Brain Candy #21 - Strictly Commercial

I've been looking for a cheap, quality network kit so that we can link our soon-to-arrive second computer to our current one. I read a review article about a fast Ethernet kit available from a company called D-Link. By typing in www.dlink.com, I found their web page. I looked up the technical specs and found that they also had an on-line version of the manual for the kit available. This gave me as complete advanced knowledge as I could hope for. The only problem I've had is finding the kit in a local store. If I can't find it locally, the Web can help me there, too. I'll buy it on-line.

While I'll be talking about commercial sites, I'm still focusing on sites of interest to Mensans. Let's extend our gaming topic from the last article to one more site: www.cheapass.com (pardon the name). As you might infer from the URL and the stated topic, they are in business to sell you cheap games. What you get for your money are rules, a heavy paper game board and perhaps some cards. The company figures that you can supply your own counters, pawns, dice, notepads and whatever else you might need. If not, they can sell you some of that stuff, too. If you want heavy cardboard backing for your boards, DIY. Production costs are minimized this way, although the quality of the components is good. Typical game prices are $5-$6, with none over $9.95. There are almost two dozen available; they've grown a lot since I last ordered. Here are a few of the games they offer.

"Kill Doctor Lucky" is a take-off of the game "Clue". In this case, the victim, Doctor Lucky, isn't dead yet. You're in Doctor Lucky's mansion, chasing him around with a few of your equally murderous friends. Each one of you want to be the first one to kill him, but of course, he is Doctor Lucky. It won't be easy.

"Ben Hvrt" (yes it is spelled that way) is a wacky chariot-racing gambling game. Each player builds a team of ruthless chariot racers who do very nasty things to each other in order to win races. But winning the game isn't about winning chariot races - you need to win the most money.

"Before I Kill You, Mister Bond...", has each player playing the role of an evil genius. You try to kill various spies, some good, some not-so-good, invading your lair, while fighting with your innate tendency to toy with them, allowing them chances to escape and destroy you.

Do you begin to get the picture? These are very strange games, but are very entertaining. Playing times vary between two minutes and two hours. A site well worth a look, in my opinion.

Switching gears - I love music. Not too long ago, I turned on a local blues show and heard something unique. Since my musical experience has been quite varied, this doesn't happen often. I listened carefully at the end of the set for the artist, whose name was Othar Turner. The name was new to me, so I went to the Web to find out more. I first turned to www.cdnow.com. This is a music store, which offers samples for many of the titles it has available. I found out that Othar Turner has released a single album, called "Everybody Hollerin' Goat" by Othar Turner and the Rising Star Fife & Drum Band. CDNow had samples available for this CD, including one of the tune I heard on the radio. I could spend hours listening to samples and I frequently buy CDs based on them. For those interested, fife and drum music is considered a precursor style of the blues; Othar Turner is over 90 years old (91 or 97, depending on the source of the information) and is an original practioner of the form. I did some other browsing for more details and finally bought the CD, but I bought it from www.amazon.com. If I were only ordering music, I probably would have ordered from CDNow, but I also wanted a book at the same time (Barbara Kafka's new soup book), so ordering from Amazon, I could get both for a reduced shipping fee. Amazon also has samples of its musical offerings for your evaluation. Both of these sites make acquiring obscure musical offerings as painless as it can be (short of having free shipping).

As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, make sure that you consider the Web when you're making any major purchase. You can gather information, do comparisons, get recommendations from sites you deal with often and even buy what you're interested in from the World Wide Web.