Xmas Party 2023!

Non-Facebook people, here are this year's Xmas Party details:
( Copied from the Facebook event page https://fb.me/e/1sjfdjNnR )

Date: Saturday, December 16th
Time: Doors open at 7:00pm. We get started at 8:30pm and the White Elephant Gift Exchange is at 10:00pm!

The *69 Xmas Party is usually the biggest and most fun gathering of the year at *69 HQ! We can't wait to welcome everyone back to celebrate! There's food, fun, partying and gaming. This party is for everyone, so feel free to bring non-gamers, siblings, significant others, etc. They'll have fun too!

 I *highly* recommend that you participate in the White Elephant Gift Exchange! (See below!)

PLEASE RSVP so we can get an accurate head count for food/drinks. Also let me know of any guests you're bringing... the more the merrier! You may text me, email me or call me to let me know you're coming. We usually get around 20-30 people, so it's a pretty good sized party! RSVP early!

7:00pm - Doors Open
8:00pm - Party Game Registration
8:30pm - Games Start
10:00pm - White Elephant Gift Exchange

There are two main events at every *69 Xmas Party... the White Elephant Gift Exchange and the 2v2 Random Teams Game Tournament.

- WHITE ELEPHANT GIFT EXCHANGE -

Most of you have played some sort of variant of this game at an office party or school function. It goes like this:

You find something around the house that you don't want anymore, but you think someone else might want. It can be just about anything... unused gift certificates, old electronics, movies, video games, comic books, Star Trek steak knives... whatever. Hell, re-gift your office gift exchange gifts if you want!

Wrap up the gift, but do NOT put a tag on it so nobody knows who brought it. Also, try to be tricky with the wrapping. CD/DVD-shaped presents are dead giveaways as to their contents.

Bring your gift to the party and place it alongside all the other White Elephant gifts.

When the time comes to play, everyone who brought a gift will get a number drawn from a hat. #1 goes first, and he or she picks a gift at random and opens it. #2 and forward can either choose to unwrap a new gift from the pile remaining or steal an already opened gift. If your gift is stolen, you get to steal from someone else or choose a new gift. Play continues until all the gifts are open.

Additional Notes...

A gift can only be stolen 3 times. After the 3rd steal it becomes locked and cannot be stolen again. You cannot directly steal a gift back from someone that just stole it from you. After all the gifts have been chosen, #1 gets to choose whether to keep his or her existing gift or steal from any of the non-locked gifts!

On Choosing a White Elephant Gift: People often take choosing a gift in one of two ways. Some take it upon themselves to come up with awesome gifts. Previous awesome gifts included a Sega Dreamcast, Oakley Sunglasses and a porno dvd complete with lotion and tissues. Others, the grinchy ones, give away total crap. Some examples of total crap that have been given away include: an external 28.8bps modem, and... uhh... yeah... that was actually the only really shitty one. 🙂

- 2v2 RANDOM TEAMS GAME TOURNEY -

This is an absolute blast. What we do is take everyone's name who wants to play, and put their names in a hat. People are paired up randomly. You might end up with the best game player ever or the drunkest person at the party! The 2 person teams then compete against each other in *very simple* games that anyone can play. Seriously. No experience necessary.

The Prizes: The winning team will get 2 fabulous prizes courtesy of the *69 family. They won't suck either! Winning is good!

This Years *POSSIBLE* 2v2 Tourney Games:
- Jenga (Board)
- Push Me Pull You (PS4)
- Password (Traditional)
- Mario Party Superstars (Switch)
- Johann Sebastian Joust (PS4)
- Fibbage 3 (Xbox One)
- Gang Beasts (PS4)
- Super Bomberman 2 (SNES)
- Overcooked (Xbox One)
- Starwhal (PS4)
- Chu Chu Rocket (Dreamcast)

*69 Xmas Party 2022!

This is for the people that have left Facebook or are too young to have ever been on it. ;)

Here are the details as copied from the Facebook event page :(https://www.facebook.com/events/645505203685315)

Date: Saturday, December 17th 
Time: Doors open at 7:00pm. We get started at 8:30pm and the White Elephant Gift Exchange is at 10:00pm!

