The Ankh-Morpork Times

Spaktekel Medieval Festival 2011

2011-06-27T13:36:00.005-04:00

Three years ago was the last time I attended the Spaktekel. So I was surprised to learn that this year it would take place in on a Castle in Grisons. Fortunately it was very easy to get there by public transport.

We arrived at 5pm, just after a heavy rainstorm blew over. So it was markedly cooler than we expected, after all it was supposed to be sunny and warm!

The first band to play after our arrival was Seabass a Swiss band playing "Balkan beats 'n Melodies". Their music was catchy and encouraged us to dance along.

Next were Cumulo Nimbus a Renaissance Metal Band from Germany. Even though their music sounded cool, I couldn't warm to the vocalists and so I wasn't too disappointed when their show was over.

What then followed was an impromptu acoustic concert by members of Des Königs Halunken and other musicians. And it was fantastic. The guys had never played in that combination before and even exchanged instruments between songs, nevertheless it sounded very professional :).

And then it was finally time for the highlight of the day, Des Königs Halunken played their 5-year anniversary concert. Exactly 5 years and one day ago they played their first gig at the Spaktekel. To celebrate this they vowed to make all their speeches in Swiss German, in addition they regularly toasted to the audience with Vodka and other liquors, which definitely didn't make it easier for them to play! Thus it wasn't surprising that fun was the first priority and fun we all had. As a special present to the constant fans the Halunken played "Herr Mannelig", one of their oldest songs, which no longer features in their regular program. After two hours the show was over and everyone was relieved to get a break ;).

With a nice fireshow the evening ended.

Overall, the Spaktekel was a great success despite the mixed weather. I'll definitely consider returning next year :)

My pictures can be found in my web album.

Middle Earth Festival returns in 2012

2011-06-08T01:18:00.003-04:00

After an absence of 5 years the famous Middle Earth Festival returns to Leuk in 2012. I myself have attended three times so far, and every time was tremendous fun. Let's take a look back.

2003

I didn't have a clue was I was getting into when I signed up for the 3rd Middle Earth Festival in 2003. The reason for going was my good friend Ronny, who is a huge Lord of the Rings fan, didn't want to go alone.
I most clearly remember the workshops featuring fighting skills such as Sword Fighting and Archery, but also the concerts by An Lar and Saltatio Mortis in the evening. We had such great fun at the concerts that we blocked the bands from leaving the stage! Only after Saltatio Mortis appealed saying they had to travel another 300 kilometres tonight, we appeased and gave them a rest ;).
All in all it was a wonderful experience.
Unfortunately for this review, the Middle Earth Festival happened before I started blogging and before I acquired a digital camera, thus there are no further posts and pics to link back to.

2005

When I learned that the Middle Earth Festival would take place again, I didn't hesitate to sign up. This time I even signed up alone, knowing that there are so many wonderful and friendly people there, that I wouldn't feel left alone.
The day before it all started I joined the Caradhras expedition, for a day-long trek with beautiful summer weather over the Gemmi pass.
This time my focus for workshops shifted from fighting to dancing (Irish Dancing, Medieval Dancing, etc.) and I didn't regret this choice, because they all were great fun!
But let's take a look what I had to say about it at the time:
Mittelerdefest 5
Pics from Mittelerdefest 5

2007

Signing up for 2007's Middle Earth Festival was a no-brainer ;), after two such wonderful events, I just had to be there.
Same time as last year I joined the Caradhras trek a day before the festival. However, this time we were not so lucky with the weather and ran into a snow storm!!! Remember, it was the 5th of July! We all made it through and still have fond memories of our heroic feat :)
Fortunately the weather improved for the rest of the Festival. Having loved the dance workshops in 2005, I signed up for more dancing in 2007 and again it was great fun.
But let's take a look what I had to say about it at the time:
Caradhras
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3

Conclusion

With great joy I learned that the Middle Earth Festival will take place again in 2012 and immediately marked it in my agenda :). I can't wait to meet all those wonderful people again :)

More information about the Middle Earth Festival 2012 can be found on their official homepage.

Bali

2011-04-14T13:01:00.002-04:00

We just returned from a fabulous vacation in Bali! At first we spent two weeks Scuba Diving in the North-East, where we stayed at AlamBatu, a beautiful resort.

Bali Alam Batu 2011

Then we headed to Ubud, where we rented a car, a tiny Suzuki Jimny, and drove all the way to the North-West to Pemuteran. There we stayed in the Pondok Sari Resort for three days to do some more Scuba Diving. One day we visited Menjangan Island, a national park close-by, and one day we perused local dive sites.

Bali Pemuteran 2011

Then we spent two days driving around enjoying the views and the rain, after all it was the end of the rainy season ;). We were very glad when we finally arrived in Ubud, because our car broke down twice on the way...

All in all it was a great adventure with lots of fun and relaxation :)

Finally, here are some non-diving pictures from Bali

Bali 2011

Medieval Festival at Castle Liebegg

2010-09-06T04:49:00.002-04:00

Two weeks ago a medieval Festival was held at Castle Liebegg. Since we had other plans for Saturday we decided to visit Friday evening.

Just before we approached the entrance area, we were asked by a charming young man if we would like to participate in a medieval competition, it would only take 30 minutes and involve tasks such as Archery. As a reward we would receive two free tickets.

We'll it turned out harder than it sounded, the competition was composed of ten tasks such as Archery, tug-of-war, barrel rolling, obstruction course and many more. Here are some of the highlights:

Fortunately we had a great team and lots of fun. Unfortunately it was already dark by the time we finally made it up to the castle, so we weren't able to look at all the market stalls and activities. We did stay for the night concert by Faun, which took place next to a beautiful cave in the middle of the forest. But by now we were so tired and so distracted by Faun's light-show, an acoustic set would have been much more appropriate to the location, that we left after half the time had passed.

Thus we decided to return on Sunday and check out the other events. Which gave us also time to chat with friends from the LARP scene.

All in all, the Medieval Festival at Castle Liebegg was a wonderful event, and I hope it will be repeated in the future.

More information about the event
All pictures

SOLA 2010

2010-07-29T01:28:00.002-04:00

This Spring I participated again in the SOLA Team Relay Race with a team from Zühlke. It was again a great event and I could even improve my time from two years ago, where I ran the same course.

The reason for this late blog post is that I only recently got hold of the pictures and here they are:

Spectaculum, Weil am Rhein

2010-07-03T07:17:00.003-04:00

Two weeks ago I visited the Mittelalterlich Phantasie Spectaculum in Wheil am Rhein. The weather was great and we had a fantastic day. A highlight was Des Königs Halunken, which was their first time as part of the Spectaculum.

Some Pictures can be found in my gallery.

Road Trip to Belgium

2010-05-04T15:19:00.003-04:00

It all started with a concert. Alexandra wanted to see a show of Within Temptation's latest tour. Unfortunately, they only played in Holland and Belgium. After synchronizing our calendars we decided to go to Antwerpen for the show. And since it is so far we might as well enjoy ourselves and see some more things on the way.

Our first stop was Cologne (Germany), because Subway to Sally was giving one of their rare acoustic concerts there (we would have missed the show in Switzerland because of our trip). And it was well worth the small detour, they played an awesome gig which lasted almost 2.5 hours! Thanks to our friends we got an address of a cool game store in the neighborhood. I was overwhelmed by their selection and even saw some of the games which I painstakingly imported from the US years earlier! Obviously, I couldn't leave the store without "some" souvenirs ;).

Next was Brussels, a must see according to the guidebooks. Well the first thing we saw was the famous traffic congestion, which led us to leave the highway and take the less traveled route "cross-country". That led us through some very charming towns. Anyways, we weren't too thrilled by Brussels itself, too many tourists not that many beautiful buildings, and so we left after only two hours.

After a couple of hours driving we stopped in a nearby town and hit a gold-mine. The town was Mechelen and absolutely beautiful. Almost no tourists, lots of things to see and amazing food :)

The next day we reached Antwerpen, the original reason for our journey. After checking into a stunningly charming bed and breakfast, we made a short trip through the city visiting the shopping district and the old town center. Within Temptation's concert was mainly acoustic, which I liked a lot, with a couple of rockier songs.

On we went to Bruges, a city I wanted to visit because I loved the movie In Bruges, and we were not disappointed. Even though there were many tourists the city was big enough to get away from the crowds and enjoy the feel of the place. A must-see if you are in Belgium!

Overnight we stayed in Oudenaarde, a small town with a nice city center, but not much else.

On our long way back we made a detour through Luxembourg to visit Vianden, a small town with a castle. The drive accross Luxembourg was stunning and one of the highlights of the whole trip! Awesome landscapes and forests!

Our last stop was Colmar in the Alsace region, a charming medieval city, which serves delicious Tarte Flambée.

Overall a fantastic trip which will long remain in my fond memories.

All pictures can be found in my web album.

Sinfath II: Pictures

2010-04-18T11:21:00.001-04:00

This weekend I attended a Live-Action-Roleplay organized by the Order of the Sinfath.

My pictures can be found on Picasa.

Leipzig

2009-12-07T16:16:00.002-05:00

December is always a good time to visit Leipzig, because it is this time of the year that Christian von Aster's famous Christmas Reading takes place. This time it was under the Motto "Buchstabensuppenkasperletheater" (loosely translated: Letter Soup Punch & Judy Show") and the decoration was aptly chosen.

Christian von Aster's big entrance

The reading was a blast even though our dear artist was labouring under a severe cold. I of course used this opportunity to complete my collection with books and accessories which were released while I was away. At the end I had my bags were filled to the brim ;).

On Sunday I had the chance to accompany Christian to his reading in Chemnitz and thus I got two events for the price of one! ;)

All pictures from Leipzig can be seen in my webalbum.

Riedhburg XVIII - Rights and Servants (Rechte und Knechte)

2009-11-23T16:17:00.002-05:00

Last weekend was the follow up to 2 Weddings and a Funeral, the first peasant LARP featuring the four families from Tannenbüren:

Kellermeisters are well known for their wine, liquor and other alcohol production.
Roggensingers focus on farming
Waidmanns forte is hunting and tending to the woods
Webers are the richest family in town and are mostly merchants and cloth dealers.

A lot has happened since that eventful Thanksgiving Feast. A war has started between Riedbhburg and neighbouring Falkenburg and many of Tannenbüren's sons were drafted and lost. Another casualty was Arnold Roggensinger, the previous steward of Tannenbüren. Now, as it is custom, it was time for Tannenbüren to elect someone else. This of course warranted another big meeting at the Roggensinger's house.

But politics wasn't the only thing on the agenda. The Bachelor society of Tannenbüren planned to celebrate their reunion with (illegal) gambling and parties. The women on the other hand were scheming to plan advantageous marriages for their unwed daughters and sons. This of course didn't please the Bachelor's at all ;).

After some long internal debates the final applicants for the position as steward, were announced and were asked to present their Agenda:

Gotfried Kellermeister (myself) wanted to strengthen the village by focusing on traditional values and bridging old grudges. His motto “Yes we can” (or as it was in Swiss-German “Ja mir chönd” was well received, mostly by Kellermeister family members, but in the end his experience in dealing with the last crisis was also a beneficial factor.
Urs Waidmann wanted to abolish the old traditions and introduce shared wealth and possessions. I don't have to mention twice, that once his true agenda was revealed, he stood little chance ;)
Gerhard Weber mainly wanted to strengthen his own position in the village.
Waldemar Waidmann was all for hard work to overcome difficulties, however, he seemed to depend too much on his mother Annerös.

At the end of the day I was elected with a fair margin in front of Waldemar Waidmann.

People were also very active on the marriage front and so we could celebrate four marriages, bonding the families Kellermeister and Waidmann as well as Weber and Waidmann.

Although the Weber's turned out to be the sore looser when Agnes Waidmann eloped with their farm servant!

Early the next morning Baron Hannibal arrived to give his blessing to the election. Unfortunately, he was in the mood for painting and thus the village first had to pose for an idyllic farm picture.

The End - for now ;)

It was a terrific event with lots of laughter, intrigues food and of course alcohol ;). All pictures can be found in my webalbum.

Lots of Dancing and Literature

2009-10-27T02:47:00.002-04:00

Last weekend I kept myself busy ;).

Friday night I attended a Céili, that's a traditional Gaelic/Irish social dance in Bern. There were about 150 people present and it was simply brilliant.

Saturday, I first wen to a Conforama to scout for a new couch and wardrobe and I did indeed find both in abundance. About four wardrobes suited my tastes and that after I have only found one in Fly, Ikea and TopTip. I should have gone to Conforama from the start! ;).

Home again I remembered that it was the Long Night of Short Stories. Browsing through the program, I noticed that most events were already over, but then I spotted something that sounded interesting. And so I ended up at the Razzia im Seefeld. This bar and place for culture was originally opened as a cinema in the 1920s with breathtaking wand murals. Over the years these have unfortunately been covered over but now it has been softly restored and some of it's old glory is shown again.
But back to topic. Joey Goebel read from his new novel Commonwealth and it was hilarious! After the reading I couldn't stop myself and bought two books to get them signed ;).

Following the reading was a party with tunes selected by Joey, who is a former member of a small punk band, and so I ended up dancing late into the night again. ^^

On Sunday I almost overslept. It being the end of daylight saving time, I dutifully changed the time on my cellphone during the night that it would wake me on time. Unfortunately, the cellphone then changed the time on its own, which meant that it was now running one hour behind! Luckily, I woke up on my own, checked the cellphone and heard the church bells at the same time discovering the discrepancy and getting up in time to travel to Lenzburg.

In Lenzburg on the castle I attended another Medieval Dance course led by Andreas Rutschmann. I've visited his courses before and they were fun and instructive as always, even though I had danced most of the pieces before.

All in all it was a fantastic weekend and I'm looking forward to the next Céili, reading by Joey Goebel and Medieval Dance course. However, I wouldn't be mad if they weren't all on the same weekend! ;)

Gallery updated

2009-10-15T14:51:00.003-04:00

I finally found time to update the gallery of my homepage with all the albums hosted by picasa.

This makes the Gallery your main place of call if you're looking for my pictures :)

Wunderbaum LARP

2009-10-11T14:39:00.002-04:00

Finally back in Switzerland I could resume one of my favorite hobbies: LARP-ing ^^. I signed up as an NPC (non-player character) at my first LARP in 17 months, since I wasn't sure whether I'd have enough time to prepare a new character in time. As an NPC I was assigned to the Border Patrol. They had observed strange people in the woods and have suffered severe losses recently, thus our captain sent a cry for help which was answered by 45 adventurers and various other characters.

Soon after everyone arrived, a dark magician entered the scene trying to scare the players away from his land. Subsequently, we at the border post suffered severely for this and we were attacked multiple times and the four guards were regularly outnumbered.

I suffered a bad leg wound in one of the attacks.

To make things worse, we were hit by a course which subsequently drained our powers until we no longer could wear any armor or wield two-handed weapons. Fortunately, we were able to uncover hints for a cure and by the end of the day, the players could destroy the curse and restore our strength.

At night everyone was vastly relieved and thus celebrations were in order all around. I joined the Landsknecht at their tavern.

The Landsknecht convincing a Guest to part with his mead!

But the celebrations were too early, and the evil magician made his presence known the next morning, which led to an epic, although rather short, battle in which the magician was vanquished.

Despite a short spell of bad weather, it was raining for most of Saturday, we did have lots of fun and I enjoyed meeting many old friends and making some new ones!

The Border Patrol in its entirety

More pictures can be found in my gallery.

