Damn you Verizon! Hurry up and get to me with your blessed FIOS!

I looked at the installation schedule PDF on verizon.com, and those bitches are staking out a perimeter around my house!

We’re the little yellow balloon on the left. The blue line connecting the typical Google map points of interest are the centers of the two roads they’re installing FIOS along.

Hopefully they’ll come out our way by October :(

I’ve been doing a lot of reading in preparation of my zombie campaign, mostly the Year of the Zombie text I purchased, as well as articles/essays on governmental plans in the case of Mutually Assured Destruction, climactic change brought upon by massive warfare, the crippling and collapse of U.S. utilities, and so on.

I have to say, it’s a fucking grim situation. Basically, your odds of surviving are just about zero. If the zombies don’t get you, you have to deal with radioactive fallout, chemical weapons, raiders, slavers, rival groups of survivalists, and all the other fun stuff like, uh, starvation, disease, and suicide.

I had trouble going to sleep last night, thinking intermittently between zombies staggering through my open bedroom door and all the various calamities of any post-apocalyptic world. Of particular bother was protecting any female survivors — especially my Lady Jaye — against the barbarous desires of men no longer fettered by law. I think my last thoughts of the evening were typical of any time I think of home invasion: securing the bedroom, holding off intruders with my Glock until I could bring the Mossberg or the AK to bear. Just like in the upcoming zombie campaign, the trick is surviving long enough to employ Ready Mode.

Once I crashed out everything was fine. I think I was even pleasant this morning when Lady Jaye left for work.

I’m going to finish reading YotZ and possibly check out All Flesh Must Be Eaten, as suggested by . I might read some documents I can find by places like FEMA, or declassified MAD documents, and then I’m going to decide if I want to go through with this campaign milieu or not. I’m not sure that a setting of nearly assured death is a good way to usher three RPG newbies into the past-time.

And I don’t know how much longer I can keep up with thinking about the material.

I know you have one.

One of those $9.99 to $19.99 upright coffee grinders with the spinning chopper blade on the inside. You know, the kind you start up by pressing down on the plastic top. I have probably bought, broken, lost, or given away almost a dozen of them.

While the top-actuating chopper is OK for beginning brew-at-home coffee drinkers, they have one fundamental problem that will flaw any pot of coffee you throw. The chopper blade, well, chops your coffee bean into oddly sized, asymmetrical bits. These asymmetrical bits result in uneven brewing. Your coffee will not only brew unevenly (with the smaller, finer chunks brewing better than the larger, coarser chunks), but your pots will never taste the same way twice because one batch might be coarser than the last.

A grinder, on the other hand, “grinds” the bean between its metal teeth. The grind is much more uniform, and in general the higher quality burr grinders will allow for more precise coarseness variation. For example, my Solis Maestro Pro has forty different grind settings.

Here’s my lovely Maestro (or at least, the product shot):

The Maestro has a 1/2 pound plastic hopper that holds the beans. I wouldn’t want a larger hopper for pro-sumer use; Lady Jaye and I drink about two pots of coffee a day and we don’t want our beans going even a touch stale inside the hopper. We keep the rest of our beans in an airtight container at room temperature.

The Maestro has a timer dial on the side that will run the grinder for a set amount of time. One of the drawbacks to this unit is that it will continue to grind even when empty. On the finer settings this is particularly disastrous. There is a also button on the front of the unit that allows you to run the grinder manually — but you have to keep the button depressed.

One of the drawbacks to the Maestro, and I’m guessing this applies to most grinders with a front-loading bin, is that it gets coffee grounds everywhere. I thought my old Braun chopper was bad. Holy shit. When you take the bin out little particles of coffee fly all over the counter. It’s a constant mess, but the worst part is that the grounds get on your hand, and for some reason that creeps me out.

Cleaning the unit is recommended weekly, but that’s just damn silly. I clean the grinder out once a month, or when I feel guilty about it. There aren’t a lot of moving parts, the objective is to get the bean fragments and coffee grounds out of the grinder. Don’t submerge the unit in water, I normally turn it upside down and shake it like a toddler to get all the crap to fall out. I disassemble the burr grinder itself and blow the excess chaff out. Probably takes five minutes.

