Sunday, September 21, 2014

What Are the Odds?


Fridaynight was board game night.  First up was Chariotteer (aka Formula I) run by Curt.  Curt (the bastard) drugged my horses which hobbled my whole race.  It went better than it should have as two teams (Jeremy and Stacey) flipped and crashed out so I finished a close third having lost a bid for first at the post.

For the second game I trotted out Terry Pratchett's the Witches  which was good silly fun.  Link to a review

The box notes that you don't need to know the Discworld series to play the game, and test results show this is this case.  Yep, in a random survey of 4 long time gamers we batted 0/4 on Pratchett.  I wish I knew something about probability so I could work out the odds of that!  I knew it was an odd event when Sylvain asked "why do I know the name Terry Pratchett?".

Anyway for those of you who don't know, Mr Pratchett is the best selling UK writer, the top selling non-US bases writer in the USA and he's bloody good!

I love his books because:

  • He's bloody funny and a damn good read.
  • He has a better way with words than most others and I'm a lover of puns.
  • He creates a better thought out world and characters than most "serious" fantasy writers.
  • His books have some very biting no wicked social criticism of religion, politics, money, class and other classic comedy topics.
  • He writes about things that relate to what I do for a living (death, money, a academics etc).
  • He's bloody funny and a damn good read.
 So if you are one a of few who haven't done so,go read yourself some Pratchett.  I recommend Mort or Going Postal.

Not Dead Yet


It's been a while since I've posted mostly because of a severe case of real life that came up unexpectedly.  August was a blur that saw us dealing first with a kid who came had to give up her summer job on the Atlantic Coast having come down with mono, and then dealing with her toxic roommate situation for the fall college term.  In the end SHMBO and Iflew out to Halifax, backed up one flat, moved  the contents into storage,found a new flat and moved the stuff in.  I had to fly back in the 3rd so that I could teach at 8:30 am on the 4th!  My wife stayed on a week and a half to sort out legal (seriously) issues from the ex-roomie.

Any way all seems settled now and we all seem to have survived.  My daughter's uni term seems to be going well and my students haven't murdered me yet.  

I have had a chance to play a couple of games in September.  Given the wack jobs and stress I dealt in with in August a pleasant evening with sane company would be just the ticket.  Since that wasn't available I opted for gaming with Curt, Sylvain et al.  Curt ran an excellent Chainof Command SCW game featuring a downed Stuka and then it was board game night is week. Next week I'm aiming for doing El Cid.