Zebra Adventures

Summer of 2010

2010-08-17T18:44:00.004+03:00

I've been to four major events this summer: the combined Swedish/Danish Nationals, which I head judged, Estonian Nationals which I also head judged, Finnish Nationals where most of my time was spent trying to open a dormitory door, making sandwiches and filling water bottles, and Ropecon, where I wasn't officially working at all.

Still on the schedule: GP Göteborg this week, PT Amsterdam next week, and Greek Nationals in a few weeks.

ATJ etc

2008-12-04T21:24:00.002+02:00

Ask the Judge on Starcity is dead. This means that Feature Friday is also dead. This means that if I want to write about judging, I'm going to do it here. I'm sad to see ATJ go, but Feature Friday had become a bit of a burden. I was writing because I had to, not because I had things to say. It was fun for a while, though. If you read it, thank you.

I've had a pretty good judging year. I went to three Pro Tours and learned a lot at all of them. I did a couple of GPs. I did the usual set of Nationals (skipping Norway because it clashed with Sweden, and Sweden had the higher mana cost). I even did a Finnish judge conference a few weeks ago.

I'm not sure what's going to happen next year. I might not be able to go to Kyoto, and Honolulu is on the same weekend as my brother's wedding. There's no Scandinavian GP. All Nationals will be held in July, and I've already bought tickets for a Take That concert on the first weekend of July. The Finnish judge community is in desperate need of fresh L2s.

Coming soon...

2008-12-04T13:46:00.000+02:00

...the "triumphant" return of this blog. Sort of.

Another sign that we're actually adults

2008-06-12T00:08:00.003+03:00

Late last year, they cut down all the trees on the empty lot next to our parking lot. They put up some signs and brought in the machines and turned the whole area into a mudpit. After a few months of walking past the construction site every day, we finally decided to contact the company. We like this neighbourhood; it's nice and quiet and it's even called Tuomarila (roughly translated as "judge-place"). This morning, we signed the contract to buy an apartment. We won't get to move in until February 2009, but I'm still pretty excited. The rent in our current place is pretty cheap, but we need more space and buying an apartment just makes more sense than findind another rental place.

My summer

2008-06-04T15:19:00.002+03:00

How's this for a summer judging schedule:

12-13 July: Eventide prerelease
19-20 July: Eventide prerelease part 2 (most likely I'll skip this)
26-27 July: Finnish Nationals
2-3 August: Estonian Nationals
9-10 August: Ropecon (PTQ, GP Trial, general insanity)
16-17 August: visiting family and friends, and possibly the UK
23-24 August: GP Copenhagen
30-31 August: Norwegian Nationals
6-7 September: Swedish Nationals

Am I insane?

Oh look, a new year

2008-01-04T22:02:00.001+02:00

2007 was pretty good for me. I did a lot of travelling, both for fun and for work. London was awesome, San Diego was great, and Stockholm was very, very educational. Aalborg and Copenhagen were amazing. I don't know yet what 2008 will bring. I hope I'll be able to figure things out after Kuala Lumpur.

Lately I've been spending a lot of time at the TT fan forums. I've met some weird and fun people there, and it's kind of nice to chat in a female-dominated environment for once.

Kuala Lumpur!

2007-11-15T21:54:00.000+02:00

I'm going to PT Kuala Lumpur! I can't believe I got accepted for an Asian Pro Tour. So happy!

I had a little....Patience

2007-11-14T21:19:00.000+02:00

If you're looking for Magic judging stuff, stop reading now.

I'm back from my Take That holiday. I had a good time; the show was everything I expected and more, and I got to behave like a silly teenager.

For once, my flights were not delayed at all. I arrived in Aalborg, checked into my hotel, grabbed a few snacks from a nearby shop and went straight to the venue. There I found five queues, separated by metal barriers, and a few dozen people camping out. They had blankets, sleeping bags, camping chairs, drinks and snacks. Some of them were dressed like they were going on a snowmobile safari. I picked a spot in a queue behind a very loud group of Danish girls; they had beer...and Smirnoff Ice...and rum. They were talking non-stop in Danish and I could only understand a few song names here and there. In the next line, there was a strange lady wearing a German army jacket and denim Hammer pants, trying to do the dance routine to Pray.

After an hour or two I got bored, so I talked to the loud, drunk Danes, who were absolutely shocked that I'd come all the way from Finland for a concert. They were even more shocked when I confessed that I was also going to two other concerts. And they were the ones with camping chairs, go figure.

The doors opened at 6 pm and after a brief security check, we were allowed in the concert hall. I got a good spot in the second row and prepared to stand there for the next four hours. It's a good thing I have some experience in the standing-around game. The support act came on around 7:30. It was Jamie Scott and the Town, and he was quite good. He did a few of his own songs, which were quite catchy guitarry pop songs, and a cover of Lily Allen's "Smile". The band includes a cello player and Jamie is a cutie with a nice voice, so how could I possibly hate them? I'll definitely look up the album at some point. The audience in all three concerts seemed to love Jamie.

Take That came on sometime after 8 pm. It was kind of surreal to actually see them that close, to hear Gary sing live, and to see that weird chemistry they have with each other.

Take That shows are not just about four guys singing and dancing on stage; there's costume changes, props, scenery and supporting "artistes". When they do "Relight My Fire", there's always pyrotechnics on stage: this time, they actually set the band on fire - Jason's shoe was burning, Gary had flames on his coat sleeve, and Mark's hat was on fire (Howard, who was recovering from his injury, was not on stage for this number). The opening song was performed from political rally-type podiums, with the appropriate gesturing and some confetti raining from the ceiling. For the next song, the podiums transformed into, umm, lap dance booths. But it wasn't just the scantily clad dancer girls doing the lap dances, the guys did them as well.

Here's a crappy cameraphone picture from the show - does not include lapdancing.

There was a B-stage, which was another smaller stage closer to the middle of the hall. The supporting cast appeared there at certain points of the show to set up the next song, and the guys performed some songs there, including a new version of Could It Be Magic, a song that Robbie Williams used to sing when he was in the band. This new, slow, different version was sung by Gary and it really banished the ghost of Robbie. I only wish I could have heard it without having several people trying to yell the Robbie version in my ear.

The next morning, I had breakfast and then went for a walk to get rid of my headache. The hotel and venue were pretty much in the middle of nowhere, so I walked to the venue again. There were already some people camping there - security had let them take their sleeping bags inside the venue. I went back to the hotel for a few hours, but since I couldn't get an internet connection on my laptop, I decided to go to the venue and join the campers. I took a lunch with me, and a newspaper to sit on. The weather was much colder than the previous day, but I was quite comfortable. The queues started filling up much later than on the previous day, but during the show the crowd was just as loud. Thanks to the camping, I got a spot in the first row.

On Sunday morning I packed up my stuff and took a flight to Copenhagen. Again, I went straight to the hotel and then to the venue, where I found about thirty people in the queue. The same people who camped out in Aalborg were at the top of the queue; I later found out that they'd travelled here overnight and had camped out since 6 am. Just in case you think I'm crazy, I want to point out that I'm nowhere near the worst. Just before the doors opened, it started snowing and two weird old guys showed up to collect empty bottles. One of them accepted a half-eaten hotdog from someone in the queue. He then rummaged through all the trash on the ground, found a sandwich and offered it to the other bottle guy, who politely refused.

The security at this venue was not very good. They didn't even look at my ticket or the contents of my bag. Apparently they just trusted that I'd picked the right door (there were two, one for standard tickets and one for the "front of stage" tickets) and stamped my hand. I ended up in the second row this time. This show was just a little bit better than the first two, maybe because it was the last one of the European part of the tour and guys seemed to be putting in a little bit of an extra effort. Now that I knew the show I was able to concentrate on specific things and notice stuff that I'd missed before.

That was my crazy weekend in Denmark. I'm probably not supposed to have this kind of fun at my age, but I don't care. I'll probably do it again if I get the chance.

Take That and Party

2007-11-08T22:19:00.000+02:00

Tomorrow morning I fly to Denmark to see Take That. I'm not sure what to expect from the trip. I'm sure the show itself will be awesome, but it will be interesting to see just how fanatical my fellow fans are. It's a standing room only concert, and I'd like to get reasonably close to the stage, but I just don't know if that's possible without camping out all day. I've heard that for some shows, people camped out overnight. I'm not going to do that, although I might pack a lunch and go to the venue very early for the Saturday show.

There are a lot of people who travel around to see this band like I travel to Magic events. It's like a hobby to them - they meet friends and occasionally chat to these incredibly charismatic pop stars. It wouldn't be that difficult to get caught up in this culture, but so far the Magic judging thing seems like a more sane pursuit.

I'm still probably going to scream like a 14 year old, though.

What Will Jaap Do?

2007-10-12T12:05:00.000+03:00

This morning, it was announced that the first day of PT Valencia is cancelled due to flooding at the venue.

I'm sort of glad that I'm not there. This is my first free weekend in a long time. But on some level, I wish I was out there helping out and seeing how they deal with a huge problem like this. I hope they won't have to cancel the whole PT. If you're reading this in Valencia...good luck!

The new Take That tour started in Belfast last night. I took a little peek at one of the reviews, but I'm really trying to stay spoiler-free. It's going to be very difficult, because those pictures looked really interesting.

Between Nationals

2007-08-21T10:29:00.000+03:00

I ended up going to Estonia after all - the original HJ had some unexpected work obligations, so I had to step in on a very short notice. The event was reasonably smooth but I'm still very tired - I didn't get much sleep because my hotel seemed to be near some kind of club or disco that blasted loud music late in the night. And when the music stopped, the local pigeons and seagulls started screeching outside my window.

This weekend I'm going to Norway, where (according to the TO) the "legacy of Rune" still lives on. I expect the event will be about the same size as Estonia, but with players who have a bit more experience with high-level tournament play. In Estonia, most players didn't seem to care if their opponent removed their suspend counters in the second main phase, and we got very few judge calls for game play errors.

The rest of my summer

2007-08-03T18:16:00.000+03:00

Finnish Nationals happened, and now it's only a week to go until Ropecon. I have enough actual staff, a couple of trainees, and a decent event program. It should be okay.

Once Ropecon is over, I can devote my attention to other projects, such as Swedish Nationals (end of September), Norwegian Nationals (end of August), Estonian Nationals (mid-August, but I'm thinking of skipping this one), DCIX stuff, that article I'm supposed to write with Juan, and one other judging-related project. Then there are the local events: Summer of Magic, Lorwyn prereleases, some WoW stuff, Junior Finals. Valencia is not too far ahead, either. I'm counting my unassigned vacation days and extra Saturday working hours and all those Fridays and Mondays I'm going to be taking off work, and trying to make it all match. I'm also planning to squeeze in a few days of non-Magical vacation time, so as to keep my sanity. I hope that works.

Judge dinners

2007-07-04T14:00:00.000+03:00

We have returned from San Diego. Yesterday we came home around 5 pm, did internet stuff for a couple of hours, went to bed and slept for 4 hours, woke up, chatted on IRC for 3 hours, and then slept for 12. Good stuff.

Yesterday something weird happened at the airport: I was recognized by a random German lady, who had seen me at GP Amsterdam! She was a mostly casual player whose boyfriend was interested in becoming a judge. She did an excellent job of keeping us awake while waiting for our (delayed) flight.

The official judge dinner at PTSD took place at Buca di Beppo. I didn't enjoy this dinner as much as I have enjoyed some other dinners - the food wasn't anything special, and the place was just too loud. Of course I want to talk to my fellow judges too, but I'd like to do it at a normal voice level. It must be pretty annoying for the waiters to have a room with 50 people in it, all yelling at the same time and not paying attention to what you're saying. It must also be extremely annoying for the other customers.

Another issue is the consumption of alcohol at judge dinners. I'm not against it - if you want beer or wine with your meal, you should have some. However, the judge dinner shouldn't be a drinking event. Not all judges are drinkers. When I'm not drinking myself, I find loud drunken people extremely annoying. The drinking and yelling can happen later, at a facility designed for that purpose, so that the people who want to avoid it can avoid it.

It's probably impossible to have a nice quiet dinner with 50 people who all want to talk to each other, but we could at least try to turn down the noise a bit.

We appreciate your patience

2007-06-26T15:55:00.001+03:00

This is the tale of our epic journey from Helsinki to San Diego.

Our airport shuttle arrived on time, and the driver got us to the airport on time, despite being a little confused about what terminal we wanted. That was the last time things went right. We tried to exchange US dollars at the airport bank, but for some reason they couldn't accept any plastic, and the line to the cash machine was too long. We decided to take care of that later.

The flight to Munich was mostly fine. We enjoyed a breakfast of bread, cold cuts and a single cherry tomato! In Munich, our flight boarded exactly at the announced time. Once everyone was ready to go, the pilot announced that there was a technical problem. Almost an hour later, he announced that they had located and fixed a smoke detector that was in one of the cargo holds. Unfortunately, the cargo hold also contained a dog that now couldn't stay there because the heating wasn't working. Then they took another 45 minutes or so to figure out how to transport the dog without freezing it to death.

Inflight entertainment review!

"Wild Hogs" - I didn't really watch this movie about four middle-aged guys in leather jackets, but Pasi tells me it had a lot of gay jokes.

"Music and Lyrics" - Hugh Grant plays himself as a has-been popstar, Drew Barrymore is the weird girl he falls for. The song lyrics they write pretty much suck, but the opening sequence (80s music video parody) and the Cora (Britney Spears substitute) character are pretty amusing.

"Freedom Writers" - Hilary Swank earns a divorce from McDreamy while teaching English to gang kids and fighting her evil colleagues.

"Me and Mr. Darcy" (a novel) - Utterly predictable, but I'm a sucker for P&P rewrites.

The flight landed in Los Angeles about 1,5 hours late. We rushed through immigration and customs, and some guy at the transit desk told us he was rebooking our connecting flight. Of course, he gave us a flight that would leave in 45 minutes. And he didn't actually put us on the flight, which we found out after finally finding an agent that could check us in. Luckily, this agent was very helpful, efficient and dyslexic, because the gate number she told us was not one that was on our boarding passes (luckily, we noticed this on time). At the security check, the guards of course decided that they should do "extra screening" on the two people who were most obviously in a hurry. We made our flight with 10 minutes to spare.

We arrived at San Diego commuter terminal 35 minutes later, but our luggage didn't. There was nobody at the United lost luggage desk. Some 15 minutes later, a luggage person finally showed up, and told us that they put our stuff on the next flight because there was already too much stuff on our flight. So we had to wait another 40 minutes for our luggage.

