Travian

The ex-bf talked me into joining him in playing Travian, an online war game. You start with a dinky little village and build up your resources, then with those resources, you build troops and then there's all out warfare. I'm on S8 and I started late. So far, I have one village that's medium sized and I just started a new village. I'm naming all of my villages after Race for the Galaxy worlds. I've befriended another East Coaster who's helping me with my account and vice versa, so it's something to do in the evenings. Unfortunately for him, he's getting picked on by a rival alliance and he's not sure he'll last another week or two. It's quite volatile.

People keep talking about the mid-game. I think this is when a lot of casual players get picked off and destroyed to get ready for the "end-game". Each server runs for a year. This one started in March, but I didn't start until June. I'm doing okay though considering I started so late.

The good thing is that it's something to keep me busy. To be successful, I probably should read up on strategy, but so far, I've just been winging it. I'll just be happy if I don't get wiped out. So far, no one's been really picking on me, but I'm sure I'll become a target once I grow my population some more. Until then, I'm just enjoying managing everything! It scratches that itch for me... I am enjoying it!

The idea behind the Mime

I talked to Evan today and I was asking him how he came up with the idea for the mime costume. There's a downloadable PS3 game called Pain that is essentially VGA Bomb meets Tony Hawk. You put a person on a ramp and shoot them out into the city and try to make combos by exploding yourself and destroying stuff. It's totally over-the-top gross-ness, but really, really fun. And hey, you get to learn about physics while you're at it. Anyway, there's a mime that you get points for hitting in the game. Here's a slo-mo video of the PS3 mime...

Rock Band 2 News

Here's a link to an article about Rock Band 2...

Luckily all the equipment for the first version will work with the second one although they claim to be improving all instruments. Looks like they're really working to keep the fans happy. Another biggie for everyone (except me so far!) is that all the downloaded content will work with RB2. Rock on!!

Rock Band Humor

Why is this webcomic so cute?!

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!!

Rock Band Tryouts

It's been out for less than a week and already my eyeballs feel like they're going to fall out. We had band practice all day and even band tryouts because we had more than four people who want to be in the band. We're still testing everyone's skillz to see who's going to make the cut. Travis is trying out Monday night! Tryouts in Glendale!

Rock Band is awesome!

Everyone knows how much I love Guitar Hero, right? Well, I think I might be a Rock Band convert. And here's why...

1. Rock Band has an awesome song list, mostly done by original artists.
2. The drums are so much fun!! And challenging in a whole new way.
3. The way the crowd sings along!
4. You can make your very own customized rocker.
5. The "photo" action shots of band members as they go on stage right before a gig!

My downstairs neighbor's mom is in town and she called me around 11:30 AM to ask me to turn down the music. It's the middle of the day! And it wasn't that loud. Next time I might not turn it down. Later they called (and I had the TV turned down) and they said, "The music's fine, but can you be careful about the foot banging..." because someone was playing the drums.

Some of the guys can be a bit energetic while playing. Man, I really need to just bite the bullet and buy a house.

Rock Band

My package of Rock Band from Amazon.com is "Out for Delivery"! It should be here any moment... Ah, no plans on Saturday means plenty of Rock Band! Who's with me?

Freezepop Concert

The Freezepop concert last night was pretty good. Much better than I was expecting, but not as good as Chris thought they'd be. He said the sound was messed up. But according to Liz Enthusiasm, she said that this was the best LA show they've had because the sound has been F-ed up at other shows.

The surprise highlight of the show was Ming & Ping! The music was interesting and good. I kept LAUGHING though because there was a guy dancer on stage with him who was dressed up in an organ grinder monkey outfit!! It was pretty funny!

OH! I almost forgot... I was talking with the Duke after the show and he said that they have a song on this new game that just got released for the iPod called Phase. So, all you iPod users, check it out!! It's supposed to be like Frequency or Amplitude, but not quite as difficult!

After the show, the band was downstairs signing CDs, so I had them sign the newest one that has "Less Talk More Rokk" on it! Here are some pictures! I love the Duke's shirt!!

Liz Enthusiasm and me

Me and the other Sean Drinkwater

Me and the Duke

Weekend Recap

Friday started out with a Guitar Hero par-tay that rocked all night. Saturday brought us yummy carnitas tacos and lots of fun conversations. I also went to Best Buy to return the extra copy of Guitar Hero III that I had pre-ordered. It didn't show up until October 31st!!! It should've been here Monday, but UPS sucks.

