Posts from 2007

My Top 10 Games

A short while back Steve (I think Steve Sexton, though I’m not sure) asked me to post my all-time top 10 games.  Here they are, but I’m not even going to try...

Salishan Gaming 2007

I hosted another fantastic weekend of gaming about a weekend ago at Salishan.  We enjoyed our largest crowd ever, peaking at about 15 people, and though thin...

My Link Blog

I use Google Reader to read syndicated blogs, and have started to be more thorough about sharing interesting posts I read. If you are interested in subscrib...

Our Family Christmas Special

This may rank as the dumbest, most inane video you watch this year so feel free to just move along. Really, there’s nothing to see here. Still here? Enjoy ...

Games for Sale

I’ve got a few games for sale, posted on the BGG marketplace. I’ll be adding a few more to the list as I clean out my collection.

Winds of Plunder, Brass, Niagara, 1960

Gaming continues to be frequent and fun.  Last weekend the boys and I tried Winds of Plunder for the first time, the GMT game stuck on my burndown list.  It ...

GMT In-Stock and P500 Order

It sure is hard to resist GMT Games’ annual in-stock discount. After chatting with Mike Deans yesterday afternoon I placed my in-stock order, plus added a f...

Start ‘em Young!

I just had to post this photo. Yes, this little girl on the left really does know how to play chess. Talk about getting an early jump on competitive play!

BoardGameGeek Holiday Gift Guide

If you are a casual gamer (or not a gamer at all!) then you might be interested in the BoardGameGeek Holiday Gift Guide. I haven’t played all of the games o...

BGG.CON 2007 Wrap-up

Convention Summary BGG.CON 2007 was quite a bit different than 2005, the last time I attended.

BGG.CON 2007 Day 4

My primary gaming buddy at BGG.CON was nowhere to be found on Sunday as he had an early flight to Indy, so I had to fend for myself to get some final gaming ...

BGG.CON 2007 Day 3

Saturday was full of great gaming and even better Texas BBQ thanks to a trip to the Baby Back Shack courtesy of Tim and Carrie.  The day did not start off to...

BGG.CON 2007 Day 2

This will be another brief post - having a blast and don’t want to miss out on any gaming! I continued to play new games to me that were very good, including...

BGG.CON 2007 Day 1

Check out the photo stream with more photos over at Flickr. Wow, what a fun-packed and tiresome first day at BGG.CON.

Brass

As promised I played a three-player game of the new Martin Wallace release Brass today.  Randy and his son Byron joined me - a first chance to meet these new...

Burndown 2007

What a difference a year makes. Last year I peaked at 118 unplayed games in my collection and went into the holiday season with over 35 games remaining to b...

BGG.CON 2007

Two weeks from now I’ll be at BGG.CON. Are you going? If so, leave a comment so we can meetup there. I’m really looking forward to this. Why? I’m ...

To Court the King with Sasquatch

Jacob invited a friend over for some Magic: the Gathering action. After playing another prototype with Carey I joined in for some fun theme-deck action. I ...

Twilight Struggle vs Ken

Ken and I got together about 2 weeks ago to play Twilight Struggle. This currently ranks as my favorite-game-that-I-rarely-get-to-play. Ken was concerned a...

Age of Empires III

With a rare free Sunday, the boys and I took the dive into boardgaming again and played Age of Empires III. KC and I did a joint order at Funagain recently ...

Game Class Starts

Class started today without a hitch. I opted for Walk the Dogs to keep the first day simple and play something known by about half the class (returning from...

Contrast Train Gaming

Two consecutive Fridays, two consecutive train gaming sessions. How different they can be! Last Friday I hosted an evening of 18XX gaming, a rare pleasure...

Spiders

Look at what jumped out at Jacob today while working in the yard: Note: I think this is a Cross Spider.

DSLR Sensor Cleaning Part 2

I wasn’t at all satisfied with the results of my prior sensor cleaning and was noticing some significant spotting, particularly with some flash shots on my 2...

What New Games for 3-5 Graders?

I’m doing the game class thing again at school this year. Take a look at the games I used last year and leave comments here with any new suggestions for 200...

Matthew Football Highlights vs Beaverton

Matthew had a great football game on Saturday, scoring 2 touchdowns and making 9 tackles. I’m doing a lot of the video post-production this year for the tea...

Two Months with an iPhone

I’m a little over two months into owning and using my iPhone and it is past time to share my experiences so far. I made a complete transition from using a B...

Mini-Retirement vs. Semi-Retirement

A few folks have emailed me and congratulated me on my semi-retirement. I’m very grateful for the remarks and support, but I do feel the need to make a clar...

Big Foot

So Gabby, our new kitten, is supposed to have larger than normal (for a cat) paws. This morning Julie noticed that one paw was larger than the other, took h...

Fun at Keuka Lake

I’m sitting here at a coffee shop in downtown Hammondsport, NY uploading some photographs for an online photography course I’m taking over at BetterPhoto.com...

18FL with Jacob

I recently borrowed 18FL from Eric Landes to try another easier 2-player 18xx game with Jacob. We played a couple of weekends ago, again with good results, ...

Off to New York

Blogging from the iphone here… Still not too used to typing on this gadget. We are off to NY to visit Keuka lake for a week. Stay tuned - maybe you’ll see so...

Max Michael (and family) Visits Oregon

Max Michael, game designer and publisher from Stratamax Games (also see an interview by Tom Vasel), is wrapping up a two week vacation to the Pacific northwe...

