Who knew Stevie Wonder can rock out on the drums?! I am impressed.

I went up to the Chicago Blues Festival with Signgirl this past weekend. The weather was great. I met her friend Karen and got reacquainted with her parents. My brother was in a weird mood, but seemed to enjoy himself at the festival.

We also checked out some used books at Printer’s Row. Signgirl bought some Dr Who books. I would have bought some, too, if we hadn’t had to carry them around all day.

The Scott Air Show will be July 7-8 this year. It includes a display of a B-2A Stealth Bomber, the most technologically advanced bomber in the world, which is rarely seen outside of its home base, Whiteman Air Force Base.

I spent the Memorial Day weekend writing characters for the Spycraft LARP that Atomic Squash plans to run at DieCon this Saturday. I started Friday after work and worked morning to night on them. I took a few breaks to play Battlefield 2 and do some shopping. More on that in a bit.

We managed to post a list of characters for this year’s game. In total there are a total of 35 characters. Since we usually have around twenty players, the unfortunate reality is that a third of these characters probably will not make it into the game. I just hope some of the ones I sacrificed my holiday weekend to write find their way into the game. Here is the list of characters on which I worked the past three days (in the order on which I worked them):

• Vittorio Esperto: an Italian collector visiting the United States. (White Tux, Greased Hair, Pinky Ring)
• Malcolm Whitlow: a former Prime Minister of Australia. (Bald, Charismatic, Bold tie)
• Clodomir Uteem: an exiled islander and activist. (Dark Skin, Beard, Scowl)
• Nicole Mason: an Australian government official. (Plain, Flat Hair, Nice Dress)
• Jamal Riggs: a European Union tax agent. (Wrinkled jacket, Wing tipped shoes, Soul patch)
• Izanami Kishi: a famous Japanese actor and martial arts expert. (Black Formal Robe, Bald, Short)
• Hong Gildong: a Korean-born Texas oil magnate. (Comb over, False Teeth, Designer Tuxedo)
• Jeremy Wade: the assistant to Izanami Kishi. (Flamboyant, Curly Hair, Pink Shirt)
• Juan Kerr: the bodyguard to Elsa Beisheim. (Eye patch, Muscular, Van Dyke)
• Cynthia Pride: a British journalist working for The London Times. (Pantsuit, Short Hair, Notepad)
• Elmyr: a little known artist seeking some exposure. (Ascot, Chain Smoker, Earrings)
• James Camelot: a hacker who claims he has a program that can determine if paintings are fake. (Young, Nerdy, Skinny Tie)
• Pat Pennyworth: a beautiful auctioneer working for Fukabun Naka Auctions. (Stiff Prosthetic Arm, Stunning, Red Dress)

Yeah, I’m a slacker. I have a new respect for writers. Getting my head around most of these characters was a challenge. How do you make a tax agent interesting? What motives a wealthy Texas oil tycoon? What would compel somebody to spend time with a former Australian Prime Minister? I am convinced that writing involves hundreds of these little decisions. Good authors are the folks that make the best decisions.

I managed to accumulate enough points in Battlefield 2 to get promoted to the rank of First Lieutenant. So far I have earned 75,099 points and have played the game for a total of 825 hours.

I picked up Ozzy Osbourne’s new album, Black Rain. It definitely rocks. The album features some juicy guitar riffs, or as I heard a DJ once say, “.. the sound of finely tuned chainsaws”. It’s a beautiful thing. The lyrics were adequate but fell short of being great. Thankfully Ozzy did not completely disappoint me like Sevendust’s last effort did.

I went to the St Louis Tap Room for Burns Night last night just like I did last year. It is a fun celebration of the Scottish poet Robert Burns.

I had some excellent Scotch Eggs. My buddy Adam joined me. He had the haggis, nips and tatties.

We got there too late for the recital of the late poet’s “Address to the Haggis”, the best poem ever composed by a man to a meat product. Even more regrettable is that we missed the Lassies Response delivered last year by an attractive lass who was very amusing.

