Thursday, March 29, 2007

School, and how evil it can be

I hate school.

Okay, wait, that’s a bit of an overstatement. I dislike some parts of school, like, history projects… those are a PAIN!

But, what I really hate is when you have to learn about things that you A) have no interest in whatsoever and B) will not help you as far as you can tell in the career that you have decided to pursue. Today I found out that I have to take a class that is both A and B, high school biology.

Okay, I don’t really mind most science, I like learning about all sorts of things (I am so well versed in the background of 40k that I have begun to start working on my own “crackpot” theories), but, biology is an exception, I just plain dislike it.

Now, the annoying part is, I MUST complete a one year of biology in either high school or college, and, since I know I will have better things to do in college (like learning how to increase my writing skills and learning how to make video games and all that stuff), so I have opted to do it in high school. Still, it really bugs me that our educational system forces people to do things that they absolutely hate (okay, people who just hate school are an exception… they need to wake up and smell the coffee/tea/coke/caffeinated drink, school is useful and fun). I’d rather take two years of psychics or chemistry or something like that, but I can’t because I have to be “well-rounded”.

Generally speaking, I can understand the need for most High School classes, but its really just this one class… I just want to not take ONE!!!!!!! class, but in order to get my diploma I need to take that one class… it sucks.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out how to get 3 hardback Warhammer Fantasy Role-playing books from the US to BD by May, without any of the books getting “lost” or lost.

Signing off for now,

The (in)famous masterofweirdness, Isaac.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Another Life Update

Well Blog, it’s been awhile.

What have I been doing lately? Lots. First off, I ordered my first taste of WFRP off of Amazon a while back. I spent a pretty sum of money, but, hopefully, the Core Rule Book, the Tome of Corruption, and Sigmar’s Heirs will be well worth the cost.

Also, I’ve been playing Neverwinter Nights 2. I’ve promised a review of the game, but, I want to actually win it before doing so. Right now, I’m in the beginning of chapter 2 (of 3) and am a level 10 (of 20). My official classification is an lvl 4 rogue, lvl 5 wizard, and lvl 1 arcane trickster, my race tiefling, which is a human with infernal (read demon) blood.

But what else? Well, this week in 4him we talked about Camp. It was really neat to hear some of the things that other people experienced at camp, and as always, Mark did an amazing job leading worship, he really is blessed to do that every week.

And also, I am doing a report on the weapons of WWI. So, like previous librarians before me, I walk down dark hallways that have not been traversed for centuries to find the ancient tomes that I seek.

Okay, reality check, I am NOT a space marine, the Emperor DOES NOT exist, Khaine is NOT Khorne (or is he?...). But, seriously, I picked up this HUGE WWI book at Words N’ Pages a while back, it’s pretty in depth, and useful.

In other news, I decided to try and again finish Qzar. Its not that I don’t want to finish it, it was just that, for a long time, I was at a loss of who to finish it. I had a middle, end, and beginning, but, I didn’t know how to fill in the gaps between the end of the middle and the beginning of the end, hopefully, I’ll be able to fix that soon.

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Kids Camp

Well, as I type this I am trying to keep my eyes awake, why? Because I’ve returned from 2 nearly sleepless nights at AG Kid’s Camp’s 10th Anniversary! YAYAYAY!

Camp, ah, camp, such a fun time we had 150 kids (HEY! EVERYONE! LISTEN TO US! Okay, never mind, you can go on talking to each other) 8 teams, a, for once, GOOD FOOD!

Ah, but, I fear that some of you don’t know what the heck I am talking about, camp? You say, what is this “Camp” you speak of? Well, allow me to enlighten you. Kid’s Camp is a yearly event run by Dhaka AG Church, we take a bunch of kids during the middle of march out to Gazipur (1hr drive outside of Dhaka) to play games, stay up late, and learn about God. The whole thing begins Thursday afternoon and ends Saturday afternoon.

This year our Theme was Rainforest Rumba, and, getting saturated by God’s presence. We had a guest speaker from the US (a girl, Pastor Ashley) and that was fun, worship was okay (I like nice long worship sessions) but we had proper worship stuff after the Pastor Ashely was done speaking.

And then, of course, we had to have teams…. Ah, joy, teams. You know, now that I think of it, though perhaps for control reasons, it’s a good idea to keep teams, I think it would be best to have more informal teams and the like, and defiantly get rid of the points system (okay, its fun to win, but, it does get boring losing EVERY SINGLE TIME). Anyways, enough of that rant… I had a bad team that was small, and didn’t really do that good, so, obviously we lost. In fact, I don’t think we placed in ANY of the games.

What games did we play? Lets see, we had a water balloon fight (that was okay, but not really fun) an egg toss (that was REALLY fun), dodge ball (not that fun), piggyback relay races (neat idea, but I didn’t like it to much), and this game that involved covering one kids face with shaving cream and having the other kids throw popcorn at him, the team with the most “popcorns” (as we say it in Bangladesh) in the cream, wins. And, we probably played one or two more games, but I can’t think of them.

