The more things stay the same the more they change…
One of the rules of this blog is that I don’t apologize for lapses, though I am not proud of how many entries I have started along these lines. As explanation, and not a complete one, let me offer this:
People ask me what’s going on in my life, and I’m not certain how to answer them. My life is as stable as a life can be outside of an institution. I am enjoying it. The personal problems I face all seem solvable.
When I talk about my plans for the future, I either mean minor improvements to the current situation, or my grander plans for when this situation inevitably falls apart.
The news in my life, that I could share with strangers, once I am convinced they have an actual interest, is loss. Since you have read down this far, I am making that assumption.
I have had to replace my air conditioner at considerable expense. That expense is manageable, but it does noticeably tighten my margins. There are some line items in my budget that are no longer goals, but mandates. Don’t cry, they are all actually discretionary.
The other is that my mother passed away recently. I am too old to consider this small talk. This was my mother’s third and final bout with cancer, and she knew, after surviving the second, that she was playing with house money from there on out and conducted her life accordingly. She died in her house, surrounded by family – or would have been surrounded by family, but it was two in the morning. But someone was staying wit her 24/7 at that point.
My Mommy (foreground) experiencing ordinary life at my house…
This was in April. There was a Celebration of Life in May at the church I grew up in and that she still attended. I read a poem. You can read it here. [3rd one down]
I learned a lot recently about David Crockett in the process of writing a short story about him for an anthology. It was rejected, a trivial loss, but still a loss. It was about his encounters with Goldilocks the were-bear, loosely based on the sample cast character I made for Go Action Fun Time, which was loosely based on the folk tale. I have no idea what to do with this story now.
My source for Corckett was his partial autobiography and the book, David Crockett – The Lion of the West by Michael Wallis which provides a reasonably sober and detailed account.
David_Crockett_portrait_by_Chester_Harding
Of the frontier heroes we were taught to worship in grade school (in the 1970’s) Crockett stands up pretty well to the light of actual history. He was an absentee husband and father, owned slaves from time to time (though he never actually bought one – they were all trades or gifts) and his unwillingness to compromise doomed his political career. Compare to his contemporary, Daniel Boone, who propped up his fortune by smuggling slaves into Texas, or Kitt Carson who openly advocated native-American genocide.
And Congressman Crockett might have honestly been the best hunter in all of Tennessee.
My source for Goldilocks, in contrast, is all poppycock.
A lost farmgirl begins replacing the fox in the old English folktale in versions circulating in the Appalachians in the early 19th century. Also, this is as close as we’re going to come to Laura Ingalls with super-powers.
The three faces of Goldilocks
As a young girl, Goldilocks encountered some suspiciously civilized bears in the backwoods. You know the story. What’s left out is that the youngest bear bit her, and she contracted Lycanthropy.
Anyway, those two met in my short story “David Crockett’s Last Bear Hunt – A Tall Tale with Context”. It remains unpublished.
I have determined that short of a full-on marketing campaign I am unable to put together a viable group to play Go Action Fun Time at my house or anywhere else. Filtering for those who say they want to play, but really do not, you run into this dynamic: the people with the means to play – meaning get to and spend 4-5 hours someplace besides where they live – do not have the time, and the people with the time do not have means. I know people who want to play who have neither the means nor the time.
(If you want to propose a solution that uses the term Discord – the invitation is below. Visit the server and make your case. Otherwise, join the rest of humanity and ignore my server in silence.)
There is some evidence that this problem is inherently intractable. But I need to filter for 1) Me, as a GM and 2) the game itself. So if you have a regular RPG group going that’s not Dungeons and Dragons, let me know how you do it, either in comments, or (heh) on Discord.
And my longstanding offer of free materials (at least as PDF’s) still stands for anyone who want to try Show-running.
Speaking of terrible losses…
The way I filter for the game itself is to try and run something else.
