Hmm. Looks like I need to clean my glasses before I take my picture.

Sheesh this month is just flying by. I am still in the process of getting over my cold and Thanksgiving preparations are in full swing. As I speak we are prepping the brine for our manly 22lb turkey. Got some cleaning done today and tomorrow is geared up to be a full day of cleaning and food prep. Although if we work things out just right I'm hoping we just might be able to squeak in a screening of The Muppets before bedtime. So pumped to see that.

Well, off I go to get myself all doped up on Mucinex.

Yay?!?!

So yeah, once again, I'm typing this up last minute right before I go to bed. So I'm not likely to do that much in terms of bonus points and the like. Or, if you like, you guys just aren't very inspiring in your manly pursuits these days and thus are undeserving of my virility-encroached leavings.

Let me just mention this then.

Recently we started a book club on The Tome Show. It forces me to read a book a month and it gives me a place to put all the gaming books I read in terms of the show. Plus I've been able to leverage it into opportunities to talk to some awesome authors.

We are combining the months of November and December in order to keep our sanity, and we are doing an easy read, to boot. Specifically, the D&D comic #1-12. A couple days ago I started re-reading them in preparation.

I recalled liking them. On re-read, I am now loving them. They ease a person into the world well, they build story in meaningful ways that are long-form but not overwhelming (there are hints in issue 1 that I now realize didn't pay off until somewhere around issue 10) and there is a lot more that I'm seeing the second time around that we haven't seen play out. This tells me there are a lot of planned stories.

They are an exceedingly fast read but each issue feels like it moves and develops the story.

What's best, it captures the feel and humor of what playing D&D is all about without hitting you over the head with it. If I want to I can recognize good encounter design, certain powers being used, and setting constructs. But never do I feel like the story is constrained by these things or do I feel like I can see the dice rolling.

If you have any history with D&D. If yo have any interest in fantasy. If you like fun, light hearted but well developed and written stories, pick up the D&D comics. Seriously. And they're all available digitally, so there's no reason you can't pick them up.

Oh, and Khal, the dwarf...he's got a beard and he's a poet who longs for the love of a woman...and there's a plague. So that's beards, boobs, and "cancer" all rolled up in there. It's relevant...what?

Manly Points:

Chris - 70

Beard A Non - 110

Drew - 175

Wesley - 237

Bob - 234

Duane - 130

Brian - 207

Cmaaarr - 243

Fred - 89

Jeffrey - 232

Kris - 225

Michael - 56 (+5 for putting his money where it's non-manly face will be)

Pete - 225 (+2 for the funny post, +2 for the portal picture, -1 for stealing my close person friend, the companion cube)

Brian E - 115

A Dam - 207

Jim - 226

Wannes - 169

Chooch - 210

Jason - 165 (-2 for having a vaguely Christmas-related post before Thanksgiving)

Much more progress was made on my band's new album last night and tonight. All of the lead guitars are now down. Ready to finish vocals, fiddle, and finally the little extra pieces to complete the puzzle.

Its frustrating sitting on this stuff for so long. We're so proud of what we're creating, I just want to post and spread each song as it comes into shape.

Not much longer now, though!

Would you like a j€lly baby?

Any momentum I have as far as sponsorship is currently the object at rest kind. But I shall not give up! Behold my beard, and tremble (dropping loose change that I can put in my sponsorship bucket).

My younger two daughters (Kiddo2 and Kiddo3) are now feeling a bit off, which amplifies some very different aspects of their personalities. Kiddo3 is very sweet, and really just wishes she felt better. Kiddo2 is... less sweet. Like lemons.

Kiddo1 is feeling fine, so she tried to make them feel better by putting on a puppet show using puppets of our family Kiddo3 made in pre-school. Luckily my wife was doing the dishes, as I'm not sure she would have enjoyed the show. While puppet me quickly disappeared off to work, puppet wife went on a tirade that went something like this: "I'm grumpy mamma, and I don't like holidays! I don't like Halloween at all! Christmas is a pain, and we don't have room for any more junk anyhow. Harrumph... I guess Thanksgiving is OK."

Assume the Party Escort Submission Position, or you will miss the party!

The enrichment center would like to remind you that all* donations to me go to orphans**, sick orphans***, sick orphans with puppies****. So donate today, so you can triumphantly yell to the world "I am the savior of boobs and tiny, enslaved, diamond mining, insanely cute orphans*****!"

*Lies

**There are no orphans

***Nope, still no orphans

****The puppies might be real, but the orphans still aren't.

*****Really now? Really? Would someone actually believe this? The boobs are real though, I assure you.

The New Face of Face

Man. Yesterday blew. Not only did I have a bunch of crap to do in a rush, but then my computer got a nasty malware that stopped me from doing any of it for a full hour. Little bastard set everything on the computer to 'hidden' and 'read only' so it looked like my files were gone, and then tried to sell me a fake antivirus software. Good thing I'm smarter than they are.

