Monthly Archives: December 2007

A river runs through it

Mer and I tried adding the (free, came with the game) river expansion pack to the basic Carcassonne game. The river pack adds 12 river cards – one spring card (where the river starts), one pond card (where the river ends), and 10 river cards. It adds more interest to the game, especially where farmers are concerned, because it creates a boundary to the fields, which adds complexity to the strategy.

I felt as if I was winning throughout the whole game. I managed to take over a castle that Mer had spent a lot of time building, and I managed to get an extra farmer in the main field of the game, so I had two big point-scoring opportunities. It turns out that my confidence was misplaced. I won by three points. If Mer had gotten any one of four different cards that I drew, she would have won. One of the cards she needed was the penultimate card drawn (I got it) – at that point she had a 50/50 chance of winning. It’s weird how you think you are in control of a game and then start sweating it as the points are tallied. I’m looking forward to trying this game with three people sometime. I think that would add complexity without making it simply a land-grabbing game (I fear that four or five people make the game about playing any piece you can any time that you can).

Uncle Bob

We just got back from calling hours for Uncle Bob. Uncle Bob was a dear friend of Mer’s family, and he was a huge influence on the entire King clan. He was a long-time friend to Dale, and was responsible for Dale coming to Ohio to teach at Malone College. Uncle Bob loved theater, and his New York and Cleveland tours exposed a young Meredith to the world of the arts. Uncle Bob was also an ordained minister, and he presided over our wedding. Here is his obituary, as printed in the Canton Repository:

Dr. Robert Leland Lair
R
obert L. Lair, age 75, went home to be with the Lord on Tuesday, December 4, 2007 at Aultman Hospital. He was born to Francis
and Georgia Morrison Lair in Gloversville, NY, on June 21,1932. He was
one of six children.  He received his
doctorate in English at Ohio State University, and his masters of
English from Middlebury College at the Bread Loaf School of English.
His undergraduate studies were completed at Bob Jones University where
he also received a masters in Bible, was professor of English, and
served as the Dean of Arts and Sciences. He also taught at Ohio State
University before coming to Malone College where he taught until his
retirement in 1994. During these years he was very active not only at
the college but in the community. For many years he served as the chair
of the Language and Literature Department. He started a series which he
wrote and directed entitled “Evenings with” where he acquainted
students with the lives of various authors. While at Malone he received
the honor of the yearbook dedication and was also recognized as
Professor of the Year when he retired. His acting and public speaking
skills landed him leading roles in Malone College Shakespearean
productions of Richard II and King Lear, and he could be frequently
seen at area churches performing one of his religious monologs. An avid
writer, his books on T.S. Eliot and Emily
Dickinson were published by
Barron’s Educational Series, and he was a regular contributor to the
Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges and Universities. Robert was
pronouncer several years for the Repository Spelling Bee. He was quite
an accomplished pianist and accompanist and wrote many musical
compositions as well. He could be heard in the community where he
served as interim pastor of three different churches: Sixteen St.
John’s Church of North Lawrence, Market Heights United Church of Christ
of Canton, and St. Jacob’s Community Church of Cairo, Ohio. A lover of
the arts, Bob led NYC Theater tours for 30 years, Cleveland Playhouse
tours, the Spoleto Festivals, Europe and Stratford Festival Tours as
well. There were many faithful participants in these tours who attended
just to experience the warm personality and fun of just being with
Robert Lair. He will always be remembered as a wonderful husband,
father, teacher, pastor, tour director, actor, pianist, friend, and
always the life of the party. He will be greatly missed. He enjoyed his
retirement and spent much of it in travel, antiquing, reading, and
writing, having written hundreds of prayers which he shared with
friends. Most of all, he loved his family dearly and was so proud of
their accomplishments. Contributions may
be made to Malone College, to establish a scholarship fund in the Department of
Language and Literature in memory of Dr. Lair.

Rest in peace, Uncle Bob. Welcome home.

Don’t try this at home – I’m a professional

The CVCA server has enough data (250+ GB) that it has become difficult to back up. Backups are taking 8-24 hours to complete, depending on technology. So, after dumping $2000+ into various solutions, the next attempt was to install a firewire 800 card in the server and use that to back things up. How hard can installing a PCI card be?

Uber-technician takes the server offline just before 7:00 am. He unhooks the 10,000 cables and hoists the 800-pound server onto the workbench. The side just pops off (good Dell!). Uber-tech takes out the not-fast-enough USB2 card that was last month’s solution to the backup issues. Uber-tech installs the new card. Success! Uber tech slaps the side back on, hoists the 800-pound server back into place, and reconnects the 10,000 cables. Uber-tech confidently powers the server back up. Wild success! Uber-tech goes over to his desk to await the “found new hardware” announcement. Silence. Hmmmmm. Uber-tech figures that the server just found the card and happily hooks up a firewire 800 drive. Silence. Hmmmmmm. Uber-tech remembers seeing a standard power connector on the card. Even though the manual says nothing about the power, uber-tech figures maybe the card needs 12 volts.

Adequate-tech unhooks the 11,000 cables from the server and moves the 900-pound server over to the workbench. Adequate-tech takes off the side. Hmmmmm. The only internal power cable seems to be powering the server DVD drive. Hmmmmm. Adequate-tech figures he can just share a network DVD drive, so he unhooks the power from the DVD drive and plugs it into the card. The card connection bends to the rousing chorus of “Oh, crap!” from adequate-tech.

