Harry Potter

The first three Harry Potter books, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban were a delight and a sin. A delight for the fun and a sin for the enjoyment of such trivial fare. Then came Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Up to the twist at the end, still a delight and a sin. But at the end of Goblet of Fire, a character we have been primed to love and admire dies, suddenly and without preparation the stories turned down a darker road. Instead of reading and then rereading with sinful delight, I read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with bated breath and my heart in my throat waiting for the death of someone I had grown to care about. Then I put them aside and never went back to them, so I never grew to know the stories like I knew the first three. And I didn't get to see the characters I cared about grow into adults the way I knew them as children. So, today, I am watching the last three movies and this weekend we will go to see the Deathly Hallows, Part I.

Desolation Con - November 20, 2010

Desolation Con 2010 has to rate as a general success. Lots of gamers had lots of fun, many playing new things. Gamemasters had new gamers and their tables were filled with joy.

Here's some pictures from the basement of the Richland Odd Fellows Lodge.

A crowdshot from the last session of the day.




Gearing up for Hordes of the Things. I ended up with eight players on four battle fields, some of them entirely new to even the notion of miniatures battles....



Best plane photo of the day....



Space: 1889 RPG "Rescue the Princess"



War Eagles presents Wooden Ships and Iron Men

GOTV

This is my inspiration, the wind beneath my wings



Yeah, OK, so I'm a bit weird in what switches me on.

The New York Times' chief polling analyst just wrote, "If our forecasts turn out to be biased against Democrats by just 2 points overall, (Ed Note: This is a distinct possibility) the party becomes about an even-money bet to hold the House." (And then they'd almost certainly keep the Senate, too.)

Republicans ran this country into a ditch. Their candidates this year offer nothing but a return to the all government is bad, reducing taxes is always good, don't give the suckers an even break policies of the Bush Administration that led to the biggest deficits in history and a concentration of wealth matched only moments before the Great Depression, which was not a coincidence.

Volunteer, talk to your friends, post on your facebook, Get Out The Vote.

It Can't Be Said Better - twenty three ish.....

Pictures of Muslims Wearing Things.

And a picture is worth a thousand words....

Pageant geek

Grandma Joan got a good pic of Kimberlyn all ready for the ball gown competition with me. That's what I call a smile. ;o)


That's my girl...

So?

From the Office of Irrelevant Factoids:

Pastor Terry Jones is a high school classmate of Rush Limbaugh.

So?

Baseball

Once upon a time, you found baseball to be among the most interesting things in the world. It'll get there again. For us (Mariners fans), eventually.

Jeff Sullivan at Lookout Landing.

My Father

For nine and a half years, I have hung onto my first laptop, a Compaq with a 486 processor (that's pre-Pentium) and Windows 3.11, because it was the only place that my eulogy for my Father existed. The floppy disk drive has been out of alignment for a long time, it had been dropped heavily from the top of a bookcase that had fallen over and the battery falls out, the hard drive opening cover won't close, but it still boots and runs Word for Windows, but there was no way to install drivers for a network card, reinstall a modem driver or copy the file to a floppy disk, even.... So yesterday, I plugged it in and booted it up and hand typed the eulogy into my Thinkpad T510 and saved the file in various formats in various locations, never to be lost again. There is much more that could be said.....

My Father was raised on a hardscrabble farm in the piney woods of East Texas. With three older brothers he had no say in the operations of the farm and a strong desire to be the master of his own destiny. In the spring of 1944, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps. The destiny he had chosen was to fly.

You may not realize how preposterous a goal this was. At the beginning of World War II, it was possible to be a pilot and still be an enlisted man. By the end of the war, ALL pilots were officers. At the beginning of the war, an Officer Candidate needed to be 21 and have at least a year of college. By the end of the war, an Officer Candidate had to have at least a bachelor’s degree. For an eighteen year old in 1944, who had only completed high school, flight school was out of the question.

My father found a way to fly. After basic training, he passed the rigorous testing for a paratroop, and then passed the additional testing in mathematics and physics to qualify for training as a glider pilot. Shortly after he qualified and before he began training, the disastrous 101st Airborne landings behind Normandy Beach convinced American high command to discontinue the glider program. However, the trainee pilots had a contract and to honor the contract, they were offered an opportunity. If they could qualify by testing, they would be sent to Flight School to graduate as an officer and a pilot. An eighteen year old with a high school diploma from a two room school in the back woods was given two weeks of self study to prepare for a test designed for college graduates, preferably with engineering degrees, who were applying for flight school. He passed. If anyone ever told you my father wasn’t smart, he was wrong.

Private Melbourne Ernest Harris, still only eighteen, of Point, Texas was promoted to Sergeant and was going to flight school to become a pilot, and an officer and a gentleman.....

He was taught the physics of flight and trained in the art of flying basic flight school. Near the end of flight school, he had tested for advanced training as a fighter pilot and had qualified and been assigned to be trained in the Black Widow night fighter, which I think was designated the F-60 and was an Army Air Corps version of the Navy’s F6F Hellcat, fitted for night combat, and one of the latest designs.

On his final solo flight in Basic Flight School, a bad landing resulted in an injury to his head. A routine post-crash examination failed to uncover a detached retina and a few days later he lost the sight of his left eye, his binocular vision and his chance at flight school and becoming an officer...and his impossible dream.