I went to see Before the Devil Knows You're Dead with some friends last night at the Encino Town Center. OMG, there were so many OLD people at that theater! It was weird! The movie itself was pretty good. Slow paced, but intense. And, Marisa Tomei is smokin' hot. Geez. How old is she? (IMDB says she's almost 43!! WOW!) She has the body of a 20-something year old!

Then we went to the Maui Sugar Mill Shack and again, it was filled with old people! There was a decent band playing though so we had fun watching them. Then we stayed up way too late talking. I don't think I got to bed before 5 AM all weekend long!

Today was filled with shopping with Nikki. I got a SUPER cute dress from Banana Republic for about $15. It's awesome. I can't wait to wear it! I also got a bunch of other stuff. It's really been a while since I've gone clothes shopping. I need to do that more often. But before I do that, I need to clear out some space in my closet. I have perfectly good clothes that I just never wear. I need to just purge all that stuff.

I didn't get some stuff done (like LAUNDRY) that was on the original plan, but I will do that tomorrow night. I also need to sleeve Agricola with the English translations of all the cards. That should pretty much take up all of Monday evening. For a pretty busy weekend, it was actually relaxing and fun.

Coming up this week: laundry, hiking, GH bar, and two dates! One with an eHarmony guy and the other with #5.

Guitar Hero Achievements

I had a Guitar Hero party last night and we rocked the house!! Til 4:30 AM! My downstairs neighbor loooooves me! I did warn him though. What else can I do? I did also turn it down after midnight.

Luckily, Pearl had never played so she watched all the tutorials for me, scoring one of the achievements. We scored some of the others too like the 500 note streak! I'll post a link to my progress later.

Guitar Hero III: Online!

On Wednesday, I decided to try playing Guitar Hero III online. Since I was playing online, I hooked up the headset to my guitar. I played a quick match, but I couldn't hear anything through the headset and since I've never played any console video game online, I wasn't sure if it was even working or I had it hooked up correctly. So, after I beat the first person (on hard, I should've gone to expert), I created a match and hosted it. When it got to song selection, I was talking to Chris and we decided I should try "Evenflow" since we haven't unlocked that one yet and thus, haven't had a chance to play it.

I played that on expert and I ended up losing by about 7K points, which isn't much. So I say to Chris, "Hey, not too bad considering I've never played it before." All of a sudden, in my earpiece I hear, "You've never played that song before?" The other guy could hear me talking the whole time!! It was pretty funny!

I also played a couple matches on Thursday and got friended by a couple guys. Soon I'll have a whole Guitar Hero gang online! The online play is so cool. I love it because it gives me the chance to play against people that can beat me by double my score, which is a great challenge. I love it!! I seriously could hang out in my apartment for the next month straight busy with all the Guitar Hero, reading, cooking, TV, movies and oh yeah, board games.

I was joking with Chris the other night and told him, "Any hope I had of finding a boyfriend who doesn't already live in my apartment has just flown out the window!" because the online play is that cool!!

I have a new baby!

It's white, weighs a few pounds and hopefully will bring me hours of joy! Not that kind of baby!

It's my new Xbox 360! I also signed up for Xbox Live and my gamertag is CraftyBeans, so hit me up if you use the 360 and play online.

So far the only games I have are Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (of course!!), Halo 3, Gears of War and some Marvel Alliance combo game that came with it.

I went back and forth about getting one for a couple weeks. The ability to play GH online was a little too great. Also, Lincoln mentioned some issues they were having, so I made sure I got one made after August 28th.

Another draw was that Ted told me my Xbox can blog for itself! So, I signed up for that and put a link on my page. Enjoy! You can see what I've been up to! I think it'll become more active tomorrow.

As Ted told me in Essen, "Money's only temporary!" How right he is! Especially with a 360 in the house!!!

Look what I have!

This is me at 1 AM when I got home from Best Buy with my new toy! I've been toying with and resisting the urge to buy a 360 lately. It's been a daily struggle! Today alone I've changed my mind about four times!!

I picked out my favorite GH shirt and headed down to the store! Luckily I got there just in time!

Me and GH3!

