dr4b | How to spend your time unemployed

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How to spend your time unemployed

Well, like

doeblert suggested at dinner the other night, spending 10 hours a week job hunting and the rest taking "vacation" seems like a good plan. I'm on it so far. Today I woke up, went to the dentist, came back, and worked on my resume for two hours, mostly updating it and converting it to various formats. (If any of you want to go find me a job, please feel free to forward it along: http://www.dr4b.org/resume/.) Then I sent it to two people so far, and I'm going to do more research on CMU staff jobs tomorrow, maybe.

I spent an hour then playing Simcity (I was very good. I did not start up SC3K until I had finished up my resume stuff), and after that got the idea it'd be funny to go to the KGB meeting, so I did that. (I had neglected to remember exactly how COLD it was outside!) Got there just as the meeting was starting and sat in the back of the room with Bayani. I even conveniently had pennies in my pocket to throw! It was sort of fun and sort of weird. Fun in that the people who know me actually were happy to see me and waved and admired my Hello Kitty earmuffs, and I got to throw pennies at Chris, and wave at people, and politely decline the opportunity to kick

teki in the butt, but weird in that I've been out of the KGB loop for the most part for so long that meetings seem weird to me... you know, like since the officers aren't my close personal friends anymore the reports don't seem quite as relevant, and such. But, things seem pretty constant for KGB as far as KGB goes. I'm at least glad nobody went "aah! it's Deanna! kick her out, kick her out!" whee. And it seems like they're building up quite a membership, somewhat reminiscent of the year I think of as my "glory days" in KGB, namely 1997-1998. It is good. I saw many people on my LJ friends list there (notably

damion,

sleepsong,

whitemage,

naufiel,

cdwfs and notably lacking

sk4p and I guess

blk. Of course Shawn has a good excuse.)

I left around 5:10 so I could go drop film from the weekend off in the UC, and get my baritone and get to Kiltie on time. I actually didn't need quite that much time and got there sort of early, but oh well. I got to warm up and all, which I really did need. My throat felt kind of icky though and I was utterly unable to play anything above a high D clearly.

I bought some snacks from Entropy and then Carl and I walked over to Mike's house after Kiltie for D&D. Except, we found out then, Tal hadn't had a chance to plan an adventure for the day and Brook wasn't showing up at all anyway. So we did a "Reading day" thing. We worked out some things like exactly how much damage Grundar does with his urgrosh, and about partial actions vs. full actions, etc. I rolled up and planned more the characters for Janthina's mission, except it seems we might just revive our old characters and go do that instead. (I like making up these other characters anyway. Just imagine how much fun the party would be with Janthina, our elven female NN 9/1/3 Ftr/Wiz/ArcaneArcher with a vendetta against Iuz questing to get her magic bow back, Kylarra, an elven female CN 4/5/4 Rogue/Wizard/ArcaneTrickster who hates vampires and Iuz just as much as Janthina does, Benedict, a human male LN 13th level Cleric of St. Cuthbert who has been assigned a holy quest of recovering an artifact of the church and bringing the Iuz followers who stole it to justice, and Narthal, a half-elf male NE Ranger/Assassin who was living in a forest in Furyondy minding his own business until followers of Iuz totally trashed it and burned it down, and has devoted his life ever since to killing worshippers of Iuz as revenge. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Lots of good fun orc bashing and Iuz-worshipper-annhilating. And probably some good inter-party squabbles.) Tal and Mike informed me that if I was a proper lower brass person, I would start singing "he is dead... he is dead... he is dead, he is dead, he is dead..." during the "Elegy for a Fallen Comrade" in Kiltie Band. Ok, more like, Mike told me people used to do that and Tal told me I ought to restart it, and Carl admitted how glad he is nobody sings that anymore.

Anyway, after a few hours we went home. I played some DDR and stuff and wrote a thingy for

combinator since I hope he gets to work at PGSS this summer.

I wish the weather would get nice again. Nothing sucks more than being laid off right before it gets really fucking cold out. Why couldn't they time it better and do it when it was stll 70 degrees out?

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And it seems like they're building up quite a membership, somewhat reminiscent of the year I think of as my "glory days" in KGB, namely 1997-1998.

Personally, I think of those first couple of years (1988-1990) as the glory years of KGB. But that's just me showing my age.

I wonder if there are any other founding members lurking around LJ. Somehow, I doubt it.

yah, but since I was in middle school at that point, *my* glory days are 1996-1998 when I had my reign of terror as 2nd VP. But certainly things must have been more interesting in the beginning.

(...dunno about founding members but it seems like a lot of the people who arrived at CMU around 89 or 90 are on here...)

