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The life and times of David Geisert

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Friday At PAX

Friday was overwhelming at PAX.  I’m not a big fan of crowds, and PAX seems to be nothing but crowds.  I was able to handle it for a while, and did enjoy the indie mega booth.  There are a good number of games that look very interesting.  It is amazing to see the influence Clash of Clans and MineCraft have had on the games that indie developers are making.  There weren’t too many original projects, but a lot of them did build well on top of well defined mechanics.  The originality was certainly there.

I really liked the Pixel Junk Inc. game that Steph tried out, as well as Cannon Brawl.

I competed in the Goldeneye tournament and had a disappointing first round knockout.  I’m sure I could have made it to the final 4 match, but the disparity in skill level made it more of a hunt than a match.  The settings were also quite strange as the organizer had never played the game before.

Nick, Steph, and I played two pretty good board games.  The first was a dice drafting, resource management game called Castle Dice.  It was quite good, but not good enough to buy.  We didn’t finish the game either, as the guy at the booth was just showing us how to play and implied that he didn’t want us to stick around and play it.

The second game was a very fast paced interactive dice roller.  It was the next in the series of Space Cadets, called Space Cadets: Dice Duel.  In this version of the game you are going up against another team, and you have to load missiles, get lock, and move to be able to shoot them.  Then you must also dampen their lock, build up shields, and make sure they can’t shoot you.  Steph, Erin, and myself won handedly both times over Nick and the two other guys there.  We destroyed their ship without getting hit both times if I remember correctly.

Steph and I went to a really nice wine bar after that.  We had several flights of wine (Sweet, Alsace, and Port) as well as some phenomenal desserts.  We were joined later by Andrew and Nick.  We were almost done at the wine bar, but we stuck around for a bit longer and had another desert with Nick.

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Glass Gardens in the Morning

This morning Steph and I walked to the Chihuly Glass and Garden under the Space Needle.

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The gardens were really pretty.  The favorite exhibit for me was the interior garden that we could walk all the way around.  He has a dozen or so basic forms that he then combines in all sorts of combinations and colors.  The walk was also very nice as we stopped by a suisse cafe for breakfast and a little glassworking shop on the way back.  Seeing all the glass I really wanted to get back to the glassworking, if it wasn’t so expensive.  Should I be able to rent time I would totally go more often.  We got back and picked up Steph’s Saturday pass from Andrew and went to the convention.

Below is a ton of images of the glass art.

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My Kickstarter is Live!

Robert and I just put live the kickstarter campaign for the game we’ve been working on for the last 2 months.

Take a look and share it with your friends!

Apocalypse Overload

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Flight to PAX

Last night I had Steph drop me off at SJC so that I would be there, and she wouldn’t have to drop me off at 4am.  I didn’t get much sleep in the airport, but I did sleep decently well on the flights.

I just got to the room and hooked my mac mini up to the TV.  It works surprisingly well as a monitor.

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Diving the Sonoma Coast

Yesterday Steph and I got up super early to head to Northern California to dive for abalone on the Sonoma Coast.  We went up to a place called Salt Point State Park.  Along the way we ran into the same traffic that I hit coming back from the Beer and BBQ festival.  They had now closed the northbound lanes on 880, down to just 1 open lane.  This made us at least 40 minutes slower.  When we got the park we were a little late, but they were still getting set up.  We talked to some of the people there and met an interesting bunch of people.  After a safety briefing we got in the water around 11am.  We went out in groups of 5; 2 buddy pairs and 1 instructor.  Steph and I took about 15 dives each and ended up getting 3 abalone each for it.  We quickly figured out how to find them, and how to get them off the rocks.  I started cramping due to the long bike ride I took on Friday.  I got one that was about 9 inches, and will need to have some people over to share it.  There is a ton of meat to the 9 inch abalone.

When we got back in we tagged the abalone, and then got to learn how to prepare them for eating.  It is a tough process to cut them up when they are so slimy, but it was fun for being a challenge.  We had a nice picnic bbq there, and made some breaded and fried abalone steaks.

We then drove back, stopping by Stumptown Brewery on the way.  I just got a couple diet cokes, and Steph got one of the beers.  It was a relaxing time, and prepped me for the drive back.  We went to her parents house for dinner of soup and cheesy bread.  I showed them how to prepare the abalone on one, and Russell took over the other.  He was so happy to be getting some abalone it was cute.

We then went home to clean our gear and go to sleep, it was a full day.

I’d be up for doing it again, but not sure when I’ll be able to find the time.  I certainly don’t want to drive up to Northern California to do it.  It is such a long drive, and hard to do when tired after diving.

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Russian River Beer Revival and BBQ Cookoff

I went to the 13th annual Russian River Beer Revival and BBQ Cookoff.

None of the pictures here are mine, since I wasn’t about to take a phone or camera to this event.

On the way there Nick and Fred came to pick me up.  Fred is the Box intern from last summer that is now full time at Box.  The drive there was longer than expected and Nick and Fred were mainly talking about Box and SF Living.  I dozed off for a bit, but joined in the conversation when it went back to other things.  We got to the campsite right at sunset.  I set my tent up wrong at first and had to get Brian and Andy to help so that I could get it set up.  We then ran by the grocery store to get food and beer.  We had a nice sit around the fire.  Andrew and Adam showed up later and they got the tent set up quickly.  I went to bed decently early, and had a really restful sleep due to the 4 beer.

