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.

Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Given the kind words and consistent reactions from other Bearders in the last few days I have taken my child out today (before the insanity of tomorrow) to see the new Muppet's movie. After all the (both) good things mentioned about here around here I had pretty high expectations. I can now say, without a doubt, that my expectations were met in every way.

Having little background on the film, outside of the trailers, the whole thing felt like a giant love letter to the Muppets we (some of us) grew up with. Yet at the same time it acknowledges all of the developments of the characters in the last decades.

There is exactly one thing wrong with the movie and everything else was perfect. That one thing, Kermit's voice seemed off. I mean, there are hundreds...thousands maybe...of people out there who do Kermit impressions, surely one of them would have done a job more similar to the original.

But that said, it still totally worked for me and seldom did this push me out of the movie's tale. And let me tell you, this thing was dense. The story was straight forward and simple and everything you expect, but there are so many little jokes and Easter eggs, and cameos and what not that I found myself glued to every detail to try and catch as many as possible.

My favorite (and this may have existed in the original show as well, but my youthful mind didn't catch it). Backstage at the theatre there is a set of stairs. Spray painted stencils above the tunnel read "Crossover to Stage Left" then hanging below it is your standard electric Exit sign. Ha! Exit...Stage Left...HA! I laughed twice (not including in this post).

Still in the haze of nostalgic Muppet love I only hope that this movie is a huge success and finally leads to the return of the Muppet Show. Not A Muppet Show. THE Muppet Show.

And now determine if you are a Man or a Muppet (really, see the movie). Manly Points:

Chris - 70

Beard A Non - 110

Drew - 185

Wesley - 257

Bob - 256

Duane - 130

Brian - 218

Cmaaarr - 264 (+1 for at least having one ball...what's more manly than that? Oh, right, two balls)

Fred - 99

Jeffrey - 254 (+2 Muppets)

Kris - 245

Michael - 76

Pete - 248 (+2 Muppets, +1 Legendary Nog)

Brian E - 115

A Dam - 239 (+1...that's a big bottle, +1 for naming your home Messy Manor...which I should have done years ago)

Jim - 257 (+1 sleepy-time-Jim)

Wannes - 169

Chooch - 220

Jason - 185 (In 3 hours you are officially allowed to discuss that next holiday)

Change, my dear. And it $eems not a moment too $oon.

I'm thankful for the great day spent with family, for all my sponsors, and all of the other BeMos.

Now to get the kiddos to bed before they melt down!

Zzzzzz

Ssshhh... Jim spent the day cooking and eating and then football came on... he'll be back tomorrow with more gaming beards. Until then, enjoy this article on the origin of pie.

"Colonial Style" is just another word for "Legendary"

Hanging out with the family and enjoying Thanksgiving dinner today. In a possibly food-drunk delusion I decided that custard nog was the secret to a fuller more manly beard. Seems to be working out pretty well so far, don't you think? Though my donations don't seem to reflect it... So be sure as you're lulling yourself into a food coma you donate to your favorite bearded fellow (even if it's not me) and share a little bit of holiday joy with all the lovely ladies out there.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's 52 degrees outside! This is getting rediculous already.

Today I made breakfast for the crew here at Messy Manor. My sister Brenda and her boyfriend Russ, who came to work on her car before going to dinner in town. Matt Wiitala and his family, who are up visiting from Lansing with their two children. And myself too of course. A good breakfast helps to feed a growing beard after all.

This is all about growing and dontating for the boobies. Is it not? Donations are in need people, dig deep.

Looking beardy at my Aunt's holiday table.

I am thankful for the boobs.

Hint: Come on. This one's easy.

Traveled most of the day. We're up in western Massachusetts for Thanksgiving, then off on Friday to upstate New York for my friend's wedding. And, yes... I still have to shave my beard.

But here's today's hint! It won't be a common theme. Hopefully just a periodic one.

You want me to cook what?

If you are traveling today or tomorrow, be sure to leave extra time for airport screening. Your beard will likely draw the wrong kind of attention.

I hope and trust that the Americans among you will all have joyous (and filling) celebrations of gratitude with friends and loved ones. I hope and trust that the rest of you will have a very fine Thursday.

I, for one, am thankful for my bearded brethren, our generous sponsors, and all the boobs. Thanks.

Bonus beard fact^*
• Your beard can help you extend the feast. Simply eat sloppily, then at a later time, suck the food off your soup catcher.