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Two-Minute Drill: Believe in the Chiefs?

Street Talk Two-Minute Drill: Believe in the Chiefs?

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Last week was… well, not as bad as Week 3, overall. Still some crazy going on around the league, and truth be told the whole NFL looks like a total cluster right now, with no true front-runner (unless you consider the Chiefs at 4-0 a sure thing).

Here’s a quick recap of a Crazy Week 4:

-The Panthers stormed into Foxboro and took out the Patriots with a field goal in the final seconds. Two home games for Brady, two losses. Better get the ball boy to grab the needle again…

Deshaun Watson went crazy on the Titans. Like 4 TD passes crazy. Oh, and rushed for another. That Tom Savage was a Week 1 starter in Houston blows my mind…

-The lowly Jets beat the Jags. I don’t wanna talk about it…

-Also big fat losers of the weekend: Matt Ryan & the Falcons lost to the re-Bill-ding team from Buffalo, the Raiders lost QB Derek Carr for 2-6 weeks with a back injury, the Vikes lost rookie RB Dalvin Cook to an ACL tear, and the Cowboys fell to the Rams, who are a shocking 3-1.

Then there’s the team from Baltimore…

Last Week: Steelers 26, Ravens 9

Where to start… well, we’ll start with the scoring. The Ravens forgot the game started until after halftime, and were down by a score of 19-0 at that juncture. While they were able to finally find pay dirt in the 2nd half, Baltimore’s game was far too riddled with miscues and mistakes to possibly recover from a 19-point halftime deficit. Here’s the low-lights:

Joe Flacco threw multiple AWFUL picks. Like right at the defender. Once behind the defender who was trailing the receiver, so like two bodies behind his spot.

–A failed 2-point conversion that was literally called good, then rescinded upon review. After it was called good, the crowd went nuts… then got confused upon review… then went salty nuts after the ‘no good’ signal.

–The Ravens defense was unable to get pressure on Big Ben whatsoever. At one point, I think he bent over and tied his shoe in the pocket. Read the fine print disclaimer on his phone contract. Built a tiny model ship in a bottle. Then threw a completion to [insert anybody- they were all open by then].

— Nobody was able to set the edge, allowing LeVeon Bell to take a stroll through the park at his leisure.

That was the gist of it, really. It was a second ugly week in a row, and this time I’m placing much of the blame on the coaches who don’t adjust, don’t have the players’ ear, and have no clue how to fire up a team. Not being able to fire up a team leads to a fanbase that is relatively chill and complacently quiet. Which is ineffective for home field advantage.

But that’s a whole different convo for a whole different occasion…

This Week: Ravens @ Raiders

Sunday 10/8 @ 4pm

The Ravens come in reeling, losing 2 straight games by a score of, like 732-16 or something like that. Flacco looks like David Carr. The receivers can’t get separation. Everyone is being fitted for air-casts as an added precaution before the games.

In short, everything is awful.

The Raiders, while overall a more complete team, enter Sunday with their own issues. The biggest cause for concern comes under center, as they will start backup quarterback EJ Manuel, after losing starter Derek Carr to a back injury that’ll cost him between 2 & 6 weeks.

Oakland is also facing a two-game losing streak of their own, in which they’ve scored but 10 points in each game. Their overall offense is a bigger issue, Carr aside, as they’ve averaged only 280 ypg- good for 28th in the NFL.

So who thrives and survives? Who crumbles under the weight of failure en route to a 3rd consecutive loss?

I’m going pessimist this week, if only because I’ll either be a) correct in my assessment, or b) pleasantly surprised by a Ravens win.

The Ravens will do only slightly better this week than they did last week against Pittsburgh. Despite Manuel being under center, the Raiders offensive line will hold up strong all day again Dean Pees’ vanilla defense that’ll only rush 3 or 4 on every snap, giving Raiders receivers ample time to find space. But of course none of that will matter, as the Raiders will spend the day getting to the edge against Baltimore via Jalen Richards, much like the Steelers did with Bell.

Marshawn Lynch won’t do a ton up the gut. Maybe a junk TD for a yard after doing nothing for an entire drive.

On the offense, the Ravens will struggle finding time to let routes develop, as Khalil Mack is still a force and rides Flacco all day long.

Could Marty Mornhinweg dial up some quick routes to get the ball out of Joe’s hands? Could he run more plays out of shotgun knowing time is a factor? Could Flacco try to not throw behind his receivers, or perhaps feel backside pressure for once in his career?

If you’ve answered yes to any of those questions, please see yourself to the door.

Here we come, 2-3. The pink slip rumbling for the coaching staff grows louder by the minute, as fans clearly see they were sold a false bill of goods in the offseason by Steve Biscotti & Co.

BAL- 13

OAK- 23

 Rest of the Slate

The Ravens play at 4pm this week, so your 1pm is open! Enjoy an early game before the stress of yelling at Flacco through your TV.

Chargers @ Giants- Sunday 10/8 @ 1pm. Two 0-4 teams, meaning one will come out with a better record than the Browns- even if they tie.

Chiefs @ Texans- Sunday 10/8 @ 8:30pm. The Chiefs come into the game as the only undefeated team in the NFL. The Texans are coming off a victory featuring 5 touchdowns by rookie QB Deshaun Watson. Somethings gotta give…

Vikes @ Bears- Monday 10/9 @ 8:30pm. Rookie QB Mitch Trubisky makes his NFL debut, and I just want to hear Jon Gruden gush over him for 3 straight hours.

Rank ‘Em!

Football season in Baltimore has gone from awesome in Weeks 1 & 2, to total frustration in recent weeks. In an effort to help some of those on the verge of a mental breakdown, we offer this Top-5.

Top-5 “It Could Be Worse!” Scenarios for the Ravens

5-“At least our defense isn’t as bad as the Patriots!”– literally dead last in the NFL in every facet. Scoring, yards, passing- yup all 32nd.

4-“At least it’s still more exciting than the last month of Orioles baseball!” Chris Davis whiffs more than the Ravens O Line.

3-“At least we’re only stuck upside on Joe’s contract through 2018!” If you’re still fully behind him, we need to have an intervention…

2-“At least our new coaching staff in 2018 will be hungry!” Too soon?

1-“At least we aren’t the Browns!”– Eternally grateful.

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Adam Bonaccorsi

About Adam Bonaccorsi

Known by his fellow 227ers at M&T Bank Stadium as “Are You Kidding Me?” Adam is a vocal and opinionated Baltimore sports fans, who appreciates thinking outside of the box and offering far-fetched perspectives that tend to leave readers left wondering ‘what if?’ or sometimes 'seriously bro?' and occasionally, 'I'll have what he's drinking!' Or just 4-letter expletive-laden responses. Those are the best. More from Adam Bonaccorsi

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227 Clarkin Road Fairfield, Hamilton City 3214

Sold on 29 Jun 2017
  • 3 Beds
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House in Fairfield

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  • 3 Beds
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Directly opposite Fairfield Park, polished wooden floors, rimu shelving, insulation, bath, second toilet, separate wash-house, new colour steel roof installed in 2016, carpeted bedrooms. Garage with storage room at one end. Large 743m2 section, quiet elderly neighbours, tenant in place for last 5 years and tenant wishes to stay on, rental of $350pw with $1400 Bond, rental appraisal of $370-$390 per week, HCC Rates $2074.13 per year, WRC Rates $346.73 per year. A really good property to do-up to add value to the home. House is located in an excellent area in Clarkin Road, the new Colour Steel roof is a real head start for someone keen to take on a renovation project. Walking distance to Fairfield Primary, Fairfield Intermediate and Fairfield College.

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1 garage space

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Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Housing {un}affordability

Are you concerned about the un-affordability of housing in our community?

Let's build momentum to tackle this problem!

Join me and other local MLAs for a Community Town Hall! October 11, 6:30-8:00pm at Reynolds School (3963 Borden Rd.). We'll have a panel discussion and an open Q&A. (And snacks too!)

I'm very pleased to share that the panel will include MLA David Eby and housing expert Marika Albert. (Other panellists to be announced.)

On the agenda are the challenges and opportunities we face when it comes to the cost of housing on the south Island.

MLA Eby is the Spokesperson for Housing for the Opposition New Democrats in the BC Legislature. He is very knowledgeable and articulate about these issues and has a lot to say about how we could improve the situation.

Ms. Albert is the Executive Director of the Community Social Planning Council. She has done extensive research on housing affordability and was formerly a Research Analyst at BC Stats and a research Associate for the McCreary Centre Society.

Hope to see you there!

Lana Popham, MLA Saanich South


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Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Isi Life Mein - Youth is calling!

Youth is defined by Wikipedia as the “time of life between childhood and adulthood (maturity)". To my mind, this definition is a very loose one and youth means a lot more. Youth is not an indicator of just the age; it is a state of mind. It denotes an entire way of life and one that is not obstructed by pre-ordained or old notions.

Robert Kennedy said “This world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease.” That to me defines precisely what the youth of today stand for.

