Evolution of a Gamer: 30 years and still kickin open doors

The 24th of November will be my 30th anniversary playing role-playing games. Thirty years of highs, lows, and doldrums. Thirty years of managing to progress into being able to unashamedly experience the full range of emotions within the human condition. Thirty years of friends and fun and pain and a just a little regret. Thirty years of staying up nights trying to understand a characters motivations because before I could answer the questions, they were not fully formed in my head. Thirty years.

How did it all start?

I was 11 and summer vacations had moved into staying at home basically on my own. Both parents had to work, and my older sister had just graduated from high school. It was my first independent summer, and guys I knew from school said, 'Come over, we are going play Dungeons and Dragons." So, I rode my bike over every day and we played in Capt. Crunch's(known later as Hash Under Glass: Jerry B. I am looking at you!) dining room table, killing monsters, fighting giant rats with a 10' pole and basically really not fully understanding what we were doing. The only thing I can fully remember from that time was having fun, and my fighter (named quite appropriately: Brandon hehehe) died by falling in a pit with spikes. I can't even recall if we rolled dice for his damage or not. It didn't matter, I was hooked and my gaming experience would continue like this for about 1 more year.

My first vivid gaming memory, like I can taste it even now, was in November '79. Mulhead's brother brought home the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master Guide. There were only 3 of us then, in Mulhead's basement and we tore through the book, tried the best we could to use everything in it and played 'Hall of the Fire Giant King'. To this day, I can just about draw the entire module from memory including encounters. It is so indelibly burned on my brain. We spent literally days and nights playing straight through and ended up exhausted and victorious on the other side. Mulhead would fall away from RPG's after this, not really his thing, but SheepALittle and I would continue on trying various games that we could play one on one until we found other gaming groups.

I like to call the next bit my crawl period. I would find groups but they would only play a while, and then dissolve as people finished playing with their shiny new RPG toy today and discarded it the next. During this time, I got the pleasure of encountering characters such as My Lady Syphilis of Cellophane and learned to play in I-only-need-to-run-faster-than-you campaigns. Everything was a dungeon craw usually with no rhyme or reason. We killed everything, took their shit and didn't regret one minute of it, constantly looking for the next pile of heavily guarded treasure. This took up most of my early 80's gaming life, interspersed with jaunts into Diplomacy marathons and 3rd Reich tournaments. I used to spend just about every penny I had on gaming stuff, that I mostly didn't use, but the material I found there kept my imagination sparked and my interest deeply rooted.

Then I met K2. It was a chance meeting really, a friend of a friend said he knew the awesome dungeon master and asked if I was interested in meeting him. We hit it off and that led to some of the best gaming days in my life. I was in late high school, getting ready to head to college, and so time seemed to be mine. There was a core of 7 or 8 of us and we played at Wonder Couple's dining room table every night of the week from 4 or so until all hours. If I was not playing at K2's, I had games at Heimdell's, with 101 fully fleshed NPC days and started to somewhat understand the importance of relationships in RPGs. That there was something underlying all the hack, slash and stash going on. The good out of both groups ended up morphing into one at K2's. Some of us were working by then, so it would be an eight hour day at work or school, home to change clothes, stop and get Heimdell out of his sheet, head to K2's and play ADND until 3 or 4 in the morning. It was a time of quantity and we all gorged, puked and rallied.

When I think back on the years there, I can't understand how K2 did it. His stuff was not particularly in depth. Most adventures were within 3 days of town, that at first didn't have a name until his GF did a map of town and gave it name. That stuff wasn't important to K2, making the adventure interesting and challenging the characters were his forte. And he brought it, day after day, week after week, year after year and it never got boring. Sure there were times we would play something else for a short time (usually a few days), but then we would be back at. And with the same characters and I think our highest level character was a 14th level thief. I met a lot of friends who I consider still family today. Hair Club for Men (HCFM), and Heimdell to name a few.

