Monthly Archives: March 2007

Disc Golf 03/16/2007

disc in water

John and I went to the normal Old Settler’s course. And every time we stay away from the course for a while, it seems that we forget how to avoid the water hazards. Well, at least we didn’t loose any discs this time…

flood control thing
digging machine

It looks like they have installed one flood control/monitor thingy. I wonder why its so tall?

Game Day 03/15/2007

Game #1

Through The Ages

This night I held a special event. A four player, full game of Through the Ages. We even started earlier than normal at 6:00pm. The game lasted 6 hours though. And, strangely enough, no one attacked or started a war during the game.

This game, while fun, suffers from two problems. The first is the down time. The only way to alleviate that is to bring a computer with an internet connection.

The second is randomness of the military cards. You need a well balanced draw (some tactics cards, some defense cards, some event cards, etc). It always seems that you can never draw what you need. I think that this game needs a card rack for military cards as well as civil cards.

Blue bonnets

Blue Bonnets

Looks like the Blue Bonnets have started blooming. I wonder how plentiful they will be this season… Spring is the only pretty time in Texas.

links

Beer launching minifridge link via

Super Mario snow art link via

the Freakonomics of inner-city gangs link via

The restoration of Tiger 131 link via

85 million lotto winner uses his winnings to become a billionare link via

The cause of the “printer on fire” error message link via

Magenta ain’t a color link via

Snowglobes link via

Steampunk Star Wars link via

They’re made out of meat link via

Origin of Species: the audiobook link via

Analemma: Pictures of the sun at the same time over the course of a year link via

Saturday’s lunar eclipse link via

The credits just keep going and going link via

Bringing atomic clocks on a vacation to show general relativity to kids link via

Thinking with your stomach link via

To go a Viking link via

Disc Golf 03/09/2007

Construction #1
Construction #2

Apparently, all this construction going on is for flood control computers. Which I think is a waste. It hardly rains around here…

Good throw

John and Adam canceled on me, but Jon showed up (which is extremely rare for a Friday). I had a really bad day. I think I lost a point to Jon at about every hole. But the weather was beautiful out and playing with friends is the real reason to be out here.

I did have two good first throws. But I couldn’t convert them into birdies.

gravitt

Gravitt showed up late with a new toy: a bag with a backpack strap. Apparently in celebration of his ace…

Game Day 03/08/2007

Game #1a
Game #1b

Bootleggers

Last week, I had promised to play a game that John wanted to play. And John brought over his cart of possibilities: Gloria Mundi, Big Kini, Sienna, Himalaya, Factory Fun, Midgard, and Traders of Genoa. The group settled on Bootleggers. I had played it once and didn’t have a particularly fun time. But I was willing to give it another shot.

This is a game that has a lot of dice in it. Dice determine your production of moonshine. And dice determine the demand of speakeasies. You can mitigate the poor dice rolls with special cards (an extra still or extra dice at a still). But these cards are in a big deck with other cards and are subject to the random shuffle. You get to pick one card from a row of n+1 cards in player order. Your order is based on what card you choose at the start of the round. The cards range from 1 to 70-something and are dealt out at the beginning of the game. So, the net of it all is that you rely on getting good cards to go first. But you are waiting for the extra dice cards to show up in the display. In order to mitigate poor production dice rolls.

There are a lot of links in that chain to try and make a better experience for you… Too many.

Whatever you produce, you ship in truck to bars. The bars have three waiting lines each. If you have majority presence in a bar, you get to use the first line. If you have presence in a bar, you get to use the second line. Otherwise you are forced to use the third line. These lines and your order in the lines determine what goods are accepted by the bar. If your goods were accepted, then you get paid. Otherwise, you are screwed. You get nothing and have to get rid of the unused goods. Also, if you have majority influence in a bar, the bar will pay you extra for each good that it bought.

At the end of the game, whoever has the most money wins. Simple and unpleasant.

Game #1b

Mu

To end out the night, we played Mu. Its a great trick-taking game that not enough people love. We had to force Doug and John to play it. But, eventually, they will come to love it…

Breakfast tacos

breakfast

One of my vices is the weekly breakfast tacos at IBM’s cafeteria. For a long time, I didn’t know about it. You see, they offer pre-made tacos that sit under heat lamps. But if you wait at the grill, you can get made-to-order tacos for only 30 cents more. Not only can you get whatever items you want, but these tacos are huge. One of these tacos is easily bigger than two of the pre-made ones. The only drawback is that the chef is rather slow and likes to talk. So be prepared to wait.