Quiet, then Crazy, then Ghosties!!

Well, Friday started out pretty quiet - had a pretty full week so far and I was looking forward to just getting caught up.

That lasted until I was just about ready to call it a day. Then I got an email from Tammie needing another run at the WPG customer I worked on yesterday. Got that out of the way just in time to get ready for Halloween.

In the meantime I took a run to the Rev and picked up a couple of games (Java, To Court The King and the Lunch Money expansion.

R dressed up as a giraffe. M dressed up as Cinderella and J dressed up as Darth Vader. It was a really warm night and the kids had a lot of fun. R and I lasted about an hour and Beth and other two lasted another hour or so.

Got home, sorted out the candy and crashed for the night.

Thursday - Gear Change 101

OK, started off the morning with plans to work on my favorite VCR customer. You know, the one where I have been working on the same report for almost a year? Yeah, that one.

That lasted about 2 hours, until I come to the realization that the report just won't work as detailed. So, I changed gears to my Job Ledger CGY Customer for a while. A couple kicks at can left this in Wendy's hands for the evening.

Then I got a call from Tammy and Debbie, they were having some issues with a WPG customer that they needed me to jump on. It took a couple of bits to sort that out and now it is back in Tammy's hands to close it out.

Beth had gym and school council, so I spent the evening doing some housecleaning, surfing and TV time. Pretty quiet.

I realize that I don't talk much about what the kids do in my blog. Not intentional, I don't think. Need to ponder on that one....

Battle Line for Hill 218 creates Race for the Galaxy

Started the evening with Battle Line. It took me a couple of hands to figure out the tactics of this game. You really have to pay attention to what has been played and where. this really helped me in the last couple games, when I could sneak out a couple of flags under Bruce's nose. Score 3-2 for me.

Bruce got his revenge with Battle for Hill 218. A really light game, I was really looking for some sort of deep strategy, but I found so long as you keep the zones near your Base clear, the game will basically end up in a last round battle for a draw. Still a pretty good game for what it is. Score 4-2 Bruce.

Finished up with a quick game of Race for the Galaxy. Bruce started with New Sparta and quickly put together a lot of military planets and 6-point Developments. I had a bunch of Blue planets and made a run at it, but in the end I think he won by 15 points or so.

All in all, a great night! Thanks Bruce.

Saturday is Arkham Horror in all of its glory - 4 games, each with a different expansion.

Family, Work and Game Night - Yea!!

Crazy morning looking after R while Beth went on M's field trip to Butterfield Acre. Lots of TV and Lego, can't go wrong.

Crazy afternoon at work. jumped around between most of the same stuff I worked on yesterday. Still not resolved yet.

Fun evening with Bruce as well (see other post).

To top it all off, I cooked supper!! I don't remember the last time I prepared the whole meal (yea, sure, I will grill up the meat sometimes, but rarely will I also handle the Veggies and sides.

Look Ma! I can Juggle!

Wow. CGY (x2), WPG, VCR all firing at the same time? And I keep them all happy at the same time? Must be Tuesday!

Spent the day hopping from one call to another, and somehow (so far) didnt drop any chainsaws.

The longest one was a C/SIDE to SQL conversion on a 20GB database for WPG. Just waiting for the OK to fire the trigger on the conversion and it should be ready to back up.

Didnt get to much TV in today, but I did get a lot of work done :)

Nighty-nite!

Not too bad a Monday at all...

I wish all Mondays were like this one. I had a great chat with Ashok first thing and it set my mindset for the whole week. He said, "just let it go to voicemail". Brilliant in its simplicity. Difficult for my 'oooh shiny!!' mind to handle.

I thought I would give it a try as I had a ton of work to do.
Partial list:

• Emails
• Team meeting / Time Entry / update Calendar
• Emails
• WPG payroll database transfer development
• Emails
• Weekly one-on-one with Linda
• Get CGY Customer W/O bugs cleaned up.
• help Mark B with VCR Customer AJM issues.

Finished up around 10pm. Long day, but a lot done. (only 6 voicemails to deal with :))

Didnt watch much TV at all, but worked through a bunch of Podcasts.

Sunday Cleaning

So, Church, Timmies, and sorting of all my miniatures.

Got the Heroclix, Mage Knight, MechWarrior:Dark Age and Heroscape minis all sorted into their own buckets. Then for good measure, added in the D&D Minis. Two full Shelving units filled to the brim. Very cool!

