Got a LootCrate

LootCrate is a company that will send you a monthly box of stuff for a little less than $20 a month.  The boxes contain nerd tchochkes revolving around some central theme.  It's either a way to get a care package that you'll probably like for nerds who don't have people to send them stuff, or it's the 21st century's answer to the death of the magazine.

Let me expound a bit on that latter idea.

I buy a subscription for $19/month that I can cancel anytime, or I play less for a 3-month or 6-month plan.  At a certain point in the month the theme is announced, for instance, October's theme was "Survive" which very clearly was going to be zombie-related stuff.  They DON'T tell you exactly what's in the box, that's a surprise.  Around the 20th of the month the box is "locked" which means they charge you and you are officially getting that stuff.  Then your box arrives around the end of the month and you are encouraged to post an "unboxing" either in pictures or as a Youtube video.

You get:

1. Something to look forward to every month.
2. No pesky reading material that you might, y'know, have to read.
3. Toys with which to decorate a geek cubicle.
4. A sense of community where you see how happy everyone is to get their stuff.
5. A chance to win a Mega LootCrate full of expensive stuff.

The best part of getting magazines was finding them in the mailbox and flipping through them while all the stupid subscription cards fell out and littered your front porch.  Then you actually had to read the magazine.  Currently I'm about three months behind on reading my Smithsonians.  I suppose when I had a subscription to Maxim (long story, but I got shunted there after two or three different gaming magazines went belly-up) I could plow through one of  those in about 15 minutes, but generally I like to actually read articles to feel as though I'm getting my money's worth.

LootCrate gives you all the happy feelings of getting something in the mail without any of the actual work of reading stuff.  There are other services like this, for instance Graze will send you natural snacks, Spicy Subscriptions will send you sex toys, and Cannabox will send you marijuana-themed stuff every month.  I can only imagine that after a year of monthly sex toys you might get a bit tired.  There seem to be a lot of panty and sock subscriptions (do young women go through that many panties?  Socks?)  All of them seemed geared towards twenty-somethings.

I was told about LootCrate by one of my former students.  Okay, I like geek toys.  I like getting stuff in the mail.  I looked through their last seven LootCrates and figured I'd have liked about four of them, and liked the other three somewhat less.  So, for instance, a box centered around fighting games wouldn't appeal to me so much.

What the hell, I'm in for a month.

So I guess this is an unboxing, but probably not one that #LootCrate is going to like.  Did I mention that they give away prizes for the best unboxing videos/pictures?  Yes, they do.  So if you're super excited they'll give you something.  I do not think they will be giving me something.

And if you get other people to subscribe they'll give you four dollars off your next LootCrate.  Every five people you get means a free LootCrate.  Welcome to the Ponzi scheme section of our business model.

It arrived yesterday.  See?

They even give you handy instructions on how to record an unboxing.

They're printed on the inside of the box.

The box starts with a pamphlet/magazine which contains exactly one short article (an interview with Max Brooks) that can be read in about two minutes, a top five zombie movies list that doesn't include anything by George Romero thus invalidating its own existence, a description of this month's Mega Crate, pictures of happy looters from last month, an invitation to send in pictures of yourself with this month's stuff, a page to say they've updated their Minecraft Servers (?), and a page each to describe the entire contents of this month's crate, which, presumably, you have in front of you anyway.

I really don't get the point of the pamphlet/magazine at all.  Use the money you spent printing that up to put something else in the box.  Or maybe this is their idea of a magazine?

So let's get to the stuff.  First, a "zombie hunter's membership card."

What am I, ten?  A membership card that I'm supposed to carry around in my wallet?  Really?  I've got enough "membership" cards from every store who wants customer loyalty jamming my wallet, I don't need some fake zombie hunter card in there.  And what's the stupid l33tspeak serial number doing in there?  You couldn't come up with something better, like 5318008?  Hint: turn it upside down on your TI-30 calculator, but of course you're too young to even know what a TI-30 was, let alone the vastly superior TI-55, but we were poor and my parents could only afford a TI-30.  

Oh shit, I'm veering into "Get off my lawn!" territory.

Moving on.  Next up, a zombie greeting card.

But no envelope to put it in and send it to someone.  So basically I've got to go steal one from the card aisle, or, more likely, my wife's card box.  What's a card box, you ask?  Well, when women reach a certain age (and I have no idea what that age is, it could be 15 for all I know), they start a box where they put cards that they liked enough to buy, but don't have any reason to send to someone.  They apparently browse Hallmark stores, see funny or sweet or sad cards, and buy them.  Then they put them in a box and when it's somebody's birthday or someone dies or whatever, they get out their box and go through the cards there and pick something out to send.  My mother had a card box, my sister has a card box, and my wife has a card box.  