Coming to the big screen this December is the latest offering from the Rajshri stables, “Isi Life Mein”. Without spoiling any surprises and giving out the story, let me just say that the movie promises to exude youthfulness in all its glory.

The title of the movie screams it out loud and clear: Most of us have just this one life (if we’re lucky, that is) and we have to make the most of it within our allotted life span.

Whether we accept it or not, most of us have that one dream – this dream could be anything, be it going to space, becoming a scientist, a world renowned musician etc. And these dreams get created since the time the coils in our minds get well oiled to life on earth. The majority manage to get through their lives and let their dreams drown in the routine of “growing up” (akin to the poor pickles in a dinner plate being heaped with the other and more happening buffet items) and get into the usual rut of what society feels is the way to be (quote unquote). And then there are those very select few who live with a single minded objective of achieving what they want – it is for such people that Rhonda Brynes “Secret” holds true; the universe conspires to help them get where they want to be.

“Isi Life Mein” is a reminder of what the youth of today stand for; they have a dream and they go for it with all they have. Along the pathway to glory, there are many words going against them, mostly from well meaning but ill informed sources in the form of parents, elders and well wishers. The trick is to be able to separate the grain from the chaff and that is what our youngsters are best at. You can count on them to be able to find the best solutions to all their problems as long as the proper means are visible.

At the same time, the Indianness element is very strongly ingrained in our youth and you would see that in spite of setting out to achieve what they want to, tradition and culture still figure on their list of “In” things.

Another moot point is that it takes one to know one. Its amazing how two people who have disparate aims in life can act as catalysts to each other and just by sheer dint of being there when it counts, can help the other succeed. The best part is that they don’t even need to share similarities in terms of background, upbringing or caste and creed. It’s the common resolve of wanting to get some place (not figuratively) that binds them on common ground.

Youth movies have been done to death, some good, some bad and some ugly. What differs is the treatment of the topic and this time round, Rajshri showcases something different. “Isi Life Mein” has 2 young people making their debut with a young woman at the director’s helm. With such a strong youth quotient in play and given the track record of young director’s in the recent past, this one should be a must-watch for all those new age movie viewers with a discerning eye. I have a feeling Robert Kennedy would have watched this one and said, “This is EXACTLY what I meant!!” So go watch this one and celebrate the determination of our youth – Dec 24th is the date and I will definitely be out there in line with many others. Cast and crew of ILM, good luck & best wishes!


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Stories from the valley

Benden Farms – helping our region thrive

Contributed by Steve Beckley

The Sacramento Valley and Colusa County have benefitted because of a decision Ben and Denise Carter made 23 years ago to start farming on Colusa’s East Side.  Prior to this time, they were both engineers in the Bay Area, Ben at Apple and Denise working for Texaco.

I had the opportunity to visit with them at their home, located on the East side of the Sacramento River, North of Colusa.  I was somewhat familiar with their farming operation Benden Farms, but wanted to know more about their community involvement.  Denise, who was a farming novice when they moved to Colusa, educated herself on farming through seminars, field days, and talking with others. She also took time to learn the culture of Colusa County.  She now serves as a member of the Colusa County Board of Supervisors and is involved in flood control issues, the sustainable groundwater act and serves as a director of the Colusa Glenn Irrigated lands program. She also finds time to help mentor young children by being active in an afterschool program.  Ben serves on the boards of the Colusa County Fair Foundation and Center of Land- Based Learning  and is past President of the California Central Valley Flood Protection Board.  Both of them are passionate about telling the story of Sacramento Valley agriculture and its value to society.  Their busy schedules require a color-coded calendar on their personal communications devices and, with Ben been previous employment in the Silicon Valley, I don’t have to tell you what brand that is.

I joined Ben, Denise and their Yellow Lab, Caly for a tour of the ranch. I was not only impressed by the farming operation, but also by the biodiversity, lots of old oak trees and some Sandhill Cranes were enjoying one of their fields.  They produce organic rice, row crops, seeds, beans, prunes and other crops in the area with a great view of the Sutter Buttes.  They also have a cow calf operations and I have taken a few photos of their cattle standing under an oak tree with the Sutter Buttes in the background.   The Moulton Weir runs through part of the ranch and Ben’s mother Jane still lives on the part of the farm that was originally farmed by his dad, Robert.

Ben and Denise are great examples of a quote attributed to Lucile Ball, “If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. The more things you do, the more you can do.”  Fortunately, we have many people in the Sacramento Valley working to make it a better place and letting society know its value.


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Saigon Kids Emporium
October 2017
« Sep

Old Saigon The Way It Was In 1955

I thought everyone might enjoy seeing Saigon the way it looked in 1955. This collection of films was taken in November 1955.

Those of us Saigon Kids who were in Saigon prior to 1961, this is pretty much the way Saigon was when we were there. The rapid changes, in Saigon, seemed to have come after 1961 for the most part.

When I arrived in Saigon in April 1959 it still looked about the same as in this film and remained that way until my departure in early 1961. Saigon was really very mellow back then compared to the hustle and bustle that came with the war build-up starting in late 1961 to early 1962.

In many ways I’m glad I left before the build-up for the war and the war years, as Saigon was such a beautiful peaceful place while I was there. As you can see in this film the traffic was not all that bad, like it became in later years (and is today).

I hope you enjoy seeing what *Old Saigon* the former capital of French Indo-China was like. Some of the scenes in this film are the Municipal Theatre (Opera House), the fountain, Saigon City Hall with a large photo of Premier Diem (before he was President) over the entrance. Street scenes in a residential section of the city. A side walk vendor display of toy sampans near the edge of a park. The Catholic Cathedral. The river with vessels in the harbor and at the pier. Nearly deserted streets at noon to 3 pm (nap time) with most of the shops closed; and, a street vendor sleeping with his feet under his stand and hat over his face. Women street vendors with their baskets. Cars moving through the streets during heavy rains. Some great shots of the old original Continental Hotel and Tu Do Street, along with Le Loi Street, Flower Street and the Tax Building … on and on with old familiar places.

Just for fun see how many places you can remember and name – LOL – 🙂

[Note: The last scene in the film is somewhat underexposed.]

There is NO SOUND to this film (your speakers are not broken) – LOL.

As always, you are welcome to leave your Comments below.

Enjoy a journey back in time to the sweet sweet memories of *Old Saigon* … 🙂

20 comments to Old Saigon The Way It Was In 1955

  • Bruce Thomas

    Thanks for making that film available, Bob. It brings back fond memories of idyllic times along Rue Catinat, back 50 (count ’em!)years ago when my family arrived in July 1960.

  • Leri

    Thanks for the memories. I see you managed to capture La Pagode – the tea room anyway, and the old Continental Hotel across the street from Passage Eden. It really was a beautiful city

  • Leri

    I’m wondering who Wilson, on the clip card, was. Mrs Wilson was a teacher and her son Ashley was a phenomenal painter. They were from Oklahoma.

    • Leri – I was wondering the same thing *who is Wilson*. At the time these clips were taken (1955) I doubt there were more then 50 or so Americans in Saigon – mostly CIA and Military Intelligence personnel working covertly through the U.S. Embassy. When I arrived in 1959 there were only a total of about 450 Americans in all of Viet-nam.

      I’m assuming these clips were taken by an Army photographer as they were obtained (and copied to DVD) from the Department of Defense, Department of the Army, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, U.S. Army Audiovisual Center. They were originally *Classified* then years later *De-Classified* – why I do not know. Perhaps they were originally some type of surveillance footage.

  • Suellen Oliver Campbell

    The “Paris of the East” was a beautiful city. The lovely people and the shady streets are as pretty as I remember.
    C’mon Bob and Ken…can’t you identify, “Wilson?”
    With all your locating skills I bet you can “name that man” in less than a week!
    Thank you for sharing these pictues of Old Saigon. Sure brings back good memories from our tour there from 1958-60.

    • Suellen – Actually, it took me *4.3 seconds* to locate *Wilson* – LOL – amazing how fast Google can find things … ha ha ha – 🙂

      Here’s the scoop:

      Gwendolyn Mary Wilson was born to Fannie Robinson Wilson and Dr. Cornelius Wilson in Dardaneele, Arkansas on December 8, 1907. Dr. Wilson moved the family to Des Moines, Iowa in August 1913 where he set up an office and continued with his medical practice. Dr. Wilson died in 1916. Fannie Wilson married Olin Cooper in 1937.

      Gwendolyn Wilson attended Bryant Elementary School and West High School in Des Moines. Determined that her daughter get the best education possible, Fannie Wilson made arrangements for Gwendolyn to attend a special preparatory high school located on the campus of Rust College, in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Wilson graduated with honors in 1926 before returning to Iowa, where she was accepted to the College of Pharmacy at the University of Iowa, in Iowa City. After attending the University of Iowa for a year, Wilson transferred to the Des Moines College of Pharmacy, which later became the Drake College of Pharmacy. When Wilson graduated with a pharmaceutical/chemist degree (Ph.C.) in 1930, she became the first black woman to obtain a pharmaceutical degree and to be officially registered as a pharmacist in the state of Iowa.

