May 2007 Archives

Mini Bridge

As we were waiting for people to show, Adam dealt out a mini-bridge hand. With the point count being 16 (Mark), 4 (Mike), 7 (Adam), and 13 (Dummy), I got the bid. With this many points between myself and the dummy, Adam would not let me bid low. So I was forced to bid game in a minor suit (which means all of the tricks except for 2). My combined hand was: AKQ76542 K85432 AKJ9862 AKQ05. I called clubs as trump. Mike lead the three of hearts. Which I won. When I started trying to run out trumps, I had a bad split. Mike was able to win a trick with the Jack of clubs. One mistake that I made was discarding the two of diamonds which I needed to keep to protect my king of diamonds. So I ended up being set.

Call My Bluff x 3

While we waited for Tim and Mary to show up, we played three quick games of Call My Bluff. I made one dumb mistake when it was down to two players. Sigh...

Funkenschlag

Chapel went off to play the fluffier game of Andromeda while Tim, Adam, and myself played Funkenschlag. I missed playing this game. I spent most of the game going first. Mainly because I would connect to more cities than I needed to (or could power for that matter). But I was doing so to stop others from cutting me off or getting there first for a cheaper connection fee. Towards the end of the game, I was running just a little short of money. So I couldn't end it. And then I made the classic mistake of not guaranteeing resources to power your plants. I noticed during the power plant auction that Adam was going to buy resources before me and he would buy all of the oil away from me so that my big oil plant wouldn't power any cities. So I bought the fusion plant to replace it for 62 dollars. Adam was thinking of buying all of the coal away from me as well but decided against it when he thought that he couldn't afford to both buy coal and connect to 20 cities. In the end, Adam and I could both connect to and power 20 cities. And Adam broke the tie by having more money left over at the end.

However, if I would have protected my oil plant by buying extra resources and not bought another power plant, I would have easily won the game. I was worried that Adam would connect to and power more than 20 cities. So thats why I bought the fusion plant. I only discarded the oil plant when I realized that Adam could have hosed me (the bastard!).

Still, I am glad that I played it and it was a fun game.

For Sale

We started off with this light, but good game. The auctioning is simple and works rather well. You bid for properties which you then turn around and sell for money. There are a number of rounds based on the amount of people in the game. You either increase the bid or drop out, loose half your current bid, and take the lowest property (which number from 1 to 30).

In the second half of the game, you turn around and simultaneous blind bid for money (which number in two sets of 1 to 15). Obviously, you want to use as low a property as you can. I had won the 29 property and knew Susan had the 30. So my dilemma was when to use it. I passed the first opportunity for a 15 and hoped that Susan would acquire it. But, she didn't. When the second 15 came up, I definitely skipped that one. At the end of the game, I learn that she was not even tracking or going after the 15s. Sigh. I only psyched myself out it seems.

Through The Ages

Next up was Through the Ages. Harry specifically came to Ed's to play this game. And you did not have to twist Adam's arm to get him to play it again. I did alright in this game. My weakness was not keeping up my military strength. Adam was in last for most of the game. But, towards the end, he built up his army to be much stronger than the rest of us. He first attacked Harry and took him down a notch. Next he was going to go after either myself or Marty. Fortunately, he went after Marty and came up with an astonishing 37 points taken from Marty. Thankfully, the game ended (he had mentioned that he was going to go after me next). The end game scoring slowly moved Adam firmly into the lead and me into second. I was doing alright with Elvis as a leader and some Theaters. But I think what had hurt me was not having enough civil actions during the game. That and not enough science generation.

Age of Steam: Mississippi Steamboats

With this being one of the last of Adam's gaming days in Austin, he got to pick the games for us. Which meant some nice and meaty games. He decided on playing a game of Age of Steam with a new map. The addition rules were short and terse. So we misunderstood some of the aspects of the game. Like, for example, of do you need to purchase the track from a city on the river to the river itself? We decided that you had to. Apparently you did not. But I think that it really didn't hurt the game after all.

Apparently, Adam had made some mistakes in both calculations and misremembering the rules. So he was in catch up mode. Since this is such a tightly strung game, it was rather impressive that he was able to keep up with us after being forced to take three shares a round (and then maxing out early). I thought that I was not doing so well. I wasn't able to get longer and longer deliveries. And I was dependent on the northernmost river connection which turned out to be rather flaky and only one space wide. The steamboats (which allow you to transport across the river and give you bonuses for delivering on them) are pretty random on where they end up. Rolling two dice and moving the result will do that.

I was surprised when we started the final scoring. I turned out to have the most victory points after the shares were subtracted. And no one out built tracks either...

Tichu

To end the night (and to make me stay for another game), we played a game of Tichu. Adam was aggressive in calling Grand Tichu as usual. But, the heroic team set him every time.

