Back from CST, the full report
Aug. 30th, 2004 01:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sniffnoySo, Looney, as one of his last acts as Executive, appointed me to the Ministry of Randomness. (JediSquid is now Executive, and Human Vice-Executive. Looney is still King, though.) My first proposal as Co-Minister of Randomness[3] will be:
304.2 Let's do something with those Mad Scientist points
Author: Sniffnoy
Create the following page:
The Mad Scientist's Evil Scheme(s)
Book: Player's Handbook
Type: Rule
Text:
Whenever a player that influences the Mad Scientist gains or loses points from proposal passage or failure, the Mad Scientist gains or loses the same number of points.
Whenever the Mad Scientist has a Lot of points or more, he spends them all to build an Evil Orbital Death Ray Laser Beam of Doom to kill us all. All players lose a Bunch of points, except for the Executive and Vice Executive, who hide out in their top-secret bunker and only lose a Handful of points. The Evil Orbital Death Ray Laser Beam of Doom then crashes into the Earth, and, randomly, one of the following three things occurs: The Evil Orbital Death Ray Laser Beam of Doom falls into the ocean, to no effect; it lands on a randomly chosen player, causing him to lose a Lot of points (unless that player is the Executive or Vice Executive, still hiding out in their top-secret bunker, in which case both of them each lose a Bunch of points); or it lands near a randomly chosen player, and he sells the parts to the other players for a Bunch of points.
Whenever the Mad Scientist has a negative Lot of points or less, he gets frustrated enough to try sending out his failed project: The Giant Evil Chicken of Destruction. The Giant Evil Chicken of Destruction attacks a randomly chosen player, causing him to lose a Handful of points, unless it attacks the King, in which case the Giant Evil Chicken of Destruction is slaughtered and its meat is sold to the other players to add a Bunch of points to the Royal Coffers. Otherwise, the Giant Evil Chicken of Destruction continues attacking random players, other than ones it has already attacked, until it has either attacked the King (as described above) or it has attacked at least half the players, at which point the players who were attacked rally, kill the Giant Evil Chicken of Destruction, split the meat amongst themselves, and sell it to the other players to each gain back a Bunch of points. The Mad Scientist then resumes his evil scheming and returns to 0 points.
(I should probably note here that a Handful, a Bunch, and a Lot are all defined in our Book of Numbers.)
Anyway... as for our vacation in CST (with the longer sections LJ-cut).
So. The plan. Fly out to Chicago, see the university among other things, drive up to some town in Wisconsin called Baraboo (strictly speaking, we were actually staying in West Baraboo), then down to St. Louis, see the university among other things (No, not St. Louis University! Although apparently that does exist) and finally drive back up to Chicago to return the rental car and sit in the airport until our plane comes.
To keep this somewhat short, I will only talk about those things I wrote down in my notebook.
Anyway. Out to Chicago. I didn't have a book to read, so I brought my PROMYS yearbook so I could work on the topology problem sets, which obviously I had no time to do at PROMYS. Ran into Max (Furman) (expectedly) at the UChicago tour. Random bizarre vacationy walking around. Nothing much. That I wrote down, anyway. Oh yeah. We stopped at a bookstore (of which, of course, they have plenty by us) but I had no money as I had spent it all right before going away to PROMYS, but mom noted that had I been home I would have gotten some allowance money, and said I could buy a book if it wasn't too expensive. I bought Lies by Al Franken. So some of the time I say I was working on the topology psets, I was actually reading that. But I finished it while on the trip. Oh yeah, I played Carcassonne against Elana a bunch of times. Won every time.
