The not-so-great parking, I expected, having gone to events at the Columbus Convention Center before, but I don’t think that I fully expected the size of the event. There were thousands of people there. I think that it’s the second largest gaming convention in the country after GenCon, and I have been lead to believe that they’re not even close in size, GenCon being much bigger. Still, there were thousands of people there. To the point that it was overwhelming.

We came into the convention from one of the side entrances, which really worked against us because I was completely disoriented as to where to go and what to do. After wandering around for awhile, and being accosted by a girl who was desperately wanting people to LARP with her group, we found the main booths. So, here is something that I was shocked to see- the on-site registration booths were packed. These are the people who did not sign up for their badges before that day. Just in case you forgot, these are people who play minitures games, role playing games, or are board gamers… We’re all nerds here, so these people have Internet access, why didn’t they sign up ahead of time? I had one guy in line ahead of me to get our badges.

With our badges was a printed out list of all of the events and games for the weekend. It was like a phone book for a small city. We also received tickets to the one game I signed us up for, and then forgot about.

Our first stop was to the dealer room, because we didn’t know where else to go, feeling overwhelmed. We wandered, and I bumped into Andy Hopp of Low Life fame, and made sure to say hello to him and let him know I backed his Kickstarter about three minutes after it launched.

After doing more wandering, Kerry and I took a seat and then Kerry points out that I signed us up for a Savage World’s game yesterday and today is today. I look for another game to play in the phone book sized directory and find a couple of Savage Worlds games hosted by Pinnacle. Both are Deadlands games, one is the Hell on Earth setting, which I’ve never played. Both games are starting in a little under an hour.

I take us up to the table that seems to be running the show for the role playing section of the convention and explain the situation. The people at the table make a really good show of trying to accommodate me, but refer me across the convention to the customer service booth. The both there is staffed by one guy who is actually handling things, and another younger guy who is “buying and selling generics”, which are poker chips that buy you into games that have openings. The guy handling the customer service situations, handles the first guy in line, then the guy right in front of me takes forty minutes, not an exaggeration. Before that happens though, I tell Kerry to hold my spot in line, I’ll go to the ATM, and buy a few generics from the other guy and take my chances upstairs. Ultimately, that’s what happened, just as I get the poker chip, the other guy is wrapping up.

Upstairs, I go to the room the games are happening in. The Hell on Earth game is filled, the other Deadlands game has zero attendance, so Kerry and I take our seats.

Our GM introduces himself as Mike (actually Evil Mike of the Evil Mike and Chaos Steve duo). His props and gaming aids are impeccable. As a member of Pinnacle’s “demo team”, he does a great job. Doesn’t assume that we’re some sort of Savage Worlds experts, but figures out pretty quick that we’re familiar with the system, so gives us a nice middle ground of instruction when needed.

Long story short on things, Kerry (the Huckster) and Stephen (the Weird Scientist) wind up very dead on what would have been the last round of combat in the scenario had we gotten just a bit luckier on the rolls of the dice. It was a great game.

After that, we went to the North Market for dinner and Jeni’s Ice Cream for dessert.

(p.s. we know there is a Jeni’s in the North Market, but we got our dinners just as the whole place was closing. Timing wasn’t our friend the whole day.)

From miniature golf course, not actual dinosaur attack.

Turtles from Manteo’s Aquarium.

Fish from Manteo’s Aquarium.

A diversified business where we stopped to get gas.

Because I didn’t know this until I ran my battery on my phone down and then left for a long drive to Columbus. For the first time that I can remember in a car I’ve owned for two years, I turned on the radio. *Terrestrial radio is terrible*. Particularly in the morning when there are all the morning shows with a group of people telling jokes and then laughing. I don’t enjoy that at all. It’s banality at its worst. I hope terrestrial radio dies. Terrible quality on all the stations, way more commercials than Pandora has, and I can’t skip songs.

It was surprising to me how much worse radio is compared to what I’m used to.

