- Saturday I took Jody’s car to get an oil change and car wash at The Car Spa. I met an older woman in the waiting area with a graceful grey Afghan named, Annie. Afghans have the softest coat I have felt on a dog. Both woman and dog were gentle spirits. It was a welcome treat.
- Saturday evening, Jody and I drove to Oklahoma. Sunday after lunch, we fed the cattle, which I enjoy. Then we went out in the wooded pasture to try to find one of the cows who did not come up to feed. Jody’s mom thought she might be out trying to have her calf, but she wanted to make sure. We split up and walked all around through the trees and brush. I spotted the cow up the side of a hill past the creek and called Jody over. The cow had afterbirth hanging from her which meant she had the calf recently. We looked around for a little while and couldn’t find it. The momma cows normally hide the babies while they go feed, and we split up again just to find it and make sure it was okay. I went back South over an area I had already looked over. I climbed down into a little draw and looked around. I spotted the new calf under scraggly tree in amongst the rocks and leaves. It was so perfectly camouflaged that I completely missed it before. It was sitting there motionless with its eyes closed, and I thought it was dead, being the naive pessimist I am. When I yelled to the others that I had found it, the tiny brown calf opened its black eyes to look at me but didn’t move a muscle. I stood there and looked at it and it looked back at me without concern. It was just doing what it was supposed to do. Waiting quietly for its mother to return. I thought that we creatures of Earth are so perfectly suited to our world.
Personal
Enumerating the weekend
Attention board game geeks: Settlers of Catan
Every month at my apartment complex there is a “game night”. It’s hosted by this couple who work for a group called “Cares”, a non-profit that tries to build community in large apartment complexes. The idea behind Cares is that if you make the complex feel more like home the tenants will want to take better care of things and stay longer. That saves the landlord money.
We have a young married couple on site who run all the events. They’re very nice. My guess is the complex gives them a free or sharply discounted apartment in return for their services. I can see the point behind trying to build community in a 300 unit complex, although every time I go to a Cares event there are usually fewer than eight people and most of them are regulars like me who can only be coaxed from their apartments to play board games. The last couple times I’ve gone it’s been a total sausage party, 4-5 guys and occasionally a couple women playing Scrabble. Out of the three times I’ve gone in the last three months, we’ve played Risk once and Settlers of Catan twice. I’m new to Settlers of Catan, but it’s one of the best games I’ve ever played. It’s Chess meets Risk. Although there is no combat, it is very strategic and competitive. The basic idea is to get to ten victory points before anyone else. You start out building roads and villages and each village gives you one point and helps you to collect resources like ore, wood, sheep, timber, and clay every time the dice are rolled. These resources help you build or buy development cards. Like Chess, there are several ways to win, and as you play you will see the most popular strategic gambits: the race for the longest road (2 victory points), the race for the largest army (2 victory points), etc. Many people go all out for the development cards, which like Chance cards in Monopoly can often throw you some sort of bonus. For example, there is a card called “Monopoly” that allows you to strip all of one resource out of every player’s hand. The game itself is relatively new as board games go, having been created in 1997 by a small publisher, so many people have not heard of it. It will become one of those classic games, if it hasn’t already. It’s that good.
Poking around online, I stumbled across a free knock-off of Settlers of Catan called Sea3D that you can play over the Internet. It’s a direct translation of the game into digital form produced by Jason Fugate, a programmer at EA in Chicago. It even just looks like a board game on your computer since it uses 3D representations of the game pieces complete with wood grain. In addition to a fantastic iteration of Settlers, Fugate created a ladder ranking and online game matching system, so you can actually compete against players from all over the world. The game application allows you to host your own Settlers matches as well as join games hosted by other players. In some ways, I wish I hadn’t found this because I’ve spent several hours playing since last week. Last night I laid awake at two in the morning trying to figure out why my strategy using the sheep port didn’t pan out. I think I’m coming out too strong in the beginning which results in unwanted attention from my opponents who check me with the Robber and slow me down. The Robber is placed on a tile whenever someone rolls a 7 or plays a Soldier card. If the Robber is on one of your tiles he can keep you from producing resources until the piece is moved.
If you’re interested in playing The Settlers of Catan Sea3D is be a good way to start. It’s still more fun to play in person since you can enjoy the petty little rivalries and arguments that inevitably take place as players become frustrated watching their fortunes change.
Just a tourist passing through
Yesterday afternoon I unbent myself from the computer and pumped up the bike to take a ride around Dallas where I live. It ended up being a three hour ride around downtown, which to add the confusion, is also called “uptown” in parts. The main difference between uptown and downtown is that uptown is where the rich, white folk live. So it seems. It is apparently very important to differentiate, even though it’s all central Dallas when you get right down to it.
It was fun and exhausting to ride around and explore the area. I have no idea how many miles I went, but my ass is still sore from pushing my out of shape self around the city.
Most of the ride was uneventful, but I did have a few interesting experiences. When I crossed a creek near the Infomart, I spotted a tire-sized snapping turtle coming up for air in the green, rain-swollen creek. I knew I should have brought my camera, but from where I was it wouldn’t have made a good picture.
A short time later I went down this closed off road and passed under a rail line where a homeless black man was curled up sleeping. As I rode past, he bolted awake and leapt up at me like he thought I might be trying to rob him or mess with his shit. It scared the crap out of me, and I pushed on past the piles of wet garbage as quick as I could. As I looked back, he sat there on the edge of the concrete wall looking either very scared or very pissed off leaning forward with his hands steadying him on each side. It’s hard to tell what blaring, blood-shot eyes mean. Who cares, I’m sure you have to be one vigilant mother to sleep outside in this town. I felt ashamed for disturbing him with my clueless, whitebread jaunt through the city. Just a tourist passing through while other people sleep under bridges in the mud.
