Another Anniversary

End of July. I've been home for a year since the storm.

Awesomely good, Awesomely bad

I've wanted a Watchmen movie for more than half my life. The new trailer sends shivers up my spine. I've watched it three times today and seriously thought about going to see Batman again to see it on the big screen.

There's a bug in DNS, some of the major glue on the 'tubes that prevents you from having to remember a 32-bit number instead of just typing in "rossum.blogspot.org" ever day. We should expect an exploit in the wild in the near future. Good info here, video for the layperson here. Patch your shit, people.

Still in Shrink

So to speak.

Even though more than three-fourths of my game shelf is in storage, I've managed to not play some of the ones I have close at hand. A few of the titles on this list are cheats, in the sense that I've played the game but not my copy. Others I haven't played since moving home almost a year ago.

A mostly accurate list, at this point in time, to the best of my imperfect knowledge, while looking about in the dark and pulling from memory.

1960: The Making of the President (BGG, BUY ME!), never played, still in shrink. A well-respected two-player historical strategy game. Got to find a partner and the time to understand it.

Arkadia (BGG, BUY ME!), played before, my copy still in shrink. It's a clever timing and building game. I have an extra copy for trade, and someone else in the gang has a copy already.

Bauwerk (BGG, IMPORT), played before, my copy still in shrink. Super clever little building dexterity game for two. I've got to give props to D-Bomb for introducing this to me.

Conquest (BGG, OOP), unplayed by me, got in trade. I hear it's a good combat game that makes extensive use of action points. I believe I have the four-player version.

Cranium (BGG, BUY ME!), unplayed for quite some time. I think my party game tastes have changed. Got this one at a thrift store, though.

Escape from Colditz (BGG, OOP), unplayed, got in trade. Not sure why. I think as a reverse Scotland Yard, it holds intrigue. A little uncomfortable to have someone play the Nazi.

House of Whack (BGG, BUY DIRECT), played before, my copy unplayed. Also signed by the designer, my buddy Drey.

Khet Mezzanine (BGG, BUY ME!) Strictly speaking, this is the "Tower of Kadesh." I think I technically played once, but I was playing with my laser toy instead of competing.

La Strada (BGG, BUY ME!), unplayed by me. A middle weight euro about roads. I'm pretty sure I traded too aggressively for this, mistakenly appraising it as worth more.

Make 'n Break (BGG, BUY ME!)/Make 'n Break Extreme (BGG, BUY ME!), sort of unplayed. I was seduced by bright colors, wooden blocks, and a steep discount. I read the rules and was instantly let down- I was hoping for more interaction/competition. Honestly not sure if I care, and I love dexterity games.

Money (BGG, BUY ME!), still in shrink, unplayed. A Knizia card game I've heard good things about this little card game and succumbed to a promo for a copy before it came back into print.

More Cosmic Encounter (BGG, OOP NEENER NEENER), played before, my copy unplayed. Not quite sure which box has the base set.

Pandemic (BGG, BUY ME!), played before, my copy unplayed. w00t, played!

Pillars of the Earth expansion (BGG, BUY ME!), another expansion that hasn't made it out.

Ponte de Diavolo (BGG, BUY ME!), still in shrink. I love two-player abstracts, and this one looks like a game of connections.

Poser (BGG, BUY B&N B&M), unplayed, bought on a whim. It appears to be a party game with some promise.

Princes of Florence (BGG, BUY ME!), unplayed. Got in trade. Strong recommendations from a friend. Not to be confused with Traders of Genoa. Pesky Mediterranean peoples.

RoboRally Armed and Dangerous (BGG, OOP NEENER NEENER), unplayed since way before the storm. Got this copy in trade. I've also got an unplayed WotC edition. I do like the production values of the newer Avalon Hill edition, plus the rules cleaning-up. Call me a traitor.

San Marco (BGG, OOP NEENER NEENER), my copy unplayed. Got in trade. A keeper.

Shift (BGG, OOP), unplayed thrift store trade fodder. A simple vintage maze game.

St. Petersburg plus exansion (BGG, BUY ME!), played before, but not mine. w00t, played! Never played the expansion. Rio Grande has an English version due soon.

Stop Thief (BGG, LONG OOP), a vintage 80s electronic crime game. I hear that it's a solid deduction game if you tweak out some of the pure chance.

Ticket to Ride Swizterland (BGG, BUY ME!), an expansion that I don't own the base game for. Bought in California. Support your FLGS!

Torres (BGG, BUY ME!), a game I need to play again- a solid building Euro with action points and cool plastic towers.

Traders of Genoa (BGG, POSSIBLY OOP), played before, just not my copy. Not to be confused with Princes of Florence. Pesky Mediterranean peoples.

TV Scene It! (BGG, BUY ME!), picked up at a thrift store. I think I've technically played this. I don't watch much broadcast television.

VOC (BGG, BUY ME!), picked up in trade. I succumbed to the siren call of the mechanics- I want to draw lines around the shipping lanes of Europe while blindfolded!



So what does this say about me? Clearly, that I like to trade and I don't have enough time or participants to play everything I care to.

If I could pull nearly seven miles

Yikes, what a long last several days. We're rolling out a new Nortel VOIP system at NOCCA that requires actually decent wiring spec, so that means putting a new wire wherever there exists a phone.

So yes, we've put in something on the order of thirty-five thousand feet worth of new cat 5 cable. Each cable has four pairs of twisted wire, so strictly speaking, I'm talking fifty miles of copper wire.

Ah, the march of progress.

Hooray Netflix!

This is pretty much the best news today. Netflix is keeping their much-utilized Profiles feature.

If you're behind the times, this is one of their killer features: the ability to split a rental queue between more than one person. Fantastic for couples or roommates. Parents can ratings-control for the offspring, if they so desire. Separate ratings and recommendations with merged billing. It's very convenient.

Cat has a hundred or so titles in her queue- a lot of television drama series I don't really care about. I've got a full queue (500) of random craziness.

Thank you, Netflix, for listening to your customer base.

George Carlin, dead today

It's a terrible thing, and an awful way to start the day.


I need something to make me laugh.

By popular demand

Tomorrow's the day

Today's the day, by the time you read this. I'm happy and relatively stress free wrt planning and orchestrating. The secret? Keep it simple, keep it low-key, and know that the wedding is for me and she.

I promise that pictures will follow, or you'll break both my legs.

Dogs and strangers

How do you apologize to someone you politely nod to on your way out the house and the dog goes crazy barking at the stranger?

You don't want to punish the dog for being a dog; you definitely don't want the dog to not protect your home. But you don't want to tacitly imply that you want the dog to attack a random person for merely walking on public land.

Do you get embarrassed on behalf of your animals?

Four buck gas

The Fool brings up a good point. Four buck gas means we'll finally see the economic pressure to look at different kinds of energy, at mass transit and at other transportation options.

Maybe no flying car in the near future, but some of the car companies are stopping or slowing down their production of less efficient vehicles. I'll bet we see more hybrid vehicles, more thought to engineering for efficiency.

Solar power, wind power, tidal power, geothermal power. We have energy falling out of the sky, we just need to pick it up and use it. You don't sound like a tree-hugging, flower-chewing, skyclad, hippy loon these days if you talk about "alternative energy."

We need to use our fossil fuels for plastics, not power.