Here's how I do it: "Oh shit, I'm on my way to a birthday party/wedding/funeral!  I better stop at CVS and buy a card so I have something to put the money/my sympathies in."

Eventually I got married and then it changed to: "Honey!  Do you have a card for this present?  Where's your card box?"

Or even better, my wife comes along while I'm putting my shoes on to go to the thing and says, "Here, sign this card."

I digress.

A zombie greeting card with no envelope.

 Next is a set of temporary tattoos, one a bite mark, one a bar code (and again with the 1337 bullshit).  These are really photo ops so you can dress up as a zombie (or "sexy zombie" if you're feeling frisky) and send them a picture of yourself with their tattoos for marketing purposes.  I might actually apply one on Halloween and call it a costume.  So okay, it's a $0.30 item, but whatever.

This brings us to the first big item, a t-shirt.

Okay.  Cool.  Zombie Ewoks.  It's got that Star Wars thing going crossed with Walking Dead.  I like it.  Except for one thing-- it's too goddamned small.  They ask you for your size and your sex.  I told them I was male and I wanted an XXL (and I just double checked my account, and yes, it still says that).  I am large.  Okay, I'm fat.  2XL usually covers my bulk.  Just for reference, I put this shirt next to a Penny Arcade 2XL that I own:

Do you see that?  This ewok shirt is maybe a large, but the label says XXL.  Where, in Munchkin Land?  Also, it seems to be tapered and cut like a woman's t-shirt.  So this shirt is good for nothing but a giveaway in my class.

Next there was a bloodshot eyeball candy thing.  This was a marshmallow inside a package with an eyeball printed on it.  I have no picture because I ate it.  It was a perfectly fine marshmallow.  I have no complaints.

Some buttons:

A zombie hand, a crossbow (kind of Zelda-ish there, guys), and a health pack.  8-bit is the new black.  Seems fine.

And here's the final big thing in the box.

Wow!  The Zombie Survival Guide!  Cool!  

Wait, where have I seen that before?  Oh, I remember:

On my bookshelf, where it's been for the last ten years since it was published!  Right there between Master and Commander and A Man on the Moon being guarded by the goddamned Batman and Rick from The Walking Dead.

I suppose if you're twenty now and you were ten when the book came out, then you might have missed it, but if you're into zombies at all you probably already have a copy.

So they put all their eggs one basket by giving me a book that they think I'll like, but like many friends who want to give me presents they fell into the trap of giving me a book that I already have.  Honestly, if they'd have just filled the box with zombie action figures and bobbleheads it would have been fine.  Even if I already have the action figure, you can never have too many.  How else are you going to stage a zombie horde?

So what have I learned?

The LootCrate is Not For Me.  It's for skinny twenty-somethings who don't have shelves and shelves of books, action figures, and tchochkes already.  I would have been better off taking my $20 and buying an action figure I picked out myself.

Update:  If you want to subscribe even after this not great review, here's the link that gives me credit for it:

http://mbsy.co/lootcrate/388888

I am much more likely to get another LootCrate if it's free.

UPDATE 11/18/2013: I sent the picture of the LootCrate t-shirt next to an actual 2X shirt to the LootCrate people and they sent me a mailing label to return the shirt for one that fits.  I've now gotten the new t-shirt, and it now fits.  Odd that it has the exact same labeling as the tiny one.  I blame whatever sweatshop in Indonesia made the shirt.

So LootCrate is okay in my book.  Good customer service.  And thanks to however many of you clicked the link, it looks like I will give them another month and see what I get.  Stay tuned for next month's review.

Fixing My Own Vita

No, not my CV, my PS Vita.

The left analog stick stopped working one day.  I called Sony and was told that my Vita was out of warranty because it was about a year and a half old.  The base warranty is only for one year, but for an extra $40, I could have bought an extra two years.

In order for Sony to fix the problem, they would charge me $129 + taxes + shipping.  Currently a new PS Vita costs $199.  The customer service rep commiserated with me, agreeing that it really wasn't worth my while to spend that kind of money to get it fixed, and that I was probably better off just buying a new one AND getting the extended warranty, which he would be happy to call back and sell me.  I told him to call back in a week.

There are guides online showing exactly how to take apart your Vita.  There are also Chinese websites willing to sell you Vita parts.  I looked for reviews of the Chinese vendors and found the overall consensus was that if you got the correct part it would probably work fine, but you might get one that doesn't work, or you might get the wrong part in your package.  If either of these things happened, you were probably SOL because the standard of customer service from them was to politely delay you until your funds cleared, then ignore you.

