August 2008 Archives

I bought some different drinks at Central Market today. The first was chocolate milk. It is a Danish product called Cocio. The other was a soda made with a sweetener from an herb. It is called Zevia.

It has been a while since I've been down to Pease Park. And, with Marty potentially showing up, we decided to play there today. Through a fluke, we took 35 to 290 which turns into 2222 as it heads West. And, along the way, Jon noticed Kick Butt Coffee. Since it was advertised in the Chronicle, he decided to patronize it.

There is new construction going on at the park. Hole 6 was taken out for the time being.

Luckily, the disc golfers have done something about it. They split up hole 7 into two holes.

You throw first at the old hole 7. And then you tee off here. Which is up the side a little ways.

We stopped off for lunch at Wahoo's and had some fish tacos.

Here I am in the middle of making some Hatch chile sauce. These chiles have been fire roasted by the grocery store. The skin has been blackened into a state resembling activated charcoal. And nothing has been done to these chiles before roasting, so I have to remove the stem, seeds, and blackened skin. I add some onion, chicken stock, and vegetable stock.

Now I consider a thickening agent. And I am in the mood for a roux. I put two tablespoons of butter and flour in a small non-stick pan and stir vigorously over a medium heat. The mixture turns from white, to yellow, to light brown, to coffee milk color, to peanut butter color. I remove the pan from the stove and continue to stir madly. There is a lot of residual heat left. Even when I dump the mixture into the sauce, the super heated oil flash boils the sauce. Which is when the smell overwhelms me. And I bath in a primal memory of coffee...

With the Labor Day weekend coming up, we got a half day at work. So I convinced Jon to play disc golf at Wilco. Of course, I told him that it wasn't going to rain when I was on the phone. But, when we were out there, I was proved wrong. You could see rain off in the distance and the temperature was dropping as well.

Age of Steam Expansion - Texas, Oklahoma & New Mexico

Winsome's 2008 Essen pack was shipped early to me. In it was an Age of Steam expansion about Texas and cattle. We tried it out. Of course we got a couple of the rules wrong. But that did not make this game broken. In fact, it made it harder. Which, in my opinion is a good thing. This expansion is designed to make it easier for beginners. There is the normal goods on the board. And there also is a bunch of cattle which can be transported as goods. This is way too many goods for a group of seasoned players. So the mistake of not filling up the new goods section turned this game into a more normal version. With an interesting cattle twist.

Suicide Tichu

We finished up with an abbreviated game of Suicide Tichu. This was Marty's first time and he liked it.

You certainly cannot miss this vehicle. The paint scheme is rather intense. I bet that the yellow is the reflective type as well. And that is ignoring all of the lights all over the vehicle. I wonder if you could paint your car this scheme without getting in trouble...

I haven't even heard of Fayette County before this. Only to find out as I write this that it is located 60 miles away. I wonder what they were doing in downtown Austin.

Marty suggested a Brazilian restaurant named Sampaio's. He had really liked the coffee crusted pork tenderloin. I couldn't make the dinner that he was setting up. So I went there for lunch. Unfortunately, they had a different menu for lunch.

I did have the special which was Garlic shrimp served in a spicy coconut sauce. It was served on rice cakes with collard greens. It was pretty good. I think that this was the first time that I have eaten collard greens raw. Their strong taste balanced out the dish and was mellowed out by the sauce. The only negative thing was that the shrimp were not that garlicly at all.

The one odd thing that I noticed was that the chef loves collard greens. Many menu items contain them.

Jon played a solo game of Agricola and told me what cards he drew and what score he got (20 points). This made me want to see how I would do at it. I received 45 points. Which is below the minimum required for the first round (50 points). This got me thinking how I could improve my play. So I set out to see if I could better my score. This time, I scored 52 points. Can someone else do better?

Incredibly detailed minutia follows...

I was tempted to play around with Microsoft's Photosynth. It looked really interesting when it first made the news. Recently, they allowed the public to access it to add their own pictures.

This was my first attempt.

My first complaint is that you cannot modify an existing photosynth by adding pictures to it.

My next try will be a game in progress. Perhaps Formula De? Or Heroscape (which I would have to borrow since I don't own). I am thinking that the EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM and EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM lenses will come in handy for this.

