| Dig until it hurts

I have been digging a good bit here and there on my wing. Someone laid some serious time down on the other wing, but that has been stagnant for the past week or so. I tried to play some this week, but didn't get much traction because MC 1.5 caused my frame rate to drop precipitously (60-120fps pre / 8-11fps post). Even 'Nilla MC 16x was pulling 16fps max. I got a fix in the newest HD patcher. Seems good now at mid 90s for 128x Sphax.

eLzar, that hockey quote was a rad merging of two hockey and hardcore.

Damn! I logged in to the Minecraft server for the first time in a couple weeks and holy shit, someone's been busy. enr0n, is that all you?

Edit: best band name ever?

| Hockey Fan Quote

The Phoenix Coyotes have been shutout in 3 straight games, which means they have not scored a goal in three games.  A fan on their site posted the following which seemed funny to me:

"They haven't scored in so long it's like they've gone straight edge."

Tee-Hee.

Yo'z Shizzle, anytime you are back in the good ol, Sbay, bring down Eclipse so we can get a crack at it.  I don't think Rudy has a copy.  Now he's more into family games like Twister! The game mechanics sounds like a game that I'd probably like.  Strategy elements (most important) / customized ships (Reach for the stars?).  All elements of a weinner.

If Eclipse doesn't work, we can play Wowarcraft.  I'm quite possibly thinking about joining up for a month of Mist of Pandario for the hell of it.  Mostly because, I just bought a whole bunch of (antiquated) high end parts and built my own system, GTX 470 1gb, E8500 dual core, upgradable to Q94~'s, 6gb ddr2, Intel G45 chipset, all for under 180 bucks.  I haven't built a game system in years (edit: decades?), so this was fun. I also wanted a dedicated game system and see how cheap/good I can do it.  Actually, I started off just wanting to upgrade the cpu, but then realized, I needed a new mofo mobo because the old one didn't fit a full length GC, then needed a new power supply, memory, etc etc, until my "upgrade" actually turned into a whole new system save the chassis!  

I liked Eclipse! The mechanics are really interesting. You want to get out there and colonize as much space as you can because the more people you have out, the more you can research and build. On the other hand, the more actions you take during a turn, then the more upkeep it takes to maintain your empire. You are always trying to push yourself as much as you can without going overboard. The mechanics for researching and upgrading your ships are really cool. You get to customize each ship type's blueprint to a pretty high degree, so my little crap ships might be speedy, yours might be slower but heavily armored.

It is pretty quick. It took Matt and I about 2 hours to go through with rules, but everyone swears that after you've played a couple games it gets close to 30 min/player. I can see it because everything resolves pretty quickly.

The way Matt (and Keith, who'd played it before) felt was that it was too luck-dependent in that when you explore new hexes, sometimes you find awesome shit, sometimes you get crap, but I don't know if I agree. Admittedly I might just be too invested because it's my game, but I felt like even though Matt had a few great ship upgrades that he found through luck, that with better play I could've tied or won the game. I also think that having some luck dependency isn't as much of a big deal when you get the game time down.

Anyway, it was fun and I'd like to play again. Five-six might be a little painful with rules, but I think four would be totally doable.

Looks like you/Ja-el won't be making it up to Kubla this year (why, Ja-el!? I'll protect you from Rich) but I am gonna be down in LA several times this summer, so hopefully we can get together for a game day at least once.

OK, so a question for Aeryk, fArt or Ryan if anyone got through all that. Who came up with the name Torch the Toilet? I was assuming it was a Rich-ism, enr0n wasn't sure.

No Kubla for me this year. It sucks too because there were/are some cheap ass flights via Virgin to SFO. The bigger obstacle this year is work - I need to work a bunch of holidays to earn time off for bonding later in the year. Maybe next time! How was Eclipse?

Watched Jackass 3 last night. Not as good as the others, but definitely had some moments. Lots of ass stuff. Maybe I just haven't seen Jackass in a while but it seemed a little over the top.

Anyway, this one made me laugh.

I bet he'll love Disneyland in a couple years. Especially with all the stuff Disney owns now, pretty soon it'll be Star Wars/Marvel Comics land.

Had a good gaming day yesterday in SF. The original plan was to run the Iron Kingdoms RPG, but I totally flubbed the prep so it turned into open gaming (don't plan on childproofing and session planning on the same day, kids). Somehow Matt P. had never played Space Hulk, so I broke out my 3rd ed copy and we played a couple rounds of Torch the Toilet. That game still holds up. Also got in a two-player game of Eclipse, which was a good time. I think I'm going to do some conversions to the player sheets, which are quite fiddly and easy to knock over. The other guys played some game with a theme like Brewster's Millions, which had little top hat meeples.