Up to Baraboo, with a stopover in Madison for no apparent reason. Mom had taken out some books on tape from the library for the trip, but the rental car had no tape player, only a CD player. Staring at fields of corn for miles and miles, though, gets rather boring, so thankfully I had my topology sets (or the book) with me still. Elana complained that we were in the middle of nowhere; Mom pointed out that this was not the middle of nowhere, there were at least presumably farmers here; when we were driving through the desert in Oregon (and then happened across an ice cream shop in the middle of it because there was apparently an Indian reservation nearby), *that* was the middle of nowhere. Anyway in the quick stopover in Madison I had my first encounter with Coldstone Creamery, which is a chain of ice cream stores which apparently is really near us, too, but I'd never seen it before, though Elana had (though in New Haven, not near us), which is why we went there. What's interesting about it, if you've never seen it before, is that they don't do toppings, they do mix-ins. As in they actually take the thing and mix it into the ice cream so it's not just on the top. Which is something I'd been suggesting for quite some time and had no idea there was a place that actually did it.
Anyway. On to Baraboo itself, where it rained most of the time, ruining our various hiking plans or whatever. Near Baraboo is the Wisconsin Dells, which has more tourist traps right next to each other than I'd ever seen before. As you go down the road into it, you come across water park after amusement park after water park after thing that defies classification, including Noah's Ark, the largest water park in the US, the largest Pirate's Cove in the US, with 5 different courses (we actually went to that, though), and a Mt. Olympus theme park, with rides with names like "Cyclops", a roller coaster build around a giant Trojan Horse, and, according to the billboards, an *underwater* go-kart ride called "Poseidon". Wait, it gets worse. Don't forget those "things that defy classification", such as something labeled "The Looney Bin", some sort of haunted house sort of thing, and an upside-down broken mansion, labeled "Top Secret: A Highly Classified Experience". Also there were these billboards advertising this magician who looked a lot like Mr. Sokolewicz.
Anyway we went to Devil's Lake to go on the trails a bit. It had rained the past few days, as I've said, but it hadn't started raining yet today. By the time we got there and decided to go on the West Bluffs Trail, though, it looked like it was going to. I should note now, we started on the north shore of the lake. After going a bit we decided we *really* wouldn't want to be caught there in the rain, much less in a thunderstorm, and we went back and took the Tumbled Rocks Trail, which is less of a trail and more of a walkway. Mom saw a snake there but I didn't get to see it. Expectedly, it did start to rain while on it. It definitely looked like we were at least halfway by that point, and it wasn't very heavy, so we continued on. Naturally enough it got considerably heavier, enough that we considered heading back, but decided the end has got to be near, let's keep going. Eventually it got really heavy and we asked some people about the nearest shelter; they said if you keep going you'll get to a boat landing, where there's a bathroom. We did so, and found out why the end wasn't so near: the trail proper doesn't lead to the south shore (where there was a concession stand, a visitor's center, and other good things, like at the north shore), it leads to a *road* that leads to the south shore. Anyway we followed the trail, and then the road, and finally found this bathroom, where we hid out for about 15 minutes from the pouring rain. Eventually the rain let up, and after a bit of discussion, we decided to head out while we had the chance. Thankfully the rain did not return and we made it to the south shore without getting any wetter. There we ate, and asked the person at the concession stand what the quickest way back was. "Take the train tracks on the east shore. It's not an official trail, but everyone uses it anyway." Mom: "...and are there trains on it?" Concession stand guy: "Yeah, but they go slowly." Well, after some confusion about how to get to them, we set out on the tracks, with mom commenting that she feels like a hobo. There was a wide open space to the right of the tracks, which is where we mostly walked, but constantly walking on gravel[0] is rather tiring so occasionally we walked on the railroad ties. We didn't see any trains. Right after we got back to the north shore and the car, though, a train came by. A big freight train, so we had to wait a while. And the guy was right: It did go slowly.