The *69 Xmas Party is usually the biggest and most fun gathering of the year at *69 HQ! We can't wait to welcome everyone back to celebrate! There's food, fun, partying and gaming. This party is for everyone, so feel free to bring non-gamers, siblings, significant others, etc. They'll have fun too!

 I *highly* recommend that you participate in the White Elephant Gift Exchange! (See below!)

PLEASE RSVP so we can get an accurate head count for food/drinks. Also let me know of any guests you're bringing... the more the merrier! You may text me, email me or call me to let me know you're coming. We usually get around 20-30 people, so it's a pretty good sized party! RSVP early!

7:00pm - Doors Open
8:00pm - Party Game Registration
8:30pm - Games Start
10:00pm - White Elephant Gift Exchange

There are two main events at every *69 Xmas Party... the White Elephant Gift Exchange and the 2v2 Random Teams Game Tournament.

- WHITE ELEPHANT GIFT EXCHANGE -

Most of you have played some sort of variant of this game at an office party or school function. It goes like this:

You find something around the house that you don't want anymore, but you think someone else might want. It can be just about anything... unused gift certificates, old electronics, movies, video games, comic books, Star Trek steak knives... whatever. Hell, re-gift your office gift exchange gifts if you want!

Wrap up the gift, but do NOT put a tag on it so nobody knows who brought it. Also, try to be tricky with the wrapping. CD/DVD-shaped presents are dead giveaways as to their contents.

Bring your gift to the party and place it alongside all the other White Elephant gifts.

When the time comes to play, everyone who brought a gift will get a number drawn from a hat. #1 goes first, and he or she picks a gift at random and opens it. #2 and forward can either choose to unwrap a new gift from the pile remaining or steal an already opened gift. If your gift is stolen, you get to steal from someone else or choose a new gift. Play continues until all the gifts are open.

Additional Notes...

A gift can only be stolen 3 times. After the 3rd steal it becomes locked and cannot be stolen again. You cannot directly steal a gift back from someone that just stole it from you. After all the gifts have been chosen, #1 gets to choose whether to keep his or her existing gift or steal from any of the non-locked gifts!

On Choosing a White Elephant Gift: People often take choosing a gift in one of two ways. Some take it upon themselves to come up with awesome gifts. Previous awesome gifts included a Sega Dreamcast, Oakley Sunglasses and a porno dvd complete with lotion and tissues. Others, the grinchy ones, give away total crap. Some examples of total crap that have been given away include: an external 28.8bps modem, and... uhh... yeah... that was actually the only really shitty one. 🙂

- 2v2 RANDOM TEAMS GAME TOURNEY -

This is an absolute blast. What we do is take everyone's name who wants to play, and put their names in a hat. People are paired up randomly. You might end up with the best game player ever or the drunkest person at the party! The 2 person teams then compete against each other in *very simple* games that anyone can play. Seriously. No experience necessary.

The Prizes: The winning team will get 2 fabulous prizes courtesy of the *69 family. They won't suck either! Winning is good!

This Years *POSSIBLE* 2v2 Tourney Games:

- Jenga (Board)
- Password (Traditional)
- Super Mario Party (Switch)
- Johann Sebastian Joust (PS4)
- Fibbage 3 (Xbox One)
- Gang Beasts (PS4)
- Super Bomberman 2 (SNES)
- Overcooked (Xbox One)
- Starwhal (PS4)
- Chu Chu Rocket (Dreamcast)

*69 Xmas Party 2021!

It's super weird to go back to writing a blog post on this site, but so many people have left Facebook, and this blog post was the easiest was for me to communicate the what it is to come to the best party that we host all year!

Anyway, here are the details as copied from the Facebook event page:

Date: Saturday, December 11th 
Time: Doors open at 6:00pm. We get start at 7:30pm and White Elephant Gift Exchange is at 10:00pm!

The *69 Xmas Party is usually the biggest and most fun gathering of the year at *69 HQ! We can't wait to welcome everyone back to celebrate! There's food, fun, partying and gaming. Feel free to bring non-gamers. They have fun too! I *highly* recommend that you participate in the White Elephant Gift Exchange! (See below!)

