Fuzzy Goes West

Nutritional Blog Post Suppliment

2011-07-15T00:31:00.003-06:00

I came across this post about grocery stores not equating to nutritional benefit by someone who, uh, I guess doesn't have a lot in common with pie. She (he?) also ties in somewhat with my post a few months ago, Foodies Hunger and Class Warfare.

Team Fortress 2 Sprays

2011-05-23T20:37:00.005-06:00

About two years ago, I posted a list of usernames from The Playstation network that I found amusing. They were culled from the records on my PS3 while playing Team Fortress 2. Since then, I've purchased a new computer and purchased the PC version of the game. Far better than the PS3 version, as the PC version has:

Enough updates and added content (free!) to create a whole second game
More users than the 10 people that played on the PSN
Developers that didn't implement to half-ass security

I wanted to do a second post like that one from two years ago, but Steam doesn't save all the people that I meet in a single place the way that the PS3 does. Then Valve added a feature where you take screen shots in any Steam-enabled game by pressing F12, and I thought that all of the fun little sprays that people use in game would be even more entertaining.

BTW, for the uninitiated, a "spray" is a little .jpg image that you can post on a wall with a press of a button. Originally used (I guess) for tactical marking of way points or spots of interest, now they are primarily used to for humorous purposes.

Or Pornography. Lot's of T&A sprays too. Or shock images. When a game that has any online modes at all, the ESRB rating will be marked with an asterisk and a note that says "Online Interactions Not Rated". That's basically their way of saying "Look, the studio didn't add any sexual content to this game, but we can't stop people from showing you a screen grab of Two Girls One Cup, or from reading Scat-Porn featuring the cast of the Super Mario Games."

And yes, the latter had actually happened to me before. Some things you just can't unhear.

Anyway, Instead of posting them all here, I'm just going to send you to Flickr, where I've saved and commented on some of the better ones:

Team Fortress 2 Sprays

And don't worry, it should be clean enough for all but the most sensitive among us. The kind that think that extra mild salsa is a good idea. No shock images, no boobs.

Well, maybe some boobs:

Sentimentality

2011-05-11T18:56:00.001-06:00

I was never really into keepsakes, mementos, or scrap-booking. Still not. Other folks post Christmas cards on their door or over the mantle; I just keep them in a pile until February when it's socially acceptable to dispose of them, like receipts you don't need to keep anymore. Pictures? I'm not really a shutterbug. I'll take a few pictures now and then, but most of the content on my flickr account is from the first year or two after I had just gotten a new camera.

Sometimes I'll save a ticket stub or program from some memorable event, but a year or two later, when I go into a de-cluttering frenzy, they get tossed without a second thought. (By the way, heavenly bodies have to line up in rare ways for me to go into de-clutter mode.)

But there is some things I keep, and will still keep in a box in a drawer somewhere: Letters from my Grandfather. Granddaddy was a traveling minister for years, eventually going into prison ministry. An old Brittish gentleman, he always had a way with words. Dry wit. Brisk sarcasm, but without the acidic snark that typically comes bundled with it nowadays. While doing a recent purge of photos, paperwork, and other documents that I don't want kept around, I came across them again, and read some of the last ones he wrote to me before he died in 2008. Loved the guy.

If you sent me a picture or letter more than two years ago, It probably isn't with me anymore. Please don't take it personally, but if don't look at it or read it for that period of time it's probably not a lot of use to me. But I still have correspondence from Granddaddy from when I was about twelve. That's not going anywhere.

I was going to end this with a video of a sentimental song, something like "Cats in the Cradle" or some nonsense, but those of you who know me well, knows that I have to reverse the touchy-feely vibe that I've been building up. So instead, here's the Raul's Wild Kingdom segment from UHF. Enjoy!

Foodies, Hunger, and Class Warfare

2011-03-23T18:27:00.003-06:00

At the al-dente blog at amazon.com, one of the authors (Tracy Schneider) is attempting to feed herself on $7/day for five days, as part of the United Way's Hunger Challenge. Caveats: She cannot accept food from family, friends, coworkers, etc. This week, there's no doughnuts or coffee provided by the office, no accepting dinner invites from friends, things like that. She has to eat Breakfast Lunch and Dinner, everyday at this cost, and no adding ingredients that she already owns except salt and pepper. Also, in the spirit of the challenge, she's going to attempt to use fresh produce and protein whenever she can. The $7 amount was chosen as it is the maximum amount of money a (single) person can receive on Food Stamps.

Some of you may be thinking "That's not hard. Heck, I've been feeding myself on $4 per day since I left home!" And frankly, you'd be right. That's $210 dollars per month, which is pretty rich for one person's food budget, except maybe in an area with a remarkably high cost of living (NYC, for one).

Unfortunately, a lot of the comments, in the true fashion of internet trolls, have resorted to name calling and attacking the writer for this. When Ms. Schneider wrote about using a leftover Rotisserie Chicken Carcass to make homemade chicken soup, the attacks began right off the top. The first guy, "greg", thinks he can write a book on what's wrong with Schneider's posts and believes himself to be an expert on what poor people can't afford (ding! Stuff White People like, #62!).

Then there's "marissa" who sounds like daddy didn't hug her enough when she was little. The Irony Police will be probably be knocking on her door soon for calling Schneider a "pretentious asshole" after calling her a "fucktard" and still attempts to take the high road.

This isn't the first time the Internets were outraged at what well-to-do journalists called a tight budget. This article from two years ago on CBS told users how they could put together a spaghetti dinner with a tossed salad and dessert on a shoestring "recession budget" of... $35.00. Or another article on 20-something hipsters who's post-graduate degrees in poetry (seriously) aren't giving them good job prospects, and they're using their taxpayer funded food stamp money to buy Free-Range-Grass-Fed-Organically-Grown-Cruelty-Free-Vegan top dollar groceries from Whole Foods. (hat tip to my sister for the link)

I can understand the indignation. When people read these articles, it brings up images about some Trust Fund Baby who's woefully relaying the tale of how she had to sell the vacation home Vail, CO in order to keep the one Santa Monica. The recession is soooooooo cruel! Meanwhile the guy mowing her lawn is using his $50/day wage to provided food for his three kids.

The commenters raise some good points (rotisserie chicken wouldn't be available to be purchased via Food Stamps, for one thing), but generally need to chill the hell out, a point not lost on other contributors to the al-dente blog.

Here's my only real conclusions on the matter:

Eating well on $7/day is not terribly difficult.
The spirit of United Way's Challenge, I think, is to replicate the challenge of living on Food Stamps, so I think the restrictions of not buying things you couldn't via Food Stamps is a good idea.
This is not a "living in grinding poverty" challenge, and I have several friends who were or are currently on Gov't nutritional assistance and they have a working vehicle, even if it is a little beat up. If Ms. Schneider uses a car to go grocery shopping, let that one slide.
Tracy Schneider may very well be what is described as a Bohemian Bourgeois. For the rest of us, it is OK to roll our eyes or even snicker at those that have to totally rethink their grocery shopping and eating habbits to fit them within a budget that a lot of us might consider to be lavish.
Name calling and making personal attacks are NOT ok, and it does nothing except make yourself feel like a bigshot, while everyone else feels embarrased for you. Maybe you should slide over to the message boards at Fark or 4Chan. You'll fit right in. Or maybe get eaten alive by some professional grade trolls.
Yeah, give me a jar of Prego, some Barilla pasta, a bag o' salad greens, and some Yoplait, and I could recreate that $35 recession budget meal (*snicker*) for about eight bucks. Some of you tightwad superstars can certainly do it for less.
Just because you're on Food Stamps, it doesn't mean your diet should move to ramen, Bar-S hot dogs, Hormel Chili, and Wonderbread. If you can still eat Whole Foods groceries on Food Stamps, then that's great! I'm glad to see you're doing OK, but the next time you try to get sympathy from me by complaining about how poor you are, I am totally permitted to give you a swift kick in the ass for bitching about it.

As for me, I just used my budget from last year to calculate how much per month I spent on groceries last year. It averaged to about $154 per month, or $5.10/day, which isn't bad. Some explanation on this this number:

It includes non-food household products, such as toothpaste, deoderant, soap, etc.
I also filled up a pantry with canned goods, and my freezer has filled up nicely on this $5/day.
I do my grocery shopping locally (there's a grocery store in town about a mile away, the nearest Wal-Mart is about 40 miles away).
The United Way's challenge stipulated you had to pay for breakfast lunch and dinner. A lot of times, I skip breakfast, so for me, it's probably closer to something like 2.2 meals per day, not three.
I try hard to avoid most instant and microwaveable over-processed foods, opting for fresh produce, dairy, and meat; but a can of chili or a Totino's Pizza still slips in now and then.
If I started with a totally empty pantry and fridge and ended them the same, I could feed myself on... I guess...$4/day.

As for buying fancy stuff, I just try and keep it fresh. I still have a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli in the pantry that has a use-by date of November 2008. As long as I possess this unopened can of bland pseudo-food, I know that I'm winning the nutritional war in the Kitchen.

Eat well, and keep it civil, folks!

Recent Travels

2011-03-17T18:56:00.002-06:00

I won a Magic: The Gathering Grand Prix Trial event in February, which gave me three byes in the Grand Prix main event that was happening in Denver two weeks later. Under the urging of my Gaming peers, I decided to attend this tournament, which I would have ignored otherwise. Heck, the only reason why I went to the Trial event was because it overlapped with the few events that I usually attend anyway. How'd it go? Well... I lost horribly.

The following paragraphs contain data only relevant to MTG players. If you have never played in any MTG tournament, you should probably just skip ahead. I'll let you know when it's all clear.

The problem with three byes (three wins) is that you basically win your first three rounds without having to play. So, you have to take your untested deck against someone who actually had earned his three wins in the fourth round. And because this was a sealed deck event with 831 players, the probability of someone pulling a RIDICULOUS set of rares with excellent support and removal is higher. Like the guy I played in round four with Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas, Thopter Assembly, and three or four other on-color rares whose memories I'm currently repressing. And not to put all the credit on a lucky card pool, this guy played well, too. Most of the people at this tournament were pro or at least semi-pro. Out of My league BIG TIME.

Next round I play the OTHER kind of lucky card pool. The dripping-with-removal card pool. In a typical card pool, you can reasonable hope for 2-3 hard answers for creatures, maybe a few lesser ones, too (e.g. dealing 2 damage to something, combat tricks, etc) this guy had about two of each good removal set from the whole block. He only lost one match (and thus, paired with me) because he had difficulty getting enough creatures. Probably because he was too busy killing the other guy's to bother with casting his own. Lose again.

The rest of the day went like this, although after dropping out of the main event, I was able to win a Side Event draft, so it wasn't a total suckfest (first pick Massacre Wurm, and poison team, FTW!). Aside from that, picked up a few cards I needed for an old deck that I've been constantly tweaking, and got some art prints from Mr. rk post. Overall, not an especially productive weekend, but still, you have to get out of the Valley once in a while, right?

Non MTG-playing readers may resume now.

Last weekend, I made the trip back to Pittsburgh to watch my best friend get married. Do you want to know how much nerd cred these two have? The groom wore pins fashioned after the pins worn by the Asha'man in Wheel of Time. If you don't know what that is, pick up some Robert Jordan and start reading. I'll even post you a link. The Dedicated Pin and the silver Asha'man pin was what he was rocking.

Additionally, for favors, instead of your typical cutesy knick-knacks, they passed out dice with the bride and grooms names on them where the 1-pip usually goes. How wicked is that? The only other wedding that came close was my buddy who gave out cards from a game called"Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot" (yes, it's a real game). Also, a Karaoke wedding reception, where the couple did a kick-ass rendition of Paradise by the Dashboard Light.

Finally, I made the decision to just forgo TV forever. I mentioned that the only thing that might make me call up Dish network was when that HBO series based on A Song of Ice and Fire had an air date. Well, it got one. And I deliberated. Oh, how I tried to justify it. I spend money on a lot of other stuff, I can spare a bit more for some Quality TV, right? Well, economically, I could... but I just don't see any real reason for it. I'll be able to watch the series on DVD a year after it comes out, and I may just slip on down to the local pub on a quiet night to watch it there. That's it. I resisted the greatest TV temptation that could and has come to frutition. I'm done with Television.

But maybe I'll change my mind if I keep watching this trailer that I'm leaving you with...

D'oh!

2011-02-06T21:51:00.001-07:00

In retrospect, maybe we shouldn't have thrown the ball to the other team so much. *Sigh*

Black And Gold, Even Out West

2011-01-31T22:24:00.002-07:00

My Team is in the Super Bowl again. I've seen four of these games; two back home, and two out West, counting this Sunday's game. The best one by far was Super Bowl XL. My sister and brother-in-Law Drove up from DC to watch the game at Shootz Cafe in Pittsburgh. With the possible exception of being at the 50 Yard Line during the game itself, there is nowhere better to be than in the Home Town when your team wins. The joy is tangible. You can reach out and grab a handful. For one night, total strangers, who's names you don't even know, are your best friend for one night for no other reason than you both cheer for the same team. Walk outside from the bar, and the streets are teaming with cries of joy, car horns honking. You just feel Good to be in the middle of it all.

Then, I moved to Wyoming two years later, and decided not to get TV service. This means, I can't watch my guys during regular season, unless I want to spend an afternoon inside the local bar. I feel like such a bad fan because I barely keep up on my Steelers during the regular season, and only start watching when they play in the post season. It's partly because I don't have that city full of voracious fans to remind me of my football roots.

But this is not to say that there's no fans here. There's a local man here, drove a truck for years. His name's Verne. Let's visit his home, shall we?

Ah... that just makes this place a little more friendly for me during the days of Football. And it's not just him. There's the wife of the guy that owns the Grocery Store. The Lady from Accounting that married a Pittsburgh native. In the bar, I'll see a person wearing a Steelers shirt or jacket, he'll see my Steelers Hooded sweatshirt, and we'll exchange knowing glances that convey the same. "Hail Brother/Sister! We are from the city of Champions! Six times over!"

I don't have the numbers on my side like I did back in Pittsburgh, but rest assured, there are pockets of fans here, and we all salivate with anticipation. of the Seventh Trophy.

And now, one more picture of Verne's tastefully decorated home:

I'll be home for (the weekend before) Christmas

2010-12-21T19:35:00.005-07:00

When my Wyo-friends ask me if I'm going home for Christmas, the answer is always a resounding "Hecks no!" Then they get that same look of misplaced pity and ask "oh noes! y not?" The answer is simply because I don't like to travel in the Winter. The Roads are laden with water in varying stages of freezing. I don't like the directions taken and methods used by the TSA (Tax Subsidized Ass-grabbers).

The airports are crowded with people also trying to go home for Christmas, and there is a greater number of couples bringing their small children onto the plane to visit their Grandparents.

Quick thought here: Why is it always the parents doing the traveling with the children? If the G'rents want to see their grandchildren, why can't they get on a plane? Their kids are probably dealing with enough stress and financial burden from their little snowflakes without the added cost of Air Travel? Or the mental stress of minding your child at an enormous building filled with thousands of strangers? Or keeping them under control while juggling your luggage, the kids luggage, diaper bags, strollers, car seats, and other brik-a-brak that have mostly just driven up the cost of becoming a parent? It's a shame that kids can't sit still in an airplane seat for four hours; they may be the only ones that can fit in them comfortably.

We live in a day and age where people hundreds of miles away, even on opposite sides of oceans, can hold a conversation as if the participants were staring at each other. A few webcams, and they CAN be staring at one another.

But this year, my sister, and one of my uncles that I haven't seen in a while returned to The 'Burgh for a visit to my Grandparents before Christmas. The weather had been unusually cooperative this year, so I booked a flight to surprise my family on the same weekend. The weekend was great. Nice Dinner got to see family that I don't see often, especially my cousins.

Then I came back, and found that a Class Five Winter Killstorm had dumped about two feet of snow on Utah, Wyoming, and other less important western states. My connecting flight was delayed over an hour and a half, I had to take shelter at the Best Western in Heber, UT. I got stuck in parking lots due to the lack of snow removal. My little front wheel drive vehicle barely made it up the pair of hills, referred to as "The Sisters" by the locals, that lie between Evanston and Mountain View. Longing to get back to the Valley, where they at least keep the roads drivable, I pulled into town only to find that everyone that drives a plow in the county decided to just give up and go inside for hot cider or something.

So, yeah, not doing that again. This has basically validated all of my reservations about Winter Travel. As my mother put it, "When winter begins, he doesn't come down from the mountain until the spring thaw." No more driving in the slush, no more winter flights where the TSA gets to 2nd base with me. Although, the SLC security folks are usually pretty polite and even temered, unlike those I've encountered everywhere. Usually TSA makes me feel cheap and used. The Salt Lake International Airport TSA almost makes me feel... sexy.

Uh, don't read too deeply into that last sentence.

What's with all the sentimentality about family and Christmas, anyway? Why can't we designate that kind of sugar-job for a summer holiday? How about we have ourselves a merry little Cinqo de Mayo? Or maybe make Independence Day the new wishy-washy feel-good holiday? BBQ, swimming pools, lawn darts (and I'm talking about the awesome stabby kind!) sunshine and favorable temperatures, and explosive ordinance of questionable legality. That's what I want at a family gathering!

1096 Days Later

2010-10-15T17:43:00.003-06:00

Oh, hey, I've lived in Wyoming for three years now. Wicked cool.

My experiences so far have been pretty positive. We'll see where it goes from here...

Scattershot Post - Filler for September

2010-09-30T18:41:00.005-06:00

Nothing of importance, really. but I don't want a gap in the blog archive that shows absolutely nothing for September. Topic? Lets pick... entertainment!

Books:

There's the Dresden Files Side Jobs book that's out next month, followed by the next to last Wheel of Time book out early in November, then another Dresden files book way out in April that'll continue the main storyline. Good reading! I need to go over the first Wheel of Time books again to re-familiarize myself.

Games:

Team Fortress 2 is without a doubt the game that made me love online gaming. Eve didn't do it; there's a reason why this game is nicknamed "Spreadsheets Online". Starcraft II didn't do it (as great as the game is, you're either the OCD Multi-tasker that builds five bases and two dozen Battlecrusiers/Carriers within ten minutes, or the guy that repeatedly gets overrun by the former when he starts building his first Siege Tanks. Usually, I'm the latter. (Also, sorry for the majority of you that had this paragraph go over your heads.)

