Blankshield

Hot. Melt. Ick.

The Gencon report: Gencon happened! Yay! I was too busy to blog! Yay!

I ran Robbing Hood four times and Control the Crossroads 3 times; I'm really really really happy with how it went. Across the games I got a roughly even mix of kids and adults playing; the youngest participent was 9, the oldest, 50. Everyone picked up on the rules very fast, and great fun appeared to be had by all. Somewhere around 30 people took copies of the rules home with them, and lots of people went away intending to play at home with their own Lego. At least one person seemed seriously interested in buying his own Lego so that he could go home and play it. That was certainly better than a kick in the pants.

The Wasp and Rafik survived travel fairly well both ways, and it will take only minor tweekage to get them to a state where I'm comfortable letting someone else haul them around the country. The box did get banged up around the corners, and I think I want to get the funky reinforcement/protective thingies before letting it be someone else's box.

Attack Vector demos went quite well, although there was less traffic than I'd hoped/feared - the minis/board gaming hall was in the proverbial end of beyond, well past all the major crowd magnets, so we didn't get many people who weren't there for a game already. Saturday night, Ken and I sat down with about 5 other people to run the Duel - which is to say, the one that will get written into the fiction to replace the one that Ken wrote back for the beta version of the game. It was an excellent duel, practically textbook in many aspects, and I think will write up very well. Unfortunately, because we were both playing it very well, several turns went by with nothing happening. And because everything (and I mean everything!) about the match was being recorded, it dragged out and reached evolutionary timescales. I was getting bored, and I was one of the principles involved - I can only imagine the mind-numbing agony we put our recorders through; especially as hour 4 approached and we *still* hadn't engaged to beam range. By the time we finished and went to bed that night, all I could think about was how much my head hurt, and how horrible an ordeal it was. By the next morning though I was forgetting the pain and remembering all the really cool tactical details, so it's a much better place in my memory now. As an example of how well-executed our tactics were (although I don't expect anyone who hasn't played AV:T to get the "oooh" factor) neither of us had a single non-nose bearing to the other until we started into our final pass. Neither of us was able to manage getting the other into a poor position, and in turn 8, pretty much "had to" compromise on a pass that would give both of us the shots we wanted. It was good.

Anyway, time to stop hiding in the air-conditioned office and go home. Look for me soon as a puddle on the floor. Oog blag hot.

James

The Gencon report: Last night was productive. I have built and sorted and 90% packed all the armies for the Crossroads battles. In the process, I realized that I'm bringing in excess of 320 minifigs to Gencon. Yikes! Many many thanks to Jim-san for helping me (subtext:doing it all while I gave directions) build the armies last Friday before the playtest; it made last night's job much simpler and quicker. I've also found a home for the obscene amount of 4x4 green plates I bought from Bricklord: under my armies! :)

Yet to do:
-Optimize the teams for Robbing Hood: the Friday playtest had the feedback of "pre-build the teams for the con. We know what we're doing, and it still took us half an hour to make our teams."
-Build more trees, which involves setting up both tables in the basement for Robbing Hood so I can tell how many trees I need.
-Finish the Wasp. Cylinder needs ends, mast needs attaching, engine needs to exist. Greeble as needed.
-Repair the Rafik (greeblies)
-Print off rules one-sheets for Brick Battles (brief pause) Ok, done. Yay network printers.
-Get the Ad Astra box from Ross. Hope he's finished it... Cut and shape the foam for the Ad Astra box so that the models don't arrive in their component bits. This is one of those things that I fear will take much longer than I think it will.
-PACK. This is the other thing that I fear will take much longer than I think...

Mugh. At least I stop being at work in half and hour, ya me!

James

Oh yeah - the Gencon report. The weekend was a study in opposites. On the one hand, both scenarios got tested on Friday, and some really good feedback happened, and I'm very comfortable with running the events at Gencon.

