Author: coemgenvs

Summer!

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My Business Applications final has been available for a week, and was due by the end of finals week, which if I remember correctly is Thursday of this week. (See previous posts about online classes leading to disconnnect from campus schedule.) Anyway, I submitted my final earlier this afternoon, and according to my math even if I don’t do very well on my final I should achieve a satisfactory grade, considering I have 100% or close to it on all of the assignments, and about 90% on the two quizzes over Microsoft Excel and Access in the last weeks of April. Now I can enjoy the week until final grades are available and the 27 days until my summer class starts.

Technically, that number should probably be more like 26, considering today is essentially over due to my working from 4 to midnight tonight. Tonight is, however, the last day I work this week, and now that my spring semester is over I can (finally) return to amusing myself with Netflix, Crusader Kings 2, Europa Universalis 4, and writing.

In Chariton news, I’ve played to (if I remember correctly) 2767, and the current Duke of Chariton is in his 50s, so he probably has less than 20 years left. My current plan is to finish playing his rule. I’m not sure what will happen next, but Paradox Interactive (the company that makes Crusader Kings 2) released the first information about the next expansion, which will probably be coming out sometime in the next month or two. For my next After the End-related writing project, I’m considering playing as a Norse chieftain in the wilderness once known as Wisconsin, but that probably won’t start until after the next expansion is released. I know the After the End mod has expanded to California, and I’m looking forward to updating my version of the mod from 0.4 to 0.5 and seeing how California might impact the rest of the map (though I admit I don’t anticipate much influence from California to reach the Midwest).

I’ve also been thinking lately about how I haven’t posted much about the Chariton game here lately, which I’m going to have to address now that I’m done with the spring semester. I think my writing has reached the point at which I’ve played to, but since I haven’t looked at that for at least a week or so I’ll have to look at that later. I also keep thinking about writing 25-year updates to show the state of “the world” (or at least the part on the map), which would be at roughly July 2691, 2716, 2741, and 2766. I’ve also considered playing a while in “observer mode” to see what the AI might do. So far, the current Duke of Chariton’s heir has proven to be quite lustful, considering he’s acknowledged a bunch of illegitimate children in addition to a decent number of legitimate children.

Backward and Forward

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This morning, I went to bed about 2 AM, planning on waking up around 8 for my counseling appointment at 9 AM. This was slightly delayed by my browsing the Internet via my phone until about 2:30, but I had set my alarm clock and a timer on my phone for 8 AM.

For the third time, that didn’t happen. I woke up at 8, but I turned off my phone’s alarm, rolled over, and went back to sleep until 8:50. I decided to go ahead and go, started getting ready to drive to campus, and then, about 8:55, I realized that if I left my apartment about 9, I would make it to campus at 9:15 and then it’d be a few more minutes to walk to the counseling center. I decided this didn’t seem worth it, so I went ahead and called the counseling center, talked for a few minutes to the counselor I’ve been meeting with, and for the third time we rescheduled for the same time next week (even though we haven’t actually met since April 9).

Needless to say, this was frustrating. This general mood wasn’t helped by going to campus anyway to meet my brother for lunch. While walking around campus and eating in the student union, I felt like I was enjoying people watching too much. The good news on that front, at least, is that taking classes this summer and fall should mean that I’ll have some potential for being around people that isn’t while at work. At one point I also started wondering what it would be like if I could either start college all over again, with a blank transcript, or at least have followed a more “traditional” path by going to one school, finding something I wanted to major in, and then staying at that school until graduation (4-6+ years, finances depending), as opposed to my college experience to date of going to a university I liked, majoring in something I didn’t like after the first week, leaving that school after a year, taking two years off in the work force, and then taking classes at one school before transferring to yet another university. Third time’s the charm?

