A few months ago my friend Kyle brought his massive version of Terraforming Mars to our weekly game night. It’s one of my favorite games, and I’ve owned a “standard” copy for years.
Kyle unexpectedly passed away a few weeks ago, and his wife has been selling his board games. She doesn’t play, and he owned hundreds of them– often high-end collectors’ editions. His Terraforming Mars game is the “complete” version: it has all the expansions, 3D-printed pieces, sleeved cards, and so on. His wife knew I love the game, so she contacted me to ask if I’d like it. She quoted a price that was a fraction of what it was worth, and I agreed. (Don’t worry, I paid her a much more reasonable price; I’m not going to swindle a widow.)
I picked it up today and pulled out all the pieces. Wow.
I love it. And every time I pull it out for a game night, I’ll think of Kyle. Rest in peace, my friend.
We’ve lived here for six years, and for all that time we’ve had a really nice shed halfway down our driveway. That’s about a quarter-mile from where we need it, so it’s always just sat empty. I have no idea why the former owners placed a shed there– perhaps they thought it would be useful to store a bunch of tools for the cherry orchard? In any case, we’ve been talking for months about how to move it up near the house.
The problem: it’s 20×10 feet and weighs several tons. Moving it a quarter mile uphill, navigating three sharp switchbacks, and placing it up by the house isn’t trivial. I talked to three friends who are in the construction business, and all three had different ideas. Then I talked to four contractors, explaining the situation and asking for their ideas. One grizzled old guy shrugged it off, saying it would be no problem to just pop the shed onto his gooseneck trailer and bring it up (he hadn’t seen the shed or our driveway, and his tone made it clear he wasn’t really interested). Another scratched his head because he couldn’t figure out how to fit it on a trailer that wouldn’t be too long for the switchbacks. A crane company said they could do it by hoisting the shed on and off a trailer– but destroying our driveway in the process because the crane weighs 40 tons. Finally, a couple of yahoos I was introduced to by a friend said they could attach wheels to it and tow it up the driveway with a skid steer.
After thinking about it for a while, we decided to give the yahoos a shot at it. Today was the day.
They showed up with their skid steer, a pile of lumber, and a couple of big wheels.
After jacking up the back of the shed, they attached the lumber and wheels. Then they looped a huge strap around the entire shed and lifted it. Ready to roll!
It took them over three hours to maneuver the shed up the driveway. Not surprisingly, the switchbacks were the worst, requiring constant twists and turns and adjustments.
Finally they were through the switchbacks and on the straightaway past the house!
They maneuvered it into position on the leveled gravel I’d laid about two months ago.
And almost five hours after starting, the shed had a new spot!
Now it’s only a hundred feet from the house, making it much more convenient for storing our lawnmower, wheelbarrow, piles of tools, and so on. Yay!
As I was thinking about designing a new board game, I decided it would be interesting to create a game for kids. Specifically my grandson Ollie. He’s four now, so he’s not going to be thrilled about whatever resource-management game I devise, but he’ll probably like a fun card game.
I did a bit of design work, sent the files to my favorite card-printing company, and today my new deck arrived.
This is Ofrendas, based on the Mexican traditions of Dia de Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. It’s actually a beautiful celebration of family, remembering those who have passed on. I created cards with cartoon grandparents, aunts, and uncles.
The game is basically Go Fish, but the objective is to collect matching ancestors to complete your ofrenda, the display where family photos are placed along with candles, candy skulls, and favorite foods. I threw in a few primo locos (crazy cousins) to spice up the game a bit.
I haven’t actually playtested it– I mean, it’s Go Fish— but I’m hoping Ollie enjoys it when we visit him in a few weeks…
It’s been a few months since we shopped for a new hot tub, and today was the delivery. A team of four guys manhandled the old tub off our pad and brought in the new one. They made short work of positioning it, connecting all the wiring, and testing the various buttons. Now it’s ready to go!
Of course it’ll take a solid day to bring it up to temperature, and it’s still pretty warm outside, so we might not actually use our latest addition for a while yet…
Every summer we zip across the lake on our jet skis to visit Wild Horse Island, the largest island on Flathead Lake and the home of four wild horses and a network of hiking trails. Today we decided to go to the highest point on the island, and set out on the trail. It wound through the trees and climbed up a long hill before going up a steep rocky incline to the summit. Pepper and Kyra decided they’d gained enough altitude, and stopped at a small outcropping.
Undeterred, I continued on. It was hard going because the grade was very steep, and there were a lot of loose rocks that slid underfoot. But I finally made it to the top and snapped a celebratory selfie.
The view from the peak is spectacular, encompassing much of the lake.
I made my way (carefully) back down to the ladies and we hiked back to our jet skis. It was a beautiful day to be out, and definitely a spot I plan to return to in the future.
This is an nVidia graphics card that takes up about half of my desktop computer case.
Now that I’m easing back into board game design, and considering a foray into large language model computing, I thought it made sense to get a better graphics card. This particular one is the largest one that still fit inside my computer case (barely!) and it packs a wallop. I’m excited to see how it does as I generate artwork for my games. It should be almost two orders of magnitude faster than my old card. Off to the races!
