The Majestic Suffolk Seaboard Coastline Trail

A couple of days ago I went geocaching along the Suffolk Seaboard Coastline Trail. I didn't have very much luck finding anything (2 for 6, I think), so I took advantage of the outing to document some of the more eye-catching flora and fauna instead. Enjoy!

Immediately upon entering the trailhead I was greeted by a herd of Spotted Used Mattresses, sunning themselves majestically just southeast of the main path. I did not want to pass up a rare opportunity to photograph them in their natural habitat, but I made sure I was careful not to startle them to avoid interfering with any willomying and flolloping they might be engaged in. 

This flock of Bud Light Tall Boys was probably drawn to the area to feed on the ample offering of broken glass and shattered stereo speaker casings left on the manhole cover in the foreground. 

A cluster of Abandoned Sofa Sets and North American Armchairs stood shyly off to the left of a side trail and waited for me to pass.

This Broken Plastic Bin was caught bathing and slowly sinking into one of the many fetid still-water pools alongside the main trail.

I was fortunate to snap a pic of this clutch of Sofa Cushions while their mother stood a few yards away.

A Discarded Children's Swimming Pool stands guard five yards off the main path, precisely where I had spotted it six months before. This time, however, it was joined by a Disintegrating Lawn Chair and the remains of a Girls Vinyl Lunch Bag (not shown).

A Bright Blue Gas Can in repose. 

A gaggle of Balding Automobile Tires takes turns sipping stagnant ditchwater.  The Deflated Basketball must wait its turn.

A solitary Collapsed Plastic Chair sits on its rusted, crumpled legs.

Out of respect for their holy culture, I blurred out some of the more… umm… poignant writings the natives left here.  My translation may be off slightly but it suffices to say that, whoever Justin is, he is not beloved by all. 

Several outcroppings of Discarded Roofing Shingles line the path, beckoning travelers closer with their promise of flattened bicycle tires and tetanus.

Overall, I was very impressed by the level of abject neglect that has been achieved in the short period of time this trail has been open to hikers, bikers, and illegal hunters.  Space and good taste prohibit me from listing all of the interesting things I discovered along this 1.5 mile pin-straight trail segment, but I encourage everyone to don some blaze orange biohazard suits, come on down, and start their own photo-journal. After your visit, be sure to thank the Suffolk Department of Parks and Recreation for a job well done!

Personally, I can't wait to see what the next ten miles of this trail is going to bring!

Rook Update II

Well, it turns out the little rook I carved a dozen years back that lived out its life in various junk drawers and finally placed in a Geocache two autumns ago is once again on the move (click here for the previous update).

You can get more detailed info at geocaching.com and searching for item TB56TVF.  If you sign up for a free account, you can also see a map.  Here is a summary of its travels to date:

• 10/2012 - Dropped off in Hampton, VA
• 11/2012 - Found and taken to Washington D.C.
• ??? - Sent to Seattle, Washington (made into Travel Bug here)
• 06/22/13 - Released into the wild
• 06/23/13 - 08/22/13 Bounced around a few caches in the Seattle area
• 08/23/13 - 11/03/13 - ???
• 11/04/13 - Arrived in Germany
• 11/06/13 - 11/24/13 Bounced around a few caches around Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
• 12/06/13 - 12/08/13 Taken from cache to cache in the London, England area in search of a new home (Soooo close to its goal of visiting castles in Scotland)
• 12/08/13 - No suitable caches were found, so it was returned to the cache in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
• 12/08/13 - 12/25/13 - Sitting and waiting…
• 12/26/13 - Picked up.
• 12/28/13 - Placed in a cache in the Canary Islands, Spain.

Current Location: N 27° 45.050 W 015° 34.390 (map)

Total travel distance since its release date: 7783.1 miles.

Thanks to all the cachers out there helping to move it along, and thanks to ReesaRice for including me in its adventure!  

Cheers, everyone!

Merry Christmas!

