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Last night, sitting up and awake at the computer, I finally downloaded and installed PGP. Everything's not working as completely wonderfully as I'd hoped it would be (signed messages look rather odd, had to do some fidgeting so Eudora only PGPs my stuff, and doesn't get in Liz's way, I can't find a way to just give someone my public key without having them use the keyserver), but this is something I've been meaning to do for a while, and I feel good about having finally done it.

What is bothering me, and has been for a while, is the feeling that I have to do it. Stated plainly, once again the government is proving that it can't be trusted. I won't get into extensive detail, but suffice it to say things aren't looking so good.

I'm trying to balance my growing level of concern on the issue with a level head, so I don't end up out in the hills with a collection of rifles and a laptop full of encrypted data, especially since the house is so close to being done. ;-)

The odd thing is, I was interested in installing PGP at work, but here the company plan is to go with S/MIME and digital certificates, so I probably shouldn't buck the company. Still, though, it'd be nice to be able to stick with Eudora. Maybe I'll write that plugin for Eudora that does S/MIME encryption in my spare time. And maybe I'll find the AIDS vaccine while I'm at it.

In other news, Liz had the second (third, if you could the character creation night) session of her game last Saturday. I had fun, but... I dunno. It really looks like I'm going to have to serve as the party conscience, which is a frustrating position. But, since Greg's mercenary frequently reminisces about his glory days of looting and pillaging villages, Richard and Carl's characters are both cold-hearted to the extreme (kill off unconscious attackers, propose cutting off a mage's fingers to keep him from casting spells while imprisoned, etc.), and KT's still working up a personality, it looks like I'm going to have to try to do it. But I hate it.

I hate being the one who has to play the adult, and chastise the children for their "It's expedient, it works, so what are you complaining about?" solutions. Bleah. In the adventure, I'm just glad the kobold women and children escaped.

But, anyway, Liz has declared that she's closed off a chapter and now it's time for Richard's game. When she started the games up, I knew that she and Richard would be trading off from time to time, but I didn't know that it'd be this soon. ::shrug:: Oh, well. When I DMed, I always felt like I was barely keeping ahead of the players with the plot, so I hope Liz will figure out a few more storylines and the next chapter will be a little beefier.

So, I've got to make a new character for Richard's game. He (and Liz, apparently) are using a house rule that lets you knock 2 points off one stat to gain 1 point on another, to a maximum of 18. Quite a few people bumped a stat to 18, and rolled the percentile dice, just in case they wanted to play a fighter. Well, it seemed like everyone was rolling around 70%, so it sounds like it'll be another fighter-rich group. I'm thinking of bumping a stat up to 18 and playing a thief. We'll see, though.