TV:

I think I mentioned before that I do not have Televisions service of any kind, including the free over the air kind (signals don't get out to here), but now that an HBO miniseries based on A Song of Ice and Fire is in production, I may have to reconsider. Yeah, I could wait and buy the inevitable DVD collection, but... There IS something to be said for seeing it sooner than later. Then again, why have another monthly bill, especially for something that I'll never use? If this one doesn't make me call up DirecTV or Dish, then I don't think anything will.

Movies:

Due to 1) the closest decent theater being an hour away, and 2) a lack of Television that walls me off from the primary marketing outlet for new movies, I haven't seen much that wan't on Netflix, and I still only bother watching maybe one Netflix movie a month. Still, I decided to go see Scott Pilgrim vs The World Last month, and have to say it was pretty good. Sadly, juding by box office returns, it looks like I was one of only about 300 people nationwide that actually paid to see it. This pretty much says it all.

Nightlife/Social:

One of the reasons why I adjusted so well to moving to Nowhereville, WY is that to me, a Saturday night at home is better than a night on the town, even when said town is hip and trendy. But I still have my karaoke, and I still run the show on Friday Nights. Good times!

Music:

I went to see Streetlight Manifesto Back in July, and in spite of a great show, I was reminded why I don't go to concerts. I can recreate the experience by walking into a sauna fully clothed, tape a picture of the backs of people's heads to my glasses, and just play one of their albums through. I could probably get closer and a better view if I was willing to muck about in the mosh pit, but I don't feel like getting shoved around by 19 year olds that have no other outlet for aggression. I'm just too old for that shit.

And now, posted with no explanation or reason, ELO's Don't Bring Me Down.

Fark-Roulette

2010-08-25T17:33:00.005-06:00

Internet message boards are like spider webs for arachnids that feed on stupid. In spite of my general preference to stay away from them (for no one cares what you think, Internet!), I've developed a way for people to create betting pools based on some of the more predictable trends. I call it Fark-Roulette.

You need a group of friends, that agree to only visit a chosen website (Fark, in this case) once per day, as a group. Honor System enforced, as there's no way to keep people from accessing during the day. Read through the headlines, and each person chooses a good one. In this example, I'll pick "From the 'We've all wanted to do it' file. Man gets drunk and fires round after round into the company server" The betting begins!

I picked this headline, so I choose the Winning reference: Office Space, Image, The cast beating up the office printer. Then, I choose the number representing the earliest comment that I believe the chosen reference will appear. I pick the seventh comment, believing that it will appear early, but not quite immediately.

Another bettor believes I highly underestimate the speed at which this popular movie scene will appear in the comments, especially because this headline could have been ripped right from the script of Office Space. He chooses the 2nd Comment. Gutsy.

After everyone has placed their bets (with an agreed upon amount of money, peanuts, M&Ms, etc. in the pool,) You look in the comments and see where it appears. The person that guess correctly (or has the best Over/Under) wins. In the case of this thread, it showed up 3rd. I would lose to the man that bet on the 2nd comment.

Try it sometime. Even if you're just guessing by yourself. Whenever a headline about McDonalds appears, or another alarmist article about how our kids are getting FAAAT comes up, try to guess how soon this Fark-favored picture will show up:

Space, Spice, and Lame-ass Vampires

2010-08-02T20:42:00.003-06:00

So... Starcraft II. As the tagline so poignantly stated, "Hell, it's about time!" Only a few of you care, everyone else can read on. The campaign mode is a blast. Aside from the usual units (all are back) you can research fancy new ones and new abilities for them (research is done by collecting Zerg DNA Samples and Protoss knickknacks scattered throught misisions).

Example: Thor, the giant walking mech that deals a world of hurt, 2500 HP, cannons that hurt bad and shoot fast. What makes it fun is when you research an ability called "Immortality Protocol" that uses 200 Vespene. This takes your charred blow'd up husk of a unit, unloads an auto repair mechanism that survied somehow, and and patches it right up. Also fun: The Arnold Schwarzenegger voice clip that accompanies it. Gold.

While rummaging around in my pantry for various things, I decided that it was high time I break down and buy a spice rack. At this point, I felt my testicles shudder, and get weaker. They proclaimed, "Men do not need these things! They need a bigger grill, more power tools, and another beer! Go get your pink apron on, Nancy, and forget about the spice rack!"
But I assured them that it's OK for a man to cook and cook well, and want to organize his ingredients to make his pantry less cluttered. And then I felt that I might be slightly mad for having a conversation with my man bits. Anyway, at least I didn't do like my co-worker who is a 58 year old man...

...and admits to being a fan of *shudder* The Twilight Series. Seriously, he fails at being a man. I've told him as much, and informed him that he need to head downtown and turn in his penis. Also, I linked him to this comic by The Oatmeal about how Twilight works.

In conclusion, I would like to apologize to anyone by my gratuitous references to Male Anatomy. I'll limit these in the future, and as always, keep it tasteful. *cough*

Grubbin' With Fuzzy - White Chili

2010-07-18T14:51:00.002-06:00

Having successfully reproduced, and dare I say "improved", my father's excellent chili, I decided to take it in a different direction: White. I've had white chili before, but haven't yet attempted to make a batch myself. The idea is pretty straightforward: Chili - Tomatoes - Beef + Chicken - Red Kidneys +White Kidneys = White Chili.

I decided last week that it was time to try it to use up ~~an old package of boneless chicken thighs that I found in the back of the freezer from last February~~ choice portions of deboned chicken that has been carefully aged in cold storage for 450 days. As always, the portions and ingredients can be played with.

1-10 Fresh chilies of your choice, diced (I used Cubanelle to start and Serrano to finish)
1-2 lbs Boneless chicken or pork
4-5 cans of light colored beans
1 can chicken broth
12 oz pale beer (ever the connoisseur, I only use the best: Miller High Life! It's the champaign of beers, you know!
a few handfuls crushed toritilla chips (This is primarily a thickening agent)

spices:

Cumin and Oregano, use your best judgement for amount
Salt/Pepper to taste

Assembly is pretty simple.

1) Brown the chicken.
2) Throw everything except the spices and half the chilies into a slow cooker, set it low, and walk away for a few hours.
3)Throw in the last of the chilies and the spices. walk away for one more hour.
4) Om nom nom nom...

Other thoughts

While cheddar goes best with Red Chili, your better of with Monterey or Pepper Jack on top of this stuff.
About chilies: If you throw them in towards the beginning, the most of the flavor and heat will cook right out. add them in towards the end (like the spices) and your chili will have a kick. Adjust according to the wussiness of you and your guests.
you can add the crushed tortilla chips closer to the end if you want to see how much you'll need to thicken, but don't add salt until after you are sure you added enough chips.
Instead of chips, you can used corn meal. But which of those two things are you more likely to have on hand?
Not mentioned in the list of ingredients above is a 6 oz can of Salsa Verde. I'm not sure if that really had an impact or not, so I'll leave that to you guys.

Enjoy!

Origins 2010 Breakdown

2010-06-29T19:09:00.004-06:00

Returned, caught up on sleep, returned to work, and pictures have been uploaded to Flickr. Time for the final debriefing! I've decided it would be easier to follow categorically rather than chronologically this year, so here goes:

Hotels

In years past, I've cheaped out and stayed at the Hotel with the lowest price tag. I figured that I just needed a place to get a shower and sleep for a few hours before heading back into the fray, and it's not like I'm going to be there for longer than that. So why blow the budget on accommodations?

Last year, I found out why: the cheap places are ten miles out from the Convention center, making runs back and forth difficult with parking garages, and eating more of your time navigating through traffic that should be spent in the convention center. This is my vacation, I've already jumped on two planes each way, I want to do as little traveling as possible once I'm in town.

I also found that the little niceties are worth paying for, if you can afford it. I'm not picky about staying at places that are spotless, staff that's hospitable, or located next to a strip club, but when you advertise a continental breakfast, I expect more than a a bagel, a half eaten blueberry muffin and cold cereal with warm milk. This year I was at the Courtyard by Marriott, and instead of providing a complimentary continental breakfast, they had a proper breakfast buffet for $10. Eggs. Bacon. Biscuits and Gravy. Home Fries. Waffles hot off the Iron. The stuff of life! I was a little worried that my cohorts would find paying for breakfast not worth their while (they are still playing it cheap, with good reasons) but even they found this expense not only acceptable, but well worth the money. Indeed, it is the most important meal of the day, especially when the rest of that day will be spent walking around a convention center until 10 or 11 pm.

Another small thing I noticed from staying here is that they leave the Air Conditioning on right where you left it. Cheap places cut corners by turning off the AC when housekeeping arrives. Annoys the snot out of me, because I want to come in from the hot and humid outdoors and into an environment that is suitable for keeping fruits and vegetables fresh for a few days. I likes it cold. Don't turn off my AC! If I wanted it off, I would have done it myself!

Being as close to the convention center as we were, we were also able to partake of the shuttle service that GAMA had arranged for four of the hotels. Wonderful!

Air Travel

I purposely stagger my flights with 1-2 hours of layover between them so if the first one is delayed, I can still get on the second one and maybe even have my baggage follow me. This kind of backfires when the 2nd flight gets delayed and forces me to wait 2-3 hours for my next flight. Like what happened on this trip. Both ways.

Something must be wrong with Chicago Midway. From now on, it goes on the avoidance list with Atlanta.

After last year's debacle, I started flying Southwest Airlines exclusively. As much as I like not having to pay to check bags or having my flights totally screwed with and not told until two days before the trip (bastards) I don't like the non-assigned seating. I always end up at the end of the line which means I'm in the bitch seat the most (for the few of you that don't know, the bitch seat is the one that's between two other people). I have a friend who loves it, but that's only because they seat families after they seat section A (the A section are the people who paid extra to avoid the bitch seat) which means they still get prime seating options. Next time I'm at the ticketing counter I'll ask politely who I have to blow to get put into group A seating.

The Games

I wrote enough in the descriptions of the photos on Flickr, so I'll keep these brief.

Android

Here's a peek at Fantasy Flight Games' R&D discussions:

Allen: "How did the playtesters like it?"

Bob: "Pretty good, I guess. But there's still some things we need to work out."

A: "Oh? Did we not add enough game bits? I'm sure we can toss in a few tokens an counters in there somewhere..."

B: "No, it's not that. We have plenty of pieces. The problem is that the players all had a pretty good grasp of the rules by round three."

A: "Round three?!? I'd have thought they'd have that dull stare like a dairy cow that early into it."

B: "Yeah, I know, but they're getting the hang of it pretty fast. How can we add more complexity to this?"

A: "Well, we've been working on adding a subset of rules and mechanics for each player that work completely different depending on which of the starting pawns the players take."

B: "That might work! Let's try it!"

Car Wars

This is an adaptation of a miniatures game created by Steve Jackson Games, and is run at Origins and Gen Con by a gaming club that calls themselves the "Rogue Judges". They've adapted the rules to be slightly less complex (just slightly) and is played by moving around your little Matchbox car that has plastic guns glued onto it, and then shooting any other player's car that has the audacity to get within firing range. Fun times!

Illuminati

Have your Illuminati add ten powerful (or not so powerful) groups and/or organizations to it's power structure to control the world! There was one game where I had the KGB attempt to take control of Texas. Good times!

Magic: The Gathering

If you like sealed deck style play, but don't want to drop close to $30 for an event, you can play Mini-masters. Basically, it's sealed deck with two booster packs. And yes, you still have to make a deck that's at least 40 cards. This means you'll be playing 4 or 5 colors, have about 18 lands, and instead of choosing what twenty-three cards to play with, you'll pretty much be choosing which four cards NOT to play with.

Mini-masters is played single elimination style, and after each round, the winners receive one more booster pack to improve his or her deck, hopefully paring it down to a more managable three color deck.

The Red Dragon Inn

A quick and easy little game about a party of the common D&D archetypes celebrating at the local inn, having defeated the Dragon and ending the campaign. The goal is to be the last adventurer standing in the inn by not running out of money, and not getting so drunk that you fall on your ass. Not easy considering your companions will be buying you round after round, and occasionally roughing you up.

The mechanics are nothing especially memorable, but the theme and humor of the game is priceless. The Female Warrior will typically beat you up by playing cards like "It hurts more if you do it like this!" or "No more chain mail bikini jokes!". The Wizard's familiar (a white rabbit named "Pooky") will run around causing trouble or go on a drunken rampage. Or buy you a drink ("Pooky says you look thirsty!"). The priestess and rogue have similar functions with different jokes "The Goddess told me to do it!" or "I'm saving that money for the poor!" or "Uh, I think you made an error in dividing the treasure". Good stuff.

The Food

I've mentioned the benefit of eating a decent breakfast above, so I'll not belabor that point. Instead, let me tell you if you do breakfast right, on most days, you can get away with bottled water, Cliff bars, and beef jerky and not be hungry the rest of the day. But still, you'll want those few good meals with your cohorts to unwind, so let me tell you that across the street from the side entrance to the Convention Center, there is a great little brew pub called Barley's. Actually, I think I mentioned this last year, so let me just point out that it's still good, they still make their own beer, and is still worth the money. This year, they had a brew called Bloodthirst Pale, a wheat beer for the Summertime that's flavor with blood oranges. Yummy.

In spite of moving from the homemade limoncello to DeVito brand rotgut, we still decided to do the final wrap-up meal at Buca di Beppo. The Chicken Carbonara is EPIC, and puts mine to shame. Good sangria too.

About as much gaming as I could fit into four and a half days, meeting up with old friends, and Good Times all around. That should tide me over for a while... at least Until January when early bird registration for 2011 starts winding down, and I start counting down days again... Hooray!

Origins 2010: Travel and Day One

2010-06-23T12:33:00.003-06:00

Writing this on my netbook, waiting for the next shuttle so I'll keep this brief:

While driving to the airport, I passed a military convoy on I-80 that was pulled over. Wasn't sure what they were about, but they had two tanker trucks with the contents marked as "Flammable". Interesting...
Flight was overbooked. Thank you, anonymous lady with the two kids, for taking the discount offered by Southwest! The connecting flight was delayed an hour for for "maintenance". Better than the wings falling off mid-flight, I guess.
The Hotel is a BIG step up from the roach motels we've picked in years past. It's the little touches, such as housekeeping not turning off the AC when they clean in order to save a buck on the energy bill. I walk in and it's delightfully cool. Especially after walking around a humid Columbus, OH. The staff is pretty friendly, too.
One odd design flaw about the hotel is that you have to climb a flight of stairs to get to the elevator. Like a staircase that leads to a handicapped access ramp. Silly.
The bag o' schwag that was way too light last year is back with some decent things from WotC, including a whole starter for their Axis and Allies miniatures game. I guess they're desparately trying to push the game. looks neat.

More later. Shuttle arrives in 5 minutes.

Scattershot Post - Volume 13

2010-05-25T17:44:00.002-06:00

You know you're working for the right people when one of the executives walk around wearing this shirt.
One of my Karaoke superstars told me there's only a few things he enjoys more than singing in front of a crown. One example he gave me was ice cold Visine in your eyes when you're baked off your ass. It has to be ice cold; he held the bottle out of the window of a moving car in winter to achive the proper tempature. And, yes, for the full effect you must be, as he said, "Baked off your ass".
One of the local ranchers was moving his herd to a new pasture this past Sunday morning. I heard mooing, stepped outside my back door, and watched the cows walk down highway 414. Viva Wyoming!
Starcraft II drops on July 27th. If you don't hear from me for about 30 days after that date, don't worry.
Origins Game Fair in less than 30 days! Hooray for Vacation!
And now, the Zac Brown Band will play me out. If Jimmy Buffet wrote country music, this is what it would sound like.

My Car, and No One Else's

2010-05-18T12:28:00.003-06:00

I bought my first car back in 2006, because I was tired of taking the bus to work or catching a ride with my Dad. One more step in the plan for independent living, you see. We went to the local dealership, haggled over price a little, and I drove home my little blue Cobalt. It felt good. I remember going home, sitting down on the couch, jingling my keys saying, "Heh. I'm a car owner now! :-)".

My Mother, whom I suspect likes taking on the role of Captain Bringdown pointed out that actually, my financing company was a car owner, a privilege I wouldn't fully have for a few more years. Bummer...

Four Years, one leap up the career ladder, and several thousand dollars later, now I say to thee all (especially Mom):

"I Am A Car Owner!"

For I now have the title to prove it:

PS: Full disclosure - the afore mentioned Blue Cobalt met its end way before its time, when a Freak Blizzard, a big hill, and a phone pole conspired to end its life. This title is for my little Orange Cobalt.

Condimental Divide, Part 2

2010-04-25T12:33:00.003-06:00

Last year, I discussed the culinary abomination of Fry Sauce, which is beloved by the Philistines in Utah. I was convinced that this was the dirtiest thing one could do with ketuchup.

Oh, how I wish it only went as far that.

Yesterday, I'm back in Ogden indulging in my games again, when I go for a dinner break between matches. I finally find a decent Chinese restaurant that serves good Hot and Sour soup, and good egg rolls, which I get on the side of some Orange Chicken. (mmm... MSG... so good). I sit down and unpack the paper bag with my food, and inspect the condiments. "Soy sauce... hot mustard... Ketchup?!" In all my years, I have never seen ketchup distributed at Chinese restaurants. Ever. So I bring it up to my fellow gamers, asking rhetorically, "Heh. Why the heck would they give me ketchup packets with my Chinese food?"

"Oh, they put those in there when people started complaining they didn't have any ketchup to put on their Kung Pao Chicken." The response was immediate as it was terrifying. He just said that, like it was the most natural thing. Just like putting it on tater tots or hot dogs.

Ketchup on Kung Pao Chicken. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

Something is just terribly wrong with Utah. I now have evidence. For my part, I'm going to do my best to turn society against the abuse of both ketchup and Chinese food. Now, when I find something to be irregular, peculiar, or other wise not quite right, instead of saying that it's "queerer than than a 16 dollar bill" I will now say "queerer than ketchup on Kung Pao".

Seriously. Eww.

Skills that have been Long Dormant

2010-03-14T19:43:00.002-06:00

My first job was at a local movie theater, whoring out overpriced popcorn to movie goers. while it wasn't a bad job for a 16-17 year old it really had no transferable job skills at all.

