Turkeys and Angels

Wow, so James Cameron has hatched a new idea: He wants to do a new movie (yes!) with Battle Angel Alita (YES!), and then he wants to have the main character be CGI and the rest of the actors be humans....

(shit?)

Well, if anyone can pull it off, you know Cameron can. The guy absolutely broke ground with CGI in T2, and I'm sure he can do it again. Of course, he did produce that one dud, but hey, the guy had to get it out of his system, am I right? Am I right? You betcha.

As for the Turkey Day Festivities, most holidays now boil down to Run Evan Run. This means my grandmothers (approximate drive time: 1.5 hrs one way), then to Ericka's mom's house, then to wherever. That last part is rarely home, and this time it was The Festival of Trees, presented by the local Children's Hospital.

And while my heart didn't exactly find christmas (as the tagline goes), it was great to finally (FINALLY) hang out with my good bud Jeremy and his fam, and I also got to enjoy Annie riding the merry go round and the, uh, car-go-round (it was the same concept, except the kids were strapped into cars...and no parents standing beside them). It is also worth mentioning that said good bud provided the tickets to get into the event, and I greatly appreciate the sentiment. I wish we could've stayed longer, but the experience was at the end of a very long day, one I am frankly glad to see coming to a close. Holidays are grand, but relaxation is to be cherished!

Speaking of good buds to hang with, I finally got to see my cousin Jim at my grandma's, and I know he reads this blog. Therefore: You must email me and we must get together ASAP. You are far too cool to not be seen on a regular basis, this includes you and me doing stuff (paintball, et al), and the fam (card/board games, etc).

And with that, I'm going to go waste some time with time wasting video games. Ericka hits the sales at crack-ass dawn tomorrow, so we'll see how she fares in the aftermath.

Crunchy, Even In Milk

Man, where was this shop when I needed it. This seems like such a simple idea (aren't the best ones always?) and I instantly want to run one ;) I'm a cereal lover, and lived on it and peanut butter for about a year when I lived with my sister. Hey, single guys know two things: How to make cereal and peanut butter sandwiches. Some get all crazy with Ramen noodles, but I like meals I can fix in 30 seconds.

I pulled this off Baily's blog, whom I suggest be read on a frequent basis.

Zoom Bang Bah

Well, what an interesting interactive painting.

I recently tried the LOTR Online CCG again, and found it just as frustrating at the last time I visited. Many (many) moons ago I purchased a starter pack, and evidently they've moved on to bigger and brighter things. Did I mention that the Advanced Tutorial supposedly lurks somewhere on the website and not in the game interface like the Beginner Tutorial?

Am I the only one who thinks that is insane?

Meanwhile, I finally got to divulge a few tidbits regarding the next Star Chamber expansion, so that's cool. It's coming together nicely, and I'm excited to finally play with some new stuff in the game.

After seeing the coolness that is Half Life 2, and enjoying the mindless carnage of Counter Strike: Source, I've taken some time in investing in what is available in regards to mod creation with the new Source engine. While Doom 3's is nice and all, it seems that if you want to build something truly interactive and story driven, you'll find that Half Life's (that is to say, Valve's) tools are much more condusive to this type of thinking. I found this forum and hope that it might point me in the direction of some mods in progress. I've built quite a few maps in my day, and should be able to crank out a few for the right project. Very exciting stuff, but then again this is all just fanboy gushing, no actual work or direction in regards to where it might go.

My car was fixed today, which is nice, and yes it was the alternator. Afterwards Ericka went to the store and stocked up bigtime, as you never know when the bomb might drop and we'll be cut off from carbinated beverages.

I also get to start my new job on Monday, and to say that I'm excited is to put it mildly. I'm just raring to get started and make a difference somewhere, something I don't think I've had a real shot at doing in about a year or more. As ORNL's inertia of shutting me out of future projects began to grind to a halt (the end result being my leaving that place), it became apparent that they didn't want to listen and that I had no real say in what was going on. This new place is not quite a blank canvas, but one with a few tears and cracks. To patch those up the way I see fit and recommend new strategies I already see forming in my head, well that's just goodness that's tough to put into words.

Wow, Thanksgiving is Thursday. I guess I certainly know what to be thankful for, eh?

Pro Tours and Car Adventures

So there I was at Friday Night Magic at my local card shop (The Round Table, with a freakishly bad web page to back it up). I was winning with my white weenie deck (oh how fun it is to win with jank...that is to say, cards most people think are bad or unplayable) when the shop guy said "You playing in the qualifier tomorrow?"

Qualifier? A Pro Tour qualifier?

Well, for those who don't know, Magic the Gathering has a Pro Tour where people actually play that silly game for cash. Yes, the green stuff adults give to local municipalities and credit card companies. So my chance for some of that green, doing something I'm both good at and enjoy, well shit I'm all for that.

