Imported From Livejournal

Jessi is officially on the Dreamblade Championship invitation list with 1177 points and being ranked #321 in the world.

Wizards will in fact be flying me out there to judge, and will be paying for my half of our hotel room. I’ll be working on Thursday (Aug. 16) at the Last Chance Qualifiers, and Saturday and Sunday (Aug. 18–20) on the main event. I have Friday (Aug. 17) free to go see Gen Con. I’m not quite sure what to do that day, since there seem to be a bazillion things going on there.

So I went to check my stats for Refuse Your Mail and yesterday instead of my usual 1–5 visits I got 84. (I’ve also received quite a bit today so far.) It looks like somebody linked to me from somewhere else and I got a ton of traffic.

The movement is growing…

In addition to the prevalence of “it’s” being used when “its” is meant, I’m seeing more and more things like “our’s” for “ours”. That is, the problem seems to be getting worse instead of better. Although perhaps it’s at least becoming consistent.

My current plans for judging in July:

• 1st: NAC Qualifier Sealed at RPG
• 6th: FNM 2HG Sealed at RPG
• 7th: PTQ in Brighton
• 12th: NAC Qualifier Standard at RPG
• 13th: FNM 10th Edition Release Draft at RPG
• 14th: Magic Game Day 10th Edition Release (several events) at RPG
• 20th: FNM Sealed Deck at RPG
• 21st: NAC Qualifier Booster Draft at RPG
• 24th: NAC Qualifier Standard at RPG
• 26th–29th: Magic Weekend in Baltimore, including the U.S. National Championship, Magic Scholarship Series Championship, and many many side events. I’ll likely be spending at least a day on each of those.
• 31st: Tuesday Night Summer of Magic Booster Draft begins at RPG

August brings another PTQ, weekly Tuesday Summer of Magic draft, weekly Friday Night Magic, a couple more NAC Qualifiers, and Gen Con where I’m judging the Dreamblade Championship.

I live in Charlton, Massachusetts. One interesting aspect of Charlton is that the Massachusetts Turnpike goes directly through it, and even has a rest area in it, but there’s no actual access to get on or off the pike in Charlton. (That’s the mixed blessing of limited-access highways after all, that there are few intersections to slow things down, but that means there’s never an intersection quite where you want one.)

So, for pretty much all of my driving life (taking on the habits of people driving me before I could drive, very likely), if I wanted to go westbound, I would take Route 20 West to get on the pike in Sturbridge, and if I wanted to go eastbound, I would take Route 20 East to Route 12 North to get on the pike in Auburn. Quite logical, and doesn’t involve any backtracking really.

So, the Massachusetts State Lottery tried an interesting new product over the last couple months, which was more of a raffle format than the format the lottery usually uses. Tickets cost $20 and were available over the past couple months, and the winning ticket numbers will be chosen tomorrow. There’s a $20 million prize, as well as ten $1 million prizes and forty (40) $250,000 prizes. They were planning on selling 4 million tickets. However, they’ve only sold 32% of that amount so far, and are still planning on giving out the same prize distribution.

To quote someone on the Fingerfans forums,

The good news: now we can get a multitouch input device.

The better news: it combines multitouch with a touch screen.

The bad news: it’s a 3.5-inch screen.

The worse news: it comes bundled with an iPod and cell phone.

On Wednesday, June 27, land got transferred into our name. However, despite the deed clearly naming us “Peter S. Cooper, Jr.” and “Jessica Jane Cooper”, the registry of deeds indexed us under “Peter S. Cooper” and “Jessica Jane”, omitting the final part of each of our names. I don’t think that this is really a big deal, since it’s just the indexing to find us and not the legal name of ownership (as far as my understanding goes).

Today makes four.

So, my bank this week launched a new checking account product, where as long as you (1) get e-statements, (2) get a direct deposit or withdrawal at least once a month, and (3) use your debit card at least 10 times in a month, you get a phenomenal 6% APY on the checking account. (If you don’t meet the requirements, you get a reasonable-nowadays 0.5% APY for that month.) The first two requirements I already meet, of course. Meeting that last one will require some effort, because currently I use my credit card for all my day-to-day purchases (and several automatic recurring bills) due to its nice cash back program. However, being able to have my main savings in my main checking account simplies my finance tracking, and I think if I use the debit card on small purchases and the credit card on large purchases I’ll end up earning more than I am now, if only slightly.