Tresspassers Will

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:51:31 GMT

RIP Little Baby
A Kitten of 16 Years
1993-2009

I know I was your favorite. You were my favorite, too. Shine on, you crazy star.

World of Warcraft

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:52:54 GMT

I would like to play a fantasy adventure MMO. But I do not want to play World of Warcraft. That's about the only option out there and I dislike it. There are so many things that annoy me that I can't remember them all.

Mostly, though, it's lousy game design. The game is like a prom dress make of carpet remnants (thank you, Futurama) in so many ways. Whenever enough (or loud enough) players whine about a problem, the developers nerf it into the ground, then tweak the game's math to keep it from popping back up. My friend Bryan left WoW for six months and now he barely recognizes some of his old characters. His priest, a healer, is now the #3 damage-dealing class in the game. Why do the developers make such huge changes? Because their original class designs were cobbled-together, rushed, and never playtested adequately. As of the initial alpha version of the game, there were no class designs. Each class was "you have this armor, these types of weapons, and these spells". The only differences between two characters of the same class was going to be the gear they found. So they rushed the talent trees into the game and have been fixing them ever since.

The whole game is just so... bleh.

ConCarolinas!

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 03:34:39 GMT

I was at ConCarolinas all weekend, playing some major D&D! I played five LFR modules and judged two more. I had a ton of fun, but the con experience has its upsides and downsides. You meet a lot of new people and can earn some major xps, but some of the people you run into are just... special. The gaming coordinator, Greg, was pressed for DMs, so I was on a table judged by this lady with serious pronunciation difficulties. I don't want to be insensitive, but when you're basically going to be talking for four hours straight in a loud room and you have to deal with all kinds of random fantasy names, speaking clearly is vital.

The other major downside in LFR is magic item distribution. Each character is allowed to find one magic item per character level. At the end of each module, there's five or six different items you can choose from, or you can get extra gold this time and save your magic item pick for later. The problem is in the magic items to module authors choose. Ideally, you'd want all the magic items in all the adventures to include a wide variety of items so that no matter what type of weapon, armor, or implement a character uses, you can find something you want. However, there was apparently no communication between module writers (or no central authority that decided the magic items) so oftentimes you have random crap to choose from. For instance, my highest-level character was having trouble finding any armor he could use, so he bought a particular type of armor that doesn't hinder his acrobatics or walking speed like most armor. But now that he's leveled up a few times since then, he's going to have to save up all his money for quite some time or break down and pick some other kind of armor. At least he's not as bad off as Shamans. Shamans are a more recent class that uses an implement type (totem) that didn't exist when the first wave of modules were written, so any Shamans are going to basically be locked in to buying and upgrading their totem and will be at the mercy of mod writers for the rest of their items. I am interested in any news from WotC about changes to the loot system in LFR (although I haven't heard an acknowledgment from official sources that there is a problem...)

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:56:24 GMT

My hurt wrist is doing better, but I still have to favor it some, so my other wrist is getting sore from the extra strain. Last night the were even more heavy-ass boxes than usual and I was so sore when I got off work I just wanted to cry.

I've been talking to the ranking official on duty during my shift for almost a week now. He says that the hub manager had to ask Legal what he was supposed to do. That secretly pleased me, because it means that FedEx could be legally responsible for my injury and thus my bills. Basically he said, "We're asking our lawyers if you can sue is. If you can, we'll probably pay."

flops like a noodle

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:08:49 GMT

Waaah. So tired. Right now I'm on "light duty" at work, which means fewer hours in a different area. Instead of picking up boxes and loading them, I'm moving certain boxes from one conveyor belt to another. There's rollers in between the two (thank goodness), so I'm just sliding the boxes, not lifting them. Even so, I can't really favor my hurt wrist much. And it's still hard work.

Ow ow

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 06:00:07 GMT

fell at work yesterday night. Caught myself with left hand, bruised wrist. V. painful. People at work didn't say jack crap about seeing a doctor, but during training they said that you're supposed to see the company doctor first. Not that I recalled that little detail while I was sobbing in pain! So after i left work, my mom took me to the emergency room. Mind you, she spent 30 mins on the phone trying to get through to the people at work and left a message which nobody returned.

