Darksteel Pre-Release
So this weekend was the "Pre-Release" tournaments for the latest Magic: The Gathering Expansion - called Darksteel. I didn't go yesterday - couldn't convince myself I could burn an entire weekend obsessing on Magic. But I did go today and it was a lot of fun. Long term readers of the blog will remember this article from last August where I discussed my first introduction to Magic, and how I had stopped, and then recently startedagain.
In truth the slippery slope didn't really kick in then, for a lot of reasons. My new job was requiring crazy hours, and the 8th edition release on Magic Online really screwed up the environment. In fact they still don't have all of the features working right after the 8th release. So the Magic playing throttled back a bit. For a while . . . .
Then one day I had an IT guy working on my PC, installing a new Service pack for Windows 2000. He saw my wallpaper was a Magic card and mentioned that I should get in touch with the "guys upstairs". Turns out the the guys upstairs play at lunch fairly regularly. So I bought some Mirrodin to play sealed deck with them. Fun but I didn't get great cards, and I didn't play that well. Playing physical seems awkward now in a lot of ways. But now's there's the Darksteel Prerelease.
So I played in an individual tournament, and some of us played in a 3 person Team Sealed Deck format. Overall I did decent, and won 9 packs of Darksteel, in addition to the game cards.
The big slippery slope notch has been when I started putting the modern cards into a binder over the weekend. I don't have that much modern stuff, but I'm getting enough that I need to organize it. That act, the very act of getting out the binder sheets and sorting cards was a definite slide down the slope. :-) Oh, and finding all my old cards to see what was standard legal in those - that wasn't a good sign either. (Since they reprint cards, anything that is a current standard set is legal - even old versions. For instance - I have a card from Ice Age called "Icy Manipulator". This card is 8 years old, but Icy Manipulator has been reprinted in Mirrodin. So although most of Ice Age isn't Standard legal, I can play my beloved Icy.
Oh and it was super-cool at the tournament when they asked for my DCI card, and I had to bust out the old-school one. And say "Yeah, this is the old number" because they use 8 digit numbers, and I registered back in the day when they were only four digits. :-)
Darksteel seems decent, nothing jawdroppingly good, but a solid expansion on Mirrodin. Team Sealed is tough You make a three person team, get a card pool, and make three decks. You face off against another three person team, and play three different 1 on 1 matches. Whichever team wins two of the three matches wins the round. I think Mirrodin deckbuilding is hard. Trying to balance three decks is even worse. We ended up splitting red across all three decks, and ditching blue. (So I played white+red, and the other two decks were green/red and black/red)
So this weekend was the "Pre-Release" tournaments for the latest Magic: The Gathering Expansion - called Darksteel. I didn't go yesterday - couldn't convince myself I could burn an entire weekend obsessing on Magic. But I did go today and it was a lot of fun. Long term readers of the blog will remember this article from last August where I discussed my first introduction to Magic, and how I had stopped, and then recently startedagain.
In truth the slippery slope didn't really kick in then, for a lot of reasons. My new job was requiring crazy hours, and the 8th edition release on Magic Online really screwed up the environment. In fact they still don't have all of the features working right after the 8th release. So the Magic playing throttled back a bit. For a while . . . .
Then one day I had an IT guy working on my PC, installing a new Service pack for Windows 2000. He saw my wallpaper was a Magic card and mentioned that I should get in touch with the "guys upstairs". Turns out the the guys upstairs play at lunch fairly regularly. So I bought some Mirrodin to play sealed deck with them. Fun but I didn't get great cards, and I didn't play that well. Playing physical seems awkward now in a lot of ways. But now's there's the Darksteel Prerelease.
So I played in an individual tournament, and some of us played in a 3 person Team Sealed Deck format. Overall I did decent, and won 9 packs of Darksteel, in addition to the game cards.
The big slippery slope notch has been when I started putting the modern cards into a binder over the weekend. I don't have that much modern stuff, but I'm getting enough that I need to organize it. That act, the very act of getting out the binder sheets and sorting cards was a definite slide down the slope. :-) Oh, and finding all my old cards to see what was standard legal in those - that wasn't a good sign either. (Since they reprint cards, anything that is a current standard set is legal - even old versions. For instance - I have a card from Ice Age called "Icy Manipulator". This card is 8 years old, but Icy Manipulator has been reprinted in Mirrodin. So although most of Ice Age isn't Standard legal, I can play my beloved Icy.