PLEASE RSVP so we can get an accurate head count for food/drinks. Also let me know of any guests you're bringing... the more the merrier! You may text me, email me or call me to let me know you're coming. We usually get around 30-40 people, so it's a pretty good sized party! RSVP early!

There are two main events at every *69 Xmas Party... the White Elephant Gift Exchange and the 2v2 Random Teams Game Tournament.

- WHITE ELEPHANT GIFT EXCHANGE -

Most of you have played some sort of variant of this game at an office party or school function. It goes like this:

You find something around the house that you don't want anymore, but you think someone else might want. It can be just about anything... unused gift certificates, old electronics, movies, video games, comic books, Star Trek steak knives... whatever. Hell, re-gift your office gift exchange gifts if you want!

Wrap up the gift, but do NOT put a tag on it so nobody knows who brought it. Also, try to be tricky with the wrapping. CD/DVD-shaped presents are dead giveaways as to their contents.

Bring your gift to the party and place it alongside all the other White Elephant gifts.

When the time comes to play, everyone who brought a gift will get a number drawn from a hat. #1 goes first, and he or she picks a gift at random and opens it. #2 and forward can either choose to unwrap a new gift from the pile remaining or steal an already opened gift. If your gift is stolen, you get to steal from someone else or choose a new gift. Play continues until all the gifts are open.

Additional Notes...

A gift can only be stolen 3 times. After the 3rd steal it becomes locked and cannot be stolen again. You cannot directly steal a gift back from someone that just stole it from you. After all the gifts have been chosen, #1 gets to choose whether to keep his or her existing gift or steal from any of the non-locked gifts!

On Choosing a White Elephant Gift: People often take choosing a gift in one of two ways. Some take it upon themselves to come up with awesome gifts. Previous awesome gifts included a Sega Dreamcast, Oakley Sunglasses and a porno dvd complete with lotion and tissues. Others, the grinchy ones, give away total crap. Some examples of total crap that have been given away include: an external 28.8bps modem, and... uhh... yeah... that was actually the only really shitty one. :)

- 2v2 RANDOM TEAMS GAME TOURNEY -

This is an absolute blast. What we do is take everyone's name who wants to play, and put their names in a hat. People are paired up randomly. You might end up with the best videogame player ever or the drunkest person at the party! The 2 person teams then compete against each other in *very simple* videogames that anyone can play. Seriously. No experience necessary.

The Prizes: The winning team will get 2 fabulous prizes courtesy of the *69 family. They won't suck either! Winning is good!

This Years *POSSIBLE* 2v2 Tourney Games:

- Jenga (Board)

- Password (Traditional)

- Super Mario Party (Switch)

- Johann Sebastian Joust (PS4)

- Fibbage 3 (Xbox One)

- Gang Beasts (PS4)

- Super Bomberman 2 (SNES)

- Overcooked (Xbox One)

- Starwhal (PS4)

- Chu Chu Rocket (Dreamcast)

Ready Player One Movie Thoughts (Plot Spoiler Free)

Ready Player One

Note: This was written in a kind of stream of consciousness style. I didn't take time to organize my thoughts or edit it thoroughly on purpose.

As a person that rarely reads fiction for pleasure, I can count on one hand the number of novel-to-film adaptations that I've seen in my life. I mean the ones where I read the book first and then saw the film adaption. Not like Wizard of Oz or something where I saw the film first. When I read anything, it's either about current events/pop culture or history. The idea of reading a novel almost puts me to sleep on its own. It's an archaic form of entertainment. However, I will admit that reading books does offer one very important advantage over film adaptations: detail. Since most of the time movies are limited to a few hours, they often have to cut out details that would simply make the movie too long. This of course, happened. Even with its subject matter being "right up my alley" and almost universal praise upon its release, I never considered reading Ready Player One. It was only after I somehow decided to try Audible, the audiobook streaming service, that I figured I'd give Ready Player One a try. So, for the next couple of weeks, I listened to Wil Wheaton read to me for a little over 15 hours while I drove around in my car. A couple of times I went on a long road trip, and let me tell you, audiobooks are amazing for that. In any case, I just wanted to own up to the fact that I never actually *read* Ready Player One, but I did listen to it read to me. And in my opinion, that bridges the gap between movies and reading books quite nicely. But you're sacrificing time for convenience and entertainment, I suppose.

