It's really too bad pork rinds are nasty. It's 3 times as much protein as fat, no carbs, the consistency of cheeze puffs... but a subtle undertone of rancid bacon grease.

But...

My fasting blood sugar this morning was 103. 103! One oh three. One hundred three. Not 130, mind you, but 103.

Low-carb dieting + eating breakfast earlier + small snack before bed = 103.

Even my after-meals peaks have been around the 120 range. Ladies and gentlemen, I have acheived tight control... and so far no nasty lows. W00t!

Once I start losing measurable weight I'm going to try skipping the Glucotrol. If my numbers don't climb out of happy range, I'll stay off it, call the doctor and say "wheeeee!" :)

My visit to Cypress Village on Saturday showed me that I really didn't like their townhouse style stuff anyway. They're older buildings, the loft is basically a little lost space rather than a neat open feeling, the patios are insubstantial, and the upgraded units (read: dishwashers and oak cabinets) are $590 a month. The garden-style apartment at that place is my #1 choice though. I timed my drive to the office from there: a little under 10 minutes, which is better than from here. There's no mucking around with construction and traffic before getting on the interstate, it's just a block away on a not-so-busy road.

The other places I've found with lower prices have had no-pet policies. I could have a 2-bedroom place for $450/month if I gave my cat to Steph. Not gonna do that though, I like the little vomiting furball :)

My Amazon preorder of the D&D 3.5 books shipped today. I was a little concerned by rumors that they were having problems and a lot of people were pulling out and buying from elsewhere.

Turns out that Knockdown can't be used with Whirlwind, so there's a whole bunch of fighter feats that aren't as valuable. I adjusted the Templar of Kossuth build to be a little less Fighter, more Templar. I wouldn't be me if I didn't spend many hours this weekend planning out other character options -- sometimes I think I spend as much time designing a character as I do playing it -- but I like this one best. I like the others just enough to know that there'll be times when the grass will be greener on the Rogue/Fighter side. But a Templar of Kossuth though in the Temple of Elemental Evil campaign is just choice -- a church of a fire god sending a warrior to kick the butts of their rivals. "I didn't come here to convert you to Kossuth, I came here to convert you to corpses." Hee!

I have, therefore, started painting the miniature in flame colors: red pants and sleeves, gold armor, orange trailing ribbon thingy. Haven't painted the weapon yet because I'm trying to figure out how I want to depict a chain that's magically burning, when I can't exactly model flames on it and I'm not such a hot painter. Haven't painted the skin or hair yet because I'm not sure if this is still Marabi. She's not an Elf, not a dancer, not a war fan specialist, not pretty or at all charismatic, has a totally different background story -- how can she still be Marabi?

But a name hasn't suggested itself yet. Something fire-related would be obnoxious and obvious, but that would suit her personality. Something like Singe or Kindle or Glare. Something that Glen Cook would name a northern city, heh. ;)

For gear, I'm thinking Everburning Chain (+2 flaming spiked chain that can catch people on fire when you trip them; not the min-maxer's ideal combination of enchantments but very much in the right flavor... and very inconvenient to a spellcaster) and Cape of the Fire Bath (+2 cloak of resistance with heat and fire protection, that looks like it's on fire). I mean, I'd just have to. ;) And the Pyro feat is a must too.

Posted 07:27 AM CST [Link] [Archives] [Index]

...oh yeah. I'm flying to Seattle tommorow for Microsoft DirectX Meltdown. Flying back Friday.

Name suggestions: Blaize, Skorch d'Sear [grin]

Good to hear you've got your blood sugar under control, Dave! :) Now you can find the most effective way to keep your levels within the range you need them to be in, and like you said, you can eventually get off the medicine and handle the situation yourself. :)

Oh, and I was invited to goto that Microsoft DirectX Meltdown thing. Why? I have no clue. Apparently Microsoft things I'm some sort of software developer. They also sent me an SDK CD. Weird.

Mostly I'm looking forward to the demo (and possible beta CD?) of the new DirectX performance analyzer. VTune and David's cool real-time performance graphs are good but they don't know what happens at the driver and hardware levels. We might be able to afford ten times as many polys but need to cut back on our textures, or vice versa.

I'm thinking the character's name will be Yanaqetra, just because. ;) I'm obsessing over this detail almost as much as the mechanics. The background story just sort of assembled itself. It's like this every time :P

Just for the record, I think that higher quality textures with lower polygon models produce a better looking scene overall... Of course they need to be nice textures, but you get what I'm saying. ;)