Dragon's Weblog - DragonsHobbies.com

Friday 8/22/2003 11:40

Yesterday we bought tickets to go see Bill Cosby in January. There is also a dinner scheduled with before the evening show, but we decided not to buy tickets to that. We spent enough just buying tickets to the show. I don't have any idea what his comedy routine is like anymore, but Beth and I have wanted to see him live for a while so hopefully it's good.

I'm starting to see my email fill up with junk this morning - I'm assuming it's because of one virus or another going around. This is not one of my public email addresses either, so one of my friends has a virus or they sent my email address out to someone else who has a virus. As a note to friends who might read this on my website - please use BCC when including me on messages that are sent to people I don't know.

While I was at Wal-Mart I noticed a few interesting things on the game shelf. This is rare because most of the time I can't find any interesting board games in the big corporate stores. Amazingly also is the fact that both games come from Hasbro (Milton Bradly/Parker Brothers/etc).

Clue is out with a slightly new look now. They finally made miniatures of each of the players. Now, instead of each player having a generic looking, colored pawn to move around, they will have painted miniatures representing each of the 6 suspects. Of course, that doesn't mean the game play is any better, but it looks nice.

Battleball is a football game of the future, or so it says. The game comes with over 20 pre-painted miniatures and a bunch of dice. For me… that in itself is enough to make me drool over the game. Now, thinking of other pre-painted miniatures games, such as Mage Knight, you might question the quality of the miniatures, but you can see the actual miniatures on the top of the box, not just photos, so that should alleviate any fear of getting some crappy painted minis. The game, of course, is a sports-themed game so I immediately thought of a couple people who might be interested in playing Battleball with me. Anyway, it is just another game that I've found that I think would be a nice addition to my collection. I know Battleball came out this year, but I don't know what month. I'm thinking it was really recent because there isn't much information about it online yet. It's not even available at Funagain Games yet. The price range has been between $19 and $30 for where I've seen it, so hopefully I can get it for around $20 if I don't get it for my birthday.

I'm still working on a new style sheet for the website. I'm not really planning to change the look of the site much, other than to update the pages that have yet to be updated, but I want to have a layout that will be easier to make changes with. This is inspired by what I've recently seen at the CSS Zen Garden, so hopefully soon I'll understand enough CSS to make my website easier to change.

Monday 8/18/2003 06:35

Today I should begin my regular workout schedule now that I have my weight bench set up in the garage. I've told Beth for years that if I got a weight bench I would work out regularly. Now that I got this Weider system from my dad I guess I'm going to have to stand by what I said. I need to get in shape anyway. I'm actually underweight, so I need to build myself up and get my scrawny arms doing something more than typing on the computer.

We have one more night with the two foster girls. They are cute little babies but it will be nice for the house to be back to normal. Our one baby girl is enough right now. If it weren't for my mother-in-law staying with us, I doubt we'd be able to handle taking these to other girls, even though it's only for a few days.

Since I've just been killing time at work I'd better wrap it up now and get ready to head home. After my workout I hope to get a little bit done on my website (other than posting my journal entry) this morning if the babies don't keep me too busy when I get home.

Sunday 8/17/2003 01:40

With less than a month to go for my birthday, I'm now in a buying lockdown. This started a couple years ago because in the past I've made it difficult for my wife to buy me a birthday gift before I bought it for myself. So now, each year, I'm not allowed to purchase anything except gas and food within a month from my birthday. Of course, this often gets me talking more about the "cool stuff that I saw online" (usually games) because rather than buying them, I end up just reading about things and talking about them. This year I guess BANG! is on the top of my "hint-hint" (as Beth says - "Is that a hint-hint?") list. It's an interesting looking game which I might not get a chance to play very often since the minimum is 4 players, but the cost is not too high (in my opinion) to make it an unreasonable purchase. Of course, I've made several more unreasonable game purchases if how often I'll get to play a game has anything to do with being a good price.

I finished up the Randomizer/Logic game version 3 just a couple hours ago. Beth says that I need a different name for it than the Randomizer. Maybe I'll come up with something new... maybe not. Either way, I'm beginning to plan out my Duels game now. Of course it's going to be another text based game (since I haven't learned how to put any kind of graphics into C++ yet) but it will be another exercise in more practical uses of C++ rather than the basic "Hello world." codes and other basic training exercises - not that they aren't good for learning, but I just want to get some more hands-on experience along with creating things that I have an interest in at the same time - namely games.

Before I wrap up this journal entry, I have to say that I'm extremely disappointed with Taco Bell today. On my way into work I stopped in to pick up my newly found favorite meal - the Chicken Caesar Stuft Burrito. Of course, they are promoting their (Beef) Stuft Burrito, but they don't have the Chicken Caesar one anymore! AH! It's not like they don't have the ingredients there. Ok, well... maybe the Caesar dressing, but why get rid of such a great item? That was probably about the most nutritious fast-food (via drive-thru, so I'm not counting SubWay) item that has been available for me recently. Well, enough on the subject of food. I'm going to look for my can of soup.