April 2008 Archives

The group finally went to Monument Cafe. Unfortunately, they ordered sandwiches and burgers. To me, the daily and varied vegetable and dessert selections make this place special. Also, our waiter was rather disappointing. He ignored refilling our drinks. And, while he offered to split up the bill, he wouldn't actually split the bill up. I had to write down everyone's name on the bill to mark what items were ordered by what person. He then took our credit cards and cash and came back with the change and the credit card bills. You had to trust that he entered everything in correctly for each person.

While I think that Traci understands the mechanics of Tichu well enough. It seems like she doesn't understand the subtleties in playing with a partner. Whenever Nick would play and John would pass, Traci would go over Nick. This happened whether she called Tichu or not. The most egregious example was her playing the Dragon on top of Nick's Ace. You need to keep in mind that your partner should have your best interests in their decision making process.

Perhaps we should play more games of Suicide Tichu. My one game of Suicide Tichu distilled and exemplified the "teamwork is essential" experience quite nicely.

The group checked out the new disc golf course near the Benbrook subdivision in Leander. The course is brand new. And it shows. They are still working on clearing out trees. A crew had come by earlier, cut some tree branches down, and left them laying in the course.

There is a creek running through the course. Of course, we lost discs in it! You had to cross the creek at different points. Each time, the only way to get across was one thin board. The only problem with that was that one end was usually in the water.

The greens are pretty narrow. And the rough is very rough. It is quite easy to loose discs in the tall grass. If that wasn't enough discouragement, right next to the rough is an impenetrable wall of brush and trees.

I had a couple of good throws. But I tried to generally play it safe. Can you see that body of water in the distance? Well the basket is on that small hill behind it. There is about twenty feet of green around it.

Jon threw his disc in the water. And if I wasn't spotting his throw for him, he would have never found it. It disappeared into the muck without any trace.

Apparently Jon stirred up more than just muck in that pond. An aggressive water moccasin started swimming around in it after he left. It went back and forth towards people. Can you spot it just past the green pond scum?

That wasn't the only time you had to throw across the water either. The tee for seventeen is on the other side of another pond.

It been a while since I have made pizza. So sad. I was distracted by high-tech gadgets. Don't worry though, Mr. Pizza. I would never put you in a vacuum bag and submerse you in water!

I had an interesting experience at the pump today. With gas at all-time highs, I finally hit a limit. The pump stopped at exactly $75.00. But the tank was not full yet. When I inquired within, I was told that my credit card must have a limit on it. So I swiped the card again and put the last couple of dollars in to top it off.

Sigh. What a stupid security measure! The company does not want me to spend more than 75 dollars on gas at one time. But they do not mind if it do it immediately again.

I should figure out what car I want to drive next. I would love to get a 2008 Corvette ZR1. 638 horse power! Mmmm. But I can't really justify spending 65 thousand dollars (assuming that I can find one at that price). A Volkswagen Jetta Blue TDI diesel would be interesting. At least in theory (making your own bio-diesel ). But diesel, which was once cheap, is now more expensive than super-unleaded. Plus, I would want to cut down on weight and get a two seater version. And it would be nice if it was a plug in hybrid as well.

Das Zepter von Zavandor

Cool. We played a game of Zepter. I started off strong. I was able to build my economy up to four diamonds before everyone else. But I just kept it there and let the other people catch up in income generation. The endgame took far too long for my strategy. We did have an amusing ending though. Someone myself, Doug and Jon ended up having the same number of victory points. And this game does not have a tie breaker!

We had another session of bridge tonight. And it was quite boring. Wayne played 5 hands. Nick played one hand. Stephanie played two. And I played one hand. Well, I would have played another hand if I would have remembered the "Rule of Twenty."

I definitely like Tichu much better than bridge. You are more involved. You don't have to sit out on hands. And good hands don't necessarily mean good cards. For example, my hand could make Tichu if the opposing team had got down in cards and I was able to play a single 8 (then bomb, play a jack high straight and then the 4).

Out of curiosity, how should I keep and present the bridge score?

Marty came into town and was looking to see if Tichu and Tex-Mex was going on tonight. Since Gravitt was out of town, I took the task of finding two other Tichu players to make this happen. We met at Serrano's. I haven't been there in a while. Which is a shame. I like their Chile Relleno.

Next up with the sous vide experience was cooking Salmon. I bought a half of a pound of Atlantic Salmon and brined it in a 10% salt water solution for ten minutes (to help prevent the albumen from leaching out during the cooking). After patting the salmon dry, I then cut the it in half. I salted and peppered the fillets, poured a little bit of olive oil on them, and also put some garlic power on them. In one bag, I placed some tarragon. In the other, nothing else was added.