On the other hand, I spent all evening Saturday rebuilding the mast on the Wasp to make it smaller, and keep the same basic shape & structure. It worked; it even improved a bit in places. Then I pressed the ends together gently, just to compress some of the parts to get a tight fight, and it collapsed like it was made out of wet cardboard. I stared at it for a few moments, and decided that going to bed was the better part of valour. I couldn't even weep with frustation; I had that sort of hollow, "that can't have just happened" feeling that comes from dropping a mountain in your garage (I've done that too, but not recently). So I rebuilt the damn thing exactly as it was before I decided to improve it on Sunday afternoon, and finally, at about 10:30 Sunday night, started to finish the body of the Wasp. Two steps forward...

James

Microsoft certification is useless.

By which I do not mean that having "MCP" or "MCSE" on your business card, or a "Microsoft Certified Partner" plaque on your company's wall will not aid in the whole job/work aquisition process. What I mean is that any schmuck with a couple hundred bucks and the patience to memorize can study and ace the exams, which makes the certifications, as a measure of compentence, worse than useless. I am a Microsoft Certified Professional with Windows XP Professional. I can count the hours I've logged with XP on one hand. I've installed it once. If I concentrate really hard, I can remember something about security features and active directory. Worthless.

Now Lexmark, on the other hand, has their shit together on certifications. They accept that passing an exam will not teach you how to fix a printer. So they've gone completely the other direction: Exams are free, have no time or retry limits, 20 questions long at the outside, and you're encourgaged - nay, practically required - to have the service manual onhand (which, conveniently enough comes in a PDF on the same disk as the exam). They will ask incredibly petty questions like "You are servicing a printer displaying Error 53, and have verified that the scanning assembly is not at fault. What voltage should be present at pin 3 on P203 off the engine board?" They do not expect you to memorize this information; a computer would have a hard time memorizing this kind of petty crap. What they are teaching you, however, is how to use the service manual. What a novel flipping idea - don't cram someone's head full of useless knowledge that will leak out their ears - teach them how to use the tools they need to do the work and get the knowledge as they go.

They're very subtle about it too; the first few Lexmark exams I took I was cursing their bones for the perfidious crap they made me look up. It took me hours for each one. Now I can knock off 6 or 7 in an afternoon, while occaisionally checking e-mail, watching my inbox for new work, and surfing the web when it gets too boring. Looking up the answers is approaching instinct; I just "know" where they put that kind of thing in the manual. I'm also picking up the knowledge too - having to look it up myself when the question is asked, rather than memorizing it as random factoid B, is making it stick in my brain.

More importantly, from my point of view and Lexmark's, I know how to use the service manual. When I get a call about a broken printer, I don't spend 3 or 4 hours humming and hawwing and taking various bits out to see if they're the problem. I look in the book, and usually I know what needs doing and what parts need ordering within about 10 minutes.

I know how printers work and how to fix them. Lexmark made me look it up.
Microsoft took my money and gave me pretty letters. Ooh, shiny.

James

Gencon report: Things are moving. See, see - I am capable of doing things not at the last minute! Well OK, 5 days before I get on the plane is sorta last minute, but it's not all the way last minute like building a castle at 5 AM the morning it's being displayed.

Ross and I didn't get a box built; life intervened and it didn't happen. On the plus side, I know how big I want it to be, and he's just going to go ahead and build it for me. I also had an inspired building session, and designed and built the hard part of one of the AV:T ships in about an hour. It is gorgeous and functional and funky. Bow before my Lego building skills. </ego>

I've also sucessfully suborned a bunch of gamers to playtest for me tonight, using the clever tactic of asking them to.

Last night was fun too; I didn't get anything done for Gencon, but an AFOL from Montreal was in Edmonton for business, so NALUG had an impromptu gathering in my basement last night. We barbequed, we looked at stuff, we yakked about the Brick. It was good. I do feel a bit guilty about the miscommunication that kept Raven from going off to her Thursday night thing; she was waiting for me to come upstairs and mind the Beast; I was minding the beast like I often do in the evenings; letting her do her own thing, and checking every 20 minutes or so. After the third check, when Raven still hadn't left, I asked what was up, and the miscommunication came to light. Mea Culpa.

