So I picked up Call of Duty: Black Ops for my Xbox 306 and that has proved to be a very enjoyable game. I love a couple of the new feature, such as theaters where you can watch and clip your past games as movies and I love that you can now take a friend on-line as a guest. (Shame it doesn’t allow two friends.)
Tonight I’ll be heading out to San Diego Vintage SF for a screening of Them!, so tonight is looking good.
I am suffering from a headache anda clogged sinuses tonight so there will not be any real blogging.
On the plus side I had an idea occur to me for a fantasy short story. On honest-to-god sword and spell fantasy short story. Being me it is of course entirely from the bad guy’s point of view.
see you peeps later
I had posted, even if it was just a tiny, every singe days for nearly two months. I think that was a new record for me, until yesterday.
Sadly I was afflicted with a fairly intense headache yesterday. It passed, but I had to scrambled to get ready for the D&D (3.5) game I run. This was the introductory run of a new campaign with new characters starting over at first level. Sorry I missed posting, but on the plus side the game seemed to go rather well and people seemed happy with the change in gamemastering style I started.
Tonight I shall relax by watching a Sunday Night Movie.
As a teenager in the 70’s there was a lot of thing I wanted that I could never have. My family never had much money so while I never wanted for the essentials of life and a few basic pleasures, I spent lusted for things in catalogs that I knew would never be mine.
One of my favorite catalogs to daydream in was from Edmund Scientific. Oh what wondrous items they had. Tonight on a whim I went to their website. To see what sort of things might still inspire and thrill me.
Here’s what I found.
That my friends is the CARDIAC cardboard computer. It as an educational tool for teaching someone the basics of how a computer worked. Seeing this at the website blew my mind because I remember by Brother-In-Law Thom (Pronounced ‘Tom’ he was and remains unique.) putting one of these in my hands. It was a throughly engaging and engrossing device.
Had I been a teenager a decade later that event would have sent me spinning down a life in computers. I am certain of it.
For decades later I would remember this device — never by name — and wonder upon its coolness. Edmund Scientific is selling them for $20 and it’s really tough to resist.
So after the Atomic testing Museum I ended up with more hours to kill than I had expected. I programmed the GPS in the rental for the Luxor and drove over there to see ‘Bodies: The Exhibition.’ This is an exhibition of dissected human bodies and various states of display. Some of detailed to show musculature, others focus on the organs, or other systems of the human body. It was quite interesting, but for my money I think I got a better deal from the Atomic Testing Museum. (certainly more bang for the buck.) Sadly like the Museum, no photography was allowed.
After visiting the Exhibition at the Luxor I returned to my room to shower and change into nicer clothes for dinner and the Concert. I drove to The South Point Casino and Hotel where I ate at their buffet. OH once again I was stuffed before I was finished. Truly, Vegas likes to feed you. I had more time to kill and I wondered around the casino for a bit.
Here is a photograph I took of a million dollars on display in the Casino.
as you can see it doesn’t take up all that much space, but after all it is only a million dollars.
Here are a set of Slot machines that are themed on Star trek: The Original Series. Frankly all the advanced video slot machine leave me cold. I don’t know what combination are the winning combinations and frankly games of purse chance at not my bag baby.
While people played the games still from various episodes would display on the screens above them. (where you can see the orbiting Enterprise on the left.) Geek that I am I stood and played a game in my mind of how many still could I place. (Turned out to be quite a few.)
I wondered upstairs to the Bowling Alley and found a video game arcade, Ah, now this was more my speed. To my eternal delight I spotted the game pictured on the right. If you watched in the background at Pizza Planet in Toy Story you would have seen a game based on this very idea; Whack-a-mole but with chest bursters. I loved it in Toy Story and I positively giggled upon seeing that someone was un-PC enough to actually make one. I moved towards the game to play it but a young boy I guess maybe 8 or so, dashed excitedly at the games. I stood back. Who was I to stand in the way of such fun and if had parents — I saw them there – that would allow him to play the game, then he NEEDED to play the agme.
I went back downstairs and passed the next forty minutes or so playing Blakcjack for money. As I have already noted, I left the table with $10 more than I had started. No bad for my first game ever.
By this time the doors had opened and I went in the Showroom to take my seat. I was way down front, an excellent position to watch the concert.
There was no opening act, Just Sheena Easton singing and chatting and interacting with the audience. This shot was done with little or no zoom, so you can get an impression of just how close I sat.
Sheena is now 51 and not the sex kitten of the 80’s anymore, that said I throughly enjoyed the show. She has a lively wit and sharp sense of humor along with her lovely singing voice.
I took plenty of photos, but she moved around a lot and has a very expressionistic face. These sort of people are not easy to photograph and have them look good. (just ask Joh McCain.)
I throughly enjoyed my trip to Sin City — even my sins were quite tamed and under control. I look forward to another trip someday with my sweetie-wife.
I loved driving the Corolla. It handled like a dream, it purred making hardly any noise at all, and I had very good visibility. The trip went by fairly quickly with me singing to my music for the 5 hour plus drive. (It’s a good thing I traveled alone.)
The GPS navigator was a god-send. When I have a car of my own I want one.
After checking into my room, (The El Cortez is an old hotel and the rooms reflect this. That said they are clean, and perfectly nice.) I played craps in the Casino downstairs..
Now if you know me you know that dice often hate me. So you might wonder why I selected craps as my limited gambling option.. Easy, I wanted to give a middle finger salute to the fates. I know the dice hate me, so I was out to show them I was not cowed.
I started at the table with a $40 stake. Every time I won, I took the winnings and set them aside. Once the stake was gone, my gaming was finished.
I walked away from the table with $93. A net gain of $53. Do I feel tempted to increase to more? Nope. I’m going to dinner soon and as far as I consider it, the casino is picking up the table for my all-you-can-eat steak experience.
Tomorrow promises to be a busy day.
So All the reservations have been made for my Vegas Trip! I have my room, my tickets, my car, and even a dinner reservation for friday night at a Brazilian Steakhouse in the Mirage Hotel and Casino.
While working with my rental reservation I explored the option available to me with the Hertz Never Lost navigation system. I expect just your basic GPS unit, but it’s really much cooler than that. I had planned out my trip on-line, all the key destination I want to hit, and saved all the data to my geek-stick. Now when I pick up my car, I’ll plug the stick into the GPS system and it will be pre-loaded for my trip.
I love to plan in advance and this just make me smile.
So today I hung out with my pal Bear. It was a typical Sunday Afternoon for us. First we visited our local specialty bookstore, Mysterious Galaxy. I did not buy anything as my ‘to read’ stack is currently five books high. (I personally am not a fan of buying books when I have not finished reading the ones I purchased the trip before.) Then a quick stop at our local games store Game Empire — nicely located next to Mysterious Galaxy — where I picked up an expansion deck for Munchkin as a gift to my sweetie-wife.
We had a large lunch at Outback Steakhouse. hmm I love that Sundays I do not count calories. we discussed my re-invented zombies and I am pleased to say that now two friends — both fans of the zombie movie genre — have enjoyed the ideas I bounded around about re-inventing the zombie. I still am not sure that I have a plot that will fully form, but it could be that it will just take time. My Macbeth ideas bounced around my skull for nearly a decade before they became Cawdor late last year.
I am very sorry that Conjecture’s programming looked so weak this year. I love going to my local conventions, but I am there primarily for programming and it is on that basis that I judge if a con was a failure or a success for myself.
A Minor Tragedy: Tonight one of my sweetie-wife’s two lovebirds suddenly passed away. My sweetie is of course devastated.
Behind the cut is a photo of poor little Jack. He was spry and healthy and active right up until the end.