Monthly Archives: May 2007

The Domain

removed building

I walked over to the new Domain today for lunch. And passed the old rusty IBM building that has been thoroughly demolished and is now a large pile of sand. What is it with IBM selling off its properties and developers making way more money on the land?

fence city

I wouldn’t say that the route to the Domain is safe. Not with all of the temporary fencing around here. It makes quite the maze. I cut through the parking lot for the Texas Culinary Academy and was fortunate to find a gap in the fencing to make it towards the Domain. I can understand fencing that stops people from going to an active construction site. But why is there fencing on the right where there is just parking lots? Flawed! And, they create this road from Burnett to the Domain that is lined with fencing with no sidewalks for people to walk. Not very friendly for pedestrians.

pepper and salt shakers

I had lunch at a new restaurant called Jasper’s. It was a little odd when they asked for both my first and last name to seat me. In an empty restaurant. But I doubt that they spelled my last name correctly. So I don’t have to worry about Big Brother. The lunch was nice, if expensive. I tried out some Raspberry Quince tea from the Republic of Tea. It was nice and light. And also unsweetened, which is nice.

In a strange coincidence, I noticed that I had a dilemma in determining which shaker held salt and which held pepper. Last Sunday, I was talking with my aunt and cousin. And they told me that they had a bet as to which one had more holes than the other. The web replied that there was no standard and the authorities conflicted each other. Mine were quite similar. One was half an inch higher and had twice as many holes (with 2) as the other. So, since pepper has more letters in it than salt does would it use the two hole shaker? Or, because salt is essential to life, would it use the shaker with 100% more holes in it?

Mike Resnik

I stopped by the new Border’s afterwards to briefly look at the books. And was depressed to see that some of my favorite authors only had one of their books on the shelves. Both Mike Resnik and Jack Chalker are both prolific authors. So sad.

construction

Besides tearing down old IBM buildings, they are doing other construction around here. From what I hear, it is infrastructure work. Sewer, water, electrical work… that kind of stuff. I guess that the rocky ground around here is making this work take forever.

Japanese Spiderman

I went to see Japanese Spiderman with W—– at the Alamo Downtown tonight. We stopped by Noodle-ism for dinner. I had the Won-ton soup bowl and it was pretty tasty if extremely large (why are meals so huge nowadays?).

The movie was not actually a movie but four episodes of a TV series. Alamo replaced the audio with their own music, sound effects, and voicing using Foley artists. It made for a great effect. Although some times the music was too loud to hear the sound effects. And I don’t think that they bothered to translate the footage either. They just watched it beforehand and created a script with their own wacky dialog. For example, every time we saw the child and he spoke, he said something about wanting sugar. There were Ninjas, of course. Who had beak-like masks. So, every time we saw them, we heard ducks quacking. And the splicing was kinda of weird. But that just enhanced the quirkiness of the movie.

Alamo Drafthouse is a great movie house. They show cool movies, you can eat and drink while you watch movies, and they have a lot of themed showings like a specialty menu and a movie, sing-a-longs, or stuff like this.

Disc Golf 05/12/2007

disc in tree

The group went to Wilco today. We had two new players with us. The first was Traci, who is new to disc golf. And the other was Wayne, who has been playing disc golf for some months now.

Someone spotted a disc stuck on the top of a tree. Can you spot it in this low quality picture? Sadly, Jon refused to climb up the tree to retrieve it. Has he lost his super powers?

group

We had three teams today and I was playing with the women in the group. One of whom is a pro now after playing in a tournament at this very course! I was throwing quite poorly today.

Nick to the rescue

At hole 16, Traci sat down and complained about heat exhaustion. Nick was kind and rescued her. He stopped playing, went out to the parking lot, drove his SUV (which he bought for 10 dollars or something really low) out onto the course to pick up Traci, and then drove her to Rudy’s to wait for us.

snake

On the way out, we came across this tiny grass snake. Who had a paparazzi moment when we started taking pictures of it…

Disc Golf 05/11/2007

Good Work

I went to Old Settler’s park today for some disc golf and came across this sign. It seems that there is a race going on in the park. And they had these motivational signs along the course. I think that they apply to disc golf as well!

Hole 5

On hole 5, I threw farther than normal. Not close enough to birdie it though. I like this hole. You are throwing blind. There are trees on both sides of the tee box. And, you have to arc it off to the right with a anhyzer throw. Challenging.

parking lot

There is this tiny water park in Old Settler’s park. And, apparently, it is really popular. So they are expanding the parking by digging up the park. Thats just what we need to do: trade grass for asphalt. And, they created this big temporary road up the hill along hole 8 for the construction equipment. Sigh.

Hole 16

On hole 16, I had a great first throw. Which was easily birdied. This is another hole that calls out for an arcing anhyzer throw.