Once again, we at The 36th Lock wish you all the very merriest of Christmases!  May the season bring you and yours all the joy you hope for!

Insulin, Schminsulin!

Well, well, well… Lookee what we got here… An early Christmas present from my sisters.  How thoughtful!  By the way, definition 1b in the Merriam-Webster dictionary states that “thoughtful” means “characterized by careful reasoned thinking”.  It doesn’t say jack about being “nice”…

It’s a box of “candy” (and some playing cards)!  Ok, ok, the quotes are unfair.  Let’s call it a box of nostalgia tinged with evil.

I think the best way to write this up is just to list the items you see in the order in which I would like to eat them.  As you go down the list, divide the last one’s yumminess by 2, so, for example, the sponge candy is twice as good as the Sky Bar and is 8 times as tasty as the Bit-O-Honeys.  Here’s the list:

1. Sponge candy (Awesome and almost impossible to get here!)
2. Sky Bar
3. Clark Bar
4. Bit-O-Honey
5. Rock candy (in the vials, there at the top)
6. Pop Rocks
7. Candy buttons
8. Wax bottles
9. The jumbo playing cards (you read that right)
10. Teaberry gum
11. Butter rum Life Savers
12. Necco Wafers
13. The cardboard box everything was shipped in
14. The Chowards Violet Mints*
15. The Chowards Violet Gum*

* Eaten at gunpoint only

They said the Teaberry gum was put in there only because the store ran out of Blackjack licorice gum.  I can only assume Santa bought all of the packs to give out in lieu of coal this year as a cost-cutting measure.  The Chowards items are… let’s say, terrific.  By the way, definition 1a in the Merriam-Webster dictionary states that “terrific” means “very bad” (yup… look it up).

This year’s theme for a gift box for a friend of mine is “The Most Inconsiderate Story Ever Told”, so it looks like the mints, the Teaberry gum, and the Necco Wafers have a few more miles left in their regifting destiny.  I think it works well with the fact that one of his gifts didn’t arrive when the USPS said it would so he won’t get it until well after Christmas.  I’m just payin' it forward, I guess…

I’m not gonna list the other items I’m giving him but I will share a pic with you.  It might look like a bunch of drink coasters and an envelope to you but it fits the theme quite well.  I might even tell you why someday...

A Right Bitter Old Elf

"Hey, buddy," I asked our five-year-old while I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to nearly draw blood, "What does this say under the Ho Ho Ho part on this Christmas card?"

"That's the sound reindeer make when eating their food, like crunching a carrot."

"Oh.  Ok...  Good job."

"Thanks!"

Here's the inside:

And a Messy Kweznuz to you, too, kiddo.

Jingle Snake

Parents: Only a few more days left until your kid's Christmas vacation.  Make sure they know the words to this holiday classic before school lets out so they can share it with their teachers and classmates!

After you listen to it a few times, check out the "Transcript" button below the video (to the right of the words "Add To"... it looks like a little menu).  I guess I missed the Sigourney Weaver part...

Map Project

In our TV room, two empty picture hooks hung above the entertainment center since we moved into this place.  As part of my continuing effort to de-blank some of the walls in the house I decided to put up a map.

Why a map?  Well, maps do a really good job of filling unused wall space.  They can be made to be any size you need, they are interesting to look at, and they are generally tone-neutral. Years ago I salvaged a discarded nautical map and built a frame for it.  It now hangs above my wife’s desk in her office.  The map works there and I was pretty sure one would work above the TV as well.

Around the time I was thinking about exactly what kind of map to put up in the TV room I started playing through one of the Lost Treasures of Infocom titles and I came to my decision pretty quickly:  I would recreate the Great Underground Empire map from Zork I.  This iOS app has all the stuff you would have found in the box in these 27 original games including rotatable 3-D images of the “feelies” (non-paper stuff that came in the the box as well as the box itself), maps, the manual, and even the InvisiClues! So, if you were born while the Apollo Program was still a thing and much of this paragraph isn’t simply gibberish to you, check it out.  Activision did a good job with this.