So, yeah, the movie. I'm sure you're wondering how the movie was. It was... different. That's the best way I can think of to explain it. I guess this is how most people that "read the book first" feel when they see movie adaptations. But I mean, it almost wasn't the same at all. Sure, it had most of the big points from the book in it in some way or another. But everything was turned around somehow. Well, maybe not everything. But a lot of things. Characters acted differently, especially I-R0k. Names were slightly changed (why shorten Shoto to Sho... seems like no reason for it at all, and it impacted nothing.) People lived that should have died. And the quests were pretty much completely and totally different. There were, of course, parts of the book that were completely left out, and things that weren't explained very well which I'm sure was a requirement to getting this thing under 6 hours. Basically, if you read (or as in my case, listened) to the book first, just throw it all out the window. All of it. Take all of the references that you read in the book, and just assume they are replaced by new references. This isn't necessarily all bad, but it's hard not to be disappointed. The only thing that was almost spot on for me when it went from book to film was the dance club. It looked pretty much exactly how I envisioned it. Since a picture of the stacks was on the cover of the book when I listened to it, that was pretty close as well.

So other than being different, was it any GOOD? Yes. It was. Did I have very high expectations? Yes, I did. Were they met. No. Honestly, I knew I'd blown this up too much in my head, but I had high hopes that they'd do it right. I didn't mind the addition of 90s and even 2010s references. I minded that they changed things too much. But, if you've never read the book, you'll probably enjoy it more. The acting was fine for the most part. I thought that Halliday was mis-directed or mis-written. The actor that played him was fine, I suppose, but his personality was pretty off from the book. And as much as I like Simon Pegg, he was not who I envisioned as Og. The special FX... I don't know. It almost feels like they made the Oasis characters have that uncanny valley look to them on purpose. Like, hey, this is a game world they're in, this is how avatars look like in there. But then you look at everything else in the game world, and it looks totally and completely realistic. There is even a scene at the end that really drives that point home. But overall, I guess the effects were still pretty good. The feedback I got from my girlfriend's 15 year old son was that he really liked it. He never read the book, and I'm sure he didn't get many of the references. The feedback from my 40something friend who'd only partially listened to the audiobook was that he liked it as well. So, I guess, overall, it's a likable movie if you've never experienced the book or were even alive in the 80s. My girlfriend liked it better than I did, I think. She'd both listened to and read the book. She even wore her "Ready Player One" t-shirt to the movie. But even still, I think I was much more invested in it. It's currently got a 79% on Rotten Tomatoes. I think that's fair. Maybe add a few points if you've never experienced the book.

My Horrible Experience with an Auto Body Painter

I contracted a guy to paint my arcade cabinet in the beginning of January 2016. He said it would take 3 days tops. He dodged me for 3 weeks until I called the police, and they made him give me my unfinished/totally botched cabinet back.

Here is what the cabinet looked like before it was sent to the painter:

The cabinet breaks down into 3 main parts. The Arch, the Base and the Control Panel. Here you can see the Base and the Arch. There are extra parts in the back that just needed to be painted flat black. Those are done.

Here is the Arch attached to the Base WITHOUT the monitor/speaker bezel in place. You can also see my other arcade cabinets already painted in the background.

I had started to work on sealing the cut/rough edges of the control panel with bondo. I did an OK job, but felt that a professional should finish it up and paint it with the right paints and equipment. Ha!

Here are examples of what the cabinet was SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE after being sent off to a local painter:

I like this example except that I didn't want red ALL the way around the control panel like this. Just the sides. Also, this is a different version of the arcade cabinet. It has a black side piece that does not exist on the version I have.

.

In this example, the pin-striping is unnecessary, but the rest looks good.

