Asymptomatic

We're going on a trip to Disney World this month where we're likely to be standing in a lot of lines waiting to get on rides. Because the kids have such great potential to be annoyed at this, and at the suggestion of a travel book, I have considered what it would take to keep them occupied while waiting. The book specifically suggests notepads and paper for particular kinds of lines, and I got to wondering what kinds of games we could play to stay occupied.

There are a few other games we could play that don't involve paper at all, and those are fine. I worry that Riley will be inconsolable standing in wait for everything, and that we'll constantly need to attend to him to keep him appeased. In that case, having some activities to keep Abby entertained would probably be a good idea. So what pen and paper games can we play? What sort of games can you play with just pen and paper?

The classic that Abby likes is Tic Tac Toe. She hasn't gotten so old that she's figured out how to tie every time, but she's getting pretty good at it. We have a long-running series of tied games. I seem to be the only one that doesn't let her win. But I'm sure that game will run out of steam quickly. So what else is there to do?...

One of the classes I'm taking at West Chester on Tuesdays and Thursdays is Discrete Math.  Discrete Math is basically turning out to be the study of things that are ture and false, and how to determine is something is true or false via logical argument.

We're learning such things as boolean algebra, truth tables, ands, ors, nots, venn diagrams, and proof by induction.  It's mostly a formal spin on the common sense understanding of truth.

My class is filled with the usual evening-hour students.  They're mostly of two types: Returning adult students (see also: me), and regular students who were too lazy/stupid to register when the daytime classes were still open.  That's the impression I get from the high intelligence level in the class, anyway.  There is one exception to this set of students, though.  Annoying Kid.

Annoying Kid must be in the 12-15 range.  His mom comes to pick him up from class every day.  Any none of this is why I like to call him annoying kid, because certainly none of what I mentioned already is annoying.  No, actually, Annoying Kid is annoying.  In order to explain why he annoys, I'll have to describe the particular type of behavior he exhibits.

This is a very strange phenomenon, because in a college environment you might think that you would like open dialog during class.  You might expect that students in the class would call out answers to questions when the teacher poses them.  But there is some kind of unspoken rule that students in college classes apply wherein it's simply not cool to speak out in class.

I'm not sure exactly how to quantify this rule.  There are times when it's ok to speak out in class.  Certainly when the teacher asks a question.  But usually answers are provided only when they will move the class toward its conclusion.  Rhetorical questions should be left floating unanswered at the penalty of having all of your cool revoked.  Most questions are rhetorical.

There is also some miswiring in this kid's head where he just doesn't shut up.  He seems to know the material pretty well, but he just doesn't get the fact that other people in the class are trying to learn and he's really not giving them the chance to reason it out.

Furthermore, it turns out he's really not so smart.  I told Nana about this young'n in my class and she was impressed.  Impressed by what?  The fact that he has escewed any social graces and abandoned the opportunity to be with like-aged friends in daylight hours to waste time proving that he knows discrete math?  This child is going to be very poorly adjusted when he graduates.  It's no wonder all of our high intellectuals are so socially inept.

Anyway...

I assume that you are all too used to listening to me rant about every little thing, and so I've decided to provide you with some evidence.  This evidence will likely serve only to prove that I am a kook that complains about everything, but I swear to you that other people in my class feel similarly about Annoying Kid.

Here is the evidence.  Selected clips of Annoying Kid in class.

I provide this transcript because the audio is a little muddy from the recorder being in my shirt pocket with a very noisy air conditioner running full blast and the windows open.  Why is the AC on with the windows open?  Beats me.  Actually, the audio is pretty good considering the circumstances.

Here, the teacher is factoring an equation on the board and the Annoying Kid.  You'll see how Annoying Kid eventually overtakes the teacher:

Teacher: The left-hand side is...

Teacher and Annoying Kid simultaneously: one.

Teacher: The sum of the first n integers if n is one is...

AK (overpowered by noise): One.

Teacher: one.  The right-hand side is...

AK (fast, to get it in before the teacher): Two over two.

Teacher (getting annoyed, slow down): One times two over two is one.

Later that class...

Teacher: Why is it true at 1003?

AK: Because it's true at 1002, because it's true at 1001...

Teacher: ...and...

AK: ...because it's...

Teacher: ...and...

AK: ...true at 1000

Teacher: ...and by the time you get back to one it'll be next Thursday, but you get the idea.

And during another class, the teacher asks for the sum of the squares of all integers to n...