After looking the maps over, I felt that straight up copying them wouldn't work for a couple of reasons.  First, the original maps are broken up over three separate pages (the area in and around the House, the Maze, and the entire rest of the Empire), and each of those pages is a vastly different scale than the others. Second, the maps are arranged more for a portrait form factor and the area where the map would hang was landscape.  Finally, a direct transcription of the maps seemed a little “on the nose”, I guess, and the whole thing would have been less of a woodworking project and more of a photocopying exercise.

Still, I wanted to be as faithful as possible to the idea of the original maps so I kept the relative room shapes and sizes the same and, of course, the paths between the map regions all lead to and from the right places. 

In the original maps you see a lot of “To Forest 3” or “To Grating Room” - the authors needed to do this to keep the maps easy to follow across three sub-regions, especially if the rooms were quite far away (on paper, anyway). Since that would result in a huge amount of finely printed text - way finer than my wood burning tool was capable of and certainly more detailed than I was willing to shoot for in this project - I decided that I would use direct pathways with as few crossover points as possible instead. The regions themselves and some of the connecting rooms needed to be shuffled to accommodate this strategy, and some of the path lengths needed to get from one place to another became very long, but I think the overall scheme worked out ok.

Like I implied, I used a wood burning tool for all of the paths and all of the writing you see in the pics in this post, but that wasn't always the plan.  Originally, I wanted the paths to be copper to match the nail heads in each of the corners of the rooms because I thought it would look cool.  It certainly looked cool in my head, but the idea simply did not manifest itself well in the real world.  The metal-to-wood bonds were messy, the copper would not cut straight, the paths would curl up and each one needed to be weighted down so the glue could set, the turns looked sloppy (even by my standards), and sealing the map would have shredded any brush I used.

I did about 30 room-to-room paths before dejectedly deciding to try and remove the copper.  If I couldn’t do it, I would just deal with it and slog through the best I could.   I got lucky, though, and most of the traces came up without too much trouble - just an ugly residue left over.  By using a quarter-inch circular ridged stamp attachment on the wood burning tool I was able to scorch the dried glue away fairly easily resulting in a stepping-stone type path for most of the room-to-room linkages.  It looked ok, so I kept with that method where it was appropriate to do so.  The only places where I used a finer tip for the paths were the maze rooms, the Strange Passage linkage, and the link from the Kitchen to the Studio.

I made the frame out of oak, and, like most things, it took a heck of a lot more time to create the jig for doing the job safely and nicely than it did to actually dado 1/4-inch slots into the frame members.  The background is made from a 2’ by 4’ sheet of oak plyboard which governed the size of the map as much as the size of the blank wall space did.  However, plyboard of any type was not going to work since that stuff gets super splintery when cutting against the grain and I had hundreds of cuts to make.  I wanted something other than oak to make the rooms stand out a bit, grain-wise.  Based of cost and availability, I ended up with two choices for the rooms - aspen or balsa.  After experimenting a little with cuts, sanding, staining, and etching things into some test pieces with a wood burning tool the balsa came out the clear winner.

The balsa had the extra benefit of being soft enough to push copper nail-heads through without pre-drilling.  The nails were used to give the room labels a bit more visual appeal and also give them the appearance of being mounted to a plyboard that way (they are actually glued there). The less said about the tediousness and the hand-crampiness of chopping the heads off hundreds and hundreds of copper-coated steel nails with a pair of side cutters, the better.

After the rooms were glued in place and the paths were made

there was still a lot of “white space” to fill.  I wasn’t too sure what to do about that.  I toyed with the idea of duplicating the legends from the original maps but that would have required me to differentiate between narrow passages, one-way passages, etc.  Instead I took the rest of the balsa, cut it into various sized squares and rectangles, stained the pieces slightly darker than the rooms,  and glued them into place as a space-fillers that look very much like elements in a rock wall.  Perfect for an Underground Empire.

