Continued on to fishermans wharf, slight tourist trap. Ate some good chowder and sourdough bread. Went up from there to Ghiradelli Square, unbelieveable long lines for free samples of chocolate. Had a “quake shake” with raspberry chocolates mixed in. ZOMG it was so good! Ate dinner at Good Pizza, and it lived up to it’s name.
Breakfast at Lori’s Diner, cool 50’s retro spot! On to Union Square.
Ok, so I just got back from a great 4 day weekend in LA (more Santa Monica) than LA, but hey, its all semantics. So got to go to some really cool places, Beso - restaurant on Hollywood Blvd owned by Eva Longoria, Enterprise Fish Market (awesome lobster), The Beach Hut (cant go to Manhattan Beach without stopping in), and La Vecchia (great Kobe beef). It seemed like a food centric trip, but we also got out to Annaheim to Disneyland, wow, talk about a lot to take in, no wonder they stay open until midnight. Glad to be home, sad the trip was over, Marty really liked it out there, which I was surprised at. Just under 2 weeks until the big family vacation to San Fran, Portland, and Seattle. Will be nice to disconnect from work for a bit. Oh well, thats all for now, stay tuned for summer movie update #1, I feel since I have not seen everything yet, we will do two to three summer movie updates as we continue to blog here. Hope everyone is well and remember, its Tuesday, and no one can take that away from you.
Ok, so I’m writing this from my iPhone. Scary how tech keeps evolving. If you follow the news it looks like AT&T is buying up the markets that verizon had to sell as part of the Alltel buyout. Interesting due to the technology hurdle, but hey new phones generally make customers happy.
To have a great monday!
OK, so I am a douche! Sorry for the lack of updates. Lets see, Tuesday was two years of marriage! Turned 35 earlier in the month. Oh and I’m going to be a dad…of twins!
So, as most of you who actually know me, I work in the telecom industry and my company has begun the process of being sold to someone else. What that means is today I have a job, for the forseeable future I have a job, however that could all change by end of year. Just wanted to update everyone and make sure no one was worried (yet).
So, anyone who still reads this around? Well I have an Image for you of the completed casa. Hope you like it.
Well, first let me say I never wanted to build, but we couldn’t find anything that met our needs. To that end, let me also say building a house F’in sucks! Well at least it does with our Builder/contractor. There have been delays since day one, the whole process started out in July of last year with an estimated completion of end of December/early January. Bad weather, poor communication let that date slip to February, from Feb we had to sign a contract extension to April 1. Well here we are 2 weeks exactly to April 1. House is up, cabinets are in, painters are starting. However the builder just called to set up the tile man, who is already booked… Top that with the fact that the cabinets have been in for over a week now and they countertop company was not called to come out an measure the templates to get started. I called them yesterday and set it up myself, they are coming over the weekend, which via my wife from the contractor they dont measure on the weekends. Funny how stories change when you do it yourself. But the rub is they are a month behind and it will take that much longer to complete. Wonder what the law says about moving into a house without the kitchen counter installed?
I love my wife, I love my life, I love my home (if I can ever live in it).
Blatantly Borrowed from the New York Times
Gary Gygax, a pioneer of the imagination who transported a fantasy realm of wizards, goblins and elves onto millions of kitchen tables around the world through the game he helped create, Dungeons & Dragons, died Tuesday at his home in Lake Geneva, Wis. He was 69.
His death was confirmed by his wife, Gail Gygax, who said he had been ailing and had recently suffered an abdominal aneurysm, The Associated Press reported.
As co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, the seminal role-playing game introduced in 1974, Mr. Gygax wielded a cultural influence far broader than his relatively narrow fame among hard-core game enthusiasts.
Before Dungeons & Dragons, a fantasy world was something to be merely read about in the works of authors like J. R. R. Tolkien and Robert Howard. But with Dungeons & Dragons, Mr. Gygax and his collaborator, Dave Arneson, created the first fantasy universe that could actually be inhabited. In that sense, Dungeons & Dragons formed a bridge between the noninteractive world of books and films and the exploding interactive video game industry. It also became a commercial phenomenon, selling an estimated $1 billion in books and equipment. More than 20 million people are estimated to have played the game.
While Dungeons & Dragons became famous for its voluminous rules, Mr. Gygax was always adamant that the game’s most important rule was to have fun and to enjoy the social experience of creating collaborative entertainment. In Dungeons & Dragons, players create an alternate persona, like a dwarven thief or a noble paladin, and go off on imagined adventures under the adjudication of another player called the Dungeon Master.
“The essence of a role-playing game is that it is a group, cooperative experience,” Mr. Gygax said in a telephone interview in 2006. “There is no winning or losing, but rather the value is in the experience of imagining yourself as a character in whatever genre you’re involved in, whether it’s a fantasy game, the Wild West, secret agents or whatever else. You get to sort of vicariously experience those things.”
When Mr. Gygax (pronounced GUY-gax) first published Dungeons & Dragons under the banner of his company, Tactical Studies Rules, the game appealed mostly to college-age players. But many of those early adopters continued to play into middle age, even as the game also trickled down to a younger audience.
“It initially went to the college-age group, and then it worked its way backward into the high schools and junior high schools as the college-age siblings brought the game home and the younger ones picked it up,” Mr. Gygax said.
Mr. Gygax’s company, renamed TSR, was acquired in 1997 by Wizards of the Coast, which was later acquired by Hasbro, which now publishes the game.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Gygax is survived by six children: three sons, Ernest G. Jr., Lucion Paul and Alexander; and three daughters, Mary Elise, Heidi Jo and Cindy Lee.
These days, pen-and-paper role-playing games have largely been supplanted by online computer games. Dungeons & Dragons itself has been translated into electronic games, including Dungeons & Dragons Online. Mr. Gygax recognized the shift, but he never fully approved. To him, all of the graphics of a computer dulled what he considered one of the major human faculties: the imagination.
“There is no intimacy; it’s not live,” he said of online games. “It’s being translated through a computer, and your imagination is not there the same way it is when you’re actually together with a group of people. It reminds me of one time where I saw some children talking about whether they liked radio or television, and I asked one little boy why he preferred radio, and he said, ‘Because the pictures are so much better.’ ”
I think everyone who has ever played is deeply saddened by this loss. Tabletop Roleplaying lost an Icon, no a legend. Mighty Magic Always Gary!
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