I have to say this: K2 taught me a lot. He formed a lot of the DMing habits I have today. I learned how to wing it from him and how to throw something together at the last minute that was both interesting and fun. He was the one that encouraged me to do DM, and I found that I was really pretty good at it. As for the others, I learned strategy and tactics from the ex-military types in our group. I learned how characters who knew their place in an adventure and when to act, could make it tough on a DM.

I wish I could remember what broke it up. In my memory, that time just seems to have faded away and been replaced by something else. I want to say that some of us grew tired of the same thing, and decided to go do our own thing. I can't remember the time, only that it was later in the 80's and must have been '87 because the transition seems tied to the Forgotten Realms (FR) setting. I can remember HCFM and myself seeing the FR boxed set and getting excited about a whole world in detail. Again, I don't remember how or why, but we started playing at my place with myself, HCFM, Heimdell, and PinkFloyd.

This became the awakening for me. Again, we played just about every night of the week, even if it was just for a few hours. When we weren't playing, we were discussing how and what our characters were doing. The DM (usually me) would even handle things for characters that people wanted to do. It was here that characters became really more than just numbers on paper, they became flesh and blood. The players wanted things for their characters outside the adventuring, dungeon delving and monster slaying. That stuff became a means to and end. They wanted a life, it just so happened that being an adventurer was the best kind of way to do that. The Realms became a magical place for us. The detail involved pushed us to provide the same kind of detail in our games and characters. It all became so very important. Relationships were built that transcended the group loyalties. In arguments, you knew who would polarize with who. It became ok to have conflict with your fellow players, to be petty and to argue, just like friends do. Characters got married, had families and died of old age. It had become something more than before, I knew what it meant to 'be in character', to make decisions based not on your own life or because of situation but because this is how the character would act. Knowing a character so well, it became second nature.

But I grew restless, not out of boredom or mediocrity but because I thought that I needed to find a wider group to play with. See what others were doing and see how it compared to what I had been doing. So, HCFM and myself found a notice at the university that said they were starting a RPG club and anyone was welcome. We went to the first meeting, and literally we found ourselves in a room with nearly 60 other gamers, all looking for groups. There I noticed one of the few girls, thought I knew her, but wasn't sure where from. The meeting broke up into groups, and we joined the only 1st edition group forming and she was in it!

I would go on to eventually marry that girl, but that is another story. We have found a large group (8-10 of us) and met new friends, that I wished I had managed to keep, but eventually in the long run we wandered away from one another. We ran in Greyhawk under the auspices of Jafar and in between the friday nights at game club, we all gamed together during the week. At times, our separate groups would merge for a while to play other games and then split up again. I learned how to run games with 8 players and on up even to as many as 16. I can remember one day looking around the extra tables we had set up at the house to accommodate us all. I was running Rifts and there were 16 players, and it became a lot to manage all of them, but I did it and we had a pretty good time to boot.

It would be here that I realized that the small FR group that had been playing at my kitchen table were moving way ahead of others playing the game. While the college years lasted, we played beside a group that won the GenCon Masters Tournament several years in a row and although our group had never gone to GenCon, we beat those guys in role-playing at local tournaments. I guess at some point we had reached some height that we were all unaware of. Meanwhile, I had written Conceptual Realities (A try at my own game) and started my own world: Soleas.

As I alluded to before during this time, Jhi and I acquired The House. The house became the focal point of our lives and seemingly of all of our friends lives. We gamed there just about every night. Even nights when it wasn't planned, we would just call everyone and to the man, they would drop whatever they were doing and come over. People stayed the night, slept drunk under tables and we stayed up all night just talking. And although gaming was still a big focus in my life, I just miss those nights. The nights where someone (I didn't know who nor cared) would show at my door, we would watch TV, talk gaming some but usually just bullshit about life or philosophy or try to solve the worlds problems until literally the sun came up. That time made me realize that I only had gamer friends. A very select few gamer friends, but gamers nonetheless.

