Tuesday, December 10, 2019

Healthcare Update & Other News

  My 2020 application for health care has been completed and I'm going to have health and dental coverage starting in January. I had to call the ACA information number in order to complete the application. It turns out that I made several mistakes on it which led to me ending up with really high monthly premiums. When everything was corrected, I ended up with a hefty tax credit to help pay the premiums. It was also recommended that I go with a silver policy for maximum benefit. The policy isn't perfect. While all my doctors are covered under the policy, my Lantus pens aren't. When I'm able to sign up for insurance through work next November, I have to contact the government so they can cancel the ACA policies.
  My eDice unit has arrived. I charged it up and tested it out. It works fine. The tracking numbers for the Randice expansion set are available. I have to contact them and get my number. I'm backing two more Kickstarters, the Better Backstories deck and GoDice. The Better Backstories deck aids DMs and players in creating backstories for characters. Other functions are being added to the deck as various stretch goals get reached. The GoDice are a set of six d6 that have sensors in them. Included with the GoDice is an IOS or Android app. This app allows the GoDice to connect with your phone or tablet via Bluetooth and play games. At the tier I pledged, I also get an RPG app and six shells that convert the GoDice into RPG gaming dice. Three of the shells have 24 sides and convert the GoDice into a d4, d8 and d12. Three 20 sided shells convert GoDice into a d10, d% and d20.

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Healthcare, Kickstarter and Cthulhu Wars

  My quest for health insurance is proving fruitless. After submitting my information, even the cheapest plans are ridiculously priced. How the fuck do they expect me to pay for this? And that Good RX app is a fucking joke. My insulin pens cost a little over $400.00 without insurance. With the app, it's about $325.00. The price when I had insurance, $40.00. Yet they claim that the app can beat your insurance. Lying bastards. Looks like I'm going to be going without insurance for at least a year.
  Slowly but surely, my Kickstarter rewards are coming in. I recently received my 2 copies of Immersive Battle Maps and stickers. I've received a tracking number for my eDice unit. I should have that by the end of the month. The Randice expansion set should be mailed out soon. I've filled out the Hexacube dice survey. I originally paid for the Kickstarter only antique gold set with custom wooden dice box but I added on a pearl red set with a dark red with black logo felt bag. I really want to get my hands on these dice but they won't be sent out until May 2020. I've also backed the Spin DiceSpellbook minisReversible Self Standing Microfiber dice bag and RPG Backstory card deck projects. The Spin Dice project is more than fully funded and the Backstory project has $2,547 of the $3,000 needed to fund the project with 40 days to go. The surveys for the Spellbook mini, microfiber dice bag and Critical Dice set have been completed. I haven't heard anything new regarding the Turn Keeper and Debunked card game yet. I'm going to hold off backing any more Kickstarters for the near future. I need to build up my bank accounts.
  I've purchased the Ancients faction, Cosmic Terrors and HPL First Player marker for my Cthulhu Wars game. I now have 9 factions that can be played along with the independent Azathoth expansion. I'd like to get a few more monsters and terrors for the game as well as a few independent Great Old Ones before New Year's Eve so I have a lot of options when I take the game over to Glenn's house.

 

Thursday, September 12, 2019

Nerdhalla The Aftermath

  The last day of Gen Con consisted of me buying some more dice as well as a deck vault for my Paranoia decks and dice. I drove home, rested up, went back to work and was fired five minutes into my shift for time theft. My mistake was not staying in my department until 10:00 pm on those nights I closed. Since it was dead, I figured I could give my legs a rest and sit by the time clock. It was a stupid move on my part.
  So 25 years of employment, my personal holidays and vacation time and my health insurance have been pissed away because of my mistake. I'm fairly certain my pension might also be gone because of this but I haven't found out yet. It took a couple of weeks but I've found another job. At the moment it's part time and I don't have health insurance through them yet but some goods come out of this. For some time now I've felt like I've had a target on my back at my previous job and it was just a matter of time before things came to a head. The worse part is I handed them a reason to fire me on a silver fucking platter. I'm trying to get insurance through Healthcare.gov. I've started an application but I'm waiting for my current employer to provide me with information needed to complete it.
  On other matters, some of the Kickstarters I've backed have arrived. The CNC machined Mobius strip and Random Encounter Dice are here and my two sets of Troll's Teeth will be arriving tomorrow. The Debunked card game, remaining 4 Cthulhu Mythos coins, Immersive Battle Maps book and Randice expansion should be completed and mailed out shortly. The eDice Kickstarter I joined was cancelled and restarted. It still has 21 days of funding to go before things get underway. I hope they unlock the stopwatch function. I really hope this thing goes to completion. I really want to get one of these.
  I went to the SPandme.com website and took the quiz. Here are the results; 39% Lisa Berger, 19% Kevin Stoley, 19% Kyle Schwartz, 6% Pete (Hair Flip Goth), 6% Roger Donovan, 5% Ned Gerblanski and 5% Rumper Tumpskin.