Guitar Hero 3 Song List Released

Oh yeah... the song list for Guitar Hero III has been released!! OK, I was hopeful about GH80s, but that one really wasn't good. The song selection sucked. This one? This one is gonna ROCK!! Notice too that many of these songs are BY the artists, not "as made famous by"... so a lot more original songs instead of covers! Woo-hoo!

· Same Old Song and Dance (by Aerosmith)
· Helicopter (by Bloc Party)
· Stricken (by Disturbed)
· Monsters (by Matchbook Romance)
· Before I Forget (by Slipknot)
· Kool Thing (by Sonic Youth)
· When You Were Young (by The Killers)
· Devil Went Down to Georgia (as made famous by Charlie Daniels Band)
· Sunshine of Your Love (as made famous by Cream)
· Holiday in Cambodia (as made famous by Dead Kennedys)
· Cliffs of Dover (as made famous by Eric Johnson)
· Hit Me with Your Best Shot (as made famous by Pat Benetar)
· Black Magic Woman (as made famous by Santana)
· Story of My Life (as made famous by Social Distortion)
· Pride and Joy (as made famous by Stevie Ray Vaughn)
· The Seeker (as made famous by The Who)
· Black Sunshine (as made famous by White Zombie)

In addition to the newly announced tracks, previously announced songs in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock include:

· Miss Murder (by AFI)
· Minus Celsius (by Backyard Babies)
· Sabotage (by Beastie Boys)
· Hier Kommt Alex (by Die Toten Hosen)
· Through Fire and Flames (by Dragonforce)
· In the Belly of a Shark (by Gallows)
· Welcome to The Jungle (by Guns N' Roses)
· Avalancha (by Heroes Del Silencio)
· Take This Life (by In Flames)
· Number of the Beast (by Iron Maiden)
· Ruby (by Kaiser Chiefs)
· Closer (by Lacuna Coil)
· Cult of Personality (by Living Colour)
· One (by Metallica)
· Knights of Cydonia (by Muse)
· Mauvais Garcon (by NAAST)
· Even Flow (by Pearl Jam)
· Lay Down (by Priestess)
· Bulls on Parade (by Rage Against the Machine)
· 3's and 7's (by Queens of the Stone Age)
· Suck My Kiss (by Red Hot Chili Peppers)
· Generation Rock (by Revolverheld)
· Raining Blood (by Slayer)
· Cherub Rock (by Smashing Pumpkins)
· Radio Song (by Superbus)
· The Metal (by Tenacious D)
· I'm in the Band (by The Hellacopters)
· Anarchy in the U.K. (by The Sex Pistols)
· Reptillia (by The Strokes)
· Paint It Black (by The Rolling Stones)
· My Name is Jonas (by Weezer)
· Slash's Original Boss Battle Recording
· Tom Morello's Original Boss Battle Recording
· School's Out (as made famous by Alice Cooper)
· Paranoid (as made famous by Black Sabbath)
· Cities on Flame (as made famous by Blue Oyster Cult)
· Slow Ride (as made famous by Foghat)
· Barracuda (as made famous by Heart)
· Rock and Roll All Nite (as made famous by Kiss)
· Mississippi Queen (as made famous by Mountain)
· Rock You Like a Hurricane (as made famous by Scorpions)
· La Grange (as made famous by ZZ Top)

Sneak Preview at Guitar Hero 3

OMG, check out this video of Guitar Hero 3.

Whew!! I need to start practicing!!!

Random update tidbits

I made it back home safely and I'm feeling a lot better than I was when I was diagnosed last week. My throat is not hurting nearly as much and my lymph nodes are no longer sore and swollen.

I just found out that one of the kids at Gulf Games has mono too. He already was sick by the time I got there, but I did see him last month when I was in Atlanta. My guess is that I somehow got it from him. Either that, or I somehow gave it to him last month. Or maybe it's just a coincidence that we both have it at the same time.

I ended up playing quite a few new games last week. OK, I just added them to my "New Games" list for the year and I played 24 new games last week. So, I'm up to 114 new games for the year. Whew. That's a lot of games!

I did learn how to play Memoir '44, so now I can try it out with #5 tomorrow night. I'm taking it, we'll see if we get around to playing it. There's a movie on deck also.

