BootheNet.com

I sorta splurged a little bit this week and bought myself a running present. I felt I worked really hard to achieve my goal for almost an entire year, I wanted to purchase something that was kinda fun and kinda helped keep me on the right path. It’s kinda weird that I’m excited about buying a watch. But I got myself a Nike+ Sportwatch GPS.

I’ve been using the Nike+ Telemeters ever since I started running. Not 100% of the time, I’ve done a few ‘naked’ runs here and there. But I’d say that 99% of the time I’ve had either the footpod with my iPod Nano, or my iPhone using the Nike+ GPS App.

I like the iPhone GPS app better but it had one MAJOR flaw. If I was out on a run and someone called me, it interrupted my run. It was handy to have the phone around, but I think I’d rather not have the interruption. Often though the iPod Nano was just easier and quicker to get out and run with. My hope is that the watch replaces the Nano and the iPhone and becomes the number one. It even works with the heart rate monitor that I bought for my Nano.

One other benefit I thought about the watch is the fact that it is waterproof. Most of those ‘naked’ runs were done mainly because it was pouring down rain outside and I didn’t want to run with any electronics.

So I ordered it on Tuesday. It’s been basically sold out everywhere, but I caught it on the Nike Online Store at just the perfect time. It was here by Thursday. I was so excited, I went out for a run this morning even though I really shouldn’t have. I tried to make it a short/slow one though. I’m happy to report I really like it. It’s easy to use, fast to begin the run with, and it looks good on the wrist (unlike those garmin huge things I saw people wearing at the Marathon). Plus it still posts the data to the Nike site. Which I’m basically bound to these days since all my runs for all time are basically posted there.

My Next Goals
So, I’ve been thinking long and hard about what to do next. Like long term with running and all. (I promise I’ll get back to talking about boardgames soon!)

In the immediate future, I’m running the Gumtree 10k in Tupelo, MS next Saturday (5/14/2011). It’ll be my first 10k ever. I really wanted to do the Double Decker 10k, but unfortunately it was the exact same day as the Country Music Half Marathon, so I missed the only 10k in Oxford each year.

I wanted to do one so that I had a time to benchmark against going forward. I doubt I’ll be able to run it all that well because honestly I’m still supposed to be recovering from the half. So I figured I would just have fun and run a fairly local, fairly popular 10k.

Beyond that, my eyes were going two different directions. I think the Full Marathon is definitely my next big goal. I really think it’s the one I should have been aiming for, and have felt that way for a while. The half marathon, although challenging just doesn’t seem to have the mystic that a full marathon has. I really thought that I’d be running a Full Marathon at the St. Jude Marathon in Memphis, TN on December 3rd, 2011. It seems as though the Winter Air Gun Championships are that very same weekend though which creates scheduling problems between Val and I. There are many Full Marathons in the Fall though, and I’m sure I’ll find one. I think I’d like to attempt one before the end of the year though. Not sure when or where yet, if you have any suggestions feel free to let me know!

written by Chris \\ tags: Country Music, GPS, iPhone, Nike, Running

So, in accordance with the popular activity among the board gaming crowd, I hereby present to you my Five & Dime list for 2010.

One word of warning, they kinda suck. Apparently I spent the bulk of 2010 playing new games, or light games, and not playing nearly as many as I usually do. I went through a pretty serious funk from around March to about November or so. I don’t think I bought more than two games in all that time, I didn’t play many.

Our local game group kind of stagnated at some point during the year. Besides a couple of events I attended I didn’t play very many ‘gamery’ type games during the year at all.

To be honest, at some of those gaming events, I spent a whole lot more time socializing and visiting with friends than I did playing games.

All of this is in an effort to make me feel better about my five & dime list that I’m about to present, because you’re not going to believe how bad it is.

Well anyway here goes.

My 2010 Board Game Five & Dime List!

Crokinole – 12 plays – I’m guessing a good portion of that was my visit with friends for a football game in September along with entry into the Crokinole Tournament at Tennessee Game Days. I love this game though. It’s a great game, even if I quit playing boardgames altogether I’m pretty sure I would still hang on to this.

Werewolf – 11 plays – A good portion of this was likely at BGG.con, there might have been a game or two of it played at Midsouth Con as well, but I don’t remember and don’t care enough to look up dates. I really like Werewolf. If the fact that you needed 9 players to really play it wasn’t a concern, it would probably get played a lot more. I can’t wait till I get my copy of the Resistance. Going to love getting that one in. I predict that will be on this list in some form or fashion next year.

