KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

The great and powerful families have finally met. This past weekend Ms. Fiance's parents met my parents for the first time. It went swimmingly well. Not that we were worried or anything, but it's nice to have that past us.

We did a little steak and corn-on-the-cob grilling on Saturday, and then played a few games of cards. No, Cooper, not THOSE cards. ;-)

On Sunday, Ms. Fiance and I were on worship team at church, and we sang a duet during offering. It went really well. We had some issues getting to that point, however. The first plan was to sing along to an instrument-only CD track, but the range was too high in a couple spots, and if I dropped down an octive, it was too low in a couple spots. Basically, the worst possible range for me. The other option was to have someone play the piano (actually keyboard), but then Ms. Fiance had some trouble with the harmony since it was in a different key. In the end we slowly worked out the harmony and sang with the keyboard, guitar, and drums from the worship band backing us up. It was really cool that both of our sets of parents were there for our duet debut.

After church, we headed down to the Metrodome to see the Twins play. Wow, what a game! This was the Johan Santana performance you may have heard about, where he struck out 17 people in 8 innings. Think about that. He had to get 24 outs, and 17 were strikeouts. Crazy! And only Sammy Sosa caused it to not be a no-hitter, as he had both hits that the Twins allowed.

And you thought all it did was rain this weekend!

DotD: Refurbished iPhone - $399 or $499 - For a hundred bucks less than a brand new phone, you can have a just-like-new, factory-refurbished iPhone, in either the 4 GB or 8 GB version. Yes, it is still expensive, but it's an iPhone! Why aren't you running yet? Oh...yeah...it's on the internet... Why aren't you clicking yet?

Great Outdoors

I can't wait until the work day is over. Immediately afterwards, I'm heading home quick, packing a few last minute things (like food), and then Ms. Fiance and I heading to Interstate Park. It's going to be a short camping weekend, but it should still be quite fun.

This is our alternative to the SonShine Music Festival which is going on right now. I had to take a bunch of vacation days during the school year to get various projects done, and I need to save some vacation for next year, meaning that SonShine got the axe. It was sad, but we're doing the next best thing, which doesn't require about 3 days of vacation.

We're coming back Sunday just in time for the last TEC meeting. Can't believe next weekend is TEC already! These past couple of weeks have flown by. I need to get my little body in gear to get stuff ready for next weekend.

Oh, and there's going to be a card night on Tuesday, which means Monday night I need to make some decks. It's going to be a busy week!

DotD: Norton Internet Security, Norton Partition Magic, and Norton Ghost bundle - $0.00 - Pretty sweet deal if you ask me, and easy on the wallet (after mail-in-rebate). This bundle has it all: Antivirus, Antispyware, Antiphishing, Firewall (incoming and outgoing), partition management, and disk imaging and backup. Did I mention free? 

Goldfish and Honey

Continuing on the Sons of Jacob theme...

My church just finished VBS this past week, so on Sunday the kids were a big part of the service. During the week, each group was named after one of the tribes of Israel, so we had Joseph, Levi, Judah, etc. This in itself was slightly odd, because as I walked in the balk of the sanctuary on Sunday, there were a bunch of signs across the back with a name of one of the tribes on each one. Since this was the morning after card day, my first thought when I saw the signs was, "Gee, Gad is a card in the Reclamation deck I was using last night. And Joseph too!" 

Side note: One of the things I'm looking forward to with the Reclamation game is its ability to help me remember some of the smaller characters and events in the Bible. If you doubt this ability, then you have not seen my friends and I rattling off the names of almost all of the aliens in the Cantina in Star Wars. Credit that to the Star Wars card game we play.

Anyway, back to the VBS service. During the week, the kids were trying to raise money to buy sandals for kids in Sudan, most of which do not own and shoes at all. Many of them develop permanent problems with their feet while walking to and from school, for instance, as they can easily cut their feet on glass, rocks, etc. The goal was to try to raise $300, which would be enough to buy around 120 pairs of sandals. After the first 2 days, they had only raised about $90, so the stakes were raised. If the kids could hit the $300 goal, the tribe that raised the most money would get to pour honey on the head of our children's paster (no idea where they came up with that idea). Well, suffice it to say, that goal was quickly reached.

The children's paster then had another great idea. if they could get to $500 by the end of the week, Pastor Nate would eat a goldfish. Final collection amount: $680. With the collection we took at the Sunday service, we ended up raising about $860 for the Sandals for Sudan project, which should be able to purchase about 350 pairs of sandals for kids. Praise God!

Pastor Nate said at the beginning of the service on Sunday that we would see a few things we'd never seen in a church service before. He was right! First, we saw him eat a goldfish (Silas during the first service, and Peter during the second service) in front of everyone. I was a little sad for the poor little goldfish, but it was for a good cause. Then they brought one o those kiddie pools up front and our children's paster sat in it. Each kid from the winning tribe of Joseph got their own bottle of honey (that's a lot of honey!) and poured it all over her head, shirt, face, etc. I can't wait to see the pictures!

DotD: Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2007 3-user pack - $0.00 - Continuing yesterday's streak of free stuff. I purchased this about 6 months ago for myself, and now it's on sale again. The rebates from Symantec are really quick (much better than the normal 6-8 weeks for other rebates), and arrive in the form of a Visa debit card that you can use pretty much anywhere. Plus, with this 3-user pack, you can use it on up to three computers. Even if you already have Norton AntiVirus but your subscription is expiring, this is a great free way to give yourself 1 more year, plus you get the new version at the same time.

Satan is Dead!

Card day has come and gone, and it was a blast. We played Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, and Reclamation. A couple of us also managed to sneak in a couple games of ping-pong. 

Reclamation was fun, although there's a bit of work to be done to balance things out (which is completely expected). People tend to do strange things when given the chance, and often find ways to do things in a game that the designers never expected. I pulled off a very unique trick in my first game of Reclamation against Joel. Here's what happened:

I had played Reuben on a previous turn and then I played Levi next to him. I then used the Human Sacrifice card to kill Levi to draw 4 cards (I was losing, and desperate times call for desperate measures). This is where things got weird. One of the cards I drew was Vengeance of God, which says if your character was just killed, you can make another character Might +5. The idea was that if a Hell character killed your Heaven character, God may take some action. Instead, I had actually chosen to kill Levi on my own (as the Heaven side) just to draw 4 cards, which then made Reuben really strong. I used another card to start a battle between a Heaven character and Hell character, and I chose to have Reuben fight Satan alone. Normally not a good idea, but because of the Vengeance of God, Reuben not only won the fight, but killed Satan! Following this? Here's the recap:

Reuben murders his brother Levi in a messed-up human sacrifice, this makes God angry, God grants Reuben super-human strength as a result, and Reuben uses this strength to kill Satan.

Not quite what Cooper intended, me thinks.

The other unusual event of the day occurred in Star Trek. I was flying my ship around, and ran into a Borg Cube in hiding. It attacked, and obliterated my ship completely, killing all of my people. And then it happened again, one game later. ;-)

DotD: Free PC case and Free USB hard drive enclosure - Both rely on mail-in-rebates to make the final cost free (before shipping). I'm a sucker for free computer stuff. I built one of my PCs with a free PC case (not the one shown here), a free power supply, and a $10 AMD 2 Ghz processor.