Sam's L33t Journal

This was a pretty eventful week.

Mystery Hunt had a Greek gods meets American roadtrip theme, as the Meeting of Interplanetary Theorists demoted Pluto from "dwarf planet" to "insignificant cosmic debris" at kickoff, accidentally destroying the lord of the underworld, and the hunters had to escape the underworld, collect the shades of Pluto, and bribe the committee in order to fix what went wrong (all via puzzles, of course). I was able to help with a few puzzles, but it felt like relatively few this year. Also, my team completed hunt first, finding the coin early Monday morning (this one went long) and for the second time gaining the definite honor and dubious prize of writing next year's hunt. Which means I'll be able to try to help with that as well. I guess this year's outcome means we can win an extremely long hunt, our past win was an extremely short one. The last attempt turned out amazing, so with any luck we'll be able to do something great again.

On Thursday, I had my date in small claims court for the dispute between our condo association and a contractor. We attempted mediation, though I didn't expect that to lead to an early resolution, I really appreciate that Somerville District Court provides that option to all small claims litigants at no cost, the mediator seemed extremely skilled. Then we had our hearing before the clerk magistrate. After going through the whole process, the judge required (strongly advised?) that she continue the case so the plaintiffs could refile the paperwork to sue the association instead of me and our condo treasurer personally. So I'm no longer being sued, I think, but there's still a lawsuit that I need to handle, and it will probably require going back to court. If the case is continued, all the existing exhibits and testimony are still in the case record, so at least I probably won't have to repeat everything again. Really looking forward to having the matter resolved, but I suppose things will go at the pace they go. (I don't know which the magistrate finds more annoying: Pro se litigants that are totally unprepared or smart aleck pro se litigants who relish the opportunity. Obviously I'm in the latter column, fortunately/unfortunately.)

Thursday to Friday, Julie was out of town for an event in Miami. Which was planned on Wednesday (presented to me in a "got to go here are my flights" kind of way), and involved her flying down Thursday afternoon, attending the event, and catching a flight without any sleep beforehand early Friday morning. Startup life.

The weekend has been cold and quiet. I left my scarf at a cafe yesterday but managed to get it back today.

After the short week where we got back from vacation, had a week where Julie was away for conference travel, MIT Mystery Hunt, and another week another conference for Julie. So I've been busy and not getting to write.

Mystery Hunt was pretty fun, though it ran long. But there were a lot of innovative twists and overall the structure was interesting. More detail later when the solutions are published, if I remember.

Julie's birthday was mid-Hunt, so we (all of us, including Erica this time) went out for dinner afterwards to celebrate, Monday evening at Puritan & Company in Inman. The restaurant was basically empty on that drizzly Monday evening, but the meal was amazing. Erica split the steak with me (I love it when she's willing to try something from the full menu instead of getting a plain pasta or similar upscale kid's meal fare), we had apple Paris-Brest for dessert. As a dessert drink, I got the bar to make me a Coffee's for Closers, a Fred Yarm creation which I'd been really wanting to try but hadn't gotten to previously. (Seemed a bit unusual to order off-menu just anywhere, though it is three-equal-parts-ish, where the -ish is an additional egg.) Was as amazing as I'd hoped, and my hopes were very high.

I've done a ton of organizational work in the house with Erica's assistance over the past few weeks. Installed more storage closets in the garage, replaced the pressed-into-service-as-toy-bins Pack 'n Play crib and playpen with more compact toy-bin shelves. Sent off several boxes of hand-me-down baby toys and books to my baby nephew, Simon. The Pack 'n Plays were gifted to our new-ish (new, but we got even newer neighbors on the other side just recently) neighbors who have an even newer baby (born shortly after the turn of the year). I recall from Erica's tiny years that having a few extra good places to put the kid down was really convenient, pretty sure at some points we were running three crib equivalents in a two-bedroom condo. So I'm happy to see those put to good use.

The weather this week has been mild. Last evening I was loosening my jacket. Felt like the wrong season except for the bit where it was pitch black at five. Overnight things cooled a bit and we got a scattering of precipitation (various types) and the morning was several flavors of damp. Large fluffy flurries descended leisurely later in the day, without much sticking.

Google announced (and implemented) layoffs today. Not great. I'm still employed, at least.

The puzzles from this year's Mystery Hunt are up. That was themed after the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas, holidays in general, and the Great Molasses Flood (a Boston disaster that occurred 100 years ago this year). The hunt had an unusual structure, where instead of each metapuzzle drawing from a round's answer, each took some unique subset of answers from each of a pair or rounds.

Since then, I barely remember what I've been up to for the past two weeks.

Xave has been running Unknown Armies at our tabletop gaming group, and that's going well. I went out for a very nice dinner at Juliet with Julie last weekend. I took Eris to the aquarium again last Sunday, and to the bakery yesterday morning. Julie got Eris a new watch which she is excited about.

