Happy to Be Wired Again

Last Saturday, I attempted to install an old scanner (and by old, I mean almost as old as David). I should have known better, but I did anyway, assuming it would be OK, and if not, no big. Well, XP crashed during install, but the scanner worked OK so I thought all was good.

A *short* time later, XP was complainng about not being connected to the wireless router. To make a long story short, it broke something in XP; drivers, dll's, who knows. But after nearly a day of trying to fix, I called AT&T for help, along with calling/[estering my friend Tim. I even used the pay-for-services route, as I didn't want to rebuild XP. Well, there was too much afoul, and the tech could not help, but he did a decent job trying, so I ndo not begrudge the small fee.

So I rebuilt, and you would think I knew what I was doing. Initially I had trouble with the XP boot disk, as there is a very short window to press a key for setup, and Blindie didn't see it too well. So formatted c:, installed XP, then SPs 2/3. There were some broken items, but I had the original Dell Drivers CD, so putting most of those on was no big deal.

Once done with this, I plugged in the 2Wire wireless adapter, set the Windows Zero thing on, and it seemed to easily connect to the adapter and I had a good signal strength, but I couldn't get anything in Firefox to show up.

Well, back to AT&T free basic support, and I got lucky. I got one of the most patient, knowledgable, and pleasant base-level techies I have ever talked to. Despite me messig something up with a blindie mistake, and having him take me through the process again, in half an hour, I was good to go and connected.

Major lesson learned here: do NOT hit the reset on your router - it resets the PW to factory defaults. Bad idea. In my desperation to connect earlier, I had reset it in hopes that that was the reason it wasn't connectiung. If I want to 'reset' the router, apparently, just unplug for 30 seconds and power back up.

So thanks to the AT&T tech from last night, and Tim for bearing with me. I was surprised by how much it bugged me not to be able to connect from home, so the kids could look stuff up for homework, and personal stuff I do. Ah, life is a smidge better today.........

eBay Joy

It's been awhile for me to sell stuff on eBay, but my geek shelf space was too full, so I recently sold 12 board games there. The auctions themselves went alright, and I always go into eBay with the expectation someone is going to ask a silly question, or two, or many, and something may go wrong along the way, which helps me not to get needlessly worked up over what amounts to be small annoyances.

This time was a bit more challenging though, as some of the boxes were overly large, and I had to hand-wrap 2 to be able to mail. Then I grossly underestimated shipping. Lesson learned #1. Lesson learned #2 - track everything! It's only 75 cents here, and I had a winning bidder's bank retract the PayPal payment, and it was my most expensive sell of the lot (a HeroScape promo figure a gaming buddy helped me get). I indeed got a bit upset, as I was out ~$33, didn't have the item, and he left positive feedback, yet because I could not provide the tracking number, I would be basically screwed if he didn't straighten this out. Well, he did, and was apologetic and all turned out well, but tracking, tracking, and tracking is the way, apparently.

Even with the shipping bath I gave myself, I was able to get the following, and still have monies leftover:
- Spinal Tap OST (Original Soundtrack)
- Logan's Run DVD
- The Hobbot/LotR animated classics on DVD
- Final Fantasy 8 OST
- Kingdom Hearts OST
- a nice blue neon wall clock (simple/large/neat; heavy and pricey to ship though)
- Pandemic expansion
- Race for the Galaxy expansion
- mini-European card sleeves
- American Pie DVD
- Tron 20th anniv DVD

Numeric-wise, I sold 12 items, and turned around and bought 12, so it may seem silly, but the games take up way more space, and I am glad people are enjoying them more than I did. They were good games, but I just wasn't playing them much currently.

Then last week, I put up 20 items: mostly kids movies and PS2 games that we haven't touched in ages, as well as a Magic Pre-Con of Slivers. The last one is the only one going for more than $1, but I didn't expect much. Not sure if it was worth the effort, but that's OK. More PayPal monies to come.

And on another note, looking forward to GenCon later this week. I have no planned purchases, so we'll see how this goes.

