We took Brian and Brittany to the Cal Ave farmers market. They were surprised by the number of stalls and the variety. We grabbed some food and then continued on to Santa Cruz. We had a great time sailing as the wind was great. Brittany took the helm for a bit. There were also a number of sailboats out on the water, and we had a few close calls. We had a great time. We also met up with Jeremy and his Wife. They were from the Bro Divers group, and we had fun with them. Bo and Yumi also drove down from the city and joined us. After sailing we went right back to the house so that Brian and Brittany could get on the road.
Brian, Brittany, and I took a morning at the Chocolate Garage, and Palo Alto farmers market. They got some good fruit and sourdough. We then went into Stanford, and took the grand tour. They were very impressed by the buildings and the space. We went through the Stanford Museum, and they really liked the art there. It is a surprisingly good eclectic collection. After that they dropped me off at home and they went to Ikea.
Brian and Brittany showed up Friday afternoon, and we decided to bike around SF. We got to the city and headed over to Golden Gate Park. We walked around the Japanese Garden, which was very nice.
We also got to go around the rest of the park and see the lakes, the windmill, the beach, and the bison.
After we were done biking around we went to Bo’s place and decided to grab dinner at a food truck area. The food was very good and we ate at several different places. Most of the others got ice cream tacos for dessert, but I got a Thai ice tea popsicle.
Once we got back to Bo’s place Brian and Brittany’s bikes were gone. They had the wire based locks and those wires had been cut. My bike was there, as I had a U-lock. We met at the train for the way back. This was complicated by the end of a Giants game. We managed to get a decent seat, but on the second train. Steph was nice enough to pick us up at the train station and take us home.
Brittany and Steph ended up making some of the candies that Steph likes and Brittany liked them too!
We tried a new game called Impulse at games night. The game was way too slow with 6 people. With 3 people it was about right. The first game we called early, and the second and third game we played with three people. The game has a little too much uncertainty with the draw. There are good cards and not so good cards, and you might go the entire game without drawing a not so good one. The difference in some isn’t great, like movement, but others, like drawing more cards, have a large difference. This means that if you get behind you fall further behind. The Impulse group of cards is also interesting since you might not be able to use the cards in the impulse, depending on what is in your hand. I didn’t much care for it.
This book touches a lot more on the ethical issues in the series, but doesn’t come to any kind of conclusion on them. I’m not sure if I like or dislike that. There is a good touch on the political aspects of the experiment, but it doesn’t go into detail either. The death of the main character seems trivial and anticlimactic.
This book has some good points, but most of it seems like bickering. The actions aren’t terribly believable, but decently interesting. The main characters are really well written, but most others are not due to their over-controlling traits. There was also too little mention of the ethical ramifications, just a light touching on them.
This book has a pretty good story, but the difference between the people isn’t very believable. There are also some ethical questions raised in the book, but aren’t even close to being addressed until 2 books later. I like the main characters, as they seem real.
I played a good number of games over the long weekend, starting with the usual thursday games night. We played a game of New Era that Tina ran away with. She had an amazing engine going that no one could catch up with. She did what I would normally like to do, engine in the first two turns then points after that.
After that we played some Lords of Waterdeep and I got destroyed early by Jeff with three mandatory quests in a row. Jeff lost the game, but he won in spirit since he was just being his chaotic self.
Another day we played Goblins Inc. with full table talk. This is much better than the times when we didn’t have any table talk since you don’t have to worry about your partner doing something stupid or missing a good opportunity. This rule has everyone at the table able to talk about everything, but it must be fully public talk. This means that you can whisper and plan, but you can reason through some things. I won this game by a lot, and it was a good bit of fun on top of that. The strategy really came into account, and choosing cards really mattered in some cases.
We also played Vegas showdown, but a couple of the tiles I was relying on didn’t show up. That made me fall behind and I wasn’t able to recover. It was still a pretty good time.
This was a decent book, but not my favorite setting. The clash between the standard world and the magical world didn’t appeal to me much. The main character was great, and the plot was decently well written, but the world doesn’t appeal to me. The one thing I don’t like about the plot is how there is an absolutely evil guy behind it all. I typically like the morally ambiguous situations more.