In the House, I grew into my own. Soleas became fully formed and the players brought it to life for me as much as I infused it with life for them. They contributed to it, lived in it, dirtied up the place and left it that way. To me, it still shines in my mind and although it rarely gets used today, I still pick up the binder and just marvel at what we accomplished. I would like to I accomplished there, but the good portion of it was just seeds, and that a groups energy turned into a living thing. Although we ended up moving on from the House and everyone seemed to follow us, we lost a few of the really important ones along the way to life. Marriage, children and responsibilities started rearing its ugly head and even Jhi and I would not be immune to it. We continued to play at the new place with the group, but as time went on it seemed to start slowing and then Jhi and I were presented with the opportunity to move from Ohio to Colorado. It was an off we couldn't refuse.

I had to say good-bye to that gaming life and our friends and truly at the time it didn't seem so bad, but as I type this I am looking through welled up tears. It was important to me. It seems silly but all those hours and energies put into something like a game, I wonder sometimes if on my death bed I will look back at it and wonder if it was all worth it, but I already know it was. I still want it back sometimes, but I realize that in a way it is just nostalgia. I simpler life and time where responsibilities and money didn't matter all that much. But what I really miss the friends from that time. I find it hard to let anyone close to me where friendship is concerned. i was told I am good at making acquaintances but friends almost never happen for me. I know I have mentioned those guys before but I can tell you that my heart truly enjoys hearing from Heimdell, PoB, Chaz and even the opportunity to see HCFM.

HCFM and I used to talk about some day having 'Osterman Weekend' games when we were older. Inviting our old gaming buddies to a cabin in the mountains for a long weekend to play again and try to recapture. I wonder if anyone would actually come if invited?

My new gaming life began in Colorado. Jhi and I talked about how to meet some gamer types, try to get a group started in CS and then we met some friends at a party. S, K, and Craing were mostly transplants and gamers. We started playing, eventually trying to add a few others that turned out to be a disaster with a notable exception in Beosig. We continued to play on a regular basis and had fun along the way. But I had lost something, that I could not find again. Gaming was just not the same, and I grew restless all the time. I was greatly unsatisfied. Not any of their fault, but my own lack of adaptation I think, but even though it is more recent, the memories still elude me. I tried going back to the basics and that helped for a while, I tried new games with the same result. Now I realize that those times were just different, but I couldn't accept that. I struggled, gaming became a chore and started slowly but surely losing its pleasure. In typing this, it seems odd that I cannot seem to pinpoint when groups broke up or how. I know that S&K moved away but it seems the rest of us continued playing in some fashion or another. And although we would move again, that group would make the trek to game on fridays or saturdays and a few new players would show up.

I dissatisfaction would not let me be. The struggle would become a burden I carried and take out to examine once in a while to try to figure out what I was so dissatisfied with. I would consider quitting and then not. I would try taking out the old stuff and turning it over to see if there was something in there that would spark me. The latest RPG stuff no longer interested me, even in a just-to-read fashion. I sold a good portion of my gaming stuff keeping mostly those things that reminded me of the old days. And this is how it went for several years. It seemed at times that I was playing just to be playing with not a single tingle to my reptilian pleasure center.

Now I find myself closing in on 30 years. My current group has changed face to one that is something I can work with. I hit "the groove" more often than not now, instead of a car with a bad piston. There is an exchange of energy and banter that makes the creativity increase. In the old days, it wasn't me dishing things out the players, but the exchange and back and forth that made it all exceptional. A collaboration, an almost montage of what everyone wanted out of the game, with each player seeking something different. That is happening again and although I don't live firmly in the games grasp anymore, there are times that I can't wait to look around the next corner. It is a small sparkle, some smoke and a bit of heat and just maybe it will ignite one more time into a passion before I go on the big adventure that everyone takes alone....

The Halo 3 recordings

Well, I haven't played Halo 3 but everything I see makes me want to just run out and get a 360 just to play it. I have played the other two and they were literally endless hours of fun. While skimming through news sites I read, I got a few links for the new video capture and editing you can do with Halo 3. It is really totally amazing. I haven't done any research, but I guess that when playing online Bungie records all the action so you can go back and look at it from different angles and stuff. I found these two particularly funny since this is really shit that happens to me playing Resistance on my PS3. I guess there is a reason my online name is R3sp4wn....:)

Random kill?

