Well, I am now officially a repeat Hyundai buyer. Today we picked up our second Hyundai Elantra. This one is for my wife, Tasha. She liked mine so much that she wanted one of her own. Hyundai made that easy by giving us $2,000.00 for being a loyal customer and then added another $750.00 rebate to bring us in to the showroom.

I had been looking to get the $1,500.00 clearance rebate on a 2003. But after four dealerships and only one 2003, which had a manual transmission, I broke down and bought the 2004 in silver.

Tasha tells me that it feels quicker than my car, so I start looking at stats and find that her car has more horsepower, torque, and gets better gas mileage than mine. And to top it off the payment is $30.00 less. Oh well, nothing but the best for my wife.

2004 Elantra
Horsepower 138 @ 6000 rpm
Torque 136 @ 4500 rpm
Average MPG 29

2003 Elantra
Horsepower 135 @ 6000 rpm
Torque 132 @ 4500 rpm
Average MPG 28

It’s a little strange to buy two nearly identical cars, the color is different, but I’m very happy to not be leasing any longer. Life is good. Bring on the new year.

Since New Year is approaching, it’s time for some resolutions. You know stuff like promising to do some upgrades on RonnMcCarrick.com or promising more regular updates. Well those things I can’t promise, though they would be nice. But the coming New Year got me to thinking about how we got started with this whole resolution thing.

So I did some research on New Year’s Resolutions, not much, okay I found this on the first site I checked. It seems that we have the Babylonians to blame for this crazy practice. Apparently, they started celebrating New Years Day over 4,000 years ago. Of course they celebrated in March rather than January, so that it coincided with the spring planting of crops.

The start of a new year is, and apparently has always been, a time for looking back to upon the past year, forward to the coming year, and generally reflecting on life. It’s a time to reflect on the changes we want, or need, if we are to have the motivation to move forward. I think it’s safe to say that resolutions are a reflection of the Babylonians’ belief that what a person does on the first day of the New Year will have an effect throughout the entire year.

So for starters in 2004 I resolve to improve my body. You know the whole excersise, get in shape, lose weight thing. Now I’m not talking about massive changes. I’d like to get back to 220 pounds, I’m at 270 now. I figure this is doable. The plan is to do some daily morning calisthenics, moderate the amount of food I eat (No More Soda), and generally be more active.

I resolve to start saving some money in 2004. Open a savings account and put something in it each paycheck, I’m thinking $50.00 is a good target number. As I get older, I start to worry that the only savings that I have is the money in my 401k.

I resolve in 2004 to buy a house. I keep telling Tasha that I want to have our Fourth of July barbeque in our new backyard. That may be a hard goal to reach, but I think we can definately do the winter holidays in our new house next year.

So those are my general resolutions, the ones I know I should do; the ones that I think are needed. But there is one other resolution that I keep promising myself. The one resolution that I keep putting off year after year. It’s almost two resolutions in one, but they’re so closely linked that I think of them as a single resolution. This is the big one.

In 2004 I resolve to write every day. I am setting the bar at 1,500 words a day. I plan to complete the `BlackMoon Project’ that I started for NaNoWriMo 2003. This resolution also means finishing the revisions on and expanding A Difficult Dinner to a 90,000 word novel and sending it out. In short, I will have at least one rejection letter this year from a legitimate publisher.

So there you have it. Those are my resolutions for 2004. Feel free to call me out on any, or all, of them.

Just got word that my grandfather on my father’s side passed away. I’ll write more after I’ve had a chance to think about this a bit and gather my thoughts. But suffice to say for now, I wish I’d have known him better.

Robert George McCarrick, May 7th, 1923 – December 2003

The politics of elementary school and junior high school were revealed to me by my ex-wife a short while back. Seems as if my oldest is having trouble with bullies and my youngest has a tendency to be attracted to those kids. I explained the rules to both of them. You never start a fight. You never go meet someone for a fight. You should do your best to finish a fight if one occurs. Pretty simple.

Well, shortly after this I stumbled upon this article by Holly Lisle and I really like what she had to say on the subject. I’ve had my own share of experiences with bullies, and I could relate my tales here, but I think she says it all with her Playground Rules. I’ve taken the liberty of reprinting her rules list here. You can see her whole post by clicking on this link.

Playground Rules by Holly Lisle

There are some people who are simply assholes, and no matter what you do, all they want is to draw blood. You cannot make friends with pirhanas, nor do you want to try.

The first people you meet are the pirhanas, because they are looking for fresh meat, while the decent kids see the assholes circling you and hang back out of fear. In a new situation, the people closest to you are probably the ones looking for weakness.

Negotiation is futile with playground pirhanas. They get nothing out of making peace. They want your pain, and only your pain will satisfy them.

Pirhanas cannot be ignored. I pity kids whose idiot mothers tell them to “just ignore the bullies, dear — they’ll go away.” No, they won’t. They’ll nibble away at you a piece at a time until you bleed to death.

Playground pirhanas can be joined. But only if you want to be as big an asshole as they are. I never wanted that, and never chose that path.

Playground pirhanas can be beaten. But it ain’t fun. If you do not want to spend the rest of the school year dealing with these bastards, your options are limited. To one. You have to make such a horrific example of the first shitwad to take a bite out of you that the rest flee in terror. This means:

You commit to hurting. The playground pirhana derives his power from fear as much as from combat — but first he had to derive itfrom combat. He is going to hurt you. You have to face that, you have to accept it.

