Mindless Juices

So, since my hockey post didn't go over well, I'll try to avoid the subject in that intensity. Meanwhile, I do need to tell you that Nick and Kelli came down for "Christmas." We went to dinner, went to a movie and went home for presents exchange and dessert. First, we went to dinner. We went to Firebirds at Southpoint mall. Unfortunately, it was the worst service we've ever had there. Sabrina and I ordered a steak and a salad to split. Usually, Sabrina eats most of the steak and I eat most of the salad. Unfurtunately, the salad didn't come out until after everyone else was done eating. There were a few attempts to get it out sooner, but they didn't work. Also, our drinks hit bottom and stayed there for a little while in the middle of dinner, especially mine since it was all I really had to eat. Then, it turns out that they ran out of glasses, so the waitress had to take ours to refill. Luckily, the waitress did her job and let the manager know about our rouch experience. He adjusted our bill a more than fair amount, in my opinion. Overall, our past experiences have all been so good that we won't let one little bad experience ruin our favorite steak. Plus, we were taken care of, so we'll pretend it didn't happen. Then, we went to see "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." Disney did a surprisingly good job with C.S. Lewis' work. In conversation with Sabrina, she told me that C.S. Lewis was not particularly fond of his works being made into any sort of visual art. We are of the opinion that he wanted to excite people's imaginations and the visual arts would take away from our imaginations. Well, the movie fleshed out my imagination. It definitely didn't take it away. It's an excellent movie and worth seeing in the theatre. If you have kids, I would NOT recommend taking them to see it. There is a lot of violence... very Lord of the Rings/Braveheart. And, there are certainly scary aspects and a smaller screen may be the better way for kids to experience this movie and this story. On a side note, there was a mom who brought her very young kids to the late show, 7:45pm. She did not keep particular control and did not really seem to care how her children were disrupting other people's experience. Her very young son did not understand how to whisper. He asked a ton of questions and would askover and over again until his mom answered him, which she usually didn't do until he asked at least three times. I tried to be patient and it wasn't the child that really upset me, but the mom who was inconsiderate for bringing the children to a late show and, at least, not attending to the child to minimize the disruption he was obviously causing. Lastly, we headed home for dessert and presents. My wife made creme brule. It was excellent, as usual. We exchanged presents. I got a Logitech Gamepad... it will make playing some Gametap games more fun and easier to play. I am very excited about it. Although, currently, I'm starting to feel pretty tired... I had to stay up until midnight last night for work again... and I'm working today... I hope I have energy for the party tonight.

Tonight, Eric Staal, NHL goal leader will face off with Dominik Hasek, #2 goalie in the NHL. Currently, Hasek is number two in his Goals Against Avg., Save %, Wins, and Shutouts. His save % is .928. Staal has 26 goals under his belt and 51 points total putting him third in the league. Martin Gerber will likely open for the Canes. His Save % is .912. He’ll be facing Daniel Alfredsson who is currently the #2 points scorer in the NHL with 52 points, 23 of which are goals. Additionally, on the front line, the Senators have to-be-Olympian Jason Spezza who has 47 points this season. Staal and Spezza will be teammates, both as alternates, on the Canadian Olympic team. Yeah, can you say good game? Ottawa has the stronger goalie and stronger front line. They are definitely the favorites, but it shouldn’t be an easy win for them. The Canes defense will have to come through big time if they want a win tonight. The Canes are coming off an OT loss to the Lightning, traveling to Ottawa, and have to play again tomorrow night back at home against the Flyers who currently have the same record in their last 10 games as Carolina. Both teams have 49 points after 35 games and a 7-2-1 record for their last 10. The Flyers have a better away record, but the Canes have a better home record. Yeah… another great game.