I distinctly remember, the first semester of my freshman year, deciding I didn’t enjoy being a computer science major. In retrospect, I really should have talked to someone about it, instead of continuing to attend classes I disliked and, in general, not being the most diligent student. It would be nice if I had been more motivated and interested freshman year (particularly second semester – my worst semester to date), but it seems like half of college, if not young adult life in general, is learning how to navigate bureaucracy, or at least large, impersonal structures. Even if you don’t go to college, and instead go to the military or the workforce, there’s probably some element of that involved.

Anyway, it could be worse. My current Business Applications class, as I’ve written here before, is easy, and aside from two quizzes I’ve taken recently my current grade is almost 99%. I’m not too concerned. In contrast to the spring 2010 semester, where I stopped attending most of my classes by mid-February and was a mess at the end of the semester (if not earlier), this semester has been okay, disagreeable writing class and my own failings excepted. Once I take the writing class this summer, my GPA will improve, and next fall German and Accounting should, hopefully, be more interesting (or at least easy).

Non-academically, the last few weeks at work have been a bit rough between people quitting or leaving, so we’ve been short-handed. New people have been hired, though, so aside from training them (which I thankfully haven’t had to do recently) it sounds like being short-handed might be less of a problem. Tomorrow’s pay day, which will be nice until my paycheck promptly vanishes to pay rent and bills. C’est la vie. I believe I have the next couple days off, though, so that’ll be nice.

I’m not a huge fan of summer, due to not enjoying warm weather, insects, and sunlight, but the weather recently has been pleasant, even if I prefer autumn or winter. In general, it could be worse- for example, I don’t live in Nepal, Syria, or the territory claimed by the self-styled “Islamic State”, and (unlike the characters of Revolution, which I’ve started watching again) I have access to the Internet and modern conveniences.

Writing this makes me feel like I need a “mental health” or “venting” tag. “Life” suddenly seems way too broad as a category and tag.

Current projects

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Crusader Kings 2:

(After The End mod) ChAARiton: A history of the Dukes of Chariton (rulers of the lands once known as northern Missouri) and their descendants, starting in 2666. At present I’m thinking about ending this around 2766, after one century of gameplay, so I can update the mod to a more recent version. So far, according to Google Docs, I’ve written about 18 thousand words, and I still have at least 20 more years to write about, so I’ll probably meet or exceed 20 thousand words.

(CK2+ mod) AARkney (working title): A history of the Pictish chiefs of Orkney, starting in 769 and ending… well, whenever I feel like ending it, I guess. I haven’t worked on this very much, and have only started working on it briefly about a week ago.

Master of Magic:

(untitled): a narrative of the progress of a game of Master of Magic as a wizard specializing in Life and Sorcery magic (or, in Magic: the Gathering terms, White and Blue) and ruling a city of High Men. I’ve played the game for 20+ years now, and have come up with several characters. My goal at the moment is for a sort of generational saga, because I always enjoy reading those. While writing earlier today, I realized I need to do some research on medieval houses, and possibly urban society in general.

Contemplating dreams

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The impending end of one month, and the start of a new month, has made me want to start a new “project” (writing, gaming, writing about a game, etc.). This momentary urge is absurd, because I already have 3 ideas I’m more or less currently working on (really, 2 plus one I’ve barely touched). The good news is that my semester is almost over, and since my Business Applications class is absurdly easy (almost certainly the easiest college class I’ve taken, or am likely to take), this means that, at least in theory, I’ll have slightly more time in which to write, game, etc. In practice, I’m not sure how much more time I’m actually likely to have, considering how much time I (don’t) spend working on this class. I suppose every hour helps, though.

For the past week or so, I’ve had a somewhat irregular sleep schedule. Last Friday afternoon I made the mistake of drinking coffee, so after finishing my coffee around 4:30 PM I was unable to fall asleep before roughly 7:30 the next morning (after spending 3 or 4 hours trying to fall asleep). Other than that, I’ve mostly been going to bed before then – I remember at least one day (Monday?) where I was going to bed about 5 AM (and really, my working until midnight doesn’t help in this area), but last night/this morning I was almost proud of myself for going to bed at 2 AM this morning after getting up about 11:30 AM Tuesday and spending most of my day off in front of my computer, which sounds really pathetic and boring when I say it like that.

