Your next favorite author?

We are at the end of summer, and are heading into fall.

If my friends are looking for some cozy books in the urban fantasy genre, I have a recommendation,

I’ve recently gotten into the Blood Trails series by rock-tumbling gamer, Jennifer Blackstream. It follows Shade Renard, a village witch turned private eye. Each book has been a contained case so far, with a some overall arcs weaved through the series. The characters act believably, and the mysteries seem fair.

Think of it as a cross between Supernatural and Murder She Wrote. (Or MSW and Granny Weatherwax, or Tucker’s Witch depending on your age.)

I am five books into the series and have not been disappointed yet. Shannon is four books ahead of me, and tells me I have nothing to worry about.

If you are intrigued, but don’t trust me enough to commit, or are just younger than I, you can also sign up for her newsletter at www.jenniferblackstream.com and, after the first couple intro emails that you get over the next few days, you will be provided with a code for a story (Temptation) that leads into the first book (Deadline). I would tell you more about it but we haven’t yet figured out how to download it.

If you a fan of e-readers, and you like her writing, you can get them right from her site. She even has bundle deals available. If, like me, prefer a more dead-tree version of the story, you can also order the books online.

But wait you say, I’m a fast reader. I don’t want to get into another series with an author who takes forever to write the next book. Not to worry. Jennifer is pretty prolific. This series is already 19 books long. Plus she has two other series (Blood Realm, and Blood Prince) that are 5 and 5+ books each respectively. These are more or a paranormal romance genre. We haven’t read those though but again, there are links to samples in her newsletter.

For reading this long, I leave you a haiku:

Red coat, witches hat

Peasblossom, tactical pouch

Mother Shade Renard

jenniferblackstream.com

More paper Disney

 After a break of three months, the Disney Go Blog finally released another four in their paper Disney series.  I have only managed to finish the first three so far.  The two blocks of Main Street were easy to assemble.  The parade floats were a bit more fiddly.  The castle was more difficult to put together as some of the steps weren't very clear.  I still have to finish the Carousel.

In the new sets, they have added some extra Halloween themed crafts as well as more parts to the Paper Disney Park.

In Happy Haunts set 1 you get the Entry Gates with some extra pumpkin decorations as well as some decorations and shadow puppets.

There are no paper park pieces in Happy Haunts set 2.  Instead they give you a placemat, cup sleeves, napkin rings, place card holders, decorations, and a doom buggy snack box.

In Happy Haunts set 3 you get a Haunted Mansion facade on too big a map (9 sheets!) with a stretching portrait chamber.

Happy Haunts set 4 includes more parts around the Haunted Mansion including more rooms.

New printer and papercraft

When our printer needed more ink back in July, we looked at the cost of replacing ink, and the cost of buying a new printer with ink.  We finally took the plunge, spent a bit more, and upgraded to an ink tank printer. 

Not being so concerned about saving precious ink, I printed some things from a few papercraft sites.

 

I started with the sample saloon from Hotz ArtWorks.  It looked too small against the Reaper and Knight Model figures so I didn’t assemble it.  I have since gotten some Dracula’s America figures that seem closer in scale so I probably will put it together.

 

Disney Parks Blog had just come out with Paper Disney Parks.  They have four so far in the series.  The first two were both for Main Street and the Magic Happens parade, the third was for Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, and the fourth was for King Arthur’s Carrousel. 

I printed off all of them at 25% to save space once done and have finished the first set.

 

They haven’t printed any more in the series yet, so looking for a Haunted Mansion led me back to Haunted Dimensions.  They have papercraft for three versions of the Haunted Mansions from the different parks. 

They also have the houses from Amityville Horror, Psycho, and Adams Family as well as facades from the movie theatre from The Blob and some others.  I have printed off the three houses and the movie façade and am mostly finished the Amityville house.

 

For more hyper detailed versions of papercraft about the Disneyland signs, train station, and castles there is also The Disney Experience.  I haven’t started on any of these yet as I am not sure if they will be too large once finished as well as too complex if shrunk. 

 

Some of the buildings will be used to fill up a table for wargaming, and some will be used for our Halloween display table in our new spare bedroom.

New-master reels?

My wife and I are of an age where we used to have Viewmaster reels. These were little white discs about the size of a coaster that you could put into a special viewer and, if you held it up to the light, you would see a 3D image. There were ones for cartoons as well as the more grown up travel ones.

