Five Point Friday - March 11, 2022

Welcome to this week's Five Point Friday. I haven't been keeping up because so many things are happening around here. Today marks 50 days until we go home. In just 2 weeks, we got new floors, windows, kitchen cabinets and a lot of other stuff. 

50 days is going to go fast. My main issue is all of the changes at home. I might have to skip restoring my basement office. That's ok. 

My daughter has plans for a rabbit hutch and a reading area. My wife wants the PS4 down there, too. My son Paul's room will be down there. 

In the kitchen area, we have a nice table picked out which will be great for homework and blogging. Additionally, we'll have a nice passthrough area between the kitchen and dining room with room to write and draw. We already have the stools picked out.  

For point one, on the gaming side, I jumped into the Old School Essentials Kickstarter. It seems very popular. At the moment, with 14 days to go, they crossed the $650,000 range. They are deep into the stretch goals but shy of the $800,000 point to do physical dice. They are projecting that the Kickstarter won't make it to that. 

Ah, well. Can't have everything. But by sharing their campaign, maybe we can have everything. :) 

Just what I need, more dice. 

For point 2, I stopped off at Iron Buffalo Gaming for a book and some excellent coffee. I really enjoy this place and they have a great thing going there. 

I spoke with the owner and listened as he did an interview with a local news crew. I haven't seen him on the news, I suspect I missed it.

 

But anyway, I did manage to snap a picture or two of their D&D e5 setup.

 

I want my shelves to look like this. We'll see. 

Point 3 is I discovered that Hulu has the Firefly TV show. For some reason the film, Serenity is elsewhere in the streaming universe. Over the next couple of weeks, I plan on watching an episode per evening. 

Four. More sci-fi. 

I picked up the Serenity RPG from 2005. It looks impressive, I've been reading through it and building characters to work out the rules. I really enjoy reliving Firefly. 

My last point is on ads, media, and swag. 

I lost my Amazon ads a week or so ago. I'm not sure why. Anyway, that is why you won't see ads for them here anymore. I am still heavily into the Amazon ecosphere, so don't think that just because I don't run their ads that they have bad products. 

As a replacement, I have been including Abe Book ads with each book review. Additionally, I have some swag links available. Over on Redbubble, you can grab some great coffee mugs created by me. I am trialing putting ordering information in posts, but I'm not sure that is the way to go. I need to figure out how to present them nicely on the blog. 

Another simplification is I have eliminated my Facebook and Twitter share campaign. Redbubble is kind of pressuring me into using Instagram, but I don't use it much. The data doesn't support using Facebook, so flipping to a new platform seems... well... bad. Facebook was good for a while, but it wasn't giving me the returns I was expecting. What I found was, 38% of my readers are coming directly to the blog either by typing the name or using a bookmark. Also, only 4% of my readers came from Facebook and that number is falling. 

But... Wow! 38%. That is awesome. If I knew how to get that higher, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But 38% is amazing name recognition for a website with a wacky name. 

I am looking at all of my social media accounts and trying to decide what else can go. No matter what, I plan on keeping my MeWe and Dice.Camp accounts running. 

Anyway, thank you for reading. 

Iron Buffalo Coffee Review and a Swag Plug

I had a chance to stop into Iron Buffalo Gaming yesterday and picked up a bag of fresh ground coffee. The place was rockin' at 4 in the afternoon. 

Anyway, Iron Buffalo Gaming has a coffee "problem". Well, not a real problem, but a strong sense of good coffee. They had the coffee bar open and it smelled wonderful. They are also able to do many other styles of drinks, such as an oatmeal latte.

They have a slot on their website for ordering coffee, but right now they are not in stock. I'll update when it becomes available. 

I was in a hurry, so I didn't have time to hang out and have a cup. That and they have a mask policy in place, so I had to take mine home. William, the owner ground it on the spot so it was totally fresh. Not that it would be old or stale being made over at Tipico Coffee on Elmwood Avenue here in Buffalo, NY. You can't get fresher coffee than that. 

This brew is a light roast. 

My son and I had a cup after dinner and it was great. While advertised as a light roast, it is full-bodied with a delicate persimmon overtone. I love saying "PERSIMMON", I've always wanted to say that. 

As promised, I have some swag to share, too.

A few months ago, I started offering some small items on Red Bubble, including these great coffee mugs. They are typical mugs that are perfect for relaxing with a good coffee. They are 11 ounces or 325 ml. which is just the right size for quality coffee. None of the wacky, "Venti® Americano, Starbucks Coffee" crap. 

You don't need 20 oz. of good coffee to be satisfied. I have this hysterical Starbucks monolog about "a venti what?" that I do when I go to Starbucks. It hinges on venti is Italian for 20 but Italians have been on the metric system for ages, so I want "venti litri di caffè americano". 

Enough joking, on to the commercials! 

These two mugs are available for a little over $16 on Redbubble.com, but if you order two the price drops to a smidgen over $13 each. I have both white and black available. The design is called "Rockets into Adventure". You are probably familiar with this design from my Pandemic Disaster posts. 

The black cup is pictured to the left, with the bag of coffee and a small hint to my next review.