Tag Archives: Scrabble

A Heavy Hearted Work of Staggering Genius

We’ve reached the midpoint of Scrabbuary and things are starting to get heavy.  I think 6 out of the 14 games have come to conclusion while the three most-recent games are very much in their infancy.  Additionally, all of my recent talking about Scrabble appears to put a big bulls-eye on my back as I’ve received invites to games from no less than two people with which I have never traded tiles.  If memory serves, those new games are not going well for yours truly.

Based on the recommendations of y’all and a few strangers on the internet, I have ordered and am awaiting on the arrival on a handful of dead tree guides:

The book on .NET I ordered for work.  Things are starting to cool off and it’s starting to look like I’ll have time to do my complete re-write of the software for our flagship product.  This is something I’ve wanted to do for the last two years since I took over this position but there just hasn’t been time.  I’ve been able to do a little tinkering, but I really haven’t had the chance to really get started.  But now may be the time.  Exciting.

Friday it looks like I may be making a trip to a brewing supply store here in Columbus.  I didn’t even realize we had such things.  I’m excited to get a feel for what this is going to entail and hope that my books arrive with time for me to skim a few chapters before jumping in.

I just finished taking apart and reassembling a 5-disc DVD player/receiver that I’ve recently come into possession of.  It was provided as broken and despite my previous trepidations about doing such things, I opened the thing up to see if I could fix it.  In spite of my degree in Computer Engineering, I actually don’t believe myself capable of doing that kind of tinkering crap you’d think would be a staple of my mental toolkit.  But the thing was free and I was bored so we’re looking at a zero-loss game.  And, hey!  Look at that.  It’s working.  I can’t say in any certain terms what was wrong with it, but after I had the thing in a couple dozen pieces and had a theory on how it should have worked, everything just went back together after a few false starts and then the thing just worked.  So!  Fair play to me.  It was a home-theater in a box kit, so of course all of the speaker cable connectors are proprietary (and many missing) so maybe this weekend project will opening the thing back up and soldering my own connectors on there.  What the hell.

OK!  That’s all for now and probably more than you have come to expect.

Choose My Own Adventure

It is become very apparent to me as of late that I don’t really have any engrossing hobbies.  I do a few little things, but nothing that takes up a good deal of my time.  I’ve got a bike, but I’m not a bike-enthusiast.  I have a pool table, but no amount of my playing it seems to improve my skill to any great degree.  I’ve “collected” things before, but I don’t see how this is something that could take up a lot of my time.  This is not by design but rather that I’m hesitant to invest any significant amount of cash (or time) into something I’m likely to end up being terrible at.  I think it’s time I squashed that self-doubt but I’ll need your help.  There’s a list of things I’ve always considered doing but always talk myself out of.  At your collective behest, I will endeavor to make an initial investment in at least one of the following:

  • Brewing beer – If we were having a conversation in 2005 and you told me that a few years later I would consider myself a “beer drinker” and even go so far as to take an interest in its gestation, I would have doubled-over in laughter and likely spilled my Mike’s Hard Lemonade.  At the time, I was fully convinced that 90% of beer in America was brewed in public bathrooms.  And, you know what, some of it probably is.  But there’s some good stuff out there and a good deal of it is made by people I know.  Maybe it’s not that hard.
  • Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum – I’m not entirely convinced I’m musical, but I enjoy playing the steering wheel.  There’s a nice big space in my office that could accommodate a little kit and I’m sure the cats will absolutely hate it.
  • Do you Arduino? – You know what I went to school for?  Computer Engineering.  Which is not, in case you are wondering, computer programming (per se). People create projects and post the instructions and demonstrations on sites like this and that.  My biggest impediment for pursuing this so far as been that I have no idea what I would make.  This probably also falls under the category of “general tinkering”.
  • iPhone Stuff – Basically, I need to buy a few books and the development suite.  I hardly think I could create anything store-worthy, but I really do like my iPhone/iPad and this just seems like the next logical step.

