A Weekend of Gaming

Friday: walk a lot, play with cats, game over Zoom
Saturday: walk a lot, play with cats, DND over Zoom (came close to TPK but we pulled it out!)

Sunday: walk a lot, play with cats, game over Zoom.

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Tomorrow's the Solstice. I'll be more productive thereafter.

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I got the email estimate on the fence and, as I anticipated, got total sticker shock. I'm not feeling good about spending down that much of my cash, but I feel badly about cheapening out also. I emailed my hesitation, then another proposing some alternatives (e.g. gifting them the land under the fence, or splitting the cost).

Basically I feel badly because I make so much less money ?

Giving Thanks

 

Most Arroyo houses were way better than this

Thanksgiving Day I slept in as long as the cats would allow, then went over to Julie and Hannah's for our morning walk an hour later than usual. We drove to the Arroyo area which had intimidating slope down to the beach, but going back was not that bad really. Perhaps we are in training from the Frontenac route up to Highpoint, perhaps it was the novelty of the scenery.

I intended to do the Thanksgiving Zumba even but napped through it, oh well.

Around lunchtime I opened up Zoom for the Bloat - an annual tradition of the "MSU Hobbits" group of friends I'd known since college. Many of them ended up in NYC and lived in the more affordable Hoboken, and though we'd all drifted through the years, still on Thanksgiving several dozen gathered there for a feast. That was not possible this year so Sandy, our den mother, proposed a zoom meeting and gaming. There were 6-8 of us at any one time, which is way down from the face-to-face events but not bad, all things considering. Early on it was just Sandy and me talking while she baked pumpkin bread in her kitchen and I scanned my 25 year collection of business cards. We arranged to try game night Friday.

View From Alki

Friday was another walk, this time up at Alki which had beautiful views of the water, mountains and city as usual. I did about 40 GOTV letters while listening to TED talks, having resolved to use up all my stamps. I have to Dec 7 to do another 100 more, which seems quite doable. I then opened zoom for gaming, mostly Codenames since it hits the sweet spot of being challenging enough to be interesting but not so messing in the scoring system that one has to spend too much time thinking about mechanics. My absolute favorite clue was Stewart's "Frappe 2", which I correctly guess as "milk" (d'uh) and "helicopter" (because frappes are made in a blender and a helicopter was the closest thing to a blender that was on the board.) The mental process may seem odd but that's much of the fun of the game!

I didn't get a heck of a lot else done today but I suppose that is part of the point of taking a little time off.

Gaming weekend

 Friday I had zoom gaming with Sandy and Ed, Saturday Julie, Hanna, Melinda and I played Kingdomino and Lost Cities, Sunday I played Codenames with Ed and two people who were new to me. This can be a golden era for online gaming now that the election stress is behind (although I'm doing some GOTV letters to GA through Sierra club).

I am walking every day (Saturday was a walk/run featuring running 16 blocks of not less than 40 paces - separated by walking blocks). I've been walking weekdays with Julie and Hannah for months, and perhaps that plus the reduced stress of being on leave is giving me consistently decent - although far from perfect - BP readings so long as I put the cuff over a part of my forearm near my elbow, where there's a pulse, and not over my bicep there really isn't.

Saturday I made it to HPIC to check out their new public fridge and take a photo.

Highland Park Improvement Club
Free Fridge+Pantry

Sunday I harvested my sunchokes. I would if it would be better to leave them in the ground so they regrow next year? I have plenty of nutrition available right now.

Shadow has learned to call me to sit in my recline her and brush her til she relaxes or naps. This is ok the first 3 or 4 times a day but more than that and it's cutting into my time. There's only so much TV I can watch, although I did start catching up on old movies, such as "Meatballs" on Saturday and "She's All That" on Sunday. It's culture, I guess.

Halloween Inflatables and Codenames

 

This morning we walked to the north, and saw more Halloween decorations in the pre-dawn. 

In the evening I ran Codenames online at https://codenames.game/, using Zoom for talking with the players and the Codenames website for the game. First playing was Vikki Cool and her friend Randy; there was hilarious confusion because we have the same name. Just as they were checking out, Rachel Glass and family checked in for a couple more games. Playing 3 handed was awkward, as one person had to play spymaster for both teams, which required accessing two instances of the game using different browsers, but we got buy. Tentatively the Glasses and I agreed to try against Friday at 6:30 (and I'll check w/Vikki and Julie and Hanna.

