The day started late for me, 8:30ish. I took the day off from Nike to take Susie to lunch and then to her skin doctor’s appointment. So I got Susie going about lunchtime so we could do lunch before the skin stuff.
We headed to the Beaverton Cedar Mills Mall and Powell’s. Powell’s is only open until 4PM, and they are limited to 70 people, including staff. We got there just about noon, and they were still letting people in. Susie wanted some more books to read. We were able to find two for Susie. I forgot my Kindle for the doctor’s office wait; in its place, I picked up a cheap copy of Voyage to the Center of the Earth to read while I wait.
We then went to Panera for lunch. We did wait in line for more than ten minutes while a person ordered lunch for a whole office. I could have used the app, but I was not that much in a hurry. Technology is cool until you mess-up your lunch and your only option is to call some helpline. I waited for a human.
I will not admit that I might have experienced flaws in my ordering from the app before. How I can get a cup of hot water instead of tea is still a mystery to me.
Susie had baked potato soup, and I had pick-two, selecting a half chicken salad sandwich and a cup of broccoli cheese soup. That all worked, and we had a nice lunch.
Next stop the doctor’s office. I had to drop off Susie and parked, and then went to find her. I found her after having my temperature taken and got her to the right office. It was my first time at St. Vincent Hospital since Covid-19. You have to wear a sticker with the date on it after being cleared at the entrance. Elevators were limited to standing at the opposite sides and only two groups.
The visit was for more than ninety minutes. Seven biopsies are a lot, and we are back next month for more. Susie is covered with small bandages on her head and arms. The results will be known in a few weeks.
Susie took a nap, and I headed to The Rock to meet Mariah for pizza and a beer. We talked about her Zine; she is publishing with a friend and a bit about writing. I needed a short break from everything.
I brought back some pizza for Susie.
The Internet reports that more than nine-hundred seventy people died today from the virus.
I managed to see the last few minutes of the conference in Australia. I had to make dinner and do my regular job. It was nice to be part of a three-day technical virtual conference in Melbourne.
The day started at 6ish, and it came too soon. I feel like I only slept a few minutes before it was time to start my day. It being Tuesday, I start with the first meeting at 7 and so a rush. I got going, made coffee, took my meds, and then rushed off to shower and all that. I was ready with coffee, bagel, and banana for my first meeting at 7.
This was followed by meetings after meetings. I also had documents to read and agree to. So if it was a status meeting, I was busy reading and texting. I also had a few crises of the moment to deal with. It was a busy, but very uninteresting morning. Most issues were just catch-up or final approvals needed.
I had not gotten much walking over the weekend, and Monday, I had a break, which allowed me to slip out between meetings to walk for twenty minutes. I forgot my mask, I did not go far.
It has been raining, and the air smelled clean, and everything sparkled. Even my roses are still flowering and looking fresh. The wet and dark often fade the roses before they are even open, but today everything was bright.
I am still stiff and my legs do not always work quite right. I am also getting pain like I have pulled muscles that is tiring me out each day. I am going to keep walking and hope this clears up. Just another 2020 thing!
I had more meeting and more documents to read. I also had to send some items to the team as I am unsure the vision for some of the items. Nike, and I suspect most companies, love to just upload Excel into their systems. This usually causes audit problems later or worse requests to version spreadsheets and mark them, somehow, as uploaded. I asked the team to think about this.
We had a few more meetings and finally, the day came to an end. I started on dinner. I made grilled chicken with Alfredo sauce with couscous. I used the newly upgraded gas grill. Apparently, I put in all the new parts as there were no explosions or other first aid requirements. I also did the mass of dishes that had stacked up and focused on getting the kitchen back in shape.
This did mean I missed the last day of the conference except for the very ending. The time difference is hard to manage today. I just was over with the dinner and noticed the time was already at the end of the conference!
I did make Pineapple Upside-down Cake today. Just yellow cake mix poured over brown sugar, pineapple rings with cherries in their center, and lots of butter bits. I remember when I was a little kid watching my father and grandfather making it in a microwave when they were new at the Laingsburg Homeshow. Mom would also do the same routine, I remember. It was one of the few cakes one could make in a microwave. It was one of the selling pitches of Wild’s Furniture and Appliances, “You can even make dessert.” Back in those days, the whole family would do microwave pitches at the Home Show!
Here is my baked version
More than eight-hundred forty people in the USA today died from the virus.
If you are walking or riding a camel from Persia to Bethlehem and want to get there by about December 24th, you would need to leave soon, so I pick my favorite carol as the journey would have to start soon: We Three Kings. I like this new take on the song. There is a little commercial at the end. This is another group that uses the Patron.com website to fund their work. So this version was crowdfunded!
Today started at 830ish as I took the day off as I had to present in a virtual Mastering SAP conference in Melbourne Australia–I was invited, flight and hotel included, but this all went the way as all travel has in 2020, nowhere. Today I had about seventy people at my little panel discussion about how to build applications. We talked about software. I did this to help the Eventful Group, which needed the virtual conference to work, and I wanted to experience how to do this.
