August 2006 Archives

Klunker

Yea, I finally got to play this game. It had been out on the table for a while now. It is a light filler game of set collecting. However, if you have more than one set at a time when you are collecting, you receive less money. You also put cards in your store front in order to tempt someone to buy it and give you a dollar. The person with the most money when the game ends will win.

It is a simple enough game and I was lucky enough to be able to collect sets without any contamination.

Tempus

Another playing of Tempus and I am starting to suspect that there are a couple of things that unbalance this game. The first is the Religion card. This card allows you to convert one enemy token to one of yours. It is unbalanced because you spend one action to have babies and (usually) one action to move that token. Now, on some other person's turn, they play the Religion card which does not cost them an action. This essentially gives them a free baby and movement where you lost two actions. You can then be attacked now that you are unexpectedly weakened. Not fun.

The second problem is the turtle strategy. If you have three stacks or less, you cannot be attacked (however, you can do the attacking). Someone who uses this wisely, will build up many cities and then turtle down to three stacks. This will make them invulernable. Fortunately, having 3 or less stacks usually makes you weaker in the game. It was discussed on the geek here.

Tichu

Our team was having all the luck. Although I did learn thing. If your partner passes you the Mahjong, then they usually want you to play it singly and to wish for the (usually) low card that you pass the person on your left. Jon passed me the Mahjong and I used it to increase my straight (from 2-6 to 1-6). Unfortunately, Jon did not get a chance to take the lead even though he had a Tichu hand. Next time...

I was able to finally record a full game! But it was not without problems. In trying to recover from missing pictures, I felt like a CSI detective. For example,

I did not take a picture of when John played a pair of sixes. Fortunately, my hand was visible in some of those pictures. And, since I was the last player out, I was able to figure out that John played the red six and the green six.

Jon plays a straight incorrectly. Usually we (Adam) catch this, but not this time. I notice that I can only account for 13 of Jon's 14 cards that he played.

However, when Adam was the last player out, he showed his hand to us when I was taking the picture. And I was able to figure out that the missing card was the black six. That card should have been in the straight but Jon must have played it later.

Sadly, our Tichu game did not make. Something about a new lunchtime meeting. Lunch times are sacred, I.B.M.! Leave 'dem alone!!

So I went to Taco Deli for lunch. It is another one of my favorite lunch places. And it is a bonus that it is within walking distance! I like the concept: Order individual tacos from a large selection. Why eat a lot of something when you can eat many different small portions? My only complaint/upgrade would be for them to purchase a tortilla making machine like the one in my super-H.E.B. You would get bonus flavor points for freshly made tortillas!

After lunch, I stopped at the Blue Cupcake for dessert. The employees are all T.C.A. students which gives it some charm for me. However, their dessert selection is slim and they are usually out of some things. I had a cupcake. It was good, if expensive.

Walking back, I took a picture of where someone had been sitting. I guess they were doing traffic analysis or logging or some such... Not a very busy intersection if you ask me.

Ed was a real trooper by playing Tichu with us when he had a headace from his shingles outbreak. I really appreciate his willingness to both administrate the group (attempting to get each game going) and play when he rather wouldn't. Thank you, Ed!

On to the post-game analysis... For my first hand, I had a Tichu hand. Which I worked down to three aces and a ten. Unfortunately, I wussed out and was worried about a straight bomb potential. So I played the 10. Adam then over tichued and went out first. Sigh. Next time, screw the bomb scare!

Our local grocery chain/monopoly fustrates me. If it was a person it would have multiple personality disorder. What am I talking about? Their inventory. Each store has slightly different products than the other. The biggest difference is a Central Market store compared to a entry-level H.E.B.

The current example is the lack of butter selection. I used to shop at the H.E.B. on 620 and Great Oaks Drive. It was more upscale than the one on IH-35 and 79. But now that the supersized version has opened a mile away from my house, I have changed stores. What I don't understand is the super-sized version is supposed to have a better selection. However, in terms of butter, it plain sucks. It does not carry the above H.E.B. brand butter (which is shipped to the 620 store).

Why do I want that version? In one word, fat! It has one more gram of it on the label. And that gram makes a difference in taste. Although it is an example of a marketing lie. 12 grams out of 14 should give a butter fat percentage of 85.71% But the box clearly says it contains 82%. Which would make it 11.48 grams and that would mean that they would have to round down to 11. Since they only have whole numbers (creating a whole lot of confusion, I say).

