Be Excellent To Each Other

Are we pizzaing on Friday?

Balls, I owe you monies and forgot. Will sort this.
Much apologies.

I believe this is the plan.

If you're talking to me then I'm pretty sure you don't owe me money.

I may need to avoid the kitchen. I appear to have no off switch when it comes to fudge or caramel. My mouth is watering just looking at that Trooper!

That Trooper sure is mouth watering!

I have just found the paper. Bring pens people!

Excellent. I was about to ask if anyone had lots of paper.

THREE MORE SLEEPS!

Does Myp still have the Rev Owen Memorial Hat?

No, Russ has had it for the last two years. Maybe three.

I'm stopping off at costco friday morning. Do we need anything in particular? I'm going to pick up cakes, freddos, pretzels, etc... I can also grab a load of loaves of bread, butter, orange juice and stuff like that if people want.

Flying saucers

Their entire stock of Smirnoff Ice?

Yeah, have managed to be on the winning team most years so far, so keep looking after it.

Maybe someone else will win this year

So, as this will be my first cottage experience, is there anything I should know in advance?

We call each other by code names.

They don't sell it, unfortunately.

Doggingurno?

I can bring biscuits. Kilograms of biscuits. Any preferences?

Make sure you have a skit of some kind ready for the Saturday night show.

What are our options? Milk chocolate covered digestives are the best biscuits in the world, if you can get those.

Speak for yourself.

I'm not playing Ice this year, just to be clear.

There's a sign-up sheet in the kitchen for the sex swing; it's usually pretty heavily subscribed so get in early as it gets harder to clean down as the weekend progresses.

I'm looking for a volunteer stand in to have mine.

I physically can't drink anything that heartburn-inducing, so I'm not playing along either. (Indeed, I'm going to have to take it easy on the booze in general, because I can never tell ahead of time if I'm going to be fairly ill afterwards. Which is a bit annoying but what can you do?)

Is Gazchap bringing his technohat? Can he be convinced to bring his technohat? Yes, I know it's a giant ballache, plus we'd all need several changes of underwear for Alien.

It would need a reasonably hefty laptop (or luggable desktop) with everything pre-installed etc...
Not impossible, but serious faffness.

I actually quite like smirnoff ice, which is handy.

Isn't Mr Dave bringing something?

Also, Haribo from Costco, tangfastics. a tub ~£5.

tangfastics and flying saucers, check.

I am, but no idea if it'll support technohat.

Indeed, I actually have no idea what the internal gubbins are.

I just don't drink all that much anymore. I think I've been properly drunk once in the last five months, and that was someone's birthday at Vodka Revolution. I don't think necking Ice would sit well with me anymore.

Serious faffness for GazChap, sure. But serious aceness for the rest of us. Don't underestimate that factor.

There is a load of crap you need to download to get it to work, so it really needs to be up and running beforehand, especially with the limited internet available once we are there.

Very true! I'd be interested to see how much better it is than the DK1, for sure

Isn't the cottage meant to be low tech? Or does that not count anymore considering we don't have a calendar to plan gaming sessions?

The cottage is whatever we want it to be, and I think there's a strong case for watching people shit themselves playing Alien: Isolation with a technotechnotechnohat.

(I'm not planning on bringing any gaming gear though, except boardgames.)

I don't think gazchap beavering away in a corner all weekend, trying to make it work, counts as high tech. Treat it as an art piece or something.

Wait, I though nerds loved nothing better than faffing, setting up nerdstations for nerding on...? The more faffing and complications the better?

An art piece for serial killers.

We're not real nerds. That's just the facade we put on to make us seem cool.

Psst - it's not working.

Get a haircut.

I can just imagine it now. GazChap in a corner, unsure why it doesn't work, fiddling with cables and changing settings. Half a dozen half-cut nerds standing around him, offering "helpful" and contradictory suggestions, talking over each other constantly.

But the worst thing that can happen here is we don't get to play technohat. So afterward, to up the stakes, we'll repeat the process on something juicy and mechanical, like a gearbox swapout on one of the cars we need to go home in.

Can't make my car any worse!

That's what we were going for the first year, I think (it was originally called "Beex Unplugged" I think), but Rock Band put a stop to that.

I'm open to Technohat shenanigans, and will bring my desktop PC with me. The only proviso is, of course, that a stack of sickbags is kept on standby, I imagine VR sickness will be a very real issue for some people, doubly so when they're half cut

I don't particularly want beer/ice/vomit spraying all over my PC, thankyouverymuch.

I already have it all set up for Elite at least, and will likely be trying Alien tonight - although Elite requires an Internet connection to login to their server so you can play, so unless someone has any bright ideas surrounding that Elite will be a no go-er. I have a Three 3G dongle, which I can top-up with some credit, but what's the 3G signal like there?

I have unlimited tethering on my Three contract, so if there's signal I can use that. It'll be no use for high bandwidth stuff though.