19 Comics

12.20.2011

Today I received a little Christmas present to myself (I know, big shocker that I'm getting myself something for Christmas). Today from the Amazon I received 19 comic books.

You may notice a proliferation of GI Joe comics. It's also not a big shocker that I'm a big GI Joe fan. I get most of the GI Joe titles currently in print, but I tend not to read them. I know, it's stupid, but I've gotten spoiled reading the collected trade paperbacks of all the other series that I read, I've just gotten in the habit of reading comics that way. Instead of picking up part of the story every month, I just wait 6 months or a year and get a collection in one easy to read volume.

Huh, come to think of it that's how I watch TV now. I just wait for the current season of whatever I'm interested in to be released on DVD. If I don't mind watching the ending of Smallville 14 months after everybody else it's not too bad.

But I digress. After visiting one of my local comic shops this past week, I saw that the collection of the classic GI Joe series from the 80's was up to volume 13 (usually with 10 issues per volume). I remember some hullabaloo causing a pause in the printing back years ago, so I wasn't sure where I had stopped. When I got home and looked, it turned out I had stopped at volume 5. Rectify!

That got me to looking at the other Joe series. Some of them are a discreet collection - GI Joe Origins ran for 23 issues, now available in 5 easy to read collected volumes. I may actually have those 23 issues, but if I do they're scattered amongst boxes in a closet that I never go through, and I'm too lazy to dig out 23 issues in the proper order to read when I can just get 5 books that do all the hard work for me. Plus, they fit on my bookshelf so neatly.

Those single issues that I get, I do so to help support my local comic book store. Trust me, they need the help most of the time. If I want to read the stories I've got bad enough, I can suck it up and dig through those boxes.

Now I've got bathroom reading for months!

Permalink books/comics

2011 Gaming Season Standings

12.16.2011

Everyone has enough travel going on that it doesn't look like there will be much more board gaming going n before the end of the year. So with that, I hereby present the 2011 standings:

	Wins & Losses					Win %			Points Rank + Win % Rank - # of Wins
	Wins	Losses	Points	Ranking		Win %	Ranking		Combined Points	Combined Ranking
Russ	2	5	18	2		28.6%	5		5	2
Jer	4	2	20	1		66.7%	2		-1	1
Keith	2	3	14	3		40.0%	4		5	2
Matt	1	0	4	5		100.0%	1		5	2
Brady	1	1	6	4		50.0%	3		6	4

The championship list is:

Wins Champion Based on total # of wins Champion with 4 wins Jer	Win % Champion Based on win/loss record 100% W/L Matt	Points Champion Based on game points. 20 Points Jer
	Overall Champion Lowest combined points in rankings. Champion with -1 point Jer

There's actually some twisted logic to calculate the above.

This marks Jerry's 2nd overall championship, the last being the inaugural Widgey season of 2007 when he was co-champion with everyone else but Keith.

Now onward to see what we'll play in 2012!

Permalink boardgames

16 More Hours

12.14.2011

I've got 2 more days of work before I begin my Christmas vacation (assuming nothing important that's work related pops up during my Christmas vacation - I guess it's more of a "vacation as long as nothing's happening". Normally 2 work days wouldn't be much of a big deal. Heck, I'd even skip most of the last day. This time around, I've got meetings to go to. Important meetings. "Hey, you want a job after March?" kind of meetings. Meetings about contracts. And proposals. Generally, all kinds of stuff I don't know a thing about. 2 weeks ago I went through the first round of these meetings and actually found them informative and a little refreshing. I didn't completely suck at whatever I was doing, and I learned a little more of how life beyond coding works.

But by about 4:00 on Friday, all that will fly out of my head.

I've got a list of things I want to try to do over my Christmas vacation. After Friday I [hopefully] won't go back to work until Jan 2. One of the reasons I wedge in a week of vacation on top of the company allotted holiday week between Christmas and New Years is to try and get some personal stuff done on top of all the family/friends activities that always pop up. Some things are housekeeping chores that I've been putting off ("Hmmm, can I hook up the wireless access point in the living room so the Xbox can talk to the internet again?") while others range from hobbies that have been on hold (Unity, various website updates) to new variations of old ideas (I've got an idea for a miniatures board game that can best be summarized as "Zombie Mall", which may just be bastardization of 3 other games). The key here is that by the time Jan 2 rolls around, I want something to show for my time off.

