"Storyworths" -- I don't want your photograph!

I don't know if you're familiar with Storyworth, but it's a site dedicated to capturing your loved one's memories and keeping them in a book. A year ago, my wife "gave" me a year subscription to the site (part-time job) for my birthday and said "DO IT!" I'm like, but what about my stack of journals and blogs? 

Some of those journal entries are adorably written in crayon

Her response was, "There's no way I'm reading your stack of journals! That is crazy, and I can barely read your handwriting!" Ok ok, I get it . . . I've been wasting my time my whole life cataloging my boring adventures of Tuesday in an unreadable font known as "My Handwriting Scribble LT."   

Basically how Storyworth works is that your significant other buys a subscription as a gift to their loved one. Then, along with the help of Storyworth's suggestions and interest prompting, your significant other develops a long list of questions for you to answer. Finally, every week for a year you're sent a question prompt to answer: 52 Questions in total.

A sampling of my Storyworth Questions . . .

So far I've managed to answer 44 of the 52 questions, which is pretty good, but I have a slew I just don't know if I'll ever get to. I have three months to wrap it up before my access goes away and the printed book that comes along with the subscription is sent to my family.

The Stage Four cancer diagnosis really kind of scared everyone. We didn't know (and really, still don't know) how long I'll have beyond what the doctors tell us is the average life expectancy, which is really just the average from decades of dart throws at the wheel of life for everyone who has ever had NSCLC Lung Cancer.

. . . and so I'm happy to do answer the questions.  Today I answered this one: 

~~

What photograph do you most regret not taking when you had the opportunity?

I know this is going to sound strange because it just happened and it's not some super old, cherished memory or something, but the photograph I most regret not taking happened during this last 4th of July. For the past couple of years, we've been going to a local 4th of July parade that's pretty legendary. It's a "candy parade." They have to have police go up and down the sides of the parade just to make sure kids aren't running out and grabbing a stray piece beyond the edge of the bicycle lane.

I've been going to this parade mostly because Sawyer plays the mellophone in the marching band, but for the past two years, it's also coincided with either my father-in-law or mother-in-law visiting. My thing is finding little stray pieces of candy no one has grabbed yet and giving them to my elderly guest.

Anyway, this last 4th of July there was this panicked mother that kept screaming at her kid to GET BACK OVER HERE! She had to be in her 20's and dressed in these really nice white cowgirl boots with white fringe. She had gotten all gussied up for the day and was obviously not paying very good attention to her kid. This kid must have been 3 or 4 years old, not very old at all. He was either a fantastic escape artist or she was incredibly distracted.

This is where the photograph comes into play. At one point this scene unfolds right in front of me where she's yelling at her kid and he's unable to vocalize anything. She then realizes that he's stuffed about three or four pieces of yellow taffy into his mouth and can't swallow it.  It's just a giant wad stuck in his mouth. At that moment, crouched down near her kid, in these fancy white boots and expensive, gussied-up, country girl outfit . . . hair perfectly done . . . that she commands her child to spit out the taffy wad in his mouth into her hand.

That's the picture, and I missed it. This goofy kid unleashed the most amazing spit-filled, giant yellow glob of taffy into his mom's hand. He's got this dumb smile on his face that's also mixed with a bit of relief and sugar sadness. She's sitting there with a disgusted look on her face mixed with the emotions of what do I do with this, meanwhile she's spent an hour or more getting ready and looked pristine aside from her hand filled with yellow goop and spit. It captured a feeling that's something akin to everything that a candy parade with a young unprepared, yet fully prepared, mom should be -- a juxtaposition of kid-gross and glam-mom, white boots and yellow taffy . . . where my mother-in-law and I were pretty much the only audience members amongst a sea of legs in shorts that were all instead watching a local parade.

This kid kept running away from his mom the whole parade and she kept yelling after him during the whole event. I had my phone camera prepped in case something amazing like that happened again, but it never did. I would have loved to have that as a picture, but perhaps the picture of it in my mind is better than it would have turned out.