I cooked the fillet in 116 degree Fahrenheit water for an hour. When I removed the fish from the bag, I patted the top dry with some paper towels and then used a culinary blow torch to brown the top.

10 impossibilities conquered by science link via

The longest Turn link via

"We know that people are going to use the printer to try to make weapons [and] sex toys and drug paraphernalia," he says. "This is obviously not what we're hoping they are going to build. We are hoping they are going to build more and better RepRaps." link via

The mother of all cul-de-sacs link via

Reproducing a $100 bill by paying 10,000 people 0.01 cents each via Amazon's Turk link via

Human/chicken foetus link via

The script of the Godfather is used to create a picture link via

The difference engine link via

Sierpinski cookies link via

Fractal pizza link via

48" Star Destroyer model link via

Lost is like W.o.W. link via

Skull camera link via

Ten weirdest computers link via

Real men don't drink and drive link via

Cluttered desktop folders become art link via

The laser elevator link via

Kite camera link via

Trapped link via

Super Mario Brothers theme song link via

Excelsior 1968 link via

LOL grues link via

Bento boxes as album covers link via

Archisuits link via

The race to save the Cougar Ace link via

Jessica Rabbit Untooned link via

Detecting planets by using Canon 200mm f/1.8 and a custom CCD link via

I'm with stupid link via

Need for speed link via

The meetup group met at Old Settler's Park for the winter variant. There were a lot of people that showed up including two new people (Jim and Tyler). The only problem was that there was a charity walk going on at the park. Oh well, it makes for a target rich environment...

The is another mound in front of hole two from the dam project. It was a damn, damn mound that sucked up a lot of discs...

Fortunately, my disc went around the mound.

But, unfortunately, we could not convert it into a birdie. Jon was off of his game today. And I blamed him, of course. Its never my fault!

There was one amusing incident on hole 10. A couple and their child were taking pictures in a tiny patch of blue bonnets. John, who definitely does not want to include hitting children in his list of accomplishments, went down to protect them. We threw discs down to the basket and John would try and knock them down when they got too close. Finally, they got the clue and walked off...

This tree is more imposing in real life. I will have to try again sometime. I did mess around with the color balance though including some LAB colorspace correction.

This is a graveyard that no one seems to know or care about (at the corner of 1460 & 186). Usually you see a manicured field with a couple of flowers here and there. Not so at this location. It has flowers everywhere and an empty spot or two.

I practiced a little bit around the hill again at Old Settler's. I saw John's vehicle but no Gravitt. And, then on hole 12, I hear "four" and notice John's disc hit the ground close to me.

I had a couple of good initial first throws. But I couldn't convert them into birdies. John did throw a thumb on this hole this time. He considers it a safer shot. I just he is afraid of these trees...

I didn't stay that long. I wanted to take some pictures during sunset. The sky is nice and cloudless and there is going to be a full moon out.

I took my car in for service today. Last August, I received mail that there was a factory recall for my F-150. Well, it seems that the engineers screwed up and they had to recall the recall and redesign the parts. Luckily, I procrastinated and missed that whole fiasco. But it took them forever to get the new parts in.

I bundled up a bunch of problems for the one trip. And right off the bat, the dealership was annoying me. I had an outside oil leak and an inside water leak. My service adviser said that to investigate those problems I would have to pay $60 fee for each. My car is still under and extended warranty. And I consider both of those issues to be warranty issues.

While I don't usually buy extended warranties, I did for my vehicle. I drive the snot out of it. "Drive it like you stole it is my motto." So I wanted to make sure that what ever broke would be fixed.

Well, around 1:30, I get a call from Shaun (paraphrased, of course).

"We haven't found the leak yet. But my mechanic suspects that it is in the cylinder heads."
"Okay. How long is that going to take?"
"Well, that's a complicated process and it is about a 14 hour job. We can't finish this today and we don't work over the weekend. How is this going to affect you?">
"That is my only vehicle. I live in an non-commuter city and I need to use it over the weekend. Is this covered under warranty repair?"
"Well, I don't know what part needs to be replaced. Before I know it, I can't tell you if it is covered or not."
"Surely, the list of parts is finite! Why don't you go through the possible parts and tell me which ones are covered!!"
"I'll call you back..."

