Chore Wars: The Minions of Jose Francisco

Reading Penny-Arcade, I found a nifty Web game that lets you turn your family into Role-Playing Game (RPG) characters and household chores into "adventures" worth experience, gold and the occasional battle with a monster. "Chore Wars," it is called.

Since the default settings are private, I can't link you to our party, so I have enclosed a ZIP file that has the three main pages:

1. Party - Shows our party, "The Minions of Jose Francisco." Celeste is Maria Alejandra. Mia is Maria, which is the nickname Jose Francisco calls her. Esteban is himself. Lord Soong is me, named after one of my more famous villains.
2. Adventures - Shows all the possible adventures to undertake.
3. Week - Shows what has happened this week.
   

I strongly recommend that any family group give it a try.

To make the rewards real I'm doing this:
Every paycheck allotting $50 to reward money. I'll take a look at what the kids have done and dole out the money based on how much experience they have earned.

Game Gold/Money will be useful for:

• Trading game gold for US dollars, probably 100:1. So spending 100 gold gets you one real United States dollar.
• Buying a day off, etc.
• Spending the money in the pen & paper RPG portion of the game.
  

You will notice that I spend a lot of attention to items everyone can get. I'm a Dungeons & Dragons player and for years I've been waiting to introduce the kids to RPGs. Well every weekend they'll get to go on an adventure, just two hours long, and the items and stats (strength, dexterity, etcetera) they have will dictate what they can do. This should encourage them to look at the different chores and try to do them so they can get items not available otherwise.

Of course, my house is so disciplined that the girls have to do all these things anyway - this is my way of trying to make it fun. So far the girls love it, but they are both scared of the computer, the Web browser, and the interface.

I digress...
One thing I love about my brother, Esteban, living with us is that he is very self-disciplined, grew up in a loving but strict household, and has had no children until now. That means that, as any new parent is, he's loving, but very hard. This is actually good for the girls because he's pushing them in school so much, and while it's hard work, and they tend to lose privileges with their Nintendo Wii, they are learning and their academic abilities are increasing. He is re-teaching them their entire grade (before summer vacation) in Spanish over the course of the summer, so while he's paired down the amount of work, it is still a lot to do; but Dulce and Maria are doing it and I'm so proud of them.

And what I love for Esteban is that he gets a chance to have kids too. They look up to him, they talk about him with me, and this morning when Jose Francisco stirred awake he said "TIO?" loudly before orienting himself. Tio means "Uncle."

PS
Mom, please correct my grammar.

Overlord - Review

Try out Overlord. It's rather fun to run your minions (small horde of goblins) amok. Make sure to do bad things, it's more fun - you see more content.

The game starts becoming un-fun once you find yourself battling the control scheme more than the actual game. The control scheme worked fine until the creators equated difficulty handling the key/button combinations with game difficulty.

That said, it looks like Fable only with better shadows and wider, more open areas that all loop back and cross link (so you can wander a bit and, yes, get lost). If not wider, certainly the paths are more numerous and the areas 5-7x larger than the typical Fable one.

You get to customize your Dark Tower, enhance your gear, but I'm right at the point where that is starting to matter so I haven't explored this much other than to create a nifty sword by sacrificing a butt-load of goblins.

As I said before - the last chapter's end was more about me fumbling with buttons (as my brother and I have been trading off on a GamePad) than fighting the game itself. Keyboards help (I can select each group more easily) but you can't create or select Control Groups ala RTS, so splitting your forces becomes problematic; couple this with a few boss sequences where you have to - quickly and accurately - and that you have to target a battle banner to get that group to move by looking at them and centering your view on them - and that's pretty much stupid. I've had to do this only twice, however - once on a boss, and once while navigating boiling hot geysers.

I complain more loudly than the amount of content should proportionally show - evidenced by the fact that I played this game all weekend when I had the chance, or watched my brother, Esteban, play.

New Pictures

Craptastic Camera Alert
I have uploaded new pictures to my Flickr account. Someone buy me a decent camera? Mine died (memory card writer died - can't take pictures without it as there's no onboard memory it seems) so I'm using my 10yo's "toy" digital "craptastic" camera.

Esteban with Dulce and Alejandrita
Dulce is marveling at the new Sharp 32” TV (32SC26B).

Esteban is playful with the children and, lacking a job and being Mexican (Mexicans don't like loafing around with nothing to do - they never had such free time growing up and they sure aren't sure what to do with it once grown up - so the tend to spend it on something constructive), has kind of made being a great Uncle his job.