Tiny mango pies link1 link2 via

Hamburger cupcakes link via

Pilobolus link via

Flaming knife link via

Diffusing the built in flash with a film canister link via

Gary Coleman Pitches Outrageous 99.25% APR Loans link via

The Guild link via

Al Franken Draws The United States Of America link via

Cliffhanger link via

Speed Racer Video Mosaic link via

6.6 degrees of separation link via

Researchers craft curved, eyelike electronic camera link via

Fluid stop-motion animation link via

Periodic table of awesomness link via

Water drop refraction link via

Homer Euro link via

Every 10 years, everyone in the town performs a play link via

Thinkpad with monitor calibration and Wacom digitizer link via

Cramer Comet link via

Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene link via

Photoshopping Videos link via

The Genetic Map of Europe link via

Barack Roll'd link via

3 Controversial Maps link via

Bending Light link via

Death Star over San Francisco link via

Erotic Drawing Illusion (NSFW) link via

Face Swapping: Automatically Replacing Faces in Photographs link via

Pac-Man: The movie link via

Ray Bradbury's futuristic prune commercial link via

Using Amazon's Mechanical Turk to create a book about cat stories link via

Michael Phelps recommended calorie intake is 8,000 to 10,000 calories link1 link2 via

Why people pirate stuff link via

Hexagonal keyboard link via

Very long term backup link via

An overheard conversation at the suburban neighborhood pool, if the suburban neighborhood pool were in deadwood. link via

Pizza Oven + Inkjet Printer + Nail Polish = Solar Cell link via

Do not trust lettuce! link via

Apparently an eighteen-wheeler truck crashed into a median at 4:30 in the morning. The truck caught fire and burnt to a cinder. They had to close both North and Southbound lanes of IH-35. Unfortunately, this is just South of where I live and I have no real alternate routes. At 10:45, the roads were still shut (and in fact would not open up until after lunch). I worked my way South over surface roads. But I still had to travel East along 620. Thankfully, it was not that long of a wait to pass.

I drove down to Volente Beach and Beach Front Boats. The LTC rented a part barge for the afternoon. The directions were horrible. Jon found me at 620. And we both missed the turn off for 2769 and continued along Anderson Mill road to 1431. At which point we said, WTF?! Thankfully, as we were backtracking, we noticed the sign for 2769 and Volente Beach.

The weather was perfect. The water was great. And we had much fun floating in the water and drinking beer.

Jon and I went to play disc golf at Old Settler's Park (Winter variant). It was tough carry our bags, though. Both of us had sun-burns from the previous day. Apparently, the free sunscreen was not waterproof.

It seems like they are making progress with the dam. The mounds of earth have been cleared out. The ground has been smoothed out (well, roughly smoothed). The small hill has some grass starter covering it. It is only missing the disc golf basket. I hope that they replace it! Maybe they are waiting for the grass to recover before they install the basket.

For hole three, I was tantalizingly close to the basket. But I missed the birdie putt.

On hole 16, I was able to hyzer over the trees to land right next to the basket. Which made me happy. That shot is real hard for me and I think that this is the first time that I have made that shot.

Nick and Stephanie joined us for lunch at Twin Peaks afterwards. Hopefully, they will play disc golf again some time in the future...

It seems I have been banned from the Tichu group. I only found out about it from second hand comments. And from noticing the lack of invites. I was never told why or allowed to defend myself. How very strange and bizarre.

Tuesday's bridge session netted us with a free burrito from Chipotle Mexican Grill over the weekend. So Nick planned a Tichu game for Friday. However, I forgot that D&D was that day. So he created another session on Saturday. Traci was supposed to have come but she never showed up. It was just Nick and I. So we played Cannonball Colony.

We went back to his house and he dragged me into a short game of Descent. Fortunately, Wayne showed up and we were able to play Tichu.

The D.M. bought a GameMastery Critical Fumble Deck. Every time that we rolled a 1 on a D20, he drew a card and applied the results to us. The deck is designed for the 3rd edition, so some changes had to be made. Joe was the first recipient to win the prize.

Jeff bought a new toy, a Sony A-300 DSLR. Cool, another photo-geek that I can talk with.

We got closer another level. But we still have not cleared out the building that we are exploring. Since our party seems weak, our D.M. got rid of the unhelpful Gnome and created another NPC for us. His name is Brother Tanaka. And he is a warlord. Chapel gave him to me to control. We quickly nicknamed him "meat puppet" as he was always running to the front and volunteering to be attacked by monsters. Jon finally got to use his multi-strike ability. There were actually three monsters that was attackable by one spot.

