Games July 2026

July 31, 2026 8:50 pm

The group completed quests 12 and 13 of our Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall story. Both completed victoriously. Quest 13 was clearly set up as a major battle, but with fortune on our side and complementary decks we were able to deal out 80 damage across the enemy team with just 3 attacks and then mop up the remnants from there.

At a board game meetup I jumped into the tail end of the silly game Hot Streak. The players are compulsive gamblers betting on the outcome of a race of sports team mascots as well as various propositional bets along the way. I lost.

After Hot Streak, we played a game of 7 Wonders. I lost that too.

And closing out that night was a game of the rather odd Frenemy Pastry Party. In this game the only way to earn points is to either bake a cake or help someone else bake a cake. Baking a cake alone is suboptimal as it uses up your own ingredients. Contribute ingredients to someone else’s cake earns you points, but they will earn more points for the cake than you will for the ingredients. So the goal is to try to get all the other players to evenly contribute to your own cakes so the points for ingredients are diffused across the other players and cake points are concentrated on yourself. But once every figures this out cooperation is likely to deteriorate. I lost by a point once another player realized what I was doing and rallied the rest of the table to prevent me from winning.

Books July 2026

July 30, 2026 8:42 pm

Accelerando by Charles Stross

An exploration of a future in which an artificial intelligence singularity has occurred (sentient AI systems self-developing beyond human comprehension). It starts off way too over-the-top cyberpunk, but settles down.

Uses the evolving singularity as an explanation for the Fermi Paradox.

Livesuit by James S. A. Corey

A novella set in the Captive’s War universe in between books 1 and 2. Humanity has a new weapon in their interstellar battle, bionic humans who are faster, stronger, and more resilient, but at what cost?

Kind of a parallel exploration of the Spartan units in the Halo universe.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Speaking of bionic humans…this novella explores a bionic, human-based security “drone” which evades its governor module and begins exploring its own free will. “Human based” in that it’s mostly robotic, but uses a human brain to provide the intelligence to the system (the details aren’t fully described in the book).

It wants to protect the people it was hired to protect, but it also mostly just wants to be left alone to watch TV shows.

Wings of Fire books 1-5

During our Pacific-northwest roadtrip we listened to audiobooks of the Wings of Fire series. We got through books 1 through 4 and partly through 5 (which I finished in paper form once we returned home).

It actually lined up oddly well with our trip. We listened to book 2, taking place mainly in the sea kingdom, as we drove up the coast. Book 3, taking place mainly in the rain forest, as we visited Hoh Rain Forest. And book 4, taking place mainly within a volcano, as we visited the Cascade Volcanic Arc including Mt. St. Helens and Crater Lake.

Books 1-5 make up a unified story arc of the “Dragonet Prophecy.” Five dragonets destined to end the Sandwing war of succession and bring peace to the continent of Pyrrhia.

PNW Road Trip – Day 15

July 25, 2026 8:42 pm

Day 15 (7/25) – Breakfast provided by the hotel and today was the final leg of our journey. Starting out from Klamath Falls, Mt. Shasta dominates the southwestern horizon. We drove all the way around it and past its western edge on our way to Shasta Caverns. Since we had to skip the caves on Vancouver Island we hit the backup caving spot here. This cave tour requires a boat ride across Lake Shasta then a bus ride up the mountain. It was hot, but with some air moving it was tolerable.

The caves were neat (and nice and cool as always). They had a fancy lighting system installed in the last large room which puts on a light show accompanied by a soundtrack. That was fun.

Stopped in Redding for lunch/dinner at Lumberjack’s. Had a massive and delicious slice of chocolate cake. Corinne, Heather, and myself working together couldn’t finish it.

Then the final drive–with a short detour in Danville for a bathroom break–and we were home again.

PNW Road Trip – Day 14

July 24, 2026 8:24 pm

Day 14 (7/24) – Breakfast at the hotel and headed east on route 138. Broke up the drive by stopping at Toketee Falls. This trail starts with a surprise. The parking lot is bordered by a pipeline for a hydroelectric station. The pipeline is made of Redwood staves and it’s spraying water everywhere. It looks….concerning. The area isn’t deserted so presumably somebody knows it looks like this. It didn’t burst while we were there anyway.

We hiked the trail to the overlook of the falls. I didn’t have a tripod with me, but I managed to brace the camera well enough on the railing to get a smooth-water shot. It was a bit warm, but there was a senior-citizen group hiking the trail, so if they could make it I figured we could too.

Continued out route 138 to the north entrance to Crater Lake National Park. It is the bluest body of water I have ever seen. So blue.

The only path down to the water is currently closed for rebuilding so we had to admire it from the top of the crater. We had lunch at the Rim Cafe and walked around a little in that area.

Finished the day by driving out the south entrance to Klamath Falls for a stay at a Fairfield Inn. We attempted to go to a Pizza Hut for dinner. But after being there for about 10 minutes it became clear no one had any intention of serving us so we went across the street to Abby’s Legendary Pizza.

PNW Road Trip – Day 13

July 23, 2026 8:12 pm

Day 13 (7/23) – Hotel breakfast and the discovery that Corinne’s fall in the shower the night before cost her the inside corners of her front teeth. Thankfully, no medically-significant damage done. Her dentist said the aesthetics could be addressed if she wants in the future, but it makes sense to wait to do so until after any orthodontic work gets done.

The morning was spent across town at the Albany Historic Carousel and Museum. This facility’s genesis was in the early 2000’s when a local woman decided Albany should have a classic carousel and then spent years building community support and raising funds until finally being able to build the facility. They received the raw mechanism of an old carousel as a donation and established their own from-scratch wood shop and paint shop to produce the working carousel they operate today. They also have a handful of classic horses on permanent loan from the owners which they keep in a museum space.

They’re still in the process of building the initial set of creatures for the carousel, but the carousel is almost full. The work is all done by hand with solid wood. We took a short tour of the carpentry shop (sadly no one was working at the time). The paint shop can be looked into next to the gift shop. Neat place. Lots of intense dedication to the crafts involved and the care shows in the quality of the work they’ve produced.

The carousel has 3 rings of animals. The inner 2 move up and down. The outer ring doesn’t move, but you get to reach for the brass ring. I grabbed many plastic rings, but we didn’t go around enough time for the brass ring to show itself (I was the only person on the outside grabbing for rings).

Heather rode a serval, Corinne rode a dragon, Jess rode a cow, and I rode a bison.

Lunch at a DQ Grill-n-Chill and then on to the Cascades Raptor Center in Eugene. More birds that are either recuperating or unsuitable for release into the wild. We caught an educational talk by one of the keepers. A doe and fawn were lounging on the property. Another deer down by the road.

With some time to kill yet, and not much more distance to go to our destination for the night, we drove back across Eugene to the Eugene Science Center (dwarfed by the neighboring athletic complex for the University of Oregon). A small facility with a commensurately low price, it was worth the entrance fee for just the 90 minutes or so we had. Not many people there so we were mostly able to just roam around and interact with whichever exhibits we wanted. Corinne attempted to block all movement in the fluid-dynamics simulator.

Stayed the night in Roseburg at a Holiday Inn Express. Went to Garden Buffet for dinner (Chinese food).