Next down to St. Louis. On the way down, we saw something truly amazing: An open weigh station. Yes, really. Oh, I should probably mention this at some point, I don't recall where I saw this, though I think it was in STL: A movie theater with a marquee reading: "Yuppies vs Sharks: Open Water". It was still bad weather when we arrived, or the weather became bad shortly after, probably the latter. There was a tornado watch in effect until 20:00. Elana was constantly afraid of a tornado. To scare (?) her a bit more, I invented the tornado shark, which is like a shark but lives in a tornado. Obviously she wasn't scared by such a ridiculous animal, the "(?)" is because I can't really say the purpose was to scare her. Anyway. So we left for a bit, came back, found the power blacked out (though the lock on the room still worked). Elana was now really scared, even after 20:00 when the tornado watch expired, when I told her, "Well, we don't have TV or radio, so for all we know, they could have renewed it." Since we had nothing to do, we went to sleep early. The power came back on at around 23:05 but the lights coming back on didn't wake anybody up. I was the only one still awake at that point, so I just went and turned the lights out. And later people didn't realize that the power had come back while they were sleeping. Anyway not much else to write about in STL, except that we saw the Gateway Arch, which is simply amazing. I mean, there are taller things, but they're not arches. Oh yeah, and we saw a bumper sticker that said "Voldemort votes Republican".
The drive back up to Chicago - the only exciting thing there was Mom's false alarm: "Oh wow!" she shouted. We all looked out the window. "Corn!" That really annoyed Elana. :D Anyway we arrived 3 hours early for our flight (yay topology), which was then delayed about half an hour. On the flight, when they served drinks, I (and the person behind me) somehow ended up with an Israeli can of Sprite. (We could tell because the writing on it was in Hebrew.) It was also a slightly different shape from an American can. It looked bigger, though it was labeled as only 330 mL while the American cans are labeled as 355 mL.
...that ends this. Wow, I should LJ-cut some of this.
...and I now have a philosophy essay to write and a lit project to do. Before school starts. Which is Thursday. Yay. (Yes, the essay's only 1 page, and the project is stupid. But still.)
-Sniffnoy
[0]I don't think gravel is the right word here. Like gravel, but bigger rocks.
[3]Along with Breadman and (?!) pitboss.
--
"If you want your boomerang to not come back, first you shouldn't throw
it."
-GW De Lacey, rhod
304.2 Let's do something with those Mad Scientist points
Author: Sniffnoy
Create the following page:
The Mad Scientist's Evil Scheme(s)
Book: Player's Handbook
Type: Rule
Text:
Whenever a player that influences the Mad Scientist gains or loses points from proposal passage or failure, the Mad Scientist gains or loses the same number of points.
Whenever the Mad Scientist has a Lot of points or more, he spends them all to build an Evil Orbital Death Ray Laser Beam of Doom to kill us all. All players lose a Bunch of points, except for the Executive and Vice Executive, who hide out in their top-secret bunker and only lose a Handful of points. The Evil Orbital Death Ray Laser Beam of Doom then crashes into the Earth, and, randomly, one of the following three things occurs: The Evil Orbital Death Ray Laser Beam of Doom falls into the ocean, to no effect; it lands on a randomly chosen player, causing him to lose a Lot of points (unless that player is the Executive or Vice Executive, still hiding out in their top-secret bunker, in which case both of them each lose a Bunch of points); or it lands near a randomly chosen player, and he sells the parts to the other players for a Bunch of points.
Whenever the Mad Scientist has a negative Lot of points or less, he gets frustrated enough to try sending out his failed project: The Giant Evil Chicken of Destruction. The Giant Evil Chicken of Destruction attacks a randomly chosen player, causing him to lose a Handful of points, unless it attacks the King, in which case the Giant Evil Chicken of Destruction is slaughtered and its meat is sold to the other players to add a Bunch of points to the Royal Coffers. Otherwise, the Giant Evil Chicken of Destruction continues attacking random players, other than ones it has already attacked, until it has either attacked the King (as described above) or it has attacked at least half the players, at which point the players who were attacked rally, kill the Giant Evil Chicken of Destruction, split the meat amongst themselves, and sell it to the other players to each gain back a Bunch of points. The Mad Scientist then resumes his evil scheming and returns to 0 points.
(I should probably note here that a Handful, a Bunch, and a Lot are all defined in our Book of Numbers.)
Anyway... as for our vacation in CST (with the longer sections LJ-cut).
