Saturday, November 24, 2012

Hey Pumpkin, you know that money you've got burning a hole in your pocket? Here, throw it at the Kingdom Death kickstarter. No Wet Nurse in there, sadly(?).

Friday, November 23, 2012

| Brineage

It absolutely rocked. But in all seriousness I think one of the biggest flavor-enhancers was swapping out a gallon of water for apple juice. I do another gallon of brine using vegetable stock, allspice, rosemary, thyme, garlic, peppercorns, ginger, and bay leaf. I let that boil / reduce down for about 15-20 mins on a low boil.

This year's bird was unbelievable. Best I've ever done. Even when I was seemingly past the point of eating another bite for fear of barfing, I kept going back to pick at it some more. lol

I don't even bother using the drippings. I just make my own stock now using the turkey giblets. Throw that in a stock pot with a gang of chopped up carrots, onion, celery. I also put in some mushrooms for flavor and a few quarters of an apple. I start it off with 2 quarts of broth, 1 quarts of stock. I add in another quart or so of water. As I take stock out for mashed potatoes, dressing, gravy, I replace with more broth or water. It simmers for like 8 hours all day long and at the end of the night I usually have about 4 quarts of LIQUID GOLD to save for use in the next week or so.

| Brine & Bag

Ry, awesome. That is great to hear you are now engaged. Ignore jr0n, you totally need to have your destination wedding in Stockton. A completely rad place for a wedding/meth cook-off.

fArt, Brine and Bag is the way to go. I have been using a brine that seems to really work nice: 2-2.5 gallons water, 1.5 cups brown sugar, 1.5 cups salt, fresh thyme (1/2 bunch), fresh rosemary (1/2 bunch), fresh sage (1/2 bunch), crushed juniper berries (20), (2) oranges quartered and (1) lemon quartered. The oven bag makes it real easy too, just need to make sure you pop in the thermometer prior to tying up the bag. How did the wine brine work out?

The drippings are a little tough to work with because of the salt. I keep meaning to try cooking the drippings with potatoes to try and pull some of the salt out, but I haven't made it there yet.

I'm still suffering a bit of a post T-Day drag-ass. Too much Butta'

D>M>
We had a great time over at enr0n's place. Pretty sure I'm still sweating butter. enr0n makes a great bird and a green bean casserole that will slay your ventricles outright. I'm a little scared to make turkeys, but I do make a pretty damn good pumpkin pie, even if I had an epic brain fail this time around. (Whole cloves instead of ground? WTF??? Fortunately the taste wasn't affected.) I also made my Grandma's Jell-O casserole, which in and of itself uses 3 sticks of butter for the recipe, along with substantial amounts of Cool Whip and cream cheese.

Got today off and am STAYING THE HELL HOME.

Hope everyone had a great one!

| Turkeh Brine!

Rood:

I got home from Thanksgiving at Michelle's aunt and uncle's place a little while ago and did up my brine. I probably should have made it earlier today before we left so I didn't have to wait for it to cool down so long, lol. I put ice packs in ziploc bags and floated those around in my brine to cool it down.

Like you, I started off with the Alton Brown standard and then went from there over the last few years. I now use apple juice instead of water in the brine. Gives it a nice flavr. Also put in about 1/3 to 1/2 a bottle of white wine. Garlic, Rosemary, Thyme, Onion Powder. Comes out so much better than regular ole bird.

Something else to consider using if you don't already is an oven bag. That shit is EASY MODE. Cooks a lot faster and really very evenly.

Only bummer about brining is you can't really use the turkey drippings (too salty). But I remedy that by cooking up a batch of stock while the bird cooks in the oven, using the giblets and neck. That home made stock is GOLD for making mashed potatoes and dressing.

We're doing our surplus Turkey Day tomorrow and inviting some friends and family over. Should be a good time. :D

Ryan: You. Dumb. Bastard. lolol, I keed. I keed. Getting married was the best decision I ever made :D Hard to believe I'm creeping up on 17 years with Michelle. That doesn't even seem like a real number. Crazy.

| Gobble

Happy Thanksgiving!

I made my first turkey ever this week. I'm doing one Friday for my parents who are coming over, but I also did one on Tuesday as a test run. Came out surprisingly well! I did Alton Brown's brine for the turkey. I was worried it was gonna be super salty or bland, but it came out right in the middle and had a pretty good flavor. Not PERFECT but really good. It only took about 3 hours in the oven and nothing was particularly complicated. The brine was simple to whip up and the most nerve wracking part was waiting to see how it would taste after soaking in a brine for a day. Put my 2nd turkey in another brine tonight and this time added a few more items to the mix, so looking forward to tomorrow's turkey. It's been turkey all week (had Turkey at my ladies families house too)!