Get Back

Tap tap tap. Is this thing still on? Wow - a lot has happened in the past month! As many of you know, CheckFree completed its acquisition of Corillian back...

We Have a New Kitten

The kitten is, for now, going to be called “Kitten”. We think she’s pretty cute.

My First Digital Photo

I’m 99% certain that this is the first digital photograph I ever took.  Back in April 1997 I purchased an Epson PhotoPC 500 for a tidy sum (I bet you can buy...

Union Pacific, 24/7: the Game, Loco

Gaming sessions have been few and far between over the past 2 months.  I looked at my game journal and noticed an entry on May 1 (my session at Mike’s) and o...

Life Sometimes Takes Over

I can’t let May go by with only one post, so here’s a quick rundown of what’s been going on: CheckFree’s acquisition of Corillian closed in the middle of th...

Thurn & Taxis, Liebrary

This has been a pretty good year for me in terms of making gaming sessions.  I’ve been able to host most of the time when I’m scheduled, and I’ve managed to ...

Chess Wrap-up

The chess season for me is officially over for school year 2006-2007.  It was a fun year and a first chance for me to start getting involved with the program...

1889

I used a pretty heavy hand with Jacob last weekend in an attempt to get him to try out an 18xx game with me.  After witnessing my marathon game of 1825 at Ga...

GameStorm 2007 - Kniziathon

I decided to turn this post into a tutorial as well as a report on running a Kniziathon.  I suppose the idea could be transferable to any game designer with ...

Spring Break in Bandon

It had been far too long since we had been family camping, so back in January Julie and I decided to book some time in a Yurt in one of the Oregon State Park...

GameStorm 2007, Day 3

My goal was for day 3 to be a day of rest for me - no events to run, ideally playing a longer thoughtful game.  Downtime wasn’t a big concern as I knew I’d h...

How to Win a Kniziathon

Tim Shippert put together a nice geeklist describing how he won the Kniziathon at the recent GameStorm convention.

The Passing of a Friend Gamer

I just learned today that a friend and fellow gamer, Jason Sato, passed away this afternoon after suffering a stroke while gaming last night at the Game Depo...

GameStorm 2007, Day 2

After too little sleep, Jacob and I swung over to the “other side” to play a roleplaying game starting at 9am on Saturday.  The game: Spirit of the Century, ...

GameStorm 2007, Day 1

(You can see all of my GameStorm photos on my Flickr photoset.) I’m coming back to this blogging thing with a flurry.  I expect to make no fewer than 5 posts...

GiftTRAP Review

This is a review of the party game GiftTRAP.  I received a complimentary review copy and am way past due in posting my review. Julie, Jacob, Matthew, and I s...

Werewolf in our Game On! Games Class

Julie just wrote this tid-bit to me about our games class.  I’m out of town on business all week so she’s handling both classes, and we struggled a bit decid...

Salishan Gaming Wrapup

Chairman Mike did a fabulous job writing up our recent gaming weekend out on the coast, but I still wanted to share some of the impressions of the games I pl...

Blogging and Photos for My Gaming Weekend

I’m hosting a great crowd of friends out at our beach house at Salishan this weekend.  We are all quite chilly hear at the house waiting for the gas to be tu...

Automating Your Home IT

I enjoy hacks that simplify my life and let me focus on the stuff that really matters.  I’m a long-time reader of Lifehacker and even bought Gina’s book so t...

Combat Commander: Europe, Scenario 5

With Jacob snowshoeing / backpacking up on Mt Hood, and Julie/Matthew driving halfway to the coast to transport a friend, I rang up Ken to see if he was up f...

Two Player Wargames with Jacob

Jacob and I have been on a roll lately, playing Combat Commander: Europe twice and Command & Colors: Ancients three times over the past 2 weeks.  I’m mos...

Old School Cheat Sheets

I’m loving the cheat sheets ruby application.  Install Ruby, gem, then follow Err the Blog’s complex (heh) instructions. I even added my own cheat sheet on G...

A Face for Radio

I’ve managed to have my voice show up in a couple of interesting places lately.  First, my friends over at Distinction Communication had me record a radio sp...

Kid Stuff

Jacob and I spent Saturday and Sunday up at Nanitch Lodge with our Boy Scout troop.  This is the sixth straight year I’ve been to a scout outing up on the mo...

GameStorm 9 will feature Reiner Knizia

GameStorm 9, March 30 - April 1 at the Portland Airport Sheraton, will be featuring Reiner Knizia as its guest of honor this year.  There are several reasons...

Debt-Free Living

Note: this is going to be a personal, lengthy, non-gaming related post.  Don’t worry - I’m not going to turn this into a personal finance blog.  There are a ...

2006 Resolution Review

While I focused primarily on my unplayed games burndown throughout 2006, I actually set 5 distinct goals back in January 2006.  Let’s review how I did on eac...

Game On! Games Mid-Term Report

The game classes have been a good success, even resulting in the conversion of a few families to full-time game geeks.  Julie is running the Wednesday class ...

C&C Ancients with Jacob

Jacob and I are starting to get a bit hooked on Command & Colors: Ancients.  We played a game Thursday night then brought it out again this afternoon.  I...

Final 2006 Burndown Report

If you follow this weblog (and the now defunct Gathering of Engineers blog) you know that I had a New Years resolution to play through my current owned but u...

Build-up to Burndown

I took advantage of some solo time at home last week to invite some friends over for gaming.  It was my turn to host our weekly Tuesday night gaming, but I m...