So tonight they basically bitch me out for not following procedures. I didn't wait to see the company doctor, I didn't call them back in the morning. I don't even remember them saying to call them in the morning. I was scared, in a lot of pain, and shaken up. Bah.

Work

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:33:55 GMT

Work is hard. Working at FedEx is a bitch. I've been there three weeks and I'm still sore as a--anyway, really sore. Standard load rate is 400 packages an hour which is about 9 seconds per package, up to 75 pounds by yourself. At the end of my second week, I was up to about 250/hour, which was looking good because the minimum for working there is 290/hour. Last week, though, my productivity slowly dropped down to 200/hour. I've never been in shape before, and this job definitely demands muscles and speed.

My brother's load rate has been consistent and about the same as my lowest. However, my manager has been more forgiving and when it's obvious I can't keep up with the flow of packages, she's gotten someone to jump in and help me. My brother's manager has pretty much let him sink or swim on his own and if he doesn't get his load rate up by the end of the week, they're going to fire him.

Carlos, my sister's boyfriend of three years or so, is who told me about this job. Apparently, his father told him he wouldn't be tough enough to keep the job, so he got angry and wanted to prove him wrong. Also, apparently Carlos had a freakish obsession with being at the top of the productivity chart. I don't want to put myself through this much pain. I've been taking ibuprofen every night when I get home from work because I've been so sore.

Oh, and another thing. My shift is from 11:00 at night 3:30 in the morning. Night shift workers are at a greater risk for depression and sleep problems. As a person who's already being treated for both, I'll need to change shifts as soon as I can if I'm going to keep this job.

Sometime Soon(tm) there will be an opening at the pharmacy where my two sisters work. I'd be running a cash register in the front of the store. The pay is lower and there are more hours, but it's not a grueling, hellish... stint in hell. I'm tired and words aren't working very well right now.

I'm back on antidepressants and seeing a therapist again. God, I hate living with my parents.

Job!

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 01:09:54 GMT

FedEx called me back! I'm supposed to call back tomorrow and they'll tell me when I can start! It'll be on the midnight shift, 11pm to something as a package handler. I'm still not sure about working at night. Although the night shifts pay $1.00 more an hour, I'll need to walk there at least sometimes and I don't know if there are lockers or anything to keep stuff like a flashlight in. Still, yay job!

Say it with me now

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:48:44 GMT

I find waggle dance to be the most amusing Wikipedia article title I've read.

That is all.

State of me

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:56:14 GMT

Currently my hair is getting long, which means it says HAY GUYS I'M WAVY. When brushed, it does this synchronized wave thing so I have a long furrow in my hair. Plus, it's so thick, it takes a ridiculous amount of rinsing to get all the shampoo out of it.

Currently in the doldrums of depression and I keep getting the urge to eat myself happy. I keep wanting to eat pizza and ice cream, but it always reminds me how crappy I'm feeling. I'll be seeing the psychiatrist at the end of November. It's the earliest appointment they had.

I may be able to get a job with the sheriff's department. Apparently, most people who've actually had a job don't really like the sheriff's department. It may be the fucked-up work schedule: twelve hour shifts for three days followed by three days off. But no drugs and no criminal history is a cinch for me. I don't know if my metabolism will agree with their break schedule, though. Or my 10 hours a night sleep ~~habit~~ needs.

Also, I hate working with my parents. They bicker over every. little. thing. When I moved into my second apartment, I wasn't really sure why I loathed the idea of moving home.

I've been really irritable lately and when I get angry at my mom, I keep trying to justify why I'm angry, but it always winds up that I'm angry because she loves me. So I'm angry because I'm feeling shitty, which makes me feel shitty about feeling shitty...

Pre-release, whooo!

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:47:59 GMT

Saturday I went to the Shards of Alara pre-release event with my friend B. It was my first ever Magic: the Gathering event; mostly I've played against B or on the free servers of Magic Online. B is quite experienced at this and used to be an official Magic judge. He could've even gotten paid to judge Magic, but that takes a bit more dedication to it than he wanted.

I had two major problems Saturday. The first was that I was only half-rested after sleeping on B's couch, I hadn't eaten much that morning, and I was nervous as hell, with the butterflies in my stomach that I get when D&D combats get really intense.

