Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

First of all, I have no idea how to pronounce Carcassonne . I am sure that I will learn.


I read about it briefly on Penny Arcade the yesterday.

Tycho mentioned that it was like Catan, which I have been playing on my Xbox-360 and really do enjoy. There are a few notable draw backs to Catan, like the fact that you cannot play a local multi-player game. Only a multi-player game with others folks over the Live network. Serious downside there Catan guys. Maybe they will patch Catan with a local multi-player option.

I bring up the local multi-player because it is fun to play games together with folks that are over. Like when Jeremy is visiting or just anytime your hanging out with the wife.

Gina and I played a few games last night. She likes the game, I don't think she likes playing with me. I tend to take to strategy games like a fish to water. Of course, we did have to stop the first game and go back and go through the tutorial as the rules are a little complex.

Now, Carcassonne in the X-box Live Arcade is a port, if you can call it a port, of a table top game to the X-box Live Arcade. I can see how the game can be fun, as it is a bit of a city/empire building type game. However, one thing is that without the game be computerized the manual scoring of everything on a table top version must be a pain. Not to mention that I'm sure you don't get the fun city building animations.

I am going to go and play some more Carcassonne now. Hopefully, Jeremy has bought it too so that we can play a couple of games today.

Laterz

I park in about the same spot in the garage almost everyday. And a lot of the time, I park next to this blue Honda sedan (I think it is a Honda) that has the license plate "GLOBBY". I have often wondered what "GLOBBY" stood for.

Today, I got my answer.

"'Glow Baby', except Texas only allows six letters."

While I was getting my stuff out of the car, the owner of the blue sedan was getting her stuff out of her trunk. I seized the opportunity to quench the idle curiosity that has been smoldering in the back of my mind for about the last year or so that we have been in this office building.

Mind you I didn't ask what "Glow Baby" stood for. That I guess will smolder in the back of my mind until I run into the owner of the blue sedan again. Which, could be forever, but I'm getting ahead of the story a little bit.

After answering my question about her license plate, the lady asked me "So are you're a Spartan fan, did you go to MSU?"

I told her that I attended MSU for a little bit then came down here to Texas. She informed me that she grew up in Ann Arbor, I told her that I grew up in Lansing. She told me that I didn't have to worry about a University of Michigan rivalry, that she went to Notre Dame. To which, I of course brought out the fact that MSU had trounced Notre Dame for quite a while. We did have a pretty good winning streak there for a bit.

She has been in Texas for 8 years, oddly enough she didn't think she was going to be in the Lone Star state for this long. I remember that I originally thought I was only going to be down here for 6-12 months.

On the way into the building, we briefly chatted about the fact that Michigan has no real software industry and that neither of us have or want anything to do with the car industry.

The reason that I may never know what "Glow Baby" means, apparently whatever firm she works for (I am guessing Convio, as she got off on the 2nd floor), is moving to the Dominion office space, which has just opened up a bunch of offices. She said that they have been growing so fast that they have just filled up the office space here in the building.

It was an interesting chance meeting that satisfied some idle curiosity and at the same tame further reinforced that Michigan's greatest export is People.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

I am a gadget freak and a self proclaimed Technosnob.

However, I have yet to get Tivo. I had a PVR (Personal Video Recorder) at one point when we had cable. But now with the Dish it really isn't working out. Dish offers a DVR, but that isn't quite the same as a Tivo.

I guess I am putting Tivo down on the X-mas list.

I missed the last episode, the season finale of Stargate SG-1. I haven't seen anything on Sci-Fi about them showing it again any time soon.

So, I turned to iTunes to watch it sooner, rather than later. I spent $1.99 to get the last episode of the season.

It took a while to download, but the quality seems pretty good.

I am not sure I am keen on paying $1.99 per episode, but it is pretty cool.

Laterz