Tag: gaming

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Dungeons & Deaths

We started work 15 minutes early in exchange for leaving 30 minutes earlier than usual. Ben had a conference to attend, so the rest of us kept busy cleaning up random projects. I got a little time at Oakland to myself, but then spent the afternoon with Zach and Allen after we all had lunch at Fat Daddy’s. I always forget how disappointed I am in the value of their Friday special of a pork loin “covered in bacon.” $7 is just a crime.

After work, Summer brought the girls over to me at the shop, and I took them to get dinner before dropping them off with their grandparents. Autumn wanted a burger and Eaddie insisted on Popeye’s, so we ran by McDonald’s and then Popeye’s before heading to my house to eat. The chicken took an incredible amount of time to prepare, at least for those that were in line ahead of us. I was parked by the speaker for near 15 minutes before they even addressed me and asked me to wait longer before taking my order.

Once the girls ate, they stopped bickering just long enough for me to drop them off. From there, I headed to Kroger and then Domino’s before swinging by Summer’s. She had to be back home relatively early to be up for a quiz bowl tournament the next day, so she just followed me to Travis’s house in her own car.

John and Melissa beat us there, and we spent just a very small amount of time on introductions and pleasantries before jumping right into a game of Dungeons & Dragons. The game was pretty fun in spite of me dying twice and not having anyone around to resurrect me. Summer seemed to enjoy it as well, and we’re excited to go back and continue the campaign.

With the game over, Summer went to get the girls and I met her back at her house for the evening. I showed Eaddie a bit of Bandersnatch while the other two went to bed. We made it through to the credits once before the Netflix autoplay took over and tried to start an episode of Black Mirror. I wish you could just disable that timer and have it automatically play the full credits every time.

I’m gonna have to kick this into high gear!

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V-Games for V-Day

Oakland was pretty crazy with Valentine’s Day stuff this morning, so I was just in and out. I spent a bit of time at the shop trying to organize my thoughts about esports, and then made it to the junior high just before the 8th graders went to lunch. I grabbed my flyers and waited nervously in the lunch meeting room. As soon as Matt made the announcement, the kids started pouring in. It was pretty rowdy, and I was a little disappointed in how little most of them knew about the games being offered. I got a bunch of questions about adding shooters, and I just kept having to point them to the fact that we’re going to have a hard enough time convincing parents that video games are good for school without throwing violence in with it.

The 9th graders seemed way more prepared. Hands shot up for all the games, and there were plenty of people that already played them at home. It ended up being almost entirely a question/answer session. I was glad that Summer and Hannah came to the 8th grade lunch for support though, and even Autumn brought a couple friends. I felt like I had a pretty decent handle on the introduction the second time, but the hardest part is still ahead. I spent all afternoon running around the building getting input from different people about how to get the word out to parents. Once I can get my mind to slow down a bit, I’ll be able to enlist the EAST project kids to do most of this legwork.

I never did make it to a lunch, and I spent the end of the workday setting up AppLocker for League of Legends so I can restrict who can actually run the game. I got to chatting with Ben for a little bit before I left, and then headed home to meet up with Summer. Once I got a hold of my parents, everyone agreed on my suggestion of Taco Villa for a Valentine’s Day dinner. It was a relatively easy way to avoid the craziness of all the sit-down restaurants today. I forgot to grab cash on the way out the door though, so we had to run back home for that before we got the food.

I think we all ate too much. I confirmed that I still don’t love tamales, especially that aren’t homemade. There was a lot of cheese. Everywhere. When we got back home after dinner, I felt like I slammed into a brick wall of exhaustion, but had to finish washing a load of socks. Summer went home to receive the girls as I stayed in to wind down as quickly as possible.

Here’s to the last 80.

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Whee Sports!

I thought it might be warm enough to ride today, but it was still around 30 when I left for work, so that was right out. I mostly worked around the shop all morning, and spent a little time looking over my esports stuff so I could meet up with the EAST kids in the afternoon.

