A Scattered Brain

Game of the Week: Conquer Club – www.conquerclub.com

This week’s game is one of my favorite computer hobbies right now and has been for about a year.  Conquer Club is an online version of the popular board game RISK.  The rules are very similar but the developer has added a lot more flexibility.

The first big addition you’ll notice is the addition of dozens of maps.  Instead of just playing on the original RISK board, members of the community have worked hard to create many different and clever maps to enhance the players’ experience.

Beyond the maps, there are countless combinations of game options: 2 – 8 players, team games, fog of war (very difficult, you can only see armies that border your direct territiories), different objectives to win the game, and options for speed and how turns are made.

Trust me, this can get very addictive.  But at the same time, it takes only a few minutes to make a move and then you have 24 hours before you have to make another one (or longer depending on settings).  It is completely free or you can purchase premium membership for $25 a year and that gives you the ability to play in an unlimited number of games concurrently (free gives you 4 concurrent games).  Even if you aren’t or weren’t a big RISK player as I wasn’t, this game is a lot of fun.

If you sign up and choose to play, my user name is sgstanton.  Look me up and we can either join a game as enemies or as a team.

Next week’s game involves a monkey and some darts… if you guess it, you rock!

Happy Conquering and I’ll see you on the battlefield.

So, as I mentioned in my New Year’s blog, a new feature that I want to start adding is my Game of the Week (GOTW).  This may not be each and every week, but should be fairly regular.  Games can range from different consoles (but right now primarily ones online will be featured) and will be an eclectic collection of old, new, cheesy, and anything else that may be tickling my fancy at the time.  For the first game, I’m reaching way back to the early nineties, well before the popularity of the internet.  So without any further adoo…

GOTW – Legend of the Red Dragon

Legend of the Red Dragon (L.O.R.D.) is probably one of the oldest and most popular games during the height of BBS (buletin board system) access.  First, for those who don’t know, BBS was in many ways the predecessor to the internet during the time that the internet (known then as ARPAnet) was only for use with universities and the military.  BBS systems were always accessed through dial up modem and all programs (known as doors) were text based.  Any graphics had to comply with ANSI characters and you had to have a terminal program that would support it.

L.O.R.D. itself is a text based role playing game.  When you first started, you create a character (magician, theif, warrior) and then you have options to help build up your character.  It’s a little like Dungeons and Dragons but can be played on a much larger scale with people from around town (or more depending on the reach of the BBS).  You would venture into the forest to beat up on creatures and gain gold and experience.  You could slaughter other players in the field, either in an on-line battle or while they were offline as well.  If your character died, when you log on the next day you came back to life so no permanent damage took place.

There was a place to buy weapons, armor, an Inn to rest at night.  Characters could even get married in the game or try to woo the ultimate non-playing character… Violet (or Seth Able if you are a female character).  There were also add-ons that BBS operators could add that would allow an even more diverse virtual world.  All in all, for a text based game, it was and still is a lot of fun to play.

Now that BBS systems are nearly dead, there are only a couple of places left where you can still play L.O.R.D.  The best one I have found is Nuklear LORD and it is free to play.  You can either use telnet in Windows or through a Java browser on the Nuklear website.

Next week I’ll introduce you to an online community game that takes a popular board game and really brings it to the next level.

Greetings all and Happy New Year.

I hope you all had a safe and fun holiday season.  Mine was very nice and it was awesome to experience Connor’s first Christmas.  I’m sure in the years to come I will love getting to see Christmas through the eyes of a child once again.

This year I have a couple resolutions:

1. Continue to lose weight.  I’m about 225 right now and would love to get down to around 200 by the end of the year.  I know I won’t be able to change my eating habits too much but will try to eat at home more and exercise regularly.
2. Blog more.  I know that you all have been eagerly waiting a new blog from me for months so this year I plan to write a bit more and have some ideas for running topics.  I will start doing a “game of the week” (or month or whatever) which will be a link and review to usually simple but fun online games.  Look for the first one next week.  I may also try to get back to more regular bowling updates as well.  However you can always visit here to see the list of scores and records for my team.

I wish you all a terrific New Year.

This has got to stop… Yet another girl has gone missing and the suspect is a registered sex offender.  How many more of these need to occur before the liberals in this country understand that they are releasing sex offenders way too early.  Most of them should never be released; especially those that are ranked as “highly likely” to commit the same crime again.

Is it just me, or has common sense yet again left the building?  If you release someone knowingly that they are likely to commit the same crime again, shouldn’t you reconsider releasing them?  But no, instead we create a freaking list and tell them that they have to register themselves on this list.  Yeah, that sounds like a plan.

The people that are committing these types of crimes aren’t going to be rehabilitated.  Sorry, it won’t happen.  Their punishment should be banishment from society for life.  Whether that is in prison or in a hospital can be determined on a case by case basis; but to let these sick minded individuals back on the streets is reprehensible and as a society we are then all culpable for their actions.  It makes me sick.

How many more stories like this must we see before we change the way these criminals are handled?  I personally believe that being convicted of a sex crime against a minor should incur a lifetime sentence without the possibility of parole; along the same lines of murder in the 1st.  Even though the victim(s) may be alive, they certainly have had their original, innocent self murdered and those responsible should have to pay accordingly.

Ok, so this isn’t a huge deal, but it is annoying enough to post about it so here goes.

