%t Dungeons and Dragons %n 6R114 %s No, you can't "win" %a John Floren (slawmaster@gmail.com) %d 20051015 %k D&D %k game %k RPG %e D&D is the first pencil-and-paper (PNP) Role Playing Game ever developed. In the 1970s, a couple of guys playing Chainmail (a war simulation game) realized that it would be more fun if you had orcs, elves, and trolls bashing each other instead of humans. They came up with basic rules for different races and added magic, then in 1974 released their work in the form of a few paper booklets titled "Dungeons and Dragons". The rules would continue to be modified, going through Advanced D&D First Edition, AD&D Second Edition, D&D 3.0, and finally D&D 3.5. D&D 3.0 was released after the franchise was purchased by Wizards of the Coast, who proceded to "enhance" many game features and of course create dozens of not-quite-required-but-kinda-important-to-have expansion books that each cost between $20 and $40. D&D 3.5 is simply D&D 3.0 with a few errors fixed. The basic premise of D&D (like that of many RPGs) is that you take the role of a character in a created world; all actions and events are mediated by a Dungeon Master, or DM (usually an experienced player with a taste for masochism or sadism). You then direct your character's actions through various quests (available for $20 at your local bookstore!). These quests, or "modules", are often purchased, but some DMs create their own (read: DMs with fertile imaginations and too much free time create their own). A character is created by choosing a race (elf, human, half-orc, halfling, etc.) and a class (fighter, mage, cleric, druid, etc.), then rolling dice to determine the physical and mental attributes ("stats) of that character. Players rolling stats seem to roll higher when the DM isn't watching; however, no one questions this because higher stats are usually better for everyone involved. After creating their characters, the players start on the beginners quests, which usually involved beating up weak goblins and finding lost trinkets; at this point in the game, the warrior-types are especially strong, and the magic-users feel pretty stupid (since they can only cast a few really simple spells). As quests are completed, characters gain "experience points" (XP) and eventually gain levels. The game usually continues for months or years; unless the DM gets annoyed and kills off a character, most people get close to the max level (20). By then, the warriors are still tough and effective, but the spellcasters have become walking weapons of mass destruction, able to raise the dead or kill with a touch. It is not known if this phenomenon of some classes starting weaker and eventually gaining far more power is meant to teach a moral lesson about patience, as most players with a high-level wizard are too busy creating golden towers and conquering entire worlds to comment. One of the greatest difficulties facing a D&D player is not figuring out how to defeat Zinfandar the Archmage, but rather is trying to explain the game to a layman. Usually the first question (after "what is is?") is "How do you win?" The correct answer ("You don't") usually causes confusion among the Monopoly-playing public, to whom the concept of working out a difficult puzzle or problem for no more reward than a handful of imaginary gold is a strange one. Possibly the second most-common comment from a non-player is, "Oh, you play THAT game? So-and-so told me it teaches you to worship Satan." This can either be much easier or much harder than the first question. Some people are quick to understand that although you can play an evil character, it makes the game harder, and that saying "I summon zombies to help me" does NOT actually teach you necromancy. Others won't get it; these are not worth arguing with, as they may try to exorcise you if you persist. Advice for a hitchhiker? If you have time, get into a D&D game. If you can borrow books, the entry price is nil, and a session with a fun group of people can make for a very enjoyable exerience. Do not join a game unless you can get to most of the gaming sessions; it tends to tick people off (the DM especially) if you miss half of the game. If fantasy isn't your thing, there are D&D-based games set in modern or futuristic times; you can even play in a HHGTTG-themed game if you like. %e *EOA* %t Dolphins, Sense of Humour %a Sheilah of ZZ9.org (no email) %n 6R113 %d 20051015 %i Salcome Harbour, South Devon, England, UK %x Swimming with Clothes On %k dolphins, humour %e It is widely assumed that a sense of humour is a mark of intelligence that only humans display. This is not true--dolphins also have a sense of humour. Swimming at the entrance to Salcome Harbour in South Devon, England, UK, a pod of dolphins will lie in wait for unsuspecting boat handlers. Having chosen their victim, they leap into the air to