Stuff, i.e. Lots of Misc.
Oct. 16th, 2005 03:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneGame Design.
For those who don't know, I design board games, specifically a type sometimes called Beer & Pretzel games because they're fairly simple rules and you can learn and play the game whilst drinking beer and eating pretzels. I've got one game that I'm selling right now called Zombie Café, you can read about it and others in development on my web site, www.SpareBrainsGames.com.
(and if you're a graphic artist with a twisted sense of humor and style to match, and will work incredibly cheaply, I may be looking for you….)
Anyway, I'm currently working on a new game that I'm not going to discuss here. The initial mechanics are worked out, the first set of rules are written, the cards are laid out ready to print. I'm just needing to create a bunch more cards, then I'll be able to print the first beta and do some test runs.
So what happens as I'm driving home tonight? I get an idea for another game. I just spent a good 75 minutes writing up outline material and designing a 'Chinese Menu' form to be used to keep track of one part of the game.
It never fails. I finished Zombie Café, and ignoring the two new ones mentioned here, I have EIGHT other games in various stages of development. Well, finished might be too strong a word, excluding art work it is done.
The two new ones both look like they'll be fun. Then again, I think most of my games are fun. Some still need work, and one of them (which is one of my wife's favorites) will probably never be able to be commercially sold as it's pretty much a copy of an existing game, just cast into a totally different genre. Unless I can sell it to that company, I doubt I'll be able to sell it anywhere else.
Cell Phones. I lost my cell in September while doing some photography by the railroad tracks. My provider, Alltel, does not have a store in Alamogordo, Las Cruces and El Paso are the closest places. Today had me in both Las Cruces and El Paso, and I got a new phone. It's a Motorola V262, pretty good. For those of you not in the know, the price you pay for a phone is heavily subsidized by the provider: they take a loss on the front end of the deal because you have to sign a contract for their service for a year or two to get that lower price. So that phone that you're getting for $10 would actually cost you probably $100 without the contract/subsidy.
My Motorola? Not a cheap phone, not a fancy one either. You're paying for the name. It was, IIRC, $70 with a one-year contract, less than that if you sign up for two years. What the web site did not list, and I'm rather disappointed in it, was the price for the phone without a contract.
$200.
I balked severely when I found that out, then the sales girl told me they had refurbished units for $130. I am a big fan of factory-refurbed things: the laptop I'm typing this on is a refurb (IBM Thinkpad), my Palm Pilot Vx is a refurb, and now my cell phone is a refurb.
So it was a healthy chunk of money after tax, and I still need to get a car charger, data cable for my laptop, and a decent case: the belt clip thingy that they provide truly sucks.
I like Motorola phones. Moto, along with Sony/Qualcomm, are my favorite phones. This is mainly a bias towards good construction, I also really like their configuration, the programming of the phone makes sense to me. I can't stand Nokias, I don't trust Samsung or Audiovox, and LG is both too much an unknown and I just wasn't comfortable with it. So it is nice getting back in to a Motorola.
Aircraft Fly-In.
Today was fun. I drove down to El Paso then over to a small New Mexico town just north of the Mexico border called Santa Teresa. They had an aircraft fly-in. The interesting thing was that all the planes that flew in were built by their pilots from kits, they were all experimental.
I did not expect to be impressed by the show. Imagine going to a Corvette show (assuming you like Vettes) and you see 20 of the same year and model in one group, the only difference between them being variations on paint jobs and interior customizing. That's about what this was. But there was enough variety to keep me interested. I ended up shooting almost 30 frames with my digital, I'll get them posted soon as my friend Terry (who photographed my wedding) is a private pilot and interested in building his own plane.
I needed to shoot a roll or two of black and white for school, it didn't happen. I saw some cool stuff driving down to El Paso but didn't have time to shop, I might go back by Sunday or Monday.
Family Health.
Left Cloudcroft at about 11am Saturday, got home about 1am Sunday. Drove about 275 miles as I went to Las Cruces after the fly-in and met up with my parents and his sister and niece who drove up from Odessa, TX. We sort of had a mini-family reunion, there were 11 of us including one of my cousins. We could have theoretically produced another 8 or 9 or so but didn't. I set up my Eos Digital Rebel on my tripod and did some group shots, including some with me via the self-timer. It was good seeing everyone, but also quite sad as one of my aunts has advancing Alzheimer's and I could see the confusion on her face as she tried to find something on the menu that she liked when we went to dinner. Another aunt doesn't have the Big A, but something is radically affecting her memory and thinking. Allegedly a third aunt present also has Alzheimer's, but I didn't see any evidence of it. That's 3/4ths of my dad's sisters who have either Alzheimer's or an as yet unidentified impairment.
It's kind of depressing knowing that these two are only 5 years or so older than my parents.
More brains!
My mom dropped a bomb on me earlier this week: she may be epileptic, petit mall flavor. She was having an occasional problem with passing out with no warning, we believed it was part of a heart problem. Her latest doctor says it isn't her heart that caused the problems. I just hope she doesn't go on phenylbarbital as that is nasty stuff.
In some ways Petit Mall is worse than Grand Mall. The PMs give no warning, whereas the GMs generally have certain things that can trigger a seizure (unusual visual patterns, for example) but they also have warning signs, so if you're driving you usually have a chance to pull over and safe your car, etc.
Very scary stuff.
For those who don't know, I design board games, specifically a type sometimes called Beer & Pretzel games because they're fairly simple rules and you can learn and play the game whilst drinking beer and eating pretzels. I've got one game that I'm selling right now called Zombie Café, you can read about it and others in development on my web site, www.SpareBrainsGames.com.
(and if you're a graphic artist with a twisted sense of humor and style to match, and will work incredibly cheaply, I may be looking for you….)