PS Watched all of Sex House the other night and it was hilarious! What a great webseries. Really funny and they nailed the Real World style reality show perfectly. Alan Moore of creepy comic book writing fame is writing a web series now. I watched the first "short" and it was good. Looked amazing. The colors and style were really awesome. Act of Faith
It's kinda "sexy" so maybe don't watch it with your parents or kids. Also, it's Alan Moore who seems like a deviant, so whatever you're expecting, that's pretty much what's there.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Congrats Ryan!    Happy T-day, you Turkeys

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

They'll have a destination wedding. Destination: Oxnard.
The problem is once you live in paradise, where do you go for your honeymoon? Fucking, Torrance?

| yay

Congratulations Ry! You guys are already in the most awesome place to get married, so you're all set. :)
All this talk about the bike shop got you in the mood, eh?

Congrats bro!!!!!!! You'll need to fly us over to Hawaii for a very special episode of Man-Con.

| I'm Engaged.

| RROD(udley)

Sorry for the Studly Dudley rant!

But back on the RROD discussion from earlier, I'm in the SAME boat if mine happens to RROD anytime soon. I lost my original one within the first 3 years of ownership, so they sent me this replacement for free. But I just never use it anymore for anything. My stepkid has a 360 with Live and Netflix from another family member, so mine is basically a dvd player, if that. Once I got an iPad, my video gaming has switched almost 100% to that. I love Steam to death, but I barely even fire up my desktop these days because what internetting I don't do on my iPad I've done for 9 hours at work each night.

You think Google-Glasses type things will be common place before we make our final saving throw?

| Dudley's Bike *wink*

LOL, I guess if I am going to weasel my out of one thing I may have participated in, I might as well be blamed for something I didn't have a hand in. Oh well, there goes my political aspirations. Oh wait, I think those went out the door years ago. Never mind. Carry on.

D>M>

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Other searches:

Dudley bike
Dudley bikey bike
+bike +shop +Dudley
Dudley do-right
Dudley do-nasty
The world's most thorough disclaimer still won't erase your YouTube search history.

Dudley bike shop
Shop Dudley bike
Bike shop Dudley
Tarzan

| Chest, the only game a man needs to learn

Okay, here is what is rad about that: Your kid is fucked. r00d is right. I mean, both Mike and I learned to play Chess 6 and 5 respectively. We even played against each other competitively at the MB school with the Grandest of Views. And we both turned out great. Oh wait. A weirdo who digs up dead bodies and ashes or a numb nut who thrusts his apparently red, sexy, swollen Georgia O'Keeffe inspired lower lips at other men while inviting them to go to the lobby with him. Plus Bobby Fischer will scare you more. Actually best not to read that. You might just cry. Bummer dude.

In all seriousness though, that is actually quite promising. He is into cool activities that are gateway drugs to nerd life. You may still have a proper gamer on your hands yet.

Disclaimer: By no means is any of the above statements an admission in anyway, shape or form of involvement in any crotch thrusting activity of any sort with relation to stuffed lipped shaped pillows or any other phallic or an otherwise symbolic genital proxy or likeness. Guilt by past activities is by no means proof of the previously mentioned activity occurring other than in the perceptions of the accusers. It could have been anyone of you jArks. What was stated above was only for illustrative purposes and only exists as perceived digressions of myself or others as a result of the theoretical matter regarding Chess and what the game will do to pervert participants, both real and perceived by others.

D>M>

| Chess!? YIKES!

Be careful with Chess! I think it modifies how your brain works and makes people NUTS. I dunno, if you google it there's some yahoo answers about it. Some people say yes some say no, so best to play it safe and teach the kid Battle Chess.

| Stuffed Lipps (,INC.)

I believe the offending novelty item was a set of stuffed lips.  While my memory is somewhat, er, MOSTLY cloudy, I think that was the item that doubled as a 'lets all go to the lobby' phallus and a video camera stabilizer when we stuck the camera on the dashboard.

So, I have no evidence to PROVE Enron did it, I think all we have to do is look at his past behavior to convict him on this one.

