"Working" from home today

"E90M3" (e90m3)
03/27/2020 at 09:49 • Filed to: None

Well, maybe not actually working. I started my morning off with some video games and coffee. Got my computer out to check my email and see if I needed to attend to anything. Not really sure how much public info my company has put out, so I’m not going to say anymore.

I did get the M3 out yesterday for the first time in a couple weeks, and now that it’s warmer out, it’s going to see more use. Need to run to the grocery store to get some ingredients for dinner tonight.

DISCUSSION (33)

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > E90M3
03/27/2020 at 09:53

I like that desktop background. And your framed art for that matter. Good morning.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > E90M3
03/27/2020 at 09:53

“working”

Kinja'd!!!

I am at work today because muh essential, but by remarkable coincidence, most of what I had to do these past several weeks is either done or uncontrollably on hold. So I’m being reeaaaalll productive right now.

E90M3 > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
03/27/2020 at 09:54

I’ve been at work everyday until yesterday, and it looks I should be back soon.

E90M3 > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available
03/27/2020 at 09:55

Thanks, and good morning.

CalzoneGolem > E90M3
03/27/2020 at 10:01

I’ve been busy AF lately. Wishing I could fuck off at home instead of being crazy busy. I ain’t complaining though. I’m feeling real fortunate to have a job.

WilliamsSW > E90M3
03/27/2020 at 10:02

Send an email every few hours, jiggle the mouse every 10 minutes so Skype shows you green, shop for cars and call it a day.

E90M3 > WilliamsSW
03/27/2020 at 10:09

That sounds suspiciously like my normal day at work .

E90M3 > CalzoneGolem
03/27/2020 at 10:10

We’ve announced we’re not shutting down, today is an abnormality . I’m happy with that.

WilliamsSW > E90M3
03/27/2020 at 10:21

My current status is poring over the ad for this car like it was the Zapruder film

https://inventory.chicagocarclub.com/vehicles/477/1964-oldsmobile-starfire-convertible

CalzoneGolem > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
03/27/2020 at 10:31

He’s clearly doing single quotes so ‘working’

Cash Rewards > WilliamsSW
03/27/2020 at 10:36

From briefly checking, I can confirm for you that it is red.

TheRealBicycleBuck > E90M3
03/27/2020 at 10:41

An excellent choice in board games!

I wish I could just “work” from home today. Instead, I’m working on a project with a PM who is an obsessive micro-manager and is questioning everything I do for the project.

WilliamsSW > Cash Rewards
03/27/2020 at 10:48

Specifically Resale Red, I know. Sad part is that this is the original color - much prettier. And I want to say that the seat covers should be closer to a burgundy also, but I’m not sure of that.

Kinja'd!!!

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > CalzoneGolem
03/27/2020 at 10:58

Curse you, you gif-air-quote-continuity-editor, you.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > TheRealBicycleBuck
03/27/2020 at 11:02

Off Topic: I too am an enthusiast of esoteric Games of Board. I actually bought a college favorite recently to add to my growing collection.

No, it wasn’t Pandemic, it was Nexus Ops.

Under_Score > E90M3
03/27/2020 at 11:12

My sister (who does what you do) is still at her plant, even though an employee and another employee’s wife got coronavirus. She’s pretty isolated, though, so it’s fine. I’m glad that she’s still going in, honestly, as it means just another job not being stopped or WFH.

ttyymmnn > WilliamsSW
03/27/2020 at 11:19

Am I to blame for that?

WilliamsSW > ttyymmnn
03/27/2020 at 11:29

No, you’re really not. As I noted the other day, I’m a big fan of the 61-64 Starfire, and am fairly serious about owning one some day soon.

This one is close by (in Chicago) , and fairly cheap for what it appears to be. What I would have to do is get underneath it, pull up the trunk mat, and figure out the rust situation. Plus get a good feel for how the transmission is.

ttyymmnn > WilliamsSW
03/27/2020 at 11:36

Wait--cars rust in Chicago?

WilliamsSW > ttyymmnn
03/27/2020 at 11:43

I'm sure this car spent most of its life somewhere else, otherwise it would have been scrapped long ago.

TheRealBicycleBuck > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
03/27/2020 at 11:55

I haven’t seen that one! It looks like Starcraft in board form. I’ve always loved resource-management/real-time-strategy games. I also like FPS games, but my gaming reflexes aren’t what they used to be.

At home, we’ve been playing Pandemic lately - there was a little foreshadowing there, right? But we also have a wide range of options from Munchkin to Bob Ross - Art of Chill. The win/loss ratio has pushed some of our catalog onto the self permanently. Nobody will play Risk with me any more and everyone refuses to play Clue if my wife is playing. I’ve never seen her lose a game of Clue.

Future next gen S2000 owner > WilliamsSW
03/27/2020 at 11:57

I’m not doing that at all.....nope not me......

WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI > WilliamsSW
03/27/2020 at 11:58

You’ll have plenty of time to look it over once you just go buy it.

WilliamsSW > WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI
03/27/2020 at 12:00

Crawling around a car closely looking for rust and bondo is a must before buying any car this old.

