And it only took me to level 49.
Hey, it's my first toon. Give me a break. I even got the Carrot on a Stick before I got the Mechanostrider.
I LOVE THIS GAME!
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Check My Ride
And it only took me to level 49.
Hey, it's my first toon. Give me a break. I even got the Carrot on a Stick before I got the Mechanostrider.
I LOVE THIS GAME!
Monday, August 13, 2007
Farewell
No, not me, silly. Karl. Karl Rove. The Man Who Sold The Iraq War To America.
I'm sure there will be an avalanche of articles both positive and negative about the man, but I will just say this: we are one step closer to having evil out of the executive branch of government.
When I say "evil" I do not mean it in the mythic sense, but in the sense of acting both for personal gain regardless of the cost and regardless of the method. If you think that we live in a toxic political environment, Karl has contributed a considerable amount to that state in the various political campaigns he has run.
I, for one, hope the man retires and we never have to see or hear from him again.
I'm sure there will be an avalanche of articles both positive and negative about the man, but I will just say this: we are one step closer to having evil out of the executive branch of government.
When I say "evil" I do not mean it in the mythic sense, but in the sense of acting both for personal gain regardless of the cost and regardless of the method. If you think that we live in a toxic political environment, Karl has contributed a considerable amount to that state in the various political campaigns he has run.
I, for one, hope the man retires and we never have to see or hear from him again.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
The Worst Part About Getting Old
After the, um, you know. The thing. Not working. That.
The worst part about getting old is that things change in ways that you wish they hadn't. Two things have reinforced this for me recently, both of which will demonstrate my point.
First was a trip out to my alma mater, University of Portland. I've been out there on and off since I graduated, both with my bachelor's in 1986 and my masters in 1997, so that really isn't that different. Even when I went back for my masters it was clear that I was not 20 years old anymore. So I was a bit surprised when I was there a couple of days ago to help with auditions for a choir I sing with that it occurred to me that I really *couldn't* go home again. The place is still largely the same, with the improvments you'd expect and hope for, but more than 25 years after I first set foot on campus I got a sense of what people my age have been realizing for eons - my youth is gone and all of the perceived freedom and potential with it.
Second was seeing an old friend going to his mailbox as I was driving. I guess that shouldn't be a terribly odd thing to experience, but the strange thing is that I've watched this person (we'll call him Leo, not his name or the name of anyone I know) *change* over the years since we were undergrads together, then co-workers. We did all sorts of spur-of-the-moment things in college, like driving to Astoria on the Oregon Coast in the dead of night to his parents house because it seemed like a good idea at the time.
After graduation, all of Leo's good qualities started to fade and his bad ones took over. I remember at one point he was complaining about his job at a major chip manufacturer in the area, and I asked him if he didn't have enough in his stock portfolio to simply quit and live off of that for a few years, and he replied that he liked yelling at his reports too much. Really. On another occasion, he took great pleasure in repeatedly frightening one of my dogs at a group function, an act that freaked out the group of college friends that were there.
I guess he had a lot of things going on under the hood, because he left his wife a few years ago, and he's never contacted me since. To be fair, I wasn't really interested in contacting him either, even to let him know about my biological daughter's return to my life. At this point I think of him as a failed person, someone who was looking for how to sleep well at night and who just couldn't seem to figure out the right path to get there. We've stayed friends with his wife (they have yet to divorce, even though they've been separated longer than they were married. I won't go into the particulars of how they met and married, but it's a story all on it's own), so I guess my views are colored a bit by her (generous) accounting of events, but since Leo doesn't seem to want to present his case to me I guess I have to take hers as what happened.
A common friend who feels more or less as I do told me that Leo was living in this particular part of town, not far from where my wife works, and when I drove out there today to drop something off for her I thought I'd see if I couldn't find the house with six Saabs and two International Scouts in the driveway (Leo always had car parts under his bed, rumor was enough to make an entire Camaro). I didn't see the cars, but I did see Leo. I considered stopping and saying hello for about five seconds, then decided that that was about as much contact as I really needed and everything else would just end up with both of us being uncomfortable. I know that he frequents a couple of restaurants in our area, so I suppose we'll run into each other at some point, but for now I've decided just to let things take their own course.
So institutions change and sometimes they change for the better but you get left behind. People change, and turn to what those of us who knew Leo 25 years ago call the Dark Side, but what happened was that he just got mean. That may be the saddest part of life, is seeing those people who you once cared about floundering, and knowing that it will take calamity for them to understand what is important - those whom you call friends and family, but in the end, what people will say about you when you are gone. Sometimes, being gone doesn't involve dying, and that's where Leo went. He's right there, and yet he's gone.