My first name is Spencer; it is not Stanton.  I know, part of the curse of having two traditionally last names can confuse some people, but lately it seems to be confusing a lot of people at work.  My work e-mail name comes through to recipients as “Stanton, Spencer” and recently most people are ignoring the comma and replying with Stanton as my first name.

Here is the problem I face: how do you politely correct someone over e-mail.  It’s easy enough in person or over the phone because tone of voice will let people know that I’m not offended by the mistake, but still want to correct it.  Over e-mail; different story.  What’s the proper ettiquite over e-mail?  Do I close out a message with, “by the way, my first name is Spencer”?  That seems to come off a bit rude yet that is the nicest I can think of.  If people look at my signature, I specifically have “Spencer G. Stanton” leaving no doubt what my first and last names are but people tend to ignore that and mistakenly go by the name displayed.  If you have any thoughts, please let me know.  Again, it’s not the biggest thing in the world, but can be a bit annoying at times.

This bowling year is off to a strange start.  The first week was horrible and the last two weeks have started bad and ended GREAT!  Here is the chart:

Here’s the best and worst part.  I know exactly what I’m changing during that third game; my tempo.  For some reason though, it’s taking that long to adjust to find what’s right for me.  If I can get that reaction time down to a reasonable level I think I can start to average 190+ on a regular basis.

So, the summer season is over.  I ended up with a 185 average which isn’t too bad, but the season was a steady decline from the first week on down.  I’ll try to make the trend the other way for the long winter season.  I plan to incorporate something into my game that I’m always lacking; focus.  I will be more deliberate with my approach and try to throw every ball with a purpose instead of sometimes showing focus and other times just going up and bowling quickly.  Even if I am having a bad game/night, I need to work on maintaining a solid focus so that is my first goal for this season.

As far as average, I’m going to shoot for a goal of 190 for the season.  This will be quite difficult I know over 30+ weeks.  Goals are meant to be hard though, right?

I will try to be more consistent with updating my scores for those that have missed it.  We’ll see how that goes.

Well, I’ve been a father now for 2 weeks and it is amazing the transformation that is happening in me.  First, I never knew I could love as much as love both my son and my wife.  Just that feeling alone is enough to bring a tear to my eyes.  I honestly don’t know what I would do without either of them now.

The first few days were quite surreal.  Even after we got our son home from the hospital, it still didn’t fully set in that he was mine, and furthermore, that he is my responsibility for years to come.  Over the last week that realization has set in and most of the time I feel like I’m ready, but there are other times when it scares the heck out of me.

One of the biggest adjustments is the lack of sleep.  One thing my wife and I both love is our sleep.  We knew that when our son came that would all change since they have to eat every 2-3 hours for a while which means little sleep for all of us.  At times, it has hit me like a ton of bricks and I find myself in a bit of a fog most of the time.  Hopefully I’ll adjust to the lack of sleep soon; I’m sure it’ll happen just as he starts to sleep longer, huh?

Probably the biggest impact this has had on my is a much greater respect for my parents.  For the most part, I’ve always gotten along with them and since I’ve been on my own for the last 12 years, my relationship with them has been great.  Having a child of my own though has helped me realize all that my parents did for me that I never knew nor could I have understood prior to having a child myself.  I also know that all of our work now won’t be understood until our son has a child of his own.  Makes a lot of other parts of life seem so insignificant.

Overall, the last two weeks have let me feel nearly every emotion: joy, satisfaction, fear, love, love, and more love.  My life will never be the same.  My priorities are completely shifted, and finally my life has a true purpose.  I won’t be defined by my success at work.  I won’t be defined by any of my hobbies.  I will be defined by my job as a husband and most importantly as a father.  My success or failure will be made apparent through my son.  I know I will make mistakes, I’ll lose my cool, I’ll get frustrated.  But I can also promise this.  I will do my best to be the example my son needs and deserves to have in his life; just as my father was to me.

Greetings All once again,

So, the new season has started and along with bowling, I am also the League Secretary/Treasurer.  It’s the first time for me to take on that role, and aside from the extra cash I’ll receive at the end of the season, it’s something that really keeps me busy throughout the night.  I thought it would be just a simple as collecting the money and validating scores, but there is actually quite a bit more; so I guess it seems I’ll be really earning the money.

From a bowling stand point, at least so far, the added responsibilities have helped my game.  I’m focusing so much time and energy on my duties that when it’s time for me to go up to bowl I just quickly clear my head and go for it.  I do a lot less thinking in between frames not allowing me to over-analyze my previous frame(s).

Here is the table for the league so far:

If I’m lucky, I hope to be able to maintain above a 190 average for the summer.  I believe that 200 at this time, while it would be wonderful is a bit unrealistic.  190 may be as well, but with the good start, I wouldn’t feel right to keep my original goal of 180.

I hope all is well with all of you!

Something tremendous has happened in France… They have overwhelmingly elected a pro-American, pro-Capitalist conservative for their new President.  This changes the decades long socialist trend in France and is a great thing to see.  He will have a lot of challenges ahead, as parliamentary elections are coming up soon, and France’s government may not know what to do if an opposing party to the new president wins the majority (the government as it is now almost depends on the President and Parliament to be of the same party).

To see anything less socialist coming out of Europe (Great Britain excluded) is truly amazing.  The new president is going to be taking on a lot of responsibility but it appears the French are ready to come back to a market based society.

Check out the news article here.

Have a great week!