Congratulations, Timbers!

Sunday sports means football, and yesterday it was the kind played with the feet. Plenty of the forward-pass variety going on too, of course, but I was happy to be able to watch my Portland Timbers play the Columbus Crew in the MLS Cup final.

I don't get to watch the Timbers very often. I did get to see a game last year in person with my brothers out in Portland, which was great fun. And very occasionally there's a game on a TV channel that I have access to. It's nice that this match ended up on ESPN (which has a non-cable access option via Sling TV) instead of FOX Sports (which doesn't) so I could watch it.

The match was played in Columbus, which is actually within day-trip driving distance from me. As with most large sporting events, though, I didn't have much interest in attending in person. It's so much more comfortable watching from home, as well as cheaper and less stressful. Post-season games are especially bad in terms of being crowded and expensive. Might consider a regular-season MLS game in either Chicago or Columbus at some point, though.

Sadly, Timber Joey wasn't allowed to bring his chainsaw, but the Timbers Army was nevertheless out in force. ESPN showed quite a few shots of the stands behind one goal, filled with folks in green. Heard from them, too; good in-stadium audio work by the TV crew.

The match itself was certainly exciting, but it showcased some of the things I like least about soccer in general. There were a whole lot of missed calls by the referee, most notably a handball on the Columbus goal-line that should have awarded the Timbers a penalty shot. There were several instances of player-writhing-on-the-ground-in-pain then miraculously recovering a few seconds later. And the biggest suspense in the last few minutes was when the game would actually end, rather then what the players were doing, due to the odd "stoppage time" rules that mean only the head referee knows when the game is over.

But hey, the Timbers won, so I'm loving the "beautiful game" right now, strange rules and all. Congratulations to the first MLS champions from the Pacific Northwest!

Done Shopping

My Christmas shopping is done. It was really done back before Thanksgiving, but it turned out the wrapping paper left over from last year was insufficient, so I had to make another store trip.

I will now pause while everyone still trying to decide what to buy hates me.

Boxes ready for mailing.

Getting done with shopping early is pretty essential in my case, actually. There's a lot of distance between me and my various gift recipients. 1100 miles is the shortest travel distance. I do use the Internet to send things electronically, of course, especially for the international family members. But I don't like doing that all the time.

My list is pretty short, basically just close family. My circle of friends tends to be of the "let's just go out and buy each another a beer" persuasion over actually exchanging gifts. So that helps when finishing off the gift-buying list.

What really makes it possible to be done with holiday gifts early, though, is shopping all year long. Everyone has those moments when you see something in a store, or run across something online, and think "<insert person here> would really like that." I've learned to take advantage of those moments as they happen. I write down the idea, and pick things up off the list as they're on sale or otherwise easily available.

So once this holiday season is over, don't put down the gift-giving lists. Keep it handy for next year, as and when the ideas are right in front of you.

Crocodiles Big and Small

Who doesn't love crocodiles? Captain Hook, I suppose. And anyone living near the Nile. Most fish, probably. Actually just about anything living near water in their territory.

Looks lovable to me!

Let's start this again. Who loves crocodiles? Adam Britton does! I've never met him in person, but we move in some of the same Internet circles (specifically, forums at QT3). He and his wife Erin have their own consultancy business called Big Gecko ("wildlife management, training, research and filming with crocodiles"), and run the crocodilian.com site and blog.

The first time I saw Adam in action was on 60 Minutes a few years ago. He was an expert on the team when Anderson Cooper went diving with Nile Crocodiles. I recommend that video, very interesting (and a mite frightening). He and rest of the Big Gecko crew have plenty of other film credits to their name as well.

Adam and the rest of Big Gecko play host to crocodiles as well as going to them in the wild. Their adult male saltwater crocodile is named Smaug, a Tolkien reference that I certainly appreciate. I've seen quite a few pictures of him over the years that Adam has posted, such as this and this from crocodilian.com.

The Brittons don't discriminate by the size of the crocodile. Adam is running the Tiny Toothies crowd-funding project to raise funds to study the pygmy freshwater crocodile in northern Australia. As I write this, they've raised about two-thirds of what they need to get the project going, with a week left to go. There's some interesting donation rewards - like a chance to swim with Smaug, though perhaps that one isn't for everyone.

A pygmy croc, as seen on the fundraiser page.

I've made a small donation, and I encourage others to help out. They're cute (as far as crocodiles go), and it's for science! Edit: And the funding goal was reached, with most of a day left on the clock! Congratulations, Brittons!

SWTOR: The Light Side

My Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) subscription lasts another couple of weeks, so I decided it's time to try the light side. I picked a Jedi Consular. After playing as a self-serving bounty hunter on the dark side, the selfless Jedi seemed like a fun and different direction. Doing this made sense for trying some of the multi-player aspects of the game, too. I named him "Ineffablebob" because I have no creativity whatsoever.