Then helped Beth out with getting some of her craft stuff ready for her shows.

Caught a couple of shows on the PVR. Sanctuary, Torchwood, Dr. Who and Numbers were good for the viewing, but nothing really jumped out at me.

Oh Well, a quiet night is better than a bad one.

A Quiet day in the life of Darren

I don't remember the last time I had a full day of absolutely nothing. It was fantastic.
I basically slacked around the enitre day and watched TV. Got a bunch of my PVR cleaned up. Heroes, Prison Break, Knight Rider and a bunch of other things.

Well, since I didn't do anything, I really don't have anything to write about ;)

A short week? who knew?

Big day today. In theory at least. Helping present a webinar on SQL with NAV. Its our first webinar and not a lot of sizzle or steak, but a very high-level overview of why you would want to convert your C/SIDE Database to SQL. I presented connecting SSRS to NAV to generate dynamic reports. I think it is pretty cool.

Got that out of the way, as well as got a final build to that pesky CGY customer.
Helped out Mark with a couple of minor issues in VCR.

At the end of the day, I realized that I could actually take Friday off!!!! Cleared it with the boss, and now I have tomorrow to myself.

Didn't do much after work tonight, watched some TV (other than Chuck, nothing comes to mind).

Well. all in all a pretty quiet night, Talk to you all soon.

A Twilight Struggle into late evening.

Bruce came over tonight for our Wargames evening. We were going to play Round 2 of Hannibal, but instead we played a game of Twilight Struggle (Bruce slept in, so we thought that Struggle would be a shorter game, show's what we know).

This was a stressful game for me, but a lot of fun. At least three times, I was 10-15 points up and looking to finish the Yankees off when out of nowhere, I would lose 15 or so points in a single round!!!

I finally conceded the game to Bruce in the tenth round, when I realized that, although I would probably be ahead at the end of this round, the end-game scoring would definitely go in his favor.

All in all, I really enjoy this game. I think I have recorded 5 plays so far and each one has been very different, but all have been a great game.

A lot of stress about nothing...

It's interesting, the hardest part of writing this blog is comign up with a title for the post. After that, it is more of a matter of actually sitting down and writing something legible.

Today, Wednesday, was day 1 of my stress days for the week. I have a conference call scheduled with a customer today to go through their NAV/SQL environment, answer any questions and confirm that their setup is kosher.

I am not sure why I am stressed about this call, but it probably has a lot to do with being the first time that I have been called upon as a SQL expert, rather than a NAV expert who could spell SQL.

The call actually went pretty well. I feel the call went really well, I know that once I started in on the call, I fell into a rhythm and time just melted away. Someday I will learn not to stress so much (yea, right ;))

I also spent time working the SQL webinar, going through another dry run today. I crashed my IIS which caused some anxiety, but I should be ready to go for Thursday.

Lots of other little things in the hopper, pushed most of those to later in the week and went home.

a Long day of phone calls and coding

Well. Today was planned to be a quiet day. I worked really late the night before to get a bunch of stuff out to my CGY customers, so that I could spend the day prepping for my Webinar.

Well, that lasted all of 5 minutes. I was on and off the phone most of the day with one of my 'special' CGY Customers, getting his Work Order interface up and running (well sort of anyway).

Barely scratched the surface of the issues for him, and I had to change gears (again).

WPG Customer needed to get their payroll data converted from NAV2.60 to NAV5.0. there are a lot of changes there, but I am working with our Payroll specialist to get the mappings right.

Ended up being a long day where I sat at the keyboard WAY past my bed time, but I think I might actually be caught up for another go of it tomorrrow!!

Monday - Got to learn to stick that landing ;)

Well, Monday chaos at its best.

Started off not too bad. Kids are still on vacation from school, so Beth has a full house.
Got into work, did the usual team meeting stuff, did a lot of work on a CGY customer's Work Order processing interface. Ashok helped out by shipping off the boxes to the VCR offices and I scheduled my week so that I can fit everything in. (looks like it will be a crazy week)

Looked like it was going to be a fairly quiet day until I got a call from home. One of the kids in the dayhome fell down a couple of steps and got a nasty cut. Beth ended up calling an ambulance, but her parents ended up taking her to the clinic. Accoding to a later call, she got 5 stitches and will be staying home on Tuesday. Looks like she will be OK!!!!

Ended up doing a bunch of work after supper (I was supposed to go pick up a shelf, but that got rescheduled until Tuesday Night.