We got a taxi. The driver stared at the address I gave him for a while, and informed us that there was a free shuttle for this hotel. However, we were in no mood to wander around airports any more, so we took the taxi anyway.

We went to bed at around 10 pm, and here I am writing this post at 5 am because I can't sleep anymore. Yay.

World of Aircraft

2007-06-22T13:50:00.000+03:00

No special Midsummer plans this year - we're spending the weekend at home and preparing for the trip to San Diego. The flights and hotel reservations are all taken care of and we've suspended newspaper and mail delivery for a week, so now we just need to do a mountain of laundry and pack. I also need to finish my EDH deck (I've finally decided to get in on the judges' game), and find my Harry Potter cards so I can CHALLENGE Scott Marshall.

Work was quite stressful yesterday, because I had to finish various projects and make sure that things will run smoothly in my absence. I'm not sure I remembered to do everything. I'm sure I'll stop caring about that as soon as I'm at the airport. I enjoy airports, despite all the annoying things that can happen in them.

GP Stockholm

2007-05-09T16:30:00.000+03:00

I spent last weekend at GP Stockholm in Sweden. The venue was perfect; a convention centre attached to a very nice hotel. In the lobby of the hotel there was a huge fish pond, with a restaurant on one side and the bar on the other side. The restaurant was very good, but their fruit salad consisted mostly of non-peeled apples and pears. Not good.

The event itself was the biggest GP in Scandinavia ever, with over 700 players (including 60 Finns). Despite the unexpectedly high turnout, the tournament was very smooth and we finished quite early on both days. I didn't feel particularly tired during the event, and my feet stayed happy.

Some funny things happened, including this: Pants Guy, the judge candidate.

More stories later. Maybe.

PT San Diego!

2007-04-02T09:45:00.000+03:00

I'm always nervous when waiting for the sponsorship announcement, even when I think my chances are good. This time I even had to deal with some high-level folks who had seen the list and could neither reveal who was on it nor resist telling people on IRC that they had seen the list.

The list was finally published on friday night, and there was much rejoicing. Pasi and I received the travel sponsorships we asked for. The list is full of people I like and people I've been wanting to meet, such as Mr. Guptil, the only L5 I haven't worked with yet. We're very excited about this trip, it's going to be the perfect combination of work and fun. Our current plan is to arrive a few days early and do a bit of sightseeing (but not too much, one doesn't want to have tired feet before the PT has even started).

I've marked a two-week vacation for myself starting from Midsummer. That gives me exactly four days to get everything together for Nationals and the 10th Edition release, just like in 2005 when I returned from my wedding trip to find out that we didn't have a venue for our Nationals. Of course, I intend to get everything ready before I go on vacation and save those last four days for packing and other last-minute stuff. I'm planning to post my judge call for Nats.fi soon, so stay tuned to dcijudge-l if you're interested.

Before San Diego, we have two other trips planned. This week we're flying to London for a short non-Magical vacation. We're planning to visit various museums and chill out at our hotel in Notting Hill. If we start missing Magic too much, there's a GPT Stockholm somewhere in London that we might check out. The second trip is, of course, GP Stockholm itself.

The GP from Hell

2007-03-13T18:46:00.000+02:00

GP Amsterdam was not a good event. There were huge delays such as we've not had in years, and the site was rather too small for 1300+ Magic players. This event made me realize how good the GP organization has become - we run big events and we do it very well. This time, we were doing something that had never been done before, and we were not prepared. Sometimes delays are unavoidable, and players should understand that the judges and organizers are doing their best to fix whatever is causing the delay. But this time players are upset for a very good reason. This GP does not count as a victory.

I'll write a more detailed report for my Feature Friday slot next week.

More plans

2007-03-07T10:49:00.000+02:00

It's time to take a look at my schedule for this spring/summer.

This week: GP Amsterdam. 2HG fun for the whole family, with the new Penalty Guide thrown in.
March 24th: GP Trial for Stockholm, training 1 or 2 judge candidates

April 5th to 9th: Easter vacation in London with Pasi! Non-Magic-related travel yay!
April 21st and 22nd: Future Sight prereleases
April 28th and 29th: more Future Sight prereleases

May 5th and 6th: GP Stockholm
May 12th: a National Qualifier (unless I get someone else to do it)
May 20th: PTQ San Diego
May 27th: National Qualifier in Helsinki

June 10th: a National Qualifier (again, unless I get someone else to do it)
June 23rd to 24th: Midsummer, no events
June 29th to July 1st: PT San Diego. I hope I will be there.

July 13th to 15th: Finnish Nationals + 10th Edition release events

August 10th to 12th: Ropecon 2007.

Still unscheduled: a bunch of FNMs and JSS events, training for a third judge candidate, PTQs for Valencia, Nationals in other countries, and probably something I forgot. Sometimes I think it would be nice to have a job where you could just take a few weeks off in the middle of July or August, and someone else would take care of stuff while you were gone.

Plans

2007-02-21T20:41:00.000+02:00

I'm having such a good day. I've booked a site for Nationals, I have a budget, everything looks good. I'll be able to have decent judge compensation and decent prizes for once. The boss also approved various other plans for the year.

Recently, Take That announced a new tour. One of the shows went on sale today, and the tickets sold out in under 20 minutes. I was lucky to get a ticket, and so I'll be going to Denmark in November to see a 90s boyband. Oh yeah! I'm 16 again!

A constant hubbub of cards

2007-02-16T11:10:00.000+02:00

A few thoughts on recent and not-so-recent issues...

Magic Worlds 2007 is going to be a four-day tournament. I think this is a very good idea. Sure the days are going to be long, but they were long already. It's easier to arrange the time off work for a shorter trip, since you have to figure in travel days, sightseeing days (a luxury), and post-event recovery time. I've tried going straight to work after coming home from a US PT, but I'm always too tired. I also like the idea of a 2HG team competition. However, this changes the prize structure of our Nationals. In the past, the player in fourth place got a bigger prize than the actual National team (to cover travel costs to Worlds), because the team was already guaranteed $1000 from the team competition. Now I can put the big prize where it belongs, in 1st place.

I still haven't played a single game of Magic with Planar Chaos cards. Somehow I was not accepted in the MODO beta, and since I can't just sign up for a FNM, there are very few opportunities for me to play. Sigh. Feel my pain.

Finally...why is Talen Lee such a popular writer? He has nothing interesting to say, and he sounds incredibly pompous while saying it. Maybe I don't care about the issues he cares about because I'm a judge/distributor employee, not a player? But even his article about women in Magic was annoying and pointless, and I do care about that issue.

No judge chats here

2007-02-07T20:20:00.000+02:00

Feature Friday is taking care of my need to write about judgely topics these days, but I'll try to save some stuff for this blog. Otherwise this will be all about my favourite TV shows and fanfic, which is just pathetic.

I went to the WotC OP meeting, which was a nice combination of work and fun, as usual. Lots of judge gossip, some decent food, and nice gifts (a laptop bag and a CD case). I'm working on Nationals at the moment. Once again, finding a venue is a problem, and I haven't even started scheduling qualifiers. It's going to be annoying.

But speaking of my favourite TV shows...Grey's Anatomy is my new addiction. I started watching it on Finnish TV but I'm now watching it in "real time". Naturally, I visited the fanfic forums, but I haven't found anything I'd want to read so far. I feel like my taste in fanfic is old-fashioned. I went looking for some good post-episode fics (stories that focus on a particular episode), but all I can find is shippy fics for pairings I don't care about. It's understandable, since GA has plenty of canonical relationship stuff, but I just don't understand why fans of Lost want to read fanfic about the most absurd pairings (like Sawyer/Claire), and give them stupid names ("ConMama"). Nowadays fanfic seems to live on Livejournal communities (which are really annoying to browse if you're looking for stuff that wasn't posted this week), and Fanfic.net (which is too big and too full of random crap). It was all so much easier back in the good old days of alt.tv.x-files.creative ...

Materialistic Christmas present post

2006-12-30T21:29:00.000+02:00

I've been playing with the Espresso machine for a few days now. We've made espressos and cappucinos, but I haven't quite mastered the milk foaming accessory yet. Today I bought a set of espresso cups and a small pitcher for milk, and I'm thinking of getting a coffee grinder, and I've been reading coffee-related websites and forums...I might become a total coffee geek.

In addition to the coffee machine, I got a John Lurie art book, the Battlestar Galactica season 2 DVD set, some books, a green Marimekko apron (Pasi got a black one), some "beauty" products, and a nice red blanket (sounds random but I really like it). My father gave me some money, which I used to buy the espresso cups. Good times.

Christmas!

2006-12-22T19:46:00.000+02:00

I might post more Worlds anecdotes later, but in the meantime you can read my latest Feature Friday article on Starcitygames.com. It was supposed to be a two-parter, but Seamus couldn't post part 1 last week because of a storm. I took the opportunity to rewrite some parts, and I like it better as a single article, but it is very, very long.

I'm almost ready for Christmas. I've done most of my Christmas shopping, I've baked cookies, I've made some plans for meals. Tomorrow we're doing the cleaning and getting the groceries. As usual, we will be having the Christmas Eve dinner with Pasi's folks.

I've already opened one of my presents - an Espresso machine from my mother. I asked for a coffee maker, she got me a machine that makes both Espresso and "normal" coffee. I never had a coffee maker before. I used to be a tea-drinker, but recently I've realized that I like coffee as well.

Have a merry Christmas, everyone...

¬_¬

Post-Worlds musings, part 1

2006-12-05T14:10:00.000+02:00

I'm back home after an insane week at Worlds. I don't remember half of what happened or the names of the new people I met, but it was truly an amazing experience. I'll post some anecdotes when I recover from my post-event cold.

Help computer

2006-11-17T10:43:00.000+02:00

I'm having some problems with my home computer. I bought some new hardware and after I had installed the new stuff, the computer wouldn't start. I consulted with the friendly local computer shop guy, who was pretty sure I had managed to fry my motherboard, processor and display card. Replacements would cost 300 to 400 EUR. Yay! However, when I took the machine to the shop, it turned out that there was nothing wrong with the motherboard. So either 1) there's something wrong with the case, like a broken power source or 2) my computarr hardware kung fu is weak. I'll find out later today.

The L3 meeting last weekend was quite good. I think we could have used the time we had a bit more efficiently, but overall it was a useful weekend. We talked about L1/L2 training and community building, among other things. The hotel was very nice (huge towels, nice bed, decent fruit salad, waiter brings you coffee/tea at breakfast, a bunch of US marines in dress uniform wandering around - yes, they were marines and not bellboys with crew cuts), but the restaurant where we had dinner was suboptimal. I managed to pick the worst thing on the menu on both days (dry tuna and cold pizza).

OMG update

2006-11-08T16:40:00.000+02:00

I guess I should update this blog...I sort of forgot about it for a few weeks.

The Euro L3 meeting is this weekend. We're flying to Brussels on Friday afternoon and coming back on Sunday night. It should be a fun weekend. I'm looking forward to seeing all the European L3s in one place.

Another trip to Belgium is scheduled for January. The OP meeting will be in Antwerpen this time. I booked my flight today. I chose the earlier of two HEL-CPH flights connecting to the same CPH-Brussels flight, because the later one had only 45 minutes of transfer time. I don't want to be in a hurry, so I'll get up at four in the morning, and drink more coffee in one day than in the past 28 years. And then I'll be very very excited about whatever new projects the WotC guys will be talking about. Wooooooooooooo!

Finally...I love the Take That Ultimate Tour DVD, and I'm excited about the forthcoming album. And I'm not ashamed to say that.

Fan fiction in the media, part 1

2006-10-06T09:39:00.000+03:00

Here's an article about sequels to classic works of literature written by modern authors - ie fan fiction: Problems of revisiting a classic at BBC News. It mentions the new Peter Pan sequel, Jean Rhys's "The Wide Sargasso Sea", and one of the worst Austen fanfic writers I've ever read, Emma Tennant.

Sporty Spice

2006-10-05T22:01:00.000+03:00

Wow, I feel good. Pasi and I went to the local gym to play squash. It's part of our New Life (tm). We have both been very lazy for some years, not getting any real excercise beyond occasional walks in the nearby park. We're planning to play squash at least once a week. It's a very good workout, and the gym is quite close to our apartment. Right now I feel great, but I suspect that tomorrow my "muscles" will be crying bloody murder. When it comes to sports, I like to feel that I'm doing more than just jumping around - racquet sports, martial arts and horseriding are pretty much the only sports I've really enjoyed. I don't like aerobics or running. Team sports were sort of fun when I was in school, not that I was anywhere close to being a first pick.

More Time Spiral

2006-09-25T15:26:00.000+03:00

I was excited about the attendance on Saturday (48 at my store, 27 plus a side draft at Safe Haven, the other store), but Sunday was even better: a 63 player main event at Safe Haven and four side drafts! The store was packed and every chair in the place was in use. DCIR V3 was buggy as hell, but I had a great time and didn't mind having to go home at 22:00.

Time Spiral

2006-09-23T20:43:00.000+03:00

Wow. I expected to get about 20 players for my Time Spiral prerelease, because the store usually get between 10 and 20. I had product for 24.

48 players showed up.

I registered the first 24, instructed a fellow employee to get them seated for deck registration, told the remaining players that we'd start another event in 40 minutes, and dashed to the warehouse to get extra product.

It seems that attendance was very good in other parts of the country as well. This set is bringing various legendary veterans out of retirement. My event had a few players I did not expect to see, and at Safe Haven they had Tommi Hovi and Jarnis (very few non-Finns know him, but those who do will never forget). I also had plenty of new players. Looks like this set isn't going to kill Magic after all!

The set itself looks amazing. It has Drew Tucker artwork, wacky reprints, a Lotus and some very cool mechanics. I can't wait to draft with it.

Another 15 minutes of fame

2006-09-18T16:03:00.000+03:00

This one is for my Finnish readers: the new issue (#4) of Roolipelaaja, (a Finnish gaming magazine that mostly deals with tabletop roleplaying games, but also larp, board games, miniature games and *gasp* even collectible card games), has a four page story about Magic. About half of that is an interview with me. It's a decent article: the author gets the facts right and doesn't misquote me. He does mention that Magic is a game about powerful dueling wizards, which I always find irritating because I don't know any Magic players who think about the game that way. The "dueling wizards" thing doesn't tell you anything interesting about the game.

Worlds!

