Well they woke me ’round mid afternoon and my head hurt the most.
I remember being kidnapped at a rally by its power-hungry host.
If games are like movies, my memories are films about ghosts
I could never escape even as I freefall down the coast
I knew an idiot who walked the tightrope for fortune and fame
he was an acrobat swinging trapezes but that story was lame.
If you’ve ever hung out with little boys,
the press makes your life full of shame.
And though he’ll never forgive Two-Face sometimes
I wish he didn’t know my name.

Hey, Mr. Napier, don’t die
Hey, Mr. Napier, I know why
but hey, Mr. Napier, please don’t die on me.

Well there’s a piece of my parents in every criminal sting
and the price of a memory is repaid by the justice it brings
but there’s always one more murderer to take down and one last batarang
and the last one out of the city has to lock up everything
or the inmates will get out and fill all of Gotham with dread
while Harley’s sorrowful sobbing is still lingering in my head
and the goons and the junkies disbelieve whatever they’ve read
What’s left for a sequel when my favorite villain is dead?

Hey, Mr. Napier, don’t die
Hey, Mr. Napier, I know why
but hey, Mr. Napier, please don’t die on me.

All the blue ice reflections that color Vic’s mind when he sleeps
and the business-sense distractions that accompany the company I keep
Nigma’s razor-wit taunting that cuts just a little too deep
Hey I can dream as well as anyone but Dr. Crane can’t help me sleep
So I shoot my grapnel gun into the air and it catches some beams
for a brief interruption of a question-mark grabbing scheme
Well I can’t say I knew that you weren’t quite who you seemed
So I was surprised to find out
that Karlo played Joker on that final movie screen.

Hey, Mr. Napier, don’t die
Hey, Mr. Napier, I know why
but hey, Mr. Napier, please don’t die on me.

When the Clown Prince of Crime shattered the antidote on the floor
there wasn’t another
and I wondered what he did that for
I still was not sure because he had been dead before
but I carried his body with grief as I walked out the door.
You once lived on a desert planet featuring a pair of stars
and drove past Jabba’s palace to be disliked at some seedy Spaceport bar
and you followed Kenobi after selling off your uncle’s old car
and after taking down the emperor, you became a great voice-acting star
and after taking down the emperor, you became a great voice-acting star

Hey, Mr. Napier, I’m quite touched
but hey Mr. Napier, it’s too much
so hey Mr. Napier, please don’t sing to me.
Hey Mr. Napier, please don’t sing to me.
Hey Mr. Hamill, stay for Arkham 3?

A small but noticeable grin reflected against the blue glow of a dimly lit terminal screen. Somewhere in Los Angeles, a gateway translated zeros and ones into coherent instructions which it then sent through seemingly countless bounces, finally arriving at its intended destination. This time, the chosen destination was the International Crime Database.

Fred didn’t have a cool hacker name like “El Techno” or “Digital Mage.” He didn’t need one. He was happy being Fred of the Uplink Corporation. He was happier with the steady flow of cash infusions willingly transferred by other corporations into his account for what he calls “subcontracting” gigs. Fred enjoyed his gigs very much, and he enjoyed this batch of gigs in particular.

Corporations who need to appear wholesome to the public sometimes require Fred’s confidential industrial services. That is, industrial espionage, sabotage, creating and falsifying identities, and making certain individuals’ lives miserable. From the list of jobs in Uplink’s internal services machine, he had gathered a list of names that needed police attention. Well, they would need police attention after he was done altering their records, anyway.

I usually keep track of inventory,
stocking up on the essentials
such as sugar and caffeine
and much needed pantry items
like rest, patience, and nice.

Well, an abrasive gentleman before me
missed a num lock cue and concluded
that the keyboard was busted.
Deep within my soul, I searched –
Do you have any Nice?

Fresh out, my friend.
You used it all two hours ago
and you forgot to get some more.
Low on rest and patience, too –
I suggest you find a bunker.

Impossible, I thought,
but memory betrayed me,
sneaking bitterness in my grocery bag
when I had procured some Nice.
That vengeful bastard.

Can you make some Nice instead?
Brilliant, Fukui San
but the secret ingredient is trout –
I suggest you slap him with it.
Memory has been reading IRC logs again.

Hell-o! I said your keyboard is BUSTED.
Are you deaf or just retarded?
Calm blue ocean shark infested
hiding sunken ships and bodies –
scumbag pirates. Calm, peaceful ocean.

Hey! Your keyboard is busted!
And your machines are damn slow
I am wasting my time here
and you are no help –
Sticking to his talking points.

