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Catan Prep

03.26.2012

After a week and a half of silence, I need to post something. I should post about the fire at Jerry's house, but that's a story for Jerry to relate on his own terms. Granted, I've filtered the story out through various channels, but I don't want a permanent history of that such as what the interweb provides. Instead I'll ramble about something fun.

Wednesday is the next gaming Widgey night. Usually I don't mention any of these until after the fact, and unless you know where to luck it's nothing more than a blurb on the front page with a pic of a game box and another link. This game night is a little different. First, we're playing a new (for us) game which is part of a theme for this year. Setlers of Catan is one of the more popular European games of the past decade. It lacks combat, firepower, racing, character leveling, and spacecraft. Still, I played a little solo-demo to learn the rules and it's a fun little game. There's not a lot of waiting around for your turn to come. The basic rules are easy enough to pick up, yet there are enough expansions to add on to make it properly complicated along the way.

If everyone who's invited shows up we'll have 5 people. Catan is a 4-player game, although there is a 5-6 player expansion (which I also have). I'm currently thinking that if everyone shows up I'm going to opt out of proper playing and act as the banker/rules-looker-upper. With this being our inaugural playing of the game I'm sure we'll have aplenty rules looking up, plus being the banker will give me something to do that feels like playing.

I've also gotten the board/table ready to play. Board prep feeds into my anal need to organize things, such as when I took 3 days to prepare the HeroScape map for a battle. I once again have a 3-day head-start before we play, but I didn't go as far overboard.

The Catan board fits together like a puzzle, with hexagonal tiles that fit together inside a type of cardboard frame. It works pretty well, but I wanted the pieces to fit a little more flush. Thanks to a game room setup I saw on Board Game Geek I got the bright idea of fitting the Catan map between 2 pieces of plexiglass. After a day of searching and finding out how pricey an option that would be to do correctly, I instead went to Hobby Lobby and got 2 16x20 poster frames (I think they were labelled Glazing Inserts or something. Less than $6 each regardless). 16x20 is a little small for what I needed, but I managed to make it work. At least I think I made it work, we'll find out for sure on Wednesday.

Permalink boardgames

Less frustrated.

03.15.2012

In looking back, yesterday comes across as a lot of whining and bitching, at least for me. That wasn't the purpose of my long winded, rambling post. The post was more of a way to call myself out to make some progress on all those things I've been procrastinating on, or with the case of some of those items, don't dwell on them if I'm not going to do anything about (for example, I'm not going to run off and find another job before the contract on the current job runs out).

Today was a day that felt like I was making some headway, although I touched nothing on the list from yesterday. At work I made some progress on the documentation I'm working on, up until the point where I need to create a test user in active directory. AD hates me. It's mutual. I'm asking for help when I return to this little task.

I've had a handful of things at the house that I've managed to mark off my to-do list. Granted, none of them took over 5 minutes, but I feel better for having done them instead of putting them on a list for me to find time to do later.

I've also got a little something to look forward to at the end of the month. Two things, actually. The first is my grandfather's 91st birthday on the 24th. My aunt from Texas is flying in and I'm threatening to take Gina along with her mother (who has never met my grandparents before). The other is this month's Widgey Night, where we're on tap to play Settlers of Catan. I went through the Catan rules yesterday and played part of a solitaire game, enough to get a good beginning grasp of the rules. From there I made our somehow mandatory cheat sheet for the game. It's still early, but it looks like Trevor the Chiropopper might join us for the game.

This is a better example of the even keel my life tends to take. I don't like bitching. Bitching Lite, maybe?

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Why would I be frustrated?

03.14.2012

I'm frustrated. Just frustrated. Not in a claw my hair out way, although there are times I have to remind myself to just calm down. There's not one thing frustrating me, it's just a combination of things building up.