Not actually my character, but I liked the image.

As you'd expect, much of the game unfolds in very much the same way as a Republic citizen as it did as an Imperial. A short prologue on your opening planet, a trip to the center of the Republic, your own story to follow as well as planet-specific story-lines, companions joining your little band, your own ship, and so on.

Heroic missions are also present, and I even completed one in the early going with another player who happened to be in the same area. I had one false start...the first guy I invited disconnected almost immediately. The second one worked out, though, and fighting through the tougher monsters was fairly easy with two of us. I wasn't too impressed with the way grouping handles the story aspects, though. There was a lot of waiting involved, and it randomly chooses which one of you responds to conversation prompts.

When I did this early section on Eltaix, I wasn't a subscriber, and the difference is noticeable. The most useful difference with a subscription is the ability to use the fast travel shuttle every few minutes. Instead of completing a mission and running back across half the planet to my contact, I can use the shuttle after just about every mission. It's still annoying to have to run through the gigantic buildings where the contacts like to hang out, though. The Senate building on Coruscant is especially bad.

The Jedi starting planet of Tython and the Republic capital of Coruscant were new places to me, which makes sense as an Imperial would have little reason to be on either. After completing my story-line there, though, I moved on to familiar territory on Taris and Nar Shaddaa. The missions I was doing were almost entirely new, though. I recognized the terrain and planet descriptions, but otherwise it was very much a new experience. I'm sure if I played a second character on either the Republic or Imperial side, it would feel much more similar.

I decided to try a Flashpoint with a group before I moved on to Tatooine. As I've mentioned before, random groups in MMOs are often frustrating, but I wanted to give it a try since I'm going beyond soloing with this character. Sadly, this instance proved the point. Finding a group was easy enough with the group finder function, and we got through the first sections of the flashpoint without much trouble. But then one guy dropped out...another joined, then dropped out...another joined, stuck around but was doing horribly dumb things...we died to the same boss four times in a row because that guy couldn't figure out how to move out of the big lightning AoE and three people wasn't enough damage...eventually after more than an hour, I gave up. Not an experience I'm eager to repeat.

I've also dipped into the crafting system, which I pretty much ignored up to this point. It's similar to other MMO crafting in that you need to make a whole bunch of stuff to level up your skill, then learn how to make better stuff, make a bunch of that, repeat, repeat, repeat. It's different than most other MMOs in that you can craft pretty much anywhere at any time, because it's not actually you doing it; rather, your companions are out doing the work. It takes time for them to complete the tasks. That's good in the sense that you can craft as you go about your business around the galaxy; it's bad in the sense that you have to re-assign your companions to new missions every few minutes in order to keep things moving. I chose to become an Artificer so that I can make my own lightsaber, which is pretty cool. I don't know if I'll have to patience to get the skill all the way up to the max level of 500, but at least for now it's more interesting than tedious.

The first half of the personal story for this character is now done, after traveling to Tattooine and Alderaan, and defeating a fallen Jedi master. Just what you'd expect for a Jedi on his way up in the galaxy.

Game Days

I had the opportunity to meet up with some friends a couple of times recently for some in-person gaming. It's been years since the last time I did that (since I play mostly online stuff), and it was a whole lot of fun.

Tanglewood Restaurant, where the kind wait staff puts up with us playing games in the corner. (We tipped them well!)

Some of what we played were old favorites. Lunch Money, for instance, a fairly quick game with plenty of opportunity to trash talk and back-stab your neighbor. Or Lord of the Fries, which I was mildly surprised to hear was out of print and tough to find...my copy is still in good shape after sitting in my closet for a few years! Rumor is that they're printing a new version soon.

Other games were new, at least to me. Epic is a fairly new customizable card game that several of the guys backed on Kickstarter. Similar to a trading card game, same deck construction aspects and similar game-play to other games of that type, but sold as boxed sets with no random packs. Had a lot of fun playing that one, particularly in one of the several draft modes (since I didn't have my own decks). Epic is from the makers of Star Realms, which we also played...first time for me with the physical game, though I've played the online version quite a bit.

We found time for some longer-form gaming, too. All of us are major Tolkien nerds, so Lord of the Rings games are almost always on the table. We played both the Hobbit and Fellowship versions of the Lord of the Rings deck-building games. Those take a couple of hours to play with five people, but it's good fun all the way. I like that these are a cooperative experience...if you don't defeat the last enemy before running out of cards, everyone loses. Of course there's still a score and someone does win, so I might be a bit biased since that was me both times. But I like to think that I'd have enjoyed it just as much regardless of the end points.

The only real downside to these play sessions is that my buddies live on the other side of Michigan. It's a long drive, 3-4 hours round trip. It's worth it to make the trip occasionally, though, for some good gaming time!

