I’ve been busy the past month getting used to a new schedule. i finally got a part-time job so i can slow down our descent into credit card debt.
as most of you know i’ve been holding out for four years trying to get my own business going. well that is so much more work than i expected since i decided to start a co-op right off the bat (www.chickcoop.com is an empty storefront so far) and i can’t seem to get past the product development stage and actually sell something. so at the beginning of this term when we couldn’t afford good health insurance (which we now need since i hurt my back last year) and had to swallow our pride and ask mark’s parents for cash, i once again considered the part-time job idea. surprise surprise! no panic attack this time. whee! i decided that if i was going to work after all this time i was going to do it somewhere that inspired my creativity rather than draining it. so i inquired at all the local craft-type stores. turns out the needle work, and paper craft stores are typically not profitable enough to hire employees outside the owners’ families. i thought the bead store would be the same story, but their business is booming. enough to open a new online store. so i got hired to help launch the website and now am doing “inventory prep” and customer service for www.fusionbeads.com. counting and packaging beads, basically. the people are great and it’s an all-woman staff of about 20 so i’ve met four new lesbians and have a couple possible new recruits for my co-op. i am forced to like two office dogs, but am coping. most of them smoke, but hey, at least they’re not republicans.

Are we all too depressed to post anything? I figure all of us have been busy the last month, getting the word out on who to vote for, right? 🙂

I’ll post something about some of the board games I’ve been playing soon…

My brother got me the box set widescreen edition for my bday. Its really cool to have the whole collection. The bonus dvd is real interesting. One shocking thing was how they edited the ending of jedi. They replaced anakin’s face at the ewok party to match hayden’s. Kinda strange considering he probably wasn’t even born when they made the movie.

Ok, so for the past week and a half I’ve played:

1. Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns – finished the single player campaign. This is a pretty good RTS which concentrates more on squad tactics. Units are grouped into squads which move together (reminds me of the table-top version of Warhammer). You can change formations and what not. The spell casters and other support units all auto-cast, etc. making this game very non-micromanage. I hated how in Warcraft and almost any other RTS, any special abilities including spells are only executed by the player’s order. Building the cities is also relatively easy without all the crazy upgrades you find in War/Starcraft, just building emplacements. Upgrades to troops comes in the form of exploring the map and finding monster lairs. Some of the lairs give you heroes or special technology upgrades. Overall, a very fun game and I’m sorry I passed this up when it came out like 3 years ago.
2. some Baldur’s Gate 2 – yeah, some friends and I are about to start this game, so I decided to refresh my memory by playing a bit. There are a ton of mods out there and we will be using some of the more polished ones. George, you never replied; we need people who are committed.
3. Far Cry – finished single player but with god cheats. I just don’t have the patience for arcade first person shooters anymore. I much prefer playing co-operatively with friends in a realistic squad-based shooter. This game, however, features incredible graphics so I decided to play it through. Overall, I’d say the first like 2 or 3 missions are the ones that are worth it. Afterwards it’s more of the same but gets all weird Dr. Moreau-ish. If I want to be freaked out by mutants or whatnot, I’ll just go play Doom 3.
4. Kohan 2: Kings of War – about 1/2 way through. I didn’t even know this game was coming out when I picked up the first one. After I played the first and did a web search I found out this sequel is just came out and features a move to 3D. It’s pretty good, but for some reason I don’t like it as much as the original. They decided to make it more like other RTSes, with tech upgrades found on buildings instead of rare monster lairs, etc. Just not as exploration heavy (except to scout out enemy locations).
5. Codename Panzers – only played first mission. It’s an RTS that also features units formed into squads, set in WW2. It’s main selling point is that it is all about tactics, there is no resource management portion of the game, so no building of units and buildings and such; wouldn’t make sense for there to be one anyway. My main problem with this game is that the troops aren’t automated. I mean they fire and have stances and such, but you have to manually tell them to use grenades and so on. It’s biggest selling point is that the main campaign is playable co-operatively. It’s drawbacks are that only 2 can play. Oh, and also the multiplayer part doesn’t work on my computer for some reason and no one in the forums seems to know what the problem is.
6. Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War – only played first two missions. Awesome graphics, amazing in-depth world, and squads of units rather than stand-alone units (I see a trend here). I love the gritty Warhammer world. Biggest problem with this game is that it moves too fast for me to really enjoy all the massive carnage. I want to see it in slow motion.
7. Rome: Total War – currently playing. Man, this game is awesome. It’s the 3rd one in the series of Total War games, the other two being Medieval: Total War and Shogun: Total War. I heard good things about the others and I saw this one at E3 this year, so decided to check it out. The strategic level is like a lite version of Civ. The battles are zoomed in and play out in real-time with the player controlling massive amounts of units in formation. Ben and George would love this game. I normally don’t like Civ-like games since I find them tedious (yet addictive). This, for some reason, just doesn’t feel tedious, maybe because I really enjoy the tactical portion. Also, you get to learn a hell of a lot about Roman culture and geography.
8. Kingdom of Loathing – This is a little web-game like the old-school BBS game, Legend of the Red Dragon on steroids and injected with humor. It’s like a MMORPG-lite, being all text heavy. You get 40 action points a day and can spend them on delving into dungeons (1/room) or doing other actions. Just check the site out and read the about page. Very fun, and only takes like 30 min a day.

