I've never really been a fan of popular country music.  I don't take it seriously, consider it worse than top 40 pop, and have spent most of my life befuddled by the attraction of country to so many Americans.

Briefly at Washington University, then again in 1992, I discovered a band called Uncle Tupelo. This was an odd experience for me.  Is this country or rock?  Or something else?  Little did I know, they were ushering in what many consider an entirely new genre called Alternative Country (or alt country or americana music).  Since then I've learned to enjoy listening to bands like Wilco and Sun Volt (both offshoots of Tupelo, but very different bands today), Whiskeytown and Ryan Adams, the Bottlerockets, Lyle Lovett, and The Jayhawks.  I even like much of the works of the Dixie Chicks, as they are not afraid to break away from the mainstream of popular country music.  They even wrote a song at least partially about their frustrations with this mainstream.  And of course there's the unclassifiable Beck who put out one of my favorite alt country albums last year.

Seeing my taste in music evolve over the past 10 years has given me cause to trace back to some original sources.  My guide on this tour has been a book I picked up at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, South by Southwest: A Roadmap to Alternative Country, by Brian Hinton.  He makes some odd linkages and stretches relationships a bit (I'm not sure what Tom Waits is really doing in this book), but it was extremely revealing to me to see how much of an intersection the bands I like today have with the bands I like from the 60s and 70s.  In hindsight I shouldn't have been surprised, but it was revealing nonetheless.  Key influencers include Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Carl Perkins, and Gram Parsons.  Reading this reminded me to pick up the Byrds album Sweetheart of the Rodeo, their sometimes tongue-in-cheek homage to roots country music and gospel.  Fantastic stuff.

So, now you know a bit more about my musical tastes.

I spent last weekend in Nashville at my good friend Russ Waitman's wedding.  Russ and I were roommates in college, sharing an engineering suite our sophomore year and an apartment offsite our junior year.  After college, we both ended up serving our active duty officer assignments in the US Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, OH.  Russ entered the medical service working in hospital administration while I helped develop software for cockpit simulations at Wright Laboratory.

Russ and I hadn't seen each other since I left the Air Force in 1996.  Russ went on to Vanderbilt to get his MS and PhD in Biomedical engineering, an amazing accomplishment.  We've stayed in touch over the phone and through email over the years, and I was thrilled to learn earlier this year that he was getting married.  I was also honored to stand with him as a groomsman.  On Saturday evening, Russ married Jessica Preston, a lovely, beautiful, and clearly intelligent woman that he met at school.  They are away on honeymoon right now in the Pacific northwest enjoying their first week of married life.

I took a few photos during my stay there, so here goes.

Hatch Show Print is a still in operation letterpress print famous for their posters promoting country music concerts in Nashville.

On Friday evening I ventured downtown to some of the country bars to hear some live music.  Highlight of the evening was the rockabilly band Twistin Tarantulas.

On Saturday morning before the wedding, I spent some time at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.  Highly recommended - more on that later.

Russ and I just before the wedding.

The beautiful bridal party.

Russ and the other groomsman.  We're all engineers; funny that.  At the reception we preceded our toast with a telling of the top 10 reasons to marry an engineer.

You can beta-test Ticket to Ride online over at Days of Wonder.  I played a 2-player game with Eric H tonight - well done implementation.

Thanks to Scott, I just discovered Google SMS.  I'm sitting here in Nashville right now and need to find a bookstore.  I send this SMS to GOOGL (46645):

37203 borders

and get this response:

(1of2)Google Local:
Borders Books Music & Cafe 
2525 West End Ave 
Nashville TN (615) 327-9656

Tonight I had the fortune of spending a few hours gaming with the Billabong Boardgamers of the greater Melbourne (Australia) area. Alan Stewart was kind enough to extend an invitation to me, and with the Amaroo Neighbourhood Centre only a short train ride away I couldn't resist.

As usual, after meeting several of the members face-to-face, I was reminded of how small the board gaming world is.  One of the regulars, Craig Macbride, has gamed with Tom Powers and the other Microsofties (Tom runs Boards & Bits and I've gamed with them a few times) while visiting Seattle. Julian Clarke, owner of Unhalfbricking Games, is acquainted with owners of several American publishers that I know (Jeremy Young of Uberplay and Eric Hautemont of Days of Wonder).

