Matthew Hunter

We found Thatchem to be very inviting. Their local temple even has a small shrine for the lesser known divinities. I made an appointment with the local priest (following the ritual clensing rites) and had a symbol of Cloacina the Clenser added, so those of my faith would have a place to express their veneration. It’s small, but a beginning. At the inn, we met a man who calls himself Morrigyn and claims to be an adventurer who lost the rest of his party in Highfell.

I discussed the matter of what to do next with Forrest, and we decided to explore to the north where Verminbane and Cloacina sensed a threat. A town there known as Thatchem was reputed to be only a few miles away from the danger, so we planned to buy horses and scout the road there. Forrest agreed to lend me Verminbane for a week - whatever I chose to do with the blade during that time.

The dwarves melted down the Squeeblade while I watched, after which the high priest thanked me for bringing it to him and conveyed an invitation to see the dwarven king after lunch. I accepted, and arranged to meet with Hammerick on the way out. Hammerick agreed to find Mindy a safe home with a dog just like Kiki. The king asked us to explore the King’s Gate entrance to a dwarven city known as Dwarrowdeep.

One very useful command for locating files and performing operations on them is find with the exec option. find [path] [arguments] -exec [command] {} ; I’ve found this to be particularly useful when adjusting permissions to allow group owners to list a directory: find [path] -type d -exec chmod g+x {} ; The part that’s tricky to remember is the escaped semicolon, hence this post. Applying it only to directories avoids issues with normal files being treated as executable.

In the early days of the internet, and even before that, there was a distinct difference in the terminology used for the people who obtained unauthorized access to computer systems. The term hacker meant someone who created an interesting hack, usually something interesting that used a system – not necessarily even a computer system – to do something outside its design intent. A Rube Goldberg machne is a good example of a hack.

u-Heury and Kiba chose to accompany me to the dwarven town of Hamelet to see the Squeeblade destroyed. This actually caused problems. Hammerick the dwarf refused to allow Kiba’s dog to ride in the carriage, which offended her. u-Heury’s uncivilized nature presented a similar problem. We did eventually resolve the problem by using two separate carriages. The road to Hamelet was eventful. On the second day, u-Heury came across a force of 30 or so men blocking the road ahead.

Last weekend. I took the certification exam to become a GIAC certified incident handler. Both the exam and the course material leading up to it were interesting enough to deserve a few comments. One thing I was moderatedly surprised by in the SANS course was the initial focus on Linux shell tools and Windows Powershell. I’ve been using Linux for a long time, so there weren’t any surprises there. The Powershell material was new to me.

Faran Magebane We made arrangements for the repair of my armor and went off to see the wizard – err, the chief gnomes. On the way we met a musician playing a vast crystalline bowl like a musical instrument; Creeper and I joined in. He had some kind of flute, and I had the god of storms and war, by which I mean thunder. Creg chose that moment to speak up about an animated hand he had been carrying the whole time.

With my soul in a better place and a fresh herbal cleanse, it was time to seek out Forrest and my sword. He was surprisingly eassy to find, having set up a temple to Cloacina in the poor district. He actually seemed sincere, and after we had conversations about the matter, agreed that if the sword found me worthy, he would pass it over to me and focus on administering the church he had founded to spread Cloacina’s glory.

Faran Magebane Turns out there were at least three puddings and dessert was planning to eat us. And, oh yes, the water levels were visibly rising and someone had peaked inside the watery room and noticed large cracks in the walls from which water was pouring in to the whole complex. Someone had the clever idea to use the cube to block the puddings and buy us some time. Well two of them.