The Lords of Sargoff

As mentioned in the previous blog entry, we had Chipotle today. They had sent around a sign up sheet so people could get what they want (chicken burrito with pinto beans). Today, the burritos came in a box, each with that person's name written on it. And here I discovered the problem - none of them had my name on it. Then, there were two burritos that had "Vicki" written on it, though there is only one Vicki. Thus, I assumed one of them was mine. She had gotten black beans, and opened one of the burritos up to discover black beans, and I took the other one, only to discover, of course, that it also had black beans. So, I don't know if the burrito I ordered got given to someone else, or never made. Oh well. My burrito was wonderful.

Anyway, that's probably one of the least interesting blog paragraphs ever, huh? Yeah. Pretty much.

Well, I finished the seventh Harry Potter last night. Literally about a minute before hopping online for our regularly schedule Everquest time. I liked the book, but won't say anything about it, except that, overall, I think I rank the seven books like so: 5-6-7-4-3-2-1. I think. I'm sure I'll reread the series at some point, and will have to reconsider the order.

That being said, I won't have a lot of time for reading in the near future, because I'm going to be doing more writing. I'm starting writing another story, this one the longest and most ambitious yet. It is titled (though this may change) The Lords of Sargoff, and has the potential to reach novel length. Whether it will reach that potential is yet to be seen. I've filled over thirteen pages of notebook paper with notes for it (and I write small). I've completed the rough draft of the first chapter, which is about 9 pages single spaced in Microsoft Word (thus about 18 pages of novel length). It's quite possible that, after some more tweaking of the chapter, that I will post it here (or at least a link to it here; that's a bit long for a blog entry). It is a fantasy story, dealing with another world, some weird creatures, and other stuff. Who knows if it will be interesting or not. :)

Anyway, Friday is here, and card day is tomorrow, so life is good. :)

Harry Potter and Order for Burritos

Not all too exciting of a week here so far. :) My wife is meeting me for lunch today, we'll probably just go to Subway or something like that, which is perfectly fine with me. Tomorrow, my company is ordering in Chipotle for us. Mmmm.... Makes me hungry already.

I applied for two more jobs today. As always, who knows if anything will come from them. But I can always hope. :)

As reported in the Mac Man Minutes, we lost our softball game yesterday, though we were winning most of the game. I walked my first time at bat, then hit a silly pop up in the infield. I had one of the better hits of my softball career after that though, getting a triple out of it. Good stuff.

I need to get myself to relax more when I play sports, especially softball. When I get up to bat, I often overthink things, or get too anxious, or something, and don't hit the ball like I should. When we've had softball practices in the past, I've almost always played better than I do in games. It's weird. My brain is goofy.

We have a card day upcoming on Saturday (unfortunately, with no Tim). I always like card days. I am planning on working on my decks on Friday night, and will be prepared (in theory).

As, of course, you all know, the seventh Harry Potter book was released last Saturday. I managed to get lots of reading time on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, and got through chapter 27 (there are 36 chapters in the book), but haven't been able to touch in over the last two days. However, I will be able to read some tonight and tomorrow night, and can hopefully finish the book over the next 2 days. That's my goal anyway. Then all the questions can be answered, and I can freely surf around on Harry Potter websites and not be scared that I'm going to run into some spoiler information and give away a part of the book I haven't gotten to yet.

Of course, I knew some of the "big secrets" from the fifth and sixth books before reading them, and I still enjoyed them. Oh well.

Moving Day

Today, I moved to a different desk for the fifth time in two years and four months of employment at FLS. This move, however, may mean more than just cubicle location. A few months ago, I had been moved to a desk in order to be next to a guy that I was going to be working with more closely in the future (Mike). They were going to have me do some ASP work (website programming), working with Mike, who is the main ASP programmer.

In previous blog entries, I talked about maybe looking for a new job, partly because I didn't feel like this job was going anywhere. It always seems that my company is very slow at doing anything, and I don't want to be stuck in a job that has no growth potential. I had been hoping that my job would be expanding with the ASP stuff, but them moving me away from Mike (and my previous desk is now inhabited by a different ASP programmer) makes it very much seem that I may never do anything like that. Thus, I am trying to decide whether or not I should step up my job search. I really do like my company, and I like the job, but I wouldn't mind something different. I've started to lose motivation when it comes to my work. Kind of like Peter Gibbons. (Well, maybe not that far.) :)

Anyway, if you are so inclined, you may download the updated versions of the Reclamation Genesis printout and the rulebook. I have added attribute labels to the printout - let me know if you think anything else should be labeled.

