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Alex's even longer post thread.

Started by Alex, March 19, 2020, 10:14:15 AM

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Alex

Quote from: Trevor on January 16, 2022, 12:32:36 PM
Quote from: Alex on January 16, 2022, 11:31:04 AM

I've been unable to speak to my family as we had no cell phone reception where I was before, so catching up with them while typing this. Working tomorrow (from the roster it seems I am going to be in charge of the shift  :buggedout:).


I'm also working from a roster which sometimes makes me think  :buggedout:.

You work for a full Monday to Friday week and for the next two weeks you're at work twice a week and then go back to work for another full week. This means if I have clients or need to make deliveries to the lab, I have to arrange a week in advance. Oy.  :buggedout:

We are working a system where there are appointments, but if people haven't booked a slot then we take walk ins.
Hail to thyself
For I am my own master
I am my own god
I require no shepherd
For I am no sheep.

Alex

It was a very slow day today, with no need for the six of us to be there. Since I was in charge of the military personal, I decided to stand half of them down. I gathered them all up into a group and said "Ok, 3 of you can go home. Decide amongst yourselves who is staying and who is going. Except you (and I pointed to Dean). You are a dick, so you are staying in work with me."

His jaw dropped as his compatriots decided which of them got to go home.  :bouncegiggle: It is good to be the king.

We have noticed that the hotel bar is charging us substantially more than the prices on the room service list. A beer I got last night cost me £6. When I looked at the price list in my room later, I discovered it was being advertised at £4.40. Guess we'll just pop to one of the bars across the road if we want some alcohol...
Hail to thyself
For I am my own master
I am my own god
I require no shepherd
For I am no sheep.

Alex

Did some work today for a change. It took maybe a minute (if I include the time standing around doing nothing).

It is a nice day outside though and it is time to make the best I can of things. I may even go for a stroll.

The news has more stuff about BJ and his parties (which sounds like fun, but I bet is highly misleading). It is coming out that the government has tried to blackmail its members who are not supporting the blond muppet, threatening to withdraw funding for their regions and deselect them as MP's when the next election comes around. That is a criminal offence so doubtless, we have more to hear about it. I remember this being the situation the last time the tories were in power for a long time, the government ended up constantly mired in scandals with the headlines only moving on when a new one erupted.

I finished season 15 of Supernatural. Nice to see a show not have a terrible ending. Back on to Sapphire & Steel now while I write up some more D&D stuff. I am moving the group on to a whodunnit type adventure where they have to track down a murderer stalking the streets on Baldur's Gate, a situation made more complicated by the city authorities having been overthrown by a group following Bhaal, the God of ritual murder.

Ah the joys of trying to figure out a chain of clues for them to follow.
Hail to thyself
For I am my own master
I am my own god
I require no shepherd
For I am no sheep.

Alex

#423
I got told today that my end-ex date has been brought forward and I will now be heading home over Tuesday/Wednesday.

I am trying not to get too excited by this as I am more than half convinced that I'll get to Edinburgh and instead of being stood down, I'll get told I am off somewhere else in the U.K.

Today was a little bit busier than we've been recently. A huge rush is expected when all the people who had to isolate out of the holidays get released and all want their vaccines, but I guess that is not my problem.

Unless they tell me that I need to come back and help more of course.

Tomorrow I am going to head home for the weekend and take more of my kit with me to leave there. If they do change their minds on me going home I'll be going there without much in the way of changes of clothes and they can deal with that however they wish, especially since I need a fresh uniform each day. It is less than 6 months to go until I can submit my notice to leave, get that PVR in and start my year-long return to civvy street. I wonder how it will feel to be an ordinary person again. I must say, I am rather looking forward to that feeling. No name, rank, number etc.

It is a lovely sunset tonight. The sky ranges from a deep, royal blue through to a pinkish tinge on the horizon suddenly cut off by the blackness of the hills around the city.

Sad news about Meat Loaf dying. Some of my earlier memories are of hearing his music on the radio, I guess when he first became famous. I would have been somewhere between 3 and 5 years old when I first heard him, and I've been listening to his stuff ever since. He was my entry drug into rock music. I will miss him.
Hail to thyself
For I am my own master
I am my own god
I require no shepherd
For I am no sheep.

Alex

Still getting used to being back at home. It always takes a while to adjust back to what other people call normality when you've been on any kind of op or exercise.

