Gencon 2006 - Day 2

[Note! This GENCON 2006 report is being written chronicalogoly, but the way blogger works, is later posts are shown first. To read the report in order, please scroll down to “Gencon 2006 – Day 1” and start reading from there.]

Before we get to the pictures and the story of Day 2, I need to finish Day 1.

After the True Dungeon Ken and I wanted to go to sushi restaurant. This is a place that Ken, Geoff, Ethan & I went last time I attended Gencon in 2004. We loved it then. Now it is looking a bit beat up. The air conditioning was non-existent and the service was slow and unreliable. Still, that didn’t stop Ken, Brian and I from ordering a whole boat of sushi.


Okay, I forgot to get a picture of the boat – I was too busy eating it to really bother with the camera. The picture above is stolen from the web. Anyway, 75$ later I was stuffed on raw fish. The experience was worth mentioning.

Okay, onto Day two of the convention…


This is the day I didn’t brush my teeth. The above picture kinda represents my state. I was kinda clean having just taken a 4 minute shower. My hair is still wet in this photo. Once again, Ken, Woody and I got up at the break of dawn to play DnD. This time we got up at 7am to catch an 8am game (okay, I lied; we got up at 7:45am – hence the 4 minute shower and lack of teeth brushing.) The guy in the above photo looks nice here, but I think he was getting tired of my antics by the end of the game.

It seemed I got the most fun playing ridiculous character concepts. I think my lack of focus got on some people’s nerves since I wasn’t gung-ho about solving whatever, but I was instead interested in flushing out my character’s personality.

Okay another photo that is less gross of the same game so I can continue without you gagging:


Ken played a druid, which for those of you not up on your DnD terms, is a dude that worships nature. He’s kinda like a Greenpeacer, but less fanatical. Woody played a fighter.

I was having a big problem picking a character. This session was a bit odd. It was a Zeitgeist Game. Which meant there were a ton of DMs hired by Zeitgeist Games to run pre-made adventures. When you went through an adventure, you got loot that got recorded on some Zeitgeist Games database somewhere so you could re-use that character in another adventure at another tourney somewhere else. The fact that everyone’s character was permanent (usually you use the character just for that single game then you never play them again) made people even less tolerant of my antics.

Anyway, I was having trouble picking a character. Every arch-type was covered at the table, so I opted to play another Druid – just like my buddy Ken did.

Now it is important to understand Ken here. Ken likes to powergame. That is, he wants his character to be the best at what he is supposed to do. Ken knows all the rules and options available to characters, an always picks the one that appears to be the most advantageous to him. However, I don’t do this.

I played the younger druid bother of Ken’s druid. While Ken’s character loved nature (like all good druids do), my character hated it – even though he was a druid. He was constantly summoning animals by his side and allowing them to be slaughtered by the monsters the party was fighting. I started out the game with a pet camel that I had named “camel” – more out of disrespect than lack of.

I still think the character was funny. In particular in contrast to Ken’s power gamed druid. Ken eventually got into “it” and was always bragging (in character, of course) how Mom and Dad loved him more than me. Whenever he rolled better numbers than me, he always made sure to point it out.

This amused Ken and I a great deal, but probably got old with the rest of the table.

This is the game where Woody got really irritated with two of the guys we played with. It’s funny, because all-in-all everyone we played with was top-notch. And I’ve played with some big-time losers at Gencon before. Still these two guys were sorta condescending to our DM. (She’s shown in the above pic, the two obnoxious guys are behind me, not shown in the photo). It seems they played in Zeitgeist Games a lot and they thought they knew everything. Still, I didn’t mind them too much. They just looked at me funny when my druid kept trying to saw down trees (he hates trees) with his scimitar.

The lady DM really got into reading boxed text. Normally boxed text bores me to tears because the reader is usually reading it for the first time themselves & can’t quite get the oomph into it. She, however, was a good orator and did voices and everything. I really enjoyed listening to her. This was Woody’s favorite session.

After the 4-5 hour session, we went and grabbed some lunch. This is where I saw the angel. It was a cool costume.


I saw this lady later and she was able to fold up the wings behind her. They looked pretty cool tucked away as well.


Some people dressed like cards. I didn’t ask – I just took the pic.

Okay, I don’t have any pictures of my favorite game session of the whole convention. I was just too engrossed in the game to remember to photograph the thing.

This game was the only one where all my buddies (Woody, Brian, Ken, Chris, Sarah and myself) played. We made the entire table. No strangers, except a lone DM.

The game was run by a guy that worked for The Game Mechanics. I think it was JD Wilkers, a game designer. I probably played my least annoying character in this game, namely because my buddy Brian was being mega annoying instead. He played the best looking guy in the party, so he was in charge of talking to everyone. His guy drank with everyone he spoke to, so by like the eighth contact, his bard was smashed (or that’s how he played it). He must have had a pretend drunk conversation with DM for at least 20 minutes. Woody’s character (a cleric of some good deity) ended up picking up Brian’s bard and hauling him out of taverns over his shoulder – all the while the bard was pointing at people in the bar and waving all cool-like.

This game was punctuated by a surprise Mind Flayer. We were all about 5th level or less so the mind flayer pretty much kicked our asses. When we weren’t being stunned, we were having our brains eaten. When our brains weren’t being eaten, we were being charmed into buddying up with the big baddie. Somehow we recovered sufficiently to get a ton of Pro Evils cast on most of the party, and then we got lucky and killed the damn thing.

When we found the loot, my guy stole it and gave it to his crime bosses. Chris’ mage failed his task, and was never heard from again (he belonged to one tough mage’s guild, I guess). Woody’s cleric basically got Spanish inquisitioned when he came back having failed his quest. Sarah’s thief shared in my guy’s stolen goods and “won DnD” as she puts it. I loved the endings and the dynamics of the game. Tops.


