Tom Hartmann- Raving Socialist Moron of the Day

There’s something about Vampire: the Eternal Struggle players and Keynesian Socialism. I was previously unaware of just how deep this ideology was entrenched amongst VTES players until Facebook came around and I started seeing all of their updates. Holy snikees. Every freaking day I’m seeing updates from such left-wing rags like Media Matters, Raw Story, and who the hell knows what else. I can understand the left’s frustration with Fox News, but the answer is not just to spread your own version of historical fiction.

Kevin, who’s consistently my only reader, brought this to my attention off of David Cherryholmes’s Facebook update.

Continue reading Tom Hartmann- Raving Socialist Moron of the Day

Susan M Greene’s Notary Business is Here to Shake You Down

There’s a little business in San Diego called Susan M Greene Notary. It’s specifically located in Solana Beach and is owned by Susan Green. Note that his is not the same Susan M Green whom the California State Bar Association has located in Northern California. This Susan Greene is just a notary, not an attorney. This is an important distinction as you’ll soon see. Ms. Greene is joined in this duty by an Assistant named Joseph Click, JD. Yet it turns out he’s not the same Joseph Click who’s listed in the California State Bar Association either. According to Susan Green, he has a law degree, but has not actually passed the bar.

How did I learn all of this? Well, that’s quite a strange story. The beginnings of which are even stranger. You see, this story started in 1991 when George W. Bush signed the Telemarketing Consumer Protection Act. As part of that law, any company that called someone on the “do not call” list or any company who ended up using an autodialer to dial a cellphone or pager number is in violation of the law. As such, according to the law, the offending party owes the owner of the number compensation. Honestly, the idea that a consumer was due personal damages for the crime of a phone call bothered me a bit at the time, because it seemed possible for someone to make it there living to go after people who call them on the phone. It turns out that one such person was James Kinder.  Continue reading Susan M Greene’s Notary Business is Here to Shake You Down

Call for Action: Join the Poker Player’s Alliance

If you aren’t an avid poker player, you may not have heard that the Department of Justice/FBI have recently take some very aggressive action against the game of poker as played through the internet. How aggressive? Well, just click on over to any one of FullTiltpoker, Pokerstars, or Absolutepoker and you’ll find the following notice.

The Banner Annoucing the Seisure of Poker Sites
The signs of tyranny

It spells out the that these sites have been seized as part of a larger criminal legal action against these companies and the individuals who run them. They’re out for blood… and money of course. Continue reading Call for Action: Join the Poker Player’s Alliance

My First Letter to Mavis Dadzie

Dear Mavis,

I’ve been your sponsor for a number of years now. I’ve lost track as to how many. I hope things are going well for you and that it’s making a difference in your life. Since this is my first letter, I guess I’ll tell you a bit about myself.

I have a 9-year old daughter. I attached her picture so you can see her. She’s almost your age. We have a lot of fun together. I got divorced from her mother a long time ago. I think that it was the sense of loss from the divorce that caused me to decide to become a sponsor.

These days I’ve gotten remarried. A lot of time people in these circumstances fight quite a bit with their former spouses, but I am lucky in that we all get along very well. My ex-wife and my new wife work together with me to give our daughter a good childhood, and it makes me very happy.

As for what I do, I’m a professional gambler. There’s a card game called Poker that I make a good bit of money at. I find it strange that I receive more money doing something that doesn’t really give much back to society. I went to college and got degrees in Chemistry and Geology, but pursuing those jobs just didn’t pay very well. In fact, my first job was working for the Department of Justice in a Crime Lab to help put away criminals. I made so little in that job that I couldn’t afford to pay back the loans I took out to go to school.

I’m sure this all must seem rather strange to you. We live in very different worlds. I am curious to hear what life must be like in Ghanna. Again, I hope my modest contribution is making a difference in your life.

I look forward to hearing from you,
Preston

None Dare Call It Marxism

Once upon a time, back when Vampire: the Eternal Struggle Collectible Card game was actually in print, I played a fair amount of it. Then we all ended up friending each other on Facebook. And then Facebook recommends other friends based on the friends you have, and pretty soon you have people on your Facebook friends you’ve never met. That’s all well and good, but inevitably you end up in these political discussions with “friends” who are really strangers and you realize you have no common ground with these people. Worse, you don’t have the luxury of death actually meeting these people to keep things civil.

These exchanges tend to be a waste of time. Inevitably I end up discussing politics with people who parrot a few tidbits of history to support their rather outlandish points of view. These kind of discourses them to be rather tiresome, but I thought the one I had today was rather funny.