My last panel was at 9 at night, and that is why this is a bit late. It will also be a bit short as I am tired of looking at screens all night.
Returning to about 930ish, I helped Susie get to Zerida today for hair, nails, face, toes, etc. Susie has this every week.
Today, I was having trouble with the pollen and woke tired. Susie had trouble sleeping and kept me up late too. It was good that I decided to take the day off when I had a presentation, even just a panel. I was extra tired today. I went slow all morning.
I ordered lunch, I could not face making lunch and doing dishes, from Gyro House–lamb gyro. It was delivered before noon and was good. I felt my mood lighten a bit with some good food.
Susie returned and had a Happy Meal, her fav, for lunch.
I then headed to the Rune and Bone gaming store in Hillsboro. It was immaculate and smelled of cleaning supplies. The carpet was perfect, and every game in its place and orderly. Clean smelling and neat is not the usual as you can imagine for gaming stores.
I picked up a Call of Cthulhu role-playing game adventure The Shadow Over Providence. I like to buy at least something when I visit a store. I resisted the buy-2-games-get-third-free special and purchased a $10 adventure.
Corwin made dinner, Jambalaya made without seafood, and I went back online as it was now morning in Australia. I listened to more presentations and chatted here and there with other folks attending the virtual conference. Mostly just texting, but here and there on camera. I used a lot of “Just Do It” to describe some computer issues to the smiles of most and a few groans. It was fun, polite, and informative. The best you could hope for a virtual down-under conference. Susie watched NFL Monday night football.
Today we witness that over three-hundred people are reported to have died from Covid-19 in the USA.
The last presentation for the conference this evening was about Artificial Intelligence (AI), discussing Machine Learning, a branch of AI, and was being given in Paris, France, for the Melbourne, Australia virtual conference. Instead of me and other flying and meeting, we met at the virtual conference powered by software called OnAir. It mostly worked.
Before this, I visited a few other presentations that led to a meeting of ten people who wanted to discuss the subject more. I met the West Australian Police who would love a demo of our use of reporting in our system at Nike–I will try to get them a demo. I also discussed other details of reporting with Australian based electric utility companies. We were all wide-eyed as we tried to use microphones and cameras to create a presence in the conference through the OnAir software. We were all learning and a bit nervous.
It was not perfect, and Steve, who I have met only on-screen and by phone and runs the conference, kept using a broadcasting ability to talk over the conference to give us some direction, and I think a bit of courage. I had to mute him once to hear a speaker who just ignored the interruption. Steve was just telling us to talk to each other–software developers can be a bit introverted. The conference was strange, sometimes boring as the recorded sessions were sometimes too long, and it was wonderful to meet and share this weird experience with so many people across the world.
I am part of panels that discuss software development using old and new tools on Monday.
I slipped out and made dinner. I made Chicken Kiev (frozen from a box) with green beans (also frozen) with rice to collect the butter from the Chicken Kiev. All simple, and I could do that while I was listening. I was talking on a panel when the groceries were delivered. I ordered from Safeway.com and had them deliver late tonight. Corwin put away the items while I continued on with the virtual discussions.
I started the morning sleeping into 930ish and then caught up on some Bering Sea Gold reality TV. It is one of the few shows I watch now. I started laundry and got dressed late. I then relaxed and read and finished The Devil in the White City: A Saga of Magic and Murder at the Fair that Changed America that Dondrea recommended. It is a great book, and I knew some of the fair’s stories–it is good to learn some more. I ordered an original 1893 Guide to the fair from eBay for about forty bucks. I wanted to see the original as I might need to include this in some stories I might write.
Aside: I have been to Jackson Park, the site of the Fair in 1893, as it is where the industry museum was built after the fair. My father and I went once by train to Chicago to see King Tut and the industry museum. There is a captured WW2 U-Boat there and a simulated coal mine.
So my day was slow with laundry and reading until the conference hit. Then I was back to the corporate guy and trying, like all the other computer folks, to make the virtual conference worth the investment.
I had one other adventure today, I received a carton of replacement parts for the gas grill. The Corvid-19 emergency meant it took six-months to get the parts. So I pulled, broke out, or simply replaced the burners depending on how corroded the originals were in the grill. The grill is now ready for another couple of years of use.
Today the reports record three-hundred twenty-five people died from the virus in the USA.
Today started easy with sleeping into 9ish this non-work day. I have a computer conference, all online and virtual, starting on Sunday afternoon–today is a day to relax and play a bit.
I made coffee and relaxed and read about the events of the day. I ignored politics other than checking the polls and seeing how much new “fly” news there is. The rains have come this weekend so it feel more like home now. I just wish the virus would wash away with the rains.
I am happy the election is approaching, and we received our second Voter’s Pamphlet from Oregon today. It lists all the candidates, something about them, and all the processes for our mail-only election. Unlikes the crazy people who say by mail involves all sorts of shenanigans; actually, it is a lot of work. We get the names of all the candidates and a little write-up and photo the candidate supplied. Now comes the work. Should I think about that Green Party candidate for Secretary of State? Let me see what is this about the Libertarian Party. Then there are the judges, those are searches on the Internet to determine more about them. Often they running unopposed, so I will not vote for them. Voting by mail allows me to check who and what I am voting on. It is work. Also, if you do it wrong, they call you if there is time to correct it. Susie had to go to the state elections and sign her ballet one year.