You see, since you were never there during my Reign of First Veephood, you missed such canonical events as:

1) The DestrAuction - where the audience had to bid for the right to destroy hateful possessions, by coming up with the most inventive means of doing so. Winners had to carry through with their suggestion. You have truly never lived if you missed the sight of a man destroying a Piers Anthony novel with sandpaper taped to his forehead, or Eeyore hacking apart a so-called Rennaisance flute that refused to play, even for people who knew how to play the flute, with a machette.

2) KGB Descends Into The Worlds Largest Not Entirely Explored Cave and Nearly Gets Lost And Dies When Two, Count 'em, TWO Flashlights Purchased From an Army Surplus Store Break Within Minutes of Each Other. Although we had a more appealing name for this event at the time.

3) Mike Has a Loud, Violent, and Elaborately Choreographed Argument With Himself (Pre-Recorded On Casette) Including a Fight With Hammers.

4) And no rambling act of self-glorification loosely disguised as history would be complete without a vague allusion to the story of King Trenchmellon. (A play in zero point five mercilessly short acts.)

There was a whole lot more but my memory has the retention capacity of a basketball hoop. I wish someone had written some of ths down.

my reign as second veep had many quite fun things. When I feel like going through my photo album to figure them all out, I will post. Suffice it to say that the Murder Mystery and the 1997/1998 Carnival Parties were probably my favorite accomplishments in the organization. And then there were the goofy things at meetings (where we judged once and for all that

happysteve has the largest mouth of anyone we know), and such.

Middle school? Okay, now I just feel old. Somebody pass me my cane. It should be next to my arthritis medication.

And didn't your parents ever teach you not to stick your tongue out at people? Put that that thing away unless you intend to actually use it.

I took 4.5 years to graduate from CMU. In my last semester, as a fifth-year senior (do any other colleges bother having "fifth year seniors"?) I had to take World History and Modern Bio, both freshman courses, to fill in random cavities in my curriculum. Because of Kiltie Band and other things, I actually had friends that were freshmen.

One of them dared to ask me why I was sucking at bio. "I mean, didn't you take it in highschool too? This course is a breeze..."

"Yeah, I did. <calculates> And the year I did, you were in fifth grade. How well do you remember fifth grade? Ok. I rest my case."

Entropy! I remember entropy! (Sob/convulse.)

For the record, the official glory days of KGB were 1990-1992, approximately the duration of my tenure as First Vice President. Lucky were the founders who were there to enjoy the zeitgeist of what they had wrought.

When's the last time you visited campus, anyway?

Erm... I swung by briefly last winter, but everything was closed. Had better luck the prior winter when I got to see the friggin MEGA MALL they build in place of Skibo with my tuition money. Fortunately, dear old Baker Hall looked the same.

Hm. Come to Carnival!

Yes. Please refer to prior question about when said Carnival actually is.

Weekend of Apr 20-21.

Huh. I guess they're still holding them in Pittsburgh, huh.

You know, until you leave Pittsburgh you never fully appreciate how inconveniently far it is from everywhere. The only municipality more severly dislocated is Wheeling, West Virginia, whose population is about 250 if you count the cows.

The only thing that matters to me (and to the rest of you) is that the Kiltie Carnival concert is Thursday, April 18.

By the way, hi Jay!

Hey, Mike. Any chance you'll swing through the Bay Area in the next few months. Since I know there's almost zero chance I'll be in either Boston or Los Angeles for the foreseeable future.

Maybe I'll do a SoCal trip in the fall. Nathan Loofbourrow's moved down there. (Chris will be joining him at some point.) Hmm.

I oughta swing by sometime, do another "visit everyone I know in the Bay all at once dinner".

M

I think I just missed you. I was at a goodbye party for a nice bigwig in computing services, and didn't get to KGB until about 5:15, where I proceeded to try and start a snowball fight.

Hm, the best year of KGB I can remember was 96-97, because that's when I was most active and had lots of good friends in it. It's shaping out to be a pretty good crowd nowadays, though.

Was that Tracy Futhey's farewell party? I never dealt directly with her, but her secretary is really good and super competent.

It was. I'm going to miss her. I never really dealt with her much directly (being several levels below), but she seemed to keep on top of things really well and keep them running smoothly. We'll be lucky if we get anybody as cool as she was.

I would say that the glory year of KGB was 1989 or 1990, when I participated in a "confuse a bagger" stunt that ended in the bagger confusing us :-)

If anyone can remember this, please let me know. Some reminders, it involved a large quantity of SCAdians, the Necronomicon, and yogurt...lots and lots of yogurt. BTW, it is also the most perfect, unplanned, random catch i've ever made of a flying object without actually looking at it...yes, I snatched a container of yogurt out of mid-air while talking to someone. I never missed a beat, and i'm pissed that no one filmed it.

