Happy New Year's everyone! We're in Melbourne. The weather has gone crazy and it's 40 degrees Celsius which is 300 Fahrenheit or so. It's New Year's in a couple of hours so we're going to wander down to Federation Square, where they've got a fireworks display. (We're staying near the city center, so it's a quick walk.)

Australia is great!

| RLTSBDC

Things going on in my life right now -



Work is definitely getting a little frustrating. I feel I'm getting a little complacent with my old age with dealing with people. Or just not dealing with them at all. Work-wise things are alright. I'm pretty good at the job. So far, I managed to correct our inventory issue, generate new marketing plans, and brought on some new business. Month to month our revenues have been steadily increasing by about 10-15%. Next year, I expect some of my larger deals to pan out, which will basically put our company on the roadmap as far as our pie-share. Somehow though, I have not made any significant friends at work. I don't want to be well-liked, not running for president. Work isn't a place for a popularity contest. But I certainly dont want to be one of the un-liked or at least not so popular persons. On the brighter side, I am a really organized person. My cubicle is spotless and everything is neatly squared away. One of my co-workers brought a Hello Kitty Toaster oven. Nothing beats the smell of toasted bread in the morning especially in the office.



Dating scene - Gonna try taking up salsa dancing and then signing on to Date.com. A friend told me that stuff really works. On the other hand, I really dig this chick in Washington DC but with her job there and mine here, I doubt either one of us would be interested in moving. Provided that we even start dating. Salsa, though is a great way to meet some Latina ladies so i heard.



WOW - Saw a documentary on addicted gamers who spend every minute of their time online, raiding, leveling, grinding etc. The show was actually filmed before TBC where levels were capped at 60, and before the vanilla days. It doesn't really scare me from going back to playing, and with every work related stress issue, I edge ever so closer to the virtual world.

| RDWHAHB

Jael, shoot me a txt from whatever phone you use and then I'll update my phone! I love to txt.

Happy New Years everyone! Be safe tomorrow and have fun. I think I'll be playing it low-key as usual this year.

Started up my first batch of beer last weekend - it's fermenting away. Brown Porter. I had a couple stages of hops and used an extract. In about a week or so I'll rack it to the 2nd fermenter. So should be ready by the con! :) I've already learned so much doing this one batch and I'm itching to do my next.

Relax, don't worry, have a home brew.

PS: check out the Pliny the Edgar reviews on BA - UNCRER - I'm gonna get some more this weekend. I think it was $5 or $6 a bottle. Bevmo doesn't carry it (or apparently any of the Dog Head Fish Balls stuff) so back to Bristol Farms.

never got the text man... you gotta stop dialing those Sexting numbers! Don't get tricked. those girls don't love you, they just love money.

| Greetings form the land UP OVER ;)

Hope you guys are having an amazing honeymoon down unda! Don't overdose on Fosters and BBQ-Shrimp! :) I bet it's beautiful down there, can't wait to see the pics.

Had a X-Mas Eve EVE Game Night last night. Texted you Jael but I'm just never sure if the number I have for you is good or not. We first sampled a bunch of different brews I picked up that night then we played Dixit, Galaxy Trucker, and Ravenloft. Full game of drunken Dixit (which was pretty hilarious and strange) but then more like demo/sample versions of the last two games because everyone was too drunk/tired. Good times.

Happy Holidays!

| Sightings @ ye poopdeck

argg.... avast, no pirates in sight cap' n. Just William Shatner. Cuz he be a butt pirate. yar.

It was great seeing Aaron there... and Dave! (haven't seen that dude in ages) With his hair shaved off, i have to say they both look alike. Happy holidays to all action teamers.

| short lefts, long rights

A very Actiony Greeting from the land down under! This is first time on the internet in quite a while so pardon me if my elite-speak is rusty, etc.

Notes:
- driving on the left side of the road is no joke, but I'm getting used to it. among many other factors that make it confusing is that all of a sudden the right eye is flooded with vastly more visual stimulus in the peripheral area than it is used to while driving. also the turn indicator is on the other side of the steering column, so I keep activating the windshield wipers.
- beer is expensive here. low-grade shit goes for a minimum of $17/six pack and anything decent is more like $20-24! can't wait for some of that cheap low-grade Mr Beer!
- food is very good here. what we would call "organic" here in Australia is pretty much just "normal food". for example, I've got a carton of orange juice in the fridge. it is 99.9% orange juice not from concentrate. eggs here are nice and orange and incredibly tasty. even McDonald's is really good (had a McMuffin that was, apparently, real egg, and "Chicken McBites" are hormone-free)
- kids are just as annoying here as in the states
- I went on a supervised dive trip in the great barrier reef and it was incredible. scuba diving is something I've always wanted to try and now I'm feeling motivated to get my certification. I hear Monterey might be a good place to do it -- Aeryk/Enron, any interest?
- probably won't be back online for a while, so merry xmas to all! if any of you are going to the Poop Deck/Mermaid then we will be calling in tomorrow

I'm supposed to go to this home-brew spot in Culver City on Tue for a free class. Picked up a book on it and have been RESEARCHING different beers by drinking them. I know I should be keeping bottles, dangit. If I can get a batch of d12 (ounce) beer ready for the con, it would be awesome to compare our different brewski-wooskis.

| - What's Grosser Than Gross?