      Although Wilson was highly qualified and certified by the state to practice pharmacy, she was unable to find work as a pharmacist. Wilson would later blame this on the economy during the Depression, labor legislation that restricted the number of hours women could work, and racism. Unable to find work in Iowa, Wilson returned to Holly Springs, Mississippi and taught seventh grade for a year before returning to Des Moines again. Wilson got a job waiting tables before being hired by Winnie (Mrs. N.E.) Coffin as a maid. In 1936, Wilson accompanied Coffin on a world tour to purchase artwork for the Des Moines Art Museum then under construction. The two women traveled extensively in China, Japan, Sumatra, Bali, Java, Singapore, and Australia. Their tour ended abruptly in August 1937 when Coffin died in Japan. Following Mrs. Coffin’s death, Wilson returned to Des Moines where she married Lafe H. Fowler on January 19, 1938. They were divorced in 1946.

      Gwendolyn Wilson Fowler finally obtained employment in her field in 1944 when she was hired by the State of Iowa Department of Health as a pharmacist’s clerk. In 1950, Fowler took a position as a chemist in the Iowa State Department of Agriculture laboratory. As a temporary consultant on a special project, Fowler caught the attention of President Eisenhower’s administration. Fowler became one of only nine women (and the only woman of color) to be selected for Foreign Service positions higher than secretary. In 1955, Fowler was assigned as a program analyst in Saigon, Vietnam where she was stationed for four years. After completing her Foreign Service assignment, Fowler returned to Des Moines and the Iowa State Department of Agriculture laboratory. In 1962, Fowler was hired by the Broadlawns Polk County Hospital as a staff pharmacist, a position she held until her retirement in 1974.

      During her retirement, Fowler was active in volunteer organizations, including Wilkie House, the Red Cross, and the United Way. Fowler also served on the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) board of directors, the State Drug Abuse Council and the Des Moines Civic Music Board. Governor Robert Ray appointed Fowler to the Iowa Statewide Health Coordinating Council. Fowler was a lifetime member of both the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the African Methodist Episcopal Church. She was also a member of the Des Moines Sister City Commission, the Des Moines Women’s Club, and the Drake University Alumni Association. In 1987, Fowler was inducted into the Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame.

      Fowler died in November 1997.

      Click Here to read more about her. Well worth the additional reading, as you’ll know a lot of the families mentioned in her papers who were in Saigon during 1955 – 1959 time frame. I’d love to get copies of her photo/slide/film collections of Saigon and Viet-nam. Hmmm? maybe I need to plan a trip in the near future – LOL – 🙂

  • Elizabeth Respess

    Thanks, Bob. Even without the sound, the live action gives you the sense of pace that still photos can’t.

  • Susie Stann

    Thanks, for the film, Bob. It sure does bring bakc memories.

    PS Suellen! This is Susie Stann. Veny & I wondered whatever happened to you. We’ve seen each other in San Francisco, Bali, & Vietnam. Want to email & catch up? I give Bob permission to give you my email.

  • Kenneth R. Yeager

    Ahhh Saigon…what 17 year old kid wouldn’t have enjoyed his or her time in Saigon? This film was a real trip down memory lane. Some of the cars were ones I didn’t recognize and some of the streets, but the theme was perfect. During my time (1961-1964 with breaks) taxis (except to drop off), cyclos and bicycles were not allowed on Tu Do (Rue Catinat) Street. Bird watching was a favorite pastime (having a drink at an outdoor cafe or bar and watching the pretty girls go by). Oh what to live those days again. SIGH!!!!!

  • Richard (Rique) turner

    This is remarkable footage, especially the shots taken during a rainstorm. How did you happen to get ahold of it? Is there ever going to be a screening of The Poetic Geography of Saigon at the Kinh Do? I’ve just completed the video for my current project, SEE ANGKOR AND DIE. It has a 4 minute segment that is the video version of my James Dean story.

    • Hi Rique – Yes, I agree with you given the time this footage was taken it is very remarkable. It is even more remarkable that it is still in fairly good condition. Top secret *Clod* sources provided it – LOL – 🙂

      Poetic Geography of Saigon will not be screening at The Kinh Do, as *Passage Eden* seems a better fit – lol – since it was the Clod’s favorite theater – 🙂

      It will be a few more weeks before I can show it (and about 15 others I’ve got piled up here) as I’m still in the process of setting up the new computer system, and transferring over my 12 year collection of files and data on the old computer system. Not being a geek or techie I’ve encountered many, many learning curves along the way (which I had not anticipated – lol ). (Note: for those of you who don’t know this – I’m still using a computer I bought in 1998 and running on windows 98SE … but, recently I’ve been forced to get a new up to date computer system, so I bought a *Rolls Royce* system recentely along with a number of the latest cutting edge programs, etc. which once the transition is complete will allow me to do full blown movie and video productions – along with a lot of other really cool stuff. So, brace yourselves, cuz once I get everything transferred to the new system and have it fully functional – look out … Saigon Kids is gonna ROCK!! – LOL – 🙂

      Great to hear you completed the new project *SEE ANGKOR AND DIE* – I’ll be sitting on the edge of my chair waiting to view it! By the way, speaking of *Deaner* I’ve got a copy of the original movie Trailer for *Rebel Without A Cause*… it will be showing at the Passage Eden soon – 🙂

      Rique, do you recall a girl named *Jane T. Flowers* living in Saigon? Brooks seems to remember going to her house where she taught Brooks how to write *beat poetry*, but to date we’ve been unable to find any trace of her having lived in Saigon.

      Rock Onnnnn …

      • Jesse Rivel

        Hi all. Got on this site while googling my mothers maiden name. Jane Tee Flowers. I have a ton of beautiful pictures from her time in Saigon. I was hoping to run into someone who might share some good memories of her. She passed away in Novemberof 2005. I know one of her best friends’ name was Suellen. I saw a Suellen on here. Also, in the pictures I have, Jane is wearing a Charlie Brown helmet and riding a small motorcycle. Does anyone recall anything about that?

  • Bob,

    Jane Flowers married Paul Christensen. I visited them in 1962. They had a young child. They’ve long since been divorced. I think that Paul is in contact with her and their son. She certainly would have been the person to teach Brooks how to write bet poetry. She and Paul spent time in San Francisco sometime shortly after returning from Saigon.

    • rique – Thanks! I’m sure Brooks will appreciate this information and now knowing that she did not have an *imaginary* friend – LOL

      I’ll let Brooks know about this post from you. I’m sure she’ll be excited. – 🙂

      By the way, I viewed your video. Veryyyyy *COOL* – As soon as I finish getting this new computer system set up and functioning properly, I’ll be showing your video on the site here, so all the Saigon Kids can view it – stay tuned.

  • Leri

    Seems Rique is a great resource for news from peers. Do you know what ever happened to Jeanie and Judy Smith? Jeanie used to keep me company in the afternoons while my mother was working. She would take me everywhere. I think I even had a brush with a toga party. Then again maybe I have a vivid imagination.

    • Leri – I might be wrong, but I think, Judy (Smith) Poulin passed away some time ago. I don’t have any information on Jeanie Smith. Has anyone else been in touch with Jeanie?

      Toga parties – I’d almost forgotten about those – LOL – 😉

      Those were about as *wild* and *uninhibited* as it got back in the 50s … little did we realize then what the 60s held in store for us – LOL – 🙂

  • Greg Eaton

    I found this site after searching for hours on google.. I only visited Ho Chi Minh city for the first time in Feb 2009. I have now been lucky enough to have been there once a month for the past 2 years usually just for a couple for days at a time for business. I have craved for some old vision and photos (not filled with the American War vision- (as the locals call it). It is amazing that i can recognise many many scenes from your wonderful video that are still there today. Apart from the hustle and bustle and noise there people are wonderful and i have me so many locals and enjoyed home cooked meals and the like. I cannot wait to show this video to them when i am there next in a few weeks. Although i am nearing 60 – all the locals i do business with are much much younger (mid 20’s to mid 30’s) – but they all want me to meet their parents and elder relatives. They really are wonderful people – though there is much poverty and expensive European cars are parked next to people who still live on the street. Thanks Greg

  • Bob – wonderful footage of Saigon early days. I remember it that way from when I got there in 1959. I love the monsoon shots.

    Rique – very interested to hear of your new video, and looking forward to seeing the James Dean in Saigon part. Where can I see the whole thing?

    • Janet – Rique did a *remake* of the original video he made. He sent me a copy which I’ll be showing here on the blog in the near future – the revised version is totally AWESOME! I’m still in the process of recovering from the damage done when my servers where hacked a couple weeks ago. Fortunately, this site was not effected. But, over the next couple weeks I’ll be moving this site to it’s own dedicated server as a safety measure against potential future hacks to my primary servers. Once I complete moving this site to it’s own dedicated server, I’ll show Rique’s video on here.

