Another day, another year, another grain of sand plummets through the neck of the hourglass. Sometimes it seems incredible that we celebrate one particular day out of 365.24 as the inauguration of a new year. Yet this day I shared with friends, some whose company I enjoy frequently, some I have missed, and some I did not know yesterday. I played ( Read more... )

As a child I never paid much attention to the Chinese New Year except as an occasion to see relatives and "earn" lai see by reciting the only four words of Chinese I ever learned. Now, living far from all the relatives who might give me those red envelopes containing crisp new bills, the holiday seems primarily an excuse to celebrate with friends ( Read more... )

At Dave's Ignore-the-Superbowl Party, sheenaqotj duped me and some other chumps into playing bughouse again. I enjoy chess, and I admire the simplicity of the new rules that bughouse introduces. Your partner and you play simultaneous, asynchronous games of speed chess against another partnership, but instead of a normal move you can place anywhere on the ( Read more... )

I sometimes suspect that I live in a state of perpetual livelock: always busy but never getting anywhere. I exaggerate, of course. From the vantage point of years, I can see the progress in multiple spheres. However, I also see a considerable amount of perhaps wasted motion. The recent IJCAI deadline highlighted this problem in the context of ( Read more... )

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/international/europe/16EURO.html

I spent yesterday evening at zml's sarcastically sappy "Screw V-Day!" party, where many, many pink balloons gave their lives to the ceiling fan. I had a pretty good time considering how ( Read more... )

With all due respect to the Superbowl, my highlight for the day was getting a +250 at the Dell Center. Sitting third seat with none vul., I held ♠AKJ9xx and the club ace. Jeff opened 2♦; RHO overcalled 3♣; I passed; LHO won the contract with 3♥. The board came down with something like ♣KQJ10x ♠Q10 and some other cards. The declarer drew trumps ( Read more... )

After a long day of moving and helping others move yesterday, I drove Christina, jcreed, Emilie, Drew, and Kyle to Charlie's sushi party. Fortunately, my car wasn't too crowded, since I drove Kyle over after everyone else and Drew & Jason went home with others. In the last two months I've rediscovered my love for driving, so I've been offering people ( Read more... )