Now then, to write
Aug. 10th, 2008 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sniffnoyI have many things to write of! I will go through them in the order I have them on my list here.
1. My computer - time to really start looking for a new one now. I suppose that's not exactly news. In what is news, I did undo the weird effects of the BU Virus Scan, but the way it was before has its own disadvantages. Unfortunately, Windows doesn't seem to want to let me pick the best features of both.
2. I'm home? I think I said this already.
3. So I played Traders of Genoa twice at PROMYS. The first time I somehow won (well, I was the only one who had played before). Josh went for a privelege strategy - much as I did first time I played - which, like mine, failed miserably.
The second time, Josh wasn't playing, but Vlad was. Vlad began the game by talking about how capitalist Eastern Europe is, and what sort of crazy capitalist things his brother had done. Although it turned out that what his brother had done wasn't "that should be illegal" in a "that's an utterly crazy exploit" way, just "that should be illegal" in a "that's assholish and probably actually is illegal" way.
Anyway, partway through the game, he pays me 50 ducats so he can deliver a small order (which, for those not familiar with the game, gets you 40 ducats). Everyone wondered what the hell he was doing, but hey, I'm not going to turn down 50 ducats. Well, it turned out that the wheel he got in the process was pretty crucial to him making a lot of money later, but still - there's no way he needed to pay anywhere near 50 ducats for that. And yet, he bragged about this clearly wrongheaded move for the rest of the game, saying what a crazy capitalist he was, and indeed, when money was counted up at the end, he appeared to have won. We hadn't counted Will's money yet, but he didn't have that much, right?
Yeah, thing is, that game, Will went for the privelege strategy. And somehow, he pulled it off, and had a lot of money we couldn't see. So, I note: Privelege strategy is not, in fact, completely dumb. It can win you the game sometimes. But I think you probably still have to get pretty lucky....
4. Apparently there's some BCA alum picnic thing at Van Saun on Tuesday? Not really sure what's up with it.
Also, I was wrong when I said there were only 2 BCA kids this year - actually there were like 7. Funny thing, some people started talking about this, and Josh started saying (at least I think it was Josh) that we get so many from BCA because Holbrook sends them - certainly true - and that he thinks that Holbrook sends them because he thinks it'll improve their contest math, even though Glenn has apparently actually spoken to Holbrook and explicitly told him it won't.
5. There was a kitten! It was Gabby's. They didn't let it run around.
6. So apparently Sarah is pregnant again?! Man, as if Sasha probably being able to talk by the time we got back wasn't going to be weird enough... of course, newborn babies aren't really very interesting. They basically just eat and sleep and cry, it seems. So we're not really going to have 3 kids in the house, rather 2 kids and one eating-sleeping-crying-thing.
7. So the JCs next year will be Tony and Tim. Or at least they were offered it. Tim I think we can be pretty certain of. (He's only going into 11th grade, actually - and Erick pointed out that if things work out right, he could actually end up being the next Li-Mei.) Tony I have no idea about, I never really saw him.
8. The yearbook this year was huge! Apparently they started making it really big back in 2006, and it was already huge last year, but this year it's really huge. It's spiral-bound rather than, uh, ordinarily-bound. It's nuts. It's because they not only got notes for basically all the mini-courses, but even for the counselors seminars. The minicourses-and-counselor-seminars section is probably the longest section of the thing!
9. So apparently a bunch of the counselors don't understand the point of the Jacobi symbol? This surprised me. I figured it out my first year pretty easily. I came across Djordjo telling a kid, don't use Jacobi symbols, just factor. What! I might expect first-years to get the delusion that using Jacobi symbols anywhere pollutes their whole calculation and doesn't tell them whether or not something's a QR, but I wouldn't expect counselors to be spouting that nonsense! I made a point of correcting that... seriously, factoring vs. Euclidean algorithm? Apparently even Rebecca made that mistake, or at least a similar one, and she was grading a QR numerical on the final! I really hope she didn't incorrectly mark lots of things wrong.
