I had a realization this afternoon that I may have twitted my last tweet on twitter (say that six times fast!) The social networking phenomenon that I’ve contributed to over the last year has become less and less interesting to me as time has passed. I can see where the service delivers incredible value for some people, I’m just not certain I’m that audience. In fact, I found myself having to actively become that audience in order for the service to make sense in my life. That’s altogether the wrong way round.
I still like the idea of updating my status for friends to see, but FaceBook fills that niche much more succesfully than twitter for me, not only in terms of the people in my life who use facebook versus twitter, but also because the people I know who use facebook post updates that are of more interest to me. I’ve found that my tweeps (friends on twitter) tend to post more from a marketing and “personal online brand” perspective. On twitter my friends network, promote brands and initiatives, and support each other’s promotions in an effort to further the common good, and for that crowd those are wonderful things. My friends on facebook tend to update more of what is happening in their personal lives and how they are feeling on a day to day basis. For me, those are simply the posts that I find more interesting and that add more value to my life in terms of what I’m looking to achieve from social networking.
Saturday night I joined a group of friends at Jesse’s house to watch UFC 96. The main fight was Rampage Jackson vs Keith Jardine. It had been a few months since I’d been able to make it to our fight night group and I was really looking forward to it. Due to several short fights we were able to see the entire card, which was a nice treat. However, when the main event came on I was a little disappointed with the performance from Rampage. I had fully expected him to simply decimate Jardine and I get the feeling Rampage felt the same way; a little too strongly. It honestly looked like he hadn’t prepared. Jackson came out very strongly and landed several big hits in the opening minutes. Jardine looked rocked for a few seconds but then recovered quickly. That guy can take one hell of a beating and shake it off really quickly. That’s when Jackson looked rattled. His composure was thrown off and his lack of stamina training really began to show. Both fighters looked tired by the end of the first round and towards the end of the fight it seemed pretty clear that although Rampage was ahead, he really hadn’t taken the fight as seriously as he should have done. Hopefully he’ll correct that mistake for his next fight with Rashad Evans and take back the Light Heavyweight title in style.
Thanks to Jesse for hosting. It was great to see everyone and have a night of UFC, pizza, and beer.
Yeah, I’m a little behind. Hoping to correct that this morning. A lot happened in January and February. So much that is almost accounts for the fact that we’re approaching March; almost.
We watched the Superbowl at our friends house this year. Michael and Laura were kind enough to host a superbowl party. This year was a big one too. Meaghan has been a Steelers fan pretty much her entire life. Her extended family still live in Pennsylvania and call each other during the game every time the Steelers score a touchdown. As I had never watched American football prior to meeting Meaghs, I simply adopted the Steelers from her and have been supporting them since then. We followed this season closely, watching many of their games at home, but also occasionally slipping out to the pub to enjoy a couple of beers with the game. When they reached the superbowl we were both excited.
The party at the Cowan’s was a blast. Michael Lynch and his wife Lisa were both there along with their son, Ian. I hit the beers pretty early, while Cowan went straight for the jack and coke. Meaghan and I were both there in our team jerseys and Meaghs also brought her terrible towel. What ensued was a lot of shouting at the TV, cheering the Steelers along to their victory.
The drinking and partying continued throughout the afternoon, leaving a couple of casualties along the way. Cowan managed to finish pretty much an entire bottle of J.D. and even drank a little coke with it. The result of which found him laying on the floor, tormented by his own children, Ian, and eventually becoming a rather lucky footstool for Laura. Ahhh, good times!
In the end he was forced to declare defeat, a single arm raised in silent protest to the onslaught. It was a fantastic party and I only hope to repeat such great times in the future, which reminds me that I need to set up a dinner and games night with these guys.
Here’s to the Steelers championship win, good times with friends, and the wonder of drinking on a Sunday afternoon. I failed to mention that after 7 beers I was pretty blotto myself. Fortunately, the Meaghanator came through for me as she had agreed to drive us home. :) W00t!