The whole thing was sealed this afternoon with a semi-gloss poly and is now drying in the garage. The whole project took about 25 hours to do and it looks pretty good sitting on the sawhorses in the garage. A couple of days from now (after it has finished drying and outgassing) I will hang it above the TV. 

If it looks good I think I will do some more maps of this type, but next time on raw canvas or parchment paper.  We will see.

That Seems Fair.

"Grandpa... How did you get that medal?"

"What, this one?  Why, Billy, this one is from the Great War of 1:26PM, Saturday, December 14, 2013.  I remember it like it was yesterday.  There they were, befuddled, starving, and staggering about from shock after being suddenly thawed out after 30,000 years of glacial entrapment.  My squad, armed only with our wits, a few rifles, a handful of 50-caliber machine guns, and some light anti-tank weaponry..."

The Usual Excuses Apply

So much to do...  

I like keeping busy, but sometimes things get totally nuts and nothing ends up getting done because so many things are getting done. December is usually one of those times for me, but a number of extra bonus features lately have really challenged my ability to juggle all the balls I want to keep in the air. I suppose I could just stop juggling... 

Meh.  Not my style.  Whining about how busy I am…yeah, that’s more my style.

But in lieu of my usual wall of text I'm just going to give you some pics with a few bullet points so I can get back to making Christmas gifts for the family. 

Freedom!

Our five-year-old can now ride a bike... Kinda-sorta. He can pedal without training wheels for about a minute, up from 20 seconds last weekend (Our outings are limited to weekends due to work, school, and available sunlight).  Parents out there with kids learning to ride a bike often ask the Internet the question "how old to take off training wheels". If you are one of these folks, do yourself a favor and stop looking. Why? The fact you care about the answer shows you care about the answer, and that's awesome. All you are gonna find out there are hundreds of sites declaring in no uncertain terms that you are doing it all wrong. Just chill. It'll come.  He/she will get it. Just grab some Motrin and/or a beer for your lower back and work some more tomorrow. You and your kid are doing just fine. 

Freedom, Part II

Almost exactly one year ago, after working like crazy getting through the book "Snow Day! A Winter Tale" all by himself (uh... mostly), the boy exuberantly declared "I CAN READ!!!" His proclamation was several hundred days early.  Two weekends ago, though, he actually got through his first whole book (Fishy Tales) completely unassisted, and has read a few more all by his onesies since then.  On the down side, we can no longer spell things with impunity in front of him, and I can't have mommy bring him to work anymore since he will cheerfully read aloud the more colorful bumper stickers in the parking lot...

Banned?

Do you remember the 1954 Warner Brothers cartoon "The Oily American"? Not ringing a bell? Picture a snooty butler saying "Your cannonball, sir." or "Your arrow, sir." and it should come to you. My sister texted me because neither she nor her husband could come up with the name of the Native American kid in it. Moe Hican, by the way.

Christmas Decorations

My wife and I swap off giving each other Christmas decorations on a yearly basis. It was my turn this year so the boy and I turned some scrap wood, some paint, some hot-glue, and some stuff thieved from a  potpourri dish into this year's ornament.  There it is there.

Another tradition (Two years in a row now!  Hey, all traditions have to start somewhere...) we have is to decorate the entryway table with Legos.  The Winter Village kit was assembled by the boy last year,  and the Pet Shop kit joined it this year. The other little things you see came from last year's Lego Advent calendar. 

Yet another tradition (unfortunately more than two years old) is wondering how the I hell can be so damn sore from just decorating a Christmas tree and putting up a few lights.  When I complain about the aches and pains I am told the obvious: "You are using muscles you never use". Reallyoksurethanks.  I agree but, statistically, how is that even possible?  I do aerobic stuff for about an hour every other morning before work and hit the gym after work about four times a week.  I guess I am just missing the "Crepe Myrtle Decoration Simulator" machine where you get practice repeatedly lifting a 16-foot pole over your head for the better part of two hours... 

