Recap of 2010

Last January I attempted very briefly to fill the void that a lack of a job gave me with doing a lot of my hobbies - drawing, writing, and playing games. I set some basic goals and I didn't even meet one of them. This year is a hell of a lot different, but I'm not to the point of setting up goals and certainly not to writing them online as even an unexpected promise to whoever reads them. Instead of setting goals right now, I'm working on accomplishing the ones that don't even need to be set for me to know they're there. Perhaps they were set years ago, or have always been there, but I'm doing them.

That may sound like I didn't do anything in 2010 then, if I didn't reach my goals. I know that's not the case. With that in mind, instead of goals for 2011 let's look back at some of the things that I accomplished in 2010:

• I GOT A JOB!

That could really be the end of the list right there and I'd be happy, but there are some other (less important but quite fun) items that I'm going to attempt to quantify in some way here. Possibly in some semblance of chronological order:

• Experienced one of the most enjoyable Winter Olympics ever with Becky, since we were both home all day/everyday - so much so that I'll consider taking vacation time for the next Winter Olympics
• Determined that my marriage to Becky is even more special than I could have imagined, since we could spend all day, everyday together and still have a LOT of fun and not ever get that mad at each other. I've had numerous couples tell me they can't imagine doing that and how much they would kill one another.
  
• Played a LOT of the Starcraft 2 beta, didn't play as much once it hit retail (but that may change soon) - also designed an awesome custom map for SC2 which I want to re-do for the retail build
  
• Ran 15 adventures of my D&D Campaign - I'd certainly love to do more, but greater than 1 per month is not a bad number!
• Attended a Bonsai beginner's class and actually learned how to pot, grow, and care for Bonsai properly (hint: I was doing a LOT of stuff wrong)
  
• Attended GenCon 2010 and had a blast
  
• Read through the entire Harry Potter series (for the first time) in preparation for seeing the last movie
• Read 1984, and realized I (and all of my friends) should have read it years ago
  
• Finished The Shadow Rising (Wheel of Time book 4) in September, finally, after almost a year of very slowly getting through it. Then finished books 5 and 6 in roughly one month each, and got half way through book 7 in December
• I started and continued the Architect DM series at Critical Hits, which has been insanely fun to write and seems to be received quite well too
• Movies we saw in theaters: Iron Man 2, Inception (twice), RED, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, Tron: Legacy (maybe some others, will update if I remember)
• Becky and I resubbed to World of Warcraft for Cataclysm (god help us) in early December - and we're loving it

Reading Update: I am currently 67% through Wheel of Time book 5 - A Crown of Swords. My progress stalled for a week or two during the holidays for various reasons. We were pretty busy, but also I got several new books before the holidays and as Christmas presents so that naturally slowed down my progress because I wanted to read them a bit instead of just focusing on Wheel of Time. The very last Wheel of Time book was also pushed back to a 2012 release date, which means I have more than a year to read the last 5 books and one prequel which is more than enough time. I'm going to throw a few other books in the mix but will also try to get through WoT as soon as possible so I can talk things over with Becky without fear of spoilers.

Wheel of Time Character Mapping

So I've been thinking about doing an experiment by listing the characters that appear in each chapter of Wheel of Time as I read it (starting mid book 7 because that's where I am now). Partially this comes from the fact that now there are so freaking many noble and Aes Sedai secondary characters, many with very similar names, that even I can't keep them straight!

Also this is because I generally try to avoid spoilers, because I know of at least one person that reads this blog sometimes that hasn't read all of the books. In my opinion listing the characters as they appear won't be any kind of real spoiler, but still I'll keep things as spoiler free as I can. Here's a bit of what it would look like, but in practice I'm not sure it gives much without spoilers and would be a lot of work.

Book 7 - A Crown of Swords

Chapter 11 - An Oath

• Egwene Al'Vere
• Meri - mean servant of Egwene's
• Romanda - Aes Sedai, rival of Lelaine
  
• Lelaine - Aes Sedai, rival of Romanda
  
• Sheriam - Aes Sedai, on Egwene's side
  
• Lord Gareth Bryne
• Theodrin Dabei & Faolain Orande - Aes Sedai
  
• Halima / Aran'gar
• Tiana - Aes Sedai?
• Siuan Sanche
• etc.
  

I'm thinking that having my own wiki for Wheel of Time might be easier and better in every way. I'd build it as I go through the books and hopefully because of that it would be much more comprehensive than the other wikis that are out there. I would contribute to them, but I can't at the moment because they are riddled with spoilers so I just avoid the existing wikis as a practice. However, Becky tells me there isn't any one wiki that is as informative or comprehensive as they should be.

Reading Update: I am 41% through book 7 and now very happy to be almost 50% of the way through the series (minus the final book which isn't out yet). Towers of Midnight coming out set me back about 3% in total but I caught that up and more over the last two books.

Is it technically Winter yet? I'm pretty sure it is but for some reason it still feels very much like Fall to me even though it is super cold outside. Also, it doesn't feel like the week of Christmas at all, but it still feels MUCH better than last year for obvious reasons! :)

My Disturbing Affair with Graphs, Numbers, and Critical Hits

Sure I talk about Critical Hits here sometimes, and probably even more so I talk about how I am way too in love with random math, numbers, and graphs. So why should today be any different???

I hesitate to say that I "joined" Critical Hits in August of 2005 because that's around when Dave sent out the e-mail to a bunch of us asking if we wanted to help out with the website, and also asking what we should name the site. I believe "For Great Justice" was the working title at the time, and I'm pretty happy with the name that we settled on considering the numerous other RPG, D&D, and especially 4E themed blogs that have popped up in the last year or two.

