J: Played a little bit of the Old Republic beta and it was pretty fun. I might jump in for a month if enough other people do, but the price ($50-$60 I assume) is kinda tough for me right now, so I dunno. Def don't get it NOW because I hear it's slammed with problems seeing as it's gonna be huge and overloaded for awhile.

E: Fun video review for Band of Brother on the geek. Looks like a lot of fun and the guy is totally pumped about it. You gonna pick that up Erick?

R: Picked up a new boardgame this week called Mondo. Played it a few times with my girlfriend and we had fun. It's a tile-placing game ala the ship building portion of Galaxy Trucker, but you're building worlds and then scoring them. Pretty simple but there's def the chance for depth if you use the advanced rules and options that are present. The worlds also look great when they're done. Pretty cool game, I'll bring it around next meet. I've officially turned my girlfriend into a pretty hardcore board gamer, so every week I'm getting like 5-10 games in! It's kind of intense, haha. She's really into Quarriors right now, but she also digs Agricola and almost everything I've brought around (cept San Juan).

K: illen, Enron. Where are those wedding pics!?

That's awesome about Wylie! I was thinking about how good that game is for training kids about logic, in addition to the Lego building aspect. Who knows what my kid will be into. I really would like her to be into math and science, Legos etc., since if she is there's better than even odds she'll be able to play board games with me when I'm a 50-year-old grognard (and also will be able to get a decent job), but who knows? My half sister was a helicopter mechanic, so it's not like there isn't precedent.

Would you be up to give the Star Wars MMO a try? Sounds like it's WoW-in-space with some design updates (only have to have four in a party, and you can have AI "companions" to take the place of missing party members, ie NEVER HAVE TO DEAL WITH A STRANGER EVER). I'd like to try it. Maybe next month after the holiday crazies have settled down a bit?

How about you Enron, interested in at least giving it a shot? FWIW, sounds like it's more geared to the single player story experience than WoW is. Every character class has its own storyline, with fully voiced dialogue, conversation choices and so forth. And, Bioware has historically made pretty solid RPGs set in the Star Wars universe, they certainly will do a better job than Turkey Neck did in the last set of movies.

Anyone else?

For the holidays, we ultimately decided to split the difference and do Christmas up here, but go down for a few days the next week (I have that whole week off from work). Way less driving drama, and far less intense events to go to. I'm really bummed about not doing the Poop Deck this year and about not doing the party that Yukari was planned but it's the best thing right now.

| Updates

- "I don't want WoW for xmas" - Done!

- Somebody was visionary, because isn't that boob ball from Kubla\Cabin Con the same boob peripheral from Titty Grab? Not that Johnny needs an excuse, but Titty Grab just looks like some pretense for grabbing prosthetic boobs. Kinda like a gateway before gang-banging RealSex dolls in your basement, or the real thing in a Frat.

- Now, all your kids might be geniuses, particularly the girls, so this might not seem like a big deal, but Wylie totally rocked some Minecraft all by his lonesome this morning. I have no idea what world he jumped into, but Leslie called me and asked if it was okay for him to play it alone (unsure if it was scary or whatnot). I told her it probably was okay, though he still gets creeped out by Endermen, and he probably wouldn't be able to get it going withut me. She said, nah, he's been playing for like 20 minutes already and just wanted to check. :)

Also, yesterday, as a 'job well done' reward after breaking a board in his Ju-Jitsu class(!), I let him play a little MC while I was stringing some Xmas lights. He called me over, as he always does when he's stuck or something, to ask what he does with this 'stick'. It was a lever that I didn't remember having in our inventory, so I told him what it was, he told me he already knew that, but wanted to know where the dynamite was and the red stuff so he could explode some Blow-Up Guys (Creepers). I was impressed, because he remembered how we set the dynamite, the redstone, and the lever from when we did this weeks ago! Further, he crafted the lever by himself!

Proud daddy moment!

##########PRIVATE WoW-LAMER ZONE##################

I tried to RealID friend both of you Mykenloft and Pumpkin using your gmail accounts, but I don't know if/how you are notified and if your gmail accounts are even registered as realID's. Either way, if you get a chance, try and add me using my Gmail, that way we will be notified of log ins regardless of what server we are actually on or character we are using. I've been spending some (ill advised time, should be studying...) on Bonechewer(PvP) leveling some Horde fellas.

The smell of Christmas trees now gives me a Pavlovian drive to fire up WoW - Merrymaker Docnorvell/Acererak rides again!

Eric should buy the group Titty Grab for the next cabin con.

I'll set up on BGG! That website "janky!?" Pah!

*Navigates for 45 minutes through horrible menus for Car Wars tips*

Let's do this shit! A 25-50 limit sounds fine to me. Rude - eff google docs, boardgame geek has a gift exchange program built into it! Go create an account, add me and Enron as buddies, and set up a wishlist! It's the jankiest system ever but then I can put our names into it and it'll secret assIgn a target to each person.

In:
Enron
jr0n
Steve imsteve

Out but sending someone a random booby prize:
Aeryk

Anyone else?

The newest Humble Bundle is LIVE! Shit is so good, full of heavy hitters this time. Pay your 3 cents or if you beat the average ($4.58 when I got it) you also get some bonus games that are great. I think it's beyond worth it, even though I had a couple duplicates.