draw attention to themselves, swim under passing boats, and generally create as large an audience as possible. They then centre in on their victim, swimming close to, under, and around his (the victim is usually is a man) boat. We have to deduce that they are saying in dolphin, "Come play with us". They are waiting for the moment when he can resist no longer. What happens next is that the human hands the boat controls to another person and then then jumps into the water. The dolphins then swim away from him but stay just close enough for everyone to know that he has been snubbed. We do not recommend swimming with dolphins. They will always beat you at the 100m freestyle. %e *EOA* %t Moses Lake, Washington, United States, Earth %n 6R112 %s Slightly Less Dull %a John Floren () %d 20050518 %i Columbia Basin, Washington Cities: Moses Lake %x Earth %x United States %k Moses Lake, Washington, Columbia Basin, Mardon %e Where It Is ============= Moses Lake, Washington, U.S.A., is located in the Columbia Basin area of Eastern Washington. Interstate 90 runs directly through it. To locate it on a map, locate I-90 at Spokane. Trace I-90 westbound until you find Moses Lake. If your finger passes the Columbia River, you have traced too far. Most of the surrounding area is composed of plains with the occasional low hills; some distance to the south are the Saddle Mountains. Moses Lake (the city) is situated around (surprise) Moses Lake (the lake). Just to the south is the artificial Potholes Reservoir. The last exit available (when eastbound) for Moses Lake turns off into a group of hotels, restaurants, and gas stations that are about half a mile away from the rest of the city. Who Lives There? ================ The population of Moses Lake is approximately 20,000. Like all cities in the area, its population can expand and contract greatly as migrant farm workers come and go during the farming seasons. There are also many people living just outside the city on farms. What's There? ============= Things to do in Town -------------------- Moses Lake is home to the Big Bend Community College and an international airport; these two are situated across the street from each other. There is also a smaller municipal airport situated on the other end of town. Both airports would be worth a visit from a hitchhiker interested in aviation; the international airport is home of several WWII-era Catalina seaplanes and a Lockheed Electra (or a plane that looks exactly like an Electra), while the municipal airport has many private planes (look for a yellow-and-orange American Champion) and a fleet of spray planes. The Community College will not be of much interest to anyone not planning to attend it. There are several parks; the most notable is situated just north of I-90 on the eastern end of town. It has a boat launch and a swimming area, although the waters of Moses Lake have been known to turn a virulent green during some parts of summer. Fishing is also reported to be decent in Moses Lake--large carp are plentiful, as are bass. A city library is located near the center of town along a main thoroughfare (Pioneer Way); hitchhikers trying to locate it should ask a local for directions. Although the library is not huge, it is part of a chain of libraries in the area, so many books are available for mail order. It should be noted that the library chain now requires registration with a library card in order to actually check out a book or request one by mail order. The Grant County Fairgrounds are at the north-westerly edge of town, on Airway Drive; the fair takes place in the second week of August, running all week. It is definitely worth seeing if you happen to be there during the fair; check out the exhibit from the local SCA, if you happen to be interested in that sort of thing. There is a movie theater (Fairchild Cinema), which has several screens and shows most of the major releases. Also, there is an outdoor amphitheatre at McCosh Park, on Dogwood Street. Various performances take place there from time to time. Things to do in the Area ------------------------ To the south of Moses Lake is the Potholes Reservoir; the southern end of the Reservoir provides many sporting opportunities, such as boating, swimming, guided and unguided hunting and fishing, and golfing. There is a large group of houses located on a hill to the south of Potholes; this area is often known as Mardon, for the Mardon Resort that is on the lake edge. On the north end of the Reservoir is an area known as the Dunes; as the name suggests, there is an extensive range of sand dunes there, a favorite place for people riding off-road vehicles. A recently passed ordinance makes it illegal to possess alcohol while at the Dunes, so that should be kept in mind by any hitchhiker passing through. Where to Eat ============ There exists a respectable variety of