Hell Pump

.: MMA
Last friday I went to kung fu, and besides seriously injuring my heel, I also had the opportunity to do some BJJ with Tristram, my buddy from kung fu who has also started MMA. He’s very athletic, incredibly strong (freakishly Wai Yip-strong), but he is a lot smaller than I am, but I had expected him to be a challenging opponent. First time around he quickly put me in a guillotine-choke, but I powered out of it and went to his back. I got an arm under his chin and pulled him onto my back, put two hooks in and it was only a matter of time before I had the rear-naked choke. He tapped. Quite please with myself we went for it again. In no time I had his back again, but this time I couldn’t close and he turned and I fell in his guard. I kept my head low while he was working to better his position. I punched him in order to get him to open up, switching from his torso to his head to keep him guessing. The joke was on me, because I telegraphed my arm, he grabbed it, and grabbed my leg and sweeped me and I found myself on my back with him on top of me. I had him in half-guard and locked my legs around his. He started to soften me up with punches as I was trying to move towards his side. I rolled to my back and he went for a rear-naked choke. I grabbed his arm and threw him off me. I fell into his guard, opened him up, got the mount and rolled him into an arm-bar. 2-0 for me! After that we went back to kung fu. :)

.: Gaming
So, The Traitor got a great opportunity to work and live in Paris for a year, so our D&D campaign, which had only recently gotten underway, is going to be put on halt. I really would’ve liked to get some more gaming in, but ski-trips, visits and going-away parties are going to take up all available gaming time, so it’s going to be put on hold until The Traitor returns. Which is Kool and the Gang, of course, but what to do in his absence?

Recently, Frank got his hands on a copy of Dune, a roleplaying game based on Frank Herbert’s series of books with the same name. This game is very rare, and the only copies you can pick up are the ones you find for insane prices on eBay. That should give you an indication what kind of a Dune-nut Frank is. In that regard I’m sure things will turn out fine; Frank’s very knowledgable about the universe and will probably be able to turn that into a good story. The only problem I can see is thatDune is supposed to be a fairly political game, with intrigue and politics being the main elements. You are part of an entourage in a noblehouse and you’re going to have to try and further its political clout. While this seems like an interesting idea, with lots of roleplaying opportunities, it has traditionally not worked well for our gaming group. I don’t have a lot of examples in which it went wrong, but it didn’t work so well with V:TM, which is a shame because I really enjoyed the whole premise of the story Sam had thought up.

Another option, which is a lot safer, is that we ask Frank to prepare a D&D campaign with the current characters. I think we should give Dune a go, but we should start out slow, perhaps with a tiny campaign of a couple of weeks so that we can get to know the game a bit, try it out and see if we like it. Perhaps we should try a few small campaigns that focus on the different available flavours of play you can opt for within the game, to see what suits us the best. I just don’t want Frank to pour his heart and soul into things, having sunk hours and hours of intense preparation into it, only to have us not dig it and shut it down.

I should send out an e-mail about this.

.: Big Jim
Jim will be coming over (again) this weekend. He’s in England playing a superhero and he’s got some time to hop across the canal and hang out. Muy cool. He’s got a knee-injury, I’ve got a heel-injury, I foresee little dancing, and more of the hanging out sipping on vodka/tonic and tequila/tonic, respectively. I should really find out when his flight is coming in so I can pick his ass up at the airport on friday. Another e-mail I shall send!

.: Work
Work has become a lot more interesting lately, as I started working on a new application in our new .NET application framework. I’ve gotten quite comfortable with our old framework, and the moments of personal triumph I had while developing were getting fewer and further in between. Now, with the new framework, I’ve got that Aha-Erlebnis almost every other minute, which makes me feel good about my abilities, and excited to work on this project.

In the meantime it’s dawning on me that I’m starting the sixth year of my employment at this company, which, when I consider it, is rather crazy. I started in Januari of 2003, so I’ve got five years of employment here behind me and I wonder if it’s time for something new. I would seriously start looking for something new if I wasn’t having so much fun developing this new application, and I could certainly use the skillset that I’m currently developing. If my review next week goes well, and I can keep focussing on my current project more than I have in the last month or so, then I’m going to hold off on it for a little while.