User:DAID

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Who are you?

I mainly play Kaldonis Harvest-Moon, a totally insane halfling sorcerer. He is a citizen of River's Rest, and the Chancellor (chair) of Beacon Hall Archive.

I've also been dusting off a relative of his, Flail Harvest-Moon, a halfling paladin, who is also a citizen of River's Rest.

Any other alts I have shall not be named.

Pages of interest, etc

Things I play with go in my sandbox; if you want to play with similar information, copy it to your own sandbox rather than playing in mine, please.

One of my next projects will be rune patterns for Planar Shift (740), such as the boundary information between realms, and so on. This might be expanded into a general teleportation guide, since generally speaking the same restrictions tend to apply to all methods.

I created Holy places but it's still missing anything east of the Dragonspine, Teras, and is surely still incomplete even for the realms it does have.

If you are interested in magically opening boxes, see my guide to Popping boxes.

Information listed in various places was consolidated to Holy Damage.

Most of what you can find about Paladins was written up by me.

There are a few creatures across Maelstrom Bay that are summoned by lesser and greater moor wights which we made pages for, but are still a bit incomplete:

In general I'm interested in spell messaging and fixing as many creature pages as I can. I also have a general interest in rare creatures summoned by special means.

Useful Pages

This is just a place for me to kind of bookmark useful pages with long names. You might like them, too!

Player Profile

I thought the idea of the staff profile was interesting. I am sure many people are less interested in hearing about me as a player than their favorite GM(s), but I figured, why not?

All about DAID

DAID.jpeg

Where were you born?

  • Toledo, Ohio.

Where do you currently live?

  • Wakoshi, Saitama, Japan (just outside Tokyo)

Where else have you lived?

  • Chapel Hill, North Carolina
  • Kalamazoo, Michigan
  • Beloit, Wisconsin
  • Argonne, Illinois
  • Hamilton, Ontario

Do you have any pets/kids/both?

No. My parents have kids and pets, though.

What is your current occupation?

Teaching and Research Assistant, Center for Nuclear Study, the University of Tokyo.

What did you want to be while you were growing up?

At an early age, I think I wanted to be an architect or engineer; I used to play with Legos a lot. Some time in high school I wanted to be a computer programmer. Who knows what I wanted to be when I was in early undergraduate, because I changed my major every semester for 3 consecutive years.

Favorite TV shows?

I don't really like television. Let's go with Pinky and the Brain, Heroes, and Breaking Bad.

Favorite actors/actresses?

Edward Norton.

Favorite musicians/bands?

Portishead, Massive Attack, Thievery Corporation, Bonobo, and Bluetech.

Favorite books/authors?

Lord of the Rings and auxiliary texts taking place near/in Middle Earth. Chuck Palahniuk. Brave New World, and Aldous Huxley in general.

Where did you go to school and/or what did you study?

  • Beloit College, B.Sc. (2005) Major: Physics and Astronomy; Minor: Political Science.
  • McMaster University, M.Sc. (2008) Department of Physics and Astronomy.
  • The University of Tokyo, Ph.D. (RSN! 2015). Department of Physics, though practically the Center for Nuclear Study.

I'm mostly interested in nuclear astrophysics. Stars are gravitationally confined nuclear reactors, which generate energy and produce elements. I think that's neat and try to measure stellar nuclear reactions in the laboratory with particle accelerators. I study the most frequent thermonuclear explosions in the Universe, x-ray bursts. Here's a book I edited for sale: Stellar Evolution, Nuclear Astrophysics, and Nucleogenesis

Favorite/least favorite job you've ever had?

I can surely answer my Ph.D. for both of those at the same time. I really used to hate weeding my mom's garden, though.

Favorite hobbies?

Vinyl DJing, GNU/Linux hacking, Magic (the popular card game), GemStone...?

Favorite foods?

Hummus. Tabouhleh. Falafel Sandwiches. Pizza. Beer. (I'm a vegetarian. Also, Japanese food is okay, but kind of sucks.)

Favorite board games or computer games?

Settlers of Catan, Cards Against Humanity. I don't do almost any computer gaming. Scepters for classic Mac is still pretty awesome 20 years later. The Lunar series was pretty good. Lots of retro games on NES and Genesis and Sega CD.

Favorite sports/sports teams?

People who don't talk about football on LNet. I guess if I absolutely have to answer, I can say both Duke and UNC basketball teams, though I used to root for Kentucky growing up, just to be different.

What would you do with a million dollars?

Buy a kilogram of isotopically enriched molybdenum so I could start my own laboratory producing medical technetium. It costs almost exactly $1 million.

What three people past or present would you invite to dinner?

Richard Dawkins, Dante and an interpreter.

What is your favorite quote?

"After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with colour, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked -- as I am surprisingly often -- why I bother to get up in the mornings. To put it the other way round, isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be a part of it?" --Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow

Name something you'd like to do before you die.

Live somewhere marijuana is legalized. How else will I manage to master alchemy?

What's your favorite acronym?

XRB is a pretty good one, since I study them, and you can probably guess what the 'X' stands for, and thus the 'R', so it's not quite as obtuse as some others I use regularly. I also really like SNAFU.

Who is your hero or heroine?

Probably my academic advisor in undergraduate, Patrick Polley.

If you could have any musical group or artist, past or present, play at your birthday party, who would it be?

Massive Attack.

If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?

I would be John von Neumann. I consider photographic memory and computer calculations in your head a superpower, even though real people can do this.

What do you love most about being a GameMaster?

That I'm not one. Though, more seriously, I ever considered applying...

Would you rather never have to eat, or never have to sleep?

I like eating, and I like dreaming. Sleeping takes much more time though, so I'll go with that.

Are you also DAID on Wikipedia?

Why yes, yes I am.

What does your handle represent then, since it is clearly not related to GemStone?

It's the name I go by. Some people have said I am too cool for the letter V. It's pronounced to rhyme with the word 'maid' not the word 'said' (or something in Arabic).