What else... Oh, yes. The pic in the upper left of this post is a sneak peak of a project I am working on for the media room. With any luck I will be done this weekend and I can show you more. 

Hey... That turned out to be a wall of text after all. Not a Great Wall, or even a "Good Try Insert Smiley Face Here Wall" but certainly a fair effort. Well, back to playing Christmas Elf and knocking together some last-minute gifts in the garage... A role I fill well, assuming Christmas Elves are slightly more inebriated and significantly more potty-mouthed than they are portrayed on TV...

More later. 

Wanna Play?

My 5-year-old and I play Battleship from time to time. The game is pretty popular at his school, so the kids play a lot. As a result, since it is one of those games where you can only be just so good at, there is about an even chance either of us will win, and the matches are always close. 

I taught him that with games like this it is important to know your opponent. Are you playing the kind of person that likes things nice and neat? Do they like patterns? Do they tend to stay away from the edges? Do they tend to guess certain rows or columns more or less than others, so it makes sense to cluster your ships?  And always, always listen out for the slightest of pauses before someone says "miss", because that means you probably hit right next to a ship and your opponent is mentally double-checking the coordinates. 

“Play the man, not the board”, style of thing. 

A few weeks ago, I called out A-1 as my first shot and got a hit. On a whim, for my next shot I called out J-10. Also a hit. I said "You know, dude, I am pretty sure I know where all your ships are." He said "Seriously?" I said "You have one boat in each corner and the last one is in the very middle of the ocean."  His eyes got huge but, to his credit, he said nothing. His mother, sitting behind him on a chair, looked up from what she was reading, glanced at his board, and went back to browsing the web. I proceeded to obliterate his fleet, missing only a few times. Only one boat remained and I started my hunt around the middle of the board. 

Miss upon miss upon miss... After about 20 consecutive splashes, unbombed real-estate was getting pretty scarce and three of my boats were sitting on the bottom of the sea. I knew - knew - I was right about his pattern.  There was simply no way I was wrong. I must have sounded frustrated because the wife looked up at his board again and said "Honey, he moved a boat."

I looked up at him and he nodded at me.  His face was blank but his eyes clearly held the question "How much trouble am I in?"  

"You know that's cheating, right?"  Another nod. 

I let the moment hang for about five seconds and calmly said "Don't do that again. Especially don't do that at school."  

“Yes, sir.  I won't... and I don't, " was his reply. He meant it.

"Ok," I said, pausing again. "Your turn."  

It took me a few shots but I finally found and sunk the sub nestled neatly in its new home on the J row where he knew I would never, ever look.

You might wonder why I chose to continue the game. After all, isn't cheating an immediate forfeit?  Isn't cheating bad and wrong?  Shouldn't you always be honest?  Sure, but that's just a first-order approximation of how the real world works.  Grown-ups know this.

Also, let’s look at it from his point of view.  His opponent knew where all his ships were and told him so.  Since he knows that second only to the rule "Don't be a bully" is the commandment "Don't be a quitter", there was nothing he could do to prevent a loss... legally.  The chips were grossly stacked against him, and he didn't whine or complain or fuss. There were two paths - one with a guaranteed loss paved with honor and the other with only a probable loss paved with moral dubiousness. 

Look… I am not trying to say this kindergartner wracked his tiny little soul wrestling with the implications of some sort of Cornelian dilemma or some weird jazz like that. He’s five. He was going 45 in a 35 zone (so to speak), got nailed, and paid the fine.  

Is it something to be worried about? No.  It would be if he was proud about it.  It would be if he thought it was a big joke.  It would be if he cried about it.  It would be if he pouted and said it wasn’t fair.  It would be if he said he never wanted anything to do with the game again.  Instead, after the final shot was fired, he said “Play again?”

I smiled.  “Sure, buddy, let’s do it.”

The next game I got lucky and hit five times along the C row.  “I didn’t sink the aircraft carrier?” I asked.  

Long pause.  “No… but you sank the 2-boat”.

