Talking to Myself Again

Long Weekend, Age of Empires, Magic: The Gathering

Man, I've fallen behind on this thing! In part that's the result of having a 4-day and 45-minute weekend. One would think that, having time off from work, I would have found plenty of time to work on this. One would be wrong, however, because one would have totally underestimated my ability to waste time.

Basically, I had a day and 45 minutes of comp time to use up before the end of May. I had the comp time because of working overtime; specifically, it was for overtime spent traveling to and from classes and conferences. Normally I just take my overtime in cash, but at the end of every fiscal year, they run out of overtime money and then ask people to take comp time instead of overtime pay. As much as I appreciate time off from work (and I really needed it!), I also didn't really feel that I could afford to take time off, because I'm so far behind on everything. And why am I so far behind on everything? Because I've been going to classes and conferences. Catch-22, eh?

Anyway, I left work 45 minutes early on Thursday and took Friday off. Add to that the Memorial Day holiday on Monday and you have a 4-day and 45-minute weekend.

So what did I do with my time off? Wasted it, naturally. I spent way too much time playing Age of Empires, a real-time strategy game similar to Warcraft, but with a more realistic setting, more details, and without the humor.

Saturday evening I went over to Bill and Mary's to play Magic. Bill and Adam had gone to Jacksonville to play in a Star Wars tournament, David had company, Bob is without a car these days, and Jen & Mike will probably only be playing on Wednesdays, so for awhile it was just Mary and me. Eventually Bill got back from the tournament and joined in, but it a pretty quiet evening overall.

Sunday I mowed the grass. Cool beans, eh?

Monday, I vegged.

How could so little happen in five days? I guess I need to accomplish something this week to make up for it.

My Life by the Numbers

Friday: 234.5 pounds. Walked 2 miles in 29:35.

Saturday: 234.5 pounds. Didn't walk.

Sunday: 235.5 pounds. Didn't walk.

Monday: Didn't weigh myself. Didn't walk. Leave me alone; I'm on vacation!

Today: 234.5 pounds. Walked 2 miles in 29:32.

Magic: The Gathering, Jen's Expecting, Weird Weddings

Wednesday night was gaming night, naturally. With Jennifer and Mike added to the group, we now have up to eight people playing Magic. Bill had to bring out a card table for there to be room for all of us! I suspect that in the future we'll either play four two-player games to two four-player games. With eight people playing, it can be a long time between opportunities to do anything. :-) Anyway, I had put together a new all-red deck, which actually ended up winning a seven-player game. Cool beans!

Jen's expecting on August 30. I congratulated her on not expecting in April, because it seems like half the people in our group have April birthdays, but then I was told that David's birthday is August 31 and Jen's is September 1! Stop bunching up, people! There are 366 birthdays available, and an awful lot of them seem to be going to waste!

Mike seemed pretty nice. He's somehow involved with the local hockey team, although I never caught whether he's a player or a coach or what. Anyway, as a result of that connection, he and Jen got married in the rink on the ice! Weird, eh? Then again, Bill and Mary got (re-)married in full medieval garb. Two other friends of mine, Patrick and (a different) Jen, were married in a ceremony in which all of the groomsmen wore kilts, all of the bridesmaids had (pre-existing) tattoos, and the minister recited a speech that sounded like something straight out of an H.P. Lovecraft story -- literally.

Weird friends make life interesting.

My Life by the Numbers

Wednesday: 235 pounds. Slept in. No reason, just did. So there! Finished lesson 7 of Irish on your Own.

Today: 235 pounds. Slept in, 'cuz I was out until after midnight the night before. Repeated lessons 5-7.

Celtic Festival, MtG, Travel Plans, Ultima Online, Ally McBeal

Saturday I went to the Springfield Highland Games & Celtic Festival, presented by the St. Andrews Society of Central Illinois. I had attended the event three years ago, the first year that they held it, but hadn't been to it since then. I must say that it seems to have grown much bigger! I brought along my Hi8 camcorder, of course, and got plenty of footage of bagpipes being played, cabers being tossed, and dances being danced.