We started using Google Analytics back in October of 2006, just a year or so after we had been seriously blogging at the site. Here I'm going to look at some minor traffic stats over the history of CH so far.

• Late 2006: 30-50 avg. daily visitors
• First Half 2007: 200-350 daily visitors
• July 2007 - Fallout 3 Press Event: 1,625 highest daily visitors at the time
• Second Half 2007*: 100-200 daily visitors
• Feb 2008 - D&D XP for 4E: 4,575 highest daily visitors at the time
• First Half 2008: 300-400 daily visitors
• Second Half 2008: 400-800 daily visitors (with a lot more spikes up to around 1,600)
• First Half 2009: still in the 400-800 daily visitors range
• Second Half 2009: 800-1,200 daily visitors (GenCon brought large traffic spikes)
  
• First Half 2010 - ChattyDM joins CH: 1,600-2,000 daily visitors (Chatty brings the rain)
  
• August 2010 - GenCon: 7,300 highest daily visitors at the time
  
• Second Half 2010: 2,000-2,500 daily visitors (with spikes up to 4,500)

Now what does this really show? Not a ton, but it does tell me that from 2007 to 2010 over the course of those 4 years our average daily traffic has grown 50x and that is a pretty crazy thing to think about for me. It also surprises me, and I'm very happy about it, that our current regular traffic spikes up to the numbers that used to be our highest ever daily traffic back in early 2008 when we first covered D&D XP. Realistically I don't expect our numbers to grow at the same rate as we continue, because there are only so many RPG players out there that are reading blogs, but still I'm very happy with how things have progressed and I hope to be happy with it in the foreseeable future.

* Right around July of 2007 Google changed something with their search algorithms, and this resulted in us losing quite a bit of traffic that was probably just people glancing and bouncing from the site anyway, so we dropped from a high of 350 in a day back down to around 200 in a day.

Reading Update: I finished Wheel of Time book 6, Lord of Chaos, and am already 12% through book 7, A Crown of Swords. I'm hoping to be done with ACoS by the end of December and then into book 8 for January. It is still incredibly surprising, and satisfying, to be reading a book in a month that would have taken me up to 6 months to get through just a year or two ago.

Merging Profession and Hobby = Fun!

This week I started a series within a series (because I'm just like that) where I'm going to be talking about World Building for a tabletop RPG in my Architect DM series of posts for Critical Hits. So far I've been incredibly surprised by the series not just from people giving almost entirely positive feedback on it but also because writing posts for it has been some of the easiest writing I've ever done for a blog and especially for CH. If you want to check out the whole series, you can view the "Architect DM" tag by using this url:

http://critical-hits.com/tag/architect-dm/

So far in the series I've covered things like building story foundations for the locations in your games so that they are more believable, including if you are using ruined locations to think about what they looked like beforehand and what uses they had and then have fun destroying and knocking parts of them down to create even more interesting terrain. I've also talked about how to design a dungeon by thinking about a modern office building and taking the inverse of it and going into the ground instead of into the air. Many of the posts have been based on reader questions and suggestions and that's one thing that makes it even more fun for me to write the posts.

I'm not 100% sure but I wouldn't be surprised if all of the " DM" titles owe themselves back to Phil and his Chatty DM moniker, but for the last 5 years or so I have strongly considered myself a "Professional / Nerd" and finally decided to take that a step further and combine my experiences and expertise with Architecture and apply it to my hobby of running and playing D&D and other RPGs. This series also probably owes itself largely to the DM Guys Podcast which I participated in with our friend Quinn one day about improvising as a DM and Dave and Quinn quipped that I may be better at improvising locations/dungeons because I have spent a lot of my life designing locations (not dungeons, but really modern offices and dungeons aren't that far apart, which is probably why I compared them in one of my Architect DM posts). I thought about it and decided they were right, and that I should share to help others be able to do the same.

As far as reading goes, thanks to a day trip down to Jacksonville, FL I made significant progress through book 6, Lord of Chaos, and am now definitively into the final part of the book where I almost always speed up to get to the end. I'm 84% through the book now, and am almost caught up with where I should have been if I hadn't taken a couple days off from reading in the beginning of November.

Reading a series like Wheel of Time is teaching me quite a bit about writing, fantasy novels / storylines, storytelling in general, and pacing when it comes to novels. I'm excited to be approaching the half way point through the entire series, something that I honestly thought I'd either never do or I would be much older by the time I did it. You have to keep in mind that previously it would take me 3-6 months or even up to a year to finish a single book in the series, and now I'm clearing a book in roughly a month without THAT much more effort put into it. Again, I'm hoping in the near future to apply the same philosophies that have helped my reading to the other parts of my life such as writing and drawing.

Wheel of Time Thoughts

I am now 51% through Wheel of Time book 6 - Lord of Chaos and I'm starting to progress a bit faster (as usual). It's usual because right around half way through most of Jordan's books he starts to really pick up the action and build to the finale (go figure, right? Who would structure a book that way? Oh, everyone? I see...) so I'm naturally inclined to keep reading and to read more often through out the day.

I generally avoid talking much about what I'm reading in WoT because I want to avoid spoilers for anyone reading this, but my continuing discussions with Becky are enjoyable and I'd love to have some of those here as well. The other big problem is I really don't want anyone in comments here or in discussing it to spoil anything for me, so please keep in mind that I am only half way through Lord of Chaos and I'll probably have Becky read any comments here first (though I'm assuming there won't be any, so no big deal) just in case!

