Yeesh; I went to add a new post today, and couldn’t log in. I called my hosting service, and they discovered activity that suggests a brute force attack was underway to try to take control of my website. The IT guy I spoke with suggested it was common practice to break in and use a site to send spam emails and such, and they installed a capcha on my site to help prevent this from happening again.
The tech also noted that my site still seems to be loading slowly. He opened an actual ticket on the problem so that an admin will take a further look at it to see if something else problematic is going on.

To complicate matters, it seems that my most up-to-date laptop may be dying. More and more frequently, the cursor is non-responsive, particularly after the laptop has been in sleep mode. More often than not, I need to do a full shutdown to restore functionality. I hadn’t really budgeted for a new laptop, but it looks as though it needs to happen sooner rather than later. My dilemma now is, do I continue to use Macs, which I love, or do I switch to a PC? I’ve run into trouble several times recently with documents I’ve received back from editors not showing the editing comments and highlights, so maybe a Mac isn’t the best option any more if I want to be active (or more active) in submitting work for publication. A PC would be cheaper, but I shudder at the horror stories I hear about Windows 10 installs… and re-installs… and re-installs…

Even with al this, I managed to get an article submitted today, though it should have gone in yesterday. The tech issue with the laptop has been happening for about a week, and the glitch’s occurrence seems to be at about the same frequency, but the timing of that frequency is unpredictable. Here’s hoping I can get things sorted out, and soon.

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I missed posting last week. It was the first time in 2018 I’d missed a week. So far, I’m on track to post more often than last year, but frankly I’d hoped to get farther into the year before I skipped a post. So it goes.

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Just a reminder: I’m one of the guests of honor at Meeplestock this weekend. I’ll be on hand Saturday and Sunday, running games of Zombie Dice both days and jumping in to play in the occasional board game or RPG over the weekend. If you’re in the Stevens Point, Wisconsin area June 15-17, stop by, say hello, and play a couple of games. Proceeds go to charity…

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One last thing: I’ve been writing a series of character creation articles for Onyx Path lately. They haven’t really been hyping these articles much to the general public — not that I’ve seen, at least — but if you’re interested, the most recent one went up last Thursday (June 7) on Vampire: the Requiem 2nd Edition. It explains how to create a character as you follow along while I do it. Here’s a LINK to the newest one. They’re being posted every other week, so the next one should go up on Thursday June 21. I’ve also created characters for Exalted, Pugmire, and Scarred Lands/D&D 5E. I couldn’t find the older articles on the site; maybe you’ll have better luck. In any case, I hope your luck is better than mine has been over the last week or so. Cheers!