Grrr... Damn you, H.E.B.! I really want to only shop at one store!

300 micron wide brass dice link via

On the implausibility of the Death Star's Trash Compactor link via

Animated long-exposure photographs link via

San Fransisco in ruin (1906) link via

The Eastern Garbage Patch link via

Magic Sand link via

Bad ass camera link via

Carp can survive months with out oxygen link via

Experimenting with a pinhole camera "lens". Being a hardware/computer/camera nerd, it would be neat if they made a more sophisticated version that tells the camera the actual aperature. Not like it matters, but still... The dust on this picture is scaring me!

I tried cooking English Toffee today. And it was fun. Doubly so trying to juggle camera equipment and cook at the same time. Of course, I had to buy the toffee flavored almond slivers!

The group went to Wilco course today. Which is somewhat wooded and shady. But when we were out in direct sunlight, it got hot. We started late with a large group of seven people. This course is pretty tough.

Adam got his disc stuck in a tree.

So we called the big guns in and got Jon to climb the tree to rescue it. Sadly Adam lost that disc for good a couple of holes later.

At lunch today, I photographed the round rock that this city is named after. Whee... To bad, I forgot my phone books. I wanted to find the plastic army figures that made the front page of the Austin Statesman, but was unsuccessful.

Old Settlers Park. John celebrates on hole 1. He birdied it from quite a distance (60 feet). And he always complains about not being able to putt...

The city employees were out in force today. Performing maintainence and cleanup.

Today is Men's diversity day. And to celebrate, there is B-B-Q, wood working, recreational vehicles, foosball, and 42...

I went to Ventana for lunch today. And what is Ventana? It is the student run restaurant of the Texas Culinary Academy. This used to be part of the IBM complex. But it seems that IBM has just about sold the west side of Burnet Road off. In fact, the IBM cafeteria, putt-putt course, and other buildings were all fenced off with temporary fencing. I had to walk around it to get to Ventana.

The place was busier than I have seen it in the past. Although it still was not full yet. And there were a lot of students walking back and forth from the parking lot. Enrollment must be high after a couple of years of operations.

I ordered the pan-fried trout. It was served with green beans (haricot vert) and red onion rings. The onion rings were the best I have ever had! They were sliced ultra thin and very lightly breaded. The balance was perfect. I thought the fish was a little salty. And, for dessert, I had a "baked alaskan" which was a strawberry sherbert on shortcake bread and covered in meringue and torched. I didnt like it much. The strawberry sauce was thin and the sherbert was weak as well. Which lead to the meringue overpowering the dish.

Still, I would highly recommend Ventana. I consider myself lucky that I have three good restaurants (Mangia and Taco Deli) within walking distance from IBM.

How to Build a Panoramic Tripod Head for $10 link via

Killings: God 2,038,344 Satan 10 link via

About evolution: The United States had the second-highest percentage of adults who said the statement was false and the second-lowest percentage who said the statement was true link via

Coca Cola recipe link via

Stirring stick removes caffeine link via

The FSM appears link via

How to buy meat, the vinyl record link via

The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol, for instance, could feed one person for a year link via

3D live motion video camera that uses LIDAR technology to get a range-finding for every pixel link via

Tapioca time bomb link via

One serving of pork brains in gravy contains 1170% of the recommended cholesterol link via

Round salt link via

Animator vs. Animation link via

New species of sea urchin found in eBay auctions link1 link2 via

Outlawing unbelief link via

Magnetic water link via

Bring me the head of Charlie Brown! link via

I bypassed going to Ed's for game day. He had the shingles. And I was feeling gamed out. But I was in the mood for experimenting.

I came across this product at Williams-Sonoma and thought that it was a cool idea. However, it was $99 dollars! I already own a pizza stone and keep it in my oven to help even out the temperatures. So I put it in my gas grill.

I also used another recently purchased toy of mine (an infrared thermometer) to check the temperature. 439 degrees Fahrenheit. Good to go...

I did run into one problem though. My dough was probably too wet. Not enough to stick on the counter but enough to stick on the pizza peel. So, I threw that one away and this time I covered the peel in 1/8" of corn meal. I figured I could scrape it off when it was cooked.

