The Short Walk

I don't miss my commute. Not one bit.

On Monday I walked to my new job, about eight blocks and 10 minutes from my house (20 if I stop for coffee at the Cosmic Cup). It's been hellishly humid, which makes things uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as sitting on I-78 for an hour.

And heck, if I feel like it (like say, today) I can hang out at the coffee shop for a half hour or so, writing for Nuketown, checking up on the weather, listening to jazz, whatever.

As for the job itself, well, it's meeting and often exceeding my expectations -- cool people, cool technology, cool campus, cool college. Noticing a trend here?

Truth be told I haven't been able to really sink my teeth into the Web stuff yet, as I'm still running the meeting and paperwork gauntlets, but I've got a good idea where the challenges lie, and what I'll be tackling first.

Ayn Rand Comes to Philadelphia

Almost evertying associated with the Ayn Rand Institute seems to happen on the West Coast, since that's where it's headquarters is. But in September they're coming east, with a talk called "The State of ARI", given by Yavin Brook, the institute's executive director. It's being held at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 6 at Hilton Philadelphia City Avenue, 42000 City Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19313. For more information call (215) 879-4000.

I doubt I'll go, what with starting a new job and all, but its nice to see they'll be in the area.

WoW

What a difference a few weeks make. I've finally finished up at my old day university day job, and am enjoying a week off with my family before I start my new (and very, very, local) college day job. I had my first official function at the new job: a gathering of new faculty and staff hosted by the college's provost. It was very cool -- I got to meet a few of my co-workers, talk about the college and generally have a good time. All in all, it was an excellent experience, and proof positive I made the right decision in leaving my job of seven years.

On a geeky note, right now I'm seeking out Tinkertown in Ironforge, intent on taking the Deeprun Tram to Stormwind in order to complete a quest for my 10th level dwarf, Delven.

Yep, I'm playing World of Warcraft. I'll admit I'm slightly buzzed as I do this -- Sue's sleeping, Jordan's at the grandparents, and if there was ever a time to throw back a beer or three and play Warcraft, this is it. I'm on vacation, don't need to get up until whenever, have a ready supply of Weyebachers beer and a newly iTunes-purchased copy of The Cult: Greatest Hits; yeah, it's a pretty damn good night for gaming and drinking. Plus, as all geek dads can relate to, an opportunity like this won't come along for another six months, if then!

The Forum Speakth

The forum is coming along nicely; we've got seven members and a few active conversations, including "What are you reading now?", Dead SciFi RPGs and Radio Active Show Feedback. I expect it'll take a month or two for it to really get up to speed, but its nice to see things are picking up.

Spycraft 2.0

I'll be picking up a copy of the 2nd edition Spycraft rule book as soon as I can find one. From what I've read on Alderac's Web site and on the Spycraft Yahoo Group it looks pretty darn good: they appear to have streamlined the system nicely (gear up in 10 minutes? excellent!) while at the same time making the system generic enough to run a variety of present-day and near future adventures.

Nuketown on SCIFI.com

Nuketown's reviewed in this week's edition of SCI-FI.com's Science Fiction Weekly. Very cool.

Radio Active #13

Radio Active #13 is now live; this time around I talk about the Battlestar Galactica: Season 1 Soundtrack, talk about recent updates to the mothership, offer a brief review of The Random Signal podcast, and review the Monster Manual III sourcebook for Dungeons & Dragons. Check out the show

Nuketown Forum Launched

Nuketown's back up, and I'm happy to say that the ol'thermonuclear burg's much-discussed, long-delayed online message forum is finally online. Check it out.

Nuketown's Down

I don't know what the problem is, but Nuketown's down. This particularly sucks because I'd finally gotten the forum software up and running last night, and was hoping for formalize the list of discussion topics today, with an eye toward publically launching the whole thing tonight.

We're working on getting it back up; I expect that'll be sooner rather than latter. Or at least, I hope it will be.

E-mail Hell

You know, you never realize just how deep an e-mail hole you're in until you sit down and take a good, hard look at your inbox.

That's what I'm doing tonight, and man, what a freaking mess this thing is. A summer's worth of haphazard correspondence, not to mention a small but annoying pile of spam that managed to evade my filters has piled up. And sorting through it all, sending off responses that should have been sent off weeks ago, may take me to the wee hours of the morning.

Or at least until 9:30, when I'll be meeting some friends for Warcraft.

Something Strange This Way Comes

Nuketown is switching hosting providers, and that could result in some strange errors as the DNS servers switch over. Errors will probably be limited to the occasional weird MySQL result complaint, and perhaps a few lost pages, but we expect all of the hiccups to be over within 48 hours. At that point we'll be able to do some really cool things ... like install our bright, shiny new message forum!

I won't be posting to Nuketown until the DNS change has propegated, so you'll have to rely on The Atomic Age for all your thermonuclear commentary needs.

Dragon's Landing

I'm eager to check out the The Dragon's Landing Inn podcast, which I just heard about today via Mur Lafferty's podcast. It's a gaming centric podcast, and seems to have diverse tastes, as evidenced by the notes for Show #3.

Show #3? Man do I have ever have some catching up to do. Unfortunately the show comes too late for my Knights of the Dinner Table column on gaming podcasts, but at the rate at which these shows are proliferating, I may have to do a second one later this year.