On Friday Nan and I loaded up our 4 does into our horse trailer and hauled them up to Pueblo for the Colorado State Fair dairy goat show. After paperwork got done at the fair we checked them into their pens and Nan went off and parked the trailer.

While she was gone, I got the exciting job of cleaning out several pens, which were filled with the previous occupants defilements. This was a pretty unpleasant experience, and fell into the category of things that if I told my 15 year old self I would end up doing, he would have informed me that I may have made some poor life-choices.

Once that was completed we had some ludicrously priced, but delicious fair food and headed home where we stayed up until 2am getting our costumes prepared for the goat fun costume event on Saturday. The morning came too soon and I spent most of Saturday in a bit of a stupor due to lack of sleep.

Even so, I had a good time showing our goat Lilly, and received a blue ribbon for being the only goat in her class.

Later in the day I showed Nubbin who went on to receive a Reserve Champion in the Jr Recorded Grade show! This is a pretty significant honor, Nan and I were quite surprised!

I took a few naps in the afternoon and felt much better in the evening, where we competed in the goat fun costume show! When I signed in, the girl asked me what age group, and I indicated adult. She said, “14-18?” and I said, no, 34. So she added an extra category to her page that said, “34” on top. I guess they don’t get too many geezers in their goat fun show.

The youth classes were full of great costumes. One of the best ones included a goat converted into a camel. Nan and I were proud of ours too, Nan dressed as “Victorista Cruz: World Traveller” and I dressed as “Eugene and my robot the P9000”

As the only entries in the “34” class we both received ribbons and a prize.

On Sunday the second part of the goat show ensued, we were much better rested, so it was about 10 tons more fun to be awake. There was no costume show, but we won the “Primier Exhibitor” award for having the most Registered Grade (experimental) goats in the show! This was pretty exciting to us, as we’re really trying to create some new goat mixes with particularly good dairy and pack goat attributes.

And, that was the state fair! We had fun! We might even be doing another goat show this coming weekend, but it’s right up next to the 360iDev conference I’m going to, and I’m not sure if I’d survive two huge events right after one-another. We’ll see!

-Phil

I got back from Indie Boat 2013 a few days ago!

If you want to see pics and videos, check out Dave and Andy’s blogs. If you want to read my account of what went down, read the other two blogs first, and I’ll just fill in my own details.

The trip was an amazing experience. I’ve been to Lake Powell before, so I knew that. Our lake time was great, I had a blast water skiing and sleeping on top of the house boat every night. We saw some cool storms and stars. The food was most excellent. I’ve gotta give a shout out to Colin Northway for his 5 minute GDC talk this past year where he encouraged us to get out and travel a bit more.

This was the first conference I’ve ever organized, and well, it came out way better than I expected. We had about 3 hours of official content per day, and spent the rest of the time talking games too. I led 3 discussions.

Secret Sauce – Where we discussed some of the things we each did to differentiate ourselves. Everyone shared the unique aspects of their business. The trip had a very diverse mix of people from mobile, desktop, web based platforms, so everyone’s approach was a bit different.

Galcon 2 Design – Where I got feedback from everyone on my launch strategy and marketing strategy. I’m still not quite sure how I’m going to do these things, but the crew did encourage me to take the launch of Galcon Legends more seriously than I was taking it.

Indie Survival – Where we discussed surviving the indie life – tips dealing with depression, fitness, workaholism, time management. Working alone and being your own boss is tough, but it is undoubtedly the most awesome job in the world. Key point is to be thankful for what we’ve got.

A few takeaways for me were from these talks:

Personal Story (Andy) – People want to hear more about goats and stuff. I’ll try and do that. I mean, hey, I’ve even got a degree in writing this sort of stuff, maybe it’s time I put it to good use.

Reframing AI (Kim) – Kim got me all fired up about AI. I’ve spent the last 3 days messing with Galcon 2 AI code. It needs some real work to be solid yet, but I’m having fun, although I’m pretty sure I’m using it as a avoidance tactic to put off doing the work I need to do.

Music as more than background (Dave) – It would be fun to make a game where I make / choose the music FIRST and THEN I make the game. (Instead of the other way around!)

Culture (Tim) – Tim defined for us the concept of neotribalism. Which led to some interesting discussion of the various “tribes” in indie culture. All of whom seem to be in a state of constant tribal warfare. Yum? It also got me thinking about my recent departure from some tribes and the significance of that.

Indie Survival (Phil) – Dave suggested doing 45 minute time boxes and then tacking on 10 minutes of banjo practice after each time box. He explained how this helped him clear his mind and get good ideas. I play the fiddle, so I’ve been doing this all week so far. I really like it.

All-in-all, the conference went really well. The small group was the perfect size for doing these small group discussions and we really had fun. I got to know some folks better and meet some new people too! I’m so glad this trip came together!

…

The evening when I got home, a bunch of cows wandered up our driveway from the ranch next door. This is usually something Nan takes care of, cause she’s in charge of everything animal around here, but she was busy. So I got the lunge whip out and began to march the dozen or so cows and bull down the driveway.

Cows are kind of huge, so the whole way down our 1/8th mile driveway I kept a close eye on them. Last thing I wanted was to be stampeded by a herd of disgruntled bovines. I also had to avoid the real-time cow-pie production remains as I walked behind them.

At the bottom there where a few ranchers who escorted them up the road back to their pasture. On my way back home I fixed part of our electric fence where one of the cows had bumped through.

I clearly need a cowboy hat, and maybe a cattle prod, to really live the rural indie lifestyle.

-Phil