Grumpy-tech pulls out the firewire 800 card and installs a second one (grumpy tech’s motto – “Always order two!”). Grumpy-tech hooks up the power connection. Success! Grumpy-tech puts the side back on the server and moves the 900-pound server back to the rack and hooks up the 11,000 cables. He powers on the server. Silence. Blank screen. Hmmmmm. Grumpy-tech unplugs the power and tries again. The front display turns orange and shows a memory error. Hmmmmm. Grumpy-tech tries again. Processor error. Hmmmmm. Again. Processor error.

Panicky-tech starts formulating emergency run-the-school-with-no-data plan. Not very encouraging. Panicky-tech unhooks the 12,000 cables and hoists the 1,000-pound server on to the workbench. Panicky-tech pops the side off the server and unhooks the power from the card and reattaches it to the DVD player. Panicky-tech pulls out the firewire 800 card AND the extra USB card (just for good measure). Panicky-tech puts the side back on the server and heaves the 1,000-pound server back to the rack. Panicky-tech hooks up the 12,000 cables. Panicky tech suddenly remembers he works for a Christian school and prays really really hard. Panicky-tech powers the server back on. Beep. Green lights. Screen comes on.

Relieved-tech looks at the clock – 7:40 am, 10 minutes after students arrive. The server still has no good backup solution. Server:1, Relieved-tech:0

(I’m still VERY grateful the server came back online!)

Hubris? Yeah – he lives up near Millinocket…

It’s 4:45 pm. The hard-working Mainer starts his way home, walking across the CVCA parking lot. There is some snow, and a little ice because the day was warm and some snow melted. Huh. The Mainer slips on some black ice. Tricky. Still, the dextrous Mainer stays on his feet. It will take more than one little patch of ice to bring him down. Still, discretion is the better part of valor, so the Mainer tries to stay on the crunchy ice that he can see. Ooops! Another black ice patch. Darn stuff looks just like water on the pavement, of which there is a fair amount. The parking lot slopes down at about a 10-degree angle, so it makes it hard to navigate over real ice. Still, the Mainer has survived 36 winters, most of them in Maine and Chicago. What can bad ole Ohio throw at him?

Three strikes, you’re out. Another patch of black ice and the Mainer is glad that he lands mostly on his forearm and manages to limp to the safety of the snow and make his way back home. If the Mainer had back problems, his back would not be happy about the sudden acceleration/sudden stop of his unplanned trip. Everything seems to be mostly okay except for his pride….

The hall got lippy, so I decked it!

Christmas decorations have arrived in the new Riordan house! The tree went up last weekend (over the Thanksgiving break). We got a package from Maine (whooo!!) yesterday, and it had a real wreath in it from Mer’s grandparents. We hung it inside the door so that we could see it more often and enjoy the smell.

Since putting up the tree, I have fallen asleep on the couch three or four times (in one week!) while listening to Christmas music and looking at the tree. It is one of my favorite things to do during the Christmas season. Add some hot chocolate and a kitty or two, and life is very good!

Hope everyone has a nice and relaxing lead-up to Christmas!

Shifting Landscape

Last Christmas, Mom got me and Meredith a game called Carcassonne, a game about building walled cities and the roads and landscapes about the cities. You try to use knights to control cities, thieves to control roads, monks to control monasteries, and farmers to control the fields around cities. You build the map one randomly drawn tile at a time, which must be placed in a logical connection somewhere on the existing map. Meredith and I finally got around to playing it twice last weekend during Thanksgiving break. It is a good game, with a fair amount of brow-creasing strategy in placing your followers. Knights, monk, and thieves score big during the game, but farmers can score huge at the end of the game. If you place too many farmers, you run out of followers to place during the game.

The first game, Mer ran way out in front by placing lots of knights in small cities, and by placing thieves. I concentrated on farmers. Since it was the first game, we were not totally sure about the best strategy. It turns out that the small cities that Mer was building scored me big points from my farmers at the end of the game. Mer invested in farmers too late to challenge my farmers, so I ended up supplying all but one city on the board, and I won by a few points (we found out we had been scoring cities incorrectly, so it is not clear what I won by – it could have been anywhere from 1-5 points). I think I actually may have won because we had holes in the map – those sorts of things bug Mer, and it may have distracted her in her thinking about the game.

Mer totally smashed me in the second game. She managed to place knights in cities and thieves on the roads, which scored her points right away. She also drew a few more monasteries than I did, which got her off to a big lead early. She then concentrated on matching my farmers, but only as she needed to. This left her pieces free to be knights for much of the game, while my pieces were tied up being farmers (farmers are always farmers in the game, and the piece is lost once played as a farmer). She also built huge cities so that my farmers could not score so big if I won the farming part of the game. The second game actually came down to the last three tiles. Meredith was trying to connect up her last farmer to the rest of the fields. If she succeeded, she would neutralize my farmers. If she could not connect her farmer, I would end up supplying all of the cities. Sadly, for me, she found the tile she needed, and she won by 50 points (ouch!).

One of the fun things about the game is that Mer and I visited the real walled city of Carcassonne in southern France. It was one of my favorite places in all of France. The old walled city is still intact, and is fun to wander around in. I hope to return to blogging about the France trip over Christmas break (kind of a six-month return!).