I am going to be the crankiest old man ever.
The worst part about getting old is that things change in ways that you wish they hadn't. Two things have reinforced this for me recently, both of which will demonstrate my point.
First was a trip out to my alma mater, University of Portland. I've been out there on and off since I graduated, both with my bachelor's in 1986 and my masters in 1997, so that really isn't that different. Even when I went back for my masters it was clear that I was not 20 years old anymore. So I was a bit surprised when I was there a couple of days ago to help with auditions for a choir I sing with that it occurred to me that I really *couldn't* go home again. The place is still largely the same, with the improvments you'd expect and hope for, but more than 25 years after I first set foot on campus I got a sense of what people my age have been realizing for eons - my youth is gone and all of the perceived freedom and potential with it.
Second was seeing an old friend going to his mailbox as I was driving. I guess that shouldn't be a terribly odd thing to experience, but the strange thing is that I've watched this person (we'll call him Leo, not his name or the name of anyone I know) *change* over the years since we were undergrads together, then co-workers. We did all sorts of spur-of-the-moment things in college, like driving to Astoria on the Oregon Coast in the dead of night to his parents house because it seemed like a good idea at the time.
After graduation, all of Leo's good qualities started to fade and his bad ones took over. I remember at one point he was complaining about his job at a major chip manufacturer in the area, and I asked him if he didn't have enough in his stock portfolio to simply quit and live off of that for a few years, and he replied that he liked yelling at his reports too much. Really. On another occasion, he took great pleasure in repeatedly frightening one of my dogs at a group function, an act that freaked out the group of college friends that were there.
I guess he had a lot of things going on under the hood, because he left his wife a few years ago, and he's never contacted me since. To be fair, I wasn't really interested in contacting him either, even to let him know about my biological daughter's return to my life. At this point I think of him as a failed person, someone who was looking for how to sleep well at night and who just couldn't seem to figure out the right path to get there. We've stayed friends with his wife (they have yet to divorce, even though they've been separated longer than they were married. I won't go into the particulars of how they met and married, but it's a story all on it's own), so I guess my views are colored a bit by her (generous) accounting of events, but since Leo doesn't seem to want to present his case to me I guess I have to take hers as what happened.
A common friend who feels more or less as I do told me that Leo was living in this particular part of town, not far from where my wife works, and when I drove out there today to drop something off for her I thought I'd see if I couldn't find the house with six Saabs and two International Scouts in the driveway (Leo always had car parts under his bed, rumor was enough to make an entire Camaro). I didn't see the cars, but I did see Leo. I considered stopping and saying hello for about five seconds, then decided that that was about as much contact as I really needed and everything else would just end up with both of us being uncomfortable. I know that he frequents a couple of restaurants in our area, so I suppose we'll run into each other at some point, but for now I've decided just to let things take their own course.
So institutions change and sometimes they change for the better but you get left behind. People change, and turn to what those of us who knew Leo 25 years ago call the Dark Side, but what happened was that he just got mean. That may be the saddest part of life, is seeing those people who you once cared about floundering, and knowing that it will take calamity for them to understand what is important - those whom you call friends and family, but in the end, what people will say about you when you are gone. Sometimes, being gone doesn't involve dying, and that's where Leo went. He's right there, and yet he's gone.
I am going to be the crankiest old man ever.
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Hollywood's Crystal Ball
My wife had a very long phone call with her parents last night, leaving me trapped on the couch with a big knitting project (really) and no remote in reach. So I watched a good portion of the Will Smith action flick Enemy of the State, which is really a fairly fun movie. Smith has remarkable comic timing, and I'm a huge Gene Hackman fan.
One of the opening scenes features Larry King interviewing a Congress-Critter about the balance of security vs freedom. Of course, we've been having this discussion (or screaming match, really) about this topic for six years now, and I'm delighted to see that we're moving back toward the "freedom" side of the debate. Things were really scary there for a few years, when to even suggest that the US had perhaps overreacted to a few thousand dead and destruction of some prime real estate with hundreds of thousands dead and the destruction of an entire country's infrastructure (and Iraq isn't doing too well either) could have resulted in rocks through my front window by "patriots". The interviewee even talked about how all it would take would be one prominent building coming down before Americans would start gladly trading in their freedoms for security, in this case the government watching people all of the time.
So it was with a bit of a shock that it occurred to me that this movie pre-dated 9/11. By three years.
So it is with great thanks that I toss to my own Congress-Critter, Ron Wyden, for having the balls to vote against extending Bush's wiretapping authorization. At any other time, the revelations that have come from this single program alone would have been enough to sink any president since the end of WWII, but in these frighteningly close to Fascism times in the US, we extend them. Well done, sir. My other Congress-Critter, Gordon Smith, famous for accurately calling our invasion of Iraq "criminal" more than four years after the act, voted for the bill.
