Games or toys?

Played one game of Roll Through The Ages (homemade copy) with Lee a couple nights ago. Definitely going to buy this as soon as I get the money together.

I have also been experimenting with getting my games out with Alex and Cori. For being 4.5 and 3, they do a great job of being kind to the games. Yesterday we got out National Geographic Global Pursuit and Carcassonne to see how they would do. They did great at manipulating the tiles and taking turns drawing and placing cards on the Carcassonne map. Alex directed the traffic with Global Pursuit, quickly deciding that we should sort the point chips, then roll the giant 12-sided die and count out a single color of chips for the total shown.

Today I got out Ursuppe and Agricola for them. Ursuppe doesn't have much in the way of play-inducing parts, as the food cubes are pretty generic and the amoebas are functional game pieces but not good for imaginative play. Agricola kept the girls attention a lot longer because the animeeples are great for sorting and stacking. Cori said, "These sticks are a bed for my sheep."

Cori's definitely got a shorter attention span than Alex, but both of them can take turns well. Overall, these are a hit. I'm more wary of allowing them to handle cards, since the likelihood of the cards getting folded/spindled/mutilated is pretty high. Lee and I have also talked with the girls about the concept of good stewardship... there's little incentive for us to get them cool toys if the girls carelessly destroy them.

Firefox: Worst misfeature I encounter every day

Other than crashing often, Firefox has the idiosyncrasy of trying to make a click on the "Bookmarks" menu open a little bookmark menu somewhere else. Or it doesn't. You know, whatever is appropriate based on the whims of some egghead. Why would clicking there sometimes bring up a little boxy thing and sometimes bring up the menu? (I know why, but it doesn't matter. )

Whenever I click on the Bookmarks menu option, what I should get? A menu of my bookmarks. You know, like it does in Every Other Browser Ever.

Anything else violates the Principle of Least Surprise.

I even managed to get through this rant without using the phrase, "bag of dicks," except for now.

Dominion at Chris B's birthday party

Jan 31, played 3 games of Dominion over at Chris B's party. Also met his wife for the first time. Man, you know your schedules don't match up when someone gets engaged, then married, without ever meeting the lucky girl.

Some other guy's list of unplayed games makes me nostalgic

The comments on this list of games hit home.

I am a paint-drinking freak

I almost bought some Redemption cards tonight because I found them on sale in the church bookstore (don't worry, it's about to close due to not making enough of a profit. See, this is why I don't run a church and stuff, I thought providing services to your members and not making a profit is cool, too).

Why would I buy a Christian collectible card game? Hurf durf, it's on sale!

Back from OwlCon

... and boy are my arms tired. No, really, hiking all the way across campus with Power Grid+expansions, the 18IA proto, and a ton of clay chips for playing 18IA made my arms sore. More later, the good lord willin'.

The single most irritating type of web page I encounter

... is "10/25/over 9,000 exciting Themes for Ubuntu/Debian/Whatever".

The whole reason I deal with Linux and UNIX is to get away from stupid eye candy like this.

Also, your pictures are horrible, and I hate you.

(I just put a bandage over my graphic design blister and I am cranky.)