I was a bit surprised to have a bit of extra time last night, so I tackled the new project I mentioned yesterday, creating links pages for unofficial Multiverser support. I’ve only actually done my own, and it is a paltry beginning which includes links to the Martial Arts site in its new location, Intuition and Surprise, I’m Not a Lawyer, but I Play One in a Game, the three-part Law and Enforcement in Imaginary Realms series, and the three-part Theory 101 series. There are also links to Gaming Outpost (for the Game Ideas Unlimited series), and to the Chaplain’s Corner of the Christian Gamers Guild (for the Faith and Gaming series), but part of me says I really need to go through all those articles, re-index them, and select the cream of the crop for Multiverser support. It’s a lot of work, but I’ll figure it out eventually.

In that connection, I also already put a link on the file copy of the main support page to an as yet non-existent (O.K., existent but not having correct content) page of links to Eric “Tadeusz” “World-a-Week” Ashley’s support materials, which I consider a valuable contribution to the Multiverser corpus. I need to scrape together enough time to tackle those links, which probably will not happen today (it might, though), so I can upload the entire package.

I got an early start today thanks to the cat. I think she was looking for a new hiding place for her kittens and decided to look behind my night table. I was disturbed by the sound of her rooting around back there, and looked at the clock–which was blank, because it had no power. That can be any of several problems, of course, so potential panic arose within me, and I jumped out of bed to determine the nature of the problem. It turned out to be the least problematic problem–the cat had unplugged everything from the outlet–but by the time I’d visited the bathroom and returned, I figured I was awake. Since Tuesday has my heaviest online workload, I figured I might as well stay awake and get started.

So, I’m started.

–M. J. Young

The big deal, if there is a big deal today, is that last night I completed the recoding of the Martial Arts in Role Playing Games site, and managed to post it on my web site, available to all. I expect to add a new category to the Multiverser support site (which is here), which will include this and a few other links to useful but unofficial materials. I’m still considering what ought to be included in that.

I also did a bit of editing on my Romans notes, but the fact that I had to take my mother-in-law shopping put a pinch on my time today. Here’s hoping I can get through the rest in a timely manner, and get some sleep tonight.

–M. J. Young

The stockholders meeting went reasonably well; congratulations to Jim Denaxas on being re-elected to serve another three years on the board of directors. Our present secretary, Joshua Martin, was nominated to run against him, and would have been an excellent director, but Jim has a track record with the company since before its beginning, has been very supportive of all we have done throughout that time, and has never failed to do what needed to be done to make things work. It’s not that I doubt Joshua would have done as well, but that I know Jim has done it all already.

It incidentally marks ten years that the company has existed.

That has been the focus of my attention over most of the weekend; even after the meeting ended, I had to clean up the premises some. Thus although it is true that I pushed forward on the pages for the martial arts web site and the Romans notes editing, I do not feel as if I did much else this weekend. It is already late in the day tonight, and I doubt I will do more than the basics, but at least the big step, the annual meeting, is over.

–M. J. Young

I still am not ready for tomorrow’s stockholders meeting, but I am a heck of a lot closer now than I was thirty-six hours ago. I have the meat, for one thing. Also, the notes are done. Someone mowed at least part of the lawn, but I do not know more than that because although they were working on it when I left the house on some imposed errands, it was dark and they were gone when I returned.

Yesterday’s schedule became even more shredded than it appeared when I wrote the Shred-and-Paste Scheduling blog entry about it, to the point that it was easily five in the morning when I got home, and it made perfect sense to stay up until six thirty to talk with our houseguest who is working on the car and make sure the youngest caught the bus. I was going to take the car through inspection, but I fell asleep and was chased to bed for a few hours. I’m coming to the end of tonight’s episode, I think, or at least I’m not going to be able to keep going too long.

Incidentally, the car went through inspection not exactly while I was asleep, but in the care of someone else. It failed, but I knew it would–someone had replaced a sideview mirror with a bit of reflective plastic, which is not legal in New Jersey. The engine light came on, too, and they won’t pass a car with the engine light lit. Then when it was being driven back from the inspection to its temporary home, it died. There is no word yet on why, although there has been some speculation that in fixing the top of the engine our mechanic managed to increase the oil pressure and knock out the pump. Anyway, he says to give him a few days to see what he can discover, which is fine by me since my alternatives are to pay to tow it fifteen miles to a mechanic who will charge me, or junk it. Then again, it’s not really my car so it’s not really my call.

I’ve a reminder note here that says I did some work on the martial arts web site. With the number of other things that are really pressing, I’m almost embarrassed to have done that; but it was something from which I could walk away at the drop of a hat, which is why I chose it. There’s still a lot of work to do for tomorrow–but I said that already, so I’m repeating myself and should stop doing so and turn my attention to what needs doing.

–M. J. Young

Yesterday was a bit crazier than usual for a Thursday. Part of it was that my youngest was exhausted from school, and part of it was that I had to do the grocery shopping sometime. The result is that the guest child wandered off when no one was looking, and then everyone was looking; and in the midst of this I had unexpected company. It was all resolved satisfactorily, however, and we launched a new player in my campaign here at home (or will on Saturday night when he returns with character paper in hand).

The excuse for the visit (the point being to start the new player) was the delivery of some mail in the company box to me. One of those items was two movies, gifts from a fan of the Temporal Anomalies site. I now have copies of Primer and Lake House–but with strings attached, that I analyze these and get those analyses posted to the site. I’m not sure when I will have time for that, but it should be a priority.

Another thing I decided should become a priority has to do with a section of the M. J. Young Net site that has been overlooked for too long: Martial Arts. There has long been a Martial Arts in Role Playing Games site on a free server, but the intent was always to move it here, as every other site I was maintaining was consolidated to this one location. It never seemed a priority. Now with the new support site at the new Multiverser.org domain, suddenly I want to link to the martial arts materials from that new site, and don’t want those links to be going to a site laden with advertising for competitors which I’m not certain I can edit. Thus last night I downloaded all fifty-four pages and three images to my computer. There is a significant amount of editing ahead, to repair bad links, remove Tripod proprietary code, and clean up the pages, but it’s a start.

On the other hand, there are some other tasks in which I should be investing this time, so I’m thinking I’m getting spread a bit thin. I might have to look into getting some help.

–M. J. Young