Having committed to fighting, you cannot then cut and run. Once you’ve realized that you’re going to have to fight your way out of this mess, you have to be in it for the long haul. If you quit at any point, you only set the scale for the next beating you get. It will start where the last one left off, because the pirhana knows that he has to commit that much effort to your pain to keep you in line. And he has to keep you in line to keep the rest of his victims in line. If anyone breaks free from his tyranny, everyone will see that it can be done, and the trickle will become a rout.

You commit to hurting back. Having accepted that fact that you are going to get hurt, your objective is to hurt the pirhana worse than he hurts you. You cannot be squeamish. You have to intend to draw blood, leave bruises and teethmarks. You’re probably not fond of fighting, but too bad. You do this, or you live in hell. This is what you do to buy a year of peace and quiet, and an umbrella. (More on the umbrella later.)

To hell with fighting fair. Your only objective is to win — big and loud. Screw the Marquis of Queensbury. You want to make sure that not just the bully, but the bully’s friends, have proof that if their hands stray within three feet of you in any direction they’re going to lose fingers. Do everything you have to do to hurt the bastard, and then throw in a couple of flourishes to scare the piss out of his friends. They have to know that the consequences of screwing with you are so dire that they never even consider it again — because if they doubt, they will test. And the next time they test, they’ll come better prepared.

Make allies. Watch each others backs. If you made a big and loud enough example of the first bastard, you’ll win not just peace and quiet for yourself, but for people who can legitimately claim to be your friends. This is your umbrella. After all, friends watch out for each other, and if anyone messes with your friends, they’re messing with you. Right? Right. Gather in the nice kids you wanted to be friends with all along, watch out for them, let them watch out for you.

Never mistake your friends for your enemies. Your friends are the kids who will fight to protect you. Period. If they won’t put themselves on the line for you the way you will for them, they aren’t your friends. Your enemies are the ones who will stand there making excuses for the kid who is trying to beat you up, or for why they aren’t stepping in to help you, or who will cravenly stand there and kick you once you’ve fallen to prove to the bully that they were really on his side all along. Never abandon your friends, and never turn your back on your enemies.

I think Holly hit the nail squarely on the head with this and I wish that I had written that list. I can’t find anything in it that I disagree with. As I get older I realize that the rules for dealing with bullies apply throughout your life. Of course, in order to avoid jail time, you have to have a more subtle approach than fisticuffs.

Bullies are the same whatever arena you encounter them in. If you let them push you around or walk all over you, they’ll take advantage of it, and it will never get better. It will only get worse. Take charge of your life and don’t allow anyone to stand in the way of your dreams.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about role-playing games, and what life would be like without actively playing them, and if I made a decision to seriously lower their priority in my life. I came to the conclusion it actually would not be a bad thing. It surprised me initially, but I soon came to realize it might actually be a really positive move.

First, I’ve not run a role-playing game in six months. The last few campaigns that I have run have felt hallow and unfulfilling. There seems to be a pattern; I have an idea, I spend a lot of time and energy developing the idea for the game, I run a few sessions, I become unsatisfied with the direction of the game, the game sputters along until it finally stalls, repeat. That’s it. Yet campaign ideas fill my head all the time, and I develop them to various degrees of completion, but none of the development ever comes to the table during play. I write reams of information on the gods, civilizations, and lots of minor details, almost none of which is practical for the in-game experience. So publish this wonderful world you say. I can’t. Most of my game development borrows heavily from other gaming sources and as such is unfit for publication, what with copyright infringement and all that good stuff. I must enjoy the creative process involved in that. So, I’ll suffice to say that it does take up some of my time for no real reward beyond satisfying some creative side of my brain.

So I can say that I’m done with the game design and GM aspects of this hobby, I just need to invest time in something else. Stop creating things that have no purpose.

When it comes to playing in campaigns, I do enjoy it in fact I really enjoy it. It also doesn’t take up that great amount of time so it’s not really an issue. At the same time though, I am conscious of the fact that the time I do put into creating characters and developing them could probably be better spent writing something else, or using those skills in another fashion.

In short, I’ve realized, well, not so much realized, more allowed myself to notice again, that role-playing games are in many ways my lazy excuse for not writing publishable fiction. Okay, publication is a long shot, but I could certainly write more frequently and develop the skills and habits that I’ll need in order to become a published author. After all, what’s the worst that could happen if I was left with no role-playing group? Maybe finish a novel and get published.

I’m a firm believer that if I could force myself to stop role-playing games from being such a heat sink for my imagination I may stop being so lazy when it comes to being actually published, after all, it has to go somewhere. Since my current employment schedule cuts heavily into my available weekends which will make this much easier to do, I’m going to ,begin giving it a try.

The plan is to downgrade my creative effort as a player, which can be done by not acting under the misguided principle that I’m a co-GM or something. I’m going to stop, totally, working on campaign ideas that will not come to actual play. This should generate some free time, and a growing potential of creative thought that can be put to writing material for
publication.

The surprising thing is, the first few steps are working, I’ve not purchased any role-playing material for months, and I’ve not worked on any of my gaming related projects for an equal amount of time. It’s sort of liberating.