"I'm a WHAT now?"

One of the more interesting things about my struggle to figure out why this blog has not been indexed by Google Search lately has been that I've discovered that the term "parallel context" is now being used by Large Language Model training.

The term "Parallel Context Windows" appears to have been first utilized in 2022 in a paper published here, which is alternately amusing and vexing. It wouldn't shock me if a lot of the bot traffic here has been attracted to PC simply because of the name's utilization in AI development.

This is the search result using incognito mode
(to remove any trained tendencies from my
account) on January 17, 2026.

Yeah, I mean, "parallel context" as a naming convention isn't exactly unusual, but the annoying part is that it just HAD to show up in AI-related activity. 

That being said, I did update the "About Parallel Context" to reference that this blog predates the usage of the term with LLMs and AI by over a decade*, so hopefully nobody comes knocking on my door with some weird cease and desist by my usage of the term on this blog. If someone does, I might need to get in touch with Rick Beato to find out what lawyer he uses to fight off YouTube strikes from the big music conglomerates.

As for whether this little discovery has an impact on PC's search engine indexing, it probably doesn't. Just a hunch here, but given that Google has started slowly indexing some of my blog posts over the past week or two I don't believe it actually has an impact.

As of January 17, 2026.

The indexing listing above shows that I'm actually getting some pages indexed. And that's despite Google Search still hasn't acknowledged the sitemap.xml that Microsoft Bing approved back in September 2025.

As of January 17, 2026.

So, you've got me as to what changed.

I did try to see if I could "fix" the issues with the "Alternate page with proper canonical tag" error by removing the mobile device option for the blog,

The main error listings as of January 17, 2026.

And the detailed results of the "alternate page"
error, on January 17, 2026.

which as you see all have the mobile designation of "m=1" present. After several days, however, the resubmission still returned an error, so the issue isn't with that.**

But there are posts being indexed, so... Again, go figure.

If nothing else, I either need to 'git gud' with understanding the details about Google Search results or hire a "Search Whisperer" to understand the arcane details of the search process.

Cardwyn: You need someone to help you understand the Arcane?

Me: I said arcane details, not the Arcane.

Cardwyn: Oh. Because my rates are low, and you could use the help.

Me: ...

I ought to not let this stuff bug me so much as it does, since I've got enough things I'm working on the past several months, but the lack of understanding the why of it does get under my skin. And now, knowing that the blog's name has been utilized in a field that has nothing to do with the subject of this blog is like a mosquito bite that you can't help but scratch because it itches so damn bad but you know you shouldn't scratch it at all. 

Oh well.

*For any people doing research on "Parallel Context Windows" and happened to stumble on this post, This blog Parallel Context has been around since September 2009 and is still being actively updated with posts as of January 17, 2026. So yeah, PC has been around a lot longer than the current LLM and AI research.

**I did switch it back this morning, likely after Shintar posted a comment this morning about potential changes but before I saw her comment myself. So, Shintar and others who use mobile devices to read the blog can read it much better.

EtA: I cleaned up some formatting.

The State of the Redbeard in 2026

Truth be told, I’ve not felt much like writing the past few weeks.

I guess that’s to be expected, since I wrote more posts for the past year (187) than I have at any other year during the blog’s existence while at the same time working on personal writing projects. And that doesn’t even count the writing and reports I put together for work.

While I understand the allure of using tools such as Chat GPT and others to compose for you, I really dislike the lack of control that those tools encourage. While I’ve seen those tools likened to using a car’s automatic transmission or other time saving tools, none of those other tools replace the human as the center of the creative process quite like the so-called generative AI tools do. It could be argued that you have full control over the editing process, but I’ve found from watching people at work that once the AI tools get their hooks in, you begin to simply accept their suggestions more and more without a critical eye. 

That’s the long version of saying that I’m going to keep writing the way I always have been –with me composing at the keyboard— without any reliance upon generative AI in the creative process.

***

As I’ve approached 2026 with some weariness on the writing front, I’ve also come to a bit of a crossroads with my gaming. Perhaps its more of a recognition that my physical skills never were as good as I wished they could be,* and that the reality of retirement being a little over a decade away has lent a bit of weight to my end-of-year musings. 

It’s now four years on after I cheated Death,** and I have found it more of a struggle to maintain my numbers than before. Oh, I still make my numbers well enough, and my doctors are happy with how I’m doing, but I’ve come to recognize over the past 3-4 months that it’s not quite so easy as before to maintain my weight and blood pressure while eating the same amount of food. There are two obvious answers here, to exercise more and to eat less, but I have enough foresight to recognize that there’s only so much I can do before things start to decline again. As one of the Diabetes team members told me, what I’ve got are progressive diseases, and you can only hold them off for so long. Not exactly the most positive assessment of my situation, but probably the most realistic.***

Still, the knowledge that my time is finite has changed what I want out of gaming. I was never one to chase highs from defeating bosses or in PvP, although I’ll freely acknowledge the rush in doing so, but I’ve pulled back from that in general. I get more out of playing with people, enjoying their company, than I get from competing with people. I am less tolerant of drama when it detracts from my long term enjoyment of a game, although there have been times when I’ve thought long and hard about stirring up some crap when I thought some asshat truly deserved it in Gen Chat in an MMO. 

I’ve also become more and more interested in the types of connections that people make within video games. Perhaps that’s been piqued by my own experiences, making firm friendships within MMOs and the blogging community,**** but it could also be due to my fascination with how the RP community operates in Retail WoW (and to a lesser extent LOTRO and FFXIV). 

Yes, yes, I know: that fascination can fuel an unhealthy relationship with… players… in Goldshire’s Lion’s Pride Inn on Moon Guard-US. And I have to admit that I’m still stunned whenever I poke my nose in there by the sheer number of people getting their freak on.***** It’s slightly more normal when you go into Stormwind, but even then let’s just say that there’s always something there when I run through to the bank or the Auction House that makes me go ‘WTF?’

Yeah, this certainly did.

