It's that time
Here's the year in review for the World of Shafe.
Career
The big job move was switching from Riverside to the corporate office at Fairview. Better hours, more interesting job. Life at work doesn't suck nearly as bad.
On the freelance front, let's see. I think I had already scrapped the Organ Grinder plans before 06 started. The construct book flopped. We got it done, THEN the publisher decided he couldn't make any money on it and wouldn't print it. There's a kill fee he could pay me, but I'm not pursuing that because I don't want the work to set in an in box or personl campaign forever. There's a two year time limit on the thing, so this time next year, that shit gets shopped around. Besides, the kill fee was $20. That's not really worth the effort of taking the guy to court in New Jersey. Moral of that story is, negotiate your kill fees to be worth the effort (at least worth the effort in your mind).
The RoW projects was postponed through the hurricane season, then writers dropped out and the project was revamped. As I was struggling to figure out how to fit my piece into the revamp, it got postponed again, then revamped again as more people quit. Just a couple of weeks ago I realized I could leave the piece as is, shorten it when a final word count is announced if necessary, and from here just work with the editors if changes are needed. Done.
That gives me time to get some of my other ideas onto paper, yay. I'll get into next year in the gaming section.
Finances
Despite a few minor crises and sick cats throughout the year, we hit our savings in reserve goal this year. Which I promptly used as a down payment on a new car. Which I promptly hit a deer with. Repairs were perfect, but not in time for a wedding in Ohio (which was great fun), so I can now say that renting a car isn't TOO bad. And the Dodge Caliber is a fun car to drive. I'm still not a big fan of station wagon/crossover/whateveryouwanttocallittomakeitcool, though.
Got some stocks this year, which have performed in a much crappy fashion. Unfortunately, I forgot to dump one this week for tax reasons. Oops. Oh well. By this time next year, it'll either be kicking ass or have disappeared off the face of the planet. Almost bought some other stocks, but the money wasn't there (see the cat crises and car above). One would have rocked (almost doubling at this point), and the others....not so much. What I need to do is the same thing I did when dad gave me 2K to invest. Take 10K of fake scratch and invest that. Track it, and slowly buy into it with the real money. Unfortunately, the scratch dad gave me met a terrible end at the hands of unforseen smoker hate and smoking lawsuits.... That was 10 years ago. Wow I'm old.
We looked into buying a house. Found a beautiful condo. Thought about ARMs and 80/20 splits, etc. Thought about having $15 a month not dedicated to food or a bill. DIdn't want to be hungry if the cat's got sick or Wendy's car died. So, we opted for a new apartment. Found one. We'll be moving in on 1/7/07.
Aside from the apartment and the accompanying getting of stuff for that, for the new year, we still have to make a vacation and savings plan. By vacation plan, I'm talking visiting the family, Gen Con, are we going to Origins, can we make it to Europe, etc. Hopefully we can lace the year with a few weekend trips anywhere but here. Savings wise, *shrug* Cash reserves are still abyssmally low. Gotta get that back up, then hit the stocks again. Wanna get a CD ladder going. Now that we've got all the kids in our life their respective dragons and wizards, I might switch over to savings bonds for gifts. It's a boring gift now, but trust me, when you turn 18 and unload those things into a fat $200 cash, Uncle Brian and Aunt Wendy aren't so lame.... Besides, I'd rather be the cool adults cause we're cool, not cause we give cool toys that just get lost in the miasma of gifts everyone else is throwing at the kid.
Gaming
Lots of Battlefield. BF2 until October and mostly BF2142 now. Good times. Guitar Hero (and now GHII) rounded out the party gaming. Mortal Kombat released a new one for the parties at Phil's, too. Woot.
On the RPG front, I can't remember which D&D set I was running at the start of the year. Crenius/Zeke/Levvy? Yes. That camnpaign went the wayside, probably due to scheduling. Then we moved into the pass around campaign - Meguaba, Marlibaut, Project, the nameless assassin. That one switched to Nick DMing when scheduling killed it for Wendy. Then it died when Wendy and I started looking for a house and pretty much stopped gaming.
Shadowrun met the same fate. House front killed it. When we put that one on hiatus, the characters had just recovered the dream stone, broke Nick's characters legs, and escaped from a toxic spirit with a tribe of aborigines in tow. I was set to figure a way to screw the international fixer that had hired us to grab the dream stone, and it sounded like we would be heading to Hong Kong. Then we learned that there were still two dream stones left, one of which is in the magical malaise that Sydney has become. My character and I both lost interest.
