No photos [s]

Well, I do have another time lapse from another epic Settlers match, 17 vps. This one added the great river and event cards, the latter being wondrous at enforcing a more reliable resource distribution. We'll see how Jon does with his.

I Dot's advice I picked up a couple asparagus ferns. Imagery will come, though they're not exactly massive right now. And I grabbed a couple more vines but until they grow out the terraces will looks sparse. To mitigate that I bought four bags of bark chips. I need about twenty more.

All kinds of win [s]

Jon, Connie, and myself played a couple Settlers matches. We let White Lambda WIN both since it was his bday. He bailed from SoCal (WIN[?]) early because the prospect of being trounced at Axis and Allies cast a grim shadow over his remaining days.



The support structures for the traverse wall came out well with some impromptu assistance from E. The three on the right depict the side that will face the studs, they'll be attached flat against the interior wall because the weld nuts are embedded. They'll never need to be removed, which is good for not turning 2x4s into swiss cheese.

The board on the left is the front side, where hex bolts with fender washers will attach the 1/2" osb such that they can be easily removed and reoriented. I think feature is total WIN.



Rfq and Birdman came over to swim off the chili cookoff gluttony. We broke out the collective equipment (d70 x2, sb800 x2, sb800 hard case, a640 w/ hard case, n80 w/ soft case) and did some pool-entry shots.



The bright, reflective surface was very clutch. We just needed some glowsticks or... well I won't steal Connie's thunder. The spray looks kind of cool lit up against the dark areas, next time we'll need a just-above-water camera with a quicker shutter.



Also seen is the led pool light finally mounted and in full glory.



The turbulance created some cool effects, though it was tough to get recognizable shapes. We'll see how Jes did with the n80. When R gets his arduino flash/camera triggers up and running, we'll have some great possibilities (and warmer water).


I call this one 'Enormous underwater fart'. Chili cookoff, remember?



My citysac came today, WIN. Its four foot diameter perfectly fills the gap between the couch chaises. It is ideal for gaming and movieing, and sits at the convergence of the surround signals.




What the hell New Mexico?

Settlers II [s]

There was more Settlers tonight. I did a short time-lapse.

Said the now-older one, 'You always go for the longest road. I know your game. I have your 411 down.'

New light source [s]

The pool light switch was backward. It broke the common so I was getting power to the light even with the switch open. That resolved, my sweet led bulb is working its magic at a whopping 2.75 watts, compared to the 500 watt incandescent I pulled out.

The long life of led is nice, considering the complexity of the fixture around it. The pure white color goes well with the bright white epoxy coating on the pool. And it's bright too, the above image is pretty close to how it looks, and it's currently directed at the wall. Hopefully tomorrow Jon will brave the cold to affix it, Rabot keeps getting entangled.

So as soon as we get a little more warm weather, there'll be parties that can go well into the evening at RFQ Memorial Pool.

Mother, Jon, Curt, and I braved the Settlers/Seafarers/Cities and Knights combination. The game duration was a mere two hours, though there was little seafaring. We only played to thirteen, which may have been a bit small on account of the extra terrain tiles. It was all made phenomenal by my Auntie Kathy's delicious chili.

Texted:

• Ian said he wanted to go riding then went back to bed.
• [Crossing the I-8 CBP inspection point] Better hide Ty.
  
• Screwmosas at Pizza Port in 45 minutes... be there or suffer my wrath.
  
• I didn't realize crosswords haunted your dreams.
  
• Someone's fishing for quotes to put on their blog... eat nards!

A few events [s]

Wednesday was Settlers night. There was great anticipation as we finally cracked open Cities and Knights. The expansion adds considerable complexity to the game, it's a little intimidating at the outset, but is great for playability. The development capabilities in the expansion add quite a few options up front, but they also change as progress is made. I am simultaneously excited for- and fearful of the inevitable Settlers/Seafarers/Cities stratorgy.



Connie won. I was a couple resources from a last-to-first comeback when I handed the dice to her. Jon was held at twelve of thirteen victory points for a few rounds when his dominance was (at last) recognized. Curt was not far from the finish either. On account of our newbiness to the expansion, the lack of a dominant force/quick winner, and some very 'contemplative' turns, it took five hours to resolve the victor of Catan. That meant 02:30 on a school night. It never really dragged, unlike Risk or Axis where you can finish a pint before your opponent has decided which three territories he'll invade.

I burned about a quarter of my amputated overhang that night. The wood was particularly poppy and there wasn't a shortage of embers on the wood floor. No housefires or burn marks on the highly laminated (not laminate) surface.

I stopped by Dixieline's home furnishings showroom because their kitchen and bath selection is pretty good. I was optimistic, Home Depot just doesn't have much variety and any store that specializes in such fixtures is overpriced and/or requires install. My original goal was to find a pedestal sink that would mesh well with the tight confines of the downstairs bathroom.