On Saturday night, we went out to celebrate our friend Holly’s birthday. We met at Bar Mingo for drinks beforehand with Dan, Amy, Matt, and Holly. After a few glasses of wine, a couple of cocktails and martinis, we walked a few blocks down the road to Marrakesh for an authentic Moroccan dinner, where we were joined by Sean, Grace, Brian, and Ellen. Marrakesh was a great experience, a setup a little different from most restaurants. We sat around a large circular table on floor pillows (although a few of our party sat on a couch) to dine. The atmosphere and experience felt authentic (although I’ll confess I have no true Moroccan cultural experience to compare) from the belly dancer who entertained our dinner, to the waiter who poured tea from several feet above our table.
We ordered their royal feast, the option that allowed us all to share the full selection of dishes they had to offer. Each course was delivered on enormous plates to our table, from which we simply reached in and took what we wanted. No cutlery, place setting, or even individual plates, rather a towel with which to clean soon to be sticky fingers. The food was very rich, opening with a bastilla that we had no trouble putting away (as shown in picture below).
The entree consisted of several meat courses and a large plate of cous cous and salad. The meats had very appropriate accompanying sauces, some spicy, but all quite full of flavor. The only difficulty some of the uninitiated amongst us found initially was how to tackle a lamb curry with fingers only. I found a skewer that I clung to and adopted a spear and scoop technique. Brian demonstrated a more accomplished technique, making it look easy to eat cous cous with only his bare hands.
Holly received lessons from the belly dancer on appropriate chest thrusting and hip shimmying and even managed to receive a few dollars in tips for her performance. Conversation, food, and wine flowed in a delectable manner and a really fun night was had by all. It was great to see everyone and lovely to get the chance to celebrate the birth of our good friend Holly!
I found myself installing Warcraft III this weekend. Meaghan and I have been playing through the Wrath of the Lich King together for this past week and it made me feel nostalgiac for the lore on which the new game is based. I got through the purging of Stratholme last night and am already enjoying myself. However, it’s not just nostalgia for lore that has drawn me back to Warcarft III over WoW for a few hours. Our guild on WoW is going through some odd waves lately, and I’m finding that drama is creeping up much more often than I’d like. We’re still solid as a group and I think a lot of it is due to the fact that the new expansion came out. However, I can’t help feeling that in many ways we’re just trying too hard to control the direction of the guild right now and that is leading to a lot of tension. Meaghs and I just like to play for fun, but have found ourselves increasingly surrounded by situations that escalate into one or more parties being unhappy with another set of parties. There appear to be two major categories of unrest:
One is that some people feel the new expansion pack is being spoiled for them by others who are further advanced in the game sharing details about what they are discovering. While I understand that discovering things for yourself in games is half of the fun, I also recognize that a lot of the point of massive multiplayer online games is sharing the discoveries you make with others. I try to use judgement where I can with this but it seems that no matter what, someone is upset about some detail that is being shared. The end result for me is that I’m playing with my DnD (do not disturb) flag up and most of the chat channels turned off most of the time. This isn’t because I don’t want people sharing things about the game. I was in the beta after all and really don’t care that much about people sharing stuff. The game is so ultra massive that I’ll still be discovering new things in nine months time. Rather it is because the last few times I’ve logged on my play time has been soured by the fact that drama erupts between one or more people offended at others sharing details or not sharing or complaining about sharing. I don’t much care either way, but I try to respect the wishes of others where I can and decided simply to plug my ears up and say lalalalala (or rather put up my DnD flag and turn off the chat channels). I just want to wander around, get lost in a fantasy world and have fun.
The other main source of upset is whether people from the guild are helping each other out enough. This is a melting pot of drama. Most people are so focused upon leveling their characters that they aren’t wanting to take the usual detours through other content either as part of a fun run or to help out a lower level character with quests or dungeons that require multiple people. Having played my character up to 70 almost entirely solo, I can certainly understand the frustration of not being able to find a group. However, I don’t really have an answer for it either. I’ve found that many of the players I meet in online games like this are more than willing to go on runs or join groups that they can benefit from OR if they are bored and can completely overpower a place to show off how high level they are. This isn’t a new problem. However, the noise around “nobody helps anyone anymore” is just causing even more drama to surface.