Section 31 – the grimdark spies from Star Trek, were done dirty by a terrible TV movie, and will likely never get a proper series, even if the franchise itself survives the Paramount massacre.
I didn’t get a chapter done on my novel. I became bogged down in day-job stuff, and research.
To whit:
Gravity is not really about mass but about density, which is something I should have known 40 years ago, but am just now wrapping my brain around. Jupiter’s mass is 300x that of Earths, so you think it would have a massive gravity well.
Nope. While it does have the most gravity of any Solar planets, that pull is only 2.58g.
So, the gravity is not the biggest obstacle when trying to fly a spaceship in and out of a gas giant. It going to be radiation from Jupe’s massive magnetic field, and the 1000+ km/hr winds typical of the upper atmosphere. Further in, you have crushing heat and atmospheric pressure.
As much as I dislike the singular them as a personal pronoun – because it is inherently inaccurate – there is no better solution to non-gendered personal pronouns currently in use in American English. There’s a character that is not really trans and not really multiple-personality, but has the problems of both and, well, they need pronouns. I could make some up. The characters actually speak Terran, which while derived largely from English, is not English, but I have a lot to do – like fly half destroyed spaceships into gas giants, and I don’t want to waste word count on the future of pronouns.
When you lose a good habit, it becomes progressively harder to get back into it. If you don’t know where I’m headed with this, look at the date of the last entry. But don’t worry. This is not a blog about blogging – or worse – not blogging.
These are notes I post for my convenience and perhaps your benefit.
I suffer from a surplus of ideas. I do. I think they’re all good, and I’m right about half the time. That aside, the number of options is a paralysis point where I get locked up trying to decide what to write next, and end up writing nothing.
I had, at one point, a weekly schedule where each day of the week is assigned a broad category. These schemes change over time, and they inevitably fall apart as my life periodically becomes unstructured, but they have worked for month at a go.
Here, for my reference, is the latest scheme:
MONDAY – Research and/or classes. If I’m learning something by You-Tube, this is where I watch those.
TUESDAY – Non-fiction project. Currently that means Are We Lost Yet, though I am casting about for a book length project.
WEDNESDAY – Fiction Project 1. Currently that is the sequel to the Secret History of Empress Em. We are about 80% on the 1st draft, which puts us merely 4 months behind my internal schedule.
THURSDAY – This blog. Writer’s Group. Word count is due.
[Yes-this post went up on Friday. WordPress made me change my password, which was beyond me late last night. ]
FRIDAY – Fiction Project 2 – which has been Go Action Fun Time for a number of years now, as that RPG is a chasm of need.
If I miss a day, I’m supposed to make that up over the weekend. That does not always happen.
Now, I must caution my workaholic self that these are internal, non-binding goals. I must be careful how much I emotionally invest in them. There’s not enough money on the table to call this an actual job.
RANDOM FACTS:
There are no green stars. At least – not for humans.
The gravity of gas giants is lower than I supposed. Even might Jupiter is 2.4 g, compared with some rockey exo-planets they estimate to pull 5g. So, the hazard of flying into a hot gas giant isn’t the gravity, it’s the temperatures. Atmospheric pressure in our own gas giants, and cold and far-away as they seem, are routinely 1000k + in atmospheric temperature.
There are three phases of NBA defense: before the trading deadline, after the trade deadline and playoff, each getting progressively stingier. Some ex-player pointed this out on sports radio, and it makes clear sense to me.
I have heard or read somewhere – that I can longer identify – that it takes three lucky breaks in a row, or three bad breaks in a row to change the direction of a life. This is a broad generalization, and there are a lot of caveats. That same source further asserts that good or bad breaks are equally likely.
A break, here, is something that happens completely by chance. We are not talking about found opportunities or wasted miscalculation. You find money. Your car is recalled. Events that are out of your direct control. The random event cards of real life.
Bad breaks can be mitigated by resilience or surplus resources. Good breaks can be squandered by poor decisions or self-sabotage. These notions form the gist of an entire self-help genre that we do not have time for here. Just file this general premise while we get through some news.
