Hanford 2008 - Pt. 2 - Saturday Games, Quick Wrap-Up

We step out of the hotel into the Richland morning. Games start at 9:00am, and we're leaving to get there about 30 minutes before the first round. The morning air is chilly, but not nearly as cold as we'd expected. In previous years, the grass has crackled with frost as we stepped onto the field for our first game. This year, the frost has taken a hiatus, but Chris has donned massive winter gloves and a hat in anticipation.

The schedule for the day has us playing two games. Then a bye round. Followed by our final two games of the day. We're seeded number one in our pool (seeds, of course, mean nothing on day 1 of a recreational tournament), and will hold court on the same field all day.

Since the previous night, Maya, cheer master, and femme fatale of the Bond girl persuasion, has been talking about beating the first team that we play - Freezer Jam. Maya had been playing with Freezer Jam up until recently, and some good natured smack talk had been traded. Freezer Jam had come to the tournament as lawn gnomes. Pointy hats, vests, and cries of "Force Gnome" were the order of the weekend for them. My inner dork rejoiced, and I made one of the most bizarre comments that I was to make during the weekend. The comment was a general statement to the folks on their sideline, that was met with awkward silence. Probably due mostly to the strangeness of its content.

It went something like, "It's a common mis-gnome-er, that gnomes are defined by binary sexes. In fact, there are no less then 7 different genders. The pairings, as one can imagine, are quite convoluted."

Not an entirely original thought. I seem to remember non-binary gender assignments in something I read at some point (maybe The Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl?). Later in the game I refined my thinking on the statement by thinking of gender divisions in gnomes in terms of the color of the various pieces of clothing that they wore (all gnomes of course having beards, genders are not a matter of facial hair). Three different colors were represented in hats, vests, and shorts. Red, brown, and green. The number of genders of gnomes then, would become a product of combinatorics. By this logic, there would be 27 different gnome genders (3 cubed). In gnome-land procreation is managed by orgiastic flurry. Or is it individual couplings that result in the color coded progeny. A R-Br-R X G-Br-R would result in either a R-Br-R or a G-Br-R? Theoretical biology! Hurray!

We started out the game slowly, but it was clear that we had it well in hand. We finished the game 13-8 (the highest score against us all day). The game done, we made our initial attempts at our James Bond obstacle course. In each game we ended with a 007 Training School. One member of the opponent was picked and chose a member of our team to don a robe. Then a member from our team chose another individual from the opponents team to wear a robe. Then the games began. The two contestants started by spinning around five times (to simulate the disorientation of space - we were after all Moonrakers), they then ran 20 yards to the person that they had chosen and had to disrobe them (later this was modified, so that they had to disrobe them without using their hands). After this, they ran and leaped through a held hula hoop on their way to picking up a sticky dart gun which was used to shoot a target (Chris, in Jaws persona held a disc over his groin). They then ran to where I was and drank a martini (shaken, not stirred). The first to finish was the winner (although, to be fair, everyone that played was a winner).

In the first go around, some kinks popped up that needed to be worked out. The dollar store dart guns that were used jammed immediately, and the contestants fumbled with them for a bit before one of them decided to throw the gun at the disc (poor Chris!). We also started with a single martini, so the race essentially ended when someone grabbed it (rather then the speed drinking that came later).

The second team we played was a team dressed as athletes from different sports. There was a cricket player, black belt, rugby player, ... We started a bit stronger, and held the team to 6 points. At this point the hangovers from the previous night started to fade, and we began to click a bit more.