  • FZE

    thank you sooooo much for this movie online. my grandfather JM Aziz was a big important man in Saigon in those days. He died in 1958 in Saigon. Right now i am trying to save the graveyard he was buried in hence my blog in the link should anyone like to visit and lend support….

    but its nice to watch some moving pictures… gives me a clear idea on how the streets were….when he was alive and walking them…. especially Continental Hotel on Rue Catinat…where he used to live and always had his breakfast at the continental….

    thank you for the movie….i will come by often…just to watch it….

    thank you….

    PS: if i may add…you may google my grandfather’s name and see lots of photos of saigon and him. those of you who wish to share your memories… i would love to hear them.

    his name is JM Abdul Aziz from South India and France.

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Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Never Give Up Without a Fight

     I wrote the following transhumanist essay at some point within the past couple of years, then I lost it, and I just stumbled upon it again in an email I sent to a friend a while back who is probably dead by now. She had a rare autoimmune disease that caused her to not be able to feel physical pain, and this sometimes made it difficult for her to keep track of problems with her health.
     When I first met her she was terminally ill because her insurance refused to pay for her treatment before it was too late, and then she went from doctor to doctor and asked many people for help, but oftentimes what would happen was that they couldn't or wouldn't help her, or she would just be referred to someone else.
     I only ever met her once in person though. Aside from that, all of my interactions with her were through email. And because of my organizational difficulties I naturally found it very difficult to maintain an email-only friendship in the long-term. I eventually ran out of things to talk with her about for a while and we gradually fell out of touch.
     I hope she's still alive, but I'm guessing she probably isn't. And even if she is, I doubt she is going to be for much longer. I wish I had talked to her more. I would send another email to check up on her, but I don't know what to say, and it would be really awkward to do that after having fallen out of touch with her for over a year or so.
     Anyways, here is the essay I was talking about.
     Fear. Cold. Darkness. Why am I afraid? Why am a horrified? Not knowing any better, I fled from the truth without even noticing. Now I grasp my fear and my horror in my hands, like a disgusting bar of soap that keeps escaping from me. I realize that I am afraid and horrified for a reason—because it IS scary, and it IS horrifying. I let the fear in. I let the horror in. I feel overwhelmed. This is too much. I’m too frightened to think. I just want the fear and the horror to go away.
     No. What’s true is already so, whether or not I acknowledge it.1 I am afraid and horrified for a reason. What am I afraid of? What is it that horrifies me?
     "Life isn’t always sunshine and lollipops. Things can get hard out there. Hard enough to destroy everything you’ve worked for. Everything you’ve loved. And what will you do when that happens? Curl up and die? When things get tough, you don’t just curl up and admit defeat, you get tougher! Nobody gets anywhere by giving up hope when everything seems hopeless. Even if it is, you never stop fighting! Everyone has the right to live, and don’t let anyone take that away from you without a fight!"2
     Reality doesn’t care how I feel about it. It doesn’t care how much I scream or cry or beg.
     So I channel my fear into anger, and my horror into compassion. I think. I plan. I act.
     I fight.
     Not for glory nor fame. Neither for power nor riches. I’m not just trying to make a statement. I’m not proselytizing.
     I just want to live. And I want other people to live as well. No excuses. No strings attached. That’s it.

       1.      Adapted from the Litany of Gendlin
       2.      Quote adapted from a speech made by Frontier Brain Lucy in “Latias’ Journey”, an epic pokemon fanfiction by Ri2 that I liked to read when I was younger.
       3.      Title was partially inspired by the above quote, and partially by the inscription on Zuko’s blade in Avatar: the Last Airbender (television series)

This is something I wrote for Black History Month a couple years ago. Well, technically I started writing it before then, then finished it during black history month a couple years ago but wasn't able to find anywhere else to publish it. Then I misplaced it, forgot about it and then recently stumbled across it in an email I had sent to a friend. Hope you like it!
            My parents are red. I'm brown. It was a rather nasty shock for them when I was born. They tried to stamp the brown out of me. Twice a week, they forced me to go to a cutter to remove all the brown, down to every inch of my body, and I had to have this chemical rubbed over my whole body to keep the brown from coming back. It was deeply humiliating. The cutter always looked down on me with resentment and disregard, like he'd rather be doing anything else, and did not like having to be my cutter. Because of this, the cutter was often careless. I still have the scars on my ears and scalp to this day.
            My parents told me it was for my own good, since brown people, “are plain and worthless; they are intellectually and emotionally stunted and never good for anything because brown is a boring color.”
            But they couldn't hide it forever. One day the cutter's hands got grievously injured and he couldn't cut anymore. I couldn't skip school indefinitely until my parents could find another cutter or I'd be in a lot of trouble, my teachers would get suspicious and start asking questions, trying to find out why such a good student suddenly wasn't coming to school anymore. My parents and I could not afford to move away.
            My parents tried to keep me out of school anyway. We were brought to delinquent court for my truancy. This is when it was discovered that I am a brown. Since it was illegal for browns to attend schools in non-brown neighborhoods, and I had been attending one for most of my life already, I was tried as an adult and sentenced to prison for twelve years (which was how long I had already been in school), and my parents were fined. My parents couldn't afford the fine, so I was sentenced to another three years, or fifteen years in total.
            Not long after that, another brown was unjustly imprisoned over something stupid, but which she did have control over. Unlike me, who couldn't choose what school I was enrolled in, that lady had refused to give up her seat on a bus to a yellow man of her own free will. She was a civil rights activist who had been planning her bus incident with a team of other brown rights activists for months, in an attempt to bring national attention to the oppression of brown people.
            She succeeded. A civil rights movement began. I was fifteen years old.
            Fourteen years later, I was let out of prison after much pressure from pro-brown advocates. I emerged into a world where a lot of people were very excited and interested to meet me, simply because I am brown. Brown people were no longer seen as boring, useless or without spirit. We were now commonly viewed as calm, collected and professional, although still lacking in creativity.
            Many brown people believed this about themselves. There was an entire culture based on the brown identity. They were proud to be brown. Never mind the fact that eventually most of us would become silver and white.
            I remember many times when well-meaning and supposedly open-minded people have told me something blatantly prejudicial in a starry-eyed voice, like, “It’s who you arrrrree!” and, “You should be proud!”
            After many more years of this, I was fed up with the sheer stupidity. It was very difficult, but I finally worked up the courage to say something I had secretly wanted to say all my life—the obvious, sensible words cried out into the dawn through decades of pain, resentment, bitterness, anger, exasperation and incredulity.
            “I have brown hair! And I'm neither proud of it nor ashamed of it! IT'S JUST BROWN HAIR!”
            No one answered. A few people gave me weird looks.
            “...it's just brown hair,” I whispered, the despair and incredulity threatening to leak from my eyes.
            Few heard me. Fewer listened. Of those who listened, even fewer if any understood. They just chalked me up as another weird exception to the rule, and then forgot about me. But I remembered them. They were the same people who had condemned me before, silent as I was punished for something arbitrary, superficial and beyond my control, now loud in their praise of me for the same reasons.
            The exasperated fury arose in me, clearer and brighter than ever before, and with it a steely determination born of all the utterly pointless suffering I had endured, of rebellious thoughts I hadn't let myself think, of dreams I hadn't dared to dream. That determination came with instructions: If something's broken, fix it. I turned this desire upon myself, clearing the fog and cobwebs of my mind until I could see through it clearly. I looked at the people, and I saw their preoccupation with color for what it was: not a weapon, but the result of a weakness which was made more harmful by sheer numbers.
            If a skilled gunman was surrounded on all sides by a million sword-bearing child assailants, eventually the gunman would fall. If his goal was to defend his assailants and not just himself, that made things all the more challenging. But in this case, the weakness of the assailants was not that they were bringing swords to gunfights. It was that they were bringing aggression to argument, and leaving their minds behind them. They were either not attacking of their own will, or were attacking without meaning to, or didn't really understand why they were attacking and whether those reasons were sufficient, legitimate, or even related to their attacks, and they all adamantly refused to admit that and continued to attack anyway.
            That meant that they could be outsmarted, tricked and manipulated. From that, a plan started to form in my mind. Convince people to be convincible, trick them into not being so easily tricked, manipulate them into being resistant to manipulation, indoctrinate them into valuing their own mind and mental freedom so that they would want to think for themselves, and then teach them how to recognize and counter indoctrination techniques, propaganda and systematic biases so that they would be able to avoid falling prey to them in the future.
            After all, even if a person couldn't be reasoned out of a position they weren't reasoned into, and even if they wouldn't change their minds no matter how many times reality itself proved them wrong, if they were culturally indoctrinated into that position then surely they could be indoctrinated out of it.
            If a plan like this one was implemented, then maybe travesties like the world's pathetic, insane obsession with hair color would end, and people would start paying attention to things that actually mattered.
            Of course, someone else could have easily thought of all this long before I did. It might take a lot of resources and trial and error, but in the end the idea wouldn't necessarily be that complicated or difficult for a good, smart and sane person with enough money and time on their hands to at least think of, if not comprehend and facilitate.
            But if there were such good, smart and sane people out there, where were they? They couldn't all be poor and disadvantaged, or locked away in a cell, right? Were they working on a plan like the one I thought of? Was it working, albeit at a very slow pace? Had it failed? How many people had tried something like it before throughout history? Surely I wasn't the only person who's ever noticed the problem that the vast majority are terrible at and resistant to learning critical thinking, and yearned to correct it?
            Why was it that in fourteen years of civil rights advocacy, of a systematic campaign protesting the kind of nightmarish ignorance and insanity that would cause a child to be imprisoned just for having brown hair, all that was really accomplished was the trading of one obsession with hair color for another? It wasn't just that they were treating the symptoms and not the disease. It was that they were attempting to repurpose the disease to treat the very symptoms it had caused in the first place, not by eliminating the symptoms entirely, but by replacing them. That was beyond stupid. It was insane.
            And that insanity was precisely the problem. If people had been remotely reasonable, it wouldn't have taken fourteen years and an entire social movement to let me out of prison. If people had been sane, then I probably wouldn't have been arrested in the first place. Their decision to imprison me was not intended for my benefit, and it wasn't intended for anyone else's benefit either. It didn't make sense.
            Why was it that the civil rights movement merely switched some of the stereotypes and discrimination from unfavorable to favorable and only marginally reduced the dangerous, ridiculous perception of “otherness”, if at all? Even now that the movement had long-since ended, people with brown hair were still significantly more likely than other people to be turned away from employment and housing, to be pulled over by police while driving, to live in poverty, and to be victims of hate crimes. Even now, a third of all adult men with brown hair have or will be imprisoned at one point or another.
All this over something as trivial and superficial as hair. Just hair.
Really, humanity, how much more stupid and pathetic could you get? This is the kind of inane bullshit that makes me ashamed to be a member of your species. Why are you still being so unreasonable? Why won’t you change? And don’t smugly and self-righteously proclaim that it’s just your nature. That’s a bullshit excuse, saying it doesn’t make you deep or wise, and you know it.
            To answer that question, there were several possible explanations I could think of:
                  1. People preferred to be unreasonable because it took more effort to think clearly and act sensibly then to think incoherently and act insensibly
                  2. There were smarter and saner people who benefited from the ignorance and insanity of the public, and worked to maintain it.
                  3. People were just naturally like that
                  4. Some combination of 1, 2, and/or 3.

