Nearly Two Decades Gaming... My Experience With Magic: the Gathering.

Been a while, huh? I promised myself that I wouldn't write any articles here that I couldn't be sure would provide a unique or valuable perspective. There are lots of places to read about games, comics and geeky films/novels/TV online, that I pledged that I'd write when my opinion was relevant to folks who don't already know me well. That also came with "no promising blog updates if none are forthcoming." I've got a few ideas now, so in the coming weeks and months I'll be doing some writing, with no guarantees as to update frequency. What I've been up to since I last wrote is a return to a few geeky hobbies that I used to be into years ago, but not since until recently. I'll be writing a few articles on these subjects, but both topics (Collectible Card Games, especially Magic: the Gathering, and Miniatures wargaming, especially Warhammer) are too large for a single article. Gotta start somewhere, so Magic's up first.

I prefer not to think about how much I've spent on this game, but I can't say
I didn't get a good value for my money.

The year was 1993, and I was at my third Gen Con (which would be my last one with my father and younger brother, as I started college that fall,) mostly there to play D&D. I registered for various events and seminars, but everywhere I went in the Milwaukee Convention Center, the scene was the same. Everywhere there were people sitting at tables where there was no event scheduled, or even on the floors playing a game I'd never seen before. It was some sort of card game, but each player had their own deck. Magic didn't need word of mouth in those first few days, people were too busy playing it on any flat surface they could find with anyone who had a deck to bother evangelizing. I headed to the hall and picked up a starter deck and a booster pack of Magic cards, what we'd now call "Alpha Edition." I didn't actually play Magic at Gen Con, there wasn't time to figure out the game and attend my scheduled events, but I looked over the curious cards and read the rules.

College was a great time to be a gamer, at least for me. I quickly found a gaming group and was playing D&D and Shadowrun as often as I could (which was a little too often to keep up my studies, especially once I moved into a dorm room.) When one of the guys in the group got a job at a game store in early 1994, he brought Magic to campus with him. Some of us had a few cards, had maybe tried it, but with Revised Edition and The Dark, it blew up big that spring. Through the rest of that first year and the summer that followed, we played a LOT of Magic. Some of us quit in frustration at the release of Fallen Empires (a set so bad that nearly 20 years later you can still buy unopened display boxes of packs for well under retail,) but we all got back in for Fourth Edition in the Spring of 1995.

If only I'd kept this, I could now buy a used car.

I attended a few tournaments, as I was playing one of the early dominant competitive decks, a red/green deck based around a card combination that could end the game on Turn One with a lucky draw. My "Channel Fireball" deck won its share of games, but when key cards in it were banned, I found myself unable to stay current with purchasing the cards to build a new competitive deck. I tried a few other tournament concepts that didn't do very well, but it was pretty much back to "kitchen table" magic for the next few years. Once the college friends started to get married, move on to jobs and such, playing magic at all seemed expensive and not really worth it except on the rare occasions that we all got together and felt like bringing out the old cards again. Money got tight, I sold off the expensive cards from my old tournament deck, and that was it.

Except it wasn't. When I got into games retail, I stayed away from Magic Cards at first. I remembered how expensive they could be. A friend I met at the store got me into buying pre-constructed decks as they released for a "buy this once and then put it away" kind of playing, and I did that for a year or two, maybe buying a booster pack when curious. A customer helped me trade for enough cards to make a semi-competitive tournament deck which I played and did okay with for a bit, until the mighty banhammer hit a key card in that deck, too. Back to the kitchen table. I kept the tournament deck together to dust off and smack people around with on occasion, but I bought fewer and fewer cards, with no real desire to have more.

My favorite setting in the M:tG Universe, it returning when it did seems like fate.

In the year immediately before the Hobby Shop I managed closed its doors for good, I briefly got back into Magic when I discovered booster drafting. We'd get together, draft a few packs and build decks and play a few rounds of swiss for a prize pool of about a pack per player split between the top 2. These small drafts were in the original Ravnica Block, and I loved the characters, the setting and the two-color guilds, I even read the novels. The 3^rd set in the block came out, and we just never managed to get together for that last booster draft. I kept the packs, unopened, and put them away for years. I was pretty sure I was done, and for over six years, I was right.

Four months ago, two things happened. A friend (from that original group at college) posted to Facebook about playing Magic with his wife and daughters. Around the same time, my wife met a group of Magic players at the college where she's returned to finish her degree. We started talking about the game, dug out my old collection from the 4-5 different boxes and closets it had been scattered to... and just like that, I was back. I learned about the current tournament formats, got my friends into EDH (also known as commander) and started working on a tournament deck, learning what parts of my collection still held value. Magic is regarded as a rich man's (or woman's) game, but I've done okay on relatively little money, and I'm a tournament player again. The specifics of that journey are best left to a second article.

