Just a quick update before I head off to bed. RedBrick Ltd has been posting a series of Writer’s Spolights, an interview (of sorts) that highlights the people who work on the Earthdawn game. Mine was recently posted, and you can read it here.

I’ll try to have more updates soon, but I’ve been really busy with work and everything. Until next update!

Or at least, that’s what it feels like. Our entire office (about 60 people) is on forced 6-day work weeks. On top of that, we’re often looking for incidental overtime (15 minutes here, 30 minutes there). All in all, it results in a bunch of frayed nerves, shorter tempers, and fatigue-driven slips.

What I do isn’t really a difficult job, but it is constant, and can be stressful at times. While the majority of our calls are straightforward, and those customers are satisfied with our service, there are those who don’t understand what we do, how we do it, or the technological and regulatory limitations involved. These are the customers that drive us crazy, and that power the frustrated ventings during breaks and lunches.

NaNoWriMo starts in a couple of hours, and I’m not taking part this year. My overtime heavy work schedule, coupled with a 7-month old daughter (who is doing great, by the way), and commitments to Earthdawn development mean it isn’t in the cards.

I am using the month as an opportunity to refocus and rededicate. I hope to update my blog a bit more regularly than I have been, and get some writing and/or editing done for Earthdawn (next up, a series of articles looking at the Step system and the probabilities involved). Stay tuned, and hopefully there will be more to see here over the next few weeks!

Hello. The summer “reruns” are winding down, and the new fall shows are being trotted out by the networks over the next couple of weeks. Not only is Heroes returning for its second season, it is part of what looks to be a truly geekalicious Monday night on NBC.

The summer saw some interesting shows as well. Most notable was Burn Notice on USA, which turned out a lot better than I expected. I’d capsule it as a cross between The A-Team and MacGyver — the lead character is a former intelligence agent who discovers that a “Burn Notice” has been issued for him. This means that his contacts ad support are dried up — no expense account, no official backing, and no life to speak of. He gets dumped in Miami and begins tracking down the reason the Notice was issued — taking freelance Private Eye-type jobs to make money in the meantime.

The writing on the show is pretty good, but it’s really the cast that made this show shine. Wonderful performances abound, including a great turn from Bruce Campbell (the reason I tuned into the show in the first place) as a former Navy SEAL, now more concerned with maintaining a posh lifestyle financed by his lady friend.

No doubt USA will be rebroadcasting the shows at some point in the future (they have confirmed a second season for next summer), and a DVD set is probably in the offering as well. Give it a look — it’s worth the time (and at only 12 episodes for season one, not a huge investment of time).

Anyhow, look to this blog over the next couple of weeks for impressions of other shows (new and returning) as I catch them. I’m looking forward to seeing what the networks do with all the genre shows they’re putting out there, and I’m interested in seeing how many last through the year.

That’s all for now!

Hey all. It’s been a while since my last post. I thought I would post a quick update with regard to what’s going on in my life.

The most pressing (and major) financial crisis passed, though not without some headaches. We’ve resolved several of our past due accounts, and are trying to make arrangements that we can afford for the remaining ones. House payments, car payments, and property taxes were all brought up to date… we’re still in some deep water, but the undertow is n longer threatening to drag us under.

In Earthdawn news, editing continues on Kratas: City of Thieves. It will be out later this year (no firm date has been set yet). Our next release, Burning Desires, is an adventure by Andrew Ragland, and should be out within the next month or so.

Work remains much the same… holding pattern. There is a public hearing before the Public Utilities Commission next month, so the public can voice their thoughts and opinions on the (still pending) sale to Fairpoint. No other news for now.

Ty contiunes growing. She will be five months old on Monday. Our friends Pat and Leanne had their daughter, Kira, a couple of weeks ago, and it is hard to believe that Ty was once smaller than Kira is now.

That does it for now. I’ll try and post more often… but right now I need to get ready for work.

PS — Wil Wheaton gave the keynote address at PAX (the Penny Arcade Expo) this past weekend. It was an awesome speech, and you should listen to it. You can find it here. Enjoy.

Holy crap, this weekend held a firebomb for us.

As I’ve mentioned here before, Mary and I have been going through a tough financial situation over the past few months. Some of our credit cards have gone unpaid for several months, and we’ve been getting calls from collection agencies trying to get their money.

To try and stabilize our financial situation somewhat, Mary has applied for a supplemental student loan that will effectively act as a kind of debt consolidation; the money from the loan will go towards paying off our high-balance, high-interest credit cards, and change it into a lower interest loan with payments deferred until after she graduates. It looks like we’re going to get the money (thanks to assistance from my Dad, who cosigned the loan), which is good.

This past week, we got a call from one of the agencies who has been after us, threatening legal action if we didn’t settle our outstanding debt. I got back in touch with them, and explained that while we didn’t have the money right then, we would be getting a cash infusion from a loan that should come through in early July.

I set up a plan where we made a good faith payment of $150 on Tuesday, with the balance scheduled on July 26th — one month later. When we received the money from Mary’s loan, we would call and reschedule the balance payment. While we got a couple more calls from them wondering how the paperwork for the loan was going, everything appeared settled.

Then…

On Saturday, Mary stopped by the Wal-Marts to pick up some formula for Ty, and when she went to check out the debit card was declined. This was a little odd, as she had made a deposit just a few minutes earlier. She popped over to the bank branch in the nearby grocery store (conveniently open on Saturday) to check the balance.