We were entertained by a band of kilted performers who marched into the club room playing drums and bagpipes. They performed a number of traditional songs and an impressive drum piece.

Unfortunately I had to cut the evening short because I had a morning meeting. I had a great time hanging with friends and enjoying the food and music.

It’s a Wednesday night, but I AM SO THERE!

Darrell Mansfield
in Concert

February 14
6PM

The Gathering Place
8426 Halls Ferry RD.
St. Louis, MO
314-269-6563

Brilliant! Folks, guitars prevent synchronized dancing.

Hello friends. It has been a while since I have made a sizable blog entry. Back on Labor Day my mother came to visit. I have mentioned before that I lost my father earlier this year. Mom brought an old PC from my late father’s business. I plan to take the hard drives out and browse through them for anything important. She also brought some JRR Tolkien books I had bought Dad as Christmas gifts. Somehow I did not expect to see them again. You never give a gift expecting it to show up again on your kitchen table. I have an idea. Since I was a teenager the first time I read and enjoyed the Hobbit, I want to take the books to Archon and give them to a teenager there. It feels like the right thing to do.

Mom and I went to St Louis Bread Company. We tried their Crispani pizza. I had the Sausage and Apple. Mom had the Three Cheese. All in all they were pretty good. I’m grateful too that we didn’t have to sit in the waiting area of a restaurant.

Last weekend I had dinner with a friend at Plaza Frontenac. It was nice to catch up. Funny thing is I used drive by that mall every weekend for three months. I never stopped by to check out what it had to offer.

I have a personals profile on Yahoo! Personals. So far the only date I have managed was with a woman I already knew. I just do not get responses from women in which I am interested. I have responded to women in whom I am not even interested. I wanted to see if they would respond. Nothing is more like a Deathstar to my ego than to get the virtual cold shoulder. I hear folks say that they have had luck. But, sadly, my experience has been different.

Well, I got fed up with sub-par performance of my Linksys WRT54G wireless router. I bought a replacement in case I wanted to hack the ROM on my current router and bricked it by accident. Fortunately, that was not necessary. I reset it to its defaults and tweaked parameters. I changed settings one at a time and examined performance changes. I learned the following:

• Enabling burst mode is not good
• Changing the channel from 6 (the default) to 11 helped considerably
• Anytime a 802.11b device uses the router the performance of my 802.11g devices drop
• Increasing the value of beacon interval to 360 milliseconds improved performance on my laptop two rooms away

I upgraded the firmware on my Playstation Portable (PSP) to version 2.81. This allows me to download and play game demos. I downloaded the Loco Roco Demo from Sony’s site. It is a cute little game. You control a gelatinous blob by tilting the screen left and right using the shoulder buttons. Pressing both buttons at once bumps the screen causing your blob to bounce. The goal is to collect fruity looking widgets while avoiding the spiky looking whatzits. It is very entertaining but can be frustrating. The graphics are brightly colored and interesting. The soundtrack is a hauntingly sweet Japanese tune.

Black Label Society recently released their new CD entitled Shot to H-ll. Amid a collection of mellow meandering songs with aimless lyrics these songs stand out:

• Concrete Jungle – a grinding metal song. this is where BLS shines
• Blacked Out World – another heavy song. a little softer but still a decent tune with some good riffs

Saw “American History X” last night. I noticed that Ethan Suplee, the actor that plays Earl’s brother Randy in the sitcom “My Name is Earl”, played a skinhead in the movie. The dude has a huge range of acting ability.

You may have had some problems accessing gazpacho.net lately. Dreamhost, my web hosting provider, has been suffering network issues for a number of weeks now. The past couple of days they struggled with router issues that resulted in intermittent loss of access for my web friends. Just today they replaced the router and promised that things are better. Here’s hoping.

I have toyed with the idea of producing a podcast. I’m thinking about doing something funny. I am considering spoofing commercials, mocking liberal politicians and so-called public radio, doing man-on-the-street interviews with America on current events, giving treatment to ridiculous social mores and perhaps producing an episodic radio play. Are there any female friends who want to lend voice talent? gratis? I’ll buy pizza.