October 22 2003 RussCon Report

News

Next week's RussCon is October 29, just 2 days before Halloween, so it will be the official annual Halloween RussCon, in which costumes and spooky games are encouraged!

Heads up that the Austin Celtic Festival is coming up (Saturday Nov 1 and Sunday Nov 2). I expect I'll be there all weekend since it is probably The Best Weekend Of The Year.

Sabaton la 8-an de novembro okazos la TutTeksasa Kunveno, por ĉiuj teksasaj esperantistoj!

And Houston Go Club is hosting a weekend tournament November 15 and 16.

I've sold more of my games to RussCon friends. If anyone else is interested, here is the current list. Also if anyone wants some of these vinyl records for your listening pleasure, I'd be happy to pass them along, and I'm going to go sell the rest when I get off my lazy ass and do it. And last chance for the two ever-popular butt monsters, or I'm taking them to my office to amuse people there.

Game Results

Medici	5	Marty 4 RussW 2 MarkH 0 Clayton -2 MarkG -4
HighSociety	5	Harry 4 MarkH 2 RussW -1 Marty -1 Clayton -4
Rainbows	5	Marty 3 MarkH 3 Clayton -1 RussW -1 Harry -4
WhatsThatOnMyHead	4	Matt 3 MarkY 1 Ben -1 JP -3
Rainbows	4	Harry 3 MarkH 1 RussW -2 RussD -2
Exxtra	4	Ben 3 JP 0 MarkY 0 Clayton -3
Blokus	4	Matt 2 Harry 2 RussW -1 RussD -3

Medici, High Society and Rainbows are all RussCon oldies but goodies; it was fun to play them again.

Ratings

Rank Ratings:
 2.2380 Marty
 2.0794 Harry
 2.0794 Matt
 2.0149 MarkH
 0.9808 Ben
 0.4055 MarkY
-0.9808 RussW
-1.3863 JP
-1.6094 MarkG
-2.0794 RussD
-3.9766 Clayton

Win Ratings:
 3.1781 Harry won 3 of 4
 2.3026 Marty won 2 of 3
 2.0794 Matt won 2 of 2
 1.0986 Ben won 1 of 2
 0.1823 MarkH won 1 of 4
-0.2231 MarkG won 0 of 1
-0.5754 MarkY won 0 of 2
-0.5754 JP won 0 of 2
-0.9808 RussD won 0 of 2
-1.2448 Clayton won 0 of 4
-1.9379 RussW won 0 of 5

Harry and Marty are Co-Devils! Matt is Vice-Devil. Ben and MarkH are Co-Vice-Vice-Devils. Then MarkG and MarkY.

If you are confused how the ratings work, you could peruse the FAQ.

Meta Game

I was the Meta Devil. Here is the Meta Game I mailed out:

Civil War Meta Game

Using the deck of Civil War photo cards Whendy recently brought back from a trip, this week's Meta Game will test your ability to identify people from the Civil War. There will be cards arranged across the piano. Do NOT move them or look at their backs. On a piece of scrap paper, write your answer of who each card is, in order. (Some are easy, some are less so, although I picked cards that I was able to identify, so they're not insanely hard.) Earn a meta point for each correct answer. (Last name is sufficient, but full name is far more glorious.)

Additionally, earn a meta point for each American Civil War game you play, e.g. Battle Cry.

High score wins. Ties broken by whoever makes the fewest misspellings/typos or other things that make me go "hmm, well, ok I guess I'll hesitantly count that one as correct" in their answer sheet, and further ties broken randomly.

No Civil War games were played, so the meta scores were all purely based on identifying the Civil War personalities, who happened to all be from the Union (since that's what the deck had!) and were:

Ambrose Everett Burnside
Ulysses Simpson Grant
Abraham Lincoln
Clara Barton
Walt Whitman
William Starke Rosecrans
Frederick Douglass
Allan Pinkerton
William Tecumseh Sherman
Philip Henry Sheridan

I selected those 10 cards from the deck since I was able to identify them all, so I figured they were "fair". All of them were identified by at least one contestant, except for Rosecrans and Pinkerton. Only Harry and Whendy identified Sherman, and only Harry got Sheridan. The meta scores earned by our lovely contestants were:

7 Harry
6 Whendy
5 MarkG
4 Matt & RussD

So Harry is the Meta Devil and will design next week's Meta Game (which by Imperial Decree must be related to Halloween).

Links

http://jo.zan.hu/poen/pictures/

grouphug.us has anonymous confessions, some sad and some funny

Village Voice says Lords of the Rhymes are the best hobbit-themed rap group! Elf booty got soul! Elf girls like to rock-n-roll!

Singular They: The Pronoun That Came in from the Cold by jjoan ttaber altieri

computer.mov is inexplicable.

Salem carjack attempt "bizarre": Gunfire, a tricycle crash, a car crash and a chase add up to a man's arrest.