Yesterday was a fantastic day! Mike and I spent 9 hours working with the guys from Fanatic Games and it was a blast! We helped out making and sanding tables, setting up stock, and just having a good time all around. They open tomorrow at 9am. Hopefully they will have everything ready. I’d like to help them out again today, but I work today and I can’t take any time off because I’m on notice for my present job.
They fed us at a real nice restaurant to pay us for our work, and I didn’t get back home until almost midnight. Tired, sunburnt and happy. Shane, Tony and Mike are all great guys and I’m going to give them all the help I can to succeed. I want there to be a choice in where to game in Memphis.
Choice is good.

I’m off to a meeting for my new job in just a few minutes. The job hasn’t actually started yet, but there are things that I will be involved with in the new job that are starting up now, and I need to be in on this now so I can hit the ground running when I do start.
That, and I’m helping the guys at Fanatic Games out today. They are getting their space today and need to set it up and stock everything. I want this store to succeed very much and helping out like this is the best way I can do that.
See you later!

Well, I originally came out against President Bush’s executive orders authorizing wiretaps without a FISA court order. I thought it was just plain wrong, and there should always be some kind of judicial oversight.
Well, it turns out I was wrong. It seems five former FISA judges have come out and said that President Bush authorizing wiretaps via executive order when there is no time to get a FISA warrant is legal and proper. Of course, you can’t find that quote in the MSM, it goes against their action points.
I’m not a legal scholar, and I don’t play one on TV. So I can get this one wrong.

Memphis has had bad luck with gaming stores over the past few years. At one time we had several stores, but for various reasons they have all closed. At present, there is only the Games Workshop World of Battle. The World of Battle is a wonderful place, but you can only play Games Workshop games there. That is changing Saturday with the opening of Fanatic Games. Granted, they are in the hinterlands of Bartlett, but that’s where they settled. It’s closer to me than the Bunker is, so I’m not complaining.
Anyway, they open at 9AM on the 1st of April. They are planning a Rogue Trader Tournament to showcase their new tables, and you can find them at 4210 Altruria, Suite 136. Here is the MapQuest of the area.
Support your FLGS (Friendly Local Gaming Store), every chance you can. Sure you can get your wargaming supplies cheaper off the Internet, but where are you going to play? If you’re like me and live in an apartment, you don’t have the room for a 4×6′ table to wargame on. This way, you have a place to play and hang out with other wargamers and you don’t have to worry about your things getting broken by a clumsy wargamer.
See you there!

I’m not supposed to start my new job until the 25th or so of April, but they want me in today to help out with a project they are doing. There are times I’m so popular that I can’t stand myself.

This is really getting out of control. Lawmakers are backing up faster than a stunt driver, none of them is willing to stick their neck out for fear of offending “potential” voters, and the pro-illegals just keep getting louder and louder.
Ronald Reagan said something like this: “No country can maintain its security without first control of its borders.” And that is so true. The bad news is, the “undocumented” immigration problem is growing every second, and it is growing exponentially.
These illegals are slapping the face of every legal immigrant that has ever become a citizen. Something must be done to stop this tsunami of people. They are becoming a disruptive influence on our country.
Stop the anchor baby program. The bad news is, that would require changing the 14th Amendment. Start branding illegals so they are easier to spot. Make it so anybody caught crossing the border illegally never gets another shot at being here.
Enforcing existing laws would go about a massive positive direction. Instead, Congress passes more laws that aren’t enforceable and that makes them think they are doing something worthwhile.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:
“Calling an illegal alien an undocumented immigrant is like calling a rapist an undocumented boyfriend.”

Starting as of now, I am participating in this Blog Meme about getting Mike a job.

You see, he wants to turn his blog writing skills into actual money by writing for the local daily publication, The Commercial Appeal.
Mike’s sardonic, rapier-like wit would be a great fit, simply because the CA takes itself too seriously. They are too far in bed with the power people of Memphis to take them on when they do wrong, but Mike isn’t.
Go get ‘em Mike!

Well, I am sufficiently geeked out for several months now. I got to game until I dropped, then got up and gamed some more. I crammed about 40 hours of gaming into 48 hours of time. I am as happy as a clam in mud, and I can’t look forward to next year.
I didn’t get as many pictures as I wanted, but here’s what I did get. Click on the picture for full size:
This is a layout of the demo, looking at the town laid out for the opposed landing. The two squadrons of Fighta-Bommerz, Landa with troops and three Big Blitz Brigades just off the map at the bottom of the shot are reinforcements coming on in a later turn. Mike’s forces are in the far corner of the map.

