KJToo

Mick Bradley was able to salvage a little bit of the conversation he, Chris Miller and I recorded for The Round Table last week, and he included it in his other podcast, Misfit Brew. It’s very geeky stuff, with Chris talking about the motivation of villains and how three-dimensional villains can make for better fiction and role-playing, then me rambling a bit about Star Wars from the Imperial point-of-view. If that sounds interesting to you, get over to the Misfit Brew and download the episode. Even better, subscribe to the podcast.

We’re supposed to record a new episode of The Round Table this evening. I’ll post more about that later in the week.

EDIT: As of this writing (28 Feb, 2006 @ 2:07PM EST), The Harping Monkey and Misfit Brew websites are apparently down. I’ll update once they’re up and running again.

EDIT: The Harping Monkey and Misfit Brew sites are up and running. Go download some episodes of The Round Table and Misfit Brew!

Posted February 28, 2006 Comments(0)

Friday the 13th’s child is apparently bad luck, if you’re a 1994 Pontiac Sunbird.

Laura has taken Kyle out three, possibly four times in her car, the aforementioned 1994 Pontiac Sunbird. On two of those occasions, we had to have the car towed.

On Wednesday of last week, after bringing Kyle to see me at work, Laura found herself at an intersection in a car that would not go. The car1 would start, but stalled as soon as she put it in gear. Laura called the police and a cruiser shortly arrived to push her out of the intersection. AAA sent a tow truck to transport the car to our mechanic, and one torque control convertor, two front stabilizers, a couple of transmission hoses, two front rotors, four brake pads, one oil change, two days and six hundred junior bacon cheeseburgers later, Laura had her little blue sedan back.

Now it is today. Laura ran some errands with Kyle in tow.2 At the insurance agent’s office, she noticed that the car appeared to be… leaking. She drove a (very) short way to Panera Bread for a late lunch and called me. I advised her not to move the car anymore and drove out to meet her and assess the situation. By the time I arrived it looked as though Laura had parked on top of a hobo; the ground beneath the driver’s side tire was soaked with transmission fluid.

One tow truck later…

By the time we got to the mechanic, they were long since closed, but they know the car will be waiting for them in the morning. I’m hoping it’s just a hose, and I’m hoping that they’ll just fix it and send us on our way without requiring additional junior bacon cheeseburgers. After all, the car certainly wasn’t leaking transmission fluid before they fixed the transmission.

Perhaps Friday’s child is attempting to do away with the 1994 Pontiac Sunbird, fearing that it might pass into his possession on 13 January 2022. If that’s the case, it strongly suggests that his telekinetic powers are already quite well developed.

Where did I put that damn midi-chlorian count tester?

1. I used to call my 1980 Chevy Malibu—which was totaled on Groundhog’s Day, 1995—”Puff the Tragic Wagon,” and I would transfer the name to Laura’s car, but I don’t want to incur any more unfortunate vehicular woes. [back]
2. Actually, he was in a car seat. [back]

Posted February 27, 2006 Comments(7)

Over the years, I’ve used a couple of different anagrams of my first and middle names (”Kris” and “Alan,” respectively) for gamertags or names in various different places. When I used to play a lot of CounterStrike, my gamertag was “Karnalis,” which I also used in several Xbox games. Another anagram that I used far less frequently is “Salnikar.”

Yesterday, an unfortunate new anagram occurred to me: Anal Risk.

That’s just unpleasant. I’ve long been aware that my first name is an anagram of “risk” (and, appropriately, “irks”), and my middle name can be reordered to spell “anal” (and, not at all appropriately, “Lana”), but it has never before occurred to me to combine the two anagrams in that order.

Anyway, if I ever form a death metal band, I think I know what I’ll call it.

Posted February 25, 2006 Comments(6)

Due to a technical glitch, the discussion that Chris Miller, Mick Bradley and I had on Tuesday evening is unusable. I don’t want to get into the details of the glitch, but I’m told it has something to do with theta waves. The issue has been resolved, so there shouldn’t be a problem with future recordings. There are talks of getting together next week and doing another round table on a different topic.

Posted February 23, 2006 Comments(1)

If you’re not reading this from the RSS feed, you’ve likely noticed that I installed Scott Wallick’s “plaintxtBlog” theme for WordPress last night (if you don’t see any changes, press Ctrl-F5 to refresh the page). I wasn’t happy with certain aspects of the old theme (which I designed) and I thought it was time for a change. I’m looking for a nice way to bring back the Recent Comments and Tag Cloud features that were active in the old theme, but it’s going to require some creativity (or a plugin) to get them integrated in a manner that pleases my eye.

In the meantime, let me know what you think about the new theme. How are the colors? Fonts? Font sizes? What’s your general opinion of the layout?

Posted February 22, 2006 Comments(11)