“What seems to be the problem, ma’am?”
“That man over there was being disruptive. He shouted some nonsense and now he’s been muttering to himself and pacing back and forth in front of that house. It frightens me.”
This is my front lawn, I’m allowed to walk around on it whenever I want, jerk. And I find it easier to think out loud because otherwise my mind wanders. Why were you eavesdropping for so long anyway? It frightens me. And you’re only scared because I was walking and talking. Everybody does that. For all you knew I could have been on my cell phone.
I sighed as the officer approached me. It was time to get to work. I had a long day ahead of me.

Sunday, August 27, 2017

The Bet

"Now, I want you both on your best behavior," our mom said. "No funny business. We are here to visit family, and we want to make a good impression."

She rang the doorbell.

My brother and I rolled our eyes behind her back.

"I bet we can turn everyone at the Seder table into atheists in ten minutes," I whispered.

"I bet we can do it in five, Sis," said my brother.

We grinned.

Our mom sent us a warning glare right before the front door opened and we were introduced to our estranged "family".
My brother and I were on our best behavior, and whenever it wasn't our turn to read from the Haggadah we were silent. We didnt even complain about how hungry we were. Unbeknownst to anyone else, we had already familiarized ourselves with the story of Passover beforehand, and we were waiting for our moment of opportunity.

Finally, our opportunity came.

I glanced at the clock. It was 8:45pm.

"All the people of Egypt and the King himself beheld this miracle," recited our uncle. "They saw the fish die as the blood flowed over the land, and they turned with disgust from the offensive smell of the sacred river."

"Eww gross!" I said, while at the same time my brother said, with the apparent morbid fascination that preteen boys often have with gross things, "Cool! I didn't know God went for that kind of miracle."

As the next several plagues were described, my own face became more and more disgusted and horrified, while my brother's became more morbidly fascinated.

"Why did God kill all those poor, innocent animals?" I asked.

"They weren't innocent, obviously," said my brother. They were sinful animals who served the evil Egyptians, just like the animals that were killed in the flood. God wouldn't have smited them otherwise."

I made myself look like I was going to cry. It wasn't that difficult, since I really was horrified. It just so happened that I had cried when I had first read about the ten plagues. But no one else at this damned Cthulhu-worshipping ceremony knew that I was using that episode as a script for how I was acting now, since they didn't know that I had bothered to research their stupid religion before coming here.

The recital of the ten plagues continued like this, with each of our estranged extended family members taking turns to read. And then it was our grandmother's turn.

"Midnight of the fourteenth to the fifteenth of Nissan came, and G‑d struck all first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of King Pharaoh, down to the first-born of a captive in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the cattle, exactly as Moses had warned. There was a loud and bitter wail in each house a loved one lay fatally stricken."

"GOD DID WHAT!?" I shouted in rightous indignation.

My brother laughed cruelly.

Our mom sent us a warning glare.

"But, but, God is omnipotent right? Why didn't he just teleport the Israelites out of Egypt?"

"Obviously, he wanted to punish the Egyptians for their crimes against the Israelites," said my brother smugly.

"But the Egyptian children didn't do anything wrong!" I argued. Then in a smaller voice, I asked, "Why didn't the Israelites shelter the Egyptian children? God had promised to pass over their houses."

"Like that would have worked," my brother scoffed. "God would have known. He would have gone to those households and started banging on their doors, saying, 'I AM THE LORD YOUR GOD. OPEN UP!' and if they didn't open the door God would have just barged in. Then God would have demanded to know where the Egyptian children were, and the Israelites would have said, "There aren't any Egyptian children here. It's just us."

My brother's eyes took on a maniacal look just like we'd seen on the faces of supervillains in movies. He'd practiced that facial expression a lot in order to try to scare me when we were younger before I caught on to what he was doing.

"And then," said my brother. "God would have killed those Israelites, just as he had done with the plague of darkness to the Israelites who betrayed him by trying to assimilate with the Egyptians."

"I'm scared," I whispered, dramatically. "Is God going to kill us, too?"

Out of the corner of my eye I could see my mom's mortified and embarrassed face. I could also see the horror that flitted across the faces of all of my estranged extended family members before the look was replaced by a look of righteous fury and moral indignation directed at my mom. I looked at the clock. It was 8:52pm.

Later, on the car ride back home, I turned to my brother and said, "Pay up."

"No," he said. "Your bet was that we would turn them into atheists in ten minutes. Mine was that it would only take five. But in case you haven't noticed, we weren't able to convert them at all."

"You saw the horrified looks on their faces just like I did! We DID turn them into atheists, even if they don't want to admit it."

"No, we turned them into antitheists. Even if they become atheists eventually, it wouldn't have happened in ten minutes, so the bet is off, Sis."

I sat there, fuming silently while my brother started messing around with some game on his phone.

Our mom looked at us sternly through the rearview mirror.

"By the way, you're both grounded."

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Internal Dialogue about the End of the World

"You have got to be kidding me."

"What did you expect the end of the world to be like?"

"Something more....more...."

"Dramatic? Dignified? Come on, this is the real world. Obviously, the end of the world is going to be utterly mundane, something that doesn't violate the laws of physics and is a perfectly natural result of human stupidity. If there was a big red end the world button, someone would press it just to see what happens. But in this case, the trigger for Armageddon isn't necessarily going to be something so obvious as pressing a button."

"But that button hasn't been pressed yet! There must be something we can do!"

"There is. It's probably not going to work though."

"So there's still a chance?"

"Yes. There's also still a chance you'll win the lottery. Good luck with that.

"It sounds like you've given up."

"Do you mean to tell me you don't have a nagging whispering doubt somewhere in the back of your mind that maybe what I'm saying is right and it really is too late? Because I'm pretty sure most sane people have that nagging whispering doubt."

"Most sane people also don't give up and wait for the end just because things seem hopeless."

"I'm pretty sure it doesn't just seem that way."

"But that's still how it seems to you. The map is not the territory, after all."

"True. But I have yet to see any evidence that we aren't as doomed as it seems to me like we are. Do you have any such evidence?"

A sigh.

"Didn't think so."

"What should we do, then? Just curl up and die?"

"No. That is definitely crazy. If you don't want to die, if you feel despair over the end, then that is the most counterproductive thing you could possibly do."

"Then what should we do?"

"That's obvious, isn't it? Continue living. Continue this futile struggle. Who knows, maybe we will win the lottery. And maybe we'll get a nice perfect happily ever after, with easier choices that have lower stakes, where the challenges are designed to be solvable and the world's at peace and everything is more fair and more beautiful. I doubt it's going to happen, but there's no harm in trying. What have we got to lose?"