Ten years later, I move out west. My local boozery has bought a popcorn popper, offering free popcorn to it's patrons. The idea is Free Popcorn -> Eating Popcorn -> Saltiness -> people wanting to buy more drinks. Same principle as peanuts, only cheaper.

Today after an exciting afternoon of laundry, I stop by to have a drink with friends, and a little later, the new bartender explains that there's no more popcorn because she doesn't know how to operate the popper.

My head turns in interest. "Let me try it." Five minutes later the kettle is bursting forth with popcorn and I get kudos from the bartender, as well as a free drink.

And so, the lesson is, no matter how mundane, specialized, or poorly demanded your job skills are, someday, under the right circumstances, you juuuust might have a use for what you learned when you were a stupid teenager. So far, it got me a free Jack n' Coke. Who knows what the future may hold?

Wyoming Status Symbols

2010-02-23T17:14:00.002-07:00

In most urban and suburban areas, status symbols are mostly about disposable income, and displaying it flagrantly. A nice lawn, overachieving kids, best car, a boat, trophy wife, etc. Last week, I learned how the locals display their Street Cred. Er, Hayfield Cred. It's not the most head of cattle, nicest toys, not even the number of tasty animals that one has killed. It's not the old beat up ranch truck, although you're getting close. It's all about the numbers on your license plates.

For those of you that don't know, Wyoming License plates are prefixed by a number representing a county (I live in Uinta County, which is 19) after which, is a second number that are given out not-quite randomly. At one point, I think they just started with the lowest number and worked up. Every 9 years, new plates are issued, but you can request to keep your old number as long as you pay to keep that vehicle registered.

As a result, those who have lived here a long time, and still have Ford Trucks that are +25 years old and still in service, they have numbers like 19-127 while all of the transplants, like myself, have already gone into the letters, or into the five digit range. The lower the number that you have on your Wyoming License Plate, the higher your ranking is in the Rancher Elite. Silly, maybe, but it unofficially gets the point across that you've been here a long time, you have clout, and a vehicle registration on an old vehicle is cheaper than a BMW or a Jacuzzi.

A coworker, the son of a local rancher and an epic smart-ass, knew that in the past year a lot of the old-time ranchers have passed on. He needed to get his vehicle plates replaced, so he called his wife and told her to ask for the lowest number they have. She came back with 19-246 a full hundred lower than his brother who felt smug about his three-hundred numbered plate. His Dad said, "Son, you are gonna piss off a lot of the Ranchers around here, including me!".

But still, it's a lot like getting seat at the Adult's table at Thanksgiving: Some one has to die before you have a chance at it.

Scattershot Post: This time, it's personal!

2010-02-08T18:24:00.006-07:00

About a month ago, my Director was asking the locals if they had an old anvil that they weren't using. Like, 18th century blacksmithing tool, drop-on-a-road-runner-for-hilarity type anvil. No kidding. The man who had one declined politely; he didn't want to give it up. I love this state.
Happiness is a local bar that has Fat Tire on tap.
Looks like I have made back my initial investment on the Karaoke System. Next stop: Profitville!
For Christmas, my folks gave me a sweet gift: Three independently controlled 2.5 qt crocks in a single unit:

Its first appearance was at a coworker's Super Bowl party. It performed admirably!

And now, I leave you with Miss Murder by AFI. Before you comment that this is the wrong song, wait until the long-assed emo-intro is over at about 1:46. If emo-ballads transitioning to punk rock isn't your thing, maybe this will persuade you to watch: It has bunnies!!

The Other, Cooler Wizard Named "Harry"

2010-01-20T19:53:00.002-07:00

About a year ago, my sister recomended a series of fantasy books to me, about a wizard that freelances as a Private Investigator to make ends meet. I was never interested enough in that Potter kid to bother picking up one of his books, but this sounded a little more realistic, and I needed something to read in order to get me through George R.R. Martin's epic writer's block that keeps him from delivering A Dance with Dragons, or Robert Jordan's terminal case of Dead that prevented him from finishing the Wheel of Time series (Next WoT book via Brandon Sanderson due out this fall!).

So I picked up the first book with some old B&N gift cards I had lying around and gave it look through. I was curious by the end of the first chapter, drawn in by the second, and unwittingly gave up an entire Saturday to finish it after the third.

Harry Dresden has an office in the City of Chicago, where he gets by on contract work form the Special Investigations team of the CPD, and the occasional divining request to find lost objects. Other fun things discussed are:

How to trap a fairy
Modern Technology:Wizards :: Snails:Salt
Why you shouldn't tell your name to a wizard or any creature from the Nevernever.
Potions: General principals on mixing and brewing

Thankfully absent are Quiddich games*, British brats, and Wizard boarding schools. It's a light little read, so pick it up if that kind of thing interests you.

---------------------------------------------

*When Potter decides to form a Quiddich league that uses Australian Indoor Rules, I might get on board.

The Internet Tries to Guess My Location

2010-01-19T18:49:00.003-07:00

A lot of advertising on the web attempts to guess your location based on your IP Address. Since I moved out here. I'm constantly amused by the precision, or lack thereof, on the ads.

"Salt Lake City Dad whitens his teeth by doing one simple thing. Click here to find out the secret, you butter-spitting yellow toothed baffoon!" The closest you can Get is Salt Lake? Try again, Bucko.

"Draper Mom makes %320,0000 a year by sitting on her fat ass and playing Windows Solitare on her computer. Click here for a lazily lucrative lifestyle that has NOTHING to do with whoring our overpriced products over the intterwebs!" We've gone from from Salt Lake proper, to the greater SLC metro area and it's suburbs. I'm not sure if that's better or worse. NEXT!

"Granger woman drops 300 pounds in a weekend by following this one easy tip that we won't bother to print in this ad. Click here with your sausage fingers to find out how!" Getting closer! At least you landed in Wyoming this time!

"Lyman man gets epic huge p3n!$ by taking a daily suppliment of stuff the FDA would destroy on sight, along with anything and anyone within a 20 mile radus! Unless you enjoy being hung like a housefly, click here and let our servers download our spambot software on your machine right now! HURRY!" This is the best I've seen, a mere six miles from Mountain View. Congratulations, malware distributor, and I'll be sure to look out for the guy with the the 18" wang!

Still Alive

2009-12-29T17:33:00.002-07:00

First, let's play catch-up: Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas.

Cool. Now, Let's cover the near future: Happy New Year, Happy Presidents' Day, and just to hedge my bets, Happy St. Valentine's day.

So why have I been neglecting you all? Because I've been flying pretend spaceships: Eve Online is a Sci-Fi MMORPG that has recently been sucking up about 40% of my free time. Another 40% goes to Team Fortress 2, which is a well designed FPS game.

Otherwise, everything is chugging along. The new apartment is now cold by choice, rather than cold due to poor insulation. I guess the new tenants of my previous location complained loudly enough that they finally got the new windows they said they'd have installed by winter '08.

Work is going well. While the Christmas party was cut this year due to budget contraints, none of the staff was, so that's just fine with me.

My computer is still awesome, and still glowy blue.

Going forward, I'm hoping to take a week of vacation in the Summer to go back to the 'Burgh, as well as my usual trip to Origins.

I'll keep you posted on any new developments that I think people would find remotly interesting, but for now, I present the Black Scottish Cyclops: Meet the Demoman!

"You have chosen... wisely."

2009-11-30T22:01:00.002-07:00

The year was 1991. Maybe 1990. We had a sweet new computer with one of those speedy 386 processors inside them. It had a whopping 2MB of RAM, twice as much that was considered necessary for people not calculating trajectories of Scud Missiles. A color monitor. 256 colors, about 240 than previous generations of machines. Seething with power.

My father brought home a game that one of his coworkers had given him, copied from the original, as game publishers hadn't yet taken draconian steps to make their games difficult to pirate. It was so graphically intense that it had to be carried on FOUR floppy disks! One whole disk with its vast 1.44MB storage could only contain a fourth of the visual and audio adventure! It was one of those games that was made to capitalize on a recent blockbuster film, before such games were immediately assumed to suck. Indiana Jones, and the Last Crusade!

My sister and I sat and stared into the screen for hours trying to puzzle things out. This was made more difficult by the fact that on our first time through the game, we didn't find the Grail Diary left behind. Eventually we figured things out, puzzing through the catacombs, talking our way past the Nazi gaurds that infested castle Brunwald, flying and inevitably crashing the biplane.

The problem was that after we crashed the biplane, we attempted to steal the car (see the movie, its in there), the game itself would crash. The last disk that was copied was corrupted. Disheartened, we moved on with our lives, playing other games, taking up other hobbies. We found the strength to laugh again, even knowing that our quest for the grail was lost.

Over dramatic? Certainly, but if you ever read a book 90% of the way through and found the last 30 pages ripped out, you can imagine what this was like.

Years later, I move to Wyoming, buy a big powerful computer (like, a lot more than 2MB RAM), and when I realize I have to go at least as far as Evanston, maybe Rock Springs to pick up proper games, I discover Steam. Not content with their first game Half Life being the Game of the Year and all, Valve Studios set out to dominate the digital download and distribution of PC games. (yay, alliteration!)

I looked through the offerings of the steam store, and it looks like they acquired quite the back catalog. Even old games, like ones from Interplay and LucasArts... and then I saw it. an almost 20 year old game now only cost $4.99. The price of closure.

I download and install it. A few days later, The Grail is mine. At last, my own digital crusade comes to an end.

By the way, I mentioned before that when this game was first published, game developers didn't put layers of copy protection and CD-Keys on their games to prevent piracy. But they DID have measures meant to stop people from passing around copies of their games. Inside those huge textbook sized boxes that were industry standard until about 2000 or so, the publishers dumped all kinds of manuals and supplemental paperwork into those big boxes. Things like maps, histories of the game world, and often, as in the case of The Last Crusade, handwritten "Journals" written in persona of the game's characters.

In this instance, it was half of Henry Jones Sr's Grail Diary. Most of it was fluff, but interesting fluff. But in order to keep pirates at bay (pun unintended, but welcome) the games themselves referenced this documentation in important ways. To find out which grail was the wise choice at the end, I had to read a few pages from the handwritten "Grail Diary" to find out which one it was. I remember playing Battle Chess and Carmen Sandiego and having to type in entries from their paperwork and manuals. the xth Entry on page y. Things like that.

And now, John Williams will play me out:

IT Dept Chili Showdown, Year 2

2009-11-24T18:05:00.000-07:00

And this time it's personal!

No, really, for the organizer, it is. You see, last year he asked us not to turn up the heat too much to spare our co-worker the brunt of a Capsaicin Assault. Our coworkers in turn complained that the chili was too weak, thereby painting the IT Department as a bunch of pansies who like wussy chili.

This lit a fire under our even tempered organizer, so he in turn, asked us to light a fire inside them, all but demanding we make people cry.

So the night before I've been humming the Canyonero song from The Simpsons, replacing the word "Canyonero" with "Habrenero". Like the two I chopped up and put in the Chili. I chopped a third one and bagged it up, in case the fire cooks out too much from the first two.

What's shriveled, orange, and makes people cry, eat more than one and you'll wish you would die? HabanerooooOOOOOOoooo... Habaneroooo...

Also, I used stew beef and a chopped pork roast for meat in the hopes that whole cuts would improve the texture. Added one or two hours before serving was a few chipotles and one more chopped Habanero to drive the heat home. Also the cumin and chili powder weren't added until here, as well.

So, how'd it go?

We'll our mission to add the heat back into the competition was a successes. The tough guys enjoyed it, and the more heat adverse people flocked to two or three entries that weren't punishing on the tongue.

We had nine entries this year instead of six. All of them were about evenly matched, unlike the year before where the quality between the top half and the bottom half was a wide as a trench (recap of last year's bottom three: Watery, Tomato Sauce with Beans, and Mediocre Town).

The voting was fairly evenly distributed, and I secured 2nd place for my name again: "Chili for Smart and Good Looking Folk", the 1st place winner in the name category was "Meat Your Maker."[sic] This year the prizes were thematic, and I won a bottle of Blair's After Death Sauce. Mmm Mmm! In the future, I think I'll be using more habaneros for my chili. That turned out pretty well.

Forbidden Breakfast

2009-11-03T18:13:00.004-07:00

When I was a kid, my mother had it in for sugary cereal in our house. Occassionally, a box of Cocoa Pebbles would slip by, and Honey Nut Cheerios were allowed in moderation. But Count Chocula and Lucky Charms were rare (Mom fought the war on cereal marshmallows like nobody's business) and she put her foot down whenever the subject came up about that sugary breakfast abmonination: Cookie Crisp.

"Cookies for BREAKFAST? They'll be robbing liquor stores to feed their crack addiction by the time they're 18!"

But as I've noted before, I have the advantage of living far far away from Mom. (Love you mommy! :-) So on Monday morning, after years of denial I finally had a bowl of the stuff. It was... pretty good. I guess. Not as good as the Pebbles or Count Chocula, but pretty good. And really, Ma? Those "Cookies" are just sweeten bits of corn puffs, as are the "chips". And I have no urge to rebel against authority, so I think it turned out OK.

Follow Up on my New Computer

2009-10-29T18:00:00.003-06:00

One year after I really wanted to, I finally replaced my Laptop with the Glowy Blue Beast Box for my primary computer. Take a moment to stare at The Awesomeness:

Oooooh, pretty!

So, what did I do first? Well, let's go through the list chronologically:

Connect to the Internet
Got Microsoft.com to order my free upgrade to Windows 7
Installed Zone Alarm
Played a game of Pox Nora (a game that's not graphically intense, and STILL manages to send my laptop's CPU into overdrive, overheating, and forced shutdown)
Downloaded Microsoft's free anti-virus utility recommended by a coworker.
Attempted to install aforementioned tool, installer froze and the process had to be killed
Succeeded installation of tool, another freeze-up and kill episode on updating it
Curse Microsoft
Attempted to install one of them new-fangled MMORPG thingies that are all the rage with the kids these days. The installer freezes and locks up, much like the Anti-Virus tool.
Repeat previous step 4-5 times; curse Microsoft
Begin to suspect that the ZoneAlarm program mentioned in step 3 was having difficulty on a 64-bit system, being a 32-bit progam and all.
Uninstall ZoneAlarm, reboot, subsequent attempts to install MMORPG and run Anti-Virus are successful
Sheepishly recant curses directed at Microsoft
Played through the Eve-Online Tutorial. Remembers how it feels to be impressed by Good Graphics.

And so, the adventure continues. I'm going to have to hook up this laser printer too, and see how that action works.
So, between the myriad PC games that are now open to me, the next Wheel of Time book that came out two days ago, and the fact that I just got another coworker addicted to another old hobby of mine (he was an easy sell) My leisure time is booked until further notice. At least it's getting cold now, so I have a good excuse to stay indoors all day! :-)

Shipping and Receiving - The Follow Up

2009-10-22T20:06:00.005-06:00

Ok, so, the previously mentioned package was sent out for delivery Friday, was returned to the UPS facility due to an unknown address, they checked with the post office, and sent it back out for delivery on Monday, returned it again demanding a signature, dropped it off on Tuesday after they picked up the slip with the signature on the back. So it's all good.

Other packages that have arrived since then: My new Computer. Yay! Sadly, the monitor that I purchased from another vendor is taking its sweet time. Woot takes longer than usual to ship their stuff.

SuperFreakonomics: The follow up to the best book I've ever bought at an airport has arrived. A few pages into the introduction and I learned (seriously) that Indian mens' penises are smaller than average so they have a condom failure rate of 15%, partially explaining the high population in that part of the world. Can't wait to see what's next!

Last week I ordered a case of the Boss Monster Wine from wine.woot.com, Mostly for the novelty of buying wine via the Internet, a convienience that the Liquor Control Gestapo would not allow back in Pennsylvania. Viva, Wyoming, land of True Men, and Strong Women! Oh, and yeah, the label was a selling point for me, too.

A package from my Parents containing...? Dunno yet. I'm going to have to send them my new physical address, because apparently I gave them the wrong one last month.

And now, because the'll never be a better segue into this clip, I present the Music Man!

Wow. I thought *I* lived in a podunk town. If someone in Mountain View burst into song when the Fed Ex guy showed up, I reckon he'd be shot.

A Different Sort of Biological Clock

2009-10-15T20:06:00.004-06:00

For the last ten years or so, I always assumed that a latent desire to have children would bubble to the surface as I aged. Something about needing someone around to help you feel young or something.

But today, a coworker, her family, and I went out to Pizza Hut (Observing 2-years with our current employer) and the restaurant was also filling up with screechy 8-13 year old girls from the local Middle School (volleyball and soccer teams).

Between events like that, and encounters with other coworkers' children, I think that if I don't knock someone up by the time I'm 35, a vasectomy will seal off this genetic faucet for life.

As another friend once put it: "I love children, but I can never finish a whole one by myself."

Back in the Saddle again... and Wielding Knives!

2009-10-12T20:08:00.003-06:00

Orange chicken on Thursday, Pepperoni Rolls on Saturday, Tuna Salad on Monday, and few things already planned for the rest of the week. It took me a long time to grow into my kitchen since I moved in, but I think we're there!

If anyone has attempted to cook in a strange kitchen, you know what I'm talking about.

Shipping and (hopefully) Receiving

2009-10-05T22:51:00.005-06:00

I just placed an order with Barnes & Nobles, using up all but $1 and change of my gift card balance. What's really on my mind is will the UPS guy be able to find my new address? Apparently, it's in none of the Postal Databases, probably due to my building not existing until a few months ago. Living in friggin' nowhere probably doesn't help.

I have the option of shipping to my work address, a frill that my company cordially provides. But I figured that since these gift cards didn't represent an actual investment on my part (they were a Christmas gift from my workplace) that an order with them would be a good test.

By the way, having a gift card is the only reason to buy from Barnes and Nobles as opposed to, say, Amazon. B&N's books are about 10-20% more expensive, and even with the members discount (you have to pay for membership) and they charge sales tax. Both of these, I'm sure, are the results of being based in New York, which decided to start charging Sales Tax for online transactions. The high cost of doing business in that state causes them to raise prices, which causes me to go to a retailer than can provide the same stuff cheaper, which in turn (provided enough people do the same) causes B&N to go under or leave the state, cause the state of New York to lose the new taxes they are attempting to collect, plus the ones they had received before the Online Transaction Tax took effect.

