Tag Archives: compleat strategist

8971 – tues

Extra-Random very rough draft entry. Read at own risk, dear journal.


Current health issues – getting corrected a little at a time

  • Allergies – need to get blood work done in top of October for shots
  • Teeth – Bridge for broken tooth, and 2 fillings. Floss, kids!
  • Back-leg ortho workup.

Monday night after our appointments, BHK, Chris, Larry and I all met at the Lebanese Taverna for Half-price Mondays… yum on the falafel!

I also got a new shirt for work at good ol’ Value City – White with blue pinstripes.

Tonight after work there was a big traffic slowdown…Suitland was a parking lot, and all of i-4 was shut by police and helicopters. A cursory search online mentioned no specifics, and the traffic radio was of little detail as well. I wonder what was up? Chris speculated terrorist stuff, but there was really no hint as to what it might be at all. I made it to Tina’s about 30 minutes later than usual. When I realized I wasn’t going to be there by 7:15, I called and they ate ahead of me.. I got there in time to watch the last half of Gilmore Girls – BHK and Tina set tentative plans for a girls trip sometime in the near future.

This weekend, BHK and I will be taking a little day trip somewhere… maybe West Virginia to see the mountains, maybe Outpost Games, possibly both on different days.

We still haven’t been back to the Compleat Strategist… I want to give ’em a second chance, but it might be a while… too many other places to go and see.


Graffiti seen when we went to the movies last weekend –

Robot of love – says hate
(he cannot be fully erased!)

0826071340.jpg - hate robot
Boy says bait?
0826071342.jpg = Bait?

That rhymes!


1 year ago – pom, apples and limeade, GP ahooga, close to the edit, burrito/screech butt, god lj, more ernesto a-comin’!

2 years ago – katrina track, toyota safe vs falling knives, brothers grimm, eco footprint, The Outbursts of Everett True , caffeinated death quiz, cat toy, superheroes and goats, office has no juice

3 years ago – on call all weekend, cej packet returned, super hero movies, charities, spectral analysis

4 years ago – begging for freebies, cases, frankie, wifi, paper toys

5 years ago – comic book ads, genetic ID card, lifegems, happy tree friends, Bheesh got a vette, free fonts, and Pynchon paper dolls

6 years ago – sci-fi dorkness (pity enterprise is so bad), red headed wildcat, bacchanalia, ultima Thule, stinky cab driver, lj “post limit hububb”

7 years ago – zoo day, de-compartmentalized some pals, Brown, turtle Geotarget

8922 – Fridays 720

Free Online Dating

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

  • sex (5x)
  • death (3x)
  • corpse (2x)
  • semen (1x)

But… it was Turtle Semen/sex! It was the Corpse-plant that smelled of death! C’mon! Kids can handle it!

I counter with a pink tongue from a
Simpson’s movie doughnut, nabbed at 7-11
/ Kwik-e-mart about a week ago.
0709071946b.jpg - quick-e-mart tongue
I think that picture makes me look like I have a giant head and a tiny little tyrannosaurus arm. Perspective.

I’ve never seen so much spoiler-fear as I have for the latest Harry Potter book. People refusing to go online, switching off emails, refusing to watch TV. I imagine some folks have abandoned the phone, too. A side effect of living in the information age, I guess.

Last night’s dinner at Mexico was good, but the slowest it’s ever been. Alberto (the manager) say with us and was very apologetic… we like him, and kidded back and forth about his brother out chasing skirts and drinking margaritas on the beach at the moment. Mother in law wouldn’t let us pay all the way, but finally settled on using the money to take care of Tigger while MIL and FIL are in Salem this weekend. (Our weekend’s going to be pretty busy, give that we’re also watching Tina’s kitties, having a Birthday party of Adam, Going to Sushi with Cyn and preparing for Amy’s visit on Monday.)

In-laws are in Salem as of tonight, so they can get the house one last bit of spit and polish before the renters move in on the 27th. I fear they’ll be more trouble than they’re worth, but you never know… sometimes it can be handy to have someone on-site to keep track of things.

“For most of life, nothing wonderful happens. If you don’t enjoy getting up and working and finishing your work and sitting down to a meal with family or friends, then the chances are that you’re not going to be very happy. If someone bases his happiness or unhappiness on major events like a great new job, huge amounts of money, a flawlessly happy marriage or a trip to Paris, that person isn’t going to be happy much of the time. If, on the other hand, happiness depends on a good breakfast, flowers in the yard, a drink or a nap, then we are more likely to live with quite a bit of happiness.” — Andy Rooney

I’m pretty dang happy. Every day, some wonderful stuff happens. Added bonus, BHK gave me a lollipop for my info page today!Aw… that’s very sweet! (no pun intended). I love her very much… each day I wonder more and more how I lived with Newt and nobody else all those years. Pye and BHK make the perfect additions to our family-team.

