Oakland's Eleven

We had people over for dinner tonight. It was exciting, except that there were too many. We're slowly trying to invite all of our friends over here.. but we only do these dinners every so often and there are so many people we want to invite, and we try to plan the groups so it's mostly people who are friends with both me and Eli and who know each other, which is hard to do when there are so many cool people out there. Tonight was mostly CMU CS PhD students and related folk. Scott is leaving town next week, so it was good to see him before he left... and Rochberg his roomate, of course, and we had never invited Sprite and Dave here before, so we invited them, nor have we had Pete and Karen over for dinner but have been to their place a few times, and I hadn't seen Francisco this semester yet and he'd never seen DDR, nor had I had a chance to talk to Alex this semester. And we're still trying to find a dinner gathering that Ralph can make it to, but at least Lori could make it and brought chairs and stuff.

Incase you're not counting, that's eleven people if you add me and Eli. For those of you who have been here before, you know we have a table that Laura gave us that seats six people, and we have a bridge table that seats four. And we only have eight folding chairs. Oops... well, Karen's in a wheelchair and Lori brought two chairs, so that worked out. We sort of moved the dining room table into the living room and put it and the bridge table together and make this sort of mushroom-shaped big table, and somehow fit everyone around it.

We're still not quite down on this "having people over" thing, but we're learning. The problem is that we didn't start early enough, I guess. I made these pizza bagel thingies for appetizers, and Eli cooked stew last night for the main course, and he was making biscuits to go with them, and we also tossed a salad and stuff. I made smores brownies for dessert. Sprite's Dave is allergic to milk, so that was a little bit of a challenge. We found some biscuits that had no milk ingredients, and I made a couple pizza bagels with no cheese on them, and such. The brownies... well, after getting brownie mix with no milk ingredients and semi-sweet chocolate with no milk in it, not only did I forget and grease the pan with butter, but it turns out Dave doesn't like chocolate anyway. Shrug. By the time I served dessert a few people had left anyway, so I ended up only serving eight brownies. Now I have a huge pan of brownies... they better keep until Sunday so I can bring them to Ragnarok D&D! They were interesting actually - usually I seem to make them and bring them to a party or somewhere, so they're cool or cold by the time they're consumed, but this time since I'd put the brownies in right after eating my dinner, and Rochberg had to leave to pick up his Laura at the airport, I decided to pretty much serve them after they'd only had a few short minutes to cool. They were really gooey and sloppy with lots of marshmallows gooping out of the side, which of course is the right way to make smores anyway. Mmmmm.

After dinner we played some DDR because hey, that's what we do here, and then we stuck around and chatted until 1am and change. We had some bizarre talks about soap operas and videogames and stuff. Francisco, being Portuguese and all, had some really interesting stories to tell about their TV shows and all, and Dave kept trying to convince me that no really, I should play Everquest, and I kept saying that no really, I wasn't going to. And so on.

We demonstrated the disco ball during dinner again. We figured out that the weird-ass light formation that happens sometimes on the wall was actually caused by the mirror-like frame for my CMU senior portrait picture. Funny that.

Anyway, it was a pretty successful evening, although 11 people is definitely too many. I'm thinking 6-8 is ideal. Need to come up with more meals to make... I do like cooking for large groups though. It is fun.

W00T

I won third place in Trick in today's DDR tournament!

more details after I eat dinner - damn am I hungry.

Dance Dance W00t - 2nd Remix

Ok, so today was the big all-Pittsburgh DDR tournament at Beaver Valley Mall. Bayani called me at like 2:40 (I was planning originally to leave for it at 2:30) and said "hey, the Pirates suck, so I want to go to the tournament - can you give me a ride?" and we waited for him, and then drove out there. Eli was nice enough to also go pick up my euphonium for me (it works! yayayay!) and he had bookstore shopping and stuff to do as well.

