Well, let's see. It is nearing July 4th, and I am rather happy that this is the first time in several years that I have actually had the day off on July 4th, considering, so maybe this year I will go out and check out the old fireworks that they have a couple miles away. Take the wife out there cause she's never seen any american fireworks and whatnot, and it could be relatively fun.

Bought Spiderman2 on Xbox, and I will say that I am rather happy with the game from several standpoints, although in my August opinion the game is flawed in certain ways. First, it is often -very- difficult to find a wall/building to swing from (by web), so that when you dive off tall buildings (Like the Empire State Building), you can find the nasty realization that it is somewhat difficult to find a nice wall to latch onto with your webs, and go splat on the ground. I've seen this happen once or twice. *cough* Then, when you are moving around via web through the city, you will also notice that it is a bit difficult to do this, although with practice I am sure that you will become good at it. I will say, as for graphics, the game is incredibly beautiful looking, and the sound is pretty good too. I'd say the graphics stand out for me tho', cause I'm looking at it on a HDTV (Projection, but still) the higher-res features (cut-scenes) show up looking pretty damn nice. Thank you Spiderman-people. It plays a lot like Grand Theft Auto 3/Vice City, except you are spiderman, and you don't steal cars.

Looking forward to weekend, hoping saturday my pal comes over, cause last saturday he ditched cause of a stinky girl. I never ditched D&D for a girl, if anything, that very girl made me go when I was a bit too tired to go and so on. Anyhow. I am looking forward to playing My Drow - / *insertstrangetemplatehere* character, with his +6 ECL, because of his semi-cool abilities. Although he is 'weak' compared to the Cleric of the party, he is still cool, and I am sure that once he hits very high levels, he will be extremely cool ... possibly. :P So, I am going to call up my pal and see if he 's going to come over or not, let's hope he says 'yes'.

Anyhow, have fun.

later

\Koltur

Well, I scored my copy of T1-4 "Temple of Elemental Evil" in shrinkwrap, although the original shrinkwrap is a bit torn up, it's still in 'perfect' condition, of which I am very happy to say. I also got "Scourge of the SlaveLords", and aside from the very last page of the module being loose or disconnected from the module (a little glue and that's solved), the module is in fairly good condition. I haven't opened up "Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun" or "Curse of the Azure Bonds" yet, but I will get to them soon enough. Heh heh heh. Now all I need to do is convince my friend here, to print me off a copy of the "Temple of Elemental Evil" PDF, that way I don't have to open the module. I suppose I could hop over to kinko's with the PDF and get them to print me one (which would be exceptionally quick and painless), plus I could have it bound and so on, I imagine that it would cost a pretty penny to have that done, although that -is- an option I need to consider.

I also recieved my copy of the "Encyclopedia Magica" , the complete alphabetical listing of -every- magical item present in D&D & AD&D along with Birthright and shit like that, all in a 4-volume series of books that are in excellent condition, except for where the print along the spine is worn off from the books being handled, but who cares about that, right?!

Either way, I am damn happy with all the cool modules that I've just recently recieved and am damn happy about all the cool stuff. (Now I just need access to a good printer and binding place (like Kinkos, a shame I don't work there still...) and I'll be damn happy. I'd go in there with a CD full of PDFs and rip 'em into the Docutech40 and have 'em all printed off in about 20 minutes. Then of course, I'd bind them and have a full set of them in perfect printing and binding, and it'd be all good.) Hmms, I am curious how much something like that would cost, if I take that stuff to Kinkos, because I know it'd be a lot more... well, hella cool compared to trying to do it myself here at home. My printer is just not up to that sort of task...

Anyhow, I am done writing about that stuff, so I am going to put my computer down and go back to spending some time with the ole sick wife. Let's hope I don't catch it.

Also plan to finish up "Beyond Sanctuary", start on "Beyond the Veil" and see how that book goes.

Later,

\Koltur

Well, let's see. I took a break cause it's the middle of sunday night and I am a bit ... bored, or tired, or whatever, so I am going to juice up on some soda / caffeine, etc. to stay awake, so that I do not fall into the same pattern of ill-fortune that I've experienced for the past couple of weeks, where I sleep the night of sunday, then Monday-night work session is screwy cause of my sleep schedule, then so on and so forth through the weekend I am a bit fucked over, cause of my sleep pattern, so.. to avoid this problem, I am attempting to stay awake.

