02:30 Time to go airborne. While Black Friday is kicking off on both the east and west coasts, I will be at 30,000 feet. Seems pretty good to me. #

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15:34 Made it through a very hard Thanksgiving dinner. Thankful for everyone I care about that's still living, and the time I had with the others. #

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00:50 And now, I can Twitter from my television. This is not likely to replace my little browser-widget. #

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19:49 Jack suits up for Adventures in Home Ownership: yfrog.com/0uij5oj #

19:51 Jack will do Science! to it: yfrog.com/0x4wwinj #

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11:43 I am testing my new game at a con. With strangers. Who appear to be having fun. How did this happen?! I blame competence. Or magic. #

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00:16 Ozy and Millie author D.C. Simpson has a new comic in the Comic Strip Superstar contest: bit.ly/2qnZBD - Vote and RT, plz! #

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Do you have a postal address?
Can I mail something to you?

My company makes postal software. I'm building a system to track the progress of mail items through the US postal service. In order to test the system, we need to track mail items that are sent fairly far and wide, and my team has the go-ahead to track an advertisement we're sending out to clients.

I've also got the go-ahead to insert some addresses into the mailing, for people who can help me finish the project by letting me know exactly which day they got the ad in their mailboxes. This will give my team some data we don't have yet about exactly when the last data will show up in our system, compared to when the mail piece will actually be delivered.

So, if you want to help me out by receiving a small, generic advertisement for our product in the mail, and emailing me back to let me know what day it showed up, I'd really appreciate the help!

If you can help, leave a comment (comments are screened for privacy) with:

• Your full mailing address, including the name I should use on the address.
• An email address I can use to email you when the mailing goes out, and to check in if something odd happens with the mailing that's headed to you.

We're sending the mailing to the printer, so no more addresses are needed! I'll get in touch with people by email to let you know what to do next, and whether we'll be sending you mail. Thanks!

Help from people in cities other than Seattle and people in rural or suburban areas is especially appreciated, because it teaches us a lot about undocumented parts of the mail system that we'll need to understand to do this well.

Thanks for your help!

15:55 I appear to have the Influenzas. Bother. Is time for sofa and dazed half-awakeness. #

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22:07 At #PAX2009, having the best night ever. Rocked the Zendikar #MagicParty, now rokking out with #Freezepop. Best night ever. #

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12:05 When I took this job, I did not expect to spend so much time looking for addresses on the websites of Canadian orthodontists. Now I know. #

19:56 Just in a car accident. Hit by a hit-and-run driver. Everyone seems ok, but holy shit. We got license plate. #

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08:30 Passing through Bronx + 8 hours till flight home = spontaneous Bronx Zoo visit! #

18:31 An hour on the tarmac. At least they've let us use phones again. Watching Mythbusters act like ninjas on the inflight tv. Wheeee... #

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22:24 Today's highlight: played an RPG scene GMed by a not-quite-six-year-old. It went surprisingly well. I got the tofu, but it was close. #

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My grandmother died this morning, surrounded by all three of her daughters and her closest sister.

The ambiguity is over; now we adjust to a world that's different for her absence.

Thanks to everyone who shared their good wishes with me, and especially to those local friends who took the time to be with mufi and me over the last few, difficult days. I'm doing all right, knowing I have good friends and family.

When I had just landed at the airport on the way back from Worldcon, I got a call that my grandmother was in the hospital not feeling well, and I should phone when I get home. Before I had reached my house, I got another, more urgent call. She'd had a stroke. The family was rushing to be with her.

I've been in Seattle this whole time. By the time I could go to her, it was already too late for anything in my power.

Against death, what's in my power?

I want to hope for life. I want to pray for it; to beg God and the universe to give me more years with a healthy, happy grandma in my life. It's selfish, my desire - it's borne out of my own reluctance to confront death; my desire to never have to suffer the loss of someone I love.

