Board Game collection valued at USD$401

I was doing pretty well at getting to bed early-ish and getting up early-ish these last few days, but due to my not being able to turn down a nap earlier, I can't sleep. I'm still going to get up at 9 tomorrow, but Sunday means breakfast at A&W with the family!

I was curious to know what my board game collection was valued at. Rather than estimating, or even just adding up some prices online, I whipped up a database in case I wanted to do a similar query in the future. I'm also able to sort my games by playing time and game complexity as well.

I've taken all my prices from Thought Hammer, which pretty well has the best prices on every game ever, and they're always well stocked. My valuation of $401 does not take into consideration my thrift store purchases (stuff that TH doesn't stock, like balderdash, pictionary, etc.). Also, the prices I'm using are pretty well best-case scenario, so I paid more for each game than I've accounted for (my valuation is simply how much it would cost to replace all my games by ordering on TH). It also doesn't take into consideration the taxes I've paid, so after all is said and done, I've probably spent closer to ~$550 on board games. Not too shabby.

I've watched a fair number of movies recently. The list includes Die Hard, Wedding Crashers, Clerks 2, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, and Talladega Nights. I guess I've sort of lucked out since there are actually some movies on the movie networks that I've wanted to see.

I've been invited to a softball game tomorrow. I'll know all of two people there, but I guess I should probably go. It's not as though I have anything better to do (although I'll probably be hurting for some sleep tomorrow early-afternoon). A pretty vicious thunderstorm has just started up, so we'll see if it's still raining tomorrow.

Sheena brought up a good point the other day; it would save me a lot of time if I just left my two gaming tables set up in the crawl space rather than moving furniture around every Tuesday. I think I'll do that, but first I'll need to clean up the crawl space, something I tell myself every year. I guess it's really a matter of throwing a bunch of shit out. For instance, I don't think I'll ever have enough of a need for those 15" and 17" CRT monitors (mind you, they'd be nice if I ever had another LAN party...).

I went to six different stores the other day and didn't wind up buying anything at all. I hit up Value Village and the Salvation Army looking for some cheap games, but there was nothing too amazing (besides a really old school Donkey Kong board game that even I had to pass up). I went to the Game Shelf after that. They had an "open games day", which, while I was there, comprised two guys playing Magic in the store. They had a lot of tables prepared for gaming, but until they update their website, I'm not going to try to find out about any events they hold. I think that they're catering to the more hardcore miniatures type of gamer anyways (you know, 40K and Star Wars minis). Their prices aren't all that good. Most of their games are about $5 more expensive than I'm used to. Once you hit games that are over $50 at J&J, they mark the price up quite a bit. Still, given that I intend to buy Martine a copy of Bohnanza as a going away present, they're going to get at least a little business from me.

Now where was I? Ah yes. I went to Cash Converters to see if they had any gems stashed away in their used games, but nothing caught my eye (although maybe I should have bought X-Men Legends 2 for $10). After that was Walmart, where I intended to buy a second, new Wavebird for my Wii, but they didn't have any. They did have the new wave of Heroscape minis a day earlier than they should have, but I don't really need any yet. I headed to Future Shop after that, and they also came up dry for Wavebirds. I was interested to see that Guild Wars (the original) is marked down to $30 from the original $50. If Adam ever gets a laptop, I'll probably have to buy him a copy so that I'll have a reason to play that game again (anything besides more Battlefield! It's all he wants to play, besides tetris). Guild Wars is pretty good for just playing a quest or two at a time, you never really have to worry about experience grinding.

Listening to... Soulfly - Living Sacrifice
Link of the moment... Daily updates on Super Smash Brothers Brawl on weekdays! It's the highlight of my day!

Hit the peg! Hit the peg!

Argh, thanks for waking me up, truck outside. Curse you!

I feel like I've been quarantined in my house lately. I can't seem to find anyone to hang out with. No one is phoning me, and anyone I phone is busy or not answering their phone. It was a pretty boring weekend; I just watched some movies on the movie networks.

Spiderman 3 spoilers
I watched Spiderman 3 on Friday, at a matinee. The theatre was only about half full. I don't want to give a full on review (I'm not a movie buff, so anything I say would just be coming from someone who doesn't know shit about production values and such), but I do want to say that I'm unimpressed with the way venom turned out. Topher Grace is not the right casting choice! They didn't put enough effort into building up Eddie Brock's hatred for Spiderman and Peter Parker. We saw Eddie lose his job, and have his camera broken, and even have his "girlfriend" stolen, but I never got the impression that it was all adding up and making him go mad.

