Saturday, September 15, 2012

I want to change my profile picture. Does that happen on your side, or on mine somewhere?

| New and Notes

 - To get your pretty picture to display, you currently need to put in a title - I might be able tweak the code a bit to insert it no matter what, but don't hold yer breath.

 - The NHL is looking to have their 3rd consecutive lockout in as many collective bargaining agreement expirations.  Sometimes those asshole players and owners make it hard to be a fan.  Assholes.

 - Back playing WoW again to warm up for the release of Mists of Pandaria.  I moved Docnorvell from Dalaran to iMike's server (Eldre 'Thalas or some shit?) and joined his guild.  So far good peeps, good guild rewards, good times. Man, those heroic dungeons really up the ante and require some well orchestrated combat tactics - a far cry from the grinding of old.

 - The company just picked up the tab on a 7 day boot camp for a security certification in November up in SF (San Mateo).  Totally weird to be working for a company that appears to value their employees enough to pay for training.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Way to insult Elzar's hard work enr0n. JEEEZ!

Tomorrow at two, we will roll ALL the dice! I'll try to set up the hangout at 1:45 or thereabouts. Remember to print the two files from this folder. You'll need them both and nobody wants to watch you while you look for printer paper, search for your USB cable, set up your printer driver, have some weird problem because the Postscript settings are jacked up, realize your printer is out of ink, etc, come on bro.

It's gonna be awesome! Even though I forgot to buy a dungeon master robe.

| Douchebaggery

Yeah, I know man. Was just giving you some 3rd party shit. :D

| Webination

I am definitely not trying to say the site looks bad, in fact I like the look. I guess I wasn't clear about that, sorry 'Zar. I was just pointing out some tuning that would be nice to have.

I still pop into Minecraft periodically and play for an hour here and there. I built a circuitous path from iZar's Wiznard tower to fArt tower. I avoided the jungle BS, but added some significant extra distance. I have also been ranging for Ender Pearls. Mother Truckers. I never find Enderman close by when I need to. And when I do find some of those tough bastards, I get accosted by a bunch of other mob asshats at the same time generally far from my spawn point.

The mini-coop S are fun little buggers, although they lose a lot of pep once loaded up with people and crap. Mom's is always a joy to tool around town with, plus the mileage is pretty reasonable. Rear seating is just a smidgen tight.

D>M>

| First World Problems

Don't listen to AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRON's lies. The site looks great.

In other news, looks like we'll be getting a second car again this weekend. I think I've fallen in love with another Supercharged Mini Coop. So freaking awesome.

Other runners-ups include a 1976 Mercedes that iMichelle is in love with. It runs, looks straight, probably will need ongoing attention and love to keep it going but it's only $2500 which is nice, compared to the Mini at $12.5k. I'm pretty certain we could pocked the extra 10 G's and be perfectly fine.

Cars in Question (Mercedes is google image search, Mini Coop ACTUAL PRODUCT OMG):










Gaming-related: I've started playing through Half Life 2 again. Wow, such a great game. Even the graphics hold up after all these years. That whole Ravenholm sequence is freaking amazing horror-style gameplay.

World of Tanks: Still addicted. Stupid game. So fun.

Minecraft: Still logging in. Need to find some time to mine out a few thousand blox to complete the shell of my project. Then beautification. Then I can help Elzar get to The End.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

| Nixon's Knee

(The site looks great E-ric, thanks for maintaining it and sprucing it up!)

iWife and I got in our first game of 1960: The Making of the President (bgg) this morning and we both really liked it! Lighter than Twilight Struggle, but similar enough that I'll see if I can spring TS on her down the road. I won as Nixon by a fair amount, but it truly was a learning game because we had NO familiarity with the cards and there's some interesting mechanics like a "debate" round towards the end of the game and managing your campaigns focus across a few different areas. Great game though, so glad it went over well.

| Version 0.2

Yeah, it was a quick fix to the problems of the old blog.  I spent most of the night trying to locate where and how I would add the poster images to the template, er, 'layout' it's now called - this old dog is having a hard time reading web code anymore....  The images are related to the displayed 'posted by' name, which is different than it used to be on the old template.  Been moving and creating new images when I get some time and motivation.

Agree about the background, but again it was a quick and dirty, and it of course looks great on my giant monitor :)  I do like the overall warmth of the look though; takes me back to CayucosCon and puts me in a generally relaxed and gaming mindset.

It looks like crap on the iPad unless you turn it sideways and I don't think Safari plays nicely with the scrolling of the background, so it is what is is.  Since the site is probably viewed more in Safari than anywhere else I might put some time into solving the issue, but then again, maybe not.

| New Locale

Pleasantly thoughtful h4X0rs in fact. If I were to give one suggestion to said h4X0rs, I would say: they should crop the left hand side of the image off to remove the excess background kitchen area of the image, cropping just short of iZar's right shoulder. This would also bring in Motobyke, Pump & r00d more into the right hand side of the frame. Otherwise, looks good on ye olde desktop. Not so much on the iPhone... The whole page scrolls, instead of the text frames only.

Also, most of the Avatars are AWOL, aside from r00d and eLzar. Bad links maybe?
Love the new look! It is intentional, right, and not the result of some malware h4x0rs?

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Ticket To Ride Pocket is free again for the next 5 days if anyone had failed to grab it last time.

Also, BGG's current contest is for Dreadball, so there's a chance for you mini-maniacs to have a chance at the game. If I win it I will pick up the hobby of painting.

| ohh

Like the new look to the site! Also, not getting anymore malware warnings.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

| mucking about

seems there is something mucking about in the forgotten AT site.  looking into it.

