I hate flying

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Yesterday was one of the longest days ever spent travelling, and makes me remember why I hate flying so much.

I had a 7 AM flight into SFO, and had to catch a 4:30 AM 28X. Therefore I decided not to sleep the night of the 22nd, because it was easier, and I was getting into SFO at 1 PM and had plenty of time to sleep anyway. Big mistake.

Got to the airport around 5:30 (took Supershuttle instead because I didn’t want to walk 30 minutes to campus at 4 AM). There was a huge line to check bags (about 20 minutes) and a huge line for security (even at the alternate checkpoint; about 45 minutes). I had less time than I wanted to get food and eat at the gate, but it worked out in the end since I always budget so much extra time at the airport for myself.

The flight started out fine. We were in one of the new Southwest 737s (larger, longer, more open, more comfortable) for the PIT -> LAS leg, which was a nice experience. Got into LAS around 9:30 only to find that my connecting flight (scheduled for 11:30) into SFO was delayed until 12:30 due to weather conditions.

The delays were extended twice (finally scheduled for a 4 PM departure) before they cancelled the flight. There was no announcement to go up to the podium to be reticketed (rather, there was an announcement NOT to go to the podium while the agents tried to work out alternatives), so I ended up near the end of a very long line and therefore had very few options by the time it got to me. With no more seats on SFO-bound flights, I was instead reticketed onto a plane for OAK, leaving after 10 PM.

So I got to spend 12 hours in the Las Vegas airport trying to find things to do and wanting desperately to sleep. That was not fun.

At least the salad I had for dinner was tasty, even if I was so stressed out by that point that it took me over 90 minutes to eat it. (And I’m normally a really fast eater.)

So I eventually make it into OAK after 11:30 PM, and go to the baggage office to deal with my checked bag. No one there seemed the least interested in helping me, only telling me repeatedly to check the carousel that did not contain my bag. (Which was surprising given it’s Southwest, that I usually have nothing but good experiences with.) Eventually the agent at the carousel tried looking up the bag tag and told me to call the SFO baggage office. Who confirmed that they had the bag (not unexpected) but that I would have to go get it at my own expense due to “voluntary separation”.

So yeah, that was pretty ridiculous. They had over 8 hours from the flight cancellation to retag my bag to Oakland. Failing that, I would have expected some effort on their part to reunite me with it. Failing that, I would have expected at least some compassion or interest in my situation from the people working. I know it’s been a long day for everyone, but you could at least try to help confused, tired, and cranky passengers. This was made worse by the fact that I was dumb and didn’t carry on any clothes (never had checked bag issues before) and it was after midnight by that point (so I couldn’t make it down to SFO to get the bag).

So I couldn’t really sleep last night, and ended up waking up at 6 AM and being unable to fall back asleep. Which means I’ve had a total of 5 hours of sleep in the past two days. Went to SFO this morning at 7 AM to get it, so now I have clothing, and feel more reasonable. But still really, really tired.

On the plus side, the hotel I’m staying in is pretty awesome.

Edit: Whoa, this hotel has free wine every night. It took me 3 chardonnays before I discovered they had sangria (so tasty!). Best hotel ever.

Edit edit: My hotel apparently has chair massages (like, sit-down massages with a professional masseuse) on Fridays. My back feels much looser now.
Also Southwest responded to my complaint letter (I complained only about the baggage and not the delay, since weather delays aren’t their fault), and wants to make things right. They’re offering a voucher (that I haven’t received yet), which is really awesome of them, given I wasn’t expecting anything at all.

Cruise yay

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We went on a cruise through New England and Canada! It was awesome! Moar cruising next year plz.

Here’s a fun gif of them setting up the gangway in Charlottetown. I like that the first thing they do is set up the hand sanitizer dispensers.

Additional photos can be found here, here, and here.

I flew into Boston on Friday to meet my parents there, and we spent that evening and the following morning wandering the city and walking the Freedom Trail. It wasn’t anything new (had previously visited with Greg), but it was still fun to see and do again. The ship left Saturday evening.

Sunday morning, we got into Bar Harbor, Maine bright and early. We didn’t eat any lobster (too expensive, and there was lots of tasty free food on the ship), but I did get an awesome stuffed lobster. The tag says his name is “Lobbie”, but that’s a dumb name. His name is instead “Om nom nom”.

We took a bus tour into Arcadia National Park and up to Cadillac mountain, which had beautiful views.