So, we sign up for the tournament and put coins on the machine to get in line to practice and warm up and all. (Oh my god. There were like 50 people there. A coin line! Wow! This is like the first time I'd ever seen more than 3 people at the machine) I went around and talked to some people... Rebecca from Pitt was there, she started a Pitt DDR club, and posts to DDRfreak sometimes. Angel from CMU was there, and Mike from Duquesne (the guy who won CMU's DDR tourney in October), and a few other people who were sort of familiar either from ddrfreak or from seeing them at the mall. There was a Pitt group, a Duquesne group, an IUP group, our little CMU group, and a few people from Ohio. (I say groups in that, especially IUP/Duquesne, there were like 3 or 4 guys entering, and they had like 2 or 3 mallchick girls in makeup and tight clothing accompanying them. It was funny because I would be like "those girls can't possibly play DDR." and sure enough, they didn't. Actually, only 3 females entered the tournament at all, and all of us placed.)

So, Bayani and I warm up. First we do B4U, me on trick him on maniac. I only got like 180 perfects (I usually get 220 or so) and was really disappointed. Then we did Shooting Star (both on Maniac), Kick the Can (again both Maniac) and Saints Go Marching (him Maniac, me Trick). I full-comboed the last two, and some guy was like "and she's entering Trick? Yeah right!" Then of course I had my asthma-like attack and ended up running around the mall looking for cough drops, and sat there and coughed and sneezed a ton of mucus out of my system, while they started the Basic tournament. Ugh. So sure, I could do all of those 7-foot songs, but I was ready to fall over and die.

The guy who worked at the arcade who was supposed to be running it, Chris, had no idea how to run a tournament, so Mike from Duquesne took over and ran everything. He is cool because not only is he a really good DDR player, but he's also really nice and helpful and all. Anyway, on Basic they seemed to have some difficulties but eventually just had a whole bunch of people (5 people entered; they chose the top 2 to "win") do songs and eventually they had some winners. I am a little unclear on how since I was sitting in the hallway coughing for most of it. A girl wearing a cat-ears hairband won in Basic. Most of the basic players were pretty newbie-like, so it wasn't too exciting. I gotta give them credit for getting up and competing after only playing for a few weeks in most cases, though...

(Oh - we were doing Perfect Attack - so you compare the Perfects they get and only count Greats/etc if there's a tie - anything not Perfect is pretty much a miss)

Ok, so there were 15 people entering in Trick; it was the biggest section. They did two songs per match, and single-elimination. I won the coin toss and got to choose category and first song. I chose Sung Suk, since it's my favorite K-Pop song in the game. It's 5 feet on Trick. I beat the other guy like 100-87 or something. Then he picked Luv To Me (AMD Mix), which is like 7 feet on Trick, and is Rage and Emi's song in 3rd mix. Well, about halfway through the game he GAVE UP! He literally stepped off the pad like "I suck, I give up". I kept playing and shouted "no way dude! Get back up here!" Other people were also booing him and were yelling things like "go back on the pad, wuss!"

I was really confused, because I mean, heck, this guy PICKED THE SONG and couldn't do it?

Anyway, ok, either way, I had won my first match and would be in the second round. w00t number 1.

They finished the first round by having six normal matches and then the last three guys played against each other - one picked category, one picked first song, one picked second song, and after the first two did those two songs, the other guy had to get on the machine and do those two songs by himself, and then they'd compare scores for all three of them to determine who'd won that "match". So we technically went into the second round with 7 people.

The second round started, and Rebecca was supposed to play against this guy Brian, but he had disappeared - nobody could find him. I played against this one guy in a tie (there were like three guys there in button-down shirts and ties - I'm not sure why) and won the coin toss again, so I picked Player's Best and B4U for the first song. This time I nailed it and got like 215 Perfects, which beat him by quite a bit. The second song, he picked El Ritmo Tropical, which I hate and usually suck at (and he was like "I hope you're not as good at this song" and I was like "Yeah, I suck at it, actually") except that somehow, maybe it was all the pressure, I did really well, almost full-comboing it. I got like 150 or so Perfects, again winning. w00t! Second round down and I was still in...

Eventually they gave up the search for Brian, and Rebecca played against Chip, who had won the 3-person match, and she won. So it was down to me, Rebecca, and this guy Greg (another one wearing a tie, although a different tie) for the third round. So not only was I still in, I had placed - because they were taking the top 3 winners!

