A Clockwork Board

Beetle runs like Clockwork here.

It's like a remade version of Major Mouthful. Only the curves are slightly shorter, and you can't use the same technique for double gapping like in the previous island. With gapple sauce, however, you can get more per double gap. And score much higher than you usually would (My PB here is nearing 15 million.)

Ginger Up is now available, where the only thing it does is... well, prevent the hot frog meter from going down, but that's about it. (Note: Just because the hot frog meter doesn't go down doesn't mean the speed of your balls won't either.)

Strategy: A medium sized gap near the end of the curve (or two, if you're fast) should do the trick. Do double tapping after that point, for up to 250k per double gap. Make sure that the curve is two layers deep before gapping, or your gap shot bonus will decrease significantly. Fruit shouldn't be a main goal here - there's at least two spots where you have to go through two layers of balls to get to it.

Recommended Powers: x3, Time, Warp Ball, Gapple Sauce, Spirit Beetle. You may sub Warp Ball for Wild Shot if it works for you.

Black Friday Shopping - including Costco

When it comes to hard drives, Costco apparently sells out 30 minutes before the store officially opened.

Black Friday sales start today. No lines like last year at least in Stockton (I heard about the 'no camping' rule until 10pm), but to compensate stores opened really early. By that, meaning some stores started their sales as early at 8PM - in which waiting lines formed inside the store to get that 100 dollar TV (see note at bottom). Black Friday sales just went from starting overnight... to last night.

I've also gotten Diablo 3 in an attempt to cover the costs. (Note: it's tough but possible to sell your in-game items for real cash) I'll have to try that during Winter Break though. Just a a few weeks away...

TV Recommendations: I typically use Vizio and Sony - more expensive, but also better in picture quality. You might find extremely cheap HDTVs during the sale, but they lack slightly in a few areas.

Additional Hard Drives: Costco had them at 3TB for $100, selling out very quickly due to 'overwhelming demand'. They actually opened before the advertised 9am date - and others got to them first. It's good to see that space isn't an issue anymore (note) - with this many drives the only major issue would be running out of drive letters to mount a drive at. I don't need all the space - redundancy is more of my interest. Placing them in a RAID 1 config would be a much better use for them.

Thanksgiving Board

Not called the 'Stump' board.

The Thanksgiving Board takes a new twist - you've got one curve that around the outside (with a difficult gap possible at the end). On the other one it wraps around itself once making it a double gap. The question of 'how' to reach 10M can leave many people stumped.

There's three additional food items available, but you don't really need to make use of any of them. And there's the new message center, but the daily gifts are typically the least bought items.

Strategy: You need to setup two small gaps near the end of the board. Wait for the balls to come up on the first curve and double tap for max points. It is recommended you get Gapple Sauce (if you don't have any, refill using the Gapper's Delight bundle.)

Recommended Powers: x3, Time, Warp Ball, Gapple Sauce, Spirit Beetle.

The Last Hostess Package

No Twinkies here - guess they sold out quickly.

News spread fast that Hostess was shutting down and won't be selling any more of their goods on the 16th. It wasn't too important for me... until KY mentioned she never had a Twinkie before, and never will, so I put a slight priority to secure as many Hostess foods as possible, and if I found one, to send it over to her... somehow. (I did have a Twinkie once).

I finally made it over to a store that might be selling it on the 20th, four days later. They were right. Shelves of their products were emptied quickly.

I was unable to find Twinkies (the labels suggested they didn't have them in the first place) but I did find a few doughnuts. I considered it close enough, bought the last package, and took an image of the last Hostess product I could ever buy (and eat).

In the Past: There was a Hostess store years back that I visited once, before it was torn down to make way for a new shopping center in the late 2000s.

Davis Turkey Trot: Road Running Through the Rain

Circling round Rainbow City Park (5K path)

Months ago, after volunteering for a 5K race in Elk Grove, I thought - why can't I be one of the runners? It would be much cooler.

However recently I couldn't find any 5K that Capital Division was actively volunteering in. (Note I started practicing running the 5K in July, and all 5Ks they were doing was before this.). I did some research and noticed that Davis CKI was doing this as volunteer work last year (and also considered an interclub), so I chose the Turkey Trot as a run.

As it's an hour away, the question is why? Well, what wouldn't be a better way to impress friends by making record time? Walking up to the booth, signing in, and saying 'as a runner'. lol. The run was months away, so there was no indication that Davis was doing that this year... yet. (at least on their calendar)

October DCM indicated that their next DCM was on the 17th... which was the day of the event. Was there any other volunteer event going on that involved this event for those who weren't going to the DCM? Um... no.* That really cut off my main motivation for going to this race. Though there were other options, like 5K locally, I didn't sense the enjoyment of running back and forth along a downtown road, so I stuck to Davis for the run. And then a few day forecast predicted rain. I was advised to back down for an hours drive, but I didn't train 3 months just for nothing.