So I bought one off e-bay from someone in Minnesota.

Here's what happened:

Since I've put the video up I've had a number of comments asking me if the stick stopped working after some system update, implying that it was a software problem.  It was not a software problem because when I replaced the stick, the new stick worked (spoilers!).  If the new stick hadn't worked in the exact same way as the old stick, then I could see blaming it on some update, but that was not the case.

Finish the novel, yeah.

So I'm going to do this.

I started a novel in November for NaNoWriMo, and "won" by producing over 50,000 words, but the story wasn't finished.  In the months since then I've written another 10,000 words, which is a bit of a slower pace. Now I'm going back to using their tools to get a daily wordcount.  I'm hoping that I can finish the story in another 40,000 words.

We'll see.

Let's Play: X-wing Miniatures

Bahimiron and I played an epic game of X-wing yesterday at Pax. 150 point build, he's Empire, I'm Rebellion, many pictures were taken of us, or at least our setup.

To begin:



I have the Falcon piloted by Han Solo, with Gun Gunb as my copilot and cluster missiles. Two A-wings (one piloted by Tycho Celchu, one Green Squadron), a Y-Wing (with ion cannon, natch), and an X-Wing with Rookie pilot backed up by R2-D2.



Slave 1 with every weapon known to man (see that hill of cards behind it? Yeah, that's all the cards), a TIE with some named pilot, a TIE Interceptor with another named pilot, then over in the other corner a TIE with another name, and two TIEs with rookies.

Asteroids in the middle.



The three TIEs on the left are coming in for my Y-Wing, but I ion cannon their squad leader and pretty much ignore the rookies. The A-wing flies cover for the Falcon, and the other X-wing and A-wing gang up on the named guy in the TIE on the right. Things look okay for everyone but the Y-wing.



The big ships get bogged down in the middle among the asteroids. The Falcon unloads its cluster missiles on the TIE interceptor and only scores a single hit. The first pass is over on the right, doing some damage to that TIE. The Y-wing is getting its shields whittled down, but keeps scoring ion cannon hits on the named TIE and keeping his movement ineffectual while doing one-hits.



Turning around for the second pass, the Falcon is heavily damaged, along with Tycho's A-wing by a cluster bomb dropped by Slave I. Y-wing takes the stress and turns around, but now the named TIE is out of range of the ion cannon, so he's got to go for one of the rookies and hope it runs into an asteroid. X-wing has one shield down, so he goes into a lazy turn to give R2 a chance to fix it. A-wing spins around to get another pass at that TIE fighter.



On the right, TIE fighter gets on Rookie X-wing's tail, while the A-wing takes his shots then starts to come around to get on Slave 1's six. The TIEs from the left now swarm the Falcon, as Tycho in his A-wing spins around to hopefully thread the needle between two asteroids and take out that TIE interceptor. Y-wing just tries to stay in ion cannon range of the lagging TIE.

The Falcon blows up. Han dies screaming curses. Rookie A-wing finds out Slave 1 has a rear gun, loses his shields, so comes around to get on the TIE swarm's six. Tycho dies to the interceptor, and the Y-wing makes a pass on Slave 1, firing ion cannons all the while, because you need two ion hits for a large ship to wander drunkenly for a turn. It gets so exciting I forget to take pictures.

Slave 1 is down maybe one shield, and still has that raft of weapons. The Y-wing has lost shields, but still has something like 4 hull. If Slave 1 can take out the Y-wing before it gets an ion cannon shot, then it will come around and mop up the rest of the rebels. If it can't, and the Y-wing gets the ion shot in, then it will have to wander in a straight line at the next movement phase, and that straight line will take it out of the playing area, effectively destroying it (althoughBahimiron maintains it's just a merc seeing which way the wind is blowing and leaving to fight another day, while Han is still dead, dead, dead).

Slave 1 damages the Y-wing but doesn't destroy it (although now it has a damaged engine), and the Y-wing gets an ion cannon shot through, sending Boba Fett careening out of the play area, y'know, like Boba Fett does.



It comes down to Green Squad A-wing (no shields), heavily damaged Y-wing, and undamaged Rookie X-wing vs. two Rookie TIE fighters. They take the first one down without taking any damage.



And at this point these are all the ships left on the field. Bahimiron concedes that there's no way that Rookie TIE can win, hits the eject button, and we call it for the rebels.

It was a victory, but Han Solo and Tycho Celchu will be missed.

Edit:  This just came in from Bahimiron:

Hey, Boba got his!