eating places in Moses Lake. They can be divided into two categories: fast food and sit-down-and-wait. Fast Food --------- Most of the usual fast food chains are represented in Moses Lake, as well as a few local places. The following list is not complete, but it covers a lot of the fast food places: Arby's, Burger King, McDonalds, Taco Time, Taco Bell, Arctic Circle, Baskin Robbins, Dairy Queen, Skipper's, KFC, and Subway. Of note are the little taco wagons that can be found around town; they server authentic Mexican tacos and other food, but don't eat anything that sounds too wierd (brains tacos are not uncommon). Also of note are the numerous little coffee stands that spring up in parking lots throughout town. Sit-Down-And-Wait ----------------- There are quite a few decent restaurants in Moses Lake; here is a partial listing: *Eddies Chinese: Very good Chinese food, but in a rather hard-to-reach location (N. Stratford Road). *Pizza Hut: I classify this and other pizza joints as sit-down, because you do have to sit down and wait for a while. This Pizza Hut is located downtown (Pioneer Way), right across from the Domino's pizza. *Domino's Pizza: It's downtown too (Broadway Ave.). The pizza is pretty good, but there is not much room to actually sit and eat it. *J's Teriyaki: This is downtown at a major intersection (Broadway Ave.), right across from the Taco Time. *Godfather's Pizza: Downtown, kitty-korner to the library (Pioneer Way). The pizza is good and there are some decent arcade games. *Chinese Buffets: There are two, one on Stratford Road and one on Pioneer Way. Many people will tell you that the one on Pioneer Way is better. *Chico's Pizza: This is quite possibly the most popular pizza joint in town. You'll either love it or loathe it; the pizza is often quite greasy, but many people love it. It is a bit off the beaten track (Vista Village Shopping Center), but anybody should be able to point you to it. (I'm not joking, this pizza is VERY greasy). *Inca Mexican Restaurant: In the downtown area, 3rd Ave. *Empereador Azteca: A small Mexican restaurant located in the downtown area (3rd Ave.). Where to Stay ------------- There are several hotels and motels in Moses Lake; the largest and newest are up near the freeway at the south-eastern end of town. A non-inclusive list of hotels is as follows: Ameri-Stay Inn and Suites, Best Western Lake Inn (pretty good), Best Value El Rancho Motel, Holiday Inn Express, Interstate Inn, Lakeshore Motel, Lakeside Motel, and Motel 6. Pick one and get it over with. How to Get Around ----------------- While there is a bus system, it is rather minimalistic. The best transportation option is driving, due to the somewhat spread-out nature of the city. If you can get a ride to the center of town (near the library would be a good place to start), you can walk to a lot of the places listed in this article. If you stay at one of the hotels near the freeway, it would be a bit of a walk to get to anything really interesting, but that may be the only option--of course, hitchhiking is always a possibility. Notes ===== Things to Try ------------- *Go swimming in the lake; it's usually pretty nice. *Check out the Grant County Fair, if it is in town. *Eat at Eddy's Chinese Restaurant. *Get a bicycle and putter around town (surprisingly fun). *Check out the airports. Talk to somebody at the municipal, look at planes at the international. Things Not to Try ----------------- *Eat a brain taco. *Attend Big Bend Community College %e *EOA* %t Plan 9 From Bell Labs %n 6R115 %s Unix++ %a John Floren (slawmaster@gmail.com) %d 20051009 %i OS: Plan 9 %x Unix, Part 1 %x Unix, Part 2 %x Unix, Part 3 %k Plan 9 %k Operating System %k Unix %e In the late 1980's, researchers at AT&T's Bell Labs began work on a new operating system, one that would fix everything they thought was wrong with UNIX, which they had developed years earlier. They wanted windowing by default, unlike UNIX, which had X11 (an oft-derided windowing system) added to it years later. They wanted to be able to do neat things with the filesystem, and they wanted to reduce the complexity of the entire system. They also wanted to name the resulting system after the movie "Plan 9 From Outer Space," generally acknowledged as one of the worst movies in history. This move seems to have little reason other than that the name "Plan 9" does sound pretty cool. These intrepid hackers started by taking the UNIX premise of "everything is a file" (which wasn't ALWAYS true, or was only partly true (like so many Guide articles)) to a whole new level. Everything, including network connections, has a file name associated with it in Plan 9. They also used the UNIX philosophy of having small programs that do one thing well; indeed, they took it so far that many programs are missing what seems like vital features, although there are usually