Make sure you have swap space
I’m using Digital Ocean, and they have “droplets” which are pretty much just a empty install of some distribution of Linux to start with. They’re super easy and were a real breeze to set up. The last time I set up a Linux install on a local computer I made sure that either I manually created or the install tools made a swap partition. Droplets don’t come with swap partitions and it slipped my mind. Because of that I spent a surprisingly large amount of time trying to figure out why things kept complaining about low memory. Then I just made a swap file (which took me all of about 2 minutes) and things were great. The guide I linked to is a good resource for you if you don’t know how to do it. The guide makes a 64mb swap file. I made mine a half gig.

MX records have to have a dot after the TLD
DNS record management is something I’m new at, so when I set up my MX record, I didn’t know the TLD is supposed to have a dot after it, and I’m not sure why that’s something that needs to happen, to be honest with you. Everything else I’ve ever worked with says the TLD stops at the .com or .net, and that’s that.

If you’re setting up your own DNS records use an auditing tool like www.dnsstuff.com. It was a real help to me.

Distrobutions Change
Strangely dig and nslookup don’t come standard with CentOS 6.3. At least not in the droplet provided by Digital Ocean. Those seem like standard tools for me, and I found it strange I had to install them by hand.

Pausing for a moment, I realized that I was drinking tea that had shipped from the other side of the planet for me to brew with water that I had to do no work for to have delivered to me practically free of charge and perfectly safe to drink, then heated to a perfect temperature for that very tea with the push of a button in a kettle powered by electricity generated by a incomprehensibly large infrastructure that served as the culmination of dozens of threads of human science and research.

I considered the metal and synthetic fabric chair I sat on, understanding that my great grandparents might have had to budget and save to have something like that, and I could replace all six of them that I own without having to skimp on the cheese on my burger. The understanding of the disposability of them, to be fair, is a saddening thought. A, according to Hoyle, materialist should love material things, but American materialism is not that. Our gathered surroundings in our material world are trivial. But in that, I find wonder. How great it is that we have arrived there, but how unfortunate at the spiritual cost. Also, see the environmental cost as well.

I blink my eyes again, trying to focus, and wonder if the scratch on my eye, suffered by an ancestor would have cost them their sight. And if it has cost them their sight, I’d imagine it would have cost them their life. But, I blink away some chemicals that kill bacteria, and some other ones that accelerate the healing process, and a few more that dyed my eyes so machines that I couldn’t begin to understand could look inside, and I forget about all of them.

Looking down into my book… Well, let me amend that. A “book” is something made out of paper, and what I’m reading probably doesn’t have anything like paper inside of it. I hold a library, and every time I flex my thumb, I see the next page of a book, not having endure the stress of actually turning a paper page.

The clouds overhead that have kept the sunlight dim enough for my dilated pupils to tolerate darken, and I know that a few feet away, through a glass door, I can choose to suffer the rain or not. The white noise generator of a air conditioning unit remind me that the heat? I can choose to endure that, or not.

Oh. And I can’t ever let myself forget that I’m richer than 99% of the people alive today. I wonder what H. G. Wells would make of 2013 American life.

• Installed CentOS.
• Setup a proper LAMP stack.
• Setup iRedMail.
• Migrated all of the data from WordPress on Laughing Squid to Digital Ocean.
• Migrated the MySQL databases from Laughing Squid to Digital Ocean.

The last step was probably the hardest of all of them. WordPress exports it’s data as an XML file, which didn’t seem to want to import through the tools that the good people at WordPress provide. So I had to go to phpMyAdmin on Laughing Squid, manually export the database (had to do it twice, messed it up the first time), transfer the data to Digital Ocean, then figure out how to jam it into the MySQL there. I got a bit hung up on that the way that phpMyAdmin exported the database was with the instructions to create the very database that I was trying to put it into, which log jammed things until I figured out how to finesse it in.

