Games make you better

This seems a much better way to summarize my PAX experiences:

 

• Jane McGonigal’s keynote about how games make you better, teaching us such wonderful games as Chicken Soccer Bowling

Pretty awesome slide

• Jerry’s reaction to “Irn Bru”, a Scottish beverage given as a gift
• Getting free candy from some other guy wearing a Doctor Who scarf since I was wearing mine
• Catching Jane McGonigal to sign her book literally as she was walking out for the airport
• Wanting to kill the 30 people in front of us in the line during Action Castle since they couldn’t handle killing the damn guard
• Sitting through the boring part of the Naughty Dog panel to see Nolan North doing improv during voice recording for Uncharted 3 and getting a free t-shirt and coupon for DLC
• Witnessing the theatrically epic Protomen for the first time
• Almost accidentally stealing a $50 hard drive from JoCo when they sent me away before my credit card cleared (Don’t worry, they called me back when I was waiting for Paul & Storm.  JoCo: “I’m afraid I’m going to have to take you into custody.”)
• Learning to play Last Night on Earth, a cool board game about a zombie attack
• Jerry yelling “Michael!” when he started drawing the female version of the Dickwolf at a fan’s request
• Replacing the normal Jenga tower that was to be round 3 of the Omegathon with huge blocks so the tower was about 3 feet tall when first built.

"What is this? These are Omeganauts! They need OMEGA-BLOCKS!"

• Video Game Orchestra’s awesome performance, and the main guitarist starting to play “Freebird” when someone yelled (don’t worry, only played the opening riff)
• Paul of Paul & Storm screwing up during “Nun Fight” and asking for 3500 people to boo him
• JoCo starting to play “Jesse’s Girl” during his encore when someone yelled it, and Paul & Storm sprinting onstage to help him sing it
• Seeing JoCo play “Mr. Fancy Pants” for the first time live with his crazy recording machine
• Cheering JoCo as he drank water, so he invented a tagline for it “Water: Have you had it?”
• Actually getting to play on the same side of the screen as my boyfriend during our Dungeon Delve
• Playing several board and card games I have played before, but enjoying teaching them to new people
• And finally, the awesome Gabe & Tycho cosplayers: (Jerry’s comment about them was that “Gabe’s hair is supposed to be impossible, but she did it!”)

 

Television, television

A few months ago, my boyfriend, Rob, and I were forced to come up with a system with regards to television.  We each simply had too many shows that the other had not seen, which we found unacceptable.  We agreed to watch one season of one of his shows, and then one season of mine, alternating until we ran out of seasons.  This is not likely to happen for some time.  He plans to show me all of Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Dead Like Me, and Fringe.  I am working on showing him Doctor Who, Community, Buffy, and Angel.  It’s going to take awhile.

This presents me with the opportunity, though, of addressing my favorite geek television shows.  And so they are as follows:

Firefly

I could not begin this list with anything else.  Yes, it took me a long time to actually getting around to watching this show about three years ago.  Most of the reason for that is the pilot episode being an hour and a half was always daunting.  My thought process was always, “Well, I could start watching Firefly…but I don’t feel like sitting down to watch a full movie right now.”  Finally my friend Nick forced me through it.  And I am so glad he did.  It is a truly spectacular show that I (along with everyone else who has seen it) wish had never been cancelled.  Even though it is thought of as a “nerd” show that takes place on a spaceship, it really isn’t.  Once you’ve seen it, you realize it could take place anywhere.  Joss Whedon just decided to put it in space.  If you have not had the pleasure, take a little bit of time to check this show out.  It’s only 14 episodes, plus the movie Serenity, and it is well worth it.

Doctor Who

I’ve talked about it on here before, so I’ll keep this brief.  This show is incredible.  It has wonderfully written characters and storylines, as well as keeping a balance between fun comedy and intense drama.  It’s very easy to drop into, as most episodes are fairly self-contained.  One of my favorite things about it is that it can very easily switch between a futuristic alien spaceship and a period piece in Shakespeare’s London.  Ah, the beauty of time travel.

