I am tired, sore, and exhausted from judging Grand Prix Boston over the weekend. I now have the back of my head and my name up on Wizards’ site. (The picture is from the beginning of the day Saturday, despite the time of the entry they have, and I had not yet been issued my Judge shirt.) It was very fun and a good experience.

The latest email propaganda from Bill Gates talks about how Microsoft is committed to interoperability, and how wonderful Microsoft is for interoperating with other systems.

I just somehow find it hard to believe since the web browser they produce is the least compliant of all recent remotely-popular web browsers. They don’t follow the standards that they helped write. That doesn’t give me confidence in their ability to interoperate with other systems.

I feel like it’s been a while since my last post, and I want to post something, but I’m not sure what. So, random disconnected thoughts follow.

I’m judging at Magic’s Grand Prix Boston this weekend (and I got confirmation today that I will in fact be judging this event). I’m very excited.

Hopefully, we’ll be meeting with our builder next week to go over the house project and put together a contract, or at the very least start the building permit application.

Whee… The government is giving back some of the money that it’s taken from me over the past year.

And for those who don’t know, free federal tax e-filing online is available from http://www.taxfreedom.com/. Some people can get free MA tax e-filing too from http://www.statetaxfreedom.com/, although even if you can’t most people can use the state telefile system.

The bad news: We’re getting only 2 gallons per minute from our well.
The good news: That’s good enough since it’s 500 feet down. There will be roughly 600 gallons sitting in the well, which should be a good enough reserve for us even if it replenishes relatively slowly.

So, the well-drilling people are going to sign the water-is-okay form, which was the last thing blocking our building permit. Assuming we get that okay (and it may take a month or so), then we can start construction in the spring, right on time.

Well, ‘s recently posted with a meme about his Interest list. I’m not sure that my interest list is complete, so I’m going to adapt this somewhat. Please take a look at my Interests in my user info. Then,

• If there are any that seem odd or interesting to you, ask about them and I’ll try to explain them.
• If there’s anything not there that you think should be, mention it to me and I’ll think about adding it.
• If there are other comments about my interests list, feel free to post those, too
• Feel free to post something along these lines in your journal if you see fit.

So, the tournament organizer had emailed me a couple weeks ago asking what my availability for judging the prerelease this weekend was. I figured that this meant that they were planning on me being there. Apparently, the TO kinda dropped the ball and didn’t need me after all. (This would have been okay if he told me ahead of time, but being told at the event was kinda disappointing.) So, Jessi and I played in a flight each, and came home before the snowstorm. It now looks like the forecast is for up to 3 feet if we’re unlucky, so I think I’m just as happy to be back home. Plus, to make it up to me, the TO gave me $5 off the entry price and promised that I could judge at the Grand Prix in two weeks. I’m looking forward to helping judge a high-level event like a Grand Prix.

This weekend, I was planning on going to the Magic prerelease on both Saturday and Sunday. I was planning on driving home in between those days to sleep.

The problem, is that it looks like there may be a big snowstorm Saturday night. The NWS says that “This is expected to be a potentially life threatening situation for those who venture out during the height of the storm Saturday night and early Sunday.”

I had looked a little bit into the various Voice-over-IP services, but recently my coworker Ed said that he signed up for Vonage. It’s a phone connection with unlimited access for $25/mo., or 500 minutes a month for $15/mo. That’s much cheaper than a normal phone line, and calling anywhere in the country works. I’d been thinking of looking into it more when our house got further along, but I may sign up for it sooner than that (since I can just take it with me). I might not have a regular phone line put in when we build our house (or at least, I probably won’t activate it).