We still have a number of the reels, and we have picked up some of the old ones on the secondary market. When we were still planning to go to Disney World, I had picked up a bunch of the old Disneyland reels for my wife.

She has picked up some of the new VR viewmaster reels that work with a new viewer that has a similar style as an old viewer but holds your cell for VR.

There is also a site that allows to submit images and they will print new reels for you. But the reels only hold 7 images each, so if you have a big event with more pictures, you either have to get multiple reels (like the old 3 packs with A, B, C reels) or choose your best 7 shots.

For her birthday this year, I was tempted to do a Disney set, but that would be hard to edit down to even a few reels. Instead, I was able to select 7 shots to use from her fiftieth birthday and put together a reel with those. I placed the order on May 5 and it came on May 10. It’s supposed to have a five day turnaround before shipping according to the website but I guess they were slow so they finished early and sent it out.

It was sent by UPS so that’s always a tossup. I got an email telling me that there would be duty charges and I could pay online. So I pulled out some money to leave my son in case they came while we were at work but in getting the paper this morning it seems that they just dropped it off in the mail. We were home but they didn’t even knock, they just left it in the mailbox. So I guess the $6.82 in duty wasn’t enough for them to worry about.
I got a letter from UPS about two weeks later collecting on the duty that they should have collected on delivery. So I called them and paid it over the phone.

Avengers - graduation

After my Avengers Alliance facebook game ended last year, I finally started playing the Avengers Academy game. Based on the recommendation from cosplayer Riki Lecotey from Riddle's Messy Wardrobe.

I like it very much. I started with the second edition about a few challenges in and, after a slow start, have gotten deep into level 7 out of 8. They just announced that it too will be shutting down at the end of February. They gave a big pile of rewards to help to complete the quests and get the remaining characters.

The Grim Cheapness

I don’t have the same internet access that I used to. I work on a bit of a rolling shift, so I can start anywhere from 8 am to 10:15 am. My wife starts work at 8 am. With dropping my wife off in the mornings, I often used to have a couple hours on most days, plus my lunch and breaks, when I could watch videos and surf the net.
They had tightened up on internet access earlier this year. We are no longer able to browse while on breaks. This means that I am now way behind on the youtube videos that I was following, the online comics, as well as the sites that I was watching.

That’s how I came to miss that one of my favorite blogs has stopped updating since January. TheGrimCheapness is a good site for ‘paperhammer’ – or papercraft templates that you can build for stand-ins for Warhammer 40K vehicles, especially the titans. He also had a good writing style, which is well as it turns out that he is a now-published author. He’s taking an extended break from updating but will leave the site up.

If you haven’t been in before, it’s still worth a look.

Can you puzzle it together?

This year I played in the Mezzacotta Online puzzle challenge.  While I was only able to solve 2 of the 26 puzzles, I was able to make solid headway in almost half of them.  I was the only person on my team and was able to place 203 out of the 231 teams that scored points.  There were also 88 teams that had signed up but did not solve any puzzles, and 3 teams that were disqualified.  This would make me a more respectable 203 out of 322.

I was still only able to score 7 out of a possible 130 points.  They released 5 puzzles a day for 5 days.  If you solved them on the first day they were worth 5 points.  When they released the next day’s puzzles, they would also release a clue for each of the previous puzzles and reduce the score for solving that puzzle. After 3 clues, the solution would only score 2 points. After all the puzzles were released, the answers could be used to solve a final Meta puzzle.

I had good fun. While I only solved 2 puzzles, 33 teams were able to solve all 26 puzzles. On one of the days the five puzzles were linked together, meaning that you had to solve one to be able to solve the others. I was unable to solve this set.

I'm going to have to see if I can get any of my friends interested in next year's challenge but, if not, I'm definitely in for another try.      

Tannhauser

I’m a little late to the Tannhauser party. I got interested recently from the guys talking about it on The Dice Tower lists. I’ve checked it out online and it seems pretty Hellboy-ish, with a neat targeting mechanic. I’m not sure why I never noticed it before. The only thing that I can think is that I must have thought it was a Dust Tactics spinoff and I never got into that either.

It sounds like it would be worth giving it a try. Except now that it’s been out of print for a few years, it’s not as easy to find as it was. Most of the sets can all be found online with the exception of the equipment cards. This wouldn’t be so bad except they apparently make the game much easier to play.

