g-mini style

Star Trek CCG -- surely, the best of times

While they didn’t directly speak of their own fate, Decipher, Inc. is ending the only trading card game they have left — Star Trek Customizable Card Game.

I’m by no means as “into” the game or the tournaments as many others, but most of the memories I carry are good ones.

I remember opening my first beautifully-scented packs way back in 1994. I remember getting all excited about pulling Worf and Yar in my first couple of packs. I remember pulling that ultra-rare Future Enterprise at Lone Star Comics in South Arlington. Heck, I remember just waiting for the first expansion set to hit the shelves.

I remember all those pick up games my group of college friends played between games of other card games that were springing up at the time. I remember that we had interesting house rules about certain cards like Borg Ship, but I can’t remember the specifics. I remember getting slapped by my roommate’s Static Warp Bubble far too often.

I also remember the three in-house playtests I attended — two for First Contact and one for The Trouble With Tribbles. I remember meeting some great, colorful individuals — Bill, Sandy, Mark, Kendrick, Tim, Evan, Dave, Brad, Todd, Kathy, and many others. I remember tournaments for both editions of Star Trek CCG — some big, some puny. I still try to keep in touch with some, but have lost touch with a few — Chris, Glenn, Al.

I remember that one night after a long First Contact playtest in Norfolk where I felt like Bill and Sandy were trying too hard to bolt onto a broken system just to introduce the Borg. I remember hastily sketching some card images and rules for things that would eerily resemble Second Edition years later. I remember trying to muster the courage to say, “Hey, I realize I’m just a chump you flew in, but given how long it’s taking to release First Contact, why don’t we rethink the whole game while we’re at it?” I never did. I never would have. I wish I did. I wish I planted a nut of something in their heads.

I even remember the day on the very old Message Boards when I picked my long-standing handle of “Mogh” after reading a comment from Evan suggesting character names that had not yet been plucked.

Most of the bad feelings are directed towards Decipher, but could I fault them for sinking with the rest of a sub-industry, if not an entire industry of gaming? I’m mad at them for throwing away very good talent (*cough* Evan, Brad *cough*) and allowing themselves to be distracted by kiddie gaming and leaning on the volunteer force to help them with a game they largely deemed a red-headed stepchild. But, hey, the walls were bound to fall off the castle sooner or later. The industry is both a deep niche and a pure luxury.

I hope to finally be able to contribute something substantial in the coming months. I have a few card ideas kicking around my head, and most of them happen to be “fixes” to existing Second Edition cards, so I’ll be submitting some Virtual Cards to the new Continuing Committee that is being erected in Ohio. So, my time with this game is not over yet.

(insert cliche Star Trek signoff here)

Video problems on the Wii

After noticing artifacting problems on my Nintendo Wii for a few months, I have decided to pursue the issue with Nintendo. Several Wii owners have exchanged their Wiis for free (frii?) over the past few months due to similar problems. It is a known hardware issue, likely related to the GPU.

The artifacting did not bother me until we started playing Mario Strikers Charged. Artifacts appear all over the soccer field, particularly where shading is rendered. Noticable artifacts can also be found in the Tennis game on Wii Sports.

I shall post updates on this post. 

The curse of wealth?

Is money the root of all evil?

Is Britney Spears’s behavior a product of her wealth, fame, and “Hollywood lifestyle,” or are those things simply enablers? Does the Hollywood lifestyle impart bad motherhood, callous disregard for others, stints of public nudity, and endless partying? How much influence does her wealth and fame have on her behavior?

When people speak of the “curse of the lottery,” what they are really describing is a person who no longer needs to humble himself to keep a job nor work hard to provide for others. In short, financial windfall is the equivalent of three shots of Goldschlager. Inhibitions are at least partially removed from the equation.

Those in the upper middle class have experiences some amount of windfall. These persons likely had a strictly middle class to low middle class upbringing and quite possibly coveted the material things available to those in higher income brackets. They did what they could to get into college and land the right kind of job to achieve independence and the ability to indulge themselves. Their “lottery” was doing just enough to get to that income bracket. Their conspicuous consumption is what drives a considerable chunk of our consumerist economy, which is a scary notion as this group is more sensitive to economic shift such as changes in tax policy and corporate downsizing.

The adage is that money is the root of all evil, but in fact, money is simply the means by which anything is possible in modern life. What we do with what we have, poor or rich, has more to do with who we are than how much wealth we possess and can generate. Each of us is living our own parable of Job, some more publicly than others. We should not look to Britney Spears and her ilk as objects of ridicule and snap judgment as much as we should use them as a means to judge ourselves. Wealth and fame come and go, but who we are lasts as long as we’re alive and then some.

I am also on Plaxo

How many personal spaces can I have?

The internet is a wide and varied place. I have written two Blogger blogs: “Some Blog I Wrote” which has been stale for a long time, and “Sandwichcraft” which has been stale for not as long. I have a Myspace page that makes me feel icky, a Facebook page I use to keep tabs on friends and family, and a LinkedIn page so I can feel all professional and fancy. I have pictures on Flickr, which wants money from me before it can be useful. Finally, I have been known to tweet a few times a week on Twitter.

For some reason, I find it necessary to write to my own tumblr space. Okay, my reason is that I think it has a nice, simple interface. It’s certainly simpler than Blogger, which was improved slightly after Google took over.

It’s about to get infrequently updated all in here!