Max Michael, game designer and publisher from Stratamax Games (also see an interview by Tom Vasel), is wrapping up a two week vacation to the Pacific northwest. We originally met at Essen 2005 and have stayed in touch via email and periodically in person as we show up at game conventions. Max and Tim Cockitt (from the UK) are helping me prepare an itinerary for touring the Bulge battlefields next spring with the family, and when I heard that Max would be bringing his family to the NW I offered our home up for a visit to Oregon.

Max and family took the train down from Seattle and we immediately drove out to the coast to tour some tide pools and just hang out on the beautiful Oregon coast.



Max was kind enough to gift a copy of Wampanog, one of the new Stratamax games. This is a fun, lighter, area control game set in Massachusetts as the pilgrims arrive and interact with the Wampanog.

Baseball season is over! Both boys wrapped up their seasons last weekend by competing in the Junior Baseball of Oregon state championships.

Matthew's team went undefeated during the regular season and finished fourth in the state at the Midget Federal level - a great accomplishment though we know they could easily have finished first in the state as they beat each of the teams that finished ahead of them at least twice during the season. That's why you play the games though!

Here are all of the photosets from Matthew's season:

• Memorial Day Tournament in Bend
• Reedville Federal Tournament
• vs. Westview
• State Tournament

Jacob's team had a great second half, surging in their league play to get a berth in the district tournament and qualifying for the state championship. They also won the Newberg Junior Federal tournament.
Here are all of the photosets from Jacob's season:

• Memorial Day Tournament in Bend
• Reedville Junior Federal Tournament
• vs. Westview
• Newberg Junior Federal Tournament

Tap tap tap. Is this thing still on?

Wow - a lot has happened in the past month! As many of you know, CheckFree completed its acquisition of Corillian back in May. I started working at Corillian in September 1999 and served as the Chief Technology Officer since early 2001. After helping complete the transition work for integrating the two companies, it was time to reflect on next steps for me - 8 years in one place is a long time for me! The longest I had even lived in the same city prior to moving to Sherwood, OR was 4 years.

I was very impressed with how CheckFree handled the transition, and they offered me a very attractive role in the company. Still, after discussing at length with Julie, I felt it was time to move on and take some time to reflect and think about what's next for me. July 13 was my last day at CheckFree/Corillian. You can either call me unemployed or say I'm on a mini retirement (thanks Timothy Ferris) - in any case, I don't expect to resurface as an income-generating organic being until at least November.

I'm only 12 days into this mini-retirement but there should be no surprise that I'm loving it. Here's a short list of what I expect to do over the next few months:

• Get back to posting more regularly. I promise to post every day for the next three months, with the exception of days when I don't feel like it. I have a backlog of posts to write on topics such as baseball, photography, and Max Michael and family visiting.
• Do a lot of photography. I'm taking an online course at BetterPhoto and am loving it.
• Coach football. I'll be assisting my friend Jim again this fall, running the defense for Matthew's 5th-6th grade team. This starts August 6.
• Get back to playing more games. I'm averaging 1 session per month right now, and I'd like to get it up to 1 per week.
• Reflect. My main "work" to do over the next 3 months is to reflect, brainstorm, and start acting on some of the vocational ideas I have churning around in my brain right now. I'll probably write about this process right here.
• Hang out. Be more of a day-to-day presence with Julie and the boys. Jacob and I are out at Salishan right now. We golfed yesterday and plan on doing some surf casting on the beach in about 45 minutes. This sort of casual time is critical right now for the boys.

Stay tuned!

The kitten is, for now, going to be called "Kitten". We think she's pretty cute.

I'm 99% certain that this is the first digital photograph I ever took.  Back in April 1997 I purchased an Epson PhotoPC 500 for a tidy sum (I bet you can buy a decent DSLR body for the same amount today!) and tried it out with some shots of Jacob at age 2.  Hard to believe I've been taking digital shots for over 10 years now.

Gaming sessions have been few and far between over the past 2 months.  I looked at my game journal and noticed an entry on May 1 (my session at Mike's) and one play of Battleground: Fantasy Warfare with Jacob on May 15.  Needless to say I was excited to host a few friends for gaming last night.

We had a special guest: Peter Drake from Lewis and Clark College.  Peter is a professor of computer science there and will be using 24/7: the Game as a game to implement for a spring CS course next year.  He is using agile development techniques (eXtreme Programming I believe) and wants to have periodic visits from a real onsite customer, so he reached out to Sunriver Games.  Last night was a chance for him to meet the designer, get a copy of the game, and join us for some gaming.

I invested no time ahead of the session learning anything new (I'm itching to play Winds of Plunder) so I suggested the classic Union Pacific.  Most of us have played the game many times, but we still managed to screw up the rules.  We forgot to have each player secretly lay down a company share at the start of the game.  When the first scoring round came up, nobody had any shares out so nobody scored.  Probably not a big deal.