The date is 08/12/2008

The players are:

Jon and I played at Cat Hollow today. I did have one good practice throw on 18. Close enough for a birdie.

Well, I finally had a flat tire today when I was riding my bike. And, of course it happens when I am out in the middle of nowhere. I easily removed the tire. Now I need to find out where the leak is. I had bought one of those compressed air inflators. Unfortunately, there is no "slowly pump air into the tire" setting on this thing. A quick squeeze resulted in quickly inflating the tire and then quickly deflating the tire as the air escaped. Fortunately, I had a backup plan. I also carry a spare tube with me. So I install that tube and fill up the tire. I now notice a second problem with this pump. When it quickly releases the air, it freezes the tire stem as the gas expands! You get to now deal with holding frozen metal as you try and remove the pump from the tire. Fun. So, I then bike off. Only to notice that the spare tire has a leak in it. Argh! And the gas canister has run out of air. Double argh. I bought a spare air cylinder. But I now notice that the pump is not compatible with this one. Apparently, there are two different sizes for the pump (and also two different threading styles as well). Four combinations for a simple pump. This time I am out of options and have to call for help. Luckily, the phone worked and Mike was available.

I actually played the full Old Settler's Park course. It's crazy hot in the middle of summer, I know. It looks like they have replaced the bridge over the stream which often was under water when it flooded. I doubt that this bridge will have that problem. It looks like they have moved the basket for hole 2 out away from the creek. Which is sad.

With the dam finally finished, I was finally able to check out what they did for the tee on hole 16. It looks like they put a little bump in the sidewalk for people to throw on. Challenging.

And it looks like they are building a parking lot next to the football field. It is also right next to the basket for hole 18. Fortunately, they did not alter the basket.

What a cute, tiny car! I was hoping that I could figure out what the car was when I took the picture. And it seems that I have. "GT-R" and "X-90" are unique enough search terms.

Lokomotive Werks

Thankfully, Jon and Doug were willing to play another game of Lokomotive Werks. I made the mistake of chasing after the newly created trains instead of upgrading all of my current ones. So, when the time came during the later stage of the game, I saw that I was going to loose multiple trains and only have one left, I decided to resign from the game. Unfortunately, the Grimm brothers had a big fight over who was going to win the game and Doug left.

Agricola

So it was just Jon and myself left. So we played a two player game of Agricola. Which went rather quickly for having a Grimm in the game.

My long awaited copy of Agricola has arrived. I was a little worried about the rain though. The last time it rained when a package was delivered, the UPS person left it exposed to the elements which then destroyed the box (but not the contents, luckily enough). So, this time, I wrapped a big garbage bag around the door nob and left a note kindly asking the UPS person to put it in the bag. Which they did. Woo woo! But I should have worried. it didn't really rain today.

Interesting, it looks like Fuddruckers has a portable burger-mobile.

With gas prices rising, I finally hit a limit on my credit card: 75.00. Which was the most I could charge before the pump shut off. But, you could get around it by starting over again immediately after it stopped. Well, it looks like the credit card company finally clued in. I wonder when I will find the next limit to that card?

John Hathorn apparently overslept for this bridge session. Which is a weird thing to say when it is 7:30 pm at night. So we played three player bridge.

The date is 08/05/2008

The players are:

The tiny stream and lake that is part of our community "park" is drying up. The stream is 90% gone and the lake is getting there. I don't understand why people still fish in it. First, what is the point? One throw of the net will catch all of the fish left in it. Second, the toxicity level in that thing must be through the roof. This is not a running stream.

I wish it would rain sometime...

Jon and I went to Wilco for disc golf today. It seems that the Round Rock Disc Golf club has finished installing concrete tee boxes there. Although they didn't clean up yet. Dirt was all over the tees and pieces of concrete were not picked up yet. There was two groups of people driving around in carts all over the course. I wonder what they were up to. Besides kicking up dust that is.

A couple was walking there baby on the course today. I wonder if it is alright to throw at them? After all, there is a designated walkway around this complex.

I think that I might need a head-band when I am out biking. Sweat got into my right eye. And the salt was stinging me. I could not wipe my eye either. Sweaty hands does not help clear out the situation. Since I did not want to stop, remove my glasses, flush my eye out with bottled water, I just kept on riding with one eye closed. Avast ye maties!