The Big Bang Theory

I’m still trying to figure out why people who aren’t nerds like this show so much.  My friends and I at school loved it because we know real people like all the characters.  And obviously we love the jokes about physics, engineering, video games, and scientists.  It’s a fun show if you’re a nerd because they actually get it right.  Most movies and shows portray nerdy scientists to the extreme stereotypes.  This show does that, too, but they take the time to make accurate physics and comic book jokes, which is very refreshing when you’re a socially-functional geek like me.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel

Okay, I know there are a lot of people who strongly dislike these shows along with the die-hard fans.  So I will start by saying I don’t care.  I don’t care when it’s campy, or the dialogue is unrealistically witty, or the plot gets ridiculously convoluted.  It is an enjoyable show with engaging characters that I fell in love with.  Yes, season 4 was a bit of a stumble with that whole Riley mess, but it had some incredible episodes (including “Hush,” which had only 5 or 10 minutes of dialogue in the whole episode).  And yes, the last two seasons of Buffy got incredibly ludicrous with some of the plot points, but I love it.

For now, that’s it.  I also love other shows that I wouldn’t consider “nerdy,” like How I Met Your Mother and Community.  I would have included Lost in the list, but that show started losing it after Season 2, in my opinion.  Can I just put seasons 1 and 2 on the list?  Because they’re great.

So far I’m enjoying Stargate SG-1 and Battlestar Galactica, but since I’m only a season into each one, I cannot conclusively give an opinion, as they could both go the Lost route and change my mind.  Oh, and no joke, I cannot watch BSG without thinking of Jim making fun of Dwight on The Office.

The Return

I promise I’m working on a full post right now.  I made myself make a list of things to write about so I can get back into this, at least for a while.  In the meantime, check out this awesome blog I found:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com

It’s absolutely hysterical and I love the illustrations.  In particular, I would recommend this post, this one, and this one.  Really anything in that “Best of” column on the right side.  And if you enjoy those, many of her other posts are just as awesome.

I’ll post again in the next few days, promise.

Comfort is key

I realize I’ve been the worst blogger ever.  Life is busy, and I haven’t had any specific inspirations.  Now I do.  I apologize.

Today, I received the most comfortable investment I have ever made: a Sumo bean bag chair.

Sumolounge.com makes some incredible products.  They have been recommended by many of the webcomics I read, and I have had the joy of experiencing one of their cheapest options (the Omni pillow) in massive piles at two PAX shows.  When I got my job (with my shiny grown-up salary) and my new apartment, I decided I would get one.  Well, then I had my car accident and lots of other random expenses, and it was shoved to the side.  For some reason, over Thanksgiving, I decided it was time to order one.

I decided to go with the new Sumo Sway Couple.  The new Sway chairs look more like actual furniture than a giant bean bag, as they have a little more shape.  I also went with a dark red corduroy to match the red accent wall in my living room.

When I got home from work today, I went to the main office of my apartment complex to pick up the giant box that had been delivered while I was at work.  Getting that thing from the office to my apartment was ridiculous.  It wouldn’t fit in my car, so I had to carefully transport it over to my building on top of the trunk.  There was a UPS guy delivering stuff who took pity on me and helped me get it to the front door.  Thankfully, this apartment actually has an elevator.  Seriously, look at the size of this thing:

 

You should have seen me dragging it down the hall

Then came actually getting it out of there.  It was fairly compacted in the box, and I had to be very careful cutting open the box and plastic bag so as not to slice into the chair.  I’m pretty bad about that kind of thing.

But because it is simply a bean bag chair, no setting up was required.  I set it where it needed to be and sat down.

Best. Chair. Ever.

This is seriously one of the most comfortable things ever.  I am in love with it.  I very much doubt I will be using my couch ever again.  It’s pretty much just for visitors now.  And because I went with the Couple size instead of the Single size, there’s even room to put stuff on either side of me.  Love.

Oh!  And it even has this cool pocket on the side where I can put stuff!  That was one thing I was not expecting.

I highly recommend apprehending one.

Games are important. Games matter.

