Oh, right…
I’m going to see this tonight.
Check Six!
For some reason I felt the need to pick up something that brings me back to the original tabletop gaming that I used to play, in my early teens: historical wargaming. I had a few Avalon Hill games that I played, namely War at Sea and Victory in the Pacific. Through high school we mostly played Star Fleet Battles, moving toward RPGs during senior year. But we did find time to try games like Top Gun and Flight Leader.
The big difference back then was that the wargames were rarely designed for solitaire play, and when I didn’t have anyone to play with I ended up playing both sides of a conflict.
In the past few years I had bought a tabletop modern aircraft wargame which used miniatures, but once again I had no one to play with, so I just painted up a bunch of the minis and left them in a storage box somewhere in the house.
Finally, I came across this:
I’d been eyeing Phantom Leader and Hornet Leader for a while now, along with a couple of submarine games (U-Boat Leader/Gato Leader). I finally chose this one because I remember the F-4 Phantom as the cool looking fighter jet of my youth. Both the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds used them for their airshows back in the day.
Unlike my old standby, B-17: Queen of the Skies, these games have a political factor in each mission. If you bomb too big a target, politics may slow you down and limit the number of potential targets in later missions, but if you don’t strike hard enough, you could end up losing the campaign and the war.
This game should arrive sometime this weekend. If I end up liking it I may pick up Hornet Leader later.
Groot
Podcasting
I’m still going back and forth on this.
I have a very general idea what to talk about.
I have a co-contributor/partner for this thing.
I myself don’t have time to listen to podcasts as much as I used to.
I guess my biggest concern right now is where the heck to I store/post them once I’m done. iTunes? My own web site? Beg for space elsewhere? Ask nicely? Suggestions are welcome.
Maybe I just need to read up more on how to do this effectively.
Or I could just continue to post random 3-5 minute video blogs of myself to YouTube.
Back to Work
Sunday
Birthday Week Highlights
Saturday, February 18th: PARTY!
Sunday, February 19th: NBA All-Star Game (boring)
Monday, February 20th: Holiday, saw The LEGO Batman Movie, picked up Mansions of Madness
Tuesday, February 21st: breakfast with Dad at Gunther’s, dinner at Dave and Busters with Dad and Rob and Annie and Jen and Rubin (and families)
Wednesday, February 22nd: started to feel congested in the evening, played day two of the 1917 MLB season (6 games)
Thursday, February 23rd: BIRTHDAY! spent the morning and afternoon downing generic Mucinex, while watching Raiders of the Lost Ark and Superman: The Movie, dinner with Nels and Glenn at Izzy’s (San Carlos)
Friday, February 24th: still a bit cough-y and congested. Ran errands. Played Mansions of Madness.
Also watched the usual TV shows over the week, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow is still my favorite this year.
The 50s
My oldest friend turns 50 today.
Glenn Young and I were born two days apart, in the same hospital, and grew up in the same neighborhood for the better part of over 30 years.
We didn’t actually meet until Mrs. King’s kindergarten class. About a couple of weeks into that school year, Glenn was reassigned to the afternoon class, and we didn’t attend school together until we were in Mr. Van Pelt’s Algebra I class in freshman year of high school.
In between that time we’d see each other around the neighborhood, on our way to the corner store or going to or from school. I recall one day when I saw Glenn coming home from the store, arms full of every pack of the 1976 Star Trek trading cards that they had. Or so it looked that way.
Glenn has been my conscious at times throughout the years, helping me through matters of the heart and head, and generally helping me keep sane.
He and I pretty much share most if not all of our interests, from comic books to Star Trek to baseball to Star Blazers.
Glenn fed my interest in tabletop gaming and role-playing games, introducing me to both Star Fleet Battles and the Star Trek Role-Playing Game during high school. He helped me get a job at Gamemasters Distributors in the early days of college.
And we’ve been going to baseball games together for about as far back as the late 1980s.
We’re both avid Barry Bonds fans, having attended most of the significant events of his career as a San Francisco Giant, including milestone home runs, the day he hit his first grand slam as a Giant (vs the Rockies) and the night he hit the 500-500 mark in his career (homers-stolen bases, vs. the Dodgers). We plan to take the trip to Cooperstown the year he gets into the Hall of Fame.
The most interesting dynamic between us is that although Glenn is a Kirk fan and I’m a Spock fan, Glenn is more Spock to my Kirk: calm and collected to my over emotional outbursts.
And as I said about another friend who turned 50, Glenn probably knows me better than I know myself.
Happy Birthday, Glenn. Thank you for telling me what I needed to hear, instead of what I wanted to hear. I have been, and always shall be, your friend. Peace and long life.
No Cons
After giving it much thought, I have decided to not go to any comic-cons this year.
Silicon Valley CC was the only one that I was planning to attend, but that was nixed when Carrie Fisher passed away, who I had planned to get a photo op with this year.
If anything, I may go to the smaller cons around here, like South City CC.
I think I’m over the whole waiting in lines to attend panels for information that will be on the internet moments after it’s revealed.
The only celeb that I currently want to meet is Lee Majors, but he never travels out this way.
The 50s
February 23, 1967: premiere date of Star Trek episode ‘A Taste of Armageddon’.
On the day I was born, this episode premiered.
On Eminiar VII, the Enterprise finds a civilization at war with its planetary neighbor. Unable to discern any signs of battle from orbit, Captain Kirk leads a landing party to the surface where he discovers the entire war is fought by computer. Even though the war is simulated, citizens who are listed as virtual casualties still report to termination booths to be killed for real. After the Enterprise is destroyed in an attack simulation, Kirk must fight to keep his crew from death.
I always liked this episode, because it was basically a real live war game run by computers. Much like what I’ve been playing most of my life on my computers and game consoles.
This episode includes one of my favorite Spock lines:
Sir, there is a multi-legged creature crawling on your shoulder.
Since I bought the entire series on DVD and later blu-ray, I make a point to watch this episode on or around my birthday.