At the main entrance booth (where I bought a couple of T-shirts), they had a signup sheet for classes in Gaelic! Unfortunately, I'm fairly sure that they mean Scottish Gaelic, as opposed to Irish Gaelic. However, it's not everyday that you see someone offering to teach Scottish Gaelic in Springfield, so I decided to signup and see what happens. It looked like there were perhaps 30 people signed up. Although some of them were from outside the Springfield area, that still is quite a surprising level of interest.

When things had started to wind down, I went over to David's for our usual Saturday night Magic session. When I got there, Mary said, "Guess who's going to start playing Magic again?" I said something like, "Well, the only likely person would be Jennifer." Mary seemed amazed that I had guessed correctly -- but apparently so had everyone else. Who else was there to guess? Anyway, Jennifer's beau (Mike?) has apparently begun playing Magic, having been introduced to it through the Portal set. He would have some questions, which he would ask Jennifer. She hasn't played for a long time (and didn't play all that much anyway), so she said he really ought to get together with us. I'm not sure whether Jennifer will actually be playing, so perhaps the correct guess would have been "Mike."

The last time I saw Jennifer was at a cookout at Bill & Mary's, either last summer or last fall. At the time she told me about this week-long camping trip she had taken to Michigan (or Wisconsin; I can never keep those two straight) and how important she felt it had been to do this on her own. I found her tale to be thoroughly inspirational, and I thought to myself, "hey, I'm making good money, I'm single, I've get plenty of vacation time -- why am I not doing anything?"

Now, when I say that she was inspirational, I don't exactly mean that I leapt up and boarded the next flight out of town. However, I did start rolling some ideas around in my head, which I'm slowly working on implementing. One of those is learning to speak Irish. What I actually would like to do is learn to speak a little bit of several different languages. At the least, I'd like to know enough to be able to pronounce things.

Then, if things go as planned, I'd like to start traveling. If possible, I'd like to visit a different country each summer. Currently, I have to use up 17 days of vacation each year to avoid losing any, so I should have plenty of time to spend, say, 7-10 days on each trip. I figure I'll start with the most familiar, Canada, then move on to the less familiar each year.

Here is my very tentative itinerary:

1999	Canada
2000	British Isles
2001	Germany
2002	France
2003	Italy
2004	Spain/Portugal
2005	Greece
2006	Sweden/Norway
2007	Russia
2008	Mexico

Out of that list, the place that I would probably most like to visit is Italy. (Why? I blame it on A Room with a View and similar E.M. Forster stuff.)

As for this year, I don't really expect to be going anywhere, in part because I plan on buying a car this fall and need to save my money for that. The adventures start next year, though!

Sunday was a wasted day. I played Ultima Online for about two hours, but didn't accomplish much. Did I mention I was killed a few days ago? I don't think I did. Well....

I was killed a few days ago. Actually, it was back on May 10. (How time flies!) I went to the dungeon, found some stuff, killed some stuff -- and then the doorbell rang. Oh, bother. Being a real-time, online game, there is no "pause" button, nor can you safely logout in the dungeon. Well, I just left my character standing there and answered the door. It was my new landlord, come to talk about mowing the grass (which really needed it). I told him and his daughter that Mike would be bringing back the mower on Monday, and that I would mow it then. After that, I could either continue to use Mike's mower, or we could hire someone, or they could mow it -- I was quite flexible. (Meanwhile, I'm thinking about my character just standing there like a dummy in the dungeon.)

After we had everything worked out, I went back to my game. It turned out that another player had figured out that I was "AFK" (away from keyboard) and had cast an invisibility spell on me to protect me from a "PK" (player-killer, a player that kills other players instead of monsters) that was nearby. (Follow all that?) That was quite nice of him, so we hung out together for a time. Eventually I decided I needed to head back to town, so I left -- and was killed just outside of the dungeon by a PK named "Draven". Oh bother.

Well, nobody really dies in Ultima Online. You just lose your body and everything that was on it. I had plenty of gold and equipment safely stored in the bank in town, so all I had to do was go to the shrine, get resurrected, then go back to town to get my stuff out of the bank. Annoying, but not a total loss.

