The Sum of All My Fears
By
S. Craig Taylor, Jr.
October 2, 2003
It’s been several weeks since my last column, so it’s time to start
making lame excuses. For one thing, I had to meet a crash deadline on a big
project not even connected to my work here. Second, I’ve been very busy
with the conclusion of our outside play test process and putting together the
final rules for 
BRAWLING BATTLESHIPS.
The play test on this game was an eye-opening gullywumper in a number of
respects and I’ll be covering this whole process in more detail in a
future column. Third,
Hurricane Isabel roared through while devastating half the Eastern Seaboard.
Fourth, I was kidnapped by aliens who forced me to…hmmm, this approach is
not working; you’re not buying any of this, are you?
Well, to be truthful, reliving bad moments is not a favorite activity. Telling
tall tales is a better creative outlet and the following sad tales could have
been avoided if you were not such a skeptical bunch. Yes, dear reader, on top
of everything else, my computer started acting antsy (that’s the
technical term). What does that 
old Luddite Craig fear above all else? All together now; technology, right!
And, what is my least favorite way to spend time? Right again; waiting for
updates to load, turning the computer off and on (for some reason, they call
this “rebooting,” but you’re not supposed to kick the
computer) and talking on the phone to know-it-all teenage techies! It seems
there have been some 50 updates to XP since I bought mine and I needed all of
them to restore my troubled machine to serenity. Arrghh! I was so busy that I
missed the gala festivities for this year’s “Talk Like a Pirate
Day.”
Then, just when I thought that my life could get no more dismal, Jeff showed up
early for our Thursday night miniatures group meeting with the first samples of
our custom t-shirts, two of which contained a
blown-up image
of the silly coin you see associated with this column. As the wife of a friend
of mine says, “Craig looks much more distinguished than that!”
Indeed! Suffice it to say that making it bigger and wrinkling it does not
improve the coin’s leprous appearance. Jeff, who is younger, larger and
quite mad, demanded that I wear one of them during the game, after we washed
them to check for fading. I explained that this would be impossible as my dryer
is the slowest in Maryland. Jeff, the techie handyman, checked it and
discovered the problem. Did you know that dryers have lint traps that are
supposed to be cleaned every few uses? After three years here, there was enough
lint in that trap to construct a buffalo. For this, Jeff made me buy him dinner
while the washer and dryer did their thing. We got back, the shirts were dry
and fine (except that the sample shirt for Jim Day had the word “PANZER
” reversed—you can read it in a mirror). For all that, they are
ready to ship and you really should take a gander at these quality new custom
t-shirts. We can fix you up with a spiffy shirt featuring any card found in our
games. They also make excellent dust cloths.
Also see Catch My Drift Wood