I got caught up on a bit of TV tonight.

First two episodes of My own Worst Enemy were really cool. The premise is interesting, but not sure how long this arc can work.

Caught the episode of NCIS where Gibbs goes back to his home town. Awesome ep!

The Mentalist was interesting, but really is losing my interesting.

Big Bang Theory is absolutely awesome. So reminds me of my group of friends. Just we are not quite that smart, just that geeky.

Well, that was Monday, rated about 3 out 5.

Glory to Rome!!! (Abridged version)

Bruce and I got together on Sunday afternoon for a couple of hours of Hannibal - Rome vs. Carthage.

Neither of us had played this game before, but Bruce had read the rules and was up for it.

It took almost two hours just to cover off the rules to this Valley Games Classic. The game is absolutely beautiful and the rules are deceptively straight-forward. There are parts that feel a lot like Twilight Struggle, which is both good and bad (I tried to apply the same strategies, but the existence of the armies and generals, really seem to change the premise).

We played the first two years (in about a couple of hours) to get a feel for the rules. I still need to get a grasp on what exactly I should be doing. I read through some strategy guides after the fact and I hope that I do better on Wednesday (We have another game planned for then, where we hope to get through a full game.

It was a pretty short afternoon, but a good one.

Daiymos and more Monsterpocalypse

We started off the afternoon with Shogun. Well, sort of (See this week at home for more info on why I was two hours late ;).

I really need to focus more when I play games. I know this, really I do. Of course, you would never know that I am supposedly pretty smart, by the way I play games.

It was a really good game though, and I suspect that if I wasn't stuck in between both Steve and Bruces armies, I might have stood a chance. (Who am I kidding).

Saturday evening, I learned something very valuable. Don't play MPoc when your head really isnt in it. I am not really strong on Strategy in the first place, but even more so if I'm not paying attention.

Bruce and I played two rounds the first being Martians (Bruce) vs Sun Syndicate (me). This was almost close, but I just couldnt deal with all of the P-Dice that he kept generating.

The second round Bruce switched to my usual faction, the G.U.A.R.D. You would think that since I know something about the G.U.A.R.D. abilites, I would have fared better. Nope.

This would make 5 different games I have played, with a record of 2-3. Not bad all things considered. It did help me come up with a new tagline.

It's not about winning or losing, I just want to play.

Neroshima and Monsters!!

Sorry, these got posted out of order, I forgot to post Friday's notes before I posted Saturday's

Last night I got to play Neroshima Hex! with Alex while we were waiting for the rest of the group to show up for some MPOC.



I really want to like Neroshima, but I need a lot more practice seeing what could happen, as I always get caught with my pants down and beat up. I love the tightness of this game though and is a lot of fun.



MPoc was a lot of fun. Bruce (Martians) vs Steve (Terrasaurs) and Darren (G.U.A.R.D.) vs Alex (Planet Killers).

I beat Al, somehow, by just basically beating on his Monster with a Lightning Blast for 4 turns in a row. He was beating the crap out of my units and generating a tone of P-dice, but the repair vehicle was the key to my victory.

I think Bruce won his battle, but it was primarily due to the fact that we had misinterpreted that Monsters could walk over water without hassle. This missed fact, caused Steve to become very frustrated with the city layout.

All in all a good night was had by all and we planned for a return to the MPoc arena on Saturday night.

This Week in Gaming

Wednesday - Manoeuvre with Bruce. See my thoughts here.

Friday - Monsterpocalypse with Steve, Al and Bruce. My Thoughts

Saturday (Afternoon) - Shogun with Steve, Al and Bruce. My Thoughts

Saturday (Evening) - Conquest of the Empire with Steve,Al and Bruce (cancelled). More Monsterpocalypse with Steve, Al and Bruce (My thoughts)

Sunday - Meetup at Legends Games with Bruce. My first meetup at this location. Heck, my first meetup since Fallcon. (This got cancelled. Well, not cancelled, more of Bruce and I changed plans and we played Hannibal) (My Thoughts)

Monsterpocalypse thoughts

Well, I finally picked up some of the miniatures and I must say I am impressed with them. I got in a introductory game last week with Al, Steve and Doug and it was a lot of fun.

I think I will focus on the G.U.A.R.D. faction for now, mainly because that is the faction that I have the most in. I really like the Planet Killers faction as well, but I don't really have enough to field a decent amount.