After 20 years, Magic proves to be one of those games for me... I never really quit, I just go into periods of remission.

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Since We Last Spoke...

So, around the time my updating got spotty, and then stopped entirely, I'd gone back to work. Back, in fact, to the very job I'd lost when I made the first post to this blog well over a year ago. I said I wouldn't go back to that company, and I said that when I started working again that I wouldn't stop blogging. Amazing what a couple doses of perspective will do on both of those fronts.  I'm not going to make excuses, but anyone who still turns up to see if I'm updating after months of nothing deserves a few words of explanation.

Did I say early June? The 13th is "early," right?

Simply put, this blog isn't interesting (for those who find it interesting at all) just because I write it. I have my own writing style, and folks seem to like it, but I won't delude myself into thinking that I'm a special enough snowflake that people will turn up just to hear what I have to say. There are plenty of folks who can do that on the internet with nothing but their name and personality, but I'm not there yet.  The geeky content of my articles sure helped define my niche, but that didn't get me all the way there either. There are literally thousands of places someone can go if they want to read a review of the latest comic book film or video game, and a lot of those have been around longer than me, too. So why did so many folks (300,000 hits worth) turn up to read what I post here? It sure wasn't my disastrous experiment with the "magazine" dynamic template that genericized the look of the whole site.

I think there are still a lot of people who are struggling with the economy, they are out of work, or maybe recently were, or fear they may soon be.  The perspective of someone coming from those same struggles talking about great horror movies and Star Wars and Game of Thrones provides something special. That, or people just like page and a half articles with 3-4 pictures with sarcastic captions (something else that didn't work with dynamic views.) When my readership started to drop off when I went back to work, this blog went from something I needed to do, and wanted to do, to something that I felt I had to do. It was a second job. To make matters worse, my mind was on fitness, since I spent the last seven months dropping over 80 pounds and lifting heavy weights.  To write about what I was really interested in at the time would be further deviating from the interests of my core audience.

And really, who wouldn't rather be writing about stuff like the Battle of Blackwater,
instead of blogging about picking up heavy stuff, anyway?

Now, I'm once again out of work. The Foreign Service Office didn't call me up, and I'll keep plugging away at that, but I'm back to my original question of what to do next.  Well, a part of what I'd like to do is to get back to writing, and to take advantage of my additional free time to have a little bit of a life outside of gainful employment and the weight room at the local YMCA. I've seen a ton of movies, read some great books and played many, many video games that I hadn't had the time to write about if I wanted to keep enjoying them in these last few months.  Now, I want to catch up on the archives of the folks whose blogs I used to read daily and get back into the swing of things.  I have all these ideas for new articles, and I'd like to get back to putting them out there for folks to read. Might not be 5 days a week at first, but I'll be putting up new stuff regularly.

Do me a favor? If you just discovered this site, or are a loyal fan that didn't give up and came back to check and are happy to see new content here, drop an occasional comment here and there. It helps a lot doing this if I know that somewhere, someone is still reading. Thanks.

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There and Back Again... Stupid Fat Hobbit.

No, this isn't a long-overdue review of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.  I've mentioned recently that I'd gained some weight and had been spending time in the gym playing Fitocracy.  I never got into the specifics, but I can do so now.  I've been heavy since elementary school, slowly but surely gaining weight as so many of us do with Mountain Dew, Doritos and a lot of time spent in a computer chair or in front of some other screen, not moving around much.  When I was in my late twenties, managing a hobby shop and running an annual game convention, I'd ballooned all the way up to 325 pounds.  Somewhere in there, I decided to make a change.  I knew that my mother, who had just passed away, had been concerned for my health, and my good friend and then employer, the owner of the hobby shop, shared that concern.  He and his wife decided to work a membership to the YMCA into my annual compensation.

I had the motivation and the means, and it took nearly two years, but I lost over 125 pounds.  I managed to do so while making nearly every mistake a young gym rat can make.  I'd taken up smoking, I was working the "mirror muscles" at the expense of my back and core, and I was taking advice that was aimed at people with an overall greater baseline of fitness than I had.  However, reducing calories and moving around more work, no matter how many stupid fads you subscribe to or how many bad habits you have.  My progress motivated me to push harder and before I knew it, I wasn't having to fast-talk and charm my butt off to get the attention of the fairer sex. My looks were an asset instead of a challenge to overcome with humor, and I used my new-found changes to make many bad decisions with many women.