Unfortunately the only inspiring ones were ultra modern, and that would clash pretty badly. I took a liking to the Xylem Essence and Europa vanities because they were very slim and had no cabinets. I liked the Essence more and could even tolerate the countertop vessel, but doing a wall-mounted faucet did not appeal. I settled on the Europa with a one-piece white china top.

Joe sold it to me, he didn't mind discussing the options with me and wasn't pushy, but unsurprisingly all of his knowledge seemed to come from the catalog.

It wasn't until the invoice was printed that I was informed there was a $100 handling charge. Joe seemed to expect unpleasantness and meekly suggested that it was offset by their 25% then 20% discounts (which I intuitively know means 45% off list price!). Anyway, that bs was enough to deter me from returning but I was still okay with the bottom line and went ahead with the order. Joe told me it'd arrive within a week.

Then Thursday I (Jon) called and was informed the sink top was back ordered and they should have originally told me two or three weeks. I cancelled the order and was told there would be a restocking fee but they'd try to get it waived because my arrival date was wrong. I pointed out they couldn't well charge me a restocking fee on something not in stock and made the impression that I wasn't going to put up with any more bs. Joe called me later to confirm.

Unfortunately, for future projects this leaves me with Home Depot and the internet. The former has limited supply, the latter offers only jpgs to suggest the quality and consistency of the merchandise.



I headed over Expo to see if they were still open; the place is in the final stages of Circuit Citying. Selection was pretty limited, but they had a few vanities not unlike the Xylem one for a pretty good price. The only tops available were black glass, which I decided against based on style. I did snag an independent sink drain (rather than the one that comes with the faucet) and after the install I'm very happy with it. It's easier to install, looks better, and is of better construction.



The final pull from Expo was a sturdy shelf probably used for stocking small items. Now it's holding up Rob's big ol' crt tv and the sound system pilfered from Casa Morelos. No more bleeding clutch cables without some tunes or Futurama dvds.



Today we took Jon's xr to Plaster City way out on 8. Ty attended, so did Erik and Ian with their big Hondas. The barbecue was a challenge to secure, but very clutch for the grilling of sirloin burgers.



The terrain was a significant contrast to the previous excursion, tight trails were replaced with 360 degree mobility, packed dirt was replaced with sand.



We navigated terrain, ran a small oval course, hill climbed, and did some jumping.



A few more photos can be seen on flickr at the moment.

Multiple fronts [s]

Now that the downstairs floor is done, the floodgates have opened.

• Media room: Ty helped me return the couches from the upstairs. I affixed surround speaker mounts to the walls and tonight added some extender cables so there weren't wires in awkward places. The next step will be to change them to coax for a safer journey from the amp.
• Downstairs bedroom: It's slated for rental, but couldn't be until the floor was taken care of. This needs touch up paint and moulding, but it's close.
• Downstairs bathroom: Everything came out for the grinder. Sunday I primered and painted. I trimmed the walls and shower today, so now it's time to find a pedestal sink. I'm thinking maybe I can snag something from Dixieline that isn't horribly overpriced.
• Downstairs hallway: This could use a layer of paint, but the task isn't quite as small as the bathroom.
• Garage: Now that I'm not avoiding pools of drying epoxy, I can rededicate the car hold for vehicles and saws while the side room becomes storage once again. I'm thinking dark red walls in the garage, but leave the ceiling white. I snagged a couple sample colors and will be looking into that one. A big, awesome workbench is in the near future, but more immediatley I have to find a shelf to hold the sound system which as been pretty clutch so far.
  

I didn't have hot water for a couple days. The pilot went out, it would relight with the manual override button pressed but would wink out as soon as it was released. The internet said the termocouple was the likely culprit, it shuts off the gas when the pilot is cold for obvious reasons. I was happy to hear Depot carried Honeywell universal thermocouples.

No dice.

I called a repairman. He walked out five minutes later with the burner working and an empty generic thermocouple package in the trash. Stuff you, Honeywell, and your unnecessarily long 'universal' thermocouple that produces signal below my valve's threshold.



My blurry faced friend dropped by with his kid.

A couple fun one liners:

• For some reason I'm attracted to bikes.
• I love it when you take hallucinogens and help me pick fruit.

Anticipation is high for:

• Fast and Furious, released Friday, its first installment still tops the leaderboard. Obtw, even though the post is backdated, I just published the reviews of Gumball, Ronin, 2F2F, FFTD, DR2000, and Movin Too Fast. There are a couple flashes of brilliance in those reviews, not so much in the movies.
• I finally remembered to replace the propane.
  
