April 2006 Archives

Beating traffic link via

If Bush's speechwriters were kids link via

The making of THX Deep Note link via

Response to "10 facts you should know" link via

Why do we put salt on ice in the winter time? link1 link2 link3 via

Profit and liability for book companies link via

Code Monkey link via

Standing room only in planes? link via

In praise of loopholes link via

Infrared sports photography link via

Gas price map link via

We went back to the Rivery again. Today, I decided to drive down from Dukes to park underneath IH-35. And, wow, was the road washed out! Fortunately, my pickup truck has some clearance and I was able to navigate it. Georgetown really needs to do something about drainage here! Either fix the road or block it off. I don't see it lasting much longer if we keep getting heavy rains that causes flash flooding. The third picture was shot from down in the four foot trench that was dug out from running water.

I wanted to practice throwing some discs in the field. But it was damp from dew (and last night's rain) and was also was overgrown. They really need to mow down here, durn it! But I did notice what looked to be a bat sleeping on the concrete wall in the shade. I got as close as I dared to take a picture and tried not to disturb Mr. Bat.

This course really needs some work. Almost all of the temporary markings are gone. Only a few small signs are left. And only people who played when it existed in better condition could play here now.

One of John's putts was really lucky. It balanced right on the edge of the basket.

A new class of obstacles is the swinging vine. This managed to block one of John's throws.

And I was really lucky today! One of my putts was slightly over thrown. But it hit the tree behind the basket and bounced into the goal! Score!!!!!!!!

Innova discs have this stamped on them, so I looked it up. And this is what they patent:

abstract

A one-piece flying disc formed of a flexible plastic with an annular rim and a central section joined together by an annular shoulder. The rim has a lower edge defining a lower plane of the disc and the central section has an upper zone defining an upper plane of the disc, with the rim having a triangular cross-section with a lower rounded corner forming the lower edge, an outer rounded corner, and an upper corner merging with the shoulder. The outer corner of the rim is located between the upper and lower planes, and the shoulder decreases in thickness from the rim to the central section.

claims

1. A circular flying disc comprising:

an annular rim and a central section joined together by an annular shoulder, and formed in a single piece of flexible plastic,

said rim having a lower edge defining a lower plane of said disc, and said central section having an upper zone defining an upper plane of said disc,

said rim having a substantially equilateral triangular cross-section with a lower rounded corner forming said lower edge, an outer rounded corner, and an upper corner merging with said shoulder, with said outer corner located between said upper and lower planes,

said shoulder decreasing in thickness from said rim to said central section, with the thickness of said shoulder at said rim in the order of twice the thickness of said central section, and with the outer surface of said disc from said rim outer corner to said central section having a continuous smooth curved lifting surface, and

the upper surface of said central section being substantially flat when the disc is stationery, with said central section being sufficiently thin and flexible to dome upwards when in flight.

What was interesting was that it was filed on October 27, 1983. Almost twenty four years ago! This thing should be expired by now (actually by 2000).

Played with John at Old Settlers as usual. The winds were pretty fierce although not as bad as before. We ended early at hole 16 since there were rain clouds above us. And I thought there might be hail around. Although when I got home, nothing was on the radar. Sigh... It got here around 3am in the next morning.

Bunte Runde

For our first game of the evening, John brought out a newish Knizia game that was unknown to me. It is part of his games for children series. But it is playable for adults as well. There is a circle of wooden pieces that have two arributes. The first is shape and the second is color. And there is a bunch of plastic tokens in the middle that are victory chips. On your turn, you can move the marker up to three spaces and take the piece it lands on. If the piece is that last of a shape or color then it is scored. All players who have one of the attribute get a plastic chip. When the plastic chips are gone, the game is over. And that is it: simple, quick, and has some meat to it. I like it! We played with the variant that your final score adds the score of the player to your left. This gives you an incentive to get that person to finish something that you can score as well.

Thurn und Taxis

This is my second playing of this game and luck was on my side. Although Marty told us of three things that we got wrong in our first playing (one of the was: when you have no cards, you must draw two). I was always able to draw the card I wanted. I only flushed the cards a couple of times but I had more cards in my route in my hand so it wasn't critical that I flop a card that I needed. Towards the end, I was considering how to draw cards or flush cards that Mike (who was sitting on my left) was needing... Playing for screwage in the end.

