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puzzles, games, etc
Jan. 31st, 2012 09:38 pmSaturday afternoon I went to Google for the GC Summit, which is an event where people who like putting on puzzle hunts and Games get together to talk about putting on such events. Also, the theme was simulcasting/recasting hunts, and as such the summit itself was simulcast between here and Seattle. I took Caltrain down, because I was curious about how feasible it would be. Ideally, it should have been 9:58->10:29am on BART, 10:39am->11:25am on Caltrain to San Antonio station, and then walk over half a mile to a bus stop and take a bus from 11:49am-12:03pm. Most of that did come true -- except BART was 7 minutes late and I was totally freaking out about missing the exchange at Caltrain, because I'd get stuck there for a whole hour if so. But it all worked out okay. Whew.
As I was getting on the bus in MV, another girl got on the bus and said to the driver "Do you go to Google? I'm trying to get to 1950 Charleston", and she sat down 2 seats in front of me, so I'm like "Don't tell me, are you going to GC Summit?" and she's like "Yeah!" and I'm like "Me too! Do I know you?" and she turned out to be Debb who runs DASH (the nation-wide yearly puzzle hunt event). Even weirder, she DID know who I was, but it was mostly because another friend had told both of us to talk to each other about remote puzzlehunt stuff. Go figure.
So we get there and I get to either see people I know, or meet new people (like Wei-Hwa, who I had probably met at some point in the past, or at least been at the same events as a few times like WHO and PH14 and whatever, but this was our first time actually talking to each other and being aware of who we were. That was super-exciting for me because he's a legend and all). The first hour was mostly hanging around, anyway; Debb called it "social time" and said it was nice to be hanging out with puzzlers rather than having to puzzle. Also what was cool is, the guy I was sitting next to was this guy Rich who is on my team for the Dr. When playtest in 2 weeks! How awesome is that? So we sat and talked about puzzling for a while, hopefully we'll have a good time with it, he's also doing Shinteki Disneyland too. Pretty cool. He works with Dale (from DRT) and played PH14 with other people we know... just lots of huge coincidences. I got to meet some other people who are running Dr. When as well, and talked to the Shinteki folks about Disneyland and some of their other events.
The summit itself was interesting. I sat with Dan E for most of it, since we had both done almost all the events that were discussed (in two different cities -- even having been PH14 GC together in two different cities), so that was a lot of fun. It was really weird with Andy giving the PH14 presentation from Seattle once I'd told everyone in CA how to pronounce "Jonobie", but whatever. Dan had talked to Andy a bunch before PH14 but had never met him, so he's like "Wait, is that Andy RICH?" Heh. We also compared notes about MIT Mystery Hunt, and Kai from Codex/whatever was also there and I talked to him for a while, he apparently is good friends with Dave B who played with Liboncatipu for PH123. Go figure...
Rich gave me a ride back to Mountain View and we discussed the Dr. When logistics, so that was good.
I was meeting up with Mike D to go walking around a bit, so I found my way into a used bookstore on Castro street and was reading about Seals Stadium when he showed up, and I guess we walked around downtown MV for an hour or two chatting about random stuff (basically, I'm never ever in the south bay so was like "hey come hang out when I'm there"). He was meeting up with others for dinner though, so I ended up on my own, and found a random Chinese food place that reminded me of Chinatown in Philly. It was good and I had general tso's chicken, which I almost never ever have anymore. Yay. Took Caltrain home after that and mostly fell asleep and/or read the Dirk Hayhurst book I'm reading, which is also pretty good.
I dunno.