2006-09-14T23:26:00.000+03:00

The sponsorship results for Worlds are out, and I got a room sponsorship. I'm disappointed because Pasi was not accepted, but I'm also really excited about this event. I've done Worlds twice before, and both events were amazing. There are many good people on the list and I really look forward to working and hanging out with them.

Fangirl confessions

2006-09-08T11:13:00.000+03:00

I just watched the recent documentary on Take That. Yes, it's time to reveal one of my dark secrets: ten years ago, I was a fan. I no longer have posters on my walls and thanks to Pasi, my taste in music has also moved on, on but I still loved the documentary.

It was interesting to see how these five guys felt about their time in Take That and see some old footage (these guys seemed to always have a video camera with them), the kind of stuff they wouldn't put on the official videos back in the day. It showed the dark side of their high life: drunken ramblings, disgusting jokes, being dragged by bodyguards through a crowd of teenage girls who are trying to rip their clothes off, making cruel comments about those fans in the safety of the tour bus. It wasn't particularly shocking though, because in the past 10 years I've spent enough time with twentysomething males to know how they tend to behave.

Living that life and then quitting it would probably mess with anyone's head. Howard Donald revealed that he had considered suicide when the band broke up. Jason Orange seems to not have any idea what he's supposed to be doing with his life now, and claims to have been an insomniac for the past 15 years. Robbie Williams still seems to incredibly bitter. The one with the most happy and normal life seems to be the songwriter Gary Barlow, who is now married with two kids.

The friendship between the five guys was always very appealing to fans. They seemed like a very tight group, they had a weird sense of humor, and in interviews they'd appear all piled on a single sofa with arms around each other's shoulders and a lot of weird touching going on. They were always ambiguous about their sexuality because it was good business, and I'm sure that if the band had happened ten years later, there would be lots of really bad slash fanfic all over the Internet (I don't intend to investigate this matter). It was nice to see from this documentary that they really were good friends at the time, not just coworkers. The reunion scene was genuinely touching, especially the part where the guys hear that Robbie is not going to show up and then watch his video message.

The documentary was made about a year ago, and since then the band (minus Mr. Williams) has done a hugely succesful reunion tour. You'd think that nobody would want to see a bunch of 35 year old guys dance around in silly outfits, but judging by the clips on Youtube, it was great. Those guys always knew how to put on an entertaining live show. There's a new album in the works, and I'm totally planning to buy it when it comes out. Laugh at me if you want to, see if I care :)

No Slovenia for me

2006-08-31T10:20:00.000+03:00

Slovenian Nationals is next week. A few days ago they were still looking for a L3 HJ, and I applied. However, flights from Helsinki to Ljubljana are very expensive and the distributor couldn't afford to bring me (or any other L3).

Sometimes HJs for some European National Championships events are hired very late. If you ever find yourself in such a situation, don't assume that the distributor has taken care of everything and you just need to show up. Organized play managers tend to not have long careers (they leave the company, or move on to other things inside the company), so it may be that you're dealing with a person who has never organized a Nationals before. Even if they have been at the job for some years, they may have different assumptions about how things are going to be done.

Here's a list of things I'd check before going to a foreign Nationals:
- How many players are expected
- How many other judges are coming
- Will these judges also handle side events
- Are you expected to test any of these judges, or to have open judge testing
- What other staff will be present
- Is the draft product already stamped, and if not, who will stamp it (always, always check this)
- Does the distributor have basic land and decklist forms for the drafts
- Details of your compensation (travel, accommodation, food, other)

The Epilogue of Excitement

2006-08-28T18:50:00.000+03:00

In my last post, I was at a PTQ. The ending of that event was not very exciting...the UB deck won, my L2 candidate did not pass his test yet, and I went home, had some cake and went to bed.

The next day was our wedding arriversary. After I flew home from Oulu, we took the ferry to Tallinn, Estonia. We had dinner at Olde Hansa, a "medieval" restaurant. The staff is dressed up in pseudo-medieval clothes, a live band plays medieval music, and the food seems to be somewhat authentic. Since the weather was warm, we sat outside at the "terrace" under a cloth canopy. It was lit with candles and there were even woollen blankets availabe if you felt too cold. I liked the bathrooms, too: the door says "Dansker", the seat is wooden, and instead of tap and sink, they have a brass pot and a ceramic bowl for washing your hands. We had game sausages (made from deer, elk and bear) with some side dishes that were a bit too sweet for my tastes (berries, onion jam and such). The place is definitely worth a visit if you happen to be in Tallinn.

After dinner, we walked to the nearest supermarket and bought various sodas, mineral waters and alcoholic beverages to take home. Good times!

Live coverage

2006-08-26T13:36:00.000+03:00

I'm running a PTQ at the University of Oulu. I have 20 players, a TO (who's also L1), and I'm expecting another L1 to show up soon for his L2 test. The University was built in the 70s and it's exceptionally ugly. The walls are painted with lovely colours such as orange, green, purple and yellow. It's all concrete, noticeboards and endless hallways. The University of Helsinki (my alma mater) has some ugly facilities, but at least we have the nice neoclassical buildings in the center campus, with their fake Greek statues and antique wooden benches in the auditoriums.

14:28

I'm running this PTQ with DCIR v3. Since the software is not exactly bug-free yet, I'm also running v2 as a backup. It's a good thing that I did, because when I tried to enter results for round 1, only the 1-0 and 0-1 buttons were available. After staring at the tournament setup screen for a while, I noticed that v3 had mysteriously decided that this was an Axis&Allies tournament...

So, I created another event and entered all the players while recording results in v2. Then I did an ordered pairing based on v2 and entered all the results again. I was done before the end of round 2.

15:24

At the beginning of round 3, we picked up a table for a deck check. After we (the L2 candidate and myself) had settled down to look at the decks, a third player came to us and asked whether his opponent from the previous round was still present. Unfortunately, that person had already left with the third player's Faith Fetters. We tried first to find another copy for him, but when a fourth player came to tell us that he was missing a card, I just instructed the other guy to make his own proxy. I told the L1s to finish the deck check and helped the last guy figure out that he was missing a swamp. No penalties were issued: the deck checks were clean and the other two players had both informed a judge about their problems before presenting their ecks.

16:00

Mmmm...pizza.

18:55

The L2 candidate is calling the top 8 draft. One of the guys in the top 8 had never seen a Coldsnap card before opening the first pack of this draft.

Stay tuned...or don't

Skip this if you don't like Jane Austen (part 3)

2006-08-21T21:46:00.000+03:00

By popular demand! Or because Seamus asked about it a couple of times on IRC! The return of Skip this! TADADADADAAAA!

Here's a link to the previous episode!

The modern story always contains certain recognizable scenes in some form. There is the first meeting (the Assembly), which can be almost anything and is often related to the working life of the characters. There is the Netherfield scene, in which Jane is injured and both sisters are forced to spend time at Bingley's home. There may be a party scene that resembles the Netherfield ball. Since Charlotte rarely marries Collins, the Hunsford scenes and the first proposal often have a quite different setting, without changing the actual events and conversations. Since the fandom loves Colonel Fitzwilliam, he often gets more “screentime” and a chance to hook up with Charlotte.

The proposal itself isn't always a proposal of marriage, of course. The result is still the same, and the letter may be an e-mail or a shouting match. Then Elizabeth and Darcy are separated for a while, until they accidentally meet on his home ground (but not always his country estate). Elizabeth changes her mind about Darcy, who helps her deal with some kind of crisis (sometimes involving Lydia, sometimes involving Elizabeth herself) and drops some hints at Bingley in case he didn't already get together with Jane. Finally, our hero and heroine act out the second proposal scene, usually in a bedroom. Modernizations may contain varying amounts of sex.

It is a theory by no means universally accepted that Elizabeth felt a physical attraction to Darcy from the start. Many fans do support this theory, as does the recent movie adaptation. In the modern fan fiction stories, Elizabeth always finds Darcy physically attractive from the first moment she meets him (and sometimes even before that, if he happens to be a famous actor or musician). Of course their relationship gets physical long before they get married, and sometimes even before they have worked out their problems. In some stories, they have one night stand after the “Assembly” scene, which helps to create some tension between them when they pretend that a one night stand is all they wanted.

Tastefully done sex scenes (it can be done) are a good thing, but sometimes (well okay, most of the time) fan authors just go overboard with the Hawt Sexx. A common cliché in both modern and Regency-based stories is that Darcy is so incredibly attracted to Elizabeth that he can barely stop himself from ravishing her every time they meet, and he can't quite control his “body's responses to her” (read: raging erections). A Darcy whose internal monologues are entirely focused on his sexual fantasies gets quite boring really fast.

Reading fan fiction means that you have to browse through huge amounts of trash to find a few treasures. In the next episode of Skip This, I shall give you a few of my favourites.

Random news

2006-08-08T09:47:00.000+03:00

I've been pretty busy lately.

Finnish Nationals was held last weekend; our new champion is Max Sjöblom, a member of the mysterious team STR. We had the usual little problems before the event, like when I was putting together the product for the sealed deck last chance qualifier. I asked "where are the tournament packs?" and the reply was "we don't have any".

Oops, heh.

A few frantic phone calls later we had rounded up 50 tournament packs from local stores, which I expected to be enough. It turned out to be more than enough, because we got only 28 players for the sealed LCQ, and 38 for the standard LCQ (47 and 56 in 2005).

The main event was very smooth. The staff worked hard and the two Russian volunteer judges, Eugene and Irina, were very good. I'm sure our local L1s benefitted from working with judges from a different country. Pasi was HJ, and I was pseudo-event manager/team leader/certification person. Because of my event manager responsibilities, I couldn't fully concentrate on evaluating everyone, but there was nothing we could do about that.

This weekend is Ropecon, my personal hell.

When not planning for Nationals or Ropecon, I have been watching episodes of the (new) Battlestar Galactica. I thought it would be a fluffy space opera, with silly uniforms and possible rubber aliens (I haven't seen the original). It turned out to be much smarter and darker than I expected. Some of the early episodes are kind of weak, but after the first half of season 1 it just keeps getting better and better. One of the cool things about BSG is the way they play with genres: there's a "cop show" episode, a "lawyer show" episode, a "West Wing" episode, and so on.

Finally, I have a new toy. We received a "company is doing well so here's some extra cash" bonus this month, so I bought myself an iPod nano from the computer shop across the street. I took it home, put some songs on it, listened to it for a whole day before it died and wouldn't come back to life. I took it back to the shop where the repairs&returns guy mocked my Skills for a while (which he's allowed to do because he's a former Magic player and we've known each other for years) before conceding that it was broken and gave me a new one. The iPod #2 seems to be working fine.

Feature Tuesday

2006-07-25T18:37:00.000+03:00

MY almost all-new Feature Friday article is here at Starcity. This one is even listed with my own name and picture! Please read and comment.

¬_¬

Ramlösa

2006-07-25T16:15:00.000+03:00

I'm back from GP Malmö, one of the most difficult GPs ever. The venue was a strangely-shaped former slaughterhouse. It had a relatively low ceiling and no air conditioning. The weather was hot and we put 500 gamers in the room. We did not have a comfortable weekend. I developed a great appreciation for Ramlösa, the local carbonated mineral water. It saved lives.

I was deck check lead on on day 1. I didn't have a good day - it took us almost three rounds to count, sort and check the master list. There are several explanations for this, but the heat was probably a factor.

We were doing the counting in the side events room, where the temperature and humidity was even higher than in the main hall. On day 2, I got to spend the whole day there as side events manager. We were understaffed, everyone was tired (including me), and I could have organized the whole thing a lot better, but somehow I got through the day and keep everyone more or less alive. At the end of the day I had the unpleasant duty of disqualifying two players, which increased my stress level.

I think I want to spend the rest of the week sipping cold drinks in a bathtub filled with ice.

#mtgjudge for the win

2006-07-18T18:25:00.000+03:00

I tried to order basic land trays for my Nationals, which is something I do every year. I knew I should have ordered earlier, but I was pretty sure that WotC could still ship them on time. I didn't expect to hear that WotC.be was out of basic land trays and there wouldn't be more until Time Spiral.

So what am I going to do, open some tournament packs? WotC suggested asking my TOs to return lands that they were given for the Coldsnap prereleases. Go on, imagine my reaction to that idea.

I whined and moaned about my situation on #mtgjudge, and within minutes I had two offers for land trays. Thomas Ralph (from Ireland) offered to send one by mail, and Falko Görres (from Germany) promised to personally deliver a tray to me at GP Malmö. How awesome is that?

Thanks guys! You rock! Hooray for the Internet!

This week on the Magical websites

2006-07-12T09:28:00.000+03:00

It's not really that important to me what exactly goes in the next basic set, but I'm still participating in Selecting 10th Edition. I'm not voting based on what I think should be in T2 (because, as many people have pointed out, it's a whole new format when 10th Edition comes out), I just pick the cards I'd like to play (but probably never will). I voted for Baloth, Warhammer and Kird Ape (I don't think I voted for Hurricane/Earthquake). The land votes are really boring to me because (at least this week) we just get to choose from four really similar-looking lands by the same artist. Sure, all the John Avon mountains are pretty, but they're all in the same style. I don't care much for any of the Anthony Waters Forests. Bleh.

The art sketch votes are all depressing, because my favourite never wins. But then again, I'm a Drew Tucker fan.

Meanwhile, on Starcitygames.com, we get to enjoy Rich Hoaen's drafts. Even though this series is rather light on content, it's kind of fun to try to guess his picks. Often I have no idea why he's taking certain cards and I'm too lazy to read the forums beyond the first few posts that are available at 10 AM in my timezone. I think his record for this series is now 9-9-2 or something like that, which must be close to my record on the 4-3-2-2 RGD queues on MODO. Heh.

Finally, I'm finishing up the first draft (as in "version", they're not replacing Hoaen with me) of my next Feature Friday, which will go live next week just before GP Malmö. I want to get this one right, so we're taking a full week for the editing process.

E-mail etiquette

2006-07-07T11:15:00.000+03:00

Answering and writing e-mails is a huge part of my job. I get very annoyed when people fail to grasp basic e-mail etiquette. Here are some of my pet peeves:

1. Replying to an old e-mail instead of creating a new message and not changing the subject line

If I can't remember someone's e-mail address, I usually find an old e-mail from that person and click "Reply". Then I clear all fields and write my message. Some people don't bother to do this, so I'll get e-mails about Time Spiral with the subject line "Re: Re: Darksteel prerelease".