In this example, you can see a two tone paint job. On my version, the white parts would have been red. Ignore the Plexiglas parts. I have those already done.

And here's the current state of the cabinet... which is what I got back from an idiot painter in Hutto:

You can't really tell how BAD the paint job is here.

Notice that he didn't seal the cut/rough edges so all the paint soaked through. Terrible.

Another example of why you NEED to seal the cut/rough edges with wood filler or bondo or something BEFORE priming.

More non-sealed edges.

The Arch separated from the Base.

This should have been red/black on the back too. This guy just didn't care at all.

There is so much dust on it from the guy ignoring it for 3 weeks.

It almost looks decent here. It's not. Trust me.

Another deceptively "clean" shot.

You can see some scratches in this picture.

The bottom of the Control Panel wasn't even primed correctly. I would be ashamed if I had done this.

The bottom of the Control Panel with the access panel removed.

The only reason THIS primed part looks decent is because *I* bondo'd it BEFORE I gave it to the painter. It's the only part that looks like it came out smooth prior to painting.

More dust from weeks of neglect.

More rough edges. The yellow lines are due to sunlight. 

The arch part scratched the side all up. Those lines are NOT sunlight. Those are spray marks from who knows what he was doing..

More scratches and more spray marks. Just terrible workmanship.

Even the "good" side looks really really bad. Not smooth at all.

NO attempt to do a good job. The masking wasn't done right either.

Again, you have to SEAL the rough edges first! C'mon!

And another pic of the part that I sealed with bondo before he primed it. He never got around to painting it.

A look into a particularly tight session of $1/$2

A complete listing of every single hand that I got dealt at The Venetian $1/$2 No Limit Hold 'Em game.

Interesting stats:

179 hand dealt in 4 hours and 15 minutes. That's  42 hands per hour! Or, a new hand every 1 minute 25 seconds! That's really fast for a live game!

I folded 121 out of 179 hands. That's 68%. This doesn't count checked big blinds or chopped blinds or forced posts.

I flat called 30 out of 179 hands. That's 17%. 11 of those calls were small blind hands where I called $1. So 19 times, or 11% of the time time I flat called a raise.

I raised only 13 times. That's 7% of the time. 

In 179 hands, I was dealt:

AA: 0

KK: 2

QQ: 0

JJ: 0

TT: 0

99: 1

88: 1

77: 0

66: 0

55: 0

44: 3

33: 1

22: 0

AK: 0

AQ: 1

AJ: 2

Date: July 22nd 11:30pm.

Starting stack: $300.

You'll see the hand, my action, and how my stack looked (up or down) compared to my starting stack of $300 after that hand was completed.

11:30pm

6h Td fold 

4s 5h fold 

Kh 5h fold

Ks 3d fold 

Js 2d fold 

7c 2d fold

7h 3c BB fold -2 LOSE

Ad 9c SB folded for $1 more -3 LOSE

8c Qs DLR fold

Qc Jd raise to $7. 4 callers.  J65A +44 WIN

Jh 9h call $2 JT9 +65 WIN

Qc 4d fold

4d 6c fold

Td Ks raise to $6 Qd Td 8c Jd +76 WIN

As Qd raise $8 Folded to reraise $34. +68 LOSE

Jd 6c BB checked. folded on flop +66 LOSE

Tc 3c SB folded to raise to $10 +65 LOSE

6c 4h DLR fold

3h 4s fold

Kc 6h fold

12:00am

5h 6d fold

7c 9d fold

9h 2s fold

Kd 8c BB folded to $9 raise LOSE +63

Kd 9h SB folded to $7 raise LOSE +62

 

