There Certainly are a lot of sites out there ...

I have been sprucing up my website (www.jergames.com) and blog site (that's this one) in the hopes of joining the ranks of Interesting Places to Visit Once in a While.

Like many endeavors, the initial payoff is large, and then slows down as you get into the finer details. At some point you hit that spot where ROI is low enough to be satisfied:

- Nice font, colors, etc...
- Regularly updating, and hopefully interesting, content, that won't offend anyone too much
- A picture or two
- Reasonably organized, but not too busy
- No broken links
- Works ok on Opera, Firefox, and IE
- Links to other interesting stuff

Enough for now. I'll add JavaScript games and fill-out forms in my Copious Free Time.

I haven't been trying to imitate other sites, but I do check every once in a while to see if anyone has linked to me (and I usually link back to them). Slow going. (begin dream sequence ... why yes, my site is the first site that come up on Google when you type "board game" ... I don't know, people must link to it a lot, I suppose ... keynote speaker at GenCon, including all expenses paid? How flattering, but I don't know if I'm free that weekend, let me check my calendar ... of course I'd be happy to write a weekly article for your magazine ... how much? oh, you're too kind ... end dream sequence)

Following links and search reveals that there are an awful lot of good sites out there. Every time I think I have discovered the bulk of them, I find someone else's link farm with another hundred or so to check out ( just look at all these sites on abstract games ... )

My wife has now toasted me about five times in a row in Puerto Rico, and my friend online about five times, too. And just when I was hoping that I was one of the Best in the World at Something. Oh, well. You know I teach these people these games, and look at what I get as a reward :-) . While occasionally frustrating, I'm actually happy about it (no, really ... no, I drink like this all the time). There really are games where I still always win, and it's pretty boring to play them. Of course, always losing is not much better, unless I feel like I'm making progress (I won't tell you which game, but it starts with a G, ands with an O, and is two letters long).

Game night tomorrow, back in my house. Something to look forward to.

Yehuda