Posts from 2008

Snow Continues to Fall in Sherwood

We are getting no relief here. We thought Sunday was crazy - about 10” of snow followed by a hard crunchy shell of ice about 1” thick. This is a photo of our...

Salishan Gaming 2008

I hosted what has become an annual gaming event at our Salishan home

Thanksgiving in Salishan

I’m back at Salishan this weekend - three trips in less than a month after not visiting for over two months! We had a great Thanksgiving weekend here with th...

BGG.CON 2008 Wrapup

BGG.CON continues to impress and remains at the top of my list of conventions to travel to, surpassing Origins, Gen Con, and even Essen.

BGG.CON - Day 5

Sunday at BGG.CON - the exodus begins and gamers try to fit in an as many games as they can before the library closes. Jim had been lugging around his copy o...

BGG.CON - Day 4

Saturday began with a scheduled game of Steam Over Holland with David Fair, Tom McCorry, Jeff, and Jim. This was a last-minute substitution over 18VA and tur...

BGG.CON - Day 3

Friday started with a mini photography meetup with Mark Hamzy, Jeff Jones, and me. We enjoyed chatting about equipment, lenses, and Sony vs Canon.

BGG.CON - Day 2

Day 2 (Thursday) was a day of longish games - a series of 3-4 hour plays that were very rewarding. Jim and I hung out around registration and played The Batt...

BGG.CON - Day 1

Thanksgiving weekend gives me a chance to catch up on my BGG.CON posts. As much as I’d like to crank these out while at the convention, gaming takes preceden...

Jacob, KC, and a little Beatles action

Enjoy: Norwegian Wood - KC, Jacob, Chris and Julie from Chris Brooks on Vimeo. We need a drum section - Matthew hopes to take care of that by m...

History of BGG.CON Posts

As the gaming world turns its attention to the “vast gaming experience” that is BGG.CON, here is a summary of my posts on the convention from 2005 and 2007 (...

We the People, Agricola x 2, Dominion x 3

I took what I think was a deserved break from volunteer activities this weekend, allowing Julie to accompany the boys on a scout camp-out. I proceeded to fil...

Recent Gaming: Steel Driver and Dominion

For the first time in many moons I hosted a game night on Tuesday night and had a strong turnout of six people. Steel Driver was the top priority for the nig...

The End of Another Football Season

The season wrapped up for both boys on Saturday with dramatic victory for one young man and a heartbreaking loss for the other. Jacob’s team faced their neme...

Jacob’s Second Touchdown Catch

Jacob is getting more and more plays at tight end, and had a great 25 yard touchdown catch and run last week. Both boys’ teams are 5-1 going into today’s gam...

Tough Loss for Jacob’s Team

I’ll share some more video soon, but Jacob’s team had a tough loss to a very strong Westview team on Saturday night and dropped to a 3-1 record. On a brighte...

Jacob Football Highlights

I have a couple of highlight reels to post for Jacob’s football so far this weekend. The first one below is a collection of defensive highlights for Jacob, i...

Football is Life

Or at least it seems that way this time of year, though no regrets. My typical day these days: up at 5:30am, carpool downtown at 6:30am, work until about 4pm...

Wilco in Bend

I saw Wilco in Bend on Saturday night. Check out some nice photos at this guy’s Flickr set. This might be the best concert I’ve ever seen. The last time I sa...

Review: Dragons of Kir

I received a (rare) complimentary copy of a game to review - Dragons of Kir (publisher page). Jacob and I sat down to play last week, and here are my thought...

Video Journal from WBC-West

Dave is producing a video journal of our gaming group wargame retreat in Sunriver. I’ll arrive late Thursday afternoon.

Session Report: Napoleonic Wars

Next weekend I’ll be spending about 3.5 days in Sunriver with Doug and crowd at his “WBC West” event. This will involve mostly wargaming with a little bit of...

Summer Camp - Camp Gorton

The boys and I spent last week (hah! last month - can you tell how long it is taking me to get through the write/edit cycle for posts?) at Camp Gorton on Lak...

Keuka Lake 2008, Week 4

Week 4 at Keuka Lake is a wrap, and I’m sitting here in the grey cottage watching heavy rains over the lake as we do final prep for summer camp at Camp Gorton.

