BGG.CON 2008 Day 1

OK - so it's now 4:36 AM and we're winding down Day 1 of BGG.CON 2008... I'm in the Rock Band room, chillin', trying to stay awake while I write this. I think I officially missed a day yesterday, but my goodness, there's just too much happening here. I've been having fun with the webcam, talking to people all over the con (when my aircard and the ustream.tv website will cooperate).

If you're bored at work tomorrow, make sure you tune in! I think I'm only "planning" on webcasting around noon (or whenever I get downstairs) and then later at 11 PM before the drawing. That's CST! And we'll do the midnight drawing and then later, Ca$h'n Guns Live and maybe Time's Up? I'm not sure how popular the Werewolf was last night. The website crapped out and probably dropped the feed before they finished. I have no idea.

So far, it's been a blast. I'm still not fully recovered and I've been talking all day and I'm starting to lose my voice. I really need to try to get some sleep and take it easy.

I only played one "real" game last night and that was After the Flood, the new Martin Wallace game. It was fun and I think that if you like Martin Wallace games, you'll probably enjoy this one. It's really tight with resources and you really need to manage everything, planning both your short-term and long-term goals. I definitely need to play it again to grasp a basic strategy fully. I played with Michael Weston (delta1119) and Janna. Janna schooled us! It was awesome!

Other than that, I think I just played Time's Up! and Title Recall. I got to see Davebo act out all the works of Mark Twain in 30 seconds - white washing a fence, cajoling someone else into doing the white washing, a trip down the Mississippi River, burning at the stake(?) and other stuff. If I do stream Time's Up! tomorrow night, I will do my best to get Davebo in that game. He's so good at the third round (AKA: the no-words round).

Modern Long Distance Dating

Because my boyfriend lives across the country... Georgia, more specifically... We don't have the "typical" dates that people who live in the same city might have. It usually consists of late night chats when we can squeeze them in and silly text messages to say "hi" or some such.

What we've been doing lately is setting up "date nights," which usually go like this:
He comes home from work, eats something, takes a nap and then calls me so we can get caught up on each others' week and hang out. Last time, we played some Dominion on BSW (a German website where you can play all kinds of Euro games).

I'm waiting for him to call so we can commence with our date tonight and tonight it'll be a little different. I bought him a webcam from Amazon and had it shipped to his house. He hasn't yet opened the box and he doesn't know what's in it, so I hope that he actually likes it. I picked out one with good reviews (4.5 stars with 402 reviews), so I hope it installs nicely and doesn't give him any trouble. As much as I love our date nights, I think I'll like them even more if I can see his smile!

And really, webcams are quickly becoming the norm. I was chatting about this with my waxer and a customer in the salon overheard us and said, "Oh, are you going to talk to your child with it?" Apparently, her son is in Japan and she just shipped him a webcam so she can see him when they talk via Skype. She loves it.

In fact, Google has just released video chatting! I can't wait to try this tonight. I guess we'll find out!

In Hotlanta Once Again

I'm in Atlanta once more for the Oasis of Fun which starts tomorrow night. One thing that is definitely different this time is that I will be seeing 42, whom I haven't seen since we broke up. I am feeling completely fine with it and we've already arranged to play Race for the Galaxy together. I'm curious to see how I'll feel after seeing him. My guess is that I'll feel the same way I'm feeling now... We've communicated a fair amount over the last few weeks and apparently, he's busy with a hoard of women, including his ex-girlfriend (and I think he was including me!). Just a month ago, I was feeling some fairly strong residual feelings for him, but a lot has happened since then and I think they've severely subsided. I guess I'll know exactly how much once I see him this weekend!

I'm really looking forward to seeing my friends, some of whom I haven't seen since the OoF last summer! Also, Dale is unable to make it so I promised that if I could acquire a webcam (I left mine at home), I would stream up some video so he could check in on us every once in a while! So, there may be some streaming video this weekend! He put out the call for the webcam and if anyone has one, I guess I'll find out soon!

I saw my friend MeeMe today who I haven't seen in ages!! I think the last time I saw her was about 14 years ago. Here's a picture of us from lunchtime today!


When I get home, I'll have to dig up the old picture I have from the last time we saw each other. She looks a little more "grown-up" but other than that, exactly the same. She said I look exactly how she remembered me too. I guess it might be time for another hairstyle? I am quite partial to long hair though... Maybe a haircut for the summer is in order.

Webcam

One downside to having a long-distance boyfriend is that it means MUCH less face time! We do talk to each other pretty often, but that's clearly not the same as spending time together. To try to make up for that, we decided to buy matching webcams! We bought Logitech Quickcam Ultra Vision cameras. I received mine a couple days ago and he should receive his on Monday. Then we can give it a real try. So far, we've talked online where he could see me via Windows Messenger Live.

I've been having one problem though. I keep getting the blue screen of death! I updated the software and it didn't happen for a couple days until I was trying to stream some video on the blog tonight. Something in the software is causing it to do that, but I'm not sure what. I'm going to ask my computer guy when I see him next week to see if he has any suggestions.

I'm not planning on actually streaming video to the blog really, but I wanted to see how exactly it would work. Pretty cool!! I'm curious to see what it's like talking with him when I can see him. Now I'll have to worry about what I look like even when I'm lounging around at home!