Happy Non Denominational Winter Holiday!

12.19.2007

Too much going on, mainly with trying to fill Keith's shoes now that he's moved on to coder monkey at Dealnews. I'm my own supervisor until they start interviewing replacements in January. I'm one of the applicants, so maybe I can continue to be my own supervisor?

I've also got my holiday travel planned to go see Mom & Dad. As such I don't think I'll be around the computer much (outside of work) until maybe Xmas Eve. That is not necessarily a bad thing.

The thing I'm going to miss about working at Westar is that we don't automatically get the week between Christmas and New Years off. I got used to that at Spiritus, along with my unemployment window from last December. I may have to see if I can sneak some more time off into that week this year. As my own supervisor, I'm sure I would approve it. Of course, those management overseers may not see it the same way. Curse you double edged sword of management!

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CompUSA: Taking a Dirt Nap

12.08.2007

It was announced that CompUSA is closing all of its stores after the holidays. While they're never had the best prices, I always thought they were close to their competitors. For me, they were the goto store for when I needed some gadget for my PC. Hard drives, IDE cables, trackballs, etc. I even got a Vista-capable webcam for the laptop from there last week.

But now I'm curious to see who low their liquidation prices will go. Granted, there probably won't be much stock left over from the holidays. There may not be much stock for the holidays. I'm sure there will be something for such a good price that I can't pass it by. That's why I've got PS2 games still wrapped up from the Sam Goody liquidation of 2 years ago.

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Alas Evel

12.03.2007

I saw where Evel Knievel died over the weekend. I remember anxiously watching his specials when I was little, wondering if he would make the leap over whatever he happened to be trying to jump. But more importantly, I remember the toys!.

The main reason I remember the Stunt Cycle is that it's one of the few memories I have of "the bad old days". Dad had gotten laid off from work, I don't think Mom was working, and we ended up moving to Florence in the tiniest house I can remember. 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, living room, and a bathroom. And I swear it would all fit in my kitchen/great room/dining room now - not that I currently live in a mansion, that's just how small I remember it. The house had no hall, just more of a room that connected the 2 bedrooms and bathroom, and was more open to the living room.

The living room was where I played with Evel and the Stunt Cycle. The house had hard wood floors, back when carpet was a luxury and wood floors were a pant o maintain. Wood floors meant Evel could ride and ride fast. I think the little rubber tires may have managed a black streak on those floors a time or two, too.

For special occasions, Evel would go out to the front porch for stunts. The porch was more of a stoop, but I didn't know that back then. Evel and the Stunt Cycle would roar along the porch/stoop to tumble down the steps. A successful stunt meant landing on the ground on the Stunt Cycle wheels and going even further (although it would often tumble just as far, if not farther)! It was like a Slinky on wheels.

Now I know what happened to Evel (alas), I wonder what ever happened to my Stunt Cycle?

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2142... Reborn?

11.27.2007

Way back in April I started playing Battlefield 2142 with what would come to be my online gaming clan nerd friends. We had a dedicated server that was ranked by EA, which for the uninitiated is :
a) a way to gain experience points that can be used to watch your gaming character "grow" and get more weapons and gadgets
b) in pursuing those goals, lengthens the life span of the game, and
c) is a great scam to get people to pay for the servers in order to get those ranked points.

A few months back, we did away with our server due to a combination of lack of funds by those supporting the server and a lack of interest in playing on the server. You have to have a minimum number of people on the server for a ranked game to start, otherwise you have to just run around and wait for others to show up - not a lot of fun if you're in the mood to play, I can vouch for that multiple times.

Over the past few months, I've garnered more responsibilities in said online gaming nerd clan. More importantly, interest in 2142 has started to rise again. So after months of thinking about it and weighing pros and cons, I have started to rent a server and will see if it is worth the expense and the time over the next couple of months. Day 1 is turning out pretty good - it's been running with 90-100% of the max number of players since I got home and started looking. That's good, as it will hopefully spread good word of the online gaming nerd clan.

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New Hobby?

11.19.2007

I've been trying to get a/more non-computerized hobby(s). Spending all day in front of a computer, I need to get away from it sometimes.

Playing HeroScape has been a nice, non-computerized diversion. The best part is putting the board together. It makes me long for the days when I was going to put together scenery for the various miniatures games that I have (yet have mostly never played).

I found myself at Hobby Lobby after lunch today, wasting time and not going back to work promptly. I wandered through the manly aisles of art supplies and scale train sets. Looking at all the stuff for train scenery, I started thinking of those aforementioned games. It would be so easy to pick up a little something and make gaming scenery out of it. Heck, I bet that's what most people did.

So I looked for something simple to start out with. Rocks. Rocks are cool. Rocks should be easy. The one piece of terrain I bought previously was really a rock that goes in an aquarium. But this was going to be a learning process! So I bought myself a rock mold and some lightweight hydrocal plaster, followed up by a video tutorial on making the rocks and an extremely detailed how-to guide..

Now I'm just waiting for a 4-day weekend to see how horribly wrong this can all go.

Permalink boardgames gaming miniatures