~~

I've been doing the best I can to capture the essence of "me" for this book. Hopefully it'll be much more accessible for my family than my handwritten journals.

Happy Dueling!

MMMMMMM . . . Najena Bosses

Last night I spent more time in Najena in Everquest Legends instead of doing my usual Wednesday game of Dungeons and Dragons. It's too bad, but the DM had surgery last week and was struggling to sit and play our silly little games. On the upside he declared we can all advance to level seven for next week!  MMmmmmm (Homer Simpson voice) Level seven rogue features -- extra d6 sneak attack and evasion.

Anyway, grinding Najena has been kind of brainless fun. I was able to develop a pretty nice pattern with constant killing running between three bosses and building up their magic items by merging them together.  This run involves the Unbound Flame, the Tenderizer, and the Lost Crusader.

Mmmmm . . . Flaming Fist

Honestly, this merging feature is pretty cool. I love the concept that if I get two of the same items, I can just squish them magically together on the fly and make one of them more powerful.  It gets a little one sided with drop rates favoring a common drop vs. a rare drop, but still pretty great to start with a regular Tenderizer hammer and end up with a +5 Tenderizer hammer while leveling up 10 levels or so.

For a soloer, it's a bit of a bummer that increasing the difficulty of an instance doesn't also increase the level of the enemies (at level 24, those entrance skellies still con green. Man, it'd be cool if I bumped it up to Difficulty 4 and they now conned yellow like they did when I first stepped foot in there. I know! I know! That isn't the purpose of increasing the difficulty. I super digressed. Now returning you to the original train of thought), but on the plus side, the enemies on the second and third floors of Najena are still nice and juicy exp-wise.

I started working up a second group of four (sometimes five) bosses last night that seems pretty fun and frantic, which unfortunately are also starting to degrade as the exp keeps flowing. This run involves BoneCracker, Officer Grush, Guard Captain, Visiting Priestess, and Trazdon.

. . . and staring at Najena Banners while waiting for bosses to spawn . . .

I fell down a pit trap at one point last night into a jail cell and started fighting tentacle terrors and a few named prisoners . . . then I opened a door full of enemies and discovered the true meaning of pain as they unleashed several nukes on me. At least there aren't corpse runs and corpse summoning in this game! Again, as I mentioned before, EverQuest Legends is all about the fun of speed running EverQuest without all those painful group-play dynamics. Now that I've hit level 24 and have Feign Death available to me because of my Shadow Knight tertiary class, I could probably survive that room I died in last night and pull it apart with Feign Death. I CAN FEIGN DEATH NOW! 

Happy Dueling!

An Axe-citing Birthday

It was my birthday yesterday! Thought I'd take this opportunity to just do a quick rundown of events on or around my birthday and say that I'm happy I'm still alive and writing about it. How's that?

My typical birthday celebration consisted of two things: Eating at Spaghetti Factory and watching an IMAX film. Although I didn't do either of those things yesterday, I did see a movie a couple days before and eat at ye' old Spaghetti Factory three weeks ago, so . . . it still counts!

We saw Spider-Man Brand New Day with myself, uber wife, my middle kiddo, and my youngest. It was a pretty good show and well worth the price of admission to see it on the big screen. I'm happy we splurged instead of waiting for Netflix. After the show, my youngest (who really isn't much of a Spider-Man fan) called up my oldest (who was instead at a local con with a friend) to declare that "They finally did it! They finally made a good Spider-Man Movie!" High praise from him!

We almost got in the car to make the 40 minute drive to Spaghetti Factory, but I've been craving some Jet's Pizza and offered that up as an alternative. I'd never had Jet's pizza before . . . not bad! It kind of reminds me of what Pizza Hut used to taste like before it went downhill.

Mostly what I did yesterday was play more EverQuest Legends (Ding 20) and throw axes at my new birthday gift!