Which brings us back to Sunday's session. As I was saying, I didn't accomplish much. On the way to the dungeon, I fought a few things, among them a snake. Snake, no big deal. Except, just before I killed the snake, it bit me and poisoned me. Again, oh bother. I wasn't sure how long the poison would last, but I figured I ought to go to the shrine to be ready, just in case I died. Along the way, the poison finally wore off -- just as I encountered a couple of PKs named "Fallen Angel" and "Xena". They start shooting arrows at me while I'm running through the woods trying to lose them. Due to Internet lag, that can be a bit like running through taffy -- slow and frustrating. However, after probably five minutes of rather intense unwanted excitement, I was finally able to avoid the duo in the woods.

So... off to the dungeon again! When I get there, I pop inside and roam about just a bit, but things seem unusually dangerous. Among the monsters nearby is a giant serpent. After my recent encounter with its smaller brother, I'm not feeling too up on tackling it. I decided to go back to the dungeon entrance and heal up. While I'm standing there, I decide to hide, just to be safe. This, it turns out, was a good thing. While I'm hidden, a war breaks out! About eight PKs show up and start attacking about five players. A demon is summoned! Magic spells go flying everywhere! Death, destruction, mayhem! Meanwhile, I'm still standing there, hidden, hoping very strongly that nobody happens to stumble across me! Eventually, the PKs killed off all of the players, then stood around dividing up the spoils -- and I was still valiantly hiding there! After that, they disappeared into the dungeon, at which point I broke out of hiding and high-tailed it out of there! I figured that was plenty of excitement for one day, so I hid behind a tree and logged out. Like I said, not too productive.

Monday was the season finale of Ally McBeal. It wasn't one of their best episodes, but it was still good. John Cage finally lost a case, which I liked; he shouldn't win all of them. And that guy from The Practice was on again, which I thought was interesting. For a time I wondered if they might really go into uncharted territory and have an ongoing story involving characters from two different shows on two different networks, but it was (apparently) over by the end of the episode. Oh well.

My Life by the Numbers

Sunday: 236 pounds. Walked 2 miles in 29:23.

Monday: 235 pounds. Walked 2 miles in 29:39. Reviewed lesson 5 of "Irish on your Own"; started lesson 6.

Today: 236 pounds. Walked 2 miles in an unknown time. (Somehow, I accidentally reset the stopwatch. Oops.) Repeated lesson 6; started lesson 7.

Mother's Day Gift, MtG, SCA, Moving Computers

"So," I hear you asking, "why haven't updated this page since Tuesday?" I might say that it's because Wednesday night was gaming night and Thursday night was SCA meeting night and last night I just didn't get around to it. However, since I just today finally bought a Mother's Day gift for my mom, I suspect the real reason is that I'm simply an evil, evil person.

So on with the spiel.

Tuesday night, I called Ross and reminded him that Sunday was Mother's Day. One would think that I would also do something about that myself, but one would be naïve.

Wednesday night, as I said, was our traditional weekly "get together and lose at Magic" night. Actually, it was a little different this time. After playing one multi-player game (in which I basically did nothing but play lands and ask Adam and David how much damage they were doing to me), we played a little mini tournament. With six players, there wasn't really a good way to do it. We didn't really have enough time to play round robin (each player plays against each other player), so we did some bizarre double elimination bracket format. I wound up on top of the winners bracket, and Mary wound up on top of the losers bracket, so then she and I played against each other and she wound up winning. At that point it was late, it was pouring down rain, and Bob needed a ride home, so off we went. After I got to thinking about it, however, I realized that Mary and I probably should have played again, since we had both lost the same number of duels at that point. (Did you follow all of that? Neither did I, and I was there!) Oh well. When all was said and done, I think it would have taken the same amount of time just to play round robin!

Also on Wednesday night, I failed to get anything for Mom for Mother's Day.

Thursday night was the local SCA meeting. For those of you who don't know, the SCA is the Society for Creative Anachronism, a non-profit group that dresses up in medieval clothing to hold tournaments and feasts. If you ever see some people out in the park whacking each other over the head with sticks, it's probably us. (If it isn't, call 911.) Anyway, due to constantly being out of town on business trips, this was the first meeting I had been able to attend since February. That isn't a good thing, considering that I'm the editor of the group's newsletter. Anyway, we're busily planning an event that we'll be holding in September -- coronation. The new "king" and "queen" of the Middle Kingdom will be crowned there, so we're expecting something on the order of a thousand people to be showing up.

Also on Thursday night, I failed to get a Mother's Day gift for Mom.