Frugal and Efficient

For the most part, I'm a frugal person, by which I mean making the most of my resources: time, money, etc. Another way to say this is being efficient in using what you have.

I've seen the words "frugal" and "cheap" used interchangeably on occasion, which is misleading. You can spend a lot of money and time dealing with problems if you always just pick up the cheapest thing, or take the quickest path. "Cheap" or "quick" can sometimes be efficient, but if you look far enough ahead, it's often not the case.

A little patience goes a long way toward maximizing resources. There are all kinds of examples. Almost anything you can buy in a store will go on sale at some point, if you keep an eye on it for a while rather than grabbing it right away. The latest technology gadget will cost a lot less after a few months. (Unless it's an Apple device.) Even watching TV benefits from waiting...let the DVR record it and skip the commercials.

Exactly what being frugal means to anyone has a lot to do with how much you value money and time. If time is most important to you, then you're probably willing to spend more in order to get something done faster. Likewise, if money is more important, you'll likely spend time going after bargains or making things for yourself. This balance is different for everyone, and it changes as your life situation evolves.

Anyone who has read very many of my previous posts is probably wondering why someone who mostly talks about reading, playing games, and watching videos cares about efficient use of resources. For one thing, being efficient is how I have time to do all those things. Also, don't confuse being frugal with setting priorities. That's a whole other topic in itself; suffice it to say that there are efficient ways to accomplish whatever priorities you've set for yourself.

Another aspect of being frugal is being satisfied with what you have. There's always a newer, shinier thing out there: better cars, nicer house, bigger TV, faster computer. It's easy to get caught up in wanting the next thing, rather than sticking with what you already have as long as is reasonable. That's not to say that you can't have new things, but plan ahead and don't pick up something new just because it's shiny.

Being frugal isn't glamorous, and efficiency probably isn't going to make you famous. But on the whole, I find that I'm much happier when I know that I've made the most of my time and money.

The Man in the High Castle

When I heard that Amazon was making a TV series based on the Phillip K Dick book The Man in the High Castle, I was pretty excited. I purposely didn't read much about it, or watch the early release episodes, so that I could watch all of the first season once it came out. Now that it has, I'm happy to say that I really enjoyed it.

I did read the book, but it was many years ago when I was a teenager. I barely remember any of it; certainly none of the specific scenes or even characters. So while I can't say I went into the TV series with no prior knowledge, it was pretty minimal.

The premise of the series is a world in which World War II ends with the Axis victorious. That much you can find just from reading the series description. The writers do a good job of establishing the premise in the first couple of episodes, so even if you didn't read that description, you'd figure it out pretty quickly. Along the way there are many references that give the viewer an idea of what the past was like, such as a "Heisenberg Device" (our atom bomb) being dropped on Washington D.C.

In this world, North America has been divided between the Greater Nazi Reich (east of the Rockies) and the Japanese Empire (west to the Pacific) with a Neutral Zone in between. The series takes place in all three areas, as well as a few scenes in Europe, in the early 1960s. I thought the different settings were well defined: better technology on the Nazi side, plenty of Japanese cultural influence in the west, a lawless run-down area in the Neutral Zone. A good part of my enjoyment in watching this show came from all the little things that made each setting unique.

The story-line is fairly complex. The main focus is on various efforts to obtain newsreel films that show the world as it might have been (including the Allies winning the war). That's not the only focus, though. Heightening tensions between the Germans and Japanese, and intrigue within the Nazi ranks, are major plot lines as well. There are several plot threads taking place at once, eventually coming together in the last few episodes. For the most part, at least...still plenty to resolve in potential future episodes.

I found all the characters to be intriguing, if not necessarily likable. None of the major characters are stereotypes, even if if might appear so at first. The ruthless Japanese and Nazi police are shown to have human sides. The underground resistance is working for freedom, but has plenty of human failings as well. Plenty of character growth occurs throughout the season, too; none of the major characters remain static.

I did find a few things that I didn't like (minor spoilers here). I thought that Joe Blake's family was handled poorly. It seems he actually cares for the woman and boy that he lives with in the short time that they appear, but then doesn't seem to give them a second thought once he's chasing after Juliana. It would have made much more sense if he'd been shown to actively give up on them at some point. I also wasn't particularly impressed with the writing for Robert Childan, the antiques dealer that is trying to cozy up to his Japanese clients. I realize he's only a minor character, but the role is so one-dimensional that it was painful to watch. It was sometimes hard to tell how quickly time was moving, also. There were a few times that it seemed several days or longer had passed because so much had happened, but then some reference was made that pointed to a much shorter time period. Minor things, nothing to get too excited about, just a bit jarring when you notice them.

The series feels unfinished, which I hope is the case, because I'd definitely watch a second season. Hopefully Amazon decides to continue it.