So far, Scrabbuary has been going splendidly.  We’re already two games down and I’m happy to report my record of 2-0-0.  The remaining games are not going well, but that’s not really the point of Scrabbuary.  It’s a marathon.  I’ll be happy just to complete it.  I consider this a tremendous step forward in Dan’s pledge to “Just Fucking Finish Something”.

Oh!  Tickets have been purchased.  Shit is confirmed.  PAX East in Boston is a go.  Jesus is fucking metal.

Board 8

Scrabbuary

Somewhere in the back of my skull, I maintain a neat little steno pad of “The Worst Ideas I’ve Ever Had”. It contains a smattering of the usual things which I won’t go into (hint: roller-skates + fireworks + Gogurt = ???). But I think I’ve come up with the first one that I am absolutely going to jump into with both feet and I’ve hitched my doomed wagon to a willing participant.

February in the two-thousand eleventh year of our lord will be known as Scrabbuary. Every day this month, at noon EST, I will create a fresh game of Scrabble featuring myself and Jay, youngest heir to the house of Drumm.  That’s pretty much as far as we got.  The games will be completed at their own pace with a gentleman’s understanding of the rules and continue to accumulate on this rigid timeline.  I expect the ordeal will continue well into March (Madness), should both combatants live that long.  I’ll do my best to keep a brief journal of the results as it should prove to be both entertaining and crucial in my future plea of “not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect”.

Be sure to check back here or follow me on twitter @lilkobi and watch my slow descent into madness.  Or better yet, challenge someone you want to murder to your own Scrabbuary challenge and let me know how it goes.  Oh, do it, pretty please.  As of this writing, the #scrabbuary hashtag yields no results.  So it’s ours!

Shuffle up and die.

Ghetto Love

I couldn’t tell you why I all of a sudden got a wild hair up my ass to update this thing.  But, here we are.

I recently finished the complete works of Tom Robbins: a Seattle based author who’s been pounding pulp for almost forty years.  His works are full of great little philosophical nuggets.  I should have read them with a highlighter.  I will loan to anyone who is looking for fall/winter reading material.  Be prepared for a wash of intravenous drug use and nun-sex.  Wicked.

I think we might be all settled in here at the homestead.  Took advantage of a lot of Labor Day Sales and picked up some furnishings on the cheap.  Finally re-felted the pool table and now we’re all set up in the Rec-Room.  Bummed my folks’ old turn-table since it seems vinyl is on the rise.  My first purchase was technically pre-ordering Brand New’s new album, “Daisy”, which comes out in a couple of weeks.  Without admitting anything, I’ll say that “Daisy” is pretty good.  Definitely not like much else you’re hearing these days.

Inglourious Basterds was worth seeing and probably worth owning.  Also probably not Tarentino’s best movie (that right is still Pulp Fiction), but it certainly beats Jackie Brown and maybe the Kill Bill Volume 2.  I would recommend it to anyone who liked any other Q movies.  Or wants to nail Brad Pitt.

The office is sending me around a country (read: continent) a bit more.  Since our last chat I believe I’ve been to Boston, Long Island and Prince George.  Prince George, is in British Columbia.  More specifically, the middle-northern region.  Where Jesus lost his snow-shoes, if you will.  My career takes me all sorts of places.  Awesome places.  Hopefully the next one will be awesome.  Actually, I think the next one will be Kent State.  Hrmm.

So what happened to summer?  Yard work.  I can’t tell if this is a good thing.  I’ve got a tan, but it’s not the right kind.  But the end of summer means the start of Fantasy Football.  Don’t ask me why I give so much of a shit, but I’ve grown to love the game.  Not the actual sport mind you.  Just the numbers end of things.

Speaking of games: play Scrabble on Facebook.  I will have as many open games going at once as I can physically handle.  I’m half-retarded at it, but it’s still the shit.  Hit me up.

All right.  There’s more useless things on the internet I could be doing now.

Seatbelts.