Our (that is to say, Ed's) only Tichu call was amusing. I led the Mahjong with a straight and random-wished a ten. Which turned out to hurt Ed as he was forced to play. However, he did call Tichu and played the rest of his straight when everyone passed. Ed was able to go out first. And I was able to make it out second with my nine bomb. Sadly, Adam couldn't either set Ed or stop me from going out with three Aces and three Kings left in his hand...

The group met today at Cat Hollow for some disc golf. Eight people were in attendance, which is definitely too large for my tastes. John surprised me by buying a small seat for disc golf. I had jokingly told him to get one. But I never thought he would actually go out and buy it. With the large bag, many discs, the harness, the shoes, and now the seat, I think that he owns every disc golf accessory.

Notice the blue tooth receiver dangling off of his ear? Even almost losing it last week was not discouragement enough for today.

I got my first birdie on hole 1! I had to squeeze back into a grape-vine covered bush to putt, but that was not going to stop me from trying. And on hole 3, I had a good throw as well, but was not able to convert that one into another birdie.

As well with this shot too. Close, and challenging but unable to follow through.

We ate lunch at Extreme Pizza. And ended up playing a simultaneous round of Tichu and mini Bridge, a round of Mu, and then finally a game of Tichu. Where John called, and made, a Grand Tichu on the first hand. Way to be aggressive, John!

John and I then drove up to Temple to scout out the disc golf courses up there. We heard that there were two of them. Unfortunately, Temple is 50 miles north east of Round Rock. Which puts it about the same distance away as Dripping Springs would be.

The baskets were the professional disc catchers by Innova. They have informative metal signs. And concrete tee pads. All are good things for a course to have.

But we came at a really bad time. With all of the recent and heavy rains, the course was majorly flooded and unplayable. At least Old Settlers is playable when it floods. Notice that tree and brush line on the left? And the wide open space on the right?

Well, John found the tree line. With a vengeance.

Hole two was unplayable. And, unfortunately, we could not figure out where hole three would be since the tees were also flooded. We eventually found hole 6.

We played the rest of the course. Jumping across a raging stream or two. Sadly, both myself and John lost a disc at that course.

One of the roads was closed in the park (presumably due to flooding). But we needed that road to drive to the other course. So we wandered around Temple for a bit. And finally connected up to a road which lead to the other course. Which was much more open and less challenging. So we ditched it and drove home.

With this stormy weather over the Memorial day weekend, I was worried that I was not going to be able to ride my bike (at least comfortably). But the rain showers were off and on. And I was able to time the rides where I missed the showers.

Unfortunately, my new route now takes me past a problem house. As I bike by, an aggressive dog there will break out of the fence and chase me down the road. It gets quite close to my bike and growls and barks at me. Fortunately it gives up after a while and never gets close enough to bite me (although I don't doubt that it would bite me if it was able to).

So I was surprised when I biked past it again today. The same sequence happened. But the truck, which had just pulled out in front of me and picked up its mail, pulled over and shouted at the dog. Calling her Roxanne. I asked if that was her dog as I biked by. But I wasn't about to stop and have a talk with the supposed owner. Not with the dog six inches away from me.

Wow, Roxanne, what an aggressive bitch you are!

I am going to have to buy some pepper spray and douse the dog the next time it happens. Which I am sure that it will. Since the owners are not likely to fix the fence.

Mini Bridge

While we were waiting for everyone to show up, Adam dealt out a hand of mini bridge. And I was the lucky person with 12 points. Sadly, I didn't turn on the big halogen light and get the aperture up to f/8.0 so that you can see my dummy's support. But it wasn't much: two spades and no Aces. So, I bid the minimum spade bid and ran trump when the second heart was led. Adam commented that I should have promoted my club King since I had the Queen in the dummy. Sigh. I should have.

Guatemala Cafe

John brought out a new game by Eggert Spiele. This game has a theme, but it plays dry and turns into an abstract game. My mistake was teaming with Jon on my left. Jon had created a black plantation on his first turn. And I did as well on my first turn. Then, he had placed black ships in the corresponding port to increase the multiplier. Next he had tried to score black a couple of times but other players blocked it. However, it can only be blocked so many times. So I thought that I was finally going to score. Adam never gave me a chance to score myself. I could only set up Jon to score it. But I knew that Jon was not going to score it again in the game. Even though it was his highest scoring opportunity with 16 points. I even left black people on the board so he could catch up to my potential score which had not changed the entire game.

Sigh. You can't do all of the work alone in this game. You need to team up with others. But when that person actively denies their own scoring, you are hosed.

Tichu

Jon had the mojo tonight for stopping non-desperation GrandTichu calls. On the first stoppage, Adam was left with three Aces and a Phoenix. Apparently, he should have played pair of aces, pair of aces, dog instead of dog.

