![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So, the Endgame Auction is coming up. That means this is the time of year when I try and dump as many games I can bear in order to clear space for next year. It's been mostly board games thus far, as I'm not convinced the auction market is strong enough for my RPG rarities (but on the other hand the latter continue to sit in a closet because I don't want to go to the trouble of eBaying).
The first year I brought several large boxes of games, probably 50 or 60 total. Last year it was more like 30. This year, probably 20. It's a mish-mash of things every time, going back to some of my oldest American games (this year: Avalon Hill's Wizards) through my earliest Euro purchases to some newer things.
EndGame's Aaron was at gaming last night, as he'd come out for the auction. It was nice to get to see him and chat a bit. A glut of gamers meant I didn't get to play with him for most of the evening, but I did get to try out a truly excellent "flick" game called Catacombs that he'd brought, toward the end of the evening.
I'd been planning to go out to the auction (which I've never attended before) mainly to drop in and say "Hi" to Aaron. That's less necessary now, but I may stop by anyway since I've got my Saturday sort of planned in that way.
Right now I've got tentatively planned for Saturday a trip to Endgame and back, with a stop by the Skotos colo on the return trip. We'll see if I have energy and time for that all. I of course need to be back early enough to do my Saturday gaming which is a long-delayed return to Traveller.
This week we've been getting calls for "Keisha Cline". It was the heaviest on Monday (I think) but there seem to have been a few stragglers. It's some scummy life insurance company, and when I aggressively queried them as to why they were calling us, the caller claimed that someone online had filled out a form saying they wanted a call. I told him to take us off the list. I told the next person the same a lot less politely. I haven't talked to anyone since; if I would I'd more aggresively social engineer to get their full contact information so that I can report them to the state attorney general and whoever it is that controls the DNC list.
I find the weird locus of calls, the strange matching of a different "K. Cline" to our phone number, and the refusal to take us off their list all very odd. I always have to have a theory, and here's mine:
So that's my theory.
Weird gaming tonight. We're going to have two tables and swap between Dominion and Thunderstone, a Dominion knockoff. We'll see how it goes.
The first year I brought several large boxes of games, probably 50 or 60 total. Last year it was more like 30. This year, probably 20. It's a mish-mash of things every time, going back to some of my oldest American games (this year: Avalon Hill's Wizards) through my earliest Euro purchases to some newer things.
EndGame's Aaron was at gaming last night, as he'd come out for the auction. It was nice to get to see him and chat a bit. A glut of gamers meant I didn't get to play with him for most of the evening, but I did get to try out a truly excellent "flick" game called Catacombs that he'd brought, toward the end of the evening.
I'd been planning to go out to the auction (which I've never attended before) mainly to drop in and say "Hi" to Aaron. That's less necessary now, but I may stop by anyway since I've got my Saturday sort of planned in that way.
Right now I've got tentatively planned for Saturday a trip to Endgame and back, with a stop by the Skotos colo on the return trip. We'll see if I have energy and time for that all. I of course need to be back early enough to do my Saturday gaming which is a long-delayed return to Traveller.
This week we've been getting calls for "Keisha Cline". It was the heaviest on Monday (I think) but there seem to have been a few stragglers. It's some scummy life insurance company, and when I aggressively queried them as to why they were calling us, the caller claimed that someone online had filled out a form saying they wanted a call. I told him to take us off the list. I told the next person the same a lot less politely. I haven't talked to anyone since; if I would I'd more aggresively social engineer to get their full contact information so that I can report them to the state attorney general and whoever it is that controls the DNC list.
I find the weird locus of calls, the strange matching of a different "K. Cline" to our phone number, and the refusal to take us off their list all very odd. I always have to have a theory, and here's mine:
- Said scummy insurance company either strip mines phone books or else pays someone to do so. Whichever it was, when they pulled "K. Cline" out of the phone book (which is how our number is listed), they inserted a made-up full name. I think that makes it more likely that the made-up name started with criminal data creators who then sold their largely faulty data list to the insurance company, who only deserved what they got.
- However, the insurance company doesn't do its own sales. Instead it subcontracts out over the internet, and allows people to "Make $$$$$$$$$$$$$ From Home".
- Thus, idiots at home pull this made-up name off their scummy work-at-home insurance company's main server and call, with more people doing so when the data had been freshly loaded.
- Meanwhile, the company doesn't care that it's violating piles of telemarketing laws, because if it ever gets called on it, it says, "Oh My God! Did those criminal work-at-homers do that!? Shame! Shame!"
- (And politicians are so in the pocket of big business that they roll over and play dead for that piss-ass poor excuse.)
So that's my theory.
Weird gaming tonight. We're going to have two tables and swap between Dominion and Thunderstone, a Dominion knockoff. We'll see how it goes.