Hmm, since this was an Op I should get a bloody medal out of it. Hey, if some guy can get one for going to his regular place of work and piloting a remote drone halfway around the world, then I should be a shoo-in for one lol.

Yeah, I'd only put it somewhere and forget where it was like the others lol. Got the funny feeling I might have accidentally binned them.

Back on topic though it is strangely more of an adjustment this time than it has been on any other deployment. I wasn't actually that far from home either, nor was it an especially long time away. Hell, I've done courses that took longer to complete.

It is nice not having... uhm ladies of the night offering me services that I end up googling to find out just what the hell they are offering (Ohwooho (which turned out to be OWO), Roman showers, A-levels, bareback (ok, I sort of guessed those last two) and so many more things that I didn't know what they were beforehand that now I will never be able to forget what they are.

Just had a flashback to when I was trying to find some black and white movies online and instead of just searching for BW movies, I accidentally hit the 'B' key twice and didn't notice before hitting enter.

Wow is all I could say there.

As expected Danhausen is now in AEW. If Brodie Lee was still alive, I'd have said put him in the Dark Order, but maybe he should be part of The House of Black. AEW does seem to have an awful lot of 5 people factions.
Hail to thyself
For I am my own master
I am my own god
I require no shepherd
For I am no sheep.

ER

What does not kill me makes me stranger.

Trevor

Quote from: Alex on January 27, 2022, 03:31:13 PM
Just had a flashback to when I was trying to find some black and white movies online and instead of just searching for BW movies, I accidentally hit the 'B' key twice and didn't notice before hitting enter.

:teddyr: :teddyr: :teddyr:

We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.

ER

Quote from: Trevor on January 28, 2022, 01:39:09 PM
Quote from: Alex on January 27, 2022, 03:31:13 PM
Just had a flashback to when I was trying to find some black and white movies online and instead of just searching for BW movies, I accidentally hit the 'B' key twice and didn't notice before hitting enter.

:teddyr: :teddyr: :teddyr:



Ha!
What does not kill me makes me stranger.

Alex

#428
Another storm is hitting. We had 80mph winds last night. It has brought down the repairs from the damage caused by Storm Arwen. No idea what they've called this one.

I have now murdered my first D&D player. He was a very unpleasant fellow in real life, so while the rest of the group was sleeping, I ripped his (or her. It was a him, playing a her) throat out with a fist full of fish hooks and made it look like (s)he'd been ripped open by a giant rat.

So far this has been a year of several firsts in many different ways. It will be interesting to see if that continues to develop in the same fashion.

Hail to thyself
For I am my own master
I am my own god
I require no shepherd
For I am no sheep.

ER

That's unreal. When I think of Scotland I don't think of dangerous weather. Stay safe or move to Tulsa where the weather's calmer. ;-)
What does not kill me makes me stranger.

Alex

Mostly it is just infrastructure damage, although I did hear someone was killed when a tree was blown over onto their car.
Hail to thyself
For I am my own master
I am my own god
I require no shepherd
For I am no sheep.

Alex

So one of my D&D players messaged me yesterday asking if he could take his next character as someone with an unusual trait? He didn't mention what the trait was though, so of course, I had to do some digging and find out what kind of abomination he wanted to bring to the table.

It turns out he wants to play a cannibal. Not just any kind of cannibal though. A cannibal who is also a spell caster who specialises in Necromantic magic.

...
...
...

Don't get me wrong, I've played my fair share of evil characters in my time. Mostly people who have had no problem just killing someone when it is easier to cut their throat than ask them to move out of the way. There are some vague mentions of it in a book (appropriately) called The Book of Vile Darkness, so I think I am going to allow it. I do not see his character having a long lifespan. I've made a post about it on a D&D page and got what I thought was a rather good suggestion when someone said make him a lizardman, in whose culture munching on the dead is seen as a good thing.

I just keep imagining the rest of the party confronting him as an undead horde shambles by and him saying "But it isn't an undead army, it is my mobile snack shack."
Hail to thyself
For I am my own master
I am my own god
I require no shepherd
For I am no sheep.

Alex

Ross came around today for a board game session, along with his brother Wayne whom I hadn't met before.

I had read his message wrong though and prepared a waterboarding session.

