Author Archives: Alan V

Blorp

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I seem to have been growing chronically lazy lately. I don’t do much in the evenings after work anymore except browse the same few websites, eat dinner, and sleep. I don’t really do anything on weekends except go to Safeway and vegetate in the bookstore in front of the SciFi or Humor sections and maybe, if people are up for it, play board games.

I have three card games that I really should be working on: Student Wars v2, RPG Get! TCG, and the Supernatural CCG (the latter of which is more difficult since my season 1 disks are back in Arizona).
I have a main AlanvDotOrg rewrite nearly finished, missing only the code to allow comments. However, it’s been in that state for approximately 6 months.
The online Student Wars Java client project has stalled due to lack of interest.
CMU Adventures additions or rebalancing have yet to happen.
I’m not really even interested in playing PSO anymore (although, to a certain extent, that has been replaced by KoL).

Meh.

Photos from Thanksgiving are up at photos 2.

Also, yay cards.
As promised, here is what $50 of DBZ boosters looks like (120 base set, 72 expansion packs)

Whee.
If you add in the 5 starter boxes (4 of which remain unopened), I probably have enough DBZ duplicates (defined, for me, as a copy beyond the third of a given card, as uniqueness rules for most games are either 3 or 4 copies per deck) to literally wallpaper my room. If you add in the various duplicates from Star Trek, X-Files, Gundam War, and .hack TCGs (all of which are, unfortunately, back in Arizona), I can probably also do the bathroom, the ceiling, and the living room (especially with the Star Trek… I have way too many Star Trek cards).
That would be rather amusing…

Movies

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Did a bit of Black Friday madness today and bought the third season of Supernatural and the first two seasons of Entourage (yay stuff to watch)… (70% off Supernatural, 69.9% off each season of Entourage).
Interestingly, Supernatural came with a code to download all third season episodes from iTunes as well. I think this is an awesome feature, actually… since people are trying to prevent you from ripping your DVDs into video files, they give you a way to get the video files for free so you don’t have to dig out your disks every time you want to see an episode. Of course, they’re DRM-crippled downloads (and the disks are probably DRM-infested as well), but at least they’re trying.

Thanksgiving last night was awesome. There was perfectly-cooked turkey (Purple wins), stuffing (inside the bird, so I didn’t have any), mashed potatoes, candied yams, corn, cranberry sauce, rolls, and cornbread. And Canadian Mountain Dew which is apparently caffeine free due to some law that says that only cola drinks can be caffeinated there. How odd. There was also pumpkin and apple pie with ice cream and whipped cream. Also FFX.

Also Pat is here. Yay Pat.

Second year in a row that I’ve had something I am so incredibly thankful for, and here’s hoping that continues.

Ugh

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I swear I’m so paranoid sometimes.

This morning I walked to Safeway because I had a coupon that expired today for Ragu pasta sauce and pasta. There was some Ragu on sale for $1/package. The coupon required 2 packages of sauce and any one package of pasta. Awesome.

Got home and realized that one of the sauce packets expired October 3, 2008. I was heading to games this afternoon anyway, so I stopped back at Safeway to exchange the sauce. Walked with the lady to the aisle and found there weren’t any more of that kind of sauce left, so she offered me a refund.

Went to process the refund and she looked up the coupons I had used. She then said that I had only paid $0.75 for the two packages of sauce (if you assume the pasta is full price, this is true) after the coupon. I offered to pay the difference between the returned packet and a full jar. She said that she would offer me $0.37 credit towards the jar. However, buying the jar of sauce instead makes the coupon apply, so I should get the full dollar credit toward the jar, and I tried to point this out to her.
She ended up giving me the jar for free and keeping the receipt.

Now I’m all paranoid because I keep thinking that she kept it so she can secretly recharge my credit card tonight or something. I guess I’ll be checking my statements carefully until the charges clear.
I don’t know. I wouldn’t have minded paying the extra $2.whatever difference in price, but I guess she didn’t care or (heh) figured she’d get it later. I hope I didn’t come off as argumentative.

Of course all of this only happened because I forgot this coupon while shopping yesterday and had to go back today.

Also, next time I’ll eat the dollar loss (no pun intended) and just throw out the sauce. If I wasn’t heading back that direction today anyway, I probably would have, but now it’s just going to make me worry tonight. Blah.

At least games were lots of fun. Played Leonardo Da Vinci, which ended up with a 102-versus-13 point spread at the end of the game; Race for the Galaxy with expansion pack, which adds additional “goals” that you can win victory points for (such as being the first to build a 6-cost development or being the first to build one of each good-type world); a random puzzle thing (similar to a rubric’s cube but spherical with little beads in grooves instead of blocks), which I solved after figuring out the trick for; and a game whose name I can’t rememberEl Grande, which involved controlling various regions and scoring points and doing actions, all controlled by a bidding system (which wasn’t Risk). Whee.

Moar cardz

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Finished opening 3 boxes of DBZ expansion today. Apparently I got really lucky (or I got three boxes that were from the same run) because I got exactly one of each of the 36 rares in the expansion, leaving me with one complete set of rares (and almost 3 complete sets of commons and 1 complete set of uncommons). Awesome.
Distributions, however, are still extremely skewed. I’m now up to 6 copies of some of the Black and Blue styled uncommons, but I only have a single copy of each of the Namekian uncommons, and one copy of three of the four Red uncommons. Similarly I’m up to 5 copies of some of the uncommon Alien characters but only have one copy of the uncommon Frieza and Vegeta cards. Commons are even worse, but I at least have two copies of each common.

Apparently you can buy single rares from this site. I should buy #182 Black Dragon Support and #187 Black Z Warriors Support. That’ll complete my DBZ base set and makes more sense than buying $5 boxes of 12 packs for a 1/61 chance per pack of pulling the right card… it just feels weird paying $3 for a single card (since that’s basically the retail price for a booster pack of 10 cards). I suppose I can get myself a Christmas present or something.

I’ll post a photo of all the opened boosters once I get through the last 3 boxes of expansion. 192 booster packs of epic win.

Updates?

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I suppose I should write an update.

Downloaded David Cook’s new album today. It is good. Very good. You should get it (from Amazon to protest DRM-infected iTunes and Rhapsody). Highlights of the album (for me) are Declaration and Permanent. Also, thanks to Greg for all the pepsi points that let me download the album for free. Awesomeness.

Been opening DBZ expansion boosters. I now have a complete set of uncommons after 2 boxes (the past 3 packs contained, of the 9 uncommons, the 9 uncommons that I didn’t yet have) as well as almost-3 complete sets of commons. I’m also on track to have a complete set of rares, but we’ll see how that goes. Distributions seem to be skewed the same way as in the base set… lots of the uninteresting cards (Black and Blue styles, human characters) and few of the interesting ones (Saiyan and Namekian styles, Saiyan characters). ’tis unfortunate.

Work is going. Last week was Apex/Visualforce/Development training, which was useful. This week is lots of bugs.