Today all that's sucking is that I lost my Speedy Rewards card and had to get a replacement so I can keep earning gas points at Speedway, and that they keep running the leaf blower right outside my office window.

Fortunately there's a long weekend coming!

Should I shave or should I grow?

It just occurred to me that I have a decision to make when December 1st hits. Keep the beard? Sculpt to my default Van Dyck? Go back to baby face? I dunno.

I will most likely leave the decision up to my wife. She's the one who has to look at me, after all..and it doesn't really matter one way or the other. As long as the money rolls in for the boobies this month!

Between setting the timer and getting in front of the lens, I managed to twinge it again. That's real pain in my expression, people.

With doing sports comes the risk of injury and volleyball can be particularly hard on the ankles. I've twisted dozens of ankles over the course of my career and it had been quite some time since the last one, so I was probably overdue, but still...

After an attempted block, I landed on the hitter's foot and rolled my ankle. Not too badly this time, I think. In fact, I'm hopeful that by the time my next game rolls around, on the 30th, I may be able to play while braced up and somewhat gimpy.

You know what's worse than a gimpy ankle, though? A gimpy breast. There's not much you can do for my ankle, but a couple of dollars might just be the difference between a healthy breast and a non-healthy breast. So, chip in a few bucks, would you?

One of us is asleep. Can you guess which one?

I'm tired, so few words tonight. This is Spot, my girlfriend's cat. I believe he is the perfect yin to my yang, as we've both got spotty patches in our fur.

Word Count: 25270, 1210 Today.

Did I mention starting new fictional works is hard? Yeah, but I did it. Onward!

Less and less of a prickly beard, according to the missus. Good, because I was feeling it too.

And just in time for the colder weather, my face shall now be warm again.

Onward to moar beard!

"[on Michael Jackson]

Honey, you gotta pick a race first. All of a sudden you're a black man, then you're Diana Ross, now you're Audrey Hepburn. Then he's got the little beard going on. He's like Lord Of The Rings, the entire cast. Michael's about to jump species."

- Robin Williams

And, lo, it was time for the three week report:

*personal sponsorship: $40 (It seems that things have continued to stall. But the home stretch still lies before us. Let's do this!)

*HoNoToGroABeMo total sponsorship: $2368.01

*beard: weaving itself into appropriate bushy formation

Many thanks to all those who have sponsored a beard! If you haven't yet, please do, as it's for the best cause of all!

Your bit of disturbing trivia this day is to learn that there exists a forum called the Beard Board. There, one might find a forum thread started by someone displaying their three-weeks-worth of growth. Sadly, this effort is not for boobs, and some of the comments that follow are borderline disturbing.

On second thought, forget that, and just back away slowly...

Descriptor of the day: hedge-vectors

Hint: See code page 437

Wow. This is an all-time low. We're two-thirds of the way through this whole thing and here I am with a grand total of four beard photos? I am full of fail. And I apologize.

It gets worse. I'm in a wedding this weekend. I am, in fact, the best man. Now, I don't think I'd cause a huge amount of strife with the groom (or his bride-to-be) if I showed up to his nuptials looking like Grizzly Adams in a tux. But I'd prefer not to test the friendship. Which means... well... a shave and a haircut.

To attempt in some way to make up for wussing out, I would like to draw as much attention to HoNoToGroABeMo as I can. I'm just a humble country blogger and I don't have a huge amount of draw, but what I do have is a $50 ThinkGeek gift certificate code. I think the people who follow me on GeekDad and Twitter and Facebook like themselves some ThinkGeek, and hate themselves some cancer, so... I'm experimenting.

I'm posting every day until the end of the month. And there will be a hint in each daily beard photo that will slowly unveil the gift certificate code.

Clearly, donating money is not required, though it is, of course, immensely appreciated. If you come here every day and check out my beardly progress (or lack thereof), you should be able to figure out the code and use it. Hopefully you can do this before other people snatch it up. But you don't have to donate a single red cent to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation in order to win. Although you should.

But when I hit $500 in donations , I will add another $50 gift certificate to the mix. This one will be a random drawing from anyone who leaves a comment on my beard updates. Which means you should start commenting now, just in case. ;)

If I hit $1000... well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. But it'll be big. I promise.

In short:

• Visit every day to get each hint
• Leave a comment every day, just in case we hit $500 in donations to the BCRF
• Donate! Because, honestly, that's what this is all about: fighting some cancer and saving some boobies!
• Spread the word so that we hit $500 in donations!

Note: ThinkGeek or HoNoToGroABeMo have nothing to do with this. This is all me. If it's illegal, then it's all my fault.