Mike wanted to steal my seat! The audacity!! He picked up my Sicherman dice and rolled the dice with the big numbers on it and gave me the dice with the small numbers on it to roll. Sadly for him, he rolled a 3. I had one number that could beat him, two that would tie, and 3 that would loose. The odds were not bad for me... and I rolled the 4!! Hehehe... not like I would have given up my seat or anything... but it was an amusing break.

Turbo Taxi

After that, we played another new game from my Adam Spielt order called Turbo Taxi. This is a remake of Friese's game called Flickwerk. It is a simultaneous puzzle solving game in where you try and connect a network. This network must have only two exits off of the board to the houses. The other requirement is that the cars (or taxis) must be able to drive on the road to the house of the matching color. I think that I like the theme of the old game better where it is a circuit board.

Mike needed help in the first round. He called out done and then John and Jon would stop what they were doing and check the winning conditions. They would point out some failure to Mike. Which Mike would then fix and call "done" again immediately. This went on until Mike was able to finally satisfy the winning conditions. Flawed!! I just ignored them and tried to solve it myself (unassisted).

Tichu

Mike once again made a random wish and this time It took a bomb out of my hand. He did call GrandTichu on 35JQQKAP, so I will cut him a little slack there. If the Tichu caller is worried about a potential bomb, can you correctly hurt your partner? I think that getting a bomb out of the opposing team is better than the benefit of leaving your partner with a potential bomb to stop the lead of the other team.

So, my question is: in the above picture of a Tichu hand, what cards would you pass and why?

Tichu

This next game will go down in the annals of time, filed under how to loose a game when you are 690 points ahead and need 205 to win. I blame Mike, really. This is the disc-golf Tomahawk equivalent play in Tichu.

The opposing team is really far behind and clearly needs to start calling GrandTichus. We just need to coast to victory and set them occasionally. As you can see from the score card, the Jo[h]ns call GrandTichu seven times in a row and are successful 71% of the time. Which gives them 600 points. They still need 295 points from point cards before we can get 205 points from point cards. And this leaves us with the deciding factor. We need to over-call Tichu and be set... twice! Yes, the other team only has partial information. But they can make up for it a little bit since the non-caller will pass their best card. Draw backs are getting the dog and Mah Jong action against you.

I will give Mike some credit. In the picture above, he had to over-call Tichu. But, did he have to make the same mistake twice??? Tichu is a game where even though you have powerful cards, you are not guaranteed to go out first. When you loose the lead, the other team can play card combinations where you (and your partner) do not have an in to take back the lead.

By the way, for Mike's first hand, he had dog9TTJQQD and considered calling GrandTichu but did not. He picked up 778JAA and called Tichu and made it. P.S.: If you would have called GrandTichu, it would have been another instance where we would have won...

Luckily, Mike was not on my team and wished a bomb out of Adam's hand which caused him not to call Tichu. I am hoping that he will grow out of the random wish phase.

Our team was not getting many points at all from the cards. After five hands, we only had 95 of the 500 points (19%). And after nine hands, we had 200 of the 900 points (22%). What saved us was that we were able to set both Adam and Mike's Tichu calls which caused them to break even in Tichu points.

For Mike's desperation Grand Tichu call, he had 23468PDX. Ed had three Aces and I had one. Which was sad given the fact that he also had the MahJong and couldn't pass it to me (since I would wish for an Ace out of Ed's hand). And even with all of the Aces, Mike still went out! Flawed!!

Went to the movies with W----- (as he likes to refer other people) and tried to buy a ticket at the kiosk. But was greeted with this screen. And the other screen was dark! Forced to interact with a human...

For today's disc golf, Jon, John, and myself took a road trip down to Twin Parks country club which is located in Dripping Springs (south of Austin). It was surprisingly close and we arrived pretty early in the morning (8:05). The gate required a code for entry and noone answered the phone to let us in.

So we looked around at the scenery and spotted a couple goals for disc golf. After waiting a couple of minutes, we decided to head off for breakfast.

We found a packed gas station and headed in. In the back was a grill and a bunch of people ordering breakfast tacos. We had hit the jackpot! I ordered one potato and chorizo taco and one cactus and egg taco. Jon stayed away from it since it was green and a vegetable (or is it a fruit?). It was good and filling.