There were 10 of us in total at the centre, so we initially divided into three groups 3/3/4.  I opted to play St. Petersburg with Duncan and Julian.  Duncan was clearly an experienced player, having read quite a bit of the commentary on BGG and knowing key strategies.  I've been playing the fine PC version quite a bit while traveling so I think I've got a pretty good grasp as well.  So Duncan and I quickly taught Julian the rules and helped him along with strategy as we played.  Not that he needed much help - he quickly grasped the rules and was leaping to good strategy early on.

Duncan and Julian about half way through our game of St. Petersburg.

Julian maintained the VP lead most of the game, with me close behind.  Duncan trailed most of the game by 20-30 VPs, but I kept a close eye on his accumulation of aristrocrats.  Fortunately (for me) in the final round I was able to grab the only aristocrat upgrade, giving me 7 distinct aristocrats and enough the squeeze out a narrow victory over Duncan, who finished with 10.  Julian managed to get 5 (I think), finishing about 10 points behind me.  I still enjoy this game quite a bit, though as some have complained there seems to be somewhat narrow paths to victory.

While I was playing St. Petersburg, another group played Attika.

It was a tough choice opting out of Goa and playing St. Pete.  I've played this only once but can't wait to try it again.  Apparently this was a close game, coming down to a tiebreaker at 41 points.

While waiting for the other games to wrap up, Duncan, Julian, and I played a hand of Coloretto.  This is a fun little card game that I haven't played in a while; not sure why because it really is a lot of fun.

Duncan showing off his rainbow spectrum of cards in Coloretto.  He still managed to win.

I thought I was doing OK, but Duncan managed to win the hand despite a rather diverse collection of colors.

This game is called Extinction.  Doesn't get very good ratings on BGG.

Next up for me was Einfach Genial with Craig and Brian.  This game just didn't appeal to me based on what I'd read, but I was anxious to try it anyway.  I know Dave has had some nice things to say about the game (he is a huge Knizia fan, after all).  This is an abstract game of hex-tile laying (the pieces are actually two hex tiles) where points are scored based on the number of other connecting hexes of the same color as the piece you played.  Players score across 6 different colors, with the winner being the player with highest low score (just like the scoring in Tigris and Euphrates).

Craig and Brian setting up Einfach Genial.

I found the game to be engaging, quick, and very fun.  Our game was tight and could have gone to anyone.  Craig made a good blocking double-move at the end that took away any possibility for me scoring in my weak color at the end.  This ended the game with a tie at 10 for Craig and Brian, Brian winning the tiebreaker.  I finished at 9.

The other crowd plays Auf Heller und Pfennig.

Alan (left) and two others play Flaschenteufel.

While waiting for some other games to wrap up, I was able to teach and play a couple of hands of Tres Amigos, one of KC's card game prototypes.  We played with the three-player rules and opinions were fairly neutral.  It is likely the rules I was playing with were a bit out of date, as there were too many cards in the undrawn stack (under the face-up trump card) adding quite a bit of chaos into the system.  I need to check with KC on this.

Finally, Duncan and I taught Craig and Brian the fine Uberplay game Saga.  This is a light card game that I first played at GenCon with Jacob this year.  It has some subtleties to it that I don't quite have handle on yet, though in this case I must have been doing something right as I won 56 / 36 / 30 / 5.  I can't figure out if this game is too chaotic / luck driven, or if it really is possible to control the pace and end of game.

Thanks again to the Billabong Boardgamers for hosting me.  Let me know if you ever make it out to the Portland area!

I awoke this morning at about 4:30am local time.  Not too bad in all - that's about 7.5 hours of sleep and I'm on may way towards adjustment.  I wanted to go for a run along the river, but it was still dark so I decided to play some Middle Earth: the Wizards solitaire.  I've owned this game since 1995 but never got a chance to play it and it has sat on my shelf all this time (next to my stash of Magic cards).  Back in 1996 I also purchased the book Middle-Earth: The Wizards Companion.  This is a better (i.e., more readable) version of the rules than you find with the starter decks, and also has some solitaire rules and interesting scenarios.

