A perfect microcosm of UNLV's 2018 season existed in the first possessions of that game against Nevada. On its first drive, UNLV had a 3rd down and 4, and a 4th down and 4, that they failed to convert. Both failures were off of 50/50 balls that were thrown deep along the sideline.

On its first drive, Nevada had a similar situation, in which it had to convert a 3rd and 3 (or 4) and later a 4th and 2. They succeeded on both conversions by throwing short drag routes to wide open tight ends. In both cases, the tight end broke the play for a big gain, and the 4th down wasn't just converted for a first, it was converted for a touchdown.

Now, we could chalk all this up to poor execution by UNLV. But it's not just poor execution; it's bad play-calling. UNLV is one of the best rushing teams in the nation (they are ranked 22nd now, but I think they were 30-somethingth going into the game), but they couldn't trust their running game to convert a 3rd and short/medium? Worse yet, instead of calling a safe drag route, or quick out, or getting the running back open in the flats, they threw up two 50/50 balls down the sideline? I could understand trying to take the shot play on 3rd down if you are already expecting to go for it on 4th. A good stop-and-go route could catch the defense biting on the short pass and leave a receiver open for a big play. But why would you try the same failed concept again on 4th down?

Sanchez routinely squanders convertible 3rd downs by calling 50/50 passes down the field.

This is typical of UNLV this season. I can't count how many times I've watched UNLV squander a convertable 3rd down on a failed jump ball along the sideline, or on the QB overthrowing a receiver running a post route down the middle of the field. Drive after drive, game after game, they just refused to call a play designed to get 4, 5, or 6 yards and the first down, and instead called plays down the field.

Is the coach calling plays on 3rd and short/medium that are intended to go down the field? Or is the QB just making bad reads and not throwing to the underneath receivers? Either the coaches are calling the wrong plays, or the QB isn't being coached to be aware of the situation. That's bad coaching, either way. Get the first down first, then you'll have three more plays to take shots down the field.

Excuses, excuses

Somehow, UNLV managed to pull off an upset, come-from-behind victory to beat Nevada 34-29, after having been down 23-0 early in the second quarter. The team is currently celebrating by painting the Fremont Cannon red, while coach Tony Sanchez gets ready to start hitting the recruiting trail.

UNLV came back from a 23-0 2nd quarter deficit to beat Nevada and bring home the Fremont Cannon.

In the meantime, however, UNLV's higher-ups are mulling over whether or not to keep Sanchez on for the 2019 season. UNLV was expected to win six or seven games in 2018 and make a bowl bid, but they ended the season with only four wins.

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Friday, November 23, 2018 10:00 AM

New house, new pet

in Pets and Animals by MegaBearsFan

Yesterday, I wrote about how I took in my parents' pet tortoise, and then moved into a new house and had to build a burrow for him. However, that's not the only pet that we took in when we moved into the new house.

We took in one of my parents' tortoises when we moved to the new house.

Several years ago, shortly after my girlfriend and her daughter moved in with me, the little girl started asking us to get a dog. At the time, we were living in a relatively small house that was filled to the brim with our stuff. Board games, video games, costumes, kitchen appliances, kid's toys, furniture ... the house was starting to feel awfully cramped. So I told the kid that we would get a dog after we moved into a bigger house.

That's the sort of promise that young kids don't forget!

Well, this summer, we finally found that larger home. Before we had even moved in, the kid was asking to get a dog, but we had to get settled in and furnish the house first. We also gave her the chore of having to pick up the tortoise's poop as practice for a dog. We told her that if she wants a dog, she needs to get better at cleaning up. If she continues to leave toys laying around, then the dog is going to chew them up, especially if we get a puppy.

I didn't want to get a puppy, however, as I wanted to try to get a dog that was already house trained. We started looking at pet stores, but I wasn't really fond of the idea of buying from a pet store, especially one that is supplied by a puppy mill. I wanted to try looking for a rescue or getting a dog from the shelter.

We visited the local animal shelter, which was full of very depressed-looking pit bulls.

We went to the local shelter to look around, but that place might as well be called the "Sad Pit Bull Prison". It was so depressing to see all those poor dogs in those cages. We saw probably 250 dogs. Of those 250, maybe 10 of them were not pit bulls. Of the 10 or so that weren't pit bulls, about half were chihuahuas. Of the remaining four or five dogs that weren't pit bulls or chihuahas, every single one of them had a sign on the cage saying that the dog had already been adopted.