Anyway, I'm currently working on a new game that I'm not going to discuss here. The initial mechanics are worked out, the first set of rules are written, the cards are laid out ready to print. I'm just needing to create a bunch more cards, then I'll be able to print the first beta and do some test runs.
So what happens as I'm driving home tonight? I get an idea for another game. I just spent a good 75 minutes writing up outline material and designing a 'Chinese Menu' form to be used to keep track of one part of the game.
It never fails. I finished Zombie Café, and ignoring the two new ones mentioned here, I have EIGHT other games in various stages of development. Well, finished might be too strong a word, excluding art work it is done.
The two new ones both look like they'll be fun. Then again, I think most of my games are fun. Some still need work, and one of them (which is one of my wife's favorites) will probably never be able to be commercially sold as it's pretty much a copy of an existing game, just cast into a totally different genre. Unless I can sell it to that company, I doubt I'll be able to sell it anywhere else.
Cell Phones. I lost my cell in September while doing some photography by the railroad tracks. My provider, Alltel, does not have a store in Alamogordo, Las Cruces and El Paso are the closest places. Today had me in both Las Cruces and El Paso, and I got a new phone. It's a Motorola V262, pretty good. For those of you not in the know, the price you pay for a phone is heavily subsidized by the provider: they take a loss on the front end of the deal because you have to sign a contract for their service for a year or two to get that lower price. So that phone that you're getting for $10 would actually cost you probably $100 without the contract/subsidy.
My Motorola? Not a cheap phone, not a fancy one either. You're paying for the name. It was, IIRC, $70 with a one-year contract, less than that if you sign up for two years. What the web site did not list, and I'm rather disappointed in it, was the price for the phone without a contract.
$200.
I balked severely when I found that out, then the sales girl told me they had refurbished units for $130. I am a big fan of factory-refurbed things: the laptop I'm typing this on is a refurb (IBM Thinkpad), my Palm Pilot Vx is a refurb, and now my cell phone is a refurb.
So it was a healthy chunk of money after tax, and I still need to get a car charger, data cable for my laptop, and a decent case: the belt clip thingy that they provide truly sucks.
I like Motorola phones. Moto, along with Sony/Qualcomm, are my favorite phones. This is mainly a bias towards good construction, I also really like their configuration, the programming of the phone makes sense to me. I can't stand Nokias, I don't trust Samsung or Audiovox, and LG is both too much an unknown and I just wasn't comfortable with it. So it is nice getting back in to a Motorola.
Aircraft Fly-In.
Today was fun. I drove down to El Paso then over to a small New Mexico town just north of the Mexico border called Santa Teresa. They had an aircraft fly-in. The interesting thing was that all the planes that flew in were built by their pilots from kits, they were all experimental.
I did not expect to be impressed by the show. Imagine going to a Corvette show (assuming you like Vettes) and you see 20 of the same year and model in one group, the only difference between them being variations on paint jobs and interior customizing. That's about what this was. But there was enough variety to keep me interested. I ended up shooting almost 30 frames with my digital, I'll get them posted soon as my friend Terry (who photographed my wedding) is a private pilot and interested in building his own plane.
I needed to shoot a roll or two of black and white for school, it didn't happen. I saw some cool stuff driving down to El Paso but didn't have time to shop, I might go back by Sunday or Monday.
Family Health.
Left Cloudcroft at about 11am Saturday, got home about 1am Sunday. Drove about 275 miles as I went to Las Cruces after the fly-in and met up with my parents and his sister and niece who drove up from Odessa, TX. We sort of had a mini-family reunion, there were 11 of us including one of my cousins. We could have theoretically produced another 8 or 9 or so but didn't. I set up my Eos Digital Rebel on my tripod and did some group shots, including some with me via the self-timer. It was good seeing everyone, but also quite sad as one of my aunts has advancing Alzheimer's and I could see the confusion on her face as she tried to find something on the menu that she liked when we went to dinner. Another aunt doesn't have the Big A, but something is radically affecting her memory and thinking. Allegedly a third aunt present also has Alzheimer's, but I didn't see any evidence of it. That's 3/4ths of my dad's sisters who have either Alzheimer's or an as yet unidentified impairment.
It's kind of depressing knowing that these two are only 5 years or so older than my parents.
More brains!
My mom dropped a bomb on me earlier this week: she may be epileptic, petit mall flavor. She was having an occasional problem with passing out with no warning, we believed it was part of a heart problem. Her latest doctor says it isn't her heart that caused the problems. I just hope she doesn't go on phenylbarbital as that is nasty stuff.
In some ways Petit Mall is worse than Grand Mall. The PMs give no warning, whereas the GMs generally have certain things that can trigger a seizure (unusual visual patterns, for example) but they also have warning signs, so if you're driving you usually have a chance to pull over and safe your car, etc.
Very scary stuff.
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-16 01:34 pm (UTC)Phones: We have LG7000 phones right now and can give them an excellent recommendation.
Seizures: I was on phenobarbitol for about six months for PM seizures when I had encephalitis. It made me want to sleep all the time, but that was okay because I hated my 6th grade teacher and because of being drugged I only had to stay at school half a day.
Alzheimers: whoa, that sucks about your aunts. So far my dad is clear-headed and he's 84. His sister, a few years younger, is also fine. I'm not aware of any problems on my mom's side either, so hopefully I have dodged that genetic bullet.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-18 03:38 am (UTC)Ditto on the sympathy re your aunts, dementia, and seizures. My mom was starting to repeat herself in the year before she died, but other than that she was always herself, fortunately. A friend of the family had Alzheimers and, after having lunch with her, my mom was in tears at what the disease had taken away from her old friend.