I was lucky enough to win a used copy with both the equipment cards and a printed PDF of the updated rulebook. This seems to be the perfect pack with which to start. It all looks so pretty. Plus the background is interesting - World War I never ended, both sides have gotten into the mystical - more so the Germans. Tesla is helping out the Russians, and it includes a Japanese faction as well.

There are a couple of websites with extra scenarios and rules for other figures – like the Hellboy figures from Heroclix. Front Towards Enemy was a great one but is no longer being updated. Savage Tales has some good custom sets, as does Black Sheep Archive, and the Tannbunker - when it is working again.

Heroclix even offers a lot of extra figures that can be used for mods – Batman, Hydra, SHIELD, Hellboy, even army figures. I've read through the original rules and am almost finished the revised rules. I want to play a few games to verify that it is as awesome as it seems before I spend much more money getting more of the figures, maps, and sets.

Board Game channels

My two favorite board game related channels on youtube are Tabletop, and The Dice Tower. Tabletop is hosted by Wil Wheaton and in each episode they play a board game. He usually has celebrities (of varying degrees) playing with him and it is good to see them outside of their field. Even though they often get the rules wrong, it gives a good example of how the game plays to see if it would be worth looking into trying it. Tsuro and Fluxx were good examples of this – I had known about both for years, but wasn’t interested until I had seen them being played.

The Dice Tower is mainly hosted by Tom Vassel and usually does board game reviews but also has news, and a lot of top 10 lists. What’s nice about it is once you’ve watched a few of them, you get a feel for the games he likes, and can use that to gauge if you would also like it. Case in point – Tom really likes Cosmic Encounter and Nothing Personal. Based on the reviews for Nothing Personal, I can tell that I will not like it.

Another feature of The Dice Tower is their top 100 games lists. I have sat down a few times and looked at it, but it seems daunting to rank 100 of the games I have and have played. I will look at making a few top ten lists though.

involuntary new laptop

We were broken into early in January. As these things go, it could have been a lot worse. There wasn’t a lot of damage and the only things taken were some American money and our laptops. All of my wife’s jewelry was spread across the bed but they don’t seem to have taken any of it. I guess I don’t buy my wife nice enough things.

With the laptops gone, it made connecting to the internet harder. We still had the old desktop but that is a pretty rough connection for facebook games. It also helps point out how much we are connected – when watching tv we usually have at least one laptop on – which allows us to pop into imdb.com as needed to find out why we know the guest stars as well as to check Wikipedia for information as needed.

We’ve added an alarm system and have worked through with the insurance people to replace the laptops. We didn’t have the boxes anymore but we were able to get copies of the receipts from Best Buy. As long as you have the card on which you bought them and know the date range, they can find it in their system and reprint it for you.

After much going back and forth about my requirements we agreed on an HP NO20CA laptop. The requirements for the laptop had been – DVD superdrive, keypad, at least 500 GB hard drive, 2 USB connections, SD slot, HDMI connection, and a Radeon HD6310 or higher (the old one was HD 7520). The keyboard, superdrive, and video card seemed to be a tricky combination to fulfill.


Which basically means that I am now working through getting used to Windows 8.

Kickstarter - the new thing for games

I really need to check in to Kickstarter more often. I had to get into it to get the Ogre Designer’s Edition , but haven’t really kept up with what else is coming through it. But, especially in the Tabletop Gaming category, it’s almost a good idea to keep checking.

There have been three games that have interested me lately – and they are each a different use of the Kickstarter engine.

Some manufacturers are using Kickstarter as a means of judging interest and to be able to take advantage of the economics of scale. They may also be using it as a way of generating pre-order sales. Our friends over at CheapAss Games have used this as a means of judging interest in their full color reprints of their games. They did Unexploded Cow last year and are doing Deadwood Studios right now. By pledging, you get a copy of the game, plus a few non-game bonuses. Due to the high shipping costs on top of the regular game cost, I’ll wait until it’s in the stores.

The Ogre Designer’s Edition started out for these reasons but also had stretch goals that included extra in-game units that were only available through Kickstarter.