Battlelore

Another game of Battlelore while we waited for Rehana to show up and another game of how sucky can the dice roll for me. Ugh.

After the cruise was over, Jon and I went to play disc golf at Pease Park since it was so close. It seems that the Poison Ivy warnings are up in force...

It seems that they changed a couple of holes here. Hole 13, instead of being a short run up a hill, is now a much longer hole.

And hole 14 is also a tighter run through the cedar trees.

All in all, it was a fun day and it sure beats working.

Wow. We actually did a team outing with some morale money at IBM and took a cruise on Lake Austin. The boat was docked next to the Tom Miller dam. And when we arrived, a couple of news camera crews were filming segments for the upcoming Memorial day holiday (where drunk people flock to the area lakes).

After they got some free footage of someone unloading their boat, they started filming a police boat. Remember folks, don't drink and sail!

Jon tried teaching Tichu to some new people, others played Texas Hold-Em, and most of the people just sat around and talked.

The weather was not as perfect as it could have been. It was overcast with an occasional sprinkle. But I did manage to get a little sun burnt.

The game started off alright. The first two Tichu calls were set by opposing bombs. Nothing new there. Ed's call was also set with a bomb. But the amusing thing, however, was that I was able to go out first when I had two cards left in my hand: a Jack and a three!

The came the Tichu and one/two round. So I called Grand Tichu when my partner picked up his first eight cards. Little did I know that he also was fighting against me. We needed to go out 1/2 for the win. Unfortunately, he kept all of his strong cards and passed me a totally crappy card. So, as a result, I had no chance in going out first (I would have gone out first if he would have passed me his Dragon). Sigh. I will have to remember that in the future. Don't make GT calls with Jon as a partner...

The first two Tichu calls were set by bombs. The next set Tichu was set even though the opposing team had two bombs. I had the perfect hand: AA,JJ,22,Ace high 8 long straight.

So Adam goes on a Tichu calling rampage. While the heroic team slowly crawls ahead to the finishing line. Jon's Tichu call on the last hand of the game gave our team the win! Woo woo!

Through The Ages

Marty was in town and wanted to play a full game of TtA. And he didn't have to twist Adam's and my arm to get us to play. Weirdly, Chapel couldn't make it. So, Marty invited Harry over.

This game probably took us five hours to play. I went to bed after 12 which meant I lost some precious hours of sleep.

I was able to get Michelangelo as my era 1 leader. Mainly to stop Adam from getting it (he had St. Peter's Basilica) but I was able to turn him into a point generator. My second and third era leaders were not so good (William Shakespeare and Elvis Presley). Fortunately, I was able to draw the assassinate leader card. And discard it eventually when I didn't think that my military would get up to strength. Sadly, after that, Adam jumped out into the lead with Sid Meier. I was only able to attempt a raid on him which he defended against.

When the game was in its last round, Adam declared war on me. Usually, the defender gets a chance to respond and build up its defenses. But not in this case. And I had just spent my military in getting a +11 victory point colony. Flawed!

When the scoring was over, I was able to pip Marty by a couple of points for second place! Woo woo!

When I was making the calzone, I remembered that its been forever since I have had stuffed shells. And that made me start Jonesing for some. I whipped together some whole milk ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese, roasted garlic, roasted Poblano and Jalapeño peppers, caramelized onions, spinach, Italian sausage, and a couple of scrambled eggs. Stuffing the shells was not hard but it proved to be extremely messy. I poured my tomato sauce over the top and then topped it off with a layer of mozzarella cheese. I baked it at 350 minutes until it was bubbling and the cheese was melted.

Last time when making the calzone, I had way too much filling left over. But tonight was very close. So I was proud of myself.

I make a batch of dough for three pies on Saturday or Sunday. I store them in these ziplock containers in my refrigerator over the week. I very lightly oil the container so that the dough does not stick. The tops are only loosely tightened (to let any carbon dioxide escape). Then, when the weekend comes around, I am ready to make pizza.

About five or more hours before dinner, I take a container out of the refrigerator and put the ball out on a silpat sheet. The dough has not risen at all over the week. Now, the dough will warm up and start to rise. I occasionally flip it over so that both sides dry out evenly (the dough is very moist).

I will also cook down some pizza sauce. I open up a can of Cento's pizza sauce and cook it on a heat diffuser on the lowest gas setting. This cooks the sauce at a temperature of around 130. I also add Italian seasoning and chopped garlic. After two hours, I add another can and cook it for half an hour or so (I want a mix of both fresh and caramelized tomato sauce).

I seem to be on the outs with the group. They purposely schedule the starting time earlier than I can make. Oh, well. This morning, I only got 5 hours sleep. But I felt fine and up for a ride. I knew that I wasn't going to make the deadline so I opted for a longer ride of 30 miles. I ended up playing disc golf at 11.