Friday

The morning walk went down to Alki, which is surprisingly empty.

Alki view of Space Needle

West Seattle Alki Art Fair perspective art

In perspective

Where are the people on that ferry going?

For the evening, I met Hannah and Julie at the Beveridge Place for some adult beveridges and board gaming. The first was a word game; I unsuccessfully argued that if "warmth" is the quality of being "warm" then "thinth" is the quality of being "thin". Otherwise I would have won for sure haha!
We took another try at the Harbormaster game. Perhaps the chaotic pricing makes it hard to develop real strategies, but I squeezed by with a resource generation plan that I'm surprised was not copied, because it let me acquire the high-value properties. We discovered the "Harbormaster Selfie" card so I took the shot.
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Isle Of Cats Delivered!

Yay! the game I supported on kickstarter just came in! In "The Isle Of Cats" we rescue cats from Dire Peril through tilelaying (sleeping cats can adopt a variety of shapes ya know!) Time for game night at some pub!

Kickstarting Castle Dash

Curious about how Kickstarter feels from the funder's POV - and frankly charmed by Castle Dash's ad on the Order of the Stick forum - I put in my backing for the project. Basically, I'm taking a gamble on the designer; it looks like he has a winning idea and a strong future, but, as they say, what the future will bring only time will tell. And I'm learning more about the Kickstarter process, which will be useful!

You can participate, if you are very quick: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1892930431/castle-dash-the-speedy-siege-game

Free Rice - a Game AND a Charity!

FreeRice.com is a simple, but fun, word game. It presents you with a word and four short definitions; for each right answer, they donate 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program ... and you get a harder word.

Watch the rice pile up in your bowl of donations!

http://www.freerice.com/

Scrabulous - Scrabble online

Basically, the name says it all: Scrabulous lets you play Scrabble online. There are options for solo play (it's a good idea to adjust the difficulty settings unless you know words like "qim"); play online against users anywhere on the internew; or also play live with friends privately in a reserved room room. Free (although of course you can pay for more features) and fun: http://www.scrabulous.com

Dice Wars

Dice Wars is single-player browser strategy game created by GameDesign. In it, players fight for world domination "rolling" dice which represent units. The game looks much like Risk; however several differences in rules make for a different playing experience. You can play it at www.gamedesign.jp/flash/dice/dice.html

Rules

• At the beginning of the game, territories are divided up randomly between the player and up to 7 computer-controlled opponents, and a random turn sequence is determined.
• Each territory has a number of six-sided dice belonging to one of the players.
• Each turn, a play may win opposing territory by attacking from an adjacent territory that has at least two of that player's dice on it. The number of dice on the attacking territory are rolled and compared to the dice rolled from the defending territory. If the defender's result is equal to or greater than the attacker's result, the attack is successfully repelled and only one die is left on the attacking territory. If the attack is successful, all but one of the dice are moved from the attacking territory to the newly-won territory. A player may launch any number of attacks in any sequence (but must stop when none of that player's territories have more than one die).
• At the end of each player's turn, reinforcement dice are added to the player's territories. The number of reinforcements is equal to the maximum number of contiguous territories held. The distribution of the reinforcements is random, and not controlled by the play.
• No territory may have more than eight dice. If there is more contiguous territories held than available places to fit in reinforcements, the surplus is carried over to the next turn.

Strategy

• The reinforcement rules impact strategy in a way that makes this game very different from Risk. Isolated territories may at times be a disadvantage, in that they do not contribute to the number of reinforcements gained, but may absorb reinforcements. Cutting an enemy's contiguous terratories to minimize future reinforcement may be useful.
• Because there is no way to move forces except through attack, large forces may be trapped in territories unable to be used because they are not adjacent to enemies. This can affect strategy.
• After cutting the dominant opponent's territory, you might leave at least one of that opponent's isolated territories unattacked, even if it is weak. Instead, focus attacks on the largest contiguous area. The isolated territory will drain enemy reserves and resources, effectively weakening the primary enemy territories. It may be advantageous to allow the enemy to win attacks into your territory, to create opportunity to cut and isolate enemy territory, or to bring the combat front to a group of you own strong but isolated forces.

Misc.

• Dice Wars is Browser game coded using Adobe Flash.
• There is a multiplayer spin-off call KDice
• This article started as a wikipedia page. I editted it heavily until it was deleted due to an RfD. Any of the above that is not my own work is Fair Use of discarded material, per wikipedia's rules.