Two consecutive Fridays, two consecutive train gaming sessions. How different they can be!

Last Friday I hosted an evening of 18XX gaming, a rare pleasure these days and as satisfying as always. We had enough people to split into two separate games - 18AL and 18Scan. Couldn't talk Jacob into playing this time - he covets his free weekend evenings which is the only time he gets to play video or console games.

Eric has become our 18XX guru in terms of collecting and teaching the games. He led the 18AL game while Matt, George and I struggled through the rules for 18Scan. His version of 18AL is like mine - mostly hand-made but with nice components. Still, it underscores how amazing the productions from John Tamplin at Deep Thought Games are - I hope he continues to do his craftwork.

My impression of 18Scan is that is short, sweet, but has a few more tricky rules than the other short games I've played. I stayed out of some of the initial private company auctions and let Matt and George fight over them, hoping to preserve some cash to get a head start on the public companies.

This strategy served me well - for a while. I think I was probably in the lead for most of the game, but as I hit my certificate limit near the endgame I got a bit restless and did a stock transaction that I was to regret. I sold a share of one of Matt's companies but failed to realize that it wouldn't reduce the share value. His company continued to soar while I gained little to nothing in the transaction. It was an extremely close finish, with Matt edging me out by about 100 Kr and George a bit further behind me. This game took about 4.5 hours to finish, but would likely take 3-3.5 hours if we ever manage to play it again.

Julie's uncle was in town last weekend and we brought out Ticket to Ride: Europe as a gateway / introductory game to teach Bill. He caught on quickly and I think he enjoyed it quite a bit. I pulled out a slim margin win, with Jacob coming in a close second. I was able to focus on eastern Europe without too much distraction, allowing me to finish 5 tickets including a long run.

Look at what jumped out at Jacob today while working in the yard:

Note: I think this is a Cross Spider.

I wasn't at all satisfied with the results of my prior sensor cleaning and was noticing some significant spotting, particularly with some flash shots on my 28-135mm lens. I did some quick tests tonight to confirm the sensor/filter issue and the results confirmed by suspicions.

This was taken with my 30mm:

This with my 28-135mm:

There was a great article in a recent Shutterbug magazine about this very problem and the Dust-Aid product was recommended. It comes in a convenient, easy to carry Band-Aid type metal box and the instructions couldn't have been easier to follow. They even have a disclaimer about Canon filters and say they'll replace it if their product does any damage so I felt confident going into the process. The results were spectacular - I could find no evidence of any dust on the sensor/filter after applying Dust-Aid. The product isn't cheap but I suspect I'll only need to use it every 2 months, so it should last a couple of years. Well worth it so consider it if you are having similar problems.

After cleaning:

I'm doing the game class thing again at school this year. Take a look at the games I used last year and leave comments here with any new suggestions for 2007-2008. Remember, I only have 50 minutes to teach and play the game, so that's a significant constraint. I prefer games that support at least 4 players.

I played games for the first time in 3 months last week, a trend I will continue tonight as I make it to my first RipCityGamer session since July.

Carey came over in the afternoon to playtest one of his new designs, a supposed race game called Bridgetown Races. I say supposed because I wouldn't classify it as a racing game - it is more of a logistics or traveling salesman game.

This was a fun experience and reminded me of what I like the most about publishing games - playtesting and collaborating on new designs. I can't design myself out of a box, but I sure can be critical when I need to and Carey was great about taking feedback and innovating on the spot. We played once with his current design then made some drastic changes and tried it again with good results. He's still polishing and enhancing as there's work to be done - the game needs a bit more arc to it the board spacing needs some work.

Ken and Brandon stopped by on Sunday (no baseball due to rain, something we were all hoping for this time around) for some overdue gaming. We haven't picked up our D&D campaign since early this year and we are all anxious to get some free weekend time to dive in again. We had limited time on Sunday so we elected to play Shadows Over Camelot.

We had a good time but the finish was anti-climatic as we non-traitors fell asleep at the wheel and allowed 11 siege engines to accumulate at Camelot, making it easy for traitor Ken to finish us off. Just like that, game over 60 minutes into the game. Bah. At least it left us time to play another.

Iliad has been sitting on my un-played list since I acquired it in a math trade earlier this year so gave that a try. This is a fun (but a bit long) game reminiscent of Havoc and Condotierre. We had a great finish to the game, with a "Gorgon" battle coming up last and a great sudden death battle for the finish.

There was a clear king-maker opportunity at the end for me, especially if I took the chance to do some real analysis. I opted instead to just give Jacob the battle victory and see where the final results would fall out (Brandon was in the lead so letting him win would be a mistake) and Jacob did indeed turn out to be the victor. It was a fun finish to a fun game, though shortening it a bit might be nice. We played for about 90 minutes.

Tonight I'm off to Mike Dean's for our game group's regular Tuesday gaming session so I'll report on that soon.

Matthew had a great football game on Saturday, scoring 2 touchdowns and making 9 tackles. I'm doing a lot of the video post-production this year for the team so I figured I'd post some highlights for family to see.

