Girl, you be trippin'

Alex tripped yesteday while running into a corner at full speed, causing her to fall and cut her head.

Sooooooo, I took her to the emergency room, where she got 4 stitches.

Alex, before:

Alex, after:

Items in the queue

• played Agricola with Larry on Sunday, yes, it's an excellent game, more to follow
• Thomas Disch killed himself on July 4. Very sad about this, more to follow.
• How much division of attention is too much? Gaah, my brain is full.
  

Technical Fatwa: Trendnet Router

If you see a TrendNet router, do not buy it. Those dumb, or possibly evil invidivuals have managed to sell a router that doesn't out of the box, "route" information.

You need to install a separate program on every computer in the network and pay $30 to TrendNet for the privilege of sharing files and printers over the network.

Kids, Windows XP and Vista have this feature out of the box.

Grr. So angry.

Monday night Power Grid

On Monday night, Michael and R.J. came over and we got in a game of Power Grid on the northern end of the Germany map.

It was an odd game, with the high power plants coming out in such a way that the game stalled out for a couple turns; unfortunately for everyone else, I got into last place and began consuming all the coal and oil being generated. With the high connection costs on the Germany map, we basically sat there a couple of rounds coasting and building up cash... I went into the final turn and just tossed my 230 electros on the table with an "I'm sure this will connect 5 cities."

In hindsight, R.J. was right, we should have played the Benelux map with the lower connection costs and the rule about dropping the lowest power plant every round.

I have also received my copy of Power Grid's predecessor Funkenschlag, which involves a write-on/erase map of Germany. I feel sort of spoiled as the production value's just not as good, and now I want to find more maps to use with it. Oh, well.

Saturday at the Houston Gamers

Saturday I headed out to Midnight Comics to catch the Houston Gamers and got in a ton of games. Some of the usual suspects were missing, due to Gulf Games going on this weekend. Nevertheless, I got in a lot of good stuff:

• 2-player San Juan with Tim, won by a single point. Built a gold mine on the 5th turn to counter Tim's 3rd turn gold mine, and mine never paid out.
• 4-player Race for the Galaxy with Tim, Debra, and a guy whose name I never caught... I won 39-36-29-25. This was a learning game for Tim and Debra, so it's not like I was playing for blood.
• Von Kap Bis Kairo with James Spurny, Doug, and Jenny. Lots of tough decisions in such a little package.
• Light Speed with James, Doug, and Jenny. Doug won with 17 points, the rest of us failed to break 10...
• Naval War with James, Doug, and Jenny. I hadn't played this Avalon Hill classic before.
  Flickverk with James, Doug, and Jenny. A cute little speed game by Friedemann Friese.

I also saw games of Last Night On Earth, Elfenland, Tribune: Primus Inter Pares, Reiner Knizia's Money, and Arkham Horror hit the tables. They had already played Pandemic and Metropolys, too.