We’ve been busy.
UnObtanium Bazaar had a good winter season. Our stint in at Two Rivers Renaissance Faire in Yuma set new records for a weekend event. We vended at the SCA’s War of the Phoenix for the first time, so we have no metric for how well we did, but we made money. We did well at London Bridge RF in Lake Havasu City. We did OK at Las Vegas Pirate Fest.
What do you supposed happened to consumer sentiment between the January faire in Yuma and the late April Pirate Fest? This was the same booth in the midst of the same sort of audience. It is slower to hit us than many, because we are a niche market, and we do not rely upon imports. But consumer spending over that time has slowed, and is now declining.
Yeah, it bounced back a little in June. It is still way under what it was this time last year.
We are still doing our shows with the confidence that our hobby will pay for itself, and the renovated Cave of Wonders. But the Trump administration just flailing is sapping the joy from the edges of the economy. In another year, this hobby may join a long list of things we can no longer afford to do.
Imagine the damage they would cause if they were competent?
Hanlon’s Razor: “Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Some versions say incompetence instead of stupidity, which I actually prefer. Some add: “for the latter is far more likely” – which is certainly true, but not part of the original quate.
When speaking of current politics, we must also note an unofficial corollary:
Grey’s Law: Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
Last episode we described how Oliver! had a good break in stumbling upon a room-mate. That lasted four months out of their remaining six month lease. I am not authorized to discuss the details of that disaster. I ended up paying most of the last three months of rent. And nobody was happy about that.
Oliver! and Pippa in what was their apartment.
No good deed goes unpunished.
While zer life fell apart around them, Oliver! still managed to graduate from ASU with a BA in Music composition. (Part of the reason I paid the rent was to make certain that could happen.)
Yes, Pippa walked with her through the ceremony.
Then they moved in with us.
Then Pippa died.
RIP- The bestest dog!
Yes, it was about that sudden.
For perspective, Pippa wasn’t just a personal pet, she was a legit emotional support animal traing to be real service dog, and a central part of Oliver!’s overall brand.
Everything about Olivers!’s life is different than it was two months ago, and little of it for the better. Two bad breaks in succession, but not three.
They’re looking for a job. Not as a composer, but any normal entry-level job that would push them back towards solvency. They are due for a good break. They are not at all guaranteed one.
Ruby Vroom (2015 Subaru Forester) in the wild.
While this was going on, my son discovered that the loan company had called the note on the 2016 RAV 4 that he basically used as a residence. So I sold him Ruby Vroom.
Rather, I am “loaning” him Ruby Vroom until he pays off my asking price.
I had been mulling selling that car anyway, because it is ten years old, and my day-job contract has a vehicle re-imbursement that stipulates “late model”. But I was going to wait until the end of the year, after it crossed the 200k mile threshold, for sentimental reasons, and to see if the tariff situation stabilized enough that the late-model car situation might stabilize.
Ben at home in Ruby Vroom
I learned that if you are not financing with the dealer (I had a note from my credit union) you are a second-class customer. That process is a whole article we don’t have time for here. I do note grimly that this will be the first time I have a car payment in over two years. I did not miss that at all.
Nope. Into the teeth of the tariffs I go shopping and come back with a 2022 Hyundai Tucson Hybrid.
The one time Tucson gets to look down upon Phoenix. Myself and Hunny (the 2022 Hyundai Tucson Hybrid) at Dobbins Lookout on South Mountain.
Last episode we also speculated on when (or if) I would finish the Go Action Fun Time Monstrous Directory.
I did.
The print version is still in proofs, but you can buy the PDF at Drive Thru RPG – or just email me and ask for it.
I removed it anyway – and I regret little. But the reason I removed it last weekend evaporated by the end of this weekend, and that was positive development that I am grateful for.
Also, young renters, read your damn lease. All of it. Before you sign it. Take notes if you have to.
