18 gamers, including new folks Dan and Adam. 14 games played. Bob and Clayton's Secret Wine Society gained respectability with spiffy wine glasses. Which reminds me, I want to play Vino sometime.
Farewell Jay who probably won't be here next week as he's about to move to Oregon. But he made it this week to assert his Devil rights at the dining table.
This weekend several of us are playing in the Houston 2-day go tournament, which should prove to be, um, interesting for me since I have neglected to play go for 3 months. Some of us need to play more go, and I think I know who I am...
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Game Results:
Bluff 5 Jay 4 William 2 David -1 RussW -1 Jerrie -4 Kahuna 2 JP 1 Daniel -1 Vampire 5 RussW 4 William 1 Jerrie 1 David -2 Jay -4 Frank'sZoo 6 David 5 William 3 JeffF 1 RussW -1 Jay -3 Jerrie -5 Wimmuln 6 RussW 4 William 4 JeffF 1 Cindy -1 Adam -3 Alfred -5 TajMahal 5 Dan 3 Allen 3 Bob 0 Marty -2 Clayton -4 Vampire 4 Allen 3 Bob 1 Dan -1 Marty -3 Vampire 4 Bob 3 Marty 1 Dan -1 Allen -3 Zero 5 Allen 4 RussW 2 Bob 0 William -2 Cindy -4 EnGarde 2 Dan 1 Marty -1 BlackDiamond 3 Tim 2 Adam 0 Alfred -2 BlackDiamond 4 RussW 3 Allen 1 Cindy -1 Bob -3 RoboRally 6 JP 5 David 3 Tim -1 Daniel -1 Jerrie -1 Jay -5 SpaceBeans 4 Marty 3 Daniel 1 JP -1 WendyWhe -3
Marty brought many new games. Vampire proved popular. It's a fast simple Knizia game where you're collecting vampire heads! So the theme is sort of a supernatural version of Guillotine, but with quite different mechanics. It's good fun.
I didn't play or watch Taj Mahal, but it took them a long time.
For the first time, we played one of the other games in the "Mu und Mehr" box besides Mu! Wimmuln was a simpler game than Mu. The more hard core trick-taking game players (William and Jeff) seemed to think it was a little too simplistic, but I thought it was fun. It would be a good game to learn before Mu, I think, since it gets you familiar with the weird deck and the basic trick-taking and triangle-collecting concepts without getting thrown into the deep end with Mu's additional complexities.
Space Beans has been played wrong all this time! It turns out that when you're done with your turn, you pass the cards to your right, not left! Thus instead of one set of cards passing clockwise around the table with whoever's turn it is, there are N sets of cards passing counterclockwise, upstream from the current player flow, so to speak. Interesting! Theoretically this would add more memory to the game (as you try to remember the contents of N sets of cards instead of just 1).
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Evening's Soundtrack:
Meredith Brooks, Blurring the Edges
The Flirtations, Three
Madonna, Erotica
Jill Sobule, Jill Sobule
Sonic Youth, Washing Machine
Smiles, everyone, smiles! (No one detected that there are smiling faces on the covers of all these CDs. Watchmen fans should understand the significance of smiley faces on the cover.)
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Rank ratings: 0.5556 JP (3 games played) 0.4706 Allen (5) 0.4400 RussW (6) 0.3636 William (5) 0.2778 David (4) 0.2000 JeffF (2) 0.1818 Dan (4) 0.1429 Tim (2) 0.0588 Bob (5) -0.1111 Daniel (3) -0.1429 Marty (5) -0.4286 Adam (2) -0.4444 Jay (4) -0.5000 Jerrie (4) -0.5000 Cindy (3) -1.0000 WendyWhe (1) -1.0000 Alfred (2) -1.0000 Clayton (1) New Win ratings: 0.5556 JP (3) 0.4706 Allen (5) 0.3200 RussW (6) 0.1818 Dan (4) 0.1429 Tim (2) 0.1111 David (4) 0.0556 Jay (4) 0.0000 William (5) -0.1176 Bob (5) -0.1429 Marty (5) -0.2222 Jerrie (4) -0.3000 JeffF (2) -0.3333 Daniel (3) -0.3333 Cindy (3) -0.3333 WendyWhe (1) -0.4286 Adam (2) -0.4286 Alfred (2) -0.5000 Clayton (1)
Well this is pretty obvious: JP is the Devil, Allen is Vice-Devil, and I am Vice-Vice-Devil!
Wendy & Clayton both pulled off the rare and dangerous Reverse Brady Maneuver! (Speaking of which, where the heck has Brady been lately?)
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Links:
What would your name stand for if you were a cyborg?
http://www.brunching.com/toys/toy-cyborger.html
I am R.U.S.S.: Robotic Unit Skilled in Sabotage.
Very Short Stories -- Lengths a Power of 2:
http://www.storybytes.com/
There are "real" stories of length 2048, 1024, ..., and then the stories get more concise and silly as you go down toward the length 2 stories (whose titles are longer than the story texts). Sample length 2 story:
"Christian Collides With Corn Truck" by Brett Watson:
"Aw, SHUCKS!"
Interview with the Search Engine:
http://www.fnwire.com/features/satire-jeevesinterview.html
Jeeves does not pass the Turing Test, in my opinion.
If you enjoy sick and twisted comic strips, may I suggest the following links:
Road Waffles, sort of a wacky version of Natural Born Killers, U-Turn, and other such dark violent "road movies":
http://www.roadwaffles.com/
Just start at the first strip in the archives and cruise on down the highway.
Look What I Brought Home has primitive art but some very funny gross-out gags. Not for the squeamish or people who insist upon taste in their reading matter:
http://www.lookwhatibroughthome.com/
A good one to start with to see if you want more would be:
http://www.lookwhatibroughthome.com/comics/262.html
Don't say I didn't warn you.
A useful resource for further such researches is LOPOW, the List of Potentially Offensive Webcomics:
http://lopow.keenspot.com/
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Advance Warning of Approaching Non-RussCon Wednesdays:
Probably April 26 and May 3 I will be out of town, so no RussCon then. Stay tuned for further info. Meanwhile, don't panic, resume shopping as usual.
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R.U.S.S.C.O.N.: Robotic Upgraded Soldier Skilled in Calculation and Online Nullification
Russ