I finally cranked out a logo for SonicChicken:
Pretty weak, I’ll admit, but it’s good enough for the time being. I already knew that I was no artist, but I was surprised by how difficult this was. (Please, try not to burst out laughing…) Any graphically-inclined readers with time on their hands are free to improve upon my initial concept. 😀
Tonight I started reading James Carville’s Had Enough? A Handbook for Fighting Back, and just a few pages into it I found this bit of humor:
“You know, back in 2000 a Republican friend of mine warned me that if I voted for Al Gore and he won, the stock market would tank, we’d lose millions of jobs, and our military would be totally overstretched. You know what: I did vote for Al Gore, he did win, and I’ll be damned if all those things didn’t come true.”
😆 This doesn’t seem to be out in paperback yet, but it is available at the Sacramento Public Library.
Back in August I picked up Run for your Life, Candyman!, a hilarious parody of the children’s game, Candyland. We’ve had fun playing it, but we went through the pad of candyman status sheets already. Since the publisher has explicitly granted permission to copy the status sheet, I’m posting it here so I don’t have to go hunting for it next time I run out of these.
Last Friday I heard a rumor that Java City was moving out of Modoc Hall. I’ve now verified that the managment is investigating this, and it’s highly likely that they will shut down operations in Modoc Hall at the end of the spring 2006 semester. I haven’t been able to get any information about what will happen to the space, especially with regard to the OBCZ.
I originally started this post because of the game store locator that I learned about via the ‘Geek. The store locator relies on user-supplied store information, so if your favorite game shop isn’t listed go ahead and add it!
This would have been a pretty short post, but while I was checking out the website hosting the store locator I found out that the author is Matthew Gray , one of the BGG admins. I read the Games section of his blog and stumbled across a post about BoardGameGeek Recommendations. I already knew about Geek ratings on games, and I have used “GeekBuddy Analysis” extensively for purchase advice; however, Matthew’s post was where I learned about the improved games rating page — very cool!
So, how is this an improvement over the regular GeekBuddy analysis? The biggest difference is that with GB analysis, you start with a particular game that you may be interested in and see how your buddies rate it. The improved page shows all games that your buddies have rated. This can result in a huge number of games, so there are several filters that you can apply: only show games that you don’t own and/or haven’t rated; only show games on your wish list; and require a minimum number of ratings. Great stuff! I just wish I had known about it a few days ago when I was working on my Christmas list…
Now, there are a few potential improvements that could be made. Clicking on the sortable column headers clears any filter settings you’ve entered, which can be a real drag. Another issue comes up if you filter by a particular GeekBuddy list: all the list members’ names show up (which is cool!) but they have no whitespace separating them, so,the,browser,sees,the,list,as,a,gigantically,long,word,with,a,bunch,of,commas,in,it,which,makes,the,browser,display,them,poorly! This works fine as long as you only have 10-20 buddies on a list, but once your buddy list starts widening the browser window it can get pretty ugly. (It’s especially bad if you enable the “Include buddies of buddies” feature on a large list.) One final thing I’d really like to see is a setting to filter out game expansions, which Matthew has already suggested.
In spite of the previous paragraph, I think the improved games rating page is awesome. Thanks for putting this together, Matthew!
An engineer died and ended up in Hell. She was not pleased with the level of comfort in Hell, so she began to redesign and build improvements. After a while, they had flush toilets, air conditioning, and escalators. Everyone grew very fond of her.
One day God called Satan to mock him: “So how are things down there in Hell?”
Satan replied happily, “Hey, things are great! We’ve got air conditioning and toilets and escalators, and there’s no telling what this new engineer is going to come up with next!”
God, surprised by this, “What?!? You’ve got an engineer? That’s a mistake. She should never have gotten down there in the first place. Send her back up here!”
“Not a chance,” replied Satan. “I like having an engineer around, and I’m keeping her!”
God threatened, “Send her up here right now or I’ll sue!”
Satan laughed and answered, “Yeah, right. And just where are you going to get a lawyer?”
Holy electric bill, Batman! The Christmas light video making the Internet rounds is an actual display from last year! I assumed it was done with some video trickery, and I still thought it was pretty cool. But if that’s something you could really do on your own, that’s worth several million points out of ten!!! See the “Update” section at the bottom of the article for details.
Also, I was able to read the instructions last night and again this morning. It appears that the WonderlandChristmas site was suffering from slashdot effect and was temporarily crushed.
Holly (Daniel’s fiance) has an intriguing cooking technique shown on her blog. “Coconut creme brule” sounds tasty! Hopefully she’ll post the recipe…
When we first moved back to Sacramento a few months ago, one of our first priorities was finding a purveyor of that great American staple–pizza! We checked the yellow pages and found a Round Table nearby, so we tried them. The place was nearly deserted, and we soon found some of the reasons: the service wasn’t very good, and the pizza was worse. Thinking that maybe they were having a bad night, we gave them another chance about a week later, but they blew that one also. The staff was too busy chatting to take our order when we walked up to the counter, and then they brought us a pizza that wasn’t fully cooked. 😡
A few days later my wife and I were driving around the neighborhood. Tucked into a corner of a nearby stripmall I noticed a sign, “Wenelli’s Pizza.” It looked kind of quirky and interesting, so we decided to check it out. It turned out to be the most incredible pizza place I’ve ever tried! It’s a small family-owned place with space for about 40 people, and it’s usually pretty busy, although we’ve never had to stand around waiting for a table. (Now we know why Round Table down the street is always empty.) The pizza is excellent and the service is friendly and personal. They have some good beers on tap, as well as Budweiser and Coors Lite. 😉
Wenelli’s Pizza
4215 Arden Way (map)
Sacramento, CA 95864
(916) 482-1008
I’ve already written several posts on BookCrossing, my local library, some of the books I’ve read, etc. So I guess the next pastime that I’ll remark on is reading. This one will be a bit trickier because there are several related (but distinct) tags that I use for these topics.
BookCrossing is a very cool idea: You read a book, stick a seemingly random number on the flyleaf (along with the BX web address), and leave the book where somebody is liable to find (and read) it. They can then go to the BX web site, enter the number from the flyleaf, and write a journal entry about the book. Then they leave the book where somebody is liable to find (and read) it, et cetera, et cetera, and so forth. To see the books I’ve released or found or whatever, check out my BX bookshelf.
If you don’t want to leave a book “just lying around”, there are organized crossing zones set up especially to collect and disseminate BookCrossing books. In fact, one of my co-workers and I set up an OBCZ in the building where I work. I stop by every few days to see what people are dropping off or picking up, or maybe just to have a cup of coffee and chat. I also post news about the OBCZ here from time to time.
I’ve written several posts about the Sacramento Public Library, especially my neighborhood branch, the Arden-Dimick library at Watt & Northrop. Sometimes these are book-related, but I’ve also posted about the library’s web catalog, the community room, or non-book media such as DVD’s.
Finally, since I did use the “book” tag on this post, I should write about one of the books I’m currently reading: Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. I’ve only finished Volume I so far, which covers Pip’s childhood and apprenticeship. When I last closed the book, Pip was in a carriage bound for London. I hope to finish this soon so I can discuss it with Joseph, before he forgets all the details!