Games
I went to the house of my former AP Government teacher Mr. Mulholland. There I played games. Specifically, I played two games each of Dragonmaster and Settlers of Catan. Normally I play Diplomacy, but that always takes several hours lasting into the morning and we do not actually finish a game. Now I will spend a few words talking about how these games work.
Dragonmaster is a card game that reminded me of Hearts. If you are not familiar with Hearts, in Windows go to the Games menu and play some of it. There are four players and there is a deck of cards that contains a King, Queen, Prince(ss), Wizard, Duke, Count, Baron, and Fool for each of the four suits: Warriors, Dragonmasters, and two others I do not remember.
Every player is the Dragonmaster for one cycle. In each cycle there are five hands. The Dragonmaster gets to decide what game is played for each hand. The games have different objectives like do not take any tricks with Wizards, do not take the Prince of Warriors, or do not take the first or last trick. Any player who takes the aforementioned cards for a game has to pay the Dragonmaster a certain number of crystals as a penalty. After every player has been the Dragonmaster for a cycle, the player with the most crystals wins. I came in second place (123,000 vs. 146,000) for the first game and was declared winner of the second game (the game was not complete, but I had a large lead). None of us had played the game before, except Mr. Mulholland who often stepped in to help his child (she was in elementary school while the three of us were college graduates).
In Settlers of Catan players build settlements and roads to extract resources from the board to build more and bigger settlements and roads. I will invoke the Unnamed Geniuses for a more complete description. I have played the game a few times before and so had the other people. The odd part of the gameplay for me was following the standard rules. When I play with the Vietnamese Crew they play with rules that allow anyone to build and use ports between turns. That night I felt very accomplished, as I won one of the two Settlers games. Usually I am far removed from first place.
Disneyland
On Saturday I went to Disneyland. Ann Marie (who I know from BCR and the Patriot) made a road trip and drove from Modesto to Anaheim. I saw her and a few other people I knew (or did not know) to varying degrees.
That day (July 17th) happened to be the 55th anniversary of Disneyland. The original rides we went on included the Jungle Cruse and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. The idea of going through Hell in Mr. Toad's enamored Fr. Charlie. Even though he never went on it, he mentioned it in one of his homilies (he did not remember the ride's name, so I had to shout it out to him).
With the exception of Star Tours, we hit all the major rides and even went on Space Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain Railway twice. Something in Indiana Jones broke down and we had to exit our jeep and walk the last dozen feet of the ride to the loading platform. The strangest thing happened on Space Mountain. We loaded into the car and then it went forward to where it stops before turning right and starting the ride. However, instead of going right we went left and then stopped. A person came over and told us we had to exit the vehicle. He rolled up a two step platform and helped all of us get off and then walk back to the platform where we got in another car. Apparently we managed to break one of the cars.
We ate at the ESPN Zone and the Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney. Below is Spencer and me on the Buzz Lightyear ride. Instead of selling you this picture, they let everyone email it to themselves for free.
In the ride people are in a spaceship that makes its way through a shooting gallery. Everyone has a laser gun to hit the targets and gets a score at the end. I am proud of my score because I usually do not break 100,000. On a related note, I would recommend Toy Story 3 if you have not seen it. The Evil Dr. Pork Chop makes an appearance.
Boys, Girls, and the Salesians
Monday I drove to East Los Angeles to see Sean. I know Sean from Newman and taking some Physics classes with him. He is in the process of becoming a Salesian, which is a religious order started by St. John Bosco. His current ministry is planning and leading a summer camp for kids at a Boys and Girls Club. The current theme is superheros so I got to met Batman. I also joined the community for a picnic in the park and then played Poker with a few of them.
As a summary, Sean and me took 111 (Physics Lab) together where we had the wonderful Eric as a GSI for the BSC section (the same semester the three of us were planning the retreat at church) and then were lab partners for the Advanced section of the lab. We were in the same 105 (Classical Mechanics) class and both of us skipped most of those lectures.
One thing we talked about was Physics thought experiments. One problem Sean was explaining to one person went like this:
A pole that is longer than a barn is accelerated to very close to the speed of light. Since the pole is going very fast, it undergoes length contraction and can fit into the barn. However, from the frame of reference of the pole the barn is moving and contracting so the pole cannot fit into the contracted barn. What actually happens?The Unnamed Geniuses can help us again with the problem using a ladder and garage instead. I have not thought about this problem enough to understand it, but if you want to know about twins I can help.
When I was at Disneyland a fellow Physics graduate told me Physics majors have no social life. I like to think I did have a social life in college, which would explain why I was not a very good Physics major.
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