I promise my entry about this PAX won’t be as long as the last one.  I’ll only post the highlights:

• Playing Zombie Dice and Fluxx with all the people on my delayed flight to Seattle on our way to PAX
• Enjoying Mahi fish & chips, awesome fries, a Double Bastard, and a Scotch my first night in Seattle
• Getting fresh cashew brittle at See’s Candy
• Playing a bunch of new and old board games with fun people
• Picking up D&D adventures in the Dungeon Delve
• Winning a free PC game (The Saboteur) from the Intel booth
• Playing The Kids Aren’t Alright onstage in Rock Band 3 as the audience got really into singing along (and I dropped my drumstick at one point mid-song)
• Meeting random guys in line Saturday morning from the Chicago area who invited me to join them for D&D back home
• Jerry deciding on David Tennant as his Doctor when I asked at the Make-A-Strip panel
• Singing “and now I’m home” at the end of Frogger! The Musical at the Paul & Storm concert with 2500 people
• Paul to Wil Wheaton on stage: “Shut up, Wesley.”
• Being a zombie with the crowd singing Re: Your Brains at the end of JoCo’s set
• Losing track of how many people commented on my scarf
• Checking out a ton of amazing new games in the Expo Hall, including Dragon Age II, Portal 2, Kirby’s Epic Yarn, new Donkey Kong Country, new Assassin’s Creed, Birth by Sleep, Final Fantasy XIV, Infamous 2, Epic Mickey, Tron, and Swarm
• At my book signing, Jerry remembering me from the panel by my scarf, talking briefly about The Waters of Mars special toward the end of David Tennant’s tenure as the Doctor, then calling to me as I walked away “Also, Girl in the Fireplace!” To which I yelled back “Yes!  Amazing episode!”  Then having to explain to the Enforcer who gave me a weird look, “Doctor Who.”
• The guy who owned the Delorean on display stopping me and asking if he could take a picture of me and my scarf with his car
• Playing the ridiculous Mouse Guard with Gallia and friends Sunday evening
• Getting Ivar’s fish & chips at the airport before my flight after an epic long weekend

Yay scarf! Oh, and Mike and Jerry, too.

Overall, this weekend was incredible.  I’ve posted all my pictures here (and 2 videos!) if you’re interested.

Re: Your Brains – Jonathan Coulton

Bow ties are cool

I’m slightly in awe.  Three weeks later, the knitting is done.  I think I’ll take a break from the endless knitting I’ve been doing, but then I just have to weave in all those yarn ends and make some tassels for the ends.

I didn't unroll it for a while before I finished. This was a bit of a shock.

Final length before stretching: 8'6"

I kind of destroyed my needles. They used to be solid purple, but I wore off the coating.

Looks like it’ll be coming with me to Seattle after all.

Me? I’m the Doctor

I’ve been meaning to post an update of the scarf, but I didn’t have much else to write about.  So I guess I’ll just write more about Doctor Who to go with it.

First of all, look how beautiful:

Yeah, there's going to be a lot of weaving those ends.

I’ve been knitting for hours straight when I get home from work, and it has been insane.  I started last Tuesday shortly after I posted about the yarn.  In that time, I’ve done 474 rows of 60 stitches, and I’m nearly halfway done.  I’m estimating right now it’ll be about 8 ft when I’m done, before stretching and tassels.  I think I’m knitting so much because I’m so excited for it to be done.  Once it got to be a substantial length and started really looking like a scarf, I was so pleased with how much I had done and how great it looked that I just kept going.

That and the fact that I’ve been watching Doctor Who nonstop while working.  Seriously, this is quickly becoming one of my favorite shows.  Ever.  David Tennant is truly a brilliant Doctor, but the other characters are fantastic.  I literally cried when I watched the Season 2 finale last night when one of my favorite characters left the show.  Netflix instant streaming is a miracle for this stuff.  The first four seasons are up on there (well, the first four new ones), and considering I’m going through these episodes at 6-8 in one sitting, I couldn’t handle having to wait for a new disc every 4 episodes.  I’ll just have to deal with it for some of the older ones that aren’t online yet.