So, the Settlers of Catan, originally from Germany, has taken the board game world by storm. Apparently, it's quite popular and if you haven't heard about it until me, it's actually a little surprising. First, the cons: It really requires three or more people. Games can go from as short as 30 minutes to as long as a number of hours. There is a certain amount of luck involved for those who like strategy. There is a certain amount of strategy involved for those who like luck. Now, the pros: There is a certain amount of luck involved for those who like luck. There is a certain amount of strategy involved for those who like strategy. Randomly generated board, so no two games are ever the same. Multiple ways to win, so you are never completely out of the game. There is trading among players for those charismatic people. There is trading with the "bank" for those hermits. There are expansion packs if you do ever get bored. There's theivery involved for those who like a little evil. There are some random penalties involved for those who like a little misfortune of fate. So, the first thing is that the board is laid out randomly. This means that the land cards which are next to each other (and therefore, determine which resources can be obtained by a single settlement/city) change each time. Next, the numbers that determine the likelihood of a land card producing a resource are also quasi-random. Lastly, the ports (which allow for favorable trading with the bank) also are placed randomly. So, the initial setup of the board changes every game. The quantity of the combos has got to be in the millions resulting in a different game EVERY time. HOWEVER, the randomness lends itself to game. After the initial randomness of the setup, the players get to choose the placement of their first two settlements in a VERY fair way. This allows for players to strategize. If there's a rock quarry land card near a rock port (allowing for favorable trades with rock resources), one may choose to build there. The game begins. Each player rolls the dice to start his turn. The number combo resulting on the dice determines which land cards produce resources. Any player with a settlement on a land card with the number of the resulting dice throw receives a resource for that land type. The turn proceeds with trading (with other players or the bank) and then building (of roads, settlements cities or development cards). Play continues just like that. There are rules about roads, settlements, development cards, etc., but I'm not teaching you the game, just getting your engine started, hopefully. The object of the game is to get 10 points. Now, each players starts off with two points, one for each initial settlement. So, the game is really to get 8 points, but that doesn't sound as good and it's harder to count up points if you don't count the first two settlements. You can build the longest road or the largest army or both. You can build more settlements and upgrade them to cities. You can purchase development cards and get instant victory points. *OR* you can do any combination of any of the above to earn your 10 points. There's a "robber" that allows players to steal cards from other players and hinder the resources created by a land card. You can "steal" the longest road or largest army points by building a longer road or a bigger army than the player currently possesing the title. And any player hoarding resources or just unlucky enough to have more than 7 cards in his hand when a seven is rolled on the dice (most common dice combo), has to reduce his cards by half until he is at or below seven cards. That can be an evil misfortune of fate late in a game. Strategy has players ganging up on the player in the points lead. Stealing longest road or largest army titles can turn the game quickly. A roll of 7 can lend some elements of fate that can stem the tide, reverse some fortunes, or simply level a playing field. And then, there's always the luck of the dice. No matter how few times probability statistics say a 9 or a 6 or a 5 should come up, it's always amazing how you play that game it's just 9 after 9 after 9 after 9... you get the idea. It's easy to wrap your head around when you're actually play I promise. As the game starts out simple and gets more complex as you play. For example, you don't have to worry about cities or longest road or largest army in the beginning. After your fisrt game, you'll have the rules & gameplay down pat and then it will only be a matter of strategy and luck.

I got Sabrina NHL '06 for the Gamecube. I thought this was really just a present for her, but when I saw the Dynasty mode, I was intrigued. The thought of creating my own hockey franchise, managing and trading players and working the team up to stardom really got my engine started. I never would have guessed it. So, I'm starting slowly and just playing a season to get my skills up. I would really like to create some of the players that didn't make the Hurricane's line-up and get them in the game. Additionally, EA Sports obviously underestimated the Hurricanes this year. They have them ranked as one of the lowest teams in the game. Currently, the Hurricanes are ranked #2 in the Eastern Conference. They are obviously better than most of the teams out there, but EA doesn't have a number of stars in the game. They consider Stillman the star player. He's good, don't get me wrong, but Erik Cole and Eric Staal are going to be Olympians. Cole's breakaway speed is severely underrated. Staal's skills are completely wrong and far too low. They have Commodore moving at the speed of molasses and they're missing Ray Whitney, who apparently, makes a lot happen as the Hurricanes are 18 for 23 when he's on the ice. Their relatively small losing streak this season followed his injury. Lastly, the game auto-chooses HORRIBLE lines. What really blew my mind, was that the "best-choice" made by the game made five less than average lines and when I re-did them (to be closer to Peter Laviolette's actual lines), I made ALL the lines ABOVE average. Interestingly enough, I won my next game. Hmm... what a little chemistry will do for a team, huh? According to the press, that's actually Laviolette's theory, too. The 'Canes work hard to spend time as a team on AND off the ice. They try to have their families in the stands and have embraced the NHL's push to remember that professional sprts are about the FANS, not the teams, coaches, salaries, or players. EVERY professional league needs to take a queue from the NHL. Put in place some salary caps and quit charging fans an arm and a leg to see a game. Bring back players who LOVE to play and that's why they're playing. Get rid of attitudes and bring back teams. Shoot, maybe change some rules to make the games more interesting. The only other professional sport that seems to care about its fans is NASCAR... if they are sure to not let their new influx of fans make them too commercial, you'll see that sport continue to grow.