Traffic cone pwnage

Just dropping a line to let everyone I know I am still around.


K

Robert Jordan passes away

One of the greatest fantasy authors has passed away. Robert Jordan was a master of the craft. Apart from the world building, his advancing grasp of prose and the construction of the written word was extraordinary. As proof, go read the book not for the flight of fantasy and in depth characters, but read sections to appreciate how the books are constructed. How sentences become paragraphs and those paragraphs convey an image and energy unlike few other authors. For me, he will be missed.

It is unfortunate that his work will go greatly unfinished. The final book of his Wheel of Time series was said to be partially completed and he had an army of people translating his dictated notes and outlines for the finish. It is my hope that his overall vision is realized for what is a life's work. I hope that his works receive a better treatment than the Elder Tolkiens did. I can only hope.

Lets put on the black armband for someone who provided us with hours, days and months of entertainment in our lives.

Entitlement

Entitlement. The word has been coming up a lot lately in my life or examples of it have been rearing their ugly heads. Since it has been pushed to the forefront, I am guessing that the "choir" is trying to teach me a lesson. The most recent event is making me evaluate my own sense of entitlement. I am sure we all have it and pay attention to it one time or another in our lives.

The first time I saw this was about a week and a half ago. I was home at normal time, turned on the TV for some background noise and ended up not being able to find anything to watch. As I was flipping through the channels, I ran across Inside the Actors Studio: Michelle Pfeiffer. It was the last few minutes of answering questions and then her answer to the famous questionnaire. Her answer to "what word do you hate the most ?": Entitlement. And she goes on to explain how entitlement keeps people from doing their best work, or their best at anything and that all things should be about achievement. (I had always thought she was one of the most attractive women in Hollywood, but after hearing her speak, I just have to say, "look at the brain on Michelle!". She has totally got to be one of the hottest women around.)

Fast forward to last night, I was surfing channels again and started watching Dr. Wayne Dyer on PBS. I usually tune into his shows when they are on for a few minutes here and there because what he has to say rings really true to me. Last night, he was discussing the Tao Te Ching. A major component was to throw away your sense of entitlement and increase your life of giving. Many who know me know that the Tao means a lot to me and has for a long time.

In between those two goal posts, there have been instances of friends bringing up issues and arguments that really just boil down to entitlements. I deserve this or that. I have worked for it and now I deserve it.

For those of you that don't know me, I have no right to bitch or complain about my life. Everyday, I try to remember to thank the Great Spirit for everything I have. I make good money. I have a great wife who truly is a best friend, and no one could ask for a better partner to have in the foxhole of life. (Christopher Titus said it best, "She is my swiss army wife. She is everything I need.") I live in good neighborhood, and have all the material objects that realistically I could ever want or really need. I have a friends that care and dare say love me and a family that is better than any other.

So, what is all the hub-bub about? Well, this past week, my company got merged/sold/acquired or something. In the process, my options got vested and bonus' were given. Quite frankly, I wish they had just kept it. The time, sweat, blood and money that I have put into the company(8 years of calendar time, probably 12 years of my life) I think is worth a little more than $50/month. As one fellow employee said, "if we had gotten even 3% raises the past 5 years, we would be better off." Once they had actually put a value on the work I have done and the time taken out of my life for it, it is like a slap in the face.

So my question is: Is this an Entitlement? Do I have a right to grouse about it or feel shorted?

It is hard to see the guys who are getting like a factor of 10 more than me, saying that it is all going to be great. Some would say that the money was better than a sharp stick in the eye or not having a job after the company was merged into a larger organization. I am not so sure. In a way, it makes me think about all the inequities involved. At first, I saw that the money that had been set aside for bonuses was substantial, so my thought was that we will all be getting a decent bonus at least. I got roughly 10% of an even division of the bonus money. I am sure there are others out there that got substantially more. Probably the same individuals that ended up on the not-so-short end of the stick in the first place.