On the other hand, I had been following the spoilers closely. I knew what to expect as well as you can when you've never played an event before. In this respect, I had a significant advantage over the young kid who was there, cheerfully commenting on the cards he was opening in a Ralph Wiggum-style voice. "There's an awful lot of gold cards in this set." "Ooo, a dragon! Did you get a dragon?" Etc., etc.

The great thing about sealed deck is that your budget doesn't matter. Everybody has the same chance at the same cards. It's on you to build the best deck you can and squeeze all you can out of it in play.

But sometimes, there is nothing you can do with the cards you get. That was my other problem. I opened crap. Every single good card I got is the kind that gets awesome if you have enough of the right stuff to support it. Afterwards, B gave it a shot and even he couldn't do anything with it. There are a number of big, beefy creatures in this set that pretty much say "I win". This card pool has none of those.

I'm looking forward to trying it again, though. There's no way I could get screwed this hard twice.

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 04:09:06 GMT

When I moved back home, I found a little notebook of scratch paper from high school. I mainly used it to write down assignments, but since I always had it with me, I would jot down poetry in it, too. As it was starting to get full, I began writing poems on the backs of pages that had assignments on them, so it's like this capsule of nostalgia. On one page, there's a note to read "Chapter 17 age of exploration and the scientific rev," then Jack London's The Iron Heel. I don't remember ever reading that book. Then there's a sketch choreographing a 3D animation I was making. Then there's "Tuesday AP exam II".

And on the other page, there's
I'm tired of the pressure
To get into college
I'm tired of the pressure
To make good grades
I'm tired of the pressure
To write some paragraph
I'm tired of the pressure
To write some page!
I'm tired of the pressure
To find a topic
I'm tired of the pressure
To learn, learn LEARN!
I'm tired of the pressure
To challenge, challenge, CHALLENGE!
I'm tired of the pressure
To DO, DO, DO!
I'm tired of the pressure
To DON'T, DON'T, DON'T!
I'm tired of the pressure
To pull the trigger
I'm tired of the pressure
To stay on the ledge
I'm tired of the pressure
To wine her, dine her, mine her!
I'm tired of the pressure
To please him, squeeze him, need him!
I'm tired of the pressure
To do for me, me, me!
I'm tired of the pressure
To do for you, you, you!
I'm tired of the pressure
To not be tired!

I'm just tired...

Weird dream

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:43:46 GMT

Oh man, I has the weirdest dream last night. It started out at Autobot headquarters, where their main computer was running out of power, so we needed to recharge it. However, at just that time, some guy from around town discovered a device that turns any vehicle into into a Decepticon! And he started tooling around town in a crane and attacking the Autobots with some bucket appendage.

Then it got really interesting. I could either hide in the Autobot base or I could go do something helpful. So far, the dream has been extremely vivid and real and I was afraid of getting clobbered by the Decepti-crane, but I realized it was a dream and told myself that if I get hurt, I'll just wake up, so I can go have adventures.

Then I went to some big store, where I ran into this lady with about five dogs on leashes. One of them was Falkor the luck dragon disguised as a small dog, so I held his little paw and wished for the ability to turn a vehicle into an autobot to help fight the bad guys.

Soon I would up at the bad guys' apartment, where I found some large truck operating manuals. I picked one of them up and wandered outside, where I found fire trucks and power company trucks the bad guys had stolen. right about then, the bad guys noticed the manual was missing and started chasing me. I had to run a ways and found a place to hide and then I woke up.

Media Opinions

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 20:00:39 GMT

There's this new show on Fox called Fringe. It premiered Sunday and they showed another episode yesterday. It's got a similar basis as the X-files: FBI agent investigates weird stuff. This time around, though, the FBI agent is actually part of the cover things up. Supposedly, there's all these incidences of sciency, high-tech things that could be put to sinister use and they're supposedly part of some larger strategy by whoever's creating them.