NY needs to take a lesson from their comrades in California before they end up the same way. It might not happen for several years, but they can't afford to make the cost of business greater than it already is for New York Businesses.

Repaired

2009-09-24T20:47:00.003-06:00

My Car has returned and it's whole again! Hooray! The reputation of the local auto body shop is well deserved. All evidence of damage is removed, my doors now open and shut, and new paint is perfectly blended with the rest of the car and strangely enough, has a smell similar to bananas. I can't explain that one, but it's kinda cool.

This event along with the radiator incident two months ago makes me think that The West is attempting to assassinate my little orange car...

One Hour Away from Natural Beauty

2009-09-14T19:30:00.002-06:00

My sister came to visit this weekend, so we took a trip to the Flaming Gorge Recreation Area and did some sight seeing.

And what fine sights they were!

This is about 55 miles south of me, and it's friggin sweet. You're better off clicking that and viewing the whole picture. It's purty.

Busted Stuff

2009-09-11T17:32:00.005-06:00

Just because I signed on with the hivemind doesn't mean I'm abandoning this place!

So, I'm moved it, I have mah Internets back, and my sister is in town for a weekend. Hooray! But that means I'm too busy to post much, but I expect by the end of next week, things will have settled down some. In the meantime, lets take a look at my busted car that's getting repaired this week:

Great stuff! It'll take the better part of a week to fix, but the insurance company will be paying for a rental car durning that time.

In Which Fuzzy Drinks The Kool-Aid

2009-09-08T20:44:00.003-06:00

I have made no secrets that I don't like social network sites. Frankly, I never liked the idea of blogging in general. Not until I realized that it was the best way to update friends/family with my Wyoming escapades did I grudgingly decided to create Fuzzy Goes West. It was a better alternative to collecting a stack of email addresses and sending out a mass spam that only half of the people would read.

While at the Family Cottage in Pittsburgh, I learned that my Father was following my Sister on Twitter.

Let me tell you about my father. He is inherently distrustful of the Internet. For the longest time, He would refuse to bank or pay bills online for security reasons of his own imagination. I think he had visions of a masked man cutting the line to the DSL, holding the exposed wires under an burlap sack, and somehow pouring his money into it, perhaps in the form of pixelated dollar signs.

So, no, he demands paper transactions, pays with cash, despite the more likely scenario of identity theft through personal information left on some of those scraps of paper he holds dear.

But he follows my sister, on Twitter. I Lose. I had to do something about it.

And so, If you see my name on the Rolls of the Damned, you'll know why. Ugh.

Just checking in

2009-09-02T20:29:00.003-06:00

While I really do love my new place, they haven't gotten the WiFi up yet. So, I'm writing this from the local boozery, the Bridger Valley Lanes (They're a bowling alley too).

Sooo... pictures maybe this weekend when I'm on a proper connection. Later.

Moving Day

2009-08-29T14:06:00.003-06:00

I'm writting this from my old house, which is nearly empty, save for the kitchen, which I was never able to get properly packed in time, and some debris on the floor, some of which will be moved today or tomorrow. The bulk of my Stuff is at the new place. The apartment, while smaller, is better than I expected.

First, the kitchen. It has a dishwasher, replacing the inefficient dishwasher I was using before (that would be my hands). It has a microwave that's mounted to the cupboard, replacing the model my sister gave me, which had an underpowered turntable that came dislogdged unless you balance the weight juuuust right, and took up more counterspace than it needed to. The oven/rangetop is new. For me, this means the burners are all even, so when I put a saucepan on the front-left burner, it will stay put, rather than slide clean off like the previous one did. Dangerous AND annoying!

Next, the heating. It's all electric, so my gas bill is history, although the electric bill rising will offset that slightly. All of the rooms have their own thermostat so I can kill the heat in the rooms I'm not using, saving a little more money. And they have this new thing in home construction called insullation that's all the rage. They put some of this stuff in the walls, and it not only keeps the cold from coming in, but it also- and this is where it gets amazing- keeps the heat inside! I'm certain that this technology wasn't around when they built my last place.

Additionally, I'm told they did some soundproofing on the walls and ceilings, so I won't have little old ladies above me pounding on the floor with their canes, screaming to turn down that noise so she can hear her stories.

There was one casualty in the move. When my friends' truck pulled away, my car was parked next to it with an open door which had caught between some of the rails in his trailer and pulled the door the wrong way. So, now I have a nylong strap holding it shut, and I'm going to get a few estimates on the repairs on Monday (Yes, his insurance will cover it).

So, I'll have picutures for you later. I'd have them today, but the transfer cable for my camera is in a box somewhere.

Birds are Stupid

2009-08-23T19:08:00.003-06:00

At the Laundromat today, I encountered a bird that had found the one open window to get inside, but was utterly baffled on how to get back out. Not wanting the bird to die of starvation inside a laudromat (an awful place for any creature to die), I opened the door and attempted to shoo it back outside.

Ah, but birds aren't built for reasoning things out. This one relentlessly darted for the same pane of glass several times, as it appeared to be the biggest portal to the outdoors. So I'm standing there yelling at the thing: "That's right, go for the door- no, not the- *thwack* dammit!" after it thuds to the ground, it just sits there for a few minutes, stunned, as I walk over to see if it sustained any fatal injuries.

Dramatized Bird Thoughts:
"The two-legger is approaching, flee, flee! Ah ha! An exit! Freedom! Faster! *WHAM* Uh... the two legger must have set up a trap or something... soooo woosy... Oh no, it's coming back! Am I going to die? What's it holding over my head?" (note: it was my phone in camera mode)

I recieved a phone call from a friend of mine, so I told him about the incarnation of stupid on wings, and he told me to toss a shirt over it, and scoop it up and carry it outside. Good idea, so I finally set the terrified bird outside, and joined its buddies across the street at the bird feeder. He's probably warning them of the cave with the invisible barriers, and the two legged giants that chase the birdies around for their own sick pleasure.

Stupid Bird.

Scattershot Post - Two Barrels of Word Pellets

2009-08-17T17:23:00.005-06:00

Several items, none that can fill out an entire post. You know the drill:

In Salt Lake City, there is a store called Game Night Games that specializes in European board games, and other semi-obscure games. Meaning you wont find them at Toys R' Us between Chutes and Ladders and Sorry. The have open tables on weekends, so I learned how to play Puerto Rico with some like minded strangers. I'm liking Salt Lake more and more these days.
In electronic gaming, Starcraft II recently was pushed back to a release in the first have of 2010, and that makes me sad. I wanted a Zergling rush for Christmas. (For those of you unfamiliar with the terminology, it's kinda like this).
A few weeks ago, I got the news that Dabel Brothers Publishing are going to finish the comic book series based on Robert Jordan's The New Spring. This series was first published by Red Eagle Entertainment and illustrated by the Dabel Brothers, but some business SNAFU kept the last issues from being completed. So now, the Brother's are publishing it themselves, and they are also illustrating/publishing the comic book based on the Wheel of Time series. I just got the first taste of it in the mail today. Friggin Sweet.
I'm enjoying the whole karaoke master gig, but some nights, the drunken idiots are out in force. This past Friday was one of those nights. Some sloppy-drunk girl got belted by some angry-drunk guy, and some stupid-drunk dude just couldn't get it in his head that I. Don't. Have. Any. Music. From. Crystal Dew. English, mother****er, DO YOU SPEAK IT?!?!?
I'm juggling three consecutive weekends involving a wedding in Pittsburgh, a move to another apartment, and a visit from my sister. When it rains, it pours.
And finally, here's a band that I've recently discovered: Streetlight Manifesto. Any band that lists the Squirrel Nut Zippers as an influence must be good.

Reduction

2009-08-12T22:00:00.003-06:00

When I first began the process of packing, I figured "No big deal, I just did this two years ago." Ah, but that was me moving out of my parents house with one bedroom full of stuff, plus a few start-up household goods donated by the 'rents and my sister. That was not a big deal.

Since my arrival here, I've acquired a lot more stuff. Some of that stuff off the top of my head includes:

One large futon from coworker
One large futon from home
Matching coffee table and end table
Non-matching coffee table and end table
Full size mattress w/ box springs (no frame)
End Table like item, used as a TV Stand
Card table and chairs
Kitchenware (Pots/pans, dishes, glasses, cutlery, flatware, small appliances)
Nonperishable groceries
Large Armchair w/ ottoman (From Home)

Soon, I'll have one less Bedroom and a smaller Living room. And while I think everything will fit, it may be a bit... cramped. Another coworker might be interested in taking a futon off my hands (thus continuing the circle of life) but I'd like to ditch one of these coffee tables, I think. Well, I'll see what I can do.

Joke Overheard at the Bar

2009-08-08T11:23:00.003-06:00

Q: What's the most successful pickup line in history?

A: "Hey, does this smell like chloroform to you?"

See Also: "Does this drink taste like there's Rohypnol in it?"

A Lesser Relocation Project

2009-07-30T19:20:00.003-06:00

When I first moved here, my employer gave me 45 Days in my temporary housing. Now, it's not like I'd be kicked out on day 46, but I'd have to start paying out of pocket for my room at the local inn, and that gets expensive quite fast. Not helping the matter was that housing in the Bridger Valley, whether a rental or purchase, was a lot higher than you'd think it would be in a rural area. Demand was high and supply was low, for this was before the sub-prime meltdown. There was a waiting list for availability at the local town housing complex.

Thankfully, a member of the church that I started to attend referred me to someone that was looking for a tenant. (It pays to know people.) I signed a lease, moved into a decent sized house, and I got out on the last day of my temp housing, a feat that's uncommon at my company. The rent isn't what you'd call cheap, but it was under four figures, which is what some people were asking for monthly rent at a house. As I saw it, I was getting ripped off at a lesser rate than a lot of other people.

18 months and a housing implosion later, my lease has expired, my options are free, and a coworker tells me that a friend of his, who is also a former employee from our IT department, is building a new duplex, or I guess a quadplex, of apartments just on the South end of Mountain View, and is looking for renters.

I met with the owner, and looked around the apartments... after I helped her wrangle her stray horse back inside the fence.

Viva Wyoming!

Rent is about $125 less per month, and includes water/sewer, garbage, and Internet. All I pay for is electric. (the heating is electric, not gas). Additionally, I'm not mowing a lawn, which was a condition of the lease that I signed at the first place, a stipulation that I have regretted especially this summer; we had one of the rainiest springs in memory out here.

So in summation, it's cheaper, better insulated, and no lawn work required. Win.

I have one less bedroom, so now the gameroom and guest room are going to have to be combined. My commute will double from 1 mile to 2 miles. (My Pittsburgh friends are probably scoffing at that remark, for they still have to commute several miles to get to work, and stop at several traffic lights. The arousal of your jealousy was intended! :-)

Now, I have to decided what makes the move. I didn't bring much from Pennsylvania, but I've since accepted donated furnishings and purchased one secondhand futon. It filled up a 3 bedroom house just fine, but might be a bit much for the apartment. At least I had the foresight to keep the boxes from the first move, along with most of the boxes from things purchased from woot and amazon.

Road Quiz

2009-07-27T18:16:00.004-06:00

Question 1: While going 60 MPH on the highway under construction in moderate traffic, a shredded tire from a semi truck appears suddenly from underneath the car in front of you. You have less than one second to react to this road hazard. Do you:

A) Swerve to the right and sidswipe an SUV

B) Swerve to the left and crash into a Jersey Barrier

C) Brake Hard, probaby run over the tire anyway and get rear ended for your troubles

D) Brace for impact, and run over the tire

Question 2: One week after running over a shredded tire, your car is overheating. In this situation, what is the most likely cause of this problem? EXTRA CREDIT: How much will it cost to repair/replace?

Question 3: True or False - Manuafacurer Warranties cover damage sustained from road hazards.

Time's up, put your pencils down, check your ansers against mine below.

------------------------

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It's a Wicked World that We Live In...

2009-07-24T17:15:00.003-06:00

In 2002, a band called The Transplants wrote a song called "Diamonds and Guns". It's a surprisingly catchy song for the subject matter. From what I can interpret, it's about a drug deal or a black market diamond deal gone bad, and the consequences that comes from the life choices that led to said deal.

Some of you know which song I'm talking about, some of you may not. But all of you have probably heard it before when Garnier licenced it to sell their shampoo. Any of you who may have not heard the song in it's entirety, will recognize it by the first 5 seconds.

And now, may you think of gritty thug life when you buy hair care products, which is only fair because now when I hear this song, I can't help but think about healthy lustrous hair with shine and bounce.

Woo Woo!!

Fallout 3 - Surving the Post-Nuclear Capitol Wasteland

2009-07-16T23:24:00.004-06:00

Yeah, I haven't posted much in a while, but after three travel weekends, (Origins, Steamboat Springs, and a day trip to Ogden) I'm taking things easy for a while. I like to spend a weekend bumming around the house now and then.

The only things of interest happening right now are work related, and I can't discuss those any more than this: We discovered an expensive problem with something, and there another thing going on right now that were doing to expand our service, but working with the other company involved is proving to be frustrating for several reasons.

So instead, I'll discuss a little PS3 game I've been playing in the evenings and on weekends called Fallout 3.

Here's the deal: The story is sort of an alternate time line of 1900's history where WWII never happened, and instead, the United States gets a face full of Nuclear Warheads detonated on them, mostly in the Capitol. in the 1940s or 1950s. Millions die, but some of the population make it into underground bunkers called Vaults (Built by the Vault-Tec corporation). About a hundred years pass since the apocalypse, and you decided to go out for a stroll in the devastated DC area, hearby named The Capital Wasteland.

For rest of the game you walk around shooting mutants and Mad-Max Style Raiders, while trying to scrounge up ammo, Medical supplies, food and water, and Nuka-Cola Bottle Caps, which are the defacto currency of the Wasteland.

The Art direction is interesting, with 1950 style advertising and naming conventions displayed all around, music that I'd have to say is from the 1940s and early 1950s, and your wrist-computer (big, clunky, and named the Pip-Boy) prominently displays cute illustrations involving this guy to the right.

I'm not going to painstakingly explain why the game is amusing, so I'll just leave it at this little anecdote. As you progress in the game, you may choose special abilities that suit your tastes and play style. These abilities (called Perks) have odd names and descriptions. There's the one called Lady Killer, that gives you some unique dialogue options when dealing with the opposite sex, and deals %10 more damage to female enemies.

Some of these perks are only acquired through in-game actions. I found one today, after I successfully performed a speech where I convinced the perky inventor lady that she ought to stop writing her Wasteland Survival Guide that she's been working all her life. It took the wind out of her sails, but she agreed, and I got the perk Dream Crusher. The description: "Something about your prescience dampens others' desires to exceed. Any enemy's chance of getting a critical hits is reduced by 50%." A game that rewards you not just for saving the world, or shoot things, but dashing the hopes for somebody's life's work. That's just deviously clever.

Not Really Seafood

2009-07-08T23:14:00.003-06:00

A coworker, his family and myself went to dinner at the new BBQ place in town. Pretty good ribs and brisket.

So guess what we had for an appetizer?

Rocky Mountain Oysters. Hereby moving Raw Oysters (real seafood) down to the number 2 spot on the list of "Strangest things I've ever eaten."

They tasted alright, but it's difficult to get over the fact that you got the gonads of a ruminant in your mouth.

Again that's bovine testicles.

In your mouth.

Moo!

Independence Day in Steamboat Springs

2009-07-07T18:08:00.003-06:00

So, back in 1997 or so, some of my family's friends moved from Western Pennsylvania to Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Back then, it might have well been Mars, for the other side of the country seemed like a strange and dangerous place. And it was SOOOO FAR AWAY!

Ten years later, I make a move of my own and end up a mere 4.5 hour drive away. In western traveling time, that adjusts down to about two hours. My parents mention my relocation in the Chirstmas Card Letter and and a few days later I get a call from these folks, saying they'd love for me to visit. Between my job, my life, and my total lack of vacation time, I'm unable to make the time for the first year. This year, I take advantage of the long holiday weekend and go for a drive to visit Jennifer, Mike, Jaquie, and Leah.

Five hours later, I pull into town. Pretty place, but it has that snooty feeling, like it's crawling with White People. I think it was mostly from the tourists and Granola munchers, though. I then pull in to look upon people I haven't seen in a long time. Most of them haven't changed much, except for the total assimlation into Western Life. Jaquie's a Registered Nurse working the graveyard shift at the Steamboat Hospital, Mike's an Engineer for the Peabody Mining Corp., Jennifer works part time at the local school and runs a few church and/or social events, and Leah has been working the past three summers at the local ampitheater's box office. Seeing her again was a little akward, because she's sixteen years old now, and the last time I saw her, she was two. I feel old.

So did I spend my weekend?

Shopping at F.M. Light!

Hey, did that banner say "Free Rodeo Tickets?" Sweet! Let's go!

Cool. Next time I attend one, I'll be able use the old figure of speech "This ain't my first Rodeo!"

So how do you top that? I dunno, how about we watch the Rancher's drive the Cattle right down Friggin' Main Street? (In this case, Main Street is Lincoln Ave., but has the same significance). This is how we roll out here.

So there you have it folks! There's a lot more pictures from my trip at Flickr, and don't miss the Baggs, Wyoming Pit Stop!

I love the west a little more each week. Happy Trails!

My Independence Day Weekend

2009-07-06T20:39:00.004-06:00

Two major weekend trips in a row! My inheirited aversion to travel is reeling, and I hope at this rate will that it'll be pronounced dead by the end of next summer! I'm still captioning and uploading pictures (and there are A LOT of picutres), so I'm not going into grand detail just yet. But the short version is that I was visiting family friends, other Pittsburgh Ex-pats, that have made the move west about 10 years prior to me. Here's a quick picture for location identification purposes:

Until then, may you experience the joys of answering the Call of the West!

Origins '09 - Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

2009-07-02T18:06:00.005-06:00

After we returned from White Castle, we returned to the hotel, where I proptly recieved a call from my Brothers in Arms (Mito, Tyler, and Kress) letting me know they have arrived. So instead of sleeping, we stayed up, and played a few games of MTG and Acquire, except Tyler, who doesn't have the fortitiute of consiousness to do be up more than 20 hours at a time.