Let’s take a look. Continue reading None Dare Call It Marxism

A Rewrite of the “Replaying” Section of the Pathfinder Society Guide

Pathfinder has increasingly become my roleplaying game of choice; there is also a growing division between those players who prefer its Adventure Paths (geared toward smaller groups in a home-setting) to its ‘Society’ games (designed for the typical one-shot run at a gaming convention). Breaking it down, Adventure Paths are written to tell a coherent storyline over the effective lifetime of your characters — which, for most Adventure Paths, is level 1 to around 12 or 14. Society games tend toward a similar character lifetime (levels 1-12), but are instead a series of adventures which return the character to an episodic stasis at the end of each adventure. Not surprising, these adventures tend to lack the expected niceties of an overarching plot, or even recurring NPCs, though, you’re often playing these adventures with a different assortment of players from one Society game to another.

I begun hosting Pathfinder Society games at my home in order to meet new Pathfinder players, the ultimate goal being to find those who would be interested in engaging in a more regular Adventure Path game. Surprisingly, to me anyway, I came across some exclusively interested in Society games. It seemed the main appeal there was the official nature of the Society game: requiring the GM to register each section online plus filling out a Chronicle sheet for each player that specifically documents their progress over that adventure. This allows the player to attend a convention and play an officially sanctioned character (which he or she has played before) that has been built up over the course of several adventures. For some players, it would seem this engenders a sense of accomplishment; if the Pathfinder session in which they’re currently playing (read: Adventure Path) isn’t furthering this official standing of their character — they just aren’t interested.

Continue reading A Rewrite of the “Replaying” Section of the Pathfinder Society Guide

Coming Out of the Dark

It would seem that my wife Auby has a number of friends who are really unstable. Who’d have thought it possible that the woman who loved Jesse the loser/stalker/pizza delivery boy would ever show such lack of good character judgement in general?

Well, long story short, the old prestonpoulter.com was hosted on her bipolar friends site, and he was an amazing jerk to deal with. He was always abrasive when he was asked to do his job. Here’s an example,

Me: Pardon me, but the site’s been down for a few days.

Him: Can’t you see how busy I am. How dare you interrupt me!
I’m going to come and bother you when you play poker.

Yea, I’m not sure why, but but poker made it into every conversation I ever had with the guy. I suppose he had some special resentment in his heart reserved for poker players. Anyway, I get tired of this kind of treatment, so I told him where to stick it. In retaliation, he’s holding all of the data from the old site hostage.

He can suit himself. I’ll be filing suit. I do so love my opportunities for litigation. I get to steeple my fingers nefariously, and laugh maniacally.

Meanwhile, the site has a new look. The old site was dedicated to the whole “Preston and author of doomsday book” aspect. Well I’m way too busy playing cards and doing other stuff to worry about promoting a book, so the blog really became a collection of the thoughts I would rattle off when I had the time- which always tended to revolve around the same topics: Poker, Gaming, Judo, gold, and government.

Since that’s what I seem to talk about, I figure that’s what I’d dedicate the new site to. The header for my site is comprised of images that reflection those interests. Going from left to right, we have:

  • Pocket Aces- a hand close to every poker players heart.
  • Gwendolyn- my favorite of the Inner Circle members from the now out-of-print Vampire: the Eternal Struggle collectible card game.
  • Cassia Riley, a Penthouse Pet. Women in general and porn stars in particular have always been a special interest to me.
  • The Hand of Faith golden nugget. The largest golden nugget ever discovered until just recently, it’s housed at the Golden Nugget Casino- another gambling tie in.
  • Judo- a sport I do with my daughter and enjoy.

So there ya have it. I wish to welcome everyone to my new home. I’ll be putting stuff out more frequently as I move to get my old data back.

A Rough Draft for a Gamma World Character Sheet

I was really unhappy with the character sheet included in the new Gamma World game. The new Gamma World is clearly attempting to dummy down a RPG into something that is more akin to a board game, and I support that. However, in their effort to make the game seem easy, they made a character sheet that just doesn’t have room for enough information on it. So I threw this one together. It’s a rough draft right now, because I don’t have time to clean it up until I get back in town from Texas for Christmas. Oh yea, and I’m getting married on New Year’s Eve as well.

Anyway, if anyone’s interesting in evaluation this rough draft character sheet and providing me with any suggestions, feel free to leave comments.

Here’s the sheet.