This is a view of the battle in progress, both sides are hurt, but still dangerous:

This is one of the three scenarios I played of Memoir ‘44. There was actually 6 games, you played the scenario on both sides to give each player or team an equal chance. I won 5 out of 6 in this game:

I also played in a game of Werewolf, but I was lynched in the second round. This was a beer-and-pretzels game were werewolves kill villagers, then the villagers randomly lynch other villagers in order to kill the werewolves.
I also spent a lot of time renewing friendships, making new ones and having fun just talking games. I couldn’t have asked for a better weekend, except for the Internet being down. If you have never been to a con, I highly suggest that you attend one, it will change your life for the better.

Here it is, pretty late and I am WIRED on Bawls. Tired and wired. Not making too much sense, but I’m still on my feet and gaming until I drop in a couple of more hours. I’ve caught all of you up on my posting, I found a public computer with internet access, so I’ve backdated all of my posts to look like I’ve been liveblogging the whole time, which I really was, just offline live blogging. It makes sense, just not to me.
I’ll give you guys a wrap up Sunday after I catch up on real life and everything that’s been backing up and put on hold since Friday.
Later.

Finished up more Memoir ‘44, this one was a monster scenario, it was so big we had 3 people per side pushing pieces and one “Supreme Commander” handing out order cards. I also attended a game of Brawling Battleships, but no one but me showed up, so the guy doing the game gave me a quick rundown then hung it up for the night. I don’t know what I’m going to do now, but I’ve got a good 4 more hours of gaming time left tonight. I’m also looking forward to playing a game of Shogun tomorrow morning to wrap up the con.

Well, I just finished up several games of a WWII game, called Memoir ‘44. I played both sides of two scenarios, and myself and the guy I was with went 3-1. We won both sides (playing Germans and Americans) of the first scenario, and won as the Germans, but lost as the British in the second scenario. After catching my breath, I’m off in a while to play Brawling Battleships, a Naval card game.
I have had so many Bawls, I may never really sleep again. I am sucking them down like they were bottled water and I have no fatigue at all after getting 4 hours of sleep in the past 36 hours. When you buy this stuff by the case, it says it right on the side, “NEVER SLEEP AGAIN.” This is perfect for LAN gamers and programmers who do things in multi-day spurts.
There is something I must confess. I am not liveblogging, and this is quite evident if you have been reading my blog over the weekend. I bought a wireless network card specifically to access the Internet while here at the Con, and the hotel’s computer that controls the network is screwed up and won’t let the Net into the network. Supposedly they are (still, that was 5+ hours ago now) working on it. I’ll have to check in with the front desk to see if they got it working or not.
I may have to go and use one of their public computers, instead my own. We’ll see if those are working.

Well, that was craptacular. I know I didn’t expect much, but I only had two people for the tournament! One of them I brought along, the other one was drafted by a mutual friend to play. With only two people, we played one game and called it quits. The good news is this allowed me to go and play games, instead of running them. Bittersweet, and this was, after all, the first time I tried this. Very few people have a smashing success their first time around. I’m just happy to be here.

Well, because I’m full of Bawls, I didn’t get much sleep. I kind of drifted in and out of sleep for the 4 hours I had blocked out for rest. So I’m up and at em, I’m on my way down to the Con Suite to get some breakfast.

Well, I’m wrapping up a day of excitement! The Con got off to a great start. While the pre-registration line was long and slow, I managed to make a few friends in the line. One of them ended up in me being invited to demo/tournament Epic at another local con, ShadowCon. This one goes down in January.
At the appropriate time, Mike and I appeared on the main floor and began our demo of Epic:Armageddon. The scenario was Mike, being the Space Marine, was making an opposed landing on an Ork planet. I set up a city, then showed him where a Great Gargant was, since he could see things like that from orbit. After he made his calculations, I laid out my forces throughout the city. The demo then opened with Mike landing two drop pods, two Thunderhawks and a landing craft. He also had 8 formations of Terminators waiting up in orbit as well.
Who won? We don’t know. The purpose of the demo was to get people passing by interested in checking out the game and maybe even helping us with throwing dice or offering advice. When you measure the demo that way, it was a resounding success. We hung up the game after the session (4-hour windows of time) ended and called it a draw. I was hurt, but still dangerous. I had most of his forces on the run, but he still had two formations of Terminators that he didn’t get around to bringing down.

Well, here we are! It took a while to get connected to the Internet, the gateway server was down. Now that they’ve got it fixed, I’ll be sending pictures shortly. We’re all settled in the room and the demo will be starting in about an hour, Mike should be here any minute.
See you in a while!