The Great Cheese Steak Death March

It started with going to visit my friend, Kevin, where he'd just moved outside of Philadelphia. This would be a chance for my wife to meet his wife and we'd all do something fun for the day. He asked if I had any ideas about stuff to do, and I said that going to "that corner with the warring cheese steak places" might be fun, but other than that I hadn't been to Philly proper since I was 9 and we went to the Franklin Institute. Last year we went to Chestnut Hill, and that was a nice place to walk around and do the shops, but other than that I have very little experience with Philadelphia.

It turned out Kevin had gone to med school in Philly, so knew the city quite well. All it really took was the merest suggestion that I'd be interested in a gastronomic tour and we were off.

The first stop was Reading Market which is pretty much like Quincy Market except with more Amish and less chain food emporiums. We wanted to get some Amish pickled stuff (personally, I'm a fan of Amish Spiced Apples) but we didn't want to walk around all day with a bag full of jars, so we asked when they closed (5pm) and determined to come back and shop before then.

I was eyeing the pierogis, but never got one (potatoes are a sucker's bet when it comes to gastronomic tourism, according to Anthony Bourdain). My wife stopped for a good soft pretzel, then Kevin said we had to try DiNic's as the first stop on our quest for the best sandwich in Philly. We got in line while my friend Rob and my wife went shopping. It took about a half an hour, but Kevin and I scored two pork italiano's with provolone and greens. The greens were a new one to me. They put some broccoli rabe on top, and the bitterness of the greens just sets off the pork and the cheese. The provolone is also an aged, harder variety than you normally get sliced at the supermarket, so it's got a nice tang to it.

My wife with this sandwich:



Ironically, this turned out to be the best sandwich of the day, and it wasn't even a cheese steak.

We then proceeded to walk. And walk. And walk. We went through Kevin's old med school area, and then through what's known at the Italian Market area. We stopped in a cheese place and a spice place, and eventually:



Yes, those fatbirds were on sale for meat. Yum, fatbird!

Though Kevin said it was a 20 minute walk, I believe it took us about an hour to get to cheese steak central. There, we had a choice of Pat's or Geno's. Kevin said Pat's was the first, and that Geno's was the upstart pretender with an additional dash of racism. Apparently some years back, the proprietor of Geno's made ordering in English a requirement for getting a steak sandwich. This really didn't seem like an unreasonable request if your staff only spoke English, but apparently they made a big deal out of "Spanish language speakers, go home!" with stickers and articles in the paper, and such.

Whatever, I'm here for the food. So off to Pat's:



You'll note the line (or maybe you won't, it's a shitty picture). Both places had lines, and only outdoor seating, and it was December 28th and pretty darn cold. This does not dissuade people from eating their cheese steaks.

I made some mistakes at Pat's. First off, they had a condiment counter, and I went for it. They had a red sauce, which I slathered on my steak, and cherry peppers, which I took one of, and even relish. So my Pat's steak was adulterated with all sorts of other things going on. My wife refused to eat my spicy monstrosity, so shared a sandwich with Kevin, while Rob and I both went for the spice.

Also, whoever says that cheese whiz is the only way to have a cheese steak is just plain wrong. Provolone was had on all sandwiches, all day. Shove your cheese whiz up your Kraft ass. Man was making cheese steaks back in ancient Rome with provolone.

The spice went to my head, and I forgot to take a picture of the sandwich here.

At this point I was pretty full, and if anyone had said, "Eh, let's skip Geno's, I don't need that racist cheese steak," I'd have been fine. But Kevin was adamant. To truly have the cheese steak death march, we had to go to Geno's.

So across the street to Geno's we went:



You'll notice that Geno's is definitely flashier than Pat's. Pat's does have signs up everywhere saying, "Don't make a mis-steak! Get the original Philly cheese steak at Pat's." So I guess there's plenty of anti-Geno's feelings at Pat's.

Again we got two sandwiches to share between the four of us. Kevin pontificates on the Geno's sandwich experience:



I could swear that the Geno's steak was only a step above steak-ums in terms of meat, but we all agreed that their bread was better than Pat's.

We started to walk back to Reading Market, but I pointed out (astutely! And with much laziness in my heart.) that if we walked, continuing the death march with extra pounds of meat, bread, and cheese in us, that we wouldn't make it back in time to buy Amish products. So we took a cab.

Back in Reading Market Kevin pointed out this Amish place that served apple cobblers. So we each got one of those and they bring out a pitcher of heavy cream to pour over it, resulting in this:



Oh my god, that was awesome. I got spiced apple rings, and then we all went home and fell into a meat coma.

So we all agreed that the best cheese steak in Philly is a pork sandwich from DiNic's.