And run into a light pole, too.

*CLANK!!*

I’m not about to deny people their fun, because I’ve lived the Satanic Panic and am extremely wary of people claiming moral authority and informing me what I can and can’t do, but I do wonder about the connections we make in games, and where some of these more extreme personal expressions fit into the gaming spectrum. 

Definitely puts a crimp into me working the AH.

For all the people who brush those weighty concepts off, saying “Nah, Bro, it’s all just joking around,” I think they sell themselves short. From the benefit of having watched the internet rise into its current form over the past 35+ years, I don’t think we can brush off the connections we make as “not being important”. In the end, these connections are all we have that stand a chance at outliving us, because most of us will never paint a Mona Lisa or construct the Notre Dame. And in the case of video games, a company could decide to pull the plug on a live service game tomorrow, and what would you be left with then? Memories of the game and the connections we made. 

***

Yeah, I’ve been pondering some deep issues this past month or more, and I don’t have a clear resolution to them. I watch some of my in-game friends chase raiding in TBC Classic, and while I wish them well, I’m not following in their path. I’ve no desire to deal with drama, the need to push yourself hard to keep up, and following the gear treadmill to validate my playing a game. It’s not a matter of the old accusatory line “If I can’t keep up, I’m taking my ball and going home” that I know my decision could easily be interpreted, but for me it’s more of a “If I can’t keep up, I need to find a different way to have fun and remain valued.” 

*There, I said it. I'm not as good as I ever thought I was; if I were, I'd have a bit more success under my belt than I have. I recognize that external success with dexterity-heavy systems such as video games and sports such as soccer or basketball is highly dependent upon who you play with in addition to innate skill, but I now have enough hard-earned knowledge to admit I was never as good as I hoped. And Father Time hasn't exactly done me any favors over the past decade and a half, either.

**Or rather, my doctors cheated Death. 

***As I cynically used to put it, “We begin to die as soon as we’re born.” I’ve seen that quote attributed to various people, from The Bhudda to Bret Harte, so I have no idea who first said it, and I’m not inclined to spend a few hours or more chasing that down.

****Given what I know of my readership, if you’re reading this and this post gets the average number of pageviews there’s a greater than 70% chance you and I already are acquainted in the community. Now watch this post blow up and make a liar out of me. 

*****Sure, there could be mere bystanders, like me, but I doubt we’re even close to a quarter of the people in there at any given time. And if you are a bystander and are in there for more than a minute or two, you’re likely propositioned at least once. I know I have, and in my most recent encounter I wasn’t in there for more than a handful of seconds to turn in a quest and sell some stuff. Yes, despite appearances, there’s still a quest giver inside the Inn.

A Little Something to Do, Part 2

(Here's a link for Part 1.)

In early September, I went hunting on the American Radio Relay League's website for amateur radio classes. The ARRL is the largest US amateur radio umbrella organization. They advocate for amateur radio to the FCC (and Congress), they encourage amateur radio contests and classwork, and they have their own series of publications for and about amateur radio. (Like my study book from Part 1.) The ARRL does have their detractors, and holy crap are those people vocal about it, but the ARRL is also the best voice that amateur radio has in the US.

Maybe it's because my mind works the same way as the webmasters who designed the ARRL's website, I quickly found a free (!) class available beginning in September and lasting through October. I quickly emailed the contact person, who confirmed that yes, they still have openings and I could just show up at the bright early time of 9 AM on Saturday morning at the Red Cross building here in Cincinnati. 

If you ever wondered whether ham radio
and MMO hobbies are similar... Yes, they are.
From imgflip and SP3POW.

The night before that first class I tossed and turned in bed, finally getting to sleep after 1 AM.  It had been at least 24 years since I last had an in-person class*, and I wasn't sure what to expect. Would I be the oldest person there? Would there be a crowd? What sort of people would the students be? The instructors? Would I have issues even getting inside the building?

The answer to that last question, thankfully, was no. There were two people monitoring the front door and I didn't get harangued any more than necessary, once I explained I was there for the ham radio class. I followed their directions to the correct room, and I discovered that much to my surprise I was one of the youngest people in the class.

From memeguy.

There were seven people in the class (myself included), and three instructors. I soon learned that the instructors viewed the class as something closer to providing guidance while we learned the material for the entry level license, the Technician Class. They admitted that we really didn't need them to learn the material, as the ARRL books were fine for learning the material, but they were there to provide some hands-on learning about amateur radio as well as answer questions. I could see that despite the class being free that some people would drop the class after realizing that they could just study by themselves and take the test --and to be fair, one did**-- but once I got over the initial disconnect between my expectations and the reality I warmed up to the class.

Part of it was seeing the equipment up close and personal, which to a gearhead like me I found fascinating, but I think another part of it was that the instructors were uniformly upbeat about our chances of passing the exam. As long as you study, take practice tests online, and keep up with it, they said numerous times, you'll pass.

***

While the ARRL had its own practice test website, and I did take those practice tests while I studied, I spent a lot more time on hamstudy.org:

This place became my friend.
This is as of November 8, 2025.

I could take tests and study by being quizzed on all of the exam questions to my heart's content. That's one nice thing about the Amateur Radio license exams in the US: all of the questions are taken from pools of 400 (Technician), 450 (General), and 622 (Amateur Extra) questions for each license class, respectively. Since those are already known, you could theoretically study for the test by simply memorizing the questions. Of course, that doesn't really teach you anything other than how to pass the exam, but it could be done.

When I started taking the practice tests for the Technician exam, I realized I had my work cut out for me. I had to get 74% of the questions correct on the exam, so that meant 26 out of 35 for the Tech license, and I wasn't even hitting that. For somebody who'd prided himself on being at least somewhat savvy with radio and electrical circuitry over the years, that was tough to accept. If I were serious about this, I realized I was going to have to buckle down and really study.

That's mint tea, no caffeine. I wanted to
sleep when I was done studying for the night,
you know.