alternatives. The developers decided that since the Teletype was long dead, there was no reason to have a text-only interface. Terminal-type windows were retained as an efficient way to interact with the system (although tab completion, a favorite feature of most UNIX users, was left out in favor of copying and pasting directory paths from previous "ls" commands, leaving one wondering if that really is the simpler way), but except for a compatibility program called "vt," the terminal emulator disappeared from Plan 9. Unlike many UNIX or Windows systems, Plan 9 usually splits jobs among several machines. There is most often a CPU server and a file server, although the very cheap administrator can opt to use just one machine for CPU and files. The CPU server has a fast processor and little or no hard drive space; instead, it boots from the file server, a slower machine with plenty of storage. Individual terminals then boot from the file server. Each terminal runs its own programs, unless extra computation is needed, in which case the user connects to the CPU server and runs his programs there. To make such things possible, elements of a user's filesystem can be exported from one machine to another; files on a German Plan 9 system can be made to seem local. FTP and some other protocols are accessed in a similar way--a user runs "ftpfs ", is prompted for a username and password, and can then see the files on the FTP server as though they were in a directory on his hard drive. Although it contains many novel concepts and provides an environment in which complex things can be done through simple scripts, Plan 9 has yet to be widely adopted; this could be because of the unwillingness of UNIX users to give up their OS, or due to the arrogance of Plan 9 developers and users (scaring away newbies), or both. There are Plan 9 installations which provide free accounts to those who would like to give it a try; http://9grid.de, http://texas.9grid.us, and http://www.tip9ug.jp all have accounts available for the asking. %e *EOA* %t Potatoes, The Art Of Skinning Just Enough %n 6R116 %s You Will Never Get It Right In Your Lifetime %a Roel van der Meulen (roelvdmeulen@yahoo.com) %x Dutch Stews %x Tea %x Poutine %k Potato, Meat, Vegetables, Statistics, Hungry children in Africa %e It's always a pain, isn't it, having to decide how many potatoes to skin for a meal. Especially in traditional Dutch cuisine (1), which relies heavily on mealy potatoes on an almost daily basis, the question arises if a system can be devised to figure this out. Probably you've come to the same (amateur) conclusion as me: multiply the number of people at the meal with a set number of potatoes and then add a few. This always leaves me with plenty of potatoes left over, but I can't bring myself to learn from this experience. No matter how well I try to reduce the amount of potatoes used, at the end I invariably wind up adding a few anyway, because "you better have too much than leave someone short". Recognise this? There just _has_ to be a way to do it better, a mathematical rule that you can stick to. In order to get there, research has to be undertaken. For every meal you should start keeping tabs on the total potato consumption at the table, registering as well: - how many people were at the table, - how many potatoes were left over, - what was the size of the potatoes, - what they were served with, - what else did people eat this day, before the meal, - what was the weather like, - what was the atmosphere at the table, - did anyone fart, - were there any documentaries about brutal exploitation of potatoes on potato farms on television recently, - etc. etc. With these statistics a computer program can figure out the rules of the game: which of the above parameters matter how much and whether there are other parameters we didn't think of yet. Then, when you start preparing a meal, simply feed the computer the variables it asks for, and it will calculate exactly how many potatoes you need to skin. I predict, however, that it will also calculate how many potatoes will be left over anyway! Because no matter how well you try to estimate what is needed, a simple rule will prove you wrong time and time again: people never take all potatoes because they don't want to appear greedy. So next time you worry what the poor children in Africa might think about the copious amounts of food piling up in your dust bin, remember that it's a civil gesture that produced the waste (2). (1) Traditional Dutch cuisine: a plate half full of vegetables cooked to a non-nutritionous pulp, half full of meat that has been cooking for a day, and half full of mealy potatoes saturated with gravy - I love it! See also my article on Dutch Stews. (2) Also, in these times of economic setback this rule can be a nice way to save a buck (maybe not much when you look at one