Then I did most of the same stuff all over again for my wife, so she has her own domain and email address now.

For anyone who is thinking of doing the same, here are some good resources.

• How to Install Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP) stack on CentOS 6
• How to Install WordPress on CentOS 5 in five minutes flat
• How To Install iRedMail On CentOS 6.3 x64

The first two, (LAMP and WordPress) were good references, but probably not ones I really needed. CentOS uses yum to install things, like apt-get for Debian and Ubuntu use. So, it’s pretty much, as long as you know the name of the package, you’re in business. The third one was really helpful. I’ve actually never setup a Internet email server before, only intranet style ones, which I’m not sure anyone uses anymore. The only problems with the read-as-written installer is that there are some broken elements in the installer for how it handles anti-virus and spam handling that crashes out the system. I had to turn those off and I’ll be putting them back in by hand later.

The DNS records were nice and easy to update from Hover, who I always like working with for domains.

The two things that frustrated me were these:

1. We were never given a reason as to why so many people thought that human industry was burning up the planet.
2. In the context of our environment on a planetary scale, the concept of “stewardship” never came up. Even once.

The first item, someone might say that it’s because the people who were teaching us this knew they didn’t have a leg to stand on. That’s just not true. We were given all sorts of bizarre explanations as to how the world was only six thousand years old, despite any evidence to the contrary. I was once told that oil was put underground by God specifically for humans to find and use, six thousand years ago.

The closest thing that went for an a safer as to why people were trying to trick everyone into thinking the world is heating up is the general undercurrent of idea that the secular world (run by Satan and an army of evil spirits) were undermining the Word of God by confusing God’s people. This theme came up quite a bit.

Let us talk about “stewardship”. If you are literate enough to read this blog, you probably know what that word means, even if you don’t go to church. In a church setting it means the same thing, but with a little extra. It means taking care of the things that you were given, but not because that’s what a person should do, but because it came from God. If you have something that you worked for with your own two hands you should take care of it because God gave you those hands. If you have something that you didn’t work for, you should really take care of it because God gave you something you don’t deserve.

I get behind all of that, I really do. Here is the Wikipedia entry for stewardship. I link to it because it has a quick and dirty look at the ideals, and as they’re written about in the article it focuses on the environment, unlike how I’ve frequently had it taught to me, hitch dealt more with property and relationships.

The interesting thing is that the very Scripture quoted in the article establishing the idea that everything belongs to God and therefore that is the foundation of why we should take care of everything are the same ones that Evangelical climate deniers use. The belief is that the planet belongs to God, and by extension, God is going to take care of it, regardless what humans do to it.

The link here being that there are so many Republican friendly corporations that are dependent on fossil fuels, that it’s not in the interest of a politician to draft laws that endanger the production or consumption of those very fuels. Denying the use of those fuels contribution to climate changes helps deflect the conversation about changing the way our species collects and uses energy.

Years after I left that school I met some Democrats who self identified as Christians. Shortly after that I realized that Christians could self identify as Democrats. As time passed and I observed the Evangelical friends I had and the communities that I was no longer directly involved with with changing eyes, I came to an understanding that there was a time that the church ran the Republican party. Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority being a great example of a time that Republican Party was really doing what a political party should do- represent a portion of the America public. I think now that times have changed and the Republican Party runs the Evangelical church.

The relationship between the two used to be that couldn’t really easily called a relationship because the two were not visibly separate. Now they are and I think that the GOP understands that and the Evangelical church has allowed itself to be bamboozled still believing that the Republican Party and the church are still in harmony.

The episode of This American Life that I mentioned at the beginning of this post did interview and cite Republicans who are in the solid belief that the globe is warming up and are for reforms against carbon emissions. Change will come for climate change laws once the money is right. Change will come when the Evangelicals remember that Jesus wasn’t a Republican… Or a Democrat… Or, well, it turns out- not even American.