Before I explain any of that, some announcements:
Go Action Fun Time at my house any Sunday (except tomorrow) that I am home. I will announce these things by e-mail and Facebook. If you do not read such things, please let me know how the hell I am supposed to reach you if your are interested.
That means the next game is Sunday, December 8. 3pm. Episode TBD.
It is my intention to train Show Runners, people who actually GM GAFT. But first we all have to learn how to play.
There will be more on this later on. Back to Cholla.
Dripping with unattractive hazard…
Our House, Casa Blanca, came with chain-fruit cholla cactus in the backyard. It is native to this area, but very much unwanted. Besides being unattractive even by cactus standards, it is hazardous even by cactus standards.
And it was presumed, in the 3rd weekend of November, that I was soon to have a dog living at the house, and by extension the yard. Having a vet pull cactus from your dog is not cheap or fun. Besides, this had been on the Master To Do List since we moved in.
Originally, I planned to hire people to do this, but the landscapers are still trying to catch up from Covid – and that budget naturally evaporated into other projects. And there it sat, dripping menace onto the dirt.
For most of this year, my son, Ben, has been using my house as his permanent address. His practical address has been wherever he parks his SUV – which he is effectively living out of. Ben works in the wilderness, clearing brush, building trails and lately felling trees. That’s been generally one week on and one week off. Through the summer, he has spent most of those off weeks camping somewhere in the wilderness, and coming into Phoenix for supplies and appointments and such.
As the snow starts to cover the rim country, he spends more and more time down here, sleeping in his car, in the backyard. Yes, he uses our kitchen and our plumbing and our internet, but he finds his car more comfortable than the guest bedroom.
So that space was available when my other child, Oliver! (that’s the official spelling), finally realized her room-mate was never going to actually pay her share of the rent, and, with savings now exhausted, Olver! had no way to cover their half anymore. So Oliver!, and the dog, cat and drum set that come with them, would break the lease and evacuate to Casa Blanca.
Promises were extracted. Plans were made. Favors were called in. Cactus was removed.
It helps to have a son who removes plants with chainsaws and other implements of destruction for a living. It also helps to own actual pitchforks – which we do. So the process of chopping that horror to bits and piling it on top of tarps in Rattletrap (one of my trailers) was not as horrific as you imagine.
Ben doing the part that went well.
It was not at all fun – but not the terror we expected.
What I learned at the city dump was that all of that horror was too heavy to be drug out just by pulling on the tarps. Foolishly, I had left the pitchforks and other tools at home, confident that this tarp thing would work. I had thrown two broken chairs on top of the wagon, to hold the tarp down and, and because they were garbage anyway. After close to an hour of watching us try to scrape cholla cactus out of a rusty wagon using broken chairs, some guy gave us a shovel.
That shovel now goes out with rattletrap – I don’t care what we are doing.
Anyway, it’s gone.
The next day, Oliver! finally read the rest of the lease and discovered the termination fee was nearly three times what we expected.
Dudley getting what he really-really wants.
This brings us to Thanksgiving. We learned that Sulcata Tortoises will eat pumpkin, but really want watermelon. We found a recipe for “pumpion” pie from the 16th century and that pie got eaten while the traditional pump[king pie had nary a slice taken from it. We chopped some holes in the big cholla stump, filled those holes with kerosene, and ended the night with a bonfire, certain, as we lit the flames, that we would spend the next three days moving Oliver! out and negotiating some sort of payment plan with the corporate landlords.
But by the end of the bonfire, Oliver! had a room-mate. And since neither one has called me in a panic yet, I am assuming that deal is holding.
So – more whiskey. And a lot less brush and hazard in my yard.
I’m doing most of the art as well.
I am hoping to have the GAFT Monstrous Directory a thing you can buy – at least in PDF form, by the end of the year. It is based on Teeth and Talons II, with some line-up changes, so that leaves it 2/3 drafted. I still have hope. But that’s all I’ve been working on since the start of November. I’m behind, because of crap like sudden cholla removal, but not disastrously so.
