Jamie Wakefield

"Tournament Reports" has finally been re released under the Lulu label. Now titled "Quest for the Pro Tour." Available in print or download. From Amazon.com reviews of the original - "I spent $100 to buy this book and found it well worth it. Other MTG books age, this does not. Jamie Wakefield is very entertaining. " - Spyros A. Svoronos. "Many current experienced M:tG writer were influenced by Jamie Wakefield. This book makes a wonderful autobiography of someone struggling to be one of the best Magic players around. You will not be sorry if you buy this book. " - C. Bedford Crenshaw. "Jamie Wakefield's tournament reports draw you into his life. The book inlcudes some strategy advice, but mainly engrosses you in the story of Jamie's experiences at Magic tournaments. If there is a volume 2, I will buy it. " - A Reader. "I have read every book out there on M:TG. This is my all time favorite book. A great way to learn how

I have just finished “ Replay” for the fifth time. Well, I think it’s the fifth time. When you go years between readings you sort of lose track. Years between readings. Think about the ramifications of that sentence fragment... People say “life is short.” They are wrong. Life is long long long. Years between readings. I look back on the different sections of my life, and each one of them has so many experiences packed into them. Each like a four to ten year chapter in the novel that makes up my life... The high school chapter. The college chapter. The manager of the Middlebury Inn chapter. The computer tech at Computer Alternatives chapter. The trying to be good at Magic chapter. The Marriage chapter. The obsession with MMORPG’s chapter. And now the Spain chapter. All of those chapters were like little lives. Each one of them has so many experiences packed into them. So many memories. I look back on the college chapter and it seemed to last so long. It seemed to last for a lifetime. A

Joshie - "John, we broke down by your house, hop on your quiddich broom and get over here and help us out." If you are mystified by the above sentence , I updated yesterday's entry in the afternoon. Go read that and it will all become clear. The first two weeks back are very busy. I should be updating with more content next week. I continue to fail at sleep. I was up at 6:45 this morning after going to sleep at 1:30 am. I tried for 90 minutes to get back to sleep but the brain would not stop it's cacophonous litany of things it thought I should get up and do. I do not feel well today. Yesterday was hours spent at Lulu trying to fix "The Quest for the Pro Tour" upload and failing. The site went down for maintenance then my computer froze a couple times. I uploaded the manuscript, found some errors and had to do it again. Repeat that sentence twice more. When I finally got it right, it just sat and spun at "converting" until I finally gave up in d

Magic - There is a tournament at Heroes Kingdom I will probably go to on August 4th. Hopefully Hilary or Jeremy can build me a deck and lend me some cards. All my cards are digital these days. World of Warcraft - Having finally tamed Rak'shiri I headed back over to the Burning Crusade to explore. The first two quests vastly upgraded my bow and my melee weapon. But I kept seeing mining deposits that I couldn't touch because my mining was only 240. The only way to fix that was to head back to the old world and spend a week or five raising it up to 300. Could I really do that and just ignore all the new things to explore? Hey look, I only have 47 gold in my pocket. So, I guess, yes, if I ever wanted to buy anything again, like, say, my epic mount, then yes, I would be heading back to the old world to level my mining. That was three weeks ago. This morning it hit 296. Mixed Martial Arts - My weight continues to hold steady at 170. Wendy and I run often and continue to increase ou

I know it's Monday and you're looking for something to read. There should be multiple updates today as Wendy and I are finally home from the wedding and doing some work today. Check back often.

Some fun. Holy God. The morning started off better than mornings have a right to start. With a last wistful look, we left our apartment in Madrid for six weeks, closing the door quietly behind us. The plants watered, the fridge nearly empty, the J amon gently placed in the bin. Then the cab came on time. We arrived at the airport two hours ahead of when our plane was set to depart. We were greeted by a teeming mass of humanity greater than the herds of buffalo that once roamed this great land. (See, I'm in America now so I can actually say that and not mean Madrid buffalo.) Oh they were everywhere. We could barely get in the door. Each window had lines as long as a Dune sandwurm . Except for ours. Making our way through the press of the crowd, we plunged right through the sea of humanity to find the Continental windows completely vacant. We don't know what the chaos was behind us, but for once, it didn't touch us. We were in a mystical sea of calm inside an airport. Imp

Last week I had a perfect day. Perfect days do not come along often. Savor them. I am still grinning and happy today because yesterday was so perfect. It started out with a b… sec, phone…. breakfast bar, a liter of water and coffee. Then I colored my hair. Hey, I’m not afraid to admit it. Both my parents have that early grey hair gene so that means I have it too. If I don’t color my hair I might look like I’m over thirty and I just couldn't face that. It came out a little less red and lot more brown than I would have liked, but all the grey is gone. Even the grey streaks in my mustache and beard are gone. Wendy had to do some errands and asked if I wanted to go which was a thankful yes. The scale has been very kind to me and we didn ’t go for a run that morning so walking around Madrid for a couple hours and then up four flights of stairs with groceries sounded like a good idea. And since I’m working on the part of Marilyn’s story where she first gets her colostomy bag, I was look

Actual quote - "Do you want to open up a bottle of wine, sit on the terrace and play some Magic?" - Wendy Note - I gave her the White deck with the Serra Angels and she hated it. She played four games with it. Hated it! I gave her the Green deck with the Force of Nature and the Durkwood Boars and she likes it much better. She looked through the decks I had made. All mono color. White, Red, Green, Black. I explain the theme of each one, illustrating this with cards in the deck like Force of Nature, Castle, Terror, Incinerate. Wendy - "Aren't there five colors of Magic?" Jamie - "Nope, there's only four." Wendy - "But on the back of the cards it..." Jamie - "Who is the Magic expert here?" Wendy - "Well, you are but..." Jamie - "Four colors."