Goodbye USA

2009-10-04T11:54:00.002-04:00

After three thrilling days in Las Vegas it was time to return to Switzerland. But first I had to drive back to Phoenix. That's 300 miles or 5 hours 40 minutes: Not an ordinary one-day distance for a guy from Switzerland! ;)

Thus I left Vegas early in the morning and made a pit-stop at Hoover Dam to take the full tour. I already stopped at Hoover Dam on my way to Vegas, but alas I was too late for the tour then. The tour first took us to the Power Station, which was quite interesting and then led us into the Dam itself. This was terrific. We had a small group and an extremely knowledgeable guide, she practically grew up on site and knows every nook-and-cranny! At one of the stops inside the dam we could look out through a ventilation grill and take an awesome picture of the dam itself.

Hoover Dam as seen from a ventilation grill in the middle

Driving the rest of the way back was very long, especially because I ran into rush-hour traffic in Phoenix itself, but I managed to keep my dinner appointment :).

I had no clue where to stay for the last night, so I headed towards the airport and kept looking for a motel. Fortunately, I found one after only a short bit of driving around. And the best part? It was just next to a gas station! Thus I could fuel up my car early next morning and arrive at the airport well in time.

Since I'm fond of statistics I wanted to share the following, my distances covered in cars in the last four weeks in North America:
2'236km in Pennsylvania, New York and Canada.
1'880km in Arizona and Nevada.

The return trip, with a stop at Washington DC, was very uneventful and I arrived in Zurich on time. And this time my luggage arrived completely as well.

Breezing through Customs I immediately spotted a very special welcoming committee: Michaela, waited for me in full fantasy-armor! :)

My welcome committee

Las Vegas

2009-09-28T06:02:00.002-04:00

Arriving a day earlier as planned in Las Vegas, I first headed Downtown. After all, I had two nights booked on the strip and thus decided to check out the Fremont Street Experience.

I was lucky to find a moderately priced hotel just around the corner from Fremont Street.

Fremont Street hosts some of the oldest Casinos in Vegas. To compete with the Mega-Resorts on the Strip they covered part of Fremont Street with a huge screen. During the evening hours music videos are shown there every hour. While I was there I saw American Pie, a Tribute to Queen and a Tribute to Kiss. This was very impressive. I also tried my luck at the slot machines. However, it wasn't meant to be and I left after twenty minutes, once my five dollars were spent.

In addition to the video show, Fremont Street also had a stage where an Army Band played popular Rock songs.

Fremont Street Experience

Day 2 - Exploring the Strip

The next day I relocated to the Excalibur, one of the Mega-Resorts on the Strip which chose medieval times as a theme.

After settling in I ventured to explore the Strip. The Excalibur is situated at the South End and thus I started heading north, checking out the Resorts on the way. My ultimate goal was the Stratosphere, the highest building in Vegas; because I heard that on its top one could ride four high-thrill rides. On the way, I made a short detour through Planet Hollywood's Miracle Mile Shops and witnessed the Indoor Thunderstorm, which is very bizarre ;).

The Strip is much longer than I expected, but I finally arrived at my destination. Fortunately, there weren't too many people so I didn't have to queue up to get to the observation deck or to join the rides. The rides were ok, but not really something I would have done multiple times a day.

On the way back I checked out the rollercoaster in the Sahara. It was also rather short, so not much to write home about.

Then it was time for the big highlight of the evening: The Blue Man Group. I had organized tickets that very morning at one of the many half-prize ticket booths. The show was incredible. A mixture of light, sound, comedy, information and art which was thrilling to behold. It was definitely worth the price of admission.

My next stop was Treasure Island and its outdoor Pirate Show with two full ships and some pyrotechnic. A must-see if you are in Vegas.

On my way back to the hotel I stopped to observe the exploding Volcano at the Mirage and the Fountains at the Bellagio.

Excalibur by Night

Day 3 - Looking for Sharks

Paying five dollars extra a day as a resort fee, I thought I should at least check out the swimming pool, which was huge! Or rather, they had three different pools. One of which with short water slides! Unfortunately, my day was packed again so I didn't linger for long.

First on the program was a trip south to explore the last Resorts on the Strip. So I walked through the Luxor, which is very impressive both inside and outside and onwards to Mandalay Bay. There I took some time to visit their Aquarium. That was very interesting, especially because every visitor received an “Audio Wand", which played short sequences about the different exhibits. The highlight was of course the big shark tank located in a shipwreck.

Heading back North I went to the shopping mile at Cesar's Palace, to acquire the latest iPod Nano in the Apple Store. Nearby I stumbled into a breathtaking gallery and ended up buying the book to the exhibition.

Then it was already time again to go back to the hotel. On the way I rode the rollercoaster in New York New York. The best one I saw in Vegas, but still a very rough ride.

The highlight for this evening was The Tournament of Kings: A medieval dinner show at the Excalibur. I was seated in the Dragon section, so we could cheer for the bad guy. Unfortunately, he lost in the end :(. Nevertheless, they did an excellent job in delivering a good show and I enjoyed it a lot.

Next was a show of The Sin City Comedy Club. It was a fun event, but I was a bit distraught by two things. First, by my neighbours who ended up talking amongst themselves more than paying attention to the show. And second, the fact that every comedian repeatedly pointed out that it was all Comedy and shouldn't be taken seriously. Come on, that's supposed to be self-evident!

Even though it was a long day, I felt like going out to party. So I headed over to the New York New York and paid the Coyote Ugly a visit. That was fun. There were lots of girls dancing on the bar and some of the songs they played were actually good.

Visiting Vegas was definitely worth it, even though I ended up spending a lot of money on entertainment, food and shopping ;).

Luxor

All pictures from Las Vegas can be found in my webalbum.

Arizona - The Grand Canyon

2009-09-22T05:05:00.005-04:00

Williams and the Grand Canyon

Williams is a tiny little hamlet which has two distinguishing features. First, it is the start of the Grand Canyon Railway and second, it is on the historic Route 66 and has a well-preserved city center.

As you might have guessed, I took the Grand Canyon Railway to the Grand Canyon. That was a very nice trip, both because we could enjoy nice views of the landscape and we received a lot of information about the railway as well as on-board entertainment.

The Grand Canyon was truly impressive and a little bit frightening. After all there were many places where it went straight down and there was nothing to keep you from falling off!

On the way back our train was stopped by train robbers! Fortunately, the Marshal was tight in pursuit and guaranteed us that justice will be done ;).

Grand Canyon National Park

Sunset Crater

The next day I backtracked to Flagstaff to visit Sunset Crater National Monument. Sunset Crater is a volcano which erupted around 1100AD (in geological terms: yesterday) and around it are magnificent lava flows and semi-barren landscapes.

Lava Flow in front of Sunset Crater

Just next doors is the Wupatki National Monument. This area contains multiple well-preserved ruins from the Sinagua Native Americans. They built their homes out of clay and often leveraged natural rock formations as walls for parts of their buildings. A very impressive sight.

Wupatki National Monument

Route 66 and Grand Canyon Caverns

On my way back West I followed the historic Route 66 for a while. The funny thing was that the route was even adorned with the old-school Burma-Shave Rhyming Ads.

The highlight, besides the road that is, on this stretch of Route 66 is Grand Canyon Caverns. A natural dry cavern system that is connected to the Grand Canyon, which is 40 miles away. When the caverns were discovered by Walter Peck in 1927 he though he found the first combination Gold, Silver and Diamond Mine! After the core samples were analyzed though, it was revealed that it was just iron oxide and selenite (a completely worthless mineral). So Peck decided to earn money by letting tourists into the caverns. And that's what survived till today, even though the infrastructure has been drastically improved since 1927. Another fun fact is that the US Government stored emergency rations and water in the caves during the Cuban Missile Crises to last 2,000 people for 2 weeks. These rations are still present in the caves today and would still be edible!

Grand Canyon Caverns

Grand Canyon West and the Skywalk

On my way to the Grand Canyon National Park, I first heard about the Skywalk, a huge glass platform which allows visitors to walk on top of the Grand Canyon, at Grand Canyon West. It was immediately clear that I had to see this ;). And so that was my next stop.

If you check reviews online you find a lot of people bitching about the terrible road leading to the spot and the high prices. Granted the road was rather bad and uneven, but they were doing major roadwork so this should improve in the future, and I was able to drive the whole way with my Ford Focus without problems. As for the price issue, everyone has to decide this for themselves. In my book it was totally worth the price of admission.

The first stop at Grand Canyon West is the Skywalk at Eagle Point, a rock formation which does look like an Eagle. For safety reasons cameras were not allowed on the Skywalk itself. In a way that was good. Because it allowed me to completely absorb the experience, the view and the other people. It was so much fun watching the other people holding on to the railing for dear life or avoiding the clear glass part at all costs! There is also no time limit on the Skywalk itself, and so I spent a good 45 minutes enjoying it.

The Skywalk

Next stop was Guano Point. This section offered a terrific view of Colorado River and had a short but neat hiking path leading up to the top of a small hill. The only problem I had, was that it was an extremely windy day. First this was bad because my hair always covered my eyes, and second because I'm not too firm when it comes to unprotected heights and then feeling the wind trying to push me over the edge was not very comforting...

David with hair all over ;)

From this I learned that I have a rational fear of heights. If there is anything between me and the abyss, even a glass window, I'm fine. If there is nothing in between I start getting uncomfortable.

All pictures from my road trip through Arizona can be found on Picasa.

Arizona - Around Sedona

2009-09-16T13:44:00.004-04:00

Before leaving Phoenix I made a short pit-stop at Alice Cooperstown. The restaurant owned and sometimes operated by Alice Cooper.

Cooperstown

The next day sight-seeing started in earnest. I visited Montezuma Castle and Montezuma Well, two National Monuments and former settlements of the Sinagua people. They lived there from 1000 to 1400 AD and built their houses out of clay and into the cliff walls.

Montezuma Castle

Sedona

Continuing on my way I came to the famous Red Rocks near Sedona. Most of those rocks have names such as Cathedral Rock, Bell Rock, Snoopy Rock and so forth.

Sedona is also famous for its Vortexes. A vortex is a place of energy and tourists from all over the world come to these spots to strengthen their potential.

During my second day in Sedona I first took part in a nature walk in the Red Rock State Park, this was extremely educational and we could observe many hummingbirds.

From there I went to Tuzigoot National Monument, another early settlement by the Sinagua people. This one however, was situated on top of a rock and roomed many hundreds of people.

Driving back into Sedona I noticed a lot of water on the street. Some time later I learned that they were hit by an extreme rainfall, so heavy that you couldn’t see your hand in front of your eyes. One section of town was even hit by a Spring Flood! Lucky me, that I was out of town at the time!

To end the day I joined a Hummer Tour. This brought us onto the western back roads of Sedona and offered spectacular views of the mountains. We also saw a javelina, it looks like a wild pig but is more closely related to the hippopotamus, hurrying across the road.

Cathedral Rock

Oak Creek Canyon

The route from Sedona to Flagstaff leads through Oak Creek Canyon, a very scenic route. It also offers multiple hiking opportunities and so I made a stop at the West Fork Trail. This trail leads for 5 kilometres into a side-canyon along a cute little river. The trail ends when the canyon becomes so narrow that the creek fills it completely. This hike was wonderful; very scenic and also quite shady, a bonus in these high temperatures.

At the scenic overlook at the top of the canyon, I ran into a number of old-timers: Ford motorcars from the 1920ies.

Oak Creek Canyon

Pictures from Arizona can be found in my webalbum.

The First North American Discworld Convention 2009

2009-09-11T11:12:00.005-04:00

I first learned of this convention in the Spring of 2008. When I realized that it would coincide with the end of my Masters' Program it was clear that I just had to make the trip to Arizona to be part of this event.

Day Zero - Thursday, 3rd September

The convention officially started on Friday, September 4th, however, I decided to arrive a day early to get settled in a bit first. Before checking in I wondered where to stow my Rincewind hat and then decided to put it in my carry-on luggage together with my robes. Somehow, this was the first flight that I didn't worry about my luggage not arriving and then of course Murphy had to strike. I dutifully waited in Phoenix at the baggage belt, but my backpack just didn't turn up. So off I went to the claims deck, where the nice woman told me that my bag wasn't in their system, i.e. it hadn't been scanned anywhere! After a while I got a piece of paper and a vague promise that most bags would turn up within 24 hours.

So I made my way to the hotel, where I realized that all the accessories to my costume (clasp, belt, bags) as well as my swimming trunks and all my clothes were in the missing bag. What else to do but take a bus and make a trip to the local mall. After a lot of browsing I got the necessities (some clean underwear, swimming trunks, a couple of t-shirts, a belt and something to close my wizard robes).

Thursday evening featured a first event, a pub quiz where attendees and guests could mingle and get acquainted. Even though I was absolute rubbish at the quiz, I maybe contributed one or two answers at our table we had lots of fun and I got to know a fair number of cool people.

Rincewind and Ridcully

Day One - Friday, 4th September

The Convention officially started with the opening ceremony at 1pm. Esther Friesner, an author and one of the guests, appearing as Miss Egaltine, a Seamstress and Lady of Etiquette, gave a brilliantly funny speech and introduced us to all the guests. Finally Sir Terry Pratchett was led into the room, escorted by the Seamstresses which carried a giant turtle over his head!

Since my designated signing session with Terry Pratchett was on the same day, I soon retired to the Emporium, the Dealer's Room, to acquire two books by our favorite author; after all I had to leave all my books in Switzerland. To my big delight I was able to find a book club edition with the original Color of Magic cover, a first edition of Truckers and a first edition of the comic to Mort. (One of these books I handed to my roommate, since there was a two book signing limit)

With my book deficiency problem solved I went to an event called "Borne to Pune", in which a panel of guests tried to make puns to Discworld themes. Participants were allowed to donate some money to the selected charities and throw squishy things at those panelists making the best/worst puns. It was all-around a hilarious affair with the audience readily participating with their own puns.

I was at the head of the line and Terry took his time to chat with the people in line. When I turned up in my Rincewind garb, he divined that I was a Wizard, which pleased me extremely ;).

With the signatures in my pocket I hurried to the next event. The Igorlympics, a contest in which potential Igors could prove their proficiency in essential tasks such as Eyeball Rolling, after all they have to be kept fresh, Limping (whilst balancing an Eyeball on a cup), Lisping and Pinning the Knob on the Wizard's staff. It was all great fun. I came in third in the Eyeball Rolling competition and won a back scratcher which we also used to roll the Eyeballs. All Igors also received an original prop-tooth from the Hogfather movie set!

The big event of the evening was the Seamstresses Party with Terry Pratchett as guest of honor. To help us getting to know each other we were asked to participate in a Scavenger Hunt where we had to find people in the room which fitted certain criteria. It took me a while but I finally managed to complete my list after running into, not away from for a change, many interesting people. During the best costume awards, which were presented by Sir Terry it came to a Scandal. First Terry downed a whole glass of the Bursar's Frog Pills, then tangoed with Nanny Ogg, before fleeing back-stage with her. After a while quiet reasserted itself. Terry returned to present the rest of the awards, which went to a stunning Cherry Littlebottom in a ball gown dress, the Luggage and Young Greebo.

Holy Wood Squares, a Tic-Tac-Toe like Quiz where two contestants tried to guess if their Honored Guests / Squares gave the correct answer to a trivia question, marked the end of a fantastic first day.

The Wizards

Day Two - Saturday, 5th September

Having recently bought "Witch Way to the Mall", a short story anthology edited by Esther Friesner, I lined up to get it signed by the lady herself.

Another signature in my pocket I made my way to join the Fireside Chat with Bernard Pierson, the Cunning Artificer who created thousands of memorable Discworld articles. Bernard has a captivating personality and manages to tell fascinating anecdotes and so the allocated hour went over way too quickly.

