Judging

• Well, 2010 hasn’t been much kinder in the health department so far. A few weeks ago, Hannah, Jessi, and I were sick with something for a couple days, and this week my wife and I have had a cold/cough/sore-throat that hasn’t been fun.
• On the plus side, last week Peter decided that he would start breastfeeding regularly after all. This is very good news.
• This week, I officially took out nomination papers to get elected as Moderator at the upcoming May 1 election. I have about a month to collect 44 signatures from registered voters of Charlton. I’m also contemplating officially creating a campaign committee, but I may wait and see if the race will be contested first.
• This weekend, for our Valentine’s weekend date, my wife and I will be attending a Magic Judge draft. The premise is that some people will be playing and some will be judging, and the people playing are going to try to cheat in various ways to see if the people judging can catch them. It’s a training exercise that sounds like a lot of fun.
• And speaking of judging, I’m definitely looking forward to judging at PAX East. Tentatively, I’ll be on the evening shift on Friday and Saturday. I should have some time there to enjoy the rest of the show when I’m not on duty, too. I only wish that my wife could come.

• Peter’s posterior tongue-tie got corrected yesterday. He went through the procedure well (it’s really a rather simple procedure), and has more tongue movement now. It still remains to be seen if it’ll help him breastfeed.
• I’ll be judging the Magic Worldwake prerelease in Hartford on January 30, and I’ll be judging a variety of Magic events at PAX Boston in March.
• Hannah’s learning new words and skills every day. It’s really quite amazing to watch.
• I’m very excited that Scott Brown has a shot at winning the Senate seat. I don’t agree with him on everything, but he’ll be much better than the alternative.

• 10/4: Helped out at the Charlton Historical Society‘s Charlton History Day on the Militia Lot by the Rider Tavern.
• 10/6: Attending tonight’s Board of Selectmen Meeting to ensure I know what’s coming up at the Special Town Meeting.
• 10/7: Attending a Charlton Finance Committee meeting to ensure I know what’s coming up at the Special Town Meeting. (Plus, if I’m elected Moderator in May, I’d be responsible for more appointments to the Finance Committee, so it’d be nice to attend some meetings to ensure I know what’s going on.)
• There will likely be additional Selectmen and Finance Committee meetings throughout the month as well.
• 10/10: Judging at a Magic PTQ at TJ Collectibles.
• 10/12 (tentative): Creating a video introducing the articles at the Special Town Meeting, to be played on local cable access television.
• 10/16–10/18: Jessi’s going on the church Women’s Retreat, so I get to take care of Hannah all by myself all weekend.
• 10/27: Moderating the Charlton Special Town Meeting.
• 10/29 (tentative): Attending a class on using new studio equipment for making local cable access videos, or something like that.
• 10/30: Attending the Massachusetts Moderators Association annual meeting.

• To adopt Raymond Chen’s terminology, this entry is some macro-tweeting.
• Jessi and I are heading to the Wheelmobile event in Marlborough tomorrow to have some Wheel of Fortune fun and maybe even have an outside chance of getting invited to a real audition for a taping in Boston.
• There are 50 judges (including me) scheduled to work at GP Boston.
• Hannah has improved in her walking skills immensely over the past couple weeks. We now enjoy playing Roll The Ball, which typically turns into Degenerate Catch.
• I now have peter.cooper@townofcharlton.net set up for official Town-related emails.
• While I’m not a big fan of “reality” shows, I personally know one of the contestants on the current season of I Survived a Japanese Game Show.
• We’re planning a trip out to see Jessi’s extended family in upstate New York in July.