Peaceful meadow, quiet breeze
with soft sunlight on my face
and pollen triggering allergies
with sneezing and discomfort.
Face it, kiddo — out of Nice.

Sir, I suggest knowing number lock
lest you find me busting that keyboard
by typing qwerty on the back
of your thick skull. I asked my soul
and he said I was out of Nice.

Definition of indignant stupidity.
Yes, the machines are slow
Yes, you are one ugly moron
and it seems neither of us
can remedy either situation.

Instead I walked over, pressed a key
enabling numlock and quietly stepped away,
scraping on the pantry shelf for
a grain or two — the only thing to do
when your soul runs out of Nice.

It has always been a bit challenging for me to upgrade Kubuntu since I tend to add programs that are not in the default install.  Often enough, it comes down to giving up an upgrade and just installing anew.  Thankfully, /home is in its own partition so I get to keep my data.

Recently, the upgrade process has been less glitchy but still, I had issues.  The install asked me about a config file which it wanted to overwrite.  No problem, I said, and clicked the option to make it so.  Then the machine stopped responding.  Hey, alright, I thought, no choice but to hit the reset button and face whatever demons await after the reboot.

After rebooting, the machine spun and spun.  I hit ctrl-alt F-something to try and get a command prompt, which I got.  Logged in, tried apt-get update/upgrade and it suggested I do sudo dpkg –configure -a instead.  Doing so made the machine do its thing and continue its installation.  Another reboot and I had upgraded to 11.10.

Now the annoying part: kmail migration is borked.  SERIOUSLY?  Yes, it’s a known issue and yes, there were instructions online on how to manually backup files and re-import them into the new kmail but again, SERIOUSLY?  Someone really decided to release Kubuntu with the main e-mail application upgrade process broken?  This isn’t some obscure app or game that very few people would care about…this is e-mail.

After having gone through the process of doing the manual migration (is migration really the term for upgrading to a new version of the same application?) I had to deal with kwallet to store my e-mail account information.  Now, after I log in with my username and password to get to the desktop, I have to type in another password so kwallet knows that it’s ok for kmail to access my e-mail account information.

In the end, I’ve upgraded.  Everything seems to be working, and I’m hoping that just a little more digging around would help me figure out the extra password entry annoyance.  Rant completed.

ElTechno was deemed too much of a renegade to hang with The Renegades so without consulting a dictionary, Dear Leader decided it was best for ElTechno to be on his way.  Finding himself once more without a guild, he began to wonder about the most peculiar things, like why his clothes didn’t fit anymore.

Yes, seriously, why does some equipment have a guild level requirement?  This belt is really members-only?  Is DDO run like my old high school with its own clothing police?  No sports-related clothes, no hats (I’ve got the hat bug so none of my hats are visible), and apparently they’ll need to see my ASB card if I want to keep wearing my crafted belt.

The problem was that I was quite fond of my gear.  The same went for Eberlinz Evil Twin and Estocean.  The easiest solution to the issue was to create my own guild.  Without any fanfare, the Guild of Estoceans was born with barely any members and hardly any renown.  We are nothing like The Renegades.  We are nothing like the Fabulous Killjoys.  For one thing, we can’t stand in V formation.  However, on occasion, I may hum the Batman theme while descending upon an unsuspecting mob and disposing of them with a wand of blasting.

Let’s talk about arts and crafts.  You see these hands?  They spent years of training in both spell-casting and rapier-based combat.  With a touch, I could draw the life force out of a creature within arm’s length.  For those further away, my hand can shoot necrotic bolts, fire, lightning, acid, or ice with similar results.  When I feel the need to see some blood, I draw my rapier and carve my way through opposition.  These are dirty, bloodied, calloused, warrior hands.

To show my more sensitive side, however, today we are using these same hands to knit a cozy cloak for Eberlinz Evil Twin.  You see, Ebbie’s a human ranger with a little bit of a problem staying on his feet.  He wields twin khopesh blades (also designed by yours truly), which I’m sure he’d love to swing around and hurt people with if only he weren’t so easily tripped by his enemies.  Because of this little issue, he asked if I could make him some sort of Cloak of Balancing.  “Sure can,” I enthusiastically exclaimed, “I just need to gather some materials.”

The first step is to decide on exactly what we’re going to make.  For Eberlinz, I wanted to give him something a little extra so today we’re crafting him an Unbalancing Cloak of Balance which not only makes him more surefooted; the cloak is so awesome it has a chance to knock enemies off their feet.  After deciding on that, we gather the necessary essences and collectible items to create the magical shards that would go into the cloak.  For our purposes, we have created an unbalancing shard and a shard of balance.

