Being that I play D&D and lot, play and run games at the local game store, and am generally at the game store it’s no accident that I’ve heard of Blood Bowl before. The miniatures game by Games Workshop pits two custom made teams of players against each other each other in an incredibly violet game of a football like sport. Around here they organize into Blood Bowl leagues around this time of year and really get to it. It’s always sounded like something really fun to play.
Now I’ve never picked this game up because I haven’t been looking forward to getting into another game, but also the game isn’t cheap and it requires the assembly and painting of small pewter miniatures. Something I’ve been needing to do with a whole bunch of miniatures that I have. So when I heard about the Blood Bowl video game I was intrigued, but I didn’t pick it up because I wanted to try it. Unfortunately no demo ever surfaced (why?) but I recently got to try it at the local game store that has it installed. And I’ve got to say, wow, this game is just pure fun. I mean I pretty much I have easily emptied out an entire day into play the game after I purchased it. It’s really nice to see a good turn based strategy game on the PC, and the fact that the game is about getting the ball to the goal rather than eliminating the opponent really makes for a great change of pace. There’s just something really magical about having a turn where you tackle the ball carrier, send your catcher into the end zone, and have your thrower inch up, grab the ball, and toss it through a narrow open lane for a touchdown. Guess this means I might end up looking at the Blood Bowl pen and paper game box a bit more seriously next time I’m at the store.
If I hide under this desk the John Lennon can't get me
Although I’m sure some people will think this is just a picture of a little dog laying down, those of you who have dogs might be able to recognize the signs of a dog freaked out of his little gourd. This is a picture of Bailey hiding under my desk, curled up into a little ball with his tail tucked in and shivering. What catastrophic event caused Mr. Bailey’s distress? Lightning storm? Hurricane? A nationwide Carrot Top comedy tour? No! It’s “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band” being played on The Beatles Rockband. Incidentally Bailey started reacting to the game shortly after I read the trivia about how an ultrasonic sound, like a dog whistle, was added into the song Inner Grove on the album, though that song isn’t present in The Beatles Rockband. It wasn’t just Sgt. Pepper that scared Bailey though, he showed equal fear to “Here Comes the Sun”, “Octupus Garden”, “Get Back”, and every song in between. I guess something about the Beatles’ later years really frightens the poor little dog. After playing the game I ended up having to spend the next hour consoling the poor little dog that the big bad Paul McCartney wasn’t going to get him.
Well, at least the game was loads of fun. Guess it’s a good thing for Bailey it was only a rental.
For a little background, I’ve been a Cox Cable subscriber for a long time. I’ve had their cable internet service since around 1999 or so. And on the whole I’ve been largely happy with it, but as time goes on the email service I get from them seems to continually get crappier and crappier and crappier when I compare it to the great golden emailing calf that is Google’s Gmail.
Before this incident occurred I’ve had the feeling that some of my emails have just been going into the ether, just plain disappearing. Usually they’re things like verifying accounts for services, like, WordPress. Or Gmail. In response I checked the spam filter settings on my account. You see Cox filters emails before they even hit your email client and by default they delete anything that their filters decide is spam. You can’t turn this feature off, but you can change it so instead of deleting the messages it will put a big — SPAM — in the subject line so you can let your email client filter it. Since I thought my emails were mistakenly being deleted I decided to turn on this option and no whatever Cox thinks is spam gets a great big — SPAM — in the subject line in my inbox.
Imagine my surprise when I opened up my mailbox just now and saw the picture above in my mailbox. That’s right. Cox marked their own newsletter as spam. While I appreciate Cox’s honesty about the content of their newsletters, I have to ask my self just how badly you have to mess up when you neglect to make your own spam filter not mark your own messages as spam. Remember, if I hadn’t changed my spam filter settings this message would have been deleted before I could even download it in Outlook. No Spam folder, no logs to check, just gone. Brilliant.
Oh yeah. Some of my messages still dissapear into the ether of the information superhighway even after I changed my spam filter settings. Gotta love it.
Now if only Bumblebee could transform into a can of lemon Pledge
Well a week has gone by and the poll has closed and while during the middle of the week the X-men vs. Street Fighter arcade machine interior, the Guitar Hero 1 game and guitar, and the (yuck) disgusting bunch of used socks were beginning to close the gap, they just couldn’t match the surge in votes that the Horrible Dust Covered Optimus Prime got after the poll first opened. So as my thanks for all those views, one of you “lucky” people could receive the Horrible Dust Covered Optimus Prime you see pictured to the right. Aren’t you glad you know what he looks like now?
So how can you enter to win the Horrible Dust Covered Optimus Prime? It’s very simple. All you need to do is make a comment underneath this post to enter. When you pick your email to put your comment under make sure the email you use is valid so that I can contact you if you’ve won so that I can get an address to send your Horrible Dust Covered Optimus Prime to. Remember, I’ll only guarantee to have him shipped within the United States. If you’re outside the United States you might be on your own for arranging shipping.