The big drawback to some of you will be the cost. My Maestro was given to my as a gift, but they run you about $150US plus shipping from places like Sweet Maria’s. That’s where Lady Jaye and my mother got mine last year. You can buy less expensive grinders, even as low as $40 from Target (my friend Stilts has one). My Black and Decker mill that I bought from Costco burned up immediately — the customer service lady said they had an entire bad batch of them. I’m sure that’s a fluke, and a less expensive grinder is a good way to introduce yourself to the difference between choppers and grinders. You may also not need 40 points of granularity — if you only make drip coffee you’re probably better off saving your money on the Maestro and putting it towards Kona. Mmm, Kona.

So, to recap:

New Hotness:

• Extremely even grind results in less bitter, more consistent coffee.
• Grind settings from Turkish to Espresso and 38 settings in between.
• Built like a brick shithouse. For real, you could jack a zombie pretty good with this thing in the noggin’ if you’re in a pinch.
• Timer knob gives you enough time to pour the water into your coffee maker and get the filter ready if you’re fast enough.

Old and Busted:

• Expensive for some. Not so expensive compared to other pro-sumer grade grinders, but still more than a $10 chopper.
• Way loud.
• Coffee grounds will get EVERYWHERE. If you’re cleanliness OCD you will definitely need some couch time after using this bad boy.
• Heavy — which is good for build quality but a pain if you’re holding it upside down over the sink during cleaning.

Solis Maestro Plus coffee mill, I gloriously award you:

Four out of five STFU coffee mugs (which you will later assist in filling with the blood of life)!

This is going to be a bit of a link and run, but while Dysoning the house today I was thinking about my recent Maryland RPG gaming trip. I was lamenting the lack of paper RPG gaming, especially since the only game store in the area doesn’t have a very active (or friendly) LFG board.

I thought to myself, “Self, why not start your own RPG game?”

Damn, that is a fine idea.

“So, who could I recruit to play?”

I thought immediately of Lady Jaye, Bond, and his girlfriend, Cleopatra. They were all immediately local — although I really like the Captain’s role playing group, driving up to DC and back in one day is kind of a pain. The potential pitfall with that plan is that none of them (to my knowledge) have ever role-played, and who knows if they would even be interested. To help bridge the gap between real lifers and us role playing dorks, I thought about what milieu would be interesting to my theoretical group, and what rules system would best fit our personalities.

If you know me at all, the answer is obvious.

No, not sex in a cage. The other obvious answer.

Zombies.

So I thought about what rule set to use. The old skills-based system from West End games (which was leveraged by the original Star Wars RPG) was awesome in my book, as the skill rank system was a logical parallel to actual learning. Getting a basic working knowledge of something was easy; becoming a guru was nearly impossible, and would only occur at the expense of other learning. But I didn’t feel like converting the old WEG rules to a modern setting, and I don’t even know where I could get the out of print materials.

I thought of the D20/OGL rule set used most notably by Dungeons and Dragons 3.5. I really dislike the skill system, as I feel that the level-based nature of the rule set is unrealistic. There is, however, a ton of D20 material, and I knew in the back of my head that most likely someone, somewhere, had done a D20 zombie conversion.

Enter Year of the Zombie, a D20 rule set written by Tim Willard from the UK. 179 pages of zombie scenarios, rules, history, and equipment details. It was a $12 PDF download, so I went for it. Even if the game mechanics suck, $12 is a good amount of money spent for entertainment and ideas for whatever campaign I design.

So, Lady Jaye’s on board, and Bond is willing to give a shot, so that leaves Cleopatra, who will most likely join us as well. Good enough to start a game :) The questions now are: what’s the best way to introduce my group to role playing, how should I schedule character drafting and story line introduction, etc.?

At this point, I am thinking that I’ll have everyone over for a character draft and explain general role playing concepts and mechanics to them. I’ll answer any questions they have; so far Bond has asked, “will it make me kill my parents and run away to the railroad tracks?” and Lady Jaye has asked, “so, how does the game end?” Both logical questions for new players :)

More importantly, do I have the chops to run a game? I haven’t acted as GM since high school. Plus, will the zombie setting get too boring after awhile? I guess we can burn that bridge when we come to it.

