Thanks on Cheating

Thanks for help on cheating in online games. The article will be posted in skotos_articles momentarily.

Liff These Last Weeks

Looking over my journal these last few weeks, I see that I've written very little on what's actually been going on, just random and sporadic bits.

And that's largely been because the last few weeks have been very busy. As I wrote back on the 20th of March, it started off with meeting Kimberly's dad. Then, we entered the week of birthdays.

The Week of Birthdays

On the 24th, my dad and step-mom came up to celebrate my birthday, and we went off to dinner.

On the 25th, a Thursday, I had my fairly normal Thursday board gaming night. We played Trias for the first time, and I found it an enjoyable and unique majority-based area-control game, where you actually create the areas. (Creating maps as you play has been a bug in my ear since I started writing about strategy games early in 2003; when and if I finally sit down to design some games of my own, this will probably be a prime topic.) Afterward we played a return game of Tongiaki because the forced migrations, islands, and scoring of Trias had reminded us of the other. I continue to like Tongiaki through multiple plays. michalarick and some of the other players also like it enough to request it on occasion after our primary game is done.

On the 26th we had andrewducker and L. visit. We had Chinese food, talked, and then played a few games: Wooly Bully was first off and then Mystery Rummy #2: Murders in the Rue Morgue. I'd never played either game with 4 players. Wooly Bully worked differently; it wasn't a tense battle of wits and bluffs, but there was also a bit more opportunity to work on stuff without getting shut down. The partnership rules for MR #2 worked great, as I'd guessed they would. You get lots of opportunity to pass cards back and forth, sometimes signalling your partner, sometimes helping their hand. I felt a little bad because I won both games; it's no good to shark someone when you introduce a game to them. In any case, Andrew and L. were very nice folks, and it's a pity they live so far away.

The 27th was RPGing as usual. The fact that I attended despite the very busy week says much for my current physical & mental health. We were supposed to play ErzoQuest, but mysteriously ER never showed up, nor was he at his phone number. I have my own suspicions about where he might have been, but we'll see in the fall. In any case, we screwed around, playing first Fist of Dragonstones while waiting for people to arrive, then "Spades" while KW prepared an adventure, then, finally, a pretty short adventure of DC Heroes. The game continued to be enjoyable, as it has lately.

The 28th was Kimberly's birthday proper, and so we went out to a local Brazilian restaurant which we hadn't been to in years. Tasty tapas.

We still haven't gone out to my birthday dinner we'd planned, since my folks were up on that day. Current plan is Indian food on Friday.

Work & Play

A few other notables of late:

I've been working on an interesting project at work this week: recreating the account creation process, hopefully making it more user friendly, and thus allowing a larger percentage of potential players to get started. I really enjoy having a medium-sized, clearly visible project like that, especially when I think it might make a real difference. It helps me rise above the grind of day-to-day administration and accounting.

I've also been intermittently making it to the gym in the last month, which is more than I can say for months beforehand due to illness. Did some more cardio last night, which is what I've been doing since I got started again mid-March. Hoping to add on weight-lifting again soon, and that no mysterious aches or ailments will return.