Friday I spent pretty much the entire workday in the Bureau of Water GIS room moving computers around. They're bringing in an instructor to teach a class in a couple of weeks and they wanted to rearrange everything. This meant shutting down all of the hardware, disconnecting everything, moving it out of the way so that the maintenance people could move the partition walls, desks, and tables, then reconnecting everything and getting it all talking to the network again. Not my idea of fun, and certainly more physical activity than I get in a typical workday. I went home quite beat on Friday night -- which explains in part why I didn't quite get around to posting a new entry here that night!

Oh, and I failed to get anything for Mom. (But you knew that, because at the start of this bit, I said that I finally got it done today. Weren't you paying attention?)

My Life by the Numbers

Wednesday: 238 pounds; 2 miles in 29:35.

Actually, it could have been faster, except that I had stopped briefly to talk to a man who was walking his dog. On the other hand, after that conversation, I walked faster to make up lost time, so perhaps it was an advantage!

Thursday: 237.5 pounds; didn't walk. I didn't get home until after midnight on Wednesday, and it was promising to rain, so I figured there wasn't any point in even pretending that I was going to get up at 6:00 AM to go walking.

Friday: 238 pounds; 2 miles in 29:19.

Today: 238 pounds; didn't walk. Hey, it's the weekend! Besides, I'm sore from Friday. Well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.

Ultima Online, Palm III, Organizers, The Player, Ross's Job, Email, Weight Loss

Well, let's see. Where was I before I was so rudely interrupted? Ah yes, Friday.

On Friday, I spent most of the evening playing Ultima Online. My character, Dominic Duvall, finally had the skills and the equipment needed for me to feel comfortable doing a little adventuring -- which was the whole point of playing the game in the first place! Anyway, he started out by journeying through the wilderness hunting God's creatures -- deer, bears, panthers, wolves, pigs, particularly worrisome bunnies, etc. At one point I stumbled across a mongbat, my first actual monster! I killed it easily. Then I stumbled across a troll, and after taking a few tentative swings, I came to the conclusion that cowardice is the better part of valor, so I ran away. Okay, note to myself: I can kill a mongbat with ease, but I'm not yet ready to take on a troll. Got it. Then I found a ratman and killed him without too much effort.

At this point, I felt ready to try exploring a dungeon. According to other players, one of the easiest dungeons to survive is called "Wrong," so I went there and walked inside. It was at that point that I remembered that my character had no source of light. Okay, note to myself…. I solved that problem by turning the brightness way up on my monitor, to the point where I could see quite well. I guess I can scratch out that note about bringing a source of light next time.

Anyway, there were several other characters in the dungeon, so when a lizardman showed up, three of us quickly dispatched him. My first kill in a dungeon! I journeyed onward, killing a ratman and finding actual treasure! That's right, only six months after the release of Ultima Online, and I had already managed to get some gold in a dungeon! (Yes, that was sarcasm. Not that I'm bitter or anything.) Moving deeper into the dungeon, I came across a group of adventurers fighting about 3 trolls! Emboldened by the presence of other adventurers, I moved in and joined the fray. After several minutes, we had finally dispatched the last of them. No sooner had we divided up the treasure than about 5-6 more trolls showed up! We launched into battle, but it soon became apparent to me that I was not going to last to the end of this encounter. I then very heroically cried out, "Sorry guys, but I'm outta here," and retreated from the battle to heal my wounds.

By then it was getting somewhat late, so I returned to Vesper to deposit my spoils in the bank: 600 gold pieces, an amethyst, some weapons, and several spell reagents. At this point, I have nearly 3,000 gold pieces in the bank -- a truly massive improvement over anything I had been able to do in the previous six months. At this point, I think I could actually begin to enjoy this game!

Saturday, for a change, we didn't get together to play Magic, due to people being either out of town or playing in a Star Wars tournament. I spent much of the day continuing to learn about how to use the Palm III, as well as how to get it to work with my PC-based day-planner software. One decision I'm trying to make is whether to stick with Franklin-Covey's Ascend, or to switch to either Day-Timer's Organizer or Microsoft's Outlook. At work, we're given Novell's GroupWise, but it absolutely sucks, so I'm spared from having to consider that as a possibility.

