Fall 2011 in Pictures Summary

Fall 2011 in Pictures: Started off great at the beginning, but tapered off at the end... just like the others. No sketches were completed due to lack of time / proficiency in that skill, and is now accepting user submissions of missing pictures in question. Overall, no more effort may be placed in it, due to the fact that very few people from the intended audience actually saw this. All people that can be identified were tagged on FB on a per-picture basis in the caption area, leaving them free to tag themselves or others.

There were five other people (Claudio, Wei Wei, Aarafi, Yoon, Nhi) that would've been on the 'People of Note' but I didn't have a picture of them available.

Errata:

• "Szelagowski" is spelled incorrectly on the image.
• Missing Christine Phan in the list of people mentioned (supposed to appear in unimplemented sketch "Crossword Inception")
• Missing May Chen in the list of people mentioned (supposed to appear in unimplemented sketch "Apples^2")

Finals Week First World Problems

Even though it's finals week and people are studying, I think it's more appropriate to see this as a first world problem - being unable to stick the AC adapter in the desk outlet. (No, it's not that I could plug it into one of the wall outlets, as it's a bit too far away to reach and poses a trip hazard. The problem was later resolved somehow.)

Thankfully, I do have a netbook and not a large power-consuming notebook, so it should last me six hours off a single charge. Or not...

Crammed at BJ's

It's the day before finals - I'm helping both Tim and Cecilia with review material from COMP 51, and managed to solve a few of their problems they were having. In the end: exhausting, but at least they reported the test wasn't that hard.

Denny's Storytime

Banquet is over, what now? Denny's, of course. If there's ten of us and one of these (dessert books) then this is how we do it.

Space Factory Production Tree

Production Tree for Space Factory.

Two attempts were made at the game, one to explore all of the parts, and another to find an optimal strategy. Thanks to a bug in the game that raises the cost of laser swords and ray guns exponentially when they are in demand, the factory value peaked at 1.3 million CR by 50 weeks.

NOTE: You are not expected to see this tree as is, a larger version is listed here.

Starting out

• Produce 1 Tin Foil Hat and Tesla Coil. Keep selling Tesla Coil (30) for continued profit at this time or sell tin foil hats for contract requirements.
• Produce 1 Moon Beam and Stardust as soon as Bars from Mars become available. (This is to expand the production tree)
• Build 2nd Machine and expand storage. Produce Telepathy Charm for profit (150) and 1 Warp Drive and produce Time Travel Circuit Boards (800) asap.
• Once you get Farmed Spacemeat, produce the 1st tier of items to unlock Mined Ore (and produce Mice Krispies to complete that contract)
• Build Alien Fossils and Diamonds, produce Space Plastic and then 20 ray guns
• Expand Storage to at least 70 and have a factory lvl 4 available
• Produce equipment for 20 robot dogs (you should have at least 3 machines running)
• Build 10 Attackatacs and then sell them for 28,000 profit.

Continue on from there.

Cup Flippin' Competitions

The banquet differed slightly from the other years in that it was situated in the Regent's room. The differences didn't stop there however with the introduction of family competition minigames.

(UOP New Membership Installation Banquet)

The Black Friday Traditional Line

Usually Black Friday specials occur early in the morning, or at midnight. Today I saw what it was like to be in one of those rushes.

Line for Best Buy in Stockton - at 12:30am when waiting, was approximately 450ft long and took 1hr 15m to go through. (If you're a local, stretches to where the Macy's building starts). Bought stuff at 40% off but I liked the purchase of Mass Effect 2 ($5*) the most.

Sketch Note: I knew from a friend that tents were set up Wednesday night for the tickets and saw a few travel chairs near the mall entrance, with a guitar nearby - It looked like Ry Val from a distance, but whether or not this is actually true it will show up as a sketch for Nov 23's entry. Note since my drawing skills are less than decent, and my cousin Jason Chan (who is a well known artist who creates drawings for various games, including for Magic: The Gathering) estimates at least 50 hours for a decent picture, sketches may show up much later than when they were scheduled to appear.

Thanksgiving Returns

Thanksgiving returns with a few differences:

• No name picking for who to give presents to
• No modeling clay
• Pecan pie was much better (with bittersweet chocolate added)
• No green screen shots.
• Black Friday starts earlier. A lot earlier.

ZB Score Parser

This is the web program/code that results when someone decides to discontinue a "top 50" leaderboard. (UPDATE: He has returned and is now continuing top 50 leaderboards. Hopefully.)