Okay, this photo is of our last planned game session of the night. (We had one more afterwards, which was a pick-up game – but I’ll get to that in another post.)

I wasn’t that big on the Zeitgeist model of DnD sessions – but Woody loved them. So we went back later that night and tried to level up our guys to 3. (In the photo, Ken is the one bending over – he didn’t play – he just came and watched.) I played my “I hate nature” druid again – much to the chagrin of the players and DM. It’s funny, because earlier in the day the group tolerated the pissy druid – but without his brother to, well, balance him, he probably came across as even more annoying.

I tried to pattern the character after Larry David. One of my favorite lines from Curb Your Enthusiasm had Larry telling his wife something to this effect, “You know, sometimes I think what it would be like if I was deaf and couldn’t hear the birds sing. You know, it wouldn’t be that bad really.” That line sums up what I was trying to do with my character.

There was a woman at the table that was talking to a captured goblin that we had tied up. The DM said the goblin apologized for eating a baby. The lady was playing a paladin or something and acted disgusted at the goblin. My character injected that he had tried baby before and it wasn’t that bad. She got mad at me & my character accused her of being a close minded bigot – each culture does things different, one shouldn’t judge. The lady pretty much ignored me after that.

My character’s best line in this session was after we just entered a cave: “Can’t a druid find some nice urban adventures around here?” The DM actually laughed at that one – most of the time he just gave me dirty looks.

After we finished playing, Brian, Woody and I wandered around a bit. We stumbled across a dude holding up a sign that said “Free DM”. We quickly jumped into his game – which ended up being the most interesting session of the whole convention. But I’ll blog that later, by itself.

Gencon 2006 - Day 1

Well, a bunch of my gamer buddies and me went to Gencon this year. This is the third time I've gone & it just keeps getting to be more fun.

Ken was the only other person that went with me that has been before (both of my previous trips.) If you have any love of games at all, you can't beat this convention. It is about 20,000 people playing non-stop games for four straight days. Just incredible.

First let's start with something silly:


Ha ha and all that. That is Ken punching Brian inside a fake TV.

Now on to the story: We fly into Indianapolis on Wednesday night. Ken, Brian and I were staying in a Marriot. If you read about Marriot, they claim to be smoke free. So we show up in the hotel and promptly get shoved into a room that was, of course, smoking. Not only that, but the entire floor the room was on was a smoking floor. I go up to the front desk after Ken has checked us in and throw a fit. They give us a non-smoking room.

Why in the hell do hotels allow anyone to smoke in their rooms? No one wants to be in a smoking room, not even smokers. And then they have the gaul to try to cram all the crappy rooms down everyone's throat. I just can't stand it. Marriot will NOT be getting my return business.

Anyway, we get in to town and settle in. Sarah, the pregnant wife of Chris gets to pick the place to eat since she is by far the pickiest eater among us. My only rule was that we had to go to somewhere we couldn't go in Houston. She ends up picking a great place! It's a steak house that specializes in shrimp cocktails. And not because of the shrimp, but because of horseradish sauce they put on them. Every time I took a bite of my shrimp, I would wince because I knew my nostrils were going to get steam cleaned. If you ordered a steak, you got a choice between two sides: a bowl of navy bean soup -or- get this, a glass of tomato juice. The story we got from our waiter was that tomato juice was invented in Indianapolis. I ate a shrimp cocktail, 10oz of rare filet and a glass of tomato juice.

So the next day I get up with Chris, Woody and Ken at 7:30 to catch the 8am Barroom Blitz game.


This is a picture of the miniature's map that we were playing on with 8 other people. The idea is pretty simple; you are in a bar and are pissed off about something. It is your job to start a fight and resolve whatever it is that you are mad about. I played a bouncer that got dragged into the bar on his day off, so he is just pissed in general. Woody played a law officer looking for a particular criminal in the establishment. Chris played a death-metal bard that wanted to make tons of money. And Ken played a peace-lovin' monk. His job was to keep everyone from fighting.


That's me on the left. Next is one of the more fun players we played with. He was in charge of a drunken dwarf cleric (think Friar Tuck). His goal was to save all the beer. I think he made it. The next guy (tall one) is my buddy Woody. The short guy after him played a thief. He was trying to rob the drunk cleric when I almost killed him. The cleric played it cool, healed the thief and then enlisted him in his cause. By the end of the game Woody, the dwarf and the thief were all in cahoots with one another. The last guy was the cook. He didn't do anything in the fight for the longest time. He ended up fleeing the burning bar at the end and stood outside the exit door killing people that ran out for safety. I respected that.

Where was I, you ask? Dead. This is the second time I have played this game and it is the second time that I ended up being the first player dead. It kind of sucked. But I guess them's the breaks when you are the person that starts the violence. I almost killed the thief, but I missed him due to being blind (it’s a long story -- Chris' fault, though). And then I got cleaved in half by the half-orc pimp. The guy playing the pimp came over and shook my hand afterwards saying that there were no hard feelings. Which, of course, there weren’t. I just wish I could have killed him instead.

After about 4 to 5 hours of that Ken, Woody and I met up with Brian and went to play a hack’n’slash game. This is a DnD game that is all about killing stuff. You don’t have to figure out any traps or talk to any people in the game. Heck, you don’t even have to talk to other players. You just have to fight stuff. Pretty simple really.


Brian and Woody are off the photo. You are looking at the DM on the far left and then three guys that knew each other and played role-playing games with each other. The guy next to the DM was quiet, but sneery. But other than that, he seemed pretty cool. The guy next to him was, I think, their DM. Every time I said something off color (surprise, surprise) he would laugh. His two buddies would just put their heads down in what appeared to be anguish. The last guy was also quiet. All three of them seemed to know what they were doing, playing-wise, they just were a bit unfamiliar with the rules.

