Upcoming Surgery & A Flat!

05.07.2012

This time I wait for 3 weeks before getting around to talking on the interweb again. What's up with that?

I've actually had a couple of personal things happen over the last few weeks, but I think most of it comes across as complaining. I'll share, but keep in mind this isn't supposed to be complaining.

3 weeks ago I finally went to the doctor about a pilonidal cyst. I'll leave out any direct links as this is something you definitely don't want to look at while you're eating. This is a problem that I've had since 1995, and most of the time it will flare up for maybe a week, then lie back dormant for 3-6 months. After Christmas 2010, it has never really gone back to being dormant. My regular doctor told me I'm beyond anything he can do in the office. As such, I eventually ended up talking to a surgeon who's going to cut that puppy out. My surgery is scheduled for May 30 (after the young'uns wedding so that Gina can properly take care of me). I'll leave the rest of this little story for after the procedure is wrapped up.

I've also had my fun with car maintenance. 2 weeks ago I had to replace the left rear blinker. Thanks to YouTube this an easy procedure, the hardest part being buying the replacement bulb ($14 for 2 at NAPA). This past Friday I had a follow up maintenance, as when I left the office I was greeted by a flat left rear tire. Maybe that's what the glass-crashing sound I heard on the way in to work was?

I just noticed both of these things happened to the left rear. What the hell's going on back there?

My flat tire caused me a little of a panic, as I was on Redstone Arsenal on a Friday at 3:00. Normally I would just call a tow truck and get towed to a place of fix it, but I wasn't sure if tow trucks could come on the Arsenal.

Staring at the tire and muttering f-bombs, another lady leaving passed by and said "I think I have a can of Fix A Flat, hold on". She had parked 4 cars over, and she did have a can! I thanked her, attached the can to the flat tire and squeezed as the tire slowly rose. She gave a thumbs up and went back to her car as I kept squeezing.

For some reason I was squeezing as hard as I could, subconsciously thinking I could squeeze more out of the can. In vehicular emergency situations, I become stupid.

The can managed to fill the tire about ⅓, and I didn't think I would get far on it. I opened up the back and started to read the directions for how to put on the spare. I never got past step 1 - removing the jack. For 20 minutes I tried to twist an end on the jack so it would loosen enough to remove from the clamp holding it into the car. I'm Mr Big & Strong, but this time I was Mr Pissed and Fed-Up.

⅓ filled tire be damned, I was getting off the Arsenal. I got in the car, turned on the emergency blinkers, and proceeded to go 30MPH to my normal exit gate. I had my driver side mirror turned down to look at the rear tire, and I was nervous the whole way, but I made it out of the gate and to the Mapco just beyond. My first order of business was a refreshing Coke Zero and a brownie (I had managed a Pop Tart for breakfast and skipped lunch, so I was starving by 3:30). I called the Athens Big 10 Tires/Pep Boys, as that was where I bought my tires 2 months ago. I couldn't remember if I had bought a warranty with them, but regardless I was going to go through them. The guy that answered the phone told me to call 1-800-PEP-BOYS and they would send a wrecker that would take me to the nearest Pep Boys. I called, and an hour later I was being towed to the Madison Big 10 Tires. After 15 minutes, they had plugged the hole in the tire (nothing sticking in it, just a hole). The best part, at least in looking for a silver lining, is that the invoice that totaled up ~$80 only had a $23 charge. It looks like I did get the warranty!

Now I wonder what's going to happen over the next 3 weeks to give me something to talk about?

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2 Weeks Later

04.16.2012

Despite 2 weeks of silence, I'm both still alive and have plenty going on to keep me busy. Sadly enough, none of the things keeping me busy merits anything interesting to talk about.

Seriously. Mailing in my taxes, collecting paperwork from the new mortgage company I've been sold off to... none of it is interesting enough for outside attention. It's barely interesting enough for my attention.

Sounds like it's time to go do something just so I can post about it.

---

2 hours later...

Last week I reformatted my hard drive. My browser had been acting funny (loading seemingly random websites on occasion) along with a couple of startup programs just taking forever to start up. It's been 2 years since I had a fresh install of Windows, so I was about due. I keep important stuff on a variety of disks so that if I ever need to reinstall the OS/reformat the C: drive, I won't lose anything that I can't reload.

Except I forgot about the My Documents folder. That's the folder where all of my Unity game files are automatically stored. And now, since I didn't save them anywhere else, they're gone.

And that's ok. It's been long enough since I played with Unity that I would need a fresh start to do anything worthwhile. So next time my flaming coconuts will be even MORE extreme!

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April Gaming Stoop Booty

04.03.2012

Soon after last week's victory in Catan I placed an order with Cool Stuff Inc, where I've gotten the majority of my gaming booty over the past year. I always have something on my wish list that I either want or want to find out more details about. Since my birthday gaming booty purchases there really hasn't been anything I need. There's never anything I need. There's plenty I want. The key now is tare pare down what I can use from what I want.

This is a fun game. You should try it with a 6 year old who runs around wanting everything in a store. I think I did that until I was 12 fine, I still do it!.

The gaming closet is full of games yet to be played. This year, game night is working out to have an alternating monthly gamine schedule of previously played game on odd numbered months, new game on even numbered months. That's actually on purpose! The alternating, not the odd/even aspect. I like playing through the unopened games, especially when finding that we like the game! Alternately, I've found that I've gotten a couple of games that are 2-player only and don't really lend themselves to our 4-player game nights.

But I digress, for I had made a Cool Stuff order which had no new games, so what was in it? Oddly enough, the first thing in it was an old game, which we haven't played.

That's just insane!

Well, it's a game I had previously purchased but which we have not played. At some point last year I bought Star Trek Expeditions which has little HeroClix Star Trek characters. I've run across a blog post where someone used these in a zombie game and thought that would be a great idea and fun to do. I then ran across a different blog post of how to remove the Clix figures from the base and re-base them like regular miniatures. I like bases, so that sounds fun too. I might still play Expeditions, and the game price is about what the going rate for pre-painted gaming miniatures are, so I went ahead and bought a 2nd set to tear apart and re-base.

It's not completely sane, but less insane.

Thanks to a trip to my local comic/gaming shop, I had been looking in more detail at the World Works Games Terraclips buildings. I've bought their paper model PDFs (remember that mall I'm working on?), but this is a pre-printed, pre-cut on heavy card cardstock model(s). Although the 3 sets currently available have more of a fantasy theme than what I usually play, I could see working them into one of our games. Maybe Frag? Each set retails for $49, which is what the local store has them priced at. I came home and checked Cool Stuff who had them for sale substantially cheaper.

The trigger for my purchase was that Cool Stuff was running a random sale, and 2 of the Dust Tactic figure packs that had been sitting in my wish list had dropped from $12 to $9. I was eventually going to order these things so why not save $6 while I'm at it. And to get free shipping I needed a $100 order, so I went ahead and got the other stuff to qualify for free shipping.

Today my gaming order arrived, with no new games. Wings of Glory was just released a couple of weeks ago, but it's a new game. I can't have any new games right now, so it must stay on the wish list.

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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.

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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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