| jael gettin pwned

Nice!  I'll be happy to take the rest of your games for $1.   I've played all your games and most of them you know are worthless.   ;)

The sale didn't go too badly! I brought a lot of stuff including four boxes of RPG books and about 35 board games. Probably sold about half the books, and a little over half the games. I also pre-sold a lot of stuff to board gamers at work or people in the game group.

This year they only let a few people in at a time, so there wasn't the frenzied rush you usually get. Made it a little slower but a good bit more manageable.

There are always some dickheads. One guy spent three ten minute sessions trying to dicker a $5 book down to $3. He spent like half an hour trying to save two dollars, hahaha. I actually enjoy bargaining on this stuff but I decided fifteen seconds after talking with this guy that I was not going to bend on that book even if it meant I ended up tossing it. He was just so relentless in his pettiness that I saw no reason to reward his behavior.

There was another jerk who would offer $1 for games and say things like "come on, I've played that game, it's worthless." Planning, I'm sure, to eBay it later or something. I didn't deal with him much but Aeryk did.

But, most people were cool enough and I walked away with some decent cash in my pocket, so hey! I don't want to do the flea market every year but it definitely is fun every once in a while.

I donated some of the stuff I had left. For my remaining RPG stuff that I don't want, I'll probably eBay the good stuff and throw the rest in a huge bundle on Craigslist for cheap. Somebody will buy that shit!

We had a minor SoCal RJ-con here as well!  I had to take lil student Rudy to the School of Gifted Summoner Youngsters  today.  Unintentionally, he won our Orc vs Elves rematch only because I was over-brimming with confidence having killed all his starting guys, so I formulated a quick decisive plan to rush his Summoner with mine to end the game quickly, but alas instead it backfired.

How did the one day Sale event go?  sell all your wares?

| Professor GriffinX, Welcome to the Terrordome

I saw that, but assumed it was some random challenge and deleted it. I'll take you on!

Got back from the one-night Kubla trip about an hour ago. It felt like a full cob despite its brevity. I think it was because we were always doing something and managed to play a bunch of games even with all the craziness around the flea market. Anyway, good time. Hopefully we can get back to the full experience next year.

Jon - did you see the Heros academy game I started with you?    My moniker online is BomberJon or it might be Griffinx

It's a good series.  I'd like to know though in episode 1 if both pills were poison pills or not.  Most concensus says it was.  But i'm surprised Sherlock didn't figure that out?  It would have been nice closure, HAD he said in the end "I knew both pills were poisoned".  

It's also puzzling why Watson ran off protecting the girl in episode 2 at the museum when he should have remained and protected her.

Yeah, the first series of Sherlock was awesome. Haven't seen any of these new ones yet. That's future Bilbo as Watson!

I am so there.  Sherlock is probably my favorite show.  It just kills me that it's only three episodes per season.

| Speaking of Television Shiz

If you all aren't watching the New Sherlock Holmes series on PBS, you're seriously missing out on maybe the best show I've seen in the last few years (decade?). We're backlogged on TiVo'd episodes of the second season but just watched the first episode and HOLY SHIT it could have easily been a feature length movie and I would have gladly paid $15 to watch it. It was that good. Extremely witty writing, humor. Good plot, action and characters. It is simply amazing.

Since I was blathering about Community a while back, thought I'd follow up now that I've watched most of the run. Definitely agree with fArt and Enron in that the show becomes frustratingly uneven at a certain point. I say "frustratingly" because there are still awesome and unique moments mixed in with the dreck.

Digging into the history of the show is very interesting: it is/was developed with strong input from "the fans." My personal feeling is that this is normally a bad idea (with exceptions; when EVERYBODY says your ending is bad, a la Mass Effect 3, it's probably a valid point). Anyway, for whatever reason the show spends a lot of time in season 2 navel gazing and explicitly trying to reclaim the glory of the season 1 Paintball episode. Consequently there are a lot of themed parody/gimmick episodes in S2 and they are almost without exception mediocre (including just a dreadful run early on with the Apollo 13/Charlie Kaufman/Zombie episodes [although Aeryk would probably like the Z episode]). The S2 season finale is ANOTHER paintball episode (a two-parter, actually) and that's what killed it as our nightly show. (We're rewatching Arrested Development.)

