytarian can recieve: She thanked me for being willing to discuss relgion rather than simply debate it. She turned out to be a Jehovah Witness, so we were able to help correct a lot of views we had had of the other's relgion. We also had a kick-butt disscussion on the book of Daniel, and what points in history the ancient prophieces may point to.

I also heard about the halloween party and am defintly glad I missed it. The whole thing ended with Ian tied to a wheelchair.

ALPHA DEMO COMPLETE!!

At long last, I've finished the initial V0.02 build of the game. It contains the entire intro and a basic sidequest. Some features are missing and I'm ironing out bugs, but it has definte potiential.

As mentioned it's an old-school turn-based RPG. I've assembled a site http://www.geocities.com/chargeriic/

To show it off and provide download links. If you're feeling bored go ahead and download it and drop me a line on what you think.

Church Meeting

Rest? We don't need to stinkin' rest!

Showed up a special session of church before the big church meeting. The sermon, was on the persecuted church and covered a lot of the places in the world where our faith has been banned. I wish I could have attended the meeting itself, but volunteered to help run things down below for the kids instead. I really am a sucker :p Well, needless to say, we suffered another food shortage, this time with both adults and kids, but tempers were calm and I didn't have to experience half the stress I did during the 'VBS incident'. All in all I had a good time and got to walk trough the AC-Delco building, which our church has purchase din preparation of building a youth center, The thing is almost as big as the current property, so it'll be interesting to see what happens.

PS: Saw the movie Jarhead. It was horrible, just plain horrible. It's a pretty demeaning view of the common soldier and depressing as hell. The drama is jsut a case of "we're screwed, you're screwed". I advise avoidance at all costs.

Nov5 Dinner and Auction

Another busy day. I showed up at the school only to find out that the event was being held at the Community center. By the time I figured out where the community center was, I was 25 minutes late. Luckily things hadn't started yet and I was able to setup the powerpoint and take some last minute pictures of the auction items. The entire dining hall was swamped with hammers, board games, DVD's and artwork for auction. I managed to calm down and to confirm that everything was running smoothly when my parent's arrived. Unlike me, they had correctly guessed at the "cultural" level and had formal attire on.

The silent auction was massive and a lot of fun. I bid hard on a Coca-Cola giftset but lost out. My $5 cheesecake bid was also eaten alive by a $50 one. I soon realized that people were more interested in making a donation than a bargain. The best example was the 'premiere' desserts. A pair of desserts judged to be the best and sold in a live auction format. With the bidding being done by Kobe ( A local Fresno Celebrity), the chocolate delight went for $1000, that's right a thousand bucks so that a single table could dine on the sweetest thing this side of sugar cubes. While the silent auction was moderate, the live auction was trough the roof when it came to some of the bidding. I won't go into bid amounts, but I'll list some of the bid items and maybe you can see why:

* 20 acres of tree planting

* A weekend at a sugar Pine Bed and Breakfast (where you get an entire floor to yourself)

*7 days at a Costa Rica Condo with $1,00 in travel expenses paid

*1500 gallons of diesel

* a $2000 gift certificate for free orthodontics

The event was a success and the school hopes to use some of the cash to gain another classroom, which we will need next year. Thanks to everyone who prayed on this!

*super Thunk*

Ok

Powerpoint...check

Master copy of program...check

Kids.....Check

Books..Check

Tommrow's the big event. Wish me luck!

*thunk*

To wrap up today:

Woke up at 4:30 and headed to work

Left work at 10:00 to pick up files I left a home

Left Home to head to Work at Kerman Christian School

Was informed that the work I did was on the wrong project, headed home at 5:30 to fix it

6:00, Got home and helped load boxes of books

8:00 Worked on new powerpoint project for school

9:30 Finished project and fell asleep

This has been going on all week. Evidently I'm the only tecnincal person other than my boss who can put this stuff toghether. I'm starting to remeber my college days :P

*Thunk*

Project: Priest

Need better project names...feh

I've started work on another game, although I'm trying to take this one slow to prevent some of my classic stress-outs during projects. I'll have an Alpha Demo up and running soon, once I finish scripting the introduction and am looking for people who wouldn't mind taking a look at it. I especially need input on glitches, bugs and plot issues. I'll post more information soon.

(please note names are sooo temporary)

Premise:

For centuries, the kingdom of Desearch has been kept safe from it's zealous neighbors by the monks of the Steel Cross and the Fearsome Judicators of the Obsidian Order. With a new war on the horizon, Desearch's worst fear has come to pass. One of it's feared immortal judicators may have gone rouge, killing in the name of Gods to dark to name. With the Obsidian order torn apart from the inside, fate lies in the hands of single Monk and an untested soldier to stem the oncoming tides of darkness and bring the rouge Judicator to justice before the entire kingdom falls from the inside out.

It was essentially be a Final Fantasy type-RPG (turn-based combat, 2d graphics) made with RMXP. I will have more information soon, but if anyone is interested drop me a line at: packrat@arilion.com

BTW

Just a note to some of the more regualr attenders. I know I don't always post as much as I should, so there's a subscribe box in the sidebar that'll let you know when I post.

Also, I've noticed that my post are waaay down below the sidebar, I'm looking into that.