Exploded Clown

Good Idea

Setting up a family tree on Geni. It’s like a little Facebook for your relatives. You click and add your siblings, your parents, their siblings, etc. Then you can post what’s new, share photos, plan events, and all that fun stuff.

Bad Idea

Doing this when you’re my coworker from Hungary, whose wife is the youngest of thirteen children, and whose three brothers are also married to women with twelve siblings each (a bizarre coincidence, he claims). His tree is now over 400 people, and its growth is now self perpetuating. Eventually it will consume us all.

I first met Mitchell in 1998 at my local AM PM. I’m not sure what brought me in that fateful day, but I know that I left with 52 ounces of Mountain Dew and a new companion. From the day forward, Mitchell and I would be inseparable. Here’s a picture of Mikayla and Mitchell. He’s the one in the back.

Yes, Mitchell is my mug. He’s insulated, well-worn, has a great seal, and has been with me for just about a decade. He was named Mitchell after the MST3K version of the Joe Don Baker movie because he was huge, hold the potential to hold a lot of alcohol, and inexplicably had a woman on him.

The biggest problem in those early days was that Mitchell had no straw. For almost a year I made do with swigging, but then, on a trip to Disneyland, I found the flexible tube straw you see in the picture above. It’s the perfect size to fit into the hole provided, and it bends whichever way you want. Sure, if you leave it in the fridge it gets all stiff, but it’s fine after a few minutes. Disneyland stopped selling those straws right after I purchased one.

Mountain Dew has always been my drink of choice, and it was what I put into Mitchell the most in the beginning. 52 ounces of Mountain Dew is far more than you should drink in a day (a two-liter is 67 ounces), but I did it with frightening regularity. When Dew was scarce I would brew up some Kool Aide right in Mitchell: packet of flavor, a goodly amount of sugar, water, stir. Recently, though, Mitchell has been used almost exclusively for water. One tray of ice plus Brita water to the top will get me through the day at the office; I usually slurp the last drops out on my way to the car.

Mitchell likes to travel. Aside from riding shotgun with his handle snugly latched over the reclining trigger of my passenger seat, he has followed me on three trips to Europe, plus numerous car rides hither and yon. Fill up Mitchell and he’ll take you far. Sonja and I have made it to San Jose from Costa Mesa on one mug full. He’s been to the weddings of numerous friends.

Which is why it came as quite a blow when we lost Mitchell today. We took him out to a ball game and apparently left him outside the car as we got Mikayla and her ten thousand assorted accessories safely ensconced inside. He’s ten but he doesn’t have a cell phone to call us, and he doesn’t know his way home, so I went looking for him as soon as we figured it out.

I kept checking my speed as I drove over there; I felt like I was speeding (I wasn’t).

I looked in the area around where we parked. I looked under the cars that had taken the spots in the ensuing three hours. I checked the nearby curbs to see if some kind soul had perched him there to wait for his family. I checked the grandstands where a girl’s little league game was going on, trophies at the ready. I peered into the office to see if he had been locked inside. I looked in the trash cans. I looked in the dumpster. If I had found him in any of those locations, I would have brought him home and washed him.

But I didn’t find him. Tomorrow I’ll go back and see if maybe he was turned in after I left, or beforehand but wasn’t visible in the office. I’ll make another round and see if he’s turned up. I’ll call around to see if anyone from the game has him. But it doesn’t look good. Who would rescue a battered old mug?

Mitchell, if you’re out there, I hope that whoever did find you plans on putting you to use. You’ve been a good mug to me, and if it was time to move on, I understand. But I would have liked to say goodbye to you directly. This meager internet post will have to suffice to carry my heartfelt thanks and grateful memories. Godspeed to you.

Daniel Jacob:

My nephew, aged 5 days. Congratulations, Fred!

W.E.D. ON WED:

“The idea of Disneyland is a simple one. It will be a place for people to find happiness and knowledge. It will be a place for parents and children to share pleasant times in one another’s company; a place for teachers and pupils to discover greater ways of understanding and education. Here the older generation can recapture the nostalgia of days gone by, and the younger generation can savor the challenge of the future. Here will be the wonders of Nature and Man for all to see and understand. Disneyland will be based upon and dedicated to the ideals, the dream and hard facts that have created America. And it will be uniquely equipped to dramatize these dreams and facts and send them forth as a source of courage and inspiration to all the world. Disneyland will be sometimes a fair, an exhibition, a playground, a community center, a museum of living facts, and a showplace of beauty and magic. It will be filled with accomplishments, the joys and hopes of the world we live in. And it will remind us and show us how to make these wonders part of our own lives.”