Frustration #1 - Programming in Unity. It's been a while since I actively did any game programming. Lately I've been tossing little suggestions to Joe to help him learn the programming side since he's pretty adept at the graphics side. So in talking to Joe I feel like I've kept a toe in the Unity programming pool. I've continued to go to the Burgzerg forums (when they're up), and those forums are the source of one of my frustrations. It seems people are getting stupider. Granted, I forget the average independent game programmer out there is a 10 year old who uses the Google translator to type questions in English, but have people forgotten how to search on the internet?

I swear 80% of the questions people ask point to one of 4 problems people consistently have, and I consistently answer at least 2 of those. The other questions feel to be easily answerable by a Google search: one question was "Can I write a menu, for example in Java, and the remaining scripts in C #? How Unity works with several programming languages at once?. I asked Google about passing variable between languages in Unity and the first link to me to the answer, or at least to a link with 2 answers. Granted, I may know better how to ask Google the question since in my professional programming life I've had to pass variables between languages, but I would think a rudimentary Google search would still offer up the correct answer.

Others still don't know how to properly ask a question. "I have the following error" without the code it points to doesn't give itself to much more than telling the poster what the error is since there's often multiple paths to getting the error in the first place.

For the above, I'm forcing myself to quit looking at the forums. I'll still check the website for tutorials, but I just can't handle the level the forums have degraded to. I think this is a shame, because I actually felt like I was helping people for a while there. Plus, it gave me a chance to find out about DogRobber/StephanLome who I feel is a kindred spirit when it comes to video games and programming.

Frustration #2 - I'm tired. I'm trying to chalk this up to my blood pressure medicine, but every day around 3:00 I just want to lay down and take a nap. I've been trying to note what time I eat lunch, how much I eat, etc, and it doesn't seem to make a difference. Yesterday I switched taking my BP pill from breakfast to before I go to bed to see if it would make a difference. Yesterday I still wanted to take a nap at 3:00. Worse yet, I couldn't go to sleep last night. I went to bed around 10:45 (late for me as I'm usually in bed closer to 10:00), but at 12:50 I was still awake, looking at the stupid alarm clock. Although I've been tired today, I didn't want to take that afternoon nap, so maybe there's some merit to my madness? My only worry is that my night time routine isn't as regular as my morning routine so I've got to find a way to remember to take that pill at night.

Frustration #3 - I'm procrastinating. I made a list of things to do when I took off of work for a week around my birthday. I managed to check off 10% of what was on the list. Sure, I can blame the tornado/power outage and something else that happened one day that screwed up my schedule, but they're all excuses. The big thing I've been putting off is a general cleaning/straightening up of the storage building and garage, which is going to include some crap from my bedroom closet. This is going to be at least an all-day operation if I realistically look at how I work since I have to factor in breathing hard, sweating, sweating, and seating. It's not hard work, but I'm not in the best of shape so it's going to take a while to get me moving to move all of this other crap. I've got this weekend earmarked for getting this done if the weather cooperates (Isolated Thunderstorms forecast which is normal for this time of year). If I can get this checked off the list it will be a major step forward. Of course then I have to tackle weeds and the back porch. Why did I ever think to get landscaping done back there?

Frustration #4 - Work. The actual day job. The contract keeps getting extended, which should be good, but after more than a year of extensions getting tacked on it starts to wear on you. The final RFP came out with a due date of April 10, so factoring in the way the world works the new contract should be awarded and handed over around November. We (Spiritus) are teamed up with a gaggle of companies going after the contract, but there are 2 big contenders we aren't partnered with. Mentally, I've awarded the contract to one of those other companies. Old me would have already started looking for another job, but I like my boss and the company I work for. I've also worked on this project off and on for 7 years, so I'm determined to see this through until the contract is awarded, but to be honest I'm ready to work on something else. I have no idea what that something else is, and that's the true source of my frustration.

