If you can see this message, you are pointed at the new server. If you somehow found your way here but in the middle saw a terrible looking application about World of Warcraft cards, please let me know the URL you typed in so I can fix that issue.
Found one of the best TNG episodes ever on my dvr today: Second Chances. My apologies for the length; this one gets tricky. It also includes the greatest star trek poker scene in media history at 43 minutes in. Away we go:
JAZZ PARTY IN TEN FORWARD. ANY REQUESTS? NIGHTFOX! bitch. BOODLE-BOODLE. TIME FOR AN AWAY MISSION: WTF?!?!? RIKER NUMBER TWO?! TRANSPORTER REFLECTION OF THE ION SHIELD! EIGGGGGHHHHHTTT YEEAAAAAAAARS! CMD RIKER WANTS WORK, LT RIKER WANTS TROI, TROI WANTS A BONER– TAI CHI! 5 CARD DRAW, NO LIMIT: LT.RIKER BET 50, WORF FOLD, CMD.RIKER STRING RAISE 10(!), DATA CALL 60, LT.RIKER STRING RAISE 100, CMD.RIKER STRING RAISE 20(!!), DATA FOLD, LT.RIKER STRING RAISE 300, CMD.RIKER STRING RAISE “EVERYTHIN YOU GOT LEFT”, LT.RIKER FOLD. fold? FOLDDDDDDDDD! DON’T YOU DARE GO OVER MY HEAD! BOODLE-BOODLE: TIME FOR AN AWAY MISSION! WTF? DEEP HOLE IN THE GROUND! HALP! GRAB MY HAND! DROP ME! NO! YES! NO! DATABASE RETRIEVED! THOMAS RIKER, SHIPPING OUT… DON’T FORGET YOUR NEW TROMBONE!
I re-updated the blogroll (on the right sidebar). Wwhazz alerted me to the fact that he found it helpful to have prominent links to The People’s Champ, Arlo’s Bloggity Bloggity BlogBlog, and others.
Additionally, our old pal Big Al opened a new web site at http://blog.mlbsecrets.com that has up-to-date info on all the latest baseball rumors. Example: yesterday I looked and found out that Ben “Fucking” Sheets worked out for ten (10!) interested teams the other day. I assume that he will sign for a hojillion dollars somewhere and then NOT get injured, thereby completing his unusefulness to the Milwaukee Brewers. It seems like it’s a good time to leave a Wisconsin professional sports team and then get fantastically good again.
Wwhazz’s birthday was this week, as was madddddddd’s, as was manders’. As is alandovos. Basically everyone I know: Happy Birthday. Wwhazz and bellygirl went out to dinner and snapped a picture of the all-time best bar special ever. Ever. I hope they don’t mind me reproducing it here:
The Best Bar Special Ever
I’ve slowly moved all my other websites to my new hosting provider, and now all that’s left is whazzmaster. I’ll be prepping for it over the next few days (exporting the data from this server, setting everything up over there, and then importing everything). Once it seems all set to go I’ll throw the switch and update the DNS records. There may be some problems as we switch, and some of your most-up-to-date comments may not make it over there, but I’m gonna try to get as much as possible.
Also, got the new Punchout for the Wii; it’s pretty cool so far but I’ll update once I’ve played it a bit more.
Quite a full weekend. Friday night Spacebee’s parents dropped by on their way into town and we watched the first half of the Brewers/Cubs game. We headed out to try and meet our nieghbors at The Brink but couldn’t find them, and headed back to the Depot just as the heavens opened up.
Saturday was a full day: farmer’s market in the morning, then we had breakfast at Marigold with Spacebee’s mom and grandmom for mom’s day. Quick nap, then we hopped in the car to drive to Milwaukee to have dinner with my family for mom’s day as well. We shot back to my brother’s house to watch the end of the Brewers/Cubs game two.
Sunday morning, we figured that since we had to drive back through Milwaukee to Madison anyways we might as well see if we could wrangle some tickets to the game. A Long Wong’s Wagon ride and two Standing Room-only tickets later we were watching Rickie Weeks sky a homer to left-field from the right-field foul pole. It was nice to have standing room tickets as we just ambled around the stadium the entire game and saw lots of cool stuff. Bad thing: the built a canopy over the FSN desk in right-field so you can’t hang over the fence and jaw at Craig and Davey anymore. Good thing: the new store is ok, but the renovated store in left field is pretty cool.
I bought a pink bat. See?