Okay, now I will go back to the movie Stargate, which I was re-watching, since I scored a copy of the "Extra-long" edition, with extra scenes and stuff like that, so I hope that I will notice more stuff from the book that was previously unexplained, or whatever. And maybe after this I will watch some anime or something, I have some "Shingetsutan Tsukehime"(sp?) to watch, which was pretty fun. I got up to like episode 8 or so of it, before I got sidetracked (which seems pretty easy for me).

So, anyhow.. thanks for reading this, if you do. Heh.

I'll write more later, maybe.

\Koltur

Contrary to popular belief, people do _not_ have three legs and sing sea shanties. Or at least, regular people don't, although I guess pirates might. "Yo ho, Yo ho, a Pirate's life for me..." comes to mind when I think of pirates, that or.. King Missile surprisingly enough, with the song about how .. "I never played poker with a 2+1 eyed pirate..."

Now that that nonsense is out of the way. I am reading "Beyond Sanctuary" still. The book so far is rather good and nice. A lot about Tempus, who happened to be one of my favorite characters anyhow, and Jihan the Stormbringer's daughter, and Nikodemous and many others, however those were a few of the more important (to me) characters in the story.

Had a nice little argument with the wife about bs. That didn't go so hot, oh well. At least it's over and we are on better terms again. It was pretty useless to argue with her about that stupid crap. It all comes down to me being a better husband, and her being a better wife , cause as I repeatedly pointed out , it's not -all- my fault. It does take two to tango, as it were.

Anyhow, that's over with so I'm happy and we can go on again, being happily husband and wife, or at least, i am happy, i doubt she is.. I mean, what kind of girl would be crazy to be happy to be shacked up with me? Better yet, don't answer that question. I know what you are thinking...

I saw a picture of the daughter of the King of Sweden, and as a dedication to this fine looking young lady, I figured I would post that picture here. Thank you daughter of the King of Sweden for being attractive, although a bit on the lean side. Thanks again young woman, although it is unlikely that i will ever speak to you, or be in the same country as you (unless you come to the USA, but as a small tribute to you, here you go, for all the young men to see, all of them that read this site. Heh.)

Now on to more interesting news. I waxed the floor at work. How's that for interesting?! :P We did a good job, my cohort and I, my 57 year old spanish man of a cohort, who speaks very little english, but has a very nice heart. Ah , too bad more people weren't as cool as Laz.

Not much else that I can think of.

Don't suck ass, 99% of everyone else does, why should you?

\Koltur

Logged into Dragon's Fang today, and found that it was rather stimulating to talk to a few of the old peeps I saw there. All 5 of them. Oh well, it seems as if an old friend of mine left me a message of sorts on the board, although I send him a mail and hope that I'll re-contact me soon.

I found a rather awesome song by Eric Idle of Monty Python, the link is Here!

You should check it out, it's pretty awesome.

Anyhow, what to report. Well, not very much exactly.

Started reading "Beyond Sanctuary" by Janet Morris and I can say that I am positively enjoying myself. It's got Tempus as the main character, and quite frankly because I he was my favorite in Thieves World, he probably will remain so.. Even though he was a 'super-character'. Whatever. I don't care about.

Okay, I am going to go do something else or something. :)

Laters,

\Koltur

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!

Wow, this is new. Posting before I go to work tonight. Well, it's something like 8:32, I fell asleep early in the day compared to normal, and woke up early as well. Yay. Tonight at work is going to be quite possibly one of the days where I am most tired & irritable, or at least.. I will be by the end of the night, or rather I will probably just be in a daze. Heh, I'm usually not quite irritable at work, because you have to go into work with the sort of "I don't care" atitude, because I noticed at my job, that when you do actually care, you not only try to do as good of a job as you can, but become quite angry when it seems that there are those that you work with, that are either intentionally attempting to interfere with your work progress, or just plain stupid and do so because of their own stupidity. Either way, with my "I don't care" atitude, I notice that I not only do enough work to keep my pet managers happy, but I also do enough work to warrant the occasional compliment from them. All this, while those who are stupid are constantly under the 'all-seeing' eyes of the managers. Heh. Love working in retail. Makes you really know how stupid the vast majority of people really are.