2. Randomly changing the subject line

I often send e-mails to a large group of people. I'll ask them to reply before a certain date, and after that date I look at all the replies and make the order or whatever it happens to be. If your reply has a completely different subject line, there's a good chance that I won't see it when the time comes to sort by subject line and put together an order. One of my TOs insists on adding the name of his store to the subject line of all his replies, which is totally unnecessary and messes up the sorting.

3. Non-descriptive subject lines

Some of my favourites: "Hi", "Stuff", "A comment", "now". The subject line might not matter when I first get the e-mail, but it will matter two months later when I'm trying to find the e-mail again.

Do whatever you want with personal e-mails, but these are business e-mails. The subject line has a purpose. It's important. Use it to make everyone's life easier!

4. Improper quoting

I should probably blame stupid e-mail clients for this, but I used Pine for years and for me the only proper way to show quoted text is this (quoted text is in bold):

------
>This is stuff you wrote
>I'm quoting it here, looky look
>Blah blah blah

And this is my writing here
Hooray
------

Brackets! Must have brackets! But some evil folks with inferior e-mail clients end up with stuff like this:

---
This is stuff I wrote
I only know this because it looks so familiar
And because I know how to spell and they don't

And this part is their reply

Here's my stuff again

And here's their reply again
----

So when I reply using the proper format, and they reply without brackets, and we get a nice unreadable e-mail. I've been using e-mail for more than 10 years and I'm conditioned to ignore lines that start with brackets because I know I wrote those lines. BSG and some other geniuses do this:

----
>Do you want to do this event? yes
>When do you want to do this event? 1st of Sep
>
>How many players do you expect? 12

I don't know...this game is not very popular yet
----

Before I learned to look for these end-of-line -replies, I just didn't see them and I'd keep asking BSG the same question until he replied without quoting.

5. Not signing your e-mails

Sure, I can see your name on the From-line, but you should still sign your e-mails. For my business e-mails, I have a signature that contains my name, job title, e-mail address and phone number. For my personal e-mails, I use a .sig simply contains my name and e-mail address (and I sometimes add other information such as my judge level when posting to certain mailing lists). The standard signature goes on the bottom of my e-mails, and if I'm top-posting (ie. there's quoted text between my message and my .sig), I add a simple " - Johanna" or other small signature.

If you're using an e-mail account that is used by multiple people (a store account, for example), ALWAYS sign your name so that I know whether I'm dealing with the owner of the store or just a random lackey.

That's enough ranting for one day. In other news, GP Malmö sponsorship result are out, and Pasi and I both received partials. Two other Finnish judges are also going, which is nice.

Return to civilization

2006-06-27T11:02:00.000+03:00

I'm back from my little internet-free holiday. Björkholm island was good times. After three days of eating, drinking, sleeping and sitting in the sun, I have a (very light) tan and a respectable collection of mosquito bites. We saw some cute animals (bunnies! baby Eurasian oystercatchers! ) and tried to kill some less cute ones, like the mosquitos.

We also tried to kill some fish, but we didn't have much luck catching them. Pasi managed to get a small perch, but after letting it swim around in a bucket of water for a while, we threw it back in the sea. We also released the rest of the bait-worms (those worms were in a can, make up your own joke).

I might post some pictures later, because I know you all want to see pictures of the baby oystercatcher.

Midsummer adventure

2006-06-20T14:44:00.000+03:00

This week Scandinavians celebrate Midsummer. Like I told you last year , Finns celebrate this event by going to their summer houses in the country - cottages without Internet, electricity and plumbing. This is what Pasi and I are doing this year. We are joining his parents, sister and brother-in-law on a small island, where they have rented two little cottages. We will eat, drink and hopefully set something on fire. Fires are good. Fires are pretty. No, I'm not thinking about the cottage. I just need to burn something because it's Midsummer.

We'll leave on Thursday morning and come back on Sunday afternoon, so for a few days I won't be online at all. It's going to be good for me. I'm bringing a good book and a couple of bottles of wine. Yay!

Torino stories

2006-06-16T10:19:00.000+03:00

My Torino report is now posted at Starcitygames.com. This is my second Feature Friday article and already Seamus is calling me the "superstar Finn". Weird.

I won't wait until next month to tell the story of Creepy Italian Guy (irc folks have already heard it). On the first day of GP Torino, I met this random guy while taking a break. He came up to me and started talking, I don't remember exactly how he started the conversation or what he said because I wasn't paying that much attention at the time. Random players talk to me at the events all the time and I just try to be friendly with them. However, later I found out that before talking to me, this dude had been talking to Frank Wareman and Oli Bird. He had asked them about the judges' work schedule and our hotel, and told them that he wanted to "score" with a female judge.

Frank and Oli wouldn't tell me all the details of the conversation, and they had even told the guy that "all female judges at this event are married" (which was true), but that didn't seem to bother Creepy Italian Guy at all. Knowing all this, the conversation I had with CIG took a rather creepy tone, as I suddenly realized why he was asking whether I'd had dinner yet. I spent the rest of the weekend avoiding him, which was easy enough, as he wore rather bright-coloured shirts.

The food at this tournament venue was pretty good. There was a big selection of different types of Italian sandwiches, and the ones I tried were very tasty. They also offered a few microwaved pasta dishes that were edible enough and slices of weird-looking pizza. There was a hot dog cart, but who wants a hot dog when you have other options?

In addition to the food vouchers that could be used to buy aforementioned sandwiches and pasta, all judges got a snack box. The snack box is one of Danny Brosens' (Wotc.be event manager guy) best ideas; it's a box that contains chocolate bars, candy, some cakes and half a dozen small bottles of water and juice. The drinks are the best part - they make it easier for judges to stay hydrated. And the Mentos makes it easier for us to stay FRESH!

Here's something mildly amusing that happens at all GPs: when Day 1 is finished, the judges need to set up the playing area for Day 2. This usually involves breaking up some long rows of tables, moving some tables and chairs, and putting up tensabarriers. Now, usually the HJ or the event manager knows how he wants the tables to be set up, and he instructs a small group of judges on what to do.

So then this small group of judges does what they're told and starts removing table cloths and carrying away tables. For a while every works fine. Then other judges start gathering around. They see the Diligent Judges Who Know What They're Doing diligently working. Some of them think "I was not asked to help so I instead I will go stand near the stage and look busy". Others think "My colleagues are working hard! I must help them!" Then the latter group, the Diligent But Clueless Judges, start "helping" the Diligent Judges Who Know What They're Doing. Inevitably the Clueless Judges will start removing tablecloths and tables that were not meant to be removed. Then, for extra fun, the Diligent Judges Who Know What They're Doing see the Clueless doing something, and instead of saying "hey, those tables should stay", they assume that the Clueless also Know What They're Doing and start helping them. The result is a bunch of confused judges and a completely random arrangement of tables. Then the HJ or the event manager explains again what he wanted, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Aeroporto

2006-06-05T15:23:00.000+03:00

Greetings from Torino airport. I've done some shopping, converting my judge foils into Italian wine, tomato sauce, olive oil, chocolate, pesto and rice (okay, maybe a Magic dealer was involved in this transaction), and I'm now waiting for my flight home. I have a window seat and the weather is nice, so I'm looking forward to a nice view of the Alps.

The GP itself was good times, but way too long. Too much good times can be bad for you and your feet.

I'll finish this with a Fruit Salad Review: the Torino Novotel offered a nice fruit salad containing the holy trinity of fruit salad ingredients: kiwi, pineapple and strawberries. My only complaint is that they didn't have any fruit salad on Sunday morning.

Shoes and hair

2006-05-29T14:47:00.000+03:00

I'm getting ready for another exciting GP trip. Tomorrow I'm going to shopping for new Shoes of Judging. My goal is to find nice-looking black shoes that don't turn into torture devices after a few hours. I know from experience that this is not going to be easy. If I find a comfortable pair of shoes, it's usually pink with dark brown stripes. If I find a black pair of shoes, there's usually high heels and not enough room for 33% of my toes.

On Wednesday I'm getting my pre-event haircut. I've never been a great supporter of the hair-cutting industry, because a messy ponytail was good enough for a student and it's also good enough for someone who sits in a basement all day. Still, I try to get a hair cut before most GPs and PTs. My haircut place is next door to the local Magic shop, which sounds convenient but is really not.

My third pre-event ritual is buying some food for the Friday (Thursday, this time) judge meeting. Last time I brought black sweet liquorice and people seemed to like it, so I might do that again.

It's blue badadadibibidababaa

2006-05-24T15:17:00.000+03:00

I changed the template for this blog (hi Nick!). I hope it doesn't make anyone's eyes bleed or cause nausea or anything unpleasant like that. Woo!

A good old fashioned Bad Store Guy story

2006-05-23T18:12:00.000+03:00

My old friend BSG is helping one of his former employees to start a new store. He sent me an e-mail and told me that the New Store would take over all organized play activity of the Bad Store, meaning that we should just treat the new place as a continuation of his business (which would have both advantages and disadvantages for the new guy). He also wanted to order a certain event kit for the New Store.

Since we had not heard anything from the New Guy yet, I told him that I'd be happy to tell NG about the event kit once he contacted us and told us more about his store (a phone number and e-mail would be nice for starters). BSG told me that it's really my job to contact this new store, but he would pass on the message. I told him that our Telepathic Department is a bit overworked right now.

Soon after this, the New Guy sent us an order for some product and asked if he could have JSS support for this weekend. Sorry, it doesn't work that way.

Then BSG e-mailed me again and wanted to order the event kit for another one of his stores. I asked for an organizer ID, and he said "use mine". I asked him for his organizer ID and I also asked whether he had done sanctioned events for this particular CCG manufacturer before. He replied "I'm not sure whether it was me or [New Guy]" (this meants that he doesn't have an ID), and he also said that I should just use New Guy's ID for events in both stores (BSG's store in another city, and New Guy's New Store), and they would "figure things out".

So I'm supposed to trust this guy who obviously doesn't give a crap about proper sanctioning procedures to "figure things out" in a system that requires TOs to not be idiots, and to use the event kits the way the CCG manufacturer wants them to be used. (Un)fortunately I don't have that kind of faith in these folks.

The Arockalypse

2006-05-22T20:07:00.000+03:00

Finland won the Eurovision song contest. FINLAND won. Bringing home the victory was a bunch of guys in rubber monster masks, singing about the "Arockalypse". How cool is that?

I'm not supposed to actually care about the Eurovision song contest, but damn, it was fun to mock the crappy ballads and dance pop disasters and then see almost every country give points to Lordi (Armenia, Albania and Monaco, you're so not invited to the party). The Finnish commentators sounded like they couldn't believe their eyes. Pasi is already talking about getting tickets for the 2007 show.

Today I got two e-mails from WotC people, congratulating me on the win, and even the UDE guy who was visiting us mentioned it. Everyone pretends to not care about the ESC, but we all love it when our favourite wins.

Kippis

2006-05-19T09:22:00.000+03:00

My first Feature Friday article. I hope you enjoy it.

Back from Prague

2006-05-08T17:58:00.000+03:00

We have just returned home from Prague. While the tournament itself had some bad moments for me, this trip was one of the best vacations I've ever had and the good moments definitely outnumbered the bad ones. I got to do some fun things during the event and I had some good conversations with other judges. I met some IRC people that I had not met before (hi Clariax! hi Barrin!) and some old friends. Also, Matt Tabak wouldn't stop following me around.

I have a lot to say about the event, but I'll save most of it for Feature Friday. I'm really pleased that Seamus asked me to contribute, and I hope to have something interesting to say every month.

I might share some stories about the Sunday night judge dinner later, but for now I'll just give you this: don't touch the absinth. It's banned in most countries for a good reason.

You sit in very nice car! Skoda!

2006-05-03T17:20:00.000+03:00

Greetings from Prague! The weather is nice and the city is beautiful, and we're having a great time.

Last night at the airport we did exactly what we were not supposed to do, and hired a random cab driver who came to talk to us while we were trying to figure out public transportation. He offered to take us to our hotel for a price that was quite fair based on what we had been told. Before leaving the airport, I accidentally dropped my backpack which contained a bottle of vodka for Knut, and of course it shattered into a million little pieces. All the other contents of the backpack were soaked in alcohol, including my digital camera which briefly stopped working (but it's fine now).

If you want dinner, you'll have to cook it yourself

2006-04-27T21:45:00.000+03:00

I'm at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, returning home from the UDE OP meeting. This meeting was pretty much the same kind of event as the WotC OP meetings I have attended. There are presentations on various subjects, there's food and coffee, and there's some kind of "entertainment" in the evening followed by dinner.

This time the UDE folks had decided to combine the entertainment and the dinner, by taking us to a cooking class at a "Kookschool". Hehheh. First they served us alcohol, then they let us loose in a kitchen full of gas cookers and big semi-sharp knives. Luckily nobody got hurt and the nine course meal we prepared was actually pretty tasty. I helped make a salad with grilled chicken, glass noodles, onions and herbs. Everyone got to take home a nice apron with the UDE logo.

The venue for the meeting itself was a weird hotel. It seemed to be an old building; there were some nice old wooden staircases in the lobby. However, most of the place was decorated in a style that involves lots of black curtains, black paint and furniture that looks like it came from Ikea. All of the rooms had two levels: downstairs you had a table, some chairs and a TV, upstairs you had a bed. It was kind of cool, but not worth the price of 140 EUR (I'm so glad that I get to hand that bill to my boss). There was no fruit salad in the breakfast buffet, but they did have fresh pineapple wedges which is an acceptable alternative.

Plans

2006-04-23T15:16:00.000+03:00

This is how the next few months look like for me:

April 26-27: UDE meeting in Amsterdam

May 5-7: Pro Tour Prague (and we're flying in on the 2nd of May for some sightseeing)
May 13: NCQ in Lahti (I might go)
May 21: PTQ Charleston
May 27: NCQ in Seinäjoki (I might go)

June 2-4: GP Torino (I want to go)
June 24-25: Midsummer weekend

July: NCQs, PTQs, Coldsnap, GP Malmö (I will go)

August 4-6: Finnish Nationals
August 11-13: Ropecon

I have to organize the two biggest Magic events of the year on consecutive weekends. I know that I'm going to have staffing problems with one of them, and I'll probably want to take a vacation or quit my job afterwards.

The joys of domestic travel

2006-04-16T23:53:00.000+03:00

We visited my mother this weekend. She has recently moved to a new house; a nice little place with two bedrooms. Much better for her and brother Tarmo than the old place with the five bedrooms, two living rooms, two bathrooms, sauna, kitchen and a separate garage. We had some good times with my brothers and I won a game of Trivial Pursuit, because I know things like obscure area codes and Ancient Greek philosophers.