I not only studied at night, when I'd typically get on WoW Classic and play for a bit, but also whenever I had a break at work. And for the astute among you, you likely notice that there were not only Technician Class license books as part of my study regimen above, but also General Class books. Because I can't simply do one thing at a time, I suppose.

When I started down this amateur radio classwork, I'd set a lofty goal for myself: to not only get the Tech license, but the General too. While the Tech licenses primarily focus on VHF and UHF frequencies, when most people think of "ham radio" (myself inclued) they think of people operating on the shortwave bands. Those bands, known as High Frequency (HF) in radio nomenclature, are between 3 Mhz and 30 MHz. The Tech license gets you access to the entire 10 Meter band (28.0 MHz to 29.7 MHz in the US), but if you want to talk to people using speech on the rest of the HF amateur radio bands you need a General Class license. Given my longtime interest in shortwave radio, it made sense that I'd want to do that. And, of course, my own arrogance led me to believe that I could do that easily.

Uh, nope. 

That practice result above was pretty much normal for me. This was but one of the times when I discovered I not only didn't remember a lot of things --the mathematics, in particular-- there were a lot of items I never had to deal with as a shortwave listener that I would encounter as a ham radio operator, such as concepts behind transmitters.

About the only good thing I did when I started taking the class was to NOT tell anyone that I wanted to pass both the Tech and General classes; I was putting enough pressure on myself as it was without being an asshole and waving a flag around yelling "LOOK AT ME!!! I'M AWESOME!!!!" I've had enough humble pie served to me over the years that I wasn't going to do that at all. 

By mid-October, I was passing practice tests for the Technician Class exams with regularity, so I shifted my focus to the General Class test. I had about 2-3 weeks before the license exam of November 1st, so it was very much crunch time. 

The stress I was putting myself under was
kind of like this. From Real Genius and makeagif.

At that point, I stopped trying to understand all of the material and focused instead on simply passing the test.

The last week before the exam, I admitted to the instructors that I was aiming to pass both Technician and General class licenses. The instructors were very encouraging, saying that I knew the material, so I just had to relax and take the exams. They also mentioned another little thing: when I take the Tech exam and pass (the exam costs $15 per attempt), I get a free attempt at the next higher license exam. So theoretically, I would only have to pay $15 to take both exams if I passed both on the first try.

Then one of the instructors dropped the bomb.

"You should take the Extra Class exam too."

"I haven't even looked at those questions yet," I admitted, while my mind was screaming "FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!" at me.

"Yes, but it's free, and it gives you an understanding of what it'd take to pass that exam."

I couldn't really say "no" to a free attempt, but I didn't want that to distract me from my immediate goals. Still, that "could I do it?" lingered in the back of my head all week.

***

Exam day dawned bright and sunny. The exam itself was at 9 AM, but I was already up at 5:30 AM. Yeah, I'm one of those people who don't sleep well the night before an exam, no matter what it is.

From Facebook.

I was supposed to arrive by 8:45, because the exam coordinators wanted to get started right at 9, but when I did I discovered that the instructors were already there, rooting us on. One of the class members had taken her exam earlier so she didn't need to show up, but she came to cheer us on as well. Those small things meant a lot, because I was really nervous. I should be fine, I told myself, as long as I don't get the exactly wrong question for each part of the exam. In each section, there's one question that gave me trouble, but what were the odds that I'd get them all in one randomly selected exam?

You can guess what happened.

When I started, I looked over the exam and immediately thought, "Holy shit." It was a nightmare come to life.

It had that smile on its face, too.
From theprchiro via Cheezburger.

I took a few deep breaths and calmed myself down. "It's only $15," I thought to myself. "I can take it again if I flunk."

Then I started slowly, working on the questions I knew. I answered all of those questions, then started working on all of the ones that I hadn't seen very much or I had trouble with. After that, I was down to a couple of questions that I just guessed at, and then spent another 5-10 minutes just making sure I didn't do anything stupid like selecting the answers in the wrong row***. I then had to wait another 5 minutes for my turn getting my test graded.

I passed.

That was a huge weight off of my shoulders. I took a deep breath and inquired about taking the General test. In short order I was back at my seat with a new set of questions to work on, and this time I relaxed a bit. The hard part was over, and now it was time to just go for it.

For some reason I found these questions easier, even though I knew I was going to get more wrong than the Technician exam. I'm not sure why, but my suspicion is that the pressure I was putting myself under was gone, so I found it easier to not dither and simply select answers. I finished, turned in my exam, and soon learned I passed the General exam as well.

"Do you want to try for the Extra?" one of the volunteer exam coordinators asked.

"Sure, let's do this!" I replied with an enthusiasm I didn't feel.

I sat down with the highest level exam, looked at the first question, and I knew the answer. "Hey," I thought. "I can do this."

Then I got to the second question.

"Uh.... Nope."

Yeah, this. From 9GAG.

Oh, that last exam was brutal. Positively brutal. I knew almost by the 3rd or 4th question that I wasn't going to pass this exam. Hell, I wasn't even going to get 50%. Of the 50 questions on the Extra exam, I answered about 15-20 for certain, and took a stab at 3-6 more, then I just selected "A" for all the rest. There was no penalty for just guessing, so why not?

"So," another of the exam coordinators asked as I turned in my sheet, "how'd you think you did?"

"You know how you're in college and you're in a seminar, listening to professors talk about their research and you have absolutely no fucking idea what they're talking about? It was like that."

They all laughed.

Yes, this Mr. Bean skit was going through
my head while I was taking the Extra exam.
From Pinterest (and Mr. Bean, obviously).

It turns out that while I did fail, I got 20 questions correct. They told me I did a great job for going in blind on that Extra exam, and now I had something to shoot for.

Once I filled out some forms, I went out into the waiting area where everybody else was hanging around to see how I did. "Passed the General, and bombed the Extra," I replied.

I got congratulations from the rest of the students and the instructors, and once I'd signed a few extra documents we all left the building.

