I've lost my will to blog.

Get over it.

Calculation Theme

I hate these sorts of days.

I hate the sort of day where I don't do anything productive, I can't seem to get any plans together, and the plans I do have are things I don't really want to do. I was supposed to go to Scuttlebutts (I think I'm going to start calling it Shittyfucks) since Eric is in town for convocation. Unfortunately, I really don't like Shittfucks and Eric isn't my best of friends, so I decided to bow out (though Laura went out with him). I had hoped to hang out with Adam tonight, but of course he never got back to me, and it sounds like he's busy tomorrow. So much for another game of Runebound.

I seem to be having more of those sorts of days lately. I've been pretty mopey for a good week now. My scheduling course is giving me grief, I haven't had a chance to play any board games, I haven't really gotten out of the house much lately.

I've been getting up at 9AM, exercising, and eating breakfast in the pursuit of getting that "full of energy all day" feeling that I hear about so often. I can't say it's helped at all; I still spend more time sleeping than the average house cat.

Games nights have been random. Last week, I had a total of 10 people over to play games (many stayed until midnight). This week, I had a grand total of 0 people come to play games. Grant and Chanel came over around 8, but they weren't interested in playing games so we watched shitty TV while they talked my ear off about their trip. I don't know what it is, but I'm not the type of person who really cares to hear stories or see pictures of other peoples' vacations. It just doesn't interest me at all.

At least I had a pretty good birthday. I got to spend some time with Laura on Friday night, though we haven't really done anything outside of my house in about as long as I can remember. On Saturday night, I went to Adam's house and we played Runebound and drank. We started playing around 8, and didn't finish until just after midnight. It's a long game, certainly, but perhaps our analytical skills were dulled on account of the alcohol. Regardless, we had fun and we both plan to play it again. I'm already looking into getting some expansions for the game to buff up the decks.

On Sunday, we went out for dinner at Tony and Adam's. It was pretty good. After dinner we had some of Mrs. Stilla's cake, and I opened a few gifts. I got a fair amount of booze and candy, as well as a few shirts. I think Laura spent too much on my gift.

After dinner is what I was looking forward to the most: a five player game of El Grande with Adam, Trevor, Laura, and Mr. Stilla. The rules were easy to explain, and it seemed like everyone really liked the game. At the end of the game, I eked ahead of Laura for the win. It was a very close game, and I'm glad that she did so well. She has told me numerous times how much she likes the game, so I anticipate it being played again in the future (assuming I can get more than zero people to show up on Wednesday nights).

Listening to... Muse - Assassin
Link of the moment... I picked up a really good deal online the other day. I likely won't have it until after next weekend, though.

I...uh...hmm...yeah.

BLEH. I need to get my act together. I spend too much time in front of my computer. I'm starting to get that zombie face feeling, if you know what I mean. And with all that time in front of the screen, I still leave my blog unedited for over a month. M'oh well, not like it's important in any way.

I've been very excited to get my hands on a game called Runebound. It's not like anything I own now; it is best described as an "adventure" game. From what I know of it, I'd describe it as Diablo, if it were a board game. You start off with a fairly weak character, fighting weak enemies, collecting gold, experience, and loot in hopes of becoming more powerful by collecting items, weapons, and allies. I'd likely have purchased it myself if my birthday weren't so close (I can be difficult to shop for as a result of my niche hobbies). It's not the type of game that will hit the table on games nights, as most people wouldn't care for the theme or the game length. Regardless, I'm sure it would make for a few entertaining afternoons with Adam, since he's always willing to do anything.

Laura and I have been seeing quite a bit of each other in the last few weeks, and things are going pretty well, despite my constant portrayals of insecurity. A gentleman mustn't kiss and tell, though, so I don't think I need to say much more on the subject. Trivia: Assuming Laura makes my list of "people I have considered at one time to be my girlfriend", then 50% of the people on said list will have the first name Laura.

I've started work on my course for the summer, an introduction to machine scheduling. So far, I'm left quite unimpressed both by the source material and the course organizer (who coincidentally is my new research supervisor). The material is dry and not very helpful with regard to the exercises. I had an assignment due today, and emailed the prof for help on Friday. She said she hasn't had time to look at the material yet. I went to her posted office hours today for help, but she was nowhere to be found. I'm less than impressed.

Well, Grant, Chanel, Sheena and Dan have headed off for Europe. The couples won't be back until May 27th and June 11th (!) respectively. I'm sure they're having a great time. They left on Friday, and skipped out on the previous games night to pack and visit family. I had a lot of cancellations that night, but had two new people come over. The three of us had a lot of fun; we played three games (as opposed to the usual 1 plus filler that I normally experience), and they really liked all of the games I showed them. They are both going to come back in the future. I had to convince them that I did indeed have other friends and everyone had canceled on me, but perhaps they think that I spend every Wednesday night sitting in my basement hoping that someone will finally show up.

Listening to... Metric - Down
Link of the moment... UHF video by Weird Al

SYMaOYE turns four!

Wow, I almost missed my blog's birthday today! My face would have been red if I didn't celebrate with my usual "year in review" post, but luckily it looks like I'll be able to squeeze one in on time. I liked last year's style, so I think I'll copy it again this year.