James

Gencon report: Progress at last! Scritch came over last night and we yakked about Brick Battles, and playtested Robbing Hood. That went quite well, and included very useful feedback like "ya know, those aren't the rules we came up with." We tried both ways, and The Old Ways Are Best, in this case. A slowish morning at work has let me rewrite the rules, and do the one-sheet reference.

Tonight, I'm getting together with my brother Ross, the Renaissance man to build a box for the two Attack Vector: Tactical ships I'm modeling in Lego for Ken. Now all I need to do between now and then (~5 hours) is figure out how big the box is going to be - because I haven't finished both ships yet.

This time next week, I'll be somewhere over Ontario.

James

Hot. melt. Ick, hot.

Gencon report: I've done diddly. 2 days have passed. ack blag, panic panic. Meh. I can't get enough energy to panic. I can barely get enough energy to type.

Tempest was fun on Friday; even if it didn't look like I was having fun. Even Father Dave enjoyed it. Although, to mangle a good quote: "Do not meddle in the affairs of mages, for they lack subtlety and hold a grudge." Mages are all such arrogant prigs, it's amazing we get anything done. Goes with the territory, I suppose. Anyone who has a deep-seated belief that "I'm right and the entire world is wrong" is going to have a hard time Playing Well With Others...

And I lost Father Dave, which means I'll have to rebuild him, which means I'll need the darn rulebook, which Mission: Fun and Games hasn't gotten around to ordering in for me yet. Grr.

And to top it all off, blogger isn't working from home, so this is going to sit in the netherrealms of blogger's entrails until I go to work tomorrow.

oog. blag. Hot.

Ugh. It's hot. I hate hot. People who have to live with me know this. Other people don't, because when it's hot, I melt. Raven has been known to find a big puddle of James on the couch, or on the laundry room floor, which is the coolest, darkest place in the house. mmm, linoleum.

Have I mentioned it's hot?

Pirates of the Carribean rocked!

And as I have noticed in the past, it is much more fun to see a movie with a group of fans who all set out to have fun than it is to go by yourself. Heck, I bet even Attack of the Clones wouldn't have sucked if I'd seen it with 20 people in pirate costumes, shouting "Arrr!" at thematically appropriate moments. :)

And I realized today that Gen Con is in 2 weeks. Less than 2 weeks, actually, because I get on a plane on the 23rd.

WUAAAAGGG! I have so much crap left to do it's not funny! PANIC! WUAAAG! pant pant pant.

Ok, I feel better. I still have so much crap left to do it's not funny, but I'm done with the panic part. I hope Raven can cope with being turned into a Lego widow again for a few weeks. (wait - less than 2 weeks. WUAAAAGHGGGG!)

A blog, whodathunkit? Fortunately for my sense of self worth, I'm not doing this because I'm a lemming who does whatever the latest craze is, but out of a residual sense of guilt.

Yeah, I said guilt. Despite having been reassured by a couple completely different groups that it is completely in-line with netiquette to read blogs without maintaining one, I still think that if I'm willing to be a voyeur, it's polite to respond with a little bit of exhibitionism. Hmm. Maybe guilt is the wrong term - it might just be my old habit of balancing my vices .

Either that, or this is to let Raven know what's going on in my life. :)

Ugh. It's been way too long since I've done any HTML. I couldn't remember how to make a frickkin' link. As evidenced by the fact that I screwed up linking to Raven's weblog the first time, and it took me here. This is a gratuitous link because I like Raven's 404 page. For the curious, the way to make a link is to cut-and-paste from the address bar, not to type from memory and hope I've got it right. Blarg.

Blankshield (to distinguish me from the other James)