Step 2b: Step 3 is really really smelly. Please warn everyone in your household that does not have an orgasmic reaction to the taste of beer that they may want to arrange to be in the next county or lay in a supply of gas masks when you're going to do this. (I say this will all affection, but having smelled this step at close range, I seriously recommend this for any brew-miesters living with people who don't like bitter-tasting stuff, like me.)

I read the article; I remember some of those games from their respective movies/shows. That ends with Wesley not trying "The Game"...but does he later in the episode? I'm trying to remember. It would be cool if he tried it out, then thought it was lame, all Tom-Bombadil-like. But I don't think he did. I have a vague memory that the game sucks in everyone, and Wes is about to be forced to play it to bring him in too, when...well, I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen it.

I must admit--I totally remember that episode, and the game, and not only that but I instantly knew what game you were talking about and could visualize it (in all its liquid-CGI yumminess). And I would like to think Wesley would have been a bit more of a gentleman than that, but I will defer to your judgement.

Hey Wil! Congrats on getting out from under the deadlines. I bought and very much enjoyed TDAaos. I have a couple of things I wanted to say about them--what's the best place to send that? e-mail? The stories were great. I don't think you need to worry about writing fiction. Craig Steffen

As you say, to be fair you wanted a flat statistical distribution, which is what you did. I would have used 3 d10s as my three digits, but I'm a d10 guy. d20 for old-school D&D guy isn't surprising. And yes, I would love to see the d20. Hey, maybe in a stupid cell-phone video! With the cat would be even better! I didn't enter the contest because I already have multiple copies of that book...but I'll be on the limited chapbook like CG on TRON as soon as it comes out. Happy Holidays sir!

Happy Holidays to you and yours, Wil! I would definitely be in for an autographed poster. Or photo.

Victoria, short response: http://xkcd.com/359/ Slightly less so: You can feel free to stop pissing in other people's cheerios at any time. It's a matter of perspective. Other people can find things fullfilling that you don't, and vice versa. There's no need to pull a Roger Ebert whinefest and denigrate someone else's form of recreation. I've beat Dark Forces, both Starflight games, and Star Control 2. I can commiserate with someone else who has done the same--we share a piece of cultural heritage, a sense of travelling the same road, and hundreds of hours of learning skills and finding stuff out. Who's to judge whether those things are more or less worthy than, say, the tens of thousands of hours that Michael Phelps spent getting to be in gold-medal shape. Or more to the point, the thousands of other people who put in just slightly less effort than he did and who have nothing to show for their time. Playing real instruments is awesome; it's a neat skill that I'm the process of trying to acquire. But just because you have that skill, please don't feel the need to put down people who don't revere it like you do. Craig Steffen

DJ, "3. Fees: That $2 facility fee is the venue's--TM won't see a dime. As for the $8.40 service fee, they probably share that too. Not all of it--they provide a highly convenient service and should be paid for it. But part of it also covers fees to be paid to the credit card companies (who are more evil than TM by FAR). " CC companies are indeed, evil, but they're uniformly evil at a low level that no one notices. They typically charge 2.5 or 3 percent of a purchase back to the processor to large vendors--and since TM is the 800 pound gorilla in terms of ticket sales, they certainly get those good rates. So that's $1, maybe $1.50 of the purchase. The $2 facility charge, the rest of the $8.40, and the $3 extra charge to pick the ticket up at a "ticketmaster retailer" or $2.50 for the priviledge of printing my own (WTF?) goes to either ticketmaster or the venue. Ticketmaster may not be the source of all the evil in this situation, but they're pocketing a heck of a lot of cash per body through the door. Craig Steffen

Awesome re-run, Wil. I've always liked this story. All the parts, good and bad, are painted with an excellent word-brush. Hope you're having an awesome time in Oregon. Happy Independence day, and happy Dr. Who marathon, apparently. My wife and I planned a family trip to Minnesota so that we could catch w00tstock in June. You (and many others) rocked the house; it was awesome! We had a flight the next morning, so we didn't wade through the line, but I wish I'd had time to.

Wil and all, PSA: weekend passes look like they're sold out, as are Saturday passes. If your talk is on Friday, you might tell people to get their Friday passes ASAP.

Wil, It's interesting that you were first turned off by the show's premise. I was too; I'd pretty much dismissed it, until you were on. Since then I've had the DVR recording episodes. It's really growing on me. It has some of the usual dumb scientist cliches' that set dressers can't get away from, but it's not too bad. I was pleased that Lenard's optics lab contains an actual optics table and equipment. And the scientists don't all wear lab coats, which is a relief. One thing that's really odd, though--they're at a university, and no-one on the show ever talks about the students. Most of my social circle are students, and that's a frequent topic of conversation. Anyway, thanks for being on and getting me interested in the show, Wil. I'm really really enjoying it.

Wow, that's awesome dude! What a neat way to play a game under someone who's a true part of the game but not know it. And ah; now I see the equation you were making. A slope-intercept equation. Cute.