Scrabble – 10 plays – Haha, This is sort of a fudge I think. I don’t log all my plays of it, but occasionally I do log a couple of plays of Words with Friends as plays of Scrabble. I play Words with Friends a lot. I have about 5 friends that we are constantly rematching with. My friends are very good at the game, (or else were all equally bad at it) because most of the times our games are extremely competitive. At least one of these plays was played scrabble on an iPad using the iPhones as tile racks. That is so cool.

Small World – 10 plays – This is another half and half type of number. Half of these plays were played on the board, but I’m guessing a few of these were played on the iPad as a two player game as well. I don’t log plays against AI’s which I do often, but against an opponent I most certainly do, if I think about it. There are times my daughter and I have played this that I didn’t log it, and forgot about the play shortly after, I’d say we’ve played closer to 30 games of this over the past year.

King’s Breakfast – 5 plays – I love this light fluffy game, it’s quick, and easy to teach, yet gives many interesting decisions. Every once in a while, I’ll bring it out and it’ll get a couple of plays, but often I forget it’s on the shelf.

Tichu – 5 plays – Three of these plays were at the BGG.con Tichu Tournament. All very competitive games that we played. I can’t remember where the other two occurred, but I imagine it was here and there. I love Tichu as well, one of my favorite ‘trick taking card games’

And, that’s it. There you have it. That’s all I got. I told you it was sad!!!

For the curious, here are my other plays above 1 for the year 2010. Last year, I didn’t talk about these games or list them at all because I wanted to respect the Five & Dime Format. This year, I’ve decided that I have to list these, otherwise, I won’t have any Geek Cred. At least some of the stuff on this list will go a long way toward reestablishing a smidge of that Cred.

The Adventurers 4
Hacienda 4
Löwenherz 4
Neuroshima Hex! 4
Pandemic 4
The Resistance 4
Telestrations 4
Bananagrams 3
Battlestar Galactica 3
Ca$h ‘n Gun$ 3
Carcassonne 3
Dungeon Lords 3
Go 3
Hive 3
Loot 3
M 3
Ninja versus Ninja 3
Poker 3
Race for the Galaxy 3
Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age 3
Zendo 3
10 Days in the USA 2
Battling Gladiators 2
Chaos in the Old World 2
Cosmic Encounter 2
Traumfabrik 2
Eat Poop You Cat 2
Goa 2
El Grande 2
In the Year of the Dragon 2
Liar’s Dice 2
Liberté 2
Lord of the Rings 2
Manila 2
No Thanks! 2
Polarity 2
The Princes of Florence 2
Railways of the World: The Card Game 2
San Juan 2
Schrille Stille 2
Star Wars: The Queen’s Gambit 2
Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization 2
Trendy 2
Word on the Street 2

I won’t list the 1 plays as that would be really, really, really, long. If you’re interested in that, click here!

written by Chris \\ tags: BGG.con, Boardgames, iPad, iPhone, MidsouthCon, Pictures, Play Statistics

Very Very Early tomorrow morning, KF and I will be on our way to BGG.con.

It’s our yearly shindig in Dallas TX, where we can play all the new Boardgames that just came out at the Spielfair in Essen Germany in October. This year, the only game from that crop that I know for sure that I’m going to play is K2. As far as the rest of my schedule, it’s pretty relaxed.

I need to make a list of the things I need/want to do.

• I do plan to play in the Tichu Tournament. JM and I will be terrorizing our opponents with Bomb after Bomb. (I predict we lose in the first round.)
• I do plan to play in the Poker Tournament. This I do think I have a little bit of Skill at and hope to make the final table again, with a good run at winning the tournament. I’ll let you know how it goes of course.
• I do plan to play a little bit of Werewolf. Alright, maybe a little bit more than that.
• I do plan to eat my weight in Barbecue at Hard Eight on Thursday Night with all my Werewolf Friends.
• I do plan to play disc golf on Friday Morning with a group of BGGers. I do not plan to lose any discs or accidentally hit anyone with my badly errant throws.
• I do plan to sell all the games I bring for the Flea Market. I do not plan to come home with more games than I took to sell, in fact, I do not plan to come home with any more than 1 game purchase total at the Con, and maybe my prize game if it’s something I’m honestly interested in. Otherwise, I’ll give my purchase away to the first person that asks me for it.
• I do plan to take a break from gaming to watch the Ole Miss vs LSU game on Saturday Afternoon. I do not plan to be happy with Ole Miss’ performance by the end of the 1st Quarter (Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.)
• I do plan to keep everyone partially informed of my goings-on via twitter. However, I do not plan to apologize to my other followers and friends who do not happen to be gamers for the amount of posts you will experience over the next four days.
• I do plan to take more pictures than usual. I have a new iPhone, and the camera in it is much better. So maybe that’ll encourage me.
• I do plan to run still. I need to run about four miles on Thursday, and about six on Sunday. Hopefully I can squeeze those in without losing too much gaming time, or getting lost on the streets of Dallas.