About halfway through each episode, they use some pseudoscience method to gather information that their resident nutty professor actually proved could work back before he was committed to a mental hospital. In the first episode, they read a comatose man's mind by synchronizing brain waves with him (which can supposedly also be done on a corpse up to six hours after death). That didn't really rub me the wrong way. However, in the second episode, they recreated the last thing a dead woman saw by using a superscientific camera to photograph her eyeball. "We just need something to convert the electrical impulses so that we can display them on a TV!" Uh, no. Nerves "conduct electrical impulses" by moving potassium and chlorine ions to opposite sides of nerve cell membranes. After a corpse has been dead for hours and hours (and this woman must have been, or else they could simply have used episode one's technique on her), the nerve membranes have let the ions completely balance out and there is no trace of the previous signals.

Secondly, nerves send signals by encoding the frequency of pulses, among other mechanisms scientists don't fully understand. You can't just photograph the retina and calculate the pulse rate the optic nerve was sending! furthermore, there are nerves that are attached not just to individual rods and cones, but sets of rods and cones, like line detectors and curve detectors. You can;t just unravel that with a camera! Plus, they even managed to "rewind" a few minutes to something that wasn't even that last thing she saw! Gah! *pant pant pant*

It's not a terribly interesting show, so if they keep making mistakes like that, I don't think I'll bother watching it.

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:00:35 GMT

In the past, the games of D&D I've been in pretty much fell into place without much effort on my part. This semester, though, there aren't as many games running, so it looks like I ought to start one to fill the gap. I had wanted to stick to playing D&D so that if/when I get a job, I don't have to worry about breaking my commitment to run a game. Getting Fridays off while working Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays seems like a fair trade, but I don't want to get too picky.

The Gamer's guild has two schedules of games that run on alternate weeks, so you can play in one game while still Dungeon Master-ing, or just have two characters at once. The fact is that both weeks could use another game running, but I'm not going to be the one fix [i]all[/i] their problems.

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 04:04:22 GMT

You know, I love my mom. She's done a lot of great things for me.

But my god, she is fucking annoying! Some of it is my depression surfacing again now that I'm completely off antidepressants. Everything just makes me so angry.

Currently, she's blaming me for our cable box breaking. Why is it my fault? A month or two ago I came to house-sit while my family went on vacation. My mom conveniently scheduled a visit from the cable guy the first day they were gone. She still claims that she told me everything about it, but the only briefing I got was a note on the dining-room table that said "get two new cable boxes". Am I supposed to just demand two new cable boxes from the guy? WTF is wrong with these? I called mom and got her to tell me what was going wrong with them, and the guy fixed one. I couldn't demonstrate the problem with the other. Now, both are having problems. At some point, my mom is going to return them, (one at a time so as to allow us to keep watching her precious goddamn soap operas) but she's really not a go getter. I wonder where I learned to procrastinate...

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 04:24:27 GMT

The problem with having low prices is that sometimes you run into people who are just too damn cheap for their own good. My dad really does side jobs because he likes to help people and he enjoys the challenge of fixing things. If he was in charge of prices instead of my mom, he really wouldn't make much money at all. Even at my mom's prices, it'll still be way cheaper than any of the big companies around here, unless they're trying to undercut our bid, which happens sometimes.

But with my dad, you know it was done right. He's got nearly 40 years of experience, he's worked on damn near everything, and he knows the all the fiddley little bits. He knows when you can cut corners without sacrificing performance or safety, when you really need to do more than the building code calls for, and the ins and outs of every kind of HVAC equipment out there.

But some people are just jackasses. Like this guy who called he other day. He called and wanted us to do the AC, furnaces, and ductwork for eight new houses he's building. Not what we usually do, and we only have so much time, but money is money. To make a long story short, he wanted to cut corners left and right. He'd bought equipment (that will barely fit) here and there for this job, wanted to do some of the work himself (he knows jack shit about air conditioning), and the last time we talked to him, he owed my parents $200. My mom told him that the price would be the same whether he "helped" or not, and we hope he won't call back.

In other news, I found myself mentally congratulating my sister the other day. My mom is frequently saying "we need to do this" when she really means "you need to do this." She said it the other day and my sister replied, "Are we going to rotate the laundry, or am I?" My mom quietly accepted the correction. I rather enjoy seeing my mom actually be wrong about something, because 99.9% of the time, because my mom has the supernatural ability to not be at fault for anything. It's never her fault.