Luckily, before I killed myself or anyone else with my rampant hedonism and poor impulse control, I met the woman I'd soon be engaged to.  She most likely saved my life, literally. However, I was in danger over the following few years from another spectre: recidivism.  My gym membership went away when the hobby shop did, but my increased appetite and love for beer did not. In addition, I decided that I needed to quit smoking for my overall long-term health and short-term budget.  Things did not bode well for my new, lighter frame. My lifestyle changes and poor decisions brought my weight up. Way up. When I started in Special Education, I steadily gained weight until I was creeping up on 300 pounds again.  When I was laid off this year, I spent seven (heavily documented here) months mostly in front of a computer screen gaming, looking for work and blogging.

Now that I'm nearly as heavy as I was the last time I lost it all, but older, I have a reason to get moving again. I've got a YMCA membership again, and I've got a lot of people supporting my journey back to being a healthy size again. Even though I carry the weight well, looking more like someone just north of 250 pounds rather than someone nearly seventy pounds over that, I am committed to losing it again. I'm rapidly approaching the end of my first month working out and being more careful with what I eat, and I'm down seven pounds so far. I already have a ton more energy and am finding it easier to deal with life in general. I've done this before, I know the way. This is my burden to bear, and you'd better believe I'm ready to huck that extra whole person's worth of weight into Mount Doom.

Beyond that, I've joined Sparkpeople in addition to Fitocracy and I'm lifting weights in preparation to try the Stronglifts 5x5 program, as I find it easy to add mass to my frame, whether through eating burgers or pumping iron. It'd be nice to be healthy and fairly well muscled again, and better to surpass what I did allmost eight years ago now.

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Adventures In Foreign Service Testing.

So, this should be my last full-length article on the subject for some time to come, as the process of becoming a Foreign Service Officer takes many months, but I'd like to report on how the event I've been preparing for since here actually went. This version, also known as the long version of the story, is one where I don't think even my wife has all of the details. For those unfamiliar with my other posts on the subject, I have decided that what I really want to do in terms of long-term career goals is a position in public diplomacy with the United States Foreign Service. It may not be the immediate next job I take, but I plan to keep going after it until I am there or they make me stop applying. The hiring process takes 12-15 months, and the first step is a written exam. I've been studying for the test over the last month or so, and I went into this past weekend feeling woefully underprepared. I had trouble sleeping the night before, got up groggy, showered and dressed, made coffee and poured a bowl of Frankenberry cereal for breakfast.

The actual test room is a cross between something like this and a police interrogation room
straight out of Law and Order or The Wire.

I'd gotten my directions the night before, and the expected travel time was 37 minutes according to Google Maps. I mention this detail because it will shortly become important. I left at 8:00 AM for my 9:00 appointment for testing. Traffic was normal, but I started to feel nerves kicking in, muscles in my shoulders knitting themselves into intricate celtic knotwork patterns and I felt vaguely lightheaded. Despite no serious delays, I noticed that I had several turns left in my route at 8:35 AM. Twelve minutes later, I could at least see signs for the college where the test would be administered. My stomach was boiling with acid, Frankenberry suddenly seemed a very poor choice, and I realized that it wasn't clear at all where I could park. At 8:53, I overshot the turn for parking and started shrieking obscenities like an heiress on meth. Panic was overwhelming me, as every road had a concrete center divider and I couldn't turn around.

One marginally-legal U-turn later, I screeched into the parking lot that is about 1.5 blocks from the college at 8:56 AM. I grab everything and immediately break into a run, which is not a graceful or easy process for a man my size. I hoof it up stairs, across a walkway and past a desk where I wheeze out my name for a guard who tells me I need to go down the hall to the left and around. Amazingly, I enter the small room out of breath in the closing seconds of 8:59 where people ten years my junior are filling out paperwork. There is a guy standing at a desk while a distracted heavyset woman has her back to me, trying to work out something on a computer for him. She eventually turns around, apologizes to him for the wait, and seeing me for the first time, marks my arrival as 9:01. I protest weakly, but drop it, take my arrival paperwork and knock it out. I have to lock my phone in a little locker with a borrowed quarter and my stress level hasn't gone down, I'm officially late and still hyperventilating.

The prisonlike facility that is most definitely not 37 minutes from my house.
Damnit, Google Maps.

As the computers are set up for my testing, in polite conversation I realize everyone else taking the test in my group is a college kid who doesn't seem particularly serious about the process. Several computer glitches later, we're all seated at old-looking PCs in a room monitored by cameras and microphones, with a little whiteboard and a Staedtler Lumocolor marker (love those things for D&D battlemats) as our only aid. I wince as I see how slow the network moves and glimpse a flash of "Internet Explorer" as the test environment loads. The timed test will be accepting my answers and logging them at a speed slightly above dial-up internet from 1996. I'm answering multiple choice questions about politics, culture, economics, history, geography, management and basic computer skills, and I'm likely disturbing the college kids as my hyperventilation has turned into a deep, wet-sounding cough. The section goes by pretty quickly, and I have to guess in the spots I feared I'd have to, nail the questions I thought I would. I really need to read "Economics for Dummies" or something.