Life, Love & Marriage
It seems like everyone I know is getting married. Today, on Breen’s blog I read a post written in typically terse Breen fashion: “Sarah is now my fiancé [sic].” That is great news for Sarah and Breen. They are a great for each other. Having known him before and after Sarah, it is obvious that she makes him very happy. Maybe some day soon little Breens will make their debut. That would kick ass. Congratulations and good luck to you guys.
I can read Wikipedia for hours
I kept track of some of the articles I poured over on Wikipedia. It’s an amazing thing. WikiGnomes (People who make minor edits) Konqueror, the GPL web browser. Puerto Rico (game). Raw food diet, because I was unclear.
What’s the haps on the craps?
I had a pretty eventful week, for me anyway. Wednesday night my mom came up to Dallas for business and I went up to Garland after work and had a spaghetti dinner with her and my cousin at my cousin’s apartment. Since I hadn’t seen my mom since Thanksgiving she brought up a few Christmas gifts. That was a nice surprise. Maybe we should take all the Christmas presents we get and spread them out over the year?
Thursday morning I woke up after thirty minutes of playing tag with the snooze button. When I got up I found that some of the changes John had made to the listserv had prevented mail traffic to the list. This was a stressful thing early in the morning, and I had to put that fire out before heading into work.
With Jody out of town in Austin, I had to find something to do thursday night. Luckily, I had made plans with James and Melissa to go out, and we went to this pub called The Drunken Monk over by SMU, which James refers to as Southern Millionaires University. It must be noted that James is technically an SMU student since he is in the video game design program there in Plano. The pub was packed and we had a hard time getting a table, although as I said at the time, thursday is the new friday, tuesday is the new monday. It’s amazing how much of the work I do during the week is squeezed into tuesday and wednesday, which seem to be my most productive days. I can’t be the only one.
James and Melissa are a nice couple as well as great people on their own. I’m glad they’re marrying each other and asked a lot about the whole deal since I don’t know a lot of other people who are getting married. It’s a good feeling to see two people with love for one another. We talked and hung out and drank a few beers. I’m excited about being a groomsman, although I’m glad it’s still a few months away since such ceremony makes me immediately nervous due to the obvious gravity. I’m probably overthinking it.
Return to the ATX
I’ll be coming back to Austin this weekend for a whirlwind return. I have a few errands to run Saturday and will be staying with my friend, Kyle. We’ll probably head out to Dave & Busters for some large-size beers, which seems to be Kyle’s preferred watering hole. Hopefully, Shelus and a few of the NCSoft crew will be able to make it out. Then it’s back to Dallas Sunday for dinner with my Aunt Becky.
By the way, the company where I work has season tickets to the Stars and Mavericks, so I got to see the Stars play against St. Louis Wednesday. It was a great game. Tied up, went into overtime, then ended in a shootout with Dallas winning. Hockey is one of those games I have a hard time following. At least I can see a basketball as it moves around the court. I have the hardest time following the puck.
Minutiae
1. Running on impulse. I broke down today and bought a black, 60gb iPod video. Right now, I have 20gb loaded, which is equivalent to 15 days of music. This is my one big gadget of the year, having resisted a new computer, a digital SLR, and many many other equally unnecessary purchases. Now my last remaining excuse for using the exercise facilities is gone. I still hate Apple and they’re effete hipster smugness. Fact is, the competition just plain sucks for portable digital media. The gadget industry is ceding the entire territory to Apple, when many people (like me) just want a good alternative. It’s not that difficult. The “iPod alternative” needs to have a spacious hard drive, some sort of display so I can tell what’s playing, and a head phone jack. It’s really that simple. Make it super cheap and the iPod has some serious competition. As it is, you can get an iPod or an incredibly lame alternative for the same price. What kind of choice is that? The main draws: I needed something with massive hard-drive space and small size, and nothing really comes close except the iPod. Add to that the video playback, simple interface, and iTunes mojo, and it’s a no brainer. By the way, the clerks at Best Buy are ridiculous. No, I don’t want a service plan for the 3rd time. No, I don’t care about the accessories or anything else you want to upsell me on. No, I don’t want to bond about having an iPod. It’s a consumer device, not an opportunity for group identity reinforcement.
2. While driving down the road during lunch, in front of a high school an inexplicable animated sign advertises: “Now presenting Urinetown.”
3. Tuesday at the apartment after work, while I wait for the elevator with the day’s mail I observe a large-nosed girl in a ponytail pass by in full workout gear complete with white iPod earbuds. I can hear her opening the door to the workout room, but then she’s back again walking angrily past in the reverse direction. “Full?” I ask. She keeps walking and yells, “I guess I’ll just be fat forever!” then slams the double doors. I couldn’t help laughing, but only because she was completely serious and not actually fat.
Is your man on the floor? If he ain’t, let me know.
I’ve had that song in my head for days. And, I like it. Please go away, Chris Brown.
The kind of thing only I should be worrying about
I’m about ready to toss the current “look” of the site. I’m going to strip out the current theme and stylesheet and start with the basics. The cluttered nature of the site is really bothering me more and more lately, so here’s the plan:
1. Completely strip out the current styling. Reduce everything to the WordPress markup.
2. Keep two-column layout arrangement with some sort of header
3. Markup will contain only arrangement of DIV’s and content.
4. Develop new stylesheet
How the new theme will be different:
1. Main content (both columns) should fit within 700px or less.
2. Color pallette should be black and white, specifically black text on white.
3. Design will contain my own original drawings and art work. I want to create a more humanistic feel.