So, we may be doing some Maze of Mayhem just to test some monsters out.
When we are done, there is still plenty of cactus stump left to burn.
This is not where I tell you it’s not going to be as bad as you think. It could very likely become even worse than that. I hate this outcome too, for I have never been a fan. This is about getting through your trauma and anxiety right now.
Right now, we do not know what the coming Trump Administration II – The Trumpening will actually be able to do. Some of this is because what Trump says and what he does are often at odds. But it is mostly because the federal government is a vast, complex machine with too much inertia to dance quickly to any madman’s schemes.
He cannot be a dictator on Day One. He can, and likely will, work towards that, but there are still a lot of steps. Meanwhile, he needs collaboration, which he will likely have, but that means a lot of voices chiming in to pull the thing in many different directions. So, no-one, not even Trump, really knows how this will all come out.
So, for your own sake, try not to worry about the nebulous future. There will be plenty of opportunity to emote as it congeals into a clear menace. Meanwhile, focus on problems you can solve, and then focus on what you may need to get done while this is still a country we recognize.
Even if nothing much happens, there is value in doing things that need to be done sooner rather than later.
The challenge, for all of us all the time, is to not live in fear. Fear is what made this possible. Well fear and ignorance, but mostly fear.
No one who actually understands economics voted for Trump for his fiscal policy proposals unless they make most of their money from investments. They often claim they voted against the Biden economy, but by all the numbers the Biden economy is actually above average. Not a boom, but measurably above mean.
They don’t care. They’re scared. And they voted for someone who does not require them to be brave.
No one who actually understands how immigration affects the United States voted for Trump over immigration policy. Same for healthcare. Same for education. Same for size of government. They are all excuses because they don’t want to say they’re just scared.
What we are about to witness is what happens when ignorant fear gets to dictate policy.
Do not, for your own sake, be part of that problem.
It’s okay to feel fear. It is initially an involuntary impulse. Fear means you are sane. Courage is being afraid and doing the thing anyway.
Courage is the solution. Courage to be kind. Courage to be generous. Courage to question your own assumptions. Courage to wait for the facts instead of running off with your feelings. Courage to look upon the problem and think more towards a solution than how to hide from it.
It is possible to be brave alone in your room, but like most worthwhile human endeavors it is both easier and more effective to do that together.
Image from Medium Large
Waymo can’t find its way.
I went to Salt Lake City for four days for my day job. I learned that Salt Lake City has a surprisingly robust Mexican food scene. I learned that Frontier Airlines makes its money with extra charges. But the sharpest lesson I learned is that robots are still idiots.
I tried to get Waymo to take me home from the airport, and they got lost, never actually got me home, and charged me anyway.
I have often told people that there is only one Thunderbird Trail within Phoenix. I know now that there is a second street called Thunderbird Trail also within city limits. I know this because that’s where Waymo took me instead of taking me home.
The municipal street I live on is at the 8900 south block between Central and 7th street. That half-mile segment is the only place this winding street appears. Along the 8900 south lateral it is otherwise Buist, McNeil or occasionally Kachina Trail. Thunderbird Trail does not appear along this lateral anywhere else in City limits.
The other Thunderbird Trail is the private road entering the Biltmore Estates as an extension of Missouri Avenue (2900 north block) east of 24th street. There are no addresses fronting this road, and if there were, they would 2400+ east Thunderbird Trail – which excludes my address east by several miles.
It is also, technically, private property.
This is where the car parked as I argued with Waymo customer service.
On that private road, at 11:30pm, I learned for the first time the address I gave them was not within Waymo’s service area. They absolutely should have been able to deduce that and inform me of that when I summoned the ride 40 minutes ago. Customer service, however, held the attitude that this was my fault for not knowing the service area boundaries and not checking the zip code of the address it thought I meant.