After going to bed about 2 AM, I think I fell asleep relatively quickly. After having a couple dreams, I woke up about 5:30 AM, wrote down what I could remember about my odd dreams, and then spent some time looking at stuff on my phone before I finally decided to not bother with trying to get back to sleep. I have far too much experience with sleep deprivation, which is only aided by coffee, that magical elixir that seems to completely eliminate any symptoms of sleep deprivation and fatigue. Maybe I’ll be able to fall asleep before 3 tomorrow morning.

I usually think my dreams are interesting, in either the “fascinating” or “bizarre” definition of the word. I’m not sure how much I want to write here about them, honestly – I could dissect and explain everything, but (as unlikely as it seems) I’m also hesitant about divulging too much detail. At the same time, I don’t want to be completely vague (“People were involved”). Continue reading →

Master of Magic

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Master of Magic is a single-player turn-based strategy game originally released in September 1994 for MS-DOS. The player is a powerful wizard whose goal, along with their computer-controlled counterparts, is to dominate the two worlds of Arcanus (similar to Earth) and Myrror (more magical and with various flora, fauna, and minerals that aren’t present on Arcanus) through military or magical might. In this game, magic is (like Magic: The Gathering) divided into six schools of magic: Arcane (available to everyone), Life, Death, Nature, Sorcery, and Chaos. Instead of the technology tree available in most strategy games that requires you to research technology in order to advance, you spend turns researching various magical spells, until (if the game lasts long enough) you can research the Spell of Mastery and win the game.

You begin the game in January 1400 with a small town populated by one of the races. If you start on Arcanus, you can choose from the Orcs, three flavors of human (High Men, Barbarians, or Nomads), High Elves, Halflings, Lizardmen, Gnolls (like the D&D race, basically humanoid hyenas) or Klackons (insectoid, basically giant ants), while Myrror is populated by Dark Elves, Beastmen, Trolls, and Dwarves. Not all of these races are necessarily present in any particular game, and each one has its differences. While the Orcs can build any building, the High Men (for example) can’t build Fantastic Stables, so they aren’t able to build a unit like the Nomad griffin cavalry. Other differences include population growth (slower or faster than “normal”) and diplomatic relations – some races get bonuses to “unrest” if their city is occupied by another race that they don’t get along with. Additionally, a few races (High and Dark Elves, and possibly Beastmen if I remember correctly) have magical populations that generate “mana” (i.e., power that can be used by the ruling wizard) directly, without requiring construction of religious buildings. Additionally, various roaming heroes may offer you (or your opponents) their services or be summoned via spells that can lead your armies to victory with their various abilities and skills.

I don’t remember now when I first heard of Master of Magic, but it was probably at some point within the last five years or so while reading about strategy games and/or fantasy strategy games. At some point in the last three or four years, I found it via Good Old Games (gog.com), which has (or used to have) the most recently patched (March 1995!) version available bundled with DOSBox, which I’ve played on my Linux computer with the aid of Wine (software that allows Windows programs to be run on Linux, not the alcoholic beverage).

At some point within the past month, I had the idea of writing a story set in a game where my actions, as the game player, were in the background of the story. I decided to do this with Master of Magic, so instead of writing from the perspective of the ruling wizard I would write from the perspective of his subjects. After some “random” generation with a list of heights, Myers-Briggs types, hair colors, and possibly a few other characteristics I can’t remember offhand, I’ve concocted (so far) 4 viewpoint characters, including an ENTJ soldier, an INFP scholar, and an ISTP merchant. Due to my playing the High Men, intending to base their religion on medieval Catholicism, and having a variety of viewpoint characters, I feel like I owe George R.R. Martin (author of A Song of Ice and Fire, also known as the Game of Thrones series) some kind of apology. Since I really enjoy his work, maybe no apology is necessary. At any rate, so far I have vague ideas for how I plan to start the story and I’ve played the game for 16 years (1 month per turn). I should probably start writing soon, but I feel like I need a better title than “the Master of Magic story”.

a heady cocktail

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I haven’t posted anything here in a while, and now seems like a good time to change that.