I got my first job during the summer of 1985. I've been unemployed for a month twice since then. I've always worked, but never thought much about what work I was doing. This could be evidenced by having 3 jobs where I stayed at each only a week (one of those I only went in for a day: I drink Coke but I never want to work there!). There are things I enjoy doing that my job allows me to afford, but I know I couldn't make a living doing those things. I still enjoy writing code, but I think in the last 6 months I've written 6 lines of code, and those lines weren't connected to each other. Regardless of all my whining, there's no easy, acceptable answer to this one.

Frustration #5 - My weight. Last February I suddenly put on 20 lbs over the course of 2 weeks, putting me at 415. I've pretty much stayed there for the past year. I don't know what I did to put on that weight, it was like my body just decided it needed an extra 20 lbs. During the course of a week my weight will fluctuate up or down 5 lbs either way. I've been trying (saying) I'm back on the low carb/South Beach diet that I had success with back in 2006, but I don't really think putting chopped up fried chicken tenders on my salad really qualifies. This week, since everyone I eat with is leaving/out of town, I'm endeavoring to return to the strictness of low carbs. Nothing fried or breaded. Even though I was eating sugar free sweets, I'm doing my best to cut those out for 2 weeks. I'm back to only drinking water when I eat, so that my diet soda is a treat (even though I think I'm supposed to be avoiding those while jump starting this diet). I'm also concentrating on eating smaller portions. I really don't need to eat a pound of bacon just because I'm avoiding carbs.

I'm not going to look at the scales until my 2 weeks is up (10 more days). Saturday I tipped the scales at 421, having had a good 3 days of eating whatever I wanted. If, when those 10 days are up, those scales can say 410 instead I believe I'll be on the right track. If not, it will seriously be time to start looking into the various surgeries that are out there that I've been avoiding.

Permalink rambling random

Instead of having nothing to say, I say the following:

03.13.2012

Unbelievably little of note going on right now, so I give you images.

I am appropriately ashamed for re-posting the above, but animated gifs have become the wasteland for forum avatars and this one caught my eye (duh).

I don't remember where I saw the above zombie poster, but I see it making an appearance in my eventual zombie mall.

Permalink random

Forty Tres

03.04.2012

Much to my pleasant amazement, I awakened this morning to find that I had made it to 43. The amazement is a whole 'nother story that I'm not even going to bother with right now, mainly because I just don't want to. As it is, my big focus of today was going to be opening birthday loot. I have told people not to get me anything for my birthday, and for the most part they obey as they should, for this gives me a chance to get myself some birthday loot. If anyone can pick out the perfect gift for me, it's me!.

Hopefully that only comes out half as selfish as I think it sounds. In truth, anything I actually want for myself is pure overkill, and I would feel guilty if someone else spent their hard earned money on such superfluousness. I've plenty of superfluousness, so I think it only fair that I take care of it myself.

As most of the past year has seen me focused on boardgames and their ilk, that was the focus of my birthday loot. I began ordering loot 2 weeks ago from various online retailers. When loot would arrive on my stoop, I would stash away in the closet, not to be opened until my birthday. This morning, I began the Great Opening (in no particular order).