I haven't been blogging much lately - been using Status updates on FB to quasi-blog there. I suppose it's good as it keeps my verbosity in check.

Geek Con Awaits

Mostly, I just wanted that last entry off the top of the blog, but I bought my GenCon badge for this year's convention. For the uninitiated, GenCon Indy is the largest gaming convention in the world, mostly focussed on my favorite hobby, board gaming. They have introduced video games to the Exhibit Hall floor, which does little for me, but still a neat time.

The good thing is, I ddin't think my sight would last long enough for me to go. It may not, as my practical vision is touchy at best, but I am hopeful I can go.

It's just a fun day to buy stuff, to see what's out there and go to a few gaming sessions, tournaments, demo some games, meet some people, go to gaming seminars and so on.

While gamers are one of the most self-serving, egocentric people out there, you can meet some neat people as well as just enjoy being out there. I look forward to it in mid-August.

Public Therapy

Warning: This entry I am writing for myself. I don't have a therapist, and while a public posting is an odd place for something like this, no one really reads here, so I figure it evens out. IGNORE.....

My grandfather died at nearly 96 last week.

He molested and raped various relatives I care about. This is not secondhand knowledge. Anyone who wonders where I get my odd sense of humor need look no further than the aforementioned events. His brothers did the same to even more relatives and the damn enabling wives of that generation hushed everything up. Pathetic cowards they were.

I, and others affected by this have largely moved on through some forms of healthy forgiveness (not the naive kind, but the I am not going to let this run my life kind), and just pieced together their lives as best they can.

So Ed had some money when he died (<150K. so not a fortune). More later.....

Now Aunt Marlene died in the 90s of a heart attack. She really didn't take care of herself and was developmentally slow due to a problem in the birth process. She had 2 kids, Bruce and Cheryl. They were raised by Ed and Mary (my grandmother who was actually dear). Ed physically and mentally abused Bruce. Not aware of any rape/molesting here. Bruce was like a kind older brother to ne as we all grew up in an extended family house. When he got older, he married Jeannie, who had been raped by her father, no relations between the families. He became an alcoholic, and mean to his kids. Jeannie liked to have kids for selfish reasons - they gave her comfort. After they were 10, she was "done with them", her words. Well, it shouldn't surprise anyone that train-wreck of a family didn't turn out so well. The oldest son Andrew is in the Navy and seems OK. After years of alcoholism, the "Christian" Jeannie meets some redneck off the internet and abandons the family for a while, at least until she tires of him. Not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Cheryl marries an alcoholic moron named Mike. They split years later, and this guy is mean/nuts when he drank. She meets this new guy, Bill Smith (not making this up). We can immediately tell this giuy has serious issues. Cameras at home he can view from work, but Cheryl heeds the warnings not. She moves to rural Alabama and relives "Sleeping with the Enemy". Now getting a divorce from hubby #2, both guys are the serious stalker nutjob types, and she needs to be wary.

So I found out Bruce (who had 2 brain aneurisms likely after treating his body so horribly after years of alcohol and drug abuse, and is now in a Medicaid home with few memories past 25 years of age) had coerced Ed to write a will that included only Cheryl and he. Thanks, pal. No selfishness there. How sad. How pathetic. I am not going to worry about that, but Bruce shouldn't expect any visits either. [A new will was written since then. Ed got tired of Bruce and his ignorant daughter Krystal (who shamefully thinks everyone else should just 'get over it aleady', referring to *rape and molestations*) pressuring him into changing his will]. According to their barely hillbilly logic, Ed should bypass his living daughter altogether even if she (my mom) held the family together as best she could, even if imperfect.

Now my sister and I have worked very hard to get an education, are thankful we had the opportunity, and we don't have to apologize for being successful (we aren't rich either). If some get angry about that, well, so be it.