I paid my buddy (the infamous Dylan) to build me an axe throwing target for my birthday as yet another "in spite of" cancer activity. For those that don't know the story, when I first came down with pains from my lung cancer, I thought it was from going on an axe throwing excursion. It was pretty odd. All the inflammation around the lining of my lungs was somehow causing pain in my upper right shoulder in a very specific spot. After a month of wasting my time and money at a Chiropractor, a couple x-rays and a CAT Scan confirmed it was actually cancer. To those ends, I have a new axe throwing target I can take out my aggression on. (It also helps that one of my favorite D&D characters I played used to specialize in throwing axes at stuff.)

Good times, and I'm happy to still be throwing axes, writing blog posts, and playing EverQuest!

Happy Dueling

Najena vs. The Maps of Myrist

My word I'm having so much fun delving into the newest incarnation of EverQuest. Yesterday I advanced myself to level 16 and explored a bunch of old zones that I really just kind of ignored before . . . because I could. When I started, I was a high elf locked in the whole Greater Faydark area and grew up being lost in that whole area over there.

Now I'm playing as an Iksar in the Deserts of Ro in some strange zone called New Sebilis. WHAT? That zone isn't listed in my EverQuest Atlas: The Maps of Myrist! 

Includes an intro from Maelin Starpyre, Grand Librarian of Myrist . . .

Several years ago when I was working at KingsIsle, my old partner in crime Leah Ruben (Lead Producer of Wizard101) and I got talking about EverQuest. She let me in on a little secret that it was actually Evequest that led her to get involved in the Games Industry, and we talked for a long time about our love of the game. If you go haunt Leah's page on MobyGames, you'll find out that, yes, in fact, she was intimately involved in EverQuest Online Adventures back in 2003, as well as being a Game Master for several expansions. 

After our long conversation about EverQuest, Leah (and her hubby Joel) gifted me an old copy of the EverQuest Atlas. A kind of common-bond item and a very welcome gift by me. It's been sitting in a box in my garage for a couple of years now after I moved to Utah. In fact, I had forgotten about this book until this morning when I remembered . . . OH YEAH . . . I HAVE COOL MAPS!

I never thought I'd actually be using this book for real.

Last night I spent a lot of time in a solo instance of Najena farming up the entrance and an ogre named The Tenderizer who drops a weapon named . . . The Tenderizer . . . and also a haste belt named The Kitchen Toolbelt.

Give me your kitchen tools, Mr. Tenderizer, sir!

I really don't know if this boss existed in the old game of EverQuest. I think it might be an EverQuest Legends exclusive? I of course wouldn't know because I was too busy messing around in the Feydark or over in the future expansion of Kunark. Looking back at the old Najena map over on EQ Atlas, there's certainly no note of such a notable farming spot. Huh. Must be new like the weird tutorial zone with all the Dougs (if you play the tutorial zone, you'll see Old Doug, Doug, Dougina, Dead Doug . . . as I'm gathering, it's a tribute to Doug Cronkhite?)

 Aha! So those are the Dangers, Benefits, and Background of Najena . . . got it.

I suppose finding something in all the old is what really makes EverQuest Legends the ultimate game for old fans. 

 . . . you are here. Wait . . . secret door beyond the Tenderizer?

Happy Dueling!

its Everquest -- for Legends!

So, I wasn't fully tuned in to this Everquest Legends release that happened just a few days ago. I mean, I saw the e-mail from Daybreak and skimmed a few blogposts (enough to know Tipa was playing). I even logged on to Twitch and watched several streamers play for about 20 minutes. I hate to admit this, but watching the Twitch streams bored me enough that I thought I wouldn't play the game (it just wasn't that exciting to watch despite the personalities). I'm blaming Tipa. Talking to her over Discord about the game really pushed me over the edge . . . mmmm . . . and also realizing I could play an Iksar Beastlord sealed the deal.