We arrived back at 9am and this time someone did answer the phone and told us the combo (a surprisingly easy one to guess after the fact). So we headed in. We stayed on the road which wound up a hill and arrived at a house. We figured that it was not where we were supposed to go. So we entered the inner gate instead and found the club house.

The clubhouse was pretty nice and spacious. They had a lot of couches and tables to rest at. And upstairs, they had a pool table and even three rooms that could be rented out. After we signed a waiver, we asked about the courses and were told to start at the upper one since it was hillier.

Each hole had a concrete pad to throw from that was "pointed" in the general direction of the hole. Also, each hole usually had a choice of three levels of difficulty (Champion, Pro, and Ace). The distances are some times drastic. For example, the champion would be 753, the pro would be 606, and the ace would be 354 feet. We decided to only play on the Champion tees (because we are).

One time, we were pretty close together in our throws.

The course had mostly tree obsticles but there was one small lake.

Which John managed to find. Fortunately, it was retreivable...

I managed to lose a disc in a tree and needed to invoke Jon's superhuman tree-climing powers.

The land was around 110 acres. And, besides disc golf, there was mountain biking and paintball on the premises (and sometimes even a wedding). Apparently, the owner has an Ag-exemption because there is a herd of Elk that grazes on the land. And they were spotted on the disc golf course. We humans did not scare them off. So, John just decided to throw the disc. And he almost hit one!

There were gullies around, but, sadly, we did not throw off the edge of one to the other side.

After a break, we played the lower course. And this one was different than the previous one. It was all on flat, grassy land with fewer, larger trees.

The goals even had night-time lighting where solar panels recharged batteries. And there was malibou lighting for the tees as well.

The trees were sometimes used to great advantage. They provided the bounds of where discs could be thrown.

We did have one hiccup. Jon had thrown his disc and lost it. I had seen the disc go off course at the end. So, we searched around for it and did not see it. There was a grain feeder that had a ladder running up it. I climbed up there and looked around on the ground and did not see anything. We almost gave up when Jon finally spotted it up in a tree. Not five feet from where I was looking for it...

We headed back home and decided that, since we were down south, we should check out some new disc golf courses that we would never go to. After searching for a while, we found one course on Slaughter lane. It is called Circle C Ranch Metropolitan Park. Soccer teams we out playing in the park and parking spots were few and far between. So we stopped at the first open spot along the road that had a sign pointing to the disc golf course. It was not well marked but we eventually found the tee for hole one. We threw a couple of times and wondered if we could find the goal. But we eventually found it.

It seems that these holes are sponsored by different groups. Watch out for the Cursed Ronin! Don't mess with that hole!

Even though my mind was willing, my body was tiring out. At hole five, I threw my disc and it veered off to the left. So, I took a penalty and threw again. But this time it veered off to the right! Argh! I gave up. And when we reached the goal, so did John and Jon.

Here are some higher-res pictures of the club house:

[Right of Revolution.] Government being instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security, of the whole community, and not for the private interest or emolument of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, whenever the ends of government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the people may, and of right ought to reform the old, or establish a new government. The doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power, and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind. link via

1986 World Series Game 6 Re-Enacted in RBI Baseball link via

The time traveller link via

Lazy drinker link via

Wallmart controls the games you buy link via

Students spell fuck on building link via

Interesting hair cut link via

Fixing broken DVDs yourself are illegal link via

Make sure that you can turn off the test of foam fire suppresion link via

Easter Turducken link via

Stick figure dungeon escape link via

Titanic: The Sequel link via

C is for Cookie link via

Marble madness link via

Map Gallery of Religion in the United States link via

The Bush Administration announced last week that the nation is no longer losing wetlands--as long as you consider golf course water hazards to be wetlands link via

Mice on cat on dog link via

Pinhole camera truck link via

The intelligent spoon link via

The motorized cooler link

Biodiesel on-demand link via

Hamzy: Handcrafted artificial machine zoned for yelling link via

Canon EOS systems link via

Well, I tried taking action shots today. Next time I will throw into the sun and get John to frame the picture better. But the good thing about digital cameras is that memory is reusable.