Ah, Home

I've worked from home a couple days this week, which is most wonderful. I love working from home, and would love to find a job that lets me do that full time. It would be a big perk. That being said, I've for some reason been less likely to blog while working from home. Weird huh.

We had a fun card night on Tuesday, and I got my first win in Star Trek. I now move forward with my stunning record of 1-6. Yeah that's right, I'm good.

I am going to try and get a more labeled Reclamation card printout up in the next couple of days. I did have one other thought though. If battles are won based on conflicts between columns, it might be best to have an odd number of columns (right now there are 4), so if all columns are full, there is less likelihood of a tie (in theory). So I could either increase the rows to 5, or limit them to 3. What do you think? :)

Oh, and of course, Happy Birthday Dave! :) (My brother, for those who don't know.) As always, my present to him will be late. Such a bad brother I am! But alas, better late than never! ;)

The Art of Killing Part Two

On Saturday, we went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was darker than the rest of the films, as expected. Each film has been progressively darker, and that has helped me enjoy each film more than the one before it. I gave it a rating of 9.5/10, which is pretty darn good.

My wife worked from 3-11 last night. I made a couple new Star Trek decks (card night Tuesday!), and decided to go watch my friend's Tim and Tom softball game. Tim wasn't there, and they were short players, so they asked me to sub, which I happily accepted. It was fun, though I think I let my nerves get the best of me, and struck out a couple times. The team lost both games though, even after being ahead 14-0 after the first inning in the first game. It wasn't pretty. :)

Though Tim may have already seen this, here are my proposed updated rules to battles. Let me know of any thoughts you may have. A few notes to cover first:

• A conflict is not the same thing as a battle. A battle is an event that is made up of several conflicts. Conflicts can still be initiated outside of normal battles.
• I may very well change how characters are played to the character grid (these updated battle rules assume that change has been made). Currently, everything must be played to the first row, and then the grid can grow outward from there. I am considering allowing characters to be played anywhere in the grid, no matter where other characters are. I think this would work better with these different battle rules, and would give a player a little more options in playing their characters (and options = strategy, and strategy is good). This would end up eliminating the need for characters to shift when other characters die.
• When two players are battling, their character grids are (essentially, even if not physically) right next to each other. During battle, each of a player's columns will be directly across from an opponent's column. These two columns are considered to be opposite each other.
• Also, the draw phases have been removed, and drawing has been added to the end of the battle phase (players still draw even if no battle occurred) and the end of the retaliation phase.

Here are the rules, pasted in from the rulebook.

Battle.

• Heaven player decides if he or she will initiate a battle. Only characters who are designated as fighters participate in battles. Thus, if the Heaven player has no fighters in play, that player cannot initiate a battle. Characters that do not participate in a battle can still, however, affect that battle using their game text, but do not add their might in that battle, and cannot take wounds as a result of losing that battle. If the Heaven player does not initiate a battle, skip to last step of this phase (even-up). Otherwise:
• Heaven player targets which battlefield he or she will attempt to control.
• Going counter-clockwise, Hell players decide if they will defend the battlefield (if no Hell players defend, the Heaven player automatically wins control of the battlefield with no battle necessary). Each battle is between two players only, so the first Hell player to decide to defend is the only Hell player who will be able to defend. The Hell players may talk amongst themselves to try and decide who is better for defending, but the decision to defend is still made counter-clockwise. Hell players choosing not to defend do not participate in the battle. Since only fighters participate in battles, a Hell player must have a fighter in order to defend).
• Battles are resolved through a series of conflicts. At the start of each battle, determine how many conflicts there will be. Each conflict will occur between the attacking player’s fighter characters in each column and the opponent’s fighter characters in the opposite column. Each column where each player has fighters opposite of each other, there will be a conflict. At the start of each battle, for each column where a player has a fighter and the opponent does not, that player gains an additional might +1 in each of that battle’s conflicts. This bonus stays throughout the battle, and is known as that player’s advantage.
• One by one, the conflicts are resolved, starting with the root characters (column 1) and moving outwards. These conflicts are always between only those characters in the specific column. If a character is removed from or added to a column before that column’s conflict is resolved, that affects the conflict (if a character is removed from a column, that character no longer participates in that conflict).
• For each conflict:

· Starting with Heaven player, the two participating players may take conflict actions. This continues until both players pass their actions consecutively. Any actions taken during a conflict that affect a character’s attributes (might, mind, etc.) affect those attributes only until the end of the battle, unless the card says it affects that attributes for remainder of turn.

· Heaven player compares total might of column against the total might of the defending Hell player’s column; side with most might is determined the winner of the conflict.