So. The plan. Fly out to Chicago, see the university among other things, drive up to some town in Wisconsin called Baraboo (strictly speaking, we were actually staying in West Baraboo), then down to St. Louis, see the university among other things (No, not St. Louis University! Although apparently that does exist) and finally drive back up to Chicago to return the rental car and sit in the airport until our plane comes.
To keep this somewhat short, I will only talk about those things I wrote down in my notebook.
Anyway. Out to Chicago. I didn't have a book to read, so I brought my PROMYS yearbook so I could work on the topology problem sets, which obviously I had no time to do at PROMYS. Ran into Max (Furman) (expectedly) at the UChicago tour. Random bizarre vacationy walking around. Nothing much. That I wrote down, anyway. Oh yeah. We stopped at a bookstore (of which, of course, they have plenty by us) but I had no money as I had spent it all right before going away to PROMYS, but mom noted that had I been home I would have gotten some allowance money, and said I could buy a book if it wasn't too expensive. I bought Lies by Al Franken. So some of the time I say I was working on the topology psets, I was actually reading that. But I finished it while on the trip. Oh yeah, I played Carcassonne against Elana a bunch of times. Won every time.
Up to Baraboo, with a stopover in Madison for no apparent reason. Mom had taken out some books on tape from the library for the trip, but the rental car had no tape player, only a CD player. Staring at fields of corn for miles and miles, though, gets rather boring, so thankfully I had my topology sets (or the book) with me still. Elana complained that we were in the middle of nowhere; Mom pointed out that this was not the middle of nowhere, there were at least presumably farmers here; when we were driving through the desert in Oregon (and then happened across an ice cream shop in the middle of it because there was apparently an Indian reservation nearby), *that* was the middle of nowhere. Anyway in the quick stopover in Madison I had my first encounter with Coldstone Creamery, which is a chain of ice cream stores which apparently is really near us, too, but I'd never seen it before, though Elana had (though in New Haven, not near us), which is why we went there. What's interesting about it, if you've never seen it before, is that they don't do toppings, they do mix-ins. As in they actually take the thing and mix it into the ice cream so it's not just on the top. Which is something I'd been suggesting for quite some time and had no idea there was a place that actually did it.
Anyway. On to Baraboo itself, where it rained most of the time, ruining our various hiking plans or whatever. Near Baraboo is the Wisconsin Dells, which has more tourist traps right next to each other than I'd ever seen before. As you go down the road into it, you come across water park after amusement park after water park after thing that defies classification, including Noah's Ark, the largest water park in the US, the largest Pirate's Cove in the US, with 5 different courses (we actually went to that, though), and a Mt. Olympus theme park, with rides with names like "Cyclops", a roller coaster build around a giant Trojan Horse, and, according to the billboards, an *underwater* go-kart ride called "Poseidon". Wait, it gets worse. Don't forget those "things that defy classification", such as something labeled "The Looney Bin", some sort of haunted house sort of thing, and an upside-down broken mansion, labeled "Top Secret: A Highly Classified Experience". Also there were these billboards advertising this magician who looked a lot like Mr. Sokolewicz.