Ironically, I don't expect a dime in this deal. I don't think my sister does either. Yes, really. I truly don't get all the hate expressed towards us because they are not getting any money from Ed. They use moronic terms like Mars's share. She's dead, morons, and that doesn't mean you, as a great-grandchild of Dead Ed, get money. Even if you were kind enough to deserve sone, in my mind, you used that up when you *coerced* Chester the Molester into writing you as the sole recipients of Dead Ed's savings.

The ironic thing was, my mom was going to give them a cut when the dust had settled. We know they visited him not for good heart, but to make nice for the money. Trust me, rhey are neither educated remotely well, and not good at hiding their true intent. We visited Ed once in the last 15 years. I told him I forgave him, let him see the family, we talked, and he knew exactly why I would never come back and Ed understood. When Krystal called all POed that there was no funeral (should anyone reasonably expect we would want to have one?!?), and dropped a lot of F-bombs and called her a b%tch, do you expect any sympathy now, moron?

Life is a hell of a lot more than money. Oh, it's nice to have, but if that's all that matters to you because you don't have enough, and it's your fault because you were too much of a dumb-a$$ to work hard and educate yourself, keep your bitter ignorance to yourself.

If anyone wonders why I find negative people tiresome, well, I grew up with it, and tire of hearing you over-angrily complain of trivial things with the voracity that your gripungs mean a heck of a lot. When you have seen what I have seen (have I mentioned I saw drunken Uncle Fred chase Aunt Marlene through the kitchen with a butcher knife at 4 years old? That affects you), and you are getting angry at a movie change or a bad joke, pardon me for deeming you needlessly bitter about *nothing* important.

Part of this is cathartic. And I know no one really reads this blog, and that's fine. People above would probably be horrified if they knew anyone could view this. The other reason I wrote this is because, while my mom and I joked about some kind of Dateline event coming from the morons who expected money from Ed, I am not 100% convinced the bitter angry people involved could not resort to violence. Note to world - anything happens to my mom (Kathy) look first to Krystal Kaniewski and/or Jean Kaniewski. Weirder things have happened. Oh yeah, my father, Ron, is mentally abusive to my mom and thinks the FBI has cameras around the house to keep tabs on the drug traffic next door. She has that to deal with as well, but I'll refrain here. The cameras are not real - the drug traffic is real. Welcome to the south Chicago 'burbs.

If the goofy cousins think we all should have done more to intervene because of Bruce's alcoholism and what it did to the family, well, OK, I get that, but what did they expect us to do? We had enough on our own.

Money. If all you have the brains to care about is money, well, you are a sad human.

Therapy over.........................

Board Games Conspiracy!

Anyone who remembers my earlier blog entry on my Pandemic game getting held up at U.S. customs because the shipping container from China was held quarantined for national security reasons, well, be alarmed! Apparently, there's a conspiracy now involving board games.

My friend Dave sent me a link to a story on a Sex in the City game that was thought to be a bomb. Perhaps the game was indeed a bomb, but not the type suspected.

Board games are now a threat to national security! I think, with this latest incident, the security color has changed to chartreuse.

Hey Mondo

Many people know me online as heymondo. Funny thing is, it was such a nano-second name I came up with when signing up for a Delphi forum discussion group. I wanted to think of a logon I could remember, but one not really identifiable. For some reason at the time, my old friend Armando popped in my head, and I remembered how we used to get his attention casually: "hey, Mondo'. So I used that.

Fast forward a couple years. The discussion group I initially signed up for was an anti-ICC group (a quasi-cult conning it's way into the hearts, minds, and pocket books of other people like myself not immediately recognizing the dubiousness of the group for too long). After I had enough sense to figure out the big con (and feeling like an idiot), I used that board to effectively (my opinion, of course) get people to see the fallaciousness of their current condition, even if in small subtle steps.

Well, as people got to know and respect me there, the name grew on me, and I have forever used it. Funny how such a quick and relatively meaningless decision has stuck with me.

The above clip is of my old friend Armando at his current NY improv theater. We grew up together, and while I recognize I got more out of that friendship than he, I'd like to think he had some good times and growing up philosophical discussions along the way too. I am genuinely happy for him, as he seems to not only have found his niche, but seems to be enjoying life, and that's wonderful.