I've watched most of S3 on my own and what happens is the show stops doing parodies and just gets really weird. That actually works for me, but not for the wife. The couple of parodies they do have are way better than the S2 stuff (especially the Glee episode).

tl;dr
S1: starts slow, gets great
S2: good if you ignore any theme episodes
S3: weird in alternately hilarious/tiring ways

Better than Big Bang Theory?: yes
Better than Good Times?: not sure, been a while
Better than Arrested Development?: nothing is better than Arrested Development

If you'd like to know more, well, you'll just have to watch the show. Thanks for reading my irrelevant post!

| I don't even know what date is valentimes but ta-dow!

| Denis and Motorbykael

All 4 have renewed their accounts and we were all online last night!  Huzzah!

Server: Onyxia
Type: PVP
Faction: Alliance

New server and new characters for everyone, so no one is sitting on heirlooms, cash, etc.  Roll anything you like, we have lots of crossover skills and everyone is fairly willing to play anything.  FYI, currently we have a rogue, cleric, drood, huntard, and pally - all under 10 as of last night.

Using Skype for chat, but I'm thinking we'll be sharing the cost of a vent server sooner rather than later...

Join us!

That makes me happy to hear that.  WoW (and hopefully more nerd gaming) is becoming what bridge was a few generations ago. 

Sorry to hear the devil did not entice you into all his looty goodness.  I was finally able to play Diablo yesterday.  Yeah, the gameplay is pretty much the same, but shinier/explodier.  The pseudo-crafting system is a gold sink that activates all the compulsive gambling portions of my brain.  But it suits my no-brainer time waster needs.  I actually played with Peter until about 4 last night.

| Anyone want a used copy of Diablo III?

Oh wait, that's just not possible anymore.

I'm sort of tired of it.  More of the same, followed by some sameness, and likeness of things from before.

Click, hold button, 'splosions of attacks, blood, loot, do it again.  It feels very railroady and one-dimensional.  Sure, there are skills and whatnot that let you sort of change how you click and hold the button down to make massive splosions of attacks, but it's just not enough to keep me interested.

Obligatory WoW comparison: Seeing as WoW is sort of the successor in a lot of ways to Diablo (loot, skill trees, trash mobs, etc.), I would rather play WoW and get a much more rich experience.  Also, Torchlight does the same thing on a budget.

All in all, I'm disappointed in myself for being woo'ed by the shininess of D3 and should have stuck to my guns and not picked it up.

Probably only of interest to Mike and maybe Denis:  Speaking of WoW, I've not been playing much (at all), but our neighbors, who are long time WoWers but have been taking a break since the wife/mom started nursing school, will be coming back into the fold.  Dad, Mom, and two 17 year old daughters = 4 more meatspace people (and if the mom has her way, she's gonna get Leslie to at least TRY WoW for a bit...) to do some dungeons, raids, etc.  I'll let everyone know what's up as I learn more!  I'm sending my scroll of resurrection to her right now! :)

Jael: Gimmie your game center name (unless I already have it?) so we can try some Hero Academy and Ticket to Ride. Mine is just RudyRiot.

That first Summoner Wars game was mostly just a feeler match to see what the two sides are capable of. The elves had the Magic Drain while Orcs had that damn "freeze" event. Also as the Elves, I don't think I had any 0 or 1 cost troops, so I have to come up with magic points more aggressively. Also, let you take out all my archers too soon so I was assed out on ranged. Can't wait to try it again!

Art: Did you guys make it to the Princess Bride showing? I watched that again recently and it's aged surprisingly well. Love that movie.