Today, I grabbed three games, Vindication, Pax Pamir, and Scythe. Oddly, when I sent Evan the list of games, Apple’s spelling correction translated my mistyped word for Scythe into Yggdrasil, the Viking version of the Tree of Life. It did startle me, and could not figure out how Apple made that connection. I wondered if the spirit of Loki had invaded the iPhone. It may explain so much.
Evan and I met again at Mox Board House in Portland off of Burnside this morning. We played Pax Pamir first. I set up the game for the Wakham version with two players, a three-player game with one automatic player, the Wakham. The game plays against you in this setting. I had watched many videos and had practiced this a couple of times. I was ready to play a full-on Wakham game.
Aside: Wakham is the area in Afghanistan that separates east from west and was the neutral territory between Russia and British interests. At least that is what I have read.
We were crushed by the Wakham automation player in Pax Pamir. I have the rules down for the game, and Evan had played before. It seemed that we needed to play very efficiently to beat the Wakham and to have a chance to win. It is also not a collaborative game, so the Wakham automation appeared to take advantage of the fact that Evan and I were allied to different factions, British and Russia. It then always supported the third faction, Afghans.
It is a hard game to love. We found the game mechanical and hard to know what to do. I think we will try it again with more players someday, but I am afraid there are better games. It may be hard to find enough players who know the rules well enough to discover the game’s strategy and beauty that I think is there. It plays on a little rug with cool metal coins–it is lovely to look at.
We still had a chance to win at this point in the game.
Vindication was the next game we played. We ordered lunch at this time. I had a salad and soup. It was a giant salad of apple and fennel with walnuts and local blue cheese in crumbles. Evan had the special, curried pork sandwich.
At about this time Mox was almost max-ed for tables. The very expensive private rooms were all in use. So it was a good Saturday for them.
This time I remembered that Evan nearly beat me in last weekend’s game, and thus I changed my strategy. Previously, I bought most of the proficiencies and scored in mastery. This time Evan swept those up. I, as usual, built up a pile of early honor (victory) points so I could Vindicate my character and be more efficient. This is my general plan for the game (it is the name of the game, literally). I then, instead of chasing mastery, decided to own the hexes in the game. I noticed we had many monasteries on one side of the board (in the game, the monasteries let you improve yourself). I activated myself to get two knowledge cubes that I then used the monastery to convert them to two cubes of conviction that I used to knock Evan from owning a hex or claim two new hexes. I continued to collect two victory points for this, and this tripped more and more end-game-conditions (Vindication end-game is triggered by randomly selected cards as players get more honor points). The game ended, and I received an unstoppable twenty points for owning ten hexes.
This plan worked because randomly selected hexes made it a workable plan. You have to be ready in Vindication to change plans to match the new circumstances you find in each game. Marc, the game designer who I have met many times, should be proud of how this game can play well but differently each time.
Next time Evan will be ready for this. We also decided to play some of the other variations that I have never tried in the two years I have owned the game. Vindication will continue to hit the game table!
This is at the set-up. We just got lunch so I took a pic before the game started.
The last game we played Scythe, one of the greatest new games. We play this one every weekend if we can. As usual, I let Evan pick sides and mats. I picked Russia, again, as it plays well against Poland, he picked Poland, and I was randomly assigned the Patriotic mat. It is not the best for Russia, but I made it work. I initially had trouble getting the resources to do what is called bottom actions. I think I missed something, but I have seen Russia struggle at the start when played by others in the campaign version (that is another add-on for Scythe: Fenris). We played with the alternative encounter deck.
I managed to get the Factory and get a small bonus for that. I produced all my mechs fast so I could get all the cool special abilities for Mother Russia. The building of mech for Russia improves combat and allows movement from and to the factory from a controlled city–very useful. Russia, unlike the other factions, can do the same action over and over.
I completed buildings and upgrades (both things I usually don’t do as they take too long and require too many resources), often doing the same action over and over, and won two battle stars. I slowly walked my popularity to the second level and earned my last star and ended the game. Evan was at the top level for popularity, this scored Poland extra points, but I ended the game with a move action to spread-out, which gave me enough points and the win.
This is the end of the game map. You can see that I have painted all the figures and mechs. This is the special Kickstarter version and I added in the painted workers from a third-party source.
I had dessert and then headed home. Susie and I met Mariah at Golden Valley Brewery. I had the Chicken Pot Pie and an Octoberfest beer. Susie had some appetizers, Bree heated with walnuts and other goodies and a pretzel.
Susie was very happy to get out of the house and have a beer and good food! The place was maxed-out with people waiting for tables. The staff was being extra careful and keeping distances, but some of the customers were not being careful. I am not sure we will do another Saturday night out–but it was nice to see Golden Valley Brewery busy.
It was late when we got home and this will be late too.
Today six-hundred thirty-five people are reported to have died from the infection.
Alohawild (Michael Wild's) Website 