Hey, Mondo! 8) We still talk a couple times a year, yet I still very much miss seeing my old friend on a regular basis. He's a good guy.

Help Me Find a Sci-Fi Book Title...

So I was on Facebook, and enjoyed doing the Top 5 Sci-Fi Books list that I have enjoyed. Tea from an Empty Cup and Robots of Dawn are in a class by themselves for me.

Anyway, in doing this, I was trying to remember a book I read as a youngster that I remember really enjoying, but I can't remember the darn title. I am not sure if it is a well-regarded book or it is viewed as junk. I think the book, at least when I read it, was yellow-ish and vaguely remember some greenish as part of either a character in the book or just in general. Here's the thing - as much as I remember liking it, the plot details are sketchy at best.

I can't remember if it was an alien or a robot, or generic creature, but the main character guy had to help him get to caves or mountains or something (no, it's not Escape to Witch Mountain). I remember a save-humanity from themselves kind of theme, and he was a guardian-ish type.

I do remember the last 'scene' a bit better, but not well. The 'guardian' makes it back in time to 'retire' or something along those lines, and the main character sees a wall of others just like him, waiting for their time to protect humanity.

Any ideas, pleeeeeeeease?

Son of a Wedding Band

Yesterday evening, I was downstairs making a couple CDs at my mom's request when she and my sister visited this weekend. She loves the Moby song, Porcelain, which I love as well, so I put together that song and a few groovy Moby songs from my collection. I also made a mix of tunes from that little known artist, A Produce - mesmerizing synth I like a fair amount, and find relaxing (in heavy rotation at work).

During this process, I asked the boy (David) to grab my cheap earphones out of my night stand in my room upstairs, as he is about to do his piano practice, and I did not want to interfere by listening to music over the PC speakers.

He comes back down with said earphones, but also with my wedding band I set on my night stand earlier in the evening, and a look of befuddled correction on his face. When he handed over the band, he was respectful, but also mildly corrective in tone, as in, "here's your ring dad; the one you should *not* have taken off".

Almost immediately, I was very tickled by this gesture. I thought it was cute that he did not want me to have it off, as that might suggest, in his perspective, some minor marital disloyalty. I tried not to grin too widely when I explained that I take it off at times for comfort, and his mom does the same. Heck, Ruthie takes her rings off all the time.

I am still amused by this as I type. As secure as Ruthie and I are with each other, the thought of his around marital loyalties having something to do with ring wearing was not something that remotely crossed my mind.

16 Candles Revisited

Ruthie & I were talking about John Hughes movies the other day, as someone was commenting on the classic title, The Breakfast Club. I mentioned that they wouldn't be bad to have on DVD if we saw them in a sale rack, so she picked up 16 Candles.

It's been awhile since I last saw that movie, but I remembered it as being cute and sweet and kind of funny. Megan wanted to watch it, so last Saturday we went downstairs to watch it on the big screen TV.

Well, I forgot the risque parts, which led to a few slightly awkward moments, but overall, it was fun to watch, and she liked the movie.

Time, memory, and a different life perspective, for lack of a better word, caused me to see the movie differently since I last saw it.

First, and of lesser substance, the good-looking jock who is the object of the main character seems way less cool now. He's still a jock, and has a single redeeming line when he tells his chin-up jock friend that basically, he's looking for a real girlfriend instead of the proverbial sacking. He's still very good looking, but his personality is pretty boring. What do you expect froma high school jock when you're my age?

What really captured me though was the daddy/daughter scene where the dad (played by the late Paul Dooley, which I always liked in his movies, especially in Breaking Away) apologizes for forgetting her 16th birthday. It's a soft, touching scene.

Now I have friends who are not parents who justifiably tire of the passive/aggressive dismissive line, "well, you're not a parent" they hear from people too lazy or just prone to egocentric dismissiveness to come up with something better when disagreeing on a parental issue.