Looking through this blog I have discovered that somehow I failed to post a story from my journal that I meant to put up long ago. Thursday, June 21 2007 Wendy’s intern Albina is here of course. Every Thursday is “take Albina out to lunch day.” Today we took her to Casa Lucas, another of the endless places that love Wendy. We went there last Saturday and one of the owners went by, said hello and touched her shoulder as he passed into the kitchen. We haven’t been there in six weeks and he still remembers her. That day, based on that gesture, we resolve that since we have grown a bit tired of mussel place and the only good food there is the mussels, that we need to frequent Casa Lucas some more. This is specious reasoning since we should be exploring all the places we haven’t ever eaten at in Madrid and those places are endless. Wendy had to do an errand before lunch so Albina and I got a table and waited for her. When she got there Wendy ordered for us since she knows what I like and wh

Well, I was wrong on some of my predictions for UFC 73. I didn't have the patience to wait and steal it from U-Torrent so I actually paid for it the next day and Wendy and I layed on the couch and watched it. Dear UFC, You have WAY too many fillers, fluff and dead air time in your programs. Seriously, I don't know if I will ever buy another one. If I do, I'll tivo it and fast forward through all the shit you put me through while waiting to get to the actual fights. Love J The fights pretty much sucked. I bought the card because I was looking forward to a lot of the match ups. Too many of them weren't even shown. Two of the ones were corrupted in streaming download from the UFC Direct to disk site. Apparently Kenflo had a nice victory we didn't even get to see. Never saw the Lytle flight. Nor the Gurgel fight. Nor the Bonner fight. Not that I carred about that last one anyway... The fights I did get to see were boring or confusing. Sherk is an amazing athlete. Amazin

Nate Marquart vs Anderson Silva. I know very little about Nate. I hear he has a ground game. I know that Anderson Silva is a Muay Thai machine with fantastic clinch, knees, elbows and pin point accurate strikes with hands and feet. I know he destroyed an up and coming Chris Leben and a 20-1 Rich Franklin that no one thought would ever lose. So I'm picking Silva? Not on your life. I also happen to know in his last fight a weakness was shown in Silva's armor and that's the ground game and a lack of takedown defense. A dehydrated and out of shape B-level fighter known as Travis Lutter took him down at will and rained down fists and elbows on a seemingly defenseless Silva. Yes, Silva won the fight, but he won't win against Nate. N ate is going to take him to the mat and pound him out. I don't know what round, but I predict a savage beating, then a ref stoppage. Alvin Robinson vs Ken Florian. In Ken Florian's last outing he almost won the Lightweight championsh

My premium articles from Star City Games remain subscription only for three months. Which means that this years early articles are now available for you to look at for free! Yay! You have to scroll down a half a page to see the beginning of any article you click on. Well, any one that is older than three months. You would be surprised at how much "not Magic" content is in these things. It's always been my style. Even knowing nothing about Magic, you can enjoy many stories in these. Some of my favorites were - Picking up chicks on Airplanes Picking up chicks on Airplanes part II and How would you like to die today? Spanish Food, Movies and whining about Blue Philosophy Waldo style. Next Tuesday, Bringing a Ham Leg to Paris becomes available. Don't miss it. Also, let me point you to what I think was one of my better articles you might have missed that I wrote when Mare was in Chemo and I was reading Bill Bryson's " A short history of nearly Everything.&

Still have a lot of things going on these days. Sometimes it seems like too many, and then I kick myself in the head (using my old MMA training, what that move is supposed to be used for and how it is supposed to help in a fight I’m not sure…) and remind myself that I’m certainly not bored. Wendy and I are working our way through “ The Ultimate Fighter ” season two. And I’m a very impressionable, visual guy. I see someone drinking a beer, I want a beer. I see someone cut into a large steak, I want a steak. I see someone in a cage pummeling someone else, I want to go work out and wrestle again. I see someone having se.. Well, you get the idea. So the entire time we’re watching TUF I’m thinking about how I need to work out harder. I need to get enrolled in a Muay Thai class over here. I need to run further. Do stairs. Work on my intended goal of a hundred push ups at one go. We watch until Wendy has to leave for a girl’s night out dinner with Jen, a friend of hers who is about to say &q

Wendy is happy I’m a writer. As long as he has substantial savings, any woman should be happy with a man that chooses this profession. Because as many writers will tell you, they would rather do just about anything to avoid the blank page. “The easiest thing to do on earth is not write.” - William Goldman “Anybody can become a writer, but the trick is to STAY a writer.” - Harlan Ellison This morning I have done laundry, put the rowing machine back together, made the bed, put away clothes, put dishes in the dishwasher, sliced some Jamon, written an invoice to Wendy’s company and answered all my email. I would rather do all of those things than sit down and compose. Now that I’m doing it, it’s fine, but forcing myself to get to this spot is always hard. It is always supremely procrastinated. Ergo, the laundry is always done, dishes are rinsed and put in the dishwasher with startling regularity, trash is emptied the second there’s enough in the bag to justify using another one. Wendy thin

So I bought Vista. Being a computer tech, I am qualifed to give you my unbiased, knowledgable review of this new operating system. I hope this doesn ’t get too technical for some people. It sucks. Don’t buy it. And I'm not the only o ne that thinks that. http://aspnetresources.com/blog/vista_sucks.aspx Listed there are many of the problems that I have had. I have a 9 month old machine so I'm very capable of running the OS with all the bells and whistles, without having hardware so new that Vista doesn't have drivers for it. Despite this, I have had random lockups, shut downs, apps that just disappear, apps that won't run at all, security headaches, and no matter what DVD burning software I use, all that happens is I destroy a disk, making it unreadable or writable AND the machine crashes at the end of the burn. It's just not sexy.