eklektos

Summer of '91; my best friend Chris Riegger and I are hunched over my slightly old but still fully capable i386DX with a blazing fast 14.4 kilobits per second connection. Only 28 days until the start of 8th grade at Gayle Middle School (Stafford Middle for Chris). The day marked the 186th consecutive day we had logged in. I had already slayed the dragon and had been reset to a level one thief.

At the time I didn't know what a MMRPG (Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Game) was, but if I did I'd bet $$$ that none would ever beat this game. And to this day I'm not sure any have.

Keep reading to learn about one of the best games of all time...

Continue reading "Legend of the Red Dragon" »

Posted by David Catalano at 12:08 AM | View Full Article | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by David Catalano at 11:46 AM | View Full Article | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I discovered this game a few months back and have since plowed countless hours into it. Be careful, if you like crosswords or word scramblers you may get hooked on this one too. I go to WEBSODOKU for all my puzzles. You can solve them online or print them out and take with you on car trips, doctors visits, or while you’re sitting in a boring class.

Play Now
play easy difficulty (view solution)
play evil difficulty (view solution)

Directions
At first glance Sodoku looks like a crossword puzzle. The aim of a Sodoku puzzle is to enter a numeral from 1 through 9 in each cell of a 9x9 grid. The primary grid is made up of 3x3 subgrids. A few numbers are given at the start of a Sodoku puzzle and its up to you to figure the rest out. Each row, column and subgrid must contain only one instance of each number. Wikipedia has a good write-up on strategy for solving Sodoku puzzles.

Posted by David Catalano at 10:00 AM | View Full Article | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Bill, Beth, Jenny & I went to the inaugural Wine Down the Music Trail wine festival in Floyd Virginia. This was my first experience at a wine festival and I had a great time.

The event was held at milepost 170.5 on the Blue Ridge Parkway next to Villa Appalacia (right down the road from Chateau Morrissette). This is the location of the annual Floydfest. The cost for the event was $22 and included free tasting, all day music, and commemorative wine glasses. There were booths where local artists were selling crafts and food was available for purchase from local restaurants. I would recommend that you bring a lawn chair and get their early so you can pace yourself and enjoy the day long festivities. Or if you are hardcore buy tickets for both days!

Most of the wineries were from Virginia but there were a few from North Carolina as well.

AmRhein Wine Cellars
Biltmore Estates (NC)
Chateau Morrisette
Horton Vineyards
Peaks of Otter Winery
RagApple Lassie Vineyards (NC)
Rockbridge Winery
Tomahawk Mill
Villa Appalachia
Valhalla Vineyards
Shelton Vineyards (NC)

Keep reading for my tasting experience…

Continue reading "Wine Down the Music Trail" »

Posted by David Catalano at 06:46 PM | View Full Article | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I have heard that the new Risk: Star Wars Clone Wars Edition is really good. Now, granted that was from an employee of Hasbro so there may be a little bit of bias but I trust him. The last thing Jenny wants is for me to get another version of Risk. I played Risk with her once. Big mistake, I'm going to tell you about it. When playing someone in Risk the last thing you ever want is for them to "feel bad" and not attack someone because they don't want to be "mean". OR! Even worse is when she - er I mean "they" call it "just a game" and say "I don't care" - after two and a half hours of game play!! Yeah, can you believe she said that? I just don't understand.

I'm not sure if its incredibly obvious or not but take a closer look at the image. The soldier's about to be in a world-o'-hurt. This can't make my friend Joe @ Hasbro happy but I'm sure he understands, I modified this screen back in 1998! I got a kick out of that whenever I loaded the game (which was very frequent at that time) I remember playing for so long that I had the onset of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, I believe that is what finally made me throw in the towel. Well, doctoring the image was easy, you gotta love it when the old programs used simple BMP splash screens. I mean, they're asking for it right? You would have done the exact same thing right? Right?!?

Posted by David Catalano at 10:36 AM | View Full Article | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

anybody home?

How many of you have seen this? Jenny took this picture on a hike a while ago. I can't recall which hike but it is definitely w/in a 30 mile radius of Virginia Tech. Let me know if you remember where this is!

(on a techie note, I have finally signed up w/ flickr. This is after I spent fifty bux on an ASP album which turns out to have been a waste of money.)

Posted by David Catalano at 08:57 PM | View Full Article | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)