That said, and this has no negative tone attached here, I would not have identified anywhere near what I did with the dad in that scene, and the feelings involved, if I was not a parent. Sure, intellectually, you get it, in the same way you understand prison is a bad place even if you haven't been to one. I just saw that scene now in a totally different perspective. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have identified so closely with the vibe of the scene from the dad's perspective in the way I did without actually being a parent.

Next up, Breakfast Club......

Po' Purry

I know I haven't posted in a while; a disappointment to 3 people. Been very busy at work and at home. Parenting is challenging, m-kay. If you just have one, well, OK, but having 2 adds that extra special challenge when all is not Camelot.

Got new glasses. Changed my 20/200 distance vision in my *good* eye to 20/60, which is great in that I can see stuff in the distance again and it's beautiful, but there are more and more pieces of vision missing, so it's a mixed bag. It shant be long before this last shred of practical vision is gone, and that is very challenging.

I discovered FaceBook and for the first week I did it, I had to turn it off at work, as it was distracting. I've settled in/down now, but hooking back up with people from childhood, grammar and high school again that I haven't seen in a couple decades is really neat. Many of my old friends look so different, and many are pulling the chrome-dome thing, which is fine, but as my last visual memory is in some cases an 8th grader, it has taken me aback at times to see that sun's reflection off the head.

In geek news, I haven't been blogging game sessions as I have had more important things to do. But here's a wrap-up as best I can remember. In the usual game group, Dave & I tied at Thebes. I won handily the follow-up game of Dominion, then Tim won the 2nd game of the same and I had my worst game of Dominion ever. Next week I won at Taj Mahal, Dave won Dominion, and I think myself or Tim won the 2nd of the same. At my friend Jim's house, I tought them Dominion, and my buddy Phil won the first game, but I won the second. Getting a win at Jim's house is frankly a good challenge, as the players who play there are pretty darn good players, though I do enjoy their company and tolerate the lack of social graces of one of them (not like my own gamiong group doesn't have one lacking in certain managerial skills at times [the Adam Sandler kind], so who am I to fault). Then Ruthie and I played Time's Up and Stone Age with Randy & Holly. Holly and I won Time's Up, a close game, and I won at Stone Age. I try to emphasize when I teach that game how important the cards are, really.

I am still enjoying my job, even though we are pretty busy. I get more enjoyment out of solving puzzles, albeit with data, to help other people do their jobs, then I have in a while. Working sans boss sans any real documentation on procedures I was never really trained on but kept asking for, well, sucked. I feel like we are out of the 'bailing water' mode now, and can begin to work as normal as we can. I have a new boss, and he seems pretty neat. After my old job of control-freak micromanagement and no trust from up top, this job is night/day different. And what do you know, I am far more productive here. Go figure. Still pretty busy, but coming to work has been very good for a while now, and I am thankful, for lack of a better word.

With the help of David, we now have the one TV in the house not DirecTV, digital. I was told the picture is much better. Not my TV. I am somewhat disappointed. Fox doesn't even come in much, and the local PBS rarely has a strong enough signal to not fail. Outside of football season and the goofballs on the American Idol tryouts, I don't watch much Fox, but I really do like various programs on WILL. Truth in Advertising, the spot that that TV is in gets a poor reception anyway, so I'll take some responsibility for the poor reception. However, when you got a poor signal with analog, you got some fuzz. With digital, it's warbled dropout that is unwatchable.

Megan turned 14. Scary, eh? Kids are doing well overall, as is Ruthie. We had fun the other day on a Family Night at Jupiters, a pizza place with a plethora of ticket-dispensing arcade games. I do enjoy Deal or No Deal, and one other silly fun game, but the rest are really for kids. There were a bunch of loud college kids there. Due to my sensitivity to loud noises, it began getting to me, but they did sound like they were having genuine fun being silly, so it made it more palatable. When they decided to leave, they gave David over 1000 tickets, which turned into silly prizes for David, and the rest of us. Thanks, guys!

Murder at My House (Yes, Really!)