I was supposed to go out with eHarmony guy #9 when I got back and he called today to see about setting something up, but I basically told him that I wanted to see how things went with #5 first before trying to meet him. I think I'd feel weird about it since I do like #5 and am kind of interested to see where this goes first. #9 said that was totally reasonable and said to give him a call if it doesn't work out and wished me the best of luck. I think I'm just not good at dating more than one person if I have any kind of feelings about one of them.

Also, #5's birthday is next week and he's turning 40 (!) and I asked what he was doing for his birthday. He's having dinner out with his family on his actual birthday, which I figured would be the case, so I offered to make him dinner some other night next week. He said that it sounded perfect. Now I just have to figure out what to make! I have a couple "company-worthy" dishes, but they involve the oven. Maybe some homemade spaghetti and meatballs will be what's for dinner... I'm going to have to do some research.

As it is, he's meeting a lot of my friends on Thursday night. I have a very small games night (I don't want him to feel intimidated) and he agreed to come. Hopefully he will have fun. It will be interesting to have my friends meet him. I wonder if he'll "fit in."

And last, but certainly not least! I received an email from RedOctane.com today letting me know that my copy of Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s has been shipped. I should be receiving it tomorrow!! I might play a bit tomorrow night before my date just to try it out and maybe unlock a few songs for Friday night's GH Fest! Anyone interested in coming should email me.

OMG, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock!!!!

I just saw this article on Yahoo! that has some interesting information on the new Guitar Hero III that is coming out this October!!! Woo-hoo!!!!! There's a link to a preview too.

Here are the highlights...
Over 70 new songs (all original recordings! Yippee!!) including:

• Welcome to the Jungle
• Paint it Black
• Rock and Roll all Nite
• Even Flow
• Knights of Cydonia
• Cult of Personality
• Sabotage
• Cherub Rock
• My Name is Jonas
• School's out
• Rock You Like a Hurricane

There's going to be a co-op career mode, Slash as a character in the game that you duel with at the end, a new head-to-head battle mode where you can screw your opponent up by breaking their strings, make their fretboard all wobbly and unreadable or making their guitar orientation swap between righty and lefty flip! And we'll be able to post scores online without having to use a site like Scorehero!! Nice!

This is going to be so awesome! I'm WAY more excited about this than Rocks the 80s now. The song selection is already better. I see a Guitar Hero Halloween party in my future!!!

Final song list for Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s

I got this off of my friend Dan's LiveJournal. While I'm excited about the idea of new songs, I'm not sure how excited I am about these particular songs. I will reserve judgement until I play them though. When I first started playing GH2, I didn't love all the songs and some of them I just adore now.

Also, I don't know if it's accurate, but here it is!

• "Caught in a Mosh" (as made famous by Anthrax)
• "Balls to the Wall" (as made famous by Accept)
• "Electric Eye" (by Judas Priest)
• "Los Angeles" (as made famous by X)
• "Police Truck" (as made famous by Dead Kennedys)
• "We Got the Beat" (as made famous by The Go Go's)
• "(I Think I'm) Turning Japanese" (as made famous by Vapors)
• "Seventeen" (as made famous by Winger)
• "Because, it's Midnite" (by Limozeen)
• "Hold On Loosely" (as made famous by .38 Special)
• "No One Like You" (as made famous by Scorpions)
• "Only a Lad" (as made famous by Oingo Boingo)
• "Ballroom Blitz" (as made famous by Krokus)
• "The Warrior" (by Scandal)
• "What I Like About You" (as made famous by The Romantics)
• "Wrath Child" (as made famous by Iron Maiden)
• "I Wanna Rock" (by Twisted Sister)
• "I Ran" (by Flock of Seagulls)
• "Round and Round" (as made famous by Ratt)
• "Metal Health" (as made famous by Quiet Riot)
• "Holy Diver" (as made famous by Dio)
• "Heat Of The Moment" (as made famous by Asia)
• "Radar Love" (as made famous by White Lion)
• "18 and Life" (as made famous by Skid Row)
• "Bathroom Wall" (as made famous by Faster Pussycat)
• "Lonely is the Night" (as made famous by Billy Squier)
• "Nothing But a Good Time" (as made famous by Poison)
• "Play With Me" (as made famous by Extreme)
• "Shaken" (as made famous by Eddie Money)
• "Synchronicity II" (as made famous by The Police)

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.