This is the game where my half-orc barbarian (that is so rote, all barbarians in all the games I played were half-orc, bleh) got drained of 8 points of CON damage from two stirges when the DM rolled 2d8. I hate those things as a player. As a DM, I love ‘em though. We were never able to finish the dungeon because of time constraints. I hate leaving a game unfinished – it feels like I failed. But we had a 6pm timeslot for True Dungeon.


This event was a lot of fun, except we sucked at it. Basically you walk around a dungeon with a character placard on your chest. When you do something stupid (like step on a marker on the ground that defines a trap) you take damage. A room DM runs over and marks the damage on your placard with a dry erase marker. Basically, the game is like this: everyone goes into a room where there is a puzzle. If you solve the puzzle, you win stuff. If you don’t, you take damage. Eventually people start dying. It was unfortunate that our best puzzle man, Chris, was one of the first people to die. All in all, there were something like 7 puzzles and we solved one of them (well, we kinda solved another, but just not good enough). In the end, everyone died. Still it was a ton of fun.

I’ll try to blog the two other days of Gencon later this week.

It's a Girl!

Okay, I know I haven't been exactly diligent on keeping this thing up to date, but here is the results of mine and my wife's adoption efforts. The birth mother is eveything we had hoped for, she is freindly, caring, sweet and intelligent.

We've only seen the baby through this ultrasound photo (its 3-d!) and we already love her.

Empathy for Big Tobacco -or- Making Big Space Bucks

This is an EVE Online story, so those of you uninterested in my latest MMORPGing please turn back now.

The EVE game is fascinating in that it makes seemingly mundane tasks, fun.  Not fun as in "Disney world" fun -- more like "getting off of work" fun.  My big thing these days is teamstering.  I put out these big-ass orders of trade goods such as frozen food, panes of glass, wine, depleted uranium, hydrogen batteries and tobacco.  Then, after all sorts of people get rewarded for killing pirates and rescuing helpless space miners with a couple of packs of cigarettes, they collectively say "Crap! What am I gonna do with 100 packs of virtual smokes?  Well," they continue, "I guess I could try to sell them.  Let me look at the market."  They then pull up a market window and see that they can sell their 100 packs of cigs for 60 bucks each (smoking is expensive in the future) but they have to go across the galaxy to sell them at the good rate -- in the game that translates to 6000 bucks for about 30 minutes of effort.  Any player worth their salt can make ten times that amount other ways -- so frequently people just toss the smokes, or hold onto them for a better deal later.

This is where I come in.  I am that better deal later.  I put out a galaxy-wide order for smokes, not at the high price of 60 bucks a pack, but a more reasonable 10 bucks a pack.  This way when the guy with 100 packs of red apples looks at the market, they have a choice: hold onto those cancer sticks hoping that they might find their way over to the $60 deal.  -Or-  Right now, they can sell them to me for $10 each.  They get a quick $1000 for their effort.

Now its a real pain for me to make money on this deal.  After all, now I have to go to place the cigs were sold (remember I put out a galaxy-wide order, people can sell them to me from anywhere) pick up the cigs, and then haul over where I can get $60 for a pack.  I have probably doubled the effort required to do the trade.  BUT if I get a lot of people doing the "sell me 100 packs" all over the galaxy, then I can sweep from solar system to solar system picking up 100 packs here, 100 packs there, et cetera.  And then I can haul over to Secondhandsmokus and sell them at my bitchin' x6 markup at 60 bucks a pack.

This little trick has netted me tons of cash.  I guess its really not a trick and it's hardly little.  But its all about quantity, baby!

On the downside of being a teamster, I am a huge target to other players.  I do these trades in big industrial ships that are slow slow slow.  If some less-than-savory soul spies me and scans my cargo hold they may get dollar signs in their eyes salivating over taking all my smokes for themselves.

Fortunately I am a member of a corporation with some (though not a ton of) firepower.  Me and my virtual co-workers (which are actually, real-life co-workers, ironically) team up hauling stuff everywhere with a couple trigger-happy cowboys packing shotguns for the ride.  It really gives quite a wild west flavor as three of us move around in these lumbering tugs while two or more decked out space cruisers ride astride keepin' us all warm and safe.

Like I said, more like “getting’ off of work” fun.

Wedding Gifts for Being in a Wedding

I was the best man at PlasticKelly's and CelticGypy's wedding (links provided later -- they are found on my hotlinks to the right for those so inclined as Doomsday Kelly and Days and Nights of Nat).  Anyway, it is traditional that a the people getting married give gifts to those in the wedding.

An Aside:  I don't know why, and I'm not sure I approve of the practice.  We live in a capitalistic society and right now, and after Christmas, capitalism kinda pisses me off -- but that's for a later discussion.  (I know that made no sense, but gift giving seems like a practice encouraged by capitalism.  You can link the two statements together now.)  This post is not supposed to be about my complaints about gifts, however, since I am actually very happy with my gifts.  End Aside.

Anyway, PlasticKelly and CelticGypsy (PKnCG from now on) got me a big ole knife as my best man gift.  At first I carried this big ole pocket knife with we everywhere.  Its something like a 3.5 inch blade.  It sounds small, but it ain't -- most pocket knifes are 1.5 inches or smaller, so this one is over twice as large.  But in this modern society of "don't let the terrorists win" I was in constant danger of having it taken from me where ever I went.

What's worse is the new blade is super fun to snap open.  With a flick of the wrist I can draw and open the knife.  I found myself frequently joking with people acting like I was gonna gut them while pulling the blade out super fast.  I found myself at my desk at work flicking it open and closed over and over again while I worked.  All of it combined to make my co-workers a bit nervous around me.  So now I only take it with me every couple of days.  I constantly have to remind myself that it isn't a toy.

But again, the knife isn't why I'm writing this.  The reason is that I got a gift from the groom that I love.  (The gift, not the groom...  Not that I don't love Kelly.  I do, but in a manly way.  No, that's not the way to put it...  Okay, I love Kelly, but I don't want to have sex with him.  You know, normal man-love, not man-on-man love.  You get the picture.)