A note about the Acquire game: I purchased one of the old 1968 era versions of the game that I had been seeking for a while now. This is the one with the wooden tiles instead of the plastic ones, but you can still tell that the graphic design was very 1960's era, and not the hippie psychadelic style. More like the stodgy boardroom style. Rather bland and minimalist. Still, I think it's cool. I also got a free copy of Stonehenge with that purchase, which is an anthology boardgame where 5 different designers were given the Stonehenge themed playing pieces and told to make a game around them. I'll have to give it a closer look later.

So, the next morning we fought off fatigue, and returned to gaming. I learned how to play this Dominion game everyone keeps talking about, and demanded to know why no one told me about it sooner. How it works is everyone gets a deck of 10 cards that consists of 7 coins and 3 victory points, and each turn they must draw 5 cards from this deck, and use those cards to buy more stuff, and eventually more victory points.

What I don't understand is the constant comparisons people make to Magic the Gathering. Sure each player has his own deck of cards, and you have to build that deck, but the mechanics and means of doing so are wildly different. It's like comparing Acquire to Monopoly, becuase they both use paper money, or to Scrabble, becuase they both have tiles that are placed on gridded board. And don't even get me started on the people who have compared Settlers of Catan and Risk. Not. Even. Close.

So after learning one awesome game, I decided to learn another: Munchkin Quest.

The orginal Munchkin card game was essetially an abstract mock-up of a typical Fantasy Role playing session, modeled after what some of the sillier games degenerated to: Burst through doors Leeroy Jenkins style, recklessly kill whatever lived inside, take their stuff, and maybe steal something from your friend. Or stab him in the back.

Munchkin Quest lessens the abstraction by giving you a real dungeon, with all of the humor, oddball items, and silly monsters we've come to expect.

click to enlarge

After that, I wandered around the vendor's hall to covent some wicked-cool furniture before my next game which was Risk 2210, which I think I've mentioned before, so I'll not discuss further. But seriously, the Table I saw in the exhibit hall. Wow.

After Risk 2210, we returned to the hotel again, and got some actual sleep, lest we pass out on Saturday.

Saturday, I played a little Dungeons and Dragons and Chess with Mito, which was good times. Mito's certainly getting better at chess, as he mangaged to beat me yet again (but I still got best of 3).

I also tried another game which was similar to Munchkin Quest in gameplay, called Descent:

This is like an advanced version of HeroQuest, if anyone has everplayed that when they were a kid. It's made by Fantasy Flight games, who are know for making LARGE detailed boardgames with Large, detailed pricetags. I've often seen this one retail for 80 bucks! they also make the Starcraft Boardgame which I got for a friend a year or two ago, and I think he's played it, like once. It's not something you bring out unless you and at least two more people are prepared to spend a day playing it. Oy.

Anyway, Sunday got cut short between us sleeping in, having difficulty with Kress's vehicle, and Delta bumping my flight forward two hours. But we did make time to go to Buca di Beppo's for lunch, which was tasty as always. With a few minor, and one major exception...

In an order to consolidate the look and feel of all the Bucca di Beppo franchises, they standardized some of the pictures and art on the wall (It's still mostly the same, I didn't notice it until the waitress brought it up.), the paper placemat menus have been replaced by more professionally printed full color menu (I prefered the rustic touch of the placemat-menu, but no big deal) and they no longer make their own limoncello, but instead serve Danny DiVito's Brand (RAGE!)

Danny's brand is more harsh tasting, which is something that I usually wouldn't mind in a strong liquor, but not limoncello. It tastes like a bunch of lemons steeped in antifreeze, and Danny DeVito's sweat. Basically, I'm in agreement with these folks at the A.V. Club. Bleh. I'm still amazed that he landed this marketing deal by showing up drunk (or with a hangover) on the View.

So, that's how I spent my summer vacation. And now, I think it's high time to begin looking to do something outdoorsy before the season draws to a close. Get a little fresh air in me. Maybe it doesn't burn as much as they say. :-)

Until then, keep casting Magic Missile at the Darkness!

Origins '09 - Wednesday and Thursday

2009-06-30T20:23:00.005-06:00

Wednesday morning, I stopped at the local Maverik for Coffee and Breakfast. In with the breakfast sandwiches, there was a breadless entry labeled "Atkins", which as far as I can tell, means that someone made more eggs and bacon then they had bread for.

Two uneventful hours on the road, follow by five more in the air (and taking pictures of the amusing signage and T-Shirts) puts me in Columbus, where I take a cab to the Convention Center and meet up with Ryan (He was the groom in the March Wedding, FYI). I take it easy that night, and just played with the Battletech pods and sidkicked for Ryan in his Magic: The Gathering Sealed Deck game.

The Battletech pods are basicl sit-down style Arcade cabinets LANed up together so you can shoot down other conventioneers. Weapons take a while to recharge, with the exact time it takes being inversely proportional to the power of the weapon. i.e., you're Tactical Nerf Balistic Missiles will take less time to charge than the shoulder mounted Pwnage Cannon of the Gods. Each of those pods represents a different Mech with different guns, missles, armor and speed.

Then, a trip to the Columbus, OH Waffle House, for aggressively priced butter drowned foodstuffs! Hooray! (BTW, for my Origins travel compainions from years past, they renamed The Golden Fox. It's now Lollipops. I'm guessing it was a change of owership or something.)

The next morning, we head back in. Ryan and Jill (his new wife) play Fluxx, while I play a Carcassone tornament. There wasn't many people interested in this one, as It was me versus two other people. I came in last, but it was still a good match. I was a little surprised they allowed four hours for a one round tournament. Even with five players, A game wouldn't take more than two horus.

With the 3 hours of extra time I hadn't planned on, I join Ryan and Jill in their game of Redneck Life. The object of the game is to end the game with the most teeth. But along the way, you'll lose several of them to accidents involving Beer, Vehicles, Fights, or a combination of them.

As you spiral around the board, you'll encounter extra cash, and probably even more expenses that you're job at the Bait n' Beer can't cover, so you'll have to take out payday loans at the Check n' Scam to make ends meet. You'll get married, divorced, married again (and inheirit a bunch of stepkids named Daryl) and buy a few fantastic cars and homes. After the game, we had a bit of dinner at Barley's Brewpub (conviently across the road from the exit/entrance). If your ever in the Arena District for any reason, go here and try their beer. This is good stuff!

After dinner, Ryan and I returned to the convention center to do battle in a Ravnica Sealed Deck event, with complete sets of Ravnica, Guildpact, or Dissension awared to the top 4. [MTG Nerdery warning!] Surprsingly, I placed 4th thanks to a good mix of beaters on the ground and in the skys, including Loxodon Heirarch, Watchwolf, Siege Wurm, Golgari Rotwurm, Assult Zepplid, Servent of Vhitu-Gazi, and a Hunted Lammasu, supported with a Condemn, Douse in Gloom, and Disembowl. Between the three bouncelands, two signets, and a Breeding Pool I opened (yay, shocklands!) I was able to play every color except red. Honestly, I had another bounceland and signet to play red, if I had wanted to, but the sweetness I got in the other colors left a lot to be desired in red. So, after losing one match in the Swiss rounds and again in the top 4 playoffs to a guy packing a leafdrake roost and an Obnivian (The frog that turns things into 3/3 frogs) I walked away with a complete set of Dissension. So, hooray for me!

After a late night dinner at White Castle, we returned to the Hotel to get some sleep. Or, that's what I intended to do at least...

Quest Completed! Gain 500XP

2009-06-28T21:50:00.002-06:00

I'm back, and I'm sorry I couldn't find the time to post during the week. I'll have pictures and stories later. For now, I must rest.

Remain Steadfast, Travelers...

2009-06-24T07:09:00.000-06:00

...for your journey shall be fraught with peril! Even now, as the Forces of Evil block your path and force us to take the alternate road, you must hold strong. Keep your weapons close, fill your mind with arcane lore, and for Bahaumat's Sake, DO NOT feed the Dragons. The barroom braggarts' tales of distracting blue dragons with candy have been greatly embellished.

Pack rations! The City is full of those that would gouge travelers by hawking pretzels and corn-dogs for 10 gold crowns each! Be civil! We have all observed drunken man-children cast into their own rage after losing a game of Tavern-Stones! Such conduct is unbecoming of Fate's Children, such as yourselves! Rest yourselves each night, for your minds and bodies cannot function to their full potential on two hours sleep. I was pleased to hear that your accommodations this year are less flea ridden than in years past.

Take heart, for even in spite of all these things, your destiny is not as dark as it may seem now. In the blur of the City, your eyes may fool you into making rash and fearful choices. The hordes of zombies are just pasty nerds that have cast aside the basic social norms of hygiene. The sneering warriors? Merely LARPers with impressive, yet harmless, foam covered weaponry. And years of study and research have long since disproved the theory of Anomalous Ill-Luck events: The dice ARE NOT trying to kill you.

Be wary, be safe, and we shall meet again! I would hear of your adventures over gobblets of fine Arevindor wine. Fare Thee Well, And may the Pantheon of Light favor your quest!

I'm leaving for Origins today. I hope to post now and then when I can if the wi-fi at the hotel is free. And now, to offset yesterdays unpleasantness, Reel Big Fish return to sing A-Ha's Take On Me, with 100% less F-Bombs than yeserday's offering!

With a Big Rusty Pole, or a Splintering Post...

2009-06-22T18:55:00.003-06:00

It looks like my vacation might get off to the wrong foot before it even begins.

Delta sent me a confirmation notice regarding my flight out to Ohio, and the first thing I realized is that the flight times were difference. No good. Then I relized that there were more flights involved in general. Looks like my sweet non-stop flight to Columbus now has a one hour layover in Cincinatti. I arrive an hour later than expected on the inital flight, and depart two hours later for the return flight, mangling plans for a pick-up at the Columbus Airport, and possible cutting Lunch plans short on Sunday.

I'm trying to contact their customer service number but it's constantly busy, presumeably with all the other people they've screwed calling in to compain.

And so, Delta Airlines, I now cue up some Reel Big Fish for you in tribute:

Sensationalism

2009-06-19T17:57:00.003-06:00

To reduce visibility I try not to get into very detailed news about work, but there has been an internal issue that has been the subject of rumors for the past few months.

Yesterday that issue has gone public in the Casper Star-Tribune, which ledes with a exagerated headline. I'm not going to comment on it further than this:

The person responsible for this has been fired (that part is in the article)
Newspapers are notorious for this sensaltionalist BS, so it should come as no surprise that they lead this article with "Phone Company Illeagally Erected Towers", presumably because it's sexier than "Phone Company Doesn't Get All the Pemits it Needs"

Read the whole thing. The article's headline suggests that Evil Company Ninjas sneaked onto other peoples land and secretly build towers, but the truth is far more mundane. Someone at the paper obviously doesn't like us.

I guess, the lesson is to make sure you do your friggin' paperwork.

Corporate Memory

2009-06-17T17:34:00.003-06:00

Imagine a hypothetical company, let's say it's a major retailer with stores all over the place, and it has a distribution system that carries goods and services from their warehouses to its stores. Now lets suppose that the cost of trucks, feul, drivers, etc. is a large expense and this retailer has found a third party transport company that can do the task at one third the price. The director of the shipping department may decide that everyone on his staff that is associated with the transportation part of the business to be obsolete. This is not an unreasonable assumption, so the manager lets those people go.

So, on the day that the third party transporter is contracted to begin, he lines up his trucks, walks up to the shipping director and says, "OK, we're ready to go. Just tell us where to drive these trucks full of merchandise, and we'll get them there by tommorrow at the latest!"

"Um... I thought you, like, already knew where you were going?"

"Well, once we have the addresses of your stores, sure, we can get there fast and effiecntly!"

"Oh, I thought you'd just, like, know that stuff already or something."

"Uh, no... it's in our contract that you'd give us the addresses of your stores and the names of the managers, and such."

"Oh, right. I forgot about that... hang on..." The manager runs back into the office and starts sifting through papers and searching through computer files. He returns in about an hour holding a box of various papers.

"Ok, it's all here somewhere."

The driver looks at the milk crate full of loose paper. "Uh, you don't expect us to go through all this by hand, did you?"

"Well, we kinda forgot that you might need this information." he holds up a ratty sheet of notebook paper. "Aha! I think these are lat-long coordinates for our store in Des Moines. Or one of our Maine locations. I can't quite read the handwriting, but the numbers are pretty clear."

"...and the store manager?"

"Oh, I think I talked to him at the company Christmas party last year. Name's William Something. The Des Moines guy, I mean. I've never met anyone from the Maine stores."

"..."

"Oh, hey! An invoice from a company that did some roofing work on our Ohmaha store! Address and Manager Name right there at the bottom! See? It's all good!"

"...You mean you didn't get a list of this before your last manager left the company?"

"Well, we didn't think we'd need anything they ever did after we brought you on. You can see how the misunderstanding happened."

"You DO realize that we can't do a thing until we know where to send each of these trucks, right? Not to mention which store each one of these is going to."

"Wait, you don't even know which store each truck is going to? Man, logistics is hard!"

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we're dealing with right now (The Department has been changed to protect the innocent). We're getting data that someone else used to personally keep track of, and now that he/she is gone, we have to figure out what this person did, and get our contractor data in a form that they can use.

And a lot of it is incomplete, or just dirty. To all the managers out there that have to downsize your departments, take heed: make sure you know where everything is before you terminate positions.

Grubbin' With Fuzzy - Procrastination Cookies

2009-06-15T21:58:00.003-06:00

Cookies Cooling , originally uploaded by Jack Black's Stunt Double.

Ok, so a looong time ago, like December of ought-seven, I picked up some baking chips that went on sale figuring I'd do some Christmas baking. But I forgot that baking around Christmas time was a low priority for me, especially when my Boss's wife, who used to run a catering company, bakes up a zillion cookies a year, and brings them to our workplace where they are consumed before noon.

So these baking chips sat in my cupboard, until the following September, when I figured I'd just wait a few months, and use them for Chistmas of 2008. So I'm getting ready to go out for New Year's Eve when I realized "Hey, I never baked those cookies!". So, I just decided to bake them in February. February came and went, so I thought "OK, well, I'll defiantly make them in April."

So that May I made a vow that I'd finally use up some those baking chips, and some of that sugar that's been sitting there for almost as long, and finally bake some cookies.

And so I did. In June. Whatever.

Anyway, I used this recipe at joyofbaking.com and they came out delicious. I also learned that the most wonderful tasting compound in the world is butter creamed with white and brown sugar. It's like a vortex of unhealthiness that threatens to overcome my will.

Join me next time when I make Strawberry Shortcake for Christmas using ingredients I purchased the previous Spring!

Wizards of the Coast Moves My Cheese

2009-06-10T21:06:00.006-06:00

Relevance Warning: For those of you haven't played Magic: The Gathering before, this post will be of no use to you. We're not only going to discuss nerdular games, but we're going to discuss detailed rules of nerdular games. You're wasting your time here when you could be wasting time at one of many other places on the Internet. You should probably check some of those out right now and move along.

For all the Planeswalkers still with me, read on.

Today, WotC announced a fairly dramatic change to the rules of Magic: The Gathering. In terms of predicted public outcry, I think this ranks just above the 8th Edition Card Facelift and just below the 6th Edition Rules Change which was more sweeping that this one. They also didn't give much notice on this one either. July 11th, it goes into effect. (It goes into effect July 29th on MTGO. Not that I give a rat's behind.)

So, let's take a look-see, shall we?

Statement of purpose: The rules ought to be tweeked in a way so that they function more intuititvely, in such a way that new player's expectations are met, and reasonable assumptions are typically correct. This dovetails with their efforts to make the flavor aspects of the game (card names, creature types) more familiar and understandable (i.e. changing phrasing like "local enchantment" to "enchantment - aura").

Sounds reasonable to me. So what's changing?

1) Simultanious Mulligans

What Should happen: Each player draws their starting hand of 7 cards. The player who is going first looks at hand, decides it sucks, and says "I'm going to mulligan down to 6." He reshuffles and draws 6 cards. "Still sucks. I'm going to 5". He reshuffles and goes to 5. "Ok, I'll take it.". Then and only then does the other player decided whether or not to mulligan his inital hand of seven cards, and continue to redeal his hand or keep as above.

How it really happens:

Player 1: "My hand sucks. I'm drawing 6."

Player 2: "Yeah, mine too. I'll do the same"

Both players reshuffle and draw 6 cards without waiting for the other one.

The Change: They're going to make what Really Happens into How It Should Happen.

My two cents: Yeah, this is no big deal, and it helps to move things along. I usually forget that I'm supposed to wait anyway.

2) Terminology Changes

Old and Busted: the In-Play zone; Play a Spell; Play an ability; Remove From Game.

New Hotness: The Battlefield; Cast a Spell; Activate an ability; Exile

My two cents: Making the same sound cooler and more flavorful while simplifying basic concepts is always fine by me. This change is mostly cosmetic, except that cards that are ~~Removed from the Game~~ Exiled are no longer considered to be "Outside the Game" so Burning Wish, Ring of Ma'ruf and the like can no longer retrieve a creature hit with a Swords to Plowshares. Not a big deal.

3) Mana - Floating it, and burning from it

Mana used to last up through the end of the phase, now it only persists until the end of the step. So, if you tap an Island for a blue before you declare attackers in the Combat Phase, it's vanished by the time your opponent is declaring blockers.

But you no longer take mana burn from it. It just dissapears into a puff of mystical mojo.

My two cents: The Solitary Confinement Deck I love so very much will take a hit becuase I can't maniupulate my life total for Convalescent Care via mana burn, but I can get on board with this change.

4) Token ownership

How it used to work: I play Hunted Dragon. I get a fat, cheap dragon and you get a trio of 2/2 white knights with first strike. Then I play Brand, which gives me control of your Knights, becuase I own them even though you control them. "Wait, what?" Yeah, my Dragon made them when they came into play, so they got my name stamped on them. Brand makes them mine.

How it's going to work: I play Hunted Dragon. I get discount dragon, you get knights. I play Brand. The knights shrug, unimpressed. They are owned by the person that controls them when they came into play.

My Two Cents: As a person that never exploited ownership of tokens, I'm fine with making this more logical to minds of new players.

5) Combat Damage no longer uses the Stack

I was starting to think there'd be nothing in these changes that would send me into a fit of Fanboy Rage. Then I read this part.

How it used to work: I attack with an Air Elemental (4/4) for 4. Opponent blocks with a pair of Wild Griffins (2/2). I assign two damage to each of them, each Griffin assigns two damage to the Air Elemental for a total of four enough to kill it. I play Unsummon on my Air Elemental, rescuing it from its fate, while the Griffins take two damage each, and die from the Elemental that had been winked out of existance for a moment.

