Oooooh! I got myself a brand new phone yesterday! Shiny!

I don't have any special requests. I'm still feeling things out, as you've probably figured out with most of my noobish replies.

Anyhow, I'll see about getting piccies of my new shiny.

Meanwhile, look up the Motorola U9 in Aus. That's the - hang on, I just might do it myself. Saves me messing with my digital camera

LOL, let's see if this works

Here's my new shiny!

i could possibly help with that depending on the time. (between rise of the rebellion, the kids, and my father inlaws recovery from quad-bypass surgery)
i'm on skype though, not vent

I'd be game to try it out, but scheduling would be an issue. And my comp's decided to clunk out at the moment, so I've got to service it in a few days.

Anyway, could people tell me their timezones please? That way I can keep a better track of where you're at. Thanks!

central us time (it's 10:38 pm here right now)

Central Time Zone here as well. Would that be 16 hours ahead of Australia or 8 hours behind?

Anyhoo, I'm going to set up a Gametable thread where we can schedule these get-togethers, link up and speed the game along (which will really be nice once I get all three characters on the same page).

Until we all get the hang of Gametable, though, I'm just going to hash together one or more out-of-continuum test adventures, with Corwin, Karnoz and Sylvea all at their normal, non-prologue-ish 5th Level state. Since these test sessions don't fit into the continuum of the campaign, I'm thinking that the test adventures shouldn't have any effect on the PCs' items and spells and such; once we're through with a test adventure, any expended ammunition, magic item charges and such are replenished to their original counts, and any items gathered during the test adventures will be taken away after the test adventures are done. This is only a test, after all.

On the other hand, it may be a good idea to allow any Experience Points gained during the test adventures to be banked towards the ends of your Chapter Zero prologues, just as my way of saying "Thanks for the help." How does that sound?

can you put up a link to game table


or i could just find it myself.. lazy bastard me

ok, i'm currently hosting a gametable game,

hosting ip is 68.187.146.46

nevermind, since i have no mapping stuff setup i can run a mission, but i have no missions setup to run. i'll wait til ain'sy can ohst.. GET ON SKYPE< AIM< OR YAHOO YA YAHOO!!!!!

The Gametable download link is about six posts back, but here it is again.

http://gametable.galactanet.com/

I think we'll try it without any voicechat (at least in the beginning), just to avoid complicating things.

Also, I'm going to make that thread now.

Well, I have a yahoo account, if that helps. I have a mic around somewhere if we're ever going to do chat.

Also, check out afore mentioned thread by Ainsley for some time stuff.

Apologies for the added delay, but we had a pretty nasty shock last week.

My father, who's getting well into his 60's, still keeps himself active and does what he has always enjoyed doing: heating and air conditioning repair and installation, among other things. Who can afford to retire these days, right?

Well, last Tuesday he went to work on somebody's distributor unit up in the attic. This customer, Kyle, is pretty well-to-do; he's a full-time firefighter, his house is less than five years old and it's a pretty fancy two-story brick house with an in-ground swimming pool (the nice kind, with a little in-ground whirlpool tub off to one side) and four bedrooms. So this house obviously cost a pretty penny; unfortunately, the less-than-five-years-old air conditioner went on the fritz and Dad went to Kyle's house to give it a look-over.

It turns out that the air conditioning system wasn't the only substandard thing about this fancy new house. Dad pulled down the folding mini-stairs to climb into the attack, and right when he was about to set foot on the attic floor the whole mini-staircase ripped out of the ceiling and collapsed! Dad fell about eight feet and landed right on his back. FLOP! And, according to him, he lay there for who-knows-how-long until he finally came back to his senses, grabbed his cell phone (which he sometimes leaves in his truck; thank goodness he had it on him that time) and called for help.

It's also very fortunate that Dad works a second job as a paramedic for Champion EMS here in Texas. His own immediate boss (Dustin, the paramedic station's captain) took care of Dad himself and did a damn good job of it, then gave Dad a free ambulance ride out to the hospital in Tyler. They gave Dad a morphine prescription and a thing or three to treat the mild concussion and stop all the swelling, and, even though he's the staunchly independent sort, he needed constant help and attendance from me and two immediate friends of our family for the first few days after the accident.

He's off the morphine and getting around on his own now, and he seems pretty well back to normal. But there's always that sobering realization that the accident could have been a whole lot worse for him. Broken bones, paralysis, even death...these we certainly do not need. Yet we're always hearing about people who do suffer worse injuries from falls, including falls which are less than eight feet.