We also stopped off at Eastgate Cinema on our way back into Madison to see Star Trek. I’ll bottom-line it for you: great movie. I’m no die-hard Trek fan but I watched it when I was younger and was uncertain how they would shoehorn the new dudes, villains, etc. into the existing framework. They did a great job, and with the exception of the groan-inducing (to me, but drew cheers from others in the theater) shouting of catchphrases by the characters I had a great time. Go see it, it’s good.
Using the Wayback Machine you can look at what the interweb was like wayyy back in the day. Before floppy brown hats, theoretical poker physics, and a cast of thousands there were several versions of Zach’s homepage known as Chaos Central. I can’t find the OG version because I can’t remember what the non-Computer Science UW hosting URL was (alandovos, you remember?). For your pleasure, however, review two early, early, early versions of whazzmaster.com:
The version from the latter half of my college years (run with Perl scripts and a file-based database).
The version from when I first moved to California and the maddddddddd scientist taught me about MySQL and PHP.
Have fun until I get back from Miami, weirdos.
What’s been going on lately? Well, Cal’s girlfriend won the SF marathon, and wwhazz’s wife navigated a dangerous intersection. I’ve been playing WoW again lately (though not too much!) and my friend Jay got me Dead Space for the XBox 360. The last ‘survival horror’ game I played was the original Resident Evil game for the original Playstation. I’ll tells ya– s’ a lot spookier in 1080p with surround sound. Space horror is more frieghtening to me than regular horror and I’m not sure why. Anyways, I got stuck on the tutorial level when my idiot game-man couldn’t open a door. I got past that now.
Soooo, the Badgers suck at football now? When exactly did that happen? The Packers seem to have righted their ship for the moment, but I still can’t win a 3-teamer to save my got-damned life so there’s that.
This weekend we’ll be heading up to Door County to celebrate mama’s birthday, and then next weekend is the Big Throwdown for Halloween. I don’t think anyone planned a party, or if they did I was left off the invite list, so the Main Depot it is. Luchas all around.
I’ve been quite busy trying to launch my new web site– wowtracker.org. Basically it’s a site to track card collections. I’ve been playing the WoW trading card game for awhile now, and made it to track my own collection. I’m trying to see if it would actually generate any ad revenue. I’ll soon be moving it to a new server, so that link may or may not work if you click it. In fact, better just not to click– I was only trying to beg off not updating in a week.
Finally, I found out today that I’ll be out in the Bay Area November 9th-14th, so if you are hungering for some moneypenny, uh, I guess you’re in luck.
I spent the weekend in Seattle to attend the Penny Arcade Expo, put on by the guys who make the Penny Arcade webcomic that I’ve been reading since the late 90s. I met up there with EvilAntnie and Alandovos and had a great time, though I’m not sure if we’ll make the trip next year.
I flew in on Thursday night (the con started on Friday afternoon) and kicked it with maddddddddddddddd and rach-o. They took me down to Ivar’s-on-the-lake and we had some down-home fast food seafood. After that scientist took me to Diamond Lil’s card room where we hooted and/or holllared until the wee hours of the morning. Scientist: about even, me: dead broke. It was straight up bay area-style asian poker: gambo, gambo, lose.
So I haven’t been to a Nerd Fest in quite a while, but when I was a kid we used to hit up Gen Con in Milwaukee every year until it moved down to Indianapolis. It was kinda odd coming back into the fold, because I’m a Nerd-In-Good-Standing in some ways (check off the requisite boxes: sci-fi fan, RPG fan, video game fan, quasi-anime fan, CCG fan) while being generally horrified by other element’s of Con Life: cosplay, bad smells, greasy lunatics, EXTREME anti-social behavior. PAX had some of everything but overall I had a good time; for example I met incredible fucking assholes while playing WoW TCG games and standing in lines (oh, the lines!) The majority of folks, however, were nice and polite. The PAX Enforcers (volunteers that roam the con) were incredibly helpful.
PAX is mostly organized by a legion of volunteers, and it stands out among other conventions because it’s built around a cult of personality firstly, and shared culture secondly. So if you want to attend the insanely popular “Make A Strip” session (where the two guys make a comic strip onstage with audience particpation) or the Q&A Session you must stand in a line with literally thousands of people for upwards of one and a half hours before they open the doors the auditorium. I hate lines and I hate large crowds, so those things don’t sit well with me.
I heard there were 50,000+ people attending this weekend, but as a rule I steered clear of lines and crowds by just going to places where the people weren’t. If there was a popular session going on, I would miss it and take the opportunity to do stuff that otherwise would have been crowded. What that means is that I didn’t spend much time in lines, but I also missed the cool experiences that drew me to the convention in the first place which is why I’m on the fence about attending again next year.