Without a break I returned to the Unseen University (aka Main Room) to witness an enlightening talk about Discworld cover art through time. The analysis and discussion of the various artists of the American covers were especially interesting because everyone keeps complaining about them ;).

Then came one of the highlights of the convention: A one-hour discussion with Terry Pratchett in which he answered the most pressing questions of fans. I could have listened to him for hours upon hours; he had so many interesting stories to tell.

The next session was also highly anticipated, a reading from Terry's upcoming book Unseen Academicals. Since Terry's eyesight is one of the things most affected by his case of Alzheimer's, the reading was actually performed by Rob, Terry's assistant. However, Terry was at his side and added many interesting facts. The passages we could listen to were fantastic and I can't wait to get a hand on the book on October, 6th. One fan couldn't wait and paid 1,250 US$ to get his hands on the Uncorrected Proof of the manuscript from which Rob had read.

One of the highlights of the convention for many participants was the Maskerade, in which people could show of their costumes as well as present short sketches. One of the most memorable ones was a Cricket-like commentary to an on-stage Terry starting to write his newest novel. It was amazing to what level of detail some costumes of the participants went.

The evening ended with a rendition of four songs from the Discworld Rocky Horror Picture Show, which, even tough I didn't know the original, entertained me a lot.

Ptraccia with her Pygmy-Camel and Translator Imp

Day Three - Sunday, 6th September

This day started with an interesting discussion about how Terry is published in the UK and the US both as an author of adult fiction and Children's literature. Terry was present at this discussion and actually contributed most of the talking, much to the pleasure of the audience.

I then went over to a panel featuring ordinary people who had the chance to participate as Extras in the making of Color of Magic and/or Going Postal. This was very enlightening and accompanied by a fair amount of pictures taken at the set.

The next panel I selected was very popular indeed. Titled "Yeth, Marther", it featured Rob, Terry's assistant, and his story about how he got to meet first U2 and then Terry Pratchett and how it was to work for those aforementioned parties. This session was one of my personal favorites as it gave me a view of the people supporting Terry in his ever increasing public demand.

Next on the program was the big Charity auction. Since I had set my eyes on a couple of Signed Uncorrected Proofs by Sir Terry I decided to participate. Over the duration of the auction I had to learn that there were people present with very deep pockets. And so another Uncorrected Proof of Unseen Academicals was auctioned off for 1,600$, two signed first editions of Once More with Footnotes went for 1,200$ and several other uncorrected proofs went for 150 to 300$. In between I managed to snag a copy of Dark are the Woods by Richard Laymon for 22$. However, this was not such a rare item and thus my craving for an exclusive book was not yet stilled. Having lost many auctions so far, I spotted an item which instantly won my heart, a first edition of Good Omens signed by both Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Deciding to make this my graduation present, I didn't back down when the price went up and finally was the only remaining bidder. For 650$ I could take home one of the best books by two of my favorite authors. Pat Harkins did an excellent job hosting the auction, interweaving many interesting anecdotes and in general keeping the atmosphere light. The last item to be auctioned off was a leaf on which Terry sat the evening before, which came with a certificate of Authenticity created by The Cunning Artificer, this item also managed to raise a couple of hundred bucks. At the end of the auction 23,000$ had been raised which would be shared by the Orang Utan Foundation and the Alzheimer Trust.

Near the end of the auction I sneaked out to get two more signatures in the aforementioned short story collection; this time by Dan and Sarah Hoyt.

After paying for and receiving my auction items, I had to take a short break and returned to my hotel, safely storing the books in my bags.

The main event of the evening was "A Night at the Roxie", the gala banquet. We received splendid food, an intriguing belly-dance performance also featuring Nobby Nobs alias "Betty" and a chance to meet many new people. Fortunately, our table was one of the first allowed to dine at the buffet, which was rather ill supplied and as I heard ran out of stock before the last table could satisfy their curiosity by trying all delicacies.

The Quirm College for Young Ladies Cotillion introduced us to Regency Dances. The first of which, Hole in the Wall, I was already familiar with from my dancing in Switzerland. All in all this was a nice closing event for the evening, even though most participants were getting a tad too tired to learn a Regency Waltz.

A belly-dancer and "Betty"

Day Four - Monday, 7th September

"Time is flying when you have fun", this was also true this time and it was hard to believe that the last day of the First North American Discworld Convention had already arrived.

The first panel I watched on this last day was entitled "Fantastically Funny" and discussed what exactly made Fantasy inherently funny and how humour worked. This was a very intriguing discussion which also touched upon Black Adder and Monthy Python.

Next was a Special Pratchett Movie Showing in the Unseen University. It turned out to be the teaser trailer of Going Postal followed by the two-part BBC documentary "Living with Alzheimer's" about Terry's first year after the disease was diagnosed. This was a welcome surprise to me, since I hadn't seen this documentary before and managed to miss all the other showings of this.

And then it was already time for the Closing Ceremony in which many heartfelt thanks were mentioned and another impromptu auction was held to "get rid off" some of the decoration articles such as the banners. Terry's mention that he would be back at a future North American Discworld Convention was well received by the audience and it lessened the pain many felt that it was already over.

The Tail of the Turtle Party was a relaxing chilling out and saying goodbye to the many people we have met so far.

With two of my three roommates I then made a detour to Fat Tuesday's where we tried their alcoholic slushees, a cultural experience so to speak ;).

Terry leaving the Convention

Post Scriptum One - A Note on Costumes

I myself attended all five days of the convention as Rincewind and I was pleased by the many positive feedback I received. Some people didn't believe my hair was real because it just fitted too perfectly with their image of Rincewind ;)

But I wasn't the only one who made the efforts to dress up and I would like to highlight a couple of my favorite costumes.

One fellow made an appearance as Ronnie Soaks, the Milkman better known as the Fifth Rider of the Apocalypse. He portrayed this minor character in the series with so much eye for detail (he even had milk bottles with the correct bottle caps) and authority that he earned my deepest respect.

Also great were the two tourists who made fantastic reproductions of the Iconograph, including a painting imp, and even created a moving luggage!

Another eye-catcher was the young lady dressed up as the young Seamstress Rosie Palm. Her nice dress was completed with a knitting basket.

Ridcully and the Bursar recreated these characters with lots of attention to detail. Ridcully carried a Burleigh and Stronginthearm Crossbow and the Bursar had his own supply of Dried Frog Pills.

Ptraccia with her stunning dress and fantastic creation of a travelling basket including a pygmy camel and translating imp also inspired my awe.

There were many more great costumes, too many to mention them all here.

Rincewind and Ronnie Soaks

Post Scriptum Two - A Note on Harga's House of Ribs', the Hospitality Suite

Harga's House of Ribs' was a rock in the storm of the Discworld Convention. A person in need could always find something to eat and drink there. They not only provided snacks for in between but also breakfast and warm dinners! For their effortless efforts the staff of Harga's House of Ribs' deserves a thundering applause and standing ovation. It was also a great place to meet people and strike up interesting discussions.

Post Scriptum Three - Terry Pratchett in Glendale, AZ - Tuesday, 8th September

The day after the convention Terry made a public appearance near a library in Glendale Arizona. Having some spare time on my hands and unsure whether Terry would ever show up again in Switzerland, I did my best to be there. Luck was on my side and the rental car, which I reserved for 10am, was ready at 8am and so I go there in time. Of course I was out of books again, but fortunately there was a small consignment of books for sale and so I could increase my collection by two.

Contrary to my expectation Terry did not dwell on his upcoming novel Unseen Academicals, but rather only gave a short introduction and then opened the floor to questions. What followed was an amazing ninety minutes in which Terry talked about his experiences as a public relations officer at a nuclear power plant, his views on God and Humanity, the likelihood of another collaboration with Neil Gaiman, Assisted Suicide, how he came to write the Johnny Maxwell series and much more.

This event was thoroughly enjoyable and it was a perfect (even though unofficial) end to the North American Discworld Convention.

Terry in Glendale

More pictures can be found in my webalbum.

Cedar Point 2009

2009-09-09T00:23:00.002-04:00

Before leaving the Pittsburgh area completely, I just had to return to a place which I visited before my Master's program started: Cedar Point, which gives Sandusky the tag line "America's roller coaster capital"

I spent Monday and Tuesday of last week at the park and I couldn't have picked better days. The weather was very nice, sunny but not too hot. There weren't too many people. At most I waited 45 minutes at Maverick, but more often than not queues were under 30 minutes. Knowing very well what I will miss back in Europe, namely the biggest roller-coasters, I decided to focus on them. By the end of Monday I had taken six trips on Maverick, four trips on Millennium Force and four trips on Top Thrill Dragster (three of which in front row).

Tuesday was even better! The weather was slightly warmer and there were even fewer people. This went so far that at times there were almost no people queuing for Top Thrill Dragster, a ride that normally has waiting times of two hours! I of course took full advantage of that and by the end of the day I had scored 10 trips on Maverick (a fully awesome coaster), five times Front Row at Top Thrill Dragster, four times Millennium Force and a small number of other rides. By the end of the day I was hoarse from all the screaming! ;)

This trip was a full success and I was so glad that I made it. If you happen to be in the area: Don't miss Cedar Point!

This picture is a self-portrait just after my tenth trip on Maverick:

From Cedar Point 2009

Pittsburgh Steelers live!

2009-08-31T22:04:00.001-04:00

Yep, that's me at a game fo the Pittsburgh Steelers holding a Terrible Towel! I was lucky enough to convince my parents and friends to attend the third pre-season game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Buffalo Bills, for which I got discounted "second-hand" tickets. It was a really cool experience and as I heard the best of all pre-season games to attend, since the A-Team of the Steelers played for the full first half. And it showed, the second quarter the Steelers pulled all the tricks, steamrolled the Bills and scored seventeen points, six of them after a touch-down following an interecepted pass. In the second half of the game no more points were scored but we still saw some interesting plays and had a wonderful time. I was really glad that I got this opportunity to see the Steelers play at Heinz Field :)

Exploring Canada

2009-08-30T18:47:00.001-04:00

Wednesday morning we drove further North along Lake Erie towards the Canadian border. We were a bit surprised by how late Canada was actually mentioned on the road signs, but fortunately we had a good map and did find the border crossing. Actually crossing the border was a breeze, there were no cars in line, only spent two minutes chatting with the border guard and were then directed to the customs house, where our passports were stamped within a minute. So all in all we spent about ten minutes crossing the border.

Our first stop in Canada was Niagara Falls, because everyone told us that the Falls are much better on the Canadian side and I can whole heartedly agree. For one you get the frontal view of the falls, which is very impressive, for another we got the chance to walk behind the falls in a tunnel and look out at the thundering masses of water flowing past. At first we were afraid that we had to postpone our visit to Niagara Falls. Because for most of our trip northwards we were following a huge storm which produced torrential rainfalls. However, fortune was with us and as soon as we cleared the Canadian border the weather cleared up and the clouds disappeared.

From Niagara Falls we took the scenic route to Niagara-on-the-lake a very picturesque village at the border of Lake Ontario. On our way we passed through many wineries and we even stopped at one to sample the exquisite ice-wine produced there. We were a bit surprised by the hotel prices in Niagara-on-the-lake. Because as it turned out it seemed to be a retreat for wealthier Canadians and thus almost exclusively sported very expensive hotels. Consulting the Lonely Planet my friend carried finally directed us to a cute bed-and-breakfast with two exquisite hosts. The place was decorated with bunnies in all shapes and was aptly called Bunny Hutch. To keep in line with the birding theme of the week I discovered a couple of bird watching magazines in the bathroom!

Next morning we were served a delicious Canadian breakfast and after some sightseeing continued northwards towards Toronto.

In Toronto we again used the Lonely Planet Guidebook to find an exquisite bed-and-breakfast. Located in Chinatown it occupied two old Victorian houses which were immaculately kept and featured impressive rooms and a very big breakfast. We did a lot of sight-seeing and walking around in Toronto and spotted a wide variety of interesting buildings. We also visited CN Tower, currently the structure sporting the highest public platform in the world. We had a great view in all directions and even saw Niagara Falls on the horizon. What we will never forget however, is our trip down the tower. Just when we wanted to take the elevator down, it stopped working. After some debating the guide agreed that it might be better to take the stairs down to the main observation deck (33 stories down). However, we were not allowed to descend the stairs alone. A security guard had to escort us. Of course this security guard first had to climb the 33 stories to reach us! After a notable wait, a couple of tourists started complaining, the security guard arrived with the elevator, that lazy bastard ;), and claimed it safe now. And thus we were finally able to leave the tower using the elevators.

On our trip back to the US we ran into a fair amount of traffic, delaying us almost a full hour, this was then made up at the border crossing where we again breezed through in under ten minutes! And silly me had been worrying about this border crossing for weeks before we started the trip… ;)

Exploring Pennsylvania

2009-08-30T12:25:00.002-04:00

The first part of my road trip I undertook with my parents and two of my friends from Switzerland who coordinated their vacation so that it coincided with my graduation.

On Monday we drove South-East in the direction of Fallingwater, a very famous building from Frank Lloyd Wright. We found lodging in nearby Ohiopyle, a national state park, and since we were early for the tour we booked, we went for a "short" hike around a "small" peninsula. The peninsula turned out to be much bigger than expected and we had to hurry back a bit to not be late!

Touring Fallingwater was very interesting and enlightening. The building is truly awesome in the way it is integrated into nature and the way the furniture is built in.

At night we had a very interesting experience. We were sitting outside our motel and heard a high-pitched sound for a while when suddenly dozens of bats started crawling out of the woodwork and flying around our heads! What made the experience even funnier was the fact that I started reading a book about bird watching that very same day!

The next morning we toured the other Frank Lloyd Wright house in the neighborhood: Kentuck Knob. It wasn’t as big or impressive as falling water, but still an interesting experience. We then headed a couple of hundred kilometers north to an area in North-West Pennsylvania well-known for its Amish community. The notable thing about this is that they are well integrated into the larger town-communities and we saw multiple horse buggies as well as Amish people minding their business in and around the towns. We then took a small detour and drove by a couple of Amish farms, which was also very educational.

We continued on our way North to Erie Pennsylvania, where we looked for a lighthouse and found a Lighthouse Inn. For dinner we went to the lakefront where we got good food and a surprise that every restaurant closes at 10pm. Fortunately, we were early enough to be served.

Pictures can be found in my web album.

A year ends...

2009-08-29T12:03:00.000-04:00

Last weekend marked the end of our Masters in Information Technology in eBusiness Technology program. It was a long last week, first we gave a presentation to our customer, who was thrilled and dazzled by our work, then we had several late nights to prepare for the final presentation to a panel of judges, which we had on Friday.

We didn’t win the grand price, but we were very happy with our presentation and are certain that we came in a close second. After the presentation our client took us to Dave and Busters for a night of fine food and games. At the end he surprised us with a gift certificate, because he felt we really deserved a price. And this meant much more to us than if we had wooed the judges into awarding us the grand price. After all we had been working nine weeks for our customer and not for the judges.

Saturday night, my family and friends had a very nice dinner in the Tin Angel Restaurant on Mount Washington. The five course menu, actually a four course menu with a tiny bite of melon at the end, was really good, especially the main course. In addition we were fortunate enough that it was a nice and clear night offering us beautiful views of Downtown.

On Sunday our program had its very own graduation ceremony. We all got to wear the classic academic regalia (cap, gown and hood) and could walk the stage to receive a piece of paper (our diplomas won’t be ready till October). It was a very nice experience and at the end we of course had to throw our hats into the air ;).

