Personally, I think Ethan Hawke and Vincent D’Onofrio are both actors I could stand to see in more movies. So, it’s nice to see them together on a new project. Scott Derrickson’s Sinister looks like a pretty good horror movie mixing much of what made The Ring and Amityville Horror...
So this is my first of many posts here on Leisurely Geeks. I will start off with a quick introduction. My name is Phil Young. I currently work at a game store called The Game Preserve (www.gamepreserve.com) where I am “The Magic Guy” and also their Social Media Specialist.
I have a newer passion to gaming that was sparked by a fellow Leisurely Geek, Joe P. I had always liked video games, but it wasn’t until he introduced me to World of Warcraft, that I decided I actually was a “gamer” of sorts. It followed by a rough and very smashface tutorial to Magic the Gathering during the summer of 2008. After that, I decided that I need to become great at this game. I found out all these great things about Magic the Gathering: it was played every Friday, there were even bigger tournaments not even 4 hours from where I live, and most of all, it was addicting as hell. I went on a whirlwind attempt at “going pro” which ended with me becoming very tired and very frustrated with the state of the game and what it did to people. I took a break and decided to search for new and exciting card games. The first I stumbled across was Fluxx, and then Chrononauts, but all that was great, it was not satisfying the “High Fantasy” (something that I had loved about Magic the Gathering). I then found Ascension (http://www.ascensiongame.com/). My god this game was great. The art was stylized, the game play gave way to experienced TCG players as well as thecasual gamer. It was the rejuvenation and wake up call that I needed. Out with competitive play and in with enjoying my time with friends. This is just a little about me and my relatively short existence in the gaming world.
I would like to share something that has started only about a week ago. The makers of the game I give credit to for saving my gaming soul, Ascension, and Richard Garfield (Creator of Magic the Gathering) have come together to bring us a DIGITAL Trading Card Game! They are calling it, SOLFORGE! I would love if you all check out the Kickstarter.com for it and give feedback and share feeling on this Brave New Adventure these men and fellow gamer’s are going through.
As an update to my earlier prepaid article Simple Mobile has reduced the price of it’s 4G unlimited plan from $60/month down to $50/month. There are lines to read between as per usual. 4G means HSPA+ which is in real world usage it’s about double the speed of 3G compared to LTE 4G which is about ten times as fast. Also unlimited doesn’t really mean unlimited. I’ve heard cases of throttling after 2-5 gigs of usage so keep that in mind.
I think now is also a good time to talk about my personal experience with switching over to a prepaid plan. I have been on Straight Talk’s $45 unlimited plan for about six weeks now after leaving Verizon Wireless. I chose an AT&T SIM for my phone because I wanted the extra coverage from the AT&T towers versus the extra speed on T-Mobiles HSPA+ network. Overall I haven’t had too much to complain about service wise. My secod job has me traveling all over Central New York and the only places I have found that have had poor service is a strange three foot dead spot directly in front of the computer at my primary job and at my parents house out in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t have any problems with Verizon in those places but I don’t find that to be worth the extra $100 a month that I was paying.
The plus side to switching is that when I am on a HSPA+ tower my data speeds are significantly faster but I have been walking on eggshells using their internet. If you read section six in their Terms and Conditions unlimited data only extends to websites and it specifies streaming video or audio as a no-no. Hunting through a few forums it seems that there is a 100 mb/day, 2 gb/month rule of thumb.
The ToS also explicity states they they can and will shut your service down if they feel you are abusing their “unlimited” data. I wish they used the somewhat softer and more straight forward approach of T-Mobile where you are throttled after a set number but have true unlimited data. As stated above I wanted AT&T’s network and Straight Talk was the only one to offer it at a reasonable price. Overall, changing my habits to fit within Straight Talks not-so-upfront rules was pretty simple. I don’t really stream music or videos. I do listen to many hours of podcasts but I just made sure that I was always downloaded them and app updates while on WiFi and I haven’t had a problem keeping my data down to an acceptable level for Straight Talk.
I am happy that I made the switch. Changing up my data usage habits to shave $100 off my monthly phone bill was much easier than changing my texting and phone call habits to save $40. Since I’m not held down by a contract anymore I am always looking for a better deal so I will try to keep the prepaid article as up to date as possible and keep you abreast of any changes.
Not a slew of posts the past few days here on Leisurely Geeks. A good amount of us are on vacation and actually hanging out without the use of video/audio chat apps on the PC. I guess the rest of the crew must be enthralled with the Olympics. Some of us went to the Sterling Renaissance Festival in Sterling NY yesterday. A fun time was had by all, especially the youngsters in the group. Does anyone else besides me think jousting would make for a cool Olympic sport? Hey, there are worse ones. Handball WTF!! Anyway, have a great week and we’ll try and get some posts up while recuperating between bouts of the outdoors and its searing rays of sunlight.
How to start. I’m the brother another author, trey. My geeky interests include Minecraft, tabletop games( dungeons and dragons, pathfinder, gamma world etc.) video games, comic books, urban fantasy novels, star wars,fantasy football, and more Minecraft. Some of my non-geeky hobbys are fishing, hanging out with friends, and normal teen things.
Next stop, the glamorous, lucrative world of The Huffington Post!
What’s that you say? What do you mean, The Huffington Post doesn’t pay bloggers????
Well I guess I’ll just stick around here then. Might as well introduce myself.
Hi. My name is Trey and I’m a Geek. My Geek hobbies include video games, Magic: The Gathering and other various card games, tabletop RPGs (mostly with other authors on this blog), board games, books (especially fantasy), and ummm…probably a few other things I am forgetting at the moment. My less-nerdy hobbies include fishing, fly-tying, and football (which I even manage to make nerdy by playing Fantasy Football).
I suppose that’s it for now. Be on the lookout for exciting new articles by me! (and the rest of the gang.)
English: A single d20 die – svg version (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
So I have a few games I’ve picked up over the last year on Steam. Once in a while I buy the package with 3-4 copies and gift them to friends. Well, I’ve built this site to build a community to discuss all things geeky so to help foster that along I am going to have a contest. To help everyone get talking I am going to give away these games: Terraria, Lead and Gold, and Orcs Must Die. All of these games are on Steam so the winner will need to use the service or be willing to install it. So the rules: All you have to to is to comment on any post. The comment should be more than just a few words and must relate to the topic post. Each comment made after I post this will get a number based on the time posted. The first 20 comments will get a number based on chronological order. 1-20. On Saturday June 30th at 12:00 EST I will roll a D20 3 times. If your number comes up you win! Games are in order posted and repeated numbers get re-rolled. I will comment in the thread you won in to set up the transfer. Good Luck!!
I am very excited to enter Mike’s blog. I am very interested in documentaries, psychology, and pop culture. I hope to post frequently about things I find interesting.
As Joe previously introduced me, I am Sarah, the fire mage. I enjoy numerous hobbies, including but not limited to:video games (RPG’s, MMO’s, FPS’s), Magic the Gathering, and I also dabble in tabletop RPG’s. I enjoy going to conventions, and hopefully I can start attending them more regularly. This is my first blog, and am very excited about it and I hope to bring a female perspective on the geeky things in life. More specific games I am currently playing are, Final Fantasy 13-2, World of Warcraft, Kingdoms of Amalur, and Tales of the Abyss. Also, I am very excited about Diablo 3.
So this is my first of many posts here on Leisurely Geeks. I will start off with a quick introduction. My name is Phil Young. I currently work at a game store called The Game Preserve (www.gamepreserve.com) where I am “The Magic Guy” and also their Social Media Specialist.