I won’t go on and on about everything I love about it, but I highly, highly recommend checking it out.  The first season definitely has some cheesy special effects because they were just starting up and didn’t seem to have much of a budget, but if you can look past that, the characters and storylines are amazing.  The Doctor technically continues on from the old series that ended in 1989, but they make a good transition at Series 1 in 2005 that you can easily start watching then and understand what’s going on.

Plus it doesn’t hurt that David Tennant is adorable.

You never forget your first Doctor

Today, I am very excited.  Today, I embark on a quest I have been meaning to do for a few months now.

A few months ago, I finally got around to actually watching Dr. Who.  I had seen a few episodes here and there, but I never sat down and watched them all.  My favorite really has to be David Tennant, because he’s amazing and he’s a spectacular Shakespearean actor as well.  But the most recent Doctor, Matt Smith, is doing pretty well so far.  I’m still working on the really old ones now, and it has been so much fun.

Now, this all leads to my new project: the scarf.  The scarf is one of the most iconic items related to Doctor Who.  It was created for Tom Baker, the fourth Doctor, and was really only ever worn by him, despite its fame.  It is about a foot wide, comprises of seven different colored stripes, and hangs to the floor when wrapped around Tom’s neck.

I’ve decided I’d like one.

Using this awesome site for yarn suggestions and patterns, I ordered 11 skeins of yarn a few days ago from various sites, and all of them have arrived as of this afternoon.

It’s going to take a while.  It’s not exactly a complicated project, it’s just huge.  The original plan was that I’d like to have it finished for PAX in Seattle September 3, but I doubt that’s going to happen.  I’m a somewhat slow knitter, and I can get bored of it quickly.  I usually just knit while I watch TV, so we’ll see how far I can get.  I’ll post updates along with future entries to show my progress.

Excited!

The Guild – Game On

…But you’re a girl

I actually started writing this weeks ago, but life has been very crazy lately.  Short version: first accident ever, my fault, I was fine, car was not.  I got the awesome experience of buying a new (used) car all by myself, renting a car when I’m under 25, and next week, I’ve got a court date.  So yeah, blogging got shoved aside.  Anyway…

I really didn’t think I’d write about this.  At least not until I had completely run out of ideas.  For some reason, though, a commercial I saw the other day inspired me.

Being a female engineer, or any kind of scientist for that matter, is something I’ve had to deal with for a while now.  Ever since I was little, I was always better at math than Language Arts or social studies.  As I got older, I was proud of the fact that I was a rarity among most girls.  Even though I went to a “Magnet” Math & Science high school, most of the girls in my year in the program were good at those subjects, but didn’t particularly like them.  I was one of the few to go to an engineering college.

My sister made a comment a while back about reasons for choosing OB/Gyn over orthopedic surgery.  She mentioned orthopedics was very much a “boys’ club” and there was a lot of arrogance among them.  I laughed a little, as the arrogance issue is a bit lower with the engineers I associate with, but I am so used to being in the “boys’ club.”  By the end of my freshman year of college, I realized the male-to-female ratio of my friends was steadily growing larger until my last year, when I only had two good female friends.

My reactions aren't nearly as exciting as this girl's seem to be. No explosions for me.

Don’t get me wrong: I love my career choice.  I would have been miserable if I had done most anything else.  That being said, there are a lot of things that kind of suck about being a female scientist.

1. No one has any idea what I do. When I tell people I’m a research chemist at a rubber company that makes aerosol and pharmaceutical gaskets, or that I have a chemical engineering degree, 90% of the responses are “Oh, that sounds hard.” or “Cool.  So….what do you do?”  Sometimes it’s fun to freak people out, but on average, it gets old.  I like what I do, and I think it’s really interesting.  It’s just nice when I find someone that gets it, too.

2. Not having a “normal” job. Kind of relates to the first one, but I’m not exactly doing what a lot of people would expect.  I recall many yearbook entries from high school like “You’ll change the world!  I know it!”  And now I’m spending my days fixing problems in rubber compounding recipes to make those tiny black rubber circles in all your aerosol cans and trigger pumps (among other things).  Not the most glamorous job for a 23-year-old single girl living in the Chicago suburbs.