It was in the red. Red like hemorrhaging blood — a fitting analogy for the state of our accaount.

A semi-panicked call to me, and a visit with the bank person, turned up the reason. The firm I had scheduled the payment with earlier in the week — the payment that was scheduled for July 26, was submitted for payment on Friday. It cleared (because we had some funds in the account), but left us in the hole, big time.

The bank was very helpful, filling out the paperwork to challenge the withdrawal, and even gave Mary cash for the money she had deposited earlier so that we could buy groceries.

A call to the firm later that morning revealed that for some reason, they thought I had authorized payment for the full amount, knowing that it would bounce.

Let me repeat this point, I knew the check would bounce.

W-T-F?

Why, in the name of all that is good and decent, would I authorize payment when I don’t have the money? Why would I subject myself to overdraft fees, other bounced payments, and dig myself into a deeper financial hole? The idea is, to put it mildly, complete and total bullshit.

So, I composed an angry, pointed letter to the woman I had been dealing with at this firm over the past week (she wasn’t there on Saturday), stating that I did not authorize the change to the payment plan, the idea that I would authorize such a change was ludicrous, and that I expected the problem to be corrected at once, or I would pursue action with the appropriate authorities.

Needless to say, Saturday afternoon and evening were not a whole lot of fun in the Harrison household.

From Tuesday, June 26 to Monday, July 2, DTRPG is offering a large Buy One, Get One Free (BOGO) sale. RedBrick is joining in the fun, offering the Earthdawn Player’s and Gamemaster’s Compendiums for the price of one book!

That’s $80 worth of books for only $27.95! Why not buy now?

It has been quite a while since my last post. No real reason, other than a lack of significant news in my world. Ty is growing (two and a half months old now), and I’ve been posting pictures of her up in my Flickr account. I also have a set of pictures up there from the wedding of our good friends Pat and Leanne.

This is my favorite recent picture of Ty:

In other news, I’ve been working on the next Earthdawn book from RedBrick — actually, not the next one, but the one after that. Kratas: City of Thieves is due in Fall of this year, and will be the first original sourcebook we’ve put out for the game. There is still a lot of work to be done on it, but I think it will rock on toast when we’re done. Before that, we’re looking for the adventure Burning Desires to come out this summer.

In other Earthdawn news, a review of the Player’s Compendium has been posted on RPGnet. It’s a pretty good review, all in all, but it has sparked a bit of a follow-up debate in the connected thread about how realistic the geography of Barsaive is.

I am doing my best to refrain from getting involved — it is not cool for a writer/developer to get into a thing with a reviewer (except to correct obvious factual errors). I know we have another set of books out there with a reviewer, I hope he comes back with a review soon. I like hearing what people think!

That’s all for now. I’ll see what I can do about updating a bit more regularly.

If you haven’t been watching Heroes… you are missing out on one of the best serial dramas that has been on TV in recent memory.

You can catch up on past episodes over at NBC.com — and you really should, because… holy crap…

If you watched tonight’s episode, you know what I mean. If not… get caught up and come to know what I’m taking about.

From Savenetradio.org:

On March 2, 2007 the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), which oversees sound recording royalties paid by Internet radio services, increased Internet radio’s royalty burden between 300 and 1200 percent and thereby jeopardized the industry’s future.

At the request of the Recording Industry Association of America, the CRB ignored the fact that Internet radio royalties were already double what satellite radio pays, and multiplied the royalties even further. The 2005 royalty rate was 7/100 of a penny per song streamed; the 2010 rate will be 19/100 of a penny per song streamed. And for small webcasters that were able to calculate royalties as a percentage of revenue in 2005 – that option was quashed by the CRB, so small webcasters’ royalties will grow exponentially!

Before this ruling was handed down, the vast majority of webcasters were barely making ends meet as Internet radio advertising revenue is just beginning to develop. Without a doubt most Internet radio services will go bankrupt and cease webcasting if this royalty rate is not reversed by the Congress, and webcasters’ demise will mean a great loss of creative and diverse radio. Surviving webcasters will need sweetheart licenses that major record labels will be only too happy to offer, so long as the webcaster permits the major label to control the programming and playlist. Is that the Internet radio you care to hear?

As you know, the wonderful diversity of Internet radio is enjoyed by tens of millions of Americans and provides promotional and royalty opportunities to independent labels and artists that are not available to them on broadcast radio. What you may not know is that in just the last year Internet radio listening jumped dramatically, from 45 million listeners per month to 72 million listeners each month. Internet radio is already popular and it is already benefiting thousands of artists who are finding new fans online every day.

Action must be taken to stop this faulty ruling from destroying the future of Internet radio that so many millions of listeners depend on each day. Instead of relying on lawyers filing appeals in the CRB and the courts, the SaveNetRadio Coalition has been formed to represent every webcaster, every Net Radio listener, and every artist who enjoys and benefits from this medium. Please join our fight for the preservation of Internet radio.

Since pictures and such eventually drop off the front page, I thought I would set up a hotlink to a gallery over at Flickr. If you click on the picture on the right-hand side, you’ll be taken to my gallery, where you can see the pictures I’ve uploaded.

Right now all I have are pics of baby Ty, but now that I have an account there, I’ll finally upload those pictures from Origins that I’ve long intended to have posted online.

So… at some point I should have those up. Stay tuned!