I'm finally playing Dungeons & Dragons. My interest in playing started several years ago, out of nowhere. Like many things I become interested in, I just stumbled onto it. While I knew it existed, it wasn't in my wheelhouse as a kid. Then again, I was raised by parents who lived through the "Satanic Panic" so it's not surprising I was never exposed to it or any other role-playing game. What turned me onto it recently was podcasts. In search of audio dramas and fun story-telling, I came across The Adventure Zone. At the time it was deep into the story, but I took the time and binge-listened until I was caught up. In this show, three comedian brothers and their charming dad play D&D together. It's a wonderfully funny podcast and it was their newness to the game, the improvisation, and camaraderie that that made me say to myself, "I'd like to try that!" Sadly, any time I brought it up to friends, I got a lot of, "Eh, that's not really my thing" looks and responses. I was, however, not in a comfortable position to run a game myself, so I'm sure that didn't help matters. That led me to start learning more about how to really play, but it became overwhelming so fast thanks to my wonderful un-diagnosed anxiety. My brain scrambled at the thought of having to adapt to decisions people were making. I walked away, having spent a good amount of extra money on books, systems, and dice. (Oh my gravy, the dice!) A year ago I was invited to play by the owner of a game store I frequented before COVID was a thing. He mentioned that they met weekly and were just starting up new sessions. Interested, I joined and showed up to my first session ready to play - my character had been rolled, dice had been tucked away, and my notebook and pencil were ready for note-taking. Upon entering the store I met two dungeon masters, neither of whom were expecting me, but were happy to have me join their respective groups. Unfortunately, neither seemed keen on bringing new players into their campaigns. One had an elaborate home-brew adventure ready to go and the other was starting Descent Into Avernus, but had no idea what kinds of players he needed... because the book hadn't been released yet. The first "session" was a bust that involved me rolling a brand new character and meeting potential co-players. Also, I had my first, um, sense of what Comic-Con would be like, if you catch my meaning. I didn't let that stop me, though! I returned the following week to meet up with the group and see what hellish adventure my new DM would have for me! An hour later, we had our group together after waiting on three new players to roll new characters. While I understand that this may happen, it just felt like everything was all over the place. I was ready to play, so I was more impatient than normal. Finally, the adventure was starting! As we began our Descent Into Avernus, things seemed to be going OK. Some players were well-versed in the rules and had played campaigns before. Some, like myself, were new and hesitant to really get in and do anything. Then there were those who either thought they were the DM or couldn't care about anything going on, including when it was their turn to do something. Yes! One gentleman decided it would be better to sort his Magic: The Gathering collection while playing and had no clue what was happening! Once we had slogged our way through things, the first real session was over. I was upset. This was nothing like I expected, but I didn't want to just call it off after one time. I wanted better and, who knew, maybe Magic Boy wouldn't be there next time? Lucky for me, I had a work trip planned, so I wouldn't be able to make it. I decided I'd think about it. Yeah... I didn't go back. As someone who has anxiety, being with a bunch of new people made me very uncomfortable and I couldn't be myself. Time went on and I tried again to get friends to play. Again, nothing solid came from it,

Slightly Obnoxious, Strongly Sarcastic

Leveled-Up My Nerd Cred

This is an anxiety and depression update, if you can't tell by the title. No real show notes or exposition for this one. I'm just talking about house-buying, anxiety, and depression here. I do touch on the fact that I have no idea where to start when it comes to seeing a doctor for it, so feel free to leave suggestions.

So anxious

From COVID-19 to Black Lives Matter to everything else 2020 has thrown our way here in the United States (and abroad), I'm learning that education can make a lot of difference in how we approach everything. Here are some thoughts I've had and, yes, they're just as rambly as ever. What other books on anti-racism and Black History would you suggest I read?

We can do better.

This post is a duplicate and is for testing purposes only. This does not use the Apple Podcasts Optimization area within PowerPress. This is heading one (H2) This is paragraph one. This post is used for research purposes for Blubrry (hyperlink). You can find more podcasting solutions at https://blubrry.com (in-line hyperlink). You can also email me at dave@blubrry.com (email link). This is heading two. (H3) This is paragraph two. This sentence is bold. This sentence is italic. This sentence is strike-through. This sentence is underlined. This is heading three. (H4) This is paragraph three, a quote.Dave Clements This is paragraph four, an un-ordered list. This is un-ordered list item one.This is un-ordered list item two.This un-ordered item has been indented. This is ordered list item one.This is ordered list item two.This ordered list item has been indented.

