The Library, The Relentless Resource

Here's a sort of personal blog post or vlog post for you. So ever since I started reading more books I've been using the library as an unending resource for everything I'm interested in. This isn't a new idea and most people that read go to the library often. There are many opportunities available to the public through city libraries. Its quite grand. In the future I hope libraries become bigger and better. This is what I usually do with my card.

Order things online. This is the primary use of my card. I go on the online catalogue and just search for anything I'm interested in. I've been getting jazz cds, classical & new music (avant garde classical) cds, science fiction novels, jazz biographies & defining the genre style books, scores (I've got a copy of John Adams' Doctor Atomic, the full score), and I'm always in a cycle of returning and getting more. Its an unending black hole of content. I'll eventually start using it to find old Hollywood and European films as well. I'm interested in silent films as well as old European art films. Right now I'm waiting to get the Thelonious Monk autobiography. That should be a good read.

Hang out there. Sometimes when I hang out with my friends I figure there's no point in going home after I hang out if I have work later in the day. So if they have work before me I always ask them to drop my off at the library. When I'm there I'll usually have brought a book so sometimes I'll read. Other times I'll go on their computers and listen to music while reading articles on websites like Wired, Downbeat, and PcGamer. Once you get used to going to the library you'll start to see a trend, its always the same people there using free WiFi mostly.

Pick up things in person. Sometimes when I'm there I'll find things that weren't there before. I've noticed their science fiction section at the Tarzana branch has some new stuff. Nothing out of the ordinary but its good to see that their collection is being recycled throughout different branches. Lately I've been borrowing classical albums that I find there. The most interesting ones so far have been Leonard Bernstein's last performance and Copeland Conducts Copeland, Max Roach's Bitter Sweet (on Impluse!), and an Aaron Copeland album I just got and listened to today. Not bad.

Get out of the house. Sometimes I have nothing to do before work other than the usual grind of waking up, checking email, reading articles/books, and playing guitar or keyboard. After all that I always want to leave the building. The walk to the library is only about a mile but that's good enough for me. I want to have something to do that won't cost me tons of money. This is it. Even seeing the building when you get there is cool. It has a unique architectural shape that gives Tarzana a good look. Proud to live here for sure.

Libraries are often seen as archaic for the memesters of today but if you use it your education and room for intellectual growth is unparalleled. See you at the library.  

Magic the Gathering, Board gaming, and hosting

So I've been having a great time with a lot of friends who are into a lot of different activities. I have a group of friends that are more into metal music, concerts, and hanging out (with some console gaming thrown in there) and another that is more into Magic the Gathering, board gaming, and meeting new people at these events called meetups. These are events hosted by people and advertised online through the website Meetup.com. We've met so many cool people and a lot of them have become good friends quickly. It's been a blast meeting new people, enjoying mtg (Magic the Gathering), and learning new strategic board games on the fly.

I haven't played mtg seriously since middle school and back then I relied on cheap tactics decks. I had an elf deck and a slivers deck as my main decks. Both were all about getting tons of creatures out and killing off the enemy player fast. Playing mtg again now that I'm older has really made me realize how great of a game it is. I even played in a tournament a few weeks ago. It was an edh (elder dragon highlander) setting where you have over 100 cards in your deck and you have a special commander card that you can play anytime if you have the mana on your turn. Its kind of a broken format but I find it to be super fun.

Magic has a lot of strategic and awe-inspiring elements for a trading card game. Its definitely the best card game I've ever played, sorry Yugioh kiddies. So I've been enjoying getting out, hanging out with friends, and playing magic. Sometimes we'll play until 1 in the morning just enjoying the gameplay. I've become quite serious and I'm even down to play in a tournament again even though last time I got curb stomped. They do tournaments at Fire and Dice, the place I used to go for Smash 4 tournaments. Go figure! 

This past Thursday I was at a board gaming event at this older woman's house in Woodland Hills. At first I was hesitant because we've gone to events like this before and my friend was kind of awkward (he walked in without knocking on the door first lol). However, this woman was so cool, funny, sarcastic, and chill. Her son was there too and we were the first people to arrive. Eventually more people came. We brought food and everybody was enjoying themselves eating fried chicken, pie, soda, coffee, donouts, and Doritos Cool Ranch and Nacho flavors.

We played this awesome game called Salem where we had to figure out who the witch(s) was(were) and if we found out and survived without being killed by the witch we win the game. I ended up using this troll-like strategy where I accused a random dude so much to the point that everybody thought I was the witch. But I wasn't the witch. I was just messing around. Haha, it was really fun and I ended up being a survivor, thus winning! Next time though I will definitely play that game smarter.

In addition, we played this great miniature DnD style rpg game. It was a co-op survival horde zombies game called Zombicide. Its on Kickstarter and I highly recommend it. I was this spellcaster Stormcrow dude who had this amazing spell (that I looted in a room) called Repulse where I could reposition zombies to different squares (only one square away per cast) and I got us a torch for a bile blast that killed tons of zombies in one fell swoop. I got insta-leveled pretty high from that. In the end our team just didn't play together on the same part of the board. So we got surrounded by the horde and killed. Rip. It was a fun game and I would definitely be down to play it again sometime there.

The son was a gamer too and we talked a lot and became friends. I added him on Steam and we're planning on playing Team Fortress and Terrarria sometime in the future.

I'm still interested in hosting my own events. I wanna do game nights at Planet Cyber for Overwatch. I'm currently working on doing this. Now that management has changed at my work I'm back to getting two days off a week, which I haven't had since November. You can bet that I'll be using that free time to the fullest engaged in social activity, friendship, relaxation, and fun.

Are board games better than video games? They just might be.

Planet Cyber event success

So the Planet Cyber meetup I had with my friends went well. We were all able to play Overwatch on free accounts provided by the cafe. I didn't want to log in using my main account for security reasons. Anyways, we ended up only having a three man party of myself and two friends. I was hoping for more but I'm already planning another meetup next week Thursday to try to get a stacked six man team.

Overwatch worked fine and we had a blast. Talking on the headset was fun, the monitor was super nice, and the computer ran the game just fine. We played really well for our first time playing all together the three of us. I mostly played Ana and had fun. I'm ready to plan more of these Overwatch nights and recruiting more people for the cause.

After we played Overwatch we did run into some technical computer problems. We installed Team Fortress 2 (which took 20 minutes) but after trying to launch it kept giving my computer and a friends' a Steam error. The guy running the place couldn't figure it out so he gave us a lot more time instead. We used that extra time to play more Overwatch.

One of my friends was upset about how Team Fortress didn't work but hey technical issues happen. All the other gamers there were playing Dota 2 and none of them had any problems. I can tell that this pc cafe is a moba cafe because all the guys there play is Dota. Which is actually super cool. Dota is a great game. I used to play it when I first got my computer but I stopped around the time Heroes of the Storm came out. Because of the popularity of the game yesterday I decided to reinstall it last night. I think I'll give it a whirl again sometime soon.

Anyways, I'm planning more game nights at Planet Cyber solely for Overwatch. If I get more people (just five for a full team) then that's all I'll need to get an amateur team going. It's going to be hard because I have to be a community organizer. I might have to resort to Meetup.com and Craigslist to find more players.

Wish me luck!