Me, I think that I would like to have every person who thought this was a good idea monitored 24/7, with all of their activities thoughout the day (and night) recorded and available on the web. Because some of them are, you know, bought and sold. Because we clearly can't trust the dozen or so Federal legislators who are already up on ethics charges. While it's possible there are actual legitimate national security issues surrounding George Bush's life, I suggest we instead monitor his daughters, who clearly need the supervision. Plus there's probably a revenue stream there.
Because you can put bars on your windows, you can install a safe in your wall, you can buy a ferocious dog to guard your house, you can buy handguns to protect your family, but the fact remains that if someone really wants to take something from you or do you harm and has the means and skills to do so, they will. All the wiretapping in the world won't make a bit of difference, and all it does is trade our freedom for security. It's so sad that Hollywood figured this out nearly ten years ago, and even predicted how the crisis would come, and we thought it was just entertainment.
One of the opening scenes features Larry King interviewing a Congress-Critter about the balance of security vs freedom. Of course, we've been having this discussion (or screaming match, really) about this topic for six years now, and I'm delighted to see that we're moving back toward the "freedom" side of the debate. Things were really scary there for a few years, when to even suggest that the US had perhaps overreacted to a few thousand dead and destruction of some prime real estate with hundreds of thousands dead and the destruction of an entire country's infrastructure (and Iraq isn't doing too well either) could have resulted in rocks through my front window by "patriots". The interviewee even talked about how all it would take would be one prominent building coming down before Americans would start gladly trading in their freedoms for security, in this case the government watching people all of the time.
So it was with a bit of a shock that it occurred to me that this movie pre-dated 9/11. By three years.
So it is with great thanks that I toss to my own Congress-Critter, Ron Wyden, for having the balls to vote against extending Bush's wiretapping authorization. At any other time, the revelations that have come from this single program alone would have been enough to sink any president since the end of WWII, but in these frighteningly close to Fascism times in the US, we extend them. Well done, sir. My other Congress-Critter, Gordon Smith, famous for accurately calling our invasion of Iraq "criminal" more than four years after the act, voted for the bill.
Me, I think that I would like to have every person who thought this was a good idea monitored 24/7, with all of their activities thoughout the day (and night) recorded and available on the web. Because some of them are, you know, bought and sold. Because we clearly can't trust the dozen or so Federal legislators who are already up on ethics charges. While it's possible there are actual legitimate national security issues surrounding George Bush's life, I suggest we instead monitor his daughters, who clearly need the supervision. Plus there's probably a revenue stream there.
Because you can put bars on your windows, you can install a safe in your wall, you can buy a ferocious dog to guard your house, you can buy handguns to protect your family, but the fact remains that if someone really wants to take something from you or do you harm and has the means and skills to do so, they will. All the wiretapping in the world won't make a bit of difference, and all it does is trade our freedom for security. It's so sad that Hollywood figured this out nearly ten years ago, and even predicted how the crisis would come, and we thought it was just entertainment.
Ran Over - Guest Entry
One of the things I really enjoyed about the now defunct Gathering of Engineers blog that I contributed to was the input of many voices, occasionally talking about the same thing. Having fewer posts to do was, in one way, a lower burden on the individual writer. Of course, there was pressure to come up with a topic on a regular basis other than just when you felt like it (such as this blog), and in the end I found myself without topics on occasion. Sometimes this led to a stream-of-consciousness entry, sometimes it led to me playing smacky-smacky wtih gaming podcasts and a stint as Mr. Whiney on the Dice Tower. Which meant I once again had the pressure of deadlines and coming up with interesting topics on a regular basis.
Since I'm only doing gaming posts when the mood strikes me, and very little in the way of session recaps, one of my gaming friends asked if he could contribute from time to time. I'm going to post a few things from him from time to time, and next time I'll remember to do it within a week or so of when he sends the essay to me (this one has languished for about a month - damn you, World of Warcraft!)
;-)
I'll let him introduce himself...