Another day of disc golf at Old Settlers park. And I'm off at the start. John's second throw is touching the goal and I am a distance aways...

The day was hot and humid. Hot because it is Texas and Spring time. And humid because it rained a lot yesterday. So much so that a small stream was flowing where there would normally be nothing.

I finally got around to tracking down the extra hole. You see, after hole 10, we cross the road and throw from to rocks that are spray-painted red. And then continue to the basket. We have always assumed that this was hole 11, but it was closed when construction for the water park had started. So we have a bonus hole now.

See? The old basket is there... Tricksies, that one is... It decieves us, it does....

And on the real hole 11, my brand new TeeRex was stuck in a tree. Unfortunately, we did not have tree-climbing Jon with us. So we resorted to throwing water bottles at it. Fortunately, John was a good shot.

And while we were in an exploring mood, we wandered down the other side of the dike that we throw discs off across the water. We heard running water and wondered what it was. Apparently, the big drain like contraption sitting in the middle of the lake drains through the dike over to the other side. Too bad lost discs were not strewn across the river. Sadly there is some gate that keeps stuff like that from happening.

Well game day started off scary for me. I had asked Adam to show up earlier than usual because I knew IH-35 would be bad. However, when Adam showed up in my office soaking wet and describing the 2-inch golf-ball sized hail, I knew I was in trouble. You see, I baby my truck. Ok. I drive the snot out of it, but I keep it indoors in a garage whenever possible. So the thought of hail damage was one that I was not willing to consider. However, we looked on the weather sites and determined that the hail storm had just passed. Another one was coming in from the south-east but it had a ways to come. So I thought it was safe to drive the gap. Fortunately, no hail (or heavy rain) was spotted.

Mauer Bauer

Well, after getting games from Adam Spielt, we of course had to play them. And first up on the table was Mauer Bauer. This is another abstract game from Leo Colovini. And I like it. You are building towns on a triangular grid. And when a wall is placed that surrounds pieces on the board, everyone has the opportunity to play score cards. These score cards are based on a number of different conditions, like white towers or red houses inside or outside of completed areas. Two Grimms were playing and this was our first time, so it was a little slow. But I expect future playings to be quicker. This would be a good lunch time game and I definately liked it.

Thurn und Taxis

Another new game and this one was by Andreas Seyfarth. This game was about completing routes (loosely described as mail routes but that theme is lightly applied). This game was also played slow. However, it did suffer from a couple of problems. First, you cannot plan ahead for your next move. This is because one of the actions a player can do is "clear the board". So the chances of a city card that connects your next hop staying are slim. The next problem is that it is played like a multiplayer solitare game. There is not much interaction other than getting a better score chit for the section that you completed.

Die Dolmengotter

The next new game was a completely abstract game (well, there was a theme about Druids but that was more distracting than thematic). And this new game was the worst of the bunch. Maybe we got some rule wrong (like that never happens). But my problem with it was that you have a limited number of initial moves (4). And this game requires that people cooperate in scoring sections. However, the lesser majority goes on the bottom of the score pile and consequently receives a smaller multiplier (ex: 4x 3x 2x 1x). So, Mike wants me to help complete a score (so you can get more points that allow you to score more sections). However, if I were to do it, I would receive the worst multiplier. So I didn't. And tried going somewhere else.

We actually had to restart the game when we realized that we got a rule wrong but it still didnt provide any incentive for people at the worse end of the deal to complete the deal. I actually hope that me missed something major here.

When we were picking for partners, Adam picked a Queen and I picked an 8. So I was joking that Ed and Mike needed to pick 7 or below. Then when Ed picked a King, I joked that now Mike needed to pick an Ace (or King). And what did Adam draw for Mike, but an Ace! So our fates were indeed sealed.

This is another game where Tichus (or Grand-Tichus) were called on every hand. In fact, it was more extreme, since there were multiple over-calls! On my first hand I was tempted to call Tichu but I had a single 4 and 10 to get rid of. So when Mike called Tichu, I was happy to set him. Unfortunately, our team got no points. So it was 0 to 0 after one round.