12:13am 

TABLE BROKE

12:15

NEW TABLE - MOVED

8h 4h fold +62

2d 3h fold

2d 4c fold

9d 9h call $7. 4QQ6 +94 WIN

5h 8a BB check LOSE +92 LOSE 

Jd 7c SB call 2 +90 LOSE

8s 3c DLR fold 

6c Qs fold

Ad 8c fold

4s 4c call 7 +81 LOSE

12:30a

Jh 5c fold

8h Kc fold

8c Ks fold

9s 8h BB folded to straddle 4 +79 LOSE

Ad 5c SB call 2 +60 LOSE

4s Tc DLR fold 

7s 2s fold

Qs Kd call $10  +16 LOSE

8h 6s fold

Qs 4c fold

2c 3c fold

6h 9d fold

7s 9c fold

7s 8d BB fold +14 LOSE

9s Ts SB call 2 +12 LOSE

1:00am

Ad 7s DLR fold 

Qh 4s fold

Th Jc raise $7 call $13 -8 LOSE

Kh Ks raise 12 +10 WIN

6c 7d fold 

3c 6c BB fold +8 LOSE

Kh 8d SB call 2 -59 LOSE with flopped 2 pair

2s 5s DLR fold

Kd 6d fold

7h Ts fold

7h 8d fold

Kd Ks raise to $6 -56 WIN

7s 9d BB fold -58 LOSE 

Qs 4s SB fold -59 LOSE

Js 8c DLR fold

8d 9h fold 

Js 9h raise to 6 -52 WIN

Ah Jh BB call 6. -8 WIN

Jc 9d SB  fold -9 LOSE

Qc 4h DLR fold

JS 4h fold

8c 6h fold

1:30am

TABLE BROKE

1:32

NEW TABLE - MOVED

9s 5h fold -9

Qc 7s fold

8d Td called $10. +35 WIN ChkRais w/pair/draw

Ah 7c fold

QH JS BB chopped blinds +35 DRAW

7h 8c SB fold +34 LOSE 

Kh Th DLR raise to 12. +22 LOSE

Ks 3h fold

Kh Qc call 6 +41 WIN

3s 5d fold

2h 4c fold

4d 4s call $2. +39 LOSE

Ac 8c BB call $11 +28 LOSE

Qh 2s SB fold +27 LOSE

JC 5c DLR fold

Tc 3c fold

Qh Td raise to $7. +41 WIN

Ah 5s fold

Qd 3h fold

Kc 4s BB  check +39 LOSE

Ah 6c SB call 2. +42 WIN

4s 8d DLR fold 

2:00am

3a 6s fold

3d 3c call $2. Folded to reraise. +40 LOSE

As 2d fold 

Kh 8c fold

3h 9c fold

4h 3s BB check +38 LOSE

Qc 9c SB Call 2. +36 LOSE

2c Qh DLR fold

4h 9c fold

Js 8c fold

2c 3c fold

Th 6d fold

Jc 6s fold

Jd Td BB call 7. Chopped. +36 DRAW

Ah 7c SB fold +35 LOSE

4d Jc DLR fold

Jh 3c fold

4s 5h fold

Ac 5c call $2. +33 LOSE 

4h 4c call $2. +31 LOSE

5c 3d BB check +29 LOSE

2:30a

Kc Th SB call $2.+27 LOSE

Qs Jd DLR raise to 7. +33 WIN

9c Tc call $2. +31 LOSE

As 7s fold

5c 6c call 2. +29 LOSE

4s 6h fold

2c 5h BB fold +27 LOSE

Kh 3s SB fold +26 LOSE

6c 4h DLR fold

9d 8s fold

Qd Td raise $6. +29 WIN

Jd 6d fold

5h 5d call $12. +17 LOSE

4s 8d BB fold +15 LOSE

9d 3c SB called 2. +13 LOSE

Qs 3s DLR fold

As 2s called $6. +196 WIN

As 7c folded. 