Oh and it was super-cool at the tournament when they asked for my DCI card, and I had to bust out the old-school one. And say "Yeah, this is the old number" because they use 8 digit numbers, and I registered back in the day when they were only four digits. :-)
Darksteel seems decent, nothing jawdroppingly good, but a solid expansion on Mirrodin. Team Sealed is tough You make a three person team, get a card pool, and make three decks. You face off against another three person team, and play three different 1 on 1 matches. Whichever team wins two of the three matches wins the round. I think Mirrodin deckbuilding is hard. Trying to balance three decks is even worse. We ended up splitting red across all three decks, and ditching blue. (So I played white+red, and the other two decks were green/red and black/red)
In truth the slippery slope didn't really kick in then, for a lot of reasons. My new job was requiring crazy hours, and the 8th edition release on Magic Online really screwed up the environment. In fact they still don't have all of the features working right after the 8th release. So the Magic playing throttled back a bit. For a while . . . .
Then one day I had an IT guy working on my PC, installing a new Service pack for Windows 2000. He saw my wallpaper was a Magic card and mentioned that I should get in touch with the "guys upstairs". Turns out the the guys upstairs play at lunch fairly regularly. So I bought some Mirrodin to play sealed deck with them. Fun but I didn't get great cards, and I didn't play that well. Playing physical seems awkward now in a lot of ways. But now's there's the Darksteel Prerelease.
So I played in an individual tournament, and some of us played in a 3 person Team Sealed Deck format. Overall I did decent, and won 9 packs of Darksteel, in addition to the game cards.
The big slippery slope notch has been when I started putting the modern cards into a binder over the weekend. I don't have that much modern stuff, but I'm getting enough that I need to organize it. That act, the very act of getting out the binder sheets and sorting cards was a definite slide down the slope. :-) Oh, and finding all my old cards to see what was standard legal in those - that wasn't a good sign either. (Since they reprint cards, anything that is a current standard set is legal - even old versions. For instance - I have a card from Ice Age called "Icy Manipulator". This card is 8 years old, but Icy Manipulator has been reprinted in Mirrodin. So although most of Ice Age isn't Standard legal, I can play my beloved Icy.
Oh and it was super-cool at the tournament when they asked for my DCI card, and I had to bust out the old-school one. And say "Yeah, this is the old number" because they use 8 digit numbers, and I registered back in the day when they were only four digits. :-)
Darksteel seems decent, nothing jawdroppingly good, but a solid expansion on Mirrodin. Team Sealed is tough You make a three person team, get a card pool, and make three decks. You face off against another three person team, and play three different 1 on 1 matches. Whichever team wins two of the three matches wins the round. I think Mirrodin deckbuilding is hard. Trying to balance three decks is even worse. We ended up splitting red across all three decks, and ditching blue. (So I played white+red, and the other two decks were green/red and black/red)
It's not dead yet!
Sounds like NASA has figured out what's wrong with Spirit, and should be able to get some level of functionality back. Apparently one of the Flash ROMS is bogus and booting from it causes the reboot loop. The press release mentions booting from RAM every morning so I guess they can work around it but have to keep an image in main RAM - which I imagine is a power drain. Maybe ultimately they can reflash the ROM and get the problem solved permanently.
That press release mentions that they don't expect to alter Opportunity's mission due to what happened to Spirit, which is also good news.
Sounds like NASA has figured out what's wrong with Spirit, and should be able to get some level of functionality back. Apparently one of the Flash ROMS is bogus and booting from it causes the reboot loop. The press release mentions booting from RAM every morning so I guess they can work around it but have to keep an image in main RAM - which I imagine is a power drain. Maybe ultimately they can reflash the ROM and get the problem solved permanently.
That press release mentions that they don't expect to alter Opportunity's mission due to what happened to Spirit, which is also good news.
That press release mentions that they don't expect to alter Opportunity's mission due to what happened to Spirit, which is also good news.
Linkfest!
Matthew Baldwin (owner of Defective Yeti - link to the right) writes a hilarious FAQ/Walkthrough for surviving IKEA
Bwana puts the lie to my "You can't take good photos with the Treo 600" by pointing out this guy *sigh*
Matthew Baldwin (owner of Defective Yeti - link to the right) writes a hilarious FAQ/Walkthrough for surviving IKEA
Bwana puts the lie to my "You can't take good photos with the Treo 600" by pointing out this guy *sigh*
Bwana puts the lie to my "You can't take good photos with the Treo 600" by pointing out this guy *sigh*
Where's the Kaboom?
There was supposed to be an earthshattering kaboom!