My first shoutout goes to board games, and more specifically, weekly games nights. Since last summer, I've played a ton of games, as well as buying a whole lot of new ones. I've had a lot of fun playing all sorts of games with my friends. I also have to give a shoutout to my regulars, who make my Wednesday nights the highlight of my week, every week.

I'll also give a shoutout to the Game Shelf, the local game store. At first, I wasn't a fan of you. I'm still waiting for your website to be anything more than a placeholder, some of your prices are a bit high, and your selection is a bit lacking. However, I've come to realize that you can get anything I want if I ask for it, and some of your prices are actually very competitive to other retailers.

A shoutout goes to Lakehead University, which is my current alma matter. I still walk around like I'm hot shit since I went to UW, but I'm getting a pretty good education from you. Your smaller class sizes and smaller faculty are definitely a new experience, and is probably doing me a lot of good.

My first-year academic adviser, Adam also gets a shoutout. You've been a lot of help with my transition into grad studies, and I like that you're very approachable. Thanks for all the help in the courses you taught me!

My new school friends Laura, Eric, Chris, Bobbi, and Emerald get a shoutout. You guys have proven to me that I'm not hopeless when it comes to meeting new people. I really like hanging out with you after class and just chatting in the Study. I always think that you represent the "newness" in my life this year, and it's a shame that some of you are graduating and won't be around next year.

My Wii and video games in general get a shoutout. I finally got some time in the last year to plow through a bunch of titles I've wanted to play. I think I've rekindled my gaming hobby, and it's provided me with lots of hours of entertainment that would have otherwise been spent on crappy television.

My old roommates get a shoutout, since I went to visit them all twice in the last year. Thanks especially to Andrew and Hugh who let me stay at their houses during my winter trip. It's good to know we can still hangout and relive "old times" even once we've all graduated.

Unfortunately, I've got to give a shoutout to the single life this year. In the entirety of the year, I've only gone out on one date, and that didn't really turn in to anything. Still, I am happy that I still have lots of friends to spend time with, and there are still lots of fish in the sea!

For the first time, alcohol gets a shoutout. Once Phil showed up in town, I figured there was no reason not to give it a try. I've gotta say though, I'm still not a fan at all, but at least now it's because of the taste and not for no reason at all.

Guitar Hero gets a shoutout. Lots of my friends have had fun with you, and you've been a hit at parties! I've gotten pretty good at you as well, but I don't play as much anymore now that you're not "new".

Well, that's all for this year! Not a lot of new stuff, but there it is for you to read.

Listening to... Sum 41 - Billy Spleen
Link of the moment... Or, from another perspective...

That about covers it

I went to a cover show, and saw

Bjork (ugh, GET OFF THE STAGE)
Blink 182 (omg amazing...they played a request that the drummer had never heard and he played it amazingly)
Jimmy Eat World (wait, is this a cover show or a fifth grade talent show?)
Distillers (whoah, whoah, is that *actually* the Distillers or just a cover?)
Danko Jones (good, but NO BOUNCE? WHAT THE FUCK?)

Some choice heckles I had (didn't say them loud enough for the bands to hear, of course):

Bad singer, to sound guy: "Hey, I can't hear anything on my monitor."
Me: "Consider yourself lucky!"

Laura, to me after I air drum a song: "Can you play drums?"
Me: "Better than this guy, but that's not saying much."

Crappy bassist grabs a second bass guitar.
Me, to friends: "This guy has two bass guitars? Maybe he should learn how to play one, first."

Guitarist, trying to get tthe crowd excited: "C'mon, get up! Did you come here to sit on your asses?"
Me: "No, we came to see some decent bands play!"

Other wonderful moments:

The bass player for the Jimmy Eat World cover was in a fairly corpse-like state: no presence at all, and he was a fairly bad at bass to boot. Nonetheless, at one moment, I'm pretty sure I saw him wipe his forehead, as though he was exhausted from his awesome performance.

At one point, one of the members of a bad band decided to tell a really lame joke. I laughed really hard in a belittling manner. He then followed up the joke with the classic "punchline" guitar riff, but wound up messing up the last note, making the whole event much more hilarious than the joke he told. I laughed hysterically for minutes.

Both of my friends head to the washroom. Seconds later, a drunk native woman comes up behind me, and says something along the lines of "Hey, don't be shy! If you know the songs you should get up and start dancing! I see you singing so you should be dancing...(etc.)". Minutes later, she was seen to be escorted outside.

Listening to... Danko Jones - Bounce
Link of the moment... Well, maybe I'll get to see it when Danko plays here in May!

"You cannot square the circle"

I was tired this morning after class, and thought to myself "but I went to bed early last night"! Then, I realized that by that, I meant I had gone to bed at 1 AM, which is not really all that early in a general sense.

I had a party last weekend, and it was awesome! I got the usuals, as well as a few people I don't see often, and I even got four people from my seminar class to show up! A new fascination among the board gamers is Headbanz, which I picked up at the thrift store god knows how long ago. We played a little poker (got cleaned out by the guy we had taught the game to), and some Guitar Hero and Wii as well.