Yeah, this world needs D&D physics. Fall, take a few points of damage, get up and go about your business. None of this business with bruising and concussions and broken bones and whatnot. It would be nice.

Anyway, Kyle and Dad had a good look at that folding stairladder. The blasted thing was nailed up into the ceiling joyces with nails. Just a bunch of skinny little penny nails! Who the hell was the contractor who used penny nails to secure a loadbearing structure like a stairladder into the ceiling? That's an installation which should not be done with anything less than quarter-inch wood screws, and plenty of them! Hell, I'm a far cry from being a professional carpenter, and I still know that! What's this guy's excuse?

I'm hoping that Kyle slaps that stupid contractor with a lawsuit. I hate rampant litigation, but when someone's shoddy craftsmanship threatens another person's life and well-being, I think such civil punishment becomes necessary. At best, the contractor gets a financially painful lesson about doing a job right the first time and corrects his misbehavior in the future. At worst, he loses his business, but at least he can't imperil anyone else with his terrible work....

So I just had to get that off my chest. Dad pulled through his recovery just fine, I'm going to eat dinner with him at the lakehouse and then I'm going to come back and see about catching up with the House of Ainsley campaign. It sucks that you three have to put up with my delays and absences and family matters and occupational accidents, but I still haven't forgotten y'all. I'll be back.

Ah Ainsley!

I'm so sorry to hear all that, but I am very happy and relieved that your dad's getting on okay. It's touching to see a man of your age so close to his father, I hope for both your sakes that he had many! many more years yet

Anyway, don't worry too much about absences and stuff. As always we are more than aware that Real Life takes precedence. So don't sweat it.

Say hi to the chickies for me

fyi, i won't be available this weekend. it's free play weekened on City of Heroes and i'm determined to get victor twenty to at least lvl 30 (can't pull 24 hour binging to get to 50)

CoX is having another free play weekend and they never emailed me about it? Man, I don't know what to think about that. They used to email me with these events all the time. I guess they don't love me anymore....

Also, Wraith, the chickies say hello and they're doing well.

if it makes you feel any better I didn't get victor to 30... i got agent q to 30 then left my group because i was tired of the aggro whore blasters bitching that i wasn't spamming twilight grasp.

"you're a defendar so kwit blasting an start heeling!"

dark/dark defender..... as a healer.... when i'm slotted for AoE debuffing and my only healing power is my "oh fuck" button.... at least i got a lot of use out of howling twilight and teleport friend (to bring their corpses up to the next set of mobs so that i could rez them)

the sad part is it was a partially Guru team and someone talked in team chat about kicking me so they could get a "real defender"... it reminded me why I didn't play him all that much... too many people got into the stereotype of "defendars r 4 heels" I will say that the 3 defenders and a tank group i was in was great... dark, rad, and forcefields and a tank.. it was attack of the glowing invisible hamsterballs

I must say though that the ability to change power colors is nice... Dark/Dark is pretty sweet with yellow as the "primary" color. it really pulls off the "sulphur" clouds (even though there were the inevitable hundreds of "Pee" jokes, and how Q knows "Jarate"

Yeah, I never bought the "All Defenders are healers" stereotype, either; You may recall Grae Knight and me bickering because his Empathy Defender (Grae Medic) was pure healer, while my Empathy Defender (Mary O'Knickers) put just as much emphasis on her "Blaster" set (Archery) as she did on her "Defender" set (Empathy); Mary also had Super Speed, which made her ideal for hit-and-run attacks...or, more accurately, "hit-hit-hit, run away at Mach 1, heal up, refresh Regeneration, recover Endurance, come back and repeat" attacks.

The difference, of course, is that Mary O'Knickers kicked ass, and Grae Medic didn't. Mary O'Knickers was soloing Elite Bosses like Nocturnal and Captain Castillian, and Grae Knight himself admitted that Grae Medic wouldn't stand a chance going one-on-one with the likes of Nocturnal. Of course, he tried to spin it 180 degrees, like an Empathy Defender built to solo Nocturnal could somehow be a bad thing, and being utterly useless outside of a team is somehow a good thing.

That crazy, crazy Grae Knight, eh?

So screw stereotypes. Dark/Dark Defenders aren't healers; they're buffer/debuffers, and they can boot some head too. Just give them a chance.