For today I'm not going to spoil anything big, but still if you don't want any spoilers from WoT up to and through book 6 don't read the rest of this paragraph. Minor Spoilers now: I find it very fascinating that Jordan waited until about 380 pages (38% through the book) into the 6th book of the series to finally reveal that Tigraine was Rand's mother. You find out in book 3 (IIRC) that his mother was a wetlander that entered the waste and became a maiden of the spear, and that his father was an Aiel, but the reveal in this chapter of book 6 is pretty damn important. It's important because you also find out that the Aes Sedai Gitara Moroso was the one that foretold the Dragon being reborn, and that she sent Tigraine's brother (Luc, OMG another big thing that I can't wait to find out more about) to the north and she then sent Tigraine away from Caemlyn so that Rand would end up being born on the cliffs of Dragonmount (or wherever). This is all super important not just because it explains the events that led to Rand's birth, but also because after that Gitara Sedai is the one who set Suian's and Moiraine's plans into action which is really the whole set up for the beginning of Eye of the World. Thus, to me this revelation of events is really what began the whole series of books and so to me this is easily one of the most important chapters of the series so far.

Spoilers aside and done with, I just like looking at the fact that Jordan waited until this book to reveal the beginnings of the events in Eye of the World. I'm not saying I think he should have done it sooner or later, just marveling at how and where it was done. Also that it was done in a sort of casual sense with just a noble woman in Caemlyn talking to Rand and mentioning something to him. Other things that really interest me are how much the Forsaken are characters in these later books, and how the only holdovers from the 2nd age are essentially the bad guys.

All of that just makes me want to read faster, so that's what I'm doing! I won't be finishing this book by the end of November (only 2 days away, geez) but I should wrap it up sometime in early December. This time of year is always rough for scheduling and running D&D, and I am amazed that right around this time last year I was struggling so much with scheduling that I was on the very brink of canceling the whole campaign. Thankfully (VERY thankfully) Josh rallied his roomates and came up on December 5th last year for their first romp into the Elemental Chaos, which was extremely fun and resolved me to keep things going. This year I am content to keep it going even if I don't run once in December, though I very much hope I can.

In other news Thanksgiving was very fun this year, we went to Becky's grandmother's house and had a fun time with all of the family and especially hanging out with their cousins. I'm hooked on the Sam Adams Winter Variety boxes - not just to get the 2 bottles of sweet, sweet Chocolate Boch that the O got me hooked on (thanks Andrew :P ) but also because I love the Winter Lager and pretty much every other variety in there.

Numbers Make Me Hot

Okay, so it's me and by now if you're surprised by me analysing numbers, specifically when they can be charted to a graph (perhaps even in some sort of Graph Chart!) that involves chronology, then you clearly don't know me well enough!

Apparently I started this account on Blogger almost exactly 4 years ago on November 20, 2006. If you'd asked me when I did that, I would NOT have said that long ago at all. It was mostly a whim, but I could probably already feel Critical Hits growing in a different direction and my personal blogging "needs" would need to be filled somewhere. I remember I asked Dave for name suggestions and he almost instantly shot back "Incorrect Blitz Input", and it was one of those times where solid gold just materializes first and foremost in the idea process. Thank you Dave for that, it was perfect and you seemingly conjured it from no where without any effort what so ever. If you don't know the reference, go play Final Fantasy 3 (6 in Japan) and you should be able to figure out who my favorite character was.

Oh, I also started a Blogger account because Dave and several other people who were (and are) some of the only people I believe actually read this were opposed to reading Live Journal. Also I'd gotten a bit tired of the good old LJ, it felt novel at first but quickly started to feel more dated than anything else.

The weird thing then was that I didn't post here until January of 2007, and even then I only posted a whopping 3 times in that whole year. By 2008 this blog had existed long enough that it needed some justification for existing, so I started a meager effort of posting here about once a month, but quickly started coming here to post very short musings or thoughts I had (which are usually funny in retrospect) resulting in 39 posts total in 2008. My biggest hopes and fears then were all focused on my upcoming D&D campaign, which I'm thrilled to say is STILL going! 2009 dwindled back down to a total of 8 posts, but this was also the year that my day job quickly took a downward turn and ironically is when I probably needed something like a personal blog the most, but I neglected it instead (thankfully it neither eats/drinks nor breaths, otherwise it surely would have died). This was also the year that I first got the spark that the blog could be used as some sort of "Reading Journal" where I post about my progress through current books, and I added the progress bars on the side there that have no become some kind of addictive drug that I must update whenever I read, and I read so that I may update them and progress along the bar further. It encourages me to read, so it's a good drug! Right?! RIGHT?!?

2010 started off the same as 2009, with me newly into my unemployment - though I did manage to post twice in January (rays of hope in the darkness I suppose). It wasn't until June, with new (dream) job in hand that I returned here to chronicle some of my deeper thoughts - specifically about unemployment and precisely how badly the architecture industry was hit by the downturn in the economy. I'm happy that from June to now I have managed to get 2010 up to 29 posts (30 now with this one going up).

With the advent of my Harry Potter reading marathon, and now my Wheel of Time push to finish before the final book is released (which I'm well ahead of schedule for), I am happy to say that I will have at least the most simple reason to update this blog as a record for my reading progress. It gives me hope, because if I can get into the habit of reading and progressing on that, and updating here, then I can transfer these habits to my other interests as well -namely art and drawing, which is something I've been struggling with for longer than any of my blogs has ever existed.

