Burke's Joystick

Almost a year ago to the day, I posted a blog entry entitled "You Made Me Do This!"   In a nutshell, it was my rant about the terrible state of PC gaming.  At the time I had every intention of checking out of PC gaming and devoting my free time to board games and miniatures, something I hadn't done since the mid to late '90s.  Unfortunately, that never came to pass.  Shortly after setting up my first game of Tomorrow's War , I became ill and had to let it sit fallow for a few weeks.  By the time I felt better, the madness of the holidays had arrived and I just didn't have time.  Then the holidays passed, and while I did finish painting a few more miniatures, I never did recover the impetus to return to the game. Winter turned to spring, spring turned to summer and, as is usually the case, summer turned to autumn, and now here I am, right back where I started. With the exception of needing to clear off some dust, and making a few repairs (I am discovering r

So, I had this really great research scientist show up at my homeworld.  13% bonus to energy research, 18% bonus to high tech research...wow, what a resume!  I immediately assigned him to the Buvu Yagin Major Research Facility where he could put his talents to work.  Everything was going great until a year or two later when one of my counterintelligence agents did some snooping into his background and discovered that he was, in fact, a foreign agent!  Sometimes when things seem too good to be true they are just that.  What to do?  

Well, this is unexpected: me playing a Civil War game in late October!  I usually don't get the ACW itch until the first warm days of April (I am very much a man of "feasts and seasons").  So, for me to boot up Norbsoft's masterful real time strategy game  Scourge of War  this late in the year is rather unusual.  Then again, there is a big midterm election coming up in just days.  Despite the fact that World War II  continues to monopolize the military history spotlight - as with NASCAR, mostly because men get a kick out of burning vehicles - I have always believed that the American Civil War has had the most lasting impact on modern America of all wars we have experienced as a nation.  For example, it can be a startling realization that contemporary America's two dominant political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, are the same two dominant parties from the Civil War period: And while that epic war settled the issue of slavery once and f