This concludes my adventures with the MSIT eBusiness Technology Program. I made some great friends, lived through challenging but also interesting times both on- and off-campus (Steelers winning the Super Bowl and Penguins winning the Stanley Cup in the same year!) and I wouldn’t want to miss a minute of it.

At the movies

2009-08-19T01:09:00.004-04:00

After a longer break I finally found some time to go to the movies.

On Sunday I saw the time traveler's wife, a romantic drama about the relationship between a time traveler and a normal woman. I'd listened to both the abridged and unabridged aiudiobook versionand thus was very familiar with the story. The movie was a really good adoption. It focused on the most important events without breaking the flow of the story. Highly recommended also for people who've read the book.

Monday we watched district 9, a very intriguing sci-fi movie which got me emotionally involved, I really hated the main character who was an idiot and a bit of an asshole. oh yes the aliens looked amazing!

Ps: typos to be blamed on the iPhone ;)

Graduation Dinner, Party and Moving

2009-08-15T10:57:00.002-04:00

This week has been extremely busy. First I had to start packing to be ready when I'd move out on Saturday. Then we had a Graduation Dinner Thursday night at Monterey Bay Fish Grotto, allegedly one of the best restaurants on Mount Washington. However, we were not that thrilled by the food. Even though we valued a choice of six main dishes, four of which were fish, the orders were slightly mixed up and the taste didn't reach our high expectations.

On Friday evening we had a small party on the top floor patio, where I finally could try one of the most (in)famous American games, at least in university circles: Beer Pong. The goal is to try to hit a ping pong ball into your opponents cups. That is much harder than it sounds and we managed to epically fail and not hit a single cup...

On Saturday I thought I'd sleep in to have enough energy for moving, but nature conspired against me and I was wide awake by 6:45am. Once awake my conscience started bugging me that I couldn't leave my apartment in its current state. You have to know though that expect for the stove it was already cleaner than when I moved in. So I thoroughly cleaned the whole flat for 3.5 hours. Now I'm willing to bet 100$ that this apartment has never been this clean, when a tenant moved out, in at least the last twenty years!

And now I'm waiting for kind Marcos, who generously offered me a space in his living room for a couple of days, until I can move to a hotel, and also offered to help me move the last of my stuff.

Lots of pictures from all these events can be found in my gallery.

Painting The Fence at Carnegie Mellon University

2009-07-29T14:16:00.003-04:00

One of the most intriguing and fascinating traditions at Carnegie Mellon University is painting The Fence. The Fence is located in the middle of the cut (basically the center of the main campus) and is a highly visible landmark on campus. Student groups are allowed to paint the Fence only during the time between midnight and sunrise and only using regular paint and regular brushes (if you use spray paint, you'll get cited for vandalism!). As long as two people are stationed at the Fence, no one is allowed to change it's message and thus one regularly sees tents around the Fence while school is on. Fortunately, in summer everything is a bit quieter and we did not have to fight for it and could pick a day with perfect weather.

We decided to dedicate the Fence to the practicum of our MSIT ebiz Program and could persuade our client to sponsor the paint and brushes.

From Painting The Fence

And so we met yesterday at midnight to start this project. Painting the groundwork was very fast, with five people and five big brushes we finished in under an hour. But once the color started to dry we spotted many places where we needed to add a second layer. Once everything looked good and the paint was sufficiently dry we started applying our message. This was more difficult than expected. For once we only had one small and one medium brush available, so only two people could write at a time. Another issue was that with the ongoing night, we did a couple of spelling mistakes, which threw us back a bit, since we had to recolor the section and wait till it dried again. We completed the final touches at 4.45am, much later than we expected. But we were incredibly happy with the outcome. The orange ground color looked fantastic against the green grass background.

From Painting The Fence

More pictures in my picasa library.

PS: Since we did not find any information about supplies needed to paint the fence, I wanted to share this with you. We used:

2 gallons of ground color
~1/4 gallon of writing color
5 big brushes (4 inch) for the background color.
1 medium brush (2 inch) for the letters on the pillar. [this was not enough. Would suggest 2 to 3 of those]
1 small brush (1 inch) for letters on rest of the fence. [this was not enough. Would suggest 4 to 5 of those]
1 roll of masking tape for straight letters on the pillar

These numbers heavily depend on the number of helpers you can organize. But we could have saved a lot of time if we had more small brushes for writing.

Video Games Live!

2009-07-12T11:42:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was a very special performance by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra: Video Games Live! is a celebration of video games music, where the orchestra and choir are supported by synchronized clips from the games and light and laser effects. In addition to the concert there was a guitar hero contest, a costume contest and a price drawing.

Of course I had to go dressed as Rincewind, after all he was featured in a couple of video games as well, and the reactions were very positive. A couple of people got the reference and were thrilled to peaces! Quote from a random guy I met on CMU campus: "Whoever you are, you are awesome!" *g*

From Pittsburgh, July

As part of the costume contest we could go backstage and then on-stage for the votes. A guy dressed up as the main character of God of War (a really detailed costume!) won the contest.

The concert was awesome and the videoclips very funny. The most amazing thing were the performances of Martin Leung on piano, playing Super Mario and a Final Fantasy Medley, his fingers are so unbelievably fast!

Unfortunately, it looked like they did not get permission from Squaresoft for images from their games, and so even though we heard music from Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts and Chrono Trigger / Chrono Cross, we couldn't get the visual impression from those games. But overall this was a minor point.

If this show comes close to you, don't hesitate and go see it!

Boston and back again - a Commuters tale ;)

2009-07-07T21:30:00.004-04:00

My trip to Boston started under a bad star. My flight was canceled due to heavy fog in Boston and I was asked to return the next morning for a 5.45am flight to New York, where I could change to a plane to Boston. To conquer my frustration I went to a nearby cinema and watched Ice Age 3 in 3d, the movie was very entertaining and as is common in modern movies did not overuse 3d effects, afterward I felt much better :).

My plane leaving so early on Friday, I had to take a cab to the Airport. As a small compensation for that, I got a first class seat for the leg from New York to Boston and so I could sample the perks of first class, first in and out of the plane, enough space and very attentive flight attendants. However, this doesn't validate the price difference for me.

Saturday marked the American Independence Day, which in Boston is celebrated near Charles River with a free concert at night and fireworks. However, for most Bostonians the celebrations started much earlier and when we arrived on the riverside around 4pm we were surprised to find the place completely packed with lots of people having picnics and family gatherings. With some luck we managed to grab a place on a small jetty and we didn't budge from there till after the fireworks. The fireworks were very impressive and we had a good view, unfortunately we were a bit too far away and missed the music.

From Boston, July

On Sunday we went to the Middlesex Fells Reservation near Boston for a leisurely hike. The Cascade Falls Trail took us to a nice waterfall and on to the Rock Circuit Trail, which true to its name was extremely rocky, but also rewarded us with a nice panorama view of Boston.

From Boston, July

As usual I took the 7am plane on Monday back to Pittsburgh which left and arrived on time. And now it will take a week to battle the lost sleep ;).

More pictures can be found in my Boston gallery.

Whale Watching

2009-06-28T14:35:00.002-04:00

Saturday last week marked a special expedition. While in Boston I went on a Whale Watching excursion from the Boston Aquarium. We were lucky with the weather, after it had been raining for three days straight, it turned out to be a very nice day out.

On our trip we saw Mostaza, a humpback whale born in 2000. He stayed with us for a long time, repeatedly resurfacing close to the boat after his dives, once he even nicely presented his fluke.

From Boston, June

It was a very cool thing to see such a big animal close up and we were all very happy with the outcome of the trip :)

Witches, Pirates and History in Salem

2009-06-21T21:46:00.002-04:00

The (in)famous Salem Massachusetts is a short drive away from Boston and even accessible by public transport, thus I found myself up there last week on a rainy Friday.

Salem is mostly known for the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and so it is not surprising to find a good half dozen museums dedicated to this topic in town. I visited four of them and am now a much wiser man ;). Overall it is indeed heavily commercialized and the museums are mostly a collection of dioramas, puppets dressed up to represent different scenes, so mostly rather disappointing. I also visited a pirate museum, which had the same concepts but instead focused on Pirates of the area. The highlight of the day was a guided tour of The House of the Seven Gables, which became famous as a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

As is the case in many towns and cities in New England, Salem also featured a large amount of old houses and so I spent a lot of my time there admiring and taking pictures of them. The results can be found in my online gallery.

From Salem, MA

The End is Near

2009-06-16T16:26:00.001-04:00

Today we completed the 16th and last task in our graduate program. Now we can take a couple of days break before the practicum starts next Monday. The practicum is a nine week project with an outside Sponsor and should give us an opportunity to apply all the things we've learned this year.

MSIT eBiz Class of '09

But first comes the break :)

The Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup and I was watching!

2009-06-13T00:43:00.000-04:00

Yep, that's me in a bar after the Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Detroit Redwings 2:1 in the 7th game of the Stanley Cup Finals! We only saw the last period, because we were invited to a boring Pittsburgh Pirates Baseball Game, which they incidentally lost against the Detroit Tigers 1:3, but this last period more than made up for the boredom before. The atmosphere in the pub was so charged we were all screaming like mad as the clock ticked away. And it was such a great feeling when it was all over!

On the way home we stopped at Pitt University, where crowds were gathering in the street. This time it was not as crazy as after the Steeler's Super Bowl win. No burning couches or riots, even the cars could still drive on the street, albeit only in one lane, and everyone was just happy, cheering and screaming their lungs out ;).

What a year to be in Pittsburgh. First, Barack Obama gets elected US President, then the Pittsburgh Steelers win the Super Bowl and now the Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup! Apparently, these last two events have never coincided before, so this is another historical event which happened while I was here. Maybe it's all my fault? ;)

Culture in Boston

2009-06-07T12:48:00.005-04:00

During my latest trip to Boston, I spotted a sign advertising "Jerry Springer - The Opera". This seemed such a strange concept and at the same time a personification of American culture, that I just had to see it!

Jerry Springer - The Opera

The stage resembles the setup of the Jerry Springer show and some of the viewers even have their seats on the edge of the stage!

The first half follows the more or less regular script of a Jerry Springer show, with a briefing of the audience followed by the introduction of ridiculous guests, except for the fact that everyone was singing. The first half a blast with the highlight being the "My Jerry Springer Moment" song which features the memorable line "Drip me in Chocolate and throw me to the Lesbians". The first half ends with Jerry being shot at by an enraged former participant.

In the second half Jerry is visited by the devil and required to host a show in hell to resolve the age old conflict between heaven and hell. And that's where the show goes overboard, I was laughing so hard I had trouble staying in my seat :).

If Jerry Springer - The Opera gets a run close to you, don't hesitate and go see it (unless you are easily offended by strong language that is).

In the theater we spotted an advert for another Musical "Pirates! (Or, Gilbert and Sullivan Plunder'd)". Intrigued we went to see it the next day.

Pirates!

Pirates! plays in the heyday of piratery in the Caribbean Seas. It tells the story of Frederik, an apprenticed Pirate who tries to find a pure maiden to beat the Pirate curse. This show was also great fun, with lots of silly songs and sword fighting. Best remembered is the line "We don't have to solve the problem, we only have to appear to be doing something. That's Government!"

Pirates! was also an enjoyable night out and I can highly recommend it to anyone interested to see a different humorous take on Pirates compared to Pirates of the Caribbean.

Kennywood

2009-05-26T21:41:00.002-04:00

America celebrated Memorial Day last Monday and I got to enjoy a nice day out :). The weather was nice and warm, perfect to visit Kennywood, Pittsburgh's own amusement park.

What makes Kennywood special are not spectacular and thrilling roller coasters, even though The Phantom Menace, is quite cool and thrilling, but it's well preserved and still functioning rides from the 1930's and 1940's. Some of which are the last of their kind still in operation anywhere in the world!
The Kangaroo from 1927:

From Pittsburgh, May

Another thing that made my trip to Kennywood memorable were the short lines, there were a fair amount of people in the park, but there was hardly a line longer than 10 minutes, and the water on the water rides. First I went on the Log Jam, which is a traditional log ride where I stayed quite dry, then I tried the Pittsburgh Plunge, a short ride in a bigger boat seating 20 people, that boat displaced so much water that the wave partially collapsed over us and we got quite wet. Finally I visited The Raging Rapids, a wild river ride, there we passed right under a waterfall and I was wet to my undergarments... Fortunately it was sunny and warm and after a couple of hours my trousers were dry again :).

All in all an enjoyable day out!

777 books

2009-05-21T17:41:00.003-04:00

Since November 15th, 2006 I have cataloged 777 books on Librarything. 288 of which I have read since that day, that's 2.2 books per week. The rest are books that are stored on my bookshelves which I had read previously.

The 777th book cataloged is Fables Vol. 10: The Good Prince by Bill Willingham.

The Good Prince is the tenth installment of Fables, a graphic novel series about characters from various fables which had been exiled from their Homelands by an evil emperor and have found a refuge in modern day New York. Unfortunately, they cannot spend their days in peace as the enemy threatens a total war to annihilate the colony. The stories are full of adventure, humor and strangely believable story lines. In this issue the tale of Prince Ambrose, or as all Fables know him Flycatcher the Janitor, is recounted and how he has to face many perils to finally avenge his family. This book is one of the best so far and an absolute joy to read with an epic story, romance and many surprises. I can highly recommend Fables and The Good Prince to anyone interested in graphic novels and modern fairy tales.

Geeky Graduation

2009-05-19T19:10:00.003-04:00

Last Sunday was THE big and long-awaited day for many students: Commencement! All graduating students who completed their studies last December or now in May and some of the students who will graduate in August were invited to participate. (Even though I also graduate in August, our program will have its own Commencement ceremony at the end of August). The main ceremony was interesting mainly because of keynote speaker Eric Schmidt's amusing anecdotes and the attendance of a celebrity. Phylicia Rashad, who I remember very well for her role as Claire Huxtable in The Cosby Show, received an Honorary Doctor of Arts degree.

The handing over of the diploma was done in separate ceremonies by the different schools. I joined the School of Computer Science ceremony, which turned out very geeky with a robotic bag pipes player and professors with light swords.

From Pittsburgh, May

The ceremony itself dragged on a bit as there were more than 300 diplomas to hand over. And we were all glad when it was over and we could enjoy the free snacks ;)

I've always won Time Agent

2009-05-03T21:44:00.002-04:00

I got the chance to play an old but very cool game yesterday at the CMU Game Club.
Time Agent: A game where players try to change the past to become rulers of the universe and then uninvent time travel to have always been the rulers of the universe. It was an epic battle and for a long time it looked like I've always been the looser, but on the last two turns I caught up and profited from a fortunate uninvention of Rejuvenation Technology ("Rejuvenation Technology? What Rejuvenation Technology?") and so it turned out that I had always been the winner :). A small side note, the game lasted for almost six hours!

From Pittsburgh March

Fake Cordon Bleu

2009-04-30T23:06:00.002-04:00

Recently a new restaurant opened in Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Hofbräuhaus. It is related to the Hofbräuhaus in Munich and boasts real German food, beer and atmosphere. When I studied the menu I was immediately drawn to the Cordon Bleu, one of my favorite dishes.
Today, I accompanied Guido and a couple of friends to the Hofbräuhaus to celebrate the end of classes for the Spring semester. Of course I ordered the Cordon Bleu. When it arrived I was rather disappointed:

From Pittsburgh March

The ham and cheese was on top instead of inside the Schnitzel... It still tasted good but it just wasn't the same. The one thing that positively surprised me though was the German potato salad. It was awesome!
Overall it's a nice place with good food and good atmosphere, if you sit outside that is, unless you really like German Octoberfest entertainment, then you can sit inside as well ;).