Calzone

Calzone

I finally got around to making a calzone, at least on purpose. I just winged it with the ingredients by mixing: whole milk ricotta, spinach, caramelized onions, caramelized garlic, mozzarella cheese, and a scrambled egg. It came out pretty good.

Game Day 05/10/2007

Game #1

Figaro

I recently bought this game, so I had to bring it out to play. The game is about the screw-ups of the court jester and how badly he annoys the king. The game has cute artwork. Unfortunately, for some reason, this group thought that the game was broken. I didn’t think so. Maybe they were missing something…

Game #2

Yspahan

It’s been a while since I have played this game. And, I don’t think that I have won this game yet either.

Game #3

Tichu

My first Tichu was risky. I had 1-7, QQJJJ, Ph, and a 5. And there was one round that had three bombs. Fortunately, we were able to set John’s Tichu call.


05/10/2007 The scorecard for a game of Tichu

GT or T bet made or lost

This team scored more points than the other or one twoed

GT/T Team #1 GT/T GT/T Team #2 GT/T
MarkH & Jon JohnG & Doug
T+
170
    30  
  100 T-  
100
 
  145   T-
55
 
 
225
    75  
T+
425
    75  
 
510
    90  
  510     390 T+
 
615
    285 T-
 
730
    170 T-
  770    
330
T+
  775   T+
525
 
  760   T-
540
 
 
820
  T+ 680  
 
995
T+   705  
  1025   GT-
575
 

Disc Golf/Board game mashup

Mah Jong keychains

John Gravitt came up with a good mashup that combines Disc Golf and board gaming. Disc golfers who are a part of a club sometimes carry around tags on their bags with numbers on them. These numbers are rankings that work like king-of-the-hill. If you beat someone at a game, you can swap your lower ranking tag with theirs.

John thought about using a Domino set as our tags. When Jon and I were browsing Great Hall Games, after eating at Boomerang’s Pies, we came across another likely candidate: Mah Jong key chains.

Lunch Time Tichuers 05/08/2007

For the first four hands, Adam and I passed our high cards to each other. Which is depressing. However, the other team only Tichued once during that time.

Adam’s first Grand Tichu was interesting. He had a natural Ace bomb and was passed a two bomb. So it was no contest in that he was going out first. During the play, I noticed the fact that almost all of the points were taken by Adam. And even stated that fact out loud. Jon played the last couple of Kings to go out second. So I should have known that Ed had the Phoenix and somehow get him to be in the lead. However, my mind was on the rote task of going out next. Which meant that we got stuck with the -25 points. If I would have automatically passed when Ed got control, we would have ended the round with 115 points! Ugh!!

Adam’s second Grand Tichu call was risky. With two Aces, a King, two Queens, and a Jack, I thought that either he was in trouble or we were certainly going out one/two.


05/08/2007 The scorecard for a game of Tichu

GT or T bet made or lost

This team scored more points than the other or one twoed

GT/T Team #1 GT/T GT/T Team #2 GT/T
Ed & Jon AdamR & MarkH
 
65
    35  
 
125
    75  
T+ 240    
160
 
 
320
    180  
  365    
235
 
 
435
    265  
 
490
    410 T+
  510   GT+
690
 
  635 T+  
765
 
  685   T- 715  
  695   GT+
1005
 

Lunch Time Tichuers 05/07/2007

On the fourth hand, Jon had all four Aces. How did we know this? Because Adam wished for an Ace, Ed passed, and I played a low card. Of course, only Adam really knew that Jon had all of the Aces. But I certainly suspected. Fortunately, Jon could not call Tichu since he had too many low singles to get rid of.

My first Tichu call was risky. However, since Adam passed low to me, I figured that he must have had some of the missing control cards. And, apparently we had all of the cards since we one-twoed.

On the last hand, I passed the Phoenix to Adam as I didn’t think I was going to call Tichu. However, when it came time to play, all of my cards fit together. And I was able to go out first.


05/07/2007 The scorecard for a game of Tichu

GT or T bet made or lost

This team scored more points than the other or one twoed

GT/T Team #1 GT/T GT/T Team #2 GT/T
Ed & Jon MarkH & Adam
 
180
T+   20  
  205    
195
T+
  505 T+   195  
  525    
275
 
  525   T+ 575  
  550    
750
T+
 
605
    795  
 
795
T+   805  
  795   T+
1005
 

links

Slot wrist watch link via

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Batman dead end link via

You can get a $3,000 dog for free from the shelter link via

New cameras have actors reloading link via

Giant treadmill for race cars link via

Nazi Robot attack link via

Lifeguard takes a pee break link via

Magic 8 ball uses a D-20 link via

German postcards from 1900 depicting 2000 link via

Cookie with edible nutrition information link via

The Reagans on drugs link via

Chrono shredder link via

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1:6 scale German models link via

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