passport's New Writeups

December 9, 2009 (person)

2009-12-09T03:34:59Z

Hey, E2 noders.

Lately I have been concentrating on writing roleplaying game material that is independently published (I still own the rights). Do you want to see this on E2? If so then let me know.

I Still Love You.
Paige Oliver

fatbeard (person)

2008-03-01T07:13:14Z

Every gaming group has a fatbeard, look around the table, if you don't see one then it is probably you.

The fatbeard is a very common creature in the world of nerddom. I am going to be speaking specifically about fatbeards who play roleplaying games, however there are also large numbers of comic book, anime, marijuana and Unix fatbeards as well. Any hobby that attracts geeks and doesn't require extensive physical activity will usually have more than a few fatbeards involved.

Each fatbeard is a little bit unique and a lot of people differ on what exactly they think a fatbeard is, so rather than trying to pin down one concrete definition I am going to focus on presenting a general picture of common fatbeard traits. Almost no fatbeards will share all of these traits. In fact, not all fatbeards are fat, nor do all of them even have beards.

The natural habitat of the fatbeard is that of his elderly parent's basement, unless said parents have…

Honda (idea)

2008-02-29T11:22:01Z

The following is region specific to the United States and is not particularly applicable in Europe or other parts of the world.

Honda makes some reliable cars and they are one of the better buys in the new car market. However their reliability is almost a myth of almost epic proportions. Yes it is quite true that some Honda vehicles surpass the 300,000 mile mark, however the average Honda still hits the junkyard somewhere around 200,000 miles, just like the average car from most other manufacturers that are capable of producing a passable vehicle in the first place. However the Honda myth does drive people to easily handwave pricey repairs on their old Hondas because Hondas are "reliable" and "worth it", when they would junk an American car needing the exact same repairs.

Cars that do super high miles tend to be purchased new and driven to the grave by one owner who maintains them religiously. Under those circumstances a lot of otherwise…

Killing Your Own Characters (essay)

2008-02-29T07:31:35Z

It was the second day of the Living Greyhawk convention and I was sleep deprived as usual. The steady stream of diet sodas I was downing to help keep me awake all day had the unfortunate side effect of keeping me up most of the night as well, but I was used to that, as it comes with the territory.

The Dungeons and Dragons game had been going for almost 3 hours already and we were still on the first battle and I hadn't even gotten to take an action yet. At game conventions you never know who you are going to be playing with and I was at a table full of anecdote reciters, slow players and people who somehow had been playing a wizard character for four years without even seeming to understand how any of their spells even work. Eighty to ninety percent of the time at a game table is usually taken up by the slowest player there, in this case I was sitting at a table with 5 of those guys playing and a 6th one as the dungeon master.

I am not a slow player by any means, and the fact…

TinyMCE (review)

2008-02-28T05:48:19Z

TinyMCE completely mangles any rich text pasted into it, it mangles it beyond recognition. It mangles it so horribly that it is almost impossible to edit it manually after the fact, and it introduces weird formatting that makes the user look like a complete moron. Don't just take my word for it, I can show you an example.
The following text exists on my computer and it looks exactly like this in the word processor.

Fledgling time travelers looking to travel in style are advised to seek out a police box, as a Delorean cannot be sourced anywhere other than another time traveler. By 2015 there isn't a single authentic Delorean or police box left on earth, although there are still hundreds of police boxes that can be rescued before their destruction.

Evolution

Throw out everything you know about human evolution for the purposes of this game. In this universe humans never…

eHarmony (review)

2008-02-08T11:18:32Z

e-Harmony just isn't worth your money.

So today my three month subscription to e-harmony ended. I had picked eharmony on the recommendation of an older friend who was having a lot of success with it. I guess I should have thought about it a bit more though since he is in his late 30s and better looking than me to boot, so it is natural that he had more luck than I did.

On eharmony you don't browse for people, instead you are matched up with them. In my time there I was matched up with about 60 women. Of those sixty I ultimately ended up going on exactly zero dates.

E-harmony seems to actually have very few women in the correct age range for me, which is about 22 to 28. Most of the ones younger than me closed me out instantly, never responded to my requests for communication, or closed me out…