City Race LA

I'm getting excited about City Race LA!! It's this Saturday and I'm signed up to run around with Chia, Travis and Ron! I have no idea if we'll win, but I'm ready to have some fun! I'll have a full report this weekend! I'm a little concerned because it's taking place in downtown LA and I'm not quite familiar with the area...

According to the website, we'll get a packet of clues that range from very easy to very difficult, along with a list of scavenger hunt items. The team that finishes in the three hour time frame with the highest score wins!

Busy days ahead

I am home for Thursday, but have a TON of stuff to do, both work-wise, socially and to pack for my trip. For some unknown reason, I chose to leave LAX on Friday morning at 5:40 AM. Thankfully, I think Travis is going to give me a ride (thank you!!!), but that pretty much means everything needs to get taken care of tomorrow.

Things to do Thursday
Getting up early for hiking
Dropping off stuff at Travis' apt.
Eating/showering
Work, work, work - lots of phone calls
Dinner with Robert
Packing/cleaning

Yikes! I'm also trying to break my work down so that I have plenty of stuff to do on the plane so I can get that mundane stuff that I hate doing when I'm at home.

Once I land in Atlanta, we're going to Dragon*Con in Atlanta, a huge sci-fi/fantasy con. I am really looking forward to it since I've never been, PLUS I'll get to see Valerie & Tyler and Mark! It should be pretty fun. The first event planned in our evening there is finding Valerie in the Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog room!

Then on Saturday (and the next one), I get to go to my FIRST University of Georgia football games with Greg and 97,000 of his closest friends... I'm taking some of my "bacon-of-the-month" bacon with me as my peace offering to the tailgating gods! The Bulldogs are seeded #1 pre-season, so hopefully, they can do it and win it all! The whole town is obsessed with that college football. It's like straight out of the movies.

On Sunday, I get to see Greg sing (finally!) in the choir at church. He has a solo in the early service, so we'll be getting up early to make it to that!

Whew, I'll be ready for a holiday by the time Labor Day rolls around! It'll be nice to have nothing to do on Monday and have Greg all to myself. I'm really looking forward to seeing him. It's hard living across the country from each other!

Vegas Trip

I'm back from Vegas and TIRED! After getting off to a slow start on Saturday, we finally hit the road and had a relatively uneventful ride out to Vegas. We made the ritual stop at In-n-Out in Barstow.

We checked into the Las Vegas Hilton and Stephen at the front desk gave me a free upgrade because it was my birthday! And then after being in the room for a bit, there was a knock at the door and it was room service! Stephen also sent up a gift basket for my birthday! He is definitely getting a "thank you" note from me! I was thrilled!


For dinner, we went out to Mon Ami Gabi and got a table out on the patio. It was fabulous! The weather was perfect and the people watching was really fun. The best part? We had a front row view of the Bellagio water show every 15 minutes!
Water Show at the Bellagio

Steph & Chris

Jon & Shane

Travis & Ron
Dinner itself was pretty good. After dinner, we went over to the Bellagio to check out the new set-up in the atrium. It's gorgeous inside, as usual! Check out this snail!!!


And the pretty umbrella flowers in the atrium area!
Shane & Steph in the Bellagio atrium

After that, we sadly, did no gambling and went back to the hotel to play Race for the Galaxy so we could get to bed early and do some serious gambling on Sunday. Oh my, we are dorks! I tried to get them to play for $1 per point, but no one seemed that interested!

On Sunday, we had breakfast/lunch at Blueberry Hill and then headed over to the Pinball Hall of Fame and I got my fill of Addam's Family & Fish Tales! Then we finally got to the gambling!

We headed over to the MGM Grand because that is our poker room of choice. Travis and I played from about 3 PM - 9 PM. I think by the time we left, I was down about $75 and Travis was down about half that. We went out to the Burger Bar, dropped of the non-gambling folk back at the hotel then headed back to the MGM Grand for more poker! We got there around 11:30 PM and stayed until 4:30 AM. By that time, Matt, our new private pilot friend had gone to bed and all the fun people left, so we took off too. I tried to talk Travis into hitting Casino Royale for some craps, but he wasn't havin' any of that.