Finally, after 100 years of lust, I made it to the mecca of gaming this year. That's right. Gen Con. I went as total fan boy and packed in as much gaming as possible. Played some fun and not so fun board games. Played Serenity, Godlike, and holy crap I can't remember all the RPGs. Godlike made it into my library when I got back. Still can't get enough people with a real interest in playing it though. :( Played Call of Cthulu, which also made into the library, finally. Also played in the Midnight Zombie Show, which is a must for any zombie fun or anyone that likes improvisational roleplaying and thinking on your feet. If we go next year, I'm taking booze. The Ram is a must for any Indy visits. About the only things I'd change about Gen Con is that I'd do a little more non-RPG stuff (like anime), I'd hit some of the shows, like the costume contest and the ENNIES, and I'd definitely network with more people. Wish I would have exchanged info with the British guy that played Captain America in Godlike. All in all, Gen Con might have been the big highlight of my year.
So what's up for next year? Hopefully the RoW will wrap up. If it does, I MIGHT pitch an idea or two to the company for some solo stuff. I have a list of about 8 articles to pitch to the big magazines in gaming. I'll keep watching the one job posting site for stuff, and should seriously search out some of the other forums for freelance work. I'm thinking kobolds, new monsters, maybe something with a defiler.
On the personal gaming front, there's three campaigns I'm really jonesin for. There's the Dungeon magazine Savage Tides adventure path. There's the Call of Cthulhu generational trifecta. There's the campaign that's been in the world I've slowly been working on since the Crenius/Zeke/Levvy story died. All good fun. Not sure where to focus. Oh yeah, and there's the World Serpent Inn thing, but that's more of a means of running one shots with a regular group of characters than a real campaign. I figure that's a good outlet for the tradiional kill things and take their stuff style of playing so we can hopefully focus on more storytelling with the other three campaigns. Gen Con 07? Hopefully. Right now it's in the "I'm saving for it category." Finances will determine if it goes into the "I'll put it on my credit card" category. LOL.
Oh yeah, and hopefully we can buy a Wii.
Politics/World Events
We voted. I think it was a 50/50 split on the people I voted for making it or not, but that was brought down by the fact that for a lot of the county attorney and one person running shit, if I hadn't heard of the person, I wrote in someone I knew. So a little better than 50/50 on the shit I cared about. At the very least, I can honestly say that the stuff I had control over didn't leave me with any "Oh god, we're screwed" thoughts. Now stuff in other states.....
I'm running out of steam on this thing. I got nothing on the politics. My body has certain needs which I must attend to. Like eating. I'll try to touch on the things I'd like to see if I do a full "the year ahead" type post in the next few days.
Career
The big job move was switching from Riverside to the corporate office at Fairview. Better hours, more interesting job. Life at work doesn't suck nearly as bad.
On the freelance front, let's see. I think I had already scrapped the Organ Grinder plans before 06 started. The construct book flopped. We got it done, THEN the publisher decided he couldn't make any money on it and wouldn't print it. There's a kill fee he could pay me, but I'm not pursuing that because I don't want the work to set in an in box or personl campaign forever. There's a two year time limit on the thing, so this time next year, that shit gets shopped around. Besides, the kill fee was $20. That's not really worth the effort of taking the guy to court in New Jersey. Moral of that story is, negotiate your kill fees to be worth the effort (at least worth the effort in your mind).
The RoW projects was postponed through the hurricane season, then writers dropped out and the project was revamped. As I was struggling to figure out how to fit my piece into the revamp, it got postponed again, then revamped again as more people quit. Just a couple of weeks ago I realized I could leave the piece as is, shorten it when a final word count is announced if necessary, and from here just work with the editors if changes are needed. Done.
That gives me time to get some of my other ideas onto paper, yay. I'll get into next year in the gaming section.
Finances
Despite a few minor crises and sick cats throughout the year, we hit our savings in reserve goal this year. Which I promptly used as a down payment on a new car. Which I promptly hit a deer with. Repairs were perfect, but not in time for a wedding in Ohio (which was great fun), so I can now say that renting a car isn't TOO bad. And the Dodge Caliber is a fun car to drive. I'm still not a big fan of station wagon/crossover/whateveryouwanttocallittomakeitcool, though.
Got some stocks this year, which have performed in a much crappy fashion. Unfortunately, I forgot to dump one this week for tax reasons. Oops. Oh well. By this time next year, it'll either be kicking ass or have disappeared off the face of the planet. Almost bought some other stocks, but the money wasn't there (see the cat crises and car above). One would have rocked (almost doubling at this point), and the others....not so much. What I need to do is the same thing I did when dad gave me 2K to invest. Take 10K of fake scratch and invest that. Track it, and slowly buy into it with the real money. Unfortunately, the scratch dad gave me met a terrible end at the hands of unforseen smoker hate and smoking lawsuits.... That was 10 years ago. Wow I'm old.
