Monthly Archives: October 2006

Disc Golf 10/14/2006

invalid putt

After Extreme Gloria Flawdi, we went back to Wilco. The dollar per player fee is good all day. On hole 17, John makes an invalid putt. Not the fact that he is using a long range driver called the Orc to putt with. But the fact that on top of the goal does not count. Sorry, John.

Game Day 10/14/2006

Game #1

Gloria Mundi

John brought Gloria Mundi into Extreme Pizza for us to play. He wanted to play outside. But since I had spent all of disc golfing outside and we were going to go disc golfing again, I opted to play indoors. So John explained the rules to us and we started to play. However, the game was extremly broken (I would call it flawed). The game was progressing. But no one was building a building that would last more than one turn. Looking at the rules again, we noticed that you start with resources. So we tried it again. But it was still broken (Gloria Flawedi). We kept playing and, every time it got to my turn, I couldn’t shake the flawed feeling. There was no good move for me and I could not make a building. Finally, someone spotted that we start out with one of each resource card down (or built). This would at least provide some income to bribe the barbarians with and help protect your buildings. But would it fix this game?

Disc Golf 10/14/2006

tee pees

T.P. It could be toilet paper, or it could be teepees. On a disc golf course, you are likely to encounter either. Our group went to Wilco today. The weather was ominous and threatening rain. There was a tiny bit of mist rain, but that was it.

kitty cat 1

We encountered a kitty cat today. I assumed that it was feral. But it seemed pretty healthy or at least not starving. At first, it was wary of us and stalked our group out of curiousity. Adam turned a stalk of grass into a cat toy.

kitty cat 2

This at least allowed Rehana to pick it up. Twice. But it didn’t like that at all. We lost it when we walked too far to the next hole and went out of range of the cat’s stalking pace.

Disc Golf 10/13/2006

tree down

At Old Settler’s Park today, I noticed that there were more trees down. They seem to be slowly being destroyed by nature on the order of 1 or 2 a week. This tree is hanging on by a thread of bark. But its dead Jim, and I can’t do anything about it.

disc in water

There is something about hole 3. Every single time I throw there, I go towards the stream. But even knowing this does not help me avoid the stream. Usually, John throws towards the right. However, today it went left into the stream (I avoided it by a couple of feet — twice!)

snakes on a disc

Snakes on a disc: On the next hole John throws his disc and, when he finds it, he discovers a problem. There is a small snake in close proximity to it. I walk up and ask him what is wrong. He asks me how do I determine if a snake is poisonous. I respond “when in doubt, assume non-poisonous.” Fat lot of help I am… let me tell you. So John starts chanting “black next to red: you’re dead”, “red next to black: heart attack” or some such unhelpful mnemonic. I just walk up to it, take its picture, scare it away, pick up the disc, and hand it to him. Case solved.

Game Day 10/12/2006

Game #1a

Keytown

First up was another old game and one we haven’t played in quite a while: Keytown. Of course, we had to read the rules, for I didn’t remember anything about it. And, after we answered all of the questions that came up during the rules discussion, we started playing the game. This is an area majority game where the pieces that you use for majority are townspeople. You start out with 6 level 1 people. You can increase them in two ways. First, you can birth more of them in cottages. Second, you increase their levels in villages. Both of these actions can be fought against by your opponents. In the cottages, the person who has the lowest count will have two babies (level 1 people). For ties, both people will have one baby. In the villages, only the three people who have the lowest count will be promoted. Ties are bad here — no one is promoted. The count is determined by the level of the person and the number of blocks that are “supporting” the person. Blocks are counted as one apiece except when one time modifiers (a x2 or a x0) are played in an area. The block are “mined” from 5 different resource locations around the board. Players who put the most numbers (counting their levels) will mine first with ties resolved by nearest to the start player. Keep in mind that there are limited numbers of blocks in the game. Since blocks are bad things and work against you when you are promoting or birthing your people, the reward for having them played on your people is that you get to keep them for later rounds. After four rounds of play the game is over. Your final score is the square of each of the levels of your people minus any victory points that you used to bid for start person. The bidding for start player is a meta-action. It will interrupt normal play and, once it is resolved, it will change the player order immediately.

Game #1b

The last round was quite the free-for-all. I should have realized that my people were not going to be promoted to level 3 and I should, instead, have concentrated on birthing more people. Jon (green) has only two people in one town and concentrated all of his cubes in stopping both of my people in that same town. He won that battle but I think that he should have put his twos in that town (9+9 vs 4+4). In another town, Mike (yellow) was making sure that I was not promoted. Fortunately, I was able to retaliate and keep his person from being promoted as well. In the third town, I was lucky and people left me alone. The scores were all close at the end of the game. What hurt Jon and Mike was the bidding victory points for start player. Jon went from 1st to 2nd and Mike went from a tie for 3rd to 4th. I went from 2nd to 1st since I bid 0!