Will the merger be good for future business? yes. Will it help both companies grow and become a more formidable force in business? yes. Am I happy about this? sure. Will it help me in the long run? Probably not. As always in business, it feels like it will be good for everyone else.

So, the place I arrived at today was complacence. Why can't I just accept it, say thank you and move on? Because I feel Entitled to something more. but am I? really?

I think I will just resolve to quit bitching, post this, and say thank you everyday for the really important stuff in my life.

Breakage

Twofer today...I guess the wire post brought it up.

I lost a friend. And I pretty much deserved to I guess. I have not really "lost" other friends over the years, but more or less misplaced them. Mostly, once we moved, the two-way street of communication just didn't continue and I lost touch with them. They are still very important to me. There is not a single day I don't think about them and there is not a single one that if they called today and needed me I would not be there for them. No matter what. Mike, Joey, Chuck, Ron, Jim and Steve, you all know who I'm talking about here.

There have been a few times in my life, where to be quite frank I have just lost my ever-lovin' mind. I mean really. That something inside my head just snapped and the aftermath of those times are very hazy to me.

I had always wondered about the "snapped" analogy and when I actually dwell on the subject and the time, I can actually feel that something (not sure what) in my head just gave way. That the pressure build up was so terrible and once that snap happened all that pressure and all the stress just melted away. It seemed that those happened when I was least in control of my life, I guess. That in some way I was trapped and the only way out was just to walk away. And walk away I did. And it cost me.

Tony was a friend from back home. We started working together and became great friends. He was one of the few guys that I really got along with, we were unix guys, and computer guys, and in the early days of the I-bahn we were always on the bleeding edge. When he moved to CO, I wasn't too far behind in finding a job out here too. And we stayed in close touch and spent a great deal of our off time drinking and partying.

Tony moved on again to WA to work for Boeing, and found he could start his own consulting business. He was not much for working for someone else and had the drive to run his own show. Then he fell into a contract in NY working for Xerox. He needed help and the money was pretty good, so he called me.

The task was monumental. Xerox had no centralized datacenter for processing. If a group needed hardware or software, they would request it and run the system from underneath someone's desk. Our just was to bring it all in-house into a central datacenter and keep it running. The team of Unix guys grew to enormous proportions, but in the end there were only 3 of us: myself, Tony and BradG, that tackled the problems or did the oncall rotation.

My contract was for 6 months, by the end of month 2 I had worked nearly 4 months of my time. I had not been paid as yet and the pressure was relatively high. We had just gone through a series of meetings with Sun Microsystems, where to be honest it degenerated into who has the biggest tech dick in the room. Tony and I won that one. And finally to twist them enough to get them to do what we wanted, Kate the Xerox VP, showed them the amount of on-site staff supplied by Sun that we didn't have for the 12 e10k's we had. Tony, Brad and I were doing that work also.

OK, no readers digest version there. So it turned out one week, I was oncall, Brad and Tony were out of pocket and by that I mean, not even a cell phone or pager contact. We had problems with the E10k's and some systems, that I had in my 2 months not even touched. The days dragged on and the nights too since i was not getting much sleep at all. I needed to get a hold of one of those guys but couldn't. And then SHE was there. The hell-bitch that was our nemesis in all things.

I can't remember HB's name, but I could paint a picture if I had too. I don't even remember the interaction I had with her or the multitple time we had it out over those days. For once in my life, I felt incompetent and I really just could not handle that. It all built up and one day, I got a call from and old friend offering me a job. So, I quit, that day.

In my brain, it was so simple. In a way, it was like Bill Murray in 'Stripes' trying to escape from boot camp. Pack up, check out of the hotel, get in the car and go. And that is what I did. I walked off the job. I called and left messages with Tony and Brad, I packed my shit and left. I was pissed at them, basically they were out of contact so fuck'em, I will quit by leaving a voicemail. In the end, it was not the cool thing to do. Tony called and tried to get me back there to fix it all. I had hurt his reputation. And that is how it ended. I really didn't remember much until I was trying to replay it all in my head. I guess it doesn't matter.