Saturday, August 3, 2019

Nerdhalla Day 3

  The last of my scheduled events are done. I bought the Sleeper and Tcho-Tcho factions for Cthulhu Wars. I got 3 free Astral Acolytes with my purchases.  I played in a Luchador event that I'd played last year and made a Cthulhu style deck box in a crafting event. Here's a picture of the box.
   It's a little crude compared to some of the examples they had on display, but I like it nonetheless. There are no events scheduled for tomorrow. I'm going to get up early and get everything packed into the Rav 4, check out and head over to the 24 hour parking facility at 109 South Capitol. I'm going to make a last run through the convention center so I can get a 36 d6 dice cube, some dice to group with a lone d20 I have so it will be part of a complete polyhedral set and take some more pics. By about noon, I'll be on the road heading for home.

Friday, August 2, 2019

Nerdhalla Day 2

  The second day of Gen Con has ended. Today it was The Forge of Fury, a D&D 3.5 scenario and Time Travelers in King Arthur's Court, a Doctor Who scenario. The Doctor Who scenario was run by the same person that ran a Doctor Who scenario two years ago so I got to play Drex, a Sontaran warrior for the second time.
  I bought more dice, as if I needed more. I got a set of d10s and d6s for Cyberpunk. I got a set of Elder dice primarily for Call of Cthulhu and a set of d2 Elder Sign coins. I've wanted a set of legitimate d2s for some time now. The other d2s I have are d6s marked with three 1s and three 2s. The last purchases I'll make tomorrow are some deck boxes for my Paranoia decks, a cube of 36 d6s for the latest version of the Judge Dredd RPG and the last two factions, Sleeper and Tcho-Tcho, for Cthulhu Wars. If they have a 6-8 player world board, I'll buy that too.

Thursday, August 1, 2019

Nerdhalla Day 1

  I arrived in Indianapolis yesterday afternoon. I had to go to the Will Call line in order to get my ticket for the Doctor Who event. There's a game store next to the hotel I'm staying at. I saw fellow gamer outside the store. He had purchased the Letters from Whitechapel game. It's a game where one player is the Ripper and the rest are the police hunting him down. The Ripper wins if he successfully murders 5 women without getting caught. If he's caught, the police win. I purchased a copy of the game.
  Day 1 of Gen Con is officially over. I played in a One Ring and a Call of Cthulhu based 5th edition D&D game. I had 3 hours in between gaming sessions so I did some shopping. I bought the 2019 Gen Con commemorative dice set from Crystal Caste plus two sets of polyhedral dice for my gaming belt. I picked up the hardcover Doctor Who rules and The Laughter of Dragons supplement for The One Ring. I made the mistake of purchasing The Oaths of the Riddermark supplement. I had forgotten that I purchased it at last year's Gen Con. I'm going to see if I can return it on Saturday. I also purchased the latest Luchador supplement, Masked Men of Mexico, along with a Luchador mask. My big purchase of the day was the Cthulhu Wars game and three expansion sets, Opener of the Way (Yog Sothoth), Windwalker (Ithaqua) and Azathoth. I might pick up some more expansions. I haven't decided yet. If they have the 6-8 player Earth map, I should consider getting it.
  The weather here's been hot and despite the relatively short walk from the hotel to the convention center, I still sweated my ass off. I found out that I can go from the convention center to the J.W. Marriot hotel without having to go outside. They're connected by skywalks. This will work out nicely since both games tomorrow are in that hotel. It'll be 8 hours of gaming between the D&D 3.5 and Doctor Who games