Now that I've finished with that little rant, I had a rather quite nice dinner (in my opinion), am busy winning a "still original shrinkwrapped version of the Temple of Elemental Evil" on ebay, and I will probably pay some good $$ to keep it that way, although it may be a little more then I really want to spend, I do want to have a good copy of it, and then I can buy some cheap-ass, ragged copy and not be too concerned about it getting a bit thrashed up. Ahhhh. It costs good $$ to collect some cool-ass old stuff.

One of these days, I will have to list and maybe take Pictures of, some of the kick-ass stuff that I am collecting. Among them being books, novels, D&D books, etc. etc. Some cool Naruto action figures, although I am not sure if these are actually authorized manufacturer's action figures, and this real smooth Naruto headband.

I am also collecting a good stash of DVDs, and when more $$ begins to flow, I will probably add more and more to the list, as I can. (Basically, I can only spend a certain amount per month or my wife gets a bit miffed with me, and I don't like her being angry, so...) :P

Anyhow, now that I've posted on this site today... I'm going to go off and see what I can do about taking a 30 min. nap before work, just to get a little bit of an extra 'edge' on tiredness.

Later,

\Koltur

Been having a nice, rather enjoyable weekend. Saturday, my pal came over and we did some D&D like usual. Had a character alteration.. we managed to acquire a 'machine' of sorts that after using it, would allow you to 'revamp' your character's life path from one to a different one. For example, my character was a Fighter - Mage - Thief - ... and now, he is a Fighter - Thief and almost no mage at all. Basically. I changed poor Koltur into more of what he really was, rather then what he turned into because of Merlin's old campaign, of which I am no longer really a part of because of its... style or whatever. Anyhow, K is now back to his roots, more of an Assassin/Fighter. A professional, sinister.. etc.

Let's see, what else can I say. I won several auctions on Ebay and am looking at winning one more hopefully. A copy of the Temple of Elemental Evil, a module dating from circa. 1985 of incredible proportion. Essentially, nearby the farming Village of Hommlett, an old Temple that had once before risen to a power with the intent to begin dominating the world was attacked and laid to ruin by powerful foes such as the Circle of Eight and Lord Robilar and so on, but is now revivifying itself into a power once again. The adventures show up, just in time to learn of the potential for the Temple restoring its power, and move to defeat any last remnants. Heh.

I also one some other ones. S1-4 "Realm of Horrors", which contains some nice ones like "White Plume Mountain" and "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks" to name 2 of 4 (of which I am personally familiar with) although I am positive that the other two will provide excellent reading as well.

I also scored a copy of "The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun", a nice old one that I've never read, but is probably quite good along with FRC2 "Curse of the Azure Bonds" which is in an entirely different campaign world. And let's see.. I6 "Ravenloft" .. hmm, a module where you engage in a battle with Strahd von Zarovich himself. And.. hmms, A1-4 "Scourge of the Slave Lords" , one of the 'possible' follow-up adventures to T1-4, and since I also have GDQ1-7, (which could follow-up to A1-4), we could have quite the series of adventures with these modules. Should prove quite interesting... if they are used at all. I wonder, maybe, maybe not.

I also scored a 4-volume set of Encyclopedia Magica, the oldschool 4 books that contained -all- magical items up to that point in which they were released. Awesome. *licks lips*

Also been checking out Mozilla, and I've been pretty happy with it so far. Yap, no real problems with it as I've very often experienced with IE6+ (although SP2 might change that if it ever comes out...) and I've been playing a lot of Temple of Elemental Evil on the PC, cause well.. I have a sorely soft spot for it, considering that I've longed to play that adventure in PnP D&D for a long time. (If only that game could be done, true to the original... rather then the somewhat cool, but somewhat lame rendition by Troika *sigh*.)

oh well.

I get a nap for a couple hours, I will be around later (although I probably won't post here again.) Heh.

Later,

\Koltur

Well, it's time I tested around with a new browser, mainly because I am increasingly irritated at the functionality of Internet Explorer. Although of course, I will only be able to visit "Windows Update" website with Internet Explorer, but, hey, what the hell. So, I went out and downloaded Mozilla for Windows and startlingly, it is the same browser that comes default with Red Hat Linux 7.0 (I think?!) and therefore is rather easy to use for me. It looks about the same as IE, works about the same, although I did notice that it has very -enhanced- browser security features over that of IE. Right off the bat, there are no pop-ups. I hate popups. And there are none. Very nice. Second, it's got a clean, slick look and it runs just as fine as IE. 3rd, and most nicely that I can think of... is the "tabbed" interface, no more clutter along the start menu bar. All in all, although this requires a bit more testing (which I'll certainly do), I am tending to like this browser very much. Maybe with the advent of SP2 I will lose interest in this browser, but for now however, it's got my vote.