On top of that, I didn't like how after Eddie supposedly reached his breaking point, he's still making wisecracks to Spiderman. I like how Scott Dewitt says that "Venom was the same dork as Eric from That 70's Show. Venom. Not the guy that turns into Venom. Venom himself is a dork". Venom and Eddie Brock really are two different characters, and there wasn't enough in the movie to get that point across. One thing I really missed not seeing as well was Venom calling himself "we", to show that the symbiote is a part of him, and not just something to enhance his powers. But enough of that.
END Spiderman 3 spoilers

I'm QUITE excited about my games night tomorrow night. I've had this fascination with werewolf ever since I had the idea of playing it. I've put a fair amount of effort into considering which roles to use, and how to handle voting in the day phase. I've whipped up some reference sheets for the roles and their powers, set aside some playing cards to assign roles to players, and even scrounged up some poker chips in hopes that the assist in the voting process. Now, all I've got to do is wait to actually play the game!

I picked up the Megaman X collection for Gamecube, as previously mentioned. So far I've blown through the first game, and I'm starting on the second. Even with all my heart tanks and four full energy tanks, the final boss took me countless attempts. Most of the time, I wouldn't be watching my health bar and found myself dead before I could use an energy tank. If memory serves correctly, X2 is just as hard, if not harder if I try to get the good ending by defeating three extra bosses.

I've been thinking of building my own poker table, using one of these designs. My old one is sort of in shambles, and if my weekly games nights actually pan out, having a nice table would go a long way. I've never been that good at that sort of stuff though. Even when I just changed the fabric on the old table, it came out in worse whape than when I started. I think I'm just too impatient. If I throw actual carpentry on top of that, I'm sure the end product won't turn out as it looks in my dreams. Still, I think stuff like that can be fun, and it's nice to have something that you built with your own two hands and can be proud of. I think I'll just mull over it some more.

Listening to... Death By Stereo - These are a Few of my Favorite Things
Link of the moment... They make it look so easy!

I am not economically viable

Well, things have taken a slightly interesting turn lately. Ever since Katie and I have started hanging out more regularly, I've been thinking of her in a different light. I asked her out the other week, and she responded favourably. We went doubles with John and Julie, to the bowling alley and Kelsey's. After that, we watched Falling Down and Hostage here. I won't go into details, but I will say that the date was very fun but not necessarily encouraging. I've been convinced by third parties to not worry too much about it and stop putting unnecessary thought into it. We'll see how things progress.

John and I beat Megaman 4 the other day, and we're done the first eight bosses on Megaman 5. He usually lets me do the bosses, which I seem to have a knack for. I've set a personal goal of beating as many of the megamans as I can without using cheats. Of course, who has the time for video games these days?

300 was a decent enough movie. I think I wasn't really in the mood for it though. I was pretty tired when we left, and it took all my willpower not to fall asleep at the wheel on the way to Mississauga. I didn't notice any difference at all between the IMAX screen and a regular screen. The movie was good, but I think there were still a few cliche-ish parts. I guess overall I'd give it a recommendation.

This week's Network Design assignment was considerable easier than previous ones, but there are still some questions that I couldn't get done. I didn't finish nor even start my Network Flow assignment. Again, it's only two measly percent, so I don't care too much. I didn't have much time this weekend, due to the movie and the date. I suppose in theory I could have worked on assignments rather than playing megaman games, but where's the fun in that?

I got a conditional acceptance to LU. I don't know what it's conditional on, it says more detail can be found in my offer of admission. I guess I'll go; I'm not overly excited to do more learning, but I can't really think of anything better to do. It won't hurt me to take 1-2 years to get a post-grad degree.

Happy early birthday to Nathalie! Her birthday is this Tuesday (I think), and I'm going to her birthday dinner this Wednesday. I think I have an idea of what to get her, too. Of course, I couldn't possibly say what it is here, or it won't be a surprise! I just hope I can find one easily.

