Sacramento Zoo Zoom: ZooRunner

Surprisingly enough, Taffe can run eight minute miles.*

Event for ZooZoom - a variety of different marathons for people with all ages, including a 5K and 10K marathon.

We're busy working with Key Clubbers from nearby high schoolers and holding up various motivational signs for people to keep them going, until both races are over.

Action Scene: One person collapsed to his knees near our position - and all of us rush over to the scene in no time.

Fun Fact: The first runner for the 5K came by at the 15 minute mark, but my stopwatch was off by a minute and a half so I said to nearby friends that the first person crossed the finished time in 15 minutes 2 seconds. (I later verified this)

Additional Feature: Volunteers and runners get into the Zoo for free after the race is over. (Us volunteers, however, do not get the privilege of free food.) At least we enjoyed the experience of flamingos and giraffes.

Blokus Mindgames

Feature in Alex Ung's house: Blokus. I've heard about the game before but never actually played it - until now.

General Directions: You need to place down more pieces on the board than anyone else. You can only place down pieces which are diagonally adjacent to your existing pieces, and they cannot be touching next to each other.

Strategy Used: I tend to focus on not what might be the next good move, but rather a few steps ahead to know what pieces I might be using up, figuring how (in one or two moves) to reach certain squares to expand my options, etc.

Additional Feature: Learned about Perler Beads, the source for both a fundraising initiative for Sac State CKI as well as a distinction for Sac State on their nametags during DCON. I will personally get a set of these beads and use them to build a few things later on in life...

Sac State EOTY Banquet: Pinning and Pieing

This is a one of at least a three part series of the final events this year at CKI. Sac State is the first one in the weekend long series of events (at least for UOP).

The Relay for Life events limited the audience to mostly Sac State and UOP people, as well as a handful of other students.

Sac State EOTY Banquet consists of the following subevents:

• New Member Installation Pinning Ceremony. It's apparent that one does not simply pin (a) Princess.

• Vinh's EOTYB Dare
• Old e-board members step down, new ones step up. The old board receives a pin to award them as a past E-Board officer.
• Words from the new President (Vinh Ke Ton)
• Officer pieing. as seen in this video:

Note: Bianca Posada (secretary) couldn't make it to the event due to family-related stuff, therefore she is immune to (possibly) being pied.

UOP CKI EOTY Banquet: Hagoo?

There were three icebreaker minigames during the end of year banquet at UOP - one being ipod wars, two being Hagoo, and the third being a drawing contest. (What is hagoo? Look it up on Google. Or on Urban dictionary...)

Minigame: Hagoo: Form two teams of people and get a person from each team. Walk over from one end to the other after saying 'Hagoo', staring at the person at the other end, and don't smile. Some people may find it easy, others, difficult.

I was surprised that Davis arrived due to a previous conversation from a friend there that there was an event over there the same day that would prevent Davis from attending, but still happy to see those that came.

Post-Event: Links released as part of images over to blog commentary prove rather ineffective. Also, it appears that it's better to focus posts that were intended for CKI members towards a more general audience, so I'll go ahead and make all the changes as mentioned in my closing statement.

Solitaire Blitz + Tips

Video Replay of this.

Solitaire Blitz is a timed card game that tends to play more like Golf than Solitaire, but you get three decks to play cards with and the game tends to progress very quickly especially with the ability to use powers (which require silver, which is obtained by collecting treasures at the end of the game).

Tips:

• Extra time might be helpful, but you are confident you can finish your game before the timer runs out, you should switch your power with another one if you don't need the extra 30 seconds because it doesn't count towards your time bonus at the end (if you full clear). The time bonus is 1200 points per second by the way.
• Try to focus on unlocking the draw piles as soon as possible to create more opportunities to create longer runs.
• Try not to make any illegal moves - it both resets your combo and deprives you of an accuracy bonus (10k points) after winning the game.
• Focus priority on stacks with more cards - if you even out the piles you most likely won't be stuck with a single pile left which limits your options (and you will most likely lose).
• If you're going for a high combo, try to avoid situations like 3-of-a-kind (which awards 3000 points) - you'll most likely have to flip new cards from the deck, ending your combo. Royal family (5000 points) is a bit better.
• Additional jokers are extremely helpful for making large combos, this should be the last thing you play if you're out of valid moves.
• Use starfish, mine, or depth charge if you can't make any more moves. They can safely send cards over to the decks and open more moves without breaking your combo.
• The mine doesn't destroy cards but sends cards to the piles instead which might mean more matches. The same goes for depth charge.
• Although Mine is generally used to clear a row of cards at anytime, they are extremely effective when used when you have one card left, and especially when you have a high combo. It added 100K+ to my score as seen above.
• Although full clears are partially based on luck and more on how you play your cards, you will need a lot of luck to get 50-60 card runs. This luck is generally improved by way of powers.

Additional Stuff:

Treasure Loot List (as of April 9, 2012, missing a few rare loot entries)

Solitaire Blitz Gifting Guide

This will probably be one of the useless-useful guides I will write up, however I think this is kind of important to send/silver quickly without having to play lots of games for small amounts of silver (and by that, an average of 1500 per game if you play enough times)

TIP: MASS SEND SILVER COB to friends. (or Pearl), at 300 silver per gift. The rest is trash (or less than maximum), as essentially sending the following items to them gives your friends the following silver:

(Updated with gifts that were sendable as of July 8)

Scallop: 20
Sand Dollar: 25
Fish Eggs: 25
Snorkel: 150
Mussel: 25
Sea Glass: 25
Bottle of Rum: 300
Shark Jaw: 200
Crab: 150
Conch Shell: 40
Starfish: 200
Crab (purple): 200
Feather: 30
Pearl: 300
Spear Tip: 250
Lost Letter: 200
Compass: 250
Wooden Buckler: 250
Sea Cucumber: 250
Coffee Beans: 300
Horseshoe: 200
Cannonball: 250

Like Zuma Blitz, you can still use the fortune cookie method of sending players multiple gifts. The amount of gifts that players need to play a full power game here are around the same as a player who uses full powers+beetles per game on ZB (which is 35 of them).

Scoring in Diamond Dash

The scoring for the game Diamond Dash appears to be very simple unlike the more complex scoring mechanics covered in Zuma Blitz. They are as follows:

• 3 or 4 matches: 100 points per block destroyed.
• 5+ matches: 200 points per block destroyed.
• (blazing speed) 400 points per block destroyed, if you make a match adjacent blocks are also removed.
• Diamond: removes blocks from the column it was in and the bottom row, 800 points per block removed.
• Bomb Powerup: 600 points per block destroyed, removes adjacent blocks as well (2 if blazing speed)

Essentially: Unlike other blitz games, where they are mainly based on skill (Zuma Blitz being Gap Shots, Solitaire Blitz being ways to get a high combo, and Bejeweled Blitz ways to get Lightning Powerups), this game favors fast people who are also accurate as well, as score is based on how fast you can click on groups of blocks.