Coffee Klatch

One of my favorite computer games of all time is Castles 2: Siege and Conquest. I first purchased this game in 1994 as a present to myself for finishing my first Master’s degree. It’s a fantastic game (especially for back then) which has similarities to many other games. You build your kingdom by “harvesting” resources, taking territories, using diplomacy, and working through social and political situations that come up. Gotta keep the populace happy so your armies can fight well.

The best part: You can design and build your own castles!! The bigger or more elaborate cost more and take longer, of course, but you can build your own designs and then use them! The armies actually fight on fields and you can guide them as they fight. That includes if you’re attacking or defending a castle. Instead of just having a field of battle, you have the actual castle that you designed, so your design can greatly affect the outcome of the battle. Great features for such an early game (published in 1992).

The original game was CD-ROM based and included video clips of actual (BBC, I think) on-site discussions of castles and their features. It was VERY educational and interesting and all built around the game. And there were also clips from the movie Alexander Nevsky that were used throughout the game when intrigues, plots, and warfare occurred, to illustrate with video what was going on. For 1992, it was simply a great computer game.

Today I found out that this game falls into a category of computer games called “Abandonware” which means the publisher went under and there’s nobody to fight for copyright. It’s not freeware, just abandoned and so pretty much the same thing as freeware.

So now you can download the game for free yourself. This version isn’t the full-featured version and doesn’t have all the neat video stuff, but the basic gameplay is the same and is still fun. You can get it at Abandonia, which also has many other games that are considered Abandonware.

One tip: the way the game was originally designed, you’ll have to answer a question after playing a little while, that has the answer in the original game manual. The questions and their answers have been published here.

Enjoy!

Here are some interesting statistics. It would almost be pfunny if it weren’t true.

Number of physicians in the US : 700,000
Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year: 120,000
Accidental deaths per physician: 0.171

Number of gun owners in US: 80,000,000
Number of accidental gun deaths per year: 1,500 (all age groups)
Accidental gun deaths per gun owner: 0.0000188

Statistically doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners

FACT: not everyone has a gun but everyone has at least one doctor

An eccentric philosophy professor gave a one question final exam after a semester dealing with a broad array of topics.

The class was already seated and ready to go when the professor picked up his chair, plopped it on his desk and wrote on the board: “Using everything we have learned this semester, prove that this chair does not exist.”

Fingers flew, erasers erased, notebooks were filled in furious fashion….

Some students wrote over 30 pages in one hour attempting to refute the existence of the chair.

One member of the class however, was up and finished in less than a minute.

Weeks later when the grades were posted, the rest of the group wondered how he could have gotten an A when he had barely written anything at all.

His answer consisted of two words: “What chair?”

Are you interested in NFL Football? If you follow professional football at all, you’re a perfect candidate for Fantasy Football. If you don’t follow much but still like to play in contests with others, you’re also a great candidate. You don’t have to know much about NFL football to have fun playing the fantasy version.

I’ve set up a Fantasy Football league through NFL.com. It’s free to play and they do all the work for us. Just visit NFL Fantasy Football and sign up. Before you join the league, you’ll be presented with key information about the league, including the draft date, draft type (we’re doing a live draft), and current league members. You’ll be required to enter the following password before you can join the league:

League Password: coffee

Keep in mind that each NFL.com Fantasy Football league is limited to 12 members, so it’s possible the league could be full before you have a chance to join. If that happens, or if you’re interested in a different type of league than the one you’ve been invited to join, you can easily scan other open leagues or even create a new league yourself.

I heard an interesting story on NPR’s “All Things Considered” the other day about some lobstermen (like fishermen, but they catch lobsters) who are using the Internet to sell their lobsters. Instead of selling to dealers or whatever, they’re selling direct to consumers. The guys in the story are college age and are providing unique services along with selling the lobsters. To get the details on this really interesting story, visit the NPR Story.

You may not remember, but a few years ago Microsoft had an “Entertainment Pack” they made available for PC users. This mostly consisted of cheap, fun little games. Things like TriPeaks (a card game), TaiPei (like MahJong), and a silly little Ski game where you went downhill, trying to hit moguls and avoid trees. That Ski game was particularly memorable because when you passed the Finish Line, you could just keep going, skiing and skiing, until finally a monster snowman ran out and ate you.

Probably the most addictive game in this Entertainment Pack was Jezzball. You basically have a grid with a couple of balls bouncing around in it. You click on the grid and lines go out in two directions and you try to box out the balls, giving them smaller and smaller areas to bounce around in. The goal is to clear 75% of the grid. Then you move on to the next level where they add another ball. It’s really hard to get past level 7.

Anyway, you can play the game online now. All it takes is a Java-enabled browser. Go to http://www.jezzball.net/ to give the game a try.

A couple just started their Lamaze class and they were given an activity requiring the husband to wear a bag of sand to give him some idea of what it feels like to be pregnant.

The guy stood up, shrugged, and said, “This doesn’t feel so bad.”

The instructor then dropped a pen and asked our hero to pick it up.

“You want me to pick up the pen as if I were pregnant, the way my wife would do it?” the husband asked.

“Exactly,” replied the instructor.

To the delight of the other husbands, he turned to his wife and said, “Honey, pick up that pen for me.”

It was late at night and Heidi, who was expecting her second child, was home only with her 3-year-old daughter, Katelyn. Heidi started to go into labor and called 911. Due to a power outage in the city at the time, only one paramedic was able to respond to the call.

The house was very, very dark, so the paramedic asked Katelyn to hold a flashlight high over her mommy so he could see while he helped deliver the baby. Very diligently, Katelyn did as she was asked.

Heidi pushed and pushed, and after a little while Connor was born. The paramedic lifted him by his feet, and spanked him on his bottom. Connor began to cry.

The paramedic then thanked Katelyn for her help, and asked the wide-eyed 3-year-old Katelyn what she thought about what she had just witnessed.

Katelyn quickly responded, “He shouldn’t have crawled in there in the first place. Spank him again.”

Every Friday afternoon, a 3rd year grad student goes down to the bar, sits in the second-to-last seat, turns to the last seat, which is empty, and asks a girl who isn’t there if he can buy her a drink.

The bartender, who is used to these weird university types, always shrugs but keeps quiet. But when Valentine’s Day arrives, and the mathematician makes a particularly heart-wrenching plea into empty space, curiosity gets the better of the bartender.

He he says, “I apologize for my stupid questions, but surely you know there is NEVER a woman sitting in that last stool. Why do you persist in asking out empty space?”

The studious one replies, “Well, according to quantum physics, empty space is never truly empty. Virtual particles come into existance and vanish all the time. You never know when the proper wave function will collapse and a girl might suddenly appear there.”

The bartender raises his eyebrows. “Really? Interesting. But couldn’t you just ask one of the girls who comes here every Friday if you could buy HER a drink? Never know… she might say yes.”

The mathematician laughs. “Yeah, right — how likely is THAT to happen?”

Current music: Land of Enchantment, by Deuter