Yes, I'm an asshole for not wanting you to honk, and it wasn't so much honking at the dude with the sign, it was more because we were sitting at a traffic light, stopped, surrounded by cars - I didn't want to be the assholes honking for no apparent reason stopped in traffic.

Chess and Wylie

So, sort of out of the blue, Wylie wanted to start playing chess.  For a six year old, he doesn't suck - he can remember, mostly, what all the pieces do, although he still tries to move his pawns backwards or diagonal, but mostly he get it.  The thing is, we sort of actually play real games because I am so bad and unfamiliar with chess in general.

I will usually let him know if he is moving a piece that is clearly going to get taken on the next turn and ask him if he's sure, then he usually looks at the board and says "AAAARGH!" and points to my piece that will take his the following turn, and then redoes his move.  However, it's not like I can go for the throat or anything because I just don't really know how a game of chess is supposed to flow!

If he asked me to teach him Blood Bowl, or Combat Commander, or Memoir '44 or something, I would know certain things to do, not to do, what to look for, etc. and I would know how to take advantage of a weak opponent (usually!), but with chess it's just not the case.

I usually don't praise Wy to other people because I am mostly annoyed by parents that constantly talk their kids up to anyone who will listen, but in this case I am absolutely, genuinely, impressed. :)  Next up he says he wants to learn piano!  WTF?

| Haha!!

Oh man, I had totally forgotten about that. I think the sheer volume of brain cells we were killing each night might have played a role in our memory (or lack thereof) of said events.

I remember that place now, it had some kind of view of the river going on or something. To be fair, it was essentially the Taj Mahal compared to the Garden of Eat'n motel haha.

| Garden of Eat'n

Oh boy was that place ever a gem. In the middle of fucking nowhere Utah, connected to some unassuming motel. Anyway, after Art asked, "OK, what is at least "safe" to eat?", her response was "I don't know, the French Fries are probably safe." Pregnant silence followed... After she left the table the three of us were mulling over how bad we were going to have the shits the next day or something to that effect. If this same exchange had happened in a wooded area in the south, I am pretty sure one of the three of us would have been forced to squeal like a pig. Wow. Just wow.

Now with regards to "Let's all go to the lobby." I am not fessing up to it. Video or it didn't happen. LOL. Also, that "rat trap we stopped in outside of Portland" was the Best Western Plus Columbia River at the "Bridge of the Gods". This is also the Hotel where you destroyed our room toilet with your once a month football sized turd, just as we were checking out. eLzar and I tried to convince you to cut the turd up with the plunger but you were having nothing of it. Then You refused us to call the front desk and stated, "Trust me it isn't going down easy, now leave a big tip and lets get out of here."

And yes there is evidence of eLzar telling you not to honk the goddamn horn. I still watch that one about once a year to laugh it up a bit.

D>M>

| Another classic moment from that trip..

Had to have been when we were driving past the mattress store and they had that dancing sheep guy out on the curb and iErrrric was all bent about DO NOT HONK THE HORN, ART.. JESUS CHRIST YOU HAD TO HONK THE HORN? haha. I think that rant was on film as I recall.

The Garden of Eat'n out in the middle of ass-end nowhere was probably the most hilarious stop I think.

Us (To the waitress): So, what's good to eat here? Anything you'd recommend?

Her: Nothing. I won't even eat here.

Us: "..."

Us: No seriously?

Her: Yeah, I'm serious.

Us: OK, what is at least "safe" to eat? (lol)

Monday, November 19, 2012

Well, I dunno... that doesn't SOUND like enr0n...

OH WAIT IT TOTALLY DOES

Haha, I can picture it so clearly.

| LET'S ALL GO TO THE LOOOOBBBBBBYYY

iEric, can you back me up on this one? lol I think it was at whatever rat trap we stopped in outside of Portland on the way down, but I think it was continued later on too.
Yeah, I appear in the beginning segment briefly.  I didn't want to be on at all, but somehow I was dragged in.  So I cleverly suggested that we use a narrator / Storybook format, where instead of a bunch of talking heads, we do narration through a bunch of cool shots, kinda like a flipbook.   That way, we had minimal exposure to face the camera in terms of acting.    We just recorded the script with a mike.   I'm waiting now for the rough edits of the video.   Was a fun experience.  How's everything Rood?  I'm excited about your House warming party Dec 8th man!  Let me know if you want me to bring anything.
Awesome to hear the video shoot went well, Jael! You had mentioned a resource you used to get in touch with different film crews - what was it again? I can't wait to see the finished product. Do you appear on camera at all, or are you more a behind the scenes dude?

| Wait a minute...