We got some beard conditioner, most people call it snow.

Not much today. Just beard training. Keep growing my brothers in beardliness!

This is me. Podcasting with a beard. You'll have to trust me on this, since I didn't set up the webcam to show the mic...so deal with it.

So tonight we podcasted again. We had a decent live audience this time around and it was a blast. We should do that again sometime. And we gave away a copy of the book we were discussing, which is awesome. But the other side of that is that it means things went late (that's what happens when you podcast with guests in Brazil, I guess). So, this is the end of the post and I'll be doing Many Points without bonus points again...deal with it, you're supposed to be a man!

Chris - 70

Beard A Non - 110

Drew - 165

Wesley - 227

Bob - 224

Duane - 130

Brian - 207

Cmaaarr - 233

Fred - 89

Jeffrey - 232

Kris - 225

Michael - 41

Pete - 212

Brian E - 115

A Dam - 197

Jim - 226

Wannes - 159

Chooch - 190

Jason - 157

I thought my beard had a reddish tint; now I see it's actually purple.

I beg your pardon?

How dare you question the bona fides of my digital daguerreotype, sir! The very suggestion that the likeness I have presented for your examination and appreciation could possibly be anything but the genuine article is not only patently absurd but also the very height of rudeness!

I'm afraid I rather don't like your tone, sir. Your implications, nay, I daresay accusations are quite unfounded and in having the gall to make them you show yourself to be a cad and a bounder. Of all the cheek, sir! Of all the cheek! This is an outrage, and I won't stand for it!

There! You see? That was calfskin, sir, and I doubt you've felt the like of it in your miserable life, even striking you across the cheek! I demand satisfaction! Pistols at dawn or a sizable donation to our bosom preservation fund. It's your choice, but in your shoes I ought to opt for the latter, as I am an early riser and a crack shot.

You must choose, sir, but choose wisely!

And on the seventh day there was gin

So look at this planet I have created. Perhaps I will populate it with little people and make them dance to my will! Though I should probably create some land first, or give them some boats, lest they drown.

Day Twenty featured a heroine who likes to take pictures. One possibility is Fatal Frame, where you take pictures of ghosts to defeat them. Another is Pokemon Snap, where you get Pokemon to do fashion poses (beats using them in a glorified dog-fighting ring). In retrospect, both would have qualified as vintage, being more than 10 years old. But silly me, I go for the more recent Beyond Good and Evil, which also has the distinction of having the most obscure title of the set. In this game, the heroine, Jade, is a photojournalist who uses her camera to collect evidence against the evil government. It's most an action-adventure game, but also sort of a sandbox game, in that there is a large world to explore and you expose the game's plot as you go.

Beyond Good and Evil reviewed well, but possibly because Prince of Persia: Sands of Time got most of the marketing budget that season, sold poorly. Despite that, an HD version was created in 2011 for download from Playstation Network and Xbox Live, and there is a sequel in the works, so stay tuned for more adventures of Jade.

Thhhbbbbbbbt!

Perhaps my late nacht compromised my immune system. Perhaps people don't know the importance of hand washing (NEVER eat the bar nuts.) Or perhaps I was just "lucky" enough to randomly contact a bit of a bug. Any way you slice it, I have my first cold of the season. The timing of colds is never really good, but this one really is not to be desired. I am pumping myself full of fluids (wow. that's poor phrasing on my part) and vitamins in an effort to thwart this thing by Wednesday. Wish me luck.

Are you feeling alright, old ¢hap?

So I took the beard to work today, and nobody commented. That might not seem strange, but the last time I was in the office would have been on the 7th (which is the day I shaved off the old beard) and everyone said something then. Sort of figured someone would at least mention it. Maybe they forgot I shaved if off at all.

Then again, I only sat at my desk for 45 minutes and spent the rest of the day in meetings (mostly with the same people).

21 November 2011

...and a powerful ally it is!

Life creates it, makes it grow.

Its energy surrounds us and binds us.

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.

You must feel the Beard around you.

(Yes, I am playing with my son's Star Wars Force Trainer. It converts Delta waves from your dome and translates it to a fan that keeps a ball suspended in the tube you see on the right. Great for practicing focus and concentration, and generally feeling like a Jedi badass.)

Look out, he's got a Bob-omb!

Vacation week has begun, and I almost forgot my beard photo for today. Don't mind the crazy hair and fanged grin on my face, that's how I typically look in the morning before my 12 cans of Mountain Dew.

So my beard is filling in very nicely, however the donations seem to have run dry. I need call upon the power of my ancestors to energize my standing! I'm sure Uncle Mario Mario, Second cousin Luigi Mario, First Cousin twice removed Dennis Hopper will come through, they just gotta!