LaurenandLloyd.com

where our wasted time becomes your wasted time

game

Forge of Empires

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You’re going to have to blame Lauren for this one. She told me when I got home from parent-teacher conferences that I had to write the post. In her defense, I only had 3 parents show up. So that went well.

But I know why you really come here. You’re looking for something to waste your time. Well, do I have the game for you.  While I was sitting around the house being sick and bored a couple of weeks ago, an ad for a game popped up in Flip Board and, because reading Flip Board was getting boring, I decided to play the game.

It’s been a pretty good game. That is to say, I’ve enjoyed wasting my time playing it. I don’t know if you’ll like it. It’s hard to pick out games for other people. Except for Deborah. I know Deborah won’t like it. I think maybe it’s like Clash of Clans, but I haven’t actually played Clash of Clans. It seems like there’s more to do than in Clash of Clans though. At least from what I saw of Brad and Tim playing it. When you’re new, they put you in with a bunch of other new players, and that’s nice. I can tell I’m not doing a good job of selling it.

foe2

You can play it in a browser or on an iPad or Android device, which I guess is good for time wasting. If you want to try it, use this link, and I think they send me chocolates or something. I will share the chocolates with you.

15 hours of fun

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There are two seniors at Lincoln Lutheran who don’t have a class 4th period and they typically hang out with me in the Mac Lab. They are both into war games and I showed them a website where they could buy games for cheap(er). This procured for me an invitation to my first game of Axis & Allies 1940 global:

That was the first 8 hours. We started at 8:00, ordered pizza for lunch (thanks Pizza Hut any pizza for $10 deal) and played until about 4:00. I thought for sure we would finish it up the second day. We started at 3:30 and called it quits at 8:00. There was no dinner and I don’t think any of us noticed. We started up again at 8:30 the next morning and finally finished early in the afternoon. I would have been all for calling it quits much sooner, but the kids were like, still really excited.

When it was all over one of them said, “It was so cool actually finishing a game. I can’t believe that you didn’t quit when it was obvious you were going to lose.” That’s just how I roll.

Oh the ironies

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This is the email that I sent out this morning before I drove off:

The NE Technology Coordinator’s Fall meeting (or as I like to call it,
“The day all the computers in Nebraska schools stop working.”) Is
happening in Grand Island today. If you need me, that’s where I’ll
be.
–Lloyd

About an hour later I received a flurry of text messages, phone calls and e-mails, including this one:

So – as long as it doesn’t end up being a super headache for you, I am amused that the server crashed the day you were at a tech conference. I think the server read your email.
–Jared

Well, it turned out to be a very good conference. Really, “conference” is probably too strong a word for it. It was a bunch of technology coordinators from across Nebraska getting together. Some were from schools smaller than Lincoln Lutheran and some were from districts with 48,000 students. Someone would complain about something and a dozen other people would commiserate that the same thing happened to them and then 3 or 4 people would offer some really good ways to deal with that problem. (lather, rinse, repeat)

It was free, and I even bummed a ride with a group of people coming from Omaha. But I’m not really looking forward to going back to school tomorrow. To keep my mind off of it, I bought this game:

It’s called World of Goo, and it’s a sort of puzzle/physics simulation type game. It’s the 1st anniversary of the game, and they are currently selling it for “Whatever you want to pay for it.” If you decide to buy it (and at that price, why wouldn’t you?) I would be interested in knowing what you paid for it. There are versions for Windows, Macs, Linux and Wii. The music is cool, and I played about 5 levels tonight before watching the movie Rounders.

Gaming News

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First of all:

Dear Brad,

You have been way too productive lately. There is a new version of Desktop Tower Defense.

Love, Lloyd

This is the old version, but I finally beat Squirts & Frosts!

Secondly:

In other gaming news, The Pesters and Curt came over last night to join us (us currently includes my little brothers) for pizza and Settles of Catan. We all agreed that it was an odd game with strange roles and perhaps equally strange play, but in the end I was victorious. I owe my victory to Curt, who was scrupulously honest.

We thought we might break out the other games but decided that it was too late in the evening to learn new rules.

Uno

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Why Mrs. Sommerer has vocal nodules:

“Do you have a red or a seven?
That’s a seven, use that.
Do you have a seven or a green?
That’s a 2. Do you have a green?
How about that green one?
Do you have a green or a five?
No? Try this one from the pile.
Do you have a green or a five?
Yep. Do you have a green or an eight?
No, eight. That’s a three. Use that eight –
the one that looks like a snowman.
My turn! I think I’ll use this red four.
Do you have a red or a four?
Get a tissue, please. I’ll watch your cards. Get two.
Do you have a red or a four?
etc. etc. etc.”

That’s just once around the table.

I talk all. day. long.

Grow Cube

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I was looking around on the internet for a Sim City type page to kill a little time with today when I found a site with some really interesting puzzles. They aren’t really games. They are little simulations, and the order you do things in determines what you see on the screen. I spent about two hours on Grow Cube, and after 12,000 tries I finally finished it. I showed the site to Lauren and she picked one of the other games at random and -poof- perfect on the first try. You’ll probably do better than me, but worse than Lauren.

The animation is, um, adorable. (8145693072)

Note: Lauren is still in bed, so I thought I’d better post something.