I think that just about covers it. We’ll see how it goes from here.

written by Chris \\ tags: BGG.con, Boardgames, Dallas TX, iPhone, Running, twitter

So, in my Facebook feed I have a friend who plays bunches and bunches of those mindjolt games, various puzzles, etc. Most of those games are crap, I’ve tried a few here and there.

Well, one day she posts the comment (after scoring a high score) that a game was ‘pretty good’, but she wished it had a preview piece feature similar to Tetris. Well, most flash games aren’t a good puzzle like Tetris is, but her comment made me try it.

And Now; I’ve been playing the darn thing in the evenings at home whenever I get a chance for the last several weeks. It is a very good game.

It’s called “Combine” I’m sure you can Google that if your interested in trying it and you’re not on Facebook. But the thing is, it’s different. It is a puzzle like Tetris, but it’s not against the clock. In fact, you have as much time as you want to place your piece each turn, the only key is how you rotate and place it.

But the kicker is that when you connect at least three circles orthogonally, the pieces don’t just disappear, they turn into a new colored ball, which you have to combine, also the pool of balls the game gives you will grow to include that color. So over time, the game will give you more balls of varying color and it slowly fills up your grid.

So, here’s my rant, I love this game, I think it’s a great game, and the low ‘twitch’ and ‘reflex’ factor make it a very interesting puzzle. But as you get to the higher difficulties, the game breaks down, in that the pool of balls I am getting are so intermixed I can no longer combine them as needed.

I feel like I’m doing the best I can, but there are people in the high score list scoring multiple hundreds of thousands of points, and the best I can get is something like 130k.

Anyway, I was bored one night and recorded my playing of the game, set it to some generic music in garage band and posted it to youtube, it happens to be my current high score game as well. Maybe you can give me some pointers?!? I sped this up 2.5 times to make it fit on youtube in the allotted 10 minutes.

To me, it looks like I’m doing pretty solid, but it breaks down fast at the higher levels.

I’ve also started playing a similar game on my iPhone. It’s called Alchemize, it has the same idea behind it. It does have a preview feature.

written by Chris \\ tags: Alchemize, Combine, Facebook, Flash, iPhone, Video, Video Games, YouTube

So, I’ve been using an iPhone since September of 2007, I’ve still got the original iPhone, and it has always been my intention to update it when apple released the 32gB model, whenever that may be.

However, they did so last week, the phone definitely has some nice features, things that I’m looking for, etc. Better Camera being the main one I think, the GPS chip would be nice for geotagging photos as well.

So I went to go and fill out the update package, and Whaaaaa!.

Currently I pay $40 for my voice plan, which I think is 5000 business time minutes, with unlimited nights and weekends.

I pay $20 for the data plan. Which also includes 200 text messages a month.

So, I go to fill out the update page and the voice plan stays the same, however, the data plan will go up to $30 which no longer includes text messages (You’ve got to be kidding me, text messages are just data. I can send all the emails I want, but now I have to pay $5.00 a month for SMS?

Not only that, but AT&T will not be supporting MMS right off the bat, I’d be so inclined to think that they would be charging extra for MMS messages too.

AT&T will not be supporting tethering which is native in software for the new iPhone right off the bat, and I’d be so inclined to think that they would be charging extra for tethering too.

I already pay $70 a month for my iPhone after taxes and stuff, it’s a great phone, but that’s already about $30 more a month than I have ever paid for a phone in my life before this one. Is it really worth $90 a month for me to have a new iPhone.

Did I mention there was two different $18 dollar upgrade fees AT&T was going to charge me. Two upgrade fees for me getting into another TWO YEAR CONTRACT!!! At least you are subsidizing my cost for the phone this time, unlike last time you locked me into a TWO YEAR CONTRACT!!! when I paid the full cost of the phone.

I might just be sticking with mine going forward even more in the future until it either breaks, or something else comes down that offers the functionality at a much more rational cost.

written by Chris \\ tags: apple, AT&T, Cellphones, iPhone, rant