We did get Nemesis out of the box for the first time. It is pretty much playing Alien or Aliens. You wake up from being in hypersleep on a ship, find a dead crewman who had been burst open from the inside and from there on in have to find out what is going on. You have various missions to complete which may involve cooperating with the rest of the crew, or killing some or all of them off. My mission was that I either had make sure that if we went to Earth that all the alien eggs were destroyed, or failing that, direct the ship to Mars. Since I was playing the pilot, I naturally volunteered to make my way to the bridge and check on our course. :bouncegiggle:

By the time I had gotten there, we were desperately fighting off waves of aliens and had discovered all three of the ships engines had been damaged (we needed 2 in working order or the ship would explode after a certain amount of turns when it went attempted to jump into hyperspace. If it did successfully jump into hyperspace and we weren't back in stasis, we'd be crushed by the g-force), a few locations on the ship were on fire (enough places on fire and the ship explodes). I figured there was no way we'd have enough time to destroy all the eggs in the alien nest, so I secretly changed the ship's destination from Earth to my alternative location. I wanted to check on the engines myself but didn't have enough time, so I ran off to the med bay and with a little surgery removed the alien infestation from my body then scuttled back to the hypersleep chamber and jumped in, trusting that the mechanic did actually fix the engines and hadn't secretly set them to blow. Anyway, the mechanic (Wayne) made it back to the hypersleep chamber, but by the time the soldier (Ross) got there, the bay was on fire and had one of the larger forms of alien in it too. He'd ran out of ammo for his guns but he bravely charged the xenomorph with nothing more than his fists and a bad attitude.

RIP Ross.

Anyway, the mechanic had been true to his word and we successfully jumped to Mars. Unfortunately, the mechanic's mission had been to get us back to earth, so he failed but at least he was still alive. A complicated game, and one that is easy to lose but we all had fun.

After that we played Jaws. Ross went the shark but managed to win, although he was down to his last hitpoint so as usual, it was a damn close run thing. That game is very well balanced. Might even be the best balanced game I have ever played.
Hail to thyself
For I am my own master
I am my own god
I require no shepherd
For I am no sheep.

Alex

One of my online friends heard me mention A Serbian Movie during an online chat and decided he wanted to watch it. For a few weeks I've been trying to put him off the idea but he wanted to know if it lived up to its reputation. So last night I casually dropped into a conversation what happens at the end of it.

He has now decided that is "Well f**ked up" and "How the hell does a film like that even get made?" I got him to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show instead, which he had also never seen. He seemed to think it starred Tim Burton though. He has asked about other movies like that and mentioned Salo. I told him to google two girls, one cup. Said it would make him feel the same way, and he'd save nearly two hours of his life.

We have some snow lying on the ground this morning. I wonder if we will match the heavy fall we had last year. That was the deepest I've seen snow lie here in the 19 years I've lived in Lossiemouth (I arrived in Jan 2003). Guess that means I have lived here for longer than anywhere else.
Hail to thyself
For I am my own master
I am my own god
I require no shepherd
For I am no sheep.

Alex

In a D&D group I am in, I posted the following:

QuoteSo I got a message off one of the players in a 3.5 campaign I am running. He has asked if he can play an evil character next, if his current character dies. Generally speaking I have no problems with that. Not every evil character is out to screw over the party, and they are experienced enough to deal with anyone who is quite easily.
The particular character he wants to play though is a cannibalistic necromancer. There is some vague stuff covering it in The Book of Vile Darkness, so I think I am going to allow it (granted, more from the BBEG side of things) but I've also told him to have a backup character because that one most likely won't survive very long.
If he makes it to the end of his first session I'll be impressed, especially since we have a paladin in tbe group 
I've also suggested he speaks to a therapist.
Anyway, the image I can't get out of my head is of him being confronted by the rest of the group as an undead horde trundles past and him saying "But it isn't an undead army, it's my mobile snack shack!"

Posted it more to give people a laugh at the last time, but some people seemed to think I was asked for advice, or just chose to tell me how I should be running my game.

The second group may not have liked the replies they got. Ultimately, I've been playing and gaming for over 30 years. If I don't know how to run my games by now, then I doubt I ever will.

Now if you'll excuse me, I am off to my snack shack.
Hail to thyself
For I am my own master
I am my own god
I require no shepherd
For I am no sheep.