“Oh,” I said, thinking I had stumbled into one of those weird instances where ships are lined up just right and you half-sink one before moving unknowingly onto another. The wife again glanced up, looked at the board, leaned closer to it, frowned, then looked at me.

I looked at her and then at him.  He turned the board around and showed me the pic you see in the upper left of this post.  “I was… I was using the 2-boat as, you know, a shield.”

Sigh.  Maybe taking him to see Ender’s Game wasn’t such a great idea after all…

Anyway, like I said, that was a couple of weeks ago and we have had many other games since then.  As I finish writing this, he just challenged me to yet another rematch (I won the last one a few days ago), so I gotta jet.  

Wish me luck.

Hey, Thanks!

Thank you for my wife and child.

Thank you for cold weather and a warm house.

Thank you for motivation.

Thank you for whiskey.

Thank you for laughter.

Thank you for apple pies.

Thank you for the smell of sawdust.

Thank you for power chords.

Thank you for the sound of dry leaves under my boots.

Thank you for time.

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

Rocksmith 2014 Update

I had a miserable Rocksmith night last night. I wasn't hitting anything cleanly and the software had the nerve to objectively score me accordingly. What if I was, like, really, really trying my bestest? Doesn't that count for something?  Can I at least get a hug, Ubisoft?  

Fine.

Overall, things are going ok. I'm not going to do a full on review of this software. There are lots of folks out there doing that already with a lot more care and detail than I would put into it.  Check out Gallagher's Rocksmith Journey blog (link in sidebar) for some great info on the title. I stumbled across his site when, after a particularly spectacular failure during a Master Mode attempt of Blitzkrieg Bop I could have sworn I actually got "booed". 

Hey, I couldn't blame them for booing me - they paid good money to see me rock out and instead I alternate between staring stupidly into the middle distance and beating out chords that only have an incidental association with the song I was playing. I didn't know if the sound I was hearing was just general "large crowd milling about" noise or actual displeasure, and this guy's blog was one of the few places out there that directly said that booing was a possibility.  If the booing is real, I'm cool with that. Anything beats the original Rocksmith crowd response to a blown song during a gig - five thousand dopplegangers silently swaying and just staring at you with their dead eyes... (shudder).

Anyway, check out his blog. It's good stuff. 

Some notes from my recent experience with Rocksmith 2014:

• Jeebus, Ubisoft, what is the deal with demanding I cycle through twelve hundred effects pedals? I realize you are proud of the width and depth of this part of the code, but, by making each one a mission... Well, you are coming across as desperate and a little "Smell the Glass”.
• I have no idea what the software wants me to do to "Use rack gear". I am using it. I played with the sliders, depopulated all the pedals, put in four rack units (trying all kinds in different orders), saved and reloaded, etc... Nothing seems to work - I might just be missing something. 
• The arcade games in general are awesome. Whoever wrote the dialogue for the damsel/scientist in distress and evil bad guy in Return to Castle Chordead deserves some kind of design award cuz that stuff is straight up gold!
• I hope their next update deals with the process for moving between tunings that significantly change the mechanical loading on the guitar neck (E standard to Eb drop Db, say). I am finding my Ibenez needs to be put through the RS tuning process three times before the stresses equalize enough to the point where the song acknowledges the notes are being played correctly during a song. Adding one more sequential check on each of the six strings after the last string is “tuned” would go a long way to making sure the first couple are not way out.
• I also hope there is a way to save multiple set lists for Free Play mode.  It would be nice to be able to quickly jump to a pre-set group of slow and simple stuff to get my confidence back after right arm and left wrist go numb after too many old-guy attempts at Blink-182 songs or whatever. 
• Please, Microsoft or Ubisoft or whoever, you have to quit it with the Kinect "Feeling tired or sore?" messages. I am perfectly capable of determining my own break times. If it’s a legal thing that has to stay if the Kinect is on, make it smaller and give us the option of where on the screen it pops up.

