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The 50s

January 19, 1968: premiere date of Star Trek episode ‘The Immunity Syndrome’.

The crew of the Enterprise encounters an energy-draining space creature.

The space amoeba!

In which we also learn that there was a starship manned solely by Vulcans.

WAS.

Spock has a bad reaction to the death of over 400 Vulcans.

Eventually, a Shuttlecraft is sent in (with Spock aboard) to gather information about this organism, and the Enterprise crew end up destroying it with a probe armed with an anti-matter warhead.

This episode is not to be confused with the Space: 1999 episode of the same name:

While on a survey of a planet to replenish food and water on Moonbase Alpha, an alien form attacks a crewman who seemingly goes mad; after a brief struggle with the crewman, Tony Verdeschi is attacked by the alien as well. Koenig and the survey party must find Tony and help him regain his senses before the madness kills him and solve the mystery of the alien life form. All their technology breaks down, preventing them from leaving or receiving aid; all food – native and their own supply – become toxic.

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Popcorn

I bought a microwave popcorn popper bowl.

It works fairly well.

You fill a small amount of popping corn in the bottom of the bowl, up to one of the lines (oil optional), put it into the microwave, and then either pop for 2-4 minutes, depending on the wattage, or press the ‘popcorn’ setting on your microwave.

The first time I did it for 2 minutes 15 seconds, and there was a lot of unpopped kernels in the bowl, so I put those back in and hit the ‘popcorn’ setting, and they all popped, but I should have turned it off manually because it then burned some of the popped kernels.

Available here.

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LEGO Responds

I picked up this LEGO set over the weekend, mainly because of this little guy:

A LEGO Porg.

I then emailed LEGO to ask if it was possible to order more porgs, and they sent me this response:

I’m sorry, but we aren’t able to help you get the LEGO® parts you requested. The pieces you need are based on a story and characters we didn’t create ourselves. Our licensing agreements with their original creators specify we can only sell these “licensed” pieces as part of a set.

Bummer.  But I understand.  No way I’m buying that $800 Millennium Falcon, though, just for two more porgs.

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Tiger Leader

I played the first week of my first game of Tiger Leader.

I think I’ve got most of the game mechanics down.

It’s the 1939 Poland campaign, and my forces annihilated a Polish battalion.

Which is all fine and dandy, but now I have 2 more weeks to defeat way more battalions in order to finish with an acceptable victory point total.  A minimum of 13 VPs gets me a ‘good’ result.

I currently have 2 VPs.  Because I sent all my forces against one stinking battalion in the first week of this 3-week campaign.

I’ll be spreading my forces thin during the last two weeks of this campaign.

I also forgot to add 5 to the move rolls for the Polish.

We learn by doing.

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Finding my voice

I don’t speak my mind about many subjects, because there are others who speak better for and against my own position on such matters.

As the saying goes, “better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

Though some think I’m a fool either way.  And they’re right.

I write what I know about.  I talk about what I know about.

Which isn’t much lately, beyond the realm of sports and pop culture.

It’s not that I have no interest in politics, for example, but most of that either bores or depresses me.  And I don’t like being bored or depressed.  So I generally stay out of such discussions.

And as much as some subjects don’t interest me, many people would not be interested in subjects that do interest me.

I be me.

It’s what keeps me sane.

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Gloomhaven: A Review

Fun.  But hard.

Three of us attempted the first scenario, twice, getting a bit farther the second time.

Both times the party was eliminated.

I’m going to try it again, solo, with the characters that we did not play.

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Par for the Course

Corsair Leader got funded in less than 4 hours.  Woohoo!

And then I ended up backing a game that was supposed to have been on Kickstarter last November.  It got funded yesterday as well.

I’d read about this game for years, and it’s finally being reprinted, decades after it was last published.

I’ve always loved space combat games, and this appears to be the grandaddy of them all.  it was first published in 1973 by Marc Miller, creator of Traveller.

Two very different wargames, both should be fun to play.

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On second thought…

The ‘Named Pilot’ thing for Corsair Leader is a limited backer thing, meaning only a certain number of backers can claim that add-on/reward.

It’s a ‘nice to have’ thing for me, but if it’s limited, I wouldn’t want to prevent someone who really wants it to have it.

So yeah, I’ll just get the game.  And the neoprene mat for Hornet Leader.

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Add-Ons

The Kickstarter for Corsair Leader launches tomorrow afternoon.  I’ve already decided to back it.

One of the more pricier add-ons is naming a pilot in the game.  You pick the type of plane, and the name you choose will be the pilot for that plane, in all copies of the game.

As I pondered whether or not to use my own name, I did a quick Google search for Filipino World War Two pilots, and came up with a couple:

Jesús Antonio Villamor

César Fernando Basa

So there’s precedence for a Filipino WWII pilot.  Those these two flew P26 Peashooters for the Philippine Air Force’s 6th Pursuit Squadron.

And I’m gonna have him fly one of the first WWII models that I ever built, a $2 kit from Woolworth’s, circa late 1970’s.

Not the model I built…

F4F Wildcat