It did slide off of the peel easily enough this time. Getting it back on was not a problem. Although cleanup was surprising. I would not have guessed that cornmeal would flare up that much. It must have more oil in it than I suspected.

Next time I will work on making a dryer dough...

Another Old Settler's day. Which is unusual. Since we normally play on Fridays, we do not play it on Saturday. However, Wilco and Cat Hollow were holding a huge tournament today called the Texas 10. So we decided to abort here.

Again Darwin II had another close encounter! In what looks like the same spot. Sigh... I think I am getting worse...

While I had a close scare, Adam unfotunately lost his disc in this dense growth of thorns and stickers. But he did come out ahead. While searching, he found four more discs!

Another freakin hot day of disc golf. It actually rained on the trip over to Old Settler's Park. Well, about twenty drops... I was wondering about the flag under hole 8. John explained that it was probably the closest to the hole marker. Which is pretty close! That must have been a very lucky throw, since it is a heavily wooded area.

Darwin II had a close encounter today. It would have been in the water if the lake was at normal levels..

Wow! This viral advertising for what seems to be a really crappy movie is out of control! I already knew about getting a call from Samuel Jackson. But this combination?

F.B.I.

I keep Klunker on my table because I would like to play it. And tonight seemed like the night. We were looking for a quick game to start off with and I thought that game would it. But John hosed me by bringing FBI to the table. Since I didn't know the rules to Klunker and John knew the rules to FBI, everyone agreed to play it. Sigh.

The game has a Take 6 feel to it. There are plus and minus cards in the game in five suits (colors). Every round, we will deal out ten of them. Next, people will either advance a card or not. (You can get rid of negative cards but this will cause you to go later rather than earlier). This will determine the order of play for the round. Then everyone picks to cards and simultaneously reveals them. These cards will determine which suit you must choose from. The first player reveals one of the face down cards and picks a card in the middle of the table in that suit. Play continues in the order determined until the last player goes. That person gets to take two cards. And then play goes in reverse order until the first player gets their last card.

So, you usually try to give up a high valued card in order to go first. This will atleast allow you to be guaranteed of getting one good card. The second one is a crap shoot. Unless you are lucky enough to have a pile that has no negative cards in it out there. Then you can choose that suit and not be disapointed if it is empty when it gets back to you.

At the end of the game, we determine who got majorities in the different suites for bonus cards (from +5 to +1). And your score is the total of the cards and any bonus cards.

Canal Mania

I am on Boulder Game's mailing list. And when I received one of their notes, I noticed that they had Canal Mania coming soon at a pretty good price. So I jumped on it. And got the game quicker than Ed and Susan did (they pre-ordered directly through the publisher's site).

This game is a mix of Ticket to Ride and Age of Steam. You build canal segments on the map. There are four kinds of segments (stretch, lock, aqueduct, and tunnel) and the restriction is that you cannot have two of the same kinds of segments next to each other. During the game, you can either collect cards that are displayed face up, or build canals. When you build, you play the appropriate cards (some are harder to build and require more cards: like the aqueduct (2 aqueduct cards) or the tunnel (3 tunnel cards)) and then score points (not much though: 0,1,2, or 3 points per tile). There are engineers in the game that will lend you their special powers (draw one more card, build with one less card, etc).

The other aspect of this game is the delivery of goods. You may deliver goods from one city or town to another. Goods must move along canals and cannot move into a color more than once (for a maximum of 6). Points are scored for cities that are connected by player's canals. So, along a three town path connected by two players, both players will score 2.

The production value is pretty good (although the cards could be coated). And, instead of the usual tea-towel board, The Ragnar Brothers went with a cardboard board (yea! much nicer). I would rate this game as a middle weight, meaty game. And one that I hope to play again...

Thanks to a little bit of serendipitous web surfing, I visited Whendy Wheeler's livejournal page and was surprised to learn that Armadillocon 28 was this coming weekend. And when I went to check out the schedule, I learned that Julie E. Czerneda, one of the science fiction authors that I read, was there.

I went diving into my book storage area and pulled out her books.

• Beholder's Eye
• A Thousand Words for Stranger
• In the Company of Others
• Ties of Power

It seems that I have been slacking off lately and am behind on reading her new books. I will have to add them to my rather large reading list... Anyways, back to the tale. So I drove on down and got her to sign my books. She is an energetic and charming person. And she took time to personalize what she wrote in the books! I also listened to her read some short stories. Which is always cool.

