I have a long history with Laser Tag games. It all started in the late ’80s, when World of Sports opened a Photon arena on their premesis. The gear was bulky, the helmets made it impossible to see to the sides and guaranteed you’d be bouncing off walls and teammates pretty much continuously, but the arena was great — two levels, with connecting ramps, lots of obstacles and gaps to shoot through, fog, beacons, sirens, strobe lights, and even an observation deck with guns where noncombatants could watch and take pot shots at the players. We loved the place, and used to make regular pilgrimages out there on Sunday nights after church with a bunch of youth group kids. (I even remember us all sticking our guns in together and having a pre-game prayer. What a bunch of youth group nerds we were!)

While I was in college, Worlds of Wonder released the original Lazer Tag gear. More fortunately for us than them, they went out of business just as we were discovering their products, so we were able to pick up a ton of kit on the cheap. I eventually got to be a dead-eye with my trusty Starlyte, though Bob Albright was nigh-unstoppable with his Starlyte Pro. We invested in the extremely silly looking target hats as well, as the chest sensors were too easily blocked, and even had a couple of StarBase units for use in team games. Many was the night we’d skulk around campus, unleashing Lazer-flavored death on each other and surprising the heck out of the security guards.

I left my gear with a friend when I returned to Texas, and though I’ve dabbled with paintball and airsoft intermittently since then, nothing has grabbed my interest in the same way — until now.

Shoot the Moon Productions, which were the big throbbing brains behind the original Lazer Tag gear, have signed on with Hasbro to deliver the oh-so-wonderful Lazer Tag: Team Ops. They’re ridiculous-looking ugly-as-sin guns, presumably so as to prevent users from getting shot by zealous law enforcement offers, but — oh, the things they do! While the old-school gear was pretty much limited to shooting (in the gun’s case) and getting shot (in the sensor’s case), the Team Ops weaponry adds a bunch of ideas from arena-style tag games and first person shooters, plus some new tech (like LCD displays and omnidirectional transmitters), to deliver a whole pile of new gameplay.

Cool stuff: Each gun has a Heads-Up-Display that shows you when you’ve got a lock, when you hit someone, or when you’ve been hit. This is a little semitransparent doohicky that sits in front of your eyes, so you get these indications superimposed on your field of vision. The new omnidirectional transmitter allows you to be alerted when an enemy is nearby, gives you IFF indicators so you know if the person you’re pointing your gun at is on your team or not, and even allows you to designate “zones” which can affect scoring. There are several different game types, all of which support up to 24 players on up to 3 teams. When a game concludes, all the guns talk to each other as part of a “debriefing”, and you can see how many times you shot your little sister and how many times she shot you. And there’s a (currently unused) port for a rumble pack, so presumably you’ll eventually be able to add a gadget to let you feel it when you get hit.

Best of all, the gear’s not too pricy — $50 for a two gun set. I hope to get a couple to try out, and if they’re as good as they sound, convince some friends to invest too. Here’s a review, another review, and the manual.

Liam’s kindergarten class had an open house early this week. I was, unfortunately, unable to attend, as it was my night to take Emily out solo for Chinese food and a dip in the river. Since the dinner was a buffet, we were in serious danger of sinking right to the bottom of the river due to the leaden weight of dim sum and egg rolls in our bellies, but eventually triumphed over General Tso’s attempts to drown us.

I found out later that evening that Liam was quite disappointed I didn’t come to his open house. By way of consolation, I told him that I’d walk to school with him in the morning and take the tour before class began. That seemed to mollify him, and he drifted off to sleep happy.

He awakened in the morning and wolfed a bowl of barely-fit-for-human-consumption Shrek 2 cereal while I called and told my relieved-sounding workout partner that I wouldn’t be able to make it to the gym that morning. Liam and I then walked down to his classroom, and he proudly showed off his desk, his poetry journal, and the other highlights of his first brush with academia.