There is always hope for that, no matter how long I write about wanting to get it started. As Phil says to me sometimes, which does drive me crazy but it's good advice, "stop talking about it and do it." Coming from the Chatty DM, a person who talks quite a bit, I take it as learned and very good advice. Now to stop writing about it and follow it! :D

Reading Update: I read over 60 pages today, to make up for some of the slack I had earlier in the month, and am now 37% of the way through book 6 - Lord of Chaos.

One Year Later

This past Friday, November 19th, marks exactly one year since I was laid off from my last job. It's interesting to me that it feels like a very long time ago, but also doesn't feel like it's been nearly a year since I worked there. If you haven't read my other posts from the summer of this year, what followed me being laid off was 7 months of very stressful unemployment and worrying, though it also managed to be LESS stressful than my former job was for various reasons. Thankfully, back in early June I was hired by the company I work for now and things have been going along fantastically!

With Thanksgiving coming up this week, it's no real surprise to me that I don't remember the holiday season last year very clearly at all. I'd just been laid off, and was starting into my job search full steam and also getting unemployment (and continuing health insurance) worked out. This year things are on the upswing and continue to look up for the future, so I imagine this holiday season will be one that sticks with me for a while. As I continue to do posts on here over the next year, I'm going to make it an ongoing goal to reflect to the same time frame of the last year and compare how things are going. Obviously this time last year things were not so good, and so perhaps it is this year for Thanksgiving that I have more to be thankful for than I have in many years previous.

In more regular news, we went to a midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, which was enjoyable. It is the first Harry Potter movie I've read the book before I've seen the movie, and it's a distinctly different experience though many of the changes or bizarre plots that I completely understand now still irk me because I know if I hadn't read the book I would have had major issues with the movie.

I've also finally (and hopefully) winterized my Trident Maple bonsai tree that I got back in late June. I'm really hoping it survives the winter in good health and I can really take care of it and shape it through the spring & summer next year. It's in a bed of mulch inside of a clear plastic container on our back steps, because we don't have a shed or anything to protect it from the more harsh weather while it hibernates. The tree was probably one of my first gifts/purchases after getting the new job so I really hope to cultivate it for many years to come!

Reading Update: I slacked for the early-middle part of November because of some new D&D books I got and wanted to read, but I'm back on track for Wheel of Time book 6, Lord of Chaos, and am currently 23% of the way through it. This means I probably won't finish it by the end of November, but hopefully by some point in early December and then I can start into the next book before the end of the year!

Short Story & Reading Update

The old television screen flickered to life, pale lines of blue light skittered up and down on the glass and eventually formed a fuzzy image of an old man's face. His dull, sunken eyes displayed a weariness from unkind years as he gazed through the screen at no point in particular. The image fractured into abstract lines of blue, white, and black briefly as Theresa turned the dial at the bottom of the set, eventually conceding that the picture could get no clearer. Most days she didn't bother turning it on, but whenever it rained she couldn't help but want to see her father's face. She used to sit for hours on his lap, listening to the rain on the porch roof or to one of his many stories about times before she was even born.
She held her hand up to the screen just before the image of her father did the same, she'd memorized the recording over the last few years and liked to pretend that it was just like when he was alive. Suddenly she felt foolish and removed her hand, watching as the recording ran on and his hand remained up to the glass for several minutes. She liked to marvel at the details of the hand, even through the fuzz of the old tele-screen, at the way his fingers twitched and moved as she watched. It was the same every time, of course, but after years the routine itself made her nearly as happy as the image on the screen. She pushed the stop button at the bottom of the screen and as the image faded it played the same recorded portion it always did after you stopped it, the sad image of her father waved as it flickered and the screen became dark. As Theresa packed her things for work she wondered how bad her commute would be due to the rain, and if she'd feel like re-loading her father's tube when she returned home or if she'd load her mother's as she often did.

---

This is the beginning of a short story I've had rolling around my brain for a while now, and just randomly decided to start writing it with little preparation. This is just two paragraphs for now, but I'll either come back into this post and add onto it or repost these two and add some more on as I feel like. I could just keep it on a word doc and share it once there's more there, but I figure why the hell not just share a quick snippet of it as I write it?

As for my reading schedule I finished 1984 on last Thursday, November 4th so it took me about nine days to get through it. That was a bit longer than I anticipated but still I've already jumped into the Wheel of Time book 6 - Lord of Chaos and am currently 7% of the way into it. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up some speed and finish this book before the end of November, and then get through the next one by the end of the year!

The RPG Market and FLGS's

This is something that may end up on Critical Hits, it's certainly in line with the topics there, but I haven't put enough thought or research behind it for it to go up there. In essence, this is a brainstorming post.

I see a lot of people, especially on the internet, throw around the opinion that the RPG hobby and market are declining and that there are less Gaming Stores (FLGS - Friendly Local Gaming Store is almost becoming an overplayed joke to me now), and very often the decline in the number of gaming stores is one of the first signs used to point to the decline in the industry. I have a lot of problems with these opinions when they're expressed, typically the biggest hurdle is how they're expressed - like the trumpets of the coming apocalypse or impending doom, often with the sense that it's already happened and it's too damn late to do anything about it. Some of the latest of which have finally bothered to put some numbers behind their argument, but I still have only seen the present day stats which they then compare to non-solid conjectured numbers that could just as easily be thrown there simply to prove the person's point. Example: this quarter's top-selling print run of books in 2010 was 5,000 books, but back in the day we used to wipe our asses with 5,000 books every day so clearly the market is declining. Decent stat/fact compared to conjecture = point proven. Wrong, and this angers me.