Shards in hand, now we look for a used cloak.  It is a good idea to keep a few old cloaks around just for crafting purposes.  Any will do, really.  We take the cloak, find the designer tag, rip said tag, and replace it with “Hecho De ElTechno.”  We then use a hot glue gun to secure the shards into place.  A little bit of cleanup and here we have a lovely cloak, hand-made and ready for the rigors of combat.

I am no life of the party,
my humor cold and dry
nobody ever seems to laugh
since my pranks go awry
I find it very difficult
to try and make amends
but as a necromancer,
I am always making friends.

I make for awkward conversation –
my interests arcane
and some folks wonder loudly
if I am legally insane.
I’m sure it wasn’t personal
when one rogue called me a witch
so I summoned forth his mother’s bones
and pimped her as my bottom bitch.

Others are more violent –
with my death in their plans
which I render as amusing
by causing them to dance
then we see who’s a pariah
for when this story ends
I’d have cast a strong enchantment
that suggests he kill his friends.

Up on the mast, there’s a lonely mote herd…

When people think of the Risia Ice Games, they think of sliding gracefully down icy slopes and gliding through the air through low-gravity jumps in search of assorted colored winter coins. They think of fighting fire elementals and renting ice skates. They think of the poetic snowfall in Stormreach Harbor the likes of which hadn’t been seen since a dragon terrorized Korthos.

Well, realistically, a lot of people ignore the ice games entirely, and for the longest time, I was one of those people. That was until I became involved in an obsessive-compulsive hunt for eternal wands. The basic idea is as follows: during the Ice Games, a character collects assorted coins, which gets redeemed for random items. Some of those random items happen to be crafting materials which when placed in the Risian Altar along with other ingredients, create or imbue weapons with icy properties. One of these possible creations is an Eternal Wand of Ray of Frost.

There was ElTechno’s wraith form and extended versions of “Jump” and “Expeditious Retreat” spells standing on a docked ship’s mast deciding on the best path to collect as many blue coins as possible in one leap. There was ElTechno cursing as his footing slipped, gliding back down to the dock and jumping back up to the boathouse roof for another try at a precision landing onto the ship’s mast. A successful jump netted three blue coins and a switch to another instance in the multiverse for an attempt at three more. This was repeated countless times to gather materials for him, and for members of the guild.

Thusly he herded the motes of winter, crafting recipes, an assortment of icy potions, and candy canes which he used as unexpected presents for guild and party members. After crafting the eternal wand, he embraced his jumping proficiency and continued herding motes of winter for various other recipes. He gave quite a few of the materials away and to those who were interested, he taught his methods of coin farming.

All of this was strange to the Drow rogue wizard who had lived a borderline sociopathic life.

Did you know that a Divine Union of Hirelings exists? Apparently so! In the last union meeting, countless speaker cards were filled out in order to address the issue of hireling maltreatment and abuse, with many hireling clerics speaking out against doing contract work for a Drow Wizard named ElTechno De La Biblioteca.

Yes, they spoke out against me and they made me sit through the whole thing. One cleric recounted the time when I cast Expeditious Retreat and Invisibility on myself and left her to run after me through mobs of hostile soldiers and scorpions. “I came back to pick up your soulstone!” I exclaimed. Another spoke of a time when I went for a swim through an underwater cave and left him to fight trolls and rust monsters alone. while someone else testified that I had locked them out to face Whisperdoom alone.  Yet another recalled a time I watched her get electrocuted to death by a trap I had jumped over. “That’s because most people would step away from the trap BEFORE healing themselves!” A few others spoke of being tactlessly commanded to use runes, open doors, heal others not specifically named in the contract, having to heal spiders and miscellaneous pets, and being injured numerous times by a summoned arcane skeleton mage. “You command Drow Scorpions as pets! Consider yourselves fortunate that Vulkoor has not manifested his wrath upon you!” I yelled in exasperation.

After a bit of gavel pounding, the whole episode ended with me being limited to non-union contracts over at House Kundarak. I wasn’t too worried since I knew a lot of the union clerics secretly moonlighted as bodyguards in House K. However, until the excitement that my name invoked wound down, I decided it was best to hit the realm’s Looking-For-Group Bulletin Board again for a while. Good thing, too, because I had found a group running the “Diplomatic Impunity” quest which in turn led to my being accepted into a guild.

Video put together for Dr. Domingo’s birthday celebration (running time: 8:09)

Technical note: all the news article headlines were from 6/21 — The Doc’s birthday.