More rationally, I want what's best for her. I don't know what that would be, though. Absent a belief in life-after-death, my worldview has no answer for the question of whether it's better to live in pain, or to no longer live. It troubles me, and I wrestle with it sometimes, and put it out of my mind more often, hoping that I'll never have to face the question for myself, and afraid of the answer I might one day have to give.

So, I'm sitting in Seattle, taking news in difficult phone calls from my parents. I've said my goodbyes to her, loudly, into a phone. They tell me she raised her hand when she heard my voice, even in a coma. I don't know what I think about that.

I spent a few days with her this spring, just before I started my new job; just Mufi and me, visiting her in her house. She was in pain then - we spent some time with her, but not enough; it was hard, because she was medicated for her pain, and barely able to walk. She wanted to go out to dinner with us, and spend time with us, but she was mostly asleep, trying to deal with the pain of the treatments she was getting.

I end up asking the question: What does a life mean? What did her life mean - what does her life continue to mean? When we're gone from here, what does a life mean in this world?

It strikes me that, in one very real sense, death is an illusion. We occupy a segment of the infinite line of time, and even though that segment is short, it will forever have been occupied. Nothing can destroy the stretch of time that each of us lives; nothing can undo the life that occurred. That life is capped at both ends - birth and death - and we don't exist beyond its span. But every minute of that life was real; whether remembered or forgotten, every decision happened. Whether or not you recall what you did a year ago today, you did something. That day happened; every human alive on that day did the things they did. That day was real, and it can never be destroyed.

If humanity dies out tomorrow, if the planet itself were to be destroyed - it cannot destroy the events of today.

We live as though today is real, because it is.

And I'm sad - I'm terribly, terribly sad, that I'll never get another day with my grandmother. The part of our lives that intersected is over, and I didn't know that it was ending when it did.

But every hour I spent with her, from my birth to her death, was real. That's a life. And that will never cease to be.

Con is awesome. That is all the con-posting you're getting right now.

Need to get this premise down in draft form to get it out of my head:

I don't think that you can entirely replace a dice-rolling mechanic in an RPG with a conflict-negotiation mechanic and have the play experience - in particular the emotional arc - be left unchanged. Dice-rolling is a satisfying player-victory for many players; compare to gambling. Neither requires any skill on the part of the player, but the "victory" over randomness is emotionally equivalent to real victory. (Digression; consider MMOs. Progress and random reinforcement are seductive.)

The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen replaces the thrill of winning with the social game of oneupmanship, which has its own visceral thrill, but the experience is still different. (It also tacks a strange "winning" mechanic on at the end, whose purpose I still can't divine; it feels very much an afterthought, as though the competition were compulsory. I wonder what would happen to the game without it.)

A character's victory or loss, absent the dice, has a different emotional connection. Online characters - whether forum or real-time - seem to derive their emotional payoff from a process of transference that online roleplayers engage in; allowing themselves to identify fully with the character, and then taking on her emotional status. (Does this make sense?)

Does this condemn games that don't use a randomized resolution mechanic to be "bloodless?" What's this all end up meaning?

Sorry, the extent of thoughts end there.

Hey, Seattle-area folks!

I'm planning to go to the Jim Henson's Fantastic World exhibition at the EMP tomorrow.

Anyone want to come along?

I'm planning to meet up with folks at Center House between 2 and 3, and head into the EMP at 3:00. The museum will be open till 7, so that should be plenty of time to see the exhibit.

Who's interested?

Anyone reading this good with C++, or with C++/C# interop?

I need to get some tight C++ file-handling library code to emit something that I can read in a language I'm more experienced in, and I'm at a loss for what the best approach is. I'm currently leaning toward writing a managed wrapper that I can use to call from C#, but that seems ugly and hackish. Is there a better way to do this?

07:05 Hour 24 without sleep. IG beta is going well; I am at an undisclosed IHOP waiting for clearance to move forward with my team. #

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15:00 Need to run a function across a list of data? There's a (map) for that. #tabft #

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11:10 Sign that brain was not on yesterday: Showing up this AM and needing 30 min to bang out the code that 4 hrs last night got me nowhere on. #

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