Then I went home and got a really bad sore throat. So, uh, enr0n, if you get sick, sorry dude.

So who is planning on going to Kubla? I don't think anyone responded to my last post about it. I think I'd be willing to do a Thursday night start this time around if people are interested.

Glad you guys had an easy day at Disney! Last time I was there around January kids still had a few days left of winter break, so the place was bananas. Sorry that Wy wasn't crazy about the place, but that's probably good for you guys. One less ridiculous expense to worry about. I don't know what your take on that Minecraft Generation was gonna be, but I don't think amusement parks are a dying breed. There is still a ton of kids and adults who are into those types of activities.

| Veronica Mars Volta

I think that was Ryan's favorite show (after Alias) so I tried it out and I don't remember making it through many episodes before it lost my interest.  For the life of me, I can't remember why, and I seem to be having a lot of pre-senior moments so for all I know I USED to think it was the greatest show ever!

Wy's Review of Disneyland

Meh.

Wy's Dad's Analysis of Wy's Review of Disneyland

For starters, I totally blew it by thinking he would like Star Tours.  It was waaaaaay to scary for him to start with, and I should have known that because he's not really a thrill seeker, so from that first ride one he was a little reluctant to do much and he was weary that things were out to get him for the rest of the trip.  A+ work, dad!

We were there on the best day I have ever attended Disneyland and I literally walked onto Space Mountain, Pirates, Star Tours and the Haunted Mansion with no waiting.  The Buzz Lightyear ride had like a 2 minute wait and Wy actually enjoyed that one because you got to shoot lasers at stuff.

Got me thinking about how can Disneyland compete with the Minecraft Generation, and then I got inspired to have a stream of consciousness about it and then I lost steam and instead am ending the whole post with this word 

Veronica Mars was the best show ever! Least the first season for sure. 2nd season was good and then I never saw the third. You gotta watch it! Cool Kickstarter.

Galaxy Trucker for iPad? Sign me the eff up.

Have you guys seen this Veronica Mars kickstarter? I never saw the show, that's something I should fix, but what an awesome idea. My number two choice would be another Firefly movie. Number one would be some kind of Freaks & Geeks follow-up. I guess with everybody older it'd have to be set in the mid '90s. I for one would like to see Kim Kelly's response to the Lewinski scandal.

(Seriously, Freaks & Geeks episode 4. Simply the best episode of Freaks & Geeks, or best episode of anything ever?)

| gogurts™

Glad to hear your recovering well! If you've got to lay around watching TV ANYWAYS, rent or catch on cable Cabin in the Woods. It's a "horror" film from Whedon and company that's pretty awesome. I won't say shit about the story because it's pretty clever and going in knowing nothing is probably best.

I've been taking a photography class at the local Adult School for a few weeks so far. It's pretty dry, unfortunately, but I'm slowly learning some of the basic concepts that have always baffled me. The teacher's alright, but he's pretty old school. Reminds me of most of our teachers from high school.

I brought over Time's Up (the "titles" version) to a friends game night party, and it was a huge hit! These are total non-gamer pals and their friends, so the first time they through a game night party we just played Uno. But Time's Up clicked with most of them and it reminded me of the first few times we all played it at Kubla. I don't know if Cards Against Humanity would work with this crowd as well as it worked with us, but I might pick up or print a copy one of these days. Eggos™ plus Gogurt™ equals beating up clowns n' shit and then like going to a crazy concert, WAKKA WAKKA WAKKA.

PS Just saw a news item on BGG about Galaxy Trucker for iOS coming this summer! Wonder how that's gonna work. They have some screenies up that look good.

| A little better each day

I'm able to walk around without a cane now, so that's progress. I was bitching today that I get so damned tired so fast just from standing or slowly walking around. I feel like a geezer. My wife quickly reminded me that I just had MAJOR EFFING SURGERY 10 DAYS AGO, DON'T PUSH IT... so, yeah, I got that reality check. lol

Weird how when I was perfectly healthy all I really wanted to do was sit around the house and play with my boy. And now that I'm all effed up, all I want to do is get out of the house and be back to health again. Weird, that.

Have a couple of big follow up tests/appointments this week. Will likely determine the ease / difficulty of recovery for me moving forward. I could use a couple of wins, for sure! Trying to stay positive.

The psuedo-narcolepsy thing I got going on is totally screwing with my sleep schedule. When I got home today I put my leg up and started checking some emails. Next thing I know I wake up 3 hours later after passing out, lol. Now it's 2AM and I'm just starting to get sleepy again. Madness. At least Michelle's mom flew in to help out. I have no idea how we'd be doing all this without her help.

Jesus! Glad you're ok Arturo! Sounds like such a scary ordeal for the whole family. Hope your recovery goes smoothly!