The number of gaming stores in the US may have declined over the last few years, I don't know about that but it is something that I'll concede because I can believe it, however I do not believe in the proof that less gaming stores means the hobby and market are declining. To me the obvious reason is because there are a lot of other, often better places to get your gaming books and supplies from and so gaming stores just aren't as needed anymore. No matter what anyone says, gaming stores are not there to propagate the hobby, they're not there to get new people into your favorite game, and they're definitely not there as hubs for gamers. Gaming stores exist to sell games. All of those other things were developments of the era that gaming blossomed and the necessities of the people at those times.

The internet is most likely the biggest force pushing gaming stores out of business, and it is funny because though a gaming store's only real purpose is to sell games they are almost certainly losing business because the internet can also duplicate the other roles that gaming stores have traditionally served. Gamers love to get together and nerd-talk together, and the internet definitely serves up a whole helping of that (like this post, for instance, and every other place on the internet ever pretty much).

In much the same way that people point to the decline in gaming stores as the first sign that the hobby is in decline, many of those people therefore argue that if gaming stores go away the hobby will go away also. For the most part these are inter-supportive arguments, but if you throw away the first one (like I do and discussed at the beginning of this post) I still cannot completely brush aside the second argument. Gaming stores surely help propagate the hobbies in many ways, but also people generally argue that gaming stores get lots of new gamers into the hobbies. I'm not entirely sure I agree with this, the odds are that if someone is going to a game store they were going to find a part of the hobby anyway. That said, a game store is certainly useful for people (often "kids") who come there to buy Yu-gi-oh or Magic cards are very likely to then stumble upon things like board games and RPGs like D&D and BAM, that's the...ahem, magic of gaming stores right there.

However I'd also venture to say that having D&D books in the larger book stores like Borders/Barnes & Noble are at a higher chance of reaching even larger audiences. I bought my first RPG books at the local Walden Books in the nearest mall, and went there almost weekly to check out the books and see what was new and pick up my occasional copy of Dungeon or Dragon magazine. I did that, and THEN I'd go to a gaming store to pick up my Magic cards. Now if we look at things from the internet side, you'd have to be absolutely nuts to not realize the fact that in the last year or two Penny Arcade has certainly brought a decent number of new or borderline gamers in to the D&D hobby. That alone lets me know that even if every single gaming store in the US goes out of business, the hobby will still exist and there will still be a market for RPGs.

There very well may be less people playing tabletop RPGs today then there were 5 years ago, and that number may be lower than they were 10 or 15 or even 20 years ago, but when I read people talking about how the hobby/market is in decline what I really read is that the hobby/market AS THEY KNEW IT is in decline. For many of those people, if they cannot go to a local gaming store every once in a while, then the hobby might as well be dead. What I'm much more interested in reading about, and talking about, is not how the RPG hobby/market is doomed or dying or been dead since 4E raped its mother and killed its daddy but rather how the RPG hobby and market are going to look when they're alive and being played 50 years from now.

I mean holy shit, for a hobby that started out with a bunch of people in a basement stapling pieces of paper together so they could play games, people sure do seem terrified of the hobby becoming a bunch of people in a basement with stapled pieces of paper playing games together.

Reading Update 10-28-10

Last night I finished reading the 5th book of Wheel of Time, The Fires of Heaven, a few days inside of the month which is very exciting. I'm taking a brief break from Wheel of Time to read the copy of 1984 by George Orwell that Josh lent us, I was actually surprised that Becky decided to read it several months ago and really enjoyed it. I guess it's a classic for good reason. Last night after finishing Fires of Heaven I decided to start right away on 1984 and even just getting a handful of pages into it I was immediately drawn in. It's a relatively short book, at about 260 pages, and I'm already 10% through it today so I should be able to finish it within a week or so and then move on to the 6th Wheel of Time book.

It has been decently warm for the end of October the last few days, but it looks like tomorrow and the weekend will cool off a bit for the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear and then our Halloween party. Considering how F'ing hot (literally) my costume is going to be I'll be happy for some cooler weather.

Being Sick Sucks

I've been sick with a minor cold for a little over a week now, and I'm really hoping it clears up early this week. On Thursday we're going to the dentist which is something I'd rather not do while already feeling like crap, and then this Saturday we're planning on going to the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in DC (because we're close and figure, why not?) then our bitchin' Halloween party on Saturday night! I've considered posting small spoiler/teaser pictures of my costume online, but I figure people would be able to guess it a bit too easily even from those so I'm just going to wait until the weekend.

Due to being sick my reading slacked a bit last week, okay that's only partially the reason, the other is that I finally downloaded Angry Birds onto my iPhone and it is every bit as fun as people say it is. It gets a little bit more boring after you play through quite a bit of it, but even then it's still more fun than most mobile games. That said, even though my reading schedule was slack last week, I'm still currently 78% through Fires of Heaven and pretty well on track to finishing the book by the end of the month. This also puts me at 38% through the whole series, but again that number will drop significantly when the next book comes out in early November.

Numbers Game for Wheel of Time

It's basically a theme here for me to talk about obscure and practically (spell checked to piratically at first, awesome) meaningless math and numbers, but here I go again. I'm not sure why I do it, but inevitably if I'm looking at a spreadsheet or doing something progressive I begin to break it up and analyze it probably too much.