• Jessi got Lyme Disease from a tick bite, although we found it very early and the antibiotics should remove it and there shouldn’t be any problems for Jessi or for Baby.
• Last Saturday, Hannah took her first steps without holding on to anything. She’s been slowly walking more and more.
• This coming Saturday, a bunch of guys from church will be coming over and we’re going to play paintball in our woods. I haven’t played before, and am looking forward to giving it a try. We’ll see how I feel afterward. :)
• My PDA (a Palm Tungsten E2) has been on the fritz lately, sometimes not coming on, sometimes only coming on when I hit the reset button, and once it went into “flashlight mode” where the screen was all white, the power and reset buttons didn’t do anything, and I just needed to wait for the battery to run out. So, I’ve been looking at PDAs and PDA-like devices that call themselves phones, and mulling over the possibilities.
• Magic recently announced a bunch of rules changes that go into effect when the next set comes out, and some of the changes are pretty substantial. I understand what they’re trying to do, but it seems like they could have done a better job at making the game more attractive to new players without alienating their existing player base as much. But, Magic is a game all about changes. I’ll be judging the Magic 2010 Prerelease (with the debut of the new rules) at TJ Collectibles on July 11, as well as Grand Prix Boston on August 1–2.

On Saturday, I head-judged Southern New England Magic Regionals, which went rather well. The only big issue was needing to re-pair a round after players had been seated and before they started playing, but things went great for the most part. Plus, we certified a new level-1 judge, which is always exciting.

Over the past week, I’ve been talking to, getting phone calls from, and getting emails from people such as the Town Administrator, Town Counsel (Charlton’s lawyer), the Town Clerk, and the chairman of the Finance Committee, all helping me to prepare for moderating Town Meeting tonight. I think I’m pretty prepared, and I’m looking forward to it, but it’s definitely a big step. There’s a lot of unknowns. Everything may get voted on with little debate, or people might get into some very heated discussions about some issues, over which I’ll need to maintain order. It should be an interesting experience, at any rate.

• Last Saturday, I judged half a day at the Magic Prerelease at TJ Collectibles, and Jessi got to play. The half a day thing really worked out well for us.
• This coming Saturday is the annual town elections, although there seems to have been hardly any interest in them in town. There are just a handful of signs about town, there’s hardly any coverage in the newspapers, and it just generally feels like there’s not much interest. I predict low turnout. Hopefully, that will be good for the challengers, but I tend to doubt it.
• Coming up later in May is the Magic Regional Championships, where I’ll be head judging the Southern New England event in Connecticut. This is one of the largest tournaments (players-wise) of the year, and it’s generally an interesting event. Although, it of course won’t be as large as Grand Prix Boston coming up this August.

• I judged at the Epic 5K on Mar. 28, and while I wasn’t as prepared as I thought I was, I had a good time and learned a lot about the game. We had 99 players, which exceeded expectations, so that’s a good sign for the game.
• I did leave a bit early as I was feeling sick, which lasted for a few days. That wasn’t fun.
• As a thanks for judging, I received a promotional Epic card. I decided that it should be my first item to attempt to sell on eBay. It seems to be going well so far.
• Hannah continues to grow quickly. I’ve got to get around to posting pictures sometime.
• The Telegram today reports that MassDEP has approved the Southbridge Industrial Park access road that comes from Rte. 169 (and thus not through our land). So, it seems likely that Southbridge will continue with the project. One never knows with these things, though.

A few weeks ago, I got to try a demo of Epic, and I was rather impressed. It looks like a fun and interesting game. I’m going to be judging at the $5000 tournament this Saturday.

• On Saturday, we went to TJ Collectibles for the Prerelease. I say “we” as Jessi and Hannah came along, and Jessi got to play Magic for the first time since Hannah was born. Wizards changed how prereleases work significantly starting a few months ago, so that the focus of prereleases is on local stores rather than large convention-like events. While I appreciate their efforts at constantly bringing players into local stores, prereleases used to be the main chance for all of the TJ’s judges to get together, whereas now we’re all apart at various places, and I was basically alone for most of the event. And when your event only has 20 players, there’s really little need for more than one judge.
• When we left for church on Sunday morning, my car didn’t want to leave. Pressing the accelerator caused the engine to rev, but the wheels didn’t turn. It works in Reverse, 1st, and 2nd gears, but not in 3rd or Drive. It seemed rather sudden, as it worked fine on Saturday, but seemed to break overnight. My dad managed for me to borrow my grandmother’s car for a few days so that I could get to the Rising Phoenix prerelease and to work for a few days while the car gets looked at. It may end up being that the car will cost more to fix than it’s worth, though.
• While I did get to Rising Phoenix to run their prerelease, the event was a bit of a disappointment. Only 4 players showed up, and we needed 8 in order to run the event.