So there was a murder at my house. Not the house I live in now, but the one I grew up in, in Country Club Hills, IL. It's a suburb of Chicago where I57 & I80 cross. My family bought the house new, and I lived there from when I was 6 until after I went to college. My parents moved out when I was a sophmore at U of I, when the house was dangerous to live in. Not the neighborhood mind you, but the house was splitting in half and sinking due to alleged mafia-connected builders building a big house over an unsupported storm sewer (I wish I was kidding here).

When I heard of this story from my mom late Sunday night, who heard it from my grammar-school friend's mom who still lives across the backyard, it was creepy. When I started lunch today, I Googled "18049 Edwards", the address, and got a number of hits:

Fox News Chicago
WBBM
Sun-Times
CBS2 Chicago

The above embedded link comes from the Fox link [first try at embedding videos]

When I saw the still of the old house in the video window, even before I hit the play button, I audibly gasped. There's the old house. There's the old damn shed my dad loved more than my mom. There's the stairs, the home-base for countless games of Ghost in the Graveyard (and other dubious activities) with my best friends growing up, Armando & Aidita. And there's that blood on the drive.....

What made it even creepier was that I actually talked to the murderer and the dad when I was in town a couple summers ago for a grammar-school reunion. We stopped by the house, and I awkwardly asked at the front door if they minded if I went around and filmed the house as I grew up there. I asked nicely, first to the son, and then the dad. Persmission denied, but they weren't nasty about it. I knew going in it was an odd request, and chances are they might say no. But I thought it worth a try. I still vividly remember the deceased man's face, as he looked at me a tad puzzled at my request. Apparently he was bothered and may have thought I was a reporter, as gang symbols were sprayed on the back of the house the night before, right underneath my old bedroom window.

This is surreal. My old house on regional news and available for everyone on the internet to see. I spent my formnative years there, both the good times and the weird times. I had a great friend, the aforementioned Armando, and while I got more out of that friendship than he, it's just fookin' weird to think of plenty of great memories growing up there and see a murder there as well. Very surreal indeed........

Yen Are We Playing Power Grid Again?

To the left, observe the China side of the China & Korea map I acquired for Power Grid. It had been a long time since we had played Power Grid, and I was reminded that the last time we played, our friend Topher had played with us (a sad brief memory of our lost friend). I also had purchased the new Power Grid ower Plant deck, and semi-followed the guidelines for blending the old and new decks.

Game: Power Grid
Players: Brian, Ben, Tim, Dave. Rob
Winner: Brian
A good game, but man it was long. 'Twas good to see Ben again, as his presence has been gone far too long. And Tim stated the usual "I hate this game" not 10 minutes into the game. I felt bad for Rob, as a massive overbid on an early power plant left him short on liquidity, and he never recovered. An otherwise close game with the other 4 players, it came down to a last-turn tie with myself and Dave both powering 19 plants. Ben and Tim were right behind. As I had 20 bucks left over to Dave's 6, I won the tie-break. Long, but good game.

Game: Dominion
Players: Brian, Ben, Tim, Rob
Winner: Tim
Dave bowed out, and we taught Ben what has become our favorite game of late. We went with the Village set, if I remember right, from the instructions/suggestions. A good game that had some synergy between the cards. I *think* Tim won, but someone correct me if I am wrong here, as it was 1:30am before we finished.

Lost & Found

I have been eagerly anticipating the premiere of TV's "Lost" for the last day or two. In sum, it was simultaneously disappointing and fascinating, but I'll still give an pverall approval for the season premiere.

The points I did not necessarily enjoy I won't worry about. A couple things here and there, and a couple 'and why is that worth mentioning?' moments that I am fairly confident have little to do with the overall story arc.

I did think it neat that Locke had an early episode encounter with the Dharma guy.

Ben is obviously a weasel, but why do they *all* need to go back, even for nefarious reasons? Haven't figured that one out quite yet.

Faraday mentions Des is 'special'. Was he special before he tripped the failsafe or after?

