Monthly Archives: August 2006

Disc Golf 08/12/2006

Attention Mr. Rob Feather

Today, we went to Pease Park. I noticed this sign on the board and recognized the name! Hey, I found one of his discs too! But I gave it away to Adam. So, Mr. Rob Feather, if you’d like it back, please leave your number and ill contact you.

Dry River

Today was pretty bad for me. I think I bogied just about every hole here. Which is the reason why this course is like last on the list of courses that I like in Austin. It helped a little bit that the stream is dry here. No lost discs that way…

Hole 3

I will admit that that is a cool location for hole three! Adam was on fire today and able to make some long putts.

Hole 18

Another protected hole (18). That tree really guards the hole well.

Disc Golf 08/11/2006

Blue Skies over Texas

Hrm, a tournament. Over Labour Day. Sounds like a Game conflict. But they offer beer, B-B-Q, and live music. Ed does not do that… well, there is Bratwurst.

New Tree

Man, its fricken hot out there. I think I may have hit my upper limit on bearable temperatures and 103 may be it. Seems like a new tree was planted out here. With a ribbon even. I don’t think summer is a great time for planting things. Especially when you dont water around here.

Dead grass

I mean, look at this grass. Its dead, Jim! But given some rainfall, and the thing will turn around and perk up. Buffalo grass is some pretty drought resistant grass. And it needs to be to live here in Texas.

Close throw on 15

I was throwing farther than usual today. And I have a theory about that. Hotter air is less dense and the relative humidity was a low 40%. And there is probably some updraft from the convection as the earth tries to deal with this blast furnace. Umm…. suuuure. But thats my theory and I’m sticking to it.

Low lake

The lake is pretty low. Low enough to be below the concrete drain they installed here. Fortunately, my disc made it across the water for the second time. Darwin2 keeps surviving…

Game Day 08/10/2006

Travel problems

Today was not a good day for travelling. I went home early to avoid the rush hour (working at home is just so easy and convienent). I stop by the bank to deposit a check and come across this mess. An eighteen-wheeler overturned when it tried to do a U-turn. 79 was blocked off. But, fortunately, I was able to weave around and still access the bank.

Doug later tells me that 620 was shutdown west of IH-35 because of a gas main rupture. So we figure that Peter and Francesca were not coming. And on the next day, I read that there was an accident on IH-35 southbound caused by the stupid rubberneckers trying to look at the first accident. They really should erect large tents to cover these things up…

Game #1

Tichu

While we were waiting for Peter and Francesca to show up, we played some hands of Tichu. Later, we figured that they were unable to make it here and finished out the game. And what a long and close game it was! Our heroic team only lost by 100 points! Thats a Tichu call! Newbies John and Doug increased their abilities this game by making Tichu calls. John even over Tichus Doug’s Tichu call. Getting agressive there, John. Way to go…

In the above picture, my partner calls Tichu before the pass? Um, huh? What cards you holding there, Doug? I pass my Dragon, and Doug makes it! Cool beans.


08/10/2006 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 & DougG AdamR & JohnG
 
75
    25  
  110    
90
 
T+
295
  T- 5  
  235 T-  
165
T+
  275    
225
 
  285    
315
 
  285    
415
 
  310    
590
T+
  445 T+  
655
 
GT+
730
    670  
  780     720  
  820   T+
880
 
  970 T+   930  
  1000   T+
1100
 
Game #2

Tempus

Another playing of Tempus. And this time, we corrected two big rules problems from the last game. The first was that cities cannot be built on mountains (we got that right) and they cannot be built next to another city. This creates a Settlers of Catan type of restriction. And really narrows down the real estate of valid locations. The other problem was that Government does not give you a free action. It only allows you to pass or combine two turns. This makes that card less powerful. It was only played once during the game.

