Watching the twins

I watched Lauren and Taylor last night.  After the short car ride to my house, they declared that we should have walked.  I agree.  I was teasing them about them cutting the grass at my parents house, but they said they didn't know how to use a lawn mower.  Then I asked if we should get my parents a goat to eat the grass.  They thought that was a great idea since it would eat the grass and it could play with my parents two dogs.

They wanted to watch Princess Mononoke, so I've already instilled them with some good taste in anime.  They also like Inu Yasha.  While they were watching the movie, they said that Blake was a good big brother, but Regan was a bad big sister.  Regan, you'll have to work on being nicer to the twins :)

Back to the Dwarves

Lord this game has a steep learning curve.  I hadn't fired it up recently, and I had completely forgotten what my plans were.  I did get to see something I had never seen before, I found an underground cavern.  Immediately after tunnelling into cavern, a nasty bat flew into my tunnels and killed a dwarf or two.  From there, probably 10-12 dwarves have died directly or indirectly of depression.  Someone would get upset that their friend died, then they would go mad and starve then their friends would get upset.  On the plus side, there are quite a few nodes of gems along the cavern walls, and there is lots of spider silk.

I think the fortress mood has pretty much stabalized.  I had been tempted to abandond the fort, but I think I'll forge on.  Fortress productivity is way down though, hopefully I have enough food and booze to get by until I figure out what I was doing and where my workshops are again.

Beating up on kids and co-workers

I haven't started picking fights with people.  I started playing in chess tournaments again.  I've gone 3-0 the last two Monday's at Meijer's chess tournaments.  Granted, these are small tournaments, but I have just doubled my number of undefeated tournaments.  Again, to be fair, I've been playing grade schoolers and kids, most of whom who are on paper quite a bit less skilled than I am at chess.

At work, people laughed when I said I beat one of my co-workers, an 8th grader, and a 4th grader.  However, the 4th grader was the only player who was basically an even match for me.  My game against him was the one it took the longest to win.  I've got my rating back over 1500 for the first time in ages.  My goal is to get back over 1600 so I have to play in the open section of the tournament.

The games on Monday are short, G30, so I'm planning on playing at Barnes and Noble next weekend.

Lacquer the Dög

With Ulrich von Bek (me) on drums and Thunderbolt (my nephew Blake) on Guitar, our band Lacquer the Dög got off to a rocky start. Our first several gigs, we got booed off the stage. The first song we managed to finish was Nirvana's In Bloom. After a brief setback on the Konks 29 Fingers, the virtual band was able to finish two other songs and actually finished a 2 song set.  So far the virtual band has only been playing in a virtual dive, but with 532 virtual fans the Lacquer the Dög can now play in a slightly larger virtual dive.  

The band attributes the slow start to the fact that Thunderbolt had never picked up a guitar before joining Lacquer the Dög. Thunderbolt's skills have improved significantly over the first few gigs he attempted to play.  Thunderbolt stated, "No one has even thrown anything at me the last few times I've been on stage."  

The end is near, an epic battle between light and dark is about to begin!!!

No, I'm not predicting an imminent Apocalypse.  I haven't been reading the Left Behind series or watching the Omega Code either.  

My compound sawed chess set is nearly complete.  I got six pieces cut today, that equals the output of my entire trip up here last month!  Just three pieces left to go, a bishop, rook, and pawn.  Once that it done, I need to get to sanding and staining.  I'll add pictures to this post soon.

Killing friends and family in a subterranean dungeon

No, I haven't gone insane. Well, perhaps it is insane to be playing Angband again considering I do have a win over Morgoth with a priest. However I couldn't resist the call once I got my new Linux box up and running. I had forgotten how freakin' hard this rogue-like game is.

I feel bad for Dan and Angela, I did kind of kill them stupidly by reading a scroll of monster summoning. As a result, I decided to give Dan the human priest a second try by reincarnating him as Daniel the Dunadan Paladin.

Currently Helen from the pool league in Jacksonville is atop the leader board of my new install of Angband. She had the bad luck of failing three actions in a row while trying to take down an orc captain from an orc pit. I probably should have left well enough alone after taking down some of the easier orcs in the pit and stayed well clear of the captains, however I got overly ambitions after taking one captain down without too much trouble.

If I haven't already killed you off and you have a request for a rogue-like alter ego, let me know and I'll see what I can do. (If it's any consilation, I killed myself by falling into a spiked pit and bleeding to death.)

Helen - High Elf Mage, killed by an orc captain
Meagan - Human Warior, killed by a kobold archer
Randy - Dunadan Ranger, killed by a giant clear centipede
Chip - Gnome Mage, killed by Bullroarer the hobbit
Angela - Elf Ranger, killed by a blue worm mass
Jason - Human Rogue, killed by a hill orc
Suzanne - Human Paladin, killed by Bullroarer the hobbit (I got wishy-washy about wanting to fight or run, and got my sister's alter ego killed by Bullroarer.)
Dan - Human Priest, killed by a wolf

A week of great inertia

I had been doing good about keeping the house clean and accomplishing useful things, however being sick, spending a weekend in Dayton, and drinking about a gallon of coke at a party then not being able to go to sleep until 5AM pretty much thrashed my sleep schedule. I shall endeavor to cook, go to bed at a reasonable hour, and avoid mega doses of caffeine this weekend.

My parents are out of town this weekend, so I'm taking care of the dogs. Perhaps the need to get up on Saturday morning so they don't pee all over the floor will help get me back on track sleep wise.

I'm excited to be working on something new at work. I've been supporting our franchise program for the last year and a half. This April, I'll be working on cross currency reporting. Exchange rates, here I come.