Monday, August 21, 2017

Reflection on the Gen Con Mage Wars Academy tournament and Misconceptions About Mage Wars Academy

If you're not familiar with Mage Wars Academy, this post will likely be hard to follow. If you're interested, I recommend checking out the game here, and then getting a demo either at your friendly local game store or at a convention.

I won the Mage Wars Academy tournament at gen con, and while I played fairly and fought my hardest and overcame all the opposition, part of me still doesn't feel like I deserved my victory. Partly because there were only five other competitors in the tournament. Partly because I did not face a significant challenge until the finals.

First, a recap of the tournament for those who were not there to see it. There were six players in it including me. I fought in three matches: my first match was against a beastmaster which used a minor animal swarm, second match was against a Mana denial wizard using Mana worms. My final match was against a very aggressive warlock using Sanguine Hunter and Drakas, Imp Overlord.

First match I won because my opponent forgot that Aurora Lucere, Dawnbreaker's Chosen had an ability that let her treat his minor creatures as pests, and therefore could keep her guard marker if melee attacked by them as long as she didn't counterstrike.

The second match I won because my opponent wasn't prepared to deal with Aurora Lucere. We both agreed afterwards that he should have summoned a Sailfin Hydra and attacked my Dawnbreaker's Chosen with it, using disperses to get rid of any shrinks I would have enchanted his hydra with.

The final match was best 2/3. First game I won because I surprised my opponent by rushing him really fast and he wasn't prepared to deal with my strategy. Second game I lost because I forgot to crumble his armor before attacking with Dawnbreaker's Chosen and he was able to kill me before I could recover from that mistake. Third game I won because I landed a really lucky roll on a firestream dealing 8 damage which brought him to 17 damage, and then he illegally used exile on my Dawnbreaker's Chosen because he didn't realize it could only target minor creatures. And that was the end of the tournament.

To be honest, I was disappointed that I didn't get a real challenge until the final match of the tournament. I have some educated guesses as to why it happened like this. You see, I spoke to multiple Mage Wars players there about the Academy tournament beforehand, and nearly everyone I asked was either unsure if they wanted to participate or were unwilling or did not have spellbooks prepared for it.

Two or three people even expressed the view that Mage Wars Academy was merely watered down Mage Wars Arena. This is a common misconception perpetuated partly because of the unintentionally deceptive advertising of the game on Arcane Wonder's part, and partly because Arena players just starting out in Academy don't know how to build good Academy spellbooks but too easily think that they do, especially in the absence of a real public competitive academy metagame.

At least several people told me that they had not played Mage Wars Academy since the release of its core set, and this was something I had heard before from other mage wars players online. Mage Wars Academy has been available for online play on OCTGN for about two years, but it has been almost impossible to find anyone to play it with there.

Because most people likely have not tested their custom Academy spellbooks all that much if at all, or at least because there is very little public record of what kinds of spellbooks work in Academy and what don't, Arena players who start playing Academy with each other start out trying to make their spellbooks too much like Arena spellbooks.

Mage Wars Academy is not watered down Mage Wars Arena, as I hope will become clear to you after reading this post. Unfortunately, Arcane Wonders has advertised Mage Wars Academy in such a way that it made it look like Mage Wars Academy was really Mage Wars Arena jr. For one thing, they put a mini advertisement for Mage Wars Arena into the Mage Wars Academy commercial. They have also kept talking about how they designed it for the purpose of being a point of entry for Arena, and they did not do anything to correct any of the wild misconceptions Arena players had about Academy, except by writing the words "new, standalone game" on the core set box.

Mage Wars Arena players new to Academy likely won't notice how the lack of action accelerators like spawnpoints and familiars, combined with the 1x1 zone arena make putting on armor round 1 a better decision than in Arena. They'll just think that first initiative gives an unfair advantage because the first player gets to attack or target enemy objects first after the setup rounds end, while also doing a chain of four consecutive converted quick actions without the opponent being able to respond during that chain. In point of fact you do have the ability to respond to your opponent during this chain, it's called revealing enchantments (or using defenses or other abilities that don't cost actions to use). But Arena players new to Academy are likely to think this isn't enough because casting enchantments uses a quick action in the first place.

They dont notice that because of a lack of action accelerators in Academy, that the loss of actions is nowhere near as costly in Academy. Unlike in Arena, in Academy skipping your quickcast action to save mana is a perfectly viable tactic and does not mean that you made a mistake. It's ok to lose an action or two if you are devaluing the actions of your opponent. Arena players new to Academy think that introducing quickcast phases would be a good way to solve this supposed problem of consecutive actions, but it is entirely unnecessary. Consecutive actions would only be a problem in arena because of action accelerators and the existence of move actions. With two full actions and two quickcasts, you can cast two familiars and two spawnpoints and take two move actions in Arena, which increases your action generation per round exponentially. In Academy the only action generators are creatures, each creature can only use one action per round, and only mages can cast creatures and they must use their full action to do it. With two full actions and two quickcasts in Academy you just get at most two more actions generated per round, plus maybe another quick action or two for very specific things, like how the packleader's cloak or the priestess's ability let's you put a guard marker on a friendly creature as a "free" action (you still have to pay mana for it).

Unfortunately, it seems that these misconceptions about Academy likely contributed to the quality of much of the competition in the Academy tournament, as well as to the extremely low turnout compared to the Arena tournament. At least one or two people I asked said that they were going to just cobble together an Academy spellbook right before the Academy tournament, without testing it.

I don't intend to slight any of my opponents. They all fought valiantly, despite two out of three of them coming unprepared. However, this was supposed to be a competitive level tournament. And yet from the way people were talking about it, it seemed to me a likely possibility that most of the other competitors were not expecting competitive levels of difficulty in the Academy tournament before they came to Gen Con, and that they did not think that they needed to prepare for it much if at all. I suspect they may only have started to believe otherwise after Arcane Wonders ambassador and mage wars tournament judge Silverclawgrizzly hypothized that I would just wipe the floor with everyone in the academy tournament because most other people hadn't practiced it at all since the core set's release.

This is the second mage wars tournament I have ever won, and both times there were only five other competitors, and both times the majority of the competition did not seem to be at a competitive level. I have two really cool mage wars trophies in my apartment now, and I find myself disappointed that I did not have to work harder to earn them.

Hopefully the next Mage Wars Academy tournament I attend will have a greater turnout of competitive-level players.

Note: I just looked on the forums, and there doesn't seem to be an event page for the Gen Con Mage Wars Academy tournament like there was for the Gen Con Mage Wars Arena tournament. I suspect this likely also contributed to the low turnout for the Academy tournament.

Special mention goes to my opponent in the final match, who did come prepared with a spellbook he had tested ahead of time, and he nearly beat me for the championship. That match included some of my most fun fights in Academy that I've had so far.

You can see the spellbook I used in the Gen Con Mage Wars Academy tournament here.

Friday, August 11, 2017

Did I make a mistake, or was I just unlucky?

If you're not familiar with Mage Wars Arena, this post will likely be hard to follow. If you're interested, I recommend checking out the game here, and then getting a demo either at your friendly local game store or at a convention.

I just played a game of Arena on OCTGN. I was playing a forcemaster of Salenia and my opponent was a Priest of Malakai. I had a forge, meditating monk, a mana crystal, enchanter's wardstone and a surging wave-thoughtspore. My opponent had a forge, mana crystal and guardian angel. I rolled a really unlikely bad roll on a surging wave against his battle forge which cost me the whole match, and the more I think about it the more it seems like there really was nothing I could have done to deal with that bad roll. After that bad roll I didnt have any surging waves left except for the one attached to my thoughtspore. Next round, in order to finish off the battle forge, I had to force pull the guardian angel so that it was no longer protecting the forge, then my spore attacked it again. But then guardian angel was able to attack my spore and bring it to the brink of death, and then finished it off the next round. If not for my using force pull on the angel, it would not have been in range to attack my spore. And I wouldn't have used force pull if I hadn't rolled such a unusually bad roll when I had attacked the forge the round prior. If I had rolled slightly better, the forge would have been gone sooner and I wouldn't have spent as much mana and actions to take it down, so I would have had more mana to cast certain expensive spells sooner. And my surging wave-spore would have still been alive to deal with guardian angel so that I could focus on attacking the priest. But none of that happened because I had one lousy roll against a battle forge. It seems that for the very first time EVER, I have just played an Arena match where I lost exclusively because of luck rather than skill. It was frustrating, but at least it's only happened to me once in the four years I've been playing the game.

...Then again maybe I should have used my force crush on the guardian angel instead of the priest. I already had dot on the priest in the form of magebane, ghoul rot and arcane corruption, and I had used one of my ghoul rots to finish off Cassiel, Maybe I didn't need more dot on the priest and I could have spared my force crush for the guardian angel. I'm not sure if it would work or not, but I'll try it. Next time I'm facing a mage that uses guardian angel to guard itself and my surging wave-thoughtspore dies, I will try putting force crush on the guardian angel. If that doesn't work, then I'll know that this match was decided exclusively by luck rather than skill. Considering that this is the only time that might have happened in the four years I've been playing the game, I don't think I should worry about this match too much. But I really should try using force crush on the guardian angel if I ever encounter this situation again, just to see if it would work.


