Insert random title here
Since we last met:
DragonCon was a blast. Yes, I still owe a couple of you some digital bits, lots of 'em. I'm working on it. If it helps, I haven't watched 'em yet, either. :)
Mike ran two different games this year rather than his usual two-parter. Both were run using Spirit of the Century's rules, which are _excellent_ for this sort of game; the latter was based in part on Wilderness of Mirrors, which was kinda fascinating for a caper-- the idea being that the GM only provides a one-liner to describe the story, and the players sort out the rest of the details. This worked pretty well, but I can see it being hit-or-miss in a pick-up gaming situation.
Aside from badge pickup, I decided to institute a zero line protocol for DragonCon. I figured there were two possibilities on anything with a line: 1) I'd be able to get a seat anyhow once everyone was inside, or 2) It'd be on DCTV later anyhow, and there's always something else worth seeing instead. The second part failed me once-- there was only one thing I wanted to see Sunday at 4PM. Not bad for a whole week.
The autograph thing, which has snowballed into an autograph-and-photo-op thing, has gotten insane. $200 to get your picture taken with Patrick Stewart. I don't know what Shatner and Nimoy were charging, and I probably don't want to. I don't get it, myself-- I didn't really want my picture taken with these people back before they realized they could charge money for it, but I'm glad they get the money-- it means they keep coming out to entertain me in panels.
I wound up sleeping through the concerts I wanted to see-- I was on call 'til 9AM on the Thursday that I drove down, which meant I started Con weekend short on sleep. That's never a good way to begin a con.
I got to catch the Tech football season opener, which was good fun but left many questions about whether or not the team is as good as everyone thinks it is. And the Clemson game the next week certainly didn't help. Tech is ranked around #15 in the nation, and I'm pretty sure all we've determined is that's an upper bound; Tech is certainly not underranked. Tonight's game against Miami may tell us more.
Apparently my MARTA Breeze card is expiring. I thought the whole point of the plastic ones was that they _weren't_ going to expire like the paper ones do? I was also annoyed that I couldn't put just the $.50 I needed on the card to make my last trip back to the truck, I had to put a whole dollar on it. I did happen to find a dollar sitting in the change return of the machine, but still, it's the principle of the thing. :) This won't be a problem in the future-- MARTA's jacking prices up to $2. This seemed exorbitant until I realized I spend $2.35 each way on Metro to get to the Brickskeller once a month, and that's their off-hours rate.
Almost a week in Atlanta was good fun, and it was excellent seeing many of my friends, in many cases that I hadn't seen in well over a year. On the other hand, I know I'm starting to finally get used to Maryland being home-- I was ready to get back there by the end of it. On the other hand, Amy's come down with Lyme disease again, so perhaps Maryland being home wasn't the bright idea we thought it was three years ago. :)
Yoga class started back up yesterday. I'm enjoying that. Haven't decided if I will attempt to learn more Yoga next semester or look into something else. It might be interesting to see what Tai Chi is all about.
We're in week 7 of the iRacing season, and I've actually built up a fairly decent lead in the Skip Barber Formula 2000 series (Division 10). Things will start to settle out more as we get into "drop weeks"-- only the best 8 weeks from any given driver count. This week will probably wind up being a drop week-- I'm certainly happy to be done with Summit Point's Jefferson Circuit. I don't hate Jefferson much-- it's too short a course for that, 57 seconds later I'm back at the start and I have to begin hating all over again.
Strange thing is Jefferson is the closest thing iRacing has to autocross. And I'm worse there than I am anywhere else.
Next week is VIR's North Course-- the full Grand East course is my favorite in this car, but the North course ain't bad. This doesn't mean I'm fast or anything, but I enjoy it.
The first fall batch of chili is simmering on the stove. It has the two little cayenne peppers I managed to grow this year in it. Yum. I love fall. College football, the colors of the foliage, cooling off after a hot summer... and it doesn't hurt that fall's got the big gluttony holiday built in. (Two big gluttony holidays if you're a kid!) And chilis and soups. Mmm.
It has been warm enough, however, that I may be forced to run the smoker one last time this season. Amy lives in fear, I'm sure. Pulled pork, yum!
Snow Leopard was released. I appear to be the only Mac nerd on the planet who didn't immediately pludge. The biggest thing I want in Snow Leopard is OpenCL. We've got 5 machines in this house running MacOS-- four of them actual Macs-- and none of them support OpenCL, so I have little reason to jump to the new OS. *sigh* My laptop is getting kinda long in the tooth, but it still does a pretty good job of what I keep it around for, so I'm not sure it's worth upgrading. Even if it is, I have to figure the next batch of Macbook Pros will have the Core i7 Mobile chips as an option (Quad core makes a lot of sense when you're pushing Grand Central), so I'm at least going to hold out that long. Then there comes the question of whether or not I'm willing to go back to living on a laptop primarily. Wireless technologies have gotten better in the meantime, plus I now have a netbook for "around the house", so perhaps a laptop for primary usage that I can pick up and travel with is a decent solution. This requires more thought.