What I settled for that night was being dropped off as close to my house as their service area would allow, about 2.5 due north, Southern and Central, just after midnight. With luggage.
When I typed my address into the app, I remember checking to make certain some autocorrect didn’t fill in Road instead of Trail. The app did not reply that this was out of the service area. The app replied that a car would be there in 8 minutes. If a human cab driver had done this to me, they would end up eating the fare because they took me to the wrong address and should have known it was the wrong address.
In the end, Waymo refunded my fare, but only after another 30 minutes of my life on the phone with them the morning after, explaining what they should have known to begin with.
I am not abandoning Waymo because they use robots. Robots do not frighten me, for reasons I have explained at length elsewhere. I am abandoning them because of the human customer service reps trying to make their mistake sound like my fault. Even after the refund, we are done.
Except, here is a map of how Waymo avoided the bridge 7th Avenue uses to arch over the railroad tracks downtown.
I’m thinking the LIDAR can’t handle the incline, but I speculate.
And, in fairness, I suppose, here is Waymo’s response after my tirade.
Thanks for the feedback regarding your recent ride with Waymo. This is not the type of experience that we’d like to provide to our riders, and we are looking into the matter.In addition, we’ve refunded your last ride, and you’ll see the charge removed from your credit statement in a day or two.
I had to watch the Dodgers game tonight because I love my wife. In the early innings, I took a break to feed our foster turtle. During the commercials, I switched to the Suns preseason game, where the bench gives me some hope. My busywork at the table was practicing drawing proper wings. The rest of my year is going to be all about monsters, or I will break a promise to myself.
Let’s add some context to those sentences – one by one.
That’s not gloating – that’s love.
I am in a mixed marriage. As a native Phoenician, I have been a Diamondbacks fan since they created out of MLB expansion and a wildly unpopular sales tax. My wife grew up in LA, in the shadow of Dodger Stadium, built partially and land purchased by the Brooklyn Transplants from Cheryl’s ancestors.
Last fall was gloriously awkward. This fall is simpler.
Cheryl is out at sea doing her stitch pirate thing while her cruise ship seeks a port that has not been submerged by a hurricane in the last month. The Dodgers used the Native New York Mets for batting practice, but the New York Media claims this is nothing to worry about.
Dudley accepting that this is not watermelon
The foster turtle is an African Sulcata tortoise named Dudley. His owner rescued him from a wash, but her living situation is somewhat fluid, so now Dudley does his traumatized tortoise things on our patio.
If you can watch a tortoise eat a watermelon and not interpret that experience as adorable or some close cognate, you are the problem. [Sadly, I do not have that image].
Tortoise people – a subset of Derps – all seem to have an opinion of every single possible food choice – or so it has become apparent on Social Media. And before you start: I Do Not Care.
I have a legal pad full of notes from the owner, and that is what I am going by. Mostly.
The Suns sat all of their starters in tonight’s exhibition game against the Denver Nuggets. And with three projected starters for the Nuggs playing substantial minutes – including Jokovik – the Suns bench beat them. Of course, it is an open question how seriously Denver took this game, and by the end, it was guys without guaranteed contracts trying to make a roster, but My Beloved Suns were getting rebounds and stops and pulled away as the Nuggets descended into showcase, playground basketball.
I choose to be encouraged by this.
I have drawn a lot of wings on a lot of creatures and I have been doing it wrong all this time. Sure, a lot of the creatures I gave wings had no business having them, but you still want to get the wings themselves right – right?
Anyway, I took some time this weekend to study up on the subject, and I have some evidence of improvement.
Some of the difference is because I stopped detailing the original wings the moment I realized I was going to change them. But a lot of the improvement is just learning and implementing some basic facts about the anatomy of wings. I also learned some things about the magic of doing big revisions in GIMP, and the importance of a lot of well-defined layers so you can pull this off without blood coming out your ears. (the wings are based on the eastern imperial eagle).
Bonus context: I have not taken a formal drawing class since junior high, and I am illustrating my own work.