(From a bevy of quotes from the always-excellent Re-Imagineering.)

One of the hardest things about having Mikayla has been that Sonja and I haven’t been to Disneyland in nearly two years. That’s by far the longest time I’ve gone without since sixth grade.

Gabe and Deborah had a party last week and part of it was a Iron Chef-style cooking competition with the secret ingredient of Peanut Butter. I made Ice Cream, loosely based on this recipe, but modified for size and the ingredients I had.

It turned out amazing, and (as you can tell from the title) won first place, so I thought I’d put it here for posterity.

Here’s a video we made from shots we took on Christmas last year. It’s been sitting on my desktop for months, and I finally figured I should actually, like, put it up here.

Or download it by option-clicking here.

Sonja and I got bored with a deck of Uno cards and this is the result. We’ve only play-tested this with two players, but it could theoretically work with more. At some point you’d probably need to add another deck of cards into the mix, but we don’t know when that point would be; six players is probably about right.

The games we played through took about 20 minutes each.

Setup

Take any deck of normal Uno cards. Shuffle.

Deal out two cards to the center of the table in two separate piles. These are the “Play Piles”. If you have more than two players, only use one Play Pile.

Deal all cards out evenly to all players.

Each player puts their stack face down in front of them. This is their “Draw Pile.” They flip over the top card and put it immediately in front of their Draw Pile, face up. This is their “Discard Pile.”

The Turn

The player to the dealer’s left takes the first turn by flipping over a card and seeing if it can play– using normal Uno rules– on either of the Play Piles or any player’s Discard Pile.

Alternatively, the player can draw the top card from their own Discard Pile and play it– using normal Uno rules– on any Play pile (but not other player’s Discard piles).

If the card chosen cannot be placed, the player puts it in his discard pile and flips over another card from their Draw Pile to attempt to play it. There is no limit to the amount of cards that can be moved from Draw to Discard in this way: the player keeps plowing through cards until they can place one.

If you play a “Draw Two” or “Draw Four” card, the requisite number of cards are drawn from your Draw Pile and put into the next player’s Discard pile.

Endgame

Play ends when any player runs out of cards in their Draw Pile. The player with the least number of cards in their Discard Pile wins.

A few years ago, Sonja and I bought a little box game called Fist of Dragonstones (whose webpage is mysterious inoperative at the time of this writing). Each player is a prince who is trying to score fame by racking up Dragonstones, which you do by hiring a bunch of characters who do stuff for you. There are a ton of cards with neat characters on them, and the Dragonstones themselves (in three colors), and money that you use to hire the characters in silent auctions.

This box contained all the pieces for a good game, but the actual play is dull and dreary. It goes like this: you flip over a character, everyone puts some gold and silver in their closed fist, and everyone shows their bid at the same time. The one holding the most money gets the guy. You do this dozens of times, and it quickly becomes repetitive. Plus, because it’s a silent auction, there is very little player-to-player interaction, except in ties.

So we decided that we should make some new rules. We like the cards themselves, and they’re pretty well balanced. We thought the “get people to get stones to get points” flow of the original game plays nicely, so we kept that. But we really liked the idea of hiring people and getting them ‘on your team,’ but there was no team in the stock game, so we added that. We also kept getting into auctions for characters no one wanted, so we gave the players more freedom to choose the person to be auctioned. This all fell out into the following rules:

Fist of Dragonstones: Team Edition

By Seth and Ben and Sonja

Changes from Stock

1. Photocopy the silver cards
2. Play to six victory points instead of three
3. A silver is equal to one half of a common gold, instead of being a tie-breaker
4. All bids are public: the tokens go down on the table as they are announced
5. Any cards referring to the characters already auctioned refers to the discard pile
6. Any cards referring to the characters not yet auctioned refers to the cards on the auction table
7. The Witch now kills a player on the auction table or in a players’ hand. If the Witch targets the other Witch, both are killed.
8. The Imp replaces himself with any character on the auction table at time of use. The replacement does automatically get played, but can be used if actions remain
9. The Goblin replaces himself with the top character in the character pile. The replacement does automatically get played, but can be used if actions remain
10. The Ghost acts as if he were any of the characters in the discard pile. The discarded character’s action is used immediately, and does not count as a separate action
11. The Doppleganger acts as if he were any of the characters on the auction table or in a players’ hand. The other character’s action is used immediately, and does not count as a separate action

Set up

1. Start the game by randomly drawing 4 dragonstones for each player
2. Then deal cards out to the center of the table, two per player
3. Choose a player to go first. She selects one card. Next, the player on her left chooses one, then the player on *her* left, etc. When all players have chosen one, go in reverse order choosing a second card
4. Deal out four cards to the center. This is the auction table
5. Each player gets five Fairy Gold, Two Common Gold, and Three Silver
6. Set up is now complete. Your table should look like this:

   

The Round

The person who chose the first card is the round starter. Give them a token.