Also on Saturday, I received The Player on DVD, which I had ordered a few days earlier. The Player is probably my favorite movie of all time, in part because it is a movie about movies, and because it requires you to pay close attention in order to pick up all of the little snippits going on in the background. I quite happily plopped down in front of the TV and watched it! The DVD has several nice special features. In addition to a commentary soundtrack by the director and the writer, it also has a cameo index, which allows you to quickly jump to the scenes in which over fifty stars make cameo appearances.

Mom and Dad called to say that they had talked to Ross after his first week back at work. His normal work schedule will be twelve-hour days, three days on one week, then four days on the next. However, initially he'll be working a normal eight-hour shift, five days per week, while he gets acquainted with everyone.

While we were talking, Mom and Dad asked me for my e-mail address. Their next-door neighbors have a computer now and are going to show Mom and Dad how to send e-mail over the Internet. Dad keeps threatening to buy a new computer (they still have a Commodore Amiga 500), but hasn't done so yet. Mom has virtually no interest in computers, but she said that being able to send e-mail to Ross and me would be nice. We'll see. With their new 36-foot trailer, they should have enough room for one!

Today, I spent much of the day trying to clean house, going through boxes of papers, throwing away half of them and trying to sort and file the other half. Non-stop excitement!

In other news, recently I found myself weighing 245 pounds, my highest weight ever. Having achieved such a satisfyingly lofty goal, I've decided that perhaps it's time to consider shooting for some other goal -- perhaps something like 180 pounds. I've heard that telling others of your goals provides an incentive for working to achieve them. With that in mind, I proudly present to you...

My Life by the Numbers

Saturday: Weight, 239 pounds. I walked 2 miles in 31 minutes, 45 seconds.

Today: Weight, 239 pounds. Walked 2 miles in 30 minutes, 18 seconds. The biggest challenge was dodging all of the worms that had crawled up onto the pavement after last night's rain. Worm-dodging percentage: 98% (unofficial).

Organizers, MtG, Palm III, Björk on Bravo

Wednesday I downloaded and installed trial copies of Day-Timer Organizer 98 and Microsoft Project 98. After playing around -- oops, I meant "evaluating" -- them for awhile, I've decided that I like both of them very much! Buying Day-Timer won't be a problem ($50), but Microsoft Project costs about $500, so I'll have to think awhile before I decide whether to spring for that.

Wednesday night was Magic night, of course. For the first game, I played my Shapeshifter deck, despite the fact that it winds up killing me nearly every time I play it. This was no exception. Then I switched to my Orrim's Prayer deck and won at least once, perhaps twice. The Shapeshifter deck is built to have massive firepower; the Orrim's Prayer deck is built to have very good passive defenses. Is there a lesson to be learned here?

Today was a good day! Perhaps you've heard of the Palm Pilot, that nifty little palm-sized electronic organizer? Well, just this month they released their newest model, the Palm III, and I am now the proud new owner of one! When I was in Chicago last month attending Oracle training, one of the students there had a Pilot and I was quite impressed. When I got back, I hopped on the Internet and did a bit of reading about it. I knew that it would interface with a PC-based planner, so that you could download and update your to-do list, but I hadn't realized before that there were all of these 3^rd-party programs available for it! For example, you can download games, diet and exercise logging programs, expense-tracking programs -- even connect it to a GPS receiver! And the whole thing is small enough to fit a shirt pocket (which would be handy if I wore shirts with pockets).

But that's not the only thing that made today good. On Bravo Profiles, they had a one-hour show all about Björk! Björk, Björk, Björk! I'm so happy! They showed plenty of footage of her early days, even showing her singing Icelandic folk songs at age eleven! I'm not sure what this appearance of Björk on Bravo means. On the one hand, that could indicate that she's become quite popular. On the other hand, I find it hard to believe that her appeal is that widespread. She's not exactly Mariah Carrey. Then again, Bravo tends to focus a bit more on the fringes than does most of the rest of television. In any case, I taped the show so that I can watch it over and over again, like a good little obsessive fan.

From the Earth to the Moon, Work, MtG, Aimee Mann

Sunday.... Sunday.... What the heck did I do on Sunday? I remember that I slept in relatively late (until 10 or so), and I remember that I watched the latest two episodes of HBO's From the Earth to the Moon, a 12-part mini-series about the Apollo missions. For the life of me I can't remember anything else about the day.

