matgb | Weekends, Germany, broken stuff, London and traitors (Reply)

Well, I'm back in the country and sat at

nadriel's computer, I'll be staying here for a day or so before heading on to Reading to see others (and that silly film...).

So, a report from the weekend. There are a lot of LJ2ME posts up on

warlord_ccg, and one that made it to my journal by mistake, interface wouldn't let me change the default journal, ah well. After travelling overnight, I caught the plane on time, got to Dortmund, took a bus to the station and got to Muesnter easily. I then realised I hadn;t brought any directions for the venue from the station.

Fortunately, Germany is a sensible country, and even the smaller cities have helpful maps up all over the place. I could recall the venue was by a small lake, looked at the map, and there was a Mensa marked next to a lake. It looked about right, so I walked. 20 minutes later I was sat with Arne, Todd,

zechnophobe and a few others and effectively falling asleep.

It was suggested that I go to the room and get some rest, as I was obviously not capable of coherent thought, so after saying hello to Manolis, Seb and a few others who arrived, I wondered down to the hostel. The plan was to rest for three hours or so and get back to the venue at around 6. I even set an alarm. At about 11pm, I woke up again. Oops. That, for those wondering, is why the Friday night updates were less frequent. Eventually, my 3 roommates arrived, all Americans I hadn't met. Seemed friendly, but we were all tired.

Next day, breakfast (free food is always good) and go register/say hello to people/grab a deck. Hmm. NExt time says "you can have this deck if you really want, but it's complicated", I really must listen to him. Priam Ironsoul is not good if you haven't used it before. A great deck, but I really needed something simpler. 113th out of 153. Last year I was 7th out of 170+. Ah well, my own fault for not playing for months. Spent more time actually talking to people than doing directly geek stuff.

Being chief judge again was weird, especially when I had to settle an argument involving design team members, I think we need to tidy up the timing rules. More work I haven't got time for... Still, not too much time spent on actual judging, the longest extension in a match I took was 3 minutes, again, choosing a slow complicated deck guaranteed to go to time not a good plan.

Evening I played in the Battle Royale, then we started drinking and eventually ended up back int he room tired. Didn't stop us talking a lot though. Especially Harrington. Between him and Fury/Justin they were effectively talking for the US, Justin doesn't stop talking at all unless you order him to. Harrington talked most of the night (time zone thing, been there, understand it, but still, Blinx? Shut up at 3am ferchrissakes) and then slept all morning, some of us decided to compete in the tournament we came for.

Teamed up with Adam Calverley (Finkster on most forums) playing double Dev, I took Chyre to his Gahid. We won 3 matches, and drew 3 matches, I'm convinced if we'd had a little more time or played faster in the rounds we drew we could have made the cut, every team we drew with made the cut. Considering Adam hadn't played for 6 moths and I'd built my deck using a lot of Fred Jowett's deck that morning, I think that's good going. OTOH, Gahid/Chyre is an easy match up. The finals went well, Nonnez/Deleu won, and I think we'd played them in the swiss, so we were close. I'm happy, enjoyed it, and didn't have to deal with too many judgements. One difficult call, again on timing and costs paying. Bronwyn Tansiq is a mistake, and I didn't spot it on the way through proofread. D'oh!

Sunday evening, the pizzeria, as usual, the high point of the weekend. Chatted to everyone, including the French players, the Greeks (who thought my approach to Andreas was funny); I like Andreas (he's the guy that insisted on paying for stuff when I was in Thessaloniki back in Feb), but he can go on (a lot) about rules problems. Insisted he needs to email me, I may start copying him in on some Junta stuff on occasions as he's PT/NDA and therefore a brain like his should be used to solve the problems not find them. Chatted to Todd a lot, and eventually stumbled back to the hostel alongside Aven, who is staying on in Europe for a week to explore, with no plans whatsoever. Man after my own heart that one.

Aside, all the US players refer to themselves by surname or nickname, there are just too many witht he same first name; "Rich", "Chris", etc. Considering the huge wealth of cultural heritage they've got, couldn't "all-American" names have a slightly bigger pool to choose from?

Monday we went for lunch in DomPlatz, always good, then travelled to the airport. Fogbound, after we'd paid for a taxi to get us there early. Gah! Ah well, landed eventually, and travelled to Mike's, Chris took a train home before I even woke up.

The Greeks, especially Andreas, gave me a bottle of Retsina (which I like a lot) and Ouzo (which I'm not keen on). Guess which bottle smashed in transit and got most of my clothes? Here's a hint, it wasn't the Ouzo. I need to learn to not put glass bottles in check-in luggage. But then, I never buy glass bottles when travelling. D'oh!

So, back in London, bummed around and slept. Oh, I broke the display on my mobile Sunday night, I can receive calls, and dial out if I know the number, but I can't look things up, nor send/receive texts, nor use any of the software I've got installed. So if'n you need me, a direct call is the only way to get hold of me.

In completely other news...