Weekend Wrap - Warning Boring Post Ahead.

After a massive Thursday night, Friday night was spent being very ginger and I was quiet at home preparing for the first of my new D&D gaming groups session for Saturday night.

Before that though, on Saturday morning we took Kate to netball - her first game in 5-6 weeks due to weather, byes and school holidays, and the Blaxland Redbacks "Sparkles" were very rusty and had their first loss of the season 0-1.  Kate played very good though and she is really enjoying the netball.  I will need to look into taking the girls to a Sydney Swifts game or something...  Kate won "Player of the Week" and got to take home the teams trophy for the week and she was very excited.  Then late in the game, the teams manager asked if Kate would mind backing up and playing a second game in the Under 9's as that team was short players.  We said yes, and Kate literally was jumping out of her skin when she found out.  That team lost as well, but she was very happy to have played with some older girls (and they score more goals in the U/9's the final score was about 12-7) and she had a run at Goal Shooter as well for a while, but didnt get any goals herself.  A great experience for her.

Saturday night was D&D night and Tommy, Pete, Grant and Nate came around to kick off the "Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil ".  I will probably get around to posting a first session narration in the forum, but a good night was had by all.  The game ended around midnight and we'll be playing every 4-6 weeks.  I, as DM, was a fair bit rusty with the rules!!

Sunday was more relaxing... the spent the morning after a sleep in helping the girls paint their cardboard cubby houses.  Niki picked up for just $10 at Go-Lo some cardboard houses that the kids can sit in.  They're like a giant colouring in book style cubby house and the girls were painting in the bricks, flowers and vines and using texta's to colour in the buttflies and lady beetles on the side.  After spending an hour and half doing that, I watched Saints get trounced by the Warriors and then had a bit of an afternoon nap.

BBQ'ed for dinner, including some Holoumi cheese... the girls played a muck around game of D&D after dinner for an hour (my books and stuff were still on the table) and then it was a quiet night of tele and websurfing where I played around with Firefox extensions... GOD! How exciting!!!

How to Win at Office Politics

Will be moving into a new company soon and of course you get a clean slate to meet new people and make good first impressions...

Then I saw this and given I work in a pod farm, thought this should be a good read.

How to Win at Office Politics on BNET

Dead

Death.  Come take me now!

I am sitting in the office today after my work farewell night out last night and after getting home a titch before 4am, I am very under the weather.  I feel sick, I have the shakes and a pounding headache.  I am not alone however... the office is rather subdued today.

The night started at Frisco's at Woolloomooloo for dinner, then after way too much wine it was to the W for cocktails and I started on the bourbon...  Then it was on to the Rocks at around midnight in which alot of places were closing except Jackson's On George which was open and I guess we left there around 2:30am... shared a cab which went via Concord then Merrylands then home to the mountains.

What a long night...

Stan Zemanek

Stan Zemanek died today and I have to say that I have mixed feelings about that.  It is never good when anyone dies, but I have to admit I have had the "bastard deserved it" thoughts which are not nice...

I used to listen to Stan right up until he left radio last December principally because his show was hugely offensive and his views in my mind were so bizarre and right winged to the extreme that it was almost comedy to listen to him.  And his callers - the so called "numb nuts" were also so bizarre that the show had a flavour about it that you couldnt turn off.

The article about Stan Zemanek though does say his on air shock-jock personality was in opposite to how the real man was and I honestly hope that that's true.  Otherwise, the most sexist, racist bigot ever to get a voice on main stream media has passed and if that is the case, then its a time to celebrate.

Maybe I am being too cold and callous myself... maybe he said the things he said for entertainment purposes and I guess I was entertained by it... so in that case that may make me out to be the biggest numb nut of them all...

Gaming - Is it about Luck or Fun?

Indulge me if you will in a bit of a gaming post...

One of my fellow blood bowlers (a Games Workshop game) lost it big time this week with his string of (bad) luck and quit our league mid-season and has advertised on numerous Blood Bowl / Gaming websites that he is selling his largish collection of miniatures and bits and pieces.

In response to this, Tommy "ozjesting" Dean has perhaps drafted one of the best posts / rants about people who whinge about luck and yet play games involving dice.  Dice are, completely random and be it a game on a table with real dice or a computer version of a game with a programmed Random Number Generator (RNG), then you will - and you WILL - have good luck and you will have bad luck.  The point of Oz's post however is that no matter how much strategy you put in, no matter how "good" a player you think you are, a bad dice roll at a crucial time will cruel your best laid plans.

Read this manifesto here.

I do post this posting today because the player who has retired from Blood Bowl is a regular reader of this blog, and I do hope he sees this and realises that he should simply enjoy the game and play it for the camaraderie and not get caught up with the winning / losing aspect.  I know that there are issues in real life mate, but if you can't get some time out with a what boils down to it is a silly game and simply enjoy it for what it is, then you do need to rethink why you do play games of any sort.

I know todays post isnt about World Politics or even my own navel gazing at my own hectic life, but I thought Tommy's post was too good to keep hidden in the fumbbl SWL forum.

The wait drags on...

I am so trying to be productive at work... I have 3 weeks to go and a fair number of projects to wrap up, but sheesh its hard to stay focused.

One, you have so many social calls to make... people you want to tell the news to direct rather than have them hear it on the grapevine and then those who ring you when they have heard it on the grapevine... all this "so! where are you going?" chat takes up about 1-2hrs of my day.

Then there are the logistics to work out... superannuation, car lease, mobile phone etc all drag on.  I feel as though I am going to miss something out and it will cost me big time.

And then there is just the simple difficulty of staying keen and fresh.  People ringing you up for work issues and asking you to get involved in new stuff... to maintain that enthusiasm is difficult as well.

On top of all that though is the official and unofficial functions you end up having... drinks, dinners and lunches... I will need that week off just to detox I think!

Still... it could be worse!

55 Essential Articles Every Serious Blogger Should Read

I haven't read this, but am posting it for my own reference and future reading... Ironic hey... posting a blog post about an article on how to do better blog posts... mmm, very freudian.

55 Essential Articles Every Serious Blogger Should Read | Entrepreneurial Blog of Matt Huggins