My Saviour.....

I'd gotten myself into a pickle with an spreadsheet. I was revising the Karma Pool rules for my upcoming Shadowrun 3E game to make them follow a simple non-linear progression. I had decided that the first point would cost the normal 20k, then each additional point would cost 5k more than the last one. This gives a nice simple formula of y=2.4x^2+17.5x, where x is the number of Karma Pool points and y is the total coast.

Then I realised that for existing CHRs I needed to reverse the equation - if a CHR has already earned y karma, how many Karma Pool points would it be worth?

It turns out that solving that equation for x instead of for y is not as simple as I had hoped. I asked Chrissy to have a look at it for me, and she recommended asking Kathy in America, as Kathy is a Math(s) teacher.

After much hard work, Kathy tells me that the correct answer is x = SQRT((8x+245)/20)-3.5
I'd never have worked that out by myself.

Many thanks, Kathy!

Pieces of PCs

On Thursday this week, I did some cleaning out in the spare room, as the plumber who never showed up on Friday needed access to the radiators to change the valves. I don't have a picture of what it looked like before I started, but that's because there wasn't room to get into the room while holding a camera.....

Anyway, after throwing out several bin-bags' worth of rubbish, moving several items to other rooms, and stacking things more neatly (Thanks for all the help, Bowch!), I finally got to see for the first time in a year or two, how big my computer stash is.....I don't have an exact count, but I can say that this is all in addition to the six desktops and two laptops currently in use elsewhere in the house.

p.s. As far as I know, only 2 or 3 of these are complete PCs - the boxes of motherboards, expasinion cards, memory chips and disc drives will be needed for that.

Better cooling

Lost_Boy, the downstairs PC, has been getting a bit unreliable lately, so today I took the cover off for a look. It was rather dusty, so I gave it a good clean-out, then had a closer look at the cooling fans. The air-in fan on the front of the case was particularly clogged up, since the holes in the case are small, so I decided to improve the air-flow a bit. A quick bit of work with the tin-snips later, and the obstruction was removed. There shouldn't be be any more problems at this end now. {grin}

Let down again

The plumber was meant to come round yesterday morning to put the new thermostatic vales on the radiators. This is the last stage of the work payed for by the rennovation grant, and it shoudl have been done last autumn.

He hadn't arrived by lunchtime, and Chrissy called the builder who managed the project. He texted back later, saying he couldn't reach the plumber by phone so he would get him in person, and, "I won't let you down."

Neither of them ever showed up.

Is it a bad sign that I'm not surprised?