Walk the Plank – a thematic prequel to Get Bit! Follows this second model. In addition to the game, which looks like fun, there are bonuses that improve the game the more that is pledged. Since the shipping was very low, I signed up for this one. Then they added the ability to get the exclusives from the Get Bit! promo so I had to up my pledge in order to get the Sharkspansion. This had been a Kickstarter exclusive from the original Get Bit! offer. They had tried to offer it afterwards but got a lot of flack from those who thought it should be a Kickstarter-only exclusive.


The third model is similar to the second – with additional improvements in the game being added as stretch goals are reached. But instead of keeping these goals as kickstarter-exclusives, they reserve the right to make them available after the Kickstarter funding has ended. The people who fund through the Kickstarter do get the occasional exclusive but they mainly get the extras earlier than later buyers.  Dungeon Roll follows this model with most of the bonuses being early versions of later expansions and a different box for the Kickstarter edition.

V & V again!

Back in the day, if you wanted to play a superhero role playing game you had a few serious options. Champions was the leader but as cool as Foxbat was, it had a large amount of modules and supplements. This made it a bit daunting to jump into starting with it. Marvel Super Heroes was another one (FASE RIP) that I ended up getting – but it was more of a simplified game. It eventually ended up with a large amount of books but it started out small – plus it was heroes from Marvel. When I decided to get into another one, I went with Villains & Vigilantes (2nd edition).


Besides having an ampersand, it also was written (with Jack Herman) and had artwork by Jeff Dee – who had drawn some of the pictures in the original Basic D&D book. They eventually had a bunch of supplements and modules as well as a set of comic books. Then they stopped. Eventually, they had come out with Living Legends game – which was effectively an expansion of the Villains & Vigilantes rules. We had a campaign that we ran for a while and I still think of my weight in how many Basic Hits it will generate. But the math formula for the carrying capacity was what really endeared the game to me.



There now seems to be new modules coming out for V&V. What is interesting is that they are being published by two separate companies. There is a legal dispute over who has the rights for the system.

FGU or Fantasy Games Unlimited used to publish V&V, plus a bunch of other games that I had also picked up. They were dissolved by the state but are still printing new modules at their new site. They have almost a dozen modules as well as some of the counter sets from the old modules.

Jeff and Jack have formed a new company called Monkey House Games and have also printed about a half dozen modules as well as a newer edition of the game.  They also have some character sheets and counters available as downloads from their site.

Scale Model Addict - the next step

Scott Girvan from ScaleModelAddict has taken the next step. In addition to the videos, and the website, he has now made ScaleModelAddict into a bi-monthly magazine.

The first issue is set for January but they have already been printed so if you order he will send one out.

We wish him all the best in this endeavor. I’m trying to shuffle some funds to see if I can get a subscription – the magazine price isn’t bad but the shipping is a bit of a bear up here.

Tabletop - on the list

I’ve been following Wil Wheaton’s blog for quite some time now.  It turns out that he is also a big-time gamer in addition to being an actor and author.  He recently started a youtube channel Tabletop where he plays a board game with people – actors and others.

They are running through some of the Eurogames Like Settlers of Catan, and Ticket to Ride as well as games like ZombieDice.

Two of the games that he has shown on Tabletop - Tsuro and Get Bit! I was able to try out at Keycon over the weekend.

I’ve seen Tsuro advertised before from WizKids but it never hooked me.  The theme of dragons flying on pathways in the air just didn’t make we want to pursue it.  Seeing it on Tabletop got me interested enough to play it at Keycon and it definitely makes the list.  Besides being visually elegant it also plays very well up to 8 people.  It’s simple to explain and easy to pick up.  Even though I worked out the permutations for the tiles, I’ll look to pick up a copy.

Get Bit! was also shown on Tabletop and we managed to play a bunch of games at Keycon.  You play robots swimming away from a hungry shark.  As the shark catches the last robot in line, you actually pull the limbs off the robot.  It plays up to 6 people and is also quick and easy to learn.  I’ve added it to my list even though you can no longer get the variant that allows you to play as the shark.  Also, they played it slightly wrong on Tabletop so be aware when you play it – after the shark bites off a limb, that robot is flung to the front of the line.

While they showed Ticket to Ride on Tabletop, I didn’t catch the episode until after Keycon so never had enough interest to play during the convention.  It seems interesting enough to give it a try but not enough to actually put on the list.

At the convention, I finally saw Power Grid being played.  It seems a bit too fiddly for my crowd so it doesn’t make the list.  I may change if I play it but it didn’t inspire me enough to rush out and try it yet.