Becca told us about a confuse-a-bagger she participated in, where she convinced the bagger that Kevin (

namshubwriter) was her roomate and had people coming in and taking yogurts ("Jody, you keep saying you'll quit, don't you know this addiction is bad for you?") but I think that would have been a little later than 89 or 90...

sk4p told that story ("Confuse-a-bagger/confuse-a-becca") in detail at a KGB meeting some time last semester.

From what i've been lead to understand the yogurt ruse was used a few times...but that's basically the routine. My friend Chris and I powdered ourselves down so that we looked as Albino as possible, dressed in our most "Elric" looking garb and he spoke in gibberish Elven while I translated. The awesome yogurt catch occurred while Chris was hunched in the mini-fridge digging for a flavour that he liked and he threw one straight up in the air.

In this case, the bagger was hip and faked an epileptic seizure during the "seance" involving Cecilia Sugar and a fancy copy of the Necronomicon. As soon as the bagger went down foaming, Ceil (whos nickname was "Sarge") stopped everything, turned on the lights, and started issuing orders to people to get help. The bagger then sat up and announced, "Gotcha!" and Ceil read him the riot act and we were pretty amused by being taken in ourselves. Apparently, the KGB member knew that the bagger knew and was in on it the whole time. It was fun. Makes me wish that I was 19 again :-)

So how much damage does he do? I figured it would be +8 is he has a +1 weapon, +4 strength +1.5X for two-handed weapon, which should go to +7. Mike said something about not haveing it be a two-handed weapon though. The individual ends are treated as medium and light weapons for use of the double-attack. But it is a two-handed weapon since those ends are attached to each other. Or is there something else I am missing?

weapon spec is +2.
it works out to, if he is just using the front end, he has two attacks at +15/+10 and does 1d8+9 each.

(Base attack +7/+2. Weapon focus +1, Strength +6, Weapon is +1. Base damage 1d8, +6 for strength, +2 for specialization, +1 for weapon enchantment.)

If he is also making an attack with his off hand, it works out to
+13/+8 with the axe side (+5/0 for BAB - 2weapon, +1 for focus, +6 for strength, +1 weapon), and +9 for the extra attack with the spear side (+7 is the base attack bonus, but it becomes +5 because of two-weapon fighting, and add +2 for half strength and +1 and +1 for focus and enchantment). 1d8+9 damage with the up side for the above reasons, but only 1d6+5 for the spear side (+1 for weapon, +2 for spec, +2 for half his strength bonus).

Do you think this is right? Mike, Tal, is this what it worked out to? I didn't pay much attention and just wrote down numbers.

As I was telling Tim, I wasn't really paying attention either. I was cooking and eating while this discussion was happening.

This looks correct, as far as I remember.

No, it is not quite right. You are calculating his strength wrong. His strength is 18 (unless it changed and nobody told me). That is a +4 bonus to attack and to damage, usually. But he is using a two-handed weapon, so that makes it +4 attack, and +6 damage. (look at page 97 - the two-handed bonus only applies to damage).

So, take the simple scenario of just attacking with the big end only. Attack = +1 focus, +1 magic, +4 strength, +7/+2 base = +13/+8 to attack. Damage = +2 Specialize, +1 magic, +6 strength = +9 to damage.

Now attacking double-ended adds in an extra attack from the sharp, pointy end in addition to the two regular attacks from the big, smashing end, and incurs a -2 on all attacks (since he is ambidextrous and trained for 2 weapon fighting.) So big end is still the same for damage, but attacks are -2. That means attack = +11/+6 damaging 1-8+9.

The little end should be the same for damage, except it is 1d6+9. I don't see where you got the +2 for HALF the strength bonus. Where did that come from? I can't find it in the PHB. He should get the same bonus for specialization, which would be +6.

The only argument I can see is that if you say he isn't specialized in BOTH ends of the weapon, and you are counting them as different weapons, since they have different attacks. I would argue against that saying that the weapon is listed as 1 weapon, and I don't need to take two Exotic Weapon feats to use both ends, so why should I take two Weapon Specs feats to become specialized in it? Same with focus. Plus the PHB refers to it as 1 weapon that can be used with 2 attacks, but it is still one weapon.

So, in summary:
Attacking with big end only:
+13/+8 @ 1d8+9

Big and Little:
+11/+6 @ 1d8+9 and +11 @ 1d6+9

I really think this is correct, and I double-checked it in my computer program and it calculated it out the same way. I can send the excel file to whomever is interested.

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How to spend your time unemployed

young whippersnappers

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a pointless story

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MARK YOUR CALENDARS

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Bagged by a Bagger

Grundar and his damage

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