I had to wear a kilt to his wedding and I couldn't find a decent looking belt for under $100 at the Renaissance faire.  So PK loaned me his.

He's never gonna get that belt back.

Its the best belt I've ever had.  It fits me perfectly and it looks nice with my ratty clothes.  So PK, say sayonara to your belt -- its mine now.  (Chances are he forgot he loaned it to me and thinks he lost it at the faire.)

Writer's Block

Yeah, yeah, I know I keep saying I'm going to write more in this thing and then I don't.  I have tried, though.  I just have some serious writer's block going.  Today is the first time I was able to put a single sentence down.  I have tried a bunch of times in the last couple of weeks, though.

The problem is that this blog has to be something that I want to read.  So if I can't entertain myself with the prose, then I don't want to write it.  Hence the lack of posts here.  I wonder if is due to the lack of creative outlets in my life for the last month?  I haven't played in my DnD game for three or four weeks now.  And my wife and I finished our adoption book about 3 weeks ago (though we are still trying to get it printed correctly.  Bleh!)  I would figure that having no creative outlets would spurn me to use this blog as my creative outlet -- but it doesn't seem to work that way.  Its kinda like they feed each other.  I don't know.

I finally have some topics that interest me however, so posts on the following are forthcoming:

• My gift(s) for being the best man at PlasticKelly's/CelticGypsy's wedding
• Trading tobacco for bookoo bucks in space
  
• DnD update -- a visit to the library!
  
• A rant on the current state of bad words in modern America
  

I will at least write up the first three.  I have tried to write the last piece twice now, and it gets way too profane for me to post it in a public forum.  Still, I may take another shot at it.

Check it out, I ordered mine for the new year!

Lotsa EVE

Okay, I have no excuse now for not posting something here. I haven't left my in-laws house for 4 WHOLE DAYS! Its been great.

So what have I been doing with my time you ask? Playing EVE online. I have made several million ISK over the holidays and have outfitted a pretty kick ass ship. Here are some screen shots.

I got caught in another ship while undocking. It took me a while to get unhooked.

Busy, busy, busy

I am starting to despise this time of the year. I don't have two seconds to rub together. After my big work push finished, the adoption birthmother book started. Once the adoption book finished, present shopping started. Then we had to get ready to go to Portland, Oregon (where my wife is from).

My wife and I missed our last soccer game, not intentionally mind you, but because we plumb forgot about it.

I promise to blog more soon.

Well here is the new/improved children's half of our adoption booklet. Since I moved to MS Publisher the pictures are crisper. I have used some photo editing tools to bring out the colors, but in the document's conversion to jpg, its lost some of the luster. I also have noticed that some of the pictures looked yellowed in the jpg. They don't look like that in the book (I don't think).

Enjoy.

Tardy Missives

So I said that I was going to try to post more since I am no longer working all day and night at my job.

That was the theory anyway – before my wife got a hold of me.

She has commandeered all my free time by making me work on our adoption booklet. I have moved from orchestrating the booklet in Microsoft Word to using Microsoft Publisher. I’ve gotten pretty good with it. It’s gonna be sweet when I’m finished.

My wife, however, has forbidden me to post the document to this blog. I think it is perfectly bloggable since you don’t tell birthmothers anything too identifying about you, just the interesting tidbits and generalities. It’s about the same level of intimacy of a blog. Still my wife has said no. I do plan to at least post the next draft of the children’s story when I get a chance (tonight or tomorrow) so you’ll get to see that half of the adoption booklet at least.

I’m going to actually post this last today so it ends up above all my other posts. I hope to write about a bunch of games:

• My poker game Saturday
• My DnD game last Thursday
• My current board game obsession

DnD – Tomb of Horrors and Law Offices

Our DnD game has gotten fairly interesting. Basically I threw a bunch of ideas out on the table and then waited for my players to pick what they wanted and run with it. The ideas that we started with:

• Repair a destroyed caldera and fill it with water to make waterfront property for a condo development.
• One player is in the middle of a messy divorce. Her husband wants half her experience. His legal representation comes from a demi-lich.
• Two of the players are running for mayor in my urban setting. One is a charismatic fallen paladin – someone that doesn’t mind doing bad things for the greater good. The other is a very, very ugly orc that is gradually becoming a god.
• Another player has inherited a ton of money, but can’t get it due to a restraining order keeping him from it until his great-great-great-great-great grandmother’s will has been legitimized.
• And lastly, one of the players has recently lost an arm. He still has it, but needs to travel to another plane to get the extra-dimensional pocket that exists where his arm was, removed so he can regenerate it.

Anyway, the party is pursuing the divorcee’s narrative right now.

I love using stuff that everyone is familiar with. Recently Wizards of the Coast has converted the classic Tomb of Horrors to the newest edition of the game. Now back when this module came out, it was the toughest of the tough. You had to be mega-powerful to even consider going into the Tomb of Horrors. To my disgust, they ported the module so mid-level characters could run it. The port to a medium power level just sucks.

So I just threw that version of the module away. Instead I have done my own conversion and instead of converting it straight up, I have changed the Tomb of Horrors to now by the Law Offices of Redaxe, Bonenose, Gronk and Acerack. (Acerack is the demi-lich; the other three are half-orc lawyers). Instead of having just killer traps and puzzles, I have also filled the halls with powerful clientele and other hard-to-kill legal aides. It should be fun.

Once the party rescued Nate (I’ll provide the link later, but I’m continuing from my earlier write-up where one of the PCs lost his left arm), they managed to steal his severed left arm from the Monks that cut it off. Rafael the Grey (the paladin mayor) hid the arm in his safe in his mayoral office. The two Monks of the Left Arm leaders came and fought with the party to get the arm back. All this fighting was going on while Rafael was being interviewed by city newspaper -- he has to appeal to his constituency, after all. Eventually the monks were dispatched, the arm was retained and the interview was concluded.

