So Tekman invited me to game night last night. It was really fun. I knew a couple of them from previous poker games, but it was fun meeting new people. We broke off into 2 groups because there were 11 people and most games didn’t sustain that many people, plus if it did, it’d gone rather slowly. Half of the group went to play Puerto Rico, while the rest of us played Zendo. Zendo is quite an interesting game, but because it was moving rather slowly, I think people didn’t enjoy it much. It’s a game involving pyramids of different sizes and colors and the “master” has to think of a rule and the rest of the group has to guess what the rule is by making structures and having the master tell us if it fits his rule or not. You can read more about it at the link I provided above.

Afterwards, we played Oh Hell! It’s a game similar to spades/hearts/euchre, where it’s a card game and you have to take tricks and there’s a trump suit. It’s quite intriguing because of this rule: With 7 players, the hands are: 7 cards, then 6,5,4,3,2,1, then 2,3,4,5,6,7, for a total of 13 hands to the game. A game should take approximately 45 minutes. So at the beginning of each hand, you have to bid on how many tricks you’re going to take and you try to take that amount, no more and no less or else you don’t get the bonus points. I won’t get into the scoring and there’s multiple ways for scoring to work. You can read about it at the link above. Lets say I was suppose to lose, but because of how the bidding works, the suppose to be winner’s wife force her husband to lose by forcing him to bid something he didn’t want to.

Afterwards, poker was decided to be the game played next. It was a very bad day for me. I lost $20, pretty early in the game too! So I ended up being dedicated dealer since I didn’t want to lose any more money. But I’m still up considering I won $87 the 1st time and $3 the 2nd time.

It was a blast and I had a lot of fun last night (excluding the losing money part). One of the funnier moments of the night when was when Tekman was talking about vocabulary words and he’d say, “so I dict it and…” Everyone just stared at each other and then started cracking up. It’s like when people say “I google this, I wiki that.” Dict is short for dictionary and there’s both a command line based program and Firefox supports it too. If you still don’t understand why it’s so funny, try saying “i tried to dict this new word.”

So you can chat, flirt, and even marry people in Fable. They actually have a cut scene that shows you getting married and some narator telling you that for one day, you don’t have to worry about any problems. Welp, according to ungsunghero, it turns out you can have sex with them too! You don’t see anything, but you hear the wife scream “YES! YES!” I personally haven’t gotten it to work. According to ungsunghero, I have to give the wife presents and gems and stuff. I gave a few, but gave up after a bit because it just wasn’t worth it. Supposedly after the sex, you get gold or items, but I’d rather spend my time training than trying to convince my wife to have sex with me. Also I found out through ungsunghero that you can have a wife in each town that you have a house in. I currently own 2 houses and have 2 wifes. I wonder what’ll happen if I try to marry another woman in the same town. There are two beds… ;p

After reading that, I pasted this article from /. to ungsunghero: Out-of-this-world sex could jeopardise missions. He thought we were still talking about Fable, and I could clearly see how the title could be misleading after a chat about Fable. NASA plans to return astronauts to the Moon by 2018 and later on to Mars. But a round-trip mission to the Red Planet would probably last at least 30 months and carry six to eight people. That would be a hotbed for intense crew relationships, says a report by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS). … Palinkas says long-term space missions may be similar to extended periods in the isolated and confined environments of Antarctic research stations. He says crews in those stations often pair up in “bachelor marriages” that last the length of their stay – or less. “If there are instances of sexual conflict or infidelity, that may lead to a breakdown in crew functioning,” he told New Scientist. 30 months w/o sex. Someone on /. commented on how anyone can remain healthy and functional w/o having sex for 30 months. Another person responded that as a married man, he could tell you it’s possible.

Random Crap:

The Million Dollar Homepage (from MS distribution list) – some kid needs money for college tution and puts up this site selling ads. This guy’s made BANK so far. Read about it @ the I4U Review.

A Taste of Home Turns Bitter Over Mall Project (from ungsunghero) – I have no problems of new stores trying to come into Monterey Park. In fact, I was in support of that new mall project they were going to build in the southern parts of MPK. Though what I’m not in support of is governments abusing their power and using the eminent domain clause to take land and property back from owners so they can in turn sell it to the bigger franchises so more taxes can be generated.

Wal-Mart heiress in cheat probe returns diploma (from CDMCC) – Elizabeth Paige Laurie’s name was on a sports arena when a former University of Southern California roommate alleged the Wal-Mart heiress paid her $20,000 to do her homework. Now it isn’t even on a USC diploma. $20,000 to do one year of homework… worth it?