How it's going to work: I attack with the Elemental, he blocks with the Griffins. I can either unsummon the elemental before damage is delt, and his Griffins live, or I can lose my Elemental and he loses his Griffins. Unsummon can no longer be timed in such a way that I can take out both his Griffins and save my Elemental from the graveyard. (note: at this point, I'd just unsummon one of his Griffins so my elemental would live, and I'd take out at least one Griffin.)

My two cents: OMGWTFBBQ?!?!?!!!1 WIZTARD$ OF TEH COST IZ KILLIN THE GAME IM NEVER BYING ANUTHR CARD EVAR AGAIN THAY SUXX!! Wha- woah... sorry. Ok, I regained control now. Sorry, that's a side of me I try my best to hide.

But serisously, I loved the ability to snatch my creatures away while still dealing damage to them, or use a self-sacrifice ability after damage is on the stack to kill two birds with one stone. This one is going to take some getting used to.

Additionally, they mentioned that instead of attacking creatures distributing damage to blockers as desired, they now have to be lined up in a queue or some nonsenese. I'm not going to try to articulate those changes, but here's the gist of it: if my 4/4 Beastie is blocked by a pair of 3/3 Hill Giants, I can't deal two to each of them and finish them off with a Tremor. Now, I have to assign 3 to one of them, and 1 to the other one. Meh.

6) Deathtouch and Lifelink

How Deathtouch used to work: Your Basilisk with deathtouch is blocked by my Drudge Skeletons with Regeneration for a Black mana. I have to regenerated it twice. Once for leathal damage, and once for the Deathtouch ability.

How Deathtouch is going to work: Same combat situation as above, I only have to regenerate it once.

How Lifelink used to work: I'm at two life, you attack with a pair of 2/2 Grey Ogres. I only have one 2/2 creature with Lifelink. I block an Ogre, and take two damage. I die before the two life I'd gain from the lifelink triggered ability resolves.

How Lifelink is going to work: Same combat situation as above, same blocks as above. Ogre deals two damage to me, but my Lifelinked creature dealt two damage at the same time, and gained life at the same time. I'm still alive at two life (I took two damage, and gained two life). Although now I've lost my creature and you've lost an Ogre.

My Two Cents: I like it. It just makes more sense than some oddball triggered ability that doesn't resolve before I die. Which is what they were going for.

So, for the three of you that read this post and care, let me know what you think in the comments.

Obligitory Weather Post

2009-06-08T23:20:00.003-06:00

Wyoming is said to be a semi arid area. Not quite sand, scorpions, and cacti, but dry overall. Until this week. It's been raining on and off for several days now. Unlike western Pennsylvania, where it rains usually for an hour or more at a time, Wyoming's rain is more like a sprinkle for five minutes, then just overcast, shower for 10 minutes, then sunshine. drizzle for another 5 minutes, a meteorological head-fake suggesting sunshine, then another brief shower.

I'd imagine this is making things easier on the ranchers who don't have to use as much irrigation water for their hay fields, but we all hope it stops after they start mowing it and let it spread it out to dry. If it rains too heavily on that, it rots.

In other news, my director had to cut an extended weekend trip to Yellowstone short because the park closed due to snow. In June.

Viva Wy-snow-ming.

Fuzzy Gets Medicated

2009-06-06T20:52:00.005-06:00

I made a trip to the Doctor's Office to get a new prescription for indomethacin for my gout, and he strongly recommended that I finally go on a daily medication. I've been reluctant to go on daily medications in the past because I have an irrational belief that doing so is the acknowledgement that I am officially unfit to live. If my own body chemistry can't cut it on it own, then I should just roll over and take up less space and oxygen for the healthy people. But Doc made an persuasive case:

Attacking the Source > Treating the Symptoms
Continued gouty arthritis attacks can lead to permanent joint damage
The same uric acid that causes gout can also cause kidney stones

About that last one. I'm going to tell you there's no aliment that has the potential to scare the bajezzus out of me than kidney stones. I've never had them, but I want to keep it that way. If you told me that diets low in dog excrement was linked to an increased risk of kidney stones, you might see me the next day stalking stray dogs with a bottle of ketchup and a spoon.

So, now I'm taking allopurinol, which is supposed to reduce the amount of uric acid in the blood stream. Sounds good, but there's some interesting caveats with this drug. It also dissolves any crystallized uric acid that may have built up in your joints (the cause of gouty arthritis). While this sounds like a good thing, and in the long run it is, this puts the dissolved crystals back into bloodstream before it's flushed out. If you already had a high build up of uric acid in your blood, this might reform into crystals and actually invite a friggin' gout attack, or worsen one if you take it during an attack (note: don't take this stuff during an attack. srsly).

In order to minimize this, you have to begin low doses and work up to higher between the period of a few months or up to a year. Right now I'm cutting 300mg tablets into quarters and going from there. I'm hoping I'll be able to go up to half tablets after my vacation this month, and be up to the full dose by the end of July. Any more attacks, and I'm stopping the allopurinol, popping the indomethicin, and going back on a lower dosage of allopurinol after the all clear. Like Westley building up a tolerance to Iocaine Powder.

Doc tells me that after I get up to the recommended dosage and maintain that, my gout problems should be finished, as long as I keep taking the pills. Here's to a better life through chemicals!

Anticipation

2009-06-03T10:36:00.003-06:00

Only three weeks, and I'm going to the happiest place ~~on earth~~ in Ohio.

Yeah, I've plugged this alot recently, but I'm jonesing pretty bad after missing last year. Also, I'll be joined by a few friends that I don't get to see often, so that'll be good to. This event is probably going to dominate this blog for this month, so you have been warned.

Looking Out for Number One

2009-06-02T20:14:00.009-06:00

This reminds me a lot of one of the mega churches that I hung around back home that was basically just a front for a Matchmaking service (Matt, Jamie, I'm looking at you). But it also reminds me a little bit of the Sovereign Grace church that frequented until I left Pittsburgh. Specifically, #31 on this list:

Surviving Church as a Single (hat tip: WyoPrincess for the link)

I know several of my friends back home *COUGH COUGH* would appreciate this a lot. As for me, I only score a four: #1 (no singles ministry here, I think it would be me and a few high school kids), #12 (life is more exciting for me right now than it's been most of my life, I think), and my favorite, #39: "You've developed highly sensitive, 'They're about to throw the ~~bouquet~~ garter' radar and know exactly when to leave a wedding." Yeah, that's me. I despite being in the wedding party, I dodged that at my cousin's wedding, like an Agent dodging a bullet.

Twenty-Five Character Profile

2009-05-28T23:19:00.007-06:00

While gaming over the Internet, you encounter a lot of people, but interact for only a brief time. Unless you use voice chat, you don't get to know anything about them as a person. And chatting with strangers over the Intarwebs, voice or otherwise, is NOT reccomended, because as I noted before, people suck. I think that Mad Scientists get their inspiration to destroy the world from hearing the words "Noob", "Sux", and "OMG ROFL!!!1" too often.

So while playing Team Fortress 2, I recalled that the PS3 saves the names of people that you've played with online, so I decided to go through and document some of these and share them with the world. I think you can have up to 25 characters for your PlayStation Network handle, and through this, you give major clues about your personality. So now, here's a few of the more interesting handles attached to people I've met while playing TF2:

Armageddon513 - This guy probably was surprosed that someone already took the name "Armageddon," but he'll be damned if he lets that person be the only guy with his totally original nickname! Or maybe he's propheizing that the Earth's Final Battle will fall on May 13th of a year yet to be determined.
TheDarkGaurdian - Maybe he's like me and favor's the Demoman class, who is in fact Black and excels at defending control points in the game.
abraham007 - In 1863, Gen. Robert E. Lee is preparing to unfurl his Confederate Machinations on the world, starting at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The Union's last hope rests in one lone agent with the cunning, training, and Veto Power to stop him. This summer, prepare to be... emancipated! Abraham 007 - From Gettysburg With Love. When he addresses an Army, YOU'D BETTER LISTEN!!
timburtonfan - Appropriatly, his icon was a cartoonish Grim Reaper.
burntbrowniez - Mmmm... Brownies, burnt or not, are always good!
hyphyxxl - I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean, but his icon was a Rubber Duck next to a Shark.
thewaterispoison - Oh, another warning handle! But what water is poison? The Tap Water? The stuff in the Old Well? The irrigation water used around here has all kinds of runoff from the cow pastures, so that stuff is pretty close to poison. Or maybe he's another sucker who fell for that whole dihydrogen monoxide hoax some years back.
NBK_GAYBUTTFUKRS - Somewhere, there's a twelve year-old boy laughing at his brilliance, thinking he's the most clever and edgey person ever to push an envelope. "I MADE A SWEAR IN MY NAME! I'M AWESOME!!"
UPD8_TF2_4ConsoL - A request from a player, dismayed that Valve Software is pushing all the new goodies on PC, while the Console versions languish in their inital release. I think 4 maps have been added, but still only a pale shadow of the goods the PC players get.
MissyMisdemeanor - Chances of this really being Missy Elliot? Only slightly better than NBK_GAYBUTTFUKRS not being a complete ass.
KodaChromed - SONG CUE! Give us the niiiiight's bright colors, give us the greeeeens of summer, Make us think all the world's a sunny day!...

And that about wraps it all up. By the way my handle on the PlayStation Network is Pittencream, an obscure reference used due to every single nickname, screen name and alias I've ever used in my life being somehow unavilable. Guess the reference (without a google search. Honor System enforced) and you win Mad Props (cash value of Mad Props is 1/100 of a cent, void where prohibbited).

Three Lesser Nuggets of Happiness

2009-05-26T23:16:00.006-06:00

1) Receiving a package from Woot.com. Today, it was three mini-Hibachi grills, semi-disposable, quasi-reusable, made to be portable. The three combined cost less than the five bucks shipping.

2) Opening my gas bill to find out that Questar is giving a rebate to customers due to lowered gas prices, thus bringing this month's bill to -$0.45. Hooray!

3) Mowing down my openents with HeavyWeaponsGuy in Team Fortress 2. Especially those obnoxious little Scout punks. Always trying to take my Sandvich...

In Which Fuzzy Endorses his Hobbies

2009-05-18T22:45:00.003-06:00

As a displaced tabletop game enthusiast, I have a lot of difficulties finding other players out here in cowboy country. All of my peers have at least two children under the age of 5, or are too busy working nights and weekends on the family ranch (seriously). As a result, I have to resort to the Internet to find opponents. And this is where I plug GameTableOnline.

Originally I discovered this site after Wizards of the Coast contracted the guys that ran GameTable to develop Java versions of some of their I.P. for use with Gleemax, which was to be a social networking site for gamers.

Gamer... Social... Networking... Site. Ugh, I'm not sure if I can make that sound any more lame.

The games they built for WotC were Acquire (my favorite), Robo Rally, Vegas Showdown, Guillotine, and the most popular one to date: Axis and Allies. WotC decided that between everything else they were trying to focus (such as the 4th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons, which was getting ready to launch at the time), they decided to cut loose some projects, including the Gleemax site. Rather than let some pretty good electronic versions of their games dissapear, they allowed GameTable to post them on their own site.

They also have a few traditional board games such as Chess, Backgammon, etc, and other games from independent developers.

Right now, they are looking to change over to a subscription based business model so they can make their product sustainable. I think it's worth at least a couple bucks a month just for Acquire alone. Check it out.

And in the hopes of motivating some of my friends back home, I'll say these three words: Kill Dr. Lucky!

Nerd Education

2009-05-13T19:19:00.002-06:00

I realize that a lot of the people in my department are sharper than me, more experienced then me, and (professionally speaking) just plain better than me. But that does not excuse the lack of knowlege of various Internet memes.

Today, I had to educate one of the supervisors on what exactly all your base was, and why it belong to us. Seriously, he drew blanks on this. "So... does the name Leeroy Jenkins ring a bell at all??" **He shakes his head**

Ugh. My fellow nerds need more nerd pop-culture in their lives.

Happy Mother's Day!

2009-05-10T14:36:00.000-06:00

Perils of Instant Gratification

2009-05-09T12:51:00.007-06:00

After years of failed attempts by various companies to market electronic books, Amazon looks like to be the company that has finally gotten it right with their Kindle device. The first Kindle had the unique quality of not sucking to read from, which was the sticking point for all previous devices. the Kindle2 was thinner, could read .pdf files, and could download books, some newspapers, and Wikipedia articles wirelessly anywhere you could connect to the same Edge network that wireless phones do.

This latest one now has a bigger screen that makes reading the newspapers and wikipedia content easier. But now, some people are so upset that this was released so quickly after the latest iteration of the Kindle that they have written whiny articles that makes me want to search my closet to see if I can still find the World's Tiniest Violin and play them some suck-it-up music.
Here's a wonderful little quote:

An Amazon spokesperson, in response to my tirade, told me "Well now you have a choice." The key word being "now." But when I bought the product three months ago, I did not have a choice.

I counter that statement with one from Rush:

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

You didn't have to buy the thing in the first place, but could have waited. People that buy the latest model car in July don't complain when a newer better version comes out soon after. Just because this was the latest/greatest at the time, doesn't not put an obligation on the seller or manufacturer to never sell or create a comparable item that's better than yours, or ensure that you're item is the best for a guaranteed amount of time.

The whole thing reminds me of a similar complaint of another reputable company.

When the iPhone hit the street a few years back, all of the iFaithful were outraged by the announcement that the iPhone was going to drop in price by 33% less than 3 months after it was released. The iFaithful were shocked - shocked!! - that Steve Jobs wasn't their geeky buddy giving away his nifty toys, but was in fact an executive of a publicly traded corporation that has a desire to make a profit.

The complaint was that the price cut was too soon; they would have delayed their purchase if they knew it would drop by that much in that short of a time, Apple doesn't value it's most loyal ~~worshipers~~ customers, etc.

The way I see it is even if Apple had announced before it inital launch that the price would have been cut by $200 in 10 weeks, people still would have lined up outside of their stores to throw money at them. For being without iStuff is to be incomplete as a person. People were willing to pay $600 bucks for one of these things, and no functionality was added to the $400 phone, or subtracted from the phone they purchased. People who waited just got a better deal.

I personally believe that the early adopters, while vital, or at least very important to the adaptation of new technologies, think that they are getting something more than the latest and greatest gadget on the bleeding edge of science. They are buying a membership into the upper crust of their social circle. The people that have the iPhones can discuss iPhone apps, hacks, settings, troubleshooting, etc. and have all the nifty little applications that can make life in the urban jungle easier to navigate, or at least more fun.

But more importantly, they can look down upon those that don't have these things. I'm not saying that iFolk actively think that they count more as a person than someone that uses a Nokia or Sony phone, but I would bet that buried in the parts of their brain that deals with social justice, a thought pops up from time to time: "You're still using a RAZR? You poor wretch. Do you have a tin cup that I can drop some change into? Maybe you can get one of those discontinued 4GB iPhones from eBay or something."

It kinda feels good to be on the inside track, and I guess that the iFolk thought there was some sort of handshake agreement that if they paid the premium for the device, their iClique would be protected by that pricing scheme for at least six months. Then the price came down quicker than imagined, and their heads were filled with visions of the great unwashed with their Wal-Mart grooming and technolgical ineptitude buying up their defacto Badge of Honor now that they were more affordable.

The lesson is, if you don't need it right now, wait. and if you do buy it now, remember that the maker of your gadget is probably making improvements to it, and will want to get those improvements out as soon as possible in a bid to increase market share. This means your device will be obsolete rather quickly. Especially true for any technical device.

And for all of you that doubt the blind devotion of the iFolk to their company, let me share with you an Instant Messenger quote from my Brother-In-Law shortly after purchasing his iPhone on the launch date:

"Jesus has come back, except he's a phone now!"

Yeah...

Good to be in the Cowboy State

2009-05-06T22:00:00.002-06:00

The whole recession thing sucks less here than it does most everywhere else, except for North Dakota.

In addition, people are fleeing Michigan as if it was rapidly sinking into the Great Lakes.

Hat Tip: The Consumerist

Running the Show

2009-05-05T20:27:00.003-06:00

When my mother was visiting for a night up here, I took her to the only fun place in town on Friday night: Bridger Valley Lanes for a night of Karaoke. Yeah, it would have been better to see some of the more nature oriented things, but she had to catch a plane in Salt Lake the next day.

The man who runs the show is getting ready to move out to one or two places, but wanted to sell off his old Karaoke system. The original deal with the proprietors of the Lanes was beginning to fall apart so I did the only logical thing.

I bought it.

So, um... I guess now I'm a Karaoke Master, or something.

Oy.

Condimental Divide

2009-04-26T19:54:00.004-06:00

Ketchup vs. Fry Sauce, originally uploaded by Jack Black's Stunt Double.

My first month in Wyoming, me and some coworkers were eating lunch and someone was dipping his fries into a pinkish sludge. I asked him what it was, and he replied "It's Fry Sauce".

My initial thought was to say "Oh, we had that back in Pittsburgh, but it was redder, and we called it 'ketchup'." but instead I asked him if it was any good, and he gave me a taste.

I was underwhelmed. It wasn't bad, but it was no alternitive to ketchup. I might be biased, because the Heinz factory is in Pittsburgh, but when I want sauce on my fries, I reach for the red stuff. Anyway, I was in Ogden, UT on a pleasure trip and on the way home, I decided to stop into one of those Arctic Circle restaurants that the Utah natives keep taking about.

Arctic Circle is pretty much like a Dairy Queen Brazier store. Like DQ, they have burgers that are better than those of most fast food places. Unlike DQ, these guys claim to have invented Fry Sauce. Admittedly, the stuff in Arctic Circle did taste a lot better than the little condiment tubs from the Grocery Store Deli, but again, the greatest strike against it is that it dilutes perfectly good ketchup with Mayo.

I think it's one of those Utah things that just can't get any traction outside of the West. I've never heard of this stuff until I moved out to Wyoming, and I think if I asked for it in any restaurant back home, the staff would just give a confused look (I'll have to try that next time I'm home).

Drug Tests Won't be the Same Around Here

2009-04-24T17:13:00.002-06:00

Nancy Braden moved up here from Michigan a long time ago seeking work, and took a job as an English Teacher. She later became the local librarian and then the admin assistant in our HR Department. Several of the long time staff that grew up around here remember her from her previous jobs when they went to high school.