Days later, Elani (the divorcee) was subpoenaed by the court via the demi-lich law office. The demi-lich, of course, uses powerful undead to do the busy legal work, so the party fought with deadly winterwights (first seen in the incredible Return to the Tomb of Horrors boxed set, now a nasty critter detailed in the Epic Level Handbook). This subpoena forced the party to make an assault on the law offices since they assumed more winterwights would be forthcoming.

While this was going on, Dracustous was being coerced into signing away his inheritance to a Gold Dragon that claimed the hoard to be his. Dracustous assumed that the Gold Dragon had noble intentions (in the DnD game, Gold Dragons are a paragon of virtue). Instead he discovered that the Gold Dragon was just trying to acquire a “starter hoard”. Unfortunately for the party, Redaxe of the Law Offices of Redaxe, Bonenose, Gronk and Acerack is representing the Gold Dragon.

We stopped last week’s game right before the party was going to make its initial assault on the Law Offices. Just outside Redaxe, the Gold Dragon and a winterwight legal aide were going over last minute details of the Dracustous restraining order when the party showed up. Some force walls and force cages were spelled up before we decided to call it a night -- but no weapons were swung, no blood spilled. It's a DnD Mexican standoff!

I’ll keep the blog informed when this story wraps up.

Poker Howsssss

Last Saturday a buddy of mine, Robb, had a Christmas party. After the Christmas party a bunch of us retired to the back rooms to play a couple of Texas Hold’em tourneys.

I have been playing Texas Hold’em for something like six years now. I was playing the game well before the big poker boom – it was introduced to our group when I worked with Ed. Ed was a former casino dealer – and he said it was the best game to play. That’s when we got hooked.

Before tourney style, we just played Hold’em with infinite buy-ins. If you ran out of chips, you bought more. The problem with this method is that the stakes would always raise to the level of the person that valued money the least. For example, if $20 is a lot to me and I raise David $20 pre-flop, I expect David to feel the same $20 pressure that I do. If Dave comes back over with a $40 re-raise, is it because he thinks his hand can beat my $20 hand? Or is it because $20 means nothing to him and, for that matter, neither does $40? I’m kind of tight with money, so no matter what the odds are, I’m not going to chase $40. In the end, all the people that think $100 is a lot of money but think that $20 isn’t a lot of money end up raising the stakes of each pot to $100. It makes the game no fun for people like me. I want everyone to value his or her money the same way I do.

It wasn’t until Robb started running Texas Hold’em tourneys that the real enjoyment of the game came through. Tournament style equalized everyone’s $20. It cost $20 to enter. If you come in first from a group of around 15 people you get $150, second $100, third $50 (or something like that), so the “$100 is a lot of money “folk feel like it is worth their while to play because they can win a bunch of cash. The “$20 is a lot of money” folk can play as well because it only cost $20 to play one game. People that immediately go “all-in” and lose, exit early – so if you want to play cards, its best to be a tad more conservative than normal, lest you will be watching the game from the sidelines instead of playing.

In tourney style, going all-in means something. It means you are risking your chance to win $150 as well as risking your right to play cards. I highly recommend it.

Now that that is explained, I’ll discuss my experience at the tourney.

Remember when I said that tourney style equalizes everyone’s money? Well, I lied. Even when you don’t have the option to re-buy-in people still play overly aggressive. I made my living on those people. There was a lady at my table that was in every hand. More than that, she would stay in until the end of each hand. A couple of deals into the tourney I caught an ace, queen and matched my ace on the flop. The lady kept betting aggressively, like she was doing each hand. It took a couple of good hands like that and I took all her money. Tourney style lets you play people easier.

Another one of my buddies knows a lot about poker, but his basic nature is very, very conservative. When he is on the button he knows that he is supposed to raise and re-raise to chase people out of the pot. And I knew that he knew this so I would wait until he was on the button and regardless of what I had in my hand I would wait for him to raise. After his raise I would re-raise. This would chase everyone out of the hand except my buddy and me. Sometime around the “turn” one of my raises/re-raises would trigger his basic conservative nature and he would fold. I took a bunch of money from him doing that. If it weren’t for the fact that he only raised when he was on the button, I would have never considered doing that. I was playing the odds that he was trying to be a button bully and I know him well enough to know that being a bully isn’t in his nature.

Being a bully, however, is in my nature. Every time I ended up being the big stack, I bullied myself into the poorhouse. I can’t help but try to buy pots from people. I would say that the bullying worked 30% of the time – which isn’t enough to keep your chip stack. It seems once I was unable to play the easy targets, the more savvy players had little trouble taking me down. I came in 3rd on the first tourney, grossing 56 smackeroos.

In the second tourney of the night I was the big stack going into the final 6. Robb twice had pocket Jacks up against my Ace, 5. The first time it cost my one third my stack, the second time it kicked me out of the game in 4th place, just out of the money.

And then I lost $20 on high card (I drew a 3 of spades and lost to a queen of clubs – bleh!)

Re-living the Renaissance Via a Board Game

The crew I hang out with to play Dungeons and Dragons with is kind of splintered this December. Typically during month 12 of the year we take a break from DnD since most of our members are on vacation or busy. This year we get together anyway and play board games instead of DnD. Currently we have been playing Clans and Prices of Florence.

Clans is like a big game of tic-tac-toe – not really, but the mindset is the same. It’s fun to play in small doses since it runs about 30 minutes, and it’s simple enough to learn to play in about 5 minutes. But it tends to hurt your head and people that aren’t trying too hard can easily give someone else an unfair advantage allowing them an uncontested win. I can’t take too much of it.

Princes of Florence on the other hand is a great game. The learning curve is much steeper – you can teach someone to play in about 20 minutes, providing you know how to play. Learning the strategy of the game, however, takes forever. I have played 3 full games so far and I still don’t have a great handle on how to properly play.