I woke up on Monday morning because Travis' phone alarm went off at 8 AM. I contemplated getting up to go play more poker before breakfast, but sadly the Las Vegas Hilton doesn't have a poker room. So I just went back to sleep... as Chris said, "Thank God Travis needs to back to LA tonight for class, otherwise we'd never get out of here..."

Overall, we all had a great time and I got lots of poker in. Unfortunately, no craps, but that will have to wait til I go with my friend Gary who loves craps and poker! Trip is being scheduled for June as I write this! I also found out that if you have a player's card at the MGM and play an average of 4 hours per day, the pit boss will call the front desk to have them knock up to $40 off your room night. The catch is that you have to book the room through the MGM website or by phone and you can't already be getting some special deal they have. It would've worked out great for us if we had known that because the rooms were listed at $140 per night so it would've only been $100 per night! Next time, I'm definitely doing that.

Guitar Hero III Career Update

Travis came over last night and we finally finished up our Co-op Career on Expert! We had some trouble with "One" by Metallica and "Cult of Personality" by Living Colour, but with some practice on those runs and some very strategic use of star power, we managed to pass them!

We unlocked the Pendulaxe! It's mean and tough looking, fitting for an Expert player! Next up, I need to work on my solo career on Expert. I just haven't been devoting much time to it lately. I'm hoping to remedy that with the 11 days I have off starting Saturday!!

Guitar Hero Tournament

This just in from the Thrillist...

There is a Guitar Hero 2 tournament at the Virgin Megastore tomorrow, June 7, 2007 at 6 PM. You have to sign up at noon, come back at 6 PM to play. I wish I could go!!!! I have a date tomorrow and I can't reschedule it. I doubt I could win, but I'd love to compete anyway. Someone needs to go check this out and report back. Winner gets $1,000 shopping spree!!!

I sent it to Travis, but no word on if he's going to go compete. I'm going to let the guys at the GH Bar know tonight.

Also, just found out about another tournament happening on August 11th. No details yet, but here's a link to the website. I'm *so* going to sign up for this one!!

Gamex/Strategicon Report

Warning: This is really long and gaming-related, so most non-gamers will want to skip this post.

I left my apartment around 4:40 PM on Friday and arrived at the hotel before 6 PM, so I was pleased with that. I was worried it take like 2 hours to get down there. Once I checked in, I went downstairs to check everything out.

One of the first people I ran into was Jay Tummelson, owner of Rio Grande Games. I got to play the first copy of Notre Dame that was opened at the con! Jay wasn't going to open any til Saturday, but when I showed up and he offered to show me If Wishes were Fishes, I said, "I really want to play Notre Dame!" He went and found a copy, opened it up and taught myself, Devi Hughes, Brad Parker and a couple others how to play. It was fun!

On Friday night, I ran a game of Liar's Dice and then ended up playing a few games of Werewolf that evening. In all the WW games I played at the con, I was never any of the special role cards. See Ron? I'm not *always* a werewolf! I was chosen as one of the lovers during two of the games I played during the weekend.

The highlights for me were: meeting Jay - SUPER nice guy and every time I walked by he'd say, "Wanna play a game?" with a great smile! :-) I'm bummed that I missed his talk. I didn't realize there was a talk scheduled! I got the highlights from someone at the con and his story is cool!

Starting around 11 PM every night, there were constant games of Werewolf (I think I ended up playing 5-6 times and moderated once) and lots of Time's Up. There was a Rio Grande-a-thon on Saturday from 9 AM - 7 PM which Travis won by a landslide. He had 139 points(!) and Chris took second place with 96 points. Third place went to Mike with 91 points. Travis was a frenetic game playin' fool!! First price in the marathon was 70 dealer dollars, so not too shabby! I gave up about after a few hours and still managed to land in the middle of the pack with only 5 games played. I think next time I'll stick in there for the long haul. Just for fun if nothing else.