I know that I can mix factions and such, but until I get a better grasp on the rules, I'd rather take advantage of the syngery gained within the faction/agenda.

We have another MPoc session tomorrow, I'll post more then.

This Week at Work

Monday - Stat holiday (Thanksgiving). Did some SQL Analysis Server training.

Tuesday - Team meeting, cleaned up some issues around a NAV/AJM Merge for a Vancouver customer. Met with some of the VCR Team regarding a SQL Customer that needs assistance.

Wednesday - spent most of the day working out a SSRS/NAV Demo for a webinar

Thursday - Worked on a CGY Customer cleaning up some Work order issues. Mark found some issues in the VCR stuff and I worked on that for a bit.

Friday - Drove to work because today is Office cleanup day, lots of stuff cleanedup and out. Less than a month until the big move (supposedly). Worked on CGY Customer for the remainder.

Saturday - Expanded one of our customer internal databases that was in peril of running out of space.

This Week at Home

Thanksgiving Turkey on Sunday was great - almost got everyone eating at the table at the same time :).

Monday I spent most of the day trying to catch up on my PVR while Beth frantically paints for her winter craft shows.

My kids are off school, but the day-home show must go on! Beth balances keeping the kiddos occupied with painting and housework (I couldnt do it!). On top of that she has classes almost every night.

Tuesday - Worked from home. Voted - Another Minority Conservative Government (why did we waste all this time and money again?)

Wednesday - Went into the office. Played wargames with Bruce (Manouevre).

Thursday - Worked from home. Finally caught up on the background posts to this blog. Beth went to Bootcamp and we talked about her joining the Biggest Loser online Group. Figured out the budget for 2009. Boy I hope I get a raise, looks like Beth will have to keep 2 fulltime kids in the dayhome for at least one more year.

Friday - Drove to work (first time I think since 2003), paid the bills online, probably headed to the Sentry Box after work and then Gaming tonight.

Saturday - Picked up some Toys for the Kids, took M to Dance classes, did some shopping. then plans went out the window as I helped Colin move a couch, chair and table into his new place. Family before hobbies, right? Then went to the basement to play Shogun with Steve and Bruce.

Sunday - Slept through church, Beth and kids went to Zoo with Vicki. Bruce and I played Hannibal. Folded laundry for an hour or so. Tried to catch up on some TV.

Who am I? - All caught up

Let's see. Oh yes. One more major event to cover before we get really caught up. in October 2005, Beth gave birth to our third (and probably final) child R. A blue-eyed devil of a boy who is determined to be the best of us (and well on his way :)).

Other than lots of gaming, RPG's and little family things, the last couple of years (from my self-centered opinion) have been pretty stable...

OH WHO AM I KIDDING!!!

Let's see - Beth is running a day home so that we can afford to live in Calgary. J is in a Gr. 4/5 Split class and keeping his head above water. M started Kindergarten and R is attempting to make the terrible two's stretch from newborn - high school.

Me? I, somehow am semi-in-charge of our Calgary Office for the Navision team. Considering the current size of our team, not a huge dose of responsibility, but someone has to do it.

to people who know and put up with me, I know that there are a lot of gaps in this 'Who am I?' section. To them, put a comment in, remind me of what I've missed or forgotten or even completely turned around!.

thanks

Who am I? Calgary - The first few Years

So. Moved to Calgary. Bunked up with a couple of friends (Al and Doug) from high school for a couple of weeks while Beth and J packed up our stuff back in Saint John. I've known Alex and Doug for what seems forever and we have all been gaming for years and years.

Started work with CSB on July 16, 2001. Working as a Navision Developer, I literally jumped right into a huge project in Edmonton that lasted for about 2 years. I did a bunch of other dev work during that time and it was a lot of fun.

My Mentor, who worked as project manager and implementer on most of my projects was Wendy. Wendy is an ex-pat Brit who really taught me how the world of consulting works. We had our good days and bad (I just dreaded getting the 'I'm extremely disappointed....' emails, but they really helped me to apply due diligence.

CSB stood on its own for about 4 years while I was there and then we got notice that we were being bought out. Bell Canada wanted to increase its foothold in the ERP and professional services domain, and picked our little engine to help with that.

We were merged with a couple of other companies to form Bell Business Solutions, which was headquartered out of Montreal. This was a very turbulent time for the Navision team, but we survived.