Last night I dreamt that BHK and I were hunting mosquitoes for the blood they consumed. Somehow, that blood was purified of known toxins, and if injected back into the original human hosts, they’d be immunized against all blood-borne diseases. I don’t know why we were grabbing them and putting the bugs in brown paper bags, rather than some safer environment. I did know that you could just eat the bug and be cured, but we didn’t know how many of these particular mosquitoes existed, and if the effects could be reproduced.

I’m wondering if I’ll ever go to Walt Disney World again? I don’t live in Florida, and the concept of “manufactured/processed joy” seems very different than “pure joy” pulled directly from the environment. I can have a lot of fun in the Westworld-type controlled experiment sore of scene, but there’s a different vibe in simply walking around, taking in history, art and nature as it is. Considering that I’m not really up for roller coasters these days, I don’t know if a journey to the more calm rides make it worthwhile. Pirates of The Caribbean and Haunted Mansion will always hold a special place for me… even if it’s just because they’re dark rides and are wonderfully air-conditioned after walking in the Florida sun for a few hours. I suspect EPCOT Center or Busch Gardens is more my speed for theme parks now, rather than the Magic Kingdom… or perhaps I’d feel differently if we just went and had fun. For a long while now, I’ve preferred exploration of the world around me… both on walkabout by myself, and now on journeys with BHK. I’m not sure if it’s wrong that I’m more entertained by urban decay or aquariums than by singing puppets… just that my tastes have changed a bit. I like the irony of Disney’s The Prisoner /Truman Show “friendly fascism”-style of better living in a plastic world… thanks in no small part due to hidden underground tunnels and secret police… but I’m also more than a little creeped out by it, too. I take it back. I find it *more* interesting as a result my irrational paranoia. I’d still rather wander a natural forest than a theme park, but Disney’s weird overlord aspect could be pretty groovy. The Mouse is a not-so-shadowy figure pulling the puppet strings across the Florida landscape and beyond.

After work, we took a little trip to Aardvark’s and let ’em know about the Strategist. He was cool – mentioned that he may have some out of print ice towers stuff that he’d be happy to hook us up with. We’ll still need to get the treehouse die and pyramids book, but that’s a good launching point. Meanwhile, we picked up Chez Goth to fool with while Amy’s over.

Too full of ice cream to go to Fred’s place for 50’s diner stuff, we hit the grocery for tomorrow’s party supplies and then the in-laws to babysit with Tigger for a few hours and watched 13th Warrior… by the middle of the movie we were read for eats – pizza worked for us. Tigger was a little sweetie.

1 year ago – world jump day, world party, mom heading north, netflix wakes up, availabot, electric bill, stress and sleep

2 years ago – pics, singing fountain, atarax, google moon, charity paypal link, digg, hurricane emily, operation predators, fishstories, ID badge, random wifi

3 years ago – I Robot, working with wimmin, Operation Valkyrie, moon landing.

4 years ago – bro, monkey mummy, teen titans, moon landing hoaxes, animal sounds asring tones, hunting for bambi, newtcam, consumer reports condoms,awesome earth image, pancakes

5 years ago – bike name poll, palm doodles, planning to visit Danny with his busted leg

6 years ago – rough night, slake, ambisinister, voice activated tech, how far would you go poll

7 years ago – counting days, finished first Harry Potter, books I repeat read, abortive attempt to track intake Geotarget

8920 – Wednesday

This entry brought to you by:
A freaky rusted gizmoI saw in the marshes of Washington DC.
DSCN5855

Dan should be getting his river rocks in the mail by the end of the week. (We’ll ship the webcam and LoTR Risk by then, too.)

Enjoyed watching The Soup recap of 2007 with BHK over a late supper last night.. we were both pretty stuffed, and retired shortly after our meal. I’m impressed that they had so much fun, dopey stuff. Tonight’s dinner at the Macaroni Grill was nice, save for the hornet sting I got on my finger, brushing it off of BHK.