I wish I was sleeping right now. I tried going to bed pretty early, and I would have been successful, had my roommates been a bit more considerate. I could distinctly hear all three of their voices upstairs. Sure, I could have asked them to keep it down, but by the time I was awakened, the damage had been done. Well, it looks like another instance where I sleep for two hours one night, and 12 the next. It happened to me last week, and that 12 hours of sleep was quite relaxing.

Somehow I guess I need to fit in some study time for my last midterm. I've got to study the four assignments we've had, plus the first midterm I took. Well, que sera, sera. As far as my crypto midterm goes, I'm pretty confident that I kicked its effing ass. Good for me! It helped that I really didn't need to study the RSA stuff, as I did so pretty extensively last term.

Listening to... Iron Maiden - 2 Minutes to Midnight
Link of the moment... I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.

Then I must be some kind of Genius

Well, I got my midterm marks back. I got a 90 in Network Flow...excellent. Network Design? Well, I got the second highest mark in the class! Unfortunately, that mark was 35%. The odd thing is that the highest mark in the class was around 75%, so there was a pretty huge drop-off. We're going to have a make-up midterm, and the prof talked to us all individually. I didn't tell him off or anything. What worries me is that it doesn't look like he's admitting that he's partially to blame for the class doing so poorly. Well, there's still 90% of the mark to be decided, so we'll see how this second midterm goes.

My sleep schedule is quite off lately. Lately, I've been going to bed between 4 and 5, and waking up at around 2PM. On days that I have class, I usually only get a few hours of sleep, and then crash when I get home. I forget what messed up my schedule. I was looking forward to attending a games day yesterday, but I woke up at 3 and realized it was half over, and by the time it would take to get ready and get there, it wouldn't be worth going.

I'm finally on the second disc of Shadow Hearts, but I think there's still a ways to go before I finish it. I beat the co-op story mode of Timesplitters: Future Perfect with Hugh, after some horrendously difficult stages. For Yoshi's Island, I've only got to acheive my goal of getting at least 80 on every stage for the last world, and then beat the last stage. I haven't touched FFVI lately. I have too many games started up already, so I'm trying to get SH and YI out of the way first.

I'm talking to Aly as we speak ('we speak', being figurative, of course). He reminded me that he has my Serenity DVD. I suggested that we actually do something, rather than just saying "hey, we should do something". It looks like I'll be going to see 300 this Friday in Mississauga (or Mrs. Sauga, as I jovially refer to it) at the IMAX theatre. I guess it doens't really mess with my midterms or anything, and the roads should be nice enough to drive on, so I can't think of any good reason not to go.

Katie was over last night, for the first time in a while. I was starting to get the feeling that she didn't really want to hang out with us anymore, but she initiated the hangout, so I suppose my fears were unfounded. She, Andrew and I played some NES (I have a NES emulator for PS2 with 900+ games), Scene It, and Carcassonne. As the night went on, activities included making spaghetti, and Katie falling asleep on the couch. I didn't know if I should wake her up or not, so I just played some Megaman 3 instead. Eventually she woke up (at 3:30 AM) and I kicked her out of my house. Good times, as usual! Unfortunately, she is babysitting this Monday and as such can not come over to watch TV.

I bought a Pitchshifter CD from those seedy guys that set up shop in the SLC the other day. "deviant", if you must know. It was a rare find, so I was happy to pay the eight dollars (sans tax). It's not as good as www.pitchshifter.com (the album), but I haven't really given it any time to grow on me. Now if only I could find a Bucket Truck or Chore cd...

The university had 1.5 snow days at the end of last week. They closed up shop at 3:30 on Thursday due to some pretty fierce snowfall. Overnight, there was really nasty freezing rain, hence the closure on Friday. It didn't mean much to me, besides letting me sleep in and saving me three hours of unenlightening class.

Well, that's as much as I'm willing to type for now.

Listening to... Reel Big Fish - Take On Me
Link of the moment... NES emulator for PS1. Needs a swap disc or mod chip to work.

Aparently I'm too ugly for the other three

I've been working myself silly lately, but I'm not entirely sure I've really made as much progress as I should have. I did my marking all in the first two days, and did my physics assignment in the course of about a day, but CO485 is killing me. I'm not sure when the last time was that I spent so much time on an assignment. I have a feeling I'll be handing it in with some questions left unanswered. I'm hoping to confer with Nathalie today, but I'm not sure if she's looked at the entire assignment. It looks like the tables might be turned for a change, where I'm the one who has it done way ahead of time.

