24 hours to go, then I’ll be sedate
By Thoreau
The grant proposal is done. It has been sent to our Office of Research and Sponsored Programs for the final approvals to be stamped on it, and some time tomorrow I’ll be submitting. Hallelujah.
But there is no sleep for me. Not yet. Tomorrow I have to get up early for special office hours, then give a midterm. I’ll sleep after I grade it.
And this weekend? This weekend I’m breaking out the 20 sided dice and playing Star Wars to celebrate my birthday. It’s been a long time since I played an RPG, but I think I need some serious geeking out. Which is a rather odd thing to need after spending a week finishing a grant proposal and grading physics labs (shouldn’t I need to do something cool instead of geeky?) but, well, I feel the need for some geekdom.
Comment by Steven Taylor —
May 14, 2008 @ 7:56 am
I find that at the most exhausting times of the semester I crave a bit of geekery myself.
And congrats on the proposal.
Comment by Doc Nebula —
May 14, 2008 @ 8:22 am
After a very very long hiatus, I’ve finally managed to resume DMing my longstanding fantasy RPG, World of Empire (http://www.angelfire.com/rpg2/worldofempire), on an occasional, sporadic basis. My players are my wife, who is new to the wonderful world of roleplaying geekdom, and my closest buddy, who was best man at our wedding a year ago, and who played in WOE for years over a decade ago, when he and I still lived in Syracuse, NY.
Odd how these things come around.
We play whenever we get a few hours to ourselves, whenever my 8 year old stepdaughter is over at her biodad’s for a weekend day (or evening) when we don’t have anything more pressing on our schedules.
I’ve always thought the STAR WARS universe had fabulous potential as an RPG, but I’ve discovered over the years that the higher the tech level gets, the harder it becomes for player characters to survive fairly refereed scenarios. (There’s simply no way a dozen adequately trained NPC Storm Troopers could consistently roll poorly enough not to blow Han and Chewie into kibble at nearly any of the big fight scenes in any of the SW movies; one or two high rolls should be all it takes, assuming those blasters do any kind of damage at all.) For that reason, I limit my RPGing to sword & sorcery with the very occasional single shot gunpowder weapon thrown in (the deadliness there being offset by the very real chance that such weapons have a bad tendency to explode in the hands of those firing them, plus, I keep powder and shot very expensive and difficult to find).
I hope you have a great time with your geekiness, though. Remember, though, when you’re lining up for your run on the exhaust port, there’s no reason you can’t use the electronic rangefinder AND The Force. It’s not like one excludes the other or anything…
Comment by kid bitzer —
May 14, 2008 @ 4:05 pm
thanks for the ramones riff.
relatedly, i spent a day last week unable to get “white punks on dope!” out of my head.
(”can’t clean up, tho i know i should!”)
Comment by Thoreau —
May 14, 2008 @ 5:33 pm
I just submitted. And I brought a fruit platter to the people in the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, since they’ve been helping me in the process in a month when a ton of other grants are going out. So they all love me over there, and they don’t mind that it’s already time to start thinking about the next grant….
Comment by Glaivester —
May 14, 2008 @ 7:48 pm
Here’s a physics question for you, Thoreau.
According to the general theory of relativity, how do ou calculate the time dilation from gravity? Do you use the special theory and just use the escape velocity as the velocity in the equation, or what?
Comment by KWK —
May 15, 2008 @ 1:20 pm
It’s too bad plane tickets to SoCal are so damned expensive this weekend (of order $700), otherwise my 15th level Dwarven Ranger and I would be joining you for your geekfest.
Then again, given the success of play-by-mail and play-by-email RPGs, why wouldn’t play-by-Skype work? Just don’t inquire too closely if I end up rolling a string of natural 20’s…
With regard to the GR time dilation question, gravity can be treated like any other force that results in an acceleration. To go from acceleration to velocity, and thence to the special relativistic time dilation equation, one would have to multiply the gravitational acceleration by a time interval–or a distance interval divided by the speed of light, which also gives you a time.
It becomes a little more complicated if the gravitational field is also changing, but that’s the basic idea.
Comment by Thoreau —
May 15, 2008 @ 2:40 pm
Looks like we’re skipping Star Wars to start a new 1st edition Greyhawk game instead.
I’m thinking I want to play a thief, but one who’s more like a spy/agent than a petty criminal. If anything, I’ll be a decidedly non-petty criminal, stealing information to further crimes of state…
Comment by Timothy —
May 15, 2008 @ 5:46 pm
First ed greyhawk? Did I wake up in the 70s?
Comment by Glaivester —
May 15, 2008 @ 6:47 pm
To go from acceleration to velocity, and thence to the special relativistic time dilation equation, one would have to multiply the gravitational acceleration by a time interval–or a distance interval divided by the speed of light, which also gives you a time.
But doesn’t gravity dilate time even when it does not result in a net acceleration (e.g. you are standing on the ground so the force of the ground pushing up on you keeps you in place)?
Comment by Thoreau —
May 15, 2008 @ 8:04 pm
I’m not the DM, Timothy.