Check out this link, which takes a specified address and gives you the walking score for that address. The score assess the number of and distance to common destinations (restaurants, theaters, etc.). Pretty nifty stuff! (my current house gets a rating of 38 out of 100, or “not very walkable”… I disagree! I can carry groceries , go get food and whatnot within a mile of home. My old place got a rating of 83 out of 100… much more available within hoofing-it distance.)

Received this in the mail Tuesday night, not too long after posting the day’s entry. It’s in regards to Sunday’s entry, here.

My name is Josh S. Talley and I manage The Compleat Strategist in Falls Church, Va. Your journal entry was brought to my attention by my boss (one of the owners) after being brought to his attention by a Looney Labs representative. First off I would like to apologize to you and your friends for the lack of customer service you received (or didn’t as the case may be). I would also like you to revisit us sometime soon if possible. Second please let me assure you that my employee’s behavior is and always will be unacceptable to me. Third we can always try to order something if you don’t see it on the shelf and are happy to do so. We have many days that are activity days, but I have always stressed that the customer is to take priority and that product knowledge is a good thing to all my employees. I am working on rectifying the situation you experienced with the one employee and am truly sorry about your visit. I think you will find that we are a nice little store if you visit again. Granted we are not as nice as some stores, but considering the lack of “gaming” space and floor space in general, I feel we’ve done well. Please come visit again and as an apology for your first impression of the new Strategist, I’d like to extend a discount on any purchases when we next meet. I work any day but Wednesdays and Sunday, but will most likely be working those days soon in addition, heh.

Sorry again and looking forward to another visit, hopefully,

-Josh S. Talley
Manager of The Compleat Strategist in Falls Church, Va.

My reply-

Thank you for your speedy response. I appreciate your concern and desire to make things right. (I hope you don’t fire the sales guy on my account… hopefully he can be salvaged with a little customer service training.) We were pretty frustrated by the lack of salesmanship and pro-activity, given that we were actively curious and asked multiple questions about items on hand.

He wasn’t obnoxiously rude, he just didn’t attend to us and it felt like we were more an annoyance than a customer. I understand that a lot of your business likely comes from your events, but hopefully it wouldn’t preclude sales to new arrivals.

I really liked the size of your stock, and would be happy to try again in the near future… we’re still looking to pick up ice towers and treehouse (we’re pretty big fans of the looney labs catalog and love to support local businesses) , as well as a few other games. A discount would be greatly appreciated!

May I reprint your letter in my livejournal? I think it would please a lot of the folks that read it to know that you are interested in running a quality establishment.

Again, many thanks for your courteous reply. I have many fond memories of the Strategist in Florida, and would really like to have another one so close by to get my gaming loot from.

His last answer –

Hello again Scott, please feel free to insert my letter into your livejournal entries. I read through the comments and would love to see more people come check us out and get a good experience from their visit. You are correct though, customers come first, no matter what. I have stressed this numerous times and some get it, some don’t, but what can I do? I can lead a horse to water, but can’t make it swim…heh. j/k Oh and I am pretty sure that we can order the Classic Deluxe Illuminati box set from SJ Games, just let us know. As for Brawl and any Cheapass Games we have to special order those, Cosmic Encounter was supposed to be reprinted, but I haven’t seen it yet. Playing with Pyramids I would have to check on but would be happy to do so. Anyways, please come see us again anytime.

1 year ago – morning breaks doodle, sleepy, heat of the moment, training a tech, sailboat doodle, stop motion space invaders, voice pdf files, deaths

2 years ago – bro court, autostitch of an alley no longer there, graffiti pics, harry potter, zombie game, bards tale ends, mimiced, Reverse Polish Notation, top40

3 years ago – manatee trip pictures, Miami travel shots

4 years ago – Aol gives up on netscape, random poster form the past, I get fan mail from desert butterfly, reading list retreat

5 years ago – princess sultanas circle, hug meme, joy machine, angry corn ghosts burn police cars, hydrogen fuel cars, got tested for diabetes (none here!),baseball bat poll, Bush & Women’s rights, spooky patent office logo

6 years ago – evil news, arriviste, clochard & myopic, gilligan’s lessons,contraception myths, Leisa’s 2 months pregnant, zeppelins, tuck in thoughts

7 years ago – xanadu, sleep study prep, name meaning Geotarget

8916 – sunday

Woke up creaking like the tin man, and my eye was aggravated by some sort of dust particle… between the swollen eye and bent over stance, I should’ve been ringing bells and screaming for sanctuary all morning.

Yesterday’s smoothies were so terrible that we went to the grocer, got some yogurt and fruit, and BHK made some jim-dandy, extra tasty smoothies for our breakfast supplemented by hard-boiled eggs and biscuits today.