Removing ticks from Cleo's neck. Yes, tickS.

- What's also grosser than gross? My first batch of Mr. Beer homebrew! Something went wrong somewhere along the way and it is terrible.

After reading more and more about the HB, I found a local organic HB shop and went in with the family for a visit. Learned a lot, had a lot of fun, and ended up walking out with a starter kit and some basic equipment, supplemented by a thermometer for the fermenter and a hydrometer.

My first 5 gallon batch (thats 30 22's or so!) of quality controlled, measured, and understood batch of homebrew is fermenting nicely in my garage as we speak.

I have a good feeling about this batch and will of course share it up like a mother lover when it is ready to go!

FOR SALE: 1 Mr. Beer fermenter, instructions, and 8 32 oz plastic beer bottles. Price: Free!!!

WANTED: Empty brown glass beer bottles, any size, no joke! Willing to fill some donated bottles with homebrew and return!

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Cataclysm is awesome! Its just a lot more WoW if you like that sort of thing. I'd say 85% of the starting areas have had their quests changed from vanilla to follow the Cataclysm storyline so even if you have a million characters already, it will be new for you. New skills, abilities, dungeons, equipment, quests, races, class combinations, achievements, much faster leveling, and GUILD LEVELING WITH IN GAME BENNIES just means more of a great game if you like that sort of thing. No doubt if you look you can find something broken or that you don't like about the game, but I have found the good FAR outweighs any bad, which I haven't really found any of yet.

Okay, it is really hard to get a winter hat from a singular drop in a singular dungeon that I have to queue for over 30 minutes because I'm DPS in order to finish all the winter achievements so I can get the title 'the Merrymaker'. That so far is the only bad thing I have found... :)

| How is Wow Cataclysm?

Rude: I totally agree about vegas. Although I'm surprised you only lost 40 bucks the whole trip. I find that when I go to vegas these days, my tolerence threshold for losing money has gone sky high. So instead of losing 100 bucks and swearing off vegas for a year, now I'm losing 300 and up without flinching. Meh... glad the convention costs are still the same, although I still can't tolerate the crappy expensive food.

| "Vegas, baby!" ...

Just got back from Vegas. It was exhausting. Used to love Vegas, then hated it, and am now pretty indifferent to it. I had fun but the walking is killer. I know exercise is awesome but walking up and down the strip just gets kinda old. I also drank more than I ever do anymore, and my body can't really handle it. Also, all the ambient smoke is irritating as hell. And 20-somethings, how fucking obnoxious can they get. "Vegas, baby!" That's just fucking embarrassing man, don't shout that shit out.

The huge-ass hotels and casinos are pretty awe-inspiring. Can't believe they keep getting bigger and bigger. I hadn't been since I think Paris opened, so there were a bunch of new ones to see. But other than the size being overwhelming, there's still a cheap sleazy undertone to the whole thing and I can't imagine lasting more than a weekend there.

I didn't gamble very much. I think I probably spent all of $40 bucks playing over the weekend. $14 bucks was the most I was ever up, and that lasted all of 2 mins. Saw a bunch of shows though and they were fun.

How's life for everyone? I just got an Iphone4, (yeah a bit late to the party). So far, i have just only figured out how to sync my mail & contacts. Complicity at it's finest.















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Vinhos was rated 8.18 on BGG! what a joke. Ok, that gives serious credibility on the accuracy of BGG ratings, although all rating systems has to some degree, prone to zealots, game proponents, and fallacies of opinion. Then again what does 8.18 mean? I tend to think 8.18 stands for how much fun the game can be, overall game playability and game mechanics. Or I tend to think it's the overall rating of # of people who played (likes the game vs dislikes the game). The problem is that more people who dislike the game, probably wouldn't rate the game either, so clearly the distribution is skewed. Assuming the other games also has the same distribution margin of error, then the scale of BGG can be a huge swing of +- by a factor of 2!

I'd like to try the VASSAL version of Alien Frontiers sometime if anyone is interested in trying it with me. The first run sold out but if I like it, might pre-order for the next batch coming out in March. Here's the rulebook: RULES

And here's the module: MODULE

Hear good stuff about it. 2-4 playaz.

The Penny Arcade guys have been all over Warmachine lately, talking about it in a few posts lately, and they did one today that's kind of funny. (Although as usual with them, reading the accompanying post makes it funnier.) Kind of weird feeling, in a way.

Anyway I'm making a couple of big resolutions this year, and one of them is to finally paint all the frickin Cygnar I've been collecting all these years. A couple of the unpainted models I have go back as far as 2004 when I bought my starter set. Keep an eye on this space, by this time next year I'm gonna have that shit done!

Also picked up Etrian Odyssey 3 today in preparation for the honeymoon. Playing a video game quietly by yourself is what people do on honeymoons, right???

[update] Oh yeah Rude, that is a good set of deals. Especially for Chaos in the Old World which I think is one of my favorite games. Maybe we could get a few people together and combine an order to get it to $100? I'd be in for the Pandemic expansion. Am tempted to pick up Thunderstone too but I put it on my game group "secret Santa" wishlist and might be getting it anyway.