Til Death

  On June 16th at 10:20pm, my father was pronounced dead. Cause of death was a particularly aggressive cancer that invaded his bones and liver. Chemotherapy wasn't an option. It would've killed him even faster. He died peacefully in his bed. I watched as two guys from the funeral home removed his body from the house. I followed them out to the driveway and watched them load him into the hearse. When the Hearse door closed, the finality of the situation hit home and I broke down. Mom took his death hard. Now it's just the two of us until John and Annie move in.

  On a different note, on June 22nd, an ulcer in my gastrointestinal tract started bleeding. I was spewing bloody vomit and diarrhea and had to be rushed to the hospital. The ambulance trip was quite harrowing. I was gripping the gurney tightly as we sped to the hospital. When we arrived, a team of around a dozen people frantically began working on me. I had lost quite a bit of blood and was still vomiting in the ER. A bunch of IVs were hooked up, and blood was pumped directly into my femoral artery. I was a human pin cushion. They had to insert instruments down my throat to stop the bleeding. 

Bitcoin Mining

   I went and purchased a One Shot Miner that was advertised on YouTube a while back. It took a bit to get it set up but it's now running. Will anything come of this? I don't know. Should it work, I could end up with 3.125 bitcoin. With the price of bitcoin being over $89,000, that's quite a bit of money. I might pick up another one in the future to increase my chances.

  On other fronts, more of the Kickstarters I backed are starting to reach fruition. The cold weather has done a number on my Forester's battery. Since the drive to work is only about 2.5 miles, from home, the battery doesn't get much time to charge. I purchased a portable jump starter to get the car going during the cold weather and a battery maintainer to keep some kind of charge flowing into the battery.

The Future

   As I head towards my 64th birthday, I've been giving some thought as to how my future is going to pan out. Ideally, I would like to retire in the next few years and set up Social Security, my pension and my 401k. I'll have to sign up for Medicare and Medicaid (unless Trump and the GOP fuck everything up). My future is going to a lonely one after Mom and Dad pass away. I don't have any really close friends, and I haven't been in anything even remotely resembling a relationship in over 20 years. I need to figure out what I'm going to do with the rest of my life.

  I would like to see more of the world before the Reaper cuts me down. The United Kingdom and Australia top my list of vacation destinations. I might adopt a dog or two for companionship. While I'd like to find a woman and form a relationship with her, I don't see that happening. I'm not exactly choice boyfriend material. That, and the state of the dating environment here in the U.S., make the odds against me meeting that special someone prohibitively large. My status as a virgin will likely be terminal which sucks because I'd really like to get laid. 

Random Factors

   Sometimes the random factors align in a positive permutation. For the longest time, I've been wanting to acquire a Dragonbone Dice Wand. The Dragonbone was one of the first electronic dice devices that first appeared in the early to mid 1980's. It was available for a period of time but eventually they discontinued it. Periodically, I'd due a Google search to see if any were up for sale only to come up empty. That changed early this month. Noble Knight Games had a near mint white Dragonbone up for sale. It came with the instruction sheet and original mailing box. It was tested and is fully functional. The price was $575.00 plus tax ($606.62). It took a bit to get the money together, but I pulled it off. It's now a part of my RPG and dice collection. 

  Sometime in the past, I was doing Windows update on my desktop computer, and I thought that I had accidentally scrambled my system. The computer sat idle for some time. I purchased a Windows 10 recovery disk on eBay and got it back online. I'm not certain if I was mistaken about scrambling my computer or if the disk restored it. Either way, my system is back online.

  Here's a video of an interview with the creators of the Dragonbone.

Mental Defectives in Government

   We're a little over 100 days into Trump's second term and Dipshit Diaper Donnie has been fucking things up right and left. He's managed to put together biggest batch of lickspittles, incompetents and racist fuckwads in all of history. His tariff policies change with every mood swing. First, they're on, then they're paused. He sets them at this level then raises or lowers them in a thoroughly haphazard manner. He keeps claiming that all these countries are calling him trying to make deals, but nothing is happening. China has started buying soybeans from Brazil, so American soybean farmers have lost a major market. The information I've seen regarding the US-China tariff negotiations would have us believe that both sides are winning and both sides are getting their asses handed to them. The problem is both the CCP, and the Trump Administration are filled with pathological liars that always try to make themselves look good. 