What’s more incredible is that pretty much the entire game is determinable. There are no dice, and the randomness of drawing cards is minimized because anytime you would draw a card, you draw 5 and pick the best one. The players create all play variance – i.e. the game changes from game-to-game by people employing different strategies, not by dice rolls. It’s a great game.

The only bad thing about the game is the rules. The rules page makes use of two abbreviations that make up the cornerstone of the game, “WV” and “PP”. Nowhere in the rules are either of these two terms ever defined. My best guess is that WV means “Work Value” and PP means “Prestige Points”, but I am just guessing.

The premise of the whole game is that you are nobility in Florence during the Renaissance and you are trying to commission more great works of art than the other nobles in the game. You do this by buying up resources from other noble families, building your palazzo and granting your fiefdom various freedoms to help inspire your artists to create their masterpieces. The noble with the most masterpieces wins! I realize that the description of the game sounds like it would be impossible to represent that in a board game, but the people that made this game managed to do so.

So far my pal Ken has won two of the three games we have played. So now his head has swelled to monstrous proportions and he thinks of himself as actual prince. He’s not.

Fahrenheit 12/8

This weekend the wife and I watched Michael Moore’s “documentary” on the Bush presidency and how it responded to the attacks on 9/11.  I put “documentary” in quotes because a lot of people scoff that Mr. Moore’s work is considered anything but propaganda.  In all truth, these days a documentary is anything that doesn’t have acting or animation in it.  It’s a catchall category for all sorts of messages.  I think too often people think of documentaries as historical pieces done by Ken Burns (if they are good) or get shown on the History Channel (if they aren’t so good).

Now I have always been a Michael Moore fan.  I loved his original piece Roger & Me circa 1990 because he was the first person I knew of that threw away any pretense that he was un-biased.  At the time he was new and original.  Unfortunately for the rest of us, he opened the biased news door and everyone followed him through it.  You can’t read a news piece any more without being hit over the head with bias.  I liked the illusion of “un-biased” journalism more than the frankness of biased journalism.  Now when I discuss a news story with someone I always have to answer the question of where did I see that particular piece?  If I saw it on FOX news then it obviously slants conservative, if on CNN – then liberal.

[An aside.  I have a co-worker/friend that is busy reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and is all enamored with the book.  He says that Ayn Rand is incorrectly labeled a conservative where, in fact, she is a liberal.  I’ll admit right now that I have never read an Ayn Rand book before – several people have said that I would like it – I’m not so sure.  But what bothers me about my co-worker’s statement is that when he described why she was a liberal, it was that she was a modern American liberal.  Not a standard, by the definition, liberal.  Americans abuse these two terms to actually mean Republican and Democrat, which is entirely not the case.  As per definition, a conservative holds the status quo and doesn’t want to change things.  A liberal, however, wants to change the status quo or at least have the “liberty” to do so.  By the real definition, I would say that pretty much everyone in congress is fairly conservative.  A few politicians have liberal ideas, but not many.  The only one I can think of off the top of my head is McCain, and he’s a Republican.  To make my point on this, anti-abortion is a liberal idea now as it is no longer the status quo.  Pro-abortion is the conservative idea as it is the establishment.  End aside.]

I don’t know what I like about Michael Moore.  I really don’t see eye-to-eye with him at all.  Deep down I think Mr. Moore is just a populist (someone rooted in the general population’s interest – usually pro-labor, anti-business) and I’m really against most populist viewpoints.

No, I do know what I like about Moore – he is an extremist.  Not really a radical or a reactionary per se, but extreme in his populist beliefs.  Even though his films show a huge bias, I believe strongly that what I am seeing is what Mr. Moore believes to be true.  I respect that someone with such opinionated opinions can rationalize them to the extent that he has.  I am even more impressed that he is able to clearly communicate those opinions to me.

Watching a Michael Moore film is like getting is a heated, but controlled debate with someone that knows what he is talking about.  And I always enjoy those debates – even if it is with a kook.

The Gaul of a Goal

Well it’s about 7 hours before our next soccer game.  So I think I should write about my previous soccer game before the next one removes all trace of memory about it.

Since I always take my time getting to my point, I’ll state it early in this post:  I scored a goal.  I was the only one on our team to score.  I scored half our points.

I know, I know.  You are reading that last bit about me only scoring half our points, but yet earlier I brag that I was the only one on our team to score.  You’re thinking that something just doesn’t add up.  And you are right.  But now I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let’s start at the beginning:

I was working very, very late last Wednesday night.  Since our game that night started at 9pm I was strongly considering not attending.  Alas, that wasn’t an option as my wife pleaded with me on the phone to “not let our teammates down”.  The ironic thing about that statement is that it is just as true on a really bad team as it is with a really good team.  Misery loves company and if you jet from a bad team, chances are, the rest of the team jets with you.  So if you are playing on the Houston Stinkinators then, damn it, show up each and every game so as to revel in your team’s putriscity with the rest of your teammates.  It’s a bonding experience at least.

So I end up changing in the car on the ride over to the indoor soccer match.  When was the last time you were butt nekid in a moving car?  Me?  Last week, a couple of minutes before our soccer game.  We were sitting at a red light at 8:55pm (so at least it was dark outside) and I had just taken off my boxers to put on my briefs when a Semi pulls up alongside us and stops as said light.  Semis are tall, so the driver had me at an uncomfortable angle.  Now I know that the trucker in there probably wasn’t looking, and even if he/she was, probably couldn’t see anything.  But, I bet, if they were looking and trying hard to see something, then they would notice that the dim luminescence of the red stoplight was just enough radiation to make out my jangly bits.  I figured that the less I moved, the less attention I called to myself.  So I just sat there in my seat with nary a stitch on from the waist down.  If that driver did detect my delicate parts then I bet I made for a fine story at the late night truck stop where all of teamsterdom listened to the strange tale of the SUV passenger that rode barebackside.