Monday we cruised into Halifax, Nova Scotia. We spent the morning touring the Citadel fortress at the top of the city, and I regret not having more time to see all it had to offer.


In the afternoon, we took a bus tour to Peggy’s Cove to see the famous lighthouse. It was really kind of underwhelming, and it was really cold and windy and rainy up there.

Tuesday we cruised into Sydney, Nova Scotia. The rain and wind had followed us from Halifax, and we hadn’t booked any shore excursions, so it was rather a short and boring day. We wandered the city for a bit (not much to see… the ship’s city guide had even said they don’t dock at Sydney for Sydney, but rather for the access to Cape Breton) and spent the afternoon on the boat relaxing.

Wednesday was Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. It was by far the most beautiful of the places we visited, and also had a lot of historic things to see (since the confederation conference was held here). They have a really nice walking tour set up in Founder’s Hall, and you could also see Province House, the current seat of the provincial legislature.


Thursday was an at-sea day and we didn’t do very much. We docked in Quebec City, Quebec on Friday and went on a bus tour of the city before wandering it on our own. It feels a lot like Europe to me, actually. Was an interesting place to visit.

Overall, it was awesome, and I want to do it again. The infinite free food was probably the best part (full-service dining room at night with fancy, tasty food :D :D), but I really liked the lack of internet ($0.75/minute on the ship means you basically go without it instead of paying). It’s weird how much of a useless time-waster it is. It was also nice to wake up every day in a new place with new sights to see.

The ship also has shows every night and general activities (a library with books and board games you can check out, ping pong tables and a giant chess set, etc).


Also, it’s hilarious that the ship’s coffeeshop had prices for all their drinks, but not their food. It’s weird to me that all drinks on the ship (except water, tea, and coffee) cost money ($2.95 for a can of soda!), but all food was free (including the snacks and sandwiches at the coffeeshop). Still, infinite food almost-whenever you want it really can’t be beaten, and I don’t drink soda anyway.

Moo.

Life, Carnival, Boston, Glee, and things

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Well, it’s been more than a month since I’ve updated, so I should probably write something here. (This actually makes the first month I’ve skipped since I started keeping my journal back in high school in 2003. Huh.)

Since it is now after April, my photojournal and stats have been updated. Not many changes this time in stats… people mostly look the same. I also updated my photojournal with thumbnails a while back, so it’s a bit nicer to browse now.

There was a Carnival and it was awesome. My goal to spend less time on Midway was somewhat successful… I still made it out to Midway every day during build week, but I didn’t spend much time there. Next year perhaps I should forgo the hardhat so I have no excuse to go. KGB built an awesome booth (and reportedly won second place in the independent category) and there was the usual Fairfax crowd around (minus Mars, Mars-Dan, and Al-Tim this year, unfortunately) for lots of games and merriment.

Buggy and the picnic were rained out on Friday (but, amazingly, not Mobot), so it was a little less eventful than it perhaps could have been… we braved the cold on Saturday for the Buggy finals instead and just generally had fun times.

Photos of such things are at my photos site.

Also happening during Carnival week was the Boston marathon bombing, which is rather relevant now given that the Pittsburgh marathon is happening tomorrow. Reportedly the post office has gone through and removed all mailboxes along the route (and will replace them afterward), which is a rather interesting decision.
I generally have a lot of feelings about this, but I’m not really sure how to put them into words. I tend to get more freaked out than I should by upsetting things, but I also hope this doesn’t get used as another point against liberties… after all, terrorist attacks kill far fewer people every year than lightning, car accidents, or drowning.
Even more so than the terribleness that happened, to me, was the reaction from the mother of the suspects. I can understand if you believe your sons were framed, or that it was a government conspiracy, or something (because you love your kids and maybe you want to believe they aren’t capable of such things), but to outright deny there was a bombing is completely disrespectful to everyone that was affected by it. That is not okay.
Bah.

Another thing that has been bothering me in the news lately is this. I think CMU is handling it completely the wrong way and the Catholic church is making a much bigger deal out of it than it should, especially when they compare the event to the recent frat suspension due to alleged sexual misconduct. Again, no, that is not okay. And you wonder why I am so against organized religion sometimes. :\
Meh.
(Also, KDKA seems to be horrible at actually researching and reporting stories, as usual.)