Stay tuned, I have a lot of bathroom reading to do to see if Mr. Willard’s system is worth the money I paid for it!

So, shaving one’s face is always a pain. More so when you have hair like mine that is curly and grows in multiple directions. Traditional, one-swipe shaving doesn’t work with me, nor does using Foamy or similar silliness. I can’t use my hands to apply shaving cream; I have to use a badger hair brush. I actually have to shave at least twice to get all the hair on my throat. It’s a big pain, both literally and figuratively.

That being said, I’m always on the hunt for a shaving cream that is thick enough to get my hair to orient in the same direction, but also thin enough that it doesn’t clog up my righteous Mach 3 razor. I also try to stay away from really astringent products, since I get razor burn very easily. A shaving oil or cream with a soothing ingredient is necessary. Oh yeah, smelling nice is a bonus.

One evening while accompanying Lady Jaye to Sephora, I found Anthony Logistics for Men’s Shave Cream.

Beguiled by the catchy product name, I turned the bottle over to look at the ingredients: eucalyptus oil, squalene, aloe vera gel, hops, and vitamins A, B5, C, D and E. Solid. At $15 for a 6 ounce bottle it wasn’t super cheap, but hey, it’s my face we’re talking about.

So, fast forward to the next morning, when I’m actually excited to shave to see what the Shave Cream is all about. I was fresh out of the shower and re-wet my face with very warm water. I filled my Tony the Tiger mug up with very warm water and dropped the razor in to pre-heat. I squeezed out a 1.5″ line of Shave Cream and applied it to my face with my badger hair shaving brush. I expected the line to only cover my face-face, but I wound up being able to apply it to my face and my throat. I was surprised to see how little of the Shave Cream I needed.

The Shave Cream smelled like mint. It smells really good, even to this day. I was a little nervous at how thinly the cream was going onto my face, but I had faith in Anthony and his knowledge of logistics.

Shaving was almost enjoyable! My razor slid over my skin as I did my opening “upside down” swath over my throat. My face was smooth sailing, but that is par for the course. The big challenge is on the return swath over my throat. Not a problem, thanks to the shaving cream. My razor didn’t clog up with shaving cream, either. My usual swish-swish got rid of hair and cream alike. Quite unlike my previous experience with shaving butter — which was absolutely divine to shave with except that I had to take a Q-tip to get all the shit out from my blades.

So, I’m fairly certain I bought the Shave Cream from Sephora’s in the spring of this year. I was still wearing my pullover fleece, which puts us probably in January or February. I still have the same bottle! It is almost out, but six months of shaving ease for $15 is a bargain. Now if they could just devise something that will shave for me ….

Good Points:

• Very smooth on the skin.
• A little goes a long way.
• The cream does what it says — the aloe and vitamins definitely reduced razor burn and cuts
• Minty fresh!

Nicks and Cuts:

• Price may turn some off at first, but six months for $15 = pretty good deal.

Anthony Logistics Shaving Cream, I lather you with:

Five out of five STFU mugs!

Well, after six and a half total hours in my Element today, I’m back in Richmond after spending the day up in Rockville. I had a really good time, although the day got off to a slow start. My legendary sense of direction was in full swing today,and I got a bit lost trying to take our pup to doggy day care. Coupled with an ATM stop and filling up, it was 10 am before I really got on the road. I thought I was making good time on the highway - doing well over 80 most of the way - until there was an accident with an 8 mile backup on I-95. As is usual, it was all cleared up by the time I passed the highway patrol cars, but even with the delay it only took me two and a half hours to get to work. If it weren’t for the accident I would have made the trip in less than two hours. On the way home tonight I made it all the way back in 2 hours flat, and we weren’t going nearly as fast as earlier today.

Anyway, enough about that. Work was pretty good - I gave my last employee from my previous position her review, and got my own raise and incentive bonus. I know Uncle Sam is going to get a big chunk, but a bonus is a bonus! The next challenge is to be responsible with my earnings. I am sorely tempted to build an AR 15 pistol or get some motorcycle gear, but instead I’ll feed the visa monster. Ah, what an exciting life I lead.