--------------------(Dug-Free Zone)---------------------
First of all, here’s quick note of introducing myself. As Doug is on a Euro-game reporting hiatus, I volunteered to occasionally write some game content for his blog. My name is Chuck Lietz and if you’re a regular reader here on either Doug’s website or on some of the other RipCityGamer’s blogs, you’ve probably heard my name at one point or another. I’ve been playing games all my life and in particular really grew up at a young age playing countless hours of card games while growing up in the Midwest. As I got older, my father who was a history professor brought home a copy of Tactics II that he had found at Goodwill and thought it would be something my older brother and I might like for awhile and then we’d move on. Little did he know where this would lead in that I have been an avid wargamer for about 30 years now with a collection of well over 1,000 titles. We would occasionally play some of the AH family game lines and the old chestnut Rail Baron was a favorite of ours despite its prodigious length. I believe it was the summer of 2000 when I first met Doug at a local gaming convention playing a game of Brittania and when first told me about his group of “Euro” gamers. My first thought was “Yuk, why don’t you guys keep me out of your games of Candyland and Life” but I didn’t really have any other wargaming face-to-face opponents and we exchanged e-mails with the thought of playing War at Sea. When we subsequently met, he and I hit it off right away and eventually I agreed to try coming to a few of the RCG game night sessions and later moved on to became a “regular” member.
I have lately been playing a lot of two-player games, both Euros and wargames and so I’m always on the lookout for good designs to put into the rotation. While my wargame collection is huge, I really don’t buy many Eurogames limiting it pretty much to either my top 10 list, Martin Wallace designs, and a couple of dungeon crawls. However, a recent development is that my wife has started to show some interest in games and this usually takes the form of two-player friendly designs and so I’ve tried to actively find games I think we’d enjoy. So, when Mike Deans (who is a Simply Fun rep) told me about the game Drive my first response was sounds interesting but I’d have to try it out first before I buy. Mike and I played some hands and I quickly concluded that this was a fun little game that I thought my wife would like and so I bought a copy.
Drive is a very straight-forward card game that I believe retails for about $22. For your hard earned shekels, you get a deck of 110 cards, a small board, rules, and a box. The components are serviceable and effective but other than the drawings of the cars on the cards, there’s not a lot of eye candy here. The cards are of average quality and I do think you could easily wear out a copy which is a minor annoyance. I probably would have preferred to skip having the marginally useful board in favor of getting thicker cards but not a show stopper. Rules are clear and while the game is simple, it is amazing how even simple games can sometimes end up with poor or confusing rules but that is not the case here. After Mike explained the rules, I think I’ve only skimmed them once which is a good sign.
The 110 card deck has 9 suits of cars and every card in each suit has the same value which matches the total number of cards of that suit which are in the deck. For example, there are 6 cards in the deck of the 6 suit, and 18 cards in the deck of the 18 suit, and so on. The object of the game is to score the most points and you get points based on the value of the suits you control. Game play for Drive is similar to Gin Rummy and your turn is essentially to draw two cards and then either play a set of matching cards in a suit or discard a card face-up that your opponent could subsequently draw. Playing a set can be either to start a new set or to discard and replace an existing suit that either you or your opponent has laid down at the end of a previous turn with the caveat that the number of cards in your set must exceed the number of cards in the existing set. For example, if you lay down a set of 3 cards in the 6 suit, you are guaranteed to control this set as no other player can collect 4 cards in this suit as there are only 3 more cards of this suit in the deck. The hand ends when either one player controls a majority of sets determined by the number of players (6 of 9 for two-player), when all 9 sets have been claimed, or when both draw piles have been exhausted. There’s a little bit more going on here but this is essentially it.
Now my wife generally is not a gamer and usually plays games primarily because she knows I like them. As such, most games we play I end up winning because I’ve played them before and they don’t capture enough interest for her to invest more than a casual attention to them. However, Drive has been a different story. We’ve easily played 20 plus hands and after my winning the first hand, I don’t think I’ve won another. We’ve been married for a long time and for some unknown reason, her ability to read me and then apply it to the game concepts and strategy of Drive has been downright uncanny. When I’m looking to go out early, she steals a key set to block me and when I’m looking for a longer game she is able to anticipate my motives and read into my drawing patterns to consistently beat me to the punch on winning key suits. Last night’s game was no exception and while generally I am a gracious loser (due to years of experience), losing to my non-gamer wife so consistently has been quite aggravating. At this time, I’m pretty much to the point where I need to find a new replacement game pretty quickly. However, I would still strongly recommend Drive to gamers and non-gamers alike as it is simplistic but has enough depth of tactics that it will be a game you can pick up and continue playing and (providing you win the occasional hand or two) enjoying for some time.
Since I'm only doing gaming posts when the mood strikes me, and very little in the way of session recaps, one of my gaming friends asked if he could contribute from time to time. I'm going to post a few things from him from time to time, and next time I'll remember to do it within a week or so of when he sends the essay to me (this one has languished for about a month - damn you, World of Warcraft!)
;-)
I'll let him introduce himself...
