Judge me by my beard, do you?

My beard has begun to sprout an annual solstice celebration conifer. That's right. It is topped with Yoda sporting a light saber.

Looking beardy at my wife's Aunt's place.

Today was another busy holiday day... visited with friends from high school who were in for the weekend (babies!) and then went to my in-laws thanksgiving at the wife's aunt's place for more turkey and stuffing. I'm going to be fat. Late-night board games and beverages. Good times.

It's red alright.

So it's a bit later than I thought it would be. But it is. I was trying to get the donation wagon rolling tonight, so we'll have to see what transpires after this evening.

The carefree face of a non-shopper

A holiday for many here in the States, Black Friday was just another Friday for me. There was no race this week, though, because of the festivities.

I am horribly amused by retailers' and customers' adoption of the term Black Friday. In the '90s, I worked tech support for retail systems, and that was my first exposure to the term (when used to describe the day after Thanksgiving). At the time, it had a very negative connotation, used as it was by retail workers (and their support network) to describe the hardest day of the year.

Wikipedia tells me that the origin of the term traces back to 1966 when a Philadelphia newspaper reported that that's how the local police force referred to the day due to the traffic problems it entailed.

That marketeers have turned it into a positive thing and consumers have reacted favorably boggles my imagination.

In related news, you would have to actually pay me to shop on the day after Thanksgiving. Factor in the cost of your time, add a little for the sheer frustration of it, and there's no deal available that could make it worthwhile. So, you know, major kudos to Jeffrey for doing what had to be done in the face of XBox failure. You're more man than I, and your beard is a testament to it.

Did I already do the "Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin" yet? If not, I'm doing it now. If so... I'm doing it again.

I went to 2 shops today (despite my incredulity toward Jeffrey doing the same). However, the first I just drove by to see what it was like. Best Buy was crowded, but it did not look like I would have been maced, trampled, or beaten with a 32" HDTV if I'd have ventured inside.

The second store I went to was a hardware store, to get a cable TV splitter. I asked if they had opened at midnight, but the guy behind the counter was too bored to come up with a good answer.

Turn your head and cough.

Happy Evacuation Day, everyone.

It probably doesn't mean what you think it means.

Then again, maybe it does.

What do you think it means?

It's harder than it looks!

Today I made an attempt at a "cat-beard" as my fellow beardlings have attempted before me. Of course, believing it to be the simplest task imaginable, next to well... actually growing a beard! However wrangling said cat and it get him near my face proved a more difficult task than I ever imagined. The attached photo is the best I could do. So kudos men, I have a new found respect for kitty facial hair.

"Inspector Frank Butterman: Your predecessor assumed rural policing was easy. Ended up having a nervous breakdown, and Sergeant Popwell was an exceptional officer. Truly exceptional. But he had one thing you haven't got.

Nicholas Angel: What's that, sir?

Inspector Frank Butterman: [jovially] A GREAT BIG BUSHY BEARD!"

"Nicholas Angel: I chased a suspect from the scene! Innocent people don't run!

Sergeant Tony Fisher: Maybe it was our ol' friend the Cactus Thief?

PC Doris Thatcher: Oh yeah, he was a prickly customer, weren't he? Ha ha!

Nicholas Angel: AM I GOING COMPLETELY MAD?!"

- Hot Fuzz, 2007

I have only one question for you, Myrtillocactus geometrizans forma cristata. Which is more prickly - you or I? I think it me, as I am growing for boobs, and it is a greater cause than your cactusing.

What? You disagree?! Fine, then. It's the evil eye for you. So, there.

Descriptor of the day: submental pruritic reassertion

Somebody fade me

Some days you can produce easily, some days it takes a little more effort. Today is in the latter category.

Day Twenty-Three's game was Bridge, or more specifically Contract Bridge. Bridge is one of many trick-taking games played with the standard 52-card deck, and is specifically descended from the game Whist. Whist has the basic concepts of partnership play, trump suit (determined by the last card dealt), and exceeding 6 tricks to score points. Biritch or Russian Whist was a variant of this where the dealer would declare ("biritch" is Russian for herald or caller) trump or no-trump, plus added some new scoring rules. Auction Bridge appears in the early 20th Century, and introduces the notion of bidding on the ability to name the trump suit. Finally Harold Stanley Vanderbilt, around 1925, added further scoring rules that made meeting contracts more competitive, and modern contract bridge was created.

