Monday, January 25, 2010

I Just Played with Myself Online, and Beat Myself


I have been playing a free online game called Elements since that bastard Ben Brenner told me about it (http://www.elementsthegame.com/).

If you play well enough (and often enough like me), you can make the Top 50. I am now in the Top 50 at most times during the day now (depends who is online at the time). I was greatly amused, as depicted in the screen capture to the left), when I got to play against myself online (my logon there is heymondo).

Initially I did well, but that other jerk of me crushed my quanta towers (like land in Magic) and at the end of the game, just as I was about to win, out came an Improved Miracle, resetting the life points to 199. I wound up decking myself (zero cards left = a loss):

And so the game gives you a screen afterward that tells you you may wish to improve your deck. Ah, the silly fun.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Rusty Blog

I know I haven't blogged in a while, but I simply blame Facebook. It has been a mini-blog substitute, and has filled in for many of my thoughts. Any time you can get me to use fewer words at the same time, well, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Life is still good past the eyes, which are getting into bad parts of my practical vision. Family is good. David seems to be done with unexpected operations. I continue to have fun gaming. Job is still good despite being underpaid, and just enjoying life.......

Friday, August 28, 2009

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.........

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

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.

Monday, June 22, 2009

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.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

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.........................

Thursday, June 4, 2009

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.