Ahhh, so THAT'S the problem...

Turns out my whole problem with the video clip and mediaplayer was that Firefox and Windows Mediaplayer aren't on speaking terms, at least the way I have things set up at the present. The video clip in question ran fine once I fired Internet Explorer. My personal catchphrase these days has been "I blame Bush" but this time I'm going to blame Bill Gates.

I had the convention dream last night. This is a pretty regularly occurring dream for me. Several friends (this time Don McKinney and Jon Pedigo) and I are sitting at a table at Winter War playing a game. This time we're playing Star Fleet Battles. I end up giving up the game because I forgot to allocate a point of energy to my life support systems. Then I go hit the game vendors. The shelves are full of RPG products that don't actually exist. Also one of the vendors is selling photocopies of old stuff. I'm visiting all the vendors because I'm looking for one particular item. This time it's a decent copy of the MERP corebook.

Funny thing about this dream, whenever I have it I usually wake up thinking to myself "Yeah, I should play game A (this time SFB) and track down a copy of game B (this time MERP)." A nice, friendly game of SFB with guys as knowledgeable as Don and Jon would kinda hit the spot right now. The emphasis on tournament competition and a desire to be completely self-reliant when it comes to rules questions drove me away from the game. Just getting together with some non-spazzotron players and shooting each other to pieces would be a good way to waste an afternoon. Maybe I'll send Jon an email. And I've wanted a better copy of MERP for a long time. I hadn't searched for it on eBay in a while. Last time I did the Lord of the Rings movies were still going strong in the theatres. Talk about a sellers market. Yeesh.