Clubs days went well. Waking up early enough to be on campus at 8:30 was no fun, but it's not as though I was put under any strenuous work. We got at least 70 new people sign up, and it's very likely that another 20 came after I left on Friday before lunch. Of those, I'm not sure how many will actually show up to meetings, but it looks like we should have a turnout at least as large as other terms.

I think the weekend is where all my juicy info comes from. On Saturday, I went to the Watsfic games day, at abuot 4-5PM. There were a fair number of people already playing game. I wouldn't say that I got an overly warm welcome, but I made myself visible enough to warrant being invited to play a game (Princes of Florence). None of us knew how to play, save one or two of the five players, so I didn't feel like I was slowing things down too much. I came in dead last, by a fair margin, but I enjoyed learning the game.

During the game, Nicole phoned because she was in town. I told her I could meet up with her in the plaza for supper at about 8, and we did. At 9PM, I headed over to the speed dating event and signed up. They told me I'd be in the "second round", so I played some DDR for a while with Nicole and Carissa. After working up a sweat, I headed back to wait for the call. Eventually, they herded us in, ten guys and ten girls. Each 'date' lasted only three minutes, and I found it difficult to get a good impression from each girl. After all was said and done, I gave a "yes" to four of the girls, and eagerly awaited a reply from the Warrior Weekends staff. After that, John and Julie appeared as if from nowhere, and they said they phoned Nicole as they were on their way back from bowling. We headed home (I opted out of Superman Returns), and started watching LotR: tTT on CBC. Not much else to say about that.

Yesterday, I got a reply from WW, saying that I got one match, so now I've got the email of a girl who supposedly would like to get to know me a little better. Unfortunately, I'm pretty well busy until next weekend, what with thanksgiving leaving me little time to get any assignments or midterm studying done.

There's a new show in my Monday line-up: Heroes. I caught the first episode, and found myself a little intrigued. To be honest, I found the first episode pretty dull, but I'm curious to see where the series is headed. The second episode did a bit more to catch my curiosity, and I figure since it's on right after Prison Break, I might as well give it a go. I've realized that Monday is my TV night, as there's not really much else on any other night. Sure, I'll watch CSI if I'm home on Thursdays, but it's not enough to say "no, I don't want to miss CSI" if someone has a better idea. Family Guy on Sunday is the highlight of my week as well, but half an hour isn't much of a line-up.

I started fiddling a bit with my euchre system. I've got two spreadsheets filled with paid members and game scores, as well as a score sheet to bring to meetings. I've yet to set up the database aspect of it yet, but I don't think there's any need to have stats after only one meeting.

I think I had the epiphany the other day that I enjoy graph theory the most out of all the CO disciplines. I enjoy doing math-like proofs, and graph theory is chock-full of that stuff. I'm disappointed that I'm unable to take CO442, as it's only offered in the fall term, and I'm currently doing my last fall term of my undergraduate degree. I'm still debating donig grad studies. Unfortunately, I'd be forced to take some courses I'd rather not (optimization courses, etc). Isn't that kind of funny to think about? Not only am I interested in Math, and not only am I interested in Combinatorics and Optimizatin, but I'm interested in Graph Theory. I'm sure that most people in the world didn't know that math could be broken down into so many disciplines.

Tomorrow there is a lunch for students and staff in CO, giving the students a chance to meet some of the profs. I'm going, mostly for the fact that it's a free lunch. I also realize, though, that if I apply for grad studies, I'll need three reference letters. I think my best bet is going to be with Willard and Tasic, since I've had two classes with them each, and I did very well in all four of those courses. For the last one, I'll probably choose either Richter or Menezes, since they're teaching me this term. Whatever...I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

Well, I've spent entirely too much time NOT working on my CO485 assignment, so I'm gonig to head over to RCH and work on that until the class starts.

I don't know when I'll update next, since I'll be in Tbay next Tuesday, but it shan't be very long.

Listening to... Refuse Resist - Sepultura
Link of the moment... I signed up for this stupid shit by request, but I'll NOT be one of the 60% that log in daily, nor of the 85% that log in weekly.

Whatever happened between you and me?

Jeez, I'm starting to get lapped in terms of blog posts now. It's been one of those "busy weeks followed by apathy" sort of things. Last post I made was talking about my SQL assignment...I've already got that back, and I'm about to hand in the NEXT assignment for that course, so shame on me.