This afternoon I got a phone call from a SAS agent. She explained that my 20:55 flight was cancelled because of technical problems, and that I could get on a midnight flight, because families with children had priority for the earlier one. I said "okay" and didn't ask about compensation.

However, as soon as I put the phone down my bullshit detector started making tiny little beeping noises. I checked the airline website. The flight was listed as not cancelled, expected to depart and arrive on schedule. Am I going to trust the website or the weird phone call? My awesome instincts told me to trust the website, so I went to the airport at 20:00.

I checked in, and the person at the SAS desk gave me my boarding pass without a word about cancellations or delays. The airport was more crowded than usual, and most of the lights were out, and all the monitors were dead, so something weird was going on. But apparently it had nothing to do with my flight. I'm guessing that an earlier flight was cancelled, and SAS tried to make room for those people by telling me that I should take a later flight that may or may not exist. Thanks SAS!

I knew this would happen

2006-04-12T19:57:00.001+03:00

I have a new laptop!

I realized that I have an extra 1000 EUR in my bank account, so why not invest it wisely? The laptop will be very useful for tournaments and travel in general. It's a tax-deductible expense and everything. Yay!

I also bought a bag for it, which is almost as exciting as buying the actual laptop. Some people love shoes, I love bags. Wheeeee!

The rest of the day will be spent playing with my new toy. Hooray!

Turku

2006-04-07T15:13:00.000+03:00

Tomorrow I'm going to the beautiful city of Turku for a local gaming convention. The organizers asked me to run a Magic event for them. I've managed to borrow a laptop and I sort of know how to get to the venue. I don't know if I'll have paper, table numbers, pens or markers. I'm pretty sure I won't have a printer and I have been told that there's prize support, but I'm not exactly sure how that's going to work.

The train ride is going to cost infinite because I don't have a student discount card anymore and I really hope the laptop I'm borrowing can play DVDs so I can watch the West Wing (my current pop culture obsession). On Sunday night I'm going to Kabuki for dinner with Pasi and Duracel, so this is going to be a very expensive weekend for me. I should make it even more expensive by booking our hotel room for the Prague trip (for Tue-Wed). I'm also considering buying my own laptop...which I would only use at tournaments and for airport IRCing. Sounds entirely reasonable.

What was I talking about? The convention in Turku. This city hasn't had sanctioned tournaments for a while, so it would be nice if lots of players showed up, but on the other hand I'd like to get home before midnight. I'm hoping it will be a smooth event, but chaos and disorganization would make for a much more entertaining blog entry.

So, guess the next blog entry: a) What the hell was wrong with this convention b) Skip this if you don't like Jane Austen, part 3 c) Why I love the West Wing right now

¬_¬

Destroy all Penguins

2006-03-31T12:46:00.000+03:00

The results of the Fan Favourite vote have been announced. All the name-calling and accusations between the top four candidates was for nothing, because they are now all invited. After WotC had thrown away the obviously fake votes, Williams and Canali were the top 2. Siron and Cunningham got invites because two other invitees are unable to attend the event.

WotC is taking the blame for this one and promises that they'll use a better voting system next year. This year's invitational will have slightly more drama than the previous ones - as far as I can remember, the tone of the coverage has been pretty close to "Yay! Look at these guys, they are all GOOD FRIENDS and they love to hang out with each other and this is the friendliest tournament in the whole wide world!" Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I still don't want to see Siron's face on a card. He had the most fraudulent votes, and he just seems too desperate.

All Penguins are blue

2006-03-29T12:22:00.000+03:00

The current Magic Invitational scandal makes me a bit sad. The voting process has turned uglier than a presidential election.

For those who have been living under a rock (actually, my office is located in an underground warehouse, in a district of Helsinki called Kallio, "The Rock". Har har har har...anyway...), Geoffrey Siron of Belgium knew that he had a snowflake's chance in hell of getting the "Fan Favorite" vote, and decided to beg for more votes on various World of Warcraft forums. WotC decided to reject the results and make a revote due to "voting irregularities" (claiming that Siron was not the only one who was up to some funny tricks).

WotC made some unfortunate choices when setting up the revote. It was created as a poll on their messageboard, so voting would require registering a forum account. However, it is quite possible to create multiple accounts (you just need a few extra e-mail addresses) and thus vote multiple times. Another bad choice was to let us see current results. Obviously they had limited time to set this up, but they could have done better.

The discussion thread attached to the poll is quite unpleasant. It's full of accusations, name-calling, jealousy and general ridiculousness. Siron and some others complain that this poll is unfair to Europeans and the Japanese because it requires a forum account. Others complain that certain candidates are undeserving because they lack play skills, recent high finishes, pro points, whatever. Jeff Cunningham claims that on the French MTG forums, people are creating multiple accounts to vote with, and condemns Siron for doing something "unjust", while he did exactly the same thing on a poker forum. I find all of this disgusting.

I certainly don't mind if candidates ask other Magic players to vote for them. They want to go and that's okay. It's fine to post a note on your local MTG site and remind readers to vote (and perhaps tell them how to register and vote, if language is an issue). There was a note posted on the Finnish MTG site, but not by the candidates themselves. I don't believe that previous Invitational votes were perfectly clean, but this one is no longer the fun event it should be. There are going to be some bad feelings over the Fan Favourite vote, no matter what happens. I don't think it's going to reflect which two players truly are the favourites of the fans. Siron is a skilled player, but I don't want to see his face on a card.

As for the other invitational slots, I don't really care if certain categories seem to be set up to favor a certain candidate. The Invitational is a marketing tool for WotC and if they want to point us towards a guy they like, that's not the end of the world. I don't care if a less well-known but highly skilled player misses out on a slot because the fans chose a better known guy. I think it's okay to invite Mike Flores, for all that he has done for the game. My world wouldn't collapse if they let us vote for Chris freakin' Romeo. I think it would be entertaining to put one high level judge in the event. Entertainment is what I want. I want to see people that I like in the Invitational, otherwise I won't even bother finding the replays on MODO let alone staying up all night watching it live.

Skip this if you don't like Jane Austen, part 2

2006-03-19T19:43:00.000+02:00

Warning: this post is about Jane Austen fan fiction. If you are not interested in the subject, you should definitely skip this.

Still with me? Okay. Here we go, my two faithful readers.

I've been reading a lot of Pride&Prejudice fan fiction lately. The great difference between the Austen fan fiction scene and the typical TV show fandom is that JA fans do not need to care about intellectual property rights. Jane Austen is dead, and anyone is free to publish sequels to her works. In fact, plenty of published JA sequels are available on Amazon. Another difference is that the source material is not continually expanding, as is the case with TV shows that are still in production. In fact, the source material is very narrow, and even though we can assume that they are set in the same “universe”, characters from different novels don't usually appear in the same story.

Pride&Prejudice is by far the most popular of Austen's novels among fan fiction writers. P&P stories can be divided into two groups: stories that are set in the Regency world, and modernizations. Stories of the first type can be anything from short "missing scenes", sequels and prequels to what-if stories ("what if Elizabeth had accepted Darcy's first proposal", etc). Modernizations take the basic story and characters and move them to a modern setting. These kind of stories almost always rewrite the whole book and follow the story from start to finish.

I find modernizations of P&P to be interesting analyses of the book and its world. Some things are never changed, some things are often changed, and some things are not always present. Darcy is always a rich man. Quite often he is presented as a descendant of the “original” Darcy. Sometimes he is a workaholic who runs an international company, sometimes he is a millionaire artist with an aristocratic background. He has a Pemberley, an Aunt Catherine and a Reynolds as his housekeeper. His parents are dead and his sister was somehow involved with a Wickham.

Elizabeth and Jane, however, are adults who don't live with their parents anymore. They are free to have careers (unless they are college students), ex-boyfriends and pre-marital sex. To give them a social status that in some way corresponds to the original setting (and because fan fiction is fantasy), they are usually well-educated and have succesful careers. Charlotte Lucas no longer has to marry a Mr. Collins for the security and respectability that he offers. She too often has a succesful career (often academic or legal), and her unromantic character does not prevent her from enjoying casual sex.

Wickham usually makes an appearance (someone has to help Elizabeth form a low opinion of Darcy), but in some stories he doesn't get to run away with Lydia (who is sometimes barely mentioned simply because Jane and Elizabeth don't live at home), and sometimes he doesn't appear at all. My theory is that some authors want to omit this storyline because it's unpleasant, much in the same way that the modern Darcy often doesn't interfere in the relationship of Bingley and Jane (although he is also less likely to have objections to her social status in the modern era). They just want to concentrate on Elizabeth and Darcy and remove certain obstacles from their way.

In the next episode of Skip This, I talk about the structure and plot of the stories. And sex.

Lost ones and zeroes

2006-03-19T16:49:00.000+02:00

Mtg.bore.org is the main Finnish Magic site. Pasi and I are responsible for most of the content, while a guy called Rale from another city is the webmaster. We have been running the site since 2002, publishing tournament results and articles weekly. I use the site for official announcements and Pasi writes a weekly column.

A couple of weeks ago the site suddenly went offline. This was nothing new; Rale got the hosting services for free from a friend, and sometimes there were little problems. We had learned to live with that. However, this time it wasn't a little problem: a hard drive was very very dead, and with that, our whole archive of articles and reports was gone. Friend of Rale had told us that he makes regular backups, but...he lied. There were no backups.

We knew that all was not lost - we'd be able to salvage some of the content from Web.archive.org, Google cache and my e-mail archives. But now that the site is back up (with a new layout!), I realize that reposting old content is just too much work. Nobody wants to figure out how to bring back the old forum threads and article comments. A big part of Finnish Magic history is gone, forever.

I should probably make backups of this blog, just in case.

Prague ahoy

2006-03-16T10:01:00.000+02:00

Sponsorship results for PT Prague are out, and Pasi and I received room sponsorships. Jari, Finland's only L2, is also going as a volunteer, and in general #mtgjudge is very well represented on the list. Hooray! Some folks from the channel will be testing for L3, and I'm hoping to sit in on an interview or two.

The sponsorship announcement said that judges will be expected to help out with tasks that have nothing to do with judging - typing decklists for coverage, crowd control at the Pro Lounge, etc. While I'm not exactly looking forward to Pro Lounge babysitter duty, I'm okay with using judges for these jobs if it allows Andy to bring more judges to the Pro Tour.

PTQ Prague

2006-03-12T13:25:00.000+02:00

Yesterday we had a PTQ Prague with 52 players (the biggest PTQ for Prague in Finland). I was the head judge and Polari, who recently passed his L1 test, was my floor judge. The tournament ran quite smoothly. We used MJH's number pad for registration, and it worked great. I suspect it will work even better next time, when every player won't ask "You want me to enter my DCI number? On this number pad that I just saw everyone else use? You mean you want me to do it myself? Really?"

The only notable rulings were a game loss for tardiness after deck construction (the guy had not even started working on his decklist when I called time) and a match loss for Marked cards - Major. In the latter case, the guy was playing four colours. He had a Moroii as his only black card (and there was only one other blue card in the deck), and only a Dimir Aqueduct and a Dimir Signet to play it with. Both the Moroii and and the Aqueduct had distinctive nail-marks on the bottom of the sleeve, and I could pick them out every time. I considered this significant enough, so I gave the penalty for Marked cards - Major.

There was a German player in the tournament, and as I usually do with foreign visitors, I had a little chat with him (to make them feel welcome and to find out if they have any problems communicating). I introduced myself and the guy told me that he knew who I was because I'm famous! Hooray, fame at last! My German readers should be pleased to find out that Mr. Lehmann made it to the semifinals before losing to the absolutely ridiculous URb deck that won the whole tournament.

The most amusing moment of the tournament was when I was sitting at my little judge station and discussing the interaction of power and toughness-changing continuous effects (read: Humility and Graven Dominator) with some judges who were playing in the tournament. I said something like "okay, this is how it goes...." and the judge station was immediately surrounded by a group of players, one of whom yelled "Great! I want to hear this Humility stuff!". Players are weird.

By the time the tournament finished (around 11 pm), Pasi was already waiting for me at home, having returned from Honolulu just a couple of hours before. I talked the two finalists into giving me a ride home so I wouldn't have to wait for a train. Good times.

I'm doomed

2006-03-09T13:28:00.000+02:00

I'm not supposed to hate anything that makes money for the company (after all, I would like to keep this job and get my share of that money), but I can't help it - I love some games more than others. A certain card game loved by kids almost everywhere else in the world has been a minor player in the Finnish market for a long time. It seems that this is about to change, which means that I might have to learn a game in which I have absolutely no personal interest. I'm doomed.

Pasi is still in Hawaii. He 4-4'd the PT and didn't play any side events. He has been calling me regularly (I don't think we want to see his next phone bill) and telling me how much he misses me (awwwwww - I miss him too [awwwww]). Pasi will return home late Saturday night and hopefully my PTQ will be finished around the same time. Yay!

Magical dreams, part 3

2006-03-01T20:12:00.000+02:00

I had another wacky dream last night. In this dream I was (again) at a GP or a PT. At this event I meet legendary magician Kai Budde. He says to me "I'm bored and I'm going to move to Finland! You must help me find a job in Finland!"

Who am I to refuse the great Kai Budde? "What kind of job would you like", I say.

"I dunno, something easy! Like reading poetry for example"

While I consider this idea, we look at the display of Finnish books (including poetry) that is such a common sight at every GP. Suddenly I have a great idea!

"Kai, I think I know what would be a good job for you"

"Tell me"

"You could be a teacher of German language"

"You are right, that is a very good idea"

ATIWU.

Usually I have no idea where I get these things, but this time I have something of an explanation: last night I was browsing a pile of cards that included a Kai Budde Pro Player card. I'm going to blame that and the big steak dinner I had.

And Kai, if you're reading this - I'm not a psycho stalker, really. But if you ever get tired of poker or WoW or whatever it is that you do these days, I think you should give professional poetry reading a try.

Back to work

2006-02-28T21:38:00.000+02:00

I did not have Horrible Deadly Disease, and I'm feeling much better and working again. My inbox is quite full right now but things should be back to normal by the end of the week (unless I get sick again).

Pasi is leaving for Honolulu tomorrow morning. Today we visited a bookstore and looked for some airplane reading material. It's been a while since I last visited a good bookstore (airport stores don't count). The Akateeminen Kirjakauppa ("the academic bookstore") in the centre of Helsinki is supposed to be one of the biggest in Scandinavia. It's one of my favourite places in the city. Years ago when I had just moved to the area and didn't know anyone yet the bookstore was my favourite Saturday hangout. I browsed for hours and bought cheap Penguin Classics paperbacks and more expensive stuff when I had extra cash.