So I started a Meetup group, had a few people join, realized that was all of the people I’d get, then shut it down. Having a paid Meetup group just to stay in communication with two people seemed like a waste, email does a fine job. During the course of our conversations I was introduced to Camp Nerdly (and a few other conventions, local and otherwise) and immediately volunteered for kitchen duty.

This past weekend was Camp Nerdly. I present the highlights-

The first dinner service was easy. Aaron (the ring leader of the kitchen crew) brought lasagna and breadsticks, both of which required only to put them into the oven and wait. We learned that one of the ovens was an inferno, and another one of them was the opposite, barely able to get warm. The two difficulties of the dinner service was there the ovens, and our produce, including salad for the evening, arrived late.

After dinner, I hosted a game of The Quiet Year, which had full attendance. The table did a nearly perfect job of not speaking out of turn, which made for a different, but surprisingly similar, game from the one with Kerry’s work friends who rarely observed the rule.

I went to bed early, found myself in a warm, but insect inhabited shower at about 5 am. Then on to the kitchen, where we did potatoes, bacon, and eggs. The plan for the day was to put out sandwich meat and cheese in the morning, and the other campers would prepare sandwiches for their lunch. Lunch work would only really be watching the flat top grill for people who wanted to heat up their sandwiches. Trying to use the ovens for bacon kind of bungled things up for us a bit, since they’re inconsistent.

After lunch, Aaron and I went into a game of Dungeon World. I’ve only played with the system once, and it went really well. This game also went very well. In the game was Bill White of Ganakagok fame. I chose the Paladin. The GM, a guy named Don, did a fantastic job of doing individual intros for each of our characters, but with enough pacing to it that while he was talking to each of us about how our characters came into the story, no one else felt like they were being ignored. The game ran long and butted up against our lunch prep time, so Aaron and I had to be the bad guys and tell everyone we had to leave. It was tentatively agreed on that we’d meet back up for the midnight session to continue. I didn’t think Aaron or I would make that because we’d have to be up to make breakfast for everyone.

The game was very fun, mainly because no one could roll dice to save their lives (in game- literally). My paladin resolved two relationships with other players by doing Lay On Hands to cure them of Rock Grubs in their intestines, but botched one of the rolls, transferring said parasites into himself. Then the party tried to burn the parasites out of my paladin and botched that roll, burning up one of his arms. See the later session for further misadventure.

Lunch service was easy, then Aaron and I helped Jeff mash up a bunch of chickpeas and roll up some falafel. Meanwhile, an event for kids, “Superhero Bakery” was happening in the kitchen, which was some world class kid work. The people facilitating it kept the kids entertained and remembered their super hero names the whole time. I couldn’t even remember the name of the paladin I’d played earlier that I had given the paladin.

After that, I slept for a couple hours. Woke up groggy and weird, then started into dinner. Dinner service was the falafel, pita, and some grilled chicken. At this point, I realized that Aaron was doing the majority of the grill work, and I wound up with a lot of “watch Aaron grill” time. I think because of that people thought I was running the kitchen. On the last day, I had two people thank me for running the kitchen, while in my mind, Aaron was the mastermind of things. I assumed the goal of assigning work to everyone else who was working in the kitchen in the hopes of keeping them out of Aaron’s way and keeping them busy. I hate volunteering for things just to stand around, so I tried my best to make sure that people were in motion.

After dinner, I told Aaron that I had a couple copies of Lady Blackbird printed up, but I’d never run it. He said he’d run it, we just have to find players. At the pitch session, he went last, but had no problem filling the group. The pitch session also had a guy running tremulus which I really wanted to play. Had I known that he’d have been pitching it, I would have just taken Aaron to that.