Last week a box of preconstructed challenge decks arrived at home, so I was eager to give this game a try. Part of my inspiration to give it a go was Chris Farrell's high opinion of the game, particularly before some of the later expansions were shipped.  Oh, and this is why I picked up some D6 yesterday.

The cards sitting on my ottoman in my hotel room.

There are quite a few similarities to the Lord of the Rings TCG, which I have played quite a bit.  Or, should I say, the LOTR TCG bears a lot of similarity to METW.  There is a movement mechanic to both games, and conflict is created by opponents challenging you while you move your group(s).  Thematically I think METW is much better, primarily because a big part of deck construction involves matching characters, items, and sites they will travel to.  If you want to recruit Treebeard as an ally, you must travel to Wellinghall to get him.  The rules for moving in METW are extremely confusing at first though; this is one game where it really would be best to be taught by someone in the know.  Hey, maybe I can become that person now.

Here's a summary of the solitaire rules from the book:

• Getting Started: Separate hazard cards into a separate shuffled deck.  I used the Saruman challenge deck and just took out the challenge cards from that precon.  Your hand size is 5 cards.
• Play normally with the following exceptions:
  • There is no opponent's player turn.
  • Whenever you would draw or discard to get a hand of 8 cards, you now draw or discard to get a hand of 5 cards.
• Playing hazards: During the movement/hazard phase, for each company, you draw hazard cards equal to 2 plus twice the number of hazard cards normally drawn for that site (oops, I just realized I missed the twice in that statement).  Then you must play as many of those hazard cards as you can within the hazard limit for the company.  You should play the hazard cards in the fashion that is most disadvantageous for your companies.
• Object of the game: Accumulate as many marshalling points as you can by the time you exhaust your play deck for the second time.

I only got through my deck once, and as I mentioned I wasn't drawing enough hazard cards (though I was playing the right amount).  It was a slow process of referring to the rules, playing a little, double-checking the rules, etc.  I do think I'm getting a grasp of the game and look forward to playing it face to face.

I arrived in Melbourne about 10am Saturday morning after about 18 hours total flying time.  Things sure have changed since the last time I was here: I had to rent a phone for the week to be able to affordably stay in contact with folks at home.  Now, my Blackberry works: phone, email, browser and all.  I was able to call Julie within 5 minutes of landing here as if it were a local call.

One key to recovering from jetlag when traveling to Australia (and arriving in the morning) is to stay awake the first day and switch to a local timetable.  I made a mistake last time I was in Sydney and took a nap in the afternoon - this lead to repeated awakenings in the night and another day of recovery.  So, my colleague and friend Mike and I set out to explore downtown north of the Yarra River.  What follows is a short photo journal of our day.

We started the day with a short walk to Flinders Street Railway Station.  We had lunch and a beer across the street at Young and Jackson's.

Next we hiked west and rode to the top of Rialto Tower to check out the Melbourne observation deck.  The views were stunning - clear, beautiful day with plenty of visibility.  Here you can see (upper left) the Melbourne Cricket Ground and (middle right) the National Tennis Centre, home of the Australian Open.

Ahhh, a little slice of home.

So we're wandering down Swanston St when I happen to gaze across the street - lo and behold, a game store!  Mind Games is a nice store - emphasis on family board games with a HUGE selection.  I probably would have bought something if the prices had been more reasonable.  I suspect they were 20% higher than retail in the US.  I did buy 5 wooden d6.

While walking back to the hotel, we happened by a wedding at the Scots Church.  Very cool bagpipes - how can you resist stopping and having a listen?

I'm sitting in the Red Carpet lounge at PDX, doing some demo work for Corillian and waiting for my flight to SFO.  I'll end my journey in Melbourne, Australia sometime on Saturday morning.  Mostly meetings next week, but as I'm arriving early (about $1500 cheaper leaving today rather than Friday), I'll have some time to explore Melbourne on Saturday while I try and stay awake and shift time zones.

BoardGameSearch is a useful site for searching prices for online games.  This is a good start, but I want more (actually, my friend George wants more and I agree with him): scrape the sites rather than frame them in, then present the prices in a list.  Sort of a Froogle for board games.  Froogle already does a decent job here, but it needs to index more retailers.