As usual, I couldn't leave without buying something. I found a Ursula LeGuin novel, Gifts, that I have not read yet, and she's one of my favourite authors. I've enjoyed almost everything she has written so far (except for the The Telling, the most boring book ever). LeGuin is best known for the Wizard of Earthsea books, but her "anthropological" science fiction stories are more interesting. I highly recommend the novels The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness. Changing Planes, a collection of fantasy short stories is also quite amusing but it also makes me admire her ability to create believable cultures.

I'm the person wearing a stripy shirt

2006-02-24T17:13:00.000+02:00

Here is the GP Dortmund staff picture: A ruling of judges, a herd of zebras .

This is sick

2006-02-22T15:05:00.000+02:00

After another uncomfortable night of coughing I finally dragged myself to the local "health center". I talked to a nurse who sent me to the lab for some tests and said I shouldn't go to work for the rest of the week. She also recommended lots of hot drinks and ibuprofen. The lab technician stuck an oversized cotton swab down my throat and told me to call back tomorrow to find out whether I have a Horrible and Deadly Disease.

GP Dortmund

2006-02-20T19:44:00.000+02:00

I have returned from GP Dortmund, which was not a good experience at all, thank you for asking. Short version: I was sick.

I arrived in Dortmund on Friday and found out that I had a roommate. This was surprising because there were no other female judges on the list and Wizards staff members usually get single rooms. I went to the site to meet people and see if I could help in anyway, and I discovered the identity of my mystery roommate...it was RichardD.

Danny of WotC came to explain that he forgot that there was a woman judge on the list and he just copypasted it and blah blah blah. Unfortunately the hotel was all booked, but he got me a room from another hotel on the other side of the venue. We had a good laugh about it and I told everyone that RichardD is a woman. Danny said that my new hotel was much nicer and more expensive (but it can't really be that expensive since the Finnish players were also staying there).

I couldn't really sleep in my nice and expensive hotel bed, because I had a fever. I took some ibuprofen and cold medicine in the morning, but I was still tired and weak for most of Saturday. There was a shady shuffler to watch and some interesting rulings, but I can't remember most of them anymore. Bleh.

Sunday was much better. My throat was sore and my voice was really hoarse, but otherwise I felt okay. I did judge certification with Christian, Philip and some L3 candidates, and we were pretty busy. It was fun but probably not very healthy for my voice.

My trip home was uneventful, but now I feel really crappy again and I have decided to not go to work tomorrow.

An edit for fruit salad fans:

Fruit salad review

Hotel Nice and Expensive had a very nice fruit salad buffet. That's right, a fruit salad buffet. You could mix your own salad from about ten different kinds of fruit, and they also had a pre-mixed salad. I added some fresh pineapple and watermelon to the pre-mixed stuff and it was good stuff.

Facts about Germany

2006-02-20T13:07:00.000+02:00

1. German taxi drivers love Finland

2. German catering workers are not allowed to speak English

3. Only two kinds of food are available in Germany: sausage and bread

4. Chuck Norris once visited Germany

Status update: Copenhagen

2006-02-17T15:14:00.000+02:00

My flight from Helsinki to Stockholm was okay (except for the smelly drunk Finn sitting next to me). I didn't have any trouble catching my flight from Stockholm to Copenhagen, and that one was okay too (except for the vomiting small child sitting in front of me). I would have missed my connecting flight to Düsseldorf, but luckily that's delayed too. Hooray!

On the way to Dortmund

2006-02-17T10:33:00.000+02:00

I'm at the Helsinki airport waiting for my flight to Stockholm...which is delayed 25 minutes! Hello and good luck!

Vote Antti Malin for the Fanatic

2006-02-10T09:26:00.000+02:00

The voting for the 2006 Magic Invitational has started. There's a new category called "The Fanatic", for people who really love the game and never stop playing. One of the nominees is Finland's national hero Antti E. Malin. This is the guy who rushed to play in a 15 card Highlander side event at Pro Tour London right after his PT semifinal. He is truly a living legend, and he even has his own fan club: EVERYONE LOVES MALIN!.

His mana curve starts at five, he steals blankets from airplanes, he is the Pro Tour Player and Level 1 Judge(TM) Antti E. Malin! Go vote for him!

Trial and error

2006-02-05T20:50:00.000+02:00

On this fine Sunday morning I woke up at 9 (way too early for a Sunday), skipped breakfast and dragged myself to the train station in the very refreshing -20C weather so that I could judge a GP Trial at the local shop. As usual, the local GP travellers begged for a Trial and swore that they would show up and play.

However, almost every time some of those very people stay home instead of coming to play. This time only 5 players showed up. The players wanted to draft, so the store guy (who was only there to open the door for us and collect the entry fees) locked the door and we did a double elimination draft with seven people. I drafted hideous combination of Orzhov and Golgari, because I can never resist big creatures, manafixing and Souls of the Faultless. It has such nice art, a cool mechanic and even a decent piece of flavor text, that I probably keep picking it much higher than I should. <3

February plans

2006-02-04T19:05:00.000+02:00

Wizards Europe confirmed my partial sponsorship for GP Dortmund, so I'm definitely going. Flights to Dortmund are very expensive, so I'm going to fly to Düsseldorf and take a train to Dortmund. I didn't feel like paying a few hundred extra for a direct flight or even a trip with a single layover, so I'm flying through Stockholm AND My Favouritest Airport Ever, Copenhagen. Surely I can't have bad luck again this soon, right? ¬_¬

The weekend before the GP will be spent in Seinäjoki, running a PTQ at the Fantasialinna store. I can get there by train, that's no problem, but getting back is a problem because there are no trains between about 9 pm and 2 am.

Tomorrow I'm doing a GP Trial, and last week I did a prerelease. Somehow I feel like I should be going to a PT at the end of the month.

Finnair FTW

2006-01-24T19:03:00.000+02:00

I finally made it to Brussels at 9:00 this morning, so I was able to see most of the presentations at the OP meeting. I had lunch and received the OP meeting shirt and a nice Magic pen/USB thingy.

At 17:00 I was back at the airport. My SAS flight was cancelled, but they put me on a direct Finnair flight, which means I get home earlier than expected. I have done my shopping (chocolate and alcohol), so I'm in a reasonably good mood again.

:)

I hate Denmark

2006-01-23T21:36:00.000+02:00

When I wrote my last post I didn't know when I would get out of Copenhagen, but I was still pretty sure that I would, in fact, get out.

No such luck. I will fly to Brussels at 7:10 tomorrow morning - OR WILL I?. In the meantime, SAS is paying for my taxi, my hotel room and my dinner. The dinner was mediocre, but my room is very nice. Incidentally, this place belongs to the same chain as the hotel I stayed at in Stockholm, where the room was below average but the dinner was excellent (completely uninteresting anecdote #1).

I spent about 7 hours at the airport, most of that standing in line at the transfer centre with hundreds of other unlucky travellers. One of them was my Estonian colleague Kaupo, who recognized me by my Pro Tour Amsterdam judge shirt (completely uninteresting anecdote #2). That was lucky for him, since he didn't have a cellphone and couldn't call the WotC guys to tell them what had happened to him.

In other words, life sucks.

The joys of international travel

2006-01-23T11:16:00.000+02:00

After waking up at 5 am and hopping on a plane at 7:25, I am now stuck at Copenhagen airport. My flight from Helsinki was delayed, but that's not why I'm stuck here - the SAS pilots are on strike - well, not on strike apparently - it's a "workplace meeting" or a group hug or something. Due to this "workplace meeting", we are told to expect "irregularities", by which they mean that every SAS plane is staying on the ground. Right now I have no clue when I'm going to get out of here. I visited the transfer centre, but there were at least 300 people in line before me, so I went for lunch instead.

My sandwich had a pickle in it. Thanks for ruining my day, random Danish sandwich maker.

In 2006

2006-01-22T18:19:00.000+02:00

I don't believe in New Year's resolutions, because they are always rather pointless and forgotten within the first month. However, I do have some vague plans for this year, and I will publish them here so that I may laugh at myself within 12 months.

Next week

I'm going to Belgium for the WotC Organized Play convention. It's a business trip that is a half business and half "entertainment" - last year the entertainment consisted of WotC guys shooting at the distributor representatives with paintball guns. Oh well, at least they always pay for the drinks afterwards. I'm also looking forward to buying some nice Belgian chocolate at the airport.

Next month

I have applied for GP Dortmund, because it might be the only GP I can attend before PT Prague. I'm really hoping to attend at least three GPs this year. I did four GPs in 2004 and only two in 2005.

I will buy the P&P DVD (released in early February in Europe) and write another analysis/rant about it.

Every month

Before I was L3 and had my current job, I used to judge almost every week. I was a student, I had random part-time jobs and judging was fun. Then I started working at Fantasiapelit while also trying to finish my thesis. I didn't want to spend my weekends at the card shop after working on magical things all week, so I stopped doing non-Premier events. Now that I'm done with school I have more time for Magic. It's clear that I don't judge quite enough these days, and I don't want to be a Level 3 who only shows up for the "important" events. I'm not going to go back to doing a tournament every Sunday, but I'm going to make sure that I judge at least one non-PTQ (GPT, prerelease) event every month.

Prague

I'm so going to be there.

Summer

The summer is once again going to be very busy - we'll have NCQs, Ropecon and even a Scandinavian GP. Finally they realized that nobody wants to travel to Scandinavia during the winter. Hooray! At Ropecon I will be in charge of all CCG events, and I'm also planning a small judge seminar.

Worlds in Paris

Would be so awesome.

By the end of the year

Right now there is only 1 Level 2 judge in Finland - Jari "duracel" Puranen, a good guy and the owner of many funny T-shirts (technically there's another L2, but he hasn't been really active for a while). The community could really use a few more Level 2's, but the problem is that most of the L1s have no interest in putting in the hours and work needed for promotion. I plan to encourage the most active ones and give them work whenever I can. Hopefully we'll have at least one new L2 by the end of the year.

Magical dream

2006-01-17T19:02:00.000+02:00

I don't feel like typing this again, so I'll just copypaste from mIRC.

[07:58] f-nuq wow
[07:58] f-nuq i just had the weirdest dream
[07:58] * f-nuq is now known as flame-
[07:58] TheCid irritiating irc thing ;/
[07:58] Natedogg2 What kind of dream?
[07:59] -Datatog- Ankh of Mishra {2} |Artifact| Whenever a land comes into play, Ankh of Mishra deals 2 damage to that land's controller. A,B,U,RV,4E,5E,6E-R [Legal in Vin Leg.](Yes, I had to ask Datatog for the card text because I couldn't remember what the Ankh does when I woke up)
[07:59] flame- i'm walking in a forest
[07:59] flame- trying to get somewhere
[07:59] Natedogg2 The other night, I dreamed I was Ric Flair and I was in a Ladder match against Edge. Beat that.
[07:59] flame- when i meet a walking, talking, singing...Ankh of Mishra
[07:59] flame- yes
[08:00] flame- it's like one feet high
[08:00] flame- but it's VICIOUS
[08:00] flame- and cunning
[08:00] flame- it's planning to kill me, so it starts following me
[08:00] ChocoCid you know you've judged magic too much when...
[08:00] Ag|Work Wow ...
[08:00] flame- i get a big stick
[08:01] Natedogg2 Just dont' play any lands. You'll be safe
[08:01] flame- and i push the fightin' Ankh of Mishra in the sea
[08:02] flame- first i see it swimming out there, but then it somehow disappears
[08:02] flame- so i know i have to run now because the ANKH OF MISHRA IS GOING TO GET ME IF I DON'T
[08:02] flame- aaaaand then i wake up

I don't know.

In 2005...

2006-01-11T13:10:00.000+02:00

In the year 2005...

...I judged at two Grand Prix tournaments

...I judged at two National Championship tournaments

...I judged at two Pro Tours

...I didn't judge enough non-Premier events

...I saved a 9E release event

I also...

...visited the Pokemon World Championships in San Diego

...dealt with some crazy Pokemon fans in my own country

...cried bitter salty tears when another company took over Pokemon Organized Play in Finland.

...dealt with a huge venue crisis just before Nats.fi

But it wasn't all work, because I....

...finally graduated , with a Master of Arts degree in English Philology

...married the most awesome guy ever

...narrowly avoided a terrorist attack

...was in a car crash in Los Angeles, and saw Dr. Phil's house

...had the best dinner of the year in Stockholm

I'd say that was a pretty good year.

Next up: vague plans and promises for 2006!

Hello and 2006

2006-01-01T00:21:00.000+02:00

Happy new year, friends and strangers!

Skip this one if you don't like Jane Austen

2005-12-30T15:34:00.000+02:00

I'm a big fan of Jane Austen and "Pride and Prejudice" is one of my favourite books. I also love the 1995 BBC mini-series adaptation of the book, so naturally I had very high expectations for the new P&P film starring Keira Knightley and Some Guy Who Is Not Colin Firth. This post contains spoilers, consider yourself warned.

Of course it's a bit unfair to compare the two adaptations. The 1995 version consists of six 50 minute episodes. The movie is just a little over 2 hours. The screenwriters of the 1995 version had more room to be loyal to the book and more time to show character development - and even so, the 1995 version could not include every scene and every conversation from the book. Of course being loyal to the source material does not necessarily make for a better movie, but at this point it's impossible for me to forget the book and judge adaptations solely as movies (or TV shows).

The good stuff

Keira Knightley as Elizabeth - I have nothing against Jennifer Ehle, but Keira Knightley is closer in age to Elizabeth, and also closer to what I imagined Elizabeth would look like. She was good.

Tom Hollander as Mr. Collins - This version of Mr. Collins was ridiculous in exactly the right way. He wasn't the oily-haired repulsive toad of the 1995 version, which also made him truer to the book. He was also closer in age to what he's supposed to be (he is described as a "young man") than David Bamber of the 1995 version. But they still gave him the bad hair he so thoroughly deserves.

The proposal scenes (except Bingley/Jane) - The two Darcy/Elizabeth proposals were very good (the first one tense, the second one sweet), and the Collins/Elizabeth proposal was funny.

The Letter - I liked that some of the Letter was turned into a face to face conversation, because it resulted in a longer Darcy/Elizabeth scene.