The Operational Rule of Nerds: Never underestimate the amount of time a nerd will wait in line to get something free/cheap/signed/limited in quantity. Even if the place does not open until 10am… if the thing in question is good enough and you think a sane person would show up at 9am, so you’ll be first in line at 8am, then count on nerds sleeping overnight on the sidewalk in front of the doors where the thing will be given away or sold. Many sane individuals have not gotten a cool thing because the underestimated nerds ability to stand in lines.
I didn’t participate in a whole lot of organized stuff– walked the exhibit hall and saw a lot of new video games that they were demoing (Castle Crashers looks cool), played some WoW TCG tourneys, saw WoW Minis demo, playde D&D 4th ed with Alandovos on Saturday morning (we wiped on the 2nd encounter), and took pictures of all the crziness around me.
Saturday night we hit the concerts: ditched the first band and drank, saw the end of the Darkest of the Hillside Thickets set (pretty good cthulu-metal, if you’re into that), and watched MC Frontalot and The Minibosses. The concerts went way late so we ditched at around 2am and headed back to the hotel.
I’ll probably have some pictures up once I get back into town (I’m writing this from the SEA-TAC airport). Until then– HOLLLARIT whazzmaster.com.
I can’t believe I can update Whazzmaster from my iPhone with the new WordPress app. Crazy times we live in; crazy times.
Let’s start off-topic and see if we can meander our way back to my original thought: this sounds like the coolest Chuck E. Cheese evar.
So I’ve had a week off for vacation, and what a week it was! Wisconsin got hit by a hojillion tornados, Lake Goddamned Delton was wiped off the map, spacebee and I were in Door County during all of this, and *SURPRISE!* the Brewers still suck balls on the road.
We were camping at Peninsula State Park and had prepared ourselves for a wet outing. In an eruption of sheer genius, Lawman offered his screen tent thing in case we had to sit around in the rain for a few hours(days). We arrived Wednesday evening and got things setup ok, played some beer pong and made dinner. Scads of June Bugs and hundreds of thousands of mosquitos drove us into our tent tent pretty early in the night. Thursday we awoke to the patter-patter of rain on the tent, and I had to run to the toilets in the pouring rain in flip-flops. The running was less about the rain and more about the sounds coming from my bowels. The rain continued more or less until the late afternoon so we didn’t get to do a whole lotta stuff we’d planned like rent bikes or go hiking. Meh.
Friday was very nice but we spent most of the prime time (daylight) looking at various houses my parents were interested in buying. As many of you know, they’ve had trouble selling their house in Racine and need somewhere to live now that they’ve both moved to Door County. In the end they decided to rent a (very nice!) farmhouse in Egg Harbor until the Racine house sells. Personally, I think it’s a great decision given the uncertainty of the market right now– they wouldn’t want to get stuck with two mortgages for the next two years. I’ve included a few pictures of the place they’re renting below. You can see more pictures at the appropriate Flickr set.
On Saturday we packed up and left the campground and stayed with my parents for a few days at the house they’re about to leave in Sturgeon Bay. We drove up the peninsula and took the ferry across to Washington Island, which was pretty kick-ass. The absolute greatest part of the trip to the island was when we had wine and appetizers at the Washington Hotel. If you are ever up on the island, I can’t recommend that place enough. Even better, they have a Coffee Room in Madison (right across Monona Bay!) that serves all the baked goods and coffees that you can get up there. On a bike ride around Lake Monona yesterday spacebee and I stopped there for a muffin and some coffee and it was a great place. Additionally, the owner of the Washington Hotel is a (co-?)owner of Death’s Door Spirits, which has a distillery here in Madison that uses Washington Island wheat to make various booze. They recently started making whisky and while up there I got 3 bottles of the un-aged first batch. It’s pretty good, come over and try it some time.
By the way, all of our camping photos can be found at my Flickr site.
One other weekend shout-out: Hot Tamales in Sturgeon Bay was some of the best Mexican food I’ve had since moving back to Wisconsin. They have great service, terrific food, and some hot hot hot salsa verde. I suggest the wet burrito or the hash brown sandwich (like an omelet, but made with goddamned delicious hash browns).
Last night I had a Brewers nervous breakdown. I yelled swear words at the TV for a minute and then turned it off in disgust. And that was BEFORE they allowed the 3 run triple. Barf.
Lastly, if you haven’t seen this YouTube of a house being washed into Lake Delton in Wisconsin Dells, it is goddamned wild.
