That about covers it

I went to a cover show, and saw

Bjork (ugh, GET OFF THE STAGE)
Blink 182 (omg amazing...they played a request that the drummer had never heard and he played it amazingly)
Jimmy Eat World (wait, is this a cover show or a fifth grade talent show?)
Distillers (whoah, whoah, is that *actually* the Distillers or just a cover?)
Danko Jones (good, but NO BOUNCE? WHAT THE FUCK?)

Some choice heckles I had (didn't say them loud enough for the bands to hear, of course):

Bad singer, to sound guy: "Hey, I can't hear anything on my monitor."
Me: "Consider yourself lucky!"

Laura, to me after I air drum a song: "Can you play drums?"
Me: "Better than this guy, but that's not saying much."

Crappy bassist grabs a second bass guitar.
Me, to friends: "This guy has two bass guitars? Maybe he should learn how to play one, first."

Guitarist, trying to get tthe crowd excited: "C'mon, get up! Did you come here to sit on your asses?"
Me: "No, we came to see some decent bands play!"

Other wonderful moments:

The bass player for the Jimmy Eat World cover was in a fairly corpse-like state: no presence at all, and he was a fairly bad at bass to boot. Nonetheless, at one moment, I'm pretty sure I saw him wipe his forehead, as though he was exhausted from his awesome performance.

At one point, one of the members of a bad band decided to tell a really lame joke. I laughed really hard in a belittling manner. He then followed up the joke with the classic "punchline" guitar riff, but wound up messing up the last note, making the whole event much more hilarious than the joke he told. I laughed hysterically for minutes.

Both of my friends head to the washroom. Seconds later, a drunk native woman comes up behind me, and says something along the lines of "Hey, don't be shy! If you know the songs you should get up and start dancing! I see you singing so you should be dancing...(etc.)". Minutes later, she was seen to be escorted outside.

Listening to... Danko Jones - Bounce
Link of the moment... Well, maybe I'll get to see it when Danko plays here in May!

"You cannot square the circle"

I was tired this morning after class, and thought to myself "but I went to bed early last night"! Then, I realized that by that, I meant I had gone to bed at 1 AM, which is not really all that early in a general sense.

I had a party last weekend, and it was awesome! I got the usuals, as well as a few people I don't see often, and I even got four people from my seminar class to show up! A new fascination among the board gamers is Headbanz, which I picked up at the thrift store god knows how long ago. We played a little poker (got cleaned out by the guy we had taught the game to), and some Guitar Hero and Wii as well.

I think the highlight of the night for me was when I convinced everyone to play Werewolf! I had 10 (the perfect number, IMHO), and everyone had fun playing it! My new scoring system was not too complex nor too shallow. The first round was a bit of crapshoot, with not much discussion going on. Grant and Chanel moderated the second and third round so I could play. On the first day, I wound up putting a werewolf up for lynching, and people voted in my favour (I had accused them on little to no evidence, but it must have worked!). In all three rounds, the villagers won, but I think it was solely from lucky first votes. I can't wait to play again!

School is winding down, I guess. I've only got one assignment left this term, and then two exams. I've also chosen my project advisor, Wendy Huang. Her research is in the Open-Shop Machine Scheduling problem, specifically with dense schedules. Mouthful, huh? It should be interesting (or else I'm screwed). I hope to get lots of work done by the end of the summer, rather than putting it off.

I don't think I mentioned it earlier, but I got a new scholarship, worth a total of $9000 over two years. Right now, I've got about $7000 worth of scholarship cheques to deposit. I should be a professional student!

I've broken in four of my six new games. I played Pillars of the Earth with Adam and my mom, and they both enjoyed it (my mom's not so great with rules per se). I won, but it was a VERY close game between the three of us. I'm looking forward to playing again now that I know the flow of the game. I also played El Grande with five last week. I think people generally enjoyed it and would play again, but I don't think it really "wowed" anyone, including myself. Still, it's a nice game deep in both strategy and tactics, that plays well with five.

This previous Wednesday, I had only Grant and Chanel, so we tried out some 3 player games. We started with Ra, which was about as good as I'd expected, but in a different way. The game is all about timing, and there are lots of things to consider when deciding to force an auction or place a tile. The game was super-quick, even with a rules explanation. I also went to the liberty of printing off four player sheets from BGG, and getting them laminated at Staples. After one play, I'm glad I have them since they make scoring and tile sorting easier.

We also played two games of Pandemic (though the first didn't really count, since we missed one rule which makes the game way more difficult). The second game, with *most* of the correct rules (hey, it's hard to remember all the details!), we lost. The cards came out kinda crappy, and there were a lot of chain reaction outbreaks. Overall though, I really like that game! I actually played a solo game tonight (that's right, you can play solo), and I wound up winning. I'm pretty sure I didn't cheat, and I think I just happened to get a good string of cards. I don't know if I'll still like the game as much when I feel like I've "solved" it, but I'm really in love with it at the moment. Maybe I'll play one more solo game before bed...