On to the next section with plenty of time. This one is one of those "rank from agree to disagree how you feel these statements apply to you." No problem. I got this. I have tons of relevant skills and experience and don't plan on being modest. I realize with horror that 2/3 of the questions will make me elaborate in 200 characters or less. My wide qualifications are backfiring as I'm running out of time. I type furiously as the time is running out, frequently running out of space and having to edit my responses, finishing with about 2 minutes to spare. Next up is the English Grammar section... here I get a breather. I'm good at these. The most annoying thing is that I am asked to correct sentences in a paragraph, then later read the whole sample for content and answer comprehension questions. Problem: my edits aren't featured in the sample, so I have to read it for content as written, errors and all. Still, no worries... I'm done coughing and finish with 17 minutes to spare. Foolishly, I don't take a break, I've been here over 2 hours already testing and watching the delay between clicking "Submit your answer" and the software updating the page. I really should have stretched my legs or something.

What I imagine the test center computers recently upgraded from. This,
or a series of Speak-n-Spells bound together with twine.

The essay. Oh, God. That damned essay. I went into this preparing to write a 5/5 structured argument and really blow them away. (5 paragraph, 5 sentence, with an introduction, Three points and a conclusion.) I see that I have 30 minutes and one prompt, and the prompt is a complex issue. I take it on head on, road less-traveled with a complex position and my structure in mind. I make notes on the dry-erase board and start typing. I re-word for clarity and get an awesome first sentence for my three points paragraphs and a great five sentence introduction structuring my argument with those points in mind. I write and edit my first two points, and glance up at the time left... 4 minutes. OHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT... The pressure is on, and I fear I may not actually finish, might blow the test right here. My third paragraph is weak, and only three sentences, but mostly coherent, and I have 1:39 left.. I type as fast as I can "In conclusion..." and follow with a messy sentence each restating my previous three paragraphs. With less than 20 seconds on the clock, no time to proofread, Dr. Jones... I hit submit and pray that the test accepts the undercooked essay before time runs out.

In retrospect, I don't know how well I did. I suspect if I bombed it, I either missed too many in the first section or my essay turned out as total crap. I'm still getting used to the idea of being able to read for pleasure or play video games without lingering guilt. I was so brain-burnt after the essay and the adrenaline leaving my system that when I got home, I wandered about aimlessly. Everything seemed too hard. I couldn't play games, surf the internet or read. I turned on the TV, flipped around, stopped briefly on "The Jersey Shore," realized I'd gone too far in the other direction and settled on "Women of Ninja Warrior" to let my overheated brain return to functional. I'm mostly better now. I'll get my scores in 5-7 weeks, and then I have to prepare for the next phase if I made it. Luckily, this part is simple pass/fail, with scores being meaningless. If I didn't make the cut... well, there's always next year.

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Post #100: Dungeons and Dragons.

Here we are in July, and including bonus posts and guest blogs, we're up to 100 articles published here, and there's a subject I'd been waiting to talk about until the time is right. That time is now. I cover a lot of subjects in the same manner, I give an introduction, a basic history and maybe a little bit of how it relates to me on the end. Not this time. I'm going to presume for the moment that most of the people know just a little bit about D&D, and that I'd be wasting my time doing a full writeup of the most popular geeky activity in the last three-plus decades. If you are still in the dark about it, here's the Wikipedia article... suffice it to say that D&D, or any other tabletop roleplaying game isn't like a board game or video game. Your “piece” is a set of statistics that describes using numbers and game terms, what your character can do and how good he or she is at any given task. From there on out, the Dungeon Master acts as narrator in a fantasy story, and every player is a main character, deciding what their character will do and then sometimes rolling dice to determine success or failure. Good enough.

I didn't even know this was in a world called "Mystara" until over a decade later.

Instead of devoting the rest of this article to a history and further description of what D&D is that many of my readers know and the rest likely won't care about, I want to talk about what D&D is to me. I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons for a frankly ridiculous percentage of my life. I was a precocious and extremely bookish child enrolled in a tiny private school in a bad neighborhood just outside the city limits of Chicago in the early 1980s. The school was small enough that as a K-8 (That is Kindergarten through 8^th grade for the nine years of American pre-High School education) school, the entire building would have fit on a single public school bus. My 8^th grade graduating class consisted of four students and the year before us had two. For this reason, first through fourth grade were in the same room in the building for at least one year. What does this have to do with D&D? I'm getting there.