Funny enough, I made a Stingite Sleestak T-shirt about a month ago. I took my favorite screenshot of my Beastlord standing in the Plane of Time, had AI add in my warder pet and make the wording, then used Ninja DTF transfers to make a quality heat transfer. 

STINGITE SHIRT!

Twenty bucks plus a free month of sub time seemed the perfect price point, so, while wearing my Stingite Sleestak shirt, I began my journey back in Norrath ... in an all-new way! At first I was confused. I thought you played as three separate characters ... kind of like multiboxing or playing with henchmen in actual Everquest. Wrong! No this is much crazier and actually part of what makes this experience so unique. You MULTICLASS! WHAT?! Gosh dang it's so cool.

LOL, that face . . . I need updated graphics STAT

So when I was playing EQ, I started my experience as a high elf cleric because it's what my friends needed. Eventually the Beastlord class released and Stingite became my new number one character. Listen, you have no idea how many times I wished that as a Beastlord I could separate tightly packed in enemies with a Calm spell. Now it's possible. CRAZY!

Single pulling Dervish Cutthroats like a boss!

If that last paragraph made sense to you, you probably played Everquest. You see, in Everquest, the aggro radius of nearby enemies was always scary for me. It was meant to be that way because Everquest was a game made for group play (even though as a Beastlord I could pull off solo play). Each person had a role. Clerics can help lower the aggro radius of those tightly packed enemies making pulls of enemies much less dangerous, something I knew I could do with my cleric, but not with my Beastlord.

As ridiculous as it sounds, sometimes I would even log on my cleric, debuff enemies with calm, log back on as a beastlord, and then take my chances that the debuff hadn't worn off. 

So, long story short, in Evequest Legends you can mix and match the abilities of any three classes (well, only two until you reach level 10 -- then it's three). That's crazy cool! I'm so on board for that kind of synergy! Now that I'm playing as a Beastlord Cleric Shadowknight, I can have a cool pet, heal with efficiency, Harm Touch, nuke, and pull. Ridiculous! 

My old lack of experience here is that I really don't know that much about playing as a Shadowknight. You know, now that I think about it, I kind of doubt that a regular Joe schmo would understand even how to play this game. It feels like this game was built for the old Legends who used to play Everquest 26 years ago, like me. Not saying a regular Joe schmo can't play this game, just that the learning curve is going to be kind of steep and probably less enjoyable. I feel it, and I spent YEARS playing this game. Anyway, for now, I'm loving the retro fun and being a new legend in the old world of Everquest.

Happy dueling!

I made a comic book for my D&D Group

I briefly mentioned this at the beginning of last month, but as I was cataloging my new D&D group's journeys, I started to get the idea that I could produce a kind of comic book. The goal wasn't to mass distribute it and sell it on shelves, but rather I just wanted to hand them out to these new friends I had made.

It all started with a blog that I called Thotham's Journal. As most know, keeping notes and writing about your D&D character's adventures isn't anything new. I (and countless others) have done it a bunch before, and in fact my old DM encouraged it by handing out Heroic Inspiration for anyone willing to write about their journey. Because of that, it became almost second nature -- of course I'm going to write about my adventures!

I was also using AI to produce pictures to go along with the blog posts. (I've already discussed my struggles with AI art at length.) I didn't really need help with the writing department, but what I did use AI for was to stop me from being so long winded. It was not uncommon for me to throw down 750 to 1,000 words to describe a play session, and honestly, once I started looking at making a comic book, that just wasn't going to work. So I also asked AI to condense my posts down to about 350 to 400 words so they would still be readable and fit on one page.

When I first had the idea, I actually tried to make a standard comic book out of our adventures because one play session really could have been stretched out into one entire comic, but explaining word bubble orientation, keeping character details straight, and directing character positioning is actually pretty hard to do with AI. It's like I'd describe a small change I'd want done to an otherwise great looking comic page spread, and it would just bungle and change a handful of other things in the process. 