Monday, June 3, 2019

Catching Up on Things

  Event sign up for Gen Con went poorly. I tried to sign in about 2 minutes before sign up went live and failed to get on right away. I didn't get on until 5 minutes past 11. While that's not much time, it put me far enough back in line for every event on my wish list to fill up. I did find get signed up for some other events though.
  Some more of my Kickstarter rewards have arrived. The Tower of Holding, Dice Coins, Bonus  Tracking Dice, Randice and Cthulhu Coin set are here. All the others, except the Mobius strip, have received their funds but aren't ready to ship yet. The Mobius Strip is still in the funding phase.
  I purchased a refurbished Dell Latitude e6320 laptop on eBay a short while back. This blog entry is being typed out on said laptop. The laptop came with a power cable and battery. I've added a Logitech M305 wireless mouse, Targus notebook chill mat and privacy screen, a Wenger laptop bag and a 2 USB 3.0 port ExpressCard to the laptop. I have a CooSkin TPU keyboard protector guard and locking notebook security cable coming in the mail eventually. I've been following their progress through the mail system by their tracking number. And I've received 2 laptop batteries and a Logitech C270 webcam from Amazon today. The battery that came with the laptop works but I don't think it holds power as well as it should.
  I decided to get a laptop instead of an Android tablet because a laptop is more versatile than a tablet. All my character sheets and .PDF gaming books have been moved onto the laptop and I plan to put the E-Tools D&D character creation software on it as well. The laptop has an SD card slot and I want to get an SD card installed in it and move the character sheets and gaming books there to save on hard drive space. I'm going to take the laptop with me to Gen Con so I can post video updates both here and on YouTube. Some of the content will be recorded on my Galaxy S8 and transferred to the laptop.
  My a1c is at 7.9 so it's improved somewhat but my creatinine levels have been running on the high side (1.45mg/dL). A referral has been put in for me to see a nephrologist regarding my kidneys. Back on Dec. 31st, 2014, my elevated creatinine level sent me to the hospital. I'm going to have to contact my nephrologist and orthopedic surgeon regarding my kidneys and hip surgery.

Wednesday, April 17, 2019

Background Noise

  I feel like my life is little more than background noise in the grand scheme of things. It never gets noticed because of how mediocre it is and I am. It seems the only time I do get noticed is when I royally fuck up in some fashion. I always feel like the odd man out. Like I don't belong anywhere. For example, take the gaming group that I've gaming with for over a decade. Despite the fact that I've been with these people that long, I still can't shake the feeling that I'm not truly part of the group. It's the same way at work. It's this feeling that kept me from dating. I know, deep down inside, that any attempts I make at finding someone will only end in failure. Some years back I hooked up with a local BDSM group I found on AOL. I attended a few meetings but I could never get comfortable with them. I tried to stick it out going so far as to attend a BDSM gathering at a hotel in northern Illinois. I went into the bar area where everyone was hanging out and did... nothing. I didn't speak or try to get to know anyone there. My anxiety got to the point where I just left. As I was driving home, I realized that I'd forgotten my coat and actually considered just leaving it there and taking the loss.
  The reality is I'll never be physically, mentally, emotionally or financially ready for a relationship. For the women of the world, that's really great news. One less sub par idiot making a play for their affections. One less mediocre dipshit ruining their social lives. My erectile dysfunction seems to have gotten worse not that it matters. I'm not sure whether that's due to diabetic complications or a fucked up mental state. Probably both. I've been trying to get my a1c down to 7 or below with mixed results. While I've had some good days, I'm still screwing things up enough to potentially cause problems. I need to get my a1c down so I can get hip replacement surgery done to correct the avascular necrosis.