Anyway we went to Devil's Lake to go on the trails a bit. It had rained the past few days, as I've said, but it hadn't started raining yet today. By the time we got there and decided to go on the West Bluffs Trail, though, it looked like it was going to. I should note now, we started on the north shore of the lake. After going a bit we decided we *really* wouldn't want to be caught there in the rain, much less in a thunderstorm, and we went back and took the Tumbled Rocks Trail, which is less of a trail and more of a walkway. Mom saw a snake there but I didn't get to see it. Expectedly, it did start to rain while on it. It definitely looked like we were at least halfway by that point, and it wasn't very heavy, so we continued on. Naturally enough it got considerably heavier, enough that we considered heading back, but decided the end has got to be near, let's keep going. Eventually it got really heavy and we asked some people about the nearest shelter; they said if you keep going you'll get to a boat landing, where there's a bathroom. We did so, and found out why the end wasn't so near: the trail proper doesn't lead to the south shore (where there was a concession stand, a visitor's center, and other good things, like at the north shore), it leads to a *road* that leads to the south shore. Anyway we followed the trail, and then the road, and finally found this bathroom, where we hid out for about 15 minutes from the pouring rain. Eventually the rain let up, and after a bit of discussion, we decided to head out while we had the chance. Thankfully the rain did not return and we made it to the south shore without getting any wetter. There we ate, and asked the person at the concession stand what the quickest way back was. "Take the train tracks on the east shore. It's not an official trail, but everyone uses it anyway." Mom: "...and are there trains on it?" Concession stand guy: "Yeah, but they go slowly." Well, after some confusion about how to get to them, we set out on the tracks, with mom commenting that she feels like a hobo. There was a wide open space to the right of the tracks, which is where we mostly walked, but constantly walking on gravel[0] is rather tiring so occasionally we walked on the railroad ties. We didn't see any trains. Right after we got back to the north shore and the car, though, a train came by. A big freight train, so we had to wait a while. And the guy was right: It did go slowly.
Next down to St. Louis. On the way down, we saw something truly amazing: An open weigh station. Yes, really. Oh, I should probably mention this at some point, I don't recall where I saw this, though I think it was in STL: A movie theater with a marquee reading: "Yuppies vs Sharks: Open Water". It was still bad weather when we arrived, or the weather became bad shortly after, probably the latter. There was a tornado watch in effect until 20:00. Elana was constantly afraid of a tornado. To scare (?) her a bit more, I invented the tornado shark, which is like a shark but lives in a tornado. Obviously she wasn't scared by such a ridiculous animal, the "(?)" is because I can't really say the purpose was to scare her. Anyway. So we left for a bit, came back, found the power blacked out (though the lock on the room still worked). Elana was now really scared, even after 20:00 when the tornado watch expired, when I told her, "Well, we don't have TV or radio, so for all we know, they could have renewed it." Since we had nothing to do, we went to sleep early. The power came back on at around 23:05 but the lights coming back on didn't wake anybody up. I was the only one still awake at that point, so I just went and turned the lights out. And later people didn't realize that the power had come back while they were sleeping. Anyway not much else to write about in STL, except that we saw the Gateway Arch, which is simply amazing. I mean, there are taller things, but they're not arches. Oh yeah, and we saw a bumper sticker that said "Voldemort votes Republican".
The drive back up to Chicago - the only exciting thing there was Mom's false alarm: "Oh wow!" she shouted. We all looked out the window. "Corn!" That really annoyed Elana. :D Anyway we arrived 3 hours early for our flight (yay topology), which was then delayed about half an hour. On the flight, when they served drinks, I (and the person behind me) somehow ended up with an Israeli can of Sprite. (We could tell because the writing on it was in Hebrew.) It was also a slightly different shape from an American can. It looked bigger, though it was labeled as only 330 mL while the American cans are labeled as 355 mL.
...that ends this. Wow, I should LJ-cut some of this.
...and I now have a philosophy essay to write and a lit project to do. Before school starts. Which is Thursday. Yay. (Yes, the essay's only 1 page, and the project is stupid. But still.)
-Sniffnoy
[0]I don't think gravel is the right word here. Like gravel, but bigger rocks.
[3]Along with Breadman and (?!) pitboss.
--
"If you want your boomerang to not come back, first you shouldn't throw
it."
-GW De Lacey, rhod
no subject
Date: 2004-08-30 02:19 pm (UTC)Not only is it an arch, it's an inverted catenary, and it's as high as it is long. Go (e^x+e^[-x])/2a.
And, "not much else to write about" wouldn't include WUSTL, would it? Was it just that damn boring?
BTW, we have a place on the South 40, Ursa's Fireside, that does ice-cream mix-ins. Yummy.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-30 04:17 pm (UTC)How can it possibly be... oh, right, vertical distances always look bigger than horizontal ones.
I already mentioned at the top that we saw WUSTL, as I mentioned that when in Chicago we saw UChicago. Nothing really to write about either.