Wait a minute? I don't remember this:

It's right up there with the non-stop drunk-ass sexy-dance he did on our road trip while singing "Let's all go to the lobbbbbyyyyy" with a long couch pillow sticking out of his crotch... for hours.

Did I just block this memory out? Could be...

D>M>

| What's awesome about Enron's recollection of the BoB ace pilot death

Is that he remembers it so vividly. LOL. And it really did take a good 15-20 seconds between me saying, hey, you're all shot to shit, jump out... to the final impact. Aaron completely froze into brain lock. It was horrifying at the time because, you know... I like PLAYED THAT CHARACTER FOR HOURS MAN, but now it makes me giggle-snort every time I think of it.

It's right up there with the non-stop drunk-ass sexy-dance he did on our road trip while singing "Let's all go to the lobbbbbyyyyy" with a long couch pillow sticking out of his crotch... for hours.

What's the difference between WWF and Porn?  Nothing.  Hulk Hogans in both!

Ha ha wokka!  o comon, don't die!  btw what game is that, I don't remember that on apple.

So if you guys are really interested in some good humor like mine, watch key and peele, which i'm sure some of you if not all already know.  It's like the chappelle show but not as ghetto blast.

On the weekends I've been really busy working on the Kickstarter video.  We just finished the shoot last weekend!  Prior to that, the weather channel had forecasted about 30% chance of rain, which is pretty bad, considering if it rains it would ruin the entire shoot.  Come saturday morning, it was pouring in Redondo.   I was sure we would have to pay for some kind of rescheduling fee since we had booked the cameras, stage lighting, locations, director, camera crew etc.   But it ended up being awesome weather in Santa Ana and no rain at all!   It turned out great.  Just as sweet as killing the Fucking Kilrathi.  I remember that shit.  That was one badass mo fo game.  I thought there was already a MMO based on Wing Commander. I did a search like 6 months ago thinking that would be a great game to make into an MMO like Eve.  Also note, that the was the first space porn game.  Cuz you get these hot wing women chicks and there was a bunch of storylined script, kinda like Rikker was always hitting on D.Troy funbags.


enr0n has told me that Battle of Britain story before, but damn it makes me laugh.

| Brown Star

LOL about Wil. The, "Just one more block" mentality got me into a lot of late nights. Dangerous game that.

Sooo, I ran across this article on Arstechnica about Goatse.cx being converted to a mail service. I swear to all that is good and righteous in the world, this is not a trick link. Yet, I bet you are sitting there, looking at the link for a minute mulling, "I'm not touching that shit. It's just some sick ploy to get me to look. A BS redirect site link or a mirror site." LOL. The article is kind of interesting, but the comments in the comment section are golden and spot on.

D>M>

| Wil Wheaton had a funny post regarding Minecrack

Three days ago:

So I thought I'd try out Minecraft Pocket Edition, just for fun because all the kids are talking about it. Just, you know, a little bit of goofing around to see what the big deal is. I even bought a cool little guide on iBooks, figuring that I'd just skim it, and then play around with it on my iPad for a few minutes on the airplane.

The next thing I know, we're landing and I've built a fucking fortress that sticks out of a mountain. I'm looking at the front of it and trying to figure out where I can go get clay to make bricks because a brick walkway would be really nice. At one point, while digging around, I actually said, out loud, "Hey! Coal!"

Seven hours later:

Annnnnnnd I liked Minecraft Pocket Edition so much, I bought the full version for my Mac. I built my first house on the shore of a lake in a snow biome and faced my bedroom windows to the west because the sunset is pretty beautiful to watch.

I'm fucked.

Five or so hours later:

Yep. Completely addicted to Minecraft. I was up until 1:30 in the morning playing pocket edition on my iPad in bed two nights in a row because I wanted to build a wall around my house (two stories! With a staircase! And beautiful wooden floors!) ... and then I decided that the newly-created "yard" should have some dirt instead of sand in it, and probably a tree would be nice, and then I'll just go into the mine I dug out of the mountain behind my house and look for some iron ore because it sure would be nice to have an iron pickaxe and then OH MY GOD WHY IS IT ONE THIRTY IN THE MORNING.