I asked for very functional things for Christmas this year. I find that when you don't your spouse to spend too much money on you, this is a much better solution than telling them you don't want anything. If you do that, they'll still buy you stuff you don't need. However, by asking for socks or gloves for work, you end up with an excellent feeling on Christmas day. Your spouse was able to buy you things and you can figure, you were going to buy these things anyway. That is not to say my wife didn't buy me anything fun. My favorite fun "toy" this year may surprise her. It's actually the super-bright LED keyring she got me. First, it's blue and I love blue light... cause it's blue and, if you haven't noticed, the URL is bluesteven. The keyring is cool, fun AND functional. I can't think of how many times I wish I carried a small flashlight on my belt. I don't because I already have my cell phone and usually have my Leatherman. Another thing on my belt would have people wondering if I live in a shed in the forest plotting on how to overthrow the government. So, this little handy light will come in very useful on my job and inside computer, which I tend to find myself inside a lot. My other fun "toy" from my wife is my board game, Settlers of Catan. Love Risk? This is better. Love Monopoly? This is better. Love strategy, luck, a randomly generated game board, multiple ways to win, and being declared "Lord of all..." if you do? This game is for you. It deserves it's own post and, will, hopefully get one today. My mother-in-law got me Luigi's Mansion, the launch title for the Gamecube. It's quite fun and easily playable in five minute chunks if you so desire with a feeling of accomplishment in those five minutes. I really wanted it to get all the inside jokes in Super Mario Sunshine that Angela lent me and Paper Mario: TTYD that Josh lent me. I promise to return both those soon. We joined the Mulders for Christmas dinner. The Elliotts (Rae's parents) came into town. Truth be told, prior to this festive holiday dinner, I was quite intimidated by Colonel Reverend Dr. Steven Elliott. Not because he is a reverend and a doctor and, recently, a colonel. No, but because in my relatively small interaction with him, he seemed reverent, contemplative, quiet and smart. He is still all those things, but he is no longer intidating. I have no great story, only that he's a fun guy to hang out with and I just needed to see him as a dad, grandad and father-in-law extraordinaire to appreciate that he's not just a pastor and Curtis' old boss. It helped that he played Settlers with Jordan (Rae's youngest brother) and Curtis and I. We played after dinner and late into the night. I was invited back on Monday and spent all afternoon playing more. They greatly enjoyed it and Curtis would love to see Settlers become a "poker night." I would, too. I left it over there for their enjoyment since it's not a very good game with only two players and Sabrina doesn't particularly enjoy it. Lastly, I got Sabrina NHL '06 for the Gamecube. This, too, deserves it's own post.

So, I've been trying to post for the past week, but I've been unsuccessful. Every time I start,I get interupted. It's always something truly more important like work or church or Sabrina, but still, I feel bad... no, worse, I feel like Josh. There's a number of things I want to post about, so, I think I will post them all separately and do my best to get them written today. Thus, I will have a mulitple post day to make up for my absence.

Now, I'm not really an American Idol fan. I tuned in when I heard a North Carolinian was doing particularly well and I rooted for Clay just because he was from Raleigh. But, this year, I have a particular interest. This year, I have family that made it to California. My cousin, John Munro, has made it to Hollywood. Unfortunately, I found, literally, just this minute, that John made it through the first audition in Hollywood, but was cut from the second. All in all, he says, he's glad he did it and it was a good experience. So, for those of you were hoping to help me root on my family to stardom... I'm sorry. Still, it was cool while it lasted.