3:00a

3c 7h BB Fold  +194 LOSE

Qc 5h SB chopped blinds +194 DRAW

3:05a

TABLE BROKE

3:10a

NEW TABLE - MOVED

8s Th fold +194 

As 3h fold

Tc 5c seat change $2. fold +192 LOSE

8h 8c call $2. Fold to reraise. +190 LOSE

3s 7s fold

6h 2d BB fold +188 LOSE

3:30a

9h 6d SB call 2. +186 LOSE

4d Td DLR fold

3d 9d fold

6s 7s call $2. +184 LOSE

6c 2h fold  

Jh 8s fold

Qs 2h BB check. +182 LOSE

Td 6d SB chopped the blinds +182 DRAW

Ac 5h DLR fold

4d 3c fold

Jd Td call 2. +130 LOSE

Ad Jd raise to 10. +$133 WIN

6h 9s fold

6s Qh BB fold +131 LOSE

4:00a

TABLE BROKE

4:05

NEW TABLE - MOVED

Ad 7d fold +131

4h Ad fold

Jd 4d fold

4s 2h fold

5s 7s BB check. +129 LOSE

6c 5s SB call 2. +121 LOSE

Qs 2d DLR fold

Td 5s fold

Qc Tc raise to $11. +110 LOSE

Qh 2c fold

Js 6c fold

Jd 8c fold

Ts 2c fold

Qd 9h BB check. +108 LOSE

6s 8s SB call 2. +76 LOSE

Ks 3d DLR fold

Jd Th called 2. Folded to raise. +74 LOSE

4:30a

Js 2h fold

Jc 9d call 2. +80 WIN

6s 3s BB fold  +78 LOSE

Kd Ks SB raised to 12. +101 WIN

5s 3d DLR fold

Ac 2h fold

Jd 8h fold

4:45a

TABLE BROKE

Could not be moved to a new table because there was only one left and it was full.

From Where is the *69 Moniker Derived?

So those of you that have hung around me long enough, within the last 15 years or so, have known that certain things I'm associated with are named with some variant of *69: video game tournaments, poker games, even my Wifi network have s69 or Star Six Nine in it somehow. I get asked a lot where that came from. Well, that's a medium-long story.

When I first moved to Austin in 1999, Quake 3 was a big thing for PC gaming. I had dabbled in Quake 2, but when Quake 3 came out, I got into it pretty hardcore. There was a local LAN tournament in Austin called "IRQ Conflict" (the Q was stylized to look like the Quake "Q" logo.) The best players from the Austin Area (and some even from other parts of Texas) would gather there several times a year.

At the first tournament I went to, I think I placed 5th or 6th in Quake 2. So I didn't do that great, but I played well enough to get noticed by the locals. One of the locals, Josh, decided that he should form a Quake 3 clan comprised solely of Austin players. Nobody could agree on a name, so Josh just used his old Quake 1 clan name, which had been dissolved by now. Since nobody cared, we just went with it: *69.

For a while, none of us in the clan even knew why it was called *69. Eventually I asked Josh why he'd chosen the name *69. The story wasn't that inspiring. He told me that he had hastily formed a clan for a tournament, and he needed a clan name for registration. In true Brick Tamland fashion, Josh simply looked around the room for inspiration. He saw a refrigerator magnet that was advertising a phone service, *69, and just used that.

Many of you younglings might not know this, but back then, when people had home land-line phones, you could add features to your service... like call waiting, caller-id and last-call-return. These were not included in your regular phone service. The last-call-return service was accessed by dialing *69 on your phone. It would simply call back whatever number last called you. So if you had someone that'd call you and hang up on you, you could dial *69 and call them back without knowing their number and go, "Hey, asshole! Why'd you hang up on me!... Oh!... Sorry, Mom! I didn't know it was you. Oh, the cat unplugged your phone as I answered? No, I'm fine. Sorry I haven't called." The funny thing is that some people thought that by naming ourselves *69 that we were saying, "If you frag us, we'll frag you back!" Ha! If only we'd have been that clever...

So, in short, Josh had this GTE (not even AT&T, hmph) magnet reminding him of the *69 service, and he simply chose that for the clan name kinda randomly. And the dojo part? Well, ever since being part of that clan, people would come over to practice Quake. I'd host many, many LAN parties over the years. And since my clan was called *69, and we practiced at my place all the time, people starting calling my house the *69 Dojo. Makes sense, right?

Anyway, the name stuck with me and anytime I couldn't come up with a better name for something, which is almost always, I just name it s69 or STAR69 or *69. The end.

TL;DR = *69 comes from my Quake clan's name which was in turn inspired by a lame refrigerator magnet.