Looks like this is really catching on.  Great to see other people joining the fray and sharing session reports, reviews, and other thoughts on gaming.  Tolen Dante has just started his weblog.

Update: Tolen moved his blog to a new site with RSS feeds.

Well, I'm only about 2 weeks late in posting this one.  We hosted a mystery party for Jacob and a few friends two Saturdays ago - sort of like a "How to Host a Murder" game but for kids.  The theme was western, and we asked the party goers to dress the part.  Jacob only invited boys, and there were a few girl parts, so we had to improvise.  Part of the improvisation was having Matthew dress up as a girl - and Grandma was more than happy to help out.  Check out the results for yourself; should make for some great blackmail material somewhere down the road.

The party went very well - we mixed in some games with the mystery puzzle, and everyone played their parts. Jacob is nine now, and thought it seems cliche to say that I can't believe how fast he is growing up, well, I can't believe how fast he is growing up!

Yesterday, Jacob played in his last football game of the season, and his team finished 8-0.  Not a bad season!  Jacob played out the year as the starting center, and was getting much more playing time on defense as well.  Julie and I are sold on the value of this program for Jacob, and we are eager to sign up Matthew as soon as he is old enough.

I found a good price on a used iBook here in town, so Jacob and I went to check it out on Saturday morning before his football game.  There were a few reasons for picking this up:

• A good platform for experimenting with Rotor and Mono.
• OSX / Panther / Jaguar just seemed too cool to miss out on.
• I think it will be a better home for my iPod link and iTunes.
• I wanted a personal laptop for travel, especially for important tasks like playing DVDs for the boys on road trips.

So far I love it.  I'm playing with some different software configurations (browser, office tools, etc.) to see what works best.  One disappointment - OpenOffice supposedly works, but isn't a native Mac OSX application (it runs under X11).  It also didn't work in a turnkey maner, probably because I'm not using Darwin as my X11 server.

Funagain has posted a copy of the Games Magazine top 100 games.  I can't argue too much with their pick for Game of the Year - New England - I've only played it once but it is a very solid game.

Check it out!

This has been the lowest volume of posting I've had in a while - sorry for those of you who check here frequently for gaming-related posts.  I've been on the road way too much lately, and things will not be letting up for another month or so.  I do have a backlog of things to talk about, including:

• Jacob celebrated his 9th birthday last weekend, and I've got some pics from the party
• The Cubs.  On second thought, I don't want to talk about it.
• The fantastic work Mikael Sheikh has been doing on his Wallenstein implementation, which he should be making publicly available before too long.
• More Chess teaching information.  Classes start next week.

I mentioned a few days ago that I will be teaching chess classes at Archer Glen elementary school where Jacob and Matthew are in 3rd and 1st grade, respectively.  I helped out with the beginner class (1st - 3rd grade) last year - Jack Weeks was the instructor, and he was a great role model.  I will teach two classes a week: the beginner class on Tuesday mornings and the advanced class on Wednesdays.

I feel like I have a pretty good handle on the beginner class; partly because I was involved last year, and partly because I'm comfortable with my ability to teach at that level.  I will focus on basic rules, how pieces move, checkmates, stalemates, etc.  I small amount of strategy and a bit of tactics. I will introduce the tactics of pins, forks, as well as walk through some simple endgame approaches.  Strategies focus on pawn structure, control of the center, and material / position advantages.

I'm a bit more concerned about the advanced class, mostly because of my own abilities.  I've played sense since I was a child, but I've never played competitively and I don't consider myself a very strong player.  The theory makes sense to me, but I just don't have the pragmatic experience. So I'm trying to ramp up quickly by playing as much Chessmaster as possible and by reading some good texts on opening theory.  I'll keep posting reports here as things progress.

Wow, it sure has been a while since I posted an entry.  I was in Chicago all of last week at our customer conference and got a bit behind.  Matthew had a bye week in soccer this weekend, but I have some pictures from last Saturday where he score eight goals in his game.  We can't help but think it is mostly due to his size and speed, but for his first year playing we are certainly amazed.

One of the parents from the other team jokingly exclaimed "get that 12 year old off the field".  We'll enjoy it while we can.  It sure is doing a lot to boost his confidence which can only help him in the future.

A few other random notes:

• Jacob's football team continued its undefeated streak, winning over Wilsonville this Saturday.  Jacob had another solid game - no fumbled snaps, and he made three tackles on defense.
• I volunteer to teach chess at Archer Glen elementary this year.  I'll be teaching two classes a week until spring break - one for grades 1-3, and another for grades 4-5.  This will be fun, though I really need to improve my skills.
• I'm sitting here watching the Chicago Cubs play in game 5 of the NLDS.  They are up 4-0, and the collective world of Cub fans are crossing their fingers.  It has been waaay too long!

My backordered copy of Wallenstein finally arrived from Funagain last week.  I played this for the first time during a trip to New York City last July, and I was anxious to play again.  I'm pretty sure this game is out of print, so I think I'm fortunate to have landed a copy of this game.

My routine when a new game arrives is to dismantle the bits and divide into little plastic baggies.  One of the coolest features of Wallenstein is the combat tower, which is used to resolve combat between two players.  Little wooden cubes are dropped into the top, some get stuck in the tower, and some roll out into the tray.  The player with the most cubes rolling out wins the battle.  It is actually a bit more complicated than that (native farmers might fight on the side of one of the players, for example), but that's the basic idea.  Jacob suddenly became very interested in the game as I showed him the tower and the gameboard and I talked him into trying a two player game.  We used the variant rules posted on the 'geek.  One other note on the rules - make sure you grab the most recent translation from the 'geek!  The version sent with the game from Funagain was almost worthless.

Jacob picked up the game very quickly, but was a bit too aggressive in his attacks.  Rather than focus on expansion first and then picking battles where he had an advantage, he tried to fight me one too many times where I had equal opposition.  The luck of the tower was leaning towards me in these battles and I came out ahead.  He was also slow to understand the victory conditions and didn't get enough strength in his buildings across the region, so I won pretty handily.

Man, it has been a long time!  95 years in fact - 1908 was the last time the Cubs managed to win a post-season series.  In my lifetime, it has been one heartbreak after another.  There was the collapse in 1969, the disaster in San Diego in 1984, and the letdowns in 1989 and 1998.  Not to mention the multitude of losing seasons.  Up until this year, I think I was one of about 120,000 people in the world that had ever seen the Cubs win a postseason game - I was at their only victory in 1989 at Wrigley against the Giants.

Tonight, the Cubs won their division series against the Braves.  Onto the NLCS!