Contrary to being spoiled, this has actually meant my children now have more chores, because Esteban cleans, cooks and fixes things in the house, and save for the last part, makes my daughters involved in everything he does.

NEW 32" TV!

I got a Sharp 32” Standard-Definition Digital TV (32SC26B).

Some hyper-rich college student named Brianna was selling it because, she said, she's moving to Iowa to enroll in Law School. I found it on Craigslist, which is classifieds specific to the city you are in - if you don't use it try it out.

I say "hyper-rich" because she lived in a gated, passworded, ritzy condo complex. She was thin, blond and prissy, and had two or three girlfriends who were much the same, and one tall, skinny white guy with them.

I brought with me my daughter, Maria de Guadalupe, and my brother, Esteban.

First Test: WiiSports (Wii)
To test the TV we attached the Wii and its component cables and tried WiiSports. The women didn't want to touch it but the guy wanted to try bowling. Maria joined and the white guy was surprised he and I were not only being beaten, but trounced upon by a little girl. Esteban whispered to her in Spanish and they'd chuckle. "Who's winning? Lu-pi-ta!" emphasis on the "little girl beats grown men." She and Esteban giggled until she beat us 287 to 237 and 239, mine being the lowest score.

Second Test: Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii)
The birds in the distance, just a few pixels big, look blurry on my wife's 32" Sylvania (RCA inputs), and looked clearer, but shimmered on the Wal-Mart special, the 32" ILO (IWT3206) that I had to return. But the 32SC26B supports 480p, not just 480i. The birds no longer shimmered, and the picture was much clearer. MAN! What a difference between 480i "SDTV" and 480p "EDTV".

White People Are Funny
So it came time to pay $200 (for a $369 new) TV and take it home. The white guy offered to help carry it, and I said "Sure, I'll let Esteban take my place, he's stronger."

Well the white guy tries to heft this thing and mind you, he's only about as big as me, only taller, and with GAP clothes... so it's not long before he starts to lose it. His face turns red and he starts to slip, so Esteban, perplexed, just leans into it a bit and ends up hefting most of the TV across the street to Rafael, my wife's minivan.

By the time they get there, the white guy's face was about as red as Esteban's (brilliant red) shirt, and my brother and my daughter start laughing. I go back inside with the guy to pick up the TV stand and come back, and they're still laughing about something.

"What?" I asked. They made shushing noises.

"What? What's so funny?" They shook their heads and made motions to be quiet, while they kept chuckling.

"Okay, sirs, well I'm gunna go." the white guy said and left with one of the prissy girls. Then Esteban and Maria burst out laughing.

Esteban said "He looked like he was about to pop. He came up acting so strong and I'm thinking 'What's the matter? Pffft this isn't so heavy.' so I just carry more of it myself."

Maria pointed out "His ego was stronger than him." Esteban and I got a kick out of that observation.

Internet / Gmail on the Wii
Gmail is not only easy to read, the TV cuts off less at the top and bottom of the screen, which was a bad problem on the junky IWT3206. Maria is quite happy.

Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)
The component cables I got for the Wii also has adapters for the XBOX 360 and PS2/PS3 (which appear to be the same).

Not only does the game look crystal clear (so clear, some textures shimmer, but overall I'd say the detail is more pleasing to the eye than a blurry picture with less apparent shimmer), but the TV allows you to arbitrarily set it to 16:9 format! The craptastic IWT3206 didn't - it supposedly recognized wide-aspect cable feeds and adjusted itself accordingly, but it had no idea if a videogame was using that resolution. The 32SC26B allows you to just set 16:9 anytime you want - so I can play Shadow of the Colossus in widescreen and see more area left to right if I want. I can probably do this with widescreen Wii games if there is a setting I can get to to make the game use that mode regardless of what it thinks the TV is.

Summary
I am very happy with the TV and first and foremost grateful to God. It is so frequent that he blesses us on a special day (Father's Day, a Birthday, etcetera) by giving us something that seems bad (that TV I had to return) and ends up even better (a TV better than the one I bought if it had worked for less money).

I went without a 32" TV for two nights - returned it Tuesday, got the "new" one on Thursday evening and had time to play WiiSports at home, and show Esteban Shadow of the Colossus after Maria went to bed.

Kids at Play and Esteban

I've uploaded some pictures taken with Maria de Guadalupe's craptastic camera. I even snagged two of Esteban, but my poor brother hadn't had a chance to come his hair yet.