Listening to... No Use For A Name - Couch Boy
Link of the moment... Creepiest and coolest video you'll see in a while

Binge and Purge

Whoops, haven't updated lately. You can blame that mostly on SSBB starting from March 9th onwards. I went with Adam to Walmart for the midnight release (I think that means my geekdom has reached a new high). There were a handful of other nerds there for that very reason. They probably sold about 20 copies of the game that night. That night (same night as the clocks moving forward an hour), I played the game until about 4. I think the five or six days following the release of the game, it got a cool 35 hours of playtime. I remember checking the other day and seeing that there was 10 hours clocked on Sunday alone! Time well wasted, I tell you.

I realized it was becoming an obsession, and I had a few assignments to do, so I let Grant borrow my Wii since Saturday night. I think I'll pick it up either later today or get him to bring it to games night tomorrow, because I'm caught up again and itching to play.

On games night last week, I had the regulars, plus Adam and Sheena's friend Kim. We wound up playing Settlers and Power Grid (well, those two games were played), and afterwards, I played some four-way SSBB with Adam, Dan, and Grant. Haha, I remember one of the first matches, I played against them as a team of three and wound up winning. I played either Falco or Wolf and racked up a good 4 kills off of one of my final smashes alone. I failed in all my other attempts though. Grant's starting to get pretty good and we're close to being evenly matched

Since the last post, I ordered and received some new board games from the states. I purchased El Grande, Santiago, and Alhambra, which have been on my wishlist for a while, and I picked up Pillars of the Earth on a whim since I needed another $40 to get free shipping, and there wasn't really anything else I wanted that was in stock. It's been called "Caylus light" by lots of BGG users, and it's got some nice looking components. You'd think that after opening four new games and getting that "new game smell" into my system, I'd be happy, but I actually wound up going to the local game store to buy another game, RA! It wasn't in stock at ThoughtHammer when I placed my order, and it's been number one on my wishlist for a while. It's out of print, so I figured I should get a copy while I still can (even if the local store charges $10 more than I could get online).

I've also grown very interested in a new game called Pandemic. It's a cooperative game where you play as team of people who are trying to control and cure a bunch of diseases around the world. From what I read, it seems like the theme is tied in pretty well with the mechanics, and it seems like there's a lot of tension in the game. The local store has it at the same price as online stores, so I'm thinking of picking up a copy. At the very least, I could play it solo!

Listening to... Dream Theatre - Metropolis Part I
Link of the moment... My Wii's GPU is shot (but not to the point where it's unplayable), so I'm going to have to get it sent away and repaired. At least it's under warranty.

An interesting euchre case study

I just played some euchre online and came across a very interesting hand. I'd like to make a note on it so I don't forget. If you're not well-versed in euchre, don't waste your time but if you play cards at all, you might want to have a read.

The situation is this: I am dealer. My partner called spades. In my hand I have the jack of clubs, ace of spades, ten of spades, ace and queen of diamonds. The player to my left leads the ace of clubs, my partner has cut with the nine of spades, and the other player has followed suit. What should I play?

The natural answer is probably to ruff my off-queen and let my partner take it. If my partner is void in diamonds, we'll probably take all of the tricks. If my partner has a diamond, he will lead it, hoping that I've voided myself. I haven't, and this gives the other team a chance to cut on this trick, which I can't prevent. I'd say ruffing the queen will lead to getting all five tricks 4 times out of 5.

Now let's try something different: instead of ruffing the queen, let's overtrump my partner's nine with my ten to take the lead. Now I lead the left.

Case 1: My partner has only the right bower left in his hand. Then he wins, and probably leads an ace (otherwise he made a pretty risky call). Now I ruff my queen knowing that my opponents are probably void in trump, and my two aces will win the last two tricks, unless one of my opponents was lucky enough to get the two remaining trump in the deck.

Case 2: My partner has another low trump, which he plays under my left. I bleed the one trump left in my opponents' hands, and lead my ace of diamonds safely on the third trick. Next, I lead the queen of diamonds, and one of two things will happen:
a) My partner trumps it with the right bower. Then my ace of trump wins the last trick.
b) My partner trusts it. The queen will lose ONLY if one of my opponents was dealt the king of diamonds plus another diamond. Otherwise the queen stands and my partner's right wins the last trick.

Now it seems like the probability of one of my opponents being dealt two diamonds, one of which is the king is lower than the odds that one will be void in diamonds and be able to cut a diamonds trick. Thus, I think that the way I played (overtrumping my partner's nine to take the lead), while counter-intuitive, gives our team a better chance of taking all five tricks.