In the first round, I has one farm land with two pieces on it. Everyone else had more than me. So I chose the “have ideas” action and drew a farm backed education card (+2 to farmlands! how lucky!). This allowed me to pip Adam, much to his disappointment (its a rare card after all). John was agressive as usual. I was leaving everyone alone until I introduced Doug to the religion card. Of course, I knew Doug was going to retaliate. Fortunately, I had enough defense cards to stop his first attack. And when he was gathering forces for another attack, I went back down to three stacks which made me untouchable. I had built enough cities by now. Since I knew city spots were scarce, I made an effort to secure them. I built a city before John could when his stack was right next to mine. And I moved one of my three stacks by ship to one of the last spots on the board.

When the game ended, I was able to secure flight (+3 victory points). Unfortunately, I was not able to build one city. And I was left with my four city. Also, I could not spread out to secure some more points because many of Doug’s pieces were sitting next to my cities and I knew he would attack them since he had nothing better to do. Adam was able to win by three…

Lunch Time Tichuers 08/10/2006

Another game where the one-sided luck continued. Although, this time the opposing team scored 275 points. Ed was able to stop Adam with a hand that contained a high-card of a Queen. Sometimes a hand just fits perfectly even though it does not seem strong.


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 & JP Mark & AdamR
  0     300 T+
  40    
460
T+
T+ 190     510  
  235   T+
665
 
 
315
    585 T-
  315     885 T+
T-
275
    925  

Lunch Time Tichuers 08/08/2006

We had five for Tichu, so we cut cards for the four who would play. Both Ed and Jon drew threes and were worried, but J.P. sealed the deal by picking one of the four twos in the deck.

This game (and day, really) falls under the category of one team having all the cards. On the third hand, I had a Tichu hand, but was unable to make the call. You see my partner, Adam, kept the lead. And, as long as he kept the lead, I was fine with him playing. And then he went out. I knew the one-two was not far behind. When we were were done with that hand, Adam tells me that he knew I was waiting to call Tichu but didn’t know how to transfer control to me. I could have taken the lead at any time but chose to help my partner go out.


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
 
70
    130 T+
  75    
425
GT+
  75     625  
  75     825  
  75     1025  

Since the first game was so quick, we played some more hands. It wasn’t a real game. But it is fun playing hands.

And the luck continued to be on our side. Although not quite as dramatically as before. On the first hand, I have a 13-card run (Mahjong through King) and a 2. I call Tichu. Ed bombs me and over Tichues. Now I am in trouble. Fortunately, Adam had the dog and was able to transfer control to me. Woo woo!

On the second hand, I have a Queen bomb and three Aces. I call Tichu. I bomb Jon’s Dragon. Later, Ed over tichues with a bomb. Adam overbombs and once again Dogs me. Unfortunately, I was not able to go out first….

And on the last hand, Ed was playing for the one-two. He was waiting with a King bomb and a pair of sevens. But was unable to help Jon when Adam and I were finally able to set him.


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 & AdamR
T-
-35
  T+ 135  
T+
140
  T- 60  
  155    
145
 
 
245
    255 T+
  245   T+
455
 
 
110
GT-   490  

links

Monopoly game now uses credit cards instead of money link via

Write on water link via

Giant melted bull popsicle link1 link2 via

Urville link via

How do you turn a 3 foot deep, fresh water lake into a 1,300 foot salt water lake? Simple. Drill for oil into a salt mine. link1 link2 via

Shower boob link via

Slice-o-rama link via

The politically incorrect alphabet link via

Write an encrypted version of the lock code on the lock itself link via

Photorealistic vector art (two pictures NSFW) link via

Microsoft Photosynth link via

Treadmill music video link via

Lisp CPU link via

Two for biking

Adolf's party

I wonder how popular the first name of Adolf is. Shouldn’t that name be banned?

I got my bike back from Buck’s Bikes. They replaced both tires (not easily removable) and fixed the gearing. So I took it out this morning. And today’s ride seemed to involve a lot of twos…

Riding up 1460 at 7:30, I came across two men walking southward. However, they were in the middle of the road! One of them was even walking on the yellow dividing line. And with the rising sun, I am sure that it would give drivers less notice when they came across them. There are no houses out here and I didn’t see any disabled vehicles. So I wonder what they were doing…

Next, I saw two birds flying. One was a large preditor like a hawk or a falcon. And the other was a much tinnier bird that was dive bombing the hawk. When the hawk stopped on a power pole, the little bird would keep it up. The hawk would move off and try again. I was wondering why the hawk didn’t just get pissed off and just attack back and kill that bird.