Mike's second Tichu call was late in the hand. So I thought that he was very sure about his ability to go out first. Sadly, it was not meant to be. This left us 100 points more behind. Which meant that we needed to call Grand-Tichu towards the end. And, for Mike's desperation Grand-Tichu call, I apparently forced him into it. He had 34567TJK with a rainbow of colors. He made it, so I don't know what he was whining about ;).

Wilson! favored me today and delivered my Adam Spielt package today.

The popular games were Antike and Tichu (of course). Many new and interesting are waiting to be played by our group...

Ticket To Ride: Marklin Edition

Wow, another day of games. But this one was more social than gaming. Jon and Roxana invited John and Gina Gravitt and myself over for an Easter party. The house was decked out with cute Easter themed items. Jon had just recently bought this new game and I was happy to try it out. Although I am not generally fond of Ticket to Ride.

This game has more choices going on. It introduces a passenger piece that you can place on the board when you lay a track down. One of your actions is to move it along your segments and collect points chips (which start out at some number and get progressively less valuable). You can play ticket cards to move along someone else's track. Also, this game introduces another type of engine card that is only used for tracks 4 or greater. If taken face up, it does not cost you the turn. And this game splits the destination goals into two groups (a short path for less points and long path for more points).

So they have made some progress into turning this game into a slightly meatier version. Another bonus is that all of the train cards have unique pictures of the Marklin model trains.

We took a break while the kids ran off trying to find Easter eggs.

David and Goliath

Next up was this trick taking card game. It was interesting as a three player game. Quite different from a five or six player game. However, I don't feel that you have many choices in leading or playing cards (since you are forced to follow suit). It was rare that I was able to get only one or two of the cards in a suit (which score you the most points).

Hacienda

To finish up, we played Hacienda. Jon was able to build off by himself and created a long chain. Which put him next to a lot of markets and gave him a lot of money when he brought his herds to the markets. And which easily gave him the win.

Power Grid Italy

Its been a while since I have played Power Grid. And I generally prefer Funkenschlag over Power Grid. But I wanted to try it out with the new maps. We decided to try Italy this time. What was interesting was that with 6 players, we only used 5 sections. And because of the layout of the map, there was not many choices in which section you could leave out (otherwise you would cut the map in two). Connections up north were cheaper than connections in the south. So four of the people started off in the north. Ed decided to go to the boot. And I went a little north of him.

One of the problems in Power Grid was that phase 3 is quick or missing. However in our game we had a 3 or 4 turns in phase three. That made the game a little better. And supposedly, oil was rare in this game. So I was lucky to get a couple of wind plants when I was the last player to bid for a power plant. Unfortunately, Susan was a little out of my reach and she won the game.

Age of Steam: Germany

Since Adam and Mike were both playing Zepter, we took this opportunity to start an Age of Steam game. And we chose what looked like a hard map. Mike starts off in one area. I started out in another. And then Ed and Susan jumped right on top of us and took advantage of our positions. This effectly took Mike out of the game. And I was hurting badly (although I might have finally ended the game breaking even. But I would need to start over somewhere else). So we decided to call the game and start over.

The next time, no one else played in the area where I went. For the whole game, I was alone and was able to set up a good network. Only Susan had some slight problems in tring to make a profit.

And then for the rest of the day, we would joke about just giving up and starting over.

Settlers of Nuremburg

I realized that it has been four years since I last played this game! Wow, how time flies... So we started out the game using the recommended positions. Unfortunately I chose white and the distribution of the deck of dice meant that I never got many resources. So I was out of the game. In fact, Susan got most of the resources. So much that she was able to win the game in the first third of the timeline! The starting roads were also unbalanced. I only got tolls once during the game. Flawed!

Wings of War: Famous Aces

We ended up play this light and cute game of dog fighting. In each turn, you program three manouvers from a set of cards. These cards have arrows that describe the flight path. If your plane is within a distance and arc to an enemy plane, then that person will draw a damage card.

Susan was my partner. And whenever one of us was off a distance from the others I would use the term "off picking flowers". In the above picture, I am on the left and Ed and Kevin are flying towards me. Susan is off picking flowers in the far right-hand side of the table!

Unfortunately, she was the first to die. So it was me against Ed and Kevin. I thought that both Ed and Keven were close to dying. Ed was a good opponent with an acrobatic plane. I took quite a lot of hits from him (and Kevin). And luckily enough, they were mostly 0s. In fact, I had 10 zero cards, 3 one cards, 3 two cards, and one three card. Which gave me 12 hit points of damage out of 15. What was cool was that I was able to take out first Ed and then Kevin for the win!