• Connie bought lots and lots of Settlers of Catan.
• The White Lambda may return. This time, it could be personal.
  

xliii [s]

Jon came down for the weekend. Naturally, this meant hot pot, Settlers, and diving. The hot pot was good, but needed chilies. Settlers was fun, Connie/Jessica beat Jon, Erik, and Jes/me. The dive was significantly different from Maui, but it was good to get underwater.


Games, friends, sake, and pocky.



In what is fast becoming a tradition, the Super Bowl was watched at Player's in Kearny Mesa.


Papa Smith, me, Jon, Mike, Kristen, B, Tee, Z.


Kristen gave the best interview of the evening, all of the Steelers fans came across as illiterate.

Christmas and New Year's [s]

Erik's got a blog now. My forecast is interleaved Penn and Teller Bullshit-style rants and updates on the reich rocket (pictured). If only Connie, Curt, and me could convince him to join the photo class there'd be some great imagery to go with it. Relatedly, sign up for intermediate black and white at UnEx if you like to party.

Rob's got another photo site/blog/what have you. How long before he assumes another alias and registers a new domain? Only time will tell.

To show my support for these newly registered bloggers, I'll throw some ancient memes into the rest of my post. But it's not all love toward StrippedThreads and RoughOperator.There's an enormous amount of material getting dumped in the tubes closest to mine, I hope this doesn't mean kilroy will get delayed or I'll have to get a separate internet for it.

On Wednesday I enjoyed a low key New Year's with the aforementioned Allegoren and two fine ladyfolk. Team xy maintained a 3:1 margin over team xx in both Trivial Pursuit and champagne. But it was all in the spirit of good holiday fun. High fives to Jes for triumphing in the battle of table talk/psyche outs, Kat for partying through sickness, and Erik for verifying the floor's resistance to ember exposure.


Notes: almonds in cashew jar, classy champagne bucket, Kat's characteristic trail of hair bindings, neatly-placed tools where the fire was burning the night before, painful new Trivial Pursuit color scheme.

Connie stopped by to say hi. She got me a house gnome. In case you don't know, but end up at my house, here is a gnome primer:

1. Gnomes are always on the move. If you see one, help him find a new spot.
2. Gnomes are like flies on the wall. They see all, but go unnoticed. Gnomes do not hide, but never stand out. Likely places to find gnomes are on bookshelves (at the edge of the highest shelf), on window sills, and occasionally atop a cluttered desk.
3. Gnomes do not like to be pigeonholed as lawn-dwellers.
   

You know that dream where you're on a plane and the flight attendant comes on the pa and shakily inquires if there's an electrical engineer aboard? So you retrieve the multimeter from your carry on, stride confidently to the cockpit, and save the day? Well it came true on Monday. Sort of. The overhead lights (fasten seatbelt, service, reading lights, etc.) on the port half of the cabin were nonfunctional and (presumably) faa rules wouldn't let the plane take off. Of course the Patriot Act would forbid any sort of superherolike intervention so we sat on the tarmac for over an hour while throngs of Virgin personnel stood around. The captain ineffectually 'rebooted' the plane and eventually resolved to fill out the paperwork required to fly without fasten seatbelt lights. Somehow the lightless survived.

So mixed impressions about Virgin America. It was nice to play Doom on the flight up and back even if I should have brought headphones. The jets in Virgin's flock are modern but euro-proportioned (Airbus, you know). When the electrical malfunctioned the crew didn't do much to make the wait more palatable, but at least they didn't cancel the flight and declare bad weather as most patriotically-branded airlines would.

The northward trip featured several grudgematches of Jon's new pasttime, Settlers of Catan (+ Seafarers). More complex than Risk, more distilled than Axis and Allies, Settlers is like putting Sid Meier on a coffee table.

The annual Christmas football game was great fun. Newcomers included Mom, Ted, and Christine. Team Laura/Ted/Chris triumphed over team Mom/Arthur/Jon. Keys to the match were Ted drawing the number one coverage while Laura raked in the receptions - not so much on account of loose coverage, rather a legendary ability to hang onto the ball. MAJ played the traditional no-huddle offense while LTC deliberated and fully utilized the reverse, flea-flicker, and wildcat. The play of the day had to be Ted's asomugha (read: awesome) pick-six, followed by Jon's failed attempt to juke a parked car.

It was good to see Dave in classic form. When I invited him to poker Tuesday before Christmas, he explained that he hadn't finished shopping, but could attend if he did. As I was taking a break from the table I got a text, 'Well so far all I've managed to buy is a latte. So, not that it needs saying at this point, but I'm not gonna make it tonight.' It happens every year...

He did manage a visit later that week, and capped a three hour stint of catching up/Halo 3 with, 'I've come a long way [since Goldeneye].'



Moving things to the new property was made difficult by the mud. The Bobcat was clutch, especially in setting up a decent failblog contribution.