I'm a little over two months into owning and using my iPhone and it is past time to share my experiences so far. I made a complete transition from using a BlackBerry 8800 with a dedicated exchange server to an iPhone with local iCal and Gmail. I've certainly had better results than Scott Hanselman so far, though key for me was a complete migration to the Apple way of computing.

Before picking up the iPhone I was still living in the Google apps world for calendar and mail. This is partly because it made the transition from Windows easier, and partly because my GTD system was wrapped up in GMail. While iCal can consume Google calendars just fine, it is one-way read-only access and it grew very frustrating not being able to add calendar entries directly into the iPhone. Here's how I have the iPhone setup right now:

• I'm using Mail.app on the Mac almost exclusively. Gmail is still my mail host and I'm living with the POP3 integration just fine. Sure, the email search capabilities from the iPhone are pathetic, but Gmail mobile is just a click away and I can search easily within Safari.
• I'm using iCal as my primary calendar with Spanning Sync to synchronize with Google Calendar. To be honest, I'm not sure why I'm even synching with Google Calendar right now other than to have the warm fuzzy of an online backup of my calendar. I suppose it will be helpful when I care about publishing free/busy info to people.
• About 2 weeks ago I switched to the OmniFocus alpha for my GTD system. I'm a huge fan of GTDInbox but over time I've been craving a system that is decoupled from email so that I can work my actions list without having email running (important for getting in the zone). I also grew concerned about long-term support for GTDInbox. OmniFocus includes a nifty web server that runs from your desktop, exposing a web interface to your GTD system that is tailored for the iPhone. It is very slick and a nice touch and it saves me from printing out action lists.

Overall I'm thrilled with the iPhone and think it was a good choice (the $100 rebate was nice too). It has enough storage space to have become my primary iPod - I gave my 40GB video iPod to Jacob and haven't missed it. It is so easy to rotate albums that I take with me that I've never felt I'm lacking space though I can only hold about 1/4 of my music collection.

The browser is much better than I had on the BlackBerry. I'm particularly impressed with the Google Reader experience - it feels like it was designed for the iPhone Safari browser.

That said, I do have a few issues with the iPhone that I hope get addressed soon:

• I love having Google Maps on the phone, but the integration with other aspects of the phone is poor. For example, I commonly put the address of an appointment in the location field. It sure would be nice to be able to touch the location and have Google Maps automatically bring up the location. It does this for contacts, so why not do it for meetings?
• The ring volume is too low. I miss about 75% of the calls coming in because I can't hear it ring. Even with vibrate on, if I'm at football practice I often won't notice the call coming in. I never had this issue with the BlackBerry.
• The iPhone should have voice memo recording. I know there are options if you want to put native apps on your phone, but I'm not ready to take that step yet.
• There needs to be a todo list capability for this device to be called a PIM. Even better will be if they open up the interface so that apps like OmniFocus can tie into it seamlessly.
• I wish there was a way to mark all email messages as unread. This feature was always a click away on the BlackBerry and is helpful when determining if new messages have arrived.

That's a pretty minor gripe list - overall I'm thrilled. Oh, and I don't hate AT&T like many folks do and don't really care (now) about having a choice of carriers. Coverage is fine in Oregon and the rates are reasonable.

On some landscape shots I've taken recently I've noticed some significant spotting on the resulting images. I've cleaned my lenses and the spotting remains, so it is most likely an issue on the camera sensor (actually the filter in front of the sensor). I followed Bob Atkins' advice and took some shots that would neutralize any lens effects and repeated with a separate lens. The results are clear - I need to do some cleaning.

A few folks have emailed me and congratulated me on my semi-retirement. I'm very grateful for the remarks and support, but I do feel the need to make a clarification. Technically I view myself in a mini-retirement right now. What's the difference? Both of them are constrained in a dimension: mini-retirement is constrained in duration (meaning that it will end at some point), while a semi-retirement is constrained in money or hours worked per week or weeks per year. So during my mini-retirement, I'm not working at all. But it must stop at some point. Now, if I could only find a job or role that would then allow me to be semi-retired, then I would be set.

Remember that post I made on debt-free living? I understand that the math of paying off a mortgage may not always make sense, but the psychology of it sure feels pretty good right now.

What might be next for me? Figuring that out is one of the goals I have for the next 2-3 months. I'm talking to a lot of different people and the spectrum of choices is huge right now. Here's a short list of some of the ideas popping around:

• Find another CTO-like job at a local software company
• Be a consultant to start-ups or potential investors in start-ups
• Start my own software or software-as-a-service company
• Become a high school computer science teacher
• Become a professional photographer. I realize you don't just suddenly "become" one of these, but I'm working along a path to at least have this as a part-time vocation.
• Be a trainer on software development process, presentation skills, etc.
• Be a freelance Ruby on Rails developer
• Be a college instructor or professor

Clearly I have some work to do. Comments or emails to scare me away from any of these options are encouraged.

So Gabby, our new kitten, is supposed to have larger than normal (for a cat) paws. This morning Julie noticed that one paw was larger than the other, took her to the vet, and discovered that she had likely been stung by a bee or wasp.

No, that isn't a perspective trick. Notice the enlarged right paw. She's on some meds now and is recovering nicely.