Also featured is "Jose Francisco versus: The Dirt" and "Jose Francisco versus: The Cold Sprinkler Water"

As for this shot of Alejandrita, I liked the depth and pose here, look at her arm and the curve of her back and her dress - quite cherubic and innocent.

By all means, see the Flickr collection of photos if you like.

My Brother from Mexico Has Arrived

Esteban's Arrival
Esteban arrived on Monday night at 11PM at the local airport. I recognized him from far off because he really does look like my wife, only he was born a boy not a girl. Oddly, given that description, he's quite handsome. He also speaks great English for someone taught by English courses. Maria, my 10yo, was with me to greet him.

Esteban got stopped and questioned by INS three different times, basically every stop but the last, each time he said he could tell they were comparing notes from the interview before, even though it was different people in different airports and cities. I'm not sure why the US has taken such a horrible turn against immigrants that aren't Canadians, but they have. Being Hispanic can't be confused with being Muslim, but Hispanics are definitely not "in". It's basically open season. He didn't mind, he just realized what they were trying to do - catch him at a different answer.

Esteban is like...
Esteban is quiet and thoughtful, hardworking and observant. He's a good cook. He says that if the choice for his father is getting his daughters Magdalena, Gabriella or Marisol to cook for him, dad will ask them to fetch Esteban. I ate way too much of his cooking at lunch on Tuesday.

Mighty Tuesday
I took the day off from work on Tuesday and took my extended family to the Salvation Army, where we bought Esteban more clothes than the one suitcase he brought. Esteban told me that he's studied psychology, philosophy, theology, Mexican history (as opposed to world history), and trained incoming workers how to put together computers at an IBM factory.

We dropped by Perfection Auto and saw Mr. Nuñez, our mechanic who runs his own shop. Mr. Nuñez spoke with Esteban in Spanish. He gave Esteban his card and said in English "Call me as soon as you get your papers sorted out." Mr. Nuñez has a specific way of talking and emphasizing things.

I asked Esteban, realizing what I thought just transpired (he just got offered a job, tentatively) "Do you know how to fix cars?"

Esteban smiled lightly and nodded "Sure, yeah."

My mom hit the issue a bit more clearly: my great grandfather, who went on to become the Governor of Colorado, hit the train tracks as a hobo for a year. Got his head straight, saw the country, carried around Shakespeare with him. My mom said "Back then, this was an excepted thing to do - often you'd find hobos were really just men seeing the country, not homeless or drug addicts like today."

When Esteban lost his job at IBM (first in, first out, and Mexico has felt the same small downturn we have in the last year) there was just no reason to not come here. Clearly, it was not for lack of education or the ability to walk into another job, which I knew already, but I didn't know how many things Esteban knew.

At any rate, since I've returned my 32" TV, I've asked Esteban for help considering what to do - buy computer parts for $300 and have him build one (with me helping), or buy wood working equipment so he can have fun with that, or something else, or just put it back into savings.

Jose Francisco Meets His Uncle, Esteban
So Jose, my 2yo boy, woke up early on Tuesday and came out into the living room to find someone sleeping on the couch (transformed into bed-mode). He decides it is appropriate to wake up this person and show him his toy Matchbox cars. Then, tired, he gets into the bed and naps with his Uncle until 7AM. They'd never met until this moment, and nobody else was around.

Other than feeling the jealousy of there being another man in the house, this has been how they relate ever since. Esteban and Jose Francisco took turns following each other around in the stores and places we hit. Jose quickly found that Esteban just ignores him when he whines about something, and tells him no when he tries to do something he shouldn't.

My mom told Esteban that it must have been the pheromones that Jose Francisco recognized - he knew Esteban was blood the moment he met him.

Esteban Meets the Wii
(WiiSports) He enjoyed Bowling and didn't understand Tennis any better than real life. He loved Boxing, and hunkered down and jabbed and hooked like he was really there, practicing on some tethered ball in front of him. He still lost because he couldn't figure out how the controllers wanted to be held to block. He laughed a lot, which is something the Wii brings out given the game you play.

Summary
So we're all happy Esteban has come to live with us. He has no return ticket to Mexico, which might be another reason INS was so interested in him. I'm just as happy as can be. The van fits everyone, exactly, even when the little ones grow. My wife is happy that her youngest brother is here and he's happy to be here. My kids love him and he's quickly seen what he expected: we are as Mom has told him and as we've represented ourselves on the phone. I don't think he had any surprises, even Wal-Mart didn't seem to surprise him.