We looked into buying a house. Found a beautiful condo. Thought about ARMs and 80/20 splits, etc. Thought about having $15 a month not dedicated to food or a bill. DIdn't want to be hungry if the cat's got sick or Wendy's car died. So, we opted for a new apartment. Found one. We'll be moving in on 1/7/07.
Aside from the apartment and the accompanying getting of stuff for that, for the new year, we still have to make a vacation and savings plan. By vacation plan, I'm talking visiting the family, Gen Con, are we going to Origins, can we make it to Europe, etc. Hopefully we can lace the year with a few weekend trips anywhere but here. Savings wise, *shrug* Cash reserves are still abyssmally low. Gotta get that back up, then hit the stocks again. Wanna get a CD ladder going. Now that we've got all the kids in our life their respective dragons and wizards, I might switch over to savings bonds for gifts. It's a boring gift now, but trust me, when you turn 18 and unload those things into a fat $200 cash, Uncle Brian and Aunt Wendy aren't so lame.... Besides, I'd rather be the cool adults cause we're cool, not cause we give cool toys that just get lost in the miasma of gifts everyone else is throwing at the kid.
Gaming
Lots of Battlefield. BF2 until October and mostly BF2142 now. Good times. Guitar Hero (and now GHII) rounded out the party gaming. Mortal Kombat released a new one for the parties at Phil's, too. Woot.
On the RPG front, I can't remember which D&D set I was running at the start of the year. Crenius/Zeke/Levvy? Yes. That camnpaign went the wayside, probably due to scheduling. Then we moved into the pass around campaign - Meguaba, Marlibaut, Project, the nameless assassin. That one switched to Nick DMing when scheduling killed it for Wendy. Then it died when Wendy and I started looking for a house and pretty much stopped gaming.
Shadowrun met the same fate. House front killed it. When we put that one on hiatus, the characters had just recovered the dream stone, broke Nick's characters legs, and escaped from a toxic spirit with a tribe of aborigines in tow. I was set to figure a way to screw the international fixer that had hired us to grab the dream stone, and it sounded like we would be heading to Hong Kong. Then we learned that there were still two dream stones left, one of which is in the magical malaise that Sydney has become. My character and I both lost interest.
Finally, after 100 years of lust, I made it to the mecca of gaming this year. That's right. Gen Con. I went as total fan boy and packed in as much gaming as possible. Played some fun and not so fun board games. Played Serenity, Godlike, and holy crap I can't remember all the RPGs. Godlike made it into my library when I got back. Still can't get enough people with a real interest in playing it though. :( Played Call of Cthulu, which also made into the library, finally. Also played in the Midnight Zombie Show, which is a must for any zombie fun or anyone that likes improvisational roleplaying and thinking on your feet. If we go next year, I'm taking booze. The Ram is a must for any Indy visits. About the only things I'd change about Gen Con is that I'd do a little more non-RPG stuff (like anime), I'd hit some of the shows, like the costume contest and the ENNIES, and I'd definitely network with more people. Wish I would have exchanged info with the British guy that played Captain America in Godlike. All in all, Gen Con might have been the big highlight of my year.
So what's up for next year? Hopefully the RoW will wrap up. If it does, I MIGHT pitch an idea or two to the company for some solo stuff. I have a list of about 8 articles to pitch to the big magazines in gaming. I'll keep watching the one job posting site for stuff, and should seriously search out some of the other forums for freelance work. I'm thinking kobolds, new monsters, maybe something with a defiler.
On the personal gaming front, there's three campaigns I'm really jonesin for. There's the Dungeon magazine Savage Tides adventure path. There's the Call of Cthulhu generational trifecta. There's the campaign that's been in the world I've slowly been working on since the Crenius/Zeke/Levvy story died. All good fun. Not sure where to focus. Oh yeah, and there's the World Serpent Inn thing, but that's more of a means of running one shots with a regular group of characters than a real campaign. I figure that's a good outlet for the tradiional kill things and take their stuff style of playing so we can hopefully focus on more storytelling with the other three campaigns. Gen Con 07? Hopefully. Right now it's in the "I'm saving for it category." Finances will determine if it goes into the "I'll put it on my credit card" category. LOL.
Oh yeah, and hopefully we can buy a Wii.
Politics/World Events
We voted. I think it was a 50/50 split on the people I voted for making it or not, but that was brought down by the fact that for a lot of the county attorney and one person running shit, if I hadn't heard of the person, I wrote in someone I knew. So a little better than 50/50 on the shit I cared about. At the very least, I can honestly say that the stuff I had control over didn't leave me with any "Oh god, we're screwed" thoughts. Now stuff in other states.....
I'm running out of steam on this thing. I got nothing on the politics. My body has certain needs which I must attend to. Like eating. I'll try to touch on the things I'd like to see if I do a full "the year ahead" type post in the next few days.
posted by Amazing Shafeman at 8:50 AM
0 comments