Europe 2008 - Summary

Given the, er, spread out nature of my Europe posts, I figured it would make sense to post a summary.

Europe 2008, Paris Days 4 and 5

We began the day at the Rodin museum, an impressive display of sculptures and other artifacts of his life (the museum is housed in his former residence). N.B...

Europe 2008, Paris Day 3

Day 3 in France started with an early morning trip to Île de la Cité for a visit to Notre Dame de Paris, famous for gargoyles, gypsies, and hunchbacks. We sa...

Keuka Lake 2008, Week 3

We are half-way through our stay in NY, having spent week 3 with our guests the Ginns. The weather is warming up here with most days sunny, humid, and in the...

One month with the Amazon Kindle

Scott Hanselman and I met for lunch a few months ago and he showed off his Amazon Kindle to me. This product was nowhere near my radar, but as I approached m...

Keuka Lake 2008, Week 2

Another great week at Keuka. We had our usual mix of weather but managed to get in a good range of activities, including some hardcore track work down in Ham...

Keuka Lake, Week 1

We are a week into our 6-week stay at Keuka Lake, and the pace is intoxicating. Rather than trying to squeeze in every possible activity over a 7-10 day spri...

Europe 2008 - Bulge Tour, Day 2

Day 2 of our Bulge tour was geared more to accommodating our tourists stops, so there was not much rhyme or reason to the sites we visited.

My Office for the Next 6 Weeks

About a year ago Julie and I committed to spending a full 6 weeks at Keuka Lake in 2008, and we are making it happen. This meant no baseball for the boys thi...

Europe 2008 - Bulge Tour, Day 1

Apologies for turning these Europe posts into a drawn out series of publications not unlike a pulp serial series.

Jacob Teaches Dad How To Program

Jacob is doing quite a bit more programming these days. In addition to some of his self-study of Ruby he is enrolled in a game programming class at Sherwood ...

ogpc 1.0 - What a Great Start

I had the pleasure of helping stage the first Oregon Game Project Challenge (ogpc 1.0), a state-wide project and team oriented computer game programming cont...

Jacob is County Spelling Champ (again)

Jacob won the Sherwood middle school chess spelling tournament earlier this year and was given the chance to compete at the county (actually Northwest Oregon...

Gotta Love Ticketmaster

Would somebody please start providing some competition for these guys? Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Salishan Weekend

We’ve had a great relaxing weekend here at the coast. The weather was sunny, warm, and calm on Friday and we met some Sherwood friends for some tide pool act...

Ruby, Rails, and Macports

It should be easier than this. I thought I had a decent Rails installation running on my MacBook Pro but TextMate was giving me some grief when shelling out ...

Notre Dame and Hanging Gardens

Some quick thoughts on two games I got to play tonight - Notre Dame (finally!) and Hanging Gardens. KC, Rita, Ian, Mike and I first played a five player game...

OSCF State Chess Tournament

We are in Seaside, Oregon at the Oregon Scholastic Chess Federation state tournament. The boys are each tied for 1st place after 4 rounds in their respective...

Europe 2008 Trip - London, Day 1

Time to start the steady flow of photo-journal posts for our Europe trip! I’ll break this into a day-by-day journal and will include plenty of photos. If you...

Off to Europe

You won’t believe the list of backlog posts I have, but it looks like they will have to wait for a while. We are off to Europe tomorrow, approximate itinerar...

Digging Last.fm

I stumbled on Last.fm via the nice MacHeist app CoverSutra. You can find my profile here.

Twitter me

If you are into the Twitter thing, you can follow me.

Eugene Games Gala

Two weeks ago I journeyed down to Eugene with KC and Rita (and back with Doug) for Lorna’s Eugene Games Gala. This is a small weekend event held at a hotel i...

Agreeekola, not Agruhcola

Ahh, finally, another chance to try Agricola.  Mike sprung a nice surprise on us yesterday, letting us know he had a copy of Agricola and had spent the weeke...

Non-Gaming Catch Up

We’ve been pretty busy over the past month, but not so busy that I have a good excuse to not write.  Let’s get caught up, shall we? We spend the week between...

My Five & Dime Report for 2007

I just finished tabulating my games played for 2007 for Mark Jackson’s annual Five & Dime report. This was a down year for me in terms of total games pla...