Plymoth Plantation and Mayflower II

2009-04-18T20:02:00.002-04:00

A historically very important site is located just under one hour south of Boston. Plymouth: The location the Mayflower landed and where it's passengers established the first successful and lasting settlement in the US in the year of 1620.

Nowadays, Plymouth offers many interesting sights for historically interested visitors. Just next to the landing place, called Plymouth Rock, sits the Mayflower II a recreation of the Mayflower, giving visitor's an impression of how horrendous the crossing was back then (no space, no sanitary facilities, bland and repetitive food).
Three miles south of Plymouth is Plimoth Plantation, a living museum featuring a 1627 English village (where re-enactment is a full-time job!) and the Wampanoag Homesite (the native Americans originally living in the area).

From Plymouth

It was a terrific experience and a pure joy to discuss politics (the Habsburg problem in Helvetia, for example) and religion with the townspeople.
Fortunately the area was big enough that I could evade the busloads of school children who were there that day ;).
Many more pictures can be found in my online gallery.

Six Flags New England

2009-04-16T21:31:00.003-04:00

Six Flags New England is a short trip from Boston (105 minutes by car ;)) and so it was only a matter of time till a visit to Boston also brought me to this amusement park ;).
It was a perfect day to visit Six Flags, it was nice and sunny day, there weren't that many people and so queues were mostly nonexistent (the maximum I waited was about 10 minutes because I wanted the front seat for a ride). The only bummer was that the biggest and supposedly best ride (Superman: Man of Steel) was currently being refurbished and thus closed for visitors. The park featured three interesting high speed roller coasters (Batman, Mind Eraser, Flashback), two old wooden roller coasters and a couple of cute smaller rides.
However, after my visit to Cedar Point, the rides in Six Flags were lacking in the high speed adrenaline kick area.
On the whole, however, it was a nice day and I went on 32 rides (6x Batman, 4x Mind Eraser, 4x Flashback), so I do believe I did get my money's worth of entertainment :)

From Six Flags New England

Settlers of Catan Tournament

2009-04-11T10:09:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I participated in CMU's Settlers of Catan Tournament. 30 people were present and two rounds of Catan were played to determine the winners. The first game started bad for me. Even though I hand first placement, my numbers never came up. But then two things happened: First, the guy who was miles in the lead was more interested in hurting us than ending the game, which gave everyone more time to expand and second, the dice turned in my favor in the second half of the game. And so I managed to scrap a slim victory.
The second game was the reverse. I was in the lead for a long time, but then my numbers stopped coming up and so I had to let someone pass me. I still managed to hold on to the longest road and came in second.
Finally I ranked 7th, which made me eligible for a prize! :)

World's Greatest Burgers and Monsters vs. Aliens in Imax 3D

2009-04-10T13:23:00.003-04:00

Yesterday we indulged ourselves in a real American evening. First we went to Fuddruckers, a burger chain which claims to serve the "World's Greatest Burgers".

From Pittsburgh March

That was my dinner, a 1/2 pound burger with a Cookies & Cream Milkshake!

The evening was rounded off by a visit to see Monsters vs. Aliens in Imax 3D. The Imax 3D experience was great and made up for the sometimes lengthy storyline. The Imax we visited, part of Loews cinemas in Waterfront, was originally a regular movie theater and it shows. The screen is not as big as in newly built Imax theaters such as the one I visited in Boston.

All in all it was a very entertaining evening.

McConnell's Mill State Park Dayhike

2009-04-09T18:21:00.002-04:00

Last Saturday we ventured into McConnell's Mill State Park, about 45 minutes northwest of Pittsburgh, for an easy day of hiking. The days before it had rained quite a lot and so we were glad to see the sun come out that morning. Nevertheless, Slippery Rock Creek had a lot of water and the trail was submerged in a couple of places, which meant we had to take smaller detours. But it wasn't that bad and as a bonus we saw a couple of nice wild flowers.

From McConnell's Mill State Park

At the Movies: Donnie Darko

2009-04-05T00:34:00.002-04:00

SouthSide Works Cinema shows a Cult Movie once a month. Today it was Donnie Darko. I discovered this movie a couple of years back on DVD and was enthralled by it's mysterious and disturbing story and was overjoyed to get the chance to finally see it on the big screen. It was a terrific experience and intensified the fantastic visuals and oppressive soundtrack. If you have not yet seen this movie, do so immediately! ;)

Wild Turkey Chase

2009-04-03T22:54:00.002-04:00

Leaving campus tonight I spotted something curious coming towards me from the parking lot: A wild turkey! I quickly grabbed my N95 and gave chase, taking pictures on the way. Unfortunately, the results aren't thrilling, however, you can still see recognize the turkey:

From Pittsburgh March

After following it halfway across campus it decided it had enough, and flew away... (my gallery has a couple more unclear pictures)

Fun with Google Maps

2009-04-03T15:58:00.002-04:00

Enter this into Google Maps: "from: Pittsburgh, PA to: Honolulu, HI" and check out direction nr. 20!

Do you know of other fun directions?

Last Read Sideboard updated

2009-04-01T23:02:00.002-04:00

Librarything published new fancy widgets, one of which found it's way into my blog's sideboard, where you can see the last five books I've read including rating and review (if available). A good reason to sometimes stop by my blog ;)

Squirrels in Boston

2009-03-31T21:29:00.003-04:00

Last weekend in Boston I encountered the cutest Squirrel ever:

From Boston March

In the Public Garden, a park in the center of Boston, stood a tree which was infested by Squirrels, I counted at least 5 of them, and they were kind enough to pose for my camera ;). More pictures as usual on picasa.

Winter in Pittsburgh

2009-03-19T11:13:00.003-04:00

Guido wrote a very poignant post about winter in Pittsburgh, here is a short excerpt:

"For the most time the temperature during the Pittsburgh winter is below 0 degree Celsius. Sometimes it was below 10 degree Celsius for weeks.
The coldest day this winter was -22 degree Celsius."

Read the full post on Guido's blog.

The Imax Experience

2009-03-12T10:49:00.005-04:00

It being a rainy day yesterday, gave a good excuse to pay a visit to Boston's closest Imax, which happened to be in Reading 70 minutes away from Downtown. Having to travel so far I decided to make the best of it and watch two movies!

Under the Sea 3D

A documentary about creatures living under the water shot in dazzling 3D, giving you the feeling as if you were in the middle of the ocean almost touching the fish and reefs. Being a seasoned scuba diver myself I recognized many of the fishes and was delighted to meet cuttlefish, lion fish and the epaulette shark again, and then there were also a couple of fishes I've never seen, such as the Leafy Dragonfish, which looks a little bit like a seahorse but so much more elegant and interesting. It definitely awakened the urge in me to go scuba diving again. In short: A must-see for every scuba-diver and everyone interested in underwater creatures.

And then it was time for the main event:

Watchmen - The IMAX experience

Wow, what an experience! A fantastic story, elegantly told with flash-backs to fill in the background, stunning visuals and an apt and captivating soundtrack (like 99 Luftballons from Nena!). I wasn't familiar with the story before, having deliberately waited for the movie to read the graphic novel and so I was curious if it could live up to the high praise I've heard from all around. All I can say is, it surpassed my expectations! And seeing it on the huge IMAX screen made the story larger than life! If you have an Imax in the neighbourhood, even if it is 1 or more hours away, go and see Watchmen there, it is definitely worth the trip. But be sure to reserve your ticket if you're going on the weekend, I've heard that it is regularly sold out.

Butterfly Garden @ Boston Science Museum

2009-03-10T21:39:00.003-04:00

Springbreak for me happens in Boston, where I try to relax a bit and take in some of the sights. Today I went to the Science Museum, which currently hosts an interesting exhibit about Mythological Creatures such as Dragons, Unicorns, Mermaids and so forth. They also have a Butterfly Garden which boasts an amazing number of butterflies and was well worth a visit. You can find some pictures in my photo album:

From Springreak in Boston

Spring Break here I come!

2009-03-04T16:04:00.002-05:00

We just finished our presentation of the latest task, which dealt with a Business Plan for Outsourcing Direct-To-Customer Sales for a Holiday Decoration Company.

From Pittsburgh March

This was the last official event I had to attend before the start of Spring Break and I'm so glad to get a break!

Saturday at the Game Club...

2009-03-03T11:39:00.002-05:00

Last Saturday I was part of a special event at the game club. One member brought a game he designed for playtesting. Obviously it's top secret so I cannot reveal too much ;), but it was a very interesting concept dealing with Hackers and the Internet.

After playing a couple of games of Tsuro and two rounds of Dominion, I got the chance to try another game. Thurn and Taxis plays in medieval Europe, with Zurich on the map!, and the player's goal was to connect different cities with postal routes. Quite interesting concept and definitely a game to play again.

Read: Modern Magic

2009-02-27T00:05:00.005-05:00

Living in the US has one big advantage, I can take part in LibraryThing's Early Reviewer Program, which gives away advanced readers copies based to interested members. Members can sign up for the program and select books they would be interested in to read. The books are then assigned based on an algorithm which takes the titles in the members library into account and tries to find the closest matches. So far I received four books and all were worth my time.

Here's my review for the latest book I received, Modern Magic by Anne Cordwainer:
"An intriguing story set in modern times with sorcerers living amongst ordinary people and yet dealing with their own sort of problems. The main characters are the siblings John, a highly gifted magician, and Liz, who doesn't have any magical talent at all, and they regularly exchange the role as first person narrator. This gives the reader some interesting insights into the dilemma that can arise when two world views and the truths they take for granted clash. The book is split into different episodes, which are often set months or up to a year apart, which allows us to see how John and Liz react to the changing world around them and how they try to deal with the different crises that always seem to spring up where they are. Interesting till the last page and well worth a read if you want to discover an alternative to Harry Potter's magical world."
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

A hint of Switzerland in Pittsburgh

2009-02-23T23:33:00.002-05:00

From Pittsburgh February

We had a small Swiss Cheese Fondue tonight at Guido's Place and celebrated this Swiss winter dish in snowy and cold Pittsburgh.

Coraline 3D

2009-02-18T00:48:00.002-05:00

After realizing that the 3D version of Coraline was shown in cinemas close to Pittsburgh I quickly checked my schedule and freed up room to see this version of the film as well.

From Pittsburgh February

That's me in the cinema with the "cool" 3D glasses ;).

The 3D technology was very impressive, especially because it wasn't used for showy effects but rather subtly to give the movie more depth and emotion. I preferred the 3D version to the regular print and you should definitely check it out, if you have the opportunity.

A word of warning for everyone using Google to look up show times, enter "Coraline 3D", otherwise only 2D screenings will be shown in the results list. That's why I originally thought the movie wasn't shown in 3D in Pittsburgh.

Coraline

2009-02-09T10:35:00.002-05:00

The hype around Coraline was quite big with a large web presence as well as commercials on tv (which I don't have so I have to take this as second hand information ;) ). But even without the hype it would have been clear that I had to see it because:
1. it is based on a Neil Gaiman story
2. it is directed by Henry Selick, the director of The Nightmare before Christmas
3. it was shot in stop-motion, same as The Nightmare before Christmas

The movie was everything I expected it to be, an astonishing ride with fantastic visuals, some scary scenes and a cool story, in addition it boasted an exceptionally creepy soundtrack. The only bummer was that the cinema we watched it at didn't support the Tru3d feature...

Nevertheless the movie gets 10 out of 10 points. (Who knows, in Tru3d it might have received more points ;) ).

That's it from my side, now go and watch it!

Pittsburgh Unhinged

2009-02-01T23:29:00.002-05:00

My return from Boston, more about that later, coincided with the win of the Superbowl by the Pittsburgh Steelers. The trip from the airport by bus was very interesting, because all of Downtown and large parts of Forbes Avenue (one of the main connections between Downtown and Oakland) was blocked off, so the Bus had to make a detour to Squirrel Hill (which is the suburb after Oakland, away from Downtown). When the bus finally got back on the route, we saw thousands of people congregated in the streets, wearing Steelers gear, waving the Terrible Towel, lighting fireworks and apparently having a good time. We also saw heavy police presence, some even in riot gear, firefighters and a couple of helicopters. Walking back home I was glad to have my yellow scarf with me, so I could blend into the crowd... ;)

Board Games return

2009-01-18T22:18:00.002-05:00

Saturday of the first school week brought a reunion with the board game club. This time I already joined them at 1pm, when it officially started and so I got the opportunity to play lots of games (some of them even new ones):

Tsuro: A fast and easy game where the players have to follow lines and try to stay on the board.
Puerto Rico: An intriguing plantation / settlement game.
Tichu: Still cool card game. Best was when I managed to disrupt our opponents Tichu and Grand Tichu.
Euphrat & Tigris: My non-combat strategy left me with the biggest empire but not enough tokens to win the game, still was a fun round.
Saint Petersburg: A cool money management board game, which I managed to win by a slight margin :)
Alhambra: An intriguing palace building game, which I lost by a big margin, this was probably the revenge for Saint Petersburg ;)
El Grande: An older game which won the German "Game of the Year" Award in 1996. Despite this recommendation we couldn't warm to the game, which seemed to random at times.
Dominion: To finish we played two rounds of Dominion of which I won the second with a well-functioning Market-Village-Festival Strategy.

A Weekend in Providence

2009-01-12T20:21:00.001-05:00

After several failed attempts to meet Kachiu in Providence during the Fall semester, I finally managed to get to Providence prior to the start of Spring Semester. The first two days were spent sight-seeing in Providence, visiting Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design Museum and Downtown. I also managed to catch a screening of The Spirit in Providence Mall. The strangest thing was that the movie was 10 minutes delayed! The pre-program information screen got into an endless loop and it took us a while to realize the problem and report it to the staff. The movie was OK, but not as thrilling as the trailer led me to believe, even though I'll grant that it was a visually stunning movie.

From Providence, RI

Saturday evening brought a Snow storm to Providence and thus we delayed our plans for Sunday's day trip. But when we saw that it stopped snowing close to noon, we went ahead and drove all the way into Massachusetts to visit Old Sturbridge Village. Old Sturbridge Village is a village museum with complete houses from around 1830. Many of the houses were populated by staff in period costumes who did everyday things and were very eager to explain what they were doing and how they were living. We had very intriguing discussions with the Potter, the Blacksmith (both of which would have been part-time farmers as well), a farmer's family in the process of butchering a pig, the parson's wife and the merchants in the town's shop, which boasted an amazing array of things. We also got a try at sledding with period sleds. All in all a terrific experience, unfortunately the 3.5 hours we were there weren't enough to see all the exhibits. If your in the neighborhood I strongly recommend a visit, for which you should plan the whole day!

From Old Stubridge Village

Pittsburgh is far away...

2009-01-09T20:41:00.000-05:00

Thursday started under a bad omen. A slight miscalculation led me to believe I had to check in at 8am, upon reaching the airport I saw that check-in wouldn't start till 8.45am, so we basically were one hour early. Fortunately, my friend drove me to the airport and so we spent the time breakfasting and chatting.

On the plane my window-seat was already taken, but since I traveled alone I decided to be generous and take the middle aisle seat instead. The flight was longer than expected, which offered me enough time to eat, sleep, read and watch movies. I saw Death Race, an ok car action movie, and Ghost Town a cute little comedy about a dentist who started seeing ghosts.

The minute I stepped into the immigration area, I saw trouble ahead. There were thousands of people queuing and my next plane was supposed to leave within 1.5 hours. A small consolation was that I had my book out and could pass the time reading. After 1 hour and 45 minutes, in which I dropped my documents about five times trying to hold them together with my book in one hand and the board case in the other hand, I finally was officially readmitted to the US. Unfortunately, my plane was long gone by that time. I was lucky in so far that there was another scheduled flight to Pittsburgh at 10.15pm and I could take that, however, this meant killing 5 hours on Washington Airport, which I spent reading again.