Now, it's important to note that I had quite an impressive array of tech toys when I was growing up. My dad has always been into technology. Somehow, my parents were able to get us a Commodore 64 and an Atari 2600. I remember programming on the 64 and playing games on it and the Atari. Yeah, I really was programming when I was like 5 or 6... nothing impressive, but more than my older cousins could figure out how to do. Around that time, my aunt who enjoyed spoiling me bought me a Deluxe Edition Nintendo complete with Zapper and ROB the robot. Although we didn't get a Super Nintendo, my friends did and had quite the library of games. I did manage to get a hand me down Genesis somewhere along the way. My cousin and I actually won a TurboGrafx 16 when we entered a contest in a newspaper that, I suspect, barely anyone else entered, but required you to answer questions about various games of which he had beaten half the list and I had beaten the other half. He kept it. I got a Game Gear the Christmas after that. All throughout this, my parents bought a few computers and I played PC games. I played Wolfenstein-3D, which is DOOM's predecessor. I actually got bored with FPS games before most people even started playing them. My roommate in college had a Nintendo 64 and a Super Nintendo. Somehwere in college, I purchased a Playstation to play Final Fantasy 8 & 9 when they didn't release them for the PC like they did with FF7. I also bought a Nintendo 64 to play F-Zero and Zelda. After we got married, Sabrina and I bought a Gamecube and my good friend owns an X-box and a PS2. He'd bring them over and we'd play whatever the hottest 2 player games were at the time. Throughout this time, I was buidling my own computer systems and still am. I stay high enough in technology to play some of the most demanding games (with regards to computer systems) on the market today. So, I realize that my video game fanaticism isn't really that odd. They've just been a big part of my life. So, a few months ago, I was surfing the web in the hopes of finding some old games that I never had the money to buy as a kid or never had the computing power to play. We're talking some EGA (that's the way we used to refer to monitors) games, some old arcade games... anything to give me a nice throw back to the good ol' days of gaming and maybe even help me realize some little childhood dreams of playing the games I only looked at on the shelves. I mentioned to Sabrina that they should find a way to re-license these games and package them for people to purchase for less than $5. So, Sabrina and I joined Gametap. It's basically a desktop program/GUI to access a game library of over 300 games ranging from arcade to Commodore 64 to recent PC games like Splinter Cell and, of course, it's a monthly fee to do so . Basically, Sabrina was sold by the fact that they had Burgertime. It was the first game added to our favorites. I was sold by a number of pinball games I've wanted to play for years (turns out, I'm quite the pinball fan), a number of Atari 2600 games, and other recent PC games like Beyond Good & Evil. Gametap is owned by TBS, or Turner Broadcasting System. TBS is owned by Time Warner. I expect to eventually get a discount off this service if it succeeds. This is where you come in. Visit Gametap and peruse the titles. You may find a number of titles that you would gladly pay to play. Even if you don't but wouldn't mind playing a little, use this little pormotional code to extend your free trial from 2-weeks to 1 month. Just enter "digitallife" in the promotion code. It also knocks the first 3 months down to $10/mo. instead of $15/mo. I would personally love to see a service like this be successful, stick aound and continue to grow their library. The program is done very well as you can download the larger games (like recent PC games) in the background. So, you download a few arcade or Atari games (in seconds) and play those for 20-30 minutes while Splinter Cell downloads. It's great! Also, some of the little video clips that play while it's connecting to the server are hilarious. I should note that it does NOT force you to watch anything, it simply provides some video (with Gametap commercials sometimes) to watch while you're waiting for stuff. I found myself sitting at a menu with a game 100% ready to go and one click away from playing, but yet, I'm watching the funny videos. Give it a try for a month. I guarantee, you'll get at least a few minutes of glorious nostalgia.

So, after speaking with my friend Mike for a little while yesterday, I realized how much I miss EQ II. I didn't think I did and I certainly enjoyed the break, but I've really only experienced the first half of the game. Still, I know my wife has been quite happy about having me for herself for those extra few hours a week. So, herein lies my problem. I've quite EQ, but my pre-paid year doesn't end until January of 2006. I can go back. Because of the need to buy a new car, I would not want to spend the money, but someone has offered the cost to me as a gift. So, with that, I would get to play for free. Now, it's a matter of time. I am extremely efficient when I play. I rarely get on without accomplishing a great deal more than your average player. Other people in the game have actually comments how rarely they seem me on, but how I would always seem to be keeping up pretty well. Still, I could never give the amount of time I needed to keep up with these people who played 20-40 hours a week with my <10. Eventually, I would start falling behind and evetually be too far behind to be in the same group or go to the same places in the EQ world. So, while Sabrina and I talk about it, I was hoping some of you could help me decide whether to go back or not.