"Okay, it seems that all of the possible parts are covered. Since this is covered under warranty, we will pay you $30 a day for a rental vehicle."
"See, this is what I wanted to hear in the first place. That everything is taken care of and I don't have to worry about a thing."

Conveniently enough, they rent a Ford Escort for $30 a day. The only problem was that I would have to pay for taxes. Sigh. But that should amount to a dollar or so a day. I did luck out when they were out of Escorts and upgraded me to a Ford Fusion.

Clippers

Wow, it has been a long time since we played this game (or its identical twin Santa Fe Rails). I would like to play it again while the strategy is still fresh in my memory...

Big Three

Another game of big three (which seems to be Jon's favorite three player game to finish out the evening). I had one great hand. And it got even better when I picked up three Aces and one three! No contest really...

Nick, Wayne and I played bridge. Well, at least practiced somewhat. Nick was kind enough to give me a placemat that had a bidding convention on it. But that convention is different than what Nick uses.

What I would like to see is for Nick to create a Finite State Machine that gives all possible outcomes of the system. That would appeal to my inner nerd.

Well it looks like the Meetup group finally took a trip down south! Today, we played at Circle C. Thanks to one of our new members, Jason, we actually played doubles. And we played at the shorter tees. This made for a much more relaxed and enjoyable experience. Gravitt was kind enough to car pool Jon and myself down to Slaughter Lane. We left ungodly early though. When I asked him why, he responded:

Contingency, practice, taco. It takes longer than you think.

Unfortunately, I had a Sobe Power Fruit Punch with my breakfast taco and the Taurine or the Guarana gave me a pounding headache. I could feel it build up at hole one. And I was miserable during almost all of the round of golf. Sigh.

We stopped by the south Twin Peaks for lunch. The tall mugs were frozen. And this iced up our beer. For some reason, our waitress was not very friendly. She never sat with us or talked with us.

Gravitt took this opportunity to teach Tichu to Javier. Javier was nice enough to play along with us. I don't know if he will play again though. It was amusing that he was on the opposite team from mine. Yet he kept asking what the special cards were. I tried not to use that knowledge. It was just a friendly learning game.

Today I practiced Old Settler's Winter holes around the hill. There are six holes that you can play that center around the small hill next to the water park. And if you play them three times in a row, that would make a round of 18.

It seems that I kept running into a group of people. At first, I thought that if I waited for them to finish a hole, I could be rid of them. But I discovered that, like myself, they were playing holes out of order. At least I was doing a sequence of holes. They were just jumping around...

Since I was colliding so often with these people, I wandered off across the street. It looks like the damn improvement has left yet another obstacle for me. There is now a hill of dirt on the left side of hole 2!

Pampas Railroads

I finally finished my custom board for Pampas Railroads! And, to celebrate, we played a game of it. Bidding was interesting. The initial stocks went for quite high prices. This meant that people, who bid high, ran out of money. After that I was able to get some shares for cheaper prices (essentially one dollar more than what other people had).

I had shares in almost every railroad. And the one railroad which I had a lock on (3 out of the possible 5), was doing the best in income. Chapel had the other two minor shares. So I was able to keep a delta over him. For Chapel's majority railroad, I had the other two shares. His railroad was lower in income. And I would be able to keep my railroad's income higher than Mike's. Unfortunately, Jon had neither of those two railroads. He did have controlling interest in one railroad. But it was not enough to account for our double arrangement. So that was one negative aspect of this game for three players.

Big Three

We finished off Pampas Railroads early when it was clear that the standing were not going to change. We finished off the night with a game of Big Three. Nice and light.

When we went down to Zilker park on March 8th, Gravitt had wanted to eat lunch at the Twin Peaks near Stassney. But we never did. He had mentioned that a new Twin Peaks was being built on Louis Henna Boulevard. I later discovered that it is right next to IH-35 and it is now open.

I am surprised that so many pretty women restaurants can operate next to each other. Hooters is across the street (well, if you call IH-35 a street). And the Tilted Kilt is a half of a mile away. The food is not very good. But the beer and views make up for it. I guess that the best thing about this chain of restaurants is that there are more waitresses here. And they are friendly enough to sit down and talk with you!

For tonight's Tex-Mex, we went to Rio Grande. This is my favorite Tex-Mex restaurant for its Margaritas. All you need is one of their grande and the rest of the night is happy. And boy were people drinking tonight! That's the only way that I can explain what happened. As you can tell from the picture, the score taking is atrocious. But I think that I was able to recover the score.