I'd like to say that my journey was just beginning, but the reality is that it's kind of on hold right now due to the government shutdown. The FCC won't process the paperwork until the government reopens --meaning I can't transmit on my own equipment until my license appears in the FCC database-- so I've got time to relax a bit and try to figure out what starter radio to purchase before I dive in. Still, four of us in the class have gotten to know each other fairly well, and we even met last Saturday for lunch. The club that sponsored the class and the exam was very welcoming, and I think I'm going to join that club and see how things go. 

So now you know what I've been up to for the past couple of months.

*System Admin class for HP-UX. While I knew UNIX since I coded on Silicon Graphics workstations back in the 90s, the sysadmin side of things was new to me, so I was sent off to a couple weeks' worth of classwork.

**Two dropped, but one of them had to drop because work kept them from attending regularly. The other simply stopped coming.

***Yes, I've done that before.

A Little Something to Do, Part 1

Last year, I began pondering what I was going to do when I retired.

The semi-official retirement age for my generation is 67*, when you can get your full benefits from Social Security, so I've got approximately 11 years left. It's a decently far enough way away, but not far away enough for me to be wondering what I'm going to do when I hang it up.

Obviously, the first thing I'd do is... not much, really. I already work from home --so I don't have a commute to deal with-- but I am on call 24x7, so... Okay, my work is pretty much integrated into my life. Even when I have a day off, I still check work email and occasionally take care of things because Murphy's Law is a real bitch. If I'm not doing that... Well, it'll take some getting used to, but I'm sure I'll survive. 

When my dad took early retirement at age 55, he wasn't sure what he was going to do either. And he annoyed my mom to no end when he was simply there all the time, inserting himself into how she had been running things for decades. So he eventually decided to volunteer as a "second job". He became a chaplain for one of the local hospitals, which he did until he died. I have absolutely no interest in anything vaguely resembling religion**, so that specific path isn't one for me, but that did give me an idea.

Well, that and Hurricane Helene last year.

Originally by Jabin Botsford via Getty Images
and The Washington Post. Found on grist.org.

When the remnants of Hurricane Helene smashed through the Appalachian Mountains in the Carolinas last year, almost all forms of communications were lost. Cell towers destroyed, power lines torn apart, you name it. The one form of communication that filled in the gap until power and telecommunications were restored was that of amateur radio operators. 

"Huh," I mused. It had been a long time since I thought of ham radio seriously***, at least longer than I'd been playing WoW, so that should give you an idea as to the time frame I'm talking about. I've known the occasional ham, and I encountered them when I worked at Radio Shack or (obviously) when I went up to the Dayton Hamvention, but my last trip to that convention was in 2006. But now, watching the news reports about Helene and how ham radio provided a vital link to areas that had no communications or power for a couple of weeks or more, I realized that was something I could do.

I have a history of tinkering with electronics and radio. In addition to my posts on the subject (this one included), when I was a kid I had my share of electronics kits from Radio Shack. 

The later ones had a numeric LED, but
this was the model I had. From Hackaday.

This was my first kit. (No, not the real thing,
but a picture of the model.) Yes, it did work, but I had
to hook up the wire to a water pipe to hear
anything. From Radiomuseum.org.

If I was interested in radio and electronics, and I knew some hams, why didn't I become a radio amateur back in the day? Well... There were a few reasons. In no particular order:

• There was a Morse code requirement. It used to be that you had to learn Morse code to get an amateur radio license, and the more advanced you went the greater the proficiency you had to demonstrate (in terms of words per minute). In 1991, the Federal Communications Commission (the FCC) dropped the Morse code requirement for the Technician license, which was a common entry level license. In 2007, the FCC did away the Morse code requirement for all amateur radio licenses in the US. That doesn't mean that Morse code isn't used, it's actually more popular than ever, but the people who use it are those who want to learn it, rather than they have to learn it.
  
  Still, that there was a requirement meant that I'd have to learn it, and I knew it'd be a bit of a pain. The older I got, the more that Morse code requirement looked like a problem.
  
  
• The hams themselves. Like any activity, you have those who are welcoming and those who are gatekeepers. Those who are nice and those who are assholes. Both the good and bad thing about going to a major amateur radio convention like the Dayton Hamvention is that you get to see a lot of hams in action in as much the same way as you can go to a comic con or gaming con and see the best and the worst of your community. What I saw of some of the amateur radio community was really off putting. 
  
  I now know that's not that great of a surprise --I'm a gamer after all, and we do tend to have certain elements of our community that people like to pretend don't exist-- but it still surprised me that a hobby that at its heart was about communicating with others you'd find people who had real issues with basic human interaction. And no, I'm not talking about people on the spectrum, but people who thought it a badge of honor to not use basic hygiene or be racist/sexist toward others. It's not a high bar to cross, but some of the ham community seemed to have issues with not being a dick toward certain people.
  
  
• The money factor. Let's be honest here for a moment: while radio might not seem like a hobby that you can easily spend a ton of money on, unlike the amount of cash an audiophile spends on stereo equipment, the amount of money just getting a halfway decent starting amateur radio setup for the HF bands can easily reach over $1000. Gaming PCs? Cars? Woodworking? Yeah, they're all potentially expensive hobbies too, just like amateur radio, but when you're starting out that initial cost can be a barrier to entry when you don't have a lot of money. Well, there is the used market, but like anything else, you'd better be careful and do your due diligence. To me, the VHF and UHF bands weren't "real" ham radio, so I never really thought about them much.****
  
  
  

  

  The ICOM IC-7300, currently $1099
  at Ham Radio Outlet (as of November 6, 2025).
  It's actually $300 off the regular price with coupon.
  Picture from ICOM America.

So yeah, amateur radio as a hobby wasn't really on my radar. Until suddenly here it was.