I wasn't opposed to getting a pit bull. They have a reputation as being dangerous, but I know that the reputation is somewhat unfounded. They are very strong dogs, but they aren't disproportionately more likely to attack someone than any other breed. In fact, my understanding is that they have much lower incident rates of bites and attacks than German shepherds, huskies, golden retrievers, and other popular dog breeds. Like with many other dog breeds, it all comes down to the individual dog's temperament, and the manner in which the dog was raised. In fact, one of my co-workers has a pit bull, and she's one of the sweetest dogs I've ever met. I had to go to his house to troubleshoot some hardware / software that we had installed there, and his dog sat calmly by my side the whole time looking up at me with a big doggy smile waiting for me to pet her.

However, all the dogs that we asked about at the shelter had unknown histories. The workers there didn't know if the dogs were good with kids or with other pets, and I didn't want to risk bringing any animal into my home that might be a risk to our kid or pet tortoise, regardless of breed. So our plans to get a dog fell on the wayside for the time being.

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Thursday, November 22, 2018 12:01 AM

New house, old pet

in Pets and Animals by MegaBearsFan

It's been a few years since the untimely death of my baby tortoise, Koopa. I loved that little critter, and was devastated by her death.

It took a while, but time heals all wounds, and I was eventually ready to take on another pet. The fact that I was taking in a pet that I already knew made it a lot easier for me to feel ready. Last summer, I took charge over one of my parents' pet tortoises, named Bubbles. He is the first child of Nipper, a tortoise that I had as a pet since I was about 9 years old. Nipper, sadly, also died a few years ago in another tragic incident, but she still has several surviving children.

Bubbles [RIGHT] is the first child of my childhood pet, Nipper [LEFT].

Bubbles is 14 years old, and was starting to become aggressive and territorial -- and a little incestuous -- with his younger sisters, so we decided that it was best that we separate him. Last summer, we relocated him to my home, and I had to build a large, above ground burrow for him on the side of the house. Koopa's old burrow wasn't big enough, so I had to do a whole new one from scratch.

House-shopping hesitation

I had to build a large, above-ground burrow for Bubbles.

I was hesitant to take him in at the time because my girlfriend and I were also in the process of shopping for a new house. We were starting to outgrow the small, two-bedroom house that I owned, were running out of space to store our stuff, and barely had the space to entertain more than just a handful of guests. We wanted to try to find a place that would give us the space to have large dinner parties and board game parties, and which would provide us with enough space to hopefully expand out family a little bit more. However, we were conflicted about the process. We wanted to try to stay in the same area because our kid was right across the street from one of the better elementary schools in the city, and would also be very close to a good middle school when she gets older. The new build homes that we liked (and which were affordable) were all very far away at the edge of town.

We were about to give up, when we finally found a place that was somewhat close to our old home, put in an offer, and started going through the inspection and escrow process. However, the inspection revealed some annoying defects and some shoddy work that was done by the people who had flipped the house. The sellers were unwilling to make the requested fixes or bring down the asking price, so that home fell through.

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The Haunting of Hill House

Oh boy, this is going to be a tough one to talk about. I have very mixed, and somewhat polarized views of how this turns out, and as such, I'm struggling with whether or not I can offer a recommendation. The first five or six episodes are fantastic! After that, however, I really feel like the show peters out, begins to meander and run in place, and then kind of unravels in the end. Those first five or six episodes are so good, however, that I think I can recommend the series as a whole based on the strengths of its first half.

I can't discuss this show without getting into spoilers, so be warned that the further down you read, the more spoiler-y this will become.

A masterfully suspenseful start

Each of the first five or six episodes is told from the point of view of a different sibling in a family that is tormented by a summer spent in a haunted house. This structure creates a deeply textured and nuanced tapestry, in which each episodes recasts the events of the previous episodes in a new light. Giving each character his or her own episode provides us with a rich character study that helps us to understand each character's attitude when they all get together and the family drama gets rolling. All the while, the subtle supernatural elements create a building sense of intrigue as the mysteries surrounding Hill House, and the family's last night there, continue to mount and the plot continues to thicken.

Each of the first six episodes is told from the perspective of a different character.

I really love the camera work! Slow pans and zooms are used with excellent effect to draw out scenes and add tension and keep the scene mysterious. Sometimes, there's a creepy detail in the background. Other times, there's an ominous lack of anything creepy to see as the camera slowly pans from character to character across a room or down a hallway. In any genre other than horror, these labored camera movements would seem wasteful and pointless, but they really add to the atmosphere here.

