Weird Dice

Last night, I got to play in my bi-weekly Dungeons & Dragons campaign and I tell you, folks, the dice got weird.

I honestly don't think there was any dice fudging involved. I've really come to trust this group — plus this phenomenon happened to me as well.

Our session was top-to-bottom one entire battle. (I got to use my new 3D printed mini for the first time.) No breaks, just fight-fight-fight. That meant a lot of dice rolls.

Even given that, I've never seen so many 20s and 1s come up in one session — especially in row. One of our players had three 1s come up in a row, switching to different dice each time.

I suspect that if we had recorded all the rolls that night, the distribution would actually be pretty flat — but it did make it seem like luck was really turning for and then against us. So it did serve the goal of making it a fun experience.

Having those extremes is one of the features of having a design based around a single d20. The dice you choose for your central mechanic have a big impact on the feel of the game. I remember first hearing that on the Fear The Boot podcast.

The battle had some nice moments. Our opponents seemed pretty overwhelming at first, especially since we couldn't use most of our abilities. We had an initial plan, but that went sideways quickly. I wasn't sure we were going to make it

Then some reinforcements arrived and I thought everything's going to be OK — But they immediately got bogged down by foes. We did manage to turn the tide thanks to a wild leap from a way too tall tower by one member of the party.

I'm so glad to be in a regular RPG campaign again after so many years. I honestly didn't think I was actually going to get that chance again.

I have to thank our regular DM, our guest DM for this session and all the other players in the group. It really means a lot to me to be able to play.

I also have to thank the whole team at Ravenwood Tabletop for putting it all together. I'm so glad we have a place like that in my town. Check them out of you can.

Back At It

I'm back to posting again, after a bit of a break for personal reasons. Life sometimes comes at you pretty quickly.

One of my goals with this blog is to get in the habit of regularly posting, but I will say it got away from me late last year.

When I was last posting regularly, I did find I really did enjoy it. But it's hard to get started again.

I realized yesterday that I had something I wanted to post. So here we go again.

Digital Multimeter

This morning was the day I actually used my digital multimeter, purchased several months ago from a thrift store, for an actual productive use.

Yes, it was for testing a battery. And now it's back in its box and not cluttering up my desk.

It's the kind of technology that I always wanted to have around, just in case.

I bought my first multimeter from a hardware store after I had to fix one of our light switches. I had to get some help from a family member, because I messed it up. I thought I could replace a broken switch, but it turned out to be part of not one, but two, three-way circuits.

Part of the process of fixing it involved lots of testing which wires had current running through them. I thought that was really neat, and I wanted to get a tool that would do that. The fix worked, but we were left with one three-way pair of light switches that didn't work properly.

I figured that I could fix the problem, so I got that first multimeter. I never found the time to actually do it, so we called in a professional. She fixed it in a few minutes.

I'm also glad that I didn't have to mess around with the wiring when there was actual current running through it.

So now I have two of these things kicking around. They have been useful for testing batteries. I still hope to do some hobby electronics. Someday.

First Snow

This morning was the first time I woke up to find snow on the ground this season. It really does start to put me in a winter break kind of mood. I just had this vision of enjoying my coffee, watching the snow from inside. Know that I don't have to head out there anytime soon.

Of course, I know that this all presages lots of struggling through snow, shovelling the driveway, scraping ice and snow off the car, etc.

And there is a bunch of things that I want to get done before the winter break.

But for now, I can enjoy.

Windows Posting Test

This post is a test to see if I can get posting to the blog from my Windows laptop working. I'll update this post as I test it.

UPDATE: It works. I'm still struggling with the Makefile, but posting works.

Last updated November 9, 2025.

Weapons (2025)

No spoilers. I was advised to go in knowing nothing. And I think that's good advice.

I'm really glad we finally got to watch this one. I definitely had a lot of fun watching it. A great movie to end a long Saturday.

Quick Post

Writing has always been a thing of moods for me. Sometimes you're not going to feel like it at all.

That's one thing that I want to tackle with this daily writing practice. Force myself to write something even if I don't want to.

In my current role, I occasionally have to create or contribute to briefing notes. I used to live and work in Ottawa, so I would hear from friends about having to put together a briefing note at the last minute.

That sounded like something terrifying at the time. How do you write something that sounds even remotely good in a few hours? Even if it's a subject you know well.

I'm learning that I can build up that ability in myself. Mostly through practice, as you're seeing here. I know it's going to come in handy.

Homemade Granola

I have a nut allergy, and while it is generally mild it means I avoid eating nuts. This means I can't eat a lot of granola on store shelves.

When I was out in British Columbia, I got hooked on Rogers Granola, which used to have one non-nut flavour. Now they don't even list the non-nut flavour on their website.

I was complaining about this when my sibling suggested I make my own. Apparently they do this all the time and it is really easy.

And I can now attest that is is actually very easy. I found this simple granola recipe that has no nuts. I add pumpkin seeds, raisins, cranberries and whatever else I want.

I make a big bag and it servers me well throughout the week. It's great for commuting days when I have to eat breakfast on the go.

Anyway, I still have to perfect my technique. This morning I found a chunk of brown sugar that hadn't been completely dissolved. Not really an unpleasant surprise, but not perfect either.

Reading Excel Workbooks with DuckDB

I've been using DuckDB a lot more lately It's a database, but one focused on analytics. And it's very simple to install and use.

I've been using it more an more since they added the UI extension. It really lets you just dive right into using it with a notebook interface. Also, the notebook contents is stored in a database file and is automatically versioned.

I started another data analysis today. Not a very strange occurrence since it is my job. Since I've been working on database stuff and I didn't want to shift gears, I wanted to load the data into DuckDB and work on it there.

It was easy enough to import the excel sheet and everything seemed to work. I verified that it had imported the data by checking some of the summary stats I had been provided with. All good.

But then I noticed something strange: there seemed to be a lot of missing data. Then I noticed that the table created by reading the excel file had over 4 million rows. And this from a spreadsheet with under 2 000 rows.

I specified the range incorrectly, I believe. So it just added all those empty rows. Fun times!

Line Endings

Windows posting works, except it uploads files with Windows line endings. And that breaks CSS and probably other things.

I know how to fix it, but I won't be able to implement the solution until later this week.