The year I was unceremoniously skipped directly from Kindergarten to the second grade, bypassing first grade entirely, I met Ron, a fourth grader who was into stuff I thought was cool. We both liked video games, Transformers, and he bullied me a little, but not too much (and to be fair everyone did, I was tiny and brainy with a big mouth.)  I'd already heard of Dungeons and Dragons in books, but I couldn't puzzle out what it was. One day, Ron brought the D&D books to school, and let me look at them. I was instantly captivated. Knights and wizards, crumbling ruins filled with monsters and treasure. I wanted to play. Begged to, even though my teacher yelled at me when she saw me looking at the book. I was barely seven years old, and small for my age. I was told I was too little by the teacher, my parents, even Ron... but I persisted.

Tools of the trade from that first book. I didn't know what this stuff did,
but by God, I meant to find out.

My first Dungeons and Dragons character was a thief named “Thief” (c'mon, I was 7...) due to our incomplete understanding of the rules and a series of bad die rolls, my first level thief singlehandedly dispatched a carrion crawler at the entrance to the sample dungeon in the Red Box GM book, with nothing but his dagger. I'd only managed to get Ron to run a game with me as the only player, but it was a victory. The fact that I was killed several rooms later by a wight in a chimney did not dampen my triumph. I knew what I wanted for my next several Christmas and Birthday gifts. I got my own Red Box from Toys 'R Us, where they'd stuffed it on a bottom shelf out of the way, and it was the only one left not damaged. I read it obsessively, made characters, made dungeons on graph paper and eventually got a copy of the Expert Set.

My first ever kill, and Google tells me that I'm not alone in this.

I didn't actually get to play D&D again for years, and until High School, D&D always started with me begging my little brother, my Dad and neighborhood kids to try it, with me getting frustrated and them getting bored and stopping without even being willing to sit through a full session. I didn't care. I kept getting the books, making dungeons, reading about monsters and spells. Even in High School we only got a handful of sessions off, but by then I had myself a little collection and was set when I got to college. College opened my eyes, as I had willing and capable other players, I didn't have to beg anyone to play, and I didn't have to DM the group if I didn't want to. Those were some great years.

Post-college I joined a few different campaigns, and ran more than a few of my own, though by then I was better known for running Shadowrun or Call of Cthulhu. I did a tour of the classic modules during years playing 2^nd Edition AD&D, going through the Giants Series, Slavers Series, Temple of Elemental Evil, Castle Ravenloft, Through the Looking Glass, and even Tomb of Horrors. Years went by and I learned about acting as my character and actually roleplaying in Classic RPGA events where completion of the adventure was sometimes secondary to just acting like the character you were handed. In tournament play at Gen Con, in 1994 I was on the Winning Team for the NASCRAG event Nexus II: The Weather Stone, youngest person on the team, but I was used to that by now. Three years later I was on the 2^nd place team in the D&D Open Tournament, using the “Cutters” scenario at Gen Con 1997... I remember the adventure was set in Planescape.

Still have this on the wall by my computer, and still have the shirt and tiny
cut sapphire from the NASCRAG tourney.

I'd had years of experience as a DM, player of home games, convention tournaments and I even played a bit of Living City. Everything changed when I got a set of playtest rulebooks for Third Edition. I was in the vanguard pushing local gamers to embrace D&D3e before it even came out. By then, I was manager of a local hobby shop and when the books came out we sold tons of them, and I was running games on both days every weekend. With my boss' blessing at the hobby shop, I founded the Ides of March game convention to bring gamers together to play Warhammer, Magic: the Gathering, and most of all, D&D. (More on that convention is a tale for another day.) My convention attendance was up to seven or more cons per year, and I eventually met my wife while playing.

It's funny. When 3^rd edition (and later 3.5) came out, I prided myself on being open to change, and I mocked the people who hung onto earlier editions from behind my counter to my friends and customers as the “Gaming Amish.” After all, I'd played since 1983, I knew all the editions and had adjusted with the times... progress, you know? After the hobby shop had closed, my convention was a risk I couldn't afford to take financially anymore and my con attendance was back down to one or two per year, I got a look at Fourth Edition D&D and... I hated it. I wanted to like it, but all the old sacred cows were slaughtered and what was left might have been a decent fantasy roleplaying game, but to me, it just wasn't D&D anymore. Times changed, and this time, they left me behind. I was one of the Gaming Amish.

The last edition of D&D I really played.