I don't want WoW for xmas!

| Baby vs. Travel

Baby wins!

My two cents is that your sanity and health is more important than pleasing the family with a visit. If you have a challenging sleeper right now, you do what you gotta do to survive and let that kid (and you guys) rest.

Being in a hostile environment (which is ANY other environment than at home) surrounded by unfriendlies (which is ANYONE else other than mom, dad, and baby) is a drag when there is any baby drama.

HUMBLE BUNDLE

I liked the bundle I did buy, but like you said, lots of overlap with games I already have or games I don't want at all. Love the concept, love the execution.

SECRET SANTA

Cash is kinda tight right now - lots of big bills hitting over the past few months along with the added cash stress of holiday travel/purchasing might take me out of the running for an AT gift exchange. Though some of you might find a totally unwanted coal-like $5 WoW goodie in your stockings... :)

| Secret Satan

I'm up for a secret Satan. $25~50 range seems reasonable.

jr0n, I still bust out Minecraft quite a bit. I finished up my three towers, put in a large skylight to my mine, reorganized my chest storage/kiln facility, extended my 4 longwall mine corridors to 500+ blocks long and did some more public works road work. I have actually been putting in a sizable amount of time. Especially while I was sick. I saw Pumpkin on-line for a bit on Sunday evening. Outside of that, I haven't seen any of the other Action Team jerks.

I have amassed quite a bit of redstone that I should try and do something with. I think I have some 60+ stacks. Just haven't come up with a plan yet. I also want to play around with Alchemy and Enchanting. I think Dennis has a pick of increased efficiency from his first foray into enchanting.

D>M>

| omg

the next Humble Indie Bundle which is gonna happen any day now is gonna include:

Shank
Super Meat Boy
BIT.TRIP.RUNNER
Jamestown
Nightsky

Extras for paying above average:
Gratuitous Space Battles
Cave Story+


That's insane! That's the best pack yet! I'll remind you guys when it comes out, because ven though I have some of these games already, I really  want Cave Story+ and Shank for basically free sounds pretty good too. Oh, just do it you guys.

I'm down for an Action Team Secret Santa giveaway! For too many years, we've not gifted each other shit, so I say we go for it! $50 top? Or $20 if $50 seems to steep? Someone make a Google Doc, stat!

I think Jordan and Yukari think you're coming to their house the day after x-mas jon, so you might have to let them know! I got a book for your baby and everything! (Mein Kampf, classic) - But yeah, let us know when you're in town, would love to see you guys!

Yeah, the Mage Knight rules looked intense, but like anything, it all usually makes sense once you put it in context. The Agricola rulebook is pretty shitty (almost FFG-status) but once you've got it down, you never really need to look at them again. His new game, Ora et Labora looks cool too.

The only video gaming i've been doing is Battlefield 3. Once I sorted out the technical difficulties, I play that shit every single day. It's not even that good - the maps are all kinda horrible - but the gunplay is fun, plus this morning they're releasing a bunch of classic battlefield maps, so that will breathe some good life into the game.

Yeah those wooden bits are very tempting. I think Pump has a full set!

We had a little secret Santa exchange in me/Enron's SF game group (actually, why the hell aren't we doing one? should we do one? holler if you're in!). I scored Mage Knight! Rude when you posted the rules for this a while ago I was pretty freaked out by the many pages of small print, but now I'm pretty excited about it especially because you can play SOLO! ;_;

So... did everyone just simultaneously crap out on Minecraft to play Skyrim/WoW/Agricola/raise a child/get sick/stare at vast collection of unpainted minis and groan painfully? I guess so, huh? I've been logging in every couple days but never see anyone. I've been playing SP a little bit. I really want to see what the quest mode is about. Unfortunately I went really far into a dungeon, got my ass blown up by a creeper and lost all my shit.

On the child-rearing front, last week was super rough because the kid was just NOT sleeping during the day. She was maybe sleeping 8 hours total per day and newborns her age should be sleeping 14-16 hours. She'd get fussier and fussier over the course of the day and just flip out and scream for hours at night. It was intense. This week things SEEM (knock on wood) to have settled down a bit. I think it was partially that she was going through a growth spurt (and thus hungry all the time) and partially that we weren't doing enough to help her not have gas (and thus uncomfortable/pissed all the time). We're doing some stuff like having her sleep in the carseat for a while after eating and giving her these "gas drops" sometimes (note, they help with gas, they are not gasoline).

Because it's been so rough we're rethinking the holidays a little bit. Right now to go to both Christmas and also the wife's big deal family reunion on New Year's Eve, we would have to be down in LA for over a week. That just sounds insanely hard so we're reconsidering what we're going to do. We might end up staying here for Christmas and coming down for the following weekend. We'd have to move some events around (and miss the Poop Deck :( ) but it might be the better thing for our sanities.

I had heard Skyrim had a bastardized console interface but hopefully it will get modded out or fixed eventually. I actually got used to it with the Fallout games because it was more comfortable to play with a controller (and they're not so twitchy that I need mouse control). I'm sure I'll grab Skyrim one of these days!

 Ordered some wooden animeeples and farmer-family-meeples for Agricola, I'm a sicko! I just can't get down with flat disks for my farmer fams. That game is so good, the more I think about it.

Found the newest game for the next CabinCon, Titty Grab. Way to go BGG, way to go.