The cinematography - not that I really know what I'm talking about here, but it looked good.

The costumes and sets - Very nice. The Bennets were given a slightly less polished upper-class look than in the 1995 version, which was fine. It seemed more realistic to me. The homes of the rich were probably less clean and bright than some television adaptations would have us believe.

The cuts and the additions - In general, I was okay with everything that was cut from the script, and the minor "original" scenes were all good. I also liked the way certain scenes from the book were combined together to save time and make the story flow better.

The okay stuff

The other sisters - they didn't get much screentime, but they made the most of what they had. The actress who played Mary constantly looked like she wished she had more lines. This movie focused on Elizabeth at the expense of the Jane/Bingley storyline.

Judi Dench as Lady Catherine - Nobody can top the 1995 version. Judi Dench was merely an acceptable substitute.

That Guy Who Is Not Colin Firth as Darcy - Sorry, you are not Colin Firth. Matthew Macfadyen is a good-looking guy and he seems to be a decent actor. Unfortunately he was not given equal opportunity to really make the character his. More importantly, he does not have a swimming scene (but the rain scene certainly helps) and his hair is not curly. He did an okay job, but Colin Firth is the darciest Darcy that ever darced (I checked dictionary.com to make sure I didn't just say something I didn't mean. I should be safe).

The absence of certain minor characters - No Hursts, no Maria Lucas, very little Sir William Lucas, no named officers other than Wickham (unless they mentioned Colonel Forster by name and I'm not sure that they did). I didn't miss them, and there was simply no time to even introduce them.

Colonel Fitzwilliam is not cute - Although the book quite clearly mentions that Colonel Fitzwilliam is not particularly handsome, the 1995 version had quite a good looking Colonel. In the 2005 version we have a round-faced, older Fitzwilliam. Which is fine. Maybe the crazy Colonel-fanfic authors will stop now.

The could have been better stuff

The first proposal scene - Sure it's romantic and dramatic, but I think that the romantic-scene-happening-in-the-rain is a bit of a cliche. It's also more Brontë than Austen. Dramatic weather conditions, the environment, and passionate, half-dressed characters wandering around the countryside are not present in Austen's books.

The second proposal scene - It was too short. Is a kiss really too much to ask? Why didn't we get to see Darcy's "expression of heartfelt delight"? Why couldn't we have the scene that even the 1995 version doesn't have, namely the post-proposal conversation from Chapter 60 of the book?

Many critics seem to complain that passion doesn't belong in an Austen film, because characters who merely follow their passions end up ruined (Lydia etc), and the characters who choose their partner sensibly are the ones who end up the happiest. To quote my first year English Literature class lecturer, "If you think about Heathcliff and Catherine, you know that they probably had very passionate sex. But I can't imagine Darcy and Elizabeth having sex". Well, I can (maybe I have a dirty mind, or maybe you can blame Colin Firth), whereas I was thoroughly bored by "Wuthering Heights". Let's face it, Darcy's initial attraction to Elizabeth is physical, and these two are not dead from the waist down. Those who claim that Elizabeth has some kind of merely sensible, "I like him because he's a good guy" love for Darcy are, in my opinion, taking a too narrow view of the characters. These characters can be passionate. We don't need to see them rip each others clothes off onscreen (or even in fan fiction), but it's okay to give us a subtle reminder that the physical attraction is there.

...I want a kiss, dammit! They better have one for the DVD version!

Wickham - He's barely in the film. We don't really see him be the guy who charms half the village, we don't really see Lydia's interactions with him, and he walks around like he has a riding whip up his ass. As such, the whole Wickham storyline lacks some impact.

Mom and Dad Bennet - The 1995 Mrs. Bennet is at times over the top. In comparison, Brenda Blethyn wasn't outrageous enough. Donald Sutherland was okay as Mr. Bennet, but I prefer Benjamin Whitrow. This version of the Bennet marriage seems considerably happier than the 1995 or the book version. Of course it doesn't make the movie bad, but it might bother those who know the book very well.

The character development - The whole theme of Darcy's pride and Elizabeth's prejudice (and Darcy's prejudice and Elizabeth's pride) was not fully developed in this film. It seems to take the stance that Elizabeth never really disliked Darcy, and that Darcy never really was a proud snob. However, they didn't really have time for the full story.

The Pemberley visit - Elizabeth stares at the statue for an unspecified time period, and her aunt and uncle just disappear, and LEAVE Pemberley without her, so she has to WALK back to Lambton? This sequence was just weirdly edited.

Bingley - He was too...stupid in this movie.

The final verdict

It's as good as a two-hour adaptation can be. However, a two-hour adaptation can not do justice to the book compared to the excellent five hour version. It's still a very good film and worth seeing if you like Austen.

A judge's worst nightmare

2005-12-29T10:22:00.000+02:00

Popular culture tells me that it's common to dream about losing your teeth, about being naked in a public place, or being chased by something. While normal people may dream about these things, I keep having Magic-related dreams (and flying dreams. I get those all the time).

A couple of nights ago I dreamed that I was judging a Grand Prix. The judges were all hanging out at registration, when we suddenly realized that we only had about 20 players. How odd! GPs should be more popular than that! Then Jaap, our head judge, realized that we were at the wrong venue! How embarassing! (Of course this would never happen to Jaap in real life. He's too good ;)

So then we had to move to the correct venue. Naturally we would drive there in an armored tank, and Jaap put me in charge of shooting enemies! However, I wanted to stop and buy a soda, so then I had to walk the rest of the way. Finally we arrived at the venue and found the rest of the players there. We started setting up table numbers and it was already 11:00, so it's a wonder that those players didn't go home. And Then I Woke Up. I've had a few precognitive dreams before, and I hope this wasn't one of them.

Merry Christmas

2005-12-25T19:01:00.000+02:00

The Human Warrior* and I have been celebrating Christmas in the usual fashion: eating, drinking, sleeping and ircing. The Christmas Eve meal took place at Pasi's parents' place, and today we had our own dead pig feast at home. We decided to skip the traditional casseroles and just have potatoes, mushroom salad, cold-smoked fish and reindeer with the ham. Dessert was a home-made fruit salad made of pineapple, kiwi fruit, banana and apple (next time I'll add some watermelon or strawberries, which were unavailable this time). Cut fruit into small cubes, throw them in a bowl, add some fruit juice, fruit soda (Pommac) and a fresh lime juice. Nice.

Pasi gave the first season of "Lost" on DVD, and we have already watched the first three episodes. It's very creepy in a good way. It could be my new favourite show.

On Friday we saw the Narnia movie. I was worried - the reviews in the local papers were not positive, and I thought they might focus too much on the "memorable" battles from the book. Fortunately that wasn't the case. Sure there were extra action scenes and the final battle was onscreen more than it was in the book, but it was not too much, and I felt that the extra stuff was necessary for the flow of the movie. I could have done without the Fox character (who is not in the book), and movie Peter's "I don't know if I can do this" routine was annoying, and more so than movie Aragorn's uncertainty about his destiny. The Christian allegory didn't bother me, as I expected it to be there and was able to ignore it. Earlier this year when I reread the books it bothered me more.

* I'm not sure if I've blogged (hi Nick!) this story before, but some time ago Pasi had a dream in which he changed his name to "Human Warrior". Since our surname is pretty much the Finnish equivalent of "Smith", I wouldn't mind if he did this in real life... >:D

The Prague puzzle

2005-12-19T16:32:00.000+02:00

The PTQ Season for Prague starts on the 1st of January, and ends on the 19th of March. I have three slots for the whole country, so I should have no trouble fitting them into this timeframe. That's the theory. I'm in a small country with a small pool of potential PTQ players and I want to maximize attendance not putting two PTQs on the same weekend, and avoiding consecutive weekends if possible. The format for this season is Sealed, which is usually more popular than the Constructed formats.

The last two weeks of January are not possible because of Guildpact prereleases. The first weekend of February is also not possible, because many stores have scheduled release events on that weekend. The first day of January is not an option for obvious reasons. The next two weekends are more or less available; however, the random semi-casual folks will probably want to wait for the Prereleases rather than play Ravnica only sealed. So that rules out about half of the season.

I have three organizers. One would run the event in his store, which is available anytime, provided that he hasn't scheduled another event. The second one uses a venue that is usually available if we book early. The third one uses a venue with a slightly more limited availability. So this time the third TO could only get one date, which is the 18th of February. This means that we will have two PTQs on consecutive weekends, because I also want to avoid the weekend of March 4th and 5th, because that's PT Honolulu, and I'm still hoping to get a sponsorship slot for that one (which would mean that Pasi plays, which means that 2 out of 3 potential HJs are unavailable). Right now TO number 1 has chosen the 11th of February for his PTQ, which means that number 2 has the last weekend of February and the last two weeks of the season to choose from. So...I guess that works out alright, but I kind of wish the sealed PTQ season started *after* the prerelease. Blargh.

Have a cookie

2005-12-19T11:28:00.000+02:00

Pasi went to Seinäjoki for a PTQ this weekend. Unfortunately the turnout was low; only 19 players. Stupid Honolulu! Hopefully I'll get better numbers for Prague.

I spent the day drafting, playing Civilization 4 and baking gingerbread cookies. Making gingerbread cookies was always my favourite pre-Christmas activity as a child. Of course back then "making cookies" only meant "cutting the cookies from the dough that Mom made and rolled out for you". This time I made the dough myself (on Friday night, because it has to sit in a fridge overnight) using a recipe found from the Internet. I guess I should have called my Mom and asked for her recipe in the spirit of traditions-passing-down-from-one-generation-to-the-next-and-all-that-stuff, but I...didn't (I'll make a batch of different kind of cookies using Mom's recipe, though). I bought a set of cookie cutters (a man, a woman, a heart, a flower on the traditional side, and a fish and an elephant on the not-so-traditional side) and had a great time trying to fit one more elephant on the a sheet of dough. The cookies turned out quite nice.

Jedi mindtrick

2005-12-13T11:21:00.000+02:00

Pretend that you're a tournament organizer who is not really in favor with the local distributor (there is a good reason for this, but you're a master of ignoring stuff like that). You have been repeatedly denied the right to hold Friday Night Magic tournaments. How do you solve this problem and obtain FNM for your store?

Well, how about getting a copy of the monthly FNM solicitation from a legitimate FNM organizer, deleting his information and replacing it with your own, and e-mailing it to WotC. To ensure your success, add a short note (in a language that the recipient doesn't speak) claiming that someone from the local distributor said you could have FNM , even though this person said no such thing.

No points for guessing who tried this "trick". It's amazing that he keeps trying stuff like this. Does he not realize that this would never work? Is he just trying to annoy everyone? My WotC guy was really unhappy with this, and I think they might finally hit the guy with a suspension.

A day off

2005-12-06T12:52:00.000+02:00

Worlds happened. Some teams did well, others not so much (Finland). Some judges were promoted. And we got to watch the most interesting final webcast ever (find the video here). I'm glad I wasn't part of that mess, but it sure was exciting to watch.

Honolulu PTQs here in Finland have had relatively low turnouts. Our budget doesn't allow us to guarantee a full ticket (no, WotC doesn't pay for the tickets here in Europe), so some people won't play. The PTQ in Oulu had 22 players, and the one in Helsinki last Saturday had 34. The average for the last season was 40. There's one more PTQ for Honolulu, on the 17th of December. After that we start the Prague season, which should be much more popular. There are plenty of affordable flights to Prague, and it's a sealed season.

Today is Finland's Independence Day, which means that I don't have to go to work. We usually celebrate this holiday by cooking a nice meal and watching the President's Independence Day party on TV. Science can not explain why this most boring of events is shown on TV; it's basically two hours of people lining up to shake hands with the President, and then a few interviews with random celebrities followed by the main event: dancing.

Demoing the game

2005-11-21T22:12:00.000+02:00

Some Hasbro executives were having a meeting in Finland and they required some light "entertainment" before dinner. The WotC office arranged that with my boss: they came to our store and learned to play Magic with me and some of my colleagues. If you think it's shocking that Hasbro people didn't already know how to play Magic, just assume that these folks normally work on My Little Pony or Transformers or Milton Bradley puzzles. I didn't ask.

They grasped the basic concept pretty quickly and asked some intelligent questions about the game. I wish I could say that my demoing skills are merely rusty, but I never really had to do much demoing when I was working the counter at Safe Haven (another card shop). I forgot to explain a few things, and sometimes I got much too technical in my explanations. Also, it was very hard to try to lose a multiplayer game against 3 total beginners. Still, the Hasbro folks seemed to have a good time and Patrick from the WotC office promised to drop by next morning and bring some Belgian chocolate for me. Patrick = my favourite WotC bigwig. Hooray!

Sailing to Boozantium

2005-11-20T15:36:00.000+02:00

This weekend we had the traditional company pre-Christmas party. In the past years it has usually been a fairly low-budget evening of bowling, dinner and some drinking, but since the company celebrates its 20th year in business, the bosses had decided to spend a little extra on the slaves.

The staff from all seven stores and the warehouse and office was invited on this trip. We boarded a nice little ship in Helsinki at 14:00, and started our journey to a mysterly location. On board we had first coffee and pastries, then beer and cider. Some people played games (there was a game of Pimp: the Backhanding, some other card games, and my copy of Ra, an auction game with an Egyptian flavor), some concentrated on the free booze. It was a sunny but chilly November day, so most people stayed in the cabin. I visited the deck to enjoy the fresh sea air and look at the distant rocky islands and a few passing ships. Then I went back inside and taught a few people to play Ra.

The mystery location turned out to be a kind of "adventure" resort in the Porvoo archipelago. However, our plans didn't include any adventuring, just food, drink and sauna. We had a very nice buffet meal in a building that was supposed to be an old boat shed. It had long tables and benches made of split logs, old farming/fishing/adventuring equipment on the walls, and a fire in an old-fashioned stove.

The buffet included various more or less traditional Christmas dishes: potatoes with dill, spicy pickled herrings, cold-smoked salmon, hot smoked salmon (so very very good), shrimp in a garliccy sweet marinade, green salad mushroom salad, rosolli (another salad-type thing), carrot casserole, potato casserole, swede casserole and Christmas ham. I ate way too much, which prevented me from drinking too much. And that was a good thing.

