“I don’t go to Metairie unless I really have to.”
Ballzack, Rainbow in Marrero

This Saturday, while doing my once-every-couple-of-months run to Metairie, I passed by the newly-opened +1 Gaming and decided to pop my head in.

They’ve recently opened, so stock is a little on the low side I think. It seems to cater mostly to Warhammer and similar games, but still, a gaming store is a gaming store. They also have a whole bunch of tables for games – it appears that you can just show up with your stuff and play with friends. Pretty neat.

I decided to pick up my own “copy” of the card game Bang!, a really fun, easy, spaghetti-western style card game. Dave and Belen bring it with them on their travels, and we have fun playing it – probably mostly due to everyone always saying “It’s my turn? Ok, I want to drink a beer and then bang Belen.”

When checking out, I was asked if I was a “hero”. There were too many awesome responses that my neurons misfired, and I lamely replied “Huh?” They’ve developed a customer loyalty type program – being a hero gets you a discount, and when you make a purchase, you roll 2d10 (i.e. random number from 1-100) and based on the outcome, you get something for free.

I rolled a 1. As a joke, I think they should have an anti-prize for rolling a 1 – like getting slapped in the face with a fish or reduced discount for the purchase or something.

But, a 1 still won me something: either a bag of chips or a pencil. I went with the infinitely more useful pencil, and will use it at our D&D game tomorrow.

As he was describing to me the program though, it sounded kinda familiar, but couldn’t quite place from where. I knew it was a webcomic, but as hard as I tried, I just couldn’t make the connection. Luckily, I voiced this recollection to him. He told me I was right, and it was a Ctrl+Alt+Del comic (this one, specifically). They’d been inspired by it, sat down and did the math, and realized that it was actually pretty viable.

I think that involving a game into the buying process is fun. A group of us will head over there for a field trip soon, and perhaps sit down and run through a quick game of Castle Ravenloft or two.

Hooray, nerds.

On the other side, it means that I’m finally getting around to getting rid of the last bit excess hardware that’s been collecting dust over the last x years.

Still works fine, just needs a good home. I’d love some cash for these items (I’d settle for some Guinness or Abita), but at the end of the day, they still work and throwing them away would just be a shame.

APC Smart UPS 1400. Great battery backup, just needs fresh batteries which aren’t all that hard to come by.

HP ProCurve 400m. Such a good switch. Lots of unused drive bays, and can have a secondary power supply installed.

Cisco Catalyst WS-C1912C-EN. A neat little switch for someone wanting to play with/learn about fiber.

Cisco 3101 and 3102 Routers. I dunno, bookends?

Know anyone who’s interested? Send them my way!

If you know her, go see her. A few years ago, she was sharing a few hundred square feet on Bourbon St., then went to a shop above 13 on Frenchmen, and now the front room, the waiting area, is bigger than either of those entire spaces. What can I say? I’m proud.

Not only is she a good friend, but she does great work:

The thorough de-bearding is totally my work ( I’m not used to the length attachments on my new beard trimmer ), but the rest is Savvy.

I hopped on the scale recently (something I’ve never owned before, and still rarely step on), the other day, and saw a number that was new to me: 167.5.

This is the most I’ve ever weighed, topping my post-Katrina expansion. And I don’t really care about that, because it’s all relative. I don’t care that I weigh that, I care that my BMI is high. I also care that I wasn’t able to button a pair of pants.

The problem is I have become sedentary. I’m traditionally used to a much more active lifestyle, and that just isn’t happening these days. Between the day job, the design/development LLC that Bea and I formed, the housework, and the less-than-happy knees, I just haven’t been exercising. And I /need/ to. I want to.

I just have to make the time. And I am. My friends Chum Dumpster and Everything Butt Sex have been meeting up at NOMA M-W-F at 6am-ish to run 5k. Chum and EBS are hashers who have been concentrating on the drinking part of hashing over the running part. While they run a slower pace than I do, they’re doing the hard part: getting up and doing it. This is what I need. So, Mondays I plan on bringing one dog, and Friday the other, leaving Wednesdays to myself. The pups need exercise too, especially chubby little Indy.