I won the Ingenious tournament (and now I wish I hadn't traded it away!) and placed 2nd with Roderick in the Tichu tournament. Overall I earned 15 dealer dollars, whoopee!

I did meet some cool people at the con. Some were local (I definitely have a new guy to add to my sporadic game nights at home), while a couple of the people were from out of town. They were here FROM DALLAS and had never even *heard* of BGG!! So I spread the love! They are going to sign up for the BGG.con and meet up with us there. We're going to get a driving tour from one of them who lives in that area by the custard shop we went to last year (remember how I loved those houses Dave?).

Here is their story: Apparently, they were here about 4 years ago for an NBA All-Stars game and work and were staying at the Westin while OrcCon was going on there. They were curious about the LARPers they saw walking around the hotel and found out about the con and have been flying out here for all the cons since. They're out here all the time anyway since they are computer consultants and are out here anyway to visit clients. They were fun!

On Sunday, Travis and Mike ran some playing of prototypes from about noon til 8 PM. I didn't participate in this, but I saw the more finished copy of Travis & Mike's game called A Day at the Races. I saw the cards and boards that Nikki did the art for and they are awesome!!!

Overall, it was fun, but I think I prefer the open gaming format to the scheduled gaming. It seems like the scheduled games never start when they're supposed to, they always last longer than they should and you just get randomized with people who (at least some of them), I'd rather not play with. There were some of the stereotypical stinky people there too. Is it *that* hard to, I don't know, TAKE A SHOWER? I think women have a better sense of smell than men do in general, but still! Not an excuse!

I saw the LARPers playing Vampire, but didn't get over there to really check it out. I didn't venture to the flea market or the RPG area either. I ran into a lot of regulars from SCGD and played some Guitar Hero in the computer room with the teens.

I think that hits most of the stuff I did. I am planning on going to the September one, unless I'm doing something else for some reason. There's talk of a Guitar Hero tournament and that would be cool. I think I'd have more fun though at the next one. I didn't realize what it would be like, so now I know, I'll adjust my expectations.

Memorial Day Weekend Plans

The plans start tonight! I'm going to Gamex/Strategicon which starts today and runs until Monday. This week has not been the best for me mentally, so I'm really looking forward to going swimming, playing games and hanging out with friends this weekend.

There's a Rio Grande-a-thon tomorrow and I've never participated in something like that, but my goal is to try to beat Travis. Probably won't happen, but it's good to have a goal!

Evan and Neal are in town this weekend too and I'm really hoping to see them on Sunday, preferably at Roscoe's!

My work day is more than halfway over and I'm pretty much packed and have snacks in hand! As soon as they turn me loose, I'm heading home, picking up my bags and driving down to the LAX-Westin and then, the games will begin.

I am looking forward to Monday. We're having lunch at Mozza and then I have my next eHarmony date!

Hacking Guitar Hero

I'm going to just keep updating this post so that all the "hacking" stuff stays together.

Travis borrowed a hacked copy of Guitar Hero from a friend who is on a two week vacation. We plugged it and and got it to work! Basically, the hacked copy means that there are new songs on the game that regular GH-lovers have programmed the notes for. For example, somebody wanted to see Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher" on GH, so they got the song and programmed it with INSANE notes! I think I make it about 2% of the way through the song.

Chris did some research and found out how to do it, so we planning on doing a mod to my PS2 so that we can play our own hacked GH. In fact, we found instructions on how to do the programming too, so I think we're going to try to make our own songs! Now I just need to make a songlist of which songs I want to convert to GH format. This is gonna be awesome!!

Once I start doing it, I will post the progress regarding how I did it and how well it worked. I'm hoping it's easy because I'm not super-techy. Now I just have to find the time!!