I think the highlight of the night for me was when I convinced everyone to play Werewolf! I had 10 (the perfect number, IMHO), and everyone had fun playing it! My new scoring system was not too complex nor too shallow. The first round was a bit of crapshoot, with not much discussion going on. Grant and Chanel moderated the second and third round so I could play. On the first day, I wound up putting a werewolf up for lynching, and people voted in my favour (I had accused them on little to no evidence, but it must have worked!). In all three rounds, the villagers won, but I think it was solely from lucky first votes. I can't wait to play again!

School is winding down, I guess. I've only got one assignment left this term, and then two exams. I've also chosen my project advisor, Wendy Huang. Her research is in the Open-Shop Machine Scheduling problem, specifically with dense schedules. Mouthful, huh? It should be interesting (or else I'm screwed). I hope to get lots of work done by the end of the summer, rather than putting it off.

I don't think I mentioned it earlier, but I got a new scholarship, worth a total of $9000 over two years. Right now, I've got about $7000 worth of scholarship cheques to deposit. I should be a professional student!

I've broken in four of my six new games. I played Pillars of the Earth with Adam and my mom, and they both enjoyed it (my mom's not so great with rules per se). I won, but it was a VERY close game between the three of us. I'm looking forward to playing again now that I know the flow of the game. I also played El Grande with five last week. I think people generally enjoyed it and would play again, but I don't think it really "wowed" anyone, including myself. Still, it's a nice game deep in both strategy and tactics, that plays well with five.

This previous Wednesday, I had only Grant and Chanel, so we tried out some 3 player games. We started with Ra, which was about as good as I'd expected, but in a different way. The game is all about timing, and there are lots of things to consider when deciding to force an auction or place a tile. The game was super-quick, even with a rules explanation. I also went to the liberty of printing off four player sheets from BGG, and getting them laminated at Staples. After one play, I'm glad I have them since they make scoring and tile sorting easier.

We also played two games of Pandemic (though the first didn't really count, since we missed one rule which makes the game way more difficult). The second game, with *most* of the correct rules (hey, it's hard to remember all the details!), we lost. The cards came out kinda crappy, and there were a lot of chain reaction outbreaks. Overall though, I really like that game! I actually played a solo game tonight (that's right, you can play solo), and I wound up winning. I'm pretty sure I didn't cheat, and I think I just happened to get a good string of cards. I don't know if I'll still like the game as much when I feel like I've "solved" it, but I'm really in love with it at the moment. Maybe I'll play one more solo game before bed...

Listening to... No Use For A Name - Couch Boy
Link of the moment... Creepiest and coolest video you'll see in a while

Binge and Purge

Whoops, haven't updated lately. You can blame that mostly on SSBB starting from March 9th onwards. I went with Adam to Walmart for the midnight release (I think that means my geekdom has reached a new high). There were a handful of other nerds there for that very reason. They probably sold about 20 copies of the game that night. That night (same night as the clocks moving forward an hour), I played the game until about 4. I think the five or six days following the release of the game, it got a cool 35 hours of playtime. I remember checking the other day and seeing that there was 10 hours clocked on Sunday alone! Time well wasted, I tell you.

I realized it was becoming an obsession, and I had a few assignments to do, so I let Grant borrow my Wii since Saturday night. I think I'll pick it up either later today or get him to bring it to games night tomorrow, because I'm caught up again and itching to play.

On games night last week, I had the regulars, plus Adam and Sheena's friend Kim. We wound up playing Settlers and Power Grid (well, those two games were played), and afterwards, I played some four-way SSBB with Adam, Dan, and Grant. Haha, I remember one of the first matches, I played against them as a team of three and wound up winning. I played either Falco or Wolf and racked up a good 4 kills off of one of my final smashes alone. I failed in all my other attempts though. Grant's starting to get pretty good and we're close to being evenly matched

Since the last post, I ordered and received some new board games from the states. I purchased El Grande, Santiago, and Alhambra, which have been on my wishlist for a while, and I picked up Pillars of the Earth on a whim since I needed another $40 to get free shipping, and there wasn't really anything else I wanted that was in stock. It's been called "Caylus light" by lots of BGG users, and it's got some nice looking components. You'd think that after opening four new games and getting that "new game smell" into my system, I'd be happy, but I actually wound up going to the local game store to buy another game, RA! It wasn't in stock at ThoughtHammer when I placed my order, and it's been number one on my wishlist for a while. It's out of print, so I figured I should get a copy while I still can (even if the local store charges $10 more than I could get online).

I've also grown very interested in a new game called Pandemic. It's a cooperative game where you play as team of people who are trying to control and cure a bunch of diseases around the world. From what I read, it seems like the theme is tied in pretty well with the mechanics, and it seems like there's a lot of tension in the game. The local store has it at the same price as online stores, so I'm thinking of picking up a copy. At the very least, I could play it solo!

Listening to... Dream Theatre - Metropolis Part I
Link of the moment... My Wii's GPU is shot (but not to the point where it's unplayable), so I'm going to have to get it sent away and repaired. At least it's under warranty.