A trip over to watch the UPS folks followed (we had a bye in the middle of the day). We watched as they dismantled a team, and happy for their success proceeded to our next game. This time, we met on the field of battle with "The Bros" (a frat boy themed team out of WSU). Needless to say, there was much chest bumping and such. I even worked in a "Broseph". The early stages of this game were close. The WSU team has some fantastically athletic folks and they were able to have their throwers put the disc and have them come up with some amazing grabs downfield. The problem with this approach is that when things start going wrong with throws, you give the disc back a lot (albeit with worse field position then if you turned it over back at your own 15). Tighter marks and a little bit of straight up reigned in their long game and we started to pull away. Afterwards, they had a game to cheer us with. A wiffle ball bat with the end cut off was filled with beer. They picked a guy and girl from the team that had to drink from the bat until the ambrosia (read, crap beer) within was gone. While drinking, they counted the seconds that it took. After the liquid was gone, the bat needed to be set on the ground and you had to spin around with your head on the bat a number of times equivalent to the number of seconds that it took to finish the beer. After spinning, they through a wiffle ball in your direction and had to hit it. In both of their selections, they picked people that were not drinking. Purbaugh stepped up to the plate for both in the drinking department resulting in about 12 spins around the bat for the guy (Elliot) and girl (Stephanie). Elliot spun admirably and hit the ball on the first throw. Stephanie on the other hand spun like a drunken labrador, collapsing in the midst of her spins. This of course, without having had a drop to drink. Quite amusing really. She got up, finished her spinning, picked up the bat and.... SWING AND A HIT. First shot. Once again. This is a coordinated team folks. Super coordinated. Like kangaroos shadow boxing with giant anthropomorphic bananas. We treated the other team to our Secret Agent Training Camp game. Fun, once more, was had by all. No casualties to Chris's junk this time around (having learned the tricksome ways of the dart gun, teams were informed of how not to have them jam. No need for them to throw the gun when they can actually shoot).

Our last game was against another Seattle team that we've beaten frequently (and convincingly). They conceded the fact that we would win the game up front and wanted to make the game into a bit of fun. We agreed to start the game with everyone with beer in hand, which could only be relinquished once finished. About half way through the game, we offered the team a deal. We were up 7-3 (or something on that order) and gave an option of ending the game with a score of double the current value. If they agreed, for the second half, we'd play a variation where every time a point is scored, your team loses a person. Teams start out at 7 vs. 7. When one team scores, it becomes 7 vs. 6. If the team that has 6 gets the D and scores again, it becomes 7 vs. 5. And so on. Having so many people uncovered, it eventually evens out (typically becoming 2 vs. 2 on the final point). The highlight of this for me was a point when we were playing 5 vs. 3 (our team had 3 on the field). Chris, me, and Stephanie (?) were pulling to the other team and were trying to figure out what we were going to set for D. We opted for a 3 layer defense. One person on the mark, one person covering cuts in the middle. And one person deep. I was going to be the deep. I pulled the disc, and Chris and Stephanie ran down to play defense. I moved about 15 yards down field and lay down on the grass, waiting for the other team to try and put one long. The other team got greedy and put something within 15 yards of where I was, and I sprang up and ran towards the disc. The disc got by me, but caromed off the receiver's hands, and we had an offensive opportunity going 5 on 3. Some conservative play with the disc resulted in a score. Huzzah! The other bit to this variation was that when a team was down to two folks, the two folks had to make out prior to playing the point. Sean and Sarah. Jerry and Jeni. Lora and the guy whose name I forget. All of the couples hammed it up on the line (I believe Jeni ravished the hell out of Jerry) and we won our last game of the day with the couples on the team getting it done.

We returned to the hotel triumphant. We had finished the day undefeated, and as a result would receive a bye in the first round of play on Sunday. We would have plenty of time to recover from any debauchery that the evening might bring. The early portion of the evening took place around the pool. I played my first game of Dibble (a floating piece of mulch is thrown into the pool. The person throwing it jumps in on top of it. When it resurfaces, it's a free-for-all to get ahold of the mulch. Once in hand, you shout, "Dibble" and become the thrower for the next round. This is a game of aquatic chaos. Chaos, of course, is very fun.). I was hesitant at first. It wasn't until four or five iterations in that I jumped in after the dibble chip for the first time. But once the fear of collision, etc... was assuaged, I went for anything that I could. Numbers grew. Starting with about 5 folks, we eventually ringed the end of the pool with about 20+. A few hours later, the game slowly lost steam. I showered and hung out with the team, eventually finding my way to the party (which was at the hotel bar). The WSU guys handed me a cup of beer, and I made my way around talking to folks I knew, getting generous donations of beer. The bracket was posted, and in a happy twist, we would play the winner of Olympia vs. UPS in our first game of the day (with our bye into quarters).