I recognised the older lady near the end of the episode as the lady from Des's episode where she tells him that triggering the failsafe was the best thing he had ever done. Is that Faraday's mom after Des goes for the visit? And when Des makes up his mind that he must help our islanders, was that a past memory transplant, for lack of a better word, when he comes to the conviction he must help them? It appeared as if it was a dream from Penny's perspective, but Des thought it a memory. Weird and neat.

I did like the end of the episode where the older lady and Ben were conversing. I liked the old Trash-80-ish Dharma computer that had seeming plots on it. I will assume those are pendulum-ish variations on the island's current time position and that it wavers back and forth along the lines (that resemble an older vector graphics video game explosion from the 80s), and when it becomes "central" that is when the island can be accessed in real time sans fear of nose bleeds and dying from the bad side effects from time travel (as Des had to remedy himself from last season).

Overall, pretty good stuff. Cheech was kinda creepy to look at though. I have absolutely no room to talk about someone else's weight, but he was pudgy and older looking, and it bothered me for some reason. Was that a replacement Ana Lucia, or did they hire DUI Rodriguez back?

At least we now see what Lost really refers to, as in lost in time......

Hope and Non-Believers

I was able to watch most of the inauguration of Barack Obama yesterday. Four thoughts pervaded my consciousness as I watched.

First, I know he is just a guy. However, I do have some semblance of hope that he can be a mere catalyst to change our country's recent reliance on hate profiteering to motivate people into political action. Hate profiteers and bitter people with cult-like followers like Rusty Limbaugh and Louis Farrakhan, begone. It has been childish, the angry bickering of late. Angry negative people are tiresome. Very tiresome, even if they have a point. So there is hope that climate will change.

I was moved, several times, as I thought about what this day means symbolically for our nation. Indeed, he is just one man, and that man happens to be black. It means a lot to me that our country has come along enough, at least places outside of rural Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi that we freely elected such a man.

I do hope the spirit of unity prevails. While racism is still around, I hope he shines as an example to those not wanting him alive let alone as president, that there can and are not just a few black men who do not extort all the very negative stereotypes that prevail. There are reasons stereotypes exist, and many are actually valid; yet the over-application of those stereotypes when added with anger become racism, pure and simple. He seems capable of smoothing our cultural prejudices over, at least to some degree.

Also, I know that it means even more to my wife's family. Ruthie hails from Gary, is black, and her parents actually were forced to sit at the back of the bus, etc., etc. While this is not the 'snap, all is good now' moment, I have to believe it means more to them than I can understand, as I never directly experienced that kind of direct ignorance, obviously, as I am white.

[I did have to laugh though, as I heard one comic on TV refer to yesterday as Redneck Suicide Watch Day.]

I liked the fact that during Barack's speech, he mentioned people of varying faiths, Christion, Muslim,Jewish,....and non-believers. In a non-angry and satisfied tone, thank you for not taking the usual egocentric road toward assuming Americans are all Christians, and if they are not, they are of some other emotions-based religion. It's about time somebody recognizes the non-believers crowd is growing.

Rob, You Tool

All I've been blogging on lately are geek sessions, but I plan on changing that. I have just been busy doing other things.

On Monday, MLK Day, all of my gaming friends had the day off as we all work for one of our town's local institutions of higher learning. So we decided that after a D&D session on Friday, a board game session was in order.

Game: Cosmic Encounter
Players: Brian, Tim, Dave, Rob
Winner: Dave
After taking an early lead, Rob stole my hand, took what he wanted and trashed the rest. My game never got back into form. Dave played well, had an abundance of Reinforcement cards (I didn't have one the entire game), and went on a roll, beating all of us to 5 planets. I think I went from first to last in one round about the table after my hand was pilfered. Well played by Dave though.