Aaron ran a great game. I played Naomi, Lady Blackbird’s body guard. Lady Blackbird herself were played by a guy named Kevin who interpreted Lady Blackbird as a noble who had no problem constantly reminding everyone around her that she was better than them and criticizing their low born ways, it was hilarious. In an attempt to drum up some money to fund some repairs to The Owl, which was damaged escaping from imperial captors, we took a sketchy courier job. Once the cargo was on board, we all agreed we’d be unprofessional and crack open the crates to see what was in them. What was in there? Children. There was this brief moment, where I thought the table would come to the conclusion that we need money more than these kids need to be free, but we spent about half of our game time trying to figure out how to get our ship fixed up, off the planet, then knock these kids off of the ship somewhere they’d be safe.

After that, Aaron and I decided that we would, in fact, try to stay up and play Dungeon Worlds. We found, Don, rounded up two of the other players from the earlier session and continued. It’s trends of entertainment and abuse of the characters continued. My paladin had made a promise to an unseen person, who turned out to be an undead person (for those of you unfamiliar with paladins, they hate the undead), and after helping him find the remains of his wife, he asked for us for a blood sacrifice and refused to give us a reason of why. Our ranger, who had a trend of doing things without consulting the party, opted to lob of torch onto the corpse of this guy’s wife. Then we had to fight the undead guy, then the burning corpse of his wife re-animated, latched onto our cleric, igniting him. Then the druid and ranger made rolls to put out the cleric, miserably failing both of them, sparking themselves up in the process. Then I tried lay on hands again, which took the condition of “burning” from the cleric and transferred it to me. That’s how the whole game went.

I crawled into bed at a quarter past two in the morning, trying to be quiet, but waking up Jeff (the convention organizer who I was rooming with). After both of us got to sleep, somewhere around three or four in the morning, the fire alarm in the cabin went off. No fire or smoke was going on. In my sleep deprived state, I decided to ignore the fire alarm and let the other people in the cabin turn it off or remind me that the cabin was on fire and I should leave.

In the morning, easy breakfast of bacon, eggs, and fried potatoes. After breakfast service, Aaron ran a game of Mouseguard for me and two other people, which I had to unfortunately terminate earlier than I’d have liked, because I had to leave to drive to Fredericksburg to get Kerry to drive us to Nag’s Head, North Carolina. Mouseguard is added to the list of games I’d play again, easily.

I look forward to next year.

[Post edited for clarity]

The Quiet Year describes itself as a map drawing game. When I heard it described it sounded a lot like Ganakagok, which was one of my most favorite times playing games, and it was with strangers to boot. The game (The Quiet Year) takes place post societal collapse and the players represent the currents of society in a community struggling to survive. It was a little unusual because in the game, you’re not playing a character, you’re playing the desires of a segment of the community, not an individual.

Our community was a mountain, lake side town with mysterious neighbors and a surprising amount of unresolved mysteries and unexploded munitions.

The game has very specific and deliberate rules about when people can speak, which is a big part of the game. It is very clear that people are not supposed to speak other than their turn and have rules limiting what can be said. And the game expressly forbids idle chatter at the table. My group didn’t do too good of a job about that. I gave up trying to reign them in pretty early on. No reason to wreck an evening by being a stickler for the rules, everyone is having fun, let it go. Having said all of that- I’d really love to play a game that the players adhered perfectly to those rules.

Another interesting thing that came up in play is that most of the players at the table defined themselves as representing named groups in the community, the religious people, the intellectual people, the constabulary, etc. I tried to be the segment dedicated to contrarianism, which I thought would make for a better game.

The Póstumo cards served as the playing cards for introducing trouble or opportunity to the community. The game uses the different suits in a deck of cards to represent the seasons and as the year wears on different things happen. Fifty two cards and a possibility of fifty two weeks, which our game actually got. The game ends abruptly when the final king for the final season is drawn, and it just so happened that it was the last card in the draw pile.

The cards themselves feel quality and have a pretty unique art to them that I like. They were worth the money to the Kickstarer project. I’m sure you can get some from the folks putting them together too, if you’d like. I’ll definitely be using them for my upcoming Savage World’s War of the Dead game for combat initiative.