***

Once I reconsidered amateur radio as a hobby, the next step was to start doing some research. And for me, that meant diving into various parts of the internet. I didn't want to go to books or official websites, but rather I wanted to hear/read from actual hams what they thought of the state of the hobby. I realized that just like any other hobby, it was important to understand the context behind people's opinions, so I made sure to take my time and not rush things. Over time, people will reveal their biases, even if they weren't intending to share them. That meant reviewing several months' worth of data; while it sounds laborious, in reality I found it quite fascinating. 

Okay, I laughed. From Reddit.

Some people had axes to grind (that's the internet in a nutshell), and "others" were basically AI created slop (again, welcome to 2025's internet), but I did find quite a few hams whose input was really valuable. I won't go into specifics, but let's just say that in general I discovered that amateur radio is thriving right now. A few hams were grousing about the lack of Morse code requirements, which to their mind kept the riff-raff out ("the CB radio people" is what they meant), but others countered that by pointing out that shenanigans have been going on some of the amateur radio bands long before the Morse code requirement was dropped.

But there were hams who loved their hobby, were articulate and wanted to help people, and were very encouraging in their enthusiasm for ham radio. It was at that point that I made a decision to go ahead and buy this:

Yep, the same book I posted about a while back.

Basically, you could study the license manual for the entry level Amateur Radio class (the Technician Class), take the test, and become a ham once your license shows up in the FCC database. 

Sounds simple, right?

I cracked open that book, started reading, and...

That's what it felt like.
Thanks, XKCD!

Yeah, I'd been away from electronics and electrical theory for far too long.

There had just been so much that I'd forgotten that it daunted me. I pressed on and kept reading, but I realized that my brain was pulling random stuff out of my memory without any real understanding of where it came from. And then I just as quickly discovered that I was misremembering things, which is not good when you have to pass an exam in order to gain your license. 

So what did I do? I put the book aside for a while. Both work and car repairs wreaked havoc on my finances for a few months, so absolutely nothing was going to happen over the Summer. But late August I began to get a bit antsy; maybe I was approaching this all wrong. I needed to exercise my brain, but I also needed some structure.

I needed a class.

*It used to be 65 years old, but it was changed about 10-15 years ago beginning with Gen X. Yay us. But seriously, the "official" age is just a number, because the age you begin taking out Social Security can be several years before to a few years after that "official" age. If someone begins taking SS early, they get less of a stipend per month, but you get access to it early. If you wait until after your official age, you can get a larger monthly stipend. Hey, a few extra thousand dollars per month is a good chunk of change for waiting until 69 instead of 63.

**Yes, yes, I know; I've said it before. I'm not religious at all, while the rest of my family is very religious. I'm not planning on changing, especially since I started down my path when I rebelled against said religiosity. The Satanic Panic and the televangelist scandals of the 1980s provided the initial push, and it's been gathering steam ever since. To paraphrase someone, I might not mind Jesus or others; it's their fan club I have issues with.

***There's a couple of stories as to why amateur radio operators are called "hams". The most common one is that "ham" was a derivative of the derisive term "ham-fisted" by professional telegraph and then radio broadcasters. Rather than shying away from the term, amateur radio operators instead embraced the name in the 1920s and it stuck ever since. So no, it has nothing to do with cooking a ham or anything like that. I use "ham" and "amateur" interchangeably, and most hams do as well.

****And that was me being blind to what amateur radio was about. VHF and UHF ham bands are often more active than the bands in the shortwave spectrum, and the cost of entry there is much cheaper as well. Again, that's me being a bit of an idiot and missing that aspect of the community.

A Day to Brood About Stuff

It's been an interesting couple of weeks since I last checked in with my Operation Spread the Love on the WoW Anniversary servers.

By that, I mean very busy, and not playing very much either. 

Card's getting to the point where she'll have
some of her pre-raid gear on her, such as the Frostweave
gear (the purple tunic) that provide a pretty good bonus
to Frost spells. Although the screencap was taken today
this was the status as of Thursday, October 30th.

First there was the weekend trip up to visit my oldest and her partner, which included a stop at a coffee shop built in the building that once housed a pumping station for the Milwaukee River...

It was a chilly morning or we'd have sat outside.

And here you go, proof that there is a coffee
shop inside. (I had green tea as I'd already had coffee.)
At the Collectivo Coffee Lakefront in Milwaukee.

And an additional visit to the Milwaukee Public Museum...

Including a rebuilt saloon/taproom. Not sure
if the topless statues were added for effect or not,
but I did make a few snarky comments to my wife.

And you can't visit a museum gift shop
without seeing rocks for sale.

And a small restaurant next to an old train depot. Which of course brought out the train fanatic in me...

It's not a depot any longer, although the train
tracks are nearby.

Next to the depot was a statue of Czech
immigrants coming to this part of Milwaukee.
The irony of seeing this in our current political
climate wasn't lost on me.

On Tuesday, I spent some time over at my mom's house because her hot water heater has begun leaking, which is a good sign that the 20 year old heater has finally rusted through and needs replacement. I've had to argue with her about the immediate need to call a plumber to get this replaced ASAP, because you don't want a catastrophic failure and have 40 gallons of water on your floor.

Then, yesterday I attended the funeral of one of my brother's in-laws.* It rather understandably got me thinking quite a bit about mortality afterward.

It also brought up the very real question about what happens to our games and our characters when we die. I have a few boardgames that are difficult to find these days, such as Avalon Hill's old Civilization (and Advanced Civilization) game, and I've taken care of the game to make sure it doesn't fall apart. But what happens to it when I die? Will it end up in a landfill somewhere, like what happened to my grandfather's stamp collection?**

Or in terms of video games, who gains access to them when I'm gone? More than likely they'll vanish as well, given that someone else would have to take ownership of my Steam account (and other accounts, such as my Battle.net account). 

Orcish Army Knife may be gone, but Rades' old
toons are still present in Puggers Anonymous as
of October 31, 2025.

As you can see above, I logged into OG Balthan just to check to make sure Rades' old toons are present. I guess they'll remain until Microsoft purges accounts from Battle.net for inactivity, but I'm certainly not removing them.