I've since tried 4^th edition, and I still don't care for it. I still do an awful lot of tabletop roleplaying, but despite all those decades of it being the other pillar (besides video games) of my hobby and entertainment life, I haven't played actual D&D in years except that once to give 4e a real shot. This may seem or sound kind of sad, but I really don't feel that way. Since I started blogging, I've come into contact with all sorts of people who game in their own way, some play D&D Old-school, and I learned that OSR (Old School Rules) is a hobby all its own. I'm playing the new Arcanis RPG which has its roots in D&D, I run a lot of Savage Worlds, and may try Pathfinder Society as I've heard it is a lot like D&D 3.5... From age seven to, well... I'll be thirty-five come a week from Friday, I've been a D&D player for 28 years (80% of my whole life,) and I don't think I'll ever see myself any differently.

After all, somewhere out there, there's a crumbling ruin... a carrion crawler guards the doors to the forgotten keep where ancient treasure still lies, guarded by worse things in the darkness. There has to be a roguish young man in leathers and a black cloak with adventuing tools in his pack and a dagger at his belt, ready to pilfer those forbidden riches... He just won't be named: “Thief.”

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Who Ya Gonna Call? My Time as a Ghost Hunter

I mentioned way back in my early biographical posts that I've done quite a few interesting things over the years, but one of the experiences I've had that I still get the most questions about is the years I spent as a Ghost Hunter (1999-2002.) The success of overproduced cable shows that wildly distort the processes used and experiences of a paranormal investigator were years away when I got my start, but I suspect my story is an unusual one.

I've read books about real life ghost stories since I was a very young man. I can remember that one of the first books I checked out of a public library was on the subject, and the very first book ordered in school from the Scholastic catalog was about ghosts. (Incidentally, I believe the second was a book on Greco-Roman mythology, I was an odd child.) I'd read about haunted sites, seen photographs of mists and orbs and the rare (and almost always fake) photos of an actual apparition, and I wanted to take one of those myself. One of the gaming groups I was in had someone in it with a similar interest, and we knew of a supposedly haunted site not far from where we gamed.

First book on hauntings I ever read.

After various sessions of D&D, my friend Mark and I would load up our cameras and get into either his car or mine and head to Robinson Woods in Norridge, IL. The site is an Indian Burial Ground, literally, with a headstone marking the grave of Pottowatami Chief Alexander Robinson not too far in. Now and again, we'd look around, take a few rolls of film... we didn't really know what we were doing. One night, we arrived at the site and saw two suspicious looking individuals already there, my friend and I acknowledged the pair, but not knowing if they were drug dealers or not, we moved deeper into the woods. From behind us, we saw a camera flash, and realized the pair was there for the same reason we were. We moved back to speak with them, camera in hand, and the taller of the two, dressed in a trenchcoat laughed, saying “We thought you guys might be drug dealers!”

To be fair, I was likely dressed like this.

That night the four of us went out to eat at a late night Denny's (an American restaurant that serves breakfast 24 hours per day in many places) and talked about our experiences. This is how my friend and I got started with Haunted Chicago Paranormal Research and Investigation. The pair we'd met were the last two of a group of investigators who'd had a personal falling out, and were about to “give up the ghost” (pun most definitely intended.) We agreed to go with them to a few other sites that the two of us had planned to visit someday anyway, and after a few months of weekly trips, we were officially inducted into the group.

At the time, we structured our group to be different from most other ghost hunters in the Midwest, and particularly in Chicago. Most other groups used ghost hunting as a way to sell books, or run October bus tours, or otherwise make a living. We didn't want to sell anything. We wanted to have strict controls on the data we'd gather, and come at the subject in a manner that would please people like us, interested skeptics. We did photography experiments to have examples of equipment malfunction, water on the lens, lens flare and a host of other entirely normal phenomena usually cited to debunk haunted photography. For every photo that made it to the website, we'd discard 10 with results that weren't good enough to satisfy all of us.

One of the shots I took that was most often linked-to and discussed, as drops of water
and lens flare don't move, and specks of dust don't move that fast.

We created forms, tracked down and used night vision goggles, electromagnetic field meters, ambient temperature gauges and lots of cameras. We visited virtually every site in the Chicagoland area, graveyards at night, forest preserves, the site of the Eastland disaster, Resurrection Cemetery (Of Resurrection Mary fame) and the alley where a man who may or may not have been John Dillinger was shot to death. We spent a lot of time in Bachelor's Grove Cemetery and we met our share of drunken teens, other investigators and angry policemen ready to chase us out. We took data. Lots and lots of data. We may not have been proper scientists, but we were going to take our research many steps closer in that direction than anyone else had.

The process of being a paranormal investigator is a lot like I've heard being in law enforcement is... hours of boring routine punctuated by moments of excitement. We heard and saw unusual things on rare occasion, but they were difficult to test in a scientific manner. We recorded abnormal EMF readings, sudden drops in air temperature and took photographs with anomalous results. However, for every experience like this, there were a hundred that were either entirely normal (and kind of dull) or suspect, in that they might have an alternate rational explanation. In the end, we had a lot we couldn't explain, but our findings were inconclusive.

