Frivolity Part Duex

03.27.2008

I find myself on the cusp of another weekend, perhaps a weekend to be once again filled with goofing off and not getting anything important done.  In actuality, one can do naught but hope.

After weeks of putting it off interrupted by flashes of coding frenzy, I've reformatted and reassembled my old Star Wars Miniatures figure tracker.  I still have to fill in the numbers for the pieces that I have, but all of the stats are there.  I managed to steal a little popup-image thingy from the Heroscape website, along with using my ever-favored Lightbox for popping up the stats.  I'm working on a how to best integrate the collection tracker into an army builder - it's fairly straightforward to put a point limit and then build your army to that point.  I'm thinking of trying to dynamically create a PDF that will have all the stats you need for your created army.  Half the trouble of the game is tracking down and keeping up with the stat cards.  Hopefully streamlining the beginning steps will make it more likely for me to talk some of the guys into playing.

I'm also readying myself to jump into the MMORPG world.  My FPS playing skills have been dwindling, along with all of the FPS games starting to look alike.  I have a couple of friends that play World of Warcraft, and although I'm generally anti-fantasy I've been trying to open my mind (I did manage to watch the epic Lord of the Rings trilogy, after all).  Thanks to a sale at Amazon, I now find myself in possession of a World of Warcraft Battle Chest, marketing as everything one needs to get in the game, get interested, and go for broke.  I have no idea what I'm really getting myself into.  Probably a whole new batch of 14 year olds that will gleefully giggle when they kill me.

Most importantly, come Sunday I will join Evil Mathias for our annual viewing of Vincent Kennedy McMahon's Wrestlemania!  The 14 year olds can find some other codger to kill on Sunday evening.

As a special Wrestlemania bonus, I tracked down an interview with my good close personal friend Jason from back in November about getting ready for this weekend's PPV.

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Smorgasboard of Whathaveyou

03.24.2008

Back to work after a fun little weekend.  I like my job, but I would have enjoyed extending my fun weekend a little longer.

First interesting link today, via Keith in a roundabout way, is Deborah Sperber's Mirror Universe exhibit in NYC.  She features Star Trek, transporter effects scenes using colored beads and monofilament wire.  Who thinks of this kind of stuff?

Brandon and I were talking about the proliferation of Dollar General stores last week, and he pointed me to an article quoting a woman from Tunica and their local version of the Dollar General. Not having to get dressed up like you would at Wal-Mart is what makes it so memorable.

I managed to wrap up the Lord of the Rings trilogy Sunday night at 7:00. I can no longer say "I've never seen The Lord of the Rings."

Now I've just go to figure out what all I'm supposed to be doing this week.

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Weekend of Frivolity, Here I Come!

03.21.2008

I am patiently awaiting the end of the work day, mainly because I have a lot of goofing off I'm planning for the weekend.

First I'm going to finish watching The Lord Of The Rings: Fellowship of the Ring.  I'm about 12 hours into the movie to where they've just formed the title-mentioned Fellowship, which I think is halfway through since I've been told to insert the next disc.

For the first time in a couple of weeks I'm going to turn on the Xbox three hundred and sixty and finally start playing Mass Effect.  Except for a brief venture into this genre on the PC playing Knights of the Old Republic this is a new style of game for me.  After seeing how poorly I do at first person shooters like Call of Duty 4, Unreal Tournament 3, and even the enjoyable Battlefield series, it's time to seriously investigate other styles of game.

I was reminiscing at work about old games last week.  The days of the first Atari and the Commodore 64.  Although you can play the old games using MAME emulators, I miss the old peripherals.  I miss joysticks with buttons on the left side!  The C-64 had my favorite joystick of all time, the Slik Stik.  This was a small joystick, and you never really grabbed the joystick as let it rest in the crook between your thumb and forefinger.

There was a knob at the top of the joystick that would keep your hand from sliding off - I know, it''s starting to sound a little phallic, but it was a good design that worked.  The stick made a nice little clicking noise whenever the appropriate direction was activated, so you also had a sound cue for when you were moving around.  The base was a perfect fit for the palm of my left hand, and my thumb naturally rested on the button. 

