So... it has been almost a month since my last update. This is unacceptable. My google calendar says that in this time I have watched the pirates movie, had dinner with Sara's lab mates, eaten with my grandparents at the Rathskeller, seen the dentist, donated blood, and attended a farewell dinner for Terry's lovely girlfriend Alex.

Last weekend I attended my cousin's wedding in scenic Tipton Indiana. My beautiful girlfriend Sara joined me for this festive family gathering. It is strange to think that one third of my generation is married now.

GenCon is coming up fast. I depart one week from tomorrow. Logistics are being negotiated. Work currently consists of writing unit tests and documentation that I would have written earlier if the schedule were not so tight.

Also, I am so emo now. My optometrist did not like it when I answered his question about how many hours per day I spent in front of a computer screen with "All of them". So now I have computer reading glasses to reduce the strain on my eyes.

Arxan is running dark nowadays because the research park is having some difficulty with their AC units during the current heat wave. Keeping the lights off makes things a bit cooler.

I have been listening to a lot of gaming podcasts in the run up to GenCon. As such I have compiled a list of games to check out this weekend.

• Zygote Games : Bone Wars
• Contested Ground Studios : ColdCity
• 1001 Nights by Meg Baker
• SHOCK: Social Science Fiction by Josh Newman
• Dogs in the Vineyard by Vincent Baker
• Mecha Ton by Vincent Baker
• The Shab-al-Hiri Roach by Jason Morningstar
• Margaret Weis Productions : Serenity RPG
• Death's Door by James Brown
• Atlas Games : Pieces of Eight
• Mexican Standoff by Tim Kleinert

I have a hard time conveying how geeky yet somehow awesome GenCon is. The pictures capture some of the sheer randomness of the event. You are likely to run into just about anything and soon you become completely inured to the strangeness. Then you can relax and have a good time playing strange games with strange people.

I think that it is fair to say that the independent RPGs produced by the guys and gals at The Forge booth were the most fun for our group this year. Castor played in a great game of The Shab-al-Hiri Roach and quickly became enamored of it. I snatched copies of Bone Wars and Mechaton: Giant Fighty Robots early and they are both great games. Lehmann discovered Capes later in the convention, and seems quite fond of it. Sara and I also demoed 1001 Nights with Meg Baker. The demo was too short to get a proper sense of it, but it looks like it has a lot of potential.

Other games from proper game studios were also enjoyed including Four Colors al Fresco, GURPS, Champions, and WEGS.

The board game scene seemed to have cooled down a great deal this year after being very active for several years. I suppose the folks at Mayfair and Z-Man have to sleep some time.

The weekend of the 19th we had Sara's little sister as a house guest. Sara took her out for a makeover before her first day of highschool. Sara's father also treated us to lunch at Scotty's. We made a trip to wolf park as well.

This weekend we had spicy hot stirfry of death at Terry's place with a number of people from work and grad school. Sara was kind enough to provide bananas foster for desert. Terry was a generous and thoughtful host as always. The event was a unmitigated success.

Aside from that this weekend was largely uneventful. I did work up the energy to make potato soup on Sunday. We have begun making weekly menus in an effort to eat out less and thus constrain spending.

Recently my friends and family have had issues with anonymous trolls in their livejournal comments. It is a fairly well known fact that trolls are cowardly little sociopaths who spend most of their pathetic and meaningless lives hiding in the shadows of anonymity. Most of them are terrified of the prospect of being discovered. A good way to begin the hunt for such a person is to know their IP address. They certainly don't want to publicize this piece of data to the people they are harassing. As a public service I offer the livejournal logging IP addresses HOWTO.

1. Click on "Manage". I know a whole menu appears under it when you hover your mouse over it, but you need to click the word "Manage".
2. Click on "Comment Settings".
3. Grab that drop down box and select "Everyone".
4. Save your changes.
5. Optional: In this menu you can also choose to screen comments. This means that you get to read comments before they appear in your LJ and decide if they are OK. This is likely to annoy people a bit because it slows down communication when people have to wait on you to OK things.
6. Optional: You can also change your journal such that ONLY your friends can comment, or no one can comment. This is a bit heavy handed, but if you do it for a week or two most trolls will become bored and leave.

Of course if you use one or both of the optional steps you will need to save your changes again. Happy troll hunting everyone!

We have been watching this weed grow in the back yard all summer. It has grown to an amazing height (considering that I am about 6'4''). Recently my lovely and talented girlfriend Sara with no 'h' became concerned that it might be Giant Hogweed so she did a little detective work.

With the help of Glenn Nice she was able to determine that it is in fact Tall Blue Lettuce (Lactuca biennis). It is useless, but harmless. More of Sara's photos of the plant here.