So now I hear
from Dave and Woo that Chris Van Horn is mad at me and won't come to
gaming anymore. From what they said it has something to do with stuff I
wrote in my journal. Looking back, I couldn't find anything
significant. I have written some unflattering things about him but
they're all really obvious if you know Chris. The fact that he's not
going to show up at our weekly sessions doesn't matter since he never
showed up anyway. Even before he was mad at me (unless he has been
hating me for years) he was at best made an occasional appearance.
Frankly I think Chris is blowing it out of proportion. I'm sure he's
mad but I doubt it's for a good reason. He tends to extrapolate too
much. Case in point, one day he mentioned that Kimberly had written
some criticisms of our group in her journal, and moreover had written
that Pick was a misogynist. Dave, maybe Woo, and I looked through
Kimberly's online journal and didn't find anything. She wrote about the
gamers and said things like "Kevin is quite and doesn't do anything"
and "Pick is a bit ranchy with his jokes". We totally didn't see what
Chris was talking about.
It's that kind of unnecessary extrapolation that Chris does that makes
me think that I did nothing wrong. And besides, it is a journal. People
write the interesting things and a lot of it is not what they think in
normal life. Journals are a very skewed view of what people really feel
and I find that most are more negative than the person actually is.
Therefore I've stopped reading other people's journals. When reading
you just have to understand the context and remember that this is what
the person felt like at that moment in time. I know I write lots of
things that if I read the next week I would disagree with. That's just
the way it is I think when you have an informal place to put down your
thoughts.
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Today I drove
around looking at some communities. We're thinking about changing
landscaping companies and our two top candidates gave us some
references. One (New Image, I believe) gave us two references. But when
I drove and looked at those communities, they're not condos or
townhouses. They're regular homes so I strongly suspect the residents
do their own lawn care. The common areas looked fine, but I don't think
the references were all that appropriate.
The second company (JPL) gave us three references. One is a new
townhouse community that is about halfway done, being built by Ryland
Homes (what a coincidence). Talk about claustrophobic. The homes are in
small lots and three stories to make up for the smaller lots. The
streets are narrow and windy. And of course the foliage is all new and
just starting to grow. I can't imagine this being an appropriate
reference because it's the builder who hired them and since everything
is new you can't tell if they're doing a good job or not.
With that bad start, the next two references were good. Obviously older
communities with mature foliage. Not A+ work that you'd want to show
off unless that was the best you had. But then again not particularly
bad or anything. Sort of average. The foliage looked healthy for the
most part, if a bit ragged and sloppy looking. Some brown grass but
again mostly good. Not totally convinced whether the $300 per month
savings is worth it. Though then again we don't know how good Serpico
really is.
I also dropped by Gator Games in San Mateo. Very nice hobby shop. Small
but crammed with stuff. Board game section, RPG section, miniatures
section, d20 and used games section. Friendly staff.
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