But related to The Tartan though, you should read this awesome article that Greg put together for the CMU presidential transfer happening this summer.
Yay The Tartan.

I recently purchased the first season of Glee. I haven’t watched the show since the end of the second season (when the slow season-long decline ended in the horrific New York episode that was terrible enough to turn me off from the show forever), but I caught up a bit on the plot summaries and musical performances online. And I have to say… even the worst of the first season (“Funk” and “Theatricality” come to mind) is far better than the entire second season. And the show only seems to have gone downhill from there (“Plot? Why would we need plot when we’ve got singing and dancing?”). Even the pregnancy storylines, hated as they were, wove some semblance of continuity throughout the first season. It’s really a shame… I really liked the show, and really enjoyed rewatching the first season. I hear it has been renewed for two more seasons (5 and 6)? What is wrong with TV nowadays? :\

The weather in Pittsburgh has been rather bipolar lately as the city decides whether it wants it to be winter or spring. After some bizarre weeks (record low then a tied record high a couple days later), the weather seems to have mostly settled on “nice”.
Today Chris arranged a nice picnic in the afternoon in Friendship Park (followed by Doctor Who and sherbet [which apparently isn’t spelled “sherbert” despite everyone pronouncing it that way? O_o]), and we had Yubin, Max, and Owen over for lasagna out on the patio for dinner. I’m looking forward to the nicer weather ahead, but am very much not looking forward to the humidity that will soon be upon us.

June and July will involve lots of travel (that I’m looking forward to) and plane trips (that I am also not looking forward to). It’ll be nice to take a break from work… it’s been kind of a rough release cycle for us.

Things have been nice but uneventful lately. There has been the usual game nights and usual climbing (less so lately, as I haven’t gone since before Carnival).

Life goes.

Edit: Marathon photos, because I know people will ask about them. Yay marathon.



Tea cupcakes, People Wars, climbing

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I made tea cupcakes today. Om nom nom nom. I wanted something light (especially since it was tea), so I didn’t want the usual buttery cupcakes. After mixing everything, I realized it needed something to make it moist (usually the butter or oil), so I added some applesauce. I think they turned out decently, actually. I would probably use something less flavorful than applesauce next time (vegetable oil?).

Brew teas, leaving in a little longer than usual (I did green tea and chai tea). Reduce each on the stove by about half to about 1 cup liquid total (so 1/2 cups each if you’re doing two like I did).

2 c flour
1 c sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 c reduced tea
1/4 c applesauce or oil
2 egg whites

Combine dry ingredients. (Separate into equal amounts for each tea flavor if required.) Stir in tea and applesauce and egg and mix well.
Bake at 325 for 20 minutes.
Makes 18 cupcakes or two cakes.

I sprinkled green tea on the green tea ones and cinnamon on the chai ones before baking.

In other news, the latest People Wars expansion has also been completed and posted. You can download it here. One of the expansion’s themes, other than the “give and take” of the various abilities, was to further highlight the specialties of each subject trait. Of all the cards in the set, there are a couple I think are particularly interesting.


This card (and the Program variant) can be really good for task decks if you get them out early. This may be weakened to only place on one task, pending playtesting and balance.


This card grants a powerful skill that reduces an opponent’s kill counters while increasing your own. It’s expensive, but can be really strong. To help meet the item requirement, we have


and the Fine Art variant “Modern Art” that can turn into any item you want (similar to “Crab Cakes” from the Activities expansion, but without the discard).

And here’s a couple examples of the give-and-take effects in this expansion (which is the theme for BayArea characters):

It’s also exciting that, after the next expansion, People Wars will have more cards than Student Wars, which currently holds the distinction of largest card base with 963 distinct cards. (This will be true even if you exclude the re-released item cards and event cards in the Exchanges and Starter sets.) Yay.

In other other news, I went climbing this week on Monday and Tuesday. This ended up being a terrible idea, and I spent most of Tuesday doing VBs and V0s because my arms were incapable of holding myself up on a wall. And then I spent most of yesterday unable to grip things with my fingers. So climbing is great, but doing it too much is not so great. Hopefully I’ll have managed to recover enough by Friday that I can do V2s again… there are some awesome new routes going up that I want to try.

Yay life.

San Francisco, climbing, Kickstarter games, and People Wars

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It’s been over a month since my last update. Given I keep telling myself I should write in here more, doing so at least once a month seems reasonable.