Simulated CB Chatter HoundDog: “Breaker, breaker two-ninety, have I got a story for you!” CapnCrunch: “Rodger that, story time!” Brunhilda: “HoundDog, I got your twenty, gimme your story” HoundDog: “There is a man sitting in his car next to me with no britches on! Over” Brunhilda: “What do you mean by ‘britches’, no pants?” CapnCrunch: “Strike that story, HoundDog, I have a Charlie on my tail” HoundDog: “No pants at all, the man’s genitalia are glowing under a red light. It’s like a train wreck, I can’t help but stare – but I don’t wanna. Over” CapnCrunch: “Charlie’s got me! I’m going down!” Brunhilda: “Great story Houndy, now I’m gonna lay down some suppressing fire for the Capn!”

Oops… sorry… tangent… resuming course…

So when we make it to the game we have a plethora of people in attendance.  Throughout the game I was able to take time out and rest, as there was always someone there that could spell me.  (Not a hard thing to do, mind you.)

Well our second week enemy was much, much better than our first week opponent where we lost 19-7.  So you would think that a better team would make for even less fun – but that wasn’t the case.  Since the better team was more comfortable with less of a lead, they didn’t try to run up the score as much.  We ended the game with the score 15-2 (actually the scoreboard read 15-16, that we won, but I’ll get to that in a bit.)  Even though the difference in score was about the same from game one to game two, the second week team just played looser.  They were more fun.

Okay, here comes the point of this post now, so pay attention here.

We could not score on this team.  Their goalie was just too good.  Every once in a while when I would stop panting and actually had some energy to sprint a bit, I would attack their goal.  Since our team is out of shape, typically we would have only two people attacking the goal at any given time.  With their goalie and two of their defenders, our two attackers never had a chance.

Well, one of those times I charged down there with two other players, so we had three people attacking at once.  The ball was being passed behind me several times via my teammates and I don’t really know what happened to cause this – but there I stood, ball at my feet, goal straight ahead about four feet away, and nary a goalie or defender to be seen.  I reached down and grabbed a handful of carpet and threw it up into the air to see which way the wind was blowing (it wasn’t – we were inside), I got down on my knees to read the lay of the goal, then I got back up took six steps back and two to the side, and then I ran and kicked that ball straight into the goal for my team’s first goal of the night.

You would have thought we had won the World Cup with that score.  My team erupted with cheer and carried me off the field on their shoulders.  On the bench we gave each other Champaign showers and I was interviewed by Bryant Gumbal on just what that goal felt like.  (I responded that I couldn’t have done it without my teammates – though I didn’t mean it.)

After the gleeful celebration, we once again reverted to patheticness.  But so did the other team.  In a fit of…  I don’t know what, something though…  In a fit of something, the other team managed to score a goal on themselves.  I don’t really know what happened, I just looked downfield and saw a ball lallygag into their goal – and none of my teammates were anywhere near it.  Someone told me that the ball just got lose from their goalie and bounced off one of their players and ricocheted into their goal.

The owner of the facility thought that their goal on themselves was enough to justify giving us 15 points.  So at the end of the game the score was 16-15, Ballas win!

My New Computer Stuff

Since I have been hard at work, I have been making lots of money. So I decided to treat myself to some new computer equipment. Here are a couple of photos:
The only new hardware here are the monitors. Dual 20" monsters. It looks much better in real life.

Not quite real life, but a better shot of the monitors. That is a view of my current obsession, EVE Online. It runs in a mode that uses both monitors very well.

Lastly, my new laptop. I finally got one to take with me on trips to the Pacific Northwest. And it is a blazer. I get the second best Dell offered. It is meant as a portable gaming platform. I have spent the last hour taking all the crap that Dell installs on the system standard. That is a real pain.

Dell, your stuff is cheap and good. Your software bloat sux.

O Blogtain, My Blogtain

The title to this missive is a massive, unrecognizable butchering of the famous “O Captain, My Captain” poem by Walt Whitman (I think that’s who wrote it). The poem was about Abe Lincoln after his assassination. The parallel to my blog is not as deep as an assassinated leader, but more a quick tie-in to the fact that any and all updates have been missing for quite some time – much like Abe was missing after he was shot.

Unlike Abe Lincoln, my blog will spring back to life with this post. I guess the real romantic in me thinks that Mr. Whitman’s poem did the same for the greatest leader America has ever had, but not quite the same way this post revives my blog.

[An aside: It is cumbersome just how well the Internet keeps people honest. In normal conversation I would claim to know that “O Captain, My Captain” was indeed penned by Walt Whitman. But, I really am just guessing. Since people that read this blog have immediate access to the Internet, I have to assume the cynics that read it will double-check that fact. I know that none of said cynics will post “Adam you are a moron, it wasn’t Walt Whitman, it was Machiavelli that wrote that poem – and it’s not about Abe Lincoln, you fool, it’s about a bottle of rum” – because that’s the type of readership I solicit. End aside.]

So I am haberdashing around my point here. My point is that I have an excuse for the long delay between posts. And that excuse is my job.

My division in my company has been working on a project for about a year now & tomorrow, Wednesday, is the big show’n’tell demonstrating our nifty project. Problem is, at the last minute we changed systems the project was running on. And, of course, it stopped running. About 7 bug fixes later we are down to probably our last bug. Bugs 1, 2 and 3 took about a day to ferret out and fix each. Bugs 4 and 5 took about two to three days to hunt and fix. Bug 6 was what we thought was our last bug, took me and three other people Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and some of Monday to fix. Of course after that was fixed, bug seven popped up (about an hour ago). So my life recently has been a bug hunting hell on earth.