Title: Zuma Blitz Score Parser

Description: Allows you to see a player's Zuma Blitz stats (including high score) that would normally be found under the details section of the leaderboard* and parses them into a webpage. Having a user id is enough - doesn't require that you be friends with them*. Works as of Nov 15 2011.

You will need to supply your own auth code (its different for each user) and need to be logged in to FB and must have installed Zuma Blitz to use this.

Purpose: I generally use this code to determine people's previous scores before accepting them as a friend, but can also be used to recreate a weekly high score board. Maybe even a (opt-in) world leaderboard. Hmmm...

Example: Major Mouthful (Nov 29-Dec 6) - ZumaBlitzTips (all participating players) - formatted for readability

Farmer's Market Sweep

Soon after - a farmer's market - most items were a dollar per pound, etc. Haven't been in this part of town for a while, since there was no real reason to head down here.

Picked up one tip along the way: That you can soak a bottle of honey in a tub of warm water to decrystallize it instead of discarding the bottle of remaining honey.

I had not enough time this weekend to do a lot of things. Sadly, this includes a good portion of my homework assignments, so that means that I have to sit back from a DCM for next week.

I was only here because one of my friends invited me to this event - I wouldn't have known about this event otherwise. By going, this would be something different from the pictures I saw of this event. In the end, it's not what I anticipated. Really.

Penny Madness

Penny Wars: A fun competition to help raise money. In the realm of Circle K, Penny Wars is serious business, meaning that in order to win, you have to plan beforehand. Or not.

Round 1: Fairly straightforward - see the image to the left.

Round 3: (either I missed a round or they skipped it) - Groups get more aggressive. Golden gate is the only one in the black with the help of a 20 dollar bill. Divisions gang up and flood Golden Gate's jar.

Round 4: All divisions are in the red, with Desert Oasis winning (at -285) and Golden Gate at -21,410 points. SFSU enters rage mode and summons lots and lots of filled penny coin wrappers (they had at least 80 total last time I saw) - and drops them into every other team's jar to even out the playing field (ensuring that Desert Oasis doesn't win the second time.)

Results: $740.32 was raised for Not For Sale. Capital Division (our division) wins. Although the pennies in our division would cut the score close compared to other teams, We had a dollar-filled penny wrapper to ensure the victory.

Winter Came Early

In the middle of FTC, Winter came a lot earlier than expected. What originally was rain turned out into snow (first hours of snow melted as soon as it touched the ground) - ends up with groups singing Christmas songs, making angels, or just playing with it. Including sculpture making.

In The Snackbar Now

I've always seen people inside the snack bars serving food to people, whether it's during a sports game or in the middle of a play (Hazelton ACT Team's Cinders Play comes to mind). I see what it's like to be in one - busy making (and serving) foods and the occasional shortage of supplies.

Going Up...

Nice house. Even though I came a bit late that I couldn't tour any groups, there were some interesting finds.

(UOP Safe Trick or Treat)

Tunneling Trenches

Service Project involves installing water mains (possibly for irrigation purposes) in Auburn Ravine Park. This means digging a mile long trench along the pathway, putting the pipe in, and burying it.

Alternative Title: The Facebook picture version has 'Everyday I'm Shovelin' but not here since I've used that respective meme twice in this imageset.

As a COMP Tutor

Another edition of the 'As a' series, with the other one being a assistant mentor a while back. This one involves helping a friend on a project due later today (Please ignore my screen to the left). Typically the regular tutors for SOECS aren't available on Friday, else they occur during 7pm-11pm.

I wonder if a SI position is open for me at UOP - it could give me the necessary cashflow to attend events.

Folding @ Chambers

More specifically, a folding bike. This, I definitely need. With the problem of theft (UC Berkeley has it worse by people stripping wheels off bikes while they're still chained), having a mobile bike really helps.

No Gavel Gee Dance

Fiona dancing to Gee by Girls' Generation. It was supposed to be 'do something awkward if gavel is stolen' (by person on right), but the video on Facebook has this cut out. Positive reviews and likes ensued.

We Buildin', They Debutin'

Going south to help build a house in a Habitat for Humanity project, we end up doing only one section due to lack of safety measures (the scaffolding is all but flimsy on our side and couldn't support more than two people, and the roof area is more dangerous than you might expect.)

Also: Pacific Preview Day.