What matters is I miss Tony. I have tried to contact him and mend it all but it has fallen on deaf ears. I don't blame him really, I would probably be in the camp. It is a lesson I learned and that I carry with me.

Oh the Wire thing. Tony used to say that all the time...So writing the wire post just brought it all back to me and I just felt like I needed to get it down somewhere.

Kol

Wire! WIRE! WIRE!!!

The title should be said in your best Beavis voice.:) For those of you too young, google 'Beavis and Butthead' or I optionally 'MTV lawsuit'...



So, work today consisted of removal of said wire and cabling from underneath our datacenter floors. Fun as that may sound, it helps if you are working with someone you actually like and not some ass-clown that you would rather just clock with a hammer and leave under the floor.

I used to like working in the datacenter. The sound of fans and coolers wooshing was I guess for me like the womb would have sounded. It was nice and comforting and very few others like it, so you pretty much get to work alone which I like. Hell, even crawling around and working under the floor was cool. Now its just a drag. It used to be being a cable monkey for a few hours a week was therapeutic, like soldering something. Times change I guess and getting older seems to make me want to do more of the "in case of emergency break glass" or architectural type work.

The nice thing about computers is they don't talk back to you that much nor are they idiotic (I guess unless you are working with Windoze). Being a Unix guy, my life has been spent with the command line and working with machines that actually run without intervention. Once you get them set up and all your system management stuff out of the way, the servers only really complain when they have a problem. And my servers only ever really call me to let me know how they are doing.

Again, I am never sure why I post this stuff, but maybe I will just start posting things about what I have learned doing Unix Shit for like *works the abbacus* 20+ years now. It seems that the system administration skills that used to be so important are becoming like the main framers were to us 10 or 15 years ago. We thought of them as dinosaurs. Now all the stuff you really need system admins for are slowly being taken over by software and HOWTO's and google. But really I say 'fuck that' because google hasn't been around the block like I have. And really, when its crunch time, its the guy that has seen the problem or situation before and his gut that will fix the problem...

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

I still don't know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets
Every time I thought I'd got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me
But I've never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I'm much too fast to take that test

(thanks Mr. Bowie)

I am not who I am supposed to be. I know this in the very core of my being. When I ask myself who I am, I get a distinct answer that I know is right.

How does one change their life? Who they are? Know you are someone who you are not today, but don't know how to get there?

Those are a lot of the questions I have been dwelling on lately. I seem to have been at a crossroads looking this way and that trying to figure out which way I am supposed to go, or not rather which way, but actually setting foot on it. Starting the journey. It is decidingly frustrating for me, as I am usually good a deciding a course of action and executing.

When I was younger, people used to remark on my patience and tenacity. I seem to have misplaced those somewhere along the way. I can't seem to summon either up now to help me change. There are temporary respites when I can manage to focus on what is important but those never last for more than a few days at most. A couple of days on average. It is as if I know where I am supposed to go, but I can't bring myself to go there. Perhaps it is fear.

A wise man once told me that all people suffer from at least 1 of 12 fears. I can't remember them all now but I am sure that I suffer from more than 1. Most of the important decisions I make, I make either out of fear or based on fear. He also told me that my greatest challenge in life is that I am not only my own worst enemy, but also my own worse critic. Lately, I have been trying to assure that fear has no hold on me, or that I go into something with an open mind. I also am conscious of being to hard on myself, or actually feeling like a failure. It goes a long way to making things better, but even this is not making me make any forward motion.

How does one break the cycle of living enough to change? Its not like I don't have the time to make the changes, but it is like I lack the drive. I would rather do anything else than work at changing. Does that mean I am not meant to? Or that I am just too lazy to make it happen? Or that I don't want it enough? I dunno. I don't even know why I am writing this other than I guess I needed to get it out.

Kol

Redneck Trailer

So, there it is. WhatsHerFace, wanted me to post this so everyone could have a laugh. I am going home(to Ohio) this summer and decided I needed a trailer to bring the Nomad on vacation with me. Trailers out here go fast, as an example, craigslist listings sell in less than an hour or so for a decent used trailer. I got in on this one, and went ahead and bought it.