Haha...I keep telling myself I'll proofread my posts before submitting them...I put some pretty godawful mistakes in the last one. "Luch" instead of "Lush", and "phong" instead of "phoning". I'll try to be a bit more careful this time around.

Well, my case study is handed in now. That's what the "busy week" was. I think my entire group was working for the week straight on that thing. I'm proud of the final product, so that means it'll probably get a miserable mark. It's not completely done though; we have a fifteen minute presentation to give on Wednesday. I think for the most part we can wing it since we know the material of our own sections pretty well. I actually had to go buy some clothes for the presentation, cause I don't have any 'business casual' clothes.

I've been watching a lot of movies lately. Let's see how far back I can remember:
-Pirates of the Caribbean (Curse of the Black Pearl, on CBC)
-Saw
-The Ring
-Seven
-Mad Max
-Kung Fu Hustle
-Old School
-Three Amigos

Of those, I'd like to comment on two. Please don't see Mad Max. It's an hour and a half introduction, five minutes of his mission of revenge, and then the credits roll. Terribly paced movie. If you think you want to see Kung Fu Hustle, then I recommend you see Shaolin Soccer instead. If you've already seen Shaolin Soccer, then Kung Fu Hustle likely won't live up to your expectations. It's not bad enough for me to recommend you not seeing it, but it's not as funny as I thought it would have been.

Guild Wars is getting really hard. I'm in the second area of the game, and my party size has increased to six. That just means 1.5x as many enemies to team up on my character and kill him. I'm going to play through the game with my monk character first, and hopefully accumulate items for my other characters to help them out.

Andrew has got me hooked on Smash Brothers Melee lately. Thing is, I suck at it, but it's good times anyways. We've got two characters left to unlock, plus a bunch of stages.

I think I'm going to bring Trigun back from home. I think Andrew would appreciate it; I remember when I got into Firefly, I noticed a similarity between the two, and Andrew likes Firefly, so hopefully he'll like Trigun as well.

Only a week and a half left in the term...then exams. Nearly there! I only have two exams to write as well. Still two CS234 assignments to start and finish, but I don't really have anything else to get in the way of them, so it should be smooth sailing for the rest of the term. I just hope Wednesday's presentation goes well...

Listening to... Trigun - Yellow Alert
Link of the moment... An old Dragonball Z fight video with an awesome song...brings back my childhood

I'm just saying, the first thing I'd think wouldn't be "hey, I should spit on my wiener"

Ho hum. Things are a bit stagnant around here. I should have thought ahead and brought a PC game home to play. I downloaded a few demos, but this computer is a bit too dated to play them.

I had people over the other night. Sheena, Chanel, Grant, Martine, Christina, Adam, John and Julie. I rented 40 Year Old Virgin, but most people had seen it, and Martine had rented Brokeback Mountain, so we watched that instead. Good movie, but it was a bit too deep for me. Nice to watch them on my nice tv and surround sound system (the thunder was so loud!). After that, everyone was too tired to stick around, so the night ended relatively early.

Earlier that day, I went with John and Julie around some of the sights around Thunder Bay. We went for breakfast at the Hoito. She had her first taste of Finnish pancakes, and John and I got the deeeelicious hot turkey sandwich. We noticed some well dressed men come in, and then realized that one of them was none other than the Premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty.

Afterwards, we went to Eagle Canyon, which houses Canada's longest suspension footbridge. I'll tell ya...not the best place to go on a windy day for anyone afraid of heights. My legs were rather wobbly when we got off. After that, it was a short hop to Ouimet Canyon. Unfortunately, the park is not yet open, so we had to walk 3Km uphill to get to the canyon. That was intensely exhausting and time consuming. We saw the canyon, I threw a few coins off, and then we made the trek back.

Well, I have all my marks back. I got 80 in Real Analysis, which is likely more than I deserve, but about what I was hoping to get. After going into the Linear Optimization exam with a 70 in the class, I walked out with an 86! Much better than I thought. Group Theory is the big shocker: I knew I did well on the exam, but I never expected to get a 98! That lets my average rest at 87 for this term, and conveniently enough, my cumulative average is also exactly 87.

Well, enough gloating...I'm going to go get some lunch.

Listening to... Snapcase - First Word
Link of the moment... Maybe grad studies @ home are the way to go?