So Mark S was staying with us for Sat/Sun, he's in town for some Google stuff, that was pretty cool. I don't really remember much of Sat night, I think people just got back and chatted, then on Sunday we had some people come over to play board games. Phil and Mark and I went to Safeway and spent like $100 on stuff to grill and snacks and all, and then while grilling up on the roof I put a sign in Morse code on our door telling people "come on in, it's unlocked. PS we're on the roof". It worked, at the very least rjmccall found his way up there :)
We played a whole lot of games over the course of the day. Personally I played Seven Wonders, Alhambra, Blue Moon City, Ricochet Robot, and Tichu. I was really happy to use my new copies of Alhambra and BMC to be sure, although I think we did a really weird game of BMC -- we actually managed to sink all the buildings before anyone had won on monolith points! Rafael made the good point that he didn't think it was worth going back until he had the crystals to buy the 4 tokens, but I had pretty horrible cards early on so I ended up taking a turn to buy one at 7 just to get more cards without skipping a turn. I dunno. Tichu was also amusing, Monica and I drew each other as partners against Mike and Eric, and proceeded to beat the living shit out of them, something like 1020 to -220. The thing is that they kept calling Tichu or even grand Tichu on almost every hand and we'd set them 3/4 of the time, whereas I think we called and made exactly two Tichus the entire time. Whatever. It was pretty funny to me if nothing else. Mike and Eric were taking it really seriously and even discussing each hand afterwards about entries and leads and whatnot as if it was bridge.
I ended up talking to some other people for a while about puzzlehunts and whatnot. Good times. And then on the way out, while I was saying goodnight to Yaakov, two people come out of the house next door like "Hey, what did the Morse on your door say, anyway?" and we got to talking to them, turns out they're both techie nerds who also like board games. I exchanged email addresses with them and maybe we'll get together with them and our neighbors sometime? Who knows. We still don't even know most of the people next door, it's kinda weird. Afterwards I played another Seven Leaders game with the remaining 5 of us until like 2am.
Anyway, it was a pretty good weekend.
Monday was kinda weird at work... I stayed pretty late because it was sushi night and to get things done, and eventually Ben and I met up for a little while over Mexican food in the mission (he had food, I had chips). I guess we'll catch up sometime when we're both in town and less scatterbrained.
Today is Tuesday and it's time to go home soon and watch Glee with Jenny! Yay! I've been writing code at work in our language that we're inventing for the database, and we have a syntax checker now, which is not quite like a compiler but it's still kinda cool to "run" it and see that I've written it "correctly". Yay. Also I've been doing silly things like redecorating my desk to have a Peanuts-style "The Writer is IN" sign on it, and today I went out to play catch with Cooper and Molly (two of the office dogs). Cooper won't be at work for a while after today because his owner Mark's wife is about to have a baby real soon now. I'll miss my adopted dog :)
As I was getting on the bus in MV, another girl got on the bus and said to the driver "Do you go to Google? I'm trying to get to 1950 Charleston", and she sat down 2 seats in front of me, so I'm like "Don't tell me, are you going to GC Summit?" and she's like "Yeah!" and I'm like "Me too! Do I know you?" and she turned out to be Debb who runs DASH (the nation-wide yearly puzzle hunt event). Even weirder, she DID know who I was, but it was mostly because another friend had told both of us to talk to each other about remote puzzlehunt stuff. Go figure.
So we get there and I get to either see people I know, or meet new people (like Wei-Hwa, who I had probably met at some point in the past, or at least been at the same events as a few times like WHO and PH14 and whatever, but this was our first time actually talking to each other and being aware of who we were. That was super-exciting for me because he's a legend and all). The first hour was mostly hanging around, anyway; Debb called it "social time" and said it was nice to be hanging out with puzzlers rather than having to puzzle. Also what was cool is, the guy I was sitting next to was this guy Rich who is on my team for the Dr. When playtest in 2 weeks! How awesome is that? So we sat and talked about puzzling for a while, hopefully we'll have a good time with it, he's also doing Shinteki Disneyland too. Pretty cool. He works with Dale (from DRT) and played PH14 with other people we know... just lots of huge coincidences. I got to meet some other people who are running Dr. When as well, and talked to the Shinteki folks about Disneyland and some of their other events.
