(no subject)
Another installment of my life, in reverse order.
Saturday was Puzzle Safari - our team did much better than expected - we placed 11th out of about 60 teams. My laptop had a little bit of an accident though when I tripped over the power cord. Except for a little dent and a chipped plastic on one of the corners, it still seems to be working OK. The hard drive is almost ready to die, but that was already a problem before. I also met up with dr4b, finally giving her the PuzzleQuest t-shirt that I was supposed to give her for playtesting the CMU PuzzleQuest event last year. Afterwards was a housewarming party at Thomas's family's place a ways down Redmond Way in the unincorporated area. There was a huge forest behind the house (all part of the lot), and Thomas is making a hiking path in it. We ended up hiking a bit through it in the dark with flashlights. We also played Goldeneye on the N64 and Catchphrase.
Tuesday was, of course, the 4th of July. We met up at my place, and we carpooled down to Gasworks at 6pm. It was raining for a while, but fortunately, cleared a few hours before the fireworks. I was the only one who had the foresight to bring along activities, so we ended up playing some cards and catchphrase. We ended up camping right at the edge of the lake. The fireworks were excellent - it was the first time I've seen fireworks on parachutes - they appeared as strings of lights floating in the wind.
For Monday night, I went out to see Superman with a few others. It was a nice feel-good comic book action movie, which was all I expected. The plot though reminded me a bit of a DS9 episode. It's likely that that was also copied from some Bond movie, but I don't know which one.
Sunday was the MS Orchestra concert at the Ballard locks. We ended up playing the 1812 Overture again, as well as the Franck symphony, and Welcome to Windows (the concerto for orchestra and laptop), and a few other songs. This year, instead of a shotgun, the cannon was supplied by a wave file on the laptop through the amplifiers. Afterwards, Mike decided to take out his fishing boat, and we went boating for a few hours on Lake Sammamish.
Saturday (7/1), I got to take out my shiny new bike onto the Burke-Gilman trail (the one that runs through Redmond and looping around Lake Washington). We ended up riding about 20 miles total, turning around in Bothell. The bike felt much better and it made the trip much easier than the last time.
Sometime in the week, I chatted a bit with puuj, when suddenly, I ended up about $250 poorer, and with a plane ticket to the Bay area for the labor day weekend. (That type of thing tends to happen when talking with Jay). So it'll be a blast and cool to have another vacation, even if it's not a "Spring Break" deal. Sometime afterwards, a co-worker thought it'd be cool to do the same thing and ended up buying tickets for the same flights, although he'll be visiting other friends.
And the Saturday before, I play tested the Intern puzzleday event. The puzzles were generally well written, and to add to that, our team finished the metapuzzle and all but 3 of the puzzles. The teams were assigned (by rough skill level), so I didn't know most of the people though.
Saturday was Puzzle Safari - our team did much better than expected - we placed 11th out of about 60 teams. My laptop had a little bit of an accident though when I tripped over the power cord. Except for a little dent and a chipped plastic on one of the corners, it still seems to be working OK. The hard drive is almost ready to die, but that was already a problem before. I also met up with dr4b, finally giving her the PuzzleQuest t-shirt that I was supposed to give her for playtesting the CMU PuzzleQuest event last year. Afterwards was a housewarming party at Thomas's family's place a ways down Redmond Way in the unincorporated area. There was a huge forest behind the house (all part of the lot), and Thomas is making a hiking path in it. We ended up hiking a bit through it in the dark with flashlights. We also played Goldeneye on the N64 and Catchphrase.
Tuesday was, of course, the 4th of July. We met up at my place, and we carpooled down to Gasworks at 6pm. It was raining for a while, but fortunately, cleared a few hours before the fireworks. I was the only one who had the foresight to bring along activities, so we ended up playing some cards and catchphrase. We ended up camping right at the edge of the lake. The fireworks were excellent - it was the first time I've seen fireworks on parachutes - they appeared as strings of lights floating in the wind.
For Monday night, I went out to see Superman with a few others. It was a nice feel-good comic book action movie, which was all I expected. The plot though reminded me a bit of a DS9 episode. It's likely that that was also copied from some Bond movie, but I don't know which one.
Sunday was the MS Orchestra concert at the Ballard locks. We ended up playing the 1812 Overture again, as well as the Franck symphony, and Welcome to Windows (the concerto for orchestra and laptop), and a few other songs. This year, instead of a shotgun, the cannon was supplied by a wave file on the laptop through the amplifiers. Afterwards, Mike decided to take out his fishing boat, and we went boating for a few hours on Lake Sammamish.
Saturday (7/1), I got to take out my shiny new bike onto the Burke-Gilman trail (the one that runs through Redmond and looping around Lake Washington). We ended up riding about 20 miles total, turning around in Bothell. The bike felt much better and it made the trip much easier than the last time.
Sometime in the week, I chatted a bit with puuj, when suddenly, I ended up about $250 poorer, and with a plane ticket to the Bay area for the labor day weekend. (That type of thing tends to happen when talking with Jay). So it'll be a blast and cool to have another vacation, even if it's not a "Spring Break" deal. Sometime afterwards, a co-worker thought it'd be cool to do the same thing and ended up buying tickets for the same flights, although he'll be visiting other friends.
And the Saturday before, I play tested the Intern puzzleday event. The puzzles were generally well written, and to add to that, our team finished the metapuzzle and all but 3 of the puzzles. The teams were assigned (by rough skill level), so I didn't know most of the people though.