After the dinner there was more drinking and talking, and later a sauna. I had the women's sauna all to myself, because the only other female employee in attendance didn't join me. While I was relaxing in the steam room with a bottle of cranberry cider, the rest of the staff was wrestling with giant inflatable toy crocodiles in the swimming pool. Not wanting to see all of my coworkers naked, I headed back to the boat shed. After everyone had done the sauna thing, the bosses brought out a late night snack of bread, cold cuts, cheeses, crackers, potato chips, candy and fruit. Nobody was very hungry, but we ate anyway. Some time after midnight the huge amounts of food combined with moderate amounts of alcohol were making me very sleepy, and I said good night and stumbled back to my hotel room.

The next morning I woke up at 09:30. Breakfast was served at 10:00 in the resort's main building, and almost everyone eventually showed up. I say "almost", because when we were getting ready to go back home in our charter bus at 11:00, nobody could find one of the guys from the Helsinki store. He had last been seen just before 10:00 by my boss, but nobody had seen him since then. The guy had stayed awake all night with one of his coworkers, who was still very, very drunk. Eventually somebody heard his cellphone ringing in a bathroom, and soon enough they found him inside, passed out. I didn't stay around for the spectacle of getting him out and on his feet, since the bus was about to leave and the bosses were going to stay and take care of him.

So yeah, it was a more or less normal Finnish pre-Christmas party.

Something awesome in the State of Denmark

2005-11-15T13:09:00.000+02:00

As I already mentioned, Pasi placed 6th at GP Copenhagen. I'm very proud of him. It is unclear right now whether or not he will play PT Honolulu. The GP prize money is not enough to buy a ticket to Honolulu, but we're expecting a big tax refund in early December. If I somehow manage to mise a sponsorship slot, he'll probably play.

GP Copenhagen was not a perfect GP. There were some judge-related problems. I'm not going to go into details because I have already discussed them with everyone who was involved and everyone who needs to know. Fortunately, the players were mostly unaffected by these problems.

There were also some problems unrelated to the event itself. When I arrived at the airport, I found out that our flight had been cancelled for "technical reasons". We managed to get seats on the next flight, but not before I had to pay 30 EUR and get my ticket reissued, because my original ticket had my maiden name on it. The person sitting in front of me was very drunk and kept trying to move his seat back for the whole flight (he did't know how to do it, but oh boy did he try).

The hotel was not quite what I have come to expect with Wizards. Long, wide hallways and ugly architecture - it looked like a school building. There seemed to be only one person working there, and he had to cover both the reception desk and the bar. The restaurant was closed and I was very hungry. Luckily, I met WotC event guy Jo (I've seen this guy at every GP I've ever been to, but I only recently learned his name, which I'm surely spelling wrong), who told me that the restaurant at the venue would be open. I joined Jo and the rest of the WotC staff at the restaurant, and soon all the judges came in as well.

Danny the Event Manager had asked if we could have breakfast an hour earlier on Saturday and Sunday. The manager had said "no problem", but he failed to arrange this with the kitchen staff. So, when I went down for breakfast at 7:00 on Saturday, there was a bunch of hungry judges but no breakfast. Danny had some angry words for the hotel staff before he took us all across the street to another hotel to for breakfast. Danny took very good care of us - we got more food/drink coupons than usual, and we also had a buffet dinner on both nights (they had fruit salad! Pineapple, grapes, melon, apple, orange...quite nice).

The event was extremely overstaffed and thus there was plenty of time for seminars and general judge chats. After leading a team on Saturday, I spent most of Sunday talking to L3 candidates. I also spoke with a couple of L1 candidates, but since they were obviously not ready for the written test, I just gave them short interviews and told them what they should do if they wanted to test in the future. The event finished at a very reasonable hour, which was nice. To everyone's great disappointment, the hotel bar was closed. The WotC folks went out in search of alcohol, and invited me to join them, but I preferred to stay at the hotel and talk to other judges - that is the best part of any event (not that I wouldn't have liked a drink, but my feet didn't like the idea of more walking).

Gotta ditch them all

We lost our Pokemon distribution rights to another company, which means that Pokemon Organized Play is no longer my problem. The new distributor hired TGMG as their new OP manager, and he seems to have reinstated CPD as an official league leader and TO... Well, that's his problem, not mine.

<3 Pasi

2005-11-06T23:23:00.000+02:00

My man randomly makes it into the top 8 of a GP. :D

I simply have to get to PT Honolulu now.

Los Angeles adventures, part 2

2005-11-04T11:41:00.000+02:00

Meeting old and new friends is one of the best parts of a Pro Tour. It was good to see Rune again and to finally meet Cari and Lee. I'll also mention that the Pro Tour is much more fun with The Matt Tabak around.

As soon as the sponsorship list for LA was announced, some people from IRC started planning a visit to Fogo de Chao. Much advertised by certain editor-type folks, the Fogo dinner seems to be developing into a Pro Tour tradition. Our group consisted of more than twenty judges and coverage team members, and the neighbouring table was full of Pro Tour players.

For those who don't know, Fogo de Chao is a Brazilian restaurant that specializes in meat, meat and more meat. They have guys dressed in funny pants and boots serving meat on swords. There's something like 14 different kinds of meat, and you get a small red/green disc for indicating whether or not you want more meat right now. They also have an amazing salad bar. It's not cheap though - expect to spend at least 70 dollars. I enjoyed the food but I enjoyed the company even more. Even the waitress learned that the best way to get our attention is to yell "JUDGE!"...

Dinner number two was the traditional Sunday night judge dinner at an Italian place next door to our hotel (random aside on the hotel: it looked very cool, but why did I have a bathroom with a bathtub and toilet but no sink, and a separate small room with a sink and a fridge?) The food was decent, but the best part for me was the little surprise that Cari had orchestrated. She had obtained a foil Sol Ring and gotten all main event judges (and some other people I knew) to sign it. After Andy had made his speech and announced the new judge promotions, Cari got up and presented the card to me as a wedding gift for Pasi and me. I was surprised and pleased. Thanks guys, it really meant a lot to me.

On Monday morning I had breakfast with Scott Marshall and a few other judges who were still around. I had made plans with Juan del Compare (the L3 judge from Argentina) to go sightseeing and shopping, and Riccardo joined us. We bought some books and wandered around on Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood Boulevard. After a while my feet were hurting so much that I really wanted to do something that didn't involve walking. We were at the Chinese Theater and somebody suggested going on a tour...of famous people's homes. We were told that it would take about 2 hours, which meant that Riccardo and I could get back to the hotel just in time to catch our flight. So we went on the tour, each of us telling the others that we would never ever do this by ourselves. Cheesy Hollywood stuff is not for us!

Our guide was a crazy Asian lady who talked non-stop. When she couldn't talk about any interesting buildings, she criticized random pedestrians and told us about her travels in Europe. We got to see (among other things) the house of Richard Simmons, the house of Dr. Phil, the 167 different houses owned by Marilyn Monroe at some point, and "in dis here house nobody famous live that I can tell you about. But look! It is a very big house and very well kept, well maintained. Now I'm gonna turn leffffft. And all you have to do is look rrright after I turn...dis here house is where we film the movie Bodyguard". Assuming everything she told us was true, it must take a fair bit of time and effort to keep up with these things, because she didn't seem to be reading from notes or even repeating a rehearsed speech.

Unfortunately the tour was interrupted for 20 minutes because some lady wanted to use the bathroom. After that was done, we had to drive back to the area where the rich and famous live (since we couldn't just stop the bus and knock on Ringo Starr's door and ask to use the bathroom), in Los Angeles rush hour traffic. One lady in a white SUV was in such a hurry that she crashed her car on the back of our tour bus. Fortunately nobody was hurt. It could have been very bad - Riccardo, Juan and I were sitting in the back of the tour bus, and none of us were wearing seat belts. Everyone got out, the other passengers cleared the road of debris while the SUV driver sat in her car in shock and the tour guide lady called 911 and her boss.

Our chances of catching that flight were not looking good, so we found a cab to take us back to the hotel, and then Riccardo and I took another taxi to the airport. We got on our flight and I've spent the past couple of days trying to recover. Today I'm flying to Copenhagen for a GP. I haven't done two Pro level events on consecutive weekends before, and I know it's going to be exhausting because I'm still suffering from a bit of jetlag. Expect another report in a few days...if I'm still alive.

Los Angeles adventures, part 1

2005-11-02T21:33:00.000+02:00

I came home from Pro Tour Los Angeles last night. One of the things I learned was that Thursday-Monday PT trips are not the thing to do. I was very tired all weekend, which affected my performance.

I arrived in LA on Thursday afternoon. Immigration officials were so impressed by the shiny newness of my passport that they forgot to inquire about the purpose of my visit. Eli-Woap met me in the arrivals hall, after which he proceeded to play cellphone-based hide and seek with Lee. Finally, when they figured out that the airport has two levels, we got together and got a taxi to the hotel.

After a quick shower I wandered to the venue, where I found Cari and some other judges. We played Duelmasters and I proved my superior kaijudo skills by going 3-0 (2-0 against Lee). Later we had dinner at California Pizza Kitchen and then I went back to the hotel to get some sleep.

My schedule for the weekend was quite interesting, with many different assignments: main event logistics team on Friday, Duelmasters on Saturday with a L3 interview in the afternoon, another L3 interview on Sunday morning, and a seminar on Sunday afternoon. The L3 interviews were quite interesting, even though I didn't feel confident enough to participate much.

The seminar was okay (aside from one embarassing "uhh...where was I" moment) and I think I did a decent job with Duelmasters, but I was not quite happy with my performance on the main event floor. Maybe it was the lack of sleep. I'll try to do better in Copenhagen.

One of my less than brilliant moments involved the new ruling for Looking at Extra Cards. Player A had played Gifts Ungiven, and while that was resolving (with the four cards on the table), player B used his Divining Top. I started to explain about the shuffle fix, and both players thought this was a horrible ruling. Player A appealed, and I said I would get the Head Judge after I finished my explanation. Then Player B conceded the game because he thought it was so unfair, and Player A again asked for the Head Judge. This time I fetched Gis right away. He told the players that this was indeed the ruling we would use, and that we wouldn't shuffle any known cards - and this was the part I never got to explain to them. The players were somewhat confused, but I certainly could have handled the situation better.

In part 2 I tell you about all the good stuff: Fogo, the best Sol Ring ever, Dr. Phil's house and the highly dramatic car accident that almost caused Riccardo and me to miss our flight.

Television

2005-10-18T19:24:00.000+03:00

Lately I've been lazy. Here's a short and pointless update.

Instead of writing, I've been watching reality TV on my computer. I am not ashamed to admit that I really enjoy Survivor and Amazing Race, and through the Magic of the Internet I can see these shows before they hit Finnish TV. I watch these shows, and because I'm the kind of person who rereads good books multiple times, I read episode recaps from Television Without Pity afterwards. Their episode recaps are not mere transcripts that tell you what happened. They're very entertaining and snarky reviews that tell you what happened and analyze it to death. Indeed, sometimes reading the recap is better than watching the episode (and I've read recaps of shows I don't like just to hear the writer say how much it sucks).

A word of warning for my fellow Europeans: it's very hard to avoid spoilers on this site. Surf at your own risk.

Next week: I get my new passport and fly to Los Angeles. ZOMG!

När går nästa bussen till Slussen

2005-09-27T15:47:00.000+03:00

I have returned from the western lands. Although I probably got more sleep during the weekend than the rest of my judge staff combined, I'm still feeling very tired. Here's my unofficial report from the Swedish Nationals!

I arrived in Stockholm on Friday afternoon. After checking in at the hotel, I was supposed to find my way to the venue:

Me: How do I get to the venue?

Local organizer: Oh, I will pick you up at the store.

Me: What store? Where is this store?

Local organizer: The address is so-and-so. Some guy at the store will give take you to the venue in his car. Or if that doesn't work, you can take a taxi.

Looks like a foolproof plan, doesn't it?

I found the store just fine, but Local Organizer had forgotten to mention that the place didn't look anything like a normal storefront. There was a big door that looked just like the doors of all the residential buildings in the area, and it was locked. There were no store windows. I waited for a while and nobody showed up.

Eventually I got bored and went to find some food, planning to get a taxi later. Local Organizer called me and explained that yeah, I was supposed to ring the doorbell (oh...a doorbell?) and that the guy had been waiting for me inside. Meh.

After finishing my dinner I took a taxi to the venue. My taxi driver was a very talkative old man who wanted to tell me all about his computers and printers and photo-editing software. Finnish taxi drivers know when to shut up! Sweden sucks!

Swedish Nationals was part of a gaming convention that was scattered across several old industrial buildings that were currently being used as a school. Naturally I first went to the wrong building, where the friendly convention workers didn't have any clue about Magic events. Finally I found a guy who knew that the Magic events were on the other side of the area.

I found the Local Organizer and some Local Judges putting up banners and judging the Last Chance Qualifier. I had a short meeting with Local Organizer and made some notes on the room layout before going back to the hotel.

At 8:00 on Saturday morning I found most of my staff just waking up at the venue. They had been sleeping in sleeping bags on the floor of the room that we would use for Nationals (This is how Scandinavian gaming conventions work. There were sleeping bags and matresses everywhere - hotels are for wimps and head judges).

Day 1 was quite good except for one little problem. The Local Organizer had forgotten to stamp some of the cards, and we found out about this AFTER the draft was finished. More than half of the pods had one unstamped pack of Saviors. Obviously I didn't want to punish the players for a mistake made by the Local Organizer, so we checked all the Saviors cards and stamped the unstamped ones. This took about 30 extra minutes and my lunch of INDIAN FOOD was cold by the time we were done.

Despite the slight delay Day 1 finished on schedule at 18:00. I was again planning to go to the hotel and get some sleep, but my judge team had other ideas. Many of them were planning to play in the Ravnica prerelease that started after Nationals was finished. The rest of them were judging that event. Crazy kids! I'm too old for marathon sessions.

I went back to the hotel and had a very nice dinner: char-fish and some kind of unbelievably delicious risotto with a nice Riesling. Note to self: must research risotto recipes.

Day 2 was pretty much problem-free. We moved to the mysterious Local Store for the blessedly non-blue top 8. Mikael Polgary, a Finnish speaking Swede, was "crowned" National Champion. Poor guy, he is so proud of his Finnish, but sometimes he just ends up saying the exact opposite of what he wanted to say. We were finished at 20:00 and I was back at the hotel at 22:00 after having dinner with Local Organizer and the senior judges. I vetoed their first choice of Indian food and we ended up having pizza at a decent little Italian place.

And finally...

The fruit salad review

Canned peaches and other unidentified yellow fruit objects in a bowl? First Hotel Amaranten, what were you thinking? And get some decent orange juice! But I'll forgive you this time because of that risotto.