He could have mustered out on a physical disability. He chose complete his term of enlistment and mustered out as a Master Sergeant Aircraft Mechanic. He used his GI Bill benefits to obtain a degree in Industrial Arts from East Texas State Teacher’s College and embarked on a career in teaching. He met and married Beatrice Joan Anderson and gave life and love to three children – Bruce David, Kim Alan (that’s me) and Gayle Lee. To improve his circumstances, he moved his family to Washington State to take a teaching position at Lincoln School, here in Sunnyside. He obtained Master’s Degree in Education from Texas State College by correspondence and summer sessions.

He undertook home improvement projects, including customized bedrooms perfect for a daughter who would become Miss Sunnyside and a son who is still a book collector. He took the family on summer tours of the Western United States stopping at every historical site and National Park or museum of interest west of the Mississippi.

He saw to it that all three of his children obtained the College Degree that he saw as his ticket to a self sufficient life.

And in between all that, he taught twenty-nine classes of elementary school students in Sunnyside.....

In retirement, he continued to indulge his passion for home improvement, and when called upon to provide day care for my daughter, taught her to read before she was four, just as he had done with his own children.

On March 27th of this year (2001), Melbourne Ernest Harris, aged 75, who in his youth had wanted to be a pilot, and in his maturity succeeded in becoming a teacher, died quietly of untreatable cancer in the Veteran’s Hospital in Walla Walla.

I miss him today, and I’ll miss him until we are rejoined.

Enfilade HOTT Tournament

I should have had this post up a month ago, but various activities and, well, lazy.....

The Enfilade Hordes of the Things Tournament 2010 had eight entries this year, up from six players in the tournament two years ago. I remembered the camera this year, but didn't take a lot of photos.

Results:

Round one: We laid out the battlefields with some paired armies and threw all the armies in a hat and each player drew an army.

Tom Condon v. George Allen, George was victorious with a general kill and 4 additional army points
Chuck Morris v. Henry Thomson, Jr., Henry was victorious losing only a hero to Chuck's losses of a Knight General, a horde, a paladin and a shooter.
Jeff Condon v. Phil Williams, Jeff was victorious with another general kill, Phil losing 9 additional army points
Buddy Scott v. Joel Hahn, Joel was victorious over noob Buddy Scott, Joel having finished second in the tournament two years ago.

Round Two: Losers chose an army and then the winners drew an opponent.

Jeff Condon v. Tom Condon, yet another general kill for the win, Tom setting a record for hard luck this year, losing this time to his own brother, adding insult to injury.
Phil Williams v. George Allen, in a clash of my oldest friends, Phil abused George by throwing an aerial hero behind his line and engaging the hero general before the battle lines could be joined. George lost, game over. Wow.
Chuck Monson v. Henry Thomson, Jr., and with still another general kill after Henry's god wandered off, this time Chuck with the win.
Buddy Scott v. Joel Hahn, another rematch of the novice vs experienced player, I don't remember the details, but same result.

This consumed our time allotment and the tables were unavailable and the players were committed to other games, so the two undefeated players, Jeff Condon and Joel Hahn made arrangements for a playoff on an open table on Sunday.


Jeff Chose the Goblin army and Joel chose Elves, the Goblin army defending. The experienced players arranged their lines and advanced to the fray, with some maneuvering that ended up with both lines locked in a huge melee. The opposing hero generals ended up opposing each other and the result of a clash of heroes is always one of them loses.... It was Jeff, this time, but really, that could go either way, every time.


There was a lot of fun had.....

Annual event

If you happen to have arrived here after being one of the many well wishers who were informed that they were mistaken about my birthday, thank you for keeping my blog the first result from the search for 'oldest 14 year old.' On this, the fourteenth anniversary of the fourteenth time since the fourteenth recurrence of my fourteenth birthday, it seems appropriate to acknowledge your good wishes. But I am STILL fourteen!

It Can't be said better - Truth in Labeling - will have political content

I must say that I enjoy a good piece of snark and the main reason I read Balloon Juice regularly is because when the deal the snark, it really peels paint....

And all over one can hear the sons of the Confederacy recite their talking points that the Civil War was not about slavery. They insist that the system of human bondage was a side issue. And as I look at the record of the Republican Confederate Party in recent times and the history of the Confederate Party regardless of its political host over the last 150 years—I am ready to admit that there is a bit of truth to their POV.

The Confederacy really wasn’t about slavery. That was just a tactic. The real issue was finding the best way to steal the labor of others.

Confederate History Month: Stolen Labor by Dennis G. at Balloon Juice

It Can't be said better -

"I want to just take a moment to thank the Teabaggers. Thank you so much for helping us pass health care [and] for resurrecting the Obama presidency. I know they're saying, 'Why are you thanking me? I was so against it, I marched on Washington with tea bags hanging off my Founding Fathers costume, with a gun on my hip and a picture of Obama dressed as Hitler, screaming about his birth certificate.' And America saw that and said,
...
...
...
...
...

'I think I'll go with the calm black man.'"


---Bill Maher

It's Baseball!

First Ichiro Interview, question, what are you going to do about Jr's practical jokes?

It is important not to touch the bomb because the bomb will explode. Just let it sit.

RadCon 5B

By all accounts it was a huge success....

Some pictures:

Attendance was down about 5 percent, but you wouldn't know it from the game room....



The Space:1889 Screw Galley HMS Timbonin was a good draw, especially for Hill Martians....



We played Wings of War off and on all weekend.