Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

I was voting in College Humor’s Halloween costume contest and here are “two” I was asked to vote on. How embarrassing that the two of them chose the exact same costume. There are some great costumes though (and a $1000 prize) so I spent a bit too long clicking mindlessly.

(I mean, how embarrassing for their programmer)

In good news, I finally have the appointment I have been wanting to start figuring out what’s wrong with the muscles in my legs this afternoon. I don’t like the neuropathic pain that I got after my bone tumor was removed, but I can live with it. The muscles in my thigh breaking down on the other hand — symptomatic of something worse, or even just on its own — can be very hard to cope with and negatively affects my life and I’m very hopeful that I’m starting on a path today that will lead to a solution. Plus waking up at three or four in the morning and being unable to sleep from the pain sucks — although it has greatly expanded the number of movies I have watched.

Other than that, Nefarious and I have continued experimenting with new fairy chess pieces. We’ve tried adding a cluster of four “demons” to the center of the board. These demons can be moved one square in any direction, and can capture in that same way. The interesting thing about these demons is that either player can move them… So what they mostly form is a “black hole” that needs to be avoided. The other new piece is the “bomb”, which again moves one square at a time. It can not take other pieces, but it can explode, and this explosion kills everything within a one square radius — including itself, and including friendly pieces. Additionally, bombs should not be taken (although they can), because if they’re taken, they explode. I’m not sure yet how these pieces will work, because in the games we’ve used them they’ve disappeared early so their effect on the game has been minimal. To be honest, the real winners are the cannons, the jokers, and the arch-bishops, which all weigh heavily into our play.

I think next, perhaps tonight if I have time, I want to start experimenting with new board designs. Caitlin has started reading Nefarious the Harry Potter series, so this morning she had lots of questions for me about cats and witches and a universe that I know nothing about… I will have to read some of the chapters just to keep up with the dialog. Anyway… I should get to programming before that doctor’s appointment, so I’m not going to bother proof reading this, so you will perhaps get to see just how much grammatical nonsense appears when I don’t triple-check things.