I recently traveled to San Francisco to check in at work… given I hadn’t been there in 10 months, it was about time. It was mostly an uneventful trip. Managed to see pretty much everyone except for Sharon, which was sad. Afterward, I did my usual stop in Phoenix to see my parents. Our travel plans were cancelled due to both of my parents being sick, so the week was also uneventful. Went to bar trivia and played some games with Isaac, but no one else around was answering emails.





There are more photos of the trip here.

I’ve also been climbing regularly for the past couple months. A group of us first went for Michael’s birthday back in December, and we’ve been going weekly since then. After starting with VBs and V0s in December, I’m now pretty comfortably into V2s and looking at attempting some V2/3s. It’s nice to see improvement from week to week.



More rock climbing photos are here and here.

In other fun news, the Kickstarter games I backed have started arriving. Ground Floor arrived while I was in San Francisco (like two days after I left), and My Happy Farm arrived today. Here’s the unboxings.

My Happy Farm had previously been played many times (as a print-and-play game) and enjoyed. Ground Floor met a bit more resistance.
Our first attempt at our weekly games night ended early when it was 11 PM (about 2.5 hours in) and we were still only 2/3 of the way through the game. The second attempt the following week was about a 3 hour game (quicker since half of us had played before) and went fairly well.
I think Ground Floor accomplishes what it set out to do very nicely. It’s a much heavier game than My Happy Farm, or even many of the other Eurogames we play. But I like that it’s so open ended, and there are so many decisions you can make each round. I also like the trade off between more actions (employees) and money, since it’s not a matter of “get as many actions as you can” like most worker-placement games end up as. (In fact, at the end of our game, not one player had the maximum number of employees, despite having had many chances to hire and despite the job market being at the cheapest possible level.) That’s a good sign.
It actually reminds me a lot of Through the Ages, even though they’re entirely different genres (moreso than even Agricola, which is also a worker-placement game). It’s a fairly long game, and it has so many things you can do each round, and it’s about planning well but also reacting properly to other players’ actions and the changing nature of the game (the row of cards in TTA, and the economic forecast in GF).
Definetly enjoyable for me.

Both games also came with Kickstarter bonuses.
Ground Floor came with a dice-rolling game Skyline, which we found very light and enjoyable once we started playing it correctly. (Note for other people playing that don’t read the rules carefully: When you complete a building, the dice used all move to the construction yard. They don’t go back into the supply.) It fills the same niche for me as Farmageddon or Malta!… a quick game to pull out when waiting for people to arrive or when people are tired and have started leaving: quick to learn, quick to play, and not much thought required.

It also came with a bunch of different small expansions, like a Great Depression economic forecast card, various “event” cards, and a new game board area. We haven’t played with those yet, but it looks like it’ll be fun to break them out.

My Happy Farm came with four new animals to play with. I was expecting enough copies for all four players to use, but it only came with one of each. Still, it’s a cute little extra for the game. I’m looking forward to playing the real version, hopefully at the next games night.

We’ve also played a few games of the print-and-play of another Kickstarter game, Viticulture. I’ve really, really enjoyed this one, although I admit the wake-up track mechanic ended up being less revolutionary than I was expecting it to. (Most people ended up taking the #1 spot when they were first to pick, and the winner in the few games we played were the people that were first or second to pick in the last round of the game, when competing for wine order spaces was most important.) The only issue was with our print and play… it was black and white, meaning the different card icons were very difficult to distinguish, the board was hard to read, and the white and blush wine glass icons looked too similar. But that aside, the game itself is awesome, and I think everyone that played it enjoyed it.

We had a rather interesting game where Austin decided he wasn’t going to make wine and would win by other means. He actually came very close… he managed to cause the end of the game (by hitting 20 victory points) with only his starting three workers and without having made a single bottle of wine the entire game. Yay for breaking games?

In other, other news, I’m finally continuing work on the next People Wars expansion (last talked about here) now that I actually have more up-to-date photos of San Francisco people. (This makes sense given it’s an expansion themed around Bay Area people.)

The set is also going to have new versions of the twenty basic item cards, because it’s bothered me enough that they don’t match the new card design. Here’s Board Game, which features Michael playing (and eventually winning) Ground Floor.

Other things have been happening too (like awesome AoJ in KoL and awesome vacation planning for this summer and another SF trip in June), but I’ve probably rambled on enough for now. Yay long-but-infrequent journal posts.