And then there were the teen (games we play at night when all the other kids were asleep) games… those ROCKED! We played Murder (umm… this didn’t work, and was a big disaster), Steal the bacon (real fun), and some other games. Steal the bacon was the best… that game gets wild, funny, and stuff.

So, that was the fun part of camp. But, we didn’t just have fun, spiritually speaking, we did a lot of stuff, the Camp’s Verse was Hosea umm… shoot…. I don’t know the reference. Okay, it was…. I can’t remember! AH! Something about pressing onwards and the Lord coming like rain. And, ya, lots of spiritual stuff.

Man, it was fun, I wish all you guys (assuming more than 1 person is reading this) could have been there, and we could have used all the jr. councilors and councilors. Anyway… leave a comment if you can, if not, send me an email or something whenever. I’ll be back to my normal schedule soon, doing another Primarch Bio, this one’ll be on Saguinius, the coolest, greatest, and generally speaking, the most loved of all primarchs.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Kids Camp

Well, I’m going to Camp tommorrow.

Wait, perhaps, it is possible, that some of you don’t know what Camp is?

Okay, officially, it’s called Kid’s Camp, but, everyone just calls it camp. Kid’s Camp is for 7-15 yr olds (people older can become Junior Councilors, or Councilors, or find some way to get to Camp, by “helping out”).

Also, the word “camp” gives people the idea of outdoors with trees and tents and marshmallows, we have only the outdoors part, oh, wait, there are these tall things that some people call trees… but since I haven’t seen a tree in ummm…. Okay, joking there. But seriously, 2 dorms, one for guys, one for girls, these “dorms” are long hallways with sleeping cots and mosquito nets, and, happen to be to short for tall people like me.

Anyways, Camp’s from Thursday afternoon to early Saturday afternoon (we leave at 2PMish), in between we do all sorts of fun games (8 teams… man, this camp will be HUGE!), and talk about God, do worship, devotions, play sports, eat badly cooked, barely edible Bengali food (okay, its not that bad, but almost, and I’m one of the few people who actually eat the food… so many people bring snacks… which, IMO, should be illegal).

However, the best part is the “teen” games, which, basically, are time for the teens to hang out, late unto the wee hours of the morn. Last year, I found out that some of my friends got like, umm… half an hour of sleep, the also almost missed breakfast (well, at least one of them did).

Anyways, that’s camp, when I return from camp I will give a much more in depth story of what happened, and, most likely, tell you people how badly my team lost (maybe, maybe, just this once, I’ll win... the only time I’ve one a Church compition was kids month so many years ago… Samurai Mountain, with Jonathan Alexander as team captain, of course, it was impossible for my team NOT to win, considering we had all the 12-14 year olds minus 2, those were good times, I’m already getting depressed thinking about it).

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Bengali politics...

You know, I was discussing politics with my dad yesterday, and I realized something… I’m really, really cynical when dealing with politicians. It’s not exactly the greatest trait in the world, but, then again, I live in Bangladesh, and anyone who’s NOT cynical when dealing with politics is an idiot, all politicians (okay, okay, not all, most) in Bangladesh are in it for the money. What money? Well, graft, graft, graft, I mean, they skim on everything and then illegally import a couple of Hummers and Mercedes SUVs.

But now, we have good news, you see, we have 5 year terms, and at the end of that term, the current government hands power over to a “neutral” non-political group of people headed by the Chief Advisor to the government.

But, well the first “neutral” government wasn’t neutral, the Election Commission (the guys who are supposed to get the polls ready) didn’t do much, except try to rig the polls. And on top of this, when the government handed over power, they had this guy who was former BNP (Bangladesh National Party, the party that was in power, their rivals are the Awami League, also known as the AL, and I’m not sure that the leader of the government was BNP, but he wasn’t neutral), the AL didn’t like this, so the president (BNP guy) illegally took power (okay, so it wasn’t totally illegal, actually, he just skipped about 5 people who were in line).

Then came the strikes. The AL wasn’t happy, they knew that if the President was also Chief Advisor, and he didn’t fix the polls, they would lose. So they brought in the gangs and starting attacking the BNP. The President banned sticks, bats, and, funny enough, oars, the AL symbol. So, the AL shut down the capital, many, many times.

Finally, the President relented. He resigned as Chief Advisor, and the power was turned over to a totally different Interim Government, which was backed by the Army.

Now, that’s what’s happened around these parts… whilst it may sound really scary, actually, its been for the better, the current government has pledged to fix the polls (its gonna take a year) and root out corruption (the BNP made Bangladesh the most corrupt nation for 4 years in a row, until Haiti bet us).