Starting tomorrow, I figure my game playing intake will be drastically cut. 🙂

mark

Their hard drive crashed over the weekend. After it was restored, I had to go back and manually reset some things for this site to work. The problem is that they didn’t tell me when they restored it, so I didn’t get around to fixing this site until this morning. As soon as it expires, I’m getting a new web host.

So, I went to a mini-gaming convention run by some employees of Wizards of the Coast last weekend. I haven’t been surrounded by so many nerds since I was at Reed. Robin and our friend Ari went with me on Friday, I went alone on Saturday, and then Ari joined me on Sunday.

Anyway, some of the gaming sessions I was in were sort of okay, others were awesome. Of the okay ones, they were mostly combat oriented role-playing sessions using the d20 rules. Here’s a break-down.

Friday
1. Pirates Cove! — Amazingly fun and simple board game. It’s got pirates, how could it be bad? This is definitely on my to-buy list maybe a couple of months from now in time for the holiday season to play with family and friends.
2. Homestarrunnerball Rally 2000 — the characters from Homestarrunner.com are detailed using d20 rules, get in pairs, and race to Vegas from Strongbadia. I was playing Homestar Runner and I got paired with Coach Z. First we had to make cars out of playdough; then it just sort of turned into a genre mixing, time traveling race against other pairs like Strong Bad/Strong Sad and Strong Mad/the Cheat, ending in a climactic finish racing along side the original Cannonball racers from the movie of the 1980s. Anyway, this was pretty fun when I think about it, but while I was playing it it was a little tedious.
3. Royal Turf — This is a relatively quick horse racing/betting game that lasted about 45 min. It was fun, but I think I wasn’t into the theme as much as the other players.

driving home that night was insane; rain was coming down in sheets.

Saturday
4. D&D Maxitures — this was a live action interpretation of the relatively new D&D Miniatures game. It was fun in a novel way, and we got to go outside and play in the backyard, but the game itself didn’t work so well since the teams lost their balance in such a small space. Any ranged units were at a distinct disadvantage. Of the two rounds I participated, I was on ranged teams and we got wiped pretty quickly. I was supposed to play two more hours of this (about two more rounds) but I decided to check out other stuff.
5. Gloria Mundi — this game is coming out next year some time. Did I mention that almost everyone in the house was either a game designer from Wizards or had been one at some point or was an independent game designer. Because of that, Robin got to play some word games that are in development on Friday and I got to play Gloria Mundi. (Coincidentally, the word games and this game were all designed by the guy who played my partner Coach Z.) Anyway, this game is very hard to describe and it took maybe a couple of rounds to fully comprehend the rules, but once underway, it really picked up and was quite fun.
6. D&D Miniatures sealed box tournament — I joined a tournament in which the boxes were supplied by the hosts who got to keep them afterwards. I gotta say, this game is tremendous fun. George and his friends Johnny and Claire, et. al. would love this game. It’s sort of like HeroClix but a little more like D&D and a little more like a regular miniature war game like Warhammer. What makes it really fun is the way all the special abilities and spells from different units combine with each other to make really interesting mixes. It has a very rich background, too. Maybe it also helped that I came in 2nd in the tourney (of 8 ). The only guy who beat me was one of the lead designers. 🙂 As a prize I got a rare huge model, the Storm Giant. Nice. I found all the stats of all the minis online and I have a ton of miniatures which I finally brought up from the Bay Area earlier this summer, so I figure if I could find some people to play with, I have all the stuff. Come visit George!
7. Return, etc., to Elemental Evil — this was pretty fun, though there wasn’t much role-playing involved. We played a special FBI unit created with the d20 Modern rules who were sent through a portal to the Temple of Elemental Evil. It turns out that this was one of the recurring events at the mini-con and we were the 3rd group sent through the portal, this being the 3rd annual time this event was run. It was basically one huge fight as soon as we got there. I was the only one role-playing, saying things like “What the hell is that?!?” when any sort of monstrous creature appeared. It might have helped that I truly didn’t know what some of the creatures were and that of the ones I did know I didn’t know their stats. The other guys were all Wizards guys and were saying things like “Oh don’t worry about that; it’s just s Shambling Mound, not that powerful.” !!!
8. Who’s the Werewolf — this is like the party game you have at sleep-overs called Mafia or Assassin, and it was really fun.

