Inaugural Memories: 1977

Thirty-two years ago: On inauguration day in 1977 I was sick and stayed home from school. Recall, if you will (if you’re that old), that this was a time before cable television. There were three major networks, one public network, and a few independents in the Houston area. An unelected president (Gerald Ford) was running … Read more

Flickr Pro Account

In December I got an email that said my “Flickr Pro Account is about to expire”. It has been a while since I paid to upgrade my account, so I wasn’t surprised. Then it told me “Beginning January 2009, AT&T Internet members will no longer receive free Flickr Pro.” Um, I was getting free Flickr … Read more

Here Goes Nothing

Which is to say, here goes quite a bit. I’m about to try to update my WordPress 2.5 to 2.7. I just did that over on colonelpod.com with the click of a button, because I had that boy on SimpleScripts. And that’s nice.  But I haven’t converted this one, yet.  The one thing SimpleScripts doesn’t … Read more

BGG.Con

It’s been over a month since I went to BGG.Con – the BoardGameGeek.com‘s annual game-o-rama, and I need to get down in print the games I played, so here they go.

This year my procrastinating paid off. I ended up splitting a suite with four people, minimizing costs. I managed to never actually meet one of the roommates – the geeks don’t spend many waking moments not playing the games.

Unfortunately, there was no general wi-fi available, and no signal reachable from the main game room. Apparently there was a twitter contingency, but I was unreachable and unaware.

So, here a listing of all the games I played.

Yspahan.jpgYspahan – I have played this before, and own it. One of the many “Ys” named games from Ystari. It has an interesting dice mechanic. You are creating goods in a small town and trying to ship them out on the caravan.

Agricola.jpgAgricola – I finally got to play last years trendy game a little bit before the Con, but played it some more here. Certainly a good game with quite a bit of replay-ability. Nice interaction with other players in access to resources. Building your small farm-house, family, fields and livestock.

Desctruct3.jpgDestruct 3 – The open-area lobby always has many dexterity games set up. This one was new to us. You set up a tower, jenga-like. You roll a dice to choose one of three tools. You try to knock the tower over but not too far (off the board is minus points). This was a fun one, would be great fun for young boys.

Airships.jpgAirships – I met my current regular game group last year at this Con, and I’ve played this game several times with them. I ended up teaching this to several different people at the Con. It’s an easy to learn, and not too long game of building zeppelins.

Hamburgum.jpgHamburgum – My high school friend and college roommate Manuel came from SoCal for the Con. He was only there Thursday and Friday and was brain-fried; he was amazed I could handle two more days. He saw that I had played this game before and had me teach it. I like this game more each time I play – an interesting rondel mechanic and interconnections of actions that force you into a balanced game. And beer is one of the resources – how could that not be good?

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Roland Burris, (D – Ill?)

The Illinois Governor accused of wanting sizable favors/bribes in return for appointment to the US Senate, Bolgojevic, has just announced an appointment of Ronald Burris to that position. The president elect and the Senate are on vacation, as is most of the political media between Christmas and New Year. I just saw Mr. Burris on … Read more