I had a really nice coffee break with Panda before heading out to The Captain’s house for gaming. I has missed the previous session, so it was over a month since I had played last. It was obvious. Between my excitement and over caffeination I was pretty rowdy tonight. I was rewarded with a few smirks, rolleyes,and giggles from . I hope a good time was had by all. The Captain and his family gave me a belated birthday gift - two games they picked out while at GenCon. I am fairly certain he won another gaming title this year, but he was too humble to mention it.

I really miss having a regular gaming group here in Richmond. It’s super sparse, or I’m not looking in the right places.

I do think my friend Bond would be interested in tabletop tactical gaming, especially the Star Wars tabletop game. I’m sure it’s a fucking hojillion dollars to field a squad though.

Yay, sleep! That’s where I’m a Viking!

Every once in awhile games come out that don’t fit nicely into our pre-existing genres like first person shooter, real time strategy, survival/horror, etc.

Alien Hominid is such a title. I guess it can be classified as a side scrolling brawler/shooter, ala Contra or Bad Dudes. The game can be played with only one player, but it’s best in co-op mode with one other player.

The storyline is simple, but that’s how I like them: (up to) two aliens are flying around earth when they are shot down by FBI agents. Your craft crash lands and is taken by the FBI for study. Your goal: to get your ship back and get the hell off the planet.

You are equipped with a default ranged weapon with unlimited ammunition. If people get close, you can hack them up with your sword. Switching from the blaster to the sword is done automagically based on how close your enemy is to you. Similar to Contra and other side scrollers, you can pick up power-ups that are different weapons. You have your usual freeze ray, shotgun, machine blaster, etc. You only have your power up for x number of shots, so you have to be a little bit more judicious than with your regular side arm.

The weapon selection is pretty generic, but there are two neat combat modes that you’ll like. One is you can jump on your friend (in co-op mode, obviously) and ride around on them. It’s cute and I always laugh when it happens, but I haven’t found much tactical use for it. The other neat combat mode is when you jump on top of an opponent. You can ride them, but more importantly, you can bite their head off. BOOYAH!

You can also ride on (and drive) most cars. There’s a wicked stage where you have to pilot a car through a crowded refinery while shooting at bad guys. There are also a few “escape” stages where you are in your car and the feds are trying to blow you up via jet packs or copters.

The artwork/feel of the game is fantastic. The hominids are adorable, and the mini-bosses and bosses are really ingenious. One of my favorite boss encounters involves a wood chipper, federal agents, and a super cannon/tank. Awesome. The fighting is graphic, but not realistic. When you cut enemies in half, they fall open and look like centercut ham. When you burn people up, they turn into Loony Tunes-style charcoal briquettes. Your allies, known affectionately as “Fat Kid” and “Russian Fat Kid” are endearingly rendered.

Gameplay is fast, fast, fast. Like any true side scroller, there isn’t a bunch of bullshit cut scenes in the middle of the action, or leveling up like an RPG. There are cut scenes at the end of major acts, but that’s okay since you will have to tend to your Nintendo thumb. Prepare to jack the fire button unlike any other game since you’ve played Galaga. In Alien Hominid, you jump, shoot, duck, and shoot. Constantly. Expect to die a lot. Bullets are generally slow moving, but there will be some enemies you just can’t seem to evade without dying. There’s a hunter-killer robot the FBI employs, and I think if you touch any part of it, even in mid-air, you die.

When you do run out of lives, don’t worry because you can get back in the action at the end of the scene, assuming your partner also lives. My tip is to stop the game and restart the chapter you’ve just been granted access to. This will allow both players to resume playing the game. I think you take a point total hit or something when you do this, but since Alien Hominid is a co-op game at its heart, who wants to play by themselves or go for the high score?

So, if you own a Sony PS2 or a Nintendo GameCube, I recommend that you pick this title up. Behemoth, the game manufacturer, was written by a few fellows who pitched many a video game but finally wanted to make their own.