The summit itself was interesting. I sat with Dan E for most of it, since we had both done almost all the events that were discussed (in two different cities -- even having been PH14 GC together in two different cities), so that was a lot of fun. It was really weird with Andy giving the PH14 presentation from Seattle once I'd told everyone in CA how to pronounce "Jonobie", but whatever. Dan had talked to Andy a bunch before PH14 but had never met him, so he's like "Wait, is that Andy RICH?" Heh. We also compared notes about MIT Mystery Hunt, and Kai from Codex/whatever was also there and I talked to him for a while, he apparently is good friends with Dave B who played with Liboncatipu for PH123. Go figure...
Rich gave me a ride back to Mountain View and we discussed the Dr. When logistics, so that was good.
I was meeting up with Mike D to go walking around a bit, so I found my way into a used bookstore on Castro street and was reading about Seals Stadium when he showed up, and I guess we walked around downtown MV for an hour or two chatting about random stuff (basically, I'm never ever in the south bay so was like "hey come hang out when I'm there"). He was meeting up with others for dinner though, so I ended up on my own, and found a random Chinese food place that reminded me of Chinatown in Philly. It was good and I had general tso's chicken, which I almost never ever have anymore. Yay. Took Caltrain home after that and mostly fell asleep and/or read the Dirk Hayhurst book I'm reading, which is also pretty good.
I dunno.
So Mark S was staying with us for Sat/Sun, he's in town for some Google stuff, that was pretty cool. I don't really remember much of Sat night, I think people just got back and chatted, then on Sunday we had some people come over to play board games. Phil and Mark and I went to Safeway and spent like $100 on stuff to grill and snacks and all, and then while grilling up on the roof I put a sign in Morse code on our door telling people "come on in, it's unlocked. PS we're on the roof". It worked, at the very least rjmccall found his way up there :)
We played a whole lot of games over the course of the day. Personally I played Seven Wonders, Alhambra, Blue Moon City, Ricochet Robot, and Tichu. I was really happy to use my new copies of Alhambra and BMC to be sure, although I think we did a really weird game of BMC -- we actually managed to sink all the buildings before anyone had won on monolith points! Rafael made the good point that he didn't think it was worth going back until he had the crystals to buy the 4 tokens, but I had pretty horrible cards early on so I ended up taking a turn to buy one at 7 just to get more cards without skipping a turn. I dunno. Tichu was also amusing, Monica and I drew each other as partners against Mike and Eric, and proceeded to beat the living shit out of them, something like 1020 to -220. The thing is that they kept calling Tichu or even grand Tichu on almost every hand and we'd set them 3/4 of the time, whereas I think we called and made exactly two Tichus the entire time. Whatever. It was pretty funny to me if nothing else. Mike and Eric were taking it really seriously and even discussing each hand afterwards about entries and leads and whatnot as if it was bridge.
I ended up talking to some other people for a while about puzzlehunts and whatnot. Good times. And then on the way out, while I was saying goodnight to Yaakov, two people come out of the house next door like "Hey, what did the Morse on your door say, anyway?" and we got to talking to them, turns out they're both techie nerds who also like board games. I exchanged email addresses with them and maybe we'll get together with them and our neighbors sometime? Who knows. We still don't even know most of the people next door, it's kinda weird. Afterwards I played another Seven Leaders game with the remaining 5 of us until like 2am.
Anyway, it was a pretty good weekend.
Monday was kinda weird at work... I stayed pretty late because it was sushi night and to get things done, and eventually Ben and I met up for a little while over Mexican food in the mission (he had food, I had chips). I guess we'll catch up sometime when we're both in town and less scatterbrained.
Today is Tuesday and it's time to go home soon and watch Glee with Jenny! Yay! I've been writing code at work in our language that we're inventing for the database, and we have a syntax checker now, which is not quite like a compiler but it's still kinda cool to "run" it and see that I've written it "correctly". Yay. Also I've been doing silly things like redecorating my desk to have a Peanuts-style "The Writer is IN" sign on it, and today I went out to play catch with Cooper and Molly (two of the office dogs). Cooper won't be at work for a while after today because his owner Mark's wife is about to have a baby real soon now. I'll miss my adopted dog :)