In the Great Canadian Board Game Blitz I saw a bunch of other games being played that caught my eye – notably Lascaux and Acquire.

I’ve known about Acquire for decades but never played it or knew anyone who had.  I’ve heard a lot of good things about it and in seeing it played and reading the rules it seems like it might be worth trying.  I’m not putting it on the list unless I can find a deal on a copy though.

I also got to see Lascaux being played.  Besides the pretty stones, the game seems quite simple to play and devious enough to keep interesting.  It quickly made the list as well.

On Wednesday, I finally was able to get to Game Knight.  Since they moved to Osborne, I haven’t been able to find their store while driving by but with their updated website showing the actual storefront, I finally did.  They have a good selection of games but were between shipments of Tsuro and Get Bit!  They did have a copy of Lascaux left though so I snapped it up right away.

OGRE - Designer Edition - snubbed from Steve

Back in 1977 a young designer named Steve Jackson released a ‘minigame’ called OGRE through a company called Metagaming. It came in a zip-lock bag and dealt with a massive nuclear-powered tank attacking an army of tanks and soldiers. One side had infantry, tanks, GEVs, howitzers and the other side had one counter – the OGRE. It cost a mere $2.95.
Based on the strength of this game he created Steve Jackson Games and published many other games – including Car Wars, Illuminati, GURPS, and lately, Munchkin.
I got into OGRE with the 1982 SJG edition. I always liked it and have picked up many versions – including the computer game for my Apple IIc – which allowed you to play against the computer controlled Ogre.



Last year word came around about Steve wanted to do an Euro-style version of the game with bigger counters in a solid box for $100. I was definitely in for a version and signed up for info. Yesterday I got early word about a Kickstarter program where they were raising money to gauge interest in the new Designer Edition which would be released in November. They only sent this out to those who had signed up for Ogre info.
When I checked yesterday, they easily had reached their goal of $20,000. Today, they sent out the information to the masses in their Daily Illuminator email. When I checked this morning they were now at over $70,000. As I post this, they have currently reached over $95,000.

I would be in for this in a big way, but due to shipping and Kickstarter, they are only shipping these ones ordered through Kickstarter to addresses in the US. Unless I want to pledge almost $3000, in which case they will ship three copies anywhere in addition to some cool goodies. Sadly, unless I hit the lotto before May 11 I will not be able to get one.

I might still get in for some extra dice or pins just to show my support for the project, but this feels like a bit of a kick in the chest Steve for those of us across the border. I'm going to have to see if I can get it from one of the local games stores (because I still want one) but would have been all over this if I could have.

Darths & Droids - a New Hope

Those of you who have been following along with the Darths and Droids comic strip already know that they have moved on to the First film - A New Hope.

For those of you who haven’t been following, it is a good time to jump in.

Wendy's Chili

I was off last week. I didn’t have any major plans but still didn’t manage to get a lot done. I was able to make a batch of chili on Friday.
I’ve tried a few recipes before but I really like the Wendy’s chili recipe from Todd Wilbur of Top Secret Recipes.

I highly recommend his Top Secret line of books. They have a bunch of recipes to make clones of various restaurant and branded snacks and drinks. I use his Outback Blooming Onion recipe whenever I can.

The chili is simple to make but I always have to modify it due the metric can sizes available up here.

2 pounds ground beef (~1kg)
29 oz tomato sauce (~900mL)
29 oz kidney beans in liquid (~900mL)
29 oz pinto beans in liquid (~900 mL)
1 cup diced onion (1 medium onion)
1/2 cup diced green chili (2 chilies)
1/4 cup diced celery (1 stalk)
3 medium tomatoes, chopped
2 teaspoons cumin powder
3 tablespoons chili powder
2 teaspoons black pepper
2 teaspoons salt
2 cups water

- Brown the ground beef in a skillet over medium heat; drain off the fat.

- Using a fork, crumble the cooked beef into pea-sized pieces.

- In a large pot pot, combine the beef plus all the remaining ingredients, and bring to a simmer over low heat. Cook, stirring every 15 minutes, for 2 to 3 hours.

Makes about 12 servings.