Another reason for thinking about mortality and what happens to things after you die is all of those books that came out decades ago but are no longer published. The most obvious example I can think of David Eddings' Belgariad, which I never see anymore, but there's also other authors who published books in the 70s, 80s, and 90s that are now hard to find. I'm thinking of works by Barbara Hambly, Janny Wurts, Katherine Kerr, and Katherine Kurtz. Even older classics such as Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Grey Mouser books are long out of print. I suppose you could go the ebook route, but you don't actually own those books and ebook publishers have shown an inclination to simply yank books away from you whenever they feel like it. 

Oh well. Just another thing to brood on, I guess.

*He died of a brain tumor at the relatively young age of 44.

**My mom and her siblings thought it would be worth something, but after consulting with a couple of experts on the collection the result was that the collection wasn't worth much of anything. It was merely my grandfather's obsession, and that was all it was really worth.

A Short Post Mortem

Well, I pulled off another "Not Quite a Blaugust" Blaugust.

No signups, no fanfare, no topics. Just writing for 31 days.

Things turned out better than I expected. I didn't have any real annoyances that kept me posting multiple times a month --nothing earth (or Azeroth) shattering, really, just the usual stuff-- so I just kind of leaned into my various interests to keep the posts coming.

Oh, and I got some fiction written along the way, too. Nothing ready for posting yet, but stuff that's been needing to get done and I'll be sending drafts along to my beta readers for feedback soon.

It felt good to get this past month's posts done, especially getting the radio stuff off of my back. I'd been thinking about it for a while, but Shintar gave me the impetus to finally write it up and post that part of my past. I've got other topics that I can write about that are geeky in nature but not strictly gaming related, so those might begin to make an appearance here as well. Nothing quite as fascinating as Wilhelm Arcturus' posts about his employment history with telecom, that's for sure, but they're something to get off my chest.

Speaking of things to get off of my chest...

From eBay. Of course.

My old 1989 Who concert t-shirt has likely bit the dust. I no longer fit into it anyway (it was an XL and I now wear a 2XL size), but I'd been using it as a shirt I wore when I painted rooms in my great-aunt's house back in the early 90s, so it had splatters of paint all over it. I recently became curious whether some enterprising soul (likely The Who's management) had decided to reprint old concert t-shirts, and I came across this entry in eBay.

I suspect that they're knock-offs of the originals, but the shirts do look correct at first glance.* I mean, it'd be nice to have a reprint to wear around the house again --no, I'm not wearing it to paint or work on the car or something-- but I won't be torn up about it if I don't manage to find one.

Now, I need to find some old D&D t-shirts from the 80s...

*I saw them in Cleveland on July 19th, and the story behind that road trip is worthy of a post.

#Blaugust2025

Time Marches On

My wife and I met our son and his partner for lunch today at our local bookstore, and afterward we wandered the stacks. I espied a few boardgames that the store had for sale, and I immediately felt a bit wistful. It reminded me that the first boardgame store I visited here, Boardwalk Hobby Shop, had closed during the pandemic. The owners had decided to retire, and like I said in a previous post, I couldn't begrudge them that. 

The day before I was out as an advanced scouting party for getting my youngest a new laptop, as her current one is far too old and slow to handle Windows 11, and I needed to reacquaint myself with how the various brands and models handled.* Naturally, I went to Microcenter, and afterward I stopped by my nearby Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS), YottaQuest.

I wasn't there to buy anything --because laptop, you know-- but it was good to simply roam the store and watch the steady flow of customers into the place. Those included a couple easily old enough to be my parents, and they weren't there just because their grandkids wanted to visit,** but to actually buy something themselves. 

I took this pic last Fall, when there were
leaves everywhere. Even on a nose or two.

Time marches on, but I hope that some things continue. Such as good bookstores and game stores.

*Having spent the last 12+ years buying laptops for the kids, I've seen a lot of trends. Such as the decline of HP in terms of quality --holy hell are those laptops flimsy-- and the rise of Acer as a viable brand. I remember when Acer's Aspire line used to be nicknamed "Expire" because of how poorly powered and built they were, but HP has certainly passed them on the way to the bottom in terms of consumer grade stuff. I still refuse to touch Dell because of my own personal experience with the brand courtesy of a work laptop that refused to have it's fan spin unless it sat perfectly flat. Tilt it just a hair and the fan would simply stop working. And I won't get into the overheating problems with that laptop, either.

**That was my experience as a kid when I'd drag my grandparents to a video game arcade or a bookstore.

#Blaugust2025

What Goes Around

1982 was a bit of a seminal year for me.

The 1981-1982 school year was my 7th Grade. I was knee deep in puberty, I'd been playing D&D since the Fall of 1981, and I'd dove headfirst into reading Science Fiction and Fantasy beyond just Lord of the Rings. Movies from 1982 still rank among my favorites: Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, Conan the Barbarian, Mad Max: The Road Warrior, Rocky 3, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High.* I was a year away from discovering Metal, but the popular songs of 1982 are still lodged in my head all these years later.

Among some of the big hits of the year, such as I Love Rock and Roll** and Eye of the Tiger, was a song from a studio band called The Alan Parsons Project:

It got up to #3 on the charts in the US (higher than I thought it did, to be honest) but after that it kind of faded from view except for the fans of the band and their concept albums. I always liked the song, as I could tell it was a bit deeper lyrically than the average pop song of the era, but I never got the album to find out how it fit into the larger sonic picture. 

A couple of years later, the intro piece to Eye in the Sky, Sirius, began being used as the introduction music to the NBA's Chicago Bulls games. Sirius became synonymous with the Michael Jordan era of the Chicago Bulls, so that when they hear that synthesizer intro basketball fans immediately think of #23. 

I find it surprising that, decades later, people have rediscovered The Alan Parsons Project through reaction videos and, much to their surprise, that Alan Parsons is "that guy who wrote the Chicago Bulls Theme".

For some reason, the official channel never

put these two songs together as they ought.

