Umbral Echoes Blog

This week, we’re running a promotion at work giving away lots of free RPGs.  For those interested in such things:

ThanksGiveAway Promotion

A selection of products each day, until Friday.  Last weekend, I got the fun of setting up 6 new download servers in preparation for this.  While I was at it, I also spent some of my personal time tweaking a publisher tool for sending out mails, which was received with praise along the likes of, “Shouldn’t you be doing something more important than this?” and, “I hates it!  Make it like it was!!!  Change is BAD!!!!”  The second of which is expected (and somewhat deserved, since the page didn’t work so well when the email list was in the thousands), since every time we do anything, various small publishers invariably liked things better how they were before.

If we’re to believe them, then apparently RPGNow in 2005 was the pinnacle of perfection.

In other news, we finally got a Wii.  I thought it might be useful to have since we’re having the housewarming party this Saturday.  Which you’re invited to, if you’re reading this.  Yes, you too.  But please RSVP if you are coming, so we know how much pizza/beer/etc. we need to get.

But I digress.  The Wii is as fun as the hype claims, though the boxing game is very hard to control.  I perform the exact same motion 5 times, and I end up with a jab-jab-hook-nothing-jab.  Cary bought Zelda, and has been spending lots of time with that — except at the moment, since he’s currently at the White Wolf company retreat and no doubt seeing just how many beers it takes to damage the liver.  Kirstie has been having lots of fun with Rayman, which is a fairly insane game composed of tons of mini-games which involve you (a duck) abusing bunnies.

Don’t worry, these aren’t cute bunnies.  These are bunnies that you’d see in a Roman Dirge or Jhonen Vasquez comic.

All right, back to whipping the servers into submission.

First of all, an apology for dropping off the face of the earth.  Explanation forthcoming.

Last weekend there was a White Wolf cookout, which ended up as a party at Mike Tinney’s house.  Well, some of us got there early, and there was a set of boxing gloves… so we decided to punch each other while we waited for Mike to arrive and let us in.  The only issue was that there were 2 boxing gloves, not 4.  So one person got to be a righty, and one person a lefty.  So I fought some with The Swede, being nice and giving him the right glove.  It was fun times… well except when he decided to punch me several times as we were breaking up from a clench and my guard was down.

Cary’s welcoming party was the next day,  and more people showed up to that than I expected.  That’s the thing with my friends down here — instead of saying they’ll come and not showing up, they say they probably can’t make it, and then do come.  We had some drinks, hung out, and watched Borat.  Which, for anyone who still hasn’t seen it, is incredibly awesome.

Then on… Wednesday, I think it was (I’ve lost track of days), at work we did a database merger for which we’ve been preparing for about 7 months.  This involved staying at work until 11:30pm, coming home only to work more until 2:30am, catching a few hours of sleep, then going in to work on it some more the next morning.  And a few days of publishers being like, “OMGWTF?!?!  Things have changed!  Change is BAD!!!”  With a few refreshing instances of, “You guys are doing great — this has gone more smoothly than I expected it would.”

Some of these really should be shared.

Bees: Nature’s Tiniest Ass-Kickers
Okay, so there’s these Japanese hornets, right? And they’re all about murdering some honky bees and eating their honey and feeding their larvae to their own kids. They basically fly around in their little samurai armor and use their hornet-katanas to bite the European bees in half. The European bees are all, “AUGH! I’m all bit in half! If only Braveheart was a bee and could end this tyranny!” No such luck for the European bees.

But then, there’s this rival cult of Japanese honey bees who have evolved to the point where they’re sick of those goddamn samurai hornets, and turn the tables by using HONEYBEE BIO-LASERS TO COOK THE HORNET SCOUTS IN THEIR OWN GUTS BEFORE THEIR SECRET BEE FORTRESS IS COMPROMISED.

Nature is so awesome.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=n4wRIERp6Vs

Someone named “kathe” (email excluded to protect the idiotic) sent in the following inquiry via the web form on White Wolf’s site:

My husband has been casted a mind spell on him and I need to know what to do

The amusing part is that this sort of email isn’t uncommon.

I got some new chairs for myself and my minions, and they came in yesterday. They’re so much more comfortable than our old ones (let’s hear it for high-backed chairs!)… but some people in the office have joked that we have Star Trek chairs. Being made fun of by people who work for an RPG development company; such sweet irony. I have no idea what they’re talking about, though. These are the most normal chairs ever. Seriously.

The White Wolf crew apparently had some event planned for today, and after gathering at the office they all went out to do… whatever.  Well, in the afternoon I go to the bathroom, only to see this:

Apparently someone had decided to pack up Justin Achilli‘s office (the linked picture is of him doing the ass-chicken dance at Origins.  Yes, this is the man that was the developer of Vampire for several years).  Fortunately, I had my trusty newly-acquired camera handy with me to record the event.  So after doing a double-take, I snapped this shot for posterity, and then continued along to relieve my aching bladder.  I opened the door to the restroom, to find:

What strange and wonderful times we live in.