Sunday, March 17, 2019

Pseudo Religions? Part 2 and Other News

  I've discovered that there's a First United Church of Cthulhu and you can download their Certificate of Ordination here. Needless to say, I want to get ordained. I've downloaded the certificate. Now I just have to get it filled out and printed.
  I'm still waiting for some of my Kickstarter rewards to arrive. The Judge Dredd rewards are being mailed out now. Randice production started around March 6th so hopefully they'll be mailing out those soon. The Tower of Holding rewards fulfillment has run into some problems but those problems  are being sorted out. The blanks for the Bonus Tracking Dice arrived March 9th and final tests and production set to begin next week. The Dice Coins survey has been filled out and returned. I found out that as an early backer, I was entitled to two more Dice Coins so I'm getting 12 Dice Coins in all plus 3 pouches.
  The money for the Immersive Battle Maps should be transferred to Kickstarter soon. I don't know when the surveys will be sent out. The Debunked card game, Cthulhu Coins and the One Fuck/Zero Fucks Decision Maker Coin Kickstarters still have either 8 or 11 days to go. The Cultist coin has been unlocked and I've upped my pledge in order to get it. I'm also getting two free pouches with the coins. If the total reaches $45,000 or more, the Elder Sign pin gets unlocked.

Saturday, February 23, 2019

Hamberders & Covfefe

   The man responsible for coining the words hamberders and covfefe has given his State of the Union address. This after he shut down the government for 35 days because he didn't get $5.7 billion for his useless border wall. I don't get this brainless twit. He's been told that there are better ways to secure the southern border, but instead for listening to his advisers, he lets xenophobic right wing cunt Ann Coulter dictate immigration policy to him. What a fucking dipshit.
  This man is delusional. Trump thinks he knows more and has better intelligence than the FBI, CIA and NSA combined and refuses to listen to them regarding threats to America. And on the subject of intelligence and security clearances, Jared Kushner had more than 100 errors or omissions on his SF86 security clearance form. Why this motherfucker has any security clearance at all is beyond me. You can bet that there are foreign governments looking to exploit this dipshit.
  Trump has declared a national emergency in order to secure funds for his border wall. House Democrats have introduced a resolution in order to block Trump's stupid maneuver but Trump has vowed to veto the resolution should it pass. Here's a video of declaring just that while basically lying his fat ass off.

  This dipshit is nothing more than an orange haired wannabe dictator. He recently referred to the press as 'The enemy of the people.' Truth is, the only enemy of the people is him.

Monday, February 4, 2019

The Mundanity Continues

  The polar vortex that plagued the area from Tuesday through Thursday has finally passed. The temperature has gone from -50 degrees to a much more tolerable 45 degrees. Let's hope that the super cold weather is done for the rest of the season.
  The Towers of Holding are being manufactured and the books, GM screens and plug and play tokens for the Judge Dredd RPG have been printed. Hopefully I'll be getting those soon. I've contributed to a Dice Coins Kickstarter in order to get a 10 coin set. Here's a YouTube video showing couple of d20 dice coins someone else ordered.

The set I want will consist of the following dice coins; d3 Cerberus, d4 Wizard, d5 Castle, d6 Cleric, d8 Ranger, d10 Skeleton Dragon, Percentile Phoenix, d12 Barbarian, d20 Lich and a Weather vane coin. As the video shows, each coin has a bump on the bottom that allows you to spin it like a top. You then stop the coin spinning by placing your finger on the edge. The first fully visible number to the left of your finger is the result. The Weather vane coin has words on it describing different weather conditions.
  I filed my taxes yesterday. I'll be getting back about $883.00 which will be split into my Simple and Serve accounts for Gen Con. Speaking of Gen Con, my hotel reservation has been made. I lucked out this year in that my hotel is only two blocks from the convention center. It's funny, the years when I made it a point to have the hotel reservation day off, I'd get a time when I could log into the housing portal that was 5 to 7 hours after reservations went live. This year I didn't request the day off and my log in time was 12:27 pm. It should be noted that the housing portal goes live at 11:00 am CST. I set up my hotel reservation while I was on lunch at work.
  I've been trying to lower my a1c but I'm not sure I'm making any headway. I have a fasting blood draw coming up on Thursday. I'm not sure if my a1c is one of the things they'll be determining at that time. I've got to stop the late night eating. It's not helping matters.