It's an Exciting World

Takenoko

This was a cute game, but the mechanics were too random for my liking. The random goals and random abilities made planning more than half a turn out very difficult. This is what is referred to as bad random; where the randomness determines what you do instead of determining the results of your actions. I don’t think I’ll be playing it again. The rules book was also very vague on many of the edge cases.

We played two games of it with Nick, Steph, Brian, and myself. Nick won the first game and I won the second.

BGG Link

January 3, 2014 0

New Computer setup

I decided that If I was going to own so many devices and screens that I should make sure they are all working and usable when I want them. To that effect I took this picture (not pictured is the phone I took it with). There are the iOS devices (iPad + 2 iPhones), the Android (Nexus 7 and Galaxy S3), and the Kindle (3G e-ink and full color touch). The computers are Linux on the Left, Windows in the middle, and the three screens on the right are MacOS. I’m only missing the windows phone from my main arsenal before I start getting into the console development parts.

January 3, 2014 0

Koi Palace

Nick invited Steph and I out to Koi Palace for dinner on New Years. We got the Peking duck and it was very tasty. There were two other preparations of duck, but they weren’t nearly as good. Steph got some tofu and noodle dishes and I really liked those as well. There were also some soup dumplings as the highlight of the meal. We ate with some Boxers and former Boxers (people who work at Box). They were all nice and fun to be around.

January 3, 2014 0

Startup CEO

This was a really good overview of the very specific job of trying to be a Startup CEO. It makes me realize that I’m going to have to really step it up on many of the leadership and communication parts that I’m not particularly good at or have experience in. I’m starting to work on it beginning with organization. If you want to be a CEO of a startup this is a must read.

Audible Link

January 3, 2014 0

Cuddly Cuddly Kitties

Steph and I spent a good bit of time cuddling with Archer and Lana when I got back from Atlanta. They were so nice and I really enjoyed the time to relax with my favorite beings.

January 3, 2014 0

Brunch and 7 Wonders

Tina put on a lovely brunch for the people recovering from the new year’s eve parties. I wasn’t one of them, but I was still recovering from the flight back from Atlanta. We had a lot of food and lots of people came by. Of course there were Amit, Tina, Candice, David, and Nick, but we also got Lee there. I was able to meet the new Beachhead roommate, Kevin. He seems like a pretty cool guy. We broke out 7 wonders and played two games. Ilia won them with some super military and great guilds right at the end. I did pretty well with the no resource strategy, but couldn’t quite pull off the win.

January 3, 2014 0

Back to San Francisco

I got up crazy early to make it to my flight; 5am in Atlanta = 2am in San Francisco. When I got to the airport, instead of sleeping I got a good bit of work done. I worked most of the flight as well. When I got into SFO I was a little out of it and got on the tram before going to pick up my bag at baggage claim. I went back to get it and was just in time for the Caltrain after making the connection through the SFO tram to BART to Caltrain. I had forgotten that they would be on the holiday schedule, which turned out really well for me since I would have missed the train otherwise. Steph picked me up at the Palo Alto station and we went back to my place to say hi to the kitties. We then went over to her place to meet up with a group of people for a hangover brunch.

January 3, 2014 0

Dad’s Birthday Dinner

For Dad’s birthday we went out to dinner at Goin’ Coastal. It had a very California feeling to it, but many of the places close to Piedmont Park have that feeling. The food was pretty good, but I realized while looking at the menu; I’m not really a fan of seafood. The thing I like most about seafood restaurants is that they usually have really tasty rolls.

January 3, 2014 0

Resetting the Corvette

One of the things I helped my dad with was getting his Corvette smog tested. There were all sorts of issues that we had to overcome. First was the driveway. There was a large angle at the top of the driveway that made the bottom of the Corvette scrape pretty badly. We got 2×6’s so that we could put them under the tires as it went over that little bump. When we first went to get it out the battery was dead. That meant that the data on the computer wasn’t there for the smog test, and we had to reset the computer. To do the reset, Jeff and I took the Corvette out for about a 60 mile drive. He had to go through a full routine of acceleration, deceleration, and restarting the car. It took a couple of hours and Jeff had lots of fun with it.