We had one other interesting phenomena tonight. I dealt out the cards only to discover that I was one short. So I asked everyone to count their cards to verify the deal. Wayne gave me one of his cards. On the next deal, the same misdeal and the same Wayne giving me a card. Well, when this happened for the third time, we started investigating. It turned out that a card (a red three) fell down to the floor. And Wayne was not counting his cards to see if he was dealt fourteen. So amusing!

Gravitt, Ken, and myself played disc golf at Wilco. However, I had a headache come on around hole 8. So I aborted and went home. So sad.

Brand new Ford Mustang still slower than a horse link via

Portable Rotary Phone link via

Quick factoring tricks link via

A comfortable dog carrier link via

Notice link via

Chicago Tunnel Company railroad link via

A difficult soccer field to play on link via

Six-Word Reviews of 763 SXSW Mp3s link via

Mach 3.18 Break Up of an SR-71 Black Bird link via

Hay-Soos link1 link2 via

Bush making fun of himself, again link via

It's all in the preperation link via

Shaolin vacuum link via

Coffee printer link via

Color label wheel link via

I'm sure that horse is thinking "Please don't eat me!" link via

Wikihistory link via

Sketchnotes link via

Street art link1 link2 via

Phantom Keystroker link via

Surveilance photography link via

Real Homer link via

Yellow Drum machine link via

Ele-vision link via

Sea shrinks foam cups link via

2 o'clock tittie link via

Your brain as a table lamp link via

All religions are fairy tales link via

TechShop coming to Austin link via

Joge-e link via

Bush administration's view of the legal limits of the president's power link via

Japanese Creative Barcodes link via

So here is my recipe for cooking steaks sous vide:

• Take a one inch thick cut of steak. T-bone, Porterhouse, strip, tenderloin, rib eye -- it does not matter.
• Preheat a grill as hot as you can get it. While the grill is heating up, place the steaks in a freezer to cool down. But make sure that they do no actually freeze. We don't want any ice crystals forming that will rupture any cell walls.
• Sear one side of the steak for 30 seconds. Flip it over, sear, flip and rotate, sear, and flip. You are not actually cooking the inside of the steak at this point. You are only forming a savory crust.
• Liberally salt the outside of the steaks and vacuum pack the steaks with a Foodsaver (in my case, a V2830). My hope here is that the salt will create a brine when the liquid comes out during cooking.
• Cook the steaks at 130 degrees Fahrenheit for at least an hour. What is great about this stage is that you can forget about the steaks. You cannot overcook the meat!
• Remove the meat from the bag and plate it. Enjoy!

Mmmm, juicy! The only problem is that I have yet to find non-gristly steaks in Texas. As you can see in the picture with the prominent connective tissue running along the steak.

I went down to take pictures of the southern 9 holes of Zilker park and put them up here. While I was there, a video and camera crew was also there. I saw some strobe lighting and there was one guy with a Canon 70-200mm lens. They were filming a guy talking and holding a couple of discs. I wonder what it was about?

Afterwards, I stopped to eat lunch at Flip Happy Crepes. I missed getting to eat here the fist time we went to Zilker. So I had to go by myself. It was very good. And it was packed. The line was long and slow. I don't think that there were many burners in that tiny camper.

I stopped by the water park at Old Settler's Park and practiced for a bit. There are six holes around the hill right next to the water park.

This tree inspires me. It is the last of its kind at this field (and on the entire campus, I believe). The bark is looking threadbare. The summers here are harsh with no sprinkler system in sight. However, spring is in the air. And the tree has just sprouted new leaves.

-- This time it will thrive.

Gravitt has been playing around with making comics at Bit Strips. And one of the characters looks suspiciously like me. So here is my attempt at getting revenge...

Wabash Cannonball

Yeah! I was able to successfully get a game of Wabash Cannonball played at the meetup. Susan was kind enough to agree to play with me. Unfortunately, I had to sit through a horrible new game by Mayfair or daVanci. It was bad enough for me to not even call out its name now in the fear of giving it publicity.

Wabash was cool though. It did well enough at the start. But I didn't get another share or two when I should have... Oh, well.

I was playing around with the micro-focus adjustment for the 50mm f/1.0 lens and noticed a lot of creamy browniness...

1861: The Railroads of the Russian Empire

Mike brought over an 18XX game for us to finally try out. Unfortunately, Chapel had not really read the rules. So we spent a lot of time going over the rules and trying to figure them out. These rules were bad in that they did not have any examples when we needed some. Jon was falling asleep during this and was not very motivated to play it right now. So we quit after one turn.

Big Three

He was motivated, however, to play Big Three.