I must have been drinking rather heavily.

Monday sucked. First, I was told that I couldn't attend the Internet World conference in Chicago on July 13-17 because it was too late to submit the request. Huh? Ten weeks in advance is too late to submit the request?! Fine, whatever. Then, I was told that the software and hardware that I had wanted had been ordered. That's good, except that I had specifically said on my memo that we needed to discuss some of these items before any orders were placed. Furthermore, I was told that there shouldn't be any problems getting them unless they aren't on the master vendor list -- which they aren't. Apparently, just like last year, I'm not going to be getting the items that I wanted. How the heck am I going to get these people to purchase a $60,000 database package when I can't even get them to buy a $600 scanner?

I repeat -- Monday sucked.

Here's the latest Magic: the Gathering update. In today's games against David, my "Prosperous Bloom" deck was 3 and 1. Unfortunately, that's "3 losses and 1 win". David was playing a Megrim/hand-destruction deck. The Megrim had an effect in one game; the hand destruction took me out in another (once my hand is emptied, my deck has very little chance of recovering). In the other loss, the only thing that killed me was exceptionally bad luck. There were 19 cards left in my library; I had enough mana to draw 18 cards; the Drain Life I needed was the 19^th card.

Game over.

Have I mentioned yet that Aimee Mann is the greatest singer of all time? Her only flaw is that she's only put out two albums since ‘Til Tuesday broke up. Some of my favorite songs: That's Just What You Are, Jacob Marley's Chain, I've Had It, Coming Up Close. Hey, Aimee, more output! More, more, more!

Doctor Appointment, Dain's 4th Birthday, MtG

Friday I took the afternoon off for a doctor appointment. I would have liked to have taken the morning off too, but I've been gone so much recently, I figured I had way too much to do. Unfortunately, after being gone for two days, and being there only for the morning, I didn't really feel like starting anything major, so I just putzed around on a few minor items.

In other words, I should have just taken the morning off.

The doctor appointment was just for an annual physical and to get a renewal of my medicine for high blood pressure. Unfortunately, when he checked my blood pressure, it was high. That means the medicine is no longer working, right? No, not necessarily. In addition to normal hypertension (high blood pressure), I have what is called "white coat hypertension" -- whenever my blood pressure is checked by someone in a white coat, it rises. This makes things rather tricky for a doctor to check. I've got a machine at home that is reasonably accurate, but I haven't checked it in ages. Anyway, the doctor told me to check it periodically with my machine for the next few weeks and then let them know what kind of results I'm getting. On an unrelated note, he wants me to stop in at the lab sometime this week to get a check on my cholesterol and blood sugar. Oh bother.

After that was done with, I went to Live ‘n Learn to buy a birthday present for Dain, who had his 4^th birthday party on Saturday. Dain is old enough now that he won't necessarily play with just any old thing you get him. When you're shopping for a two-year-old, it hardly matters what you pick, but a four-year-old has actual likes and dislikes. On the other hand, he has reached the age where you can buy him things with small parts and not worry about him eating them. This is a good thing! Anyway, I was drawn by an irresistible force to the Playmobile section of the store and picked out a nifty medieval castle tower.

Saturday afternoon was Dain's birthday party. The morning had been cloudy and rainy, but the afternoon was sunny and warm. I didn't count, but I would guess there were about a dozen kids and two dozen adults there. I brought my Hi8 camcorder with me and got plenty of good footage of kids playing, as well as the rather chaotic unwrapping of the presents. And how did Dain like my present? Well, I'd guess he received about twenty or thirty gifts that day. With all of those presents to unwrap, who has time to actually play with any of them? :-)

After the party had pretty much wound down, I played my Prosperous Bloom deck against Bob. (Those of you who don't play Magic: the Gathering can skip this paragraph.) Unfortunately, the deck he was using was this deck's worst nightmare -- a Jester's Cap deck. In addition to using Jester's Cap to go through my library and remove the parts of the combo, he was also using hand and graveyard destruction. I only won one game out of three. Ouch! If I had gone to my sideboard after the first game, that would have helped some, but since his deck didn't have a sideboard, I didn't think it would be fair to do so. Hopefully I'll get some more opportunities to test my deck this week. However, if I'm going to use it in a tournament, I'm going to have to locate the cards that I'm currently proxying.