So they’re rooting out corruption, big time. Tons of people are going to jail, for all that graft that they enjoyed. You know all those Mercedes I mentioned? People are hiding them and trying to get rid of them, because they know that they’re signs of their corruption. And recently, Tarique Rahman, the son of the leader of the BNP, who was more or less in charge of all the corruption and stuff, was arrested. My dad went out today and he said the bus has a party atmosphere.

Monday, March 5, 2007

Life Update

Ah, yes, Bangladesh is wonderful, we now have a daily 1 hour power outage, sometimes more.

But, at least the government is now trying to fix this… as late as it may be, maybe in 5 years we won’t have this problem… if we do, the country will be seriously screwed… seriously.

But, we have good news, 4him (my youth) is great, we’re having a sleepover this Thursday (guys and girls… at separate houses), and on the 15-17th we have the 10th Annual Kid’s Camp from our lovely AG Church (go AG!). It’ll be fun, I’ve always loved Kid’s Camp, and this’ll be my first one as a Junior Councilor, maybe, for once, my team won’t be in last place.

And what else? I’ll be get Warhammer Fantasy Role-play this April, and starting and starting a Role-Play group with my friends, with me as Game-Master (guy who makes monsters, non-player charcters, and the story) of course.

Oh, I got a new Graphics Card and am play Neverwinter Nights 2. Awesome game… once I win it I’ll review it, but that could be sometime much later, I devoted almost my entire week-end to playing it, only to barely get into Neverwinter city!

Okay, what is Neverwinter Nights? Its an RPG game set in the Forgotten Realms, a cool place with lots of magic, and weird creatures (elves, dwarves, gnomes, orcs, bugbears, etc.). You create a characters (from over a dozen races, and at least a dozen different character types including: Wizards, Fighters, Rogues, Paladins, and Clerics). Also, over the course of the journey, you get companions with different personalties, abilities, and stories.

That alone is an awesome game, but, including the cool story (its really mysterious, something dealing with someone again trying to destroy Nevewinter City), this game is neat.

I’ll leave the rest of the game to my review… it’ll be long, as I’ll go over all the classes, all the races, and a brief summary of the story, along with normal review stuff

Saturday, March 3, 2007

Alpharius

Okay, time for another primarch Bio, this time I do a traitor, a nasty, evil traitor.

Name: Alpharius

Legion #:20

Legion Name: Alpha Legion (real original, when you consider the name eh?)

Homeworld: none, was found in space

History:

Alpharius was found by Horus, who, by this time was already Warmaster and leading humanity against their enemies. Alpharius was the last Primarch to be found.

One day, Horus and his fleet came across a fleet of human pirates who attacked them. The pirates technology was inferior to Horus’ but their amazing tactics allowed them to almost win; almost.

The fleet pursued them into an asteroid fleet and Horus boarded one of their ships with a bodyguard of Astartes warriors. The first enemy they encountered was shot at as usual, however, he dodged the bullets and shot down the Astartes warriors, then charging at Horus. However, before they met in combat they realized that they were brothers; the last of the Primarchs had been found.

Alpharius was sent to Terra to meet the Emperor and given control of the 20th Legion, whom he named the Alpha Legion (as in, the best, I presume). However, some of the older, more elitist Primarchs (Roboute Guilliman to be precise) told Alpharius that, no matter how hard he tried he could never claim as many victories as the Ultramarines.

So, incensed by this comment, Alpharius decided to prove Guilliman wrong. Though he could never win as many victories as the Ultramarines (one of the largest legions of space marines, not to mention Guilliman was the Imperium’s second greatest tactician at the time). Instead, Alpharius decided to focus on quanilty, during one campaign he actually let the defenders dig in, only to have ninety percent of their men die in a week, losing barely a handful Alpha Legionnaires in the process.

However, his desire to do so only brought more scorn from the other Primarchs, who called him a fool for purposely pursuing dangerous and challenging missions.

Then the Heresy came. It wasn’t really surprising the Alpharius sided with Horus, he barely knew the Emperor, and hated Guilliman, a staunch Loyalist, in fact, it is probably most likely that this is the only reason that Alpharius sided with Horus, to prove to Guilliman and the rest of the Primarchs that he was their equal in combat, if not better.

The Alpha Legion fought against the Loyalist Forces throughout the campaign, on Holy Terra, and the distant reaches of space, in the end, they were forced to retreat, but not before they had caused serious damage to the Loyalist Space Marine forces.

Guilliman, in one of his final campaigns tried to break the Alpha Legion, only to be defeated, though he killed Alpharius, they chain-of-command was prepared and fought on, until Guilliman was forced to retreat.

To this day, the Alpha Legion is a thorn in the side of the Imperium. They dwell in hidden bases outside of the Imperium and in secret cults in the darkness of Imperial Hive cities. Though they have been supposedly destroyed three times, they have always reappeared.

Though Alpharius is dead, his legion lives on, and perhaps this is the greatest testament to his skill, he created an unstoppable army, one who for ten thousand years has fought against the Imperium from within it, and has never, and perhaps will never, be truly defeated.