For less spicy chili change the pepper to 1 1/2 teaspoons black pepper.
For much spicier chili add a tablespoon of cayenne pepper. For a real stomach stinger, add 5 or 6 sliced jalapeno peppers to the pot. Leftovers can be frozen for several months.

http://www.topsecretrecipes.com/Wendys-Chili-Recipe.html

Gee and Shan don’t eat that much so it’s mainly for me – and D3 eats a bit too.

40% off your next free game

I’m not sure how I missed it but sometime this year Cheapass games has finally updated their website. They are giving away the pdfs of their games and you can donate back to them.

I had made up a list last year of all the Cheapass games and had made another list of the ones I had when we moved around the basement this summer. I haven’t had time to cross reference the two lists yet to find what holes I needed to fill.

I came across the new version of Give Me The Brain now being made by Steve Jackson Games so I decided to check out the Cheapass site to find out what was up. And what to my wondering eyes should appear, but most of the missing games on free pdfs.

I pass it along to you out there, as my Christmas gift to the world.
Also, a small donation has been made in your name to the Human Fund – Money for People.

The Monty Hall problem.

The set up is based on the old Let’s Make a Deal scenario. You are given a choice of three doors. Behind one door is a new car! Behind the other two are zonks – dummy ‘prizes’ – usually a goat or animal or a wrecked tractor.
You pick one of the three doors. The host (Monty Hall), who knows what is behind which door, then opens one of the doors to reveal a zonk. He then turns to you and offers you a chance to switch your pick to the unrevealed door.
The question is, should you change your pick?

As proposed on Mythbusters, in the movie 21, and in various YouTube videos, they say that you should.

The key thing is in the explanation - in picking originally you have a 67% chance of being wrong. After being shown the zonk door, in switching to the other door you now only have a 33% chance of being wrong (or if you don't believe the math, a 50% chance of being wrong). Both beat the original 67% chance you had.

I still believe that the assumption is wrong though. Once you open that extra door, why would your 1/3 odds still remain at 1/3? Once a door is shown, why would it not change to 1/2? Think of it this way, at the beginning, whether you have picked a zonk or a car, Monty will still show a zonk, leaving the other door either a zonk or a car. The fact that you only had a 1/3 of guessing the car right from the start does not change the fact that when he offers you the choice to switch you now have a 50% chance of the car being behind either unshown door – one of which you have already picked. The key point in this is that you can now not pick the one door that he has shown you not to be a zonk.

Another example is flipping an unbiased coin heads 3 times in a row. At the onset, you only have a 1/8 chance of success or ½ x ½ x ½. However, after already flipping heads twice your odds of the third flip also being heads doesn’t remain at 1/8 but now becomes 50%.


Since the internet seems determined about this think of it this way - Try reversing it - pick two doors at the start instead of one. This gives you a 33% of not picking the car. Monty then opens one of your doors and shows a zonk and offers you a chance to switch.
Since you haven't done anything to the other door that you originally picked you are now being offered a 50/50 chance again between the remaining two doors - one of which you had picked at the onset.
- - - - -
update
Nope - turns out they were right all the time.
After arguing on the Mythbuster forum I come to this:

You pick door 1 - you have a 1/3 chance of being right at the start and a 2/3 chance of picking a wrong door. Monty removes 1/3 of the doors - 100% of the wrong one and 0% of the right one, 0% of being the door you picked.

However, at the time of the choice, you now have two doors each of which was originally only 1/3 a chance of being the car.
If you had picked the car to start (1/3 of the time) and now switch you have 0% chance of winning. If you hadn't picked the car to start (2/3 the time) and switch you now have a 100% chance of winning.

That's what I get for questioning Mythbusters.

Floating City soundtrack

In the Floating City, as you collected and traded cargo you completed songs. Completing a song gave you the download code for that song. Once you completed all 9 songs from an album you got the download code for that album. Even though I am still missing 5 pieces, I had managed to borrow the pieces I need to collect all the songs. Or at least the codes for all the songs – as I haven’t downloaded any of them yet. Actually, I haven’t downloaded anything yet so this will be a first for me.

With completing all the albums, we also were supposed to get a code for a fourth album, Oceanea, which wasn’t part of the game. This code came but it has an expiry date of two weeks. So if I want it, I’m going to have to try and download them sooner rather than later.

I was planning on trying to download them this weekend anyways. This just puts a bit more impetus on it. I’ll let you know how it works out for me.

Update - I got another email asking for my info for an address - it seems they may mail me an actual CD - so a bit of the download pressure may be off.