I would chat with her from time to time outside while she and some of the accountants had a smoke break. She always sounded cheerful, like she always had life in a proper perspective. She even used some casual sarcasm to lighten the mood whenever she went around the office to inform people that they've been selected for our random monthly drug screening.

Last week we found out that we shared a common view on Tax Deadlines: Why get ahead of the game when you can wait until the last minute? We both have better things to do! She was definitely my favorite person in that department.

So it came as a shock to everyone when HR sent out an announcement that she passed away at her home on Thursday night. Thanks for all the laughs, Nancy. Whenever I have to urinate into a cup, I'll think of you! Umm... but in a respectful and tasteful way. ;-)

Don't Be a Dick

2009-04-23T20:32:00.012-06:00

So I've been playing more Acquire at GameTable Online, and it gave me yet another reminder of why I haven't bothered to pickup World of Warcraft, or any other MMORPGs. The guys behind Penny Arcade illustrate it better than I could describe it.

My sister keeps telling me that you can shut off the global chat, so you can only communicate with those on your friend list, or channel, or whatever, but something about the action of joining a game with the world, and then shutting out the world just seems counter-intuitive. If I'm going to play a game with only a handful of friends, I'd rather do that Face-to-Face. In fact, I'm taking three days off from work, and flying 1400 miles to do this with total strangers! (Yes, another Origins plug, but I'm excited. Sorry.)

The worst part is how they drag you down into their petty quest to inform you what and idiot you are to you and everyone who will listen. In most other situations, you'd be the better person, give in, or just walk away with a feeling of pity for the idiot. But again, webcomics describe it better:

image courtesy of (xkcd) (permalink)

True, these jackasses also pop up face to face at times, but far less. In addition, they are shunned by others who would rather play games face to face, and not have to deal with their bullshit, and often even their own friends disavow them out of embarrassment. Remember: It's easier to be an asshole to words than people.

Beatings from the World of Tomorrow!

2009-04-20T17:55:00.005-06:00

In Terminator, Skynet sent an android back in time to kill the mother of the Human resistance faction. Did you ever wonder what would happen, if the Humans had been able to send a squadron of guys to destroy the time travel device before Mecha-Schwarzenegger went through the portal?

I've recently read through Rant by Chuck Palanhiuk, which also explores questions of the Grandfather Paradox. It provides a different theory altogether, rather than the usual destroy the universe or cause a second parallel universe to come into existence.

I mention this all because I've just discovered Achron, a yet to be released Real Time Strategy game that allows you to send units back into time, or even forward in time at certain intervals. Want to prevent an nasty attack on your base of operations? go back 60 seconds and shore up your defenses. While it's not the first game to feature manipulation of time, I think it's the first one to allow you to to make sweeping and dramatic changes. Check out the video below, and go to Achron's own website to see more. I'm not sure how it's all going to work, and I can't even wrap my head around all the combat possibilities, but it's nice to see someone trying something new.

Grubbin' With Fuzzy - Quiche

2009-04-18T23:20:00.002-06:00

A logistical miscalculation regarding a breakfast potluck at the workplace left me with over a dozen raw eggs, in addition to the dozen I had recently purchased for my own groceries. Looking for recipes that uses several eggs, I decided to make Quiche.

Alton Brown renames his quiche as "Refrigerator Pie", in order to get people around the loss of Man Points associated with consumption of the dish. Being the secure kind of guy I am, I rolled up my sleeves, turned up my upper lip in tough looking sneer... and made pie crust.

The pie crust wasn't as difficult or time consuming as I thought it would be, but I had to use all butter for lack of shortening (I don't bake enough to justify buying it) and had to substitute an old glass soft drink bottle for a rolling pin, which worked surprisingly well. Not having made pie crust before, I was a little worried that the baked crust contracted back into the pie pan leaving the crust a little more shallow than I expected, but I think I successfully patched it up with another ring of dough around the edge.

Now for the filling: 5 eggs and one cup of milk for the custard, and some chopped spinach, cheddar cheese, and left over chicken pieces for the fun stuff. About a half hour and 375 degrees later, I had ~~emasculation pie~~ quiche.

Verdict: Turned out pretty well. I'll try it again sometime, maybe using the traditional Quiche Lorraine ingredients. As for the old addage "Real men don't eat quiche,"I think that I'll let Joel Veitch from Rather Good handle that one: Man Quiche.

Warning: Do not wander around on rathergood.com alone. It contains several affronts to one's good taste, and will assault your values. Then again, I would like to get my hands on some of that HoverBacon...

Vampire Turkeys?

2009-04-13T19:49:00.004-06:00

Vampire Turkeys?, originally uploaded by Jack Black's Stunt Double.

Born on Thanksgiving Day in 1865, Dr. Plymouth Van Helsing has made it his life's work to erradicate meanace of Transylvanian Poultry.

False Positive

2009-04-09T17:14:00.005-06:00

Today we learned that several emails and resumes for positions like "Training Specialist" and "Marketing and Statistics Specialist" were getting caught in our spam filter. Can you guess why?

Marketing and Statistics Specialist... maybe they only have experience marketing a different product that does fit in with our business plan. Or maybe their domain was black listed. Another posisbility: maybe there's an undocumented feature* that weeds out bad candidates that have resumes that were poorly worded or unreadable.

Training Specialist

Could maybe the attachment had a worm or something, and the filter caught it. We had that problem before, and it was several months before we could get it all sorted out. Maybe the vendor for our spam-filter isn't an Equal Opportunity Employer, and it was filtering out Women, Blacks, Hispanics, and Handicapped people. Or maybe, it's something most of us would overlook...

Marketing and Statistics Specialist

Did you see it? look again, closely.

Training Specialist.

I LOLed when I heard about this. This is why you need to fine tune your software.

*For those unfamilliar with IT jokes, an "undocumented feature" is a programmer code phrase for "bug that we're trying to pass off as intentional so we don't have to fix it or admit we screwed up."

Fantasy Help Desk Support

2009-04-07T17:54:00.004-06:00

Here's the situation. We had a controlled outage today of our ISP service today that lasted longer than we thought it would. Most customers are understanding about this, if a little frustrated. Other customers, like Barbara Westin (name changed to protect the obnoxious), not so much.

We suspect that Barbara relishes these outages so she can talk down, curse, and belittle our ISP Support Staff. She suspects that our help desk team habitually sever a cable, dump coffee on a switch, or power down servers in order to justify their jobs.

Durring her second call of the outage, we offered to put her on the phone with our director, who voluneteered to speak with her if she got too abusive. This provoked the sardonic response "Will THAT get my internet back up faster?!?"

BEGIN FANTASY RESPONSE!!

"Yes, m'am! You see, on a wall in the Director's Office, there is a large throw switch. That switch is labled 'Barbara Westin's Internet Connection'. Right now, it's in the Off position. We do that from time to time becuase it gets lonely here and wE JuSt LoVe to talk to a woman of your charms, so we need to give you a reason to pick up the phone! My director would be ever so happy to turn it back on for you, but I'm the only one that has the power to transfer you right now. So my question is, what could you say, do, or offer to me that would make it worth my while?"

END FANTASY RESPONSE!!

Thankfully, we handled it better than that. But the odd thing was that about an hour after it wend back on, she called again to complain, not realizing she was back online. This strengthens my theory that she is one of those people who value the act of complaining more than having stuff that works, and thereby leaving her no reason to whine about it.

BONUS IRONY: She does tech support from home for a larger service provider, so one would think she might think better of abusing the staff that are powerless to do anything about it.

Securing Information at Work

2009-04-02T18:33:00.002-06:00

Here's a protip for anyone looking to tighten up document security at the workplace.

If your screen saver at work is a slide show of pictures you took, be sure that only photographs are in that folder, and that the screen saver isn't also pointing to folders full of purchase orders, performance reviews, and reimbursement requests. Otherwise, they will show up on your screen when the screen saver kicks on.

And before you ask, NO, it wasn't me.

"Tank, I need a milestone, FAST!"

2009-03-31T11:16:00.002-06:00

So someone at work pointed out to me that today is the Tenth Anniversary of The Matrix. I cannot believe that it has really been that long!

When this movie hit theaters, I was:

Contemplating colleges. Ended up with community college, followed by Harvard on the Mon. For those of you not familiar with Southwestern Pennsylvania, the "Mon" is the Monongahela River.
Eighteen Years old. between getting out of High School and finally going to study things that I was interested in, this is the time when I, like most people, feel the most free. When you are driving up the the crossroads of Interstate-Life and State Route Destiny. I, ended up taking
Watching people get real nervous about that whole Y2K thing. I guess everyone needs something to worry about, Mutally Assured Destruction through the 1980s, Y2K in the 1990s, and now ~~Global Warming~~ Climate Change in the aughts. For a Matrix tie-in, there's some truth in Agent Smith's monologue to Morpheus when he said that "human beings define their reality through suffering and misery." We all need something to fear, something to fight/rebel against, etc.
Raising money for my senior trip. Best single week of my whole life! Remind me to tell you all sometime about planting frogs in the girls' motel room. Good Times...
Working in a movie theater while this was playing. I dismissed this as some cookie cutter sci-fi B-Movie, when an usher recommended that I sit in for a few minutes. So I did, and I became intrigued. And that is how I saw the Matrix about 3 times in bits and pieces before I ever watched it end to end.

Another fun memory of the movie: When I was working as an usher at said theater, we waited until all the people exited the auditorium which is just about when the end credits soundtrack changed from Rage Against the Machine to Marilyn Manson. This is when we engaged in our three man mosh-pits. We'd run into each other and jump around like idiots as if we were at some thrash-metal concert. All done with a great sense of Irony, though. These were more like mock-pits.

So, cheers to ten years of choosing the Red Pill! I'll be watching my DVD of the Matrix Tomorrow.

Grubbin' With Fuzzy - Lasagna

2009-03-30T20:10:00.004-06:00

Here's one of those things I've always wanted to try. The often celebrated Italian cusine that no one with functional taste buds can refuse.

Whenever I decided to cook something new, I usually troll the Internet for recipes, take a sampling of them, and just see the general process of constructing it. here's the common tasks:

Brown Sausage/Ground Beef, then cover in tomato sauce, add herbs, and simmer. You have acquired: Meat Sauce!
Ricotta Cheese: Get some.
Boils some of them fancy noodles with the crinkly edges until they are al-dente
Layers are: Meat Sauce, Pasta, Ricotta, Pasta, Mozzarella Cheese, Meat Sauce, Pasta, Ricotta.
Cover in Foil, bake for a long time, remove the foil halfway through for proper browning.

Sounds easy, and I had about a quart of Frozen Marinara sauce left over from about two months ago, so the one ingredient that would be the most time consuming is in the bag.

The Ricotta that I had purchased in advance for this project became frozen after several days in the wrong spot in the fridge, but it defrosted pretty well. I guess when the food already has a grainy texture to begin with, deicing the stuff isn't a big deal. (PRO TIP: Cream Cheese does not defrost well; it gets the afore mentioned grainy texture, that doesn't work well on bagels.)

I mixed in half a block of frozen spinach (thawed, of course) to the Meat Sauce and The Ricotta, the latter also getting an egg beat into it.

Everything went pretty smoothly and surprsingly fast. This is when I discovered that lasagna noodles take a LONG time to cook, even to al-dente, which is like medium rare for pasta. This added on a lot of time to the proccess, especially becuase I didn't start this until late, becuase I didn't want cooked noodles sitting around in water for that long. Next time, I'll trust the cold water bath more for keeping the noodles soft, yet not too soft, and start them first.

Oven heated at 375 degrees, with an Itinerary of 25 minutes covered in foil, 25 minutes uncovered. Compents were layered as I mentioned above. But I could never figure out what to do on the top level. Pasta on top? Dries out. Meat Sauce? I don't ever recall having lasagna that's pure red on top, and there must be reason for that. Ricotta? again, it might burn and dry out.

Becuase I ended up making two pans (Leftovers: I has them!) I tried two things:

Noodles on top, with a generous covering of mozzerella cheese.
Ricotta on top, nevermind the bullocks!

The stuff with the pasta/motz on top didn't turn out too dry, but it was still a little bit too firm from what I could tell. It was, thankfully, quite edible. Good, even. To my surprise, ricotta is a more resilient cheese than I gave it credit for; it can withstand the rigors of an oven, with only slight browning. So the correct answer to my dilema is "Ricotta on top". Remember that.

So, this project was a success, and now, I'll be eating it for lunch and sometimes dinner well into next week, I'd imagine. Until next time, Bon Apitite, and happy OM NOM NOM NOM to you all!

Barroom Banter - The Exciting Conclusion!

2009-03-30T18:47:00.005-06:00

At the end of last month, I challenged a friend who claimed to be able to create a general profile of a person based on nothing more than their ten favorite bands. This morning, I finally got the results back from the submissions in the comment section. I didn't use anyone's names when I handed him the list. How'd he do? You tell me:

Laedelas Greenleaf:

Probably oldest of the 3 {I assume he's referring to the three people who respsond to this}
Quite Reflective Type
Financially Stable

Sarah, the Wyoming Princess:

Close to 30 Years Old {Due to your recent posts, I'd bet this hits pretty close to home, eh?}
Fun loving, friendly type
likely single or has usually been so
possible female {I'd say pretty close, but he gets a penalty for using the qualifier "Possible", hedging his bets regardless of gender}

Brian (no link due to only having mySpace/Facebook web presence, and my disdain for all of them):

Youngest of the 3
Probably a bit obnoxious in comparison to the other 2 guys or gals [in this post]
Into more technical type stuff

For reference, the age ranking of the participants from Oldest to Youngest is Sarah, Laedelas Greenleaf, and Brian. All opinions posted here are not mine, printed verbatim (with some spelling corrections) and are for entertainment purposes only.

My personal take on this is that while he didn't give up enough detail, he's reasonably accurate for most of these, based on the little glimpse of personal data you could glean from Music Tastes. If anyone else wants to give it a try, you may post in the comments. I think next time I'll give him some more guidelines. Like no weasel words, such as "possibly". Participants, give me you're thoughts in the comments regarding the results.

There Goes My [Literary] Hero

2009-03-24T18:13:00.005-06:00

After my sister and brother-in-law (Tom) married, rather than faced with the task of building a household, they were faced with the task of combining them. They've both lived on their own for several years and have accumulated a lot of stuff that would be redundant were they to merge. dishes, small appliances, media, etc. How many toasters, coffee pots, place settings, and copies of The Matrix do you need?

So they put their things in a pile, and divested the surplus. Some of it went into storage, some of it was donated (I think) and some of it was given to friends and family. "Family" in this context is mostly represented by me. In addition to some glassware, dishes, and kitchen tools, I also inherited a box of Books and DVDs that they both had copies of. One of these books was Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.

You can click the links if you want (spoilers in the link to the book), but for the purposes of this post, all you really need to know is that Mr. Stephenson writes [science] fiction that appeals to tech geeks, mathematicians, and the like.

Cryptonomicon is two stories. The first story is of World War II cryptography and counter intelligence efforts, as told by a Navel Lt. stationed in the Philippines, and a Mathematician Savant who can perform epic numerical stunts on the chalkboard, but is fairly inept in most other ways.

The second story is the tale of the descendants of the WWII plot line, two generations removed, who are attempting to build a data haven (think "electronic library in a physical location untouched by local and international law"). Hijinks ensue.

About a hundred or so pages in, one of the characters in the modern plot line is having dinner with Charlene, his girlfriend, Charlene's liberal arts friends, and some puffed-up white-tower academic. The academic, who has a very high opinion of himself, begins to argue that the Information Super Highway* is a socially destructive concept aimed at keeping down poor people, make the rich richer, yadda yadda yadda.

Our Grad Student of Science protagonist steps in to defend the I.S.H. and is promptly met with the standard relativity cop out so cherished by Academia to shut down all argument. "And who is to say what is bad/wrong/unwise?" And so our hero, Randy, tells them:

"Who decides what's bad? I do."

"Excuse me?"

"It's like this," he said. "I've read your book. I've seen you on TV. I've heard you tonight. I personally typed up a list of your credentials when I was preparing press materials for this conference. So I know that you're not qualified to have an opinion about technical issues."

[sarcastically] "Oh, I didn't realized one had to have qualifications."

"I think it's clear," Randy said. "that if you are ignorant of a particular subject that your opinion is completely worthless. [...] the Information Super Highway is a bad metaphor for the Internet, because I say it is. There might be a thousand people on the planet who are as conversant with the Internet as I am. I know most of these people. None of them takes that metaphor seriously. Q.E.D."

He then goes on to take offense at being labeled a 'technocrat,' turning these peoples own weapons on them ("I'm offended/oppressed, and therefore worthy of sympathy") and makes the formal call of "Bullshit!" on their arguments.

Prior to this, he compared mixing with his Charlene's Liberal Art friends to being a Dwarf in the Lord of the Rings. Stout and taciturn, he's hung up his war axe for a while for a sojourn into the Shire, where he finds himself surrounded by squabbling hobbits (Charlene's crowd).

For all these things mentioned above, I welcome Neal Stephenson into my top 5 favorite authors of all time. Someone should tell him that, as I'm sure he'd be overwhelmed by such an honor ;-)

*This book was published in 1999, and the excerpt above took place a few years prior to the modern time line, so the expression "Information Super Highway" is not an indication of an author out of touch with modern Internet nomenclature, but rather, is aged appropriately.

Return of the Weekend Wedding

2009-03-23T09:07:00.004-06:00

Another wedding of a college buddy on March 21st. Here's the breakdown:

Fly into Pittsburgh International from SLC via O'Hare. Between Chicago and Pittsburgh, my foot begins to get sore. It looks like my gout has waited until I was well out of reach of my meds to start acting up. After I touch down, I find a voicemail on my phone. Looks like yet ANOTHER buddy is getting married... in May. And I'm invited. This is right after I forbid anyone else to get married until after October, so I politely decline the invite.

The next day, I wake up, and my foot is worse, so I spend the day limping around between the Groom's parents' house, the church, and the hotel where the reception is. Pretty nice service, a brief little sermon about tolerating and accepting all of the stupid little things that your spouse may do, even when he/she is in the wrong.

