Blackmoor Vituperative

I received my lovely (and exorbitantly expensive) HTC One today. It’s a well made phone, attractive and solidly built. I was very pleased with it until I discovered it has no SD Card slot and, more importantly, no way to replace the battery!

Like most people, I assume, I am paying for this phone over the course of two years. As we all know, the Li-ion battery in a cell phone typically lasts a year or so. To put this into perspective, I have worn out and replaced three batteries in my previous phone before the phone itself died and needed replacing. (That’s why I bought the HTC One.)

So now I have a phone that will literally not last as long as the payments on it. I can’t express how disappointed I am. How on Earth could anyone think that making a disposable $580 phone was a good idea??

I’m sending this back tomorrow. I don’t know what I’ll do for a phone. Maybe a Galaxy S4.

P.S. I bought a Samsung Galaxy S4, which arrived yesterday. I am well pleased, and would recommend the Samsung Galaxy S4 to anyone considering the HTC One.

I Am A: Neutral Good Elf Sorcerer (7th Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-11
Dexterity-11
Constitution-11
Intelligence-16
Wisdom-13
Charisma-13

Alignment:
Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment when it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.

Race:
Elves are known for their poetry, song, and magical arts, but when danger threatens they show great skill with weapons and strategy. Elves can live to be over 700 years old and, by human standards, are slow to make friends and enemies, and even slower to forget them. Elves are slim and stand 4.5 to 5.5 feet tall. They have no facial or body hair, prefer comfortable clothes, and possess unearthly grace. Many others races find them hauntingly beautiful.

Class:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

I had an idea for a political cartoon. There would be three people at a table, and in each panel they would each say something, expressing their opinion about a topic. The first person believes in creationism, that there’s no evidence for evolution, that evolution is a plot by satanists and atheists, etc. The other two people would follow a similar pattern, but with homophobia and “gun control”, respectively (e.g., there’s no evidence that homosexuality is natural or that guns save lives, it’s all a plot by the gay Jews in Hollywood or the gun lobby and the NRA, etc.). In the final panel, they would each say that “90% of Americans support…” their own particular brand of ignorance, hatred, and irrational fear.

It’s too wordy for a cartoon, though. Also, it strikes me as a bit unkind. Just because someone has a different opinion, even an opinion I consider hateful and ignorant, that alone doesn’t make them a bad person. It’s not that simple: even genuinely good and kind people can have genuinely horrific opinions. Human beings are complicated.

“Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn.”
— Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

I love this Todd Rundgren song. It reminds me a bit of early Rick Springfield.

What do you mean, who is Rick Springfield? He played a vampire in the movie Nick Knight, which was later retooled as the series Forever Knight, with Geraint Wyn Davies playing the vampire detective, but Rich Springfield played the part first. He was also on a soap opera, the name of which escapes me, and yes, he was also a pop star for a while.

P.S. Here’s another great Todd Rundgren song.

I watched a squirrel making its nest today. It would climb down to the ground, grab as many leaves as it could stuff in its mouth, climb up a tree next to its nest, jump over to the nest-tree, stuff the leaves in, and then climb down to get more leaves. It did this for as long as I watched it, which was only a few minutes, but it made several trips. It was really interesting to watch.

Susan saw a group of four bunnies this afternoon, chasing each other and playing at the feet of a couple of deer. No photos, alas.

I spent this weekend at RavenCon, a SF&F convention in Richmond, VA. RavenCon was started by Michael Pederson, Tony Ruggiero, and Tee Morris (who, like Tony, left the staff a few years ago and has gone on to a successful writing career). I didn’t start it, but I am old friends with Mike Pederson, and I was there helping out at the beginning. This is the first year that I’ve attended that I haven’t been on staff. For the first few years, I helped design, print, and hang the large schedule signs, and I ran the movie room for a year or two until it was decided (and I agreed) that the room could be put to better use. For the past couple of years I did the programming, taking over from the previous program director, Tony Ruggiero (who was already a successful author, and is now even more so).

I had a couple of reasons for stepping down from being the programming director after RavenCon 2012. The main one is that, like Tee and Tony (or so I hope), I want to focus on my own writing. Setting up the programming for a convention is not terribly difficult, but it is ridiculously time-consuming. There’s also the matter that Susan and I have moved away from Richmond, so driving an hour or more each way for meetings was no longer something I really wanted to do.

While I did twitch a few times at things I would have done differently, it was nice not working during the convention. I could actually attend panels from the beginning to the end, and if I was having an interesting conversation I didn’t have to cut it short to go put out fires.

If you find yourself a convention volunteer some day (everyone on staff at a con is a volunteer), I have a suggestion for you: be gracious. Be gracious to the attendees, who pay good money to be there. Be gracious to the guests, who are doing the convention a favor by attending (often at their own expense), and for whom this is their livelihood (or at least an aspiration). Be gracious to the other volunteers who do the real work of the con — sitting for hours at the registration desk, or keeping the con suite supplied, or pushing carts full of audiovisual equipment from one end of the hotel to the other — all of whom are sacrificing their weekend, not being paid for their time, and who usually aren’t even able to enjoy the convention they are making happen because they are working the whole time. Be gracious, try to do a good job for the attendees and the guests, and try not to take criticism personally.