This morning:

I can see the potential for this to take over someone's life with "one more block" the way Civilization takes over your life with "just one more turn", and that's a thing I'll have to monitor closely and objectively. I also realized that Minecraft satisfies the same part of my brain that painting miniatures did back when I played 40K: I can keep my conscious mind occupied while my subconscious mind works on story ideas, or just needs to recharge. It's fun and soothing to design and build simple things like a house on the Mac or a full-on castle on my iPad, and the exploration aspects of the full desktop version are really, really fun.

I haven't even tried it on a server or with another player, yet... and I think I'll have to stay away from that for the time being, because that could lead to me wearing Kleenex boxes on my feet.

| Hahaha! I totally remember that historic Battle of Britain moment haha

We even had that sexy flight yoke thing. It was like I saw the whole thing happening in slow motion... NOOOOOooooooo HIT THE J KEYYYYYY AAAAAAAARON!!! NOOOOOOO!!!

lol.

Yeah, I lost many a nights' sleep to that game. This one looks so effing amazing. I pledged for an upgraded ship to get the lifetime free insurance on it. Will use it to make money to earn / own other ships. The Kickstarter campaign (combind with the fundraising on their home site) ended at over 6.2 or 6.3 MILLION dollars.. holy shit that's amazing.

That basically unlocked a full orchestral score, playable capital ships! Cruisers and even the Bengal Carrier will be player controllable in-game at launch. 100 star systems at launch and for me, the most important part, 70-80 campaign missions to play offline (and get more cash to bring online towards upgrades, ships, etc).

Had a crisis moment right at the end there, almost switched my pledge from the Firefly-ish Constellation over to the newly unlocked Retaliator Heavy Bomber. Would have meant a loss of the little snub fighter tucked into the Constellation's bay, loss of some maneuverability but a gain of a shitload of missiles / torpedoes and bristling with turrets for defense. But the donation page was going up and down so much on the RSI website that my credit card remained safe, lol. Looks like I'll be sticking with my base pledge. The pre-alpha stuff they're showing off already is CRAZY impressive. It already looks AAA quality to me. I can't imagine it will be much more than 6-9 months until they have the alpha released.

Until then, gonna have to go download a copy of Wing Commander III / IV to scratch that itch I think, lol.

| Flight Sims and rRods

iFart: I still remember the night we got a copy of Wing Commander. It came on some 10 disks I think and was compressed. It took something like 2 hours to decompress on our then high end rig, a 386sx running a chipper 16mhz. I remember waking up a couple of times in the middle of the night to the soft glow of the DOS installer screen washing over your sleepy, hunched silhouette. No surprise Star Citizen has your full upright attention. I always liked the idea of these games, they just never hold up to the expectations. Probably because I suck at flight/space sims. Case in point: eNron flying your super ace in The Battle of Brittan...

fArt: "Crap you got shot to shit, eject."
eNron: "Which key is it again."
fArt: "Which key is what?"
eNron: "Which key to eject?"
fArt: "Dude, it's 'J'"
eNron (staring blankly at the keyboard): "Uhhhh..."
fArt: "Dude, not funny, eject before you crash"
eNron (Panicing): "Where is the 'J' key"
fArt: "Dude, fucking eject, it's not funny"
eNron (more panic): "I can't find the key"
fArt: "What?! Dude hit the goddamn key. It's on the right"
eNron: "Where on the right?"
fArt (Stunned silence)
eNron: "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!"

Plane splashes down. fArt is slack jawed in disbelief...

eNron: "Shit, I couldn't find the key"
fArt: "Asshole! What the fuck was that? You better hope my Ace doesn't die. He has 50 plus confirmed kills. Ugggg, well the chances of dying are pretty slim, you will probably get picked up by a British surface ship."
eNron (more stunned): "Ummm, it says... Your ace died."
fArt: "FUUUUCCCCCK!"

fArt stormed out of the room.

Yeah, that.

But I did really enjoy X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter, although I sucked at that too.

RROD? That is no good. If mine were to RROD, I probably would not replace it either. I just don't use it very often at all. I used to use my Xbox for Netflix, but I got a Roku and stopped paying the Xbox live Gold fee. Plus, the Roku streams much smother, cleaner than the Xbox ever did. For gaming purposes, I tend to almost exclusively use my PC, sprinkled with the occasional Xbox game.