When I set my goal to read all of Harry Potter within a few months, I set up an excel spreadsheet that listed each book, the page counts for them, and let me input my progress and see % completion for each book as I went as well as the entire series. With 7 books most of which were roughly 700 words, this was a daunting task for me at first but actually went very quickly. I finished a solid 2 months early, which is better than I ever expected to do! After that, Becky challenged me (again, it's always her fault) to do the same with Wheel of Time so that I would be set to read the final book by the time it comes out in late 2011. The pace that needs to be set for that to happen is roughly one Wheel of Time book a month, and so I created a spreadsheet and have even gone one step further and I've begun tracking my progress by date every few days in the same spreadsheet.

The result of this tracking is that I am finishing roughly 1% of the entire series (counting only the 12 books that have been released so far) in about 3 days. I'm currently 42% of the way through the 5th book, and at the moment it syncs up nicely that I'm reading 10% of the book in 3 days that is the same as 1% of the whole series. Right now, including the four books I've finished previously, I am 35% of the way through the entire Wheel of Time series (released to date). When the newest book is released in a week or two that number will be skewed somewhat by the addition of ~700-800 new pages, but that's not a huge deal when looking at the whole. To be more precise if the new book is exactly 800 pages that will only set my series completion back by 2.5% but it will make my overall progression go a bit slower. If I assume that after that I will be completing 1% of the series every 4 days, I'll still be finishing up in roughly 260 days which is well before the 1 year mark.

I'm very happy with this information, because it means I should easily be able to throw in a book or two in the next year that isn't from Wheel of Time and still reach my goal pretty easily. Perhaps I just use numbers and math to make myself feel better?

October is Beard Time

Generally before winter I grow out my facial hair, this year I grew a goatee around September but now I'm growing it into full beard mode because I think it will go better with my Halloween costume (which is going to be totally awesome). It's not a stretch to think that most guys, especially when they're older, are pretty strict when it comes to their facial hair. I know if my father-in-law were to shave his mustache it would be a pretty drastic change for him and everyone that knows him. Last week I was musing if this is a pretty universal thing, is uniform facial hair something that a large majority of guys do or is it just something older guys do?

As I said, I usually grow mine out in the fall/winter for no particular reason, but it kind of makes sense for the colder weather and really I just think it's fun to change things up. I grew my hair out in early college and then again over the last two years, and getting that cut was a pretty big (and seemingly extreme) change for me but I really don't think I'll ever get to that point with facial hair. Sooner or later I get sick of it and shave, and eventually I get bored with shaving it all off and grow it out. Any insight into other observations or stats about this I would be very interested in seeing, so if you have them please share!

I can't believe it's October already, and I really can't believe how much I've been reading just in the second half of this year. I'm now 32% of the way through Fires of Heaven, still on track to finish the book by the end of October and then I'll be reading through 1984 pretty quickly hopefully and onto the rest of the Wheel of Time books. Previous to now I was splitting each book with at least one or two other books between them, and I think this was part of the reason I was going through them so slowly. Taken over time the Wheel of Times books are heavy and cI would even describe a fair amount of what they cover as relatively boring, but when you're reading them and going through it the story is enthralling and I think I need to ride that wave to get through all of the books in anywhere close to my lifetime.

Another Deathly Reading Schedule

Well, the Harry Potter reading schedule worked out so well that Becky suggested I do the same for the Wheel of Time series, though both of us freely admit this one is a lot more daunting. With the largest HP book being just under 200,000 words, and the average WoT book having roughly 2x that many words in it, but we're also setting a reasonable schedule so it should work fine.

The goal is to finish about 1 Wheel of Time book each month, so that by the end of next year when the final book is released I'll be able to read it when it comes out. I am 13% through Fires of Heaven at the moment, the 5th book, so I have 9 books and 1 short prequel to read before November of next year. That gives me a buffer of at least 2 months, which is nice, and so far I'm keeping pretty well on pace with my reading through book 5. I'm hoping to finish them even faster so I can mix in some other reading and get to other book series I'm planning on reading.

It also appears that 6 posts/month is the casual and natural pace for my personal blogging. That doesn't really mean much, but if there's one thing I enjoy it's seemingly pointless numbers analysis!

Critical Hits has existed for over 5 years now, which is kind of amazing and an enjoyable milestone for us to reach. Dave put together a great post for it, which you can find here: http://critical-hits.com/2010/10/04/critical-hits-5-years-and-counting/ and it appears once again our friend Melinda from They're Using Tools did a cool graphic for our celebration which you can see on the post. I'm insanely happy that I've been a part of Critical Hits since the very beginning, and sometimes really have trouble believing how things have developed for CH overall and also for me - especially when I look back at my earliest writings on the website. Back then, in late 2005, I was fairly fresh out of college and just finding my legs in the professional working world. I began using CH as a semi-public outlet for my wildest and craziest musings and rants, or as Becky put it the blog was my much-needed "crazy vent". These days I'm not sure where or if I vent my crazy, I may have changed enough in the last 5 years that I don't need to vent it as much or it simply seeps out of me in short, controlled bursts.

Yea, that was an obscure Aliens reference. There's some of the crazy!

A Year Overdue

The earliest record on this blog that I found was back in April of 2009, when I first added the progress bars for reading here, and back then I was 18% of the way through The Shadow Rising. By Fall of last year I'd only made it to 67% of the way through the book, then I didn't really pick it up until a few weeks ago after going through all of Harry Potter and I finished the last 33% of the book in just a few weeks. Now I'm excited and motivated and should be able to keep up this pace of faster reading for a while to come. I'm just starting the 5th Wheel of Time book, The Fires of Heaven, and hope to be through its nearly 1,000 pages in the next two months or so. So here's my reading schedule going into the future:

• WoT 5: The Fires of Heaven
• 1984
• WoT 6: Lord of Chaos
• WoT 7: A Crown of Swords
• ???