  On the immigration front, ICE has been rounding up people and shipping them off to places like El Salvador without Due Process and some of these people aren't criminals. Kristi "Dog Killer" Noem has spent much of her time running around playing dress up in various parts of the country. She has no idea what Habeas Corpus is. She's the Secretary of Homeland Security and she doesn't have an understanding of the Constitution or of law in general. 

  Trump's corruption is out in the open. He's begged the Qatari government for a $400 million plane to replace Air Force 1 despite the fact that this violates the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. His shitty meme coin is being bought up by people looking to buy influence with Trump. The top 25 buyers got to have a personal meeting with Trump at Mar-A-Lago. How many foreign governments are laundering money via this meme coin?

  Pete Hegseth has proven to be fucking incompetent at his job. His screwups are numerous yet this asshole still has his government job. Why? How far did Hegseth bury his head up Trump's ass?

  And let's not forget about Trump's obsession with Canada and Greenland. Our narcissistic maggot of a president wants to take over both of them and make them US states or territories. This has nothing to do with national security. It has everything to do with natural resources. He wants the minerals and other resources these countries possess so he can suck up even more money. Exploitation is the name of the game here. Canada, Greenland and Denmark have made it clear that they aren't interested in being annexed. A recent deal was struck with a French investment group regarding the mining of anorthosite in Greenland. This might be their way of sticking it Trump.

  Trump is living in his own reality. He sincerely believes that some 200 nations are all lining up to strike deals with him because of the tariffs. He believes that a clearly doctored photo of Kilmar Abrego Garcia's hand proves he's an MS-13 member and nothing anyone says can convince him otherwise. On the other hand, Trump has been saying that whites are being targeted in genocide attacks in South Africa despite being told otherwise. It has been made clear that Trump suffers from vascular dementia. Combine that with narcissistic personality disorder and you have a deadly combination. Trump genuinely believes that he knows more about everything than everyone else. He never accepts blame for his mistakes and takes credit for things he didn't do. We can only hope that Trump suffers some serious mental and/or physical condition that takes his sorry ass out. 

Still Alive and Kicking

   I recently had a stress test performed on my heart due to the fact that my calcium level was over 400. This test was done to determine if the arteries supplying blood to my heart were clogged up with cholesterol. I'm happy to say that my heart is normal. The cost for this test was a little over $1,300 after insurance.

  In other news, many of the Kickstarters I'm involved with are progressing slowly. I'm still gaming with the group at The Sanctum. We just finished a Harlem based 1920's Call of Cthulhu campaign and are switching over to a game called Business Wizards on June 7th. I've put forward a few RPGs that I'd like to run in the future.

Still Plodding Along

   Life's been fairly boring of late. Summer has come and gone. I didn't go to Gen Con or the Ren Faire. The Slot Dice and Goblin Dice Kickstarters have turned out to be rip-offs. They simply took the money and ran. I'm fucking pissed. The Gamer's Bag Kickstarter is starting to look like another rip-off. They haven't posted an update in quite some time. Their last update was May 16th, 2024, where they claimed that they were almost ready to start shipping. There's been no updates since then. The Crossroads Inn people have finally posted an update after a long period of silence. It looks like they're making a sincere effort to bring their project to completion.

  Petersen Games has teamed up with Quimbley's Games in regard to Cthulhu Wars. Petersen Games designs the games and Quimbley's manufactures and sells them. This pairing has finally allowed me to get the Invasion Faction completed. I now have all 12 factions for Cthulhu Wars. The status of the Misprint Corrections is still pretty much unknown. Quimbley's has received the Azathoth dice that were missing from the Daemon Sultan faction and, I believe, they also have the correction stickers for Bubastis and Sleeper. Why they haven't mailed out the corrections is unknown to me. From what I've seen in photos, the Azathoth die looks to be the same die that I got with that custom Cthulhu Wars dice set I bought a while back. The spellbook corrections for Bubastis and Sleeper are minimal. Both factions are playable as they are right now.

  A pair of great concerts are in my future. Gwar is returning to The Rave Oct. 31st and King Diamond will be at the Riverside Theater on Nov. 8th. Tickets have already been purchased.