I'd also never imagined that a Pro Tour qualifier would be happening in Knoxville. Most of these events happen in Nashville, a frustratingly 3-3.5 hour drive away. So I inquired the time, the format (Sealed Deck, one of my best/favorite formats) and after a little wife begging and promises of taking home the $500 prize, I was off first thing in the morning.

Warning #1: The battery light had come on the night previous. The voltage meter hadn't moved, but the battery light was on. Weird.

So I arrive and prepare myself for a day of geek bliss. Hours of magic, grinding it out with other pros and scrubs alike, ready to mise my way to victory.

Mise is a new geek/Magic term which means basically winning when you shouldn't have, topdecking something crazy (and/or winning the game with it), and other various definitions all circulating around that fact.

There is also a very interesting process to sealed deck in a Pro Tour Qualifier (TM) environment: You don't keep the cards you first open. You open a "Tournament Pack" with lands, 3 rares, 12 uncommons, 30 commons and 30 lands (total: 75 cards), and 2 booster packs (1 rare, 3 uncommons, 11 commons each). You then register these cards with a big sheet with all of the cards listed on it, and hand that back to the tourney organizers. You then get one of those registered lists back randomly. You build your deck from such. This basically assures you won't cheat and can't cheat--someone else has already assured that if your picks are crap, you're stuck with said crap.

To make many long stories short: The cards I got back were mediocre and my heart sank as I had no real winners. I had a few good cards, but nothing that said "Damn son, you're in the top 8 for sure." The top 8 finishers got to duke it out in a Rochester draft who then play one another ina single elimination round to determine who gets first.

So after three wins, one loss, and one draw (we ran out of time), I made it into the top 8 with a 3-1-1 record. (Officially: 7th place) What's really odd is that my opponent in the 5th round of play had the exact same record and got 9th place. Sucks to be him, I guess. I was really worried I would have to tuck my tail and go home, forced to explain to my wife that I didn't even make it into the final rounds of the tournament I had played in all day long.

So after them explaining to all of the newcomers what Rochester is and how it works, we proceeded. I got a pretty good deck and no real bombs. Bombs are game changers, swingers, and winners that own once they are in play. I got pretty much none of those. But in retrospect, the deck was solid and I had a few key cards that could win me games. I was sure I had a real shot.

The first match was against a guy named Morelock. I can't recall his first name, but Morelock is the same last name of my former boss, so kudos to good memory. Anyway, the funny thing about Rochester drafts is that you see everything your opponents draft. And he drafted some amazing shit. Just beautiful cards tha worked well together. I knew it would be a tough matchup, to say the least. And it was. But there was something else I had on my side: Tempo. I had so many early threats that even if he had late-game monsters, I could put such pressure on him early that he would be forced to chump block those little threats instead of smashing face with the little ones.

And that was how it went for game one, then game two he pulled out a narrow victory. The last game we went to time, and then Sudden Death. You can't draw a game in the Top 8, so the rules are as such: When time is over, there are 5 more turns. At the end of those turns, the player with the highest life total wins. Here's how that game went: Turn 2, I play a beatstick. He concedes. Ain't that some shit?

The next game, me now in the Top 4, was tougher, and a critical game 3 mistake cost me the game. I curse at it thinking of it, but am proud (along with my hunk of metal, ie commemorative pin) to have taken part. I got half a box of cards for my efforts.

So that concludes my PTQ story. I think my 5th or 6th time actually playing Magic with cardboard after such a long interlude (read: 5 years) and placing Top 4 in a Pro Tour Qualifier really says something. What's really funny is finding my DCI Ranking, still intact after all of these years! Wow, 1752 Limited Rating. That's really good for those who don't know. As a new player you begin at 1600, and gain 8 to 10 points a whack for a victory. That ranking information also shows you how many times I've played over the years, including 48 Constructed Events and 10 Limited events.

So much for the $500, but I think my effort was a rather good one. Now, about that car...

The battery light remains on when I start the car up, but by this time the voltage meter has dropped. By the time I get on the highway (about 3 minutes later), the lights were dimming. Oh shit.

So I am forced to pull off on the next exit, and then proceed to call and ask my brother in law for help. He arrives a half hour later, complete with no jumper cables. WTF?

"No problem, man, I make my own." Oh yeah. Did I mention he's an electrician? So he busts out some wire, #10 copper or something, and proceeds to make jumper cables. So we then we hatch The Plan:

We need to get to Carmax so they can fix this on Monday. That's about, oh, 15-20 miles away. The problem is, we quickly find out, we can make it no more than 3-4 miles before the car battery dies on us again. So here goes the cycle: Charging, running like a bat out of hell until it dies completely, then doing it again.

During the course of this crazy plan, we run red lights, get a visit from Knoxville's finest, and finally make it all the way to Carmax, where we go home exhausted after a 2 hour ordeal. I hope to never have the privilege of doing that stupid shit ever again.