Parentheticals

April 9th 2011, a very good year (almost as old as レヤ  ちゃん ) We just opened the cheese that we made on April 9th. It is the softest hard cheese that we have made yet. It has a good Italian flavor (it is strong enough that you could grate it and put it over pasta, but not so hard that you have to. I am going to try a cheeseburger with it - I think that that will be super tasty). We have not used all of the recent feta yet, so I we are planning a chard casserole tonight to use it up - here's to hoping that the chard is not to bitter (we let it grow pretty big). I have printed up the cards for the card game, and cut them out now. Hopefully I will get to use them soon to test it out :). Also, I am thinking that it will be a Polynesian themed game. If anyone comes up with a good name for it I will reward them with one lb of cheese of their choice (or a half lb of a pre-made hard cheese (so that you can taste it first to see if you like it)). The MSV is mov...

Over the three day weekend, I have play tested the new card game. We rewrote the rules almost entirely, and rewrote most of the cards. The notes that I have posted can be found  here  and  here . You can download a docx file that contains the newest version of the cards in a printable state here  Google Docs fails to render it correctly, so don't print from Google docs. Also, My parmesan cracked since I did not turn it over enough. :( This means that I will have to watch it carefully to make sure that it doesn't develop mold. The other cheeses look good (and I am in fact overdue for opening up a cheese - so perhaps I will report on that soon.) The feta came out pretty good. It has a nice flavor. Only one more change needs to happen for me to declare my MSV to be out of alpha: I have to make real time updates. I have put it off for so long, but I know that the user wants it. :/ We gathered apes over the weekend from an old couple's tree. Amy talked with t...

Apparently the new fuse that I put in to my cheese cooler couldn't handle the hot temperatures recently. It blew out. I am now planning on getting a bigger fuse, and putting the cheese cooler into a better ventilated place. Fortunately, Alison saved all the cheese :). I am also thinking of making a card game. As of yet it is not anywhere near ready for publication, but it seems to be moving along. I keep hitting snags in my MSV. The final alpha release might be farther off that I would hope. I made three cheeses over the past week: parmesan, feta, and ricotta. The ricotta split into three cheeses of its own, cheese with fine herbs, ricotta, and dessert ricotta. I plan on ageing the parmesan 9 months, the feta 30 days, and the ricotta will be eaten on crackers and in ravioli. I also turned an old sock into a new seat cover for my bike. I am riding in style now :) Finally, this Saturday is our next play session of 42 Earths, and this Sunday is Danie...

Yesterday evening I got off the bus and walked toward the place where I parked my bike. I didn't notice that something was amiss until I unlocked my bike, and saw that the knit cap that I use as a seat cover had been stolen. Since the average temperature this week is in the 90s, I have to assume that the thief didn't actually need the hat. It had been sitting on my bike seat for almost a year, so I would also assume that the thief did not think: 'that is a nice looking hat... I want it'. The hat couldn't have fallen off - it has never fallen off before, and is very securely attached (sometimes I check it to see if it is still attached well). I doubt that the thief knew me and had a personal vendetta against me, so that leaves one thing that I can think of. The theft must have been a random act of maliciousness. Probably some teenage kid thought that it would be funny if I came back and my hat was gone.

On Friday we went to the DI and found a wine cooler for $10. It didn't work, but a quick google search revealed that that model of wine cooler has a known issue with a fuse blowing out. We got it to store our cheeses as they age (it can control the temperature pretty exactly, and should not be too expensive to run since it is fairly small). After borrowing Loren's soldering iron I was able to replace the fuse, and for just about $11 we have a working cheese cooler. I also have been working on the MSV fairly heavily recently. I just posted a new version here . The last 42 Earths play session went well (I was hoping to get farther, but they were not quite sure what they wanted to do, so they took a while deciding where to go after the firefight in the train). They ended up going to the government and reporting Diablo's recent activities. They got hired on as information gatherers, and offered equipment and funds to try to figure out what alien information/equipment Di...

We have returned from our trip. It was fun. We arrived Friday night at the cabin and I got to play some bang and star wars epic duels with the guys (and Sheila). Saturday we went hiking up a river and saw some waterfalls (baby Andrea enjoyed playing in the water a lot). Sunday we had a testimony meeting and roasted marshmallows. Monday we came home. Our house was pretty hot when we arrived home, and I smelt something funny. After walking around to try and figure out what it was, I remembered that I had not put the cheeses into the refrigerator (usually we have to house much cooler, so they can age normally, but this was crazy super ageing, and I think that it might have done some damage). I opened up one of them immediately, and it was bad. The other ones do not look bad, and I put them in the fridge. I intend to open them up tonight and see 'what has tobe done'. Hopefully they are still good. We have another play session coming up - I am not quite prepared for it yet. Hopefull...

Mason quit playing our role playing game (not too surprising, but sad nonetheless.) Our third session went well. They went to visit The gang Diablo to try to sell info (in the form of 3d computer models of the interior of the dimension ship) to them. Xander was offered a scientist position at Diablo by Blaire (the representative of Diablo ). Xander stalled for time again, and said that he would think about it, and then come back later. As he walked out, Zhengi noticed that he was being tailed. Quickly Xander was notified via text, and then he tried to lose the gang member by hopping onto a train. Zhengi snuck up behind the gang member, and as they entered the train, he attacked. Talk about a cliff-hanger ;) My MSV is going along nicely. The Atlas is cranking away, and the derivative finding was successful. I now have user input fractals fully available, and I am working on user input Newton fractals next. If that all works out, I will try to figure out a better system for decl...