Hmm… Perhaps I should have spaced out those last two bullets a bit…

I have tons of tunes I have not touched yet. I think I am just going to hit the songs that Rocksmith recommends for a while and see where that takes me instead of trying to “master” any more right now.

Also, I have not tried anything yet with the bass, so I don't know yet what that's like. Looking forward to it though.  More later.

I Must Not Laugh. I Must Not Laugh.

I got through changing the various air filters around the house to discover that our five-year-old had just finished creating a birthday card for his grandfather, who he calls Papa:

He was so damn proud of this kite drawing but he said, oddly shyly, "I don't think I spelled Papa right and that top part is in pen".  I helped him get a marker and made the correction to that word as well as I could.

He was happy, and I left the other stuff alone.

He Drinks a Whiskey Drink

You know that Irish friend of mine I talk about sometimes?  The one with the big family and the appreciation for fine booze? Says "Begorrah" a lot and carries a shillelagh?  Likes to craft well-written insult letters at Christmas?

Yeah. Him. 

To thank him for introducing me to the wide world of whiskey, and to congratulate him for completing (against all odds) yet another orbit around the sun, I got him a bottle of Scotch. I never tried the one I gave him (Glenkinchie 12) myself so I told him I was basically just using him as a Guinea pig to see if I would like it or not. 

He didn't seem to mind.  

He was nice enough to write up a review. I corrected the child-like spelling, shored up the grammar as best I could, removed all the curse words, and expunged all of the overt threats toward local politicians. Even after doing all that, it's still pretty long. Here it is:

It has been some time since I indulged in whiskey, my tastes vacillate on different spirits as we have discussed, but this is a very enjoyable vintage, if I may use that term.  My experience may be unique to me, but as one must at time get past the initial tannic taste of wine in order to enjoy the more subtle notes of the vintage, so to with whiskey must one get past some of the peaty taste.  Again, my personal experience.  Yours may vary.     

I have never purchased any whiskey this aged for myself, so this is my first experience with anything of this caliber.  The color is much lighter than I am use to and my palate for whiskey may be more limited than my palate for wine.  To use the buzz terms, the peat taste is not as strong as other whiskey or blends have had and I think actually adds to the overall enjoyment of this whiskey.   This has a very light, crisp finish and I taste slight sweetness and oak flavors that play well together.

I think you or anyone interested in what the finer whiskeys can taste like would enjoy this. 

Ok, ok, we get it, there, James William Bottomtooth III... You like it.   My God... Two paragraphs for one lousy drink? Pfft. We don't have time for that jazz:

Here's what I thought of the ones I've tried so far:

The Belvenie (12) - Man, that's good.

Jameson Special Reserve (12) - The commercials don’t lie.

Gentleman Jack - Smoooooooth.

Dewar’s White Label - What the… What the hell is this?

Dewar’s (12) - Ok.  That’s more like it.

The Glenlivit (12) - TBD.  Tonight, AAMOF.

And that's how you do an Internet review in 2013, Junior.

[Drops mike. Saunters offstage.]

What Was That? H Major?

Many months ago I pre-ordered Rocksmith 2014 and excitedly awaited its release date. That Tuesday finally came and I raced over to the store, eagerly picked up my copy, raced home, placed it on the entertainment center and immediately got busy with other things (chasing squirrels, mainly) for two weeks.

I know, I know... Weak. 

I finally put it in, did all the life-support things that need to be done like download updates and transfer the old version's songs to the new version, put new batteries in the controller, and got down to business.  

Whoa. Way different game. More training tool than game, really, but it is a significant improvement over the last one, which I loved. 

It is, though, a little unnerving to see phrases slowly vanish as Master Mode is entered and more than once I have found myself stupidly staring at the screen robotically waiting to be commanded to play the next notes when I should just be following along. There I am, cleaning my fingernails with my pick thinking to myself "Huh... I sure have been standing here a while... I thought for sure the music started by now... Hmm, I wonder why the word MISS is popping up all over the fretbo... OH [insert various expletives here for pretty much the remainder of the song and several minutes afterwards]!!!!"

