Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

I've started two communities for Spare Brains Games, my game company. The first group is sparebrainsnews, this is a public group for general news and information on happenings with me regarding SBG.

The second community is sparebrainsdev, this is a restricted group which requires you to apply to join. In it I will be discussing games that are almost at the play-test stage and that I'll be looking to members of the community for suggestions on more material for the game. I'll get specific along the lines of "These are the cards that describe X, I need another ten or so."

I will not be describing a game's mechanics in specific detail as those have already been worked out by me and I won't be revising them until some playtesting has been done and weaknesses shown. This community is more for fleshing out the atmosphere of the game.

If you're interested in contributing, I'd certainly welcome your input. By now you may have a fair idea as to my sense of humor, and I try to make my games as funny and as gently twisted as possible. I do have to ask you to respect that these game designs are my intellectual property, also please do not re-post any of the information that you see in this forum until after the game is released. Any contributions that are used in the final product will be rewarded in some fashion, possibilities of reward types are described on the community info page.

Ex-Buffalos will be automatically approved (and I'll try to pre-add them as approved), most others on my flist will also be approved. If you've been on my flist for more than couple of months and we've posted back and forth on each other's blogs, you're probably in. If you're not on my flist and I don't know you, your odds for approval are not high.

Please don't ask to join the development group if you're not serious about contributing. People who are approved and show themselves to be not active in some fashion will eventually be booted.


I hope to see you in my communities!

We're heading off on a 5,000 mile drive in a bit over a week, and I need to get my car serviced. It's fairly minor (for now), basically the cruise control doesn't hold speed when going downhill. Please bear in mind that I live at 8600' and Alamogordo is over 4000' lower. It's something like a 6% downhill grade overall for 14 miles. So I'd set my cruise control for 45, it would drift up to 50, and hold steady.

It ain't doing that no more. It's fine going uphill or level, but won't hold going downhill. My concern is (a) I don't want to get a ticket, the whole mountain is a safety corridor, so all fines are doubled, and (b) that's one part of the cruise control -- who's to say that the problem won't spread and we won't be able to use it on the drive to Virginia and points North & West?

So I called the Toyota dealership to make an appointment to get it looked at. Turns out their service department is closed on Saturday.

*sigh*

I definitely live in a Small Town (tm) area. At least in Phoenix I could have gotten the appointment scheduled and maybe discussed it with someone.

Summer is here or soon arriving, so I pick up some ankle socks. It gets warm in Alamogordo in the summer, daytime highs will frequently be over 100f, but an hour after sundown it'll drop down to mid 70s and Cloudcroft will be mid 50s.

Here's the thing. The bag that the ankle socks came in? It's a resealable, ziploc-style bag.

To the best of my knowledge, socks don't go bad as long as they're occasionally washed. I've never seen any care instructions on clothing that recommended socks be stored in an air-proof container.