Results: 5K Cleared in 32:27.

Based on my performance over the past few weeks coming in at around 38-40 minutes in training runs, I realized that even friends might not be impressed if they saw me finish in that time frame (as I would fall less than the 80th percentile of runners in my age range). In reality, I managed to do better than expected, placing in the top 37% of runners, crossing the finish at 32 and a half minutes - it was also my personal best. I had improved a lot since I started my first (unmeasured) 5k at UOP back in April last year, where I finished in around the 48 minute mark.

Overall, I consider this a good practice run, and keep will on training until Capital Division actually happens to for another 5K, at a race where it really matters. I was not the only one in this race, as another member from Capital - Bobby Miyashiro - was also in this and finished it in 23, but whether I can beat that - only future runs will tell.

Playlist: My playlist was adapted to sunny conditions. But it's raining hard, so I can't just plug in that playlist containing Cotton Eye Joe by Rednex and some other songs. I had to change my playlist. So I set my iPod on Shuffle and the following songs came up, which seemed appropriate:

Eric Redd - Breathe (Albert Castillo Clean Radio Mix)
AN-2 - Road Through The Rain
Skrillex - Rock N' Roll (Will Take You to the Mountain)
Natasha Bedingfield - These Words (Ford Radio Mix)
The Chemical Brothers - Under the Influence
Rob Dougan - Clubbed To Death
The Prodigy - One Love (Edit)
Kesha - We R Who We R
Celldweller - The Last Firstborn

LOOT: The Guide

The only difference between an easy game and Nintendo Hard is the quality of your loot.

This guide covers LOOT The Game on Armor Games. As in, I don't know what came first - was there an animation or something?

Objective: Get to the front of the train and take out Wooly. You have to attack the train cars (as well as turrets) in order to advance. Did I forget to mention, survive? Pick up loot and upgrade your elephant (must be dragged quickly in realtime).

Strategy: Three types of weapons are present in this game (looks not matter much):

• Swords deal large amounts of damage up front, but you need to get within melee range. Effective against blue shields.
• Guns have constant dps and hits their target instantly. Effective against orange shields.
• Wands do burst damage and fire off tons of projectiles but they take a while to reach its target. Effective against green shields.

Loot can increase any of these attributes (the higher quality an item is the more attributes it has):

• Damage controls how much base dps that weapon can do. You'll obviously want a weapon with higher dps.
• Armor reduces the damage you would normally take. An elephant with 200 armor will reduce incoming damage by 200. This is effective for survival early on, but gets useless later.
• Strength increases sword damage by a percentage.
• Dexterity increases gun damage by a percentage.
• Intelligence increases wand damage by a percentage.
• Health increases overall health by a percentage. It is mandatory to have at least two decent pieces of equipment that increases this attribute. Without any bonuses, launchers will one shot you late game (and they're almost undodgable with eight of them onscreen)
• Gold Drops increases how much gold appears. It's used for item slots (as if you need them) and especially quick healing.
• Rare Item Drops increases the frequency and quality of rare items. Your goal is to get the most legendary items equipped.

You'll want to focus on dodging stuff while getting items that have upgrades in this order: Rare Drops, Dexterity (or STR or INT, depending on what weapon you have equipped) - this is VERY IMPORTANT for high dps, Health, and then a Weapon Upgrade. Once properly upgraded you can take down cars in a matter of seconds. Get going. A playthrough can be seen using this link.

Gold Mine Board

Now for a real change in board design. Despite the (internal) name of the board, there is no gold present here (unless you perceive the base under the frog as one), and balls are essentially rolling on rails. Curve clears are hard due to the tunnels on both ends (since hot frog explosions can't get balls into tunnels) but it's still short enough that two hot frog shots will clear a curve when it rolls out again.

You'll want to resort to gaps and Gapple Sauce for this one... providing you stocked up on it the week prior. Don't worry, you have until this Wednesday or so before they're no longer buyable. (This includes Pyro Popcorn, but you shouldn't be using it for any decent high score.)

Despite the tunnels suggesting they can pack quite a few balls in there before they come out, the tunnels' length are actually two balls long - they teleport to the other side of the tunnel with no explanation.

Note: Next week's board post will be delayed until November 23.

Strategy: Double tap on both ends, but be aware that the balls must be almost near the second tunnel on either side before fruit spawns. Double gaps are possible, but both gaps must be small to receive the full double gap value.

Recommended Powers: x3, Time, Epic Fruit, Gapple Sauce, Spirit Eagle. You may also use Spirit Beetle if you want.

Gapple Sauce recommended, but they will disappear sometime this week - stock up on it. Else, use Combo Corn (if you have it) or Candy Lei, the former won't give you any single balls.