Moving was a combination of right and left hands - moving the base as well as the stick.  It was a natural, fluid motion.  Many a fighting game was won with that joystick.  Even better, way to much time was spent playing California Games and surfing.

Maybe I won't be playing Mass Effect after all?

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Not For Squeemish Guys

03.17.2008

Today I went to the doctor.  I don't have a cold or the flu or any of the things you usually go to the doctor for in order to get a quick fix of feeling better.  Today I went because I'm paranoid about getting old (at 39 years and 2 weeks).

The following talks about man parts and is not suitable for reading while eating dinner or fly fishing.
About a week ago I noticed a small lump in my scrotum.  It's not attached to a testicle, it's just kind of there.  It doesn't hurt, it causes no pain or discomfort other than an occasional pinching sensation.  But I'm getting old, and the phrase testicular cancer gets thrown around pretty easily these days.  I had planned on going to the doctor on Wednesday if the lump was still noticeable, but in the wee hours of Monday morning things swelled and became more noticeable.  Hoping to err on the side of caution, I went ahead and went to my local doctor.

Dr Meyer is a great guy.  He's been my doctor for the last 13+ years and is one of the few people I have no qualms dropping my drawers in front of.  The only problem, and I've mentioned this before, is the Dr Meyer works out of a walk-in clinic.  You can't make an appointment, you just have to get there and wait your turn.  That turn usually takes a couple of hours.  On Mondays it tends to be worse, since everyone that caught a bug over the weekend shows up Monday morning.  I tried to play the odds and instead of showing up at 8:00, showed up at 9:45 hoping some of the masses would be cured.  At 9:45 there was a note saying Dr Meyer would not be seeing any more patients that morning and to come back at 1:30. 

I returned at 1:30, waited an hour, and went back to get my blood pressure and temperature taken.  I had a temp of 99.9°, which I hadn't really noticed except for an occasional chill off and on throughout the day. That should have been a sign. I never get cold after February.   After another half hour or so, Dr Meyer came in and I commenced to dropping my drawers.  I forget the medical mumbo jumbo, but he ended up shining a light through my scrotum which showed that my scrotal mass was fluid filled and not solid (that's good!).  His official diagnosis came to be that I have a Scrotal Cyst.  Since it's all fluid, I shouldn't worry about the big C.  Since it's not causing any pain, he suggested I keep an eye on it and if it's hasn't shrunk or starts to cause pain in the next month, at that time he'll refer me to a Urologist where they can undoubtedly do something really gross.

I'm not used to a diagnosis of "leave it alone" after a doctor visit.  Especially with something close to my nuts.  But "leave it alone" sounds better than "numb it, stick it with a needle and extract fluid" which might still lead to"leave it alone".   At least this was one of those times I went to the doctor for something I would normally have put off and managed to get not-so-bad news out of it.

I did a Google search for Scrotal Cyst which wasn't very informative. Just for the heck of it I searched Google images for the same thing and got 2 pages of results leading to MySpace pages.

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The Widgey Is Nigh

03.12.2008

Next Tuesday is the next Widgey-Widgey nite. I'm not sure who all is coming yet - I sent a nice little invitation that may have gotten stopped by some spaminators - but I'm hoping it'll be a good game night.

I've got a couple of days to put the plan together for the Heroscape game I'm envisioning. Step one is opening up the 3 basic sets of the game still in a closet to double my battle area. I've got a Capture-The-Flag map in my head that I want to try to make, with a board that's not mirrored from the center. I'm thinking one side is mountainous, the other has lots of water and trees. Both should hamper movement evenly - or at least that's the plan.

I also want to throw in a little Paranoia. Each player in Paranoia used to get slipped a secret mission or quirk from the GM for bonus points that no one else knew about. I think a Capture-The-Flag game where the flag may not be everyone's ultimate goal might make things a little interesting. We'll see if I have the time and gumption to follow through on that one.

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