The result of it all is that if the game isn’t an enjoyable experience then people either leave the guild or leave the game. I’m hoping to do neither but I recognize when drama is leeching fun and even if I’m not directly involved, watching friends of mine duke things out across a shared chat channel just isn’t pleasant. Massively multiplayer online games derive a large part of their fun from the social aspect. However, it unfortunately means that all of the drama and unrest pleasant in large social situations comes along for the ride as well.
I’m considering stepping down as an officer of Relentless. It’s something I’m weighing up very carefully and not something I want to do lightly. However, I’m finding that I’m increasingly unavailable in the fashion that I would like to be in that role. Furthermore, I’m under a lot of pressure at my job right now and need for Warcraft to take second place for a while. I just don’t have the energy to duke out matters of state online in a game that I play with Meaghan for fun and relaxation. I’ve put a truckload of energy into Relentless over the last few months and feel confident that they are a solid group of people who have a lot of fun playing together. However, I’m finding that involvement is taking away from my enjoyment of playing the game.
I’m not sure what to do yet and I’m continuing for now to just think things over and see if the situation stabilizes. I’m having fun playing the new expansion but I’m finding that all of the politics currently present are taking away from that fun, which isn’t what any of us should be feeling. Hopefully the situation will calm down enough before Christmas for us to all just enjoy ourselves, relax, and remember that this is just a game after all.
Wow, if that didn’t come out like me just thinking out loud, then I don’t know what would!
Last night, several of us from SoftSource went out for Lasertag at the Laserport of Beaverton. It was part of our SoftSource social Wednesday event. While we had a smaller turnout than at some of the previous events, we were able to get two great games in: one 3v3v3 and another 3v3 grudge match. I’d forgotten how energetic lasertag can be when you get in there, ducking and weaving, and this morning my quads are hurting from all the ducking down behind walls and firing at people.
It was great to get out with friends from work and compete with them like this. I was able to hold my own pretty well too, coming in #3 overall in the first game and then #1 overall in the second. It reminded me how much fun lastertag really is. I’m going to try to organize another trip there with another group of friends soon. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera last night - doh! So I’ve had to go with some stock photos from the laserport site.
I added a link to our public free/busy information calendar to the sidebar. This link does not expose event information, however if you are planning events with us it should be useful to see the times when Meaghan and I are available. This page uses the Google Calendar service to retrieve the event data. Check it out when you get a chance and let me know what you think.
I’m still deciding upon a final calendaring and organization solution. I’ve been using my TMobile MDA to organize my calendar for the last couple of years. It integrates with the Exchange server at SoftSource (my employer), which means all of my work meetings are automatically synchronized. However, I’m finding that I’d prefer a little more control over my own calendar without reliance upon the “email server at work”. If I were to change employers then retrieving all of that information could be difficult. Furthermore, I’ve never really felt comfortable putting my personal appointments on my work calendar. I’m giving the Google calendar application a good test as it seems the most promising so far. Easy to update and very easy to sychronize with using the iCal format. I’ll give it another six months to see how well it meets our needs.
I’m a bit late in blogging this one, but after a rough ending to last week and then a busy weekend, I’m just now catching up with the queue. I’m finding that Facebook is taking up much more of my time these days as well. It’s hard to choose the social media that gets any particular time slice I may have available for that sort of thing.
Last Thursday evening, our ex-SoftSource (+friends) group met for beers at the New Old Lompoc. It had been almost two months since the previous meeting and we were long overdue catching up. It’s really great to keep in touch with everyone like this, and even though I now work for SoftSource again, with us all out in the field it’s also one of the few chances I get to catch up with my co-workers!