Eristic Improvements: Reading the hour from a clock with hands

It's yet another one of those times when I don't post for weeks at a time because I'm alternating between being busy and wrecked! So, jumping back:

Seattle was lovely! The winter weather was very nice. Only two days of our nine there were notably rainy, and overall it was very mild. We did some touristy things, spent a lot of time hanging out with DJ and Mishy (including a lovely New Year's celebration / early birthday celebration for Erica at their home), briefly met up with David and Kelcy (who were in from Portland, Oregon for New Year's), had dinner with Susan (one of Julie's Church Lab friends), took the kid for a swim in the hotel pool, and spent the entire time drinking good coffee. Good friends, good food, generally a wonderful, relaxing trip.

We did manage to get in a little business while we were there, too: Julie took the opportunity for some face-to-face meetings with Seattle-area biotech contacts, and I got out to Google Kirkland to meet with a team I'd collaborated with on some 20%-project work and to say hello to Mark Chang (one of my Olin profs who's now working at Google).

On the way back, Eris had a seat to herself on the plane for the first time. I was actually looking forward to being required to pay for the extra seat by that point, she's definitely getting quite a bit too big to be an infant in lap. (Having another seat to put carry-on bags under also means a lot in terms of legroom.)

After returning, I came down with a bad cold that had me working from home basically the entirety of last week.

On Thursday, Eris came down with a bad stomach bug. This one was her first real stomach bug as a toddler (the full waterworks, and a long night of not being able to keep down even water). Needless to say no one enjoyed the experience. Had to wipe down the whole house and do all the laundry. Fortunately, the worst of it seemed to be a 24-hour affair.

Friday through Monday was MIT Mystery Hunt, which I got to experience from the writing side this year, since my team, Death & Mayhem, won last year's hunt. I can't say I contributed as much as many members of my team (my contribution to the writing process was mostly limited to a bit of test-solving), but Julie did pull a lot of extra weight on childcare this weekend (including on her birthday) so I could help out some weekend-of. I helped run a couple of the interactions, but mostly I called phones (made 569 callbacks about puzzle answers over the long weekend).

This year's Hunt was themed after Pixar's Inside Out, putting hunters inside the mind of a student having an emotional crisis as they try to win the 2018 Health & Safety Hunt run by Team Life & Order. Teams solved layers of puzzles to get the five emotions back to HQ, recover four lost core memories, and complete the epic Health & Safety walkaround. 12 teams completed the hunt, led by last year's writing team, Setec Astronomy (whose tongue-and-cheek pledge to never write Hunt again seems to have not stuck for very long at all).

Overall, Hunt went amazingly well, the puzzles were great and it was a ton of fun. I'll post some links to that once they're up in the archive (presumably after the part of the team working on tech has had a few days to recover).

Today, I'm sick. Despite my best hygiene efforts, I'm down with whatever stomach bug Eris had. This seems to be a really bad winter, disease-wise.

Eristic improvements: Jumping in place unassisted, more intricate play with building toys (duplo, magnablocks, traintrack toys, and the like).

The MIT Mystery Hunt was this past weekend. Unusually, the Hunt was won a little past four on Saturday morning (usually it goes into the wee hours of Sunday). More unusually, it was my team (Death & Mayhem) that won it! (Which means we won the indubitable honor and dubious prize of writing the Hunt for next year. Exciting!)

Despite the misestimated length, this year's Dungeons-and-Dragons-themed Hunt was really excellent—fun, entertaining, and full of lots of really well-constructed puzzles.

Puzzles and solutions are up, so here are some of my favorites (link goes to puzzle, spoilers are behind the "solution" link there):
The Sacred and the Mundane (we backsolved this one from a meta-puzzle, then went back and solved it the right way for fun)
Pic of the Litter (note that the text not in italics is instructions)
Epic Raft Battles of History (great title)
Hexed Adventure (great puzzle form)
How I Spent My Pre/Postapocalyptic Vacation (I really enjoyed working this one out)
Above Your Pay Grade (I helped mostly with the extraction)
Boston Burgers (I helped solve this by pushing for a more straightforward approach to extracting an answer)
Listicle (Julie was the one on our team who figured out the form of this puzzle)

On Saturday we had a lazy day, wandering around town, and then going to a celebratory dinner with the Hunt team. Sunday, we went to dim sum with Ingress-playing friends, then took the kid to the aquarium (Julie's brother and sister-in-law got us an aquarium membership as a Christmas gift). Monday, we went to wrapup for Hunt, then Julie went to lab while I took the long route home with Eris.

The kid has been much more interested in upright mobility lately, traversing the room while holding onto a hand. She's not taking unsupported steps yet, but it won't be long. She seems to be working on some teeth again, judging from the degree of chewing on everything and how uncomfortable she's been getting in the evenings.

