Pic-A-Day

October 21st, 2009

From Pic-A-Day 365

Climbing with my friends at Planet Granite tonight.

October 22nd, 2009

From Pic-A-Day 365

Went out to a coffee shop and taught Go to my friends.

Go playing party

So, I'm a huge fan of Go, one of the deepest and oldest strategy games in the world.

However, the depth of the game tends to scare away beginners, and I find that I run into very few people that are interested in learning to play. And even when I do, the initial learning curve is pretty steep, causing folks to get frustrated pretty quickly. However, I've found that a good environment amongst folks of your relative skill level could really help out in learning to play.

It's certainly possible for me to go to the local Go club and learn to play there, but my social anxiety there causes me to shy away for the most part. That, and the fact that I really prefer to play these games against my friends or acquaintances. I'm not really into games purely for the sake of the game. I'm also into it as an experience of sharing with people I care about.

So... I'm wondering if any of you folks from the Bay Area out there are interested in playing Go with me. Or even if you're further away and might be interested in playing online once in a while? I'd be happy to teach the game, and you can talk to several of my "students" about how they feel about my efforts to teach them to play. I'm still classified as a beginner, with a ranking of about 18-20k, but I know a few things that I can teach to even more beginning players.

After doing a teaching game with viesti and orange56gal last night, I've been thinking about possible having a little games night at my place again. I've been dealing with shame issues from the last party I tried to throw at my place, having had to cancel at the last minute and even screwing that up, but I've been recovering from that and might feel okay throwing a party again. Although all games would be welcome, I personally would be focusing on teaching/playing go with folks. I've actually got 3 boards to play with, so many people could play at once. :)

Anyways, if you're interested, drop me a line. I'll pick a date and send out invites once I have a good list of folks that might be interested in coming by.

I live in an insane apartment complex.

Warning: RAGE ahead.

So... Although I really like the interior of my place, I'm afraid I'm going to have to move again once I have the energy and money to do so.

Why?

Because the people that run this apartment complex are anal-retentive OCD dick-wads.

The first problem was that the laundry room got locked at 8pm sharp, every single day. Not just closed, but LOCKED. And it didn't matter if my stuff was in there or not. Locked up until tomorrow morning. Since I get home at 7pm from work most days, that just doesn't work for me.

Next is what happened a few days ago. They are saying that my car is parked illegally and they are going to tow my car if I don't fix the problem.

Why? You might ask?

Well, the car is sitting my my spot and no one else's. I have my parking pass in there and they definitely saw it. And they have my license plate number on file and know whose car it is. So what could possibly be the issue here?

Well, because of the odd design of my car, the parking pass does not fit on my rear-view mirror. Because of that, I had it sitting on my dashboard. It had managed to slide into the crack between my windshield and my dashboard. I know they still saw it, because they took photos of it.

So what's the deal?

The deal was that the parking pass was *partially obscured* by the bottom of the windshield.

And because of that, they recorded my license plate number, took a bunch of photos of my car, threw a big orange "YOU ARE PARKED ILLEGALLY" sticker on my car that was nearly impossible to scrape off, and threatened me with the towing of my car.

Excuse me? Fucking excuse me?

This is fucking nuts. If this is the way this place is run, I'm out of here as soon as I have the energy to leave. Fucking dumb ass shit morons.