It's been 43 years since this song came out, so I guess that it's time for newer generations to rediscover the music of the past, just like how my generation rediscovered the Big Bands of the 30s and 40s.

*Sorry, I don't like E.T. (more of a reaction to how popular it was than anything else) and I didn't really care for Tron. The Thing wasn't my type of movie so I never watched it, and I didn't really watch Blade Runner all the way through.  

**Yes, I know, the album was released in 1981, but the song was released in 1982, so it counts in my book. I could just as easily have chosen Rock the Casbah or Jack and Diane to fill in this spot, but some 8th Grade girls used to play I Love Rock and Roll ALL THE TIME during lunch and recess. Looking back on it, I'm still amazed the nuns let them get away with it.

EtA: Corrected some grammar.

#Blaugust2025

When You're Too Meh for a Midlife Crisis

I sometimes wonder what my midlife crisis would look like. 

Yes, before you point out that I'm north of 50 so I technically should have had my midlife crisis a decade or more ago, I'm aware of that. But I also know I didn't really have a midlife crisis either, so...

Would it be a fast car, like this Mercedes I discovered at my son's apartment parking lot when we picked him and his partner up for Gen Con?

It was SO out of place compared to all of the
rest of the cars in the parking lot.
Fun Fact: I looked up the price online and it costs
close to what our current house cost back in 2002.

Nah. If I had my choice of car, it'd likely be something from the mid-90s to the mid-2000s, although I'd not say no to a mid-80s Ford Mustang or Pontiac Firebird.

These were made locally until mid-1987.

The thing is, that era of cars are in high demand from people my age (or a little older), so even the thought of buying one to try to fix it up is kind of cost prohibitive. 

The pricing bubble has also afflicted another hobby of mine, audio, because I'd like to have picked up an older 1970s era receiver, but again a ton of people my age have gone into that and driven up the prices.

Such as this Pioneer SX-780, made in 1980
(the manufacturing run was 1978-1980).
From Oleg's Vintage Audio.

Then again, my trusty old NAD T751 receiver could stand a cleaning and repair job, so maybe it's for the best to stick with the NAD and my Pioneer VSX-2000 that is still chugging away in the basement.

Or I could go the route of a friend of mine and start up an AD&D campaign of my own...

Such as module S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.
From eBay.

But I'm happy playing in his campaign at the moment. No sense in stealing his thunder.

Maybe I could just take that period of my life when I actually did progression raiding in Vanilla Classic and say THAT is my midlife crisis, and then we'll call it a day. That's probably the easiest answer. 

EtA: Corrected the NAD receiver model.

#Blaugust2025

When Life Hits you in the Head

Well, the news broke a couple of hours ago on Monday that one of my coworkers and acquaintances for a decade or more had passed away. I'd not heard much from him over the past decade or so, but he was always kind of private that way, so I never worried about him or anything.

But I wasn't expecting that I'd hear today that he'd passed away from advanced dementia at the age of 67. 

I never realized he was that much older than me; I always thought he was about 5 years or so older, but...

This is going to take some time to process. 

#Blaugust2025

Gen Con 2025: The Gamer Diaspora

When we first began attending Gen Con, some of the biggest booths were from companies such as Days of Wonder, Catan, Fantasy Flight, and Z-Man. Then, in the mid-2010s, that began to change as Asmodee went and bought up all of the companies listed above using investment firm money, and now all of said firms are but a subsidiary of the Embracer Group.

Yes, the same Embracer Group that has been taking a sledgehammer to the video game industry in its quest to make the quickest dollar. I've discussed this before, but one of the side effects of the Embracer Group ruining the quality of a bunch of popular board game companies is that all of those game designers dispersed into the gaming ecosphere and began putting out their own games under new companies. And other people looked at that vacuum created by Embracer and said "Hey, you know what, I bet I could design something new and cool!"

The net effect is that 2025's Gen Con looked far more diverse than what I'd seen in years.

Of course, you couldn't escape the gravitational pull of
Magic: the Gathering collectors, but that aside...

***

This was also the first Gen Con where most of the family got together to attend since 2015. Our youngest took a pass this year (she is also waist deep in her internship, so life, you know) but everybody else managed to make it to Indianapolis. Our oldest and her partner came down from Milwaukee on Saturday to meet up with friends, visit the Con, and go to Critical Role's live show, while the rest of us assembled early on Sunday and drove up from Cincinnati.

We got in early enough that we beat the crowds.

For the first time in forever, we got in early enough that we had no issues parking. If anything, the cars in front of us had more trouble navigating the digital parking lot system than actually fighting traffic itself. (Yes, we slew the Parking Lot Monster without much trouble.)

I realize that the Indianapolis Convention Center has big screens around by design, but I still am surprised by them when I see them in the main entrance:

Even if they're owned by Gen Con LLC, they're still quite impressive. They cycle with different games and other information every 10-15 seconds or so.

Once everybody arrived and the Exhibit Hall opened, we dispersed into the crowd. The idea was to loop back at noon and head out for lunch, so we had a bit less than 2 hours to wander the hall.

A few things stood out to me the moment I walked inside. The crowd was denser on this Sunday than they had been in the recent past --it felt more like a Saturday's crowd-- and that while some stalwarts still held court...

It was likely my son was in there somewhere.

There were a lot of newer booths in the crowd. Such as the invasion of the V-tubers:

And Brandon Sanderson made his presence felt:

One of the many displays around.

I've no idea if Brandon was here --and I just checked and it doesn't appear that he was-- but the Author Guest of Honor was Ohioan and frequenter of my local bookstore, John Scalzi, so if I'd have actually attended on Saturday I might have seen him out and about.

Okay, that's a very cagey "might" there, because I was aware of some RPG content creators who were there*, but damned if I ran into any of them while I fought my way through the crowds. Now, that's not quite fair, since Margaret Weis held court in her usual location in the middle of the Exhibit Hall, and I did briefly see Ed Greenwood at one of the booths over in the far left hand side of the Exhibit Hall --you can't miss that beard of his-- next to the... wait for it... MIT Press booth.