The set design is also really great. The gothic Hill House provides an excellent and ominous set piece, but the other sets are also uncanny and unnerving in their own right, especially Shirley's funeral home. Around episode 6 or 7, I was really starting to struggle with reconciling the geometry of Hill House, and this is something that is paid off really well at the end of the series.

The geometry of Hill House becomes a source of unease as the series develops.

A meandering, incoherent ending

Unfortunately, the series faltered a bit for me after the sixth episode. At this point, all the characters are together in one place, and so no one character receives the focus of the narrative. The story starts to meander a bit here, while also running in place, as the intrigue that was so carefully crafted in the preceding episodes is squandered, new plot points and concepts are thrown at the audience, and old plot points and concepts just disappear.

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Cities: Skylines: Industries - title

Wow, Colossal Order is really popping out these Cities: Skylines expansions in rapid succession! I feel like this is the third or fourth expansion in the last year alone! ... Hold on, let me check ...

Expansion titleOriginal release
After Dark coverAfter Dark24 September 2015
Snowfall coverSnowfall18 February 2016
Match DayMatch Day*9 June 2016
Natural Disasters coverNatural Disasters29 November 2016
Mass Transit coverMass Transit18 May 2017
ConcertsConcerts*17 August 2017
Green CitiesGreen Cities19 October 2017
ParklifeParklife24 May 2018
IndustriesIndustries23 October 2018
* denotes a mini content pack, rather than full expansion.

... So, yeah; third full expansion in the last 12 months (give or take a few days). Fourth expansion in the last 14 months if you want to count the Concerts content pack. Colossal Order seems to have been following a pattern of two full expansions and a mini content pack each year since the game released. I guess that's one way to keep your game relevant. It has certainly kept me coming back every few months.

Never as robust as I would like

The problem is that the limited development time means that the content that is provided in these expansions rarely ever feels as robust or comprehensive as it should -- at least, not to me. As such, I feel like I'm getting diminishing returns from each new expansion. The amount of content that is already in the game means that each new expansion feels like relatively smaller drop of content into an already-large bucket. Each expansion feels like it gives us less to do, and has that much of a smaller impact on the overall gameplay experience.

Adding to the problem of diminishing returns: every single expansion has had some glaring omission or weakness that bothered me, and none of the later expansions have bothered to go back in and address the weaknesses and limitations of the previous expansion(s). After Dark failed to include zoneable public beaches and didn't really make the day/night cycle feel as meaningful as it should. Snowfall failed to include season cycles to go along with After Dark's day/night cycle, and completely dropped the ball with regard to mechanics like ski resorts. Natural Disasters probably felt like the most "complete" and well-rounded expansion (not to mention the most novel one), but still suffers from its content being random, and it neglected to introduce any winter-specific disasters to go along with Snowfall.

Industries follows a long-standing trend with Skylines expansions neglecting seemingly-obvious features.

Mass Transit brought the long-overdue ferry transit option, but neglected to revise cargo harbors to make cargo ship routes more practical, and didn't have any water-based city services (like a coast guard, for example) that would allow a true island economy to function without a network of bridges for freight and emergency services. Green Cities was maybe the laziest expansion, and it focused on pollution-management, but didn't bother to actually make pollution any more relevant or challenging to begin with. Lastly, Parklife granted a lot of player expression, but failed to incorporate the legacy parks into the new modular park feature and doesn't allow the camera to zoom in close enough to get a good look at your pretty decorations.

This isn't to say that all these expansions are "bad". I've liked them all (except maybe for Snowfall and Green Cities), but none of them have really wow-ed me with their content (except maybe for Natural Disasters). And the modular nature of each expansion means that it has limited-to-no impact on the core game systems, and limited-to-no interaction with the previous expansions.

The latest expansion, Industries follows suit. It promises to re-invent the way that your cities' industry functions, but kind of does it in an almost half-assed way. Much like the expansion before it, Parklife, Industries doesn't really incorporate the old legacy industry zones into the new industry mechanics. The new "Industry Area" paintbrush is virtually the same mechanic as the Park Area paintbrush from the last expansion. It isn't a replacement for the original industrial district specialization, so if feels like it's pretty much duplicating that content rather than re-inventing it.

You paint an area as an "Industrial Park", just like the parks in Parklife.

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A gamer's thoughts

Welcome to Mega Bears Fan's blog, and thanks for visiting! This blog is mostly dedicated to game reviews, strategies, and analysis of my favorite games. I also talk about my other interests, like football, science and technology, movies, and so on. Feel free to read more about the blog.

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