They threw one of the best receptions I've seen at a wedding. on top of the the usual dinner/dancing, Ryan and Jill hired the DJ to do Karaoke as well, as both Jill and Ryan are Karaoke enthusists. When Ryand and Jill had the first dance as husband and wife, Ryan sang as they danced. Then both of them performed Paradise by the Dashboard Light by Meatloaf.

Let my point out, that Paradise is the most difficult song to perfom by one of the most difficult artists to sing. And they both nailed it. That is no small feat.

What follows here, is the tale of the worst travel day of my life.

Sunday morning, my foot was not getting any better, and so began the most wretched travel day of my life. The one highlight of my day was having lunch with the parents at Cracker Barrel for my Dad's birthday. At the airport I decided to check my little duffel bag, and just pay United's outlandish fee for the first checked bag. Then I had people wheel me around place to place.

Airports are BIG, especially Denver, which is crowded and has a few design flaws. Like the hallway pinches narrow where the departure/arrival screens are, so people stop in a crowded corridor to see where their next flight is, adding to the congestion. It doesn't help any that United doesn't believe in printing the Gate number on the boarding pass, so checking these screens is manditory.

Also, the Arport is built so it can move around, say, 100,000 people, but the restrooms are built with only 50,000 people in line. As a Male, it is my god given right to not have to wait in line to pee, and curse anyone who would deny that right!

By the time I'm on the plane to SLC, I just want to get home as fast as possible, and I'm not looking forward to the two hour drive that will follow this flight. Oh, and the woman in seat 4C who was kind enough to share her Advil? Lady, you're alright by me!

I got off the plane, to find no one at the counters of the United Gates, so I asked the woman at the Delta Counter if she would summon some Cripple-Mobility assistance for me. She said she would, but as soon as I sat down, she had to help another couple switch filghts, ask for passengers on an overbooked flight to accept tickets/comps to give up their seats, and I think she forgot. After she mysteriously disspaears for about five minutes, I decided that SLC isn't has large as Denver, so I'd just limp over to baggage claim myself.

Emboldened by the Advil from Ms. 4C, I hobble over, grab my bag, and take the shuttle to the parking lot. Then I drive home in a growning snowstorm, and have my first experience going over the Sisters in icey condidtions. (The Sisters are what the locals call the two big hills between Evanston and the Valley, known for causing a lot of accidents in winter weather).

Hobbling inside, I grab the pills that I was wishing for all weekend, pop one, wash it down with a a few ounces of Cherry Juice, and crash into bed, thankful that it's over.

Irritability

2009-03-19T18:46:00.002-06:00

Ever have one of those days when you need to punch something stupid, and everywhere you look there's Opportunity Targets?

No, I didn't do anything rash, it was just more of the usual piling up, on the day before what is probably going to be a stressful weekend.

It doesn't help that Salt Lake City and Pittsburgh have no direct flights going back and forth. My apologies in advance for all of those people that I'll be within 15 miles of, and not be able to visit. My paltry vacation time is spread thin this year due to two weddings, my jaunt down south, and some badly needed Me Time. Seriously, nobody else I know is allowed to get married until after October. I forbid it!

Gonna run all night, Gonna run all day...

2009-03-13T18:57:00.003-06:00

That promise I made about having the results from the Barroom Banter post will most likely be broken, as the person in question has had a slight medical emergency, and I wasn't able to get that list to him until today.

So in the meantime, here's My Top 10 in no particular order:

Offspring
Squirrel Nut Zippers
Franz Ferdinand
Reel Big Fish
Green Day
Spin Doctors
Five Iron Frenzy
"Weird" Al Yankovic
Gin Blossoms
Evanescence

And as an added bonus, here's my cadindate for best song EVAR:

Enjoy!

Off the Wagon

2009-03-07T19:11:00.002-07:00

I've mentioned here before that I'm a recovered Video Game Junkie. I could park in front of the Tube with a controller in hand to the point where I would start growing moss. I've spent Summers with friends playing Mario Kart and Super Bomberman almost every day.

A year ago, I finally picked up my first video game console that was made in the 21st Centrury. I've also picked up a PlayStation 2 to match it, because Sony decided not to make the 40GB console backwards compatable with PS2 games. I was surprised how little I played these things after I purchased them. an hour or two here, part of a Saturday Afternoon there, but I didn't log more than one or two hours in any one day that I played. I still have about four games that I purchased that Still haven't seen the inside of my PS3. I thought I had left that part of me behind.

Then, late one night there's a knock on the Door. I open it. There's a familiar looking monkey standing there, and he's holding something.

"Whadya have there, little friend?" I ask him. He hands it to me. It's a Playstation 2 game called Persona 4.

I look over the cover. One of those new Japanese RPGs that features a menu based combat system, and also features a kind of high school social networking mechanic, a popular recent addition to these kinds of games from Japan.

While I was distracted, the Monkey which gave me the game pounced. He put me in a full nelson, and triumphantly climbed onto my back, chattering all the way. That was when I remembered where I saw this back-dwelling monkey. I sent him packing after I replaced Video Games with Magic: The Gathering as my timesink of choice. And now he has returned.

Anyway, this monkey used a game to get his foot back in the door, so I decided to play it, in the hopes that I could finish it, and then concentrate on ditching him like I had done 8 years ago. Ah... JRPGs... Almost 40 hours of game play, and I still feel like I'm only about halfway through, if that far.

Here's the plot (if not so deep in Gameplay, JRPGs Overcompensate this shortcoming with Plot, if your lucky it might remotely makes sense). You're a 2nd year high school student in Japan who's parents take a contract job overseas. You are sent to live with your uncle, who is a Detective in Inaba, a little rural town in Japan. Hmm... The protagonist moves away from the Big City, to live in nowhere-ville. Already, I can relate to him!

The day you arrive, there's a local news personality is murdered, shortly after the Affair she's been having with a local polititian has been uncovered. A few days later, a local school student is murdered, and her body is found the same way as the first; draped over a rooftop TV Antenna. You and a few of your new schoolmates find another world after going through the TV Poltergeist style, and find a connection to that world and the recent murders. The rest of the game is spent social networking with your school mates, which give you combat powers when fighting monsters in the TV World.

As odd as this sounds, it's still more logical than some Anime and JRPGs I've seen.

Anyway, the monotonoius menu combat is broken up nicely by the social networking sim, where you make friends and strengthen those bonds by spending time with them after school, or sharing lunch with them. Also, you'll be asked to converse in some delicate situations so you'll need to boost attributes like courage, understanding, dilligence, expression and knowledge to be better able to deal with them.

It's kinda like somebody accidentally spilled Final Fantasy on The Sims, then tried to mop it up with pages torn from Manga.

I've spent the better part of the past two Saturdays playing it. When I was a kid, I'd get kicked off the TV if I would have spent even one third of that time playing games. Now, I can get all day marathons in. Such are the advantages of being a single adult.

I'll probably go back to my orginal schedule of maybe 6-8 hours of game time the per week after I finish this, but for right now, me and the Monkey are catching up on old times.

Barroom Banter

2009-02-28T19:01:00.004-07:00

UPDATE: I'll try and have my friends music derived profiles up by March 14th if I can. Thanks to all who participated!

The Fiance of one of my Coworkers and I were discussing music at the Barling Alley (the Bar in the Bowling Alley), and he told me that he could profile people based on their ten most favorite bands. I called BS and demanded proof.

He demonstrated this ability with people around the bar using only 5 bands, but he only gave details about them that he would already know about them. Small town life means you pretty much know everyone around, so he asked me to get lists of bands from people that I know whom he has never met.

So, folks, start posting your list of 10 bands in the comments. I'll try and have his results back in a week or two. Let's see how well the amateur Rock n' Roll Psychologist does!

Old School Addictions

2009-02-25T18:18:00.002-07:00

It's about time someone put this together: It's a Dual NES/SNES console and it only costs 50 bucks. So if you're having trouble finding an old nintendo console that actually worked (like I did) This is you're chance!

Who's Hungry?

2009-02-19T18:13:00.003-07:00

This is why you're fat.

Badly as these pictures clash with any bit of gastronomical moderation and health sense I have... most of it makes my mouth water.

Road Trip

2009-02-18T18:01:00.002-07:00

So, after we get the kids all married off, (on Friday the 13th, for extra style points!) we head down to Yuma, AZ. The desert is pretty, in a hostile, oppressive kinda way. All the flora is pointy, and the fauna is venomous or carnivorous.

We met up with Jim's wife at the local chapter of the Elk's Lodge and met some of his old time friends. Fun crowd. A lot of older folks with a laid back attitude, a quick wit, and in many cases, own large swaths of the town.

The next day, we parked at the boarder, and strolled into Algodones, Mexico. The town is one part tourist trap, one part trading post, one part Optical and Dental capital of Mexico.

After a few Margaritas and some shopping, we took off for the day. I looked for some authentic trinket of Mexican culture that I could bring home. Meaning not a refrigerator magnet, and not a trunk full of guys who'll paint my house for 5 bucks. So what did I find?

Awesomeness. THAT'S what I found.

Also, Jim's wife, Cheri, picked up a wedding cake for the newlyweds. There was indeed smeary frosting action, as is tradition.

Sunday, We went on a driving tour of Yuma, and I learned how to play a Dart Game called 301. Quick Rules: You start with 301 points, and have to reduce that score to exactly zero, by landing darts on the marked scoring area. Aside from the difficultly of getting your score exact, you need to hit the doubling ring (a narrow area, if you've ever seen a dart board) on both your first score and your last.

The last day was a 14 hour drive back to Cold Country. We had lunch at a little cafe on an Indian Reservation. Part of the advantage to doing shopping in a place that the government doesn't tread is Tax Free Cigarettes and Liquor. Not to mention picking up a bottle of something difficult to find...

And that's about it. You can view the pictures at your leisure.

Road Trip Day One: Wyoming to Las Vegas

2009-02-17T17:52:00.005-07:00

We left Thursday at Noon, and headed south on I-15. Winter attempted to hinder our driving, as did the Utards. As the snow started to stick to the roads, we blew past the folks in the slow lane, going 70-80 MPH in the snow. By what authority? The Wyoming License plates we were sporting. By what means? By the super grippy snow tires on Jim's truck.

About 10:30 local time, we pulled into Vegas and crashed at Sam's Town. Becuase our rooms were so cheap, we decied to donate a little money to them via the casino. I played a few table games, scratching one more line item off of the list of things I always wanted to do.

I just don't like slots. I think it's the thought of feeding money into a machine waiting for it to run it's calulation of when it's allowed to maybe give you an astronomical chance of getting paying out. I like to gamble on things that I can kinda sorta affect the outcome of. Even if it's as simple as choosing whether or not to taking a hit on a hand of blackjack. I'll put a little money into a Video poker machine as a time waster, but that's about it for electronic gambling.

Anyway, the following morning, we got my coworkers Johnny and Meagan all dressed up and to the Chapel of the Flowers for their nuptial.

They asked us not to take photographs during the ceremony, mostly to avoid getting in the way of their professionals, so for more pictures, you'll have to go to the chapels website.

Before we left Sam's Town, one of my friends back home asked me to pick up some of those iconic red dice for him, so I made a fast run to the gift shop. Hope you like them.

More tomorrow, I spend most of the night tagging, titling and captioning my pictures.

Random Encounter: Level 6 Road Trip

2009-02-16T22:46:00.004-07:00

As many of you know via random text messages I've been sending to all of you, I spend the weekend in the southwest. First a night in Las Vegas, then onward to Yuma. I would have sent you a text from the third leg of the journey, but I couldn't seem to get a signal in Mexico.

I just got back from a long drive, so I'll not expound tonight, but check back either late night Tuesday or early Wednesday for a lengthy post (might be broken up into several posts) and a massive Flickr dump. (Between hitting the 200 picture limit and close to a half gig of pictures to upload, I'll be upgrading to a pro account very soon.)

Odd-io

2009-02-10T18:07:00.002-07:00

Some of the most weird, yet strangely beautiful things I have ever had the pleasure to listen too:

Freak on a Leash (acoustic) - Korn feat. Amy Lee of Evanescence
System of a Down's Lyrics to the Legend of Zelda Theme
Bluegrass tributes to Just About Anyone.
Anything by Richard Cheese

and most recently...

Seether covering... Careless Whisper by Wham! (?!?!)

...and All that Jazz

2009-02-08T18:34:00.005-07:00

I took an opportunity this weekend to get out of the Valley for a while, to meet someone face to face after communicating via blog comments for several months, and to see Chicago at the the Buell Theater in Denver. Darn good show, and it was awfully nice to get out of the Valley for a weekend.

Wyoming Cultural Fact: each corner of the state has some kind of getaway in the boarding state. SE corner has Denver and Fort Collins in Colorado, NE corner has Billings, Montana and Rapid City South Dakota, SW corner has Salt Lake City, and Jackson has Idaho Falls, or rather, they would if they weren't so full of themselves and decided to visit once in a while. Those unfortunate enough to live in the center of the state are faced with an empty wasteland on all sides.

Thanks again to Sarah, for providing the tickets, the drive from Laramie to Denver, and the hospitality!

acclimation

2009-02-05T19:52:00.003-07:00

After the nasty coldsnap we've had, along came another reprieve from the harsh single digit temps. It's nice enough to go out in a light jacket, and when returning home from work, I took it off completely. Er, the jacket. THAT came off completely, not- nevermind.

Anyway, I looked at the thermostat on my workplace's big lighted sign expecting to see 45 or 52 or something.

32 degrees.

I think I'm getting used to this.

Victory - We Has It!

2009-02-01T21:55:00.004-07:00

Superbowl XLIII Breakdown:

First Team to win six Superbowls - Pittsburgh Steelers
Longest Returned Interception in Super Bowl History - James Harrison for 100 Yards
Most Epic Choke - Thowing an interception on the opponent's 1-yard line, resulting in the above mentioned return.

Total Yards:
Pittsburgh - 292
Arizona - 407

Penalties:
Pittsburgh - 7
Arizona - 11

Amount of Money I won in the Football Pool - $250
Amount of Money I lost - 2 bets of $5 each to coworkers. (Pittsburgh didn't beat the 7 point spread)
Net Gain -220 ( 250 - 20 in the pool - 10 to my coworkers)

Total Bullets sweated out by fans on both sides - 253,476
Cries of Grief - Approximately 6.5 million

Summary: The Cardinals' Offense overran our Defense, and certainly could have pulled it off, but in the end, made a lot of mistakes and penalties, and proceeded to choke.

Best anecdote from the night:
{After an interception by Pittsburgh was ruled as an incomplete on review}
Jim: *smugly* Sorry. :-)
Me: So instead of a turnover, you're on 4th and 6 on your own 35. You DO realize that you're just gloating over the fact that you suck less than was previously thought, right?
(Note: Jim is from Yuma, Arizona, and was able to provided me with a real home team vs. home team rivalry)

Best Pun: (From former coworker) I was really hoping Arizona would win, but it looks like it just wasn't in the Cards.

And now... a victory pose!

The Return of True Winter

2009-01-27T16:25:00.000-07:00

Our unseasonably pleasant temperatures of the 40s and lower 50s have ended abruptly with a high of 9 degrees, three inches of snow overnight... and the drippings of the bathtub faucet creating a sheet of ice in my tub.

Viva, Wy-snow-ming!

Grubbin' With Fuzzy - Spinach... Stuff

2009-01-26T19:54:00.003-07:00

When I was a wee lad, I didn't like spinach. Most kids don't at that age. It probably hadn't helped that my initial impressions were based on a block of frozen chopped spinach that had been heated up. bleh.

Then, my Dad made this. It didn't have a name, but wow, it was delicious. The truly amazing thing was that it combined several things that I simply didn't like and made them into mass of awesome (I still won't eat Swiss Cheese in anything but this).

I've recently made this twice, once for Thanksgiving, and once for a going away party for a former employee of my company.

I've given a name (tribute to Dad!), because I was tired of calling it "Spinach... stuff. With the, uh... things in it." Without further ado, here's the dish that will make you believe in the power of spinach:

** Spinach Emmett **

2 Blocks Frozen Spinach, thawed
1 can cream of mushroom soup
6 oz fresh or two 12 oz canned mushrooms (approximate)
8 oz Swiss Cheese, shredded
Breadcrumbs, enough to cover an 8 x 11 area

1) If you're using fresh mushrooms, slice them, or chop them coarsely (large enough pieces to be positively identifiable as mushrooms and not brownish chunks of mystery foodstuffs).
2) Drain most of the water out of the spinach, but don't wring it dry.
3) Mix to combine the spinach, soup, mushrooms, and 2/3 of the cheese.
4) Spread half of mixture into a greased 8 x 11 baking dish.
5) Cover with the last of the cheese, and spread the other half of the mixture on top of that
6) Top with the breadcrumbs' this will keep it from drying out in the oven.
7) Bake at 300ish for, I dunno, about a half an hour or something.
8) Remove from oven and let it stand for a few minutes. Serves several.

Things to remember:

The cooktime and heat are approximate. I can't remember how long it was supposed to cook, nor the temperture, but just remember that you aren't cooking this, so much as you're warming it up enough to get the cheese melty.
My sister prefers the texture of whole leaf frozen spinach. I'm kinda partial to the chopped spinach.
It's been suggested that this could make a good spinach dip, but I've never tried it. I might add a seccond can of soup or mix in some sour cream or something to try it. Anyone that wants to give it an attempt please let me know how it turns out.
Over draining the spinach isn't a deal breaker, but the moisture makes the texture better. Here's a test you can do to test the spinach for the proper amount of moisture. Take a fist sized wad of it, and throw it against the wall, like you're throwing a good fastball. If it sticks to the wall, then there's too much water in it. If it bounces off the wall cleanly, then there's not enough moisture. If it hits the wall with a *splitch* and falls to the floor with a *thwup*, and leaves a nice splatter mark on the wall, then you've got it just right. I recommend you practice this technique on a fairly regular basis. If you have children, get them involved and make it a family activity.

Enjoy!

Here We Go...

2009-01-18T20:31:00.007-07:00

Batimore: 14
Pittsburgh: 23

Congratulations, Steelers, on winning the AFC Championship!

I was hoping for a Pittsburgh vs. Philadelphia Game, but I guess a we'll have to settle for beating up on Arizona.

And onward, to the Super Bowl!

UPDATE: You see, even Madden predicts the inevitable! Prepare for emotional letdown, Cards fans!