Today we went to a place that held a lot of fond memories for me as a young gamer-geek. The Compleat Strategist… There was one in Hollywood, Florida way back in the 80s… a source of many fond memories. It was a sad day about 18 years ago when it burned down… even when some supposedly smoke-damaged merchandise appeared at the new Dragon’s Lair a few months later. I sometimes wonder if the “Dragon” reference was an inside joke about the fire. Rumors abounded at the time, though I don’t know of any actual validity to the same.

We landed at the Strategist in Falls Church, Virginia… and… well, I’ve been spoiled by Aardvark, I think. I was fairly underwhelmed, even though they have a huge amount of stock… probably four or five times that of Little Aardvark’s.

Nice thing about the Virginia place was that it was mostly clean – no dust on any of the good in the front, and the books were well-organized by game and title. If I’d been there looking for RPG stuff or Wargaming stuff, I’d have been set.

Unfortunately, I was looking for parlor games. The little corner in the back reminded me of the “pervy” section of old video stores. The light bulb overhead was dim, the packages heavily manhandled with cellophane and cardboard torn. The games were in semi-alpha order…. but not quite. Some stuff was on pegs, some on shelves, some boxes lay half open. I might’ve wept openly for the poor pente tube in the corner without a visible lid or board inside.

I can’t find a thing that I want. BHK spots Treehouse and Ice Towers on the wall… I get excited, and ask about some other games, almost sure that he’ll know something about one or more of these… almost all are major award winners, and have a pretty large following.

Do you have

Nope, nope and nope. We had money for a game or three more burning a hole in our pocket, and finally asked…

“OK, then… based on what we mentioned… what do you recommend? We like fun, fast-paced games with a mix of strategy and random chance. What do you have that’s cute with a deck of cards and a die in it?”

The proprietor was too busy playing mechwarrior with another regular at the store to give us any more answer than “if it’s not on the shelf, we don’t have it…”

Not a very talkative fellow, unless he was reciting how many bonuses he had to hit the other toy robot on the board. So much for me pumping him for info regarding the old florida store or reminiscing… I suspect that the Florida CS burned down when he was maybe three years old.

That sort of disappointed us… BHK asked him about a high school clique game, and he said he’d never played it, but a guy friend did, and didn’t much like it. That was the most extensive review we got from him… heck, those were the most words spoken to us at one time.

Still no other advice, so we browsed for about a half hour or so, found a few games, and noted to purchase them elsewhere. Chez Goth, Treehouse with Martian Coasters, Puerto Rico. That’s like $100 or so worth of games, I’d guess. He lost the only sale it looked like he might make that day.

The best aspect of going was that we got some freebie Star Wars constructable ship-combat game as throwaway swag. We got a spare for Amy, too, for when she comes up to visit next week.

{edit – We got a response to this entry from the manager of the store, shortly after it was published. See it here}

On our way to another game store in the Virginia area, Alan rang us up, and we all went out the the Lebanese butcher for some tasty falafel, hummus with pine nutes, and baba ghanoush.

Instead of dorking around, we trundled over to his place in the city… *very* nice. Alan has a real flair for design, and his home is like a showcase… TM, BHK, and I gabbed with him for a bit about Pollack’s strengths and weaknesses, including the Guggenheim dirt, and he played piano for us for a bit. He’s a very talented guy, and a kind host… I’m glad to have him as part of the family.

DSCN5850

See video of him playing here

We returned home, tired but feeling good about the day – it ended a lot better than it had begun.

1 year ago – furniture, kevin smith & superman, pocket windows (note- add to new flash drive), coral square mall pictures, fin fang foom, algorithm march w/ninjas, girls on walls

2 years ago – broward and fed autostitch, visited kev, walkabout pictures with rastas and shirtless, tell-tale heart in street signs, overheard

3 years ago – spidey, weather, let them sing it for you, freddy vs gb

4 years ago – remembering the keys, overtime psa, comic books, workman’s comp, prostate cancer

5 years ago – newt in sink, bro gets viper fins sponsor, pesky security, badly drawn images on a bumpy road, punquin finds my 125 item list

6 years ago – Evil News, bad joke, crux, random journals, nice thing poll, designer’s lament, laptop space bar weird, hatt-baby, email plain text

7 years ago – Enjoyed the X-men movie, 1974 memory visiting Florida, reprint of Scooby & the occult, insomnia Geotarget