1. That player takes a turn (see below)
2. Each player in clockwise order takes a turn
3. When each player has taken a turn, pass the round starter token to the left, and all fairy gold returns to its player. That person is now the round starter, and takes the first turn in the next round.

The Turn

1. The player uses up to two of their characters.
   The effect written on the card takes place at this time.
   Gold characters, once used, are placed in the discard pile. Silver characters are turned sideways on the first use, then discarded on the second use
2. The player can optionally chooses a card from the auction table to bid on
   1. The current player places an openning bid of whatever amount they want
      this is a public bid: all monies are places on the table for all to see
   2. Each player around the table can meet or raise this bid
   3. When all players agree not to or cannot raise, the winner is decided. That player pays the amount bid and takes the card into their team. Any bids that did not win the other players get their money back. In the event of a tie, the highest bidders pay, but no one gets the card

We’ve played this through once, and play is quick and fun: it took around 45 minutes to reach six points. This preserves the cards almost completely intact (the Witch changes slightly, and the scope of a few of the other characters is redefined to make sense in the new scheme). While similar in structure, the varying powers of the characters mean that the turns are each different and you never know what’s coming next, even though almost everything is laid out on the table. We’ll have to play it a few more times, but so far we really like what we’ve done with it.

We were watching A-Team the other day, and the lot of them were at Universal Studios. Hannibal is dressed up as a swamp monster (of course) and they’re meeting some potential client. As Face waits, a Cylon walks by. Face’s smile vanishes and he looks perplexed for a moment, and then Mr. T says something and the moment passes. Priceless.

There is a quote from George Lucas talking about how he wanted the world of Star Wars to feel like it had been around forever, and that not everything was perfect. He called this idea the “used future.” It is one of the things that makes the original trilogy engaging: this is a place that you could imagine actually exists because you can empathize with the mess all over the Millineum Falcon and the rust on the ships and the sand that gets everywhere on Tatooine. The prequels lacked this lived-in feel, and as a result the worlds seemed sterile, lifeless, and boring. It mirrors the acting, which was by and large done on blue screen stages that were sterile, lifeless, and boring.

A few weekends ago, Sonja and I watched the entire extended The Lord of the Rings DVDs set in three consecutive nights, one movie each night. It took forever to get through it all, but it was fun. And while we were watching, I sudddenly thought “The Lord of the Rings is the ‘used past.’” Everything is deliberately meant to have a weight, a history, a backstory. There are ruins everywhere, a testament to the past civilizations that are now lost. The main action is a reprecussion of a war that happened 3000 years ago. Even the swords have names and histories.

LotRs was also filmed on sterile, lifeless, boring bluescreens, but nothing else is allowed to even approach that level of banality. The costumes are embroidered with patterns of elvish runes. The props are made by real blacksmiths. Theodin’s armor has decoration inside, where no audience member will ever see it. The production department went to great lengths to make every item the actors touched have that same history that embues every bit of Tolkien’s world. Throughout the special features is a drumbeat of ‘make it seem real’ and ‘attention to detail.’

One of the things I love about LotR (and Harry Potter, and the Head First books, etc) is that they engage in world-building, which is this niche little interest that I don’t think many people really share with me, but that everyone I know reacts to in a very visceral way: “yeah, those Oliphants rocked.” This is why people come back to these worlds: it’s because you get a sense that there is so much more to it than just the little slice of story you were served, and you’re wondering what it is. The original Star Wars has that, and I think we were all a little disappointed that the backstory was a whiny kid.

Friday my brother Ben came over and we played old Video Games using an emulator and a USB controller. We had a blast.

We spent quite a lot of time marveling at how different games are designed nowadays. In QuackShot and World of Illusion, two Disney games, there is level after level of rote memorization. If you don’t know which direction to jump before you start falling, you die, and start the level again. The goal is to make you play the game one hundred million times.

Today, a game is designed so that something is always changing, and something is always new, and that makes you want to play it one hundred million times, because there is an unexpected element around every corner. In old games, you are expected to know each corner, because if you don’t, you’ll die immediately after you turn it.