The flight to Pittsburgh passed very swiftly and I slept throughout.

In Pittsburgh I had two chances to catch a bus to CMU. The first chance became possible because we landed 15 minutes early. However, waiting for my checked luggage almost took this time advantage away again. Finally, I managed to catch the earlier bus with two minutes to spare.

Back home I quickly repacked my bags for my upcoming weekend trip to Providence and finally fell asleep around 2am only to get up again at 4.25am. But more about that later...

Hermitage (Einsiedelei) St. Verena, Solothurn

2008-12-24T05:49:00.002-05:00

From Holiday Season 2008 in Switzerland

Every year around Christmas thousands of people congregate to the Hermitage St. Verena in Solothurn, lighting candles to remember other people. The most people arrive on Christmas Eve, but already on the 23rd December many candles were burning and the atmosphere was very special.

Henkersmahl 2008

2008-12-21T12:00:00.004-05:00

This weekend I took a short trip to the Valais, to take part in the "Henkersmahl". This is a Lord of the Rings themed event with an aperitif, a dinner, show acts and a screening of The Fellowship of the Rings (Special Extended Edition) in the cinema Capitol in Brig. The event was a great success and lots of people I knew from the Middle Earth Festival and Larp events attended. The only disappointment I faced was that the movie was shown in its German synchronized version instead of the English original, but I got over it and translated the dialogs to stay awake (after all the screening lasted from 1.30am till 4.20am).
As usual, I couldn't help but take a lot of pictures which can be found in my gallery. Here's a sneak preview:

From Henkersmahl December 2008

Traveling to Switzerland

2008-12-21T05:55:00.000-05:00

I could bring two bags weighing 50 pounds each back, so I wasn't very concerned about the weight, despite a couple of heavy books. Big was my surprise then when my suitcase weighed in at 52.5 pounds! Fortunately, there was some space in my big backpack and after some creative repacking, I got the suitcase down to 49.5 pounds, whereas the backpack now weighed in at 40 pounds. Bad weather conditions in some parts of the US led to long delays, fortunately Newark/New York was not hit by the storm and so our plane left with only 20 minutes delay. The flight itself was very uneventful and I spent most of it reading or sleeping.

The plane to Zurich also boarded on time, however, we again had to wait on the runway until we could finally take off. This time it was a full 50 minutes... My video console was not working properly and so a steward had to reset it before I could watch a movie. And so I missed the first 10 minutes of The Mummy 3. Since it was only back story so far, I watched the rest anyways. Overall it was pretty entertaining but did not reach the high points I remember from the first film. After the movie was over my video console balked again, but since there was no other movie I absolutely had to see, I didn't do anything about it and read a couple of books instead. Finally, we landed in Zurich "on time" (i.e. the 50 minutes late we lost on the runway in Newark). The only surprise on debarking the plane were two border patrols who inspected every passengers passport as soon as we left the plane.

Movie Marathon

2008-12-19T07:19:00.001-05:00

After having finished early with our task and packing I had half a day to spare. The natural thing was of course to go the the movies ;). After mainly frequenting South Side Works the last couple of times, I decided to go to Waterfront instead because they offered a bigger selection for cheaper prices (US$ 5.00 / movie) and so I saw:
- Transporter 3: A cool action movie with a couple of unbelievable stunts and very cool fight scenes.
- Madagascar 2: As with the first part the penguins were the secret stars and my favorite element in the movie, however, they couldn't carry the whole movie on their own, also because they didn't get that much screen time. And so I was rather disappointed with the movie and will not watch it again anytime soon.
- Bolt: Bolt on the other hand was a hit! Cute, witty and incredibly funny. Even though it is not a Pixar movie it is well worth your time!

Enlightened Christmas Event

2008-12-16T23:57:00.003-05:00

Like every good Consulting Company, our team held a pre-Christmas event! However, since we were only students we were a little bit limited regarding the budget ;). So we went to Qdoba for dinner and then for an All You Can Bowl event.
We had great fun and were happy to adopt Woo as our 6th team member ;)
And here's our team:

From Pittsburgh December

Games, Movie & Dancing

2008-12-13T22:22:00.002-05:00

Since I didn't come around to blog about last Saturday's Game Club Meeting, I thought I'd catch up now.

Last Saturday we played:
- Ticket to Ride - USA 1910: The US edition of Ticket to Ride with an extra expansion set was far more challenging than the European Game, because many people ended up building the same routes. Nevertheless, it was quite interesting.
- Kingsburg: Still a fun and luck-based game. I managed to win by a big margin :)

Afterwards, we went to the Southside Works cinema to catch a screening of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This was the first time I saw this movie on the big screen and it still is brilliant and lots of fun. My cheekbones started aching after the first five minutes ;).

This Saturday I returned to the Game Club, where the Dominion fever has started to grow and so we ended up with three copies of the game (two of which were played concurrently). So as you could guess, I played:
- Dominion: Nothing to add, still a fantastic game.
- Kingsburg: This time I was not quite as lucky as last time, but I still managed to tie for first place :)

Then I went on to an English Country Dance Meet, which was held close to the University. Even though I was the youngest by about 20 years, it was a lot of fun. We danced countless dances, almost all of which were new to me. But the great thing about English Country Dancing is that they are very easy to pick up. To my great delight we also danced Picking Up Sticks, one of the two English Country Dances I previously learned in Switzerland. After two hours of dancing I was really tired, but very glad that I went there and I'm sure to go back in the new year.

Celebrate the Seasons Parade & some more gaming

2008-11-29T22:24:00.003-05:00

To start off the Holiday season Pittsburgh celebrated it's annual "Celebrate The Seasons" Parade downtown. Only having seen such events in movies, inspired me to check it out in person ^^.
The parade was quite entertaining, even though there were many high school marching bands and a lot of local "celebrities". The only annoyance was that they regularly stopped for five minutes to give the TV stations time to show commercials during their live reports.

From Celebrate the Seasons Parade

Even though it is Thanksgiving Weekend, there were still around twelve people at the CMU gaming club, which gave me the opportunity to play a couple of games:
- Ticket to Ride Europe: A short strategy game where every player tries to build train lines to fulfill his tickets.
- Nuclear War: The name says it all. A game where the players fight a nuclear war against each other. Fortunately, it is kept inquite light and thus is very entertaining, however, it heavily depends on luck when drawing cards.
- Tichu: Still a classic, still a fun game to play.
- http://boardgamegeek.com/game/36218: This time we played my copy and I actually managed to win two times (once tied for first place).
Unfortunately, everyone seemed to be heavily biased against Munchkin so my copy of Munchkin Quest was not played...

Spamalot - The Musical

2008-11-27T23:02:00.002-05:00

Today is Thanksgiving the day every American spends with his family eating too much food and watching football on TV. Every American? Not quite, a fair number of people found their way downtown Pittsburgh to watch Spamalot The Musical.

Spamalot is mainly inspired by Monty Python and the Holy Grail but liberally borrows from other Python classics such as Life of Brian. All in all it works fantastically well and is a riot to observe. We were laughing so hard my cheek muscles started to ache ;).

Some merchandise for the show was also sold on location and since I noticed getting cold feet recently I got these...

From November in Pittsburgh

The Rabbit with Pointy Teeth Slippers or better known as "The Killer Rabbit Slippers" :)

Games & Early Thanksgiving

2008-11-23T22:04:00.003-05:00

Even though I attended another Game Club meeting yesterday, it was cut short by other plans. But one thing after another.

At the Game Club I played Tigris & Euphrat, one of my favorites, and Brass. Brass is a strategy game revolving around the industrial revolution offering a very interesting game play, and I don't say that just because I won the game ;).

But then it was time for the official part of the evening. Our program held an early Thanksgiving Dinner at the Pittsburgh Golf Club, an event I couldn't miss! The food was very authentic - turkey, sweet potatoes (with marshmallow topping), cranberry sauce, beans and more - and extremely delicious. So in the true spirit of Thanksgiving (eating too much ;) ) I had two helpings of the main course and tried all the deserts. The Pumpkin Tiramisu was quite exotic but also very tasty. Even though the evening ended a bit abruptly, and we didn't get a chance to take more group pictures, it was a very pleasant experience ^^.

Christmas arrived early this year!

2008-11-20T21:40:00.002-05:00

The best presents are the one you make to yourself ;). So when I walked into Phantom of the Attics Games, my favorite Game Store in Pittsburgh, I didn't hesitate to buy the long-awaited Munchkin Quest. At the cash register, I then noticed Monthy Python Fluxx, which I bought after studying two of the cards ;).

When I got home there were more surprises, the first package from Amazon.com with Absolute Sandman Vol. 2 and Vol. 3 was waiting for me!

And that's how the table for presents looked like:

From November in Pittsburgh

After a Toast Hawaii dinner at Guido's place we got a chance to play Monthy Python Fluxx and it is as silly as it promised to be :).

Social Web and World of Warcraft

2008-11-16T12:15:00.002-05:00

Here's the paper I wrote for my Social Web Homework:

Background

Before discussing the different social aspects, I wanted to give a short overview about the way I tackled this assignment. The assigned research condition was to create a human character, first play a couple of hours solo and then a couple of hours with an assigned group. Reaching level 6 soloing, I considered my character ready for group play.

My main character:

Wanting to explore the world a bit more, and not risking running away with levels, I created an alternate character on another realm. This time I picked a dwarf priest which I also quickly reached level 5. After playing with my assigned group for a couple of hours, I had reached level 8, 2 levels shy of the 10 goal. Unfortunately, a new expansion was released just then and the realm of my main character was regularly completely congested. So I continued playing with my dwarf and eventually reached level 10 and visited both Ironforge and Stormwind City, taking the Deeprun Tram to go in the one direction and a Gryphon to get back.

My alternate character:

A more detailed account about my experiences can be found on my blog: http://pratchettfan.blogspot.com/search/label/WoW

Social Aspects

Learning the Ropes / Encouraging Newcomers
WoW tries to show new players how the game works through displaying context sensitive tips. So the user is not overwhelmed with a flood of information, but successively learns new things as they become relevant to him. This works very well for people who have played similar role-playing games, because they are familiar with the principles behind the game mechanics. So I had no problems finding my way around, picking up the first quest and getting started. However, a complete newbie to these kinds of games might be so distracted by the myriad of controls and things going on, that he might miss these tips. A possible improvement would be an optional meta-game tutorial, which would describe the function of the key elements on the screen (such as health bar, map, and tips) before the user is let loose in the world. Experienced users can choose to abort this if they are already familiar with the concepts.

There are two different elements in play which encourage newcomers to continue playing:
1) The quests which start out being quite easy to accomplish and then incrementally get more difficult, taking more time and effort to complete as the game goes on.
2) The other players which have reached higher levels and can from time to time be encountered. Such an encountered leads to a wow effect. The newbie sees how cool and powerful his character can become if he only dedicates enough time to it.
The first element definitely was a conscious design choice of Blizzard, whereas I’m not so sure about the second element. I’d guess that it is something that just naturally occurred as more players reached higher levels and kept on playing.

What can we learn from this? Even though there are advantages to keep newbies separated from the harsh reality of the game until they have got their bearings, a complete separation would eliminate the second point. So it may be a good thing to strike a balance, starting the player in a low threat area, but still giving higher level characters incentives to visit these places from time to time.

Solo vs Group Play
Playing solo at the start of the game worked well for me; it gave me enough time to get used to the controls and the quests were simple enough, that I didn’t need other people to finish. However, speaking with one of my group members, I realised that this may not be true for players inexperienced with role-playing games. All he did to level up was killing monsters; he wasn’t aware that there were quests which made levelling up more meaningful and easier.

As the game progressed and the quests got more difficult, group play became almost mandatory. With my dwarf healer I stood no chance of completing some quests, because I was regularly overwhelmed by the number of enemies around. Fighting with other players helped distribute the aggression of the enemies and dramatically increase our chance of success. So knowing a couple of people with the same level and the same goals works well at this point. But even solo players are not completely at a loss. There being so many other players around and I often was invited into short term parties were trying to complete the same quest. Nevertheless, finding a party can be quite hard for certain quests and requires a fair amount of luck and good timing (at least with the trial account and its limitations).

So we can observe two kinds of group play in WoW. First, partnerships of convenience of solo players who happen to be in the same region and have the same goals and second, groups which have a long term goal of playing together and completing several consecutive quests. More often than not this second type of group is organised around a guild.

Early in the game the first kind of groups seem to be more important than in the end-game phase, this is mainly because the quests early in the game do not require a lot of coordination and time to solve and even strangers can easily step in and help. In the end-game, however, when quests and raids become long and dangerous, coordination and trust are key, both things which don’t come naturally to partnerships of convenience and so guilds start playing an integral part in the game.

Dying
Keeping the consequences of failure low is key to keep people from becoming frustrated and quitting the game. WoW’s concept of dying strikes a fair balance between punishment and continuing the game. Whereas it is annoying to walk back to the corpse, achievements a player completed so far are retained and he can continue with his quest. In many solo games the consequences for dying are that you have to start the level / quest from the beginning again. This can become very frustrating, especially when you die close to completing the quest. Nevertheless I had a couple of problems with this mechanism of dying. Exploring the area I ventured into the Gnomeregan mines. There was no one to stop my decent. However, once at the bottom I was promptly killed by monsters far above my level. Walking back to my corpse I saw that the entrance now also was crowded with these powerful monsters, apparently a party marched in just before I ventured inside, and so was promptly killed again trying to flee the dungeon.

Having to do this several times can be extremely annoying. So in the spirit of encouraging newcomers to continue playing, I would welcome an emergency exit which becomes available if the dungeon one finds oneself in is drastically overpowered.

Conclusion
Blizzard did a good job keeping the game fun for newcomers as well as old timers, offering a wide range of activities to pursue which address the interests of the different player types, such as Achiever, Explorer, Socialiser and Killer. And so I can understand how people get addicted to the game. And if the game had come out a couple of years earlier, even I might have started playing it. But at the current moment in time there are too many other interesting things going on, not leaving enough time to play WoW economically (playing enough to warrant the monthly fee).

Level 10!

2008-11-16T00:20:00.002-05:00

Trying my luck again this morning, I discovered that the glitch was resolved and the elevator worked again as it was supposed to. Nevertheless, I took two times to get all the way out, because there were Addled Lepers on the way to the exit as well. At first I thought it might take longer, but fortunately a big group marched in and cleared the way for me ^^.

Now that I was back in the game, I wanted to try to solve some of the bonus assignments. And so, after reaching level 10, I went Ironforge to find transportation to another major city. After walking planlessly around for a while, I stumbled upon the Deeprun Tram, which took me to Stormwind City. From there I wanted to find an alternate way back, so I first ventured to the harbor, but had to discover that no ships were leaving for the moment. After a while I did find the Gryphon Master and took a Gryphon back to Ironforge. The view on the way was quite impressive, giving me an idea what powerful monsters await more advanced players...

So here ends my quest for World of Warcraft. My trial period is almost over and tomorrow, I'll write the homework paper about some social aspects of my experiences. Even though I found it to be a fascinating game, and I can see that several problems I had were related with the trial account, I won't continue playing, at least in the US. First, because it is very time consuming, and I have many other things I need and want to do (tonight I missed out on a game of Arkham Horror with a new expansion because I had to get back to reach level 10), secondly, it's too expensive for casual gaming, and thirdly, since the US and Europe are completely disconnected in the game, I might need to buy the game again if I wanted to play back in Switzerland...