This is opposed to full-contact bridge, which is only played in the northern reaches of Canada and Siberia. No pads, either.

Hmmmm...

Today I made a D&D character...manually.

I used to do this back in the 3e days and it would take me a full day of work to craft the PC, sort through the feats, choose just the right spells, etc.

Then with 4e we got the Character Builder. And I got soft. I can throw together a PC in under an hour of ANY level and they are awesome.

Tomorrow is game night and for unique situations I find myself having to make a PC manually again. And so I have. It took me all day, again. Some of that probably because I have inputting things manually on my computer rather than using paper/pencil so that at the game tomorrow I'll get to play from the iPad. This means I painstakingly entered every single power by hand.

Man, that sucks.

And thus, I haven't made a PC without the Character Builder in ages. In fact, a Play-By-Email Pathfinder game I am in/used to be in has been waiting for me to piece together shadow-based cleric for literally months now. And given the time it takes to make these PCs and the lack of said time that I have in my life anymore, I just have not been able to motivate myself to get this PC made.

So I guess I'm too lazy to play games with extensive options and character creation rules without electronic aid. It's a development that's come with old age, I guess. But as I kept doing this thing all day I kept thinking to myself, "what could I have accomplished with this time if I could have used the character builder?".

Such is the sacrifice I make for my geekdom, I guess.

Manly Points:

Chris - 70

Beard A Non - 110

Drew - 185

Wesley - 268 (+1 for the plane of food)

Bob - 266

Duane - 130

Brian - 229 (+1 for a freaking laser beam)

Cmaaarr - 274

Fred - 99

Jeffrey - 275 (+1 because technical frustration is a manly pursuit)

Kris - 255

Michael - 86

Pete - 248

Brian E - 115

A Dam - 239

Jim - 257

Wannes - 169

Chooch - 220

Jason - 197 (+2 nothing more manly than hair done by little girls)

Hey, that rhymes

Today I took to repairing my xbox by transferring data from old to new. It started with a trip to Gamestop and turned into a small circus. After about an hour of chat troubleshooting and trying several iterations of trying to get the darn thing to work, I was preparing myself to have a Darth Vader-esque "Noooo!" as the title of today's post. Because out of everything that could possibly be causing my new xbox to not see the old hard drive, the least likely after a hardware failure is the brand new cable. Years of gaming flashed before my eyes. Pictures of all the unlockables being relocked. Countless hours of gaming vanished. I clung to a hair thin shred of hope that the cable was the issue, and...(as you may have guessed already) it was.

So the moral of the story? Nothing good really ever comes from Gamestop except the return policy.

Time and tide melt$ the $nowman.

So, I'm not really sure how this happened. I think I was reading an interview on my phone, and my wife used the Ninja hairdressing skills she's developed to deal with three squirming, screaming girls to literally mess with my head.

Still, the beard sets in off nicely, don't you think?

The Orange Room - playing video games.

Today I played video games, did some stuff around the house, and generally was lazy. Took my wife out for a drink. It was a lovely Friday.

Any ways, the key to this plan is the giant laser. It was invented by the noted Cambridge physicist Dr. Parsons. Therefore, we shall call it the Alan Parsons Project.

A new tradition has emerged thanks to the influence of the beard. The firing of the Thanksgiving Laser! See how it illuminates my beard. My beard has such strength that is actually protected me from the powerful energy of the laser. You might not be so lucky but I will consider sparing you if you donate to my beard growth.

You see, I've turned the moon into what I like to call a "Death Star". - Dr. Evil

Snnzzz

Happy Thanksgiving, all. I must be brief for I have had a very long, but productive, happy, and satisfying day.

Stuffed.