While I was standing around looking faintly out-of-place among all the teachers and little people, one of his classmates — a tiny blonde girl with a beatific smile — evidently decided that I was in need of bucking up. Without a word, she walked up to me, beaming eyes fixed on my face, and wrapped her arms around my knees. I was so startled that this child who had no idea who I was would welcome me so enthusiastically that I could only manage a “Thank you, sweetie” and a pat on the back before she had run off to attend to other angelic errands.

I’m reminded that Kindergarten means “children’s garden.” It looks like they’re growing a good crop of kids in this one.

I’ve been working on my first Final Cut project on the new iMac since it came in on Monday, teaching myself how to use the new software along the way. I was hoping Final Cut would be as easy to pick up as iMovie, but was sadly disappointed in that regard: this is an application for which one really needs to read at least parts of the manual.

I’d estimate that the new software is probably 5x as difficult as iMovie, but 15x as powerful and flexible. Some things that it does that iMovie can’t include on-the-fly color correction, all kinds of interesting compositing (including chroma-keying), capturing a precise segment of tape using DV device control, and handling lots of audio and video streams at once. Some things it does better include transitions, organizing source media, slow motion (it generates extra frames to smooth things out), custom titles, and audio editing.

There are a few areas where it’s come up short: the manual doesn’t explain how to modify motion paths. While iMovie includes several animated title plugins, I haven’t been able to figure out how to do similar animations in Final Cut yet. It doesn’t play back MP3s well (though a quick conversion to WAV works around that issue), nor does it integrate with iPhoto nearly as smoothly as does iMovie.

Overall, however, it’s nice to have the added power that the program provides, and I’m enjoying the learning process.

I just got word that the new iMac I ordered at the end of August has shipped. Curiously, it appears that it’s being sent via FedEx directly from China, where the factory presumably is. I’m quite looking forward to getting my hands on it!

Another note of interest: The comments say “Future delivery requested.” I guess bending the very laws of space-time so that the shipment can be delivered into the past costs a little extra.

Today, I have brought to bear the collective powers of Artificial Intelligence, Conversant, gamma rays, RSS, and the atom to allow you to peer into the darkest recesses of a man’s soul, into the very fiber of his being; a glimpse of something few mortals have seen.

Behold! MY NETFLIX QUEUE!

Yeah, that’s all it is. Hey, I’m a busy guy. The next six items in my queue are in the sidebar here on the web page, or you can see the whole queue here. I’ve also added links to the books I’m currently reading in the sidebar as well. (You folks reading via email or RSS won’t see those without visiting the site.)

This afternoon while Geocaching with the kids, I took a series of photos from the location of one of the caches, later combining them into this panorama. While it’s technically not the best panoramic shot I’ve managed to put together, it does communicate some part of why I love the Texas Hill Country.

To celebrate our friend Lori’s birthday, Kathy and I went bowling last night with her and her husband Kelly. We had the singular good fortune to have a lane next to a group from the local brain injury treatment center — a bunch of characters who were great fun to talk with. Corey, a patient who claimed a physical age of 30 and a mental age of 4, told us this joke: “I once had a girlfriend who told me that I had the body of a god. That made me feel pretty special inside, until a couple of weeks later when I found out she was a Buddhist.”

Since none of our party were particularly good at bowling, we livened up the two games we played in a variety of ways. Kelly struck the Big Lebowski “Nobody Mess With The Jesus!” pose as he prepared to do his worst. Kathy used the granny shot to great effect. (Kelly reminded us of a motto from his time in the Army: “If it’s stupid, but it works, it isn’t stupid.”) And in a futile attempt to pick up a 7/10 split, I tried bowling with two balls at the same time.

