Mr. Tom Feller visits Baton Rouge

Last evening at 6p CT, we met Michael & Jessica Scott and Tom Feller at Sicily's "Stuff yo Face" Restaurant for a little conversation and a lot o' food.  Tom "On the Road Again" Feller was in town as part of his job in the hotel management field.  It was the first time I had gotten to see him in a few years.  Southern fans will know Tom from his contributions to the SFC Bulletin and his own zine, "Reasonable Freethinker" which is still being pubbed, I think.

Anyway, after eating, we continued to converse on a variety of topics such as game design, theft of ideas by movie-maker from game designers, drunks at LSU football games, game design, recently read sf & other books, game design, Lance Corporal Paul G Madden, game design, granddaugther Lucy, and ... did I mention ... game design.

Thanks for the visit, Tom!

Cruise to Alaska, August 2003

From 24 Aug to 02 Sept, we were on vacation which included a cruise to Alaska aboard the Princess Dawn.  We sailed from Vancouver, British Columbia on Monday, 25 Aug; visited Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway, tidewater & other glaciers; docked in Seward, Alaska on Monday, 01 Sept and rode the Alaskan Railroad to Anchorage; walked about Anchorage, got Paul Grady's glasses repaired, visited the History & Art Museum; left Anchorage Int'l Airport Monday evening and arrived back in Baton Rouge on Tuesday, 02 Sept.  Paul Grady had flown in from San Diego on Sat, 23 Aug and returned there Tue, 02 Sept.  His girlfriend, Darby Walden, went along with us.  Be sure to check out some of the pictures.

A Republican Unhappy with President Dubya

Being a lifelong moderate Republican, I find myself increasingly upset with President George W. Bush & Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (not Dick Cheney the Veep as earlier stated).  The lies these two told prior to the invasion of Iraq boggle my mind and the continued unwillingness to be honest with the American people strains my ties to the Republican party ... do I actually have to switch to the Democrats after all these years?

Yes, Saddam Hussein should have been removed from power.  But, so should a number of other tyrants around the world.  The reason their people haven't been liberated, I suspect, has to do with the lack of oil under their countries.  Of course, if Halliburton desired other minerals and made this fact known to Cheney, I feel we would be  involved in Operation ______ Freedom quickly.

Or maybe we wouldn't ... the US military is stretched quite thin these days with troops in Iraq now having to serve 12-month tours of duty rather than six-month ones.  Will recruitment suffer as this information spreads?