Well, enough of work, what was going on in my personal life? A lot! (Oh? you want more?, fine.)
Let's see.... My Beautiful Daughter M was born in 2004 and she is a daddy's girl. Strong willed, but willing to cry at the drop of a hat, she never ceases to amaze me.

Got a new gaming group formed here in Calgary. A great group of guys with Alex and Doug (mentioned above) starting the core and then adding Bruce, Steve and Drew (There was also Dave, but he only lasted about 2 months before running in fear, but I don't think anyone misses him :)) We played primarily D&D3.5, but Bruce and Steve, also introduced me to Euro-Boardgames with Settlers of Catan.

Alternating between RPG's and boardgames, we get together almost every weekend for a few hours of comraderie and friendship. A Great group of guys and excellent friends.

Other changes in my life would be Beth and I converting to the Catholic faith. It began innocently enough, with getting J into one of the better schools in Calgary, MNA. This is a Year-Round school (shorter summer break and a couple of other breaks during the year).

We slowly started attending Ascension Church with our adopted family, The Hayles. Anne and Vicki are now Grammy Anne and Aunt Vicki and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I finished our journey into the faith, Easter 2007. I find it a necessary part of my life now, something I didnt realize I was missing until I found it.


NOTE: One more background entry, then I should be caught up.

Manouvre with Bruce

Round 2 of Manouvre with Bruce tonight. Started off playing the Russians (me) versus the Ottomans (Bruce). Bruce won this at the end the day phase, having more troops on my side than I had on his.

The second game had USA (Me) versus Spain (Bruce) where I did the same thing to him this time.

I really like this game, lots of replayability due to the 8 different armies and lots of terrain tiles. So long as I play patiently (this is a common theme to the deep-strategy games that I have seen), I can do pretty good.

I had a great time tonight. Thanks Bruce.

First day blues :(

Well, this is interesting. Received an email from Blogger, saying that this site may have violated some sort of terms of service or could be a spam blog.

I suspect it is because I did a lot of journalling today, so hopefully the review will clear me of any issues.

More to come (hopefully).

Who am I? - Marriage to Calgary

At the time I got married, I was working for BM Wilson & Associates. This was a great learning experience for me. They contracted me to NBTel to work on a customer service Application in COBOL and I learned what it is to work in a professional IT department.

FYI - nothing in school really prepares you for this. I was fortunate that I did my internship at this very same position, otherwise, it could have been disasterous. I think I did pretty well there, once I learned the ropes. I wasn't a super-star by any means, but I was willing to put in the effort, which counted for a lot then.

1998. Near the end of my contract, a major turning point in my life occured. I was offered a chance to work directly with NBTel as an employee, or I could work on BM Wilson's internal IT team. Looking back, I am not sure I made the right decision, but I definitely learned a lot by the decision I made. It probably made for a harder road, but a necessary one.

1999. Major change on the homefront!! Beth and I are pregnant! J was born in February, a beautiful and energetic baby boy. J and I are cut from the same cloth, full of energy and no idea how to focus it. I love him, and he is the most entertaining and frustrating part of my life.

In the summer of 1999, I screwed up. I was working internally at BM Wilson and without getting into too many details, I grew lax, overconfident and in a nutshell, I got was I deserved. The Wilsons let me go and it is one of those things that pulls me out of a deep sleep at night. I betrayed a trust with friends, not just employers. I will forever be sorry for that, but it taught me that you have to always stay vigilant (sounds corny, but overconfidence is the biggest killer).

After a couple of months, we ended up having to move back into my parents (round 6 by my count). I was quite depressed during this stage and directionless. Without Beth and J (and my parents) it could have been very dark. I posted my resume on a number of jobs, and had a number of interviews, but nothing clicked.

Then, one day I got a call. It was in response to a job posting that I really don't remember sending my resume to. They were looking for a programmer with Visual Basic experience and willing to learn a new product.

Thus began my journey into the world of Navision. After 4 weeks of training in Atlanta, I joined a small Solution center called Central Software (later Central Solutions). We did 2 implementations of Navision over two years and the company folded. It seems a very short paragraph on such a challenging time, and someday I may come back and flesh it out, but that is all I want to say for now.

Two highlights from my time in Central. First, I got to work from home, which really gave me the opportunity to see J grow up. It also gave me the opportunity to work almost every other waking hour, but such is life. Secondly, I worked with a wonderful mentor, Lloyd Queen. There is not enough space in this blog to tell you the things this man taught me. Business, life, family, what have you, we had long discussions about every subject imaginable.