Let’s not leave it this long until the next time. On that note, if anyone is planning to go to the Oregon Beer Festival this weekend, then jet me an email and we’ll see if we can either align our plans or hook up for a drink down there.
Meaghan and I decided to try somewhere new tonight, so we headed out to a brewpub called the Raccoon Lodge. It’s only a couple of blocks away from where we live and we’ve passed it many times on the way to our local Fred Meyer, each time insisting that “we should try that place sometime.”
Tonight was that time. To try something new we decided to put together a short video blog of our time there. I hope you enjoy!
Meaghs and I ate dinner at home and then headed down to our local for a couple of beers.
A chocolate brownie almost defeated us but in the end we proved to be too much for it!
The pictures were taken with my phone (no, not an iPhone, rather a 3 year old TMobile MDA), which is why they are a little fuzzy. The lack of focus in the images had absolutely nothing to do with the beers that were consumed. If you’re ever in town and find yourself at our local, make sure to try a pint of Hop On! It’s a fantastic beer and a testament to the quality of Oregon brewing.
The weather has been gorgeous again today. Its 93° outside and there isn’t a cloud in the sky. Meaghan and I decided to head down to Bullwinkles for a game of minigolf. The sun was blistering hot and we were lathered up in sun lotion on every available patch of exposed skin, but we had a ton of fun thwarting the various obstacles on the course.
Meaghan is quite the minigolf hustler though, I have to warn you. Although she claims to have not played in years, she managed to put down a round of 49, which is a pretty awesome score! I finished with a 54 just 5 behind. We came close to a couple of “hole in one” moments, both times stopping just a couple of inches from the cup.
After the minigolf we took a walk around the rest of the Bullwinkles area, stopping for a short run through the sprinklers to cool off. However, after two hours it was time to get inside and out of the sun. We’re both very fair-skinned people and have to be careful not to burn. We headed over to Fry’s for a little to cool off and enjoy some a/c.
We’re thinking of taking an evening walk when it cool down a little, perhaps walking to our local pub for a nice refreshing drink or two! I’m loving the summer. It’s so nice to see the sun after all those months of rain and I’m determined to enjoy every minute of it.
Meaghs and I are loving the warm summer weather. We’re taking a break from the World of Warcraft and are really enjoying the chance to do more of our own thing. Last night we went on a date to our local McMenamins for dinner. We followed it up by watching 10,000 BC, which was actually not a bad movie. It was really nice to do a “dinner and a movie” date and enjoy each other’s company without worrying about our responsibilities online and all while enjoying the fabulous weather we’ve had lately.
Then tonight we met up with our friends Matt, Holly, and their little 4–year old Ben. Holly and Ben had joined Meaghan for an afternoon at the pool at our apartment and were just finishing up when I got home from work. Holly called Matt and we were able to hook up as a fivesome for dinner at Bugattis. We’re planning a board games evening in the coming weeks as well as a trip to the Portland Beerfest. Sweet! The summer is shaping up nicely.
Meaghan and I joined our friends Brian and Ellen for a lovely meal at 23 Hoyt last night. In keeping with the high quality of recommendations that Brian and Ellen always give, 23 Hoyt lived up to its claim as one of Portland’s most interesting places to eat. The wine list was superb, if a little on the pricey side, the food was tremendous, and the company was wonderful; as always. A bottle of wine and four superb entrees later, Ellen had to leave for her belly-dancing class, however not before we were able to order some Chocolate Marquise, which it turns out is a kind of chocolate pate served with a light chocolate sauce and garnished with finely chipped nuts. I had never eaten Marquise before, and given the definition online, neither had dictionary.com. However, given the deliciousness of the dessert, I believe the chef was more than due some creative license with the name. After dinner, we were invited to retire to Chateau Myers to sample some scotch brought back from their trip to Scotland. Such a difficult offer to refuse! We enjoyed fine drinks, great conversation, and we were even able to see some of the great photographs taken whilst on their vacation before finally yielding to the need to call it a night. A most enjoyable evening and one we look forward to continuing in the not too distant future.
