Let’s talk about dice jail

Not surprisingly, I have a Quest Calendar again as my day-by-day calendar for the fourth consecutive year. Because each year is published separately, the rules are continuously improving, adding new mechanics to enhance the experience… that’s a fancy way of saying it’s more fun each time. The characters this year are anthropomorphic, and the first six weeks were spent playing one character a week to get a feel for their abilities. I settled on Quill Mudsong, a porcupine Spell Keeper.

Yesterday, while protecting some travelers, Quill engaged in five rounds of combat. Each round of combat required the following rolls: Wisdom (a failed roll results in the Attack roll being rolled twice, take the lower one), Attack (a successful hit allows a Damage roll), Damage (do enough Damage and stun your opponent, allowing you to skip the Defense roll), and Defense (a successful roll reduces the amount of damage you take).

Dice jail with 20-sided die trapped inside

As you might surmise from the title of this post, some of my rolls did not go well. I passed all of my Wisdom checks, but only succeeded at two of my Attack rolls, and only did enough Damage to stun the beast once. I’m not concerned about the hit points I lost; those can be restored through health potions and rest.

But the travelers I’m protecting… that’s another story. This particular combat came with a special mechanic of losing one traveler for each combat round where I failed to hit. Interestingly, I don’t know how many travelers I’m protecting, or for how long… the instruction provided a couple days ago was to track how many I’ve lost. Between the day they joined me (with a mediocre rolls) and yesterday’s combat, I’ve lost six; that’s half the possible losses across three days. But today’s rolls were made with a different d20; yesterday’s sits in dice jail presumably reflecting on those poor attack rolls.

Laughing at the spam

Spam has become pervasive for those of us with an online presence. Unlike my friend John, I’ve never tried making haikus from it, though I do have to laugh at how wildly untargeted some of the spam is. In this particular case, I’m focusing on comments posted to my blog – none of which you see because I have always had the comments set to moderated. I thought I’d break down some of them for educational and entertainment value.

Allegedly from a Gmail account, consistent enough to sign with the same name as the account (while not someone I know):It’s been a while, but I just read an article online about momsguidetothegalaxy.com and thought it was important to message you guys to disprove this article. It seems like there’s some unfavorable news that could be detrimental.” This includes a shortened link, so the goal is for me to click through to their site. Interestingly, this and most of the recent spam are in response to an August post about Wordle and related games.

Is that Russian? “Ещё можно узнать:” Google Translate says yes. Most of that comment was links, the preview hover on them shows multiple websites that I also can’t read.

Dental hygiene relates to Wordle… how? “If you’re dealing with bleeding gums, tooth decay and sewage breath… And if the thought of eventually losing your teeth does not let you sleep at night… You need to know this.” Link is to a video I’m fairly certain I do not want to watch. There are a couple like this, with different openings.

OK, I kind of like this one: “mukRgDKpG” This reminds me of losing a credit card in college, which someone tested by buying a dollar of gasoline, cluing the bank into the loss. Presumably if this comment was allowed, more spammy comments would appear from the same source soon.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO), podcasts to boost my audience, foot/nail fungus (ewww) miracle cures… it’s like there’s no limit to the subjects spammers will try.

Oh, excuse me, I must go reply to “You got 55 646 USD. Gо tо withdrаwаl => [plus URL]”… yes, that’s what they entered as their name. I’m so sure it’s legitimate that my eyes are rolling like dice.

Anyways, the lesson here is that spam is prolific and if you don’t know the person, don’t click on the link they sent you.

Some off-hand remarks

As I mentioned last week, I had surgery on my dominant hand. As you can imagine, that has made for an interesting few days, especially the first couple when my hand and forearm were bandaged.