Oh my god the junk

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 21:25:06 GMT

Right now I'm staying at my parents' house. The stuff I decided to not put in storage is still in one of the pick-up trucks because there's nowhere to put it if I bring it inside.

My mom didn't understand why I was very upset that I had to move home. When my brother and I moved out, we left extra space. One of my sisters colonized our room and junk has filled up any extra space. If something has any kind of slight value, any potential for getting used in the future, my parents try to find a place for it. But we they really don't have that kind of room!

A few months ago, when my mom was trying to tell me that they have just about zero extra money, I suggested that if they really needed to they could sell some things, like some of their extra power tools, or maybe the Wii that they don't ever play, or one or two or five laptop computers. Then she tells me this: "It's not that we don't want to help you, it's that we don't want have to sacrifice anything to help you."

That made me angry. As often as she tells me she loves me? As often as she says she'll do as much as she can to help us? As often as she says she wants to see me succeed? When she lives in a house full of junk, she doesn't want to sell some of it to help her sons? "I want to help you, but I don't want to get off my cushy ass to do anything about it." Thanks, mom. Thanks a lot.

Box box box

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 05:02:42 GMT

Oh god I hate moving

Yesterday, we didn't get to move much into storage, just my bed and the couch. This is because my Grandma fainted. The neighbors found her on her porch and called my mom. My grandma complained that her ankle hurt so bad that it's got to be broken. The only mark on her ankle was a tiny nick from the edge of the porch. Mostly, she was complaining that her back hurt. A few months ago, she fell in he yard and hurt her back, so my mom was worried. Cut to the hospital: She bitches and whines about her back hurting so much that they do X-rays, and she's got no new injury. She fainted because her heartbeat is irregular? or something, which means her pacemaker isn't working? whatever. Every time they want her to sit up, it takes like 3 people to help her because she's in so much pain, but when my mom and my aunt are having a conversation she can't quite hear, pow she can sit up without any help. My mom suspected as much, because the first thing Grandma did when they got her onto the couch is she slumped over to the side like she was going to sleep, bending her back in a way that would be quite painful if she was actually injured.
So because my mom had to go take care of that, we only had one vehicle to fill up today while we moved instead of two and a trailer. A friend of ours kindly let us carry stuff in his minivan, but my brother picked the wrong-ass shit to put in it. Instead of, for instance, pots and pans or towels and sheets, he packs up a load of just his stuff, including books that he was planning to sell/give to charity and reams of Star Wars/Star Trek/Magic cards that he should've thrown away anyway.

When I ask him why he put useless drek in the storage space we I my parents are paying for, he tells me, "Well, I was concentrating on getting everything out of the apartment, because we have a deadline to meet!" So later on, he gets tetchy when my mom suggests giving away these barstool/chair things (which we got for $25 for the four of them two years ago). It felt good to throw that shit back at him.

What I absolutely hated, though, was what he said this morning. I called to let him know we were on the way with the van and told him to check the bathroom and see if anything needed to be done in there. So he says, "Uh-huh." "How about, 'Yes, I'll do that'?" "Uh-huh." So when we get there, he's not at our apartment, ready to sling boxes in the van. He's at Minivan Friend's apartment! I knock on the door. My brother answers. He says, "Is there somehting I can help you with?"

I was flabbergasted! WTF? I talked to you on the phone ten minutes ago! We're in he middle of moving out? I'm your brother? Why would he think that's the appropriate thing to say?????

I guess he was in the middle of another conversation and in some other world entirely, but damn, what the fuck? I mean sometimes this kind of thing happens between me and my mom, where we're on totally different wavelengths, but what the hell?

What annoyed me is that in the middle of moving stuff, me and my Dad had to go and get some shelves for New Van. We had to get them out of this junk van that contained a giant air compressor(srsly, thing was like 2, 3 feet long), many electrical fittings, and part of a bale of hay(?). The shittiest part about that was this: the last time we saw my brother &c., they said they were going back to the apartment to get one last load, and then we'd be done. Yay! Three or four hours later, when me and my Dad got back to the apartment, everything looked exactly the same. On closer inspection, they'd made a load out of a coffee table (which probably cost in the range of free-$25) and boxes of books that my brother was going to sell/give to Goodwill. Apparently, they had gone to eat (what, a 27-course meal?) and to the grocery store. ??? what do they need so bad they have to go instead of packing???

