Saving Throw

Weather: Hot day, humid evening.
Hooligans: One
Apologies: Also one
Triumphs: More than one

Seriously, super sorry about going AWOL last week. I'm settling into a pattern of four posts a week (Friday is too weekendy), but last week was a busy one. Most of my productive time outside of work was spent working on a job application that included an extensive game analysis (recommended 3-5 pages). I chose Mark of the Ninja, and laying out its design choices on paper made me realize just how impressive the game is. After last week, it's earned a spot on my list of near-perfect games, alongside

• Bastion
• Journey
• Beyond Good & Evil
• Guacamelee
• Burnout Paradise
• Metroid Prime

There are a few more, but that's a pretty sick list already. Anyway, triumph #1: job application submitted! I'd still love for my current position to become permanent, but there are just six weeks until the end of my contract and I'm going to try and avoid another six-month "vacation" this time.

Saving throw against hooliganism: failed

Tonight's ride home featured not one but two noteworthy events. The first was a genuine hooligan - some jackass stuck his head out of his car window to yell at me as he drove by. You may recall that I have an active imagination, and/or that I mentioned watching The Vampire Diaries a couple weeks ago. I'm still plowing through that series, which probably contributed to my imagining that the hooligan's catcall included the word "werewolf" in it. Getting yelled at late at night without warning is startling, and we already know there's a man-eating coyote living in eastern Bellevue, so my mind started spinning with creepy possibilities. Eventually it settled down, and I was only worrying that Mr. Hooligan would decide to pull a U-turn* and come buzz me. Oh imagination. You so crazy.

Saving throw against fatigue: success

The other event of the ride home was Triumph #2. Sometime last week, frustrated that I'm still failing to find the willpower to do core/upper body exercises before work, I tried engaging my core muscles during my bike ride. Hello, new-found strength and stability! It let me involve a bunch more muscles in my pedaling, and somehow even got my shoulders involved. And today, with my core engaged, I made the entire trip home without dropping to the smallest chainring**. There are usually three separate hills that force me to downshift to my smallest few gears, so yay!

Saving throw against low productivity: barely

It was a rough day at work, due to a combination of factors, but I feel like I squeaked out a win. The big problem is that for some reason, my imports and exports (the process by which raw production assets get turned into game-ready, playable packages) were taking AGES - my initial import, which ideally is 30-45 minutes, took 75; and a later import that should have taken five minutes took twenty. First minor victory: I spoke up about it, and one of my coworkers mentioned the same issue. End result: our lead knew what was going down, and hopefully didn't count my low productivity against me personally. Score one for speaking up. Second minor victory: anticipating another long import, I proactively asked if there was anything I could do while I waited for it to finish. There was, so I was able to get another task done. I can still only call it "barely," though, because it's a question I should have asked far sooner. There was a lot of thumb-twiddling tonight, and several test passes that didn't get finished. ):

Saving throw against boredom & solitude: success

Why the D&D references? This weekend I had my first session of Pathfinder (modified D&D 3.5) with some coworkers and their significant others, and it was quite fun. We're an accidental party, falsely accused of murder and shunted off to a penal colony to await trial. Naturally, a greater adventure seems to be lurking around the corner. The first session was somewhat abbreviated, as two of our party couldn't make it. Our DM thought fast and decided that we had been brought to the island on two separate ships; our first session took place mostly on said ship, which was attacked by pirates en route to the prison island. The stand-out moment came just after we had escaped our manacles and were attempting to flee the brig and steal a lifeboat. As we started up the stairs, a band of five pirates stepped into our path and brandished their weapons.

"You can say one thing before combat begins," our DM told us.

"Bluff check: 'They went that way!'" I replied, and rolled. I have +8 in Bluff, which turned out to be completely pointless.

Natural. 20.

As half of the pirates ran right on past us to go find "them," I put my hands in the air. Triumph.

* I really like the phrase "pull a U-y" rather than "pull a U-turn," but how the hell do you spell "U-y"?

** According to the first site I checked on the Internet, the front set of gears are called chainrings. The rear set are cogs.