My PC is getting pretty damn old. The rig is about 4.5 years old and holding up, but it certainly could use an upgrade. Yet, I continue to drag my feet on the expenses. I know it will need almost all new components, aside from the drives, the case and the PSU. Uggg, so much to do, so little money to do it with. My Vid card is particularly long in the tooth (Radeon 4850). 54 months is ancient by those standards. At least I solved the overheating issues (dust), the card would cut out when it hit 120 degrees... Celsius. Toasty. I can not believe any part in my computer would even operate at 250 degrees Fahrenheit before conking out.

Rude: I like that ja -El "Tells a really good joke." Too bad about eLzar dying.

Made some brosmary bread this past weekend. Damn that was good. I used 1-1/2 Tbs of fresh chopped rosemary. It was awesome with Olive Oil and Balsamic. Damn!

D>M>

| Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie

First of all, wow on that Kickstarter! I would never have imagined that game doing so well, but there really must be a market for it! Are they gonna have space-furries like the Kilrathi again?

Secondly, holy shit I laughed my ass off at Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie. It's showing on Showtime right now. I always resisted checking out the Tim and Eric show on Adult Swim because it just looked like weird anti-humor I wouldn't like, but now that I've seen it, it's BRILLIANT. The funniest 11 minute show you'll ever see. The movie was really good, but fair warning, it's pretty extreme in parts. Nothing the Action Team can't handle, but talk about NSFW/NSFAnywhere. But if you have an open mind, I think you guys might like it. It got a half-star review from Ebert which is pretty hilarious. He sounded so letdown.

| Wow, the Kickstarter on Star Citizen is going nuts

They're about to pass up $5.5MM (I didn't think they'd likely get above 4.5!) and the devs are unlocking all kinds of shit. Playable capital ships! That makes me wanna throw in for a heavy bomber. Man this looks seriously awesome. I haven't been this excited about a game in so long. 10 hours to go on the fundraising effort. It looks like they might just hit the $6MM tier. Already broke the all-time Kickstarter record yesterday or the day before. Amazing.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Weird!

I'd upgrade your computer! You can always use more horsepower to throw at WoW and fancy Minecraft textures, right?

| RROD

No. Freaking. Way.

Mine RROD'd yesterday, too!  Seriously!

Seeing as a refurbished model is like $129, I figured I'd just crack that bad boy open and try to fix it myself. I did the do-it-yourself penny heat sink trick, the replace the 'x brackets' with bolts trick, and the re-seal the thermal paste trick - all to no avail.  I took it apart and put it back together like 3 times just to make sure, and it is toast.

I use my xbox for about nothing these days, with the exception of Skate 3 (which I really like!), so I am even less motivated to fix it.  However, I also need to upgrade my regular PC since I'm still running XP and my hardware is like 4 years old.  But when I compare the cost of the PC upgrade, vs. the need, as well as the cost of the xbox vs. the need, it still seems likely that I will get the xbox because it's cheaper out of pocket.  Isn't that sad?

For being someone that has chosen technology as his career, I certainly have the shittiest tech in my house (I upgraded my CRT monitor LAST YEAR).
I slept until 9:40 AM today. Holy shit that was awesome. I haven't slept past 6:30 in many moons.

In other news, my 360 RROD'd. "Mother-cracker!" I loudly exclaimed. It'll be $100 to fix it. I'm weighing letting it stay broken. It's really of value for two things: a) HBO Go b) my tremendous repository of Rock Band DLC. We'd kinda tapered off on a), and I don't get the chance to break out b) often, but I dunno... I don't like the idea of just leaving some broken piece of shit in my otherwise dynamite command center.

Rude, do you use PS+ at all? It seems like a pretty good deal for $40/year since you get a bunch of pretty decent "free" games. They are also expanding it to Vita, and since I'm one of the fools that owns one, it'd be useful for me there as well.

Picked up a 2-player card game today called Mr. Jack - Pocket that's pretty fun and was pretty cheap ($15 or so). Mr. Jack had been on my watch list before, and then it got a recommendation through an unexpected vector. The premise of the game is that one person is Holmes, Watson, and their creepy-looking dog, the other person is Jack the Ripper, or "Mr. Jack Pocket" as the wife dubbed him. The investigators try to get line of sight to Jack while Jack tries to evade them. It's fun and really quick, so if you like the theme at all it's worth checking out. I might pick up the full version someday, supposed to be quite good.

In other news I am looking forward to Thanksgiving, Xmas break, Man-Con, Kubla Con etc.
Yeah, it's a good app! I think they patched in the ability to switch between the USA/EU versions within the same app as well, so it should be a pretty smooth experience. I'm always down for a game.