Back on 1460, there was a house that I wanted to take a picture of. It was an old farmhouse. What was interesting about it were the two trees that the house was squeezed between. The one on the right was almost touching the side of the house. And on the left, a bit of the roof was actually cut out for the tree. Talk about poor planning. Sadly, the house was recently demolished for what looks like a new road.

Turning on Chandler, there were two large turtles in the middle of the road. I doubt that the turtles knew that they were in danger of getting run over by the speeding traffic on this windy (curvy) hill. So I stopped and picked them up and moved them off the road (I didn’t think that they could get up over the curb themselves). They hissed at me to thank me.

The bike feels faster for me. Instead of taking one hour and thirty five minutes to bike 25 kilometers, it took me an hour and seventeen minutes. I’m racing now…

Game Day 08/05/2006

Game #1a
Game #1b

Tempus

Ahh, Tempus, the highly-awaited and long-delayed Martin Wallace game. Mike and myself placed an order at Thought Hammer, but the order arrived too late to play it at Ed’s (it probably arrived when we were playing another copy of it). Fortunately, John ordered it from Boards and Bits. They shipped it to him on Friday.

I would think that with all of the delays that this game has suffered, there would be no production problems. We had to spend some time trying to figure out what areas the table on the board was refering to. Hills, Grasslands, and Farmlands look different on the board and cards than the on tiles. It seems like two sets (with different resolutions) were used. Also, in dim lighting, it is hard to tell the difference between the black and purple pieces. I will give credit to the rules and player aid sheets, though.

You can tell by the board, above, that purple and yellow have a huge advantage. And, unsurprisingly, purple won the game. I, being lite blue, expanded out a little to the grasslands that would be contested between myself and red. During the game, I forego drawing cards and this hurt me. You see, cards give you technoligcal abilities (ignore stacking limits, extra babies, extra movement, etc) or attack/defense bonuses. So, John opened up hostilities by playing a religion card on me (damn you religion!) which removed one of my tokens (a solitary one on the grasslands) and gave him a token. Later on, he then attacked me. Since I didn’t have any cards, there was nothing that I could do. This took me out of the running for the game. So I decided to fight back. However, there is a rule that if a player has only three stacks of tokens, then he cannot be attacked! Since he never grew beyond three, he was untouchable. Seems pretty one-sided to me…

Game #2a
Game #2b

Indonesia

There is not many meaty players at Ed’s game sessions. So when we suggested another meaty game, we had trouble filling it. Fortunately, Adam joined us which gave us enough for a three player game. In this game, my shipping line was useless, there always seemed to be competing line during the game. So I didn’t make that much money with it. Adam proved to be the master of spicy-rice and shipped a lot of it during the game. Which gave him enough money to win it. I was worried that Mike would surpass me in the end. Adam kept prefering Mike’s ships to mine and would always give him more money than me. But fortunately, I kept my lead over him in the end.

Cleopatra

Ed and Susan won Cleopatra and the Society of Architects at Gulf Games recently, and brought it out. It is full of plastic bits and looks interesting. Notice how the wide aperature of f/2.8 gives a razor-thin depth of field to this picture…

Disc Golf 08/05/2006

Disc Golf group

Today we went to the Rivery before gaming at Ed’s. I didn’t think that the term “Grimming” would apply to disc golf, but the new guy, Carl, makes me think about using it. He takes at least twice as long to throw as everyone else. For every shot. Not fun. Big groups are slow in general and here is another factor to dragging it out.

Dos Salsas Art

At Dos Salsas in Georgetown, this statue amuses me. Yeah, I know its a Mexican woman making tortillas. But she seems so inviting…