Allen suggested KFC for lunch, and I was excited to check out the renovation. It was really nice, but I was a little surprised at a few of the choices. I hated the absence of a tray rail on the buffet, and had to balance my tray on the edge of the bar instead. The food was the same mix of stuff, and everything was nice and fresh. I’m seldom disappointed there lately.

Once I got to the junior high, I set up in Lab 201 and waited for the kids to arrive. I got them signed up with PlayVS, and we looked at some of the resources there. I didn’t see the required firewall settings at first, so I wasn’t able to install League of Legends today, but I finally found them later in the evening.

Summer had to go to an eye appointment and took Eaddie with her, so I took Autumn home to pick up some deliveries. Evidently I ordered a 24oz CO2 bottle instead of the 20oz I thought I ordered. Fortunately it fit my SodaStream perfectly, and seems to be holding pressure fine. Only time will tell. From there, we went to my parents’ house to trade some razer cleaner for rice and toilet paper. Summer skipped the gym so she could get dinner started, so we headed that way without too much delay.

She made a really great, if not confusing mix of ginger chicken and asparagus with fettuccini. It was really good, but Autumn wasn’t a fan. I was a bit surprised we didn’t force her to finish her bowl, but I’m at a loss. After we ate, Summer got a workout on her stair stepper while we watched a couple episodes of Parks and Recreation. I had to head home to start some laundry, so I didn’t stay too long. Then it was off to bed.

“Matt, I wanna see you play more aggressive!”
“Yep.”

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What’s the Dale, Yo?

It rained all day today, so we had to trailer the TVs we were mounting. Dale had us load up four for the high school, but when we got there we decided not to do two of those because they had newer projectors already. Then the two we did hang were in rooms that seemed not to use them at all, so I’m not even sure it was necessary. All of this was really out of the ordinary for Dale, so it really threw us out of whack the rest of the morning.

I offered up a couple places at the junior high where we could mount the last two, and after Zach spent about half an hour trying to back the trailer up to the pad, we got one TV hung. They left the last one in my office, and we met the gang at the shop to go to lunch at Popeye’s.

Way too much food later, I was left to go to the junior high and take care of a few things by myself. I spent a while trying to get sound out of the TV we hung, and then went through a few rooms to check on the quality of some projectors to decide on more replacements. The teachers were all there for SSP night, so I found all of them to discuss the replacements. About half of them were all for TVs, and the other half didn’t want to give up their touch panels. It’s all well enough, I suppose, because I hate getting rid of stuff that still works.

Summer had to stay late for her conferences, so I headed home and played some Rocket League and Overwatch with Johnny and Aaron when they came on. I missed having friends to play with, but I didn’t miss all the whining about why things are the way that they are in the games. I guess you just have to take the good with the bad.

My body is finely tuned, like a microchip.

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Domo Arigato Mister Conky 2000, Ha Ha!

I had to wake up this morning to meet at the robotics tournament around 8, and the place was already pretty packed. Everything went pretty smoothly, and I only worked for about an hour before they cut me loose. I went up to Summer’s to see what they were doing, and she left Eaddie and me there while she went to the gym. I ate the last of the leftover noodles and then played on the Switch for a little bit while Eaddie took a shower. Just after Summer got back, I got a call about some trouble at the tournament, so I had to head back there.

I couldn’t find anything wrong with the wireless other than a slightly higher number of users in the area. I would think the access points could have handled the 30-40 users per device without too much trouble though. I spent a little while fiddling with it to see if I could narrow down the trouble, but in the end the only advice I could offer was to restart their tablets.

When I left, I met Summer and Eaddie at Sumo for lunch. They were super busy and our cook was unusually quiet for the venue. What made it even worse was that our noodles were basically completely inedible due to the amount of salt in them. They burned my mouth as I ate them, so I had to mix them with the rice to make them palatable. Then he forgot Summer’s vegetables and had to scrape enough from the scraps on the table for her. Overall I just felt like they were trying to hide poor quality with tons of sauce and seasoning.

