Thursday Things

January 25, 2018

What I’m Contemplating

“The least-worst idea we had”—The creation of the Age of Empires empire – Inspired me to get some similar RTS games installed on my iMac.
How to Fix Facebook—Before It Fixes Us – Worth a read. I think Facebook has serious problems ahead of it and will see dramatically declining engagement.
‘It Had Never Been Done on Television Before’: The Oral History of Breaking Bad – Read this and just try not to go back and reewatch the series.
The Good War – I’m guilty of being drawn into this particular fiction, but I think the comic is off in several areas. Still good to get different perspectives.
An Interview with Matt Cutts: Can the Government grow a Money Mustache? – Gives me just an ounce of hope that maybe some parts of our federal government are functioning well.
How to Write a Blog Post – I don’t do this much editing, but you probably already know that.

I played Defiant Russia and wrote a short article about it.
I played Red7 with Julie and Ken – it has become a staple and works great even with two players.
Julie and I brought out Blokus and of course she crushed me. Don’t get into a land war with Russian and don’t get into an abstract game with Julie.
I’m ramping up my ASL play – played Advanced Squad Leader on 2018–01–13, on 2018–01–13 and on 2018–01–19
Julie and I played Rummikub which is a staple for us. We even have two copies, just in case.
I finally played the solo game Friday and enjoyed it. Will keep ramping up difficulty.
Ken and I also played Star Realms, and I should mention that my brother-in-law Dave and I have a continuous string of games going in iOS that has been quite fun and competitive.
Julie and I played the very obscure Plext followed by Boggle, two word games. I’m a bit of an ace at Boggle, and Julie beat me in Plext.
Sitting in a bar before a movie, Julie and I played Coin Age twice and she beat me both times.
I finally returned to my game group’s Tuesday night gaming and played a four hour slog of Gloomhaven. This is a very good legacy / RPG style dungeon crawl game that builds on the D&D and Descent boardgames and adds improved campaigning and a very cool combat system.

Hike the Salmon River Trail – This was an average hike but the weather was perfect and it was nice to get out for a while.

I read most of Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers and thought was OK. I’ve listened to many of the podcasts so there was redundancy, but it is nice to have a summary.
I listened to the epically long Hitler: Ascent 1889–1939 and it was… well, epic. Best bio I’ve read so far and the research and detail is unsurpassed.