Here's a compiled screenshot of my character:

Football Dominion

2008-11-15T20:58:00.002-05:00

Today was the last game of the season for Carnegie Mellon's Football team. Since I missed all the other games, I decided to go and check it out. Even thought the weather was rather unfriendly, it rained lightly most of the time, it was pretty enjoyable. Carnegie Mellon had a good game against Chicago and won 28 to 21 in the end.

Afterwards, it being a Saturday, I joined the CMU gaming Club. This time I learned no new Games, rather I played Dominion for 6 hours straight and slowly I'm getting an idea for some of the strategies, even managing a tie for 1st place once. But even when loosing it was a lot of fun! Definitely a game I'll want to have in Switzerland. Now I need to start figuring out if I actually have enough space in my luggage to bring everything I want back home...

Unhappy Ending

2008-11-14T23:41:00.003-05:00

Since my assigned server was full again, I continued to play with my Dwarven Priest. I made good progress but was a bit annoyed by the amount of walking around involved, I never seemed to be able to find the right spot...

The highlight was when I was invited to join a party about to raid a dungeon. That was a pretty cool experience and this time I tried to act the priest offering healing and shielding where necessary.

Playing alone I often encountered players in distress and I was more than willing to help. Most often I got a thanks and sometimes even some help in return. Only one gay walked out on me, leaving me with one of the monsters he was fighting before...

Unfortunately, it didn't have a happy ending for me. I was doing the first quest outside Gnomeregan, when I discovered the entrance to the mine (or whatever that is). Curios I stepped in and took the elevator down... big mistake... because I couldn't get out again. I'm not sure if it was a glitch in the game, or on purpose, but whenever I stood on the elevator and it moved up, I stayed at the bottom (inside the elevator)... help would be greatly appreciated!

Update: Some research this morning revealed that it is indeed a glitch in the game, which has already been reported. Unfortunately, this means the end of my dwarf because I doubt they are going to fix it till tomorrow (when my trial account ends). And I would have needed just one more level to get to level 10...

Task 5: Wireless Municipal Area Network

2008-11-14T19:00:00.004-05:00

Today we just had the presentation of our fifth task "Wireless Municipal Area Network (WiMAN)" in which we had to come up with a suggestion for a WiMAN implementation for Pittsburgh. I'm writing about this task because several interesting things have happened.

After four tasks with my initial team, we were assigned into new teams, so we had to come up with a new organisation and a new name.
Presentations were open for everyone again, and so I chose / was picked to be the first presenter
The presentation was, as in task 1, extremely persuasive.

In the morning I gave a trial run of the presentation and I was again extremely nervous. When the presentations were about to start and we were waiting for the faculty, my nervousness wouldn't go away, so I picked up "Discworld: The Graphic Novels" and read a couple of pages. This surprisingly helped alleviate my stress levels and when it was finally my turn to give the presentation I was very calm.
The presentation was, in my humble opinion, a big success (we got the fewest critical questions from the professor), which was only possible because our team did a very good job in preparing the report and presentation. So I'm looking forward to three more interesting tasks with this great team! :)

Trial account woes...

2008-11-14T12:11:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, my group managed to meet up for our assigned WoW group play. To overcome some of the trial account limitations, you cannot form a party, you cannot participate in private group chat channels, we decided to physically meet in the same room, to at least simulate effective voice communication.

The first problem we then faced was that every player had completed different tasks and so it took us a while to find a task at least two of us had not yet completed. But then it got really complicated. Since we weren't in the same party we couldn't share experience and treasure, in addition, if I, who had done that quest before, attacked a monster first, it wouldn't drop the quest item. So we had to settle for playing alone together. But this ended in disaster as well, because we couldn't see the location and health status of the other players and we were constantly swarmed by Kobold miners. After dying three or more times we found our way out of the mine and started to attack enemies in a more ordered fashion. This gave us a better success rate but also decreased the fun in the game because loot and experience couldn't be shared...

After completing a couple of quests we visited Stormwind City. That was an impressive experience, first because of its size and second because of the high-level players posing all over the place ;). However we didn't find a quest adequate for our level so we had to return to Goldshire to pick another quest.

I can see the advantage of group play, however, with these limitations in place it doesn't make much sense.

Book Meme

2008-11-13T22:41:00.003-05:00

As seen in Rico's Blog:

Grab the nearest book.
Open it to page 56.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

This happens to be The Discworld's Graphic Novels, which I just started today. This puts me in front of a couple of problems:

The book doesn't have page numbers
Page 56 (manually counted) only has two sentences

So I'll just take the fifth sentence from the 57th page (I might have miscounted after all):
"Don't Say It!"

Mysterious... next!

Join the fray

2008-11-09T22:18:00.002-05:00

Since my server was busy and as a trial account user I had the lowest priority, I switched servers and created a dwarf priest (which would have been my first priority, if I had complete free choice). The first couple of tasks were pretty boring. But then I got into the troll cave. There I stumbled upon a group of adventurers and was invited to join their party. Charging into the fray with four people around was indeed a lot of fun. From a social standpoint it was interesting to observe that as long as everyone was in the cave the team worked great and we killed trolls left and right. But once outside the cave the group dispersed quickly, lacking a common goal, respectively communication and coordination towards what should be done next. Additional tools such as voice communication may have helped in this situation to quickly exchange the different player's goals and needs and to find a common understanding of what to do next. Now I'm really curious how it will be to play together with my classmates...

Boardgames galore!

2008-11-09T00:27:00.002-05:00

Of course I couldn't let a cloudy Saturday get in the way of board gaming ;) and it was totally worth it because I got the chance to play three new games:
- Dominion: A card game where players try to build a kingdom by buying different Action, Victory and Money cards. Reminds me a bit of a good Trading Card Game (without the Trading element, which is a plus in my book) and offers a lot of variety from game to game. I absolutely loved it and I highly recommend it to any fans of TCG like Games.
- Leonardo da Vinci: A game where players collect resources to create inventions in their laboratories. Pretty interesting.
- Container: A production and shipping game with a couple of flaws. First of all, the color choices of the designers are pretty poor (the ships colors don't match the players board and then there are light brown, dark brown and dark orange containers; try playing that with not enough light!), another problem is that to be successful one heavily depends on the actions of the other players. Nevertheless it was a challenging experience and I'd probably give it another go.
- Mystery of the Abbey: Clue with a twist. A monk was murdered in an abbey and the players try to solve the mystery through deduction. An entertaining and fun game which offers more options and depth than Clue.

The evening ended with another round of Agricola. Somehow I just can't seem to get the hang of it. Even though I got a head start with a good profession, I miserably lost again. Maybe next time...

Death after Character Creation...

2008-11-09T00:14:00.002-05:00

This morning I started playing WoW (World of Warcraft). I chose a human fighter (race and faction were assigned), figuring it would be easier to get the first couple of levels in solo play. However, searching for kobolds I got slightly lost and ended up in the dominion of brigands, they weren't pleased to see me and I didn't stand a chance. So now I know how dying feels like... ;)

After that it went better and I managed to complete a couple of quests and gain a couple of levels until I ran into a kobold ambush in a mine... Now I know to be more careful in mines. ^^

Getting started was actually pretty easy and through a little bit of trial and error I figured out most of the important key and mouse interactions. Two things struck me while playing: First, it was also encouraging to see other low level players around solving the same quests I had already done, and second, it was impressive to see a couple of high level characters with their mounts passing by. Some even gave me a helping hand in passing.

So far it has been more of a playing alone together, than interaction with other players and just running around and killing monsters didn't strike me as extremely fascinating... let's see if this changes in the group phase (next we have to play together with two other students from our class).

Last innocent post ;)

2008-11-07T23:17:00.003-05:00

Many of my friends played World of Warcraft (WoW) and I was frequently asked why I didn't play, my answer was always: "It just doesn't sound that fascinating to me." So peer pressure had no effect on my desire to play the game, even when I ended up being the only one at the table who couldn't join the latest WoW discussion.

But now Carnegie Mellon does what peer pressure couldn't, they get me to play WoW... It is one of the homework assignments in the Social Web class I'm taking this year. We were assigned a race and two team mates and should play about two hours solo and two hours in a team and then analyze this experience in light of the social theories we covered in class. Fortunately, there is a 10 day free trial, so we don't have to invest money for the homework, and we are guaranteed to return to the real world within ten days, at least that's what the teachers hope...

I try to keep writing about my experiences, but in case I disappear from the radar send a search party to US server Alleria ;)

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

2008-11-02T21:46:00.002-05:00

After discovering that "Zack and Miri Make a Porno", the new Kevin Smith movie opened Halloween weekend, it was clear I had to see it! After all Dogma is still one of my favorite movies of all times!

Zack and Miri have been good friends (and nothing more) since high-school, sharing the same apartment without major problems until their utilities get disconnected. Now they need to get money quick or end up on the street in the deepest winter. A porno seems to be an easy way to achieve that and so they start looking for actors, producers and a location. But their problems are just about to start...

Overall an entertaining movie, which doesn't quite reach the brilliance of some of Kevin Smith's other projects. What made this movie more relevant to me was the fact that it played in Pittsburgh and it's suburb Monroeville. So it was quite funny to see local "landmarks" such as Pittsburgh Steelers and Pengiuns fans, Downtown and the amount of snow I can expect in winter ;).
If you see the movie, stay seated during the end credits because there's a cool "infomercial" placed in the middle.

Halloween, Whash-a-ton, Game Club

2008-11-01T23:43:00.003-04:00

Halloween in the US is a great day. All day long you see people in costumes everywhere. On the way to dinner we even saw a huge group of people in costumes on bicycles! At first I was a bit disappointed to learn that there was no official Halloween party at the University, but then I managed to get invited to a private Halloween party through people I know from the Social Web class.

The party was in Shadyside in a private home which was decorated with a lot of care and featured a number of very funny pumpkins. The people there were great as well, everyone was dressed up and some of the costumes were fantastically detailed. Politics of course was also a theme and so we saw three Sarah Palin's, one of them a Zombie!, and one Barrack Obama. Other great costumes were Waldo, from Where's Waldo fame, Little Red Riding Hood, with a wolf in a pot, Snow White, Wilma and Fred Flintstone, the Harlem Globetrotters (five of them) and many more. It was a real blast!

Wash-a-ton
Throughout the last month I've been accumulating new clothes to postpone doing the laundry as long as possible, but Saturday morning the time finally came round again where I had to bite the bullet. This time round I had four washing machines running in parallel! So now I'll be set for another month ;)

Game Club
You now the drill by now ;), if there's nothing else going on on a Saturday it's Game Club time! And again I could play two new games:
- Pillars of the Earth: A resource strategy game based on Ken Follet's Pillars of the Earth. I liked it a lot because it offered many possibilities to gain victory points and thus allowed for a variety of strategies.
- El Capitán: A seafaring territory control resource management game. Sounds very complicated but is a lot of fun!
- Agricola: The day ended with another round of Agricola, as usual I lost miserably, but slowly I'm getting a hang of strategy and for once I wasn't clueless what to do ;). Maybe I'll be better next time ^^.

Hiking in Shenandoah National Park, West Virginia

2008-10-29T09:02:00.004-04:00

This trip was originally planned two weeks previously, but due to various reasons it had to be cancelled. Now it finally worked out and four of us (David, Fedya, Omar and me) made our way to West Virginia.

Day 1 - Night Hike
Arriving at the parking lot at 1am we quickly grabbed our packs and started hiking. After all, we had a mile to cover before making camp, and the tent promised a reprieve from the rain. Hiking in the dark is pretty interesting and with a headlamp not too difficult. We soon found a suitable spot and stopped for the night.

Day 2 - Rainforest?
When we got up it was raining still so we decided to postpone breakfast and start directly. What followed was an extremely intense experience. Our hike was almost constantly accompanied by rain and even when we finally stopped for snacks and brunch we didn't get a reprieve from the wet. And so we hiked up and down hills covered in forest, missing the beautiful views on the way, due to thick clouds and fog, but getting a good chance to look inwards and contemplate why we are here.

Wildlife... a bear cub!
Seeing two snakes on the trail was already quite cool, coming from a hiking experience with almost no wildlife in close view, but what made the day was a bear cub which was on our trail and fled as soon as it saw us. Me being in the middle of the group I only saw its hind quarters as it turned tail and fled into the forest, but still, that was one frigging cool experience! To round it off we later saw a good half dozen white tail deer.

Meet and Greet with Jeremy's Run
Because half the troupe, me included, was pretty exhausted by 4pm we decided to skip the next mountain and hike along a valley instead. There we encountered Jeremy's Run a "small" creek which carried enough water to make crossing it difficult. But crossing it we did and that a good dozen times... So when we finally stopped for the night everyone's shoes were finally wet, either from the rain and/or stepping into the Jeremy's Run.

Camping
Fortunately the rain had stopped when we started down Jeremy's Run so we could set up our campsite in a relatively dry setting and hang our wet things out to dry. A small fire gave us some additional comfort and a chance to further dry our belongings. The only drawback of the fire was that it hindered stargazing for which the night turned out to be perfect, even the Milky Way was visible!

Day 3 - Neighbour Mountain Trail
Because we had a long way before us to get back to the car, we got up at 6.15am and started without breakfast up the Neighbour Mountain Trail. This climb was pretty hard so early in the morning, but with the weather presenting itself from the best possible side, we were rewarded with beautiful views! On the summit it was finally time for our well deserved breakfast and all I can say is that I love Oatmeal! :)

From Shenandoah Backpacking

Down and Up and Down and Up...
After hiking down Neighbour Mountain we hit the Appalachian Trail, which we followed for a while. And that's where we finally started to meet other people. Having only seen a lone hiker the day before, we were a bit shocked to now encounter whole groups of hikers with up to ten people. After lunch break things started to get difficult, because my left knee started to hurt again and the 8 to 10 miles up and down hills we still had to cover didn't make it any better. Even though we were slowed down by this we could still enjoy the wonderful scenery and finally also found our car again ;).

Statistics
In two and a half days we covered 477 miles by car and 36 miles on foot, 22 miles of which we hiked on the second day.

Pictures
A couple of pictures of this trip can be found in my picasa gallery.

Culture, Garage Sale and Game Club

2008-10-19T10:10:00.002-04:00

Friday marked the visit of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, which performed "A Good Life" a special piece commissioned for Pittsburgh’s 250th anniversary and renditions of John Adams' "Slonimsky’s Earbox" and Antonin Dvorák's "The New World". The Adams’ piece was very interesting, with lots of layers and variety. "A Good Life" was good and you could clearly feel the ups and downs that Pittsburgh went through with the rise and fall of the steel industry. I was kind of expecting it to end on a high note, to represent Pittsburgh’s recent success and bright future, yet, the last piece was quite dark as well. "The New World" was also good and I did recognize the last piece from numerous renditions in movies.

On Saturday morning we got an "early" start to go to REI’s Garage Sale. We arrived there 15 minutes before it was supposed to start and were a bit taken aback to see that 130 people were in the queue in front of us. Nevertheless, the trip was a success and I got an almost brand new winter jacket from Marmot for 140.- instead of 300.- US$. So now I should be ready for the cold Pittsburgh winter.

After a team-meeting for my social web class it was time again to join the game club :). My timing was pretty lucky and they were just about to start a game when I arrived.
This time I played:
- Tigris & Euphrates: Still a very interesting and challenging strategy territorial game, which I start to like a lot.
- Maharaja: A game where the players try to earn money by building palasts and houses in Indian cities.
- Arkham Horror with Kingsport Horror Extension: A great cooperative game trying to defend Arkham from the Great Old Ones. We were six players and had a lot of luck with drawing our items and cards, nevertheless it took close to 5 hours to complete, which was 1.50am!