My hope is that I can keep up and finish Fires of Heaven by the end of November and then read 1984 over the holiday season before the end of 2010. Then I'm planning on getting through the rest of Wheel of Time as fast as I can much like I did with Harry Potter. It feels really good to get through a long series like that, and I've already started on WoT so it's definitely something I want to finish!

The End of September

We're quickly nearing the end of September, and as you might expect life continues to get better and better. 2010 has quite literally been split in two for us, with my new job starting in mid-June I can easily consider the year as 6 months of unemployment and 6 months of recovery from those harder times of our lives. I certainly don't expect easy times from now on, but it's nice to be in what I can consider easier times for a change. For absolutely no reason other than my bizarre love of numbers, let's break my life down into some segments:

By Age (in years):

1-4 - Pre memory for the most part, though I did become friends with Dennis during that time (in pre-kindergarten, Chipmunks 4 life!)

5-11 - I became obsessed with things I am still pretty obsessed with, Nintendo / videogames, Transformers, TMNT. At some point early on in these years I saw and liked Voltron and Thundercats, got toys for them, but then mostly forgot about them so my most vivid memories of those franchises are of the TOYS and not the shows themselves. Everything for me in this time period was put down to ambitions of what I'd be able to accomplish at the age of 12, I have no idea why but for young-Danny that was the age of supposed adulthood.

12 - I realized it was not, in fact, an age of adulthood at all and that I was not any closer to building a blue suited boy robot as my best friend (seriously)

13-15 - My dad probably started bugging me to get a job before this, but he started working at the age of 14 and that's when he could legitimately get on my case for being a bum. Middle School also introduced me to my friend Andrew the O, who would gateway me to becoming friends with Dave and thus is the origin of the power-friendship that would somehow lead to Critical Hits becoming a website that Wil Wheaton (who I was watching on TV at this age) knew the name of.

16-17 - Driving, gaming like crazy and also getting into board games in addition to playing all kinds of RPGs and videogames. Also I finally got a job in the kitchen at the local Olive Garden (thanks to Andrew working there already).

18 - End of highschool, summer of conventions and debauchery, then college studying Architecture, met Becky and life would never be the same again (take that as you will :P )

19-22 - Somehow ended up continuing to study Architecture, no matter how hard I didn't try at some points, moved in with Becky / got engaged, dealt with the ongoing realization that Becky was majorly depressed and how we were both going to handle it, then graduated and again somehow got a job that started one week after college. That was probably still one of the luckiest moments of my life because that was the ONLY place that offered me a job

23-26.5 - Working for a living, got married, awesomest. honeymoon. ever. (Disney World FTW) Adopted two cats, bought a house, adopted the cutest white German Shepherd in the world. Then got laid off from my job just shy of 5 years of professional experience.

26.5-27 - Endured 7 months of stressful but not entirely terrible unemployment, learned the incredibly valuable lesson that Becky and I can spent nearly 24 hours a day together, at home, with little to do and very much enjoy it - plus not really get sick of each other! Then getting hired at a new, incredible, and absolutely better than I could have even imagined job and now beginning to pay off some of ours bills from the last 8 years.

That's it, not sure why but just felt the random urge to break it all down like that. Hope you enjoyed it!

Quite thankfully, nearing the end of the book with The Shadow Rising has brought with it many interesting and cool events in the Wheel of Time universe so I'm back to reading quite a few pages per day and am up to 88% through the book, now a full 20% beyond where I was stalled for quite a while. It is a bit tough to remember things from the first 1/2 of the book having read them over a year ago, but once I'm finished with the book I'm going to read a synopsis of the whole thing to hopefully refresh me on all of the connections.

Oh also we're hosting our usual kickass Halloween party at the end of October, which I'm looking forward to a little too much. Becky and I have already decided on our costumes and it should be awesome. Pictures will definitely show up after the party!

Now That It Actually is Fall

Back in August I started a new series of posts for Critical Hits and I titled it "The Architect DM" because I received a lot of good responses whenever I discuss my professional and architectural education experiences with regards to RPGs and specifically D&D.

Part 1: Building Foundations
Part 2: Function & Playability
Part 3: Environment and Interaction

Perhaps the most interesting development of this series is that I've found writing these posts is not only easy - meaning I can come up with a concept for a post much more quickly than normal, but also I find it even more enjoyable than writing other things for blogs. Also writing more regularly on CH is rewarding on its own, so I'm planning on doing this series for as long as I can keep writing it and enjoying it.

As for my reading schedule, it has unsurprisingly slowed down post-Harry Potter, but I am now 74% of the way through The Shadow Rising when I was stalled at 67% for the last 6-8 months, so progress is being made! Becky really wants me to get through all of the Wheel of Time series (at least 8 more books...) because she enjoys discussing the books as I'm reading through them. I guess to her it's pretty much the same as re-reading them, but she also gets to discuss things with me and that's a plus, or so she says.

I haven't been creating that much artwork lately, but I can feel myself building up to a productive time with the ideas I have swimming around. I have a project for my friend Wyatt (a baby dragon with a treasure hoard) and I now have most of the supplies I could need for doing some acrylic paintings - my goal for the fall is to use up all of the extra canvases I have from as far back as college. Though it sounds kind of lame at first, I am probably going to try some Bob Ross style landscapes to start and then see what cool elements I can add into them!

Harry Potter Complete!