2001. When Central folded, it was almost expected. Sad, but expected. I actually only sent out one resume, to a company I had met at a Navision conference in Atlanta. CSB Systems. I talked to them on the phone, they flew me out for an interview and two weeks later, we were moving to Calgary!

Who Am I? - High School to Marriage

After graduating Sussex Regional High School in 1989, I joined the Canadian Armed Forces. Well, sort of. I lasted 3 days of boot camp before I got discharged on a medical (phych) condition. Someday I may tell that story in its fullest, but not today.

I did a couple of odd-jobs for a couple of years, not really making any real progress (I did play lots of D&D during this time, and made some really stupid decisions in my social life as well.
I delivered pizza, installed waterbeds, sold furniture and a couple of other one-time jobs that aren't even worth mentioning at this time.

in 1993, I went to Trade School (Eastern Business Computer Institute) to get some professional training in Computer Programming. This one year course was a complete waste of my time. I learned a lot of really interesting things that, it turns out, no one in the real world was interested in. Especially from a fly-by-night operation. All of my resumes probably ended up in an HR office roundfile (trash can).

1995. Relentlessly, and undaunted (and also, wanting to move out of my parents house for the 3rd or 4th time) I registered at the New Brunswick Community College - Saint John. This was the first time I moved out of my hometown by myself.

I guess one thing that really hadn't shown up in my thoughts yet, was that I was a pretty quiet person. Very few friends, keeping to myself a lot, mostly reading or geeking on my computer.

When I moved to Saint John and started school, I decided that I had an opportunity to become someone else. No one really knew me here, and no pre-conceived notions would be in place. I was determined to talk to everyone, join in and break out of my 'shell'.

I did this, every day and every night I threw up from the stress of it all. Eventually it got easier, I got to know people in my class and in the rest of the school. I joined the Student Council, I sat with people at lunch and in general, just tried to fit in with everyone. I firmly believe that this was the key to where I am today. Hard skills like programming languages are easy to pick up, but soft skills like communication and personality are key to moving forward.

In summer break (this was a two-year course) I met the woman who changed my life forever. I had known Beth, really all of my life. We were in Kindergarten together and I was friends with her brother on-and-off through school. I'm still fuzzy on how this all started, but it was probably my friend Julie's fault. I had been in love with Julie all through High-School and even after when we both moved to Saint John for school, but she was (and always will be) a 'Best Friend', not a 'Girlfriend' (I was probably in love with her younger sister Dawn as well, but that is another story).

The first date with Beth I remember was at the Drive-in in Sussex. I couldn't tell you what was playing, I just know that Beth and I cuddled the entire time, barely even talking. It had begun.

Three Days later, Beth was in a motorcycle accident. I was in a car behind her and saw the entire thing. She was pretty beat up, with a lot of road rash and a couple of mangled fingers, but in the end she came out fine. My dad always joked that she tried to get out of the relationship by driving off of the bridge, but I think it was an event that brought us ultimately together.

1996. We ended up living together in Saint John while I finished my last year of school. I proposed to her around Thanksgiving, and we got married May 31, 1997.

Who am I? - Up to High School

Good question. This is always tricky posting such information to the Web, as you never know who may be lurking out there. Yes, there are scarier people on the web than I.

I was born in the early 1970's to a very unusual family. Unusual in the fact that they are loving, caring and still married after raising my brother and I and setting us free on to the world. They live in Sussex New Brunswick, where I spent most of my formative years (which may explain a lot to some of you).

I got interested in computers while we spent two years living in very rural Ontario (Port Burwell, pop.~500). My dad bought me a Commodore 64 and I fell in love with it. I spent Gr. 8&9 in Ontario, and beyond the usual hobbies of Hockey and Boy Scouts, I joined the High-school Wrestling team. (They needed to fill the ultra-feather weight slot, I never won a single match, but being on the wrestling team did keep the other bullies at bay ;)).

We moved back to New Brunswick for Gr.10 and I began my delve into Dungeons and Dragons. History will tell whether my fateful encounter with Cecil Stacey was for good or ill, but I was hooked. Between Computers and D&D, just about every spare moment was occupied. (This did wonders for my marks, and my attitude towards school, let me tell you).

In the Beginning

Well, I have been thinking about blogging for quite a while. I read a lot of blogs, but I am primarily a lurker by nature.

I may come up with a concrete topic for this Blog, but for now, it will be very sporadic.