The plywood was bolted on, which I quickly removed. Taking harsh comments about my trailer ALMOST made me keep the plywood sides, painting them black and putting flames on it. As we all know, flames on anything gain you about 10 h.p.:) Anyway, I don't have any pics of it after the work I did, but suffice to say I needed to replace lights, the jack and rewire the harness. Add a hitch and wiring to the Jeep to get ready. Along with drilling a hole in my gas tank on the jeep that I had to fix also. All in all, it took a lot time but everything was pretty simple to fix.

Finding loading ramps has been a chore. The Nomad weighs in at a hefty 800lbs so finding a ramp that will support just that weight is not easy. There are several types but finding them in time for vacation seems to be difficult at best. I have been to just about every hunting/fishing/truck accessory store: bass pro, gander mountain and others to no avail. When I do find them, I will post them with pics of the new trailer and bike on there. I think there is a series of posts coming about my vacation hopefully. I am not exactly a blogging maniac.

So, finally I think I am ready to go home for a week or so. I have been looking forward to the trip but it seems like I have been preparing for the trip for 2 weeks now. But it will be nice to get home and have the Nomad to ride around on while I am there.

2 mantools worth of labor (including patching the gas tank)

First tattoo

There it is. My first tattoo. It went through a lot of iterations (well 2) with differing ideas, but I ended up with something that symbolizes a great many philosophys and beliefs that I hold. It also manages to harken back to another life, as well as reminding me in this one to not get bogged down in the mundane shite we all have to put up with everyday.

Mainly, that accumulating "stuff" is not what its about, and to do something with your gifts. To know who you are simply by asking yourself and trusting the answer. To not allow fear to rule your decisions or keep you from your goal. To understand that the mind is a tool, not who you are, that it needs to be quieted or it will run your life.

This tattoo was born of the Ouroboros and runic lore. Both of which I have been drawn to all of my life.

The tattoo was always centered around the Ouroboros, and its associated meanings. The cycles of life and renewal, the understanding of the unity of us all.

As for the runestave, it started out life as another design in the center of the Ouroboros. However, the more I meditated about it and asked, I suddenly sat down and sketched the snake and the runestave with it. I barely remember doing it, but there it is(People who know me can attest I can barely draw stick figures). It is something I needed and serves as a reminder to not squander the gifts that I have. If you want a breakdown, the staff consists of the runes: Eihwaz, Kenaz, and Algiz. I wish I could express everything it does mean to me, just suffice I guess to say that it goes much deeper than what I have put here.

Difficulty: 1 mantool

Latest phone

So, I was out riding the Nomad with WhatsHerFace this weekend and stopped at cingular to upgrade my brick of a phone to something else. I ended up with the CranBerry(Red Blackberry pearl).


At first I wasn't sure that it was for me, or that I would like the qwerty keyboard integrated with the phone pad. After a bit of practicing I now can go pretty fast on the little keys. I also tried many times getting my email set up and web browsers working, applying all the patches but no go. I finally called the old att wireless-cingular-the new ATT support and found out the store sales girl did not add a blackberry plan to my phone, so no browser or email capability.

I had the rep add the functions and now I have full web access and email access. This phone rocks now! The map features rule and the web browsing is fast and easy to use. Big plus on the format of this phone, getting a blackberry that actually fits in my watch pocket is great. Better than carrying the blue berry brick around.

Setup on this phone was easy once I got the correct services added to the phone. I decided to not use our company Blackberry Enterprise services and used the Blackberry Internet Service. I went to the mycingular blackberry website and signed up for an account and added my email accounts. These almost immediately showed up on my Pearl's desktop. One of the cool things is email addresses like gmail.com and netaddress.com are supported by Blackberry so I all I had to do was enter my account info, they configured the server info for me!