But honestly one of the coolest things was just going back in time and remembering the titles for all these games we used to play. Populous. Shadowrun. Centurion: Something about Rome. We got them all, and each time, it went like this:

1. Seth: Oh, SuperMegaCoolGame! We’ve gotta get that!
2. Ben: I remember that! Here it is!
3. Seth: Oh yeah, I forgot that in order to finish the first level you had to dunk your head in acid. Yeah, this was great!
4. Ben: Man, I don’t understand what’s going on.
5. Seth: No one does. And the graphics all suck compared to my memories.

That last part, where I realized that the graphics were awful, happened in every single game. I remember thinking that this stuff was magical. And indeed, some of it was. Shining Force looks great next to BattleMaster, but they both look childish now. It seems odd that I’ve retroactively upgraded each games’ look and feel in my brain. Even now, two days later, I am picturing the memory-enhanced version of BattleMaster and not the real thing. And in terms of nostalgia, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. In a few more years, I can come back to them again and be surprised all over again.

Since I know that all of you are just itching to get us gifts, here’s the list of what we want!

Sonja’s List, in Order of Desirability:

1. Friends Season 10
2. We love Katamari PS2 Game
3. Friends The Official Trivia Guide Paperback book
4. Vertigo Tour DVD (U2)
5. Sound of Music Special Edition DVD (Widescreen)
6. You’ve Got Mail DVD
7. Real Genius DVD
8. The Wedding Singer DVD

My list is available on Froogle.

Our shared list, in no order at all:

• Cinderella DVD (Widescreen)
• Sword in the Stone DVD
• Return of the King Extended Edition DVD

Ben’s List:

• GURPS Basic Set, 4th Edition
• Food/Vons Gift Certificate
• Think Geek Gift Certificate
• Chipotle Gift Certificate
• iTunes Gift Certificate
• Borders Gift Certificate
• X-Box Live Subscription

In response to my younger brother Ben’s recent blog post.

First off, I hope you feel a little better, Ben. Getting back into the flow of things can be tough. But that’s not what I wanted to write about.

What I wanted to write about was New Testament class, and studying for it.

Yes, you will need to hunker down and work to get through that class. But I can tell you from experience that it’s worth it, but not in the way they sell it to you, and not in the way that your study session went wrong with it.

In other words, New Testament class will probably not make you a better Christian. It will, however, make you think. It will ask you questions about what the Bible means, and it will make you examine how that impacts your life. And that’s not easy. It’s incredibly difficult.

It is far easier to dodge and try to make it a Bible Study. The people that surround you at Westmont are comfortable with Bible Studies, because they are used to having the three answers that they know work in Bible Studies (”Jesus”, “Sometimes God tells you to Wait”, “The Lord works in Mysterious Ways”) and they are comfortable interacting with people who follow a narrow interpretation of the easy parts of the Bible.

It’s the hard parts that get you. But it’s also the hard parts that are the most powerful, and the most expressive, and the most interesting. It’s the reflections you find between New Testament and Old that make you wonder in both senses of the word. It’s the things that Jesus says that aren’t of the format “Blessed are those who X for they shall Y” and are instead along the lines of “Some have told you A, but instead I say to you B,” because the A’s are what you’ve heard for most of your childhood in Christianity.

What’s happening is that you’ve outgrown your childhood Christianity and you need to discover a larger Christianity that still fits. And I encourage you to go out and see what’s available, because it’s a much larger selection than what you’re likely to find in your Youth Group-esque Study Session. Talk to your professors, and I don’t mean just the RS profs. Talk to VanderLaan; he’s amazing. Read the material if you’re getting something out of it. Read other material if you’re not.

But most of all, seek to understand. New Testament class is much more interesting when you are asking questions as a part of the active conversation, not only because it keeps you interested but also because it keeps you thinking. And thinking is what it’s all about. Thinking is what you’re paying so much for.

Oh, and Xeno’s Paradox? Calculus solves it.

Sonja TV

Originally uploaded by TALlama.

I just put up a ton of new pictures from our trip to DisneyWorld, and a few of our cats. Check ‘em out!

Also, a quick thank you to Fred, who tossed a Flickr account my way since the Yahoo buyout meant that he got a few to toss around!

My brother-in-law is in Mexico doing translations for the Mexican government. He goes to awesome places and takes awesome pictures and posts them on Flickr.

His entire photostream is worth a look, but here’s a recent one I really loved: When translations go awry.