There was a band of 10 year old boys a few lanes over who were celebrating one of their birthdays with bowling, cake, and one of the most tonally uncertain renderings of “Happy Birthday to You” to which I’ve even been witness. Evidently the boys noticed my illicit two-ball technique, as they all started doing the same thing shortly after I did. The dad, who had already been pretty irate with the boys, came close to blowing up when he saw their latest shenanigans. I thought for sure that the boys were going to point over our way and say “but HE did it!” Fortunately, the code of the playground is still evidently intact, and I didn’t get ratted out.

Thanks for your discretion, boys, and Happy Birthday!

A few weeks back the kids and I went to the San Antonio Zoo, a beautiful spot in the city’s Brackenridge Park, adjacent to the San Antonio River and close to downtown. I distributed the tickets to the children so that they could enjoy the sense of responsibility as they “paid” their own ways into the zoo, and we began the trek around the zoo grounds, visiting the jaguars, flamingos, lions, javelinas, and other ferocious beasts.

As we peered earnestly at a giant, ill-tempered grizzly bear, I casually remarked to Liam that he should hang on to his ticket stub, because the animals are allowed to eat anybody that sneaks into the zoo and doesn’t have a ticket stub. He gave me the purse-mouthed roll of the eyes that so concisely communicates the fact that he knows Dad is talking nonsense, and is therefore giving his words all the attention they deserve.

We moved on from the grizzly to the spectacled bear, the lemurs and llamas, the giraffe and the elephants. As the afternoon wore on, I continued my little joke: reminding Liam to hang on to his ticket, and occasionally pulling mine out of my pocket to show to a listless and disinterested rhinoceros. He continued to skip merrily along, agape at the variety of fauna laid out before him, apparently oblivious to my silliness.

A few minutes later, I caught up with Liam after he had run on ahead, only to find him standing next to Kathy, sobbing as if his small heart had been broken. He had been fine moments before, so I assumed he had tripped and hurt himself or suffered some other accidental injury. “What’s wrong, Sport? Are you OK?”

Liam was crying too hard to speak, but Kathy filled me in, eyes shooting fire: “He lost his ticket, and says you told him the animals would eat him.”

Oh. Crap.

Getting down on my knees, and feeling like the worst father in Texas, if not in fact the history of civilization, I folded Liam in my arms and babbled “I’m so sorry, buddy. I was only joking. I didn’t think you were even listening to me. The animals won’t eat you; they can’t even get out of their cages. Do you want my ticket?” He shook his head no, but his sobbing eventually subsided as he realized that the only mauling he would suffer at the zoo was the emotional one I’d already inadvertently inflicted on him.

Of course, being a five-year-old, Liam had forgotten the incident within minutes. I, however, have been left with a lasting reminder of what an awesome, terrible responsibility it is to be a father, while at the same time being a big, clumsy, sinful human. How can God possibly entrust such an important, difficult job to us? Tread carefully, dear parents — it’s a wonderful and perilous road we walk.

It’s been a while since I put up a new photo gallery, but I figured that with the onset of fall and a new school year, our far-flung family might enjoy seeing a more current collection of photos of the children. Please enjoy your visit to Autumn 2004 Photos, and be sure to tip your waitress!

The Dragon’s Lair is my favorite place for board and card games, comics, etc. My cronies at Origin and I used to frequent the store in Austin regularly at lunch time, mounting large-scale pilgrimages when new D&D books were released and when particularly enticing new games were available. The staff is extremely friendly and helpful and always have a superb selection of products on-hand.

Several times over the last month, I’ve seen a Dragon’s Lair van lurking here in San Marcos. And then last night, as Kathy and I were driving around, I saw — oh frabjuous day! — a storefront, open for business. I dragged my friend (and pastor) Craig to the store after lunch to check it out. We met the manager and the owner, and spent 20 minutes rooting through the games and chatting with them. While not quite as expansive as the Austin store, the selection is already solid, and they seem well on their way to hiring some good folks. San Marcos has been without a game store for a couple of years now, so I suspect they’ll do bang-up business.

The only downside for me is that they’re in easy walking distance from my office, which may make spending money responsibly that much tougher.