From there, the girls went home so they could go with their father. I ran home to clean up some oil or grease stains on my shirt, and then made it back to the robotics tournament just as they were cleaning up. It went well for the most part, so hopefully the payment situation will be fairly straightforward. If I’m lucky they’ll contribute my extra to retirement as well. I left once most everyone was gone and headed back home to meet Summer.

On the way home, Zach texted and invited us to come play games with him, Sara, Gary, Bryan, and Daspri. We got there just in time to see that it was actually a dinner party they were having. We were still so full from lunch that we just awkwardly stood there and chatted with them while they ate. Apparently that’s a pretty regular thing for them to do though, which was kind of a bummer to learn. I thought we were getting in on something new there, but I ended up feeling like extras. It was still a fun time though once we started playing Unstable Unicorns. We even played by the proper rules this time so we didn’t get stuck in a stalemate for four hours. We wrapped up the evening with a learning game of Bears vs Babies. It went okay.

Enough with the grumblies!

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Coach Cow

It was storming pretty hard this morning, but we got just enough of a break and cared just little enough that we still managed to truck a touch panel to Oakland first thing in the morning. Together, Zach, Gary, and I got the panel hung with only a little unnecessary help from John. It would have helped if we had started with the correct size drill bit, but the important thing is that we got it done.

Afterward, we got the rumor mill going pretty hard, and there were a lot of things left up in the air. Jason’s still going to be out for a while, and apparently they’re letting him use sick bank days for what any reasonable person would feel are seriously inappropriate reasons. I was going to get 50 cent corn dogs with Summer and Ronda, but Ronda backed out, and then Zach wanted to continue our conversation over lunch. The three of us went to Zona K-tracha for lunch, and all ended up getting the same mixed lunch fajitas. The waitress seemed to be new at literally everything she did for us, down to asking if we wanted ice in our waters. The food was good, but inconsistent with our previous experiences. Overall good, but not worth the difference over a closer restaurant to the shop. Previously it had been pretty amazing.

I took care of work orders after lunch, and spent some time setting up an account with PlayVS. Matt and Ben officially gave me the go-ahead to be the coach for the district’s first Esports league team. PlayVS tripled the number of games to three: League of Legends, Rocket League, and Smite. None of us had any real idea how we would start the whole process, so I started by firing off an email to Gabriel, who I had helped pitch Esports to Matt in the first place. My main concern right now is how we will pay to enter the league, and whether we even should for this season with so little time to prepare.

As the day ended, Summer and I were going to meet at my place over some corn dogs while the girls were in karate. Kevin was still in his office working super late, so I thought I’d swing by and bring him a couple, but he had disappeared by the time I got there. I headed home and ate with Summer, then finally ran by the junior high basketball game to feed him there. He was super duper appreciative of that, and we chatted for a while before I headed out. I talked to Ronda and Jennifer at the concession stand for a little bit and ran into Charlie there because his daughter wanted to watch the game. I guess it’s something social to do. I didn’t used to see the appeal, but at least it looked better than an outdoor sport.

When I got back home, I spent some time in the living room with Grey. I think her tumors are getting worse pretty quickly, but she’s not acting totally worthless, so it’s going to be hard deciding when to end it. We’ll just have to take it day by day. Johnny and Aaron got online after a little while and I chatted with Johnny until bedtime.

Blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-alcohol.

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Six Months

I had ELPA testing all day at the junior high, so I spent all morning over there just in case something happened. Nothing did. I got a few other things cleaned up while I was there, then met Allen at Ruby Tuesday for $5 salads. I spent the rest of the afternoon at the shop and then visited Oakland for a bit on my way home.

I took off a couple hours early to take Grey to the vet since she’s been a little shyer than usual. It was a quick visit. One look to find three mammary tumors. She said cats don’t survive them 90% of the time, so surgery wouldn’t be a realistic option, and all we can do is watch her quality of life. She guessed it might give her six more months.

With that news, I took her back home and gave them both some wet food. Then we sat on the couch together for a couple hours until I had to pick Eaddie up from karate. She wanted to stay and hang out with her friend, but I had to get her home to shower.