I’ve been texting a girl since late February. I don’t remember when Myers-Briggs types first appeared in our conversation, but I thought it was quite interesting to learn that she is also an INTJ with a weak Judging/Perceiving preference. INTJs are among the rarest Myers-Briggs types at 1-3% of the population, and female INTJs are especially rare, being something like 0.5 to 1% of the population. This is relevant because my recent recreational research topics (i.e., recent Google queries) have included things like “INTJ-INTJ relationships” (of which I’ve read all of the first few pages of Google results), “typical relationship timeline”, and the meaning of the emoticon 😉 in a text message. I suspect I’m currently forgetting others, but if there are any they’ve been generally along those lines due to the heady cocktail of what I suspect to be oxytocin and whatever other “feeling”-related chemicals that have been flooding my brain lately.

Earlier this week, while reading about “typical relationship timeline”, I thought it was quite interesting to read people saying that they typically preferred to “define the relationship” and discuss exclusivity after about 2 or 3 months of dating. Suddenly, my previous experience with (pseudo-)dating made sense – last summer, after asking a friend that lives in another city if she’d be interested in going on a date at some point, we corresponded via Facebook chat and text message for just under two months (after previously corresponding via those media for two or three months prior) before mutually agreeing to be just friends. I don’t remember now if I had previously conducted any research along these lines, but suddenly that particular conversation made sense. I distinctly remember that for some period of time I had considered the date as being in the future, at least until this friend made a Facebook post about how she had only dated INTJs and tagged me as being among that number, which was something of a pleasant surprise since I hadn’t considered us to be dating before then. I suppose that’s what I get for being completely uninterested in romantic relationships until my freshman year of college and having no experience in that arena.

For some reason I thought there was more I was going to write on this topic, but now that I can’t think of it, and feel like I’ve met my self-disclosure quota for the week (month?), I’ll close with a brief description of this morning’s dream. Last night the text message conversation with Current Correspondent ended abruptly just before 1:30 AM, which has led me to assume that maybe she fell asleep. At any rate, immediately before I woke up this morning I dreamt that I woke up because she sent me like 5 text messages, which (if I remember correctly) featured apologizing for falling asleep last night, a few potential names of future children (I think they were supposed to somehow be combinations of our names, though the few I remember definitely weren’t), and suggesting meeting in person. Other than vaguely discussing future plans, like a few 80s movies I apparently need to see, we haven’t really made anything resembling firm plans. I think it would be weird if someone texted me names of our future children before we even met “in person”, to say nothing of doing so before any kind of exclusive relationship was established. Honestly, I haven’t even decided if I want kids yet, and I generally feel like I should gain some experience with dating, at least (to say nothing of getting a better job, and maybe finishing college) before I even consider reproducing.

Overall this entry seems simultaneously way too personal and acceptably vague. I don’t expect this (by which I mean “talking about my current or former relationships”) to become a regular thing, but I suppose we’ll see. I’ll have to post more about other recreation and recent events later.

Springing

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Have I really not written here for over two weeks?

I requested last Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (April 3-5) off from work, expecting to get only those three days and hoping to be able to go home for Easter with my brother. To my pleasant surprise, I instead got nearly 2 weeks off work, which ends tonight. Tomorrow and Saturday I work until midnight, and Friday (my 24th birthday[!]), I only work until 8 PM. It being a Friday night, however, I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up having to stay at least a few minutes late.  Continue reading →

clouds lifting

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I just dropped the writing class that I’ve had issues with this semester (and my freshman year and last summer, but I digress). My semester is looking much better, if only because I enjoy how easy my business applications class is. Doing the week’s assignments in an hour on campus? Sure, it seems futile and absurd to expect Excel and Access 2013 to apply whenever I manage to get a job that actually involves using “productivity” software (as opposed to cooking utensils, like my current job), but who knows, maybe after I graduate I’ll have an IT job with a company that’s still using a ten-year-old Microsoft Office version.