The night died slowly, and I found my way back to the room where I collapsed into fitful sleep. Strange places do not make for good sleeping, I tend to find, and I was up a few hours later at about 7am. I grabbed my laptop and headed down to the continental breakfast where I chatted with the UPS folks, and then proceeded to watch a Bond movie to get pumped up for the day.

Chris and I headed over to the fields quite a bit early in order to watch the Olympia/UPS game. In stark contrast to the previous day, the wind had picked up. Coming across the field at a forty-five degree angle, it was blowing at about 15-20mph. The game that we were witness to, was quite sloppy as a result. Unfortunately, UPS got down a few points early, and were unable to get them back in the difficult conditions. Olympia won by 2 or 3 (a single break in weather like that can be a killer). We warmed up. I worked as much as possible going upwind, trying to tune my throws. The game got under way, and for the first few points, we traded, each taking our downwind opportunity. We made them work hard for their downwind points, and usually were rewarded with a few attempts at going upwind. We didn't turn the disc as much going down wind, and they had fewer opportunities in that direction. Eventually the unequal number of upwind attempts started to pay off. We scored the first upwind point and immediately got the D and score on the downwind side. We started to pull away. The upwind offense started to gel, making smart and efficient decisions in the tricky wind. We cruised to the victory by a fair margin.

Next up, semifinals. This game was played against a team based out of Portland called "The Resurrection". I had talked to the captain the previous night at the party, and he had indicated that they were hoping for significant wind on Sunday. They were a slightly older team, and felt more confident in their throws then their legs. The game started off chippy. The other team made some ticky-tack calls and went up by a few early on. We made a few calls on them, and things started to level off (in terms of the number and quality of the calls). Once the game fell into place (in terms of what was being policed, and how stringently), things became a lot more enjoyable. The other team had gotten an upwind break early, and we played catch up throughout. We got the break back, then lost another, then got it back. The score was low, and remained close. Games were to 15, but we hit the soft cap without having had a half time (we would have received to start the second half. A brief rule interpretation thing occurred after the cap came on, that left a bad taste). The game gets tied at 7s, and we score upwind as the hard cap is blown. Chris was a monster on the upwind point, coming up with some clutch grabs, and sweet throws.

And on to finals! Another Oregon team! This time peppered with a bunch of Rhino, Schwa, and Whoreshack players (Rhino was at nationals last year, Schwa is always on the edge of going to nationals in a tough region, and Whoreshack was at nationals a couple years back). Another close game. To cut the story short, we lose this one. But it's contested the whole way. Again we give up an upwind score early. But when things get difficult, we find ways to come back. I have a few scores in this game, including a layout grab on the trailing edge of a disc, and a pull down catch on a disc that is thrown directly over my head (my hat, while keeping my hair out of my face, gives me a brimful of "where-the-hell-is-disc" on this one). The cap is blown again, we trade points going downwind. They have game point, with us down by one. We pull to them, get the D, and score going upwind. Last point of the tournament for both teams. We're pulling to them, going downwind. Sean calls the line in for defense. And the other team plays chilly offense up the field and gets a turnover free upwind score. They played the last point perfectly, and if there's a way to lose a game, that has to be it. Both teams giving it their all, the final point a result of excellent offense rather then miscues and errors on either team.

Hanford 2008 - Friday Night/Saturday Morning

So a bit of ultimate shop to set down, then perhaps some other bits and pieces.

This past weekend was the Hanford Howl, which has in recent years been the tournament I enjoy most in the ultimate season. On Friday, I called in sick to work and at about 11 rolled out of bed to start packing for the weekend. 11 was slightly later then I had planned