Spirit is failing to phone home :-( I guess it's still possible it just needs a rebooting, but for now it's offline. Hopefully they can figure this out, and before the sister rover (Opportunity) lands this weekend!
UPDATE: I guess Spirit is sorta online still. I don't envy people having to remote debug over interplanetary lag, with the whole world watching! Good luck to ya's!
There was supposed to be an earthshattering kaboom!
Spirit is failing to phone home :-( I guess it's still possible it just needs a rebooting, but for now it's offline. Hopefully they can figure this out, and before the sister rover (Opportunity) lands this weekend!
UPDATE: I guess Spirit is sorta online still. I don't envy people having to remote debug over interplanetary lag, with the whole world watching! Good luck to ya's!
Spirit is failing to phone home :-( I guess it's still possible it just needs a rebooting, but for now it's offline. Hopefully they can figure this out, and before the sister rover (Opportunity) lands this weekend!
UPDATE: I guess Spirit is sorta online still. I don't envy people having to remote debug over interplanetary lag, with the whole world watching! Good luck to ya's!
The joy of independent radio!
So I'm driving home today, bopping along to whatever was playing on the radio. I happened to be listening to Live 105 at the time, when a longish commercial came on. The gist of the commercial was some programming director explaining how they were going to play "deeper cuts", and used only local DJ's, and didn't think music came out of a focus group in New Jersey, blah, blah, blah. I thought to myself "Hmm, that's interesting that they think a backlash against Clear Channel is marketable."
About 20 minutes later I thought "Hey, I thought they WERE a Clear Channel station. In fact I thought almost everything on my dial (when do phrases die out? I mean, my car is old, but a dial? Who am I, Henry Ford?) these days was Clear Channel. It piqued my interest enough to check.
Live 105 is owned by Infinity Broadcasting. I find several references claiming that Infinity is the second largest radio conglomerate in the US. So, you GO Live 105! Strike a blow for the small independent multi-billion dollar radio station Voltrons of the world!
Oddly enough almost every preset on my radio is owned by Infinity. The first time I ever noticed radio station ownership was back when several stations just started running Clear Channel contests, and actually having a Clear Channel branded news programming. There was a couple of weeks where you could flip amongst four different stations and they would ALL be playing the same flipping commerical about this contest.
And now Newscorp wants to buy DirectTV. Ain't monopolies grand?
So I'm driving home today, bopping along to whatever was playing on the radio. I happened to be listening to Live 105 at the time, when a longish commercial came on. The gist of the commercial was some programming director explaining how they were going to play "deeper cuts", and used only local DJ's, and didn't think music came out of a focus group in New Jersey, blah, blah, blah. I thought to myself "Hmm, that's interesting that they think a backlash against Clear Channel is marketable."
About 20 minutes later I thought "Hey, I thought they WERE a Clear Channel station. In fact I thought almost everything on my dial (when do phrases die out? I mean, my car is old, but a dial? Who am I, Henry Ford?) these days was Clear Channel. It piqued my interest enough to check.
Live 105 is owned by Infinity Broadcasting. I find several references claiming that Infinity is the second largest radio conglomerate in the US. So, you GO Live 105! Strike a blow for the small independent multi-billion dollar radio station Voltrons of the world!
Oddly enough almost every preset on my radio is owned by Infinity. The first time I ever noticed radio station ownership was back when several stations just started running Clear Channel contests, and actually having a Clear Channel branded news programming. There was a couple of weeks where you could flip amongst four different stations and they would ALL be playing the same flipping commerical about this contest.
And now Newscorp wants to buy DirectTV. Ain't monopolies grand?
About 20 minutes later I thought "Hey, I thought they WERE a Clear Channel station. In fact I thought almost everything on my dial (when do phrases die out? I mean, my car is old, but a dial? Who am I, Henry Ford?) these days was Clear Channel. It piqued my interest enough to check.
Live 105 is owned by Infinity Broadcasting. I find several references claiming that Infinity is the second largest radio conglomerate in the US. So, you GO Live 105! Strike a blow for the small independent multi-billion dollar radio station Voltrons of the world!
Oddly enough almost every preset on my radio is owned by Infinity. The first time I ever noticed radio station ownership was back when several stations just started running Clear Channel contests, and actually having a Clear Channel branded news programming. There was a couple of weeks where you could flip amongst four different stations and they would ALL be playing the same flipping commerical about this contest.
And now Newscorp wants to buy DirectTV. Ain't monopolies grand?