· Player losing the conflict must take damages; they must take X total wounds on his or her participating characters in that conflict, where X = the difference between the two sides’ total might. Losing players must wound the participating character in a row at least once before characters in rows behind that row may begin receiving wounds. Thus, if a player has 3 rows, the participating character in the first row must have received at least one wound before the character in the second row can receive wounds. Then, the participating character in the second row must receive at least one wound before the character in the third row can start receiving wounds. A non-participating character in a row does not need to be wounded before a character in a row behind that character can be wounded.

· Losing players may wound their character X times, where X is that character’s health, immediately killing that character; wound cards are not placed for these wounds. This reduces their damages by X.

· If a player is about to wound a character and that wound would kill that character, a wound card is not placed for that wound.

• After all conflicts have been resolved, the player who won the most conflicts is determined the winner. If both players won the same amount of conflicts, the battle is determined a tie.
• If Heaven player wins a battle, they take control of the specified battlefield (by placing it in their Heaven trench), and they may immediately plunder that battlefield – that player reveals the top X cards of his or her game deck, where X = the plunder value of that battlefield. That player may discard any of those cards and then shuffles the remaining cards into his plunder pile (if he does not have a plunder pile yet, he shuffles those cards and creates a plunder pile). Plundering is optional.
• If the Hell player wins the battle, battlefield remains an enemy battlefield (or, if that battlefield was controlled by the Heaven player at the time, that battlefield is forfeited, meaning it is returned to the atlas and becomes an enemy battlefield again).
• Starting with the player to the right of the Heaven player and moving counter-clockwise, each player evens-up his hand. When a player evens-up, he or she may discard any number of cards from his or her hand, then must draw from his or her game deck until that player has 10 cards in his hand.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Joy is almost upon me. Tomorrow, my wife and I travel to Azkaban - I mean, Rochester - to visit a couple friends and see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Both my wife and I are rather stoked. I am especially excited, because this is the first time I will have read the book before seeing the movie. I will have to report on it later. :)

For your daily dose of Reclamation (and at the request of the Man of Mac), you may (if you so desire) download a printable PDF file of the Genesis set. It is zipped up and about 416K. There are no images, though, so it's not as pretty, but should do for reading, deck making, and play testing. (Let me know of any changes that should be made to the printout.) The printout is an Microsoft Access form exported to Adobe Acrobat, so any changes should be quick and easy. This picture is a template of the printout, so you can tell what is what (since nothing is actually labeled on the printout).

TISCSOTD: Tim is so cool, that I an getting cold just trying to think of more TISCSOTDs.

Goodness Gracious, Great Bells of Fire

Last night, we had another softball game, and got mercy ruled again. I played in right-center field and then in left, and did okay, but missed a few balls I should have gotten. And I struck out on a pitch that seemed to fall out of the air (or I just swung badly), hehe. Ah well, good fun as always. We then went to Dairy Queen and I had a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Blizzard. Mmmmm..... chocolate and peanut butter.....

At 2:00 in the morning, my wife and I woke up to the apartment building's fire alarm. It was the most obnoxious fire alarm I've ever heard. Which, I suppose is a good thing, because it should be able to wake people up. The fire department came, and most of the firefighters stood around in the building's lawn, until it was finally turned off after about 40 minutes. Then it was off for about 30 seconds, then went back on for about 10 seconds, then was off for about another minute, then was on for another few seconds. It was pretty exciting.

"The fire's out... no it's not... yes it is... not it's not... I just don't know anymore...."

Today has been rather busy at work. I work on the Data Requests team here at FLS Connect, and the other half of the team (Nick) is off on vacation in China, so I am doing all the request work for two weeks. Which I don't mind at all, but it makes busy mornings that much more fun. I am taking my first break of the morning to write this wonderful (or, barely tolerable) blog entry.

I am going to work with the Reclamation battle rules, and possibly report that in tomorrow's blog entry. Very exciting, isn't it? :)

TISCSOTD: Tim is so cool, that he makes driving a Mercury Tracer look stylish.

The Art of Killing

Just one thought on Reclamation, for those who have dealt with it. :)

I am considering a fairly major reworking of the battle mechanics. Basically, instead of totaling the might of the two armies, you would have a series of conflicts between your characters in the front row and the opponent's matching characters in their front row. The player that wins most of the match-ups wins the battle. There are more details to this, but it is still being worked in my head. Does this sound like a silly idea? :) There would then probably be card-based ways to initiate conflicts between complete armies.

TISCSOTD: Tim is so cool, that LL Cool J will now be going by the name LL Almost-As-Cool-As-Tim J.