week, but on a yearly basis...). %e *EOA* *EOA* %t Terschelling, Friesland, Netherlands, Earth %n 6R111 %s Third Of The Northern Islands %a Roel van der Meulen () %d 19970613 %d 20000728 %x Earth %x Netherlands, A Native Writes About The %x Netherlands, The %x Tourists %x Cycling In The Netherlands %x Elvis Impersonations %k Oerol, Festival, Europe, Beach, Hiking, Cycling, Island %e Terschelling, the third of northern islands of the Netherlands [1] (the Waddeneilanden), is a perfect place for a long weekend, or a midweek out of the rush. The off-season is best [2]; not too many people there yet, and you may even catch a ray of sun [3]. The island can be divided into roughly two parts: the northern part, with a very wide sandy beach (approximately 30 km long), and with dunes and forests; and the southern part, which is mostly grassland for the keeping of cattle and tourists. The island is small, and so are the villages. Where To Stay ============= Numerous are the bungalow parks and camp sites, and hotels aren't difficult to find either. This probably means that in-season the island must be swarming with tourists! What To Do ========== Nice things to do are hiking, horse-back riding and cycling. A stroll through the rugged dune area is an experience you shouldn't miss. Also, in an hour and a half you can cycle from one end of the island to the other. Don't forget to dress for cold weather on that occasion, because there is always wind. After traversing the barren wastelands of the dunes, territory of breeding birds, rabbits, and birds of prey, you can recuperate at the Heartbreak Hotel. This is a little beach-restaurant dedicated to The King. You can get interesting snacks there, such as a Terschelling tosti [4] and a cranberry milkshake. Yes, cranberries! The story goes that a barrel of cranberries once washed ashore, and since then the island has them everywhere! Cranberry products, I mean. It being the last restaurant before the next island, Heartbreak Hotel is also the place where beach sailors go to get a snack; land yachting on a three wheeled and wind-surf sail driven cart, and flying kites are also popular activities in these parts. Oerol Festival -------------- Every year there is a festival on Terschelling called "Oerol". The _whole island_ becomes the stage for open-air performances: dance, music, art, and street theatre. There are things to watch and listen to everywhere! It takes place somewhere mid-June. Important to know is that the program is only available on the island itself, and tickets have to be bought for the major performances. Still, there are plenty of free happenings left if you don't succeed in getting any. Night Life ---------- West Terschelling is the largest town on the island and, small as it is, logically about the only place where there is some night life. As I said, the place is small, so everything should be easy to find. The View -------- The view from the island is beautiful; to the north there is the wild North Sea, to the south the Shallows with stretches of glimmering water. Even further you can see the main land, Friesland, and the beautiful Dutch clouds. On nice days you can see many traditional sailing ships going back and forth. From far out at sea and from almost everywhere on the island, especially at night, you can see the very old and sturdy lighthouse of West Terschelling, the Brandaris. It has a typical square shape which reminds you of the days when there was only a fire on top. How To Get Around ================= Forget about cars: they're expensive to bring onto the island. Just rent a bike: everything is close by. Taxis and buses are available too. How To Get There ================ In Harlingen, Friesland, take either the fast (45 min.) or the slow (2 hours) ferry to West Terschelling. The slow one goes to Vlieland first though. The boat zig-zags across the Waddenzee, home of seals who bask in the sunlight (when there is some) on the many mud-flats (wadden). The sea is pretty shallow; with a guide it is possible, during low-tide, to walk to one of the islands over the shallows - an activity known as wadlopen. How To Get Back =============== The fast boat, the koegelwiek, transporting only passengers, can only be reserved on the day you take it, so get up really early (before 8 o'clock!) Details can be found at the tourist information (VVV). It is wise to visit them, because the ferry schedule can change at short notice. [5] [1] Texel, Vlieland, Terschelling, Ameland, Schiermonnikoog. [2] Note: I have only been here in the off-season. [3] Actually, it is said that there is twice as much sun here than in the rest of the Netherlands! Combined with the extra wind it is, on average, a drier place too. [4] Tosti: grilled sandwich, standard with cheese and ham. [5] Link to more information about the island: http://dit.is/terschelling %e *EOA*