So in the next few days I plan on the following posts:

• Adam scores his first goal in soccer
• My opinions on the Michael Moore’s movie, Fahrenheit 9/11
• My one-day obsession with Marilyn Manson’s so-so cover of a great Patti Smith song

Until then I leave you with some homespun poetry:

A Walk With the Wife There is a clear noise from above A beautiful, rattling singing Small birds using their lungs While flapping, rapping and winging “What kind of bird is that, I hear?” Move under tree to look, not stopping “Shrills are wonderfully queer, my dear” And then I swallow a dropping Warmth on my chin. Streak down my shirt. Tang touches the back of my tongue Clasp my mouth shut so hard it hurts Wretched song from a songbird was sung Wretched dung from a dungbird was wrung Retching bile from my stomach was flung Terse verses of my poem are done -Obiwanchunn Whitman

A Gift, A Job and A Journey

Well, the adoption story book is finally kinda winding up. Below is my first draft of the complete text of the story. We are still missing a few pictures. I want to add a San Fran illustration with the Hans and Christine page. I also want to add some do-dads on the Bethany/Linda/Bryan page. But maybe not.

The two pictures of Bunny at the end are the same, so my wife needs to draw up one more rabbit with a present.

We are going to try to get rid of about half of the text so that should make the whole thing a little less daunting to read.

For some reason, when I webify our book, the pictures get shrunk down to their exact bounds. Each frame is supposed to be on its own sheet of paper.

Please provide feedback. [Edit 5:49pm I just noticed that I forgot to add the picture of Mt. Hood on the third page. It will be present in the final book. I just didn't remember to include it here. -Obiwanchunn]

My EVE Online Bio -or- Confusing Strangers is Funny to Me

For those that don't play massively multiplayer games but are interested in trying them, I have one word of advice for you: Don't.

Okay, I'm quite the hypocrite here. Actually I want you to become just as addicted to these stupid games as I am. You will justify my obsession by joining me in my endless quest to buy bigger and badder spaceships that can kill pirates, mine asteroids and trade chewing tobacco across the galaxy.

Sounds great doesn't it? In EVE-Online you can become an accountant. Kid not here.

Anyway, everyone has a little area that they can use to write-up something special about their in-game persona. I always write stuff that amuses me and confused everyone else.

Let me tell a little story that explains this a bit. (Another anecdote, yes, I can hear you sigh in the back row. Too bad.)

My boss got season tickets to the Astros games about 5-10 years ago. My brother and I were both working at the same company back then. Anyway, we were really the only people that used these tickets. We went to the games in the Astrodome once or twice a week. The seats weren't great, but, hey, they were free.

All sporting events have that insipid game that the crowd plays where some giant video monitor mixes up something like a giant three-card monte and then puts a big "1" "2" and "3" over each item that could have the hidden do-dad under it. (I'm not explaining this very well, but if you've been to any sporting event, you know what I'm talking about. For those that haven't been to one, ask someone who has to explain it to you.) The point is, any moron could follow the hidden item in this game. It's not a difficult task.

My brother and I would diligently watch this game, and when the numbers were put on the screen, we would purposefully agree on one of the numbers we knew WASN'T the one that had the do-dad under it. Then we would yell at the top of our lungs and hold up fingers indicating which number we supported.

We made big asses of ourselves, naturally.

Of course the scoreboard showed a number that wasn't the one we were screaming. We would hunch down all disappointed-like and people around us that were cheering for the correct number would look at us in a disapproving fashion because they were right and we were wrong.

These shenanigans amused us to no end. If my wife wasn't such an uptight when it comes to stuff like this, I probably would still do it at sporting events.

Now when this stupid game happens, since it is ridiculously easy, everyone gets it right. If I would pretend to get it wrong, then everyone around me would feel special. I would be doing them a service by boosting their ego a bit. And I would amuse myself by feeling like a civil dissident.

So back to this post's topic.

When I named my EVE-online avatar (my in-game persona) I had a bit of inspiration. I named myself "Iambic Haiku". This has given me a good deal of fun because several people tell me that there is no such thing as an Iambic Haiku-- thinking that I am confusing the word "haiku" with "pentameter" -- which I'm not.

I used to submit write "Haiku" that was obviously not correctly syllabified. I think my best non-haiku, haiku was:

My hubby in a frying pan, being Rice-o-roni Witch doctor in a chicken suit standing on the stove I blew the chicken away

That poem has a long story associated with it. I won't share it now since this post is meandering a bit. But for those of you that don't know, haiku have three lines, with the number of syllables in each line being 5-7-5. Or something to that effect. As you can see, my haiku is clearly not proper. I would get into many arguments over the validity of my haiku -- secretly amusing myself with the argument.

So when I was coming up with my in-game biography for Iambic Haiku -- a block of text that anyone can read about my character -- I wrote this:

Mr. Haiku was born on a board a Gallente Frigate near Egghelende. His mother was giving birth as she was being attacked by 13 year olds that had nothing better to do than gatecamp innocent merchants. Fortunately Iambic's mother had herself cloned right after she was impregnated, and the clone gave birth in the plasmpod as she was being activated. So Iambic has always been a clone. He does not know what it feels like to NOT be a clone. Still, he likes the clone he's got now. So don't get any funny ideas there, Junior! And yes, there is such a thing as an Iambic Haiku. Here is one for example: Ode to a Secure Urn Missions or mining Or research or exploring These are a few of my favorite things! -Mao Whitman

Now it's not really important to understand all the in-game references here. A quick summary: a podkill is where someone else playing the game kills you and you have to have your pre-purchased clone activated to continue playing the game. A "secure cargo container" is used to store stuff in space so you can later retrieve it -- it is locked with a password. Gate camping is an annoying tactic used by players to ambush and podkill other players. It is generally assumed that all gatecampers are 13 year old boys with nothing better to do than play all day and kill others.

EVE-Online definitions aside, I love my Iambic Haiku. Unlike my other forms of poetry, this one is actually legitimate. I did, however, make up the fake author name.