And as for the knees/etc, I’ve already taken the first step, so to speak: I went to the Louisiana Running Co to get fitted for a new pair of shoes: K-Swiss K-Ona C. They’re meshy on top and drain out of the bottom! THE BOTTOM! I really liked that place, too. Just a two-person startup, and I didn’t feel like I was being “sold to” – he just wanted to help me run how I wanted to (no races / half-marathons / full marathons). I definitely recommend them.

Now, obviously running won’t fix the problem alone. I have plans to mountain bike (at least a few laps at the spillway) every few weeks, and do Wii Fit on an almost daily basis.

There are of course dietary concerns, and all I’m going to say is that I’m already making a concerted effort to eat better, and especially cut out as much high fructose corn syrup / crap foods overall. I also understand that it’s just not practical to go whole-hog on that effort, so it’ll be within reason. The last thing I want to is stress out about what I’m eating. If you are (or if you aren’t) familiar with the next handful of months in NOLA, then you should read Pistolette’s excellent rationalization on eating and goals in NOLA.

And as usual, she has inspired Bea and I with our life this year. We have a list of goals, broken down into months, for the year. We’re gonna get a lot of shit done that we’ve been putting off. We’re tired of a project being 85% done.

 

Novembeard is over. I’m sure many Significant Others are grateful for this, and hopefully even more are pleasantly surprised – most of ladies I’ve dated were initially anti-beard.

They came around.

As an unwitting / accidental participant of Novembeard, I can’t say the challenge was particularly difficult, uncomfortable, or itchy. A beard (or various stages of it) is my default for facial hair.

I unfortunately lost my length adapters for my beard trimmer an unknown amount of time ago, so when I heard about this (project? movement? awareness?), I figured ‘Why not? Not like I can properly trim the beard anyways.’

It’s a bit on the longer/scruffier side, but I still like it. Besides, the newly-arrived frigid weather calls for it. My favorite response is by good friend Pistolette: “You are making Dexter eyes in that photo!” I’m not sure what that means, but I’ll take it.

Sorry for the gratuitous height, but my new phone, the Droid X, takes pictures in widescreen.

And for the most part, it was just that. Here’s Sunday, in photo form:

When we got to the beach, Bosceaux, well, I don’t know what the hell he thought was going on but he barked at the waves while Indy stayed well away from them:

 
Eventually he got over it, and actually got in, a bit:

 
But then, we found oil. This is one of the bigger pieces I found, and these tarballs were all over the place:

 
We found other traces of petroleum byproducts quite easily too:

 
This only reminded me to keep Boz from drinking the water:

 
There were a decent amount of people out. All I know is that if those were my kids, they wouldn’t be in the water.

Platforms and barges decorated the horizon:

 

 
On the way back, Indy wasn’t walking on his right front paw and Bea decided to carry him. I decided to check his paw, and removed the burr:

 
Overall though, the weather was beautiful:

 
Not all the local wildlife was dead though – this crab had a lot of fight in him:

 
A couple of miles on the beach is a bit of a workout though. Always remember: a tired dog is a good dog:

While their wedding was a few weeks ago, they decided to pretty much keep it family-only and opting for a friends party later – which happened tonight.

I’m deeply honored to be a part of this for them, and have thoroughly enjoyed the experience as a whole – especially the parts where I got to catch up with family and old family friends.

I’ve only seen 3 photos from the ceremony, but here’s my favorite:

 

 

 

If you couldn’t tell, I’m excited! And now, a NSFW song by my favorite rapping puppet, Lil’ Doogie:

Molly and her flipped and chopped drop bars:

 
Not anymore! I threw some cruiser bars on her, dropped the seat a smidge, and she’s a whole different bike! I love riding it again:

 

 
An unforseen summer-time bonus is that sitting much more upright tends to limit my top speed – in the old config, I think I topped it out at ~32mph on level ground. Not so much now. I still have much higher efficiency than a standard cruiser, so 15mph now doesn’t even come close to breaking a sweat. It didn’t make me sweat on the old setup at that speed, but I tended to just plain ride faster – I couldn’t help it. 15mph or faster on a cruiser takes much more effort.