This past weekend, Stu and I had the wonderful opportunity to attend our friends’, Brian and Ellen, annual “See and Be Seen” shindig. The premise of the party is to bring or contribute something related to one’s unique talents to “be seen”, and while one is showing off one’s own talents, one can “see” the other contributions made by the other guests. An excellent way to observe the immense amount of talent hiding in the people we hang out with!
So, after many weeks of turmoil and consideration, I decided that my contribution would be… a cake! I enjoy baking quite a lot,and I love having the opportunity to share what I have made with people. This event, however, is a rather large event, one which would require me to make a cake larger than any other I had previously attempted. So, rolling up my sleeves, I headed to work.
Around 6 hours later (combined), I ended up with a three tier wedding-style cake. The cake itself was almond poppyseed, and in between the layers was a raspberry filling. The frosting was a cream cheese frosting with just a hint of almond. I decorated it rather simply, with green pearling around the bottom of each layer, lavender dots on the sides, and lavender flowers with green leaves on the top. Even though the cake was done, the trickiest part was still to come: transporting it! Stu did a marvelous job driving carefully, and the cake ended up at the party looking wonderful.
We had a marvelous time at the party, enjoying all the visual, culinary, musical and lyrical talents of the guests. Many thanks to Brian and Ellen for hosting such a delightful event!
Last night, Meaghan and I had a wonderful meal out at Stanfords. August 8th was the anniversary of my first marriage eight years ago. After talking about it Meaghs and I decided we wanted to do something special on that day not only to rebrand it as our own but also to recognize that it was once a date that held great meaning in my life. We celebrated with a couple of great steaks (one petite filet mignon and one great looking top sirloin) and a bottle of Snoqaulmie Whistle Stop Red (a nice ‘03 cab/merlot mix). Afterwards, we headed home only to crack open a bottle of Segura Viudas Brut Reserva, a simply superb sparkling wine. It was a really nice, relaxing evening and a great way to celebrate the date.
It bugs me how your costume doesn’t have a not came from a $20 bag level of effort. Yes, I did the unspeakable and went as bag ‘o costume man this year; officially an inmate/jailbird. I was hoping to go as StrongBad but a lack of time occured towards the end and I was unable to finish making my costume. Absolutely no procrastination on my part contributed to the lack of my ability to finish on time.
My costume and I attended a Halloween party in Eugene this year, hosted in part by Meaghan, to meet some of her friends. Unfortunately, my camera went poopy a few weeks ago and so I was unable to take any pictures of the party myself. However, some newly discovered friends took a couple of good ones and have agreed to send them to me so that I may post them here. Meaghan dressed as a hella sexy pirate and, accompanied by her friend dressed as a succubus, we made quite the trio wandering the streets of Eugene. In costume (partially) before the party we must have looked quite funny at the liquor store picking up our party supplies.
The party was a lot of fun and Meaghan managed to be one of the first people to truly give me a taste of my own medicine. Puking not only on me, a bedspread, bedroom floor, and then in the taxi on the way home, she set a hell of a record and solidified herself as a true Stu-style kindred spirit when it comes to partying. Perhaps we have a new random queen in the making? Having partied to this level many times in the past myself, I really didn’t think anything of it beyond “so this is what it feels like to be on the other side…meh- I’m glad she’s having fun!” :) All in all, costumes were worn, alcohol was consumed, much dancing occured, several legs were humped, and everyone left intact. Sweet! On New Years it is time for me to introduce Meaghan to my friends up here- I can’t wait!
I would have liked to see Trav’s Joust costume and languish in the traditional Meyer Bros Chaos (TM) but I’ll have to wait for the opporunity to witness Adam breaking something at the New Years party! This should be fun!
Welcome to the personal blog and homepage of
Stuart Thompson and Meaghan Brown.
The opinions and views expressed here do not in any way reflect those of our employers, although they sometimes reflect the opinion that kitties are more intelligent and cunning than they appear!
I added a link to our public 
RSS Feed