The Abominable Snowman

I have started reading the sixth Harry Potter book, and am getting more excited for the movie, which comes out tomorrow. I believe we'll be seeing it on Saturday, most likely. But that may or may not be our only theatrical viewing. :)

I spent some time working on Reclamation. Here are some thoughts:

• I removed the move phase, and added character movement to the creation/corruption phases. This should add to being able to set up your forces for an attack or a defensive. I am considering also making movements free (you used to have to discard a card from hand to switch to adjacent characters), but each character would still be limited to one move per phase.
• I also wouldn't mind removing the two draw phases, and simply adding the drawing to other phases. This would drop the total number of turn phases down to 5, which is better than 8 or 9, as it has been in the past. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to do this, but I'm sure I'll figure it out.
  
• I am considering adding something to limit damages from battles, hoping to prevent a player's army from being wiped out in a single battle, thus forcing a player to rebuild from scratch (and possibly being hopelessly behind after that). There are a few ways I have thought of so far that we could do it:
• Limit one wound on each character that participated in that battle from battle damages. Thus, if you only have 5 characters in battle, you cannot take any more than 5 wounds from battle damages.
• Limit the total damages from battle
• Make the limit a specific number (like 10)
• Limit damages to the number of opponent's participating characters
• Limit damages to the number of your participating characters
• In order to give the Heaven forces an advantage (as they should have), there will be several cards that can add to the plunder pile (which can then be used to help play cards for the Heaven forces).

Well, that's all for now, folks. Let me know of any thoughts you have on these. :)

TISCSOTD: Tim is so cool, that the Abominable Snowman lives in his basement.

Ah, Upgrades

My wife must love me. :)

In a few months, when we've padded our savings account a little more, she is going to let me buy a new computer. How sweet is that? My current one is about 2 1/2 years old, which isn't too bad, but it has been having problems lately, and has had problems handling things like Everquest II. So, I have while before I can be too serious about this, but as a geek, my mind has been wandering on the topic already.

I will be looking up prices on things, and will decide whether to just buy a system (probably from Dell), or build one. Now here's a question - has anyone on here used Windows Vista? I've not used it yet. The one person I've talked to about this so far has recommended that I stay with Windows XP instead of upgrading, because Vista slows things down and there really aren't that many improvements. Does anyone else have experience with it?

I have a set amount of money that I'm allowed to spend, and my wife really doesn't care what I get, as long as I stay within the amount. Whooah! :) I am hoping to get a nice LCD monitor, as I'm still using clunky CRT's at this point.

Anywho...

My wife is starting her new job today. She will have a week or so of orientation. Hopefully it all goes well.

TISCSOTD: Tim is so cool, that when he walks past a snowman during winter, it shivers.

Rising from the Ashes of Laziness

I have just finished reading the fifth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, just 5 days shy of the movie's release. This will be the first of the movies that I will have seen after reading the book. I plan on starting the sixth book soon. I rather enjoyed the book. I think each book has gotten better, and I've started to become a little bigger of a Harry Potter fan. What's with that?

My coworker Nick is going on vacation after today, and will be in China for two weeks. My schedule will be a little different during that time, but I like it.

I've given most of my free time lately to reading the book, and thus have barely done any work on Reclamation. This should change though coming up, because I won't be under the same timeline for reading the Harry Potter book (I really wanted to get the book read before the movie).

TISCSOTD: Tim is so cool, that he has been asked to move to Antarctica in order to stop the melting of the ice caps.

The Frozen Tide

On Saturday, I went to ValleyFair. It was good fun, as always. I really, really love roller coasters. Wild Thing is still an excellent ride, and the new Renegade is also very fun. My favorite, however, is the Steel Venom - especially in the front seat. Oh, how excellent it is! While not a roller coaster, the X-Treme Swing is one of my other favorite rides. I do also like the Power Tower, though we didn't ride it on Saturday.

We also rode a ride called the Rip-Tide. It spins you upside-down and in circles and sprays you with water. It's kinda nuts, and isn't one of my favorite rides. That being said, we walked past it as we were leaving, and noticed that the ride was stuck, with a full load of people on board. They were high in the air, but (fortunately) sitting perfectly right-side up at the time. The ValleyFair marching band that walks around the park walked by and played them a few songs. Some of the people on board didn't really seem to mind, and clapped along with the band. Others (only 2 or 3) resorted to crying or screaming. One guy even kept on flipping off the crowd and yelling obscenities. Ah, some people are so mature. :)

They were probably stuck for about 20 or 25 minutes, and then they some how got it un-stuck. Earlier in the day, that ride had reported having "harness problems." Hmmm.... and why did I ride it? I haven't got a clue.