Monkeybot link via

Wake turbulence being caused by an airplane link via

Do you see 9 dolphins or a NSFW picture? link via

Cargo ship Cougar Ace tips over, 4,700 Mazdas aboard (didn't know a ship could still float at that angle) link via

Time fountain link via

Six places to nuke when you are serious link via

Faith based programming link via

Ze Frank (Max Headroom combined with John Stewart) on terrorism: "A small number of people can incapacitate a society by leveraging our inability to understand risk." My new favorite show ! (NSFW) via

Color 3D prints of your video game avatars link via

Today, we went to Pease Park. I noticed this sign on the board and recognized the name! Hey, I found one of his discs too! But I gave it away to Adam. So, Mr. Rob Feather, if you'd like it back, please leave your number and ill contact you.

Today was pretty bad for me. I think I bogied just about every hole here. Which is the reason why this course is like last on the list of courses that I like in Austin. It helped a little bit that the stream is dry here. No lost discs that way...

I will admit that that is a cool location for hole three! Adam was on fire today and able to make some long putts.

Another protected hole (18). That tree really guards the hole well.

Hrm, a tournament. Over Labour Day. Sounds like a Game conflict. But they offer beer, B-B-Q, and live music. Ed does not do that... well, there is Bratwurst.

Man, its fricken hot out there. I think I may have hit my upper limit on bearable temperatures and 103 may be it. Seems like a new tree was planted out here. With a ribbon even. I don't think summer is a great time for planting things. Especially when you dont water around here.

I mean, look at this grass. Its dead, Jim! But given some rainfall, and the thing will turn around and perk up. Buffalo grass is some pretty drought resistant grass. And it needs to be to live here in Texas.

I was throwing farther than usual today. And I have a theory about that. Hotter air is less dense and the relative humidity was a low 40%. And there is probably some updraft from the convection as the earth tries to deal with this blast furnace. Umm.... suuuure. But thats my theory and I'm sticking to it.

The lake is pretty low. Low enough to be below the concrete drain they installed here. Fortunately, my disc made it across the water for the second time. Darwin2 keeps surviving...

Today was not a good day for travelling. I went home early to avoid the rush hour (working at home is just so easy and convienent). I stop by the bank to deposit a check and come across this mess. An eighteen-wheeler overturned when it tried to do a U-turn. 79 was blocked off. But, fortunately, I was able to weave around and still access the bank.

Doug later tells me that 620 was shutdown west of IH-35 because of a gas main rupture. So we figure that Peter and Francesca were not coming. And on the next day, I read that there was an accident on IH-35 southbound caused by the stupid rubberneckers trying to look at the first accident. They really should erect large tents to cover these things up...

Tichu

While we were waiting for Peter and Francesca to show up, we played some hands of Tichu. Later, we figured that they were unable to make it here and finished out the game. And what a long and close game it was! Our heroic team only lost by 100 points! Thats a Tichu call! Newbies John and Doug increased their abilities this game by making Tichu calls. John even over Tichus Doug's Tichu call. Getting agressive there, John. Way to go...

In the above picture, my partner calls Tichu before the pass? Um, huh? What cards you holding there, Doug? I pass my Dragon, and Doug makes it! Cool beans.

Tempus

Another playing of Tempus. And this time, we corrected two big rules problems from the last game. The first was that cities cannot be built on mountains (we got that right) and they cannot be built next to another city. This creates a Settlers of Catan type of restriction. And really narrows down the real estate of valid locations. The other problem was that Government does not give you a free action. It only allows you to pass or combine two turns. This makes that card less powerful. It was only played once during the game.

In the first round, I has one farm land with two pieces on it. Everyone else had more than me. So I chose the "have ideas" action and drew a farm backed education card (+2 to farmlands! how lucky!). This allowed me to pip Adam, much to his disappointment (its a rare card after all). John was agressive as usual. I was leaving everyone alone until I introduced Doug to the religion card. Of course, I knew Doug was going to retaliate. Fortunately, I had enough defense cards to stop his first attack. And when he was gathering forces for another attack, I went back down to three stacks which made me untouchable. I had built enough cities by now. Since I knew city spots were scarce, I made an effort to secure them. I built a city before John could when his stack was right next to mine. And I moved one of my three stacks by ship to one of the last spots on the board.