One difficult thing was to get the patches and upgrade the phone. This should be done first, and unfortunately the website link I got at the store, was incorrect. I had to hunt down the links on the cingular site, which were not easy to find either. You should find the Blackberry support page that has the latest Desktop software and the patch. Install both and upgrade the phone.

Difficulty: 1 geek mantool, 3 geekless mantools

Synchronicity Toy?

Well since WhatsHerFace beat me to it(and she was out of town) I ran out and picked up my latest toy! Here is a Ad photo of my new 2007 Kawasaki Vulcan 1600 Nomad. Since it was fresh out of the crate at the shop and the weather sucking this weekend, I won't get to pick it up until mid-week.

In true under-achieving type-A fashion, I went to my bank and got a loan done before I went shopping. At the store, I decided to see what kind of deal they could make me, which was about 4 points lower than the bank.

I had been looking at the Nomad for a while since deciding not to get the Triumph Rocket III or a HD of some sort. On the floor, they only had a Vulcan 1500 and 1600.

After much gnashing of teeth, I decided to get the 1500 because of its look and kind of retro styling. However just before doing the paperwork, the sales guy casually mentioned he had an all black Nomad in a crate in the back and asked if i would be interested. Hell yes! It was almost the exact bike I was looking for originally (it was all black and I REALLY wanted the two-tone ebony/titanium version). He obliged to allow me to see it in the crate so we took a walk out to look through ginormous crate farm full of ATV's and bikes of all kinds. We walked the crates and could not find it anywhere. The only 1600 we could find was in red(blech).

The shop manager said that it was definitely out there. On our way back out the third time, I noticed tucked back amongst all the ATV's and dirtbikes that had been assembled, I thought I saw it sitting there. I pointed it out and sure enough it had been assembled except for a few miscellaneous parts that had been mis-shipped. And it was not black, it was the two-tone model I had dreamed about!

Too late for the long story short, but I ended up with the two-tone Nomad for the price of a black one, and a few dollars more off to boot. One of the best buying experiences ever for me! If you are buying in colorado, check out Rocky Mountain Cycle Plaza in Colorado Springs. Ask for Greg, he rocks!

ManTool

Oh and a special thanks to Ballz and V900Girl for waiting what turned out to be most of saturday with me.

UPDATE: Here is the animal at home:

1995 Defender upgrade

This is my first post, and really I am not good at the blog-idea thing. Since I work around my garage and house quite a bit, I decided that I would post the project I was working on the past few days. And since my Defender 90 is probably my most prized possession, I decided the first Mantools post should be about it.

This is my D 90:


It is a 1995 and number 339/500. I love my truck.:)

This week I swapped out the water temperature gauge from the stock I-think-I-might-be-overheating gauge to the a new VDO Vision Series gauge. (BTW, egauges.com rocks!). It also required that replace the water temperature sensor with a VDO 323-417. I ordered several sizes until I finally got the correct one. I found several sizes on threads posted on the D-90 Source forums. My 1995 took an M16x1.5 thread sensor.

It required I pull out the instrument cluster. This was easy, just 4 screws, and it pops right out. Remove the old gauge, replace the electrical connectors with spade connectors that the VDO gauge needs and reassemble the cluster. Be sure the sheathing on your speedometer cable is still slid completely into the back of the speedometer or you will end up with a bouncing speedo! This was a pain to do, but I was able to slide the sheathing toward the speedo while pusing the cluster back in the dash.

Get under the hood and replace the Temperature sensor. It is located just left of the water pump, close to the Thermostat. It has a single green wire running from the stock sensor. Unplug that and get a 19mm deep well socket and loosen it. If you can, park the truck with nose up and this will help alleviate coolant loss. You should take precautions by putting a pan down there to catch the fluid, there will be some loss. Remove the old sensor, and put the new sensor in its place, tighten it down until it is snug. On the wire, replace the spade connector with a ring type connector.

Start up the truck and check for leaks and watch to see that the gauge starts showing temp. Mine runs at right around 180 Degrees F.

The light and readability of this gauge is awesome.

The only drawback is now I am going to have to replace the other gauges.

Difficulty: 1/2 a mantool