For Work – Not Optimized

This post is a duplicate and is for testing purposes only. This uses the Apple Podcasts Optimization area within PowerPress. This is heading one (H2) This is paragraph one. This post is used for research purposes for Blubrry (hyperlink). You can find more podcasting solutions at https://blubrry.com (in-line hyperlink). You can also email me at dave@blubrry.com (email link). This is heading two. (H3) This is paragraph two. This sentence is bold. This sentence is italic. This sentence is strike-through. This sentence is underlined. This is heading three. (H4) This is paragraph three, a quote.This is the quote author This is paragraph four, an un-ordered list. This is un-ordered list item one.This is un-ordered list item two.This un-ordered item has been indented. This is ordered list item one.This is ordered list item two.This ordered list item has been indented.

For Work – Optimized

This podcast is built on the idea of me being transparent about my life and the things I'm thinking about at any given time, so why not talk a little about my vasectomy, why I'm fat, and how my brain is dysfunctional? I mentioned a series of episodes by YouTube creators, Rhett & Link, on which they discuss their personal journeys through religion. You can find those episodes linked below. I'll be sharing my own version of this in an upcoming episode. Our Lost YearsOur Years As MissionariesRhett's Spiritual DeconstructionLink's Spiritual DeconstructionOur Experiences After the Lost Years Series

Getting snipped, dieting, and a mental update.

Job research and whatnot.

Having been full-time at Blubrry Podcasting for three months now and overall for two years has been a real joy. Part of that job is chatting with customers, new and old, which can be a great experience. It can also be a challenging experience when they're running into problems you haven't run into before. That's where research comes into play. This episode is part of that for me. It's a look at how show notes appear in different podcast apps. Considering there are quite a few of them out there, it's hard to help some customers, depending on the app they're using and on what device. In addition to the apps out there, those who use the PowerPress plugin for WordPress (60,000+ installs as of this post) may have a little rougher of an experience because WordPress themes also control some of the formatting of posts in the end. This is an experiment we've been needing to do from the support side of things for a while, but I haven't given it time within my day-to-day. I guess I'm doing that now, right? Let's dig into what my current settings are with this post, shall we? The Theme I'm Using My theme is Twenty-Sixteen. It's one of the default, vanilla themes that comes with any new WordPress installation. You can find it in their repository at https://wordpress.org/themes/twentysixteen/ if you like what you're seeing on my site, which is located at https://mrdaveclements.com. The reason I use a vanilla theme is because I will spend way too much damn time playing with the look and feel of the site instead of writing or creating new podcast episodes. Maybe it's a little bit of obsessive-compulsive disorder? The Editor I'm Using When I began using WordPress years ago, there was only the Classic Editor. Sure, there are other editors - most of which are included in a page-builder plugin like Divi - but I generally would use the Classic Editor due to its simplicity. Right now, however, I'm using their Gutenberg Editor. If I'm honest, this isn't my favorite editor, but I do like how it breaks things into their own easy-to-edit chunks. I can change something into a header or a quote or a paragraph by hovering over an icon. This gives me some options on what I could change the formatting to. Not a bad deal, so I'll stick with it. Why I Like A Slimmed-Down Interface Here are some reasons why my site is changing to a more vanilla-esque experience I get distracted so, so easily while writingI want to lean into a more simple aestheticI don't want others getting distracted by everything else I would normally add to a site.I want them to focus on my words It's pretty... um... simple, really. What Else Should I Test? As I've written this post, I've tried to implement as many formatting features as I could think of. If you're a podcaster using the Blubrry PowerPress plugin and you've had some other issues with formatting I missed, please let me know. You can send an email to me directly at dave@blubrry.com so I can add to this post and run more tests. This will help the team at Blubrry create a better product and give better responses to support tickets about this problem.

Job Research & Whatnot

Wendie gifted me a PlayStation 4 for Christmas and I'm glad she did. Since then I've spent a fair amount of time playing various games and falling in love with storytelling all over again. Have you had this happen while playing video games or are you more interested in skipping those scenes in favor of simply beating the game? That's what I'm talking about in this episode of the newly-renamed... Slightly Obnoxious, Strongly Sarcastic! Yeah, it was time to move away from Dave Lives Here. Thanks for listening.

Video Games & Storytelling

You'd think, working for a podcasting company that I would have all the time in the world to make all the podcasts I want. Sadly, that's not the case... That doesn't stop me from starting - or restarting - another one. Yep. In addition to getting my blog up and running, I'm going to do my best to regularly release an audio journal. What will it contain? No idea. This podcast will be a playground for me. No specific topic outside of whatever is on my mind at the time. I believe cool kids call this a "generalist" podcast? (I'm far from a cool kid.) If you subscribed, I have to say thanks and hang on, because I have no idea where this is going, so you don't either!

Obligatory episode zero

An audio journal about nothing important. Just a guy living life behind a mic.

hubhopper

Slightly Obnoxious, Strongly Sarcastic

hubhopper