Keep Calm and Carry On

| Fire Balls

I had the same malware warning about 2 months ago. eLzar and I chatted about it and figured it was erroneous. A few days after, I stopped getting the message and haven't seen it since. I suspect it is a false positive, but who knows.

Pump: I have been looking at a new kindle too; however, I am looking at the Paperwhite ($139 no ad variety). I already have an iPad and while I really like it for a lot of reasons, it is not really the best for reading books/PDFs and I can't use it for takeoff and landing on flights (damn FAA). It's just a bit too heavy to hand hold in a reading position for too long. Plus, the screen washes out in the sun. I suspect the Kindle Fire suffers a similar set of limitations.

FYI: For the first year, Fire HD 8.9: owners can pay $50 once for 250MB/month. After that year ends they go to a traditional data plan by AT&T. Monthly plans normally cost $15/month, totaling to $180/yr.

Yay DCC!

D>M>
I got a scary warning about the site just now too! I usually check on iOS but at work I'm on windows. Scary!

| Dredball

While I did not get the Relic Knights.  Weird, it's right up my seedy back alley.  I am planning to get the Dredball.   I think that's only two takers so far?  Did you see the acrylic gameboard?  Wonder if it's worth it (might scratch up easily).  You know I'm getting the extra female human team and any elf teams that come out.

Looks like I'll be able to make it for some DCC too.  And by the way.   Curse you Jorn!  I went and got that phonebook sized rulebook.  Man, maybe it's time for me to get a tablet.  Maybe the new Kindle Fire?  Anyone hear if it's worth getting.  I know the 50 dollar a year data plan is a big draw.

No errers logging here.

Monday, September 10, 2012

Anyone else getting a malware warning when they try to go to the blog? Weird.
The best thing about DC Heroes was that the fighting was very much based around console beatemups, you know, strong attack, weak attack, ranged and jump. It played well with a controller. Other than that, it was as bad as every other mmorpg. Something clicked/dislodged in my brain, and I just can't enjoy those kind of games anymore. I can't unsee the obvious "carrot on a stick" design and I don't think they respect players time. That sounds so dramatic :) Bonus suck for my DC experience was I played it the week it went free to play, and you had to patch in-game some ridiculously huge multi-gig update that crawled because they were obviously being slammed.

Picked up 1960: The Making of the President. Supposed to be a little lighter than Twilight Struggle but still very good.

| Balls Reborn

Well, as long as its not an RPG, which it is not, so indeed it sounds fun to play (ER that is.)!  Looked like a pretty cool boardgame with lots of expensive pieces.  Last saturday R00dzarian brought over the DDAY dice game he bought on kickstarter.   We didn't get to play as we were working on other games thought.  Seems like that is worth the investment time.

Steam - By the way, as i was scrolling through all the free MMO's i noticed most of it was downloaded by comrade question and Roodriot.  Any fun free MMO's?   How was DC heroes online?   That one seemed like it had all the elements of a fun Wow type MMO, Great graphics, smooth movement action, lots of distinct powers...

| Earth Re-snorin'

Let's sink some serious time into ER the next time we get together! (Xmas, Kubla, w/e.) I played the first scenario with Aeryk and it wasn't a hit, mainly I think because a) we were drunk and tired but also b) that scenario is really basic, so there's lots of setup for a really short game.

But last week I played the 3rd scenario with one of the game group guys and it was really fun! In that one you use shooting as well as get into some of the crazy order interruption/bidding stuff that makes the game feel really dynamic.

Actually I think this is a perfect game to play with the likes of ja-el.
I have to pass on Dreadball too. The multipack wouldn't really apply to me anyways since the savings would be lost on sending my copy down to Southern iCalifornia. Looks like a great game, but I'm just not interested in taking up the hobby of mini-painting at this time. I've still got a sad copy of Earth Reborn, totally unplayed. Gonna try to bust that out with the wife one of these days. Maybe it'll be a hit.

Sunday, September 09, 2012

| Ow, my balls

Yeah, I think I better steer clear of the game purchases for the time being. My wallet is still scorched from the this past weekend (awesome food, even more awesome price), the trip to the Sierras and GenCon; all of which occurred in the past month. Besides, I need another unpainted mini game clogging up my closet like I need my teeth kicked in.

I am totally set to DCC the hell out of next Saturday.

D>M>

| Dread Pirate Balls

I think my kickstarter budget for the year is tapped out... my credit card is still afire from Relic Knights (aka anime robots boobs miniatures game), the ludicrous Reaper kickstarter, and an airbrush compressor and spray booth. Of course it doesn't end for almost 2 more full pay cycles... ugh.

I think enr0n should step up on this one. :) The game looks awesome and I definitely want to play it! I think you could get Matt involved as well. He's been talking about it too and I think could be easily tempted.

Man, four factions... ugh!

| DCC: I'm in

Now, the Dreadball Kickstarting is just getting to be ridiculous with all the goodies they keep adding... anyone want to get in on it with me and save some cash?  $420 gets 3x the 'Striker' bundle (which is $150 for (1), so you save $10 each!) and the Striker bundle is ridonkulous at this point - 4 teams, like 9 'freebooter' minis, all the rules, a board, a bunch of counters, rulebook, etc....

Any takers?  20 days do go, so I bet it's gonna get ever crazier... they are 10k from hitting the 200k mark where they can produce the first expansion; whether or not that will be included, who knows.

DOO EET

| Saturday is game day!

Hey all, Saturday at 2 PM is DCC day! I hope everyone can make it.

I shared a Google Docs folder with everyone's gmail account -- there should be two pdfs in there. Print both of those out and we'll be good to go.

Also, go into Google+ and install the Hangout plug-in if you don't have it already, that'll speed things up a bit.