Just quickly because I’m busy.

Next Week For Sure lost our netball game but we were much better than last time, we even won the third quarter. This week’s lesson: if you can’t be accurate, be tall.

The Heroclix Olympic Stadium was completed on time (barely, just like an Athenian one) including an unfinished but serviceable grandstand. Mega-City One, following up a warrant to prevent mutants and aliens spoiling the games, finished out of the medals in the sharpshooting but won bronze in the weightlifting.

Phoenix beat Thunderbirds convincingly to progress to the Grand Final of the Commonwealth Bank Trophy against Swifts in Sydney next weekend.

How many sons does it take to hang a collage, move the daffodils to the backyard, check the tyre pressure, detach a faulty smoke alarm, and change four lightbulbs? One, but he gets breakfast and birthday presents.

Dave, Jimbo and I did a bit of research for Starship Manticore by watching the first episode of Firefly before generating two more characters to fill out the crew roster.

Jonathan’s Golden game will be moving to Thursday so the Guardians of Justice wrapped up the interdimensional brouhaha by recovering Mjolnir from Loki and having Octavius, who had been transformed into Thunderstone (cf Thor), confer with The Vale. The discussion was not going well when Starro interrupted so Thunderstone hit Starro who was merging with The Vale and somewhat destroyed them both.

Oh, look. Peeping out from under the other paperwork on my desk is my Interim Performance Assessment. It is nearly two months overdue, which means the next one is due in just over two months time. I wonder if I could do one and hand it in twice?
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  Happy birthday Brianna and Sean.

Substantial, real work.

Biff has finally gone. Now I am getting enquiries from people I have never met regarding thing I know nothing about which they have been discussing with someone else who they reasonably thought would have involved me, but didn’t, and I do not even know where to start looking for information concerning their issues, for similar reasons. However, after twelve weeks of having the interesting stuff dangled briefly in my line of sight after the fact I really don’t mind the anxiety.

Insubstantial, unreal work.

The urgent and important job we had to fit in before September in the middle of testing the September major release has been withdrawn because the legislation has not passed. We had it in testing on Friday. The only thing we needed the hobbits to do was pass the legislation; instead they brought the mailing schedule forward on so we had to organize a special print job to produce the letters in time. Now they don’t want us to do it, or they don’t want us to do it now. We are expecting a message clarifying just exactly how they want us to not proceed, but we don’t know when.

Lessons from team work.

Next Week For Sure nearly threw away a six to three lead in the last quarter of our soccer game on Thursday. Fiona substituted for Sue who left early. Fiona was suffering a cold so she went into goal and Christine came out into the field. Then we all forgot what we were doing. We fell back in defence for ages and without someone staying upfield to draw one of their players out our brazenly physical opponents had all three of their guys keeping possession in our half and hammering the ball at our unwell goalie. We weathered the storm and finished six to five. This week’s lesson: remember the plan, stick to the plan.

Mega-City One were less than hammered in the Heroclix game on Friday. They did fall to Greg’s JLA again, the Judges Mortis and Johnny Alpha had employed their powers, Impervious and Super Senses, to exceedingly unlikely ¹ effect while the Superfriends swept everyone else aside, leaving veteran Judge Mortis as the victor’s final opponent. If the JLA had not been healed earlier in the battle Mortis might have been able to stand against them with his Invulnerable power as even Superman was reduced to only two damage. However Batman could Outwit the Judge’s defence and he went down like a correctly functioning lift or elevator when the button to make it go down is pushed. This week’s lesson: remove their support.

Lessons from popular culture.

At Dave’s on Monday the plot of Starship Manticore strode through an example of conflict resolution involving a sentient computer virus. (Lesson One: most analogies don’t bear close examination.) Once the game mechanics were reviewed the plot devices activated. Previously contrary Nova Jones wrangled Kato Bari a crew for the Manticore and a business partnership for herself. (Lesson Two: if you want the crew to mutiny in the third act you have to hire them in the first act.) Later that evening Kato accompanied Doctor Lazlo to a disused hanger to meet his mysterious Deep Throat who is called Box and communicates via teletext. Box wants them to investigate further but seems blind to the advantages of telling them what is going on. (Lesson Three: if I told you, it wouldn’t be a secret.)

At Charmed Pages on Tuesday the Guardians of Justice blew up Galactivac only to discover the artificial Battle Planet was being constructed by a sentient realm of existence called the Veil which, in the throes of awareness, was naïvely annihilating the rest of existence. I don’t think the Guardians have learned their lesson yet.

Lessons from Athens.

Amongst the pairs of groups other people may or may not divide us into are: those who wonder disparagingly how others manage to be heartlessly alert in the morning; and those who, when asked how they manage to be alert in the morning, dissemble and contend any perceived alertness is a delusion. On Monday there seemed only to be: those who stayed up late to see the opening ceremony of the Olympics; and those who woke up early to see the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Sport is a good thing.

¹The chance of Johnny Alpha rolling Super Senses three consecutive times, rookie Judge Mortis rolling Impervious three consecutive times, and veteran Judge Mortis rolling Impervious four consecutive times (which they did) is less than one in fifty thousand. Also, nine of the ten rolls were sixes.
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  Oh, yeah.

Next Week For Sure fared better in our second game of volleyball winning sixty-one to thirty-two. The great improvement may be due to having two more six-footers than last time and only four players on the other team, or it may have been our snazzy new uniforms. Anyway we won. Yay, team!

Pretty good.