I hope SOMEONE found this interesting.

Listening to... Cream - Pressed Rat and Warthog
Link of the moment... Don't forget my old strategy articles!

Good frames won't save bad paintings

I've accomplished a whole lot of nothing lately. Besides a lecture that I gave on Thursday morning (it went very well), I haven't done a stitch of work in days. I've got some marking to do as usual, and this week's group theory assignment looks difficult. Of the two questions I've looked at (out of ~10 that I need to finish), I've gotten stuck on both. I felt quite odd today, as I spent most of the day sleeping. I really haven't accomplished much of anything today. Even after spending most of the day sleeping, I still feel very drained. I'm not sure exactly what's causing that, but hopefully tomorrow I'll feel well rested and be able to finish something before the weekend finishes.

So, I went on a date the other night with Dina (the same day as my lecture; I was a nervous wreck all day). We got a coffee before watching "Juno" at the movie theater. It sounds like a second date is in the works, so what does that mean? We're "seeing each other"? "Dating"? Sometimes the wrong turn of phrase can cause a lot of trouble.

I don't like to post about stuff involving other people that some might consider private (for instance, I went on a date the other night, but I won't say what we talked about). However, I will relay one story that ends with me feeling like an idiot for the sake of your enjoyment. I'll even give you the whole story with all the little details, cause that's the kind of guy I am.

So, we need some background history here. First of all, Dina's cell number shows up as "blocked number" on my cell phone. Also, I was invited to two events last night: Dan's birthday party, and an appetizer party at Alexa's house. I decided I would go to Alexa's for two reasons: the only people I would know at Dan's place would be people I see on a regular basis, and their apartment is too small for the number of people they invited (and I don't like being shoulder to shoulder with people). I told Dina the other night that I planned to go to Alexa's and would like for her to come along. She said she had dancing that night until 9PM, but would like to go with me after then to the party.

So, Friday rolls around, and Adam phones me to do something (he's only here on the weekends). I invited him to go to the party as well since I wanted to hang out with him, hoping that Dina wouldn't mind. Well, that sort of fizzled anyways, because he decided to go out with his other buddies later that night, and asked me to drop him off at his place before I picked up Dina.

So, 9:45 rolls around, and I start to wonder where Dina is. I call her cell phone and get her voice mail, but I didn't leave a message. About 20 seconds later, my cell phone rings, and displays "blocked number", leaving any reasonable human to deduce that Dina was calling me back. I answer the phone, and hear a girl say "hey, where are you? Why aren't you over here?", accompanied with what seems to be a party going on in the background. I couldn't really tell what was going on, but I figured Dina wouldn't have gone to the party without me, and I take a stab at it: "Alexa?". No, apparently it was Sheena calling from her party. I told them I would probably stop by that night, but forgot to call them earlier to tell them about the change of plans. So, I told her I decided to blow them off to go to Alexa's, and hoped that I didn't come off as a dick.

Alright, so I kind of felt like an idiot at this point, but it gets better. I decide to start preparing the fruit I was going to bring to Alexa's, and if I didn't hear from Dina by 10:15, I'd chalk it up as a loss and go to Alexa's. At about 10, I hear my phone ring again, and see her name pop up on the caller ID (her landline shows up properly on my phone). Finally! So, I answer, and say something along the lines of "Hey Dina, are you still coming to Alexa's tonight?". She said she would, I asked how long it would take for her to get ready, and told her I'd be there in fifteen minutes. Alright, things are going well. I throw my fruit in a container, and go upstairs to grab a shirt to wear, while Adam waited downstairs.

As I get to my room, my phone rings again, and it's Dina. "Hey, what's up?", I say, wondering what she had forgotten. "Well," she replies, "some of my family is staying over for the night, and so I can't come out tonight". Hm, how odd. She continues: "So, I guess my nephew just called you and was talking to you. He totally prank called you, and I figured I should tell you before you show up at my house". Oh. Wonderful. So, at this point, I feel a number of things, all tied together by a feeling of idiocy. Not only can I not tell the difference between Dina's voice and that of her nephew, but my plans to see Dina that night are shot, AND I've been punk'd by some pre-pubescent kid who I really can't afford to hate, seeing as how he's related to the person to whom I'm trying to give a good impression.

If that's not bad enough, when I get back downstairs, I couldn't even bring myself to tell Adam how badly my Friday night just got PWN'D, and let on that I'm still planning on picking her up after dropping him off.

I hope my misery brings you joy.

Listening to... Mega Man 3 - Blue Balls Remix
Link of the moment... If you've ever played Mega Man 3, you should give this song a listen