E90M3 > TheRealBicycleBuck
03/27/2020 at 12:00

My girlfriend got it for me as part of my birthday gift; we thoroughly enjoyed playing the US version of the game and this adds a nice twist.

That’s annoying, but good you’re still working.

TheRealBicycleBuck > E90M3
03/27/2020 at 12:02

I didn’t even realize it was the Europe version until you mentioned it! I’m glad to be working too. It’s just that the home projects keep calling to me...

ttyymmnn > WilliamsSW
03/27/2020 at 12:09

I am now reminded of all the Saturday morning commercials I used to see for Ziebart. You don’t see those in TX....

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > TheRealBicycleBuck
03/27/2020 at 12:26

I don’t know if you like Weird Tales type horror books and the whole H. P. Lovecraft thing, but Arkham Horror is a ridiculously fun game. Just takes a really long time to play. If you are mostly playing with a little bit more casual crowd, I can’t recommend Betrayal at House on the Hill enough. Simple rules, goofy horror movie tropes, a procedurally-generated “house” that’s never the same twice, and a long prelude to inevitable (and hilarious) backstabbing.

TheRealBicycleBuck > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
03/27/2020 at 12:39

We are usually time-constrained, so playing longer games is usually not an option. When the kids were younger, we tried to avoid games where wheeling and dealing was part of the game play. It was easier to keep the peace when the “bad” thing was due to a roll of the dice instead of people cutting side deals or teaming up.

Now that the kids are older, we’ve been having fun with some of the treachery that can come up in a game. I’ll have to see if we can track down a local copy of Betrayal. It looks like fun!

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > TheRealBicycleBuck
03/27/2020 at 12:51

The fun thing with Betrayal is “he could be any one of us!”. In some of the other traitor mechanic games (Battlestar Galactica, Shadows Over Camelot) the traitor is determined at the beginning. In Betrayal, it is based on who discovered which Omen in which room - usually with a flimsy connection between the two in the scenario. Book in the Ritual Room, evil summoning thing, and so on. Sometimes it’s “person to the left of haunt revealer” who’s the traitor, sometimes it’s the person with the highest of one of the stats, sometimes it’s the person who revealed the haunt themselves. The haunts are wildly varied, too: a werewolf menace, a vampire menace, evil plants, a roc picking up the house... it doesn’t matter if the spooky Events up to that point don’t make sense in context of whatever the menace really was - it’s arguably more fun if they don’t.

Then again, some of the haunts have novel traitor mechanics. The werewolf one where other players can be turned, the alien replacements one where players are being replaced secretly , and the roc one mentioned above, where it’s every man for himself to get out of the house, and there aren’t enough parachutes in the house (silly, but roll with it) for everyone.

TheRealBicycleBuck > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
03/27/2020 at 13:02

So, t he Betrayer doesn’t know he’s the Betrayer until he’s told he’s the Betrayer somewhere in the middle of the game?!? Is he revealed to everyone (including himself) at once or does he find out in secret before everyone else does?

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > TheRealBicycleBuck
03/27/2020 at 13:31

Most of the time, the traitor is revealed to everyone when the Haunt trips. He then is given a Traitor’s Tome booklet to go read in another room what he (as the traitor) can do, and everybody else reads the Survival book for the same scenario to find out what *they* can do. That way, with something like 40+ scenarios, the traitor and the players can each do things that surprise the other. There are some fully-secret traitor scenarios in addition to the at least one “every man for himself”, but those are a little weird because there aren’t secret traitor actions to do.

In addition to that, there’s nothing *technically* stopping players from killing (!) each other or whichever after the Haunt begins, other than it being cooperative usually making that a bad idea. Usually, if the good guys are all dead, the traitor wins. It’s possible for a quirk of the rules to allow for making it harder for the traitor to win if fewer good guys are alive... though that’s usually not the case.

The traitor is never actually determined until the haunt trips. How that works, is, almost every room has an icon. Most of the time, the icon is an Event. You reveal a new room tile, it has the Event, the Event happens, your turn is over. Events are spoopy things like having a dream in which you’re in a coffin, then having to make a roll not to take mental damage.

Some rooms (as appropriate for dramatic purposes - the Research Laboratory, the Pentagram Chamber, etc. etc. have an Omen instead. Each time somebody hits an Omen with one exception, it’s actually a useful thing that does something. A puzzle box. A skull. A young girl to travel with you. A madman. These things give s tat increases, a thing that allows you to draw cards, etc. When you pick up the Omen, you make a “haunt roll” with six dice.

Now, all the dice are marked two sides blank, two sides with one pip, and two sides with two pips. There are 13 Omen cards and room tiles to draw them. When you hit an Omen, you roll the six dice and hope to get *equal or more than* the number of Omens drawn to that point . First Omen, easy-peasy. Sixth Omen, you’re flirting with the Haunt beginning: the average of 6x (1d3-1) is 6.

If by some obscene chance, the players somehow rolled a twelve on drawing the twelth Omen, the 13th when drawn automatically starts things.

TheRealBicycleBuck > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
03/27/2020 at 15:10

Sounds gloriously complicated!

I’ll have to see if the local games shop has a copy. I doubt they are considered an “essential” business, but it’s worth a call.