Game: Stone Age
Players: Brian, Tim, Dave, Rob
Winner: Tim/Brian
Stone Age is only *supposed* to have one winner, but I am declaring two. Tim certainly played well enough to win, and desrves recognition. Also though, during the game, dearest Rob (and I didn't catch this) told Tim the card he just got gave him a permanent Tool of value 4. It was supposed to be a one-time shot. When the end score was calculated, I would have won had the Tool been processed the right way. Now, everyone who knows me knows that winning a game is secondary to having fun for me. Oh, I do try, but no big if I don't. On this one though, and since it is my blog, I will declare 2 winners..... 8P

Game: Dominion
Players: Brian, Tim, Rob
Winner: Brian
Dave bowed out a bit early, so the 3 of us played Dominion, using an online page I got from BGG to generate the 10 Dominion cards. It was a decent set, but not a single card allowed more than 1 Buy, so the game was a bit longer than usual. I think it was Rob's worst Dominion game evar, as he was making noises we think were ones of despair over there. Tim and I finished very close, 39 & 36, as my last Province buy got me over the top. I love this game.....

Games and Games Over Winter Break

One of my many friends named Dave wrote a good year-end game review blog entry (here), which prompted me to think about all the games I meant to blog on and never got to.

You see, I had this l'il problem over the holidays - I had to rebuild my PC not once but twice. Anime is PURE EVIL I tell you. Pure evil!!!!! My daughter loves anime and manga and went to a site she wasn't familiar with to DL a video; that was ad-ware hell #1. After the rebuild, she thought that it was only anime video files that were problematic, so when she went to another yet unfamiliar site to get only pictures, a more serious, alleged ID-theft virus got into the registry and all that fun stuff. It took me 12 hours to fully rebuild. Thank goodness we have an external hard drive to keep out those overseas anime ad/spy/virus-writing hacks.

Anyway, while I like Race for the Galaxy and Agricola more than my friend, the above link nicely covers why each of the games mentioned are excellent ones; Pandemic (pictured above) and Dominion especially.

I had meant to do the uber-geeky thing with this blog to log game nights, and with the aforementioned distractions, got away from it. So here is a sum of all the games I remember playing over the holidays (someone let me know if I remembered the details wrong here):

-First Friday on break-
Game: Dominion
Players: Brian, Dave, Rob
Winner: Dave

Game: Galaxy Trucker
Players: Brian, Dave, Rob
Winner: Rob
I *think* Rob won. I remember this game well, as we played with the IIIA boards for the first time, and my ship got hit twice in the mid-section: the first exposing a weak spot and the second exploiting it for what I believe is the largest to-date chunk of ship to break off yet. I went the way of Khan big time to the great amusement of the others. I actually made it to port sans engines, but half my ;arge ship broke off, and I wound up owing money upon docking.

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-The following Monday-
Game: Fluxx 4.0
Players: Brian, Dave, Lee, Rob
Winner: Dave
Nice new card art, though this particular game went a bit long for Fluxx.

Game: Agricola (aaaaa-greeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee'-co-la!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Players: Brian, Lee, Dave, Rob
Winner: Brian
Got my farming up and going quickly, and being able to ignore 2 Begging cards certainly helped. Thanks to Dave for being willing to play, as this isn't one of his favorite games. Not a thanks to Dave in the incessant chanting of Agricola as you would hear on the Ricola commercials....

Game: Dominion
Players: Brian, Lee, Dave, Rob
Winner: Lee
In one of the lowest-scoring Dominion games I can remember, Lee won on hos first attempt. Nice going, Lee.

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No gaming that Friday, as it was just after XMas.

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-The following Friday-
Game: Stone Age
Players: Brian, Dave, David, Rob
Winner: Brian
David did well for most of the game, but I had a huge end-game bonus for hut-builders of 56 points.

Game: Dominion
Players: Brian, Dave, Rob
Winner: Rob
Even though both Rob and I had our machines going well, Rob won handily.

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Saturday
Game: Pandemic
Players: Brian, Randy, Holly, Ruthie
Winner: Disease
Great game teaching Randy & Holly for the first time, but we lost. We had the game end in sight, but 2 players before we could finish off the last 2 diseases, the player draw deck ran out. That is the first game I have played where we lost to the deck, as it is usually to the number of outbreaks making us lose. A good time though.