Jon, John and I went back to Georgetown's Rivery course. I was afraid that all of the temporary signs would be missing and we would be unable to find the holes. Fortunately, that waqs not the case. We only had problems finding two holes (where we had to use our Jon-Positioning-System). As you can see above, the small wooden signs were still there (although only one spray-painted arrow remained).

When I described the course the last time, I was remiss in describing how cool and interesting this new layout is. It is certinaly different than all of the other courses that we go to. The wooded section provides some holes that need accurate throws (a small hole through the trees) and also general tree avoidance throwing skills (along a 400 foot hole). Also, there are changes of elevation where you have to throw up hill.

We came across some snakes going at it. They quickly fled in a tiny crack in the wall.

The one bad thing about this course is the tough and thorny vines. They will scratch you up as you maneuver around the trees. I even found some four inch high vines devoid of leaves sticking out of the ground. They remind me of caltrops.

Princes of the Renaissance

Since we played Age of Steam last week, we played the pre-empted game Princes of the Renaissance. What is sad is that I have owned this game for 2 1/2 years. Sigh. Anyways, I am glad that I played since it turned out to be an interesting game.

In this game, players are one of six families in Italy. You can bid for personalities that correspond with one of the five cities on the map. These personalities may give you income (in gold or influence), and/or special abilities. You then purchase army units. These army units are used when a fight is chosen by a player between two cities. Everyone then bids influence to be able to fight as the offender or defender in the battle. The results of this battle will move the winning city up and the loosing city down in the prestige levels and give the victor a victory counter (worth triangle points). At the end of the game, cities are then ranked by prestige and assigned point values. For each personality tile you own, you add up the corresponding point value. You can also get points for 1st or 2nd gold, 1st influence, and event tiles.

Normally, if you had a strong army, you would not want to be the defender of a city that you did not own personality tiles in. And conversely, if you had a weak army, you would want someone stronger to defend that city. However, in our game, I realized that you do not have many opportunities to initiate a battle (which would allow you to move one of the cities that you favor over one that someone else favors). And, since victory counters are worth triangle points (1, 3, 6, 10, 15, ...), this caused us to really bid for one side or the other in a battle. Even when it was not in our best interests.

I hope to play this game again soon!

For my failed Tichu, I knew it was a risky call. And Ed gave me conformation by over-Tichuing on it.

For my last Grand-Tichu call, I waited until Mike picked up his eight cards before calling it. Luckily, I had the Dog in the last six cards and Mike passed me an Ace. Unfortunately, Ed gained controlled and played Phoenix-J-10-10 and was left with two cards (little did I know they were Ace 2). I was worried that they were a pair and Ed would go out. So, I cratered my hand and played A-A-K-K. I led singles and Ed kept passing out of fear of my Dragon. Adam then plays a King on one of my singles and I could not play the Dragon on it (since I still had singles left). And sadly, I was not able to go out first.

Wow. Gruesome damage to Roxana during her first playing of disc golf. And that was just at the speed thrown while putting into the goal. I would hate to get in front of a disc thrown for distance.

I wonder what a Phrenologist could tell us about Roxy's new character...

For Adam's Grand-Tichu wish, I thought that I was in a good position to hurt him. I had an Ace, the Mahjong, and a 6 bomb. My partner passes me the Dragon. I did not plan on making an Ace wish and then immediately bombing. I figured that it was good enough to get one ace out from Adam's hand and then Dragon it. I would save my bomb for some other winner of Adam's. Little did I know that Ed was also powerful (he also had a 5 bomb). In fact, Ed went out first and I went out second for the 1/2.

Sometimes it matters which eight cards that you pick up. In the last hand of the game, my last eight cards were the Dragon, Phoenix, two Aces and two middle cards. So I wait until I can play a card. Mike made his usual random wish. This time, it was for a three and I did not have it. So I played a higher card, call Tichu, and hope that it would flush out a possible a three bomb. I had no problems making the Tichu call.

In our game, only one hand had no Tichu calls made. That is a sign that everyone is informed enough on if their hand is a Tichu hand.