--------------------(Dug-Free Zone)---------------------
First of all, here’s quick note of introducing myself. As Doug is on a Euro-game reporting hiatus, I volunteered to occasionally write some game content for his blog. My name is Chuck Lietz and if you’re a regular reader here on either Doug’s website or on some of the other RipCityGamer’s blogs, you’ve probably heard my name at one point or another. I’ve been playing games all my life and in particular really grew up at a young age playing countless hours of card games while growing up in the Midwest. As I got older, my father who was a history professor brought home a copy of Tactics II that he had found at Goodwill and thought it would be something my older brother and I might like for awhile and then we’d move on. Little did he know where this would lead in that I have been an avid wargamer for about 30 years now with a collection of well over 1,000 titles. We would occasionally play some of the AH family game lines and the old chestnut Rail Baron was a favorite of ours despite its prodigious length. I believe it was the summer of 2000 when I first met Doug at a local gaming convention playing a game of Brittania and when first told me about his group of “Euro” gamers. My first thought was “Yuk, why don’t you guys keep me out of your games of Candyland and Life” but I didn’t really have any other wargaming face-to-face opponents and we exchanged e-mails with the thought of playing War at Sea. When we subsequently met, he and I hit it off right away and eventually I agreed to try coming to a few of the RCG game night sessions and later moved on to became a “regular” member.
I have lately been playing a lot of two-player games, both Euros and wargames and so I’m always on the lookout for good designs to put into the rotation. While my wargame collection is huge, I really don’t buy many Eurogames limiting it pretty much to either my top 10 list, Martin Wallace designs, and a couple of dungeon crawls. However, a recent development is that my wife has started to show some interest in games and this usually takes the form of two-player friendly designs and so I’ve tried to actively find games I think we’d enjoy. So, when Mike Deans (who is a Simply Fun rep) told me about the game Drive my first response was sounds interesting but I’d have to try it out first before I buy. Mike and I played some hands and I quickly concluded that this was a fun little game that I thought my wife would like and so I bought a copy.
Drive is a very straight-forward card game that I believe retails for about $22. For your hard earned shekels, you get a deck of 110 cards, a small board, rules, and a box. The components are serviceable and effective but other than the drawings of the cars on the cards, there’s not a lot of eye candy here. The cards are of average quality and I do think you could easily wear out a copy which is a minor annoyance. I probably would have preferred to skip having the marginally useful board in favor of getting thicker cards but not a show stopper. Rules are clear and while the game is simple, it is amazing how even simple games can sometimes end up with poor or confusing rules but that is not the case here. After Mike explained the rules, I think I’ve only skimmed them once which is a good sign.
The 110 card deck has 9 suits of cars and every card in each suit has the same value which matches the total number of cards of that suit which are in the deck. For example, there are 6 cards in the deck of the 6 suit, and 18 cards in the deck of the 18 suit, and so on. The object of the game is to score the most points and you get points based on the value of the suits you control. Game play for Drive is similar to Gin Rummy and your turn is essentially to draw two cards and then either play a set of matching cards in a suit or discard a card face-up that your opponent could subsequently draw. Playing a set can be either to start a new set or to discard and replace an existing suit that either you or your opponent has laid down at the end of a previous turn with the caveat that the number of cards in your set must exceed the number of cards in the existing set. For example, if you lay down a set of 3 cards in the 6 suit, you are guaranteed to control this set as no other player can collect 4 cards in this suit as there are only 3 more cards of this suit in the deck. The hand ends when either one player controls a majority of sets determined by the number of players (6 of 9 for two-player), when all 9 sets have been claimed, or when both draw piles have been exhausted. There’s a little bit more going on here but this is essentially it.
Now my wife generally is not a gamer and usually plays games primarily because she knows I like them. As such, most games we play I end up winning because I’ve played them before and they don’t capture enough interest for her to invest more than a casual attention to them. However, Drive has been a different story. We’ve easily played 20 plus hands and after my winning the first hand, I don’t think I’ve won another. We’ve been married for a long time and for some unknown reason, her ability to read me and then apply it to the game concepts and strategy of Drive has been downright uncanny. When I’m looking to go out early, she steals a key set to block me and when I’m looking for a longer game she is able to anticipate my motives and read into my drawing patterns to consistently beat me to the punch on winning key suits. Last night’s game was no exception and while generally I am a gracious loser (due to years of experience), losing to my non-gamer wife so consistently has been quite aggravating. At this time, I’m pretty much to the point where I need to find a new replacement game pretty quickly. However, I would still strongly recommend Drive to gamers and non-gamers alike as it is simplistic but has enough depth of tactics that it will be a game you can pick up and continue playing and (providing you win the occasional hand or two) enjoying for some time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)