Summer and Autumn showed up shortly thereafter, and Summer warmed up some leftover pasta for us before the girls shuffled off to bed. I played Breath of the Wild the rest of the evening while Summer nursed some gnarly shoulder pain.

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Sunday Pickins

We slept in a little today after a good, long night of sleep. I started to clean up around the bedroom just a little bit, but it ended up being more like picking through a time capsule than a true cleaning day. Eventually Summer took off to go to the gym and shop for dinner stuffs. I ended up playing a little bit of Overwatch with Clint to pick up the last of my bonus loot boxes for the week. Then I got a shower and headed to Summer’s for dinner.

The girls had other food sorted and went to bed pretty soon after that. Summer made a really great pasta out of some of the leftover pulled pork, and I transferred her big tray of leftover baked beans to smaller containers for freezing. Then Summer and I watched an episode of Parks and Rec before I headed home to do one last load of laundry for the weekend. Clint and I ended the night with a few more rounds of Overwatch while my towels dried.

Baked beans, the plentiful legume.
The more you get, the more you entomb.
The more you entomb, the cheaper you eat,
So freeze beans from every quiz bowl meet!

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Foreboding New Year

It’s starting to look like this may be kind of a rough year. I started out with another dead fish – this time the black tetra that had bloated up. It was actually still breathing when I went to take a shower, but taking it out of the tank and setting up the quarantine finished it off by the time I was out of the shower.

I got stuck parking a little weird when I got to work, so I managed to clock in just a few seconds late, which was more annoying than anything else. Then I just babysat testing all morning. At least I got a couple arms full of scrap to take out of my office and to the graveyard. It already makes a difference in moving around in there. As lunch neared, Jason asked for suggestions. I mentioned that KFC had been remodeled and he responded with, “what sounds good?” I guess he, Dale, and Brice went to McAlister’s. I just went home for more leftover barbecue.

The afternoon was pretty mellow. I got done with what little bit had come up and then left the same time Summer finished. Autumn had stayed home for some reason and Eaddie didn’t want to go to karate or come with me to eat, so Summer took her home and went to the gym while I went home to start laundry. Summer stopped by for just a minute in the middle of that and mentioned that Grey seemed really thin and not well, so I’ll have to take her to the vet next week sometime.

Once Summer headed home, I got the litter box cleaned and fought some ants in that bathroom. Then I folded laundry and played a few losing games of Overwatch to really seal my exhaustion for a long night’s sleep.

I really hoped after the twelve years since my last one, this would be my year to shine.

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Ye Olde Frands

The junior high was testing this morning, so I spent most of the day trying to stay busy there. I actually got a few things taken care of, and there wasn’t a single testing issue, so it was a pretty stress-free day. Ben and Gary came over around 9 to meet with some kid from Tech about the robotics tournaments and what they needed from us to make their equipment work. Unsurprisingly, Gary was the smartest person in the room by a longshot. It was almost impressive how quickly everyone else’s eyes glazed over, and I was proud to have mostly kept up.

Dale called for lunch, so I met him and Bryce at Wendy’s. One of the maintenance guys walked in and spun some more tall tales for us as well. It felt like a really short lunch, but it was good as usual. Then it was back to the junior high until school let out. Then I ran by Oakland on the way home to replace a projector lamp.

I had to get gas when I finally left work, since I’d been skirting empty for the better part of a week. On the way back home, I stopped by AT&T to chat with the guys there. They were super dead and overstaffed, but still joked about me coming back. It’s definitely tempting, but I really would like to start out at a higher hourly rate. I left just as an area manager pulled up so as not to disturb anyone. Then it was home to start some laundry.

Summer brought all the kids over after a little while to help with the leftover barbecue from last weekend. They watched an episode of Emogenius before heading home for the night. I cleaned up and got on the computer where I saw Jack sitting online. It wasn’t much longer until Johnny showed up as well. I was a little annoyed that there wasn’t ever any chat about playing tonight, but it is what it is. We played some Overwatch until one by one they left.

Get up off my feet and stop making tired excuses.