Prime numbers have ties to the physical universe link via

Starmaze: Cartan's triangle link via

Ok, some doit-yourselfer should combine M1 batteries with a Prius link via

My little pony RPG link via

April Fool's link via

Vote for the Sweedish Pirate Party! link via

Wheel just got far more annoying! link

Keyboard shoes link via

GMaps and email path link via

Bootleggers

Tim had a game day, so I decided to stop by after disc golf. And we played Bootleggers. Because John keeps dragging it around and trying to get people to play it. He says that someone told him that it was a 10 game.

This game is set in the 20s when prohibition was enforced. We play gangsters who are delivering alcohol to speakeasies. And we start with one still, one truck, and one mobster. Be forewarned, this game uses a lot of dice! The stills initially have one die to determine alcohol production (you can add improvements which are extra dice and even get more stills later on). And the speakeasies have dice which determines their demand for alcohol (with improvements later on). The mobsters are used to try and control majority influence in the speakeasies. If you have the most mobsters, then your trucks will have delivery precidence. If you have at least one mobster in a joint, then you have priority over "general deliveries" (those who have no prescence). And if you have at least as many mobsters as everyone else, then you get bonus money for all deliveries. The speakeasies all have price that they pay for alcohol. The bigger the speakeasy, the more dice it uses to determine demand and the more money it pays out for deliveries. But those speakeasies need more initial mobsters in it to open it up for business.

This game does have a Chinatown like feel to it where you can barter your alcohol and trucks in order to make money. And like that game, not many people traded with me. Which really hurts. Especially when I had really bad dice rolls where I rolled a 1 four times in a row for my production. I also rolled lower than average in the speakeasy that I controlled which caused me to not be able to buy the goods that I tried to deliver.

Another negative thing about the trading is that deals are non-binding. So in John's first trade with me, he decides to go against our agreement. Sigh. Sure, I understand that that may happen. But on the first trade at the beginning of the game? Come on!

Another day of disc golf at Cat Hollow. Today, the weather was beautiful out and a touch on the cool side. It is probably the last time we will see cool weather around here. Apparently, there was some sort of Easter party going on for the residents here. There were plastic eggs all over and this train. That has something to do with religion, right?

Another Friday disc golf day at Old Settlers park. And the fire ants are really in season now. They are every where you look. Like every twenty feet or so. I imagine that one day, the entire earth will eventually be covered with ants.

The day was beautiful but a little too windy. Which is a pain if you are trying to avoid throwing your disc into the water. John played with me today. And on one hole we must have spent ten minutes trying to find a red disc in the middle of a green field (an easy job one would imagine). We eventually found it relatively close to the goal.

And it seems that a race will be held here sometime. Some people were out spray painting arrows along the course to indicate where the joggers would run. It also told me which direction to throw.

Unfortunately, I had to leave early (after hole 17) in order to make it to my Pilates class on time. Coincidently, John had lost his red disc again...

Easy Come, Easy Go

While we waited for Jon, we played a quick game of this Knizia dice fest. The goal of three plaques were hotly contested for a bit. But John finally survived a round with three of them to give him the win.

Age of Steam

And then we got into our meaty game for the night. Since Adam and Mike were both gone to play Bridge, it was the perfect time to play Age of Steam. Chapel really wanted to play Princes of the Renaissance (and I do as well). But I made an executive decision and brought AoS to the table. Which was cool. We all were in the running to win this game.

This is the first time with Lauren with our group. Unfortunately, Dan is hosing us by not wanting to play Tichu anymore.

Another day of disc golf for me. At Old Settler's park again. As is usual for me, I came early to practice throwing. And was mildly pleased when my long distance throws ended up in the same area. Perhaps I have some level of control?

Today was hot and humid! So much so that I was tired out from the practicing. Roxana played with us, which was cool. And we all wondered why a group of Boy Scouts would pitch a tent in the middle of a disc golf course. Aren't they supposed to be aware of their environment? It didn't stop me from throwing it towards the goal.

After we played, Jon was tempted to escape the heat and go swimming for some discs. But he only waded in and then got out. Afterwards we headed to the Mexican ice cream store to cool us off. I liked it! Their desserts are not as sweet as American ice cream.