This month’s Heroclix theme is the Olympics so everyone has to keep the same six hundred point team for the duration. In the hope of building up my ranks of 2000AD characters I bought two Indy booster packs from Logical Choice and scored an experienced Judge Dredd; also rookie and veteran Judge Hersheys to go with my experienced one. Objective achieved. I picked up a veteran Torquemada and another veteran Nemesis as well, but I already had six hundred points in Judges. On Friday my Megacity One team (Judges Dredd, Anderson, Fear, Fire, Mortis twice, Hershey twice and Johnny Alpha) was hammered by the JLA. This week’s lesson: if you can’t fly, leap or phase, don’t set up in the maze.

Inspired, and having drawn the blueprints earlier in the week, I made a twenty-seven inch square amphitheatre out of cardboard, matchsticks and glue on the weekend. Jimbo also made a movable rope bridge. Next on the drawing board (after turning the amphitheatre into a coliseum) is a rudimentary Mayan ziggurat with an ancillary Babylonian façade. But first I must learn about paint and adhesive; learn by doing.

Are you still here?

Biff has not gone on leave because her house is being painted. She is still doing tasks and telling me after they are completed, as a courtesy. She doesn't even pretend it's training.

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  The end of a short week.

For Sure Next Week had a bye for multisport so instead we had a game of urban psychic orienteering which involves telling everyone the team is going to go for drinkies when we have a bye and then not arranging anything. I spotted Alastair and Dave and Fiona in a pub at Dickson and scored a pint, but they were really there for another reason and no one else showed so it looks like we need to practise our telepathy (or make an arrangement next time).

Go Phoenix! Go Phoenix! Go. Go. Go Phoenix!

I went to the netball double header at the Sydeny Superdome on Friday. The two Victorian teams were playing the two New South Wales teams for the inaugural Sargeant-McKinnis award in round thirteen of the Commonowealth Bank Trophy competition in front of the world’s largest netball crowd (13,463).
The first game was between Hunter Jaegers and Melbourne Kestrels sitting fifth and fourth on the ladder separated by six points in the second last round of the competition. With nothing in the balance it was a spectacular game: ten all at the first break; Jaegers up by twenty-one to twenty at half time; and by thirty-three to twenty-nine, the largest lead of the match, going into the final fifteen minutes. Then Kestrels struggled back to win forty-two to forty-four.
Then Sydney TAB Swifts, top of the table with the best attacking and defending records in the competition this year, played the current trophy holders, Melbourne Phoenix. This was fantastic. There were Australian team and squad members everywhere, not least of all in the goal circle where Australian captain Liz Ellis was playing Goal Keeper for Swifts against Australian vice-captain (and world’s best netball player) Sharelle McMahon at Goal Attack for Phoenix.
Swifts won the first quarter eleven to ten and the second quarter twelve to eleven. Both teams used their bench at half-time and Phoenix rallied in the third term to be up thirty-five to thirty-seven going into the final quarter. Swifts brought on Jane Altschwager who missed her first three shots at goal but they managed to close the gap and build the largest lead of the game. Phoenix, despite being five goals down at that point, had the crowd booing every goal they scored or penalty they received. Nevertheless they stormed back into the game and took the lead by one goal in the last minute. Swifts’ shooter and the national competition’s leading scorer, Cath Cox, on thirty-two goals at seventy-eight percent accuracy for the game, missed the goal which would draw the game and gathered her own rebound only to miss again. Phoenix won forty-seven to forty-eight. That game was so cool.

Sit, sat, sit, Saturday.

On Saturday I took the train up to Woy Woy to visit my dad. I showed him photographs from my vacation and he showed me his expanding collection of bromeliads. Then we had lunch at the bowls club and in the afternoon I gave him a few clues about using his new scanner. Then it was back to Sydney and dinner with Chris, Ian, Jo, Joe, Mikey, Nick, Penny and Trina; which was nice. Also, we caught the last few minutes of Australia defeating South Africa in the Rugby Union test in Perth as it was being projected onto the side of a building next door to the restaurant.

More of Sydney on Sunday, this time it was downtown with Andrew, Anna and Linda for a brief brunch with Anna’s friend Hiromi. Then Andrew, Linda and I dropped into Galaxy Bookshop and I left with four novels and three DVDs of Doctor Who, the complete box set of Sapphire and Steele on DVD and a boardgame called Citadels which was recommended by Andrew and Linda. We met Anna again in Abbey’s Bookshop where more bookish goodness was purchased. Then it was back to Marrickville briefly before Linda and I set off back to Canberra (via Liverpool and the Hume Highway as the entrance to the motorway still eludes me) with Ted’s old computer in the boot. Super!

The beginning of an interrupted week.

Monday night games introduced me to the well recommended Citadels which I now want to play with more then three people. I won the first game (by being the King a lot) and did poorly in the second (by trying to be all the different people at least once). Then we played a bunch of Ticket to Ride which I also want to play with more than three players to open up the double tracks and increase the amount of unintentional interference from other player’s tracks.

At work we have just about started testing the September release. This will mean daily reports of things that need fixing as we countdown to the release on 4 September. As August passes these fixes will become increasingly urgent, we would like to get any other work out of the way now so as to have resources available when time is short. This is the time a hobbit involved in running the country has decided to give us a new task which not only involves creating a new letter (so it has to be perfect first time or we'll be on A Current Affair again), it also has to be delivered before September.

Then I went on a training course for two days (which is why this entry is late).
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