Advanced Alien Technology:

• Hand-drawn graphics style will have you chuckling.
• Nothing beats a button masher. If you have some rage to get out, this is the game for you.
• Co-op play is much better than head-to-head.
• You get to bite people’s heads off!!!
• Support the “little guy” of game development houses.

Crash Landings:

• Expect to die. A lot.
• This game is pretty hard — if you’re not up on your side scrollers, you might get frustrated.
• I would have liked to see more varied weaponry, but how can you possibly complain when you can ride on top of a Yeti and punch Soviet-bloc soldiers out of machine gun towers???
• Nothing beats up your hand like a button masher. If you have an RSI or easily acquire Nintendo Thumb you might want to pass, or at least play at 15 minute intervals.

Meep maap moo meep meep, maw momp sneep:

Four out of five STFU mugs!

I saw on Ars today that Google has released their own instant messaging client called Google Talk. If you already have a gmail address, you have a Google Talk account.

The question on my mind is, “Why Bother?” Ken “Caesar” Fisher, the progenitor of Ars, had an interesting theory that turned out to be false: that Google Talk would save all correspondence back to your GMail storage account. That seems like a good idea, sort of. I don’t track my IM anyway, especially since I use IM to talk to people at work about work, but I could see how saving communications might be an appealing feature to some.

There is also talk of easy IP telephony, but I already have BroadVoice for that.

I’m going to hotlink Caesar’s mini review of Google Talk, and he shares some of my sentiments. Why go with Google Talk if you’re already a user of AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, or ICQ?

Let’s run down the short list of what Google Talk doesn’t have:

• Encryption. This is a biggie, as most of my AIM conversations are encrypted.
• Buddy icons. I know that sounds lame, but I like ‘em.
• File transfers. Most file transfers get killed at the firewall, but GT doesn’t even have the capability to do so.
• Group chatting.
• Other stuff, like emoticons, theme/skin support, and message history.

It also doesn’t have some of the bullshit that I wouldn’t want anyway, like a stock ticker, news summaries, games, etc. The memory footprint on the Windows-only client is around 11MB, instead of the 80MB that AIM requires. Then again, I have 2.5GB of onboard ram, so what do I care?

Since I haven’t been bothered enough to install GT, I won’t count this as a review. But unless you have some extra time to screw around with, I would recommend you pass on GT at this time.

In my quest for the perfect daily case for the PSP, I picked up the Nakiworld soft case for a penny from eBay. Yes, a penny. Shipping and “handling” was $8, so the case wound up being $8.01. Ha.

Anyway, here is the outside of the case:

And a shot of my PSP all snuggly inside:

The nice thing about the Nakiworld case is that it’s soft on the inside. It’s not a tight fit, so having the padded, soft service is a plus.

You can store some goodies in the top flap of the case, this seems like a good place for headphones and some memory sticks:

I took the PSP out for that shot.

This case is extremely boring, but it does get the job done. And it’s cheap. Way cheap; about as half as much as the aluminum case or the S3/Pelican case.

This will most likely be my daily use case, but seriously, it’s boring. It isn’t very drop-resistant, either. The top and bottom parts of the case are hard plastic, but that’s more to keep something from poking into the case IMO than actually protecting the PSP. I know I’m spoiled by my S3 case.

Good Points:

• Way cheap.
• The somewhat hard top and bottom protects against minor bumps and abrasions.
• Extra storage space for UMDs, memory sticks, etc is welcome.

Snoozer Points:

• Visually boring.
• Because there is no hard casing on the sides, this case isn’t very crush/pressure resistant. If you put too many accessories in the top section, it might press down onto the screen. Even with the padded divider, I’d be afraid of screen scratches.

Despite my dogging on it for being aesthetically uninspiring, I give the Nakiworld PSP Soft Case
Three and a half out of five STFU mugs

Fastloader 0.7, the latest ISO loader for the PSP, was released yesterday. The big reason to upgrade over previous versions: you don’t have to open and close the UMD bay any more to get the hack to work, and Fastloader now comes with its own UMD dumper. I upgraded and checked out Untold Legends, which seemed to work fine. Ridge Racers is now supposed to work as well; it didn’t previous to the 0.7 release. I haven’t been bothered to copy the ISO over yet.