In just two days I couldn't help but fly through the 7th and final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I've surprised even myself by finishing the series WELL before November 19th, when the first part of the final movie comes out in theaters, and am hoping that I've now made a habit of making progress in my reading and I've already jumped back into Wheel of Time book 4, The Shadow Rising, and hope to finish it very soon. It's funny, because I was hoping to finish it by the end of LAST year, but we'll see how it goes now.

The change for me has been incredible, because I absolutely hated the first 2-3 Harry Potter movies because of the seemingly inane plot twists and, to be frank, ridiculousness of some of the things presented in the movie. It wasn't until Goblet of Fire that I started to enjoy the movies, and then with Order of the Phoenix I began to see the wider world behind it all and became a fan. I believe it was around that time that I finally read the first book, and enjoyed it but also didn't really desire to progress through the others at the time.

I was content to see the movies without reading the books, and I can now tell anyone who expresses the same opinion to me that this is absolutely NOT the way to go. I enjoy the movies so much more now that I've read the books, there are tons of little things thrown in that you simply don't notice or that literally make no sense at all unless you've read the book. The climax moments in Prisoner of Azkaban were confusing and didn't come over well just watching the movie, but once you've read the book and know the story behind it all the characters are nothing short of impressive and quite moving. So if you're one of those people who is watching the movies without reading the books, I can't tell you enough: Read the books as soon as you can!

It took me roughly 70 days to read all of the Harry Potter books from start to finish, and though I was going for a 41 pages/day pace I ended up at a healthy 58 pages/day. This was far from consistent throughout the 2.5 months, because I didn't read at all during GenCon and then read the entire last book in the course of two days, but it's a good average pace for sure!

I finished the book around 2am last night because I just could not put it down, and was very interested in the general feeling of loss that came both as I went to sleep last night and this morning. I mean loss in the sense that reading these books has been something I've simply been doing for the last 2.5 months, and now that thing is complete. I'll move onto reading other books for sure, but there simply won't ever be another time that I'll be reading the Harry Potter series for the first time.

This just looks nice:

Reading Extravaganza

Last night I finished book six of the Harry Potter series, The Half-Blood Prince, and promptly read the first 40 pages of the Deathly Hallows because it was my first real foray into uncharted territory with the series. This isn't entirely true because the amount of information and number of events that are in all of the books but don't make it to the movies is staggering, especially with book six where there are some key explanations of the origin, history, and even major motivations of the primary villain that are skimmed or completely skipped in the movie.

I am currently 83% of the way through the entire HP series, which means on Saturday and Sunday of this weekend I read a full 10% of the series and put myself WAY ahead of schedule. This is exactly what I wanted to do, but to be honest the books made it easy to accomplish. I now often find myself contemplating exactly what it is about certain books (HP being at the forefront right now) that make them so popular, interesting, easy and enjoyable to read.

As I've said a few times before, the crazy thing to me is that in just over two months I've read through six books, which is incredible for me considering the books are from 300 to 800+ pages which I would normally read much slower and do one book over the course of 1-2 months (or more). Both Becky and I are really hoping this continues even after I'm finished reading HP, because she is dying for me to get through all of the Wheel of Time books that are out so far, thankfully I have a bit of a head start because I'm currently almost all of the way through book 4, out of I guess 11+ books? Good god, that's going to be crazy.

Also on my reading list:

• Dune (the second time through will be awesome)
• Dark Tower
• 1984
  
• many and various HP Lovecraft short stories
  
• Game of Thrones (maybe?)
• Fall of Public Man and Conscience of the Eye (by Richard Sennett, Architecture/design/sociology books)
  

I'd actually love for anyone reading this to make further suggestions, if I haven't already read it I may end up adding it to my list and you will have greatly contributed to my edification in the wonderful world of books!

Now That It Feels Like Fall

Autumn is my favorite season of the year, so I am very happy that it is September and the weather is beginning to get cooler, windier, and pleasantly sunny. Another great thing is that our good friend Matt just bought a house about a mile from ours and we will most likely be spending a lot of time hanging out at his place or at ours now that he has moved out of the downtown area. In that vein fall also means that many people will be a lot busier on their weekends as we get closer to Halloween, Thanksgiving, and then Christmas and New Years so I'm hoping I can keep my D&D game and other activities with friends going through the busy times!

As far as reading goes, two weeks ago I had a day trip for work down to Jackson, Mississippi which marks my first journey actually into the Central time zone (I've flown over it once before) and my first time in a southern state that wasn't also on the east coast. During the four flights I had (in one day, which I do not recommend and hopefully won't be doing again anytime soon) the fortunate part is that I demolished the middle section of the 5th Harry Potter book, The Order of the Phoenix, which I finished reading two nights ago and have already started on The Half-Blood Prince.

Despite one of the most annoying villains (Umbridge), a lack of Dumbledore before the last 150 pages of the book, and Harry acting like the worst kind of teenager he could - Order of the Phoenix is at the moment my favorite of the books I've read so far. Goblet of Fire seems to be the favorite of a lot of people who read the books when they first came out, but to me the plot involving Mad-Eye Moody and how that turns out has always seemed very unsatisfactory to me. I'm avoiding any major kind of information that might be spoilers, but I'd be happy to discuss it further with any hardcore HP fans out there.

At the moment I am just starting the 6th book but am now 67% of the way through the entire series and very happy about it. Order of the Phoenix, as the longest book, pretty much accounts for 22% of the series which is ridiculous so reading that book took me from 45% through the series all the way to 65% so it definitely feels like the turning point of getting through all of the books. On top of that, I only have this one book left before I'm into completely uncharted territory (for me), though honestly the last few books have so much that was not even touched on in the movies that it feels like largely uncharted territory already.