Sidenote: I watched Naruto88, and it was good.

Also, spending lots of money buying cool ebay stuff. Heh, old AD&D stuff mainly, but cool nonetheless.

Not much else to report, so..

Later,

\Koltur

Well, I can't say that there is much that is very new, however, I can say that this past weekend was very fun for me in several ways.

I played a bit of "Temple of Elemental Evil" the PC-Game (http://greyhawkgame.com) and had some fun doing that, as well as saturday I had my friend over and my wife, friend and I all played some D&D and made some good progress there as well.

Hmm, finished reading several of the Thieves World books, and had to order several other ones from people on Ebay because they are -long- out of print, but it seems as if I have almost the full, complete collection of them all. And it was good. Heh.

Got my PC hooked directly to my TV, as well as my sound card to the reciever for extra-awesome anime watching ability. Thank god for such cool-ass technology.

Had a wierd twitch in the night as I was sleeping saturday night. Was absolutely wierd. I just started shivering, although my body on the outside was warm, i felt cold as hell to myself (i felt warm to my wife) and couldn't stop shivering for something like 10 minutes straight. And it was almost violent shivering. I am not entirely sure what it was about, but, doesn't seem to have manifested itself a second time, so I am not worried.

Bought a cool coffee table for the living room, it only seems to 'amplify' the room. Heh.

Other then that, I can't seem to think of anything worth note...

Later,

\Koltur

Well, I had last night (Friday Night) off of work due to the fact that I suddenly become 1 year closer to my expiration date. Although, I didn't quite find that part amusing, I did have a somewhat enjoyable night home, mysteriously spent with my evil wife.

Aside from that, I have little to update for the vast (2) group of people that read this site and hope that it is well understood, that not everyone, everyday, can have something interesting to write in their journal. Unless of course, you live at the Playboy mansion or so, then .. I can imagine you would have wonderful things to update your blog with almost daily or.. at least we would seriously *hope* you would, and if not, then you'd be better off dead.

Codemonkey released their 1.5 patch / eTools ver1.5 + Mega Bundle 1.5, whatever, and it is good. Several good additions, a couple new bugs, and sudden progress towards the eTools of tomorrow.. the eTools of the 3.5 generation, because 3.0 D&D isn't the most up to date apparently. Either way, since we game with 3.5 rules vs. 3.0 rules, I am very happily looking forwards to the 3.5 conversion, because my Physics skills aren't up to date for D&D playing, and I still haven't managed to find the value of Pi! So, once I do that, I'm sure I'll be able to play D&D3.5 without eTools... :P

Nothing new other then that carp.

Still waiting on my Thieves' World Books that I ordered via Ebay. (Won, rather). Stealers' Sky, Beyond Sanctuary/Wizardwall/the Veil, whatever, Tempus and Shadowspawn... *drool*. So, once I finish reading "Elminster's Daughter" which is somewhat nifty, and I have those from the mail, I'll be quite the happy camper.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Have a nice day.

\Koltur

Not much to report today. I watched Starship Troopers 2 and Wierd Science and I must say that ST:2 was absolutely horrible, while Wierd Science is an old classic and I did rather enjoy that. Meanwhile, something I have been looking forward to, the 1.5 patch for "eTools" a D&D3.0/3.5 character generator/editor/catologue-er program thingy, has come out, as well as several updates to the "Mega-DataSet" thing, so, this will save a lot of time/effort for our D&D characters, monsters, and gaming in general.

Thanks CodeMonkeys!

Other then that, my friend Luke goes back to Cali. That sucks. *sniff* And I have to work. And I get 1 year closer to my death on Friday. Woe is me. At least I'll get to see Naruto 86 this week ! :)

Not much else that I can think of. For anyone reading this, well. I hope you are happier then I am (because it's likely) and have a nice, !hot day.

Later,

\!GazeboMan

Sidenote: See Dragon Magazine, as well as: The real Gazebo! ... Assuming the site loads. Hm.