The owner of Camp Outback in all his glory.  He does fire dancing at night for anyone who wants to watch.

Saturday morning we went into town for some coffee, and I just walked around the town a bit.  It is a nice little place.  There were a good number of real estate places in the town, and the surrounding area seems incredibly inexpensive when compared to SF or the Bay Area.  Shortly after the coffee run we started walking to the main event.  I had with me the holder for the small glass, and a cloth for wiping my hands on.  Nick, Brian, Candice, and I were VIP, so we got in a little earlier.  There was maybe a 5 minute lag between the VIP getting in and everyone else getting in, which wasn’t even close to the 1 hour that was promised.  I wasn’t too bothered by it but it was strange how quickly they let in the rest of the crowd.  I was a little upset at the first few places giving me so much of the beer, since I wanted to try a little bit of a lot of different beers.  The only bad part about the VIP is the larger cup that doesn’t fit the holder, and is far to much when filled up.  There was a really amazing ginger beer that I would like to find more of.  I’ll have to try some ginger beers to find something as tasty as this was.  At the ginger beer booth, one of the hosts offered me a towel and the small glass for the VIP cup.  I gladly took it.  Nick then went over and got a T-shirt and a small glass for his VIP cup.

I had soooo much BBQ of beef, pork, and chicken.  I didn’t even taste the sides this time.  All of it was tasty, and most of it was absolutely delicious.

After a little while I decided to get in the river.  It was trying to get down the slope to the river while as drunk as we were, but not too bad.  The water was colder than I would have liked, but incredibly refreshing for being as cool as it was.  I snuck off for a bit after that to take a nap behind the stage.  It was incredibly relaxing and I had such a good time.

As the festival was winding down we all started making our way to the upper deck.  We set out from there for the pizza place in Guerneville.  We got a good bit of pizza and I ate a ton of it.  It is quite surprising how much pizza one can eat after an all you can eat and drink beer and bbq festival.  It was really tasty pizza.

After the pizza place we went back to camp, and decided to play some open faced chinese poker.  It is an interesting game with all sorts of subtlety.  I think it would be fun to have poker at my place every so often and play this variant.  It has a lot more strategy to the game itself, whereas other forms of poker have more strategy to the meta game.  I took a bit of a nap once the light was too dim to continue poker.

Nick and I decided to leave that night, and Andrew decided to join us.  We watched the fire dancing, which was pretty good that night, then we left.  On the way back we ran into some crazy construction on 880 that took the highway down to 1 lane.  It took us around 45 minutes to clear that section, but that was the only delay.  I was dropped off first, since I’m just on the other side of the Dumbarton Bridge.

I really enjoyed the festival, but I don’t think I’ll be going again.  The over-drinking and over-eating are things that I will be doing without as much of.  I think Nick was feeling the same way about it.  I love the atmosphere and the festival, but it has run its course for me.

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Squash with Nima

I played some intense games of squash with Nima, most of which were incredibly close.  He won the first one by the narrowest margin, and I won the second by an even closer amount.  It was hard fought the entire way on both games.  The third game he beat me out with some amazing ball placement.

Our game is collectively stepping up, and it is really fun now that it is closer.  I think I have a chance to beat him next week.

I saw Amy at the gym, rock climbing.  She is doing well, and I need to have her over to my new place.  I’m thinking Tuesday for house warming.

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Moving Day

I rented a Uhaul yesterday and moved pretty much all my furniture to my new place.  I got all the major items set up there and it is feeling like a nice place to be.  I’m really liking my choice to move there, and am looking forward to having the automation system.  The x10 system will make it much nicer since I won’t need to turn each light on and off when walking in and going to bed.  The kitties got there and immediately got in trouble by getting back near the water heater.  I blocked that area off as well as I could and they haven’t gotten back there again so far.  I’m going to take the toilet training a little slower to let them get used to the new place, but so far they have been handling it perfectly.  They were playing and having a great time together, so I’m not worried about them adjusting well.  This upcoming weekend will be their first big test at being left alone for a whole day while I’m at the Beer and BBQ festival, but I think they will be just fine.  I’ll leave them a good bit extra so they won’t want for anything.

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An End to the House Search

Today was my last day of looking at places.  The only place that I considered vs. the basement studio was a little house in Palo Alto on the North side of University.  It was in the back of a multiplex, but still rather nice.  Nick didn’t seem up for it, since it was decently small.  I ended up taking the basement studio in EPA thanks to the reviews from Nick and Bill.  I am going to try to spruce the place up tomorrow and move in mostly on Monday.  I need to still meet the woman that lives upstairs, and especially set up how we are going to work out the internet situation.  Comcast has the house registered as a single address, and apparently it would be a pain to split it (not to mention more expensive).

While on the search we stopped by the Chocolate Garage, which was packed.  Then we went to BackAYard and had a really tasty lunch.  It will be nice living so close to there and downtown Palo Alto.

I’ll be moving the kitties on Monday as well, so they will be back to the real toilet for toilet training instead of the cardboard setup I’m using now.  I’ll probably keep them on this sized hole for the next 2 weeks while they acclimate to the new house.

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