This contest will remain open for new entries until November 1st. Once November first has come around the winner will be randomly chosen by a random die roll, and they will be contacted. The selected winner will have three days to reply to my email, otherwise another winner will be selected. Invalid emails where delivery errors are received will be disqualified immediately. Once I have a winner who responds to the email that winner will be announced in a new blog post. Horray.
As some of you may have noticed I was posting a lot yesterday about how happy I was with the traffic this blog was receiving on Friday, only to be totally be blown away by the traffic this blog received on Saturday. Needless to say I’m overjoyed with this result and in honor of my very first 1,000+ hits in a day I’ve decided something special needs to be done. Something more special than putting together a lame animated gif which shows how all of you completely squashed my traffic graph yesterday. So to decide exactly what that something special should be I’ve decided a poll should be opened to see what out of my collection of useless junk treasured items will be given out to one, or all, of you as a gift to say thank you for all the views. Here are the options for what the “gift” will be in detail, followed by a poll. The “gift” will be whichever item has the most votes by next Saturday.
Option 1: Youtube video of the interior of an X-men vs. Street Fighter arcade machine. It’s something I have in my possession, I’m probably going to be giving it to a family member soon, but while I still have it I can film it, and wouldn’t it just be dandy to see the inside of a particle board box with a 25″ Wells-Gardner monitor in it, a Capcom CPS2 board, and Happ controls and coin-mechanisms as far as the eye can see? Probably not, because these things aren’t exactly made to be pretty inside. But, if you’ve absolutely got to know, vote for this one.
Option 2: Upload of silly 33 second stop motion video I did back in the nineties. “Filmed” with a crummy digital camera, and put together in Paintshop Pro’s animation shop on a shiny state of the art computer with a 300Mhz AMD K6 processor and encoded in Intel Indeo codec. Wow your friends with your new found knowledge of just how bored a human being can get when stuck in a house in the middle of winter!
Option 3: Contest for one lucky winner to get this tiny Japanese Optimus Prime PVC collectible statue thingy on my desk. What does he look like? You don’t know! That’s half the fun! I will tell you he stands about four inches tall and is a statue, which means minimal posing, and is fairly chunky and he comes on a clear base. He’s definitely Optimus Prime but he’s some version I don’t recognize with a more samurai looking helmet and just some slightly different shapes to his parts overall to make him much more stylized. He also comes with complementary dust. I’ll pay for shipping this to anyone within the US. International shipping is possible depending on how much it is, but no promises.
Option 4: Contest for one lucky winner to receive Original Guitar Hero 1 Playstation 2 game with guitar. Hey, who likes old used and abused video games? Obviously you do if you picked this. If you’re not sure what this is, go google it. Last I time I checked this worked, but hey, who knows! This also comes with complimentary dust. Just like the Optimus Prime Statue I’ll pay for shipping this to anyone within the US. International shipping is possible depending on how much it is, but no promises.
Option 5: Contest for one lucky winner to receive a bunch of used socks! Oh joy! Do I really need to explain what socks are and what used means? Why would you pick this? I don’t know, but it seems to work for Carson Daly so let’s go with it. As with the other contests I’ll pay for shipping this to anyone within the US. International shipping is possible depending on how much it is, but no promises.
So those are the options for the absolute junk clogging my closet trove of treasures you have to pick form. You may choose all of the options that you would actually like to see, and the option that has the most votes after time is up will be the one that happens. Choose wisely.
Editor’s Note: In the case of a tie at the end of the voting period the tie will be broken by a random die roll.
Statistics in graph may be smaller than they appear
If for some reason you should goto dinner, especially if it was good and way too expensive for your income, and you should come back and your usage stats have magically gone up, as if shoe-making elves started working for Google, first do not panic. Above all else do not do a happy dance, as it will undoubtedly find its way onto Youtube. Do not proceed to then IM your friends and tell them how your (meager) traffic numbers have spiked all of a sudden, and most certainly do not post or blog about it, thus preserving evidence forever on the internet of yourself being a complete spaz. And finally, do not under any circumstances take a screenshot of your usage stats graph and write “w00t w00t” upon on it. Especially not in red, crimson, scarlet, or any other shade thereof. Failure to heed these most dire warnings could lead to such unfortunate consequences as eternal ridicule, banishment from dance floors, or being forced to listen to stories about your friend’s cat. You have been warned.
Being that I play D&D and lot, play and run games at the local game store, and am generally at the game store it’s no accident that I’ve heard of Blood Bowl before. The miniatures game by Games Workshop pits two custom made teams of players against each other each other in an incredibly violet game of a football like sport. Around here they organize into Blood Bowl leagues around this time of year and really get to it. It’s always sounded like something really fun to play.
Furluge's Depot 