Things to write about later:
1. Vlad
2. The T-shirt
3. The final, maybe?
4. Whatever else I might remember - oh, something about Mafia, I think.
-Harry
1. My computer - time to really start looking for a new one now. I suppose that's not exactly news. In what is news, I did undo the weird effects of the BU Virus Scan, but the way it was before has its own disadvantages. Unfortunately, Windows doesn't seem to want to let me pick the best features of both.
2. I'm home? I think I said this already.
3. So I played Traders of Genoa twice at PROMYS. The first time I somehow won (well, I was the only one who had played before). Josh went for a privelege strategy - much as I did first time I played - which, like mine, failed miserably.
The second time, Josh wasn't playing, but Vlad was. Vlad began the game by talking about how capitalist Eastern Europe is, and what sort of crazy capitalist things his brother had done. Although it turned out that what his brother had done wasn't "that should be illegal" in a "that's an utterly crazy exploit" way, just "that should be illegal" in a "that's assholish and probably actually is illegal" way.
Anyway, partway through the game, he pays me 50 ducats so he can deliver a small order (which, for those not familiar with the game, gets you 40 ducats). Everyone wondered what the hell he was doing, but hey, I'm not going to turn down 50 ducats. Well, it turned out that the wheel he got in the process was pretty crucial to him making a lot of money later, but still - there's no way he needed to pay anywhere near 50 ducats for that. And yet, he bragged about this clearly wrongheaded move for the rest of the game, saying what a crazy capitalist he was, and indeed, when money was counted up at the end, he appeared to have won. We hadn't counted Will's money yet, but he didn't have that much, right?
Yeah, thing is, that game, Will went for the privelege strategy. And somehow, he pulled it off, and had a lot of money we couldn't see. So, I note: Privelege strategy is not, in fact, completely dumb. It can win you the game sometimes. But I think you probably still have to get pretty lucky....
4. Apparently there's some BCA alum picnic thing at Van Saun on Tuesday? Not really sure what's up with it.
Also, I was wrong when I said there were only 2 BCA kids this year - actually there were like 7. Funny thing, some people started talking about this, and Josh started saying (at least I think it was Josh) that we get so many from BCA because Holbrook sends them - certainly true - and that he thinks that Holbrook sends them because he thinks it'll improve their contest math, even though Glenn has apparently actually spoken to Holbrook and explicitly told him it won't.
5. There was a kitten! It was Gabby's. They didn't let it run around.
6. So apparently Sarah is pregnant again?! Man, as if Sasha probably being able to talk by the time we got back wasn't going to be weird enough... of course, newborn babies aren't really very interesting. They basically just eat and sleep and cry, it seems. So we're not really going to have 3 kids in the house, rather 2 kids and one eating-sleeping-crying-thing.
7. So the JCs next year will be Tony and Tim. Or at least they were offered it. Tim I think we can be pretty certain of. (He's only going into 11th grade, actually - and Erick pointed out that if things work out right, he could actually end up being the next Li-Mei.) Tony I have no idea about, I never really saw him.
8. The yearbook this year was huge! Apparently they started making it really big back in 2006, and it was already huge last year, but this year it's really huge. It's spiral-bound rather than, uh, ordinarily-bound. It's nuts. It's because they not only got notes for basically all the mini-courses, but even for the counselors seminars. The minicourses-and-counselor-seminars section is probably the longest section of the thing!
9. So apparently a bunch of the counselors don't understand the point of the Jacobi symbol? This surprised me. I figured it out my first year pretty easily. I came across Djordjo telling a kid, don't use Jacobi symbols, just factor. What! I might expect first-years to get the delusion that using Jacobi symbols anywhere pollutes their whole calculation and doesn't tell them whether or not something's a QR, but I wouldn't expect counselors to be spouting that nonsense! I made a point of correcting that... seriously, factoring vs. Euclidean algorithm? Apparently even Rebecca made that mistake, or at least a similar one, and she was grading a QR numerical on the final! I really hope she didn't incorrectly mark lots of things wrong.
Things to write about later:
1. Vlad
2. The T-shirt
3. The final, maybe?
4. Whatever else I might remember - oh, something about Mafia, I think.
-Harry