Yes, you read that right.

MIT Press had a booth there at the con, because they print Jon Peterson's Playing at the World 2E, a newer edition of Jon's original self-published work. My son and I got a chance to talk to the guy at the booth, and while they don't print games themselves, he was surprised to discover that there was a lot of interest in MIT Press' catalog of books at the con. (Oh, and Jon's book sold out.) He and I discussed another surprise con vendor, Central Michigan University, who actually do publish board games through their academic press. If you played the journaling RPG Five Hundred Year Old Vampire, then you ought to know that a multi-player version has been released as a CMU published game.

Anyway, we reconvened at noon with me texting out "Avengers Assemble" to the group chat when the time came, and we grabbed lunch at the nearby Old Spaghetti Factory. We didn't go to the nearby mall, because it appears the mall is being/has been sold to a development company and is shutting down. So... no more food court, I suppose. We got a chance to catch up over the hour plus we spent at OSF, and it was a pleasant way to geek out over things we saw at the Exhibit Hall.

There was someone selling "smelly dice" there at the con, for example.

"Want to smell my dice?" my oldest asked with a savage grin.

Uh, what?

She got the one named "Cemetery Soil", which smells like moss, although to me it smelled like allergies: pleasant but full of earthy overtones.

I tried to link to the pic from Studio Woe, but
it wouldn't take. So here it is.

My son has gone far enough down the rabbit hole of Warhammer 40K that he picked up an Eldar t-shirt. "Space Elves", I translated for my wife. 

Speaking of my wife, she discovered this game that is going up on Kickstarter soon, called Mystic Curling Club, which looks a bit like Sorry Sliders but with using dice:

I'd have gotten a pick of some people using it next to this
display, but I figured this photo would be enough.

My nephew is really into owls, and my wife also found a 100 piece puzzle this is about owl anatomy, or "owl-atomy"...

I mentioned the 4 person chess set that I discovered, and my son's partner just kind of gave me the "Okay, NOW I'm interested" look about it:

I looked and that and thought,
"My brain would hurt keeping track of that."

When we returned from lunch, I made sure to get a few extra photos...

The obligatory front view of the entrance.

For the record, not a Pandaren.

Gotta respect the classics...
Dungeon Crawl Classics, that is.

This was also the 50th anniversary of Chaosium, the creators of Call of Cthulhu, Runequest/Glorantha, and Pendragon. There were several glass displays out in the hallways celebrating the company's 50 years in business:

There was another display for Chaosium in general,
but it was taken down close to closing time on Sunday.
Given all of the rare items on display, I can totally 
understand why they made it a priority to make sure
the items were safe.

There's also the obligatory Dwarven Forge display pic:

That chimney in the bottom left was actually smoking.
And this year I actually signed up for their mailing list.

I told my wife the surest sign that we won the lottery is that I started buying Dwarven Forge items.

And oh yeah, here's the obligatory "gamer table" pic, although I could have chosen one of several companies to display:

Okay, they're two photos because I couldn't fit the entire thing into one pic, but you get the idea. The DM screen is wooden, like everything else, and it just screams luxury. And ambience. And "I'm an AI developer with money to spare."

At 3:30, we assembled, said our goodbyes to the family, and headed for home.

***

I really feel like what we're seeing in this Gen Con is the impact of Embracer's attempt to dominate the board game and RPG industry. As Princess Leia said in the original Star Wars...

From memegenerator and Reddit. (And Star Wars.)

That's what's happening in the industry right now. As people tried to dominate the industry by buying up all of the companies and intellectual property, developers have gone independent (by choice or layoff) and their separate companies are now bringing games to Gen Con. The ability of people to utilize better design and build techniques at home enable them to bring far more polished prototypes to places like Gen Con to generate interest. Crowdfunding enables small groups and companies to generate capital without relying upon venture capital firms who have proven to only have short term goals at heart.

There were a lot of people interested in supporting new designs and games, as well as a lot of people flocking to the Artists' Alley and Authors' Alley areas; it was so thick there I couldn't make it through and kind of gave up. Still, despite my disappointment, it shows that art in its various forms is still generating interest.

This atmosphere lent an air of a trade show to the con, something that you'd have seen in Origins in years past. 

And before you ask, there was an unsaid amount of concern about tariffs there, but given that nobody at the con had the least bit of control over said tariffs, it just kind of was just there as a dampening effect.

***

As for me, I didn't buy anything this year. A good part of that is due to finances: I'd already committed to Gen Con before some of our major car repair bills made their appearance, and I had a hard time buying anything with all of THAT hovering over my head like the Sword of Damocles. 

But even more than that, I wasn't feeling well. 

I believe I've mentioned before that on average of twice a month my digestive system reacts to my medications and kicks me in the ass for a day or two. Well, Sunday was one of those days. The moment I woke up I felt something was off, and sure enough before I could even eat and shower I began feeling like crap. Still, I soldiered on, hoping that the bout would pass and then I could get back on with enjoying things. That didn't exactly happen, but I concealed my issues as best I could** and tried to enjoy things at Gen Con. The crowd was energetic, people weren't assholes (not too much, anyway), and ordinarily I'd have had the time of my life. For this introvert, that's saying a lot. But I just couldn't get into the groove, and I decided to take some time off and stroll about the hallways to recharge my batteries.

There was still a large crowd out in the hallway
where the balloon sculpture was.

Here's a closeup of said sculpture, complete with
a sea monster attacking a ship.

The walk helped me feel a bit less stressed, but I just had to grit out my health issues for the rest of the day.

All in all, it was an okay Gen Con for 2025. On the plus side, most of the family was able to get together, and we enjoyed each other's company. On the minus side, health issues. But aside from that, it felt good to be away for a day. 

*Hi, Professor DM! Sorry I didn't run into you. I did keep an eye out, however.

**Apparently I did it well enough that when I finally got over this late Monday, my wife was surprised that I was feeling ill any part of Sunday.

#Blaugust2025