As soon as this throw left my hand, I knew it was going to be good: low, straight, and far. And an easy birdie to make.

That is the phrase for tonight! 'Nuff said.

What an interesting message left on my voice mail:

Hi Gary,

This is Liz from, ah, Sugars. Ah, I was just wondering if you were going to come by and visit me today or, um, some time this weekend. Ah, you can call me at Sugars at XXX-XXX-XXXX. Ah, I will be working the day, ah, shift Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. So, ah, stop by if you want to visit.

Bye!

Imperial

Ahh, another good game of Imperial for me. This time, I controlled Austria/Hungary and Russia. Sadly, A/H hit a brick wall. I definitely did not want to encroach on Russia's space. And I never did get a ship in the sea to go out to Africa. Also, I had some hiccups with the financing. I had built one factory too many. So, when it came around to pay out dividends, I did not have enough money in the Treasury. So I had to make a couple of inefficient moves (that is performing no actions when landing on the space) in order to make it back to taxation.

I was able to build Russia up quite well. No one was really attacking her either. So, it was clear that I needed to make the invest/taxation run. The only problem was when I was buying more Russian bonds. I had the opportunity to buy the 8 level. But it would leave me with no money. I needed two dollars for the run up to taxation to end the game. So, I took a chance of Italy paying me some money. Which didn't happen (and I should have been able to compute that, actually).

This allowed other countries to increase their final multipliers. When the dust settled, I was able to win by a couple of points. Which is a little too close for comfort.

Princes of Florence

The going joke in our game group is to respond "Haven't we played that recently?" when Adam puts Princes of Florence on the table. In fact, Mike was adamant that he actually had played it not too long ago. But when you cannot remember the rules, perhaps the recent playing was actually back in August... of last year.

This is definitely Adam's game. And he jumped out in a huge lead to prove it.

Tichu

To end out the night, we played a game of Tichu. Rehana showed up after we had played 3 hands and the last hand was called. So the loosing team had a chance to tie it up with a Grand Tichu 1/2. Fortunately, they failed.

Monte Copeland built a 17' sailboat called a Catboat. Which is way cool, in my opinion. He detailed a lot of the process here. I finally got a chance to sail it today. It was a beautiful out. Not a cloud in the sky. Temperature in the 80s. Light winds out of the North. Very few motorized boats out.

We drove out 360, to 2222, to 620, to the marina here. Surprisingly, for being built on the water, there were an awful lot of spiders on the marina and the boats.

After we motored out of the marina, we pulled out the sail and took off. Monte started off but quickly handed the reins over to me. The boat is extremely responsive and pretty vocal in response to what you do. If you pull harder on the rope that brings the sail towards the center of the ship, the speed starts increasing. And the tension on that line really increases making it harder to pull it in more. There was probably 50 or more pounds of force on that line. As the sailboat speeds up, it leans in the water. You want the slope of the hull to run flat over the water. And the position of the other person really does makes a difference in the angle of the ship.

If you want to slow down, you just let out the rope. And you can even let go of the rope entirely if you want. As you turn the ship, you can tell what angle works best against the wind. If you turn too much into the wind, the sail starts to flutter as it looses the wind.

We sailed down wind for a while which is pretty easy. Then, we turned back to practice tacking upwind which is much harder. Or, shall I say, much slower. The winds were mostly consistent. There were some moments of no wind. But it is surprising just how little wind you need to go. Of course, that other boat out there was bigger than us and had two sails. So it was much faster and more efficient than us in the wind department. And it was interesting how the winds changed when we got close to the shoreline.

This boat also has a low draft. Like less than 3 feet of water. So, we are able to get quite close to the shore as we make the bend along the lake. Certainly inside of the warning buoys.

A couple of interesting hands here. The player to my left makes, I think, a 36 bid and calls threes trump. It is a shock to realize that I had 4 of them including the boss trump (3:3). The trump split was quite horrible: 3 0 0 4. Needless to say that they were set. I am beginning to realize that you really don't need a premium hand to bid.

Case in point: I have five 5's including the top two. But I had two loosing bones in my hand including a five point bone, 3:2. I bid 36 and everyone else passes. I lead one of my two losers and the opposing team takes the trick but with no other points on it. Then, the person on my right leads a 3 and I am forced to play my 3:2 bone. Fortunately, my partner is out of threes and trumps in with the 0:5. I then lay my hand down and claim the rest since all I have now are trumps.

Because I was almost out of gas and went to the station on Parmer and IH-35, I stopped by Masala Wok for dinner. I like this place. They have a number of good Indian dishes.

It seems that they are out of regular gas. How convenient! Make people pay for the more expensive gas... Which is not an issue for me, being stuck using premium.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.