"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both," Benjamin Franklin

I finished my second game last night. Civ IV has already consumed some 100 hours or so of my time . . . . ( Read more... )

I had always played a few computer games -- beating my old TRS-80 at chess or perfecting the space shooter game score, playing duels on the Intellivision console I won in a drawing as a 15-year-old, acing every Atari I game I touched the joystick for, and even spending long hours through law school mastering Commander Keen and PGA Golf on the PC ( Read more... )

I have Civilization IV installed on the new Gateway laptop computer. It seems to work, even without the patch. I'm on the tutorial.

See ya'll in 6 or 8 months or so . . . .

Wow. One lazy weekend. A Civ 3 game where I'm the Bulgarians and have already destroyed the French and Celt civs -- might be time to go whup on the Spanish. A couple of NBA playoff games on ESPN. Why would I still instinctively root for the Lakers -- Why? Magic, Worthy, Kareem, Rambis, even Shaq & Riley -- they're all gone. Maybe it's because ( Read more... )

Congestion, head and body aches, sore throat, phlegm, tired, etc. Slovak/Yapese home remedy of oily rags to chest, modified by Scotch remedy. And watching my Buffs get blown in college football. A game of Civ 3 on one computer, of Civ 2 on the other, Utne Readers in the can, it's 3:50 am and it feels better to sit up than lay down.

The fish was a small red snapper, which I pan fried lightly last night with black beans and rice. Delicious. But there was a bit of a scale issue -- as in, I just tossed it in the pan with the scales still on it. I have no scaling tool, and the teflon skilet is the only cooking utensil I have that would work, anyway. I have 5 weeks or so to get ( Read more... )

The first sunshine of the weekend, and it's late on Sunday afternoon. I spent nearly all of Saturday in the flat playing Civilization 3 (dominating the known large world as the Persians after knocking my difficulty level down from 5th-highest of 6 to 3rd-highest). The weather alternated between cloudy and cold (15C / 59F) and pouring rain. I was ( Read more... )