	3-Drawer Tool Box, which I guess I actually "opened" on Thursday since that's when I got it at Home Depot. I wanted something to better store my painting supplies in, and tool boxes are popular with the miniature gaming sect. For me, my paints fit in the bottom drawer, flock & rocks in the 2nd, and sundry painting supplies, such as palettes, in the top drawer. In the very top I can store brushes, pens, blades of various lethality, etc. Mainly I'm combining the 4 misc. boxes that I was keeping this stuff in before. And from a guy standpoint, a tool box with drawers is just cool
	Pitchcar - I've been looking at/wanting this game for at least 2 Christmases, but kept putting it off since it's on the expensive side. Part of that expense comes from being manufactured in Italy, but still this is just a game where you flick little wooden discs around a track. I came close to following through and ordering this at Christmas but decided it just wasn't worth the price. Wait 2 months and the price for this plus all 5 expansions doesn't sound too bad. Now I just have to find the right place to play - a combination of room and minimizing the places the wooden discs can fly off to and become lost forever.
	Star Trek HeroClix: Tactics - This game was released right after Christmas, but I forced myself to wait until my birthday to order. I'm always a sucker for any game with a Star Trek logo on it. This game focuses on ship-to-ship skirmishes. With the base set and 1st order of booster I have 16 ships, 12 randomly packed. After opening all the boxes I have 12 Federation ships (with 2 duplicates) and 4 Klingon ships. Just a little skewed. I doubt this game will make it to a Widgey Night playing.
	Dungeon Run - After watching a couple of video reviews of this game, it just looks fun. The first have of the game the players work together to find the loot/stone which you need to escape, then it's every man for himself to be the first to escape with the loot/stone. Last year we had fun playing Legend of Drzzt (our first dungeon crawler), so I'm hoping to add this into the mix.
	Tannhauser - Honestly this is a game I will more than likely never play. So, why did I get it? I ordered a booster of the pre-painted miniatures before Christmas and like them - they fit in well with the rest of the miniatures I've got. The base game comes with 10 figures, and I can't order 10 figures worth of boosters for less than the price of the game. I'll eventually get around to reading the instructions, as there was some interesting Line of Sight mechanic I vaguely remember reading about at some point.
	Axis & Allies Angels 20 - I've been looking forward to this game since it was originally announced for release in October. Axis & Allies is one of those games where I like to collect the pieces, but have yet to play. The big thing about this game (or is it really an expansion?) is that the planes are scaled to be compatible with the other A&A miniatures pieces. This is slightly ironic, since there was a plane set released a couple of years ago, but those planes were tiny. When I opened a booster of the Angels 20 planes, they seemed HUGE! Much like the Star Trek game, I doubt this one will see any play time.
	Carcassonne - Totally an impulse buy due to an Amazon sale mentioned in a forum thread, this version of Carcassonne includes 5 expansions. I think of Carcassonne as one of the big Euro games (along with Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, and a couple others I'm too overloaded to name right now) and is a game I can see us trying out a time or two. There's a good video review of how to play that makes the basic game appear pretty straight forward. From there you can add expansions to complicate the game, and this version came with 5 of those expansions!
	Outrider - I came upon this game recently, which I think is independently published. It seems to be a lite version of Car Wars that lets you use Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars. That's all I know. That was enough to convince me it was worth $10 to look at in more detail. I'll let you know how that detail works out later sometime.
	All Things Zombie - roughly 6 months ago I began reading Vampifan's blog which centered around miniatures, cardstock/papercraft buildings, and his All Things Zombie campaign. It all looked fun, and the detail he put into his structures made me want to emulate him (this all of these Zombie Mall posts of the last month of so). In reading his battle reports of his game sessions, the game sounds like it could be fun. Plus, the game has a large following that seems to emulate what Vampi does - build scenery, use it in the game, write up a little report. I'm not sure if I'll enter that clique, but I think I have all the components now.
	Formula De Tracks - There were some eBay auctions last week for some Formula De tracks, which are compatible with Formula D. This will give me 6 more tracks, which I hope will give me enough to make a good season/series circuit for the game.
	My gift from Dr. Blondie - 7-11 WWE All Stars Cups. You may think these are not game related, but they're based off the WWE ALL Stars video game. These were air freighted by Dr Blondie in person to an undisclosed Krispy Kreme before I was able to take possession. I can put these with the Summer Slam cups she got me!
	Appillionaires - Although branded as how to make your fortune making apps, I picked this up to read about the success stories. And maybe some failure stories along the way. I finished REAMDE Wednesday so now I still have something to read, and I could stand for a little non-fiction. I actually got a stack of books to fill my queue. They are a mixture of gaming (not necessarily video) theory, how to paint miniatures, and business books. You should see mention of them here and there in the upcoming weeks. Awww, I read slow so let's be realistic. Upcoming months.