We had a nice dinner at Zeni with Irene and Ricardo. They are new to the area, and it was Irene’s first time having Ethiopian food. The food and conversation was great, and we’ll plan to see them again in the future.
Andrew and Debby hosted a pretty big poker tournament at their place. It was a total of 21 people and the ultimate winner was Leyan. I wasn’t the first one out, which was my goal in the tournament, but I was second out. I ended up buying back in and losing again. I had a good time and did a lot of reading while the others were playing. As people were knocked out I would get to chat with them. Eventually a cash game started, but I didn’t join in.
I participated in the 2019 Global Game Jam at the Oculus HQ location. I had a great time and mad a fun game, Hermit Crab Simulator. The game turned out pretty well, and we had it working great on the Oculus Go, as well as a web portal for anyone that wants to just try it out on web. I got to talk to some of the Oculus group, and worked with some pretty good devs. They weren’t experienced in Unity or VR, so it took a little bit to get them really going. They all contributed meaningful work, which was great. I was especially happy with the Audio work from Niko. He did an amazing job on the game music, which is worth a listen on its own. Here is the link to the global game jam page.
I invited people over for my Gigasecond on Saturday. The gigasecond is your one billionth second on earth. This is approximately 31.5 years. Steph made some great samosa filling for the samosadillas. I ordered some food from Rangoon Ruby. The butternut squash soup I was planning took longer than anticipated, and wasn’t ready when people were ready to eat.
We played a lot of Jackbox party games, and it was a good evening. I got to talk to most everyone there and enjoyed the conversations.
I spent most of Sunday playing board games.
I started out by heading to Tim’s to join him and Adam with some Mage Knight. I had a really great game. I played the unit friendly character, and got the extra unit ability early, then I got two banners including the banner of command. I ended up with 7 units, which is unheard of.
I also picked up the Book of Wisdom and Learning early on, making my deck also quite good.
Adam and I then went to George’s for Gloomhaven, and were joined by Steph. I got to play the quartermaster for the first time. The character is very powerful, and I have a good idea of how to change him up to be a bit better as well. The character is very fun, and can help out allies a lot so others will enjoy playing more as well. I died pretty early on in the scenario, but they managed to win, just barely.
Steph and I joined Kevin, Lindsay, Andrew, Debby, Jeremy, and Adam at Lindsay and Kevin’s place. We played a few games, some Jackbox Party Pack and three rounds of Secret Hitler. I had fun playing, but was a bit more unpredictable in playing than was helpful to everyone else. We got a really nice gift from Lindsay and Kevin of some really good turmeric, and a ton of oranges from Debby and Andrew.
Steph and I headed to Mexico for a week of cavern diving training. We got to use Steph status from her work trips for probably the last time, but use of the lounge and an upgrade was very nice.
We got to the airport in Cancun and pretty quickly got to the transfer we had booked. We got to the dive shop and Rory was willing to drive us to the grocery store that evening. We got a good amount of food and headed back to the room to crash. The next morning we started the training with a checkout dive in about 7 feet of water. It went decently well as we went through all the drills. We got out of the water and redid a good bit of the gear before debriefing. We were pretty tired so we went straight to the room and relaxed for a bit before calling it a night.
For the first trip with videos click here.
The next day we did a lot of navigation theory, and did dive plans for the Taj Mahal cavern. The dives didn’t go exactly as planned as we were going slower than expected, and I called out the first reference point in my dive incorrectly. We still got through most of the skills with minor hitches. I lost buoyancy pretty badly on the turn of my dive and hit the ceiling. That evening we again just relaxed, and I got some good cuddles from one of the cats that frequents the area, the aptly named Mustacio! He jumped into my lap and started purring, kneading, and drooling.
The next day we went to Cenote Chiken Hal. These dives didn’t go as well, and we had to repeat the first dive, focusing on the command chain: breathing, buoyancy, trip, position. These were really hard for me, and the better I was doing the more uncomfortable I was getting. The correct position had my neck, shoulders, and back hurting.
I decided that I was done with the training at that point.
I did go on a guided dive through a cavern called Dream Gate after that, which was gorgeous, but otherwise I sat at the room/shop. There wasn’t much else to do in that area, and there were limited transportation options.
Steph completed the course and is now certified in Cavern Diving and Intro to Cave Diving.
We then went to Cancun, and had some amazing food. We especially enjoyed the Benazuza restaurant, which is a course based meal. They had some great mixology to start out the dinner and amazing food throughout. It was better than some of the best dining we’ve had in the bay area and I can see why it was ranked in the top 5 in the world on trip advisor.
We went to Chichen Itza and saw most of the city. It was pretty amazing. Tikal was only slightly more impressive.
The discussion for this book was one of the best we’ve had in a long time. I think it was largely due to the change in format, allowing and requiring participation to be well thought, and minimizing the amount of rebuttal that could be done. I referred to it as the “Lord of the Flies” approach, requiring a physical object to be held in order to be allowed to speak. We will play with this style over the next few months, and see how rigid it needs to be.
The discussion itself went much deeper into the book, the author, the characters, and the world than we’ve had in a long time. The reaction to the book was lukewarm.
Tina hosted a lot of people at her place for her famous mochi waffles. She cooked up a ton of them and had a very instagram worthy spread. But I forgot to get a picture. We got a game going of a new game Steph got for Christmas called Kodama.
In the game you build trees, and score based on how much the spirits like them. The game was adorable, and we will certainly be playing it again.
It's an Exciting World 