Hopefully there will be more updates to come. With pictures, because pictures make life more interesting.

Permalink random

Wrapping Up Last Week

12.03.2011

I've been playing catch-up over the last week, or at least it feels that way. 2 days of work were taken up not by normal programming and coding tasks (of which there haven't been many actual busy days of late), but instead I've been in the world of contracts, proposals, contract proposals... you know, reading lots of stuff somebody else wrote. It was a good learning experience, and I don't mean that sarcastically. I'm not quite sure what all I learned yet, but nobody yelled at me for doing things wrong.

Those 22 DVDs I mentioned last week arrived without incident, and I just finished adding them to the DVD list. I shouldn't be getting bored for quite a while. I just started the final season of Smallville this morning. After the first 5 episodes I'm enjoying this one. I felt a little let down by season 9, but season 10 is making up for it thus far.

I also delivered the new TV to my grandparents last week. The only hiccups there were mounting the TV to the stand backwards at first (to where it would have just flipped over - who reads directions?!?!) and none of the outlets in my grandparents house are grounded (3-prong). They've got adapters, but didn't have an extra one when we were hooking everything up. My grandmother stole the adapter off the microwave for the night. I think I need to pick up a surge protector or 3 for them. We (Gina & family) may go by there Monday night, as Jacob's wanting to have a belated birthday dinner in Florence at Riccotonis. I think Gina is just using this as an excuse to visit my grandparents. I think it's a good excuse, though, so I'm not going to fight it.

As it gets closer to Christmas, I'm still not in much of a holiday mood. Granted, it's only 3 days into December. Some websites are trying to help my spirit: World Works Games is having a 25% off sale. Drive Thru RPG has a pretty good sale on the old Fat Dragon Dragonshire paper model set, too. I've been holding out to see if All Things Zombie will go on sale, but the price for that one has kept steady.

Permalink rambling random

New TVs Every 16 Years

11.28.2011

I've got 22 DVDs in various stages of being on the way to the house from Amazon. There are another 10 DVDs on my desk waiting to be entered into the RussFlix database. Can you tell what I was doing during the holiday shopping frenzy?

Thanksgiving Day Gina and I went to Florence to see my grandparents. When we arrived, my grandfather wasn't in the living room watching football. Something was amiss. I asked my grandmother where he was, and she told me he was back in the bedroom watching TV, as the TV in the living room died that morning. After 16 years, it finally gave up the ghost.

A couple of things went through my head, some with prodding from Gina. The first thing was that my 90 year old grandfather doesn't need to be stuck in the bedroom watching a little TV. I've got a job that will allow me to fix that! Plus, this was the perfect weekend to have to buy a TV. Thursday proper was not the perfect day for it, but still, if you have to ask for good timing you can't get much better than needing to buy a TV at Thanksgiving/Black Friday.

16 years ago, Mom and her 2 sisters went in together to buy that TV for my grandparents. I want to remember it was $100 apiece from the 3 of them to get the TV - a huge, 25 inch, heavy, tube-laden monstrosity that's been sitting on a TV cart for most of those 16 years. I lot of sports ending in "ball" have been watched on that TV. I'm pretty sure $300 of enjoyment was cashed in on that purchase.

After Mom's divorce, when it was just me and her (maybe around the 6th grade), our TV died and we made a deal with my grandfather. He was going to get us a new TV and in exchange I was going to mow his grass for the summer. He got us the TV, and I think I might have mowed his grass once. So the way I see it, I owe him a TV. Or a summer full of grass mowing. I think I'm going to opt for the TV to ease my conscience.

The new TV should be getting to my house on Tuesday; that was the earliest Amazon's shipping would let me get it, even though I was willing to pay more and make things go faster. I'll hook up the TV at home to make sure everything works, and afterward pack it into the car and take a quick road trip to Florence and hook it up at my grandparents.

Even though it was a good weekend for me to buy them a TV and get a good deal, the delivery time is just right for Paw Paw to miss all the weekend football games. Although I bet he was staked out in the bedroom with his eyes glued to the little TV :)

Permalink Amazon random