(mostly) short takes

I didn't know that UPSs had overload warnings. Perhaps my office-mate and I should not be trying to share a single one for both computers. (The office was recently reconfigured for three people rather than two, but the infrastructure hasn't caught up. "You are in a maze of twisty windy extension cords, all different.")

I recently saw an ad for "all meat" hotdogs. Um. I'm not sure I want to carefully consider the alternatives.

Hint to grocery-store managers: When your cashier tells me that she cannot simply cancel the item that rang up for the wrong price, and that I must stand in a customer-service line that's at least 15 minutes long to get my money back, you do not motivate me to pick up anything extra on future trips.

The Bush campaign is rallying church volunteers to work their congregations -- which is fine at the level of "chat up your friends", but now we have this: "A copy of the guide obtained by Reuters directs religious volunteers to send church directories to state campaign committees [...]". In at least some organizations, distributing the membership list to outsiders is a violation of the membership agreement, to say nothing of the ethical implications. Anyone who does this deserves to get smacked down by other members of his congregation -- and probably shouldn't be surprised by some of the mailing lists he ends up on as a result. And I'd have the same objection if the other side did it; it's just that either they aren't or they're being more subtle and I haven't noticed.

D&D campaign

This week's D&D game was nifty. The last several sessions have had some very nice scenery and world-building, thanks to ralphmelton. The land in which the characters live bears, shall we say, tight relationship to a certain dragon; we've recently been exploring in "Laryn" (tied to sound) and "Optalis" (left as an exercise). Each area has had thematic magics and thematic inhabitants. Next we are heading to the gorge of fire. :-)

I've also been enjoying the character-level developments. I find particularly striking the divergence between two characters. Liandra (lorimelton's character) has a clear place in the world (that's been known all along) and a place to settle down when "all this is over". Larissa (my character) doesn't; it's pretty much established that she can't go home again, but she also has nowhere to go to -- except that there's been a surprise development (surprise to both the character and the player) that could play out interestingly. I've been trying to play Larissa as being a little sad about the future but trying to ignore it because she doesn't want to be jealous of her friend Liandra; I don't know how successful I've been.

The world in which we're playing is rich, and even if that story line doesn't play out, I can think of oodles of things to keep my character busy for her post-campaign life, and even when the game is over I may try to write some of that. (I've been writing some of her story during the campaign, so this would be a continuation.) I've been having a lot of fun with the creative aspects of this that go beyond game sessions.