The day started with me sleeping into about 7:30 and then heading into the office to start my shift with an 8:30 status call. I had procured from the kitchen breakfast links and two hard-boiled eggs, peeled the eggs (destroying one), and eaten all cold with a banana. Add to that French press-made liberal coffee. The status meeting was long as the run times of the data conversions were running short, and then some ran long, causing the plans to have to be rewritten on the fly, which was not always successful. Also, a foobar moment happened, and we are now catching up on the production support updates for master data too. This added to our efficiency woes as we had to leave enough processing power to run the usual processes, do the data conversions, and catch up on the foobar-caused missing updates in production. Everything was well in hand, but it meant lots of active management.
The meeting and the day shift were just about running data into the systems, and that happened all day. I watched events at home and then from my iPhone on my Slack app, which lets me watch the channels where updates, statuses, and issues are tracked.
Returning to the narrative, in the morning, I wrote the Friday blog, which reached over 1,100 words and had a few pictures. I post that on my site, here, on Facebook, and send out an email. Corporations are blocking my email as my blog goes on for years, and the automated corporate threat detections try to scan the whole history of the blog and runs out of memory, crashes the scanner, and the email is then blocked. I then get all the return codes sent to me and see the crashed scanner. I have dropped sending those emails, but learning the types of scanning was interesting–not sure corporate security is aware of the information being sent out. Anyway, folks can subscribe to my blog and get an update when I update it each day, but it requires them to create an account, which is annoying.
Once that task was completed (using Grammarly to get the blog beyond first-draft editing), I cleaned up and dressed in a t-shirt today. Air Volvo took me to see Susie at her place at the hummingbird house in Portland (Tigard) at Allegiance Senior Care LLC, 9925 SW 82nd. Ave. Portland (Tigard), OR 97223; phone (503) 246-4116. It being a holiday weekend, drivers seemed a bit stressed, and a semi with a large trailer turning on Hall Boulevard took lots of lanes upsetting many folks who thought you should stay in your lane (like me). I arrived safely in Air Volvo, and no paint was lost, nor any of Beaveton’s Finest decided I had to make a non-voluntary donation to the City’s budget.
Susie was in her wheelchair when I arrived, with Susie’s feet in soft wraps to prevent any skin issues. Susie’s feet were having problems if left in shoes all day. Next, Anassa, the weekend day nursing aide, moved Susie to her rocking chair, and I, taking thirty minutes, finally found a version of Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. I bought the film on Amazon so we could avoid commercials. Life is too short to wait for commercials, and you are never sure if they edited the film then. Evan joined us about 3/4 through the movie. Susie was singing along to some songs and stayed awake for the whole show.
We stayed in as it was cool (62F, 17C) and grey. One of the residents told Anassa that the clocks must be wrong, as it was too dark outside to be lunchtime. Yes, our typical June weather was back.
At the end of the movie (I think the ending is too abrupt, and the film should have gone on with views of Charlie’s experience running the factory and family looking happy and maybe one more song), I left with a kiss with Susie watching M.A.S.H. Evan, and I headed to Portland.
The traffic to Portland was sluggish but moving. Again, folks were traveling for a holiday and seemed scared of the crazy ramps and bridges that make up a Portland crossing. I got off the highways and ramps to find a long train blocking all the streets in the industrial area that contains our goal, Rogue Brewery. I drove along the river until I reached the overpass that was not blocked, MLK Street, and took that back into the industrial area (passing over the train). Next, I got to try out my parallel parking with Air Volvo, as parking was a bit harder today. We were a bit later than our usual Saturday.
I was hungry and found a table inside Rogue and ordered a Ruben, fries, and a Dead Guy Ale. I set up the board game Vindication while eating. Finally escaping the train, Evan showed up, got a drink and a snack, and deviled eggs.
For this play, we removed the Academy and replaced that with the Sacred Quest tile. I pulled a set of Strength (Fort), Knowledge (Library), and Inspiration (Holy Spires) tiles and instead added the two Loot and the Pet tiles and added those cards to our game. I don’t like the Wishes Well and Infused Crystals as they seem to distract from winning–just more noise. My version of Vindication has all the Treachery cards and all the bonus cards, so blinding drawing a card could saddle you with a cursed item or at least one that does not count for final scoring.
I was leading our first game, so I could afford the experiment and got a loot item. It allowed me to roll for a random attribute twice and pick one. Loot was helpful.
In the first game, I led the whole game, and Evan had trouble finding his groove while I stacked up a lead of over ten points that I kept. I had an easy start and made no mistakes. In the second game, Evan got a lead and then used the easy end-of-game trigger to end the game before I got my groove going. I started with a Strength focus and explored but did not get the tiles I wanted (tiles are blindly drawn from the Scum Bag), and had just stared at my point-generating steps when Evan ended the game. You can get a short lead and lock in the win by finishing an easy end-of-game trigger in Vindication. A win is a win.
I paid the bill, and we parted ways, each with a win, and I headed to Richard’s house. Tonight we have five players for Saturday night games. Richard suggested Western Legends. Which is a beguiling board game where you play an Old West legend; I play Eyatt Erp on Saturday. You can be an outlaw or a marshal. You can gamble by playing poker, buy excellent goods (like the Hat), and hunt bad guys. The game is played on a board that resembles an Old West town. The play is engine building (using panning for gold, gambling, or hunting bad guys as the engine) set in a sandbox, so strongly themed your planning merges with the setting. The theme makes the game exciting and fun.
In our game, nobody turned outlaw (most of us had a goal to reach a mid-point in the Marshal Table, so outlaw was literally not in the cards for most of us), and the final scores for most were within a few points. One player was frustrated as her cards were consistently low (they are playing cards with extra abilities listed).
Kathleen, her first game, surprised us by gambling and spending her way to win by tie-breaker against Richard (who mined his way to second place). Shawn improved his scoring at the end but took too many wounds, giving me third place (one point behind Kathleen and Richard). Claudia did better than my first game but was disappointed.
We played one more game, a horse racing betting game; Richard played the announcer, and so did not bet. We bet on the dice-driven Horses. Quite fun and easy. I have bet on horses before, and Monte Carlo AI’s are a favorite of mine. I won after five races, having gone with reasonable risks on Place and Show to generate the most revenue with the least risk–very AI.
Kathleen had a car this week, so I could drive straight home and arrive home before midnight. I did take the huge ramp onto the bridge I call the Space Shuttle Launch, but it was not wet or windy; thus, it was less stressful. On the highways in Portland, I did see cars flying by Air Volvo at speeds I thought showed some relativistic shifting. Yes, the extra-legal drag racing, I think that was what that was, is back in Portland.
It took me a while to sleep. I bid on a few cheap stamps on Hipstamps.com. Finally, I got sleepy.
Thank you for reading.
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