Monthly Archives: May 2008

Circular tree

circular tree

That is what the camera sensor sees after cropping. With a 72mm front side and a 13mm rear side, you get some extreme distortion. Too bad I can’t find a fish-eye to rectilinear converter that actually works correctly.

Disc Golf 05/08/2008

hole 5

Only Jon RSVPed for games tonight. So we decided to play disc golf at Wilco instead. It was a surprise to me to find John Gravitt already out there and just finishing up. Apparently, this was the second time that he played disc golf today.

I had a birdie on hole 5.

Baby snake

It must be mating season for snakes because we ran into a couple of them. And just after I had taken this picture, Jon stomped this baby snake. He hates snakes.

Ghost Gravitt

An interesting mistake. The phone doesn’t include aperture and shutter EXIF information with the picture. But I am guessing that it was a slow one (1/30th of a second or less).

alcohol warning

We stopped by Chuy’s afterwards for dinner. I like this sign in the men’s restroom. I didn’t know that alcohol affected the sperm and that would hurt my baby’s brain, heart, kidneys and other organs.

Pizza in the grill

Pizza in the grill

Just messing around with taking pictures. I wonder what my neighbor thinks? I’m sure a camera pointed towards her house might cause a little bit of a concern?

Disc Golf 05/03/2008

John and Jon

Today was the second annual Cinco de Fly-o at Twin Parks Country Club. We arrived there early. Early enough to practice some holes. Unfortunately, we practiced the red tees but we actually played the blue tees at the tournament. One good note was that it did not rain today! This is the first tournament that I have been in where I was actually dry.

Our group

Our group had five people in it. We played relatively quickly and were not forced to wait on a group ahead of us. Which was nice. It was a little too windy out today though.

good throw

I did all right today. I had some good throws. And Jon and I remained competitive. In the end, he only beat me by one stroke (congratulations!). I think that John mentioned that I had beaten him last year and that his goal was to do better this year. Unfortunately, the tournament got to him and he did much worse this year.

There was one tragic event that happened today. After the tournament finished, we were all sitting around talking and waiting for the free lunch. I hear this kid screaming at the top of his lungs “I don’t want to die!” At first, I discounted it as a reaction to the parent throwing him in the air or tossing him around or something. But he kept screaming it. We find out that he was playing around in the rocks and must have slipped and fell on one. It had cut a rather deep gash in his leg. Deep enough for someone to call the paramedics out. The ambulance took a while to appear (apparently it came up from San Marco). The kid didn’t really calm down until the ambulance arrived (hopefully, they gave him some strong drugs).

Manor disc golf

We skipped going to Papasitos and went down to Manor to try out their new disc golf course. I had previously driven down there only to not find the course. This time we drove around a bit (and even encountered another group of disc golfers doing the same) before spotting a basket and parking. A park ranger drove up and admonished the other group behind us to slow down. After that he told us where the real start location was.

Man, this course is crazy long and crazy tough! There is a stream running around the course that has a number of branches in it. Sometimes it is on both sides of the hole. And it is quite deep. Fortunately, the water is not that deep in it and it was easy to locate our discs.

wild raspberries

I found some wild raspberries while searching for my disc. Mmm, tasty!

irrigation

Oddly, it looks like they are installing some sprinkler lines on part of the course. Thats a first.

good throw

I had one great throw for a birdie.

dirty

We finally finished the course and drove home. By that time I was famished and we stopped by Papasitos for dinner. When I got home, I was covered in dust. You could definitely notice it on your glasses and ankles. Time for a shower and then sleep.

Game Day 05/02/2008

Vegetables

I stopped by Monument Cafe for food before First Friday games. I wanted to try their quiche or perhaps their yard-egg breakfast, but their choice of vegetables cinched it for me. I ordered: roasted beets, onion rings, fried eggplant marinara, and a black-eye bean salad with tomatoes and green peppers (that was more soupy than salady).

Game #1

Toledo

Ed brought a new Wallace game. But this game is quite a departure from Age of Steam or Struggles of Empires. It is a lightweight family game about making swords. You can attempt to hose others by landing on their spot and challenging them. But the fights are decided randomly by flipping over cards (best two out of three). You can train to get advantages but the trade off is that you loose victory points at the end of the game.

Game #2

Blue Moon City

And after the Wallace lightness, I played some Knizia lightness. Sigh. So sad.

Game #3

Wow, I guess I can’t call this game gathering First Friday Fluff anymore. Someone brought and played Agricola. They even went to the effort of creating animeeples out of sculpey clay.

Game Day 05/01/2008

Game #1

Parthenon: Rise of the Aegean

Chapel brought out a new game that he bought a while ago but has not played yet. It is a civilization type game that is played with a bunch of cards. After working through the rules, we started to play. The problem with this game is that there are an awful lot of bad events in this game. Each year has four seasons and, during each season, an event was played. Every event that year had negative consequences and caused our building efforts to slow down. You can ship your goods to near and far markets to trade for other goods. But the problem with shipping is that event cards are drawn for the voyage (either one or two). Well, the chances for negative events are high!

All of these events got to me and, after skipping building for a couple of turns, I finally gave up playing the game. There was no way I would ever get out of last place. I don’t think I will play this game again either…

Game #2

Big Three

We finished off the night playing Big Three…