Sunday
9. Rise of the Legobots — bring a whole bunch of characters from TV shows and movies, stick them all in an old western, send some robots from the future to kill them, and make all these characters, robots, and buildings, terrain out of Legos. Basically, I was the Highlander (from the TV show) and had crazy insane stats (d20 rules). It was pretty fun, though early on, at one point I looked up and saw myself surrounded by middle-aged men and women arguing about if Xena was this way or if Dumbledore was that way… I was surrounded by nerds! 🙂 But it picked up really well mid-way through, and I embraced my own nerdiness.
10. Vampire: the Requiem — this was totally a role-play session rather than being so combat or roll-play oriented. I joined in really late with only an hour or so left in the session since the Legobots one ended early. This would be great if I had a group of friends who wanted to role-play for hours like every weekend.

Between sessions, I was able to check out many games including the Game of Thrones boardgame, Risk: Godstorm (also by Coach Z), and Betrayal at the House on the Hill. The latter two come out later this month. The Game of Thrones game looks like a mix between Diplomacy and Risk/Cosmic Encounter. Might be worth getting, if only I had more hardcore gamer friends living near me. Risk: Godstorm adds a lot of interesting things to the game like artifacts, spells, and gods. The House on the Hill game looks really promising as a tongue-in-cheek horror themed tile/map building rpg-lite. What makes it cool is that you don’t know what the objective is until about half-way through the game, and then you find out that one of the players will turn traitor and it turns into a player and monsters vs. players game. I think I’ll try to get it before Halloween and play at a Halloween party this year.

Anyway, had a fun weekend, and I hope to be playing games with you all again some day… 🙂

that’s interesting that we’re talking about dental insurance. diana and i just saw the dentist yesterday. it’s the first time for me in 2 years which is not good. turns out though, our new dental plan covers 100% of most routine work, ie. cleaning, cavities, etc. my problem is finding a reputable dentist. the last guy i saw said i had 10 cavities..i think i got 3 ‘fixed’ before i thought it was ridiculous. i didn’t follow up with a second opinion and now 2 years later my new dentist is saying i only have 3! did a check on the old dentist and turns out he’s out of business and had his license revoked..hmm.
same thing happened to diana in san diego..the guy told her she had a whole bunch on cavities, he probably drilled out good teeth and patched them up. she did as much as she could afford and then yesterday our new dentist said her teeth are fine..no cavities. i just hope that our new office isn’t screwing us…but i guess so far so good.
my philosophy is to avoid any medical attention if possible. even with insurance…i think healthcare is incrediby expensive. i just had a wort removed on my palm…several appointments over 2wk periods…$400! if i didn’t have insurance…$1,000,000,000 dollars

Remember a year ago when I was wondering if health insurance was worth it? Well, it is worth it if you have injuries like Robin’s back thing last year which is still bothering her and if you have to get a root canal.

Only, our insurance didn’t cover as much as I thought it would and it didn’t cover my friggin root canal last April… I put off getting a crown for the tooth for 5 months and now it seems I must otherwise I may lose the tooth. What’s more, I have another fracture on another tooth, so now I need TWO! I put it off cuz I figure we’d relook at our plans and get better insurance this year, but as it turns out, dental insurance for individuals really sucks like crazy.

We’re talking, the best I could find was they would cover 20%. What the fuck is that?? The best health insurance covers 80% after deductible. Man, I miss the good ole days of being an employee where the insurance would cover 100% after copayments! Boohoo!

September already? Insane how fast this year is going. Things have been crazy out here in Boston. I applied for and got a full-time position at the hospital where I’ve been doing my research (as an Associate Medical Physicist). It will be great for me financially and professionally (board certification, clinical experience, etc.), but it’s been a ton of work so far. The amount of time that I have to spend on research has dropped from 95% to 5%. If I’m ever going to finish my PhD, I’ll have to push that number up quite a bit… The good news is that an increase in research time will be possible, as I’ve been investing extra time learning the ropes and one of our staff physicists is currently out on leave. Things should get better.

Football starts tomorrow. Happy days.

you guys should check out will ferrell if you haven’t already at www.whitehousewest.com