So I went back to my original thought, which was . . . hey, current AI may not do great making comic page spreads, but it is actually pretty good at making simple storyboard panels! It reminded me of the old Prince Valiant comics in the newspaper from when I was a kid. They worked kind of similarly in that there weren't really word bubbles, instead it was a lot of text with storyboard pictures. THAT, AI could pull off.

Once I had all my storyboards made and words condensed down to 350-400 words per page, I could have a page of text on the left and a storyboard picture on the right as you thumbed through the comic book. The inside cover was a tribute to the players of the game, the game store for hosting, and the GM for making the adventure. The first page was my character as a level one Rogue. The back inside cover was my character now as a level 4 soul knife rogue. 

When I was at a local bookstore I had seen a number of local comics for sale and on the back of several of them was a company called Ka-blam. When I was searching for a printer, Ka-blam was in fact one of the top results and looked to be a great company to work with. I love that they will cut some of your costs by letting you put their ad on the back page of your comic book. 

To be honest, they were amazing to work with. I had used AI once again to try and produce my full pdf, and as per usual, AI had bungled a lot of the finer details like continuity between pages and keeping enough safe space between art and edges per the template that Ka-blam had provided. They contacted me before printing and raised some concerns about the art being too close to the edge.

At that point I took all the artwork to Microsoft PowerPoint and placed the pages by hand because I had had enough of messing around with AI to try and get the last bit done. After exporting the .pdf, I sent it back to Ka-blam, and a few days later they had printed out 12 high-gloss copies of my comic book and shipped it to me for around $55.

Honestly, I'm incredibly happy with how it turned out, and being able to hand these out to the other players and the DM as a gift to commemorate our adventures felt really satisfying. I guess more than anything, I'm happy I learned so much about the process of just printing and preparing a comic along the way. Perhaps if I had $1,000 to pay a really good artist on Fiverr to make a comic book for me, I'd do it, but this was good for what it was: a fun commemorative item and a learning experience.

Happy Dueling!

Asian Buffet with a side of Cancer

Happy start of Blaugust!  I don't know why I signed up for this. It's not like I don't have a billion other things going on right now, and I usually don't sign up unless I'm dead set on posting EVERY FREAKIN' DAY. That may be different this year. We shall see.

For today, I don't know, just thought I'd talk a bit of real life. I posted to my friends on Facebook a couple days ago, just a random goofy video.

"I've been watching a lot of Mullet Review lately, and when my co-worker magically found a coupon for City Buffet in Roy, it felt like . . . serendipity? kismet? synchronicity? My co-workers and I went there for lunch and I went there for the memes. (I'm really not going to eat at this same buffet until I get food poisoning.) Thankfully, I did not get food poisoning. I did eat waaaaay too much, however. On Yelp this has 3.3 stars, on Google it had 4.2 stars. I'm leaning 4.2 stars! We gooning and there was pizza!  Side note: Tomorrow is chemo day!  Wish me luck!"

As it turns out . . . it WASN'T chemo day yesterday. My oncologist told me that we're just going to go back to regular immunotherapy for now and that the 3 (4 with a break) rounds of my 2nd cycle of Chemo should have accomplished what he wanted to do with it, which is kick start my immune system again to continue fighting the cancer.

I fully thought I might have 3 more rounds of Chemo to look forward to (or dread) this time around. I was incredibly upset that the cancer came back, but I'm starting to realize that this is going to be kind of my new normal for a while.

While my goal may be NED (No evidence of disease), the reality is (so far) I'm in it for a long fight where we do this stuff . . . bounce back and forth, trying to control and contain. Wait for new treatments. Try new stuff. Fight it off as long as we can. It's in the lining of my lung and it's a sneaky type of cancer.

Long story short, I'm not going to feel like crap next week. Immunotherapy is pretty chill in comparison. I might be a little tired, but I'm not going to be poisoned (whether from chemo or Asian Buffet).

Thanks for reading, and go get some Asian Buffet -- do your own Mullet Review for the day!

Happy Dueling!