Wed Jul 27 07:55:05 EDT 2016 Slept from around eleven to 6:30 without waking. Ninety and mostly sunny today. Goals: Work: - Do something about this HTML/Adodb.gen!A "parcel" malware Done. - Add gab to Nagios Done. - Email properties re AT&T survey Done. - Decide on next step for Asterisk Done. Yvonne called, and asked me to come over tonight. Fifteen minute walk at lunch. Saw a dragonfly. Ran into Mr. Hartman at Starbucks. Home: - Consider https://www.passwordstore.org/ and alternatives Nope. - Check out Sleeping Place of the Feathered Swine Nope. (I apparently bought this adventure a couple of years ago, but only found that out after reading the tenfootpole.org review.) http://www.sffworld.com/2016/07/maze-of-the-blue-medusa-zak-sabbath-and-patrick-stuart-interview/ ZS: When I first opened a packaged module as a kid, all the things I’d read and seen made me expect a lot– -A huge space -A nonlinear design so you can end up doing the dungeon in any number of different ways. -Inventive traps. -Things are weird but they have a reason they’re there. -Enough danger that PCs look at every single thing in the dungeon sideways so every detail–even if harmless–is potentially important. -Inhabiting monsters and creatures different than the ones who live there now. -Multiple factions. -Times when a lever or key in location A can affect things that happen in location B, and you have to go back sometimes to find these things. -Dangerous features of the dungeon that can be used against the dungeon inhabitants by clever PCs. -Tricks and the traps that are integrated with monster fights so that they can work together, so you never fight the same monster twice because environmental factors make a difference. ..and almost none of the dungeon modules I read met this minimum standard I had in my head. After work, I met Kate and Ryan and Isla over at dad and Yvonne's house. Yvonne had intimated on the phone that dad wanted to talk to me and Kate about not pursuing chemotherapy. Dad wasn't ready to talk to us, or at any rate, didn't. But we all had a pleasant evening, and it was good to see him home rather than in the hospital. Kate and I did get a chance to speak privately as we were leaving. We agreed we would support whatever dad wanted, but neither of us is certain that the time to make that decision has come. Kate wants him to get a second opinion. I would like him to talk to a psychiatrist; I'd like him to make this decision with as little anxiety and depression weighing on him as possible. We agreed to get together again next week. A cool breeze came in the evening, and a fine golden sunset. I dove back past my old apartment on Elmwood, and past Clawson park. Breakfast: spinach, carrots, yogurt with berries, coffee with half-and-half Lunch: a few nuts, iced Chai Dinner: pizza