Tichu

John leaves which left us with four people. Hrm, what game can we play with four people? Do I even need to ask this question??

What would you expect with two experts versus two newbies? The answer would be a total slaughter. But I think that some of it was the luck of the card draw. Still, we won the game by two winning conditions: 1000 points and 1000 point differential! If you remove all of the tichu bets and 1/2 points, our team only scored 200 points more than the other…


10/12/2006 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 & Jon Doug & MikeCh
 
65
    35  
  105   T+
195
 
T+ 405     195  
T+ 525    
275
 
  725     175 T-
  925     75 T-
 
1000
  T- 0  

Fatty Taco Bell

Fatty Taco Bell

I eat at Taco Bell perhaps too much. I don’t like overcooked hamburgers (Fuddruckers is one of the few that will cook a medium rare burger) and there aren’t any veggie fast food places.

If you wonder why Americans are so fat nowadays, it because mega-corporations are putting extra calories in their food. Taco bell has recently changed their default style of menu items. What was once a plain taco now has a mayonnaise based sauce added to it. And they have done this to all of their items. I now have to order everything “without sauce” or “Fresco Style”. Look how bad it is. For example, the Ranchero Chicken Soft Taco and the Baja Beef Gordita have a 100 extra calories added to them! Oh my God, Magnum!

Gumbo’s Restaurant

Gumbo's Restaurant #1

And speaking of my favorite restaurants, you cannot forget about Gumbo’s. I first found this restaurant on Merriltown road off of 1325. There have been many incarnations of this restaurant. I believe this happened because the owners created a chain out of it. When they sold it off, they couldn’t open a competing restaurant. So they opened Yoli’s. I think it started out as Mediterranian restaurant. And when their non-compete clause expired, they switched back to Cajun food. They then bought back Gumbo’s and opened it back up on 620 close to IH-35. Where it still stands today.

Their food is still as good as ever. My favorite food is the crawfish etouffee with dirty rice. Today, I ordered the blackened catfish over the shrimp gumbo. The only oddity was that there was no vegtable part of the gumbo in the dish (like the okra, onions, or bell peppers). But the resulting gumbo sauce was divine. It used a very dark roux that was not burned at all and it was not oily at all. There were hints of coffee from the over-carmelization of the four. Truely something that I would love to be able to reproduce at home.

Disc Golf 10/11/2006

floating disc

I had some spare time before I had to go somewhere, so I went for a few throws at Old Settler’s Park. And look what I found. A floating disc. It must have been kicked up by the recent rains… It may just be promoted to Darwin-III when, the now current, Darwin-II lands feet-wet and unretrievable.

Dot’s has risen out of the ashes

Dot's Restaurant #1
Dot's Restaurant #2

Well, its about time! Dot has finally opened up a new restaurant in Pflugerville at the corner of 1825 and Windermere Drive. I learned about the opening from John and then found this on News 8 Austin’s web site.

Her old restaurant on Howard lane had a lot of character. It was located in a very run down area full of junk yards and abandoned homes. Parking was always tricky. You had to park along the side of the road if you were lucky. The building was an old house that was converted to a restaurant. And the place was always packed full of people. The line started outside the building. When you finally got inside, you then saw a huge line of people that snaked back and forth in front of the buffet line. After you ordered your food you searched for an empty table in one of the many rooms. Tables have little room to themselves and it can be the perfect opportunity to get to know a stranger.

For the new restaurant, not much has changed. There is still a long line of people. I arrived at 11:15 and I barely fit inside the door. However, there is not a big waiting area inside the restaurant like there was in the old one. The food is still as great as ever. But it seems that the serving size for the helpings has been reduced. The meal choices are the same. You can order: fried catfish, liver and onions, beef tips in rice, chicken and dumpling, chicken and rice, meatloaf, roast beef, mexican lasagna, chicken fried steak, and others. There is a big selection of sides to choose from: black-eyed peas, collard greens, okra, green beans, macaroni and cheese, and more. The corn muffin is excellent. And don’t forget about the desserts: pecan pie, sweet potato pie, lemon pie, chocolate pie, cobblers, and I should really stop now.

Suffice it to say that this would be in my top ten list and some place that I would go to eat weekly. The only problem is that it is farther away from work…

Disc Golf 10/09/2006

new tree planting

After gaming, John and I went out for a round of disc golf at Old Settlers park. This was before I went to yoga. It looks like they are going to plant a bunch of new trees to match the new trees they must have planted a couple of years ago. I hope they thrive in this inhospitable climate…