Which work? Glad you asked! I am determined to haver the Go Action Fun Time Monstrous Directory as a product you can buy by Christmas or die in the attempt.
That’s a joke. I know how I die – and its not this year.
The Sphynx above is for the cover.
GAFT will also have a real website by the year’s end. I am circling around decisions about what goes where in what format. Meanwhile – here’s the blurb page.
Since art counts towards word-count – I made it and then some.
The Penguin is excellent TV – if you have Max. It is a more adult take on what was the best part of the old Gotham series. That’s my next stop after I check on the turtle and mix a cocktail.
It’s been more than a month, and we have been busy running about in time and space, acquiring ridiculous things and learning on occasion.
Chronologically, we lead with the ridiculous thing:
This was from the Mad Hatter musical, an ill-fated premier at Herberger last spring that Cheryl was briefly involved with. They left these things behind, and the Herberger staff was happy to help us haul them away.
We are as yet uncertain what we will do with them. As I write this, they remain in the trailer until the heat advisory expires sometime late October.
There are places in my yard where I want trees, but cannot plant them due to power lines and such. Hmm.
Most of July was actually occupied by UnObtanium antics, which you can follow here:
We ran the game library at MaricopaCon last weekend. Cheryl ran Dread Pirate ,which is good fun drunk or sober. I was scheduled to run Go Action Fun Time, but had no players show who were not also part of the library team.
But I write the season ending episode anyway, about playing 18 holes of golf at an exclusive resort during an invasion of hostile aliens.
The Last Resort – during the commercial break.
I have never played real golf, much less designed an fantastical, high technology golf course. I found these websites helpful:
While we had no players and were thus idle, Oliver! And I helped ourselves to the hotel wifi (just kidding. Hotel wifi was a joke. I used my hotspot.) and rehabilitated the GAFT Discord. Contact me if you want an invite.
Soon, we shall disappear for the better part of two weeks, traveling in time and space because we can.
Before that, a few random lessons learned:
If you post a photo straight to Instagram – it’s gone. The only place to ever see it is that one Instagram post. It’s not like Facebook where you can still save the JPG if you can find it. Instagram encodes it in some sort of HTML that even the mighty Photoshop won’t recognize. Save the photo somewhere else – then post it.
It is basically impossible to make any sort of functional website on the free version of WordPress. They will lock up the site claiming you used features only available by subscription and will not identify those features. Twenty years ago, I could just build a website and upload it. Now, I need a subscription for a platform with half the features that takes twice the time.
When a market matures, the only way to grow the business is to squeeze existing customers. This is why everything internet or cel-phone is starting to suck. Captitalism only drives useful innovation in relatively new markets.
On the subject of saturated markets:
These are in my hands and you can buy one from me (autographed) and J&J Games [On Facebook} and basically nowhere else until mid-July. You can get the PDF at Drive-Thru. Don’t be spooked by the pink cover. That means it’s a PDF.
We will start cranking on the big fat website for this game after we return.
You can read about our upcoming micro-tour on UnObtanium’s website, which I was able to make because I have a minimum subscription.
I didn’t expect to get this done tonight. I expected Cheryl to come home from Spain and disintegrate all productive notion by her long overdue presence. But no. There was a 12 hour flight delay, as the flight she was supposed to be on was cancelled, and that plane left – perhaps with her luggage.
We shall see.
Meanwhile, I’ve been busy.
This is a product you can actually by Right Now on Drive-Thru RPG as a PDF. But it will have a salmon cover that I hated the more I looked at it. The published version should be in my hands by early July, and on Amazon by the middle of July.
For the third time in my life, I have a functional space in my garage. (the last two times were in the old place).
I did maybe a week’s of words over the three weeks Cheryl has been gone. Because garage and other distractions I shall document on Are We Lost yet soon.
I did update UnObtanium Bazaar. I also took over its Instagram account.
What Have We Learned? 