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Friday, March 9, 2012

Hearts to SEE

There are two blogs that I love to read,    and .  But sometimes when I read them, instead of feeling encouraged I feel condemned.  Ann Voskamp sees God EVERYWHERE--in a flower, in her sink, and even in her socks.  I never think to look for Him in those places. And Katie Davis sees God as she bandages wounds, cares for orphans, and shares her guest room with the homeless.  What have I done today?  Sigh.
Yesterday I read that after Jesus fed the 5,000, the disciples "still didn't understand the significance of the miracle of the loaves.  Their hearts were too hard to take it in." (Mark 6:52)  Maybe that's my problem.  Maybe my heart is too hard to "take in" what God is doing around me.  "Jesus asked them, ' do you still not see or understand?  Are your hearts hardened?  Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear?'" (Mark 8:17) Ann and Katie have eyes to see and ears to hear.  They are not super-women, but their hearts are not too hard to SEE a super-God.  Sometimes I SEE, but most of the time I am distracted by the cares of this world and all I can see are the dirty socks on the floor and the yard full of weeds.  How can I maintain my heart of flesh and keep it from becoming a heart of stone?  How can I SEE God in the details around me?
I may never write a book or meet Kathie Lee Gifford like Ann.  I may never adopt 13 orphans or live in Uganda like Katie.  But God is not just in Africa or on a corn farm or wherever other people SEE Him.  He is where I am.  He is where you are.
Slow down.
Look for Him.
Give thanks.

Jennifer said...

I love reading Katie's blog. Have you read her book?? SO good! You're right - sometimes I feel so average when I read about all Katie is doing. But God has amazing assignments for me right here in OKC. I just have to have eyes to see and a heart willing to be obiedient to where He calls me.

Lauren said...

So good!!! I know what you mean about them.. I read Ann's blog almost every day.
I want to see, too!!! :) sent this post to some friends:)


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Sayed M. Saleh has earned
a reputation as an energetic and visionary
leader in the hospitality world. He began his hotel career over thirty years ago in his native Egypt after completing his college studies at Cairo University. Over the years, he has worked in the Middle East, Europe and the United States.

Following his initial academic and property level training, Mr. Saleh spent several years in London where he began his managerial training within the luxury segment. In 1974, he came to the United States, settling in Boston as the Managing Director of The Colonnade hotel. Under his stewardship, The Colonnade became a favorite of both business travelers and international visitors and was welcomed as a member of both Preferred Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and The Leading Hotels of the World.

One of the first to envision the potential from growing international tourism early in the 1980's, Mr. Saleh led impressive overseas promotional efforts for his property, in cooperation with local industry and governmental marketing interests throughout Europe and the Far East. As a result, The Colonnade soon captured the largest percentage of the inbound foreign visitor market in New England and became known as "Boston's Grand European Hotel."
Mr. Saleh has been honored for his international service to the hospitality industry, as well as his superior performance as a hotelier. His awards include the Preferred Hotels & Resorts Worldwide “2000 Number One Service Award” in North America, the “Top 10 in the World” Service Award in 2001; the “1989 Spirit of Massachusetts International Tourism Leadership Award,” and the “International Golden Helm Award.”
In 1993, Mr. Saleh acquired the Orchards Hotel in Williamstown, Massachusetts. The Orchards quickly earned the reputation as an intimate, boutique luxury lifestyle hotel which won numerous awards for its exceptional service, elegant ambiance and world-class cuisine. It too, was a member of The Leading Small Hotels of the World and Preferred Hotels and Resorts Worldwide. In addition, the hotel was a perennial winner of both the International Five Star Diamond Award and the AAA Four Diamond Award.
For many years, Mr. Saleh served as a board member of Preferred Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, devoting himself to the growth and development of that organization. He was honored by Preferred Hotels & Resorts Worldwide as the “2003 Hotelier of the Year.”

Mr. Saleh has served on numerous community, industry and government boards and commissions: President, Boston Skal Club International; Past President, Greater Boston Hotel Association; member of the Board of Directors; Massachusetts Lodging Association, Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau, New England Inns and Resorts Association, Tourism Massachusetts International, and the Roger A. Saunders School of Hotel and Restaurant Management at Newbury College, Boston.


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News >> Browse Articles >> Fun & Useful

6 Bathroom Etiquette Tips for the Office

6 Bathroom Etiquette Tips for the Office

Jeff Hindenach | SalesHQ

You spend eight-plus hours at work every day, so you can assume that nature will call at least once during your day. Besides your desk, the office bathroom is where you might spend the most time during the workday.

Since you spend so much of your day there, the office bathroom should be a comfortable, approachable place. Make sure you are following these basic workplace bathroom etiquette rules to keep the experience pleasant for all your co-workers.

Don’t Talk on Your Cell Phone

Nothing is more awkward than when you hear the toilet flush when you are on the phone with someone. Not only is this rude to other people in the bathroom — it’s also disrespectful to the person you are talking to. Your bodily functions are private, so please keep them that way.

Wash Your Hands … Every Time!

There should never be any excuse for not washing your hands after using the bathroom. This is a hard and fast rule, especially in the business world, where you could be shaking many hands during the day. In addition, you are spreading germs throughout the office. Since you share this space with your coworkers, do everyone a favor and wash your hands.

Next: The Urinal Is Not Chat Time >>


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SalesManage Solutions

The Impact of a Product Knowledge Focus

Lance Cooper by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | on June 23, 2008 | about Coaching | 0 Comments
The Impact of a Product Knowledge Focus

Can product knowledge get in the way?  YES!

A friend and past mentor, Ron Willingham, once told me that all salespeople sell with some type of focus.  That focus can be one of these ...

- Product focus
- Quota focus
- Ego focus
- Value focus

A “product focus” causes a salesperson to wax on eloquently about product features and perhaps benefits that have no bearing on the needs of the person being sold. Oftentimes, sales training is really product training.  The trainer teaches product information and does not teach salespeople how to identify needs, problems, or wants filled for new customers.  As a result, sales trainees do not develop good questions to use during a face-to-face meeting that bring these out.

A “quota focus” causes a salesperson to see the prospect as no. 4, or no. 8, or no. etc… or as some amount of sales dollars. This focus keeps the salesperson from understanding needs or even knowing the prospect’s name. It also causes the veins to bulge out in his neck as he attempts to close the sale under a quota pressure.

An “ego focus” causes the salesperson to be preoccupied with looks, or pride, or what others think. As a result, this focus hinders a salesperson from caring about the prospect - their satisfaction or their needs.

Finally, the best focus is a “value focus,” through which the salesperson wants to exchange value in the transaction. The salesperson seeks to understand a prospect’s situation, needs, and problems relative to the prospect’s product or service purchase. The salesperson wants a fair exchange of value and wants the new customer to be delighted with a solved problem, filled need, or satisfied want.

Let’s coach salespeople to sell with a value focus and not a product, quota, ego, or PRICE focus.  Lance.

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About Me

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My name is Sally Johnson and I adore quilting... I have lived on Cape Cod since 1974 and I am married and have two sons...

Saturday, June 2, 2012

My Son isn't a Baby any Longer

I cannot believe my son is 19 and his Senior Prom is over and the 9th of June is around the corner. On that day my son Cameron will graduate from high school and begin a new chapter in his life... I thought I would share prom pics from last weekend...

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Monday, February 05, 2007

Skype on the Nokia E61 ..

IM is a huge part of my life.. next to SMS texting.. its the whole presence, freeflow almost instant conversation with friends that makes it a very appealing application for cell phones.. unfortunately not all cell phones have them or the applications arent broadly compatible... skype and symbian OS is one.. skype is a cool IM/VoIP application.. a mobile client has been on the "works" forever but nothing yet and since it doesnt look like skype will release a Symbian client to the public (the client for 3's X series phones does not work) anytime soon.. theres been a few beta apps out there that have skype capabilites but they arent as nice as having a native client built for the phone... apps like EQO and SoonR for example have skype in/out capabilities but you also have to download and have the PC application running on your computer for that call to be made which kinda sucks... and defeats the whole Mobile VoIP idea

I wrote about iSkoot and fring before (and again about fring recently here) but at the time they did not have a solution for my phone.. but things have changed.. this post is all about using skype on the E61 or any other supported phone for that matter for free skype calls..I'll explain a bit about each, what I liked and didnt like as the end they both do a very nice job.. as you can see I have a few different IM options but I like these two the most

Fring uses your cell phone data plan to make VoIP calls and instant messages with Skype and GoogleTalk..why I like Fring? it uses your data plan to make that call sobasically it makes a decent VoIP call over EDGE (2.5GPRS) or WiFi if your phone is capable..theres no usage of minutes!.. what I didnt like? no option at login to choose your connection, it jumps whatever Access point you used last.. so in my case EDGE connection but I can switch the connection to WiFi once logged in ..since the call is made w\in the application it doesnt let you use speakerphone or bluetooth ..unlike iskoot it doesnt load your skypeout contacts

iSkoot is probably my favorite right now..probably because its as close to a native skype client as looks like a skype client..the logos and asks for my access point at login and automatically refreshes my buddy list...and also brings up my skypeout contacts
what I didnt like? no chat capability as of today on my phone so I can only call them but no GoogleTalk support (which is ok by me but coming soon)... it makes the VoIP call by calling iskoot's PSTN server and then connecting to Skype (this is where you still use your minutes- if anything this comes in great when calling Intl skype contacts since there is no long distance charges)

So two different but yet similar IM/VoIP mobile clients.. check their websites to see if your phone is compatible and start calling!

botheyesgreen said...