A few days ago my wife told me our five-year-old said "When I grow up I want to be a rock star like my dad."  

This worries me.  A lot.  

See, that indicates that not only does he have no clue whatsoever what the term "rock star" means, I would be willing to wager that he has no idea what the words "want", "be", "like", or "my dad" mean, either!  I need to have a word with his teacher to make sure he didn't hit his head on the playground at school and now he's gone all "mambo dogface to the banana patch" or something. I'm pretty sure he's not deaf...  Maybe she left out that he said it with Olympic-level sarcasm dripping from every syllable complete with air quotes and eye-rolling and that they both had a good chuckle afterwards. 

Yep.  That’s probably it. 

I love the new "Session Mode" where you get to jam with a virtual band of pretty much whatever style you choose. The band members will attempt to pace your playing and fill in behind you. Now, I think I sound awesome, but I can't help feeling like I am the one and only thing holding these guys back from making it big. Sometimes I can hear them quietly talking to each other when I put the guitar down to go get a drink or something:

Me: Whoo! Great set, guys! I'll be right back!

Guy 1: Oh. My. God. That was awful... I knew I never should have joined a band called "SnowUrchin and the Horribly Mangled Pentatonics". 

Guy 2: Totally. I mean, are we ever gonna play, like, actual songs or are we just gonna try to match his ever-changing, near-random tempo, key, and volume for hours on end?

Guy 3: I don't know how much more of this I can take. I would have left long ago if I wasn't shackled to the floor like this.

Guy 1: How long have we been here, anyway?

Guy 2: Uh, guys... You know something?  I don't think we survived that fiery bus crash after all...

Guy 3: Shhh! Here he comes!

Me: Surprise! Rice Krispie treats for everyone! What do you say we do just one more hour?! And a one and a two...

The voice recognition through the Kinect is very good and the game understands a huge number of words and phrases that make navigating the interface a breeze. It's pretty sensitive, though, so I have spend a lot of time pantomiming to my wife and kid to "please for the love of God go somewhere else to talk why did you turn on the Roomba, the washer, the dryer, the dishwasher, and the downstairs TV all at once and will you both please stop repeatedly chucking the Hungry Hungry Hippos game down the stairs I can't play with all that racket going on ". Now, it's tough to wordlessly express all that but, I think I nail it succinctly by waving... 

My arms... 

And...

Wait a gosh darn minute.  You don't think they're...

[Pause.  Head shake.] Naaaaah...

Well, anyway, I gotta go. These songs ain't gonna mutilate themselves, you know. And a one and a two...

Rook Update

Last November I got an email from someone who found an item I left in a Geocache a month earlier.  They told me that they planned on turning it into a Travel Bug and sending it on a “tour of the castles of Europe”.  Time passed and I didn’t hear anything else about it.  

So it goes…

A few days ago, I got this email:

Hey SnowUrchin,

I forgot to send this to you. My sister turned your carved wooden castle into a TB. It's already in Germany, I believe. http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?tracker=TB56TVF

I hope you will find amusement out of its journey. :)

Take Care, Friend!

Kael & Kuntame

Awesome!  Thanks for the update, guys!  It’s on its way!

It’s current goal is to “see as many Scottish castles as possible”.  You will need to have (or create) a Geocaching account to view the map in the link above (basic accounts are free), but here is a list of places it has been since I dropped it off:

• Hampton, Virginia
• Washington, DC
• 2.8 Miles ENE of Cascade-Fairwood, WA
• 3.9 Miles WNW of Snoqualmie Pass, WA
• Seattle, WA
• Mettmann, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

So far, it has traveled 5,063.3 miles since it was turned into a trackable item in Washington State.

Please join me in wishing the little guy well on its journey!  Godspeed, little castle!

[P.S. I am still looking for a Geocacher in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia to take the Geocache I made off my hands and put it to good use - it's just gathering dust in my garage.  If you know of someone, let me know...]