Terrible Analogies

For the past week a board game that’s owned my heart and soul is one that surprisingly went out of print and has only recently been resurrected from potential oblivion.  Robo Rally, back from the dead, sports new boards, new gaming pieces, and new factory elements meant to create an ever-changing, treacherous environment that your robot must successfully navigate if it wishes to not only survive, but emerge triumphant. 

The rules of Robo Rally (.pdf) are quite simple; Players program their robots to make a minimum of five movements per round, with the ultimate goal of being the first one to touch a given number of positioned flags in a specific order.  Your robotic buddy must avoid falling off the side of the board to its certain doom, plunging down pits to a gruesome death, and being damaged with either static lasers or shots fired from other users robots.

What’s unique about Robo Rally, and what sets it apart from other games, is that all players move their pieces at the same time.  The savvy player will use this to his or her advantage by savagely tracking down other players and damaging them with vicious laser attacks, or pushing them into unpredictable and destructive situations.

The game comes with four two-sided boards which can be combined to make intriguing and ever more challenging gaming environments each time you play.  And the more people on the board at the same time, the more opportunity for chaos!

Easy to learn and a grip-full of fun to play, Robo Rally is an addictive classic that has that rare ability to sink its claws into anybody fortunate enough to play it.  Variations of gameplay can be tracked down online if you want to up the danger factor, speed up, or even slow down game play.  

On my scale of 1 to 10, Robo Rally gets an “A”.

Robo Rally game board in action...can you feel the tension?

Player with one of his three lives spent

Robo Rally game piece, just after capturing the first flag

Damage Tokens and Life Tokens

A Robo Rally game piece waiting to be programed

A layout of the various game boards

Game Game, Robo Rally

Wherever I go I always carry around my Canon PowerShot SD770 “blackeye”.  It’s impossible to know exactly when a camera will come in handy.  Fed up with the quality of my cell phone pictures my wonderful wife surprised me with this amazing tiny camera for Christmas.  It’s subtle and far more convenient than lugging around my Nikon D200 everywhere I go.

Here is a quick overview of four pictures taken within the space of ten hours today:

Arriving at work the first thing I typically do is consume some sort of energy drink.  Today I overdid it and slammed down not just a Mana energy drink but also one of their newly released health drinks and a Monster.  Lemme tell ya, if you think it’s easy to code sober try it while woozy, shaking, and sweating from an overdose of chemicals spelled with more than 15 characters and six syllables, containing nearly 7000% the daily recommended dose of B12 , and 160 milligrams of caffeine.  Better living through chemistry…

For lunch I went to the gym, then made a quick run to the mall to pick up a tuna sandwich.  Killing a few minutes I stepped into a store where I saw this sad display of Brett Favre “action figures”.  Evidently they’re unable to unload this particular item, even with a 40% discount.  It appears that Favre’s star had fallen so hard that even Warren Moon is easily outselling the Favre figures.  QQ…

On my drive home I happened to fall in line at the metered freeway light behind this particular vehicle whose license plate was just too cool not to photograph.

Winding down for the day I managed to catch this condescending commercial that takes place in the front yard of a middle-class suburban home.  The man of the house has apparently wandered outside with a cereal box gingerly tucked in the crook of his arm, holding a bowl of said cereal floating gingerly in a pool of perfectly chilled milk, his other hand lovingly scooping with a spoon mounds of fiber goodness into his open, quivering, expectant mouth.  Meanwhile, what I can only assume is a friendly (if not over-exuberant) neighbor who, wearing a particularly distracting sweater vest and speaking in a thick Indian accent, explains in painfully detailed prose the health benefits of the cereal his now glassy-eyed neighbor with the 1000-yard stare is serenely consuming.

Outside.  In his bathrobe.  While a woman, who I can only assume is his wife, stares disdainfully at him.

In what reality does this occur, and why am I having such a difficult time wrapping my brain around these visuals?  Is it just me?

Advertisement, Computer, Personal, Sports, Tech, Television Advertisement, football, Television

I was on business travel in Charlotte when I was first exposed to the HBO mini-series Generation Kill.  For an hour I sat glued to a broken television that would, on queue every five minutes, fade out into a field of static for nearly a minute.  At first I was unsure what I was watching, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn the channel.  What was unfolding was the tale of a Marine reconnaissance unit traveling deep behind Iraqi enemy lines during the first phase of the second war in 2003 utilizing a combat strategy that had never been tested before.  With no backup, these Marines were asked to act as the sharp point of the spear, using speed as their primary weapon as they headed ever deeper into hostile territory with nothing but their unarmored Humvees for protection.

What drew me in was the fact that this was what actually happened.  This was how the men spoke, how they interacted with each other and their commanding officers, and how they were forced to adapt and overcome to survive (no matter how cliched that sounds).  These were the rules that they lived by, where the basic doctrine of military warfare was forsaken, and how the average grunt tried to make sense of the chaos all around him.  From invaders guilt to desperately wanting to score a kill, this show had it all.

Finally, Generation Kill has been released on DVD.  Karin and I have yet to finish the series (we have one episode left to view), but this HBO presentation has been so amazing that I simply had to pick up the book it was based on.

Written by Evan Wright, Generation Kill is a first-hand account of what occurred while he was attached to First Recon, and much of the written word has been faithfully translated onto the small screen.  If you enjoyed the series and you haven’t read the book, you’re doing yourself a disservice.  There’s so much that went on during the time covered in the book that didn’t make it into the series, and knowing the details that are glossed over in the show makes watching Generation Kill just that much more enjoyable.