The fring you get now ( july 13) *does* load skypeout contacts, *and* lets you choose connection point. Well, at least on Nokia N80 it does :)


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Monday, July 1, 2013

rollin', eurostyle

You glue half a paper onto the end of a regular one.  You form the filter with the liner of a pack of cigs, then break open a cig, placing only tabac near the filter.

You add the secret ingredient to the tabac. and place in the paper.

You roll 'em and smoke 'em if you got 'em.

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RRSP Deadline March 01, 2013

RRSP Deadline in Less Than One Week

ClockIf you still have not contributed into your RRSP for the tax year 2012, there is less than one week to do it. Below is a checklist that provides some insights to your RRSP planning. Check it out!

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21 September 2008

From Archive: "how to..."

...fly to Schiphol, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Take a train towards Leiden. Forget to get off the train there, reach Den Haag before realising it. Take the next train back to Leiden. Get off the train there (and not continue to Amsterdam by mistake) and manage to get on a bus to Noordwijk aan Zee.

Parallel Boulevard, Noordwijk

Find the Mitchbi and get a room there. Drink too much Kwak. Forget your red pills back in Sweden. Visit the ESTEC medical center. Run around Katwijk looking for a pharmacy you know is somewhere there. Borrow money from your friend in order to pay for stuff. Share a small bed with the same friend. Go from being asleep to being on the bus in 5 minutes. Lose a jacket. Almost miss the bus when going to the airport. Get stuck on an airport in Copenhagen (!?!) on a travel from Amsterdam to Stockholm, 4 hours due to a snow storm...

All this in a bit less than 4 intense days. You can make this happen if you are like Axel were.

Miss you dear

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Friday, December 12, 2008

Isaiah dancing

Isaiah loves to turn on all the singing decorations that we have ad dance to them. We have a snow globe that sings, a car that sings low rider with Santa in it, a Army santa, a littel dog with a santa hat and now a singing card! I am going to try to upload the video, it is funny! He now dances to any music, commercials, the theme songs to shows, if Z sings to him, and he needs to make sure you are watching him and clapping. He loves being the center of attention!

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Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Ok, we STILL haven't broke ground as of yet, but there are 2 more families in front of us and then we are up....excited, but I do know "to be anxious for nothing" so I'm patiently waiting.....wellllll WHO AM I KIDDING....NO I'M NOT...LOL...However I do have new pictures, we have a BEAUTIFUL pond that will sit behind our home once it's built and we took pictures of it.  SEE BELOW....SO SERENE!!!!

We tried to get a picture of the ducks in the pond as well, don't know if you can see them or not, but they are there.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Elevation E

Here is a picture of the Elevation that we are going with, Elevation E, with no bonus room and a 2 car side garage.

This is the color choices for the floor, kitchen cabinets and the counter tops that we will be using. Its a model but we will be using the same color choices.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Flooring Meeting 5/12/2014

Ok on yesterday 5/12/2014 we had our meeting with Rite Rug flooring, We went into the meeting thinking wow this is cool and we were pretty excited, the meeting started at 5:00 p.m. and it didn't end until 7:00 p.m.  It was a bit overwhelming, picking out flooring is not as easy as it seems, you must match the floors with everything, because essentially the floors is whats going to pull everything together in the house.  However, my husband and I went back and forth on colors, then to find out that that Maple Honey cabinets that comes standard in the Vic Falls hall bathroom is not what we expected them to look, however we are changing those cabinets.  Oh we had our meeting with the Electrician on May 6, 2014...that didn't go as bad and as long as the flooring, we were happy with what we chose for positioning of the HDMI hookup and the alarm system.  No pictures of course, but stay tuned.  Today we meet with our SR to go over the changes we have made.  My husband has decided to change our Elevation from Elevation C to Elevation E, brick veneer, we are looking to get brick sides as well..I think its a good change, we need to get what we want because we have no plans on doing this again.  Blessings, talk to you soon.

Monday, May 12, 2014

Hello Everyone,

Today is my first time EVER blogging, needless to say on this site.  My husband and I are so blessed to be here, not only to share our blessings, but because God IS BLESSING US.  I don't know if I'm doing this right, but hey what's the best way to start.  I can't begin to tell you how this all started, it started suddenly, but I will jump ahead to the day we signed our contract and purchased our lot.  April 29, 2014 was the day we signed our contract and purchased our lot with RYAN HOMES!!!  As you see we are just in our beginning stages and as many of you already know, it's a long journey ahead, but we are looking forward to it, because as you all have shared...ITS WELL WORTH IT, so here it goes our first blog and picture.

STAY TUNED MANY More to come.


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Friday, December 5, 2008

Luminary Friday

Have I mentioned lately, how great the weather is? It was a warm 76 degrees today and a perfect evening for the Sanibel Luminary Trail, I feel like I walked most of those 3 miles. :-) Starting out at 5:30 by meeting friends at Jerry's.

We planned to catch a trolley, but after finding out there was a wait, we decided to leave one vehicle parked there and just drive the other one to the end of Periwinkle to start at Bailey's Plaza. First thing I saw was Santa and ?? Mrs. Claus or a helper, not sure. Her skirt seemed a little shorter than anything I've seen Mrs. Claus wear. :-) We had a little eggnog and a sugar cookie before getting back in the vehicle and driving to Periwinkle Place to park.

After a quick walk through Periwinkle Place, we then walked to the Island Cow, where we had some wine and another sugar cookie. From there, on over to the Community House, where we had another cookie and looked at the beautiful Christmas ornaments made from seashells by the shellcrafters.

Next stop was Tahitian Gardens, where we made a quick stroll along the shops, stopped to talk to some friends and listened to the Blues Band for a bit. Also saw Santa again. I made sure he saw me behaving properly. :-)

We started walking east again on the path, lit by luminaries and the moon. We met a lot of other folks walking. We were met and passed by many on bicycles, ringing their bells at us, with a cha-ching! The Christmas lights were magical as we walked along.

I was about worn out when we got to the community Church. A wonderful gospel group was playing and singing, and I noticed a sign that said, 'The Sani-Bells. They must have been playing the bells I heard while standing in line for 'The Journey'. We waited for about an hour and 15 minutes. (We had some snacks of cheese and crackers while we waited.) The journey took you through a street in Bethlehem to the manger where Jesus was born. Very nice.

The Church was next to Jerry's, so we got in the vehicle we left there and drove over to Island Pizza to eat, then back to Periwinkle Place to get the other one and call it a night. There wasn't nearly enough time to stop at every business that participated, before we gave out. Maybe we can catch those we missed, next year. We all agreed, it was a wonderful evening.

(Not great quality photos, taken with my cell phone. I'll try to get a few more of the island Christmas lights to put on the blog, another day.)

Trolleys at Jerry's Parking Lot.

Bailey's Parking Area
Santa and Mrs. Claus walking to catch a ride on the firetruck.
Island Cow
Island Cow's Santa

Moon over Sanibel Communtiy House
Blues Band at Tahitian Gardens
Path lighted by luminaries and the moon.
Sanibel Community Church
animals for petting in the Church yard.
A very good gospel group.
Lots and lots of people.
People in line for 'The Journey'.

ღ Alice ღ said...

Thanks Tootie for posting these pics,I love them:) Xmas is my fav time of the year.

Snowbird said...

We looked for you guys but didn't see you. Hey you missed out on great food and at Biddles and across the street in the Sanibel Shoppes. Biddles' hush puppies were to die for! We saw the line at the church and decided it wasn't worth it. Had to get to Jerry's for their hot dogs!

Terri said...

Oh my...I love your blog. I may have a love/hate (jealously really) relationship with you!

I love Sanibel! Enjoy and cherish every moment.

MariBy said...

Oh that was a great post Tootie - and the pictures were fun! :D

I was giggling about you making sure that Santa saw you being behaving properly. That's not gonna work, you know. He knows who's been naughty... :)


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Wednesday, October 08, 2014

All Those Years Ago

My mother, my sister, "Not The Pope", and me. (Long Beach, NY c.1980)

Ally Bean said...

Nice photo of y'all & Not The Pope. Unique. Memorable. Decidedly 80s clothes: full skirts + flats. Very nice #tbt photo.

la peregrina said...

Thanks, Ally. I'm not sure what a "#tbt photo" is but if you are calling it a "nice #tbt photo" then it must mean something positive. ;)