Update:
Apparently there are two ways to mod a Playstation. You can sauter a chip into it, but it sounds very difficult if you don't have experience with sautering OR you can use a network adapter. I already have a network adapter, so this is the method we're using. This method works best with the old, fatter PS2s because you need to add a hard drive inside the console which will not fit in the newer, slim PS2s.

I think the basic idea of the hacking is that once you put a hard drive into your PS2, you will upload Guitar Hero to it and then replace some of the files with the "new" music/notes files. When you start up the game, the copy we have shows all the "normal" songs from GH2, but when you pick them, they have the alternate music/notes on them. On the copy we have, instead of "Shout at the Devil," we have Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper." Some people programmed in multiple levels (medium and expert), some didn't. Some of the songs stall out and crash, some work just fine. Some of the notes are synced up properly, but I think that's more of a tweaking thing that will come later.

Here's what I've done so far:
1. I have a network adapter attached to the back of my old, fat Playstation2.
2. My computer guy gave me a 20G hard drive and an ethernet cable. Now I just need to figure out how to install it.

My new gambling love... poker!

I went to Vegas last weekend for my birthday and the first night there, Travis asked if I want to hit the poker room. I've never played poker for any money ever and pretty much have just seen some World Series of Poker episodes on ESPN, so I have an idea of how it works. And of course, I know the order of ranking on the hands. It was getting close to 1 AM and we hadn't gambled at all yet, so I said, "Sure, I'll give it a shot."

We stayed at the MGM and their poker room is actually not a room, but a barricaded area. It was pretty cool. We put our names on the waiting list for the $2/$4 limit table and while we were waiting, Travis filled me in on the procedure of the table. After about 10 minutes, we both had seats at two different tables.

I started with $100 just to test the waters. According to Travis, I bet loosely because I almost always put in my $2 to see what the flop was even if I had crappy cards. Then, I'd even go ahead and put more money in to chase a card on the 4th or 5th one. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. I'm sure there's lots of room for improvement in my betting strategy.

Travis would come over periodically and see how things were going. Around 3 AM, he said, "Just let me know when you're ready to go, we can leave anytime you want." I furrowed my brow and thought, "Does Travis really not know me?" He walked away and I told the guy next to me, "That's like a drug addict telling another, I'll stop using drugs when you do!" Around 5:30 AM, my eyes were getting pretty tired, so I told Travis I was ready to go back up to the room.

The verdict? I had $97. Not too bad. At one point around 4 AM (?), I had almost all my chips in a big pot that I won (whew!) and came back to almost even money. So, overall, not bad at all, considering it was my first time playing ever.

We played a bit at the Flamingo on Sunday and while I think I was betting a bit better, I didn't get that great of cards. So, I think I lost about $40. The thing I didn't like about the Flamingo was that we were seated at the same table. I prefer being at two separate tables. However, the Flamingo had this jackpot board, so you could win $$ if you hit certain hands, mostly 4 of a kinds and straight flushes.

I'm totally ready to hit Vegas again and try my hand at more poker. I have several friends who are into poker though, so I'm sure I'll get lots of advice from all of them. I'm sure I'm doing everything wrong, but whatever. I had fun.

Guitar Hero Update

I'm still struggling to get through Free Bird on expert. I was doing better last night, but not quite there yet.

I found out from Linc & Nikki that if you get 100% of the notes correct on a song, you get 5 GOLD STARS!!!! I haven't gotten any of the gold-starred yet, but Travis did a couple last night on medium.

Also, there's an Xbox 360 version coming out with 10 new songs and the ability to download new songs. I don't own an Xbox and I'm not quite certain that I'm willing to pony up $400 for the system, plus the cost of the game and probably new guitars since I'm sure the PS2 guitars won't be compatible with the Xbox. Boo~ !