When the game ended, I was able to secure flight (+3 victory points). Unfortunately, I was not able to build one city. And I was left with my four city. Also, I could not spread out to secure some more points because many of Doug's pieces were sitting next to my cities and I knew he would attack them since he had nothing better to do. Adam was able to win by three...

Another game where the one-sided luck continued. Although, this time the opposing team scored 275 points. Ed was able to stop Adam with a hand that contained a high-card of a Queen. Sometimes a hand just fits perfectly even though it does not seem strong.

We had five for Tichu, so we cut cards for the four who would play. Both Ed and Jon drew threes and were worried, but J.P. sealed the deal by picking one of the four twos in the deck.

This game (and day, really) falls under the category of one team having all the cards. On the third hand, I had a Tichu hand, but was unable to make the call. You see my partner, Adam, kept the lead. And, as long as he kept the lead, I was fine with him playing. And then he went out. I knew the one-two was not far behind. When we were were done with that hand, Adam tells me that he knew I was waiting to call Tichu but didn't know how to transfer control to me. I could have taken the lead at any time but chose to help my partner go out.

Since the first game was so quick, we played some more hands. It wasn't a real game. But it is fun playing hands.

And the luck continued to be on our side. Although not quite as dramatically as before. On the first hand, I have a 13-card run (Mahjong through King) and a 2. I call Tichu. Ed bombs me and over Tichues. Now I am in trouble. Fortunately, Adam had the dog and was able to transfer control to me. Woo woo!

On the second hand, I have a Queen bomb and three Aces. I call Tichu. I bomb Jon's Dragon. Later, Ed over tichues with a bomb. Adam overbombs and once again Dogs me. Unfortunately, I was not able to go out first....

And on the last hand, Ed was playing for the one-two. He was waiting with a King bomb and a pair of sevens. But was unable to help Jon when Adam and I were finally able to set him.

Monopoly game now uses credit cards instead of money link via

Write on water link via

Giant melted bull popsicle link1 link2 via

Urville link via

How do you turn a 3 foot deep, fresh water lake into a 1,300 foot salt water lake? Simple. Drill for oil into a salt mine. link1 link2 via

Shower boob link via

Slice-o-rama link via

The politically incorrect alphabet link via

Write an encrypted version of the lock code on the lock itself link via

Photorealistic vector art (two pictures NSFW) link via

Microsoft Photosynth link via

Treadmill music video link via

Lisp CPU link via

I wonder how popular the first name of Adolf is. Shouldn't that name be banned?

I got my bike back from Buck's Bikes. They replaced both tires (not easily removable) and fixed the gearing. So I took it out this morning. And today's ride seemed to involve a lot of twos...

Riding up 1460 at 7:30, I came across two men walking southward. However, they were in the middle of the road! One of them was even walking on the yellow dividing line. And with the rising sun, I am sure that it would give drivers less notice when they came across them. There are no houses out here and I didn't see any disabled vehicles. So I wonder what they were doing...

Next, I saw two birds flying. One was a large preditor like a hawk or a falcon. And the other was a much tinnier bird that was dive bombing the hawk. When the hawk stopped on a power pole, the little bird would keep it up. The hawk would move off and try again. I was wondering why the hawk didn't just get pissed off and just attack back and kill that bird.

Back on 1460, there was a house that I wanted to take a picture of. It was an old farmhouse. What was interesting about it were the two trees that the house was squeezed between. The one on the right was almost touching the side of the house. And on the left, a bit of the roof was actually cut out for the tree. Talk about poor planning. Sadly, the house was recently demolished for what looks like a new road.

Turning on Chandler, there were two large turtles in the middle of the road. I doubt that the turtles knew that they were in danger of getting run over by the speeding traffic on this windy (curvy) hill. So I stopped and picked them up and moved them off the road (I didn't think that they could get up over the curb themselves). They hissed at me to thank me.

The bike feels faster for me. Instead of taking one hour and thirty five minutes to bike 25 kilometers, it took me an hour and seventeen minutes. I'm racing now...