DragonCon was a blast. Yes, I still owe a couple of you some digital bits, lots of 'em. I'm working on it. If it helps, I haven't watched 'em yet, either. :)
Mike ran two different games this year rather than his usual two-parter. Both were run using Spirit of the Century's rules, which are _excellent_ for this sort of game; the latter was based in part on Wilderness of Mirrors, which was kinda fascinating for a caper-- the idea being that the GM only provides a one-liner to describe the story, and the players sort out the rest of the details. This worked pretty well, but I can see it being hit-or-miss in a pick-up gaming situation.
Aside from badge pickup, I decided to institute a zero line protocol for DragonCon. I figured there were two possibilities on anything with a line: 1) I'd be able to get a seat anyhow once everyone was inside, or 2) It'd be on DCTV later anyhow, and there's always something else worth seeing instead. The second part failed me once-- there was only one thing I wanted to see Sunday at 4PM. Not bad for a whole week.
The autograph thing, which has snowballed into an autograph-and-photo-op thing, has gotten insane. $200 to get your picture taken with Patrick Stewart. I don't know what Shatner and Nimoy were charging, and I probably don't want to. I don't get it, myself-- I didn't really want my picture taken with these people back before they realized they could charge money for it, but I'm glad they get the money-- it means they keep coming out to entertain me in panels.
I wound up sleeping through the concerts I wanted to see-- I was on call 'til 9AM on the Thursday that I drove down, which meant I started Con weekend short on sleep. That's never a good way to begin a con.
I got to catch the Tech football season opener, which was good fun but left many questions about whether or not the team is as good as everyone thinks it is. And the Clemson game the next week certainly didn't help. Tech is ranked around #15 in the nation, and I'm pretty sure all we've determined is that's an upper bound; Tech is certainly not underranked. Tonight's game against Miami may tell us more.
Apparently my MARTA Breeze card is expiring. I thought the whole point of the plastic ones was that they _weren't_ going to expire like the paper ones do? I was also annoyed that I couldn't put just the $.50 I needed on the card to make my last trip back to the truck, I had to put a whole dollar on it. I did happen to find a dollar sitting in the change return of the machine, but still, it's the principle of the thing. :) This won't be a problem in the future-- MARTA's jacking prices up to $2. This seemed exorbitant until I realized I spend $2.35 each way on Metro to get to the Brickskeller once a month, and that's their off-hours rate.
Almost a week in Atlanta was good fun, and it was excellent seeing many of my friends, in many cases that I hadn't seen in well over a year. On the other hand, I know I'm starting to finally get used to Maryland being home-- I was ready to get back there by the end of it. On the other hand, Amy's come down with Lyme disease again, so perhaps Maryland being home wasn't the bright idea we thought it was three years ago. :)
Yoga class started back up yesterday. I'm enjoying that. Haven't decided if I will attempt to learn more Yoga next semester or look into something else. It might be interesting to see what Tai Chi is all about.
We're in week 7 of the iRacing season, and I've actually built up a fairly decent lead in the Skip Barber Formula 2000 series (Division 10). Things will start to settle out more as we get into "drop weeks"-- only the best 8 weeks from any given driver count. This week will probably wind up being a drop week-- I'm certainly happy to be done with Summit Point's Jefferson Circuit. I don't hate Jefferson much-- it's too short a course for that, 57 seconds later I'm back at the start and I have to begin hating all over again.
Strange thing is Jefferson is the closest thing iRacing has to autocross. And I'm worse there than I am anywhere else.
Next week is VIR's North Course-- the full Grand East course is my favorite in this car, but the North course ain't bad. This doesn't mean I'm fast or anything, but I enjoy it.
The first fall batch of chili is simmering on the stove. It has the two little cayenne peppers I managed to grow this year in it. Yum. I love fall. College football, the colors of the foliage, cooling off after a hot summer... and it doesn't hurt that fall's got the big gluttony holiday built in. (Two big gluttony holidays if you're a kid!) And chilis and soups. Mmm.
It has been warm enough, however, that I may be forced to run the smoker one last time this season. Amy lives in fear, I'm sure. Pulled pork, yum!
Snow Leopard was released. I appear to be the only Mac nerd on the planet who didn't immediately pludge. The biggest thing I want in Snow Leopard is OpenCL. We've got 5 machines in this house running MacOS-- four of them actual Macs-- and none of them support OpenCL, so I have little reason to jump to the new OS. *sigh* My laptop is getting kinda long in the tooth, but it still does a pretty good job of what I keep it around for, so I'm not sure it's worth upgrading. Even if it is, I have to figure the next batch of Macbook Pros will have the Core i7 Mobile chips as an option (Quad core makes a lot of sense when you're pushing Grand Central), so I'm at least going to hold out that long. Then there comes the question of whether or not I'm willing to go back to living on a laptop primarily. Wireless technologies have gotten better in the meantime, plus I now have a netbook for "around the house", so perhaps a laptop for primary usage that I can pick up and travel with is a decent solution. This requires more thought.