According to Wikipedia, these are the songs that will be on the new Xbox Guitar Hero:

"Hush" - Deep Purple

"Dead!" - My Chemical Romance- listed as a master track (not a cover)

"Billion Dollar Babies" - Alice Cooper

"Salvation" - Rancid

"Possum Kingdom" - Toadies- listed as a master track (not a cover)

"Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo" - Rick Derringer

"Life Wasted" - Pearl Jam

"The Trooper" - Iron Maiden

"Drink Up" - Ounce of Self

"Kicked to the Curb" - Noble Rot

Guitar Hero 2 Career Update

OK, Travis and I were working on our expert career. We got hung up on section 7, the Fret Burners! We finally passed those, and yesterday, I passed three of the four songs in Section 8. Travis wanted me to save Miserlou for him, so he is hopefully coming over tonight to bust that one out.

I was VERY happy to pass those three songs because we had practiced earlier in the week and I couldn't pass them. I must've been in the zone yesterday because I passed all three of them within about 30 minutes of each other!!

All I know is that Freebird is going to be TOUGH to pass on expert. I've also been working on 5 starring the hard and expert songs. I don't think I've 5 starred any of the expert ones, but I have done some of the hards. I'm trying to stick to the bottom of the list.

Score Hero!

I just signed up for a website called Score Hero! People post their high scores for Guitar Hero. I'm totally going to do this! I'm sure I won't be on the "highest scores" page, but it will be a good way to record my scores.

When does Guitar Hero 3 come out? Hurry!!!

Also, Travis and I have gotten through 3 out of 4 of the 5th group of songs on expert mode. We're stuck on Freya. I will master it this weekend!!

Success!! Our career is advancing!

Travis and I completed our Guitar Hero 2 career on "hard" mode. The song that was giving us the most trouble was Carry Me Home by the Living End. Man, that song was TOUGH! I don't even want to imagine what it will be like on expert. For our efforts, we unlocked the Snaketapus guitar!! Rock on!!

We started 5 starring all the hard songs and even completed a couple in expert mode. I will have to work on it more tomorrow night once I get home from Christmas shopping.

My only hope is to be as good as this guy! Thanks Travis for the link!!

Picture of Snaketapus Guitar

Awesome Thanksgiving

We had an awesome Thanksgiving! I broke one casserole dish as I was drying it, but other than that, no major disasters!! In fact, everything was beautiful!

Here's a picture of my awesome turkey:

Roasted Turkey

This turkey was from Shelton Farms and it was a free-range, antibiotic/hormone-free turkey. It was delicious! And it was 24 pounds!! I could barely lift it into and out of the oven!

Here's a picture of the first table of side dishes:

Side dishes

We were all hungry by the time dinner was served, so a lot of it has food missing. Let's see we had yams with pecans, green salad, orange jell-o salad, pumpkin pie, vegetable crudite, M&Ms (peanut and plain, dark chocolate ones), green bean casserole, broccoli-mushroom casserole, deviled eggs (made with blue cheese and bacon), mashed potatoes, and yellow squash casserole.

Second side dish table

On the buffet, we had the turkey (beautifully carved by Stephanie R.), cranberry salad, creamed cornbread stuffing and bread stuffing.

I forgot to take a picture of it, but for dessert, we had four different kinds of cheesecakes (Snickers, 3 Musketeers, Reese's PB cups, Midnight Milky Ways), pumpkin pie, apple pie and pecan pies. All desserts were homemade and delicious!!!!

After dessert, we played some Guitar Hero (what else?) and had a great time with that. Shane played some Skipbo with various people too.

Here are some Guitar Hero photos:

Erin and Travis playing Guitar Hero

Erin and Steph playing Guitar Hero - hard song!

Steph playing Guitar Hero - we failed and got booed off the stage!

Dave and Steph playing "Rock this Town" - most likely since it's "our song"

All in all, a super fun evening with great food and great friends. Last year was the first year I didn't do Thanksgiving strictly with family. I think these last two Thanksgivings have been the best ones yet! I expect they will only improve in the future.