Eristic improvements: Walking (unsteadily) with dynamic support, walking (reasonably well) with static support, standing unsupported (including standing up with no support at hand; moderate duration, with effort to balance).

It's been two weeks!

I was going to post more, but I (continue to) keep not getting around to it. The sleep dep hasn't been too bad (though there have been some rough nights). Well, it could be terrible-er. But it has been enough to make me very absent-minded.

Julie's mom headed home on Friday. She'll be returning with the rest of the family-in-law next weekend for some belated holiday celebrations. Meanwhile, my mom is in town to spend some time with the grandbaby and lend a pair of hands.

I've been working my way through my to-do list slowly. Still plenty of household stuff deferred to post-baby.

The second pediatrician appointment was last Tuesday. Eris has regained her birth-weight and is due back for the next at the age of one month.

Julie got her computer repaired. I got my new computer set up. My previous computer was still working fairly well, despite being over six-and-a-half years old, but for the past few months I've been really wanting something a bit faster and lighter. The new one is also from System76, with Ubuntu pre-installed.

MIT Mystery Hunt is this weekend. I've been trying to work on some puzzles remotely, but I've really contributed to solving none of them. Still fun to look at, hunt has a lot of interesting puzzles this year (and seems a bit more challenging ).

I continue to fail to write.

Last weekend was the MIT Mystery Hunt. This year was Alice in Wonderland themed, surprisingly a Hunt theme that hadn't been done before. I wasn't able to focus on hunt as much as in past years, but I participated some. My team had their best performance yet, actually finishing all of hunt this time and coming in fifth place. Puzzles and solutions are here, my favorite puzzles included:

• A round played in reverse
• A fitting sequel to last year's Etsy puzzle
• A straightforward physical object puzzle that was nonetheless really cool
• This brilliant crossword puzzle
• A good duck puzzle, as usual
• One cool logic puzzle

My work continues to be busy, but I'm finally seeing some positive results on my project of the last few weeks. The reading group at work is now reading Joel on Software.

Watched The Wolf Children Ame and Yuki, which was everything I expected from Mamoru Hosoda (the director). A good, moving story, and some really well-done animation.

Went out to a concert on Wednesday, saw Elizabeth and the Catapault at Brighton Music Hall. Good stuff. Opening band was Neulore.

This weekend, Melissa (my sister) is in town and we're taking some time to visit extended family.

It continues to be super-cold in Boston, but this week's snowstorm wasn't nearly as bad as anticipated.

This all seems pretty fragmentary, which is yet another reminder to write things I want to write when they're fresh in my head.

The MIT Mystery Hunt was this weekend. It was fun. This year's Hunt was themed after "The Producers"; Max and Leo are up to their usual schemes and require the teams' help to make their new scam plays into sure-fire box-office flops (included rounds of puzzles like "A Circus Line" (meta-puzzle solution: ELEPHANT IN A TUTU), "Okla-Holmes-a" (CORNY CLUES), and "Into the Woodstock" (RAPUNZEL HAS AFRO)).

Puzzles and solutions are here. Cool puzzles I helped on:
Pure and Simple (figured out the form when the Muse struck, helped solve the rest)
Zugzwaang (someone pointed out the misspelling, I figured out the form from that plus Wikipedia and helped solve)
Tax... In... Space... (this is a straightforward(ish) puzzle)
Winning Condtions (someone else figure out the form, I wrote a program to help solve it)
Sounds Good to Me (Xave figured out the form, I helped solve)

The above are all pretty decent puzzles to try if you like puzzles (the answer to Hunt puzzles is always a word or short phrase), or just to look at the solutions if you're curious how such things are designed.

In unrelated Boston news, it is now COLD.

Hunt is on, with a Mario (or video games in general) theme this year. Unfortunately, I can't brain today, due to a cold. Hopefully once some helpful medicine kicks in, I'll be up and running.

Xave's Dresden Files tabletop game is starting, which looks like it should be fun. I'm still not a big fan of Fate, though, it requires more fiction-writing-type creativity than I actually have.

There's other stuff I should comment on, but I've been behind on everything this week.

Started the long weekend today, alternating time between Arisia and Mystery Hunt.

Mystery Hunt: Kickoff was great, great bunch of puzzles this year, I solved one with a small team of hunters and was a minor help on a few others.

Arisia: The panels didn't really draw me in, although there are some more interesting ones later in the weekend. It was great to see Anna again, and I also ran into a bunch of other people I haven't seen in a while. Really a great crowd. Looking forward to some of the parties tomorrow night.

Decided to walk home in the freezing wind rather than trying to crash on a couch, since I sleep miserably in suboptimal conditions. I wish I could just skip it, but I know from experience that a proper night's sleep is the way to go if I want to maximize my fun overall.