A photo I shot in the infamous Bachelor's Grove Cemetery.

We did have several television appearances, I gave a few interviews before cameras and our group was profiled on a cable show or two, before they realized that the groups not using rigid standards of data collection and a healthy dose of skepticism made for better TV. We even did a few home investigations and had conversations with many of the other well-known personalities of “the scene.” Our largest project to fall through came after we had drinks with a paranormal investigator in New Orleans, who gave us a tour of a graveyard she had the keys to. An arrangement for a Haunting-themed train trip on the City of New Orleans run from Chicago with presentations at either end from members of our respective groups fell apart due to poor communication.

Over the years, group members drifted apart, we went on fewer and fewer trips out as other things in our lives took priority, and now I rarely see or hear from any of them besides Mark, who I knew well before becoming involved. It was an interesting experience, and I came away with it with a hypothesis that didn't quite get enough testing to call a theory. I believe based on what we saw and recorded that certain powerful emotions can leave an imprint on a place. Not talking about psychic energies or any other New Age kind of stuff, I mean an actual measurable change on the environment, in particular in naturally occurring levels of Electromagnetic Fields. EMF has unusual interactions with people, making them feel things, see/hear things and can even move objects or distort photography. Unfortunately, that doesn't sell as many books or blocks of television time as spirits of the restless dead.

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Blog Gadgets

Monday Potpourri, or How I Spent My Geeky Weekend.

Today's post may be a little more unfocused than my usual articles. I have a lot to talk about today, and about the only theme I can come up that links the varied topics is that they are all about things that happened this weekend. A few events relevant to this blog happened in the course of a few days, I had the opportunity to follow up on and am prepared to revisit two topics I've covered before, and I got to experience a major world news event through a uniquely geeky lens.

Throwing chronology completely to the wind, I'll start with one of the very last things that happened this weekend. Weeks before the first episode came out, I wrote a bit on HBO's Game of Thrones, and how excited I was about it. Right before bed last night, I caught the third episode and I'm about due for an update on how I feel about the show. There is a LOT of material to cover to tell the story laid out in the first book, and so far, I feel the show is doing a good job of telling the story without losing too much of the detail that gives the world its depth and unique feel. Many favorite characters have been presented at this point, and the casting choices have been uniformly good. Any changes from the books have been tiny things, needed to improve the flow of story, and I think the show is comprehensible to people who haven't already spent years discussing the books.

Arya Stark learning "dancing" from Master Syrio Forel. Great casting.

I've also had a full week, and much of the weekend to try out the new content I touched on in World of Warcraft, the “update” of classic raid dungeons initially designed for between 10 and 25 players, re-imagined as longer than usual 5 man adventures. Zul'Aman is virtually unchanged from its initial release aside from the same monsters being tuned a bit for fighting groups of 5 level 85 characters as opposed to 10 level 70s. Still frustrating in the same places, still easy in the same spots. More interesting to me is Zul'Gurub, which kept the original environments, but completely rethought the monsters and bosses, including a clever encounter that is only accessible if someone in the group has sufficient archaeology skill to mess with a cache of cursed artifacts. Both of these new 5-man dungeons are like running 2 heroic dungeons back to back, all gear drops are purple (Epic) quality and they take, typically 2-3 hours to finish unless you have a very good group that knows all the fights already. We got to figure out the bosses in ZG for ourselves, no guides or YouTube strategy videos to help us along, and that was great fun, and a refreshing change of pace.

One of the Tiki-themed Minibosses in Zul'Gurub.

On to blog business, this weekend, two things of note happened, my post “Can't Stick The Landing – RPGs and Poor Endings” was a featured article in this month's Carnival of Video Game Bloggers here at GamingMyWay, and I got another award! This site received the “Stylish Blogger Award” from The Angry Lurker, many thanks to him, and this is another “with rules attached” award, so here they are.

Now the rules of this award are to:

1. A thank you and link back to the nominating blog.
2. Share seven things about yourself.
3. Pass this award on to 10 or so other deserving blogs.
4. Let them know of your nominating them for the award.
   
   

Rather than fill the rest of this post with links to blogs, I'm going to comply with rule 3 in my own way. Throughout the coming weeks, one or two at a time I'll add my nominations. A lot of my favorite blogs already have this award, so I'll get the time I need to figure out who to pass it on to (no begging in emails or comments please) and the deserving sites won't get lost in a long list.

As for seven facts about myself... Well, here goes.