Ok, so for the final round, I got screwed - I was told to choose the category, Greg was choosing the first song, and Rebecca was choosing the second song. Greg and I were on the pad for the first part. I chose Pops A; he chose Dub-I-Dub. Another song I love but UTTERLY suck at on Trick. Sure enough, he beat me. Then Rebecca chose My Summer Love. ARRRRGH! This is like the slowest song ever - and while I'm actually pretty decent at it on Maniac, I suck at it on Trick. So I beat Greg, but (as I found out later) he beat me by enough on Dub-I-Dub that the deficit was 13 or so, so he beat me overall. Rebecca beat both of us on both songs, so she was the winner. But I bet if I could have chosen one of the songs rather than the freaking category, I might have had a better chance. The three of us were pretty well matched... it was kind of cool, actually.

So, I placed third. I won ten bucks. The entry fee was 5 bucks, so I guess that means I won money to order pizza at D&D tomorrow. Fair enough. I mean, heck, this is my first real DDR tournament, so, that's pretty cool, right?

It's funny, before the Trick round started, actually, one guy was asking Mike from Duquesne "which players do I need to worry about?" and he pointed to like one or two people and then to me like "and her..." and I'm like "dude, I suck" and they were like "hello, you were full-comboing Maniac songs earlier, what are you talking about?" It's so weird, I was totally expecting to be really outclassed there... but since I didn't even win overall in Trick it's not like anyone could really say that wasn't the category I belonged in.

Afterwards they had Maniac. Bayani got totally owned in the first round, sadly - I was standing with the IUP guys who were rooting for their friend who beat Bayani. I gotta say, though, Bayani had style - when he realized he was so far behind he wasn't going to catch up, he chose a totally impossible song for the fourth song (I am totally forgetting which one, I think it was Hypnotic Crisis - whichever one it was, he was the first to choose a 9-foot song, or "cata" (in the earlier DDRs they had words to describe all of the levels, and 9 foot is "catastrophic"). The levels only go up to 9, so that's the hardest level). I forget if he won that round, but I had to hand it to him, if you're going to lose, you might as well lose passing one of the hardest songs in the game in front of 50 people, right?

Anyway, I watched Angel totally demolish the guy he was playing on the first two songs, and then I played pinball to get out of the way and relax and breathe and all... afterwards I saw him and he was totally zonked - apparently he did Drop Out maniac for his fourth song - it was the fastest song in the game until MAX 300 (in DDR 6th mix). But he won. Then Mike from Duquesne played his match, and he totally devoured the other guy - no chance at all there. It is really disturbing to watch him do really really tough fast songs and just get hundreds of Perfects in a row.

So it was down to Mike, Angel, and the IUP guy. Their final set was like, Angel picked La Senorita Virtual, then the other guy picked Dynamite Rave maniac, Mike off-machine picked Hysteria, and then Angel won the last coin toss and selected Silent Hill just to be funny (it's a really slow stupid song). After Angel again beat the IUP guy, Mike did the same songs (with Bayani doing them on the other pad on Basic to keep him alive just in case). In the end, IUP guy got 615 or so, Angel had 880 or so, and Mike had 1154. Daaaaaaamn. The sad thing is, since so many people entered Trick, the $10 I got was more than either Angel or the third guy got for winning Maniac. Heh.

Oh yah, during the Maniac match, the Brian guy from Trick came back and said to me, like really forcefully and obnoxiously, "Yo, you should be really glad you didn't play me, I would have kicked your ass." and I was like "huh?" and he says "Aren't you Rebecca?" and I'm like "No, sorry.." (so Rebecca also has long brown hair, brown eyes, and also has a not-thin-but-not-really-fat-either build) and he ranted at me anyway about how he left because he didn't know there was a second round and he went to get dinner and stuff. Geez. What an ass. I went up to Rebecca and told her this and she thought it was really dumb, and was like "if he cares so much, I'd be willing to let him play against me for the prize money - I could beat him," and I was like "yeah, I could beat him too. What a loser."

Well, anyway, we took pictures of everyone after, and Rebecca's friend Becky who had videotaped parts of the tournament was nice enough to give me and Bayani a ride back to Oakland afterwards since she was giving two other guys a ride back to Pitt. So it all worked out ok. Whee!

(Now to copy this post and send it to my other DDR friends who aren't on LJ...)