I always enjoy this game, but lately I wonder if I should just be playing Ticket to Ride (or one of the expansions) instead.  There's less tension in UP than TtR I think, and it can become all too clear who is going to win as you hit the second to last scoring round.

Peter wanted to learn how to play 24/7 so Carey taught the game and we played a four-player partnership game.  Dave and I absolutely crushed Carey and Peter, nearly doubling their score.  There's a decent amount of luck-of-the-draw in the game but I always enjoy it.  We had some nice discussions about how to best implement an artificial intelligence (AI) for the game, something Peter will likely include in his class.

We completed the evening with a game of Loco!, the Knizia card game.  I played this once before and enjoyed it then, but playing it a second time makes me realize just how chaotic the game is.  We all struggled with choices on what cards to play - either we just don't get the game, or there really aren't good approaches to the game with four players.  I think I would have enjoyed a game of Tichu or Die Sieben Siegal more.

Simple test from TextMate.

I can't let May go by with only one post, so here's a quick rundown of what's been going on:

• CheckFree's acquisition of Corillian closed in the middle of the month.  Exciting times!
• I attended RailsConf 2007.  Learned a little, experienced a lot.  I plan to do a post on what it's like to be an outsider at that show.

• We spent Memorial Day in Bend and Sunriver, OR doing our annual trek for baseball tournaments.  Tons of photos were taken - enjoy.
• I have not played a board or card game since the session on May 1.  Hopefully I'll break out of that drought as we take the train to Seattle this coming weekend to see the Mariners play on Saturday night.
• Max Michael of Stratamax Games will spend 3 days with us in July as he takes his first trip to the sunny Pacific NW.  We'll spend most of the time out on the coast.
• A bought a MacBook Pro, and I love it so far.  Jacob and I are excited to start recording some guitar tracks in Garage Band.

This has been a pretty good year for me in terms of making gaming sessions.  I've been able to host most of the time when I'm scheduled, and I've managed to make it to Mike's a few times on Tuesday nights.  I was hoping to play an Ystari game (Ys or Yspahan), but it looked like a group wanted to learn and play Thurn and Taxis so I offered to teach.  George, Carey, and George's friend & co-worker joined me.

I like this game but it took longer than it should.  I was thinking too much and everyone was getting used to the rules and subtleties which dragged things out a bit.  I think we played in 2 hours including teaching - this should be a one hour game.  I have my own copy now thanks to the GameStorm math trade so I'll try and get the kids to play it (fast!).  George won the game, picking up the nuances quickly which is not unsurprising.

Meanwhile Doug, Mike, and Dave played Factory Fun and seemed to enjoy it.  Dave likes puzzle games.  They also played Hey! That's My Fish and Die Sieben Siegel.

Dave wanted a party game and when Liebrary was offered I jumped all over it.  There was some reluctance in the group, but I challenge everyone that played to claim that they didn't have fun.  There were lots of laughs and groans and by the third card everyone was in the mood and making legitimate efforts (i.e., that's when we stopped seeing opening lines referring to Daryl Hannah in a derogatory way).  George was exceptionally good at the game for a non-native English speaker and beat us all, though I was a close second.

Thanks Mike for hosting.

The chess season for me is officially over for school year 2006-2007.  It was a fun year and a first chance for me to start getting involved with the program at Sherwood Middle School (where Jacob goes now).  I took a break from teaching a morning chess class at Archer Glen Elementary to focus on the Game On! games class Julie and I taught twice per week, but still managed to run an after school chess club that was the nucleus of our tournament team.

Our tournament season kicked off with our own Sherwood elementary friendly competition - the Jack Weeks Cup, named in honor of the man who really got chess started in Sherwood (he recently moved to central Oregon).  Archer Glen managed to retain the cup this year, but it wasn't easy - we had to go to seven rounds to find a team winner.  Our team was very balanced with all but one of the 10 team members scoring four points or more.  This photo shows all three teams from Sherwood:

I also helped out with Jacob's middle school regional event where the team managed to tie for first and qualify for state.  Jacob just barely missed the qualifying cut to join the team at state (they can only take five players to state) but as a 6th grader he'll have two more years to qualify.

Archer Glen did decently well at the regional tournament (posts for 2006, 2005, 2004) finishing just above the middle of the pack in what is probably the biggest and strongest region in the state.

While the team didn't qualify for state, Matthew had an outstanding regional and went into the fifth and final round with a perfect score of 4 points.  He faced off against what is one of the 2 strongest players in his age group in the state (he has about a 1300 USCF rating, Matthew is unrated).  Matthew lost the game but qualified for state and had a blast competing there.

Our last event of the year was a local chess tournament, the Whitford CMCC tournament.  The kids had a great showing, finishing second overall.  One of the middle schoolers I brought, Brogan, finished with 4 points and took home a top 10 trophy.