Of course, before that happens, I still have like another 60-odd hours left before I graduate.

(laugh track)

Considering the vital place the aforementioned writing class holds in the requirements and curriculum, I’m currently thinking about trying to take it this summer, or at least during a future semester (next spring?) in a “traditional” classroom setting. Continue reading →

writing about my problems

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Mid-term grades came out today, and there were no surprises. There have been previous semesters where I don’t really know how I’m doing until I’m pleasantly (or unpleasantly) surprised by my mid-term grade (I’ve never really been an academic perfectionist, and this has been particularly true in college), but this semester, I was pretty sure that my grades would reflect the effort I’ve been putting into my classes. Being able to do my business applications assignments for the week in about an hour at the library works a lot better for my underdeveloped study skills and inconsistent motivation than the much more open-ended assignments for my writing class (which I believe I’ve written about here before). Now I don’t know why I didn’t just suck it up and do most of the assignments for the first half of the semester, but a very consistent theme in my education, since at least kindergarten, is that I have a low opinion of and interest in anything that seems stupid, which is effectively synonymous with anything I’ve already learned. Continue reading →

Deeds of the Dukes of Chariton, part III

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(I played and wrote about these events more than a week ago. As of this morning, I’ve played this game as the Duke of Chariton to 2701, so there’s plenty more to come.)

Deeds of the Dukes of Chariton

III: War and Rebellion
January 2670 – April 2676

In April 2670, Duke Truman purchased an indulgence from the Pope, and news of the pope granting absolution reached Duke Truman near Des Moines mere days before King Franklin summoned his vassals to war, announcing his intent to return Rock Island to Iowan rule.

In late April 2670, Rose, the young wife of Duke Truman’s marshal, was the subject of salacious rumors after she was supposedly seen in a compromising position with the Count of Thompson, who was 22 years her elder. In early June, Rose died after a brief illness.

In June 2670, heathens from Michigan raided the country near Hannibal.

In July of that year, Count Napoleon requested to be allowed to duel his rival, Duke Truman’s marshal, over affronts to his honor. Duke Truman allowed the duel.

Duke Truman’s marshal, a man named Phineas, would later marry Maisy, a woman from the Canonate of Boone, part of the Boonslick Republic (also known as the self-styled State of Missouri).

In September, the heathens from Michigan who had pillaged Count Hamilcar’s lands were raiding near Ottumwa, so Duke Truman sent orders to muster men from his lands around Kirksville in order to defeat the pagans. 600 Chariton men under the command of Count Hamilcar and Lavon Graham marched north from Kirksville to Ottumwa and met the 500 Northmen near Ottumwa, where they were also joined by 500 men led by the Canon of Shoquoquon.

The 1000 Iowans met the Northlanders south-east of Ottumwa in early November. Count Hamilcar commanded the Duke of Chariton’s men on the Iowan left, while Canon Flint of Shoquoquon commanded his men in the Iowan center. After putting the Northlander scouts to flight by his vastly superior numbers, Count Hamilcar joined the Canon of Shoquoquon in attacking the Northlander center.

On November 24, His Holiness Praised-Be died in battle against the heathen King Louis of Louisiana at the age of 48. The College of Cardinals quickly elected Pleasant Cottonclad, the Abbot of Doniphan (a vassal of the Duke of Lead Belt, in southern Missouri).

Upon his hasty election, the 31-year-old new Pope, who had been commanding troops near Rapides in Louisiana, assumed the name of Cruxipher. Continue reading →