GIS Conference, Trip to Champaign-Urbana

At long last, I am home! For good! I'm never going anywhere ever again! Well, at least not for the next week or so!

Wednesday and Thursday I was in Champaign-Urbana attending the Illinois Geographic Information Systems Association (ILGISA) spring conference, as well as the ESRI Technology Fair ("Step right up and see the bearded lady!"). The ILGISA conference was rather dull, not because it's a bad conference, but simply because I've been to every single one since the first of them. That probably makes this one about the tenth one I've attended, and it's getting a bit repetitive. The ESRI Technology Fair was rather nice, though, since I had the opportunity to see some new versions of the software. I also had the opportunity to have one ESRI representative tell me that "program X definitely will do what you want" shortly before another ESRI rep told me that "program X definitely will not do what you want".

It's always nice to get a variety of opinions.

Wednesday evening, after the conference, I decided I would drop by Fantasy Realm to see whether they had any of the Magic cards I was seeking. In the process, I learned something that I had never realized before: Champaign and Urbana are two separate towns.

Now, I know what you're thinking -- of course they're separate towns. Yes, I knew that, but I hadn't realized that it actually mattered. Specifically, if you are on "West Green" and are looking for "506 East Green", you do not necessarily travel east to get there. Why? Because "West Green" in Urbana runs west until it becomes "East Green" in Champaign!

There ought to be a law!

Anyway, I eventually straightened out my confusion, located Fantasy Realm, and then was told that they only have their Magic singles in the shop on Sundays. Okay-fine. If the Sears delivery guys can decide not to deliver on Thursdays, I guess Fantasy Realm can decide to only carry Magic singles on Sundays.

After that, I made my traditional stop by Garcia's for pizza, then roamed around the U of I campus for a while to see what had changed since my last visit. Whenever I visit the U of I, I'm always hit with a major case of nostalgia. Just about anywhere I go on campus, I have at least one very clear memory about some event that happened at that spot, as well as plenty of memories about routine campus life. I really enjoyed my three years at the U of I, and I really enjoyed being surrounded by people who were busily learning new things. You don't get too much of that in Springfield.

MtG, Mom & Dad's New Travel Trailer

So far, my plan to write this in the morning isn't going too well. Yeah, well, so sue me.

Yesterday, I accomplished absolutely nothing at work. I could have stayed home and it wouldn't have made a bit of difference. But that's okay, ‘cuz once I got home, I put together a new Magic deck. (Those of you who don't play Magic: the Gathering can pretty much skip the rest of this paragraph.) It's a "Prosperous Bloom" deck that was listed in the October 1997 issue of The Duelist. I tried it out a few times solo, and was stunned not only at how well it worked, but even more by the suddenness of it. I'd take 3-4 turns, with nothing much happening, and then out of nowhere, on turn 4 or 5, it would kick in and the game would be instantly over. I was simply amazed. Of course, it's one thing to work well without an opponent; it's quite another to succeed when taking damage and facing Counterspells. So I played it against David over our lunch hour today and won all but one game. Simply stunning. (Did I mention it was stunning?)

(For those of you who skipped the previous paragraph, we now return you to the rest of today's entry.)

I forgot to mention the other day that, when Mom & Dad were visiting, they told me that they had bought a new travel trailer -- again! It seems like every two years or so they come down with a case of "two-foot-itis", meaning that they decide they would really prefer to have a trailer just two feet longer than the one they have. What they had before was a 31-foot trailer, so they decided back in February to buy a 33-foot trailer. They went to the dealer, picked all the options and the layout they wanted, then placed their order. Time passed, but there were problems and delays at the factory. More time passed and the dealer grew more and more embarrassed. Finally, a few days ago, their new trailer arrived! But when they went to pick it up, they discovered that a 36-foot trailer had been built by mistake! Well, the dealer said that he could re-order it to get them a 33-foot trailer, or he could just give them the 36-foot trailer at the 33-foot trailer price.

So they now own a 36-foot trailer.

Of course, if you're going to be hauling around a 36-foot trailer, you need a bigger pickup truck to pull it -- so they're getting a new pickup truck, too. I didn't realize that teachers' retirement plans paid so well!