Beyond Monopoly

We had tried signing up for the September 18 section of this class, but were moved to the September 25 section. Then Isabel came through DC, and disrupted the September 18 class, and ultimately caused our section to be moved to today.

Totally worth the wait!

The class introduced us to board games designed for adults. Especially those types of games that require strategy over luck to win. We started by playing “Through the Desert,” a German game in which you try to build up caravans. You earn points during game play by taking over water holes and reaching oases. Once game play has ended, you also earn points by having the longest caravan of various colors. The game was quite engaging, and I found that I wanted to pay attention to what everyone was doing, rather than just being interested when my turn came around. I think Andrew and I will end up buying this game soon.

The second game we played was “Trans America”, which is a railroad building game. Each round, you have a set of cities, one each from the south, east, midwest, west and central US, which you need to connect with railroad. I don’t think either Andrew or I found this game as engaging as “Through the Desert”, though still far more interesting than other chance-based games.

The final game was “Wooly Bully”. In this game you lay down tiles with town, pasture and/or forest (and sheep) to enclose the largest number of your sheep as possible (in one enclosure — I missed this point, so totally missed the point of the game). This one was also fun, and the teacher mentioned that it can be quite fun with just two players (the other games wouldn’t be as good for two players). I think I liked this one more than “Trans America”, though “Through the Desert” was my favorite of the evening.

Most of these-type games come from Europe. American games tend to be more in the category of luck or party games. This can make these more engaging board games hard to find in American game shops. A good web site to find these types of games is Fun Again. Some games to look for are those that have won the “Spiel des Jahres”, Germany’s Game of the Year award or Deutscher SpielePreis. The Germany award tends to be more family-oriented while the Deutscher award tends to be more strategy games, though for many years the same game has won both awards.

Migraine on the Beltway

I was commenting to Andrew yesterday that the current weather changes are perfect for triggering my migraines.

I shouldn’t have said anything.

Tonight, on my commute home, I started sensing my pre-migraine aura while on the Beltway. Since I’ve been seeing white fuzziness from scar tissue on my retina recently, I wasn’t certain that it was the beginnings of a migraine. But when I hit I-66, my vision became even more patchy. I had two choices: I could pull over at the emergency pull-off a mile off the beltway, or I could drive two miles past that and be home in a warm bed. I chose to drive home. The whole way I was moving my eyes around a lot to make sure that I was filling in all of my patchy spots.

The bad thing is that Mushi and Jeff are coming into town tomorrow, and we still have some cleaning to do. So, after sleeping for an hour or so, I forced myself out of bed. I had gotten some Excedrin and into a dark room before my aura ended, which puts me in a good position not to get the full-blown migraine. Generally I’m still dizzy and “stupid” for the rest of the day, but that’s way better than the headache.

Andrew had cooked dinner (yay), and then I went to the basement to clean up and iron our Ren Fest costumes. Andrew took care of the (loud) vacuuming, since I knew I couldn’t handle it. I was still dizzy, and had a doozy of a headache, but it was at least not the headache. I can force myself to function, if necessary, as long as I don’t get the headache.

DC Snipers – First Anniversary of First Shooting

It’s hard to believe that the sniper attacks were only a year ago. At times it seems like a different lifetime.

As much as I hate to admit it, the attacks did change the way I behaved and thought while the perpetrators were still at large. I knew perfectly well that the chance of being shot by the sniper were slim. There were other murders in the region, numbering more than the number of sniper victims. There were fatal car accidents on the beltway. I was more likely to die in some freak accident. And yet, I was afraid to gas up my car. I was afraid to walk through a parking lot into a store. I found myself changing where I got gas — I chose a station that had fewer hidden access points were a sniper could hide. I was tempted to find one of the stations where the guardian angels were pumping gas for people who were too afraid to pump their own. In the end, I didn’t let the sniper attacks keep me from activities I wanted to do; though, I will grudgingly admit that fear pervaded much of the activities that required me to be outside the comfort of either my house or my car.

Happy 45th Birthday, NASA!

On October 1, 1958, NASA was created! Yay for me, since they currently employ me.

I’m not going to go through all of NASA’s history , but it seems that lately people can only focus on NASA’s failures. While I don’t want to minimize the fact that at least two of these recent failures (meaning, those that have happened in my lifetime) cost human lives, I do want to point out that NASA has had far more successes than failures.

NASA’s great observatory program has successfully launched four observatories into space that have advanced our knowledge in the regions of gamma-ray, x-ray, visible and infrared astronomy.

• The first great observatory launched was also the one the public connects with the most: the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), launched in 1990. There were a few problems with Hubble, but even with the warped mirror, HST was sending down images that astronomers could use. Once the optics were fixed, HST’s science output was enormous. Hubble is still operating today, and will hopefully continue for another several years. One of the benefits of HST is that it’s in a low enough orbit that astronauts on the space shuttle can retrieve it for repairs when necessary.
• The second one launched was the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (CGRO) in 1991. This is one that the public heard little about. It observed the sky in gamma-rays, and while the pictures and results were not nearly as pretty as Hubble’s, they were the best that had ever been done. CGRO’s instruments advanced gamma-ray astronomy more in it’s nearly 10 years in operation than any other gamma-ray telescope in the 20 years before CGRO>
• In 1999, NASA launched Chandra , one of the top X-ray observatories so far. Like Hubble, it has produced many pretty pictures, though unfortunately, the public doesn’t seem to connect with them the way they connect to the HST images. (Probably because the human eye can see X-rays, whereas we can pretend that what HST is what we might see if we had really, really good eyes.)
• Finally, NASA has just recently launched the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTIF). I’ll confess that I don’t know much about SIRTIF, but it launched this past summer, and is currently undergoing it’s 90-day in-orbit checkout period. In a few months we should start seeing cool results.

Those certainly aren’t NASA’s only major achievements over the past few years, but I thought it might be nice to remind everyone that just because the news media prefers to dwell on what’s gone wrong doesn’t mean that NASA isn’t still setting and reaching major goals.

Lesson 10/01/03

For months, Fred has been telling me that I should think about a new mouthpiece for my sax. When I was just starting, I bought the cheapest they had, figuring that when I started getting more serious, I would probably have a teacher to help me decide which of the myriad mouthpieces to buy.

Well, the mouthpieces that Fred had had the store order finally came in today. Fred got one ready for me to try, and put in on my sax. Then he had me just play a G. I played like I always play, with as much air as I usually use and with the same embouchure. Holy crap! With that one note, I could tell a world of difference! Not only was the sound louder (which Fred has been pestering me all along to play), but the note was clearer than I’d ever played, and more in tune.

Fred said that I could try the mouthpiece for a month if I wanted, but I decided to take it then and there. I can hardly wait to try playing some of my old pieces with it to see how they sound.