I have for years been misusing the term “ambidextrous“. I’m not actually ambidextrous; I’m mixed-handed. This became an important distinction when one of my hands was temporarily out of commission. Ambidexterity is the ability to use both hands equally, which I definitely cannot do. I write and hold a fork left-handed, but crochet and hold a sword right-handed. Holding a fork right-handed, just for those first couple days of healing, felt unnatural, while crocheting left-handed seems awkward. Finger foods are fine on either side though. (Washing dishes one-handed was interesting too!)

Give it a try if you’re curious… stop and think about the item you’re about to use and see how it feels in your other hand.

Hand surgery: before & after

First of all, no before photo in this post… I couldn’t capture the bump on the back of my left hand well for a before photo. The after photo is completely bandaged, so nothing gruesome.

Before

Back in October, before I went to Montreal, my hand started hurting… just a little… and I noticed a bump just before the wrist. It disappeared during that trip, then returned in full force after Dorkstock, to the point where I headed to Urgent Care (5 minutes away) right after work one day. They quickly diagnosed it as a ganglion cyst and referred me to Orthopedics.

“But Frances,” I can almost hear you say, “that was 4 months ago. Why are you just having surgery now?”

The answer is there’s a process to follow before surgery. First we tried anti-inflammatory medication, and when that didn’t eliminate the cyst (though it did reduce the pain), the doctor drained it. Well, tried to… the cyst wasn’t particularly cooperative with the initial needle or the larger one she used next, as neither one managed to puncture the cyst to remove content. Despite that, the bump and related pain lessened for a bit, and she instructed me to give it about 6 weeks and reach out to a colleague who specializes in hands and wrists if it returned. I scheduled that appointment immediately after Capricon, had a 5 -minute appointment with the doctor to confirm that I wanted to move forward with surgery, and scheduled it for the next available date, which was a month out at the time.

The day before, the office called to give me a specific appointment time mid-afternoon, and reviewed the things I should avoid going into that day: alcohol, lotions, jewelry are the primary ones that come to mind. Arrival time was an hour before surgery time.

Once there, it was a lot of waiting time. Wait to check in, wait briefly in the waiting room, then wait for most of an hour in my pre-op room until the doctor came by to inject something numbing into my hand. Once that had time to settle, I took a luxurious wheelchair ride to the operating room, where the view of my hand was completely blocked by a draped sheet. I could feel poking and prodding happening, but no pain, and then my hand was bandaged up.

After

Left hand and forearm wrapped in bandages after surgery

After the procedure, I was wheeled back to my pre-op room, offered a snack, and told I could change back into my clothes once I was sure I was stable. At that point, my fingertips weren’t numb anymore, but the rest of my hand still was, including the knuckles and base of my fingers. It’s a weird sensation that lasted for hours; that area was still numb when I went to bed several hours later – and partially numb in the middle of the night.

By early morning, none of that numbness remained, though any pain is mostly limited to movement. Part of my release instructions are to move my fingers frequently, so I’ve experimented with different movements to see what’s comfortable. For example, typing sitting down is a bad angle for my wrist, but standing up seems to be OK. I’m also applying ice packs regularly and found a position at my work desk for keeping that hand elevated most of the time (including with an ice pack). The bandages stayed on for two days (coming off just before this post is live), and I have a follow-up appointment in just over a week to make sure it’s healing well.

In terms of other restrictions, well, the doctor said to listen to the hand… if something hurts, I’m probably not ready to do it yet.

The home repair project is done!

Well, this home repair project at least. As any homeowner can tell you, there will always be another one. (The kitchen faucet, for example. Or the couple lingering spots of green paint outside). But the work for this particular project resulting from the hailstorm and covered by the insurance finished with the garage door installation earlier this week.

An updated photo of the house, now with a white garage door and trim instead of brown.

Let me just say… damn, it looks good. I am immensely grateful to C&N Construction for doing the work and Allstate Insurance for covering the repairs. (I was going to say funding, but technically I suppose it’s funded by all of us customers paying our insurance bills.) Both companies worked together to make this a fairly painless process for their mutual customer.