Teacher (trepidatious to take answer from AK): Yeeees?

AK (seemingly out of his head): Um, it is n times n plus one times two n plus all of that over six.  I read all of that out of the book.

Teacher: Ok.

AK (revealing himself): I got that out of the book.

Teacher: And does the book tell you...

AK (ugh): I proved it by mathematical induction and it is.

>Some noise and coughing<

Teacher: ...the sum of the first n [cubes]?

AK: n times n plus one over 2 and all of that is squared.

Teacher: And does your book tell you about the sum of the first [writes 1^4, 2^4, 3^4, ..., n^4]?

AK: No, it doesn't.  As a matter of fact, are we going to do that?

Teacher: It might be nice to figure out what it is.

These were the first examples that came out of the two hours of sometimes continuous Annoying Kid dialog.  I wish I would have recorded our first class session, during which Annoying Kid talked more than the teacher did.  Unfortunately, I think someone clued him in to the whole "Coolness" thing, or he proved by mathematic induction that all of our glares meant that he was being annoying.

Ok, I took back Baldur's Gate.  The main problem in the end was that I had to cheat to win.  I didn't see any way to get to the end without cheating. 

There was this ridiculous section of dungeon at the end of the first act that is just a spiral inward.  There are no save points.  At this point, I have used a cheat to make myself invincible and give myself all spells.  I'm getting poisoned and bitten by spiders.  There are thieves that would otherwise have killed me in one good blow.  I killed everything and I didn't level up until after the very last boss.  I made level 5.

The bosses at the end could quite easily have eaten through any health potions I could have bought, since they were firing off magic without care.  The only reason I managed to get any spells off was that I was invulnerable.  Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to manipulate the klunky spell selector.  Not that I would have had any of those spells at level 4 anyway.  But the spells at level 4 (magic missile, burning hands) suck.

Did I mention that the character advancement is nothing like real D&D at all?  Isn't this a Wizards of the Coast property?  Weird.

I looked a bit at act two and decided that if that's all it had to offer then I wasn't interested.  So it went back to the store.

To replace it, I got Mario Party 4.  Yeah, I know, grand departure.  But I figured it would be nice to get something that Berta might also like to play.

I only got to look at the game briefly, but it looks hideously complicated.  Different colors of board squares mean different things as you move around on it - nothing's intuitive.  The graphics aren't really fantastic, and the one mini-game I played was not the best.  Er, not really good at all.

I just figured it would be a simple point-blank style game with the Mario characters.  Instead, there is this complicated system of stars and coins that doesn't even seem anything like the system in the original Mario games.  And you have to know how it works to win at the Party.  It seems quite befuddling.  I guess I'll have to get Berta to try it and see what she thinks.  At this point, I think that if I strike out with anouther game, I might give up console gaming, too.  Sheesh.

On a final note, though, to alleviate some of your "fears" that I might go completely over to the fluff games (and those of you in the know already know that I have), I have a couple of games that interested me recently that I thought I would share.

The first two are Palm games.  Rook's Revenge is a neat chess-based game where you can move any piece you like as fast as you like to any legal space.  There are no turns.  The only restriction is that you can't move the same piece twice in a row. 

The game also lets you build new pieces by double-tapping in an empty space in your starting row.  So if you move your knight and you want another one, you simply double-tap in the space where the knight starts.  In a few seconds (there's a timer) the new knight appears.  This is a neat feature, but I haven't had to use it to win yet.

>The second Palm game is an update to a game I already have.  Billiards is basically a pool game where you shoot balls into pockets on the palm.  If you've seen this game on my Visor before, you know how cool it is.  The new version is even more cool.  There is more, better control over the angle of the cue stick and the location of striking the ball.  Also, there are options to allow you to see where the balls are going to go when you hit them by drawing lines.  You can set it for none, first ball, or all balls.  It's very neat.  It just occurred to me while running the demo that there is a mode where you can play two-player 8-ball by handing the Palm back and forth when your turn is up.  I hadn't thought of this before, since I was always playing the computer.  Very neat.

Finally, the game that I've been waiting for.  Zelda: Windwalker.  I've seen the demo in the store, and this game is beautiful.  Tomorrow, I get to play it at home!

The cell animation looks so cool.  I love when the enemies explode in a big cloud.  Neat!  There is even some talk in the review about hooking a GameBoy to the cube to search for secret rooms.  How cool is that?  Anyway, if you can't tell, I'm excited.  This game is sure to be better than that ridiculous Baldur's Gate.