Hey Wil, Would you like a mirror for RFB? You'd solicited them for other stuff in the past, but not these. It's available if you want, but I'm not going to set one up if you're not interested. You may want to have the data for counting downloads or something. Er...sorry things aren't going well. Hope it's a minor aberration and that 2010 goes on to kick 2009's ass in terms of awesomeness! Will be downloading shortly and listening soon. Take care!

The Giants are shellacking the Redskins, so the various members of the household are spending the evening in various ways. Father in law was in the back room escaping football. The other three of us are in the living room with the TV on and the fire going. Mother in law dozing over her mystery novel. My wife reading her mystery novel. Me listening to RFB. Very sweet Wil. Thanks for sharing. A lot of neat memories. I will take the grand canyon recommendation under advisement. Take care, out there California, and everyone else everywhere. Happy holidays, everyone!

Mirror available: http://craigsteffen.net/~craig/016_rfb.mp3

Further along now. Thanks very much for using "penultimate" correctly. That's something I got wrong for years (I used to use it to mean "last") and so now it bugs me when someone uses it wrong like I used to. I totally disagree with you that the Q&A is weak--I think it's by far the best part of the show so far. It's very interesting to hear you talk about topics that are tossed at you by people. You have a good feel for the talk-about-this-subject-for-two-minutes-and-then-move-on sort of rhythm that makes, say, talk/interview shows interesting.

listening now. 2/3 of the way through. Good call on aborting the bit about referring to yourself in the 3rd person. I think some of your audience (myself included) would have found it funny. However, a small fraction would have found it terribly narcissistic and would have spewed vile ichor and poison all over the comments and I'm sure your inbox, because some people can't take a joke. That was very very nice and generous of you to directly answer the one question about voice-over acting. It's an interesting look into the process, both at the Whoopi-Goldberg-1988 POV and also the Wil-Wheaton-2008 POV. For what it's worth, your agent dumping you over the phone thing totally totally sucks. Continuing listening... [Oh...I assumed you are Ok with mirrorinig the file? You always have been before, but I just realized you might not be this time. I'll remove it right away if you don't want it up.]

I've mirrored the file http://68.169.46.94/~craig/015_rfb.mp3 on a new-to-me virtual server that I'd love to stress-test, so please let'er rip!

Hey Wil, Thanks for quoting me! Pretty cool; some friends from college found out before I did. One of them texted me about it; I've been working all afternoon (other than some brief bouts of procrastinating), and didn't know until I got a message about. There are some pretty cool comments here. Oh, and it sucks about the whole math teacher thing. I had reasonable math teachers, and as I recall, and mostly very good science teachers (explains why I went into physics, I guess). I had some pretty horrid english teachers in Jr. High. I had a couple of really good english teachers in high school, but the damage was done. I married someone who's now an english professor, so I've gotten over my problems with it, but it'll never be a good subject for me. Take care, Craig Steffen gevmage

I'm downloading now. I have a ton of work to do today, so I'll not listen until I have that done. While it's downloading, I have to ask: so what the heck are your neighbors building, anyway? I'm absolutely not fishing for info about where you live (I certainly don't want to know and your privacy is extremely important), but my impression is that you live in a fairly nice residential suburban or suburban-ish area. Nice houses with one or two car garages, small front lawn, big back lawn. So what the frack is a neighbor building that requires bulldozer work for months and now a crane? I mean, excavating for pool would be, maybe a week? Excavating a basement and building a whole house shouldn't take a month. I mean, they might be working on the interior for a couple of months but not heavy construction work; it seems like you've been talking about this since the summer. Unless you have a shopping mall going in next door, I really am totally stumped on this. None of my business, but this has been gnawing at me. Ok, download just finished. It's 4:30am, off to work with my colleague in Scotland. Will listen later today when I have a break.

Just started listening. The "one-two-three-four-five..." song at the beginning was incredibly evocative. I distinctly remember a point in my life that I heard it all the time, but oddly, I can't bring the visual to mind that goes with it, although I'm sure there is one. And RFB's coming back? Whoo-hoo!

The above happened to me on: Firefox 3.0.15 with the current "noscripts" plugin Machine is an Asus EEE 1000HD running Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty).

D'oh! Correct as usual, Mr. Wheaton. My ammended feature/bug report reads: If you browse CafePress website with the "noscripts" plugin activated (which in general I recommend, because browsing is soooo much faster), clicking on thumbnails will have very odd and unpredictable results. The effect of clicking won't be nothing, but you get shuttled into a random (or not) section of cafepress. When I clicked on the right thumbnail for the "back" of the mug, I got a page with a T-shirt saying something like "Doctors against home birth" or some such. My noscripts has been instructed to allow CafePress and all is correct with the world. Cancel alert; sorry about that.

Er...Wil and Will: At the bottom of the ad page http://www.cafepress.com/wilwheaton.417431376 There are two thumbnails, the front and back of the mug respectively. The front links to a photo of the front; the back...doesn't. Links to something else. No bad, but you might want to fix it. [edit: actually, on a third look, the left one may not be working properly either...]

Memories of the Futuremug is suitable for other types of tea, various kinds of coffee and other hot beverages, pencils, or pudding. Individually, but not at the same time. Will be buying at least pair, maybe a set of MotFMs. Awesome!