Medieval Literature for Children

2008-10-12T09:45:00.002-04:00

Whilst wandering through Carnegie Mellon's main library I stumbled upon a book which caught my eye: Medieval Literature for Children. Here's a short review:

Medieval literature for children offers a fascinating look into the medieval ages. The book contains a collection of essays, each focusing on a different work from medieval times, discussing the origins and authors (if known) of the work, putting it into context as children's literature and finally giving a small excerpt of the work itself. I can highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about life and literature in the Middle Ages.

Radio and Juliet: Culture in Pittsburgh

2008-10-11T10:24:00.003-04:00

Currently the Pittsburgh Festival of Firsts is going on and so I went with a couple of classmates to see the US Premiere of Radio and Juliet. This is a modern ballet inspired by Romeo and Juliet and set to music from Radiohead. It was a very interesting event with superb performances by the dancers and poetic movie scenes shown from time to time. I have to admit, however, that I couldn't follow all the developments on stage. Nevertheless I enjoyed the performance :)

More nasty surprises by mail...

2008-10-07T11:59:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I received my first gas bill (i.e. the gas used to cook). And it was 215 US$! According to the bill I have used up 10'200 Cubic Feet (CF) of Gas in 32 days.

I did a short research. A regular Oven uses about 40 CF of gas per hour, thus I would have been cooking for 10.6 hours every day!

Actually, I'm pretty sure that I used the oven only about five times to cook dinner or breakfast and even then it never ran for more than an hour...

A phone call to Equitable Gas this morning led to a suspension of the bill until further investigation. They did see, that there probably was a problem somewhere. Now I have to wait till they get back to me...

One thing is for sure, this month I'll keep a close diary on the time I use the stove.

250 Years of Pittsburgh on a Saturday

2008-10-05T00:14:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was the big celebration day of Pittsburgh 250th Birthday with lots of events all day long.
The thing that caught my eye first when I arrived at Point State Park was the pink water in the fountain!

From 250 Years of Pittsburgh

But after the initial shock, I started taking in the other sights, such as the old paddle steamers and historical re-enacters ranging from 1750 to 1820.

From 250 Years of Pittsburgh

Also interesting was the historical flag ceremony hosted by the Eagle Scouts of Pittsburgh.

Since it was Saturday I wanted to get back to CMU to join the Game Club ^^. This time I played the following games:
- Euphrat & Tigris: A tactical game where players try to control kingdoms in one of four aspects (religion, trading, farming and government) collecting victory points. The game offers a lot of depth and is very interesting to play.
- Kingsburg: An interesting game where the player tries to influence people in the Kings court in exchange for favors (resources, victory points, battle strength). These resources can then be used to build buildings which in turn offer various advantages. The game runs over five years where every year has three productive seasons which lead up to an attack by monsters in winter time. A very cool game which can be a bit dependent on dice luck.
- Samurai: Is set in medieval Japan where players try to take control of cities to gain figures. The game is pretty quick but offers a lot of food for thought to find the right tactic. Interesting.
- Transamerica about which I've blogged before.

And still there are many games at the game club which I haven't tried yet, so I'll keep you posted :)

Renaissance Dancing on Youtube

2008-10-03T11:55:00.002-04:00

You may remember that I regularly visited Andreas Rutschmann's Renaissance Dancing courses. A friend just pointed me to a video on Youtube which shows an excerpt from one of these courses. I'm the guy all in green :)

A+

2008-09-30T11:05:00.003-04:00

Today I got my first homework back. In the class Social Web we had to write an essay about our experiences, and the experiences of newcomers in general, in editing Wikipedia. Having spent a lot of time to write a thorough analysis, I was very pleased by the result. I got an A+!

Backpacking in the Dolly Sods Wilderness

2008-09-28T21:33:00.005-04:00

Day 1: The Wal Mart Experience
This three day backpacking trip to West Virginia was organized by the CMU Explorers Club's president, who had backpacked in Dolly Sods before. Highly motivated the six of us packed our gear and ourselves into a small Mazda. Four guys on the back seat was a tight fit, but it worked. We used Google Maps to direct us to the right spot. A couple of hours into the drive we were a) getting hungry and b) unsure if we missed a turnoff, so we were glad to see a Burger King next to a huge Wal Mart (it was huge in my eyes, according to the Americans it was actually pretty small ^^). After dinner and asking for directions at the Burger King we headed back, because we indeed had missed the turnoff. Unfortunately, the directions we printed out were not that clear and when the road we were on led into the woods and turned into a gravel road, we were pretty sure that this wasn't the road we wanted. So we went back and took the other possibility, which indeed led to a bigger road. Great was our dismay, when we saw the Wal Mart approaching in front of us… So we headed back once more and took another road, but this one turned also into a gravel road in the deep woods with huge puddles of water. Checking our maps, we saw that the road we originally traveled on would also lead to US50, so we headed back to Wal Mart, drove past it and took the next crossing to US50. From there on the trip was pretty straightforward. Until we reached the National Park, that is. There the fog was so thick that we couldn't see the campsite. Well, I was sure I saw the sign on the road, but the others were sure it had to be further down the road. Once we were about to leave the National Park, we finally realized our mistake and turned back. After all the trip took us 6 instead of 4.5 hours...

Day 2: Up and On We Go
Our first day of serious backpacking started at 7.30am, unfortunately the weather hadn't cleared over night and it was still foggy and wet. Nobody was really willing to start a stove in this weather and so we skipped breakfast and started hiking right away. The trail took us into the woods and across rivers before leading us to alpine tundra and through a mountain bike race. The ever-changing landscape was the highlight of the day, which could not be dampened by the miserable weather conditions (it was raining on and off throughout the day). Not only the landscape was very versatile, so was the track we walked on: Wooden planks, earth, rocks, grass, sand and water were all part of the track in one part or another. After covering 11 miles, we called it a day and looked for a good campsite near a river; fortunately we found one pretty quickly. Since the weather was dry for a change we quickly set up our tents and then started gathering some firewood, hoping to make a campfire later. We even built a stone oven which would allow us to dry some wood and cook a couple of things. However, the weather spirits were not on our side, and rain picked up again, featuring a harder downpour than we had all day. So we quickly packed out our stoves, prepared and ate our dinner near the stream and then fled into our tents at 7.20pm, hoping to keep warm in the sleeping bags.

Day 3: Meeting the Sods
Sometime during the night the rain stopped and so we could prepare breakfast and break camp without getting any wetter. Looking up we even saw small patches of blue sky, however, they were not meant to last and a couple of minutes after we started, the rain picked up again. All we had in mind was a fast and easy hike back to the car, but the trail had a couple of surprises in stock for us. The first was when we arrived at a river where the stepping stones to cross were completely submerged. After debating for a couple of minutes we took of our shoes and waded through the river. Next we learnt the hard way why the area was called Dolly Sods. The trail lead directly through the swamp and it took a lot of navigating to find dry places to step on and sooner or later everyone had a misstep and thus got to know the swamp a little bit better ^^. The Beaver Dam Trail then took us upwards towards the road and the end of our adventure, however, I saw neither beaver nor dam on the way ;). The last stretch took us two miles along the road back to the car, where we finally could put on some dry clothes (or at least, those of us who had some dry clothes left).
On our way out of the Park, we made a quick stop at Bear Rocks, which offered a nice view into the valley, but didn't feature any bears.
On the way back we managed not to get lost and so we were back in Pittsburgh at 5pm, where the weather was perfect.

Retrospective
- Looking at Google Maps again, I saw that we were on the right "road" the second time, but why the heck Google wanted us to drive along a gravel road for a "short cut" eludes me…
- The video footage we took on the way to the camp ground features the camp ground sign and how we passed it the first time…
- Despite the harsh conditions the trip was a fantastic experience and I don't regret going at all.
- We learned that there can be a lot of water on a mountain ;)
- All my pictures from this trip are available in my web album.

Duquesne Light: Incompetency at Work

2008-09-23T12:27:00.002-04:00

Following, the 72-hour shut-off-notice, I gave Duquesne Light a call this morning. Which was very interesting because at first they told me that they hadn't received my application. I told them I sent it on 9/10 by postal mail, after holding for a couple of minutes, they could confirm that they indeed received it. Then they told me that they could not read the meter, I told them that someone came on Monday, but they didn't believe me...

So I called my landlord who assured me that 3 (THREE!!!) guys from Duquesne Light checked all the meters yesterday at 10am...

So I called them again, but they still didn't know anything about this visit. After holding for 8 minutes they could finally track down the guy who came to my place and confirm that he indeed did check my meter...

To add insult to injury they told me that my application will be retroactive to August, 16th, the day I moved in. However, I don't quite see why I should pay for the time they were incapable of setting up my account. Unfortunately, they are on the longer lever and I really need my electricity...

Interesting side story about Guido, who doesn't have time to blog at the moment due to his work load, he never received the letter asking for a second application. And so it was only yesterday that he was finally able to fill out his application, when he called to pay for his security deposit, they charged him 86.- US$ (I had to pay 50.-$). In addition to being incompetent they also seem to have random rates...

If you have another choice: Do NOT deal with Duquesne Light!

You know you're in the US...

2008-09-22T20:37:00.003-04:00

... when getting Utilities (Gas, Electricity, Internet) connected takes at least 4 phone calls, 3 forms and possibly a personal visit to the office...

Here's the tragedy. My landlord applied for the electricity of my apartment to be charged to me. 3 weeks later I receive a form from the Electricity company that they couldn't verify my status and that I need to a) pay 50.- $ security deposit and b) have my lease and passport verified by a notary. Dutifully I did that. 2 weeks later I get a call that the electrician couldn't get into the house to read the meter and that my landlord should make an appointment. So I contacted the landlord and the appointment was set for Monday. Today, I come home and have the following note in my mailbox:

"72-HOUR SHUT-OFF NOTICE
Your electricity will be shut off. Because you have not properly applied for electric service, we will shut off your electricity on or after 8:00am on 9-26-08 without further notice."

What the fuck! *extremelyPissedOff* What more should I do? Speak to the president so that he can put a nice word in for me?

to be continued...

Burn After Reading

2008-09-21T22:24:00.003-04:00

After working for most of the day, I decided to take the evening off and watch a new movie. Burn After Reading, the new Coen Brothers movie, was on my watch list for a while, after seeing the trailer several times, like every time I was in the cinema in August ;), and so it was a quick decision to check it out.

The movie is brilliant, showcasing hilarious performances by Brad Pitt, as clueless fitness instructor, George Clooney, as paranoid womanizer, John Malkovic, as fired CIA analyst, Frances McDormand, as desperate single, and J.K. Simmons as cynical CIA Superior. It took a while for the movie to take up speed but the longer the movie lasted the better and more twisted it got. And the final debriefing with the CIA Superior is plain brilliant! A definite must see! :)

It's Saturday...

2008-09-20T23:31:00.000-04:00

... which means my afternoon and evening was devoted to the CMU Game Club!

This time I managed to play three new games and an "old" favorite:
- Puerto Rico: A very cool game where the players have to manage plantations and build a city in Puerto Rico.
- Notre Dame: A fast game set in medieval Paris where players have to collect Victory Points and try to stay clear of the Rats.
- Caylus: A complicated resource management strategy game. Explaining the rules took almost an hour and the game play was not that rewarding. But some people just love it.
- Tichu: Since I've written about the game a couple of times before, I'll drop a couple of words about this round. We had a terrible start and were down 400 points. After almost catching up a blunder set us back another 300 points. But in the last rounds, when the others only needed one hand to finish, I managed to pull of a Grand Tichu and my partner finished second, so we literally overtook them on the finishing line! What a great game! :)

And now back to studying...

The 1st week er month is over ;)

2008-09-20T00:30:00.004-04:00

Since everyone at home is blogging about their first week in the Masters Program, I'll do the same. Hang on, the first week is already three weeks in the past, so I'll just write what happened this week ;).

For most of the students this week was very important, because it featured two job fairs, the Business Opportunities Conference (BOC) and Technical Opportunities Conference (TOC) and everyone was dressed up accordingly. Since I'm not really looking for a job in the US, I just went to the TOC to have a look around. And I have to admit it is impressive to see recruiters from Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, EA, ..., the NSA and the CIA! Obviously, the two later companies only hire US Citizens, but still it's interesting to see them at such an event ^^. Two of my friends had a real battle plan, they split the companies between them and always left both CVs. This tactic seemed to work and they both got first-round interviews the following day.

Even though we do have a lot of work to do, I feel really comfortable on campus and I take advantage of the opportunities as often as possible and so I was playing Squash on Monday, playing Tennis and joining the West African Dance Class on Tuesday (afterwards I had very sore muscles), yesterday I caught Persepolis at the 1$ movie screening on campus and today I took a ride on the virtual bike. The library is slowly becoming my home away from home, and I spend most of my time working and studying on their quiet floor. So far I always got out before midnight, but its good to know that they are open till 3am. Getting home during the night is no problem either, the CMU Escort Service leaves every 30 minutes and drops me off right in front of my door, that's what I call customer service!

Here's a picture I took tonight on my way across campus:

From September in Pittsburgh

I need to wrap this post up, because there is still some more work to be done tonight...

Pittsburgh Renaissance Festival

2008-09-14T22:55:00.003-04:00

The Pittsburgh Renaissance Festival takes place over five weekends and is located 40 miles outside of Pittsburgh. There were two reasons why I just had to be there. First, I wanted to see how a medieval/renaissance festival in the US compares to the ones in Switzerland and Germany and second, I really needed a break from studying ;).

Similar to the markets back home the festival is a mixture of market stalls, food and entertainment. The market stalls were similar to those present in the Spectaculum, there were clothing, weapons and accessories stalls. There was also a costume rental shoppe, which allowed people to dress up for the day, a very neat idea. The food was more American than medieval but there were some exceptions around, such as the Soup in a Bread Bowl. Musicians were omnipresent, with a piper, a violinist, a bass player and several musical groups always circulating. The non-musical entertainment focused heavily on audience participation (i.e. people going on stage to help out) and was a case of hit and miss. I liked about half the shows I saw.

My favorite was Arsene, an inapt magician who spoke no word throughout his performance, but his facial expression and tricks were just hilarious.

From Pittsburgh Renaissance Festival

Here you can see him eating the hamster which wouldn't comply and jump through the hoop.

Overall it was a fantastic experience, I was especially impressed by the sturdiness of the buildings, which obviously are here to stay and will wait for next year's festival. Which, depending on the schedule, I just might be able to visit :)

Washing, Shopping, Gaming & Homework

2008-09-13T22:38:00.003-04:00

Since I'll visit a special event tomorrow which is conveniently located 40 miles outside of Pittsburgh, I had to rent a car. And since my favorite car rental agency is closed on Sunday, I got a car for the whole weekend. What's the first thing you do when you have a car? Obviously you drive all your dirty clothes to the next laundromat to wash them ;). Anyways, that's what I did. Next on the map was a short trip to Waterfront, my favorite shopping mall in Pittsburgh, to be completely honest it's the only shopping mall I've visited so far ;), to do some grocery and other shopping.

From September in Pittsburgh

Since working all week is a complete downer, I took a couple of hours off from homework to join the CMU Game Club. Today I've played:
- TransAmerica: A quick game combining cooperation and competition to get five cities connected by rail road lines.
- Settlers of Catan (US Edition) with Cities & Knights Extension (German Edition): They were glad to have a native German speaker at the table to explain the text on the special cards ;).
- Tichu: Still a very cool card game, even though we lost clearly this time.
- Durch die Wüste: A German camel territory control game, which isn't too challenging, pretty fast and has pastel-colored camels!

From September in Pittsburgh