The title of my post sums up my day. Filled with win and awesome, and a smack-down of fail. After being used for many years, and going through a refurb already, my xbox failed on Turkey day. Red ring of Deathed. I blame no one for it's fail other than Microsoft...however. I think there should be an unwritten rule that you should never joke about the Red Ring of Death. A relative of mine was in town for the holiday and when my system froze earlier in the day, he jokingly said "uuuup...red ring of death." and about 3 hours later, that joke was a cold reality.

I did find 4 shreds of win out of the timing though. 1: I was quickly out of hard space and needed room stat. 2: the 250 GB drives are out. 3: there was a midnight sale at best buy for said 250 GB 360 that included Halo Reach and Fable III for $199.00. 4: I was already up and had the energy to drive over there.

What was uncool is that I went across the street from Best Buy to the hell hole called Gamestop (the only open one in my immediate area at 12 AM) to get the data transfer cable, and they were out of them. I will likely rise early tomorrow and go to the one nearer my home and start the healing process.

* The Escaped Convict Beard

* The Scottish Pride Beard

* The Jedi Face Suit

* The Crusader Beard

* The "We Should Have Seen it Coming" Beard

* "That There's For Kraken Releasin'" Beard

* and, possibly, The Lincoln Beard?

- from the article "The Many Beards of Liam Neeson"

Tonight there was a Thanksgiving feast, but due to rolling into town this afternoon to visit relatives who were themselves in the midst of moving meant that there was no cooking... so we took a cue from A Christmas Story and went out for Chinese. While there was no dramatically-beheaded duck, there was turkey, and fried donuts, and chicken wrapped in bacon, and stuffed mushrooms, and coffee-infused tiramisu, and a vast spread of many other foodstuffs. We were quite thankful. Also, stuffed.

Afterwards, we went out to catch The Muppets. I will add my glowingly positive review to the others already posted here: it's a vastly fun and funny flick. It has a bit of a strange tone compared to prior Muppet movies, but does a great job of consistently being a shout-out to the past and to fans while pulling things into the present. It also somehow happens to be exceedingly goofy while surprisingly deep at times. For anyone with fond memories of the Muppets growing up and/or currently kids, it's a must-see.

Upon exiting the theatre, I found myself face-to-standee with the intense, bearded visage of Liam Neeson. There was no better way to end the night than under his NONDESCRIPT YET INEXPLICABLY DETERMINED gaze.

Descriptor of the day: warm like muppet-flesh

It may look like the food is not on a plate, and I am instead standing over a vast plane of Thanksgivingness. That's because I am.

Some days you can't find a big enough plate. Today was one of those days.

Jenny and I had a great Thanksgiving full of food, football, a random viewing of Sixteen Candles, and about half of Miracle on 34th Street (before passing out due to having eaten way too much food).

Word Count: Irrelevant.

I have decided I'm a one-story-at-a-time writer. I just cannot get into this second story while I still have unfinished business on the first. So, I have decided to - instead of making 50,000 words my goal - concentrate on the 2nd draft of the story that ended up being 25,000 words. When that is as complete as the first story, I will then move on to the third.^*

If you have somehow made it through life without knowing about my first story, by all means read it here: Too Good To Be True

*Okay, that was confusing. This year I was planning on writing 2 stories. The first of those, entitled The Relic, is actually the 2nd in a series. The second story I was to write in NaNoWriMo, entitled The Suicide Murders, is actually the 3rd in a series. The 1st in the series, Too Good To Be True, is at the link above.

Incidentally, it is very hard to get my fingers to type the html codes to end emphasis and then start it again, when I'm normally doing the opposite with book titles. I did it anyway, though. For you.

Hint: I'm not sending out an SOS.

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you have found many things to be thankful for. Me? I'm thankful for Oban 14 year single malt and for my brief time with this beard, which will be shorn some time tomorrow.

I'm also thankful that I have a $50 ThinkGeek gift certificate code that I'm giving away.

At this point, I've given hints for 4 characters of the gift code. They're in order. To review:

• Check out every remaining beard picture and figure out the code
• Spread the word (Facebook, Twitter, whatever!) and donate, because if I break $500, I'm giving away another gift code to one lucky, random individual who leaves a comment here!

Read all of the rules here

I wish turkey only cost a nickel.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.