Life, walks, travel, and games

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I suppose it’s time for another update.

Today we went on a 12.5 mile walk to Riverview Park north of the city. It would have been longer except it started raining by the time we hit downtown on the way back. After taking the T from the north shore, the rain really started picking up, so it made more sense to bus home. It was a nice walk though.






I recently went on a trip to San Francisco for work followed by a trip to the Northwest to visit Ben in Seattle and to attend Patrick’s wedding on the Oregon coast. Photos of the adventures can be found on my photo site.




Also, as followup to the edit on my last post, Southwest never sent me a voucher as promised for the baggage issues. At this point, I’m mostly apathetic (and I certainly won’t stop flying with them because they still do a better job than pretty much any other domestic airline), but it’s still a rather unhappy end to a terrible flying experience.

My Kickstarted game Pixel Lincoln finally arrived (almost 7 months after its initial delivery estimate). The shipping experience was a huge mess, and has pretty much convinced me never to back another Game Salute game again, no matter how interesting it may be. The games sat in their warehouse for two weeks before they event sent out information on paying for shipping. It then took another week after payment before the games started shipping, and it took three days after receiving tracking info for them to actually get the game to Fedex to ship. Overall, it was over a month from the time the game arrived at their warehouse to when it got to me… which wouldn’t be as terrible if it wasn’t for the absolute lack of explanation from them.
Combined with the already-sketchy expansion Kickstarters they ran before we got the game, it has really been a bad experience.
All of this would be less terrible if the game itself was awesome, but I can’t help feel like I got ripped off terribly. After $49, I got fewer cards than a basic Dominion set and a game that somehow feels not as fun as I was expecting it to be. It seems that there isn’t enough variety in cards (despite me getting a couple expansions offered during the initial Kickstarter) to make interesting enough levels (especially since you need to make two). The characters, mini-boss, and boss cards have no flavor (and no abilities that differentiate them from any other character, mini-boss, or boss card). The rulebook is terribly written and editted, and several important things (like using cards for symbol abilities) are not explained at all. The game itself therefore plays rather clunkily.
Meh. Lesson learned, I suppose. At least I only lost $49 on it.

KoL has been going rather well. The BIG! challenge path that was recently released has made getting the full sea outfits much easier (yay for immediate level 16 aftercore), and I’ve also managed to get down to 3 day ascensions reliably. My last run was a 702 turn run as a Sauceror, which I feel good about (especially given that I do 100% familiar runs).

I’ve been watching quite a few Smosh videos lately and as Zeke says, “Alan’s Law: Anything he spends over 30 hours consuming, he shall make into a card game.”
I’ve hammered out some basic rules and general cards for the game, which is turning out to be a customizable shared-deck game (so a card game where everyone draws from a single deck, but where that single deck can be customized as desired). The rules are drawing from Bohnanza and Investigations, where the goal is to collect cards to complete episodes by trading with other players. Hopefully the player-interaction and fixed deck aspects of it will make it more readily playtestable with my usual Thursday gaming group.
We’ll see if this project actually manages to get anywhere, or whether it’ll fall prey to my laziness like the RPG Get! revamps and the Investigations CCG.

Yay life and things.

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.