I wish we'd just gotten a giant U-haul van. But why would we do that when we've got two pick-up trucks, a brand new van that doesn't even have shelves to take up space, and multiple trailers?

I feel like there's this façade I have to put up for my family. But when I'm alone and I keep thinking about shit like today, I just scream and cry in frustration. But it doesn't matter how I feel, because Mom had to put up with her shitty mother today and Dad works hard to take care of us.

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:03:22 GMT

*creeeeak, dust dust*

So I pretty much fucked up. Two years ago, me and my brother moved out of my parents' house and got our own apartment while we went to college. About a year ago, I got to the point in my studies, that I couldn't really coast like I previously had, scraping by on fantastic test scores and neglecting many programs I needed to write. Well, at some point, the coursework of computer science classes consists almost entirely of programs you write. In my depression, I slacked off at the beginning of the course and didn't do some work. Then, I didn't want to go back to class, because the teacher might mention that I hadn't done the work. I didn't want to be singled out, I guess. So that semester and the next I failed all my classes and I got put on academic suspension.

At the same time, the lease ended on our apartment. We couldn't renew it because our landlord went bankrupt and the bank that bought the place is bitchy. We had almost exactly enough to rent this other apartment, a basement converted into a tiny, cheap place. Neither of us have ever had jobs before and we half-assedly looked for jobs for the last two months. If we move out of the apartment now, it will likely get rented in august. I've got enough cash from working with my parents to pay next month's rent and groceries, but not after that.

I don't want to have to move back into my parents' house! If I get a job in the next month, it'll be okay, but if I can't get a job, we'll have to pay for the rent til they find another tenant. My parents are just so adamant that it's not gonna work that whenever I talk to them, I feel like I have no chance to get a job in that month. I'm just so tired and stressed out I want to curl up and cry! I don't know what to do about all this.

An appointment with... MYSTERY

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 19:52:28 GMT

So yesterday I was hanging out with my friends when I got a call on my cell phone. The caller ID was withheld and I answered. Now I can't remember exactly how it went, but it was someone from a doctor's office reminding me that me and my sister (they even used her name) had an appointment on Wednesday with "Dr. Cavanaugh". At least, I think that's the name the lady on the phone gave. At the time, I figured it was some appointment my mom had made and mentioned to me once so I just didn't remember it, but she doesn't know anything about it.

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 22:07:27 GMT

So my best friends moved in across the street from me. It's quite awesome. I'm at their place now mooching off their Internet. Also, they have cars, so we don't have to always walk to the store. And best of all, we watch anime in the wee hours of the morning! Mostly it's stuff coming out now in Japan, like Kaibutsu Oujo ("Monster Princess")or the totally awesome Hayate no Gotoku ("Hayate the Battle Butler"). Fr'instance, in the latest episode of Hayate no Gotoku, Hayate's voice actor was sick or something, so they pulled some totally awesome random stuff out of their ass. This shows seems to exist to make anime inside jokes.

Wed, 30 May 2007 17:41:46 GMT

RIP Waldo
1991-2007

Gone on a kitty walkabout in the sky. We'll always miss you.

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 15:38:36 GMT

I miss our kitties. Last weekend, I went home to spend some time with all our fuzzy buddies. I'm feeling depressed ad cuddling kitties helps. Oh, big old fuzzy Scooter, I miss you!

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 20:25:32 GMT

Well, the players in my D&D game (I haven't gotten over that yet. My game.) are potentially teetering toward disaster. After using a magic torch they found to breath underwater, they very slowly made their way to Unnecessary Encounter #2, the place where the gnolls of this peninsula dispose of bodies.

When they got there, they fought a number of flesh-eating, paralysis-dispensing undead creatures. The party's ranger (currently the only one who can use the party's cure light wounds wand) got paralyzed near the edge of the water breathing spell's radius, so that makes two people who will oppose the wizard's proposals to find more Unnecessary Encounters. The first U.E. nearly mauled to death the party's barbarian with its razor sharp tentacle/tendrils, meaning he'll be more wary of the wizard's plans in the future.