3. Dressing for work is a bitch. You want to wear nice clothes and look professional, but you’re also going to be working with materials and equipment that could ruin those clothes in a second.  Dressing to look good while making sure you don’t care if your clothes are destroyed and you’ll be safe in a lab is very, very difficult.  Also, determining the female equivalent to what all of your male coworkers are wearing can be hard as well.  I’ve mostly been going with khaki pants, brown boots, and a polo shirt lately.  Not much variation there.

4. So stereotypical, but it can be hard to be taken seriously. I know, this is the big complaint from female science-people, and females in general.  But being a young, fresh-out-of-school engineer that’s a girl doesn’t gain a lot of credibility.  I’m the youngest person at my company by about 15 years.  Most of them have been doing this forever.  And I’m a girl telling asking them to be more diligent and technical in their data logging.  A lot of them really don’t want to listen to what I’ve got to say unless my boss approves (which he usually does, thankfully).

5. Being “the novelty.” On the other side, being a girl gets you treated as a novelty for a long time.  I get it double right now since I’m the first new hire at my company in about 2 years, and like 4 years before that one.  It’s almost fun at first with everyone being really nice and friendly, but it can get annoying after a while.

There were two reasons I was inspired to write this.  First, I saw a commercial for something like arthritis treatment with a woman saying she could “do what she loves everyday,” which happened to be some kind of fashion design.  I stopped and realized that every single one of those commercials has some woman doing some “girly” profession, and it got to me.  There’s that one organization that’s all about getting young girls into math and sciences now so we can balance that field a bit when they get older, but everyday life isn’t doing much to help with that.  The other was a friend of mine writing a blog entry about dressing professionally for the summer, which I chuckled at a bit as I’ve been going crazy for the last two months trying to bring some variation to my work wardrobe.

In all seriousness, this stuff usually doesn’t bother me much.  Every once in a while, though, it’ll all hit me at once.

No Doubt – Just a Girl

And now I’m home…

So I mentioned two posts ago that I wanted to write about game stores.  The return to blogging and the start of my new job postponed that a bit, but now seemed like a good time.

Last Thursday night, I endeavored to the local game store (only like 2 miles away!) to see if there were any people to play board games with.  I talked about said “nerd games” in a previous post, and I really miss playing them since I moved away from all my friends.  I was fully aware that many of the people that convene weekly (or more often than that) at these games stores can be a little…odd.  This store is actually really cool, though, as I went in a few times the past few weeks to check it out.  I was very nervous going in, since I have only ever played games with people I was already friends with.  It turned out to be very relaxed and welcoming, with only a small portion of creepy old guys (well, smaller than expected).  Also, one of my friends had a similar experience when she started playing at a new game store, and she assured me that being 1) cool and 2) female would probably end up encouraging some cooler people to attend weekly as well.

I was immediately welcomed into a game of Vasco de Gama, which I had never heard of, and I had a blast.  Three of the four of us had never played, so we were all learning.  I did decently well, which I usually don’t the first time through these games.  We then played two quick games of Jungle Speed, which was pretty ridiculous, and ventured on to Pandemic.  I’ve been meaning to play Pandemic for a long time now, I just never got around to it.  I’ve only heard that it’s extremely hard to win (it’s a cooperative game, everyone loses or wins together), so I was pretty excited.  We got so close to winning, but didn’t quite make it.

Still, it was insanely nice to get back out and have some fun with people again.  In the past two weeks, I’ve been downtown twice to see a friend from undergrad who is going to medical school in Chicago, but it was a very different experience.  I needed to be a nerd again.  Work only allows for so much nerdiness, since most of my coworkers are older and not scientists or engineers.  At one point during the evening, I looked around and noticed that in a big gaming room of about 25-30 people, I was the only girl.  I was probably one of the least nerdy people there, so I got to just have fun.

No, these are not people I really see myself befriending further than playing games every week or so.  But it still feels nice to know I have my own little geek haven whenever I let it build up for too long.

Paul & Storm – Frogger! The Frogger Musical