1. I grew up in a particularly dangerous neighborhood, the only Irish-American kid in an area that became a gang-controlled barrio just outside Chicago.
2. I was the initial designer of the Town Project in the RPGA's Living Greyhawk Campaign, which allowed players to write, develop and spend in-game resources on the management of their D&D character's home towns and villages in a global campaign. The towns could build structures to defend themselves, harvest resources and grow population, adding a lot of “Civilization/SimCity” elements to a shared-world campaign.
3. While working in the hobby game industry, I also pursued a performing career, working as a concert tenor, improv comedian and actor.
4. The band I've seen more often in concert than any other is They Might Be Giants.
5. I've taken classes in and since forgotten how to speak or read almost anything in the following languages: Spanish, French, German, Russian and Japanese.
6. I didn't have a driver's license until I was 21, and took the test to get one my 2^nd time ever behind the wheel. (Nearly passed, nailed it on the next try.)
7. I've been to the mayan ruins of Chichen Itza four times, and got to see the Throne of the Red Jaguar inside the central chamber of El Castillo.

El Castillo, the famous temple to Kukulcan in Chichen Itza.

Last, but not least, I'd be remiss if I didn't at least mention the announcement last night of the confirmed death of Osama bin Laden in an American operation. My wife and I were online in our Sunday night raid, working on killing Heroic Maloriak with our WoW guild when the news broke. We have several active duty military personnel in the game who claimed to have known already, but were under strict orders to keep quiet on the subject until DNA testing confirmed the news. We alt-tabbed from game to news sites and social media outlets for details or confirmation that the news wasn't a hoax in between boss attempts. Eventually, the news became so distracting that we broke for the night so all the players could watch the televised speech.  Rather than cynically insist that this news changes nothing, or hop up and down chanting “USA, USA!” I find my reaction rather more complex, but a blog I read this morning put it more succinctly than I feel I could. That link is here.  

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Blog Gadgets

Where I've Been (Part 2)

(Picking up where I left off, Saturday posts will likely not be the norm.)

My first real job was managing a hobby shop. I'd always been an avid gamer, D&D, board games, all the geek pursuits were pretty much mastered in college. Primary games buyer and store manager was a dead-end job, but damned if it wasn't a good time. I took advantage of the hours and did improv comedy, acting on stage and screen (commercials, whatnot), singing, joined up with a team of paranormal investigators and even did an improv drag rock musical.

When the hobby shop shut down, I was sad, but I knew I'd never leave, even though there was no where to go and I wasn't making much. I'd started my own convention company, running one of the largest gaming conventions in the Chicago area, but I kinda knew that the end of the hobby shop was the end of that, too. I got a job selling video games about the time I met the woman who is now my wife, and left that when they stubbornly refused to give me my own store.

I learned something else important when I took the next job, still struggling as an actor/comedian and not making it. My new career was at a diamond engagement jewelry store, I supervised a team, ran an office, and within a few months, despised what I was doing. It got to the point where having no job was better than continuing on in that one, so I quit. I learned that I have to believe in what I'm doing. Making money isn't enough.

After a period of unemployment, I got the job working with troubled kids in a therapeutic day high school. I was damned good at it, drawing from my other interesting careers and talents, learning how to do crisis intervention and doing something that mattered. Part teacher, part therapist, part babysitter, part security guard, the job was consistently different and interesting and it paid the bills. At least it did, until I was called into that office.

I've done a hell of a lot of interesting things, one thing in common. I never made much money.

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Blog Gadgets

Where I've been (Part 1)

I'm going to talk a lot about where I am, and where I hope to be going, but that might just be getting ahead of myself. A "biography" or "About me" blurb won't quite do it. I've had a lot of different jobs, yet I managed to hold the same one for almost ten years. My background will help explain why it is hard for me to figure out what to do next. It'll also be too long for a single entry, so I'll post the other half tomorrow.

I was one of those really, really smart little kids. Never stopped asking questions, tested well, skipped a grade, maybe a little nerdy, but nothing that really stunted my social development too badly. Coasted through high school, learned that I really liked performing and was good at it, and that if I slacked off, I wouldn't be socially ostracised as much. (If I want to be brutally honest with myself, this probably didn't do wonders for establishing a good work ethic right away, as I learned to procrastinate and do just enough to get by.) Really got into "doing my own thing", being the "weird kid", and went to college with a black fedora, trenchcoat and chuck taylors as my standard uniform.

Didn't do so well in college, drank a lot, didn't go to many classes, casually aced the few I did turn up for, but dropped out with nothing to show for it but a lot of debt. Moved back home from my first apartment into my parent's house and took another shot at college. Stopped taking classes when I landed my first "real" job. I'd already worked in a fabric store, with a temp agency, grocery store, at my father's place of employment as an office drone to a big financial printer, and even threw papers 7 days a week out of my old beat-up car. This was different. (We'll start there tomorrow.)

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