Knee Deep in the Hoopla

“Don’t you remember?”

–Starship, “We Built This City”

Haven’t done much radio stuff in the last week or so, except for finally getting on the air with the group of locals I hear on 146.52 – one of them was demoing FT8 for another on 10m, and I replied. When he said on 2m, “man this guy is loud” I finally found my comfortable opening to key up and say, “I should be, I live two blocks away from you.” Laughs were had and I found a group who was quite welcoming to my presence, we all chatted for an hour or so before turning into pumpkins.

The other big thing I did was bit the bullet on a virtual table top license for Foundry, and started setting up the campaign I ran with the kids before using the Lost Mine of Phandelver module from the D&D starter set. Already I’m more comfortable with some of the things I’ll need to do as a DM, and the only reason we haven’t started playing yet is because there’s some areas I want to pre-stage before the kids might decide to go that way instead of towards the main storyline. Of course I could fix that by asking them if they’re sure that’s how they want to go, and if they say yes then I close the window and say “then you’ll have to wait until I finish setting it up, now get ready for bed.” 😀

Assassin’s Creed 2 – Wow. Just, wow.

One of my Christmas presents this year was a copy of Assassin’s Creed 2.  I really enjoyed the first in the series, even though many others complained that it was a bit of a “grind-fest” (you go to various towns, and complete many of the same kinds of missions to advance the story line, to the point where you can pretty much guess what’s going to happen when you get to a new area).  Yes, many of the missions were repetitive, but the overall look and feel of the game was what I enjoyed the most: the storyline itself, the action sequences, etc.  There were nits I could pick, of course, such as the somewhat jarring sensation you’d get between missions, but it helped to further the overall story line and was understandable.  Plus, it gave for a nice break to remind you to go do something else.  Anyway, those nits – and ones picked by others about the original AC – all disappeared in AC2.  Instead they were replaced with a tighter sequel than I’ve seen in a long time, and my only regret about playing straight through and beating the game in just under a week of extremely late nights and bad circulation is that I want to forget the whole thing so I can experience it for the first time again tomorrow.

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