What gets me is that Evan Wright was given the opportunity to hang back during a particularly dangerous mission, yet he declined.  This, above everything, revealed his true character.  He wasn’t just a quiet kind of guy.  He was something much more.  To understand what I’m trying to convey pick up the DVDs.  Don’t think about it, just do it.  I wouldn’t steer you wrong here… (would I write this wall of text if I didn’t think this was an amazing series?)

I’m no “war monger”, but I was in the Air Force.  Granted, what I experienced during my military career was a far cry from what these Marines went through (but a Marine did back me up in a fight once while I was serving in Japan, so I have a certain soft spot for them), I can still feel a certain kind of kinship towards them.  Even though I was but a shadow of what these men were, anyone with a love for country, or love for a great story, will easily come to appreciate what Generation Kill has to offer.

Even though I already own the DVD set, I can’t wait for the blu-ray version to be released in December.  In fact, I already have it pre-ordered.

Lee Tergesen portraying the author Evan Wright, better known as "Rolling Stone"

Iceman firing a smoke bomb at an approaching vehicle

The commanding officer known as "Godfather"

"Check it out. You're dead *ducks down* alive. Dead. Alive. Dead. Alive..."

Captain American: Is it wrong for me to hope that someone caps his ass before the last episode?

DVD insert showing the main characters

Book cover. Seriously....buy it!

Books, DVD, Television Books, DVD, Generation Kill

I have a confession to make; I enjoy watching the coin and watch segments on the Home Shopping Network.  There’s something oddly relaxing about the dulcet tones of smooth-talking pitchmen as they desperately hawk the latest “must have” wrist accessory or claim that their stock of 19whatever coins will be depleted before the next commercial break and if you don’t act within the next few minutes they’ll be gone forever.

And I wonder how, if they’ve sold out of a particular item, why does it reappear during their next segment in full stock and at an even cheaper price?

I tell myself to simply skip this show entirely the next time I’m mindlessly channel surfing, but without pause something incredibly unusual and without logical explanation invariably flaunts its ugly flanks in my face, daring me to pause like a sheltered rubbernecking soccer mom whose only thrill in life is to slowly drive by gruesome highway accident scenes praying to God nobody was injured but secretly hoping to see a little bit of blood.  This time around the good presenters on the Hourly Watch Bonanza (or whatever they’re calling their show nowadays) were trying to pawn off on their good viewers a watch of such gargantuan proportions that I seriously wondered at what point their arms were going to tire while holding up this ridiculous hunk of cheap metal and spinning gears.

When does a watch stop being a watch and graduates to the rank of “clock”?  This particular watch is water resistant up to 100 ATMs (that’s 3300 feet).  So the next time you’re diving at over half-a-mile underwater you can rest assured that this watch will not only be dragging you down to your certain doom with it’s sheer weight, it’ll be keeping excellent time as it does so.

Who wears such a ridiculous looking watch anyway?  This watch is so huge that the manufacturer suggests that anyone with a wrist circumference of less than six inches should not wear it, lest you snap your little girly arm while showing off your wicked new wrist clock to your amused office mates who don’t have the guts to laugh in your face.

The heft of this watch should qualify it as a weapon, considered lethal in most states, and with a deadly minimum range of ten feet requiring a danger-close warning every time you raise your arms too quickly.

In all honesty, the next time you want to look like an ass, give me the $1000 you were going to blow on this overblown, unnecessary accruement and I’ll follow you around your office for an entire week with a black eye and a split upper lip claiming to your colleges and coworkers that you abuse me every night under the Egyptian cotton sheets of your plush king-sized bed.  This way you’ll be giving your money to someone who truly needs it, and I’ll be saving you the embarrassment of wearing such a contemptible timepiece.

Television Television, Watch

I’m sure you’ve all heard that there’s another salmonella outbreak occurring, this time centered squarely on peanut butter.  At the moment more than 125 products are thought to have been tainted.  Everything from granola bars to pet food is to be suspect.  In fact, warning signs like these were plastered all over the grocery story this weekend:

Those darn Keebler elves, coping a squat in the peanut fields again simply because they don’t have the decency to drudge the 100 yards to the mobile elf-sized port-a-potty that trails them wherever they go.  

But in all seriousness, with our modern technology, cleanliness standards and oversights, why does this still happen?  This time around the outbreak has sickened at least 453 people in 43 states and has thought to have caused the death of six people.  What really angers me is that the FDA has known about this particular outbreak since September of 2008.  That’s four months of this inept agency sitting on their collective asses, and the strongest action they’ve taken is to issue “voluntary” recalls.  

Whiskey.  Tango.  Foxtrot.

[HermanTurnip takes a long, slow, deep breathe]

Putting my anger and resentment aside for a moment here, I did find something I found a bit peculiar tucked away amongst the vast array of modern-day cleaning products and accruements:

I’m trying to decipher exactly what they’re trying to tell me here.  Are they saying that All can spirit away any and all child-sized bloodstained handprints from any fabric surface?  Following that logic, what’s with the protein and urine handprints?  Am I supposed to infer that a small group of children ran afoul of everything that is good and decent, soaking their hands in various bodily fluids and marking their territory like a rabid pack of wild dogs, thus requiring the necessity of All to clean up the macabre mess?  More importantly, should I be concerned that that’s the thought that this product conjured up in my addled hunger-stricken mind this afternoon while shopping for braunschweiger and potato bread?

Rant, Unusual Sightings blood, fda, salmonella