Tempus

Ahh, Tempus, the highly-awaited and long-delayed Martin Wallace game. Mike and myself placed an order at Thought Hammer, but the order arrived too late to play it at Ed's (it probably arrived when we were playing another copy of it). Fortunately, John ordered it from Boards and Bits. They shipped it to him on Friday.

I would think that with all of the delays that this game has suffered, there would be no production problems. We had to spend some time trying to figure out what areas the table on the board was refering to. Hills, Grasslands, and Farmlands look different on the board and cards than the on tiles. It seems like two sets (with different resolutions) were used. Also, in dim lighting, it is hard to tell the difference between the black and purple pieces. I will give credit to the rules and player aid sheets, though.

You can tell by the board, above, that purple and yellow have a huge advantage. And, unsurprisingly, purple won the game. I, being lite blue, expanded out a little to the grasslands that would be contested between myself and red. During the game, I forego drawing cards and this hurt me. You see, cards give you technoligcal abilities (ignore stacking limits, extra babies, extra movement, etc) or attack/defense bonuses. So, John opened up hostilities by playing a religion card on me (damn you religion!) which removed one of my tokens (a solitary one on the grasslands) and gave him a token. Later on, he then attacked me. Since I didn't have any cards, there was nothing that I could do. This took me out of the running for the game. So I decided to fight back. However, there is a rule that if a player has only three stacks of tokens, then he cannot be attacked! Since he never grew beyond three, he was untouchable. Seems pretty one-sided to me...

Indonesia

There is not many meaty players at Ed's game sessions. So when we suggested another meaty game, we had trouble filling it. Fortunately, Adam joined us which gave us enough for a three player game. In this game, my shipping line was useless, there always seemed to be competing line during the game. So I didn't make that much money with it. Adam proved to be the master of spicy-rice and shipped a lot of it during the game. Which gave him enough money to win it. I was worried that Mike would surpass me in the end. Adam kept prefering Mike's ships to mine and would always give him more money than me. But fortunately, I kept my lead over him in the end.

Ed and Susan won Cleopatra and the Society of Architects at Gulf Games recently, and brought it out. It is full of plastic bits and looks interesting. Notice how the wide aperature of f/2.8 gives a razor-thin depth of field to this picture...

Today we went to the Rivery before gaming at Ed's. I didn't think that the term "Grimming" would apply to disc golf, but the new guy, Carl, makes me think about using it. He takes at least twice as long to throw as everyone else. For every shot. Not fun. Big groups are slow in general and here is another factor to dragging it out.

At Dos Salsas in Georgetown, this statue amuses me. Yeah, I know its a Mexican woman making tortillas. But she seems so inviting...

Kaivai

Yeah, another playing of Kaivai for me. Unfortunately, we got a rule wrong. For some reason, this game seems to cause that. Perhaps its the rules translation, or the structure of the rules, or perhaps its just me. Anyways, this game needs a good player aid!

Both Peter and I started out with two ships. Doug started out with one ship and a Gods Shrine. Doug didn't build another ship for a couple of turns and was feeling the pain of not having two ships in play. And he constantly reminded us of it...

I started in last but jumped out in first and never looked back. I knew I needed to keep a supply of influence tokens both for final scoring and just having the ability to perform more actions.

Thankfully Doug said he would play it again soon (perhaps even next week). With the rules fresh in his mind and a learning game accomplished. He is ready to play a real game of it...

Ra

Another playing of this great Knizia game, Ra. Unfortunately, my tile set was not the best. I like a low tile (like the 1 or 2) and high tiles. The 1 is great where there are only a couple of tiles on the board. And the tiles contain a good tile like a Pharoah or Civilization. Call Ra and for people to bid higher or be happy for getting a tile for cheap.

Today, I was in a risky mood. I decided to be more agressive in calling Tichu. For my Grand Tichu call, I had an Ace, Dragon, Dog, and Mahjong. I passed my partner the Dog and he passed me an Ace. I wished for an Ace in order to promote my hand a little bit. Unfortunately, Jon was hit by it.

Ed had a number of black straight bombs... I think three of them during the game. And he was able to stop me with them. But I got my revenge. I was able to set one of his calls and over Tichu another of his calls.

The end was tight. We were running out of time. And unfortunately for me, we played one too many hands. Not only did I loose, but I was late for my 1pm meeting. What hurt us was our inability to score any points in the last two hands. Or maybe, I should have not called a risky Tichu. Sigh.