Pandemonium Gaming

I played games at Pandemonium Books & Games last night, and wrote up a micro-session-report for the Unity Games mailing list:

This session of Pandemonium Gaming had 13 people at its peak, enough for three tables at once. I think there were about 15 or 16 total. Lots of new faces-- I think only 5 or 6 of us had been there for the last session. I also noticed that the store has been expanding their stock of board games; games I hadn't seen there before include Seismic (which I bought and played), Recess, Grand Tribunal, Blue Moon City, Tikal, Odin's Ravens.

Games played: Shadows Over Camelot (twice), Die Nacht der Magier, Citadels, Through the Desert, Ivanhoe, Caylus, Seismic, King's Gate.

Quick summary of Seismic: It's a hexagonal edge-matching tile placement game, somewhat like the road-building part of Carcassone. ( Read more... )

I enjoyed it quite a bit, but then I'm a sucker for tile-laying games.

The saga of my new TV

At the beginning of July, I finally paid off my last credit card balance. It was the first time I had zero debt since my grad school support ran out three years ago. That began a year and a half of unemployment, which took a year and a half of full-time employment to pay off. I guess that means I make exactly twice my cost of living? Although I did start to spend more after I got a job, e.g. a laptop last January and a 26" LCD HDTV for my bedroom this January. Anyway, to celebrate, I bought another new TV for the living room.

I ended up deciding on a Samsung HL-S4666W 46" DLP HDTV from Amazon.com. I was wary of buying something that big (and fragile) by mail-order, but the reviews on that page seemed trustworthy and said it would be fine. It was certainly a good deal; Circuit City (which is where I got my other TV) had the same model but smaller (42") for about 15% more, not including tax, while Amazon.com had free shipping and no tax. Altogether it was only about 10% more than the 26" LCD; I guess DLP (Digital Light Processing) is not quite as nice as LCD or plasma, but it's much more cost-effective at that size and seems to be high enough quality that the difference isn't major.

Unfortunately this was not my best experience with Amazon.com. ( Read more... )

I'm actually happy with the TV, too. There's been a lot of random annoying stuff to deal with, and my opinion of Amazon.com has gone down a few notches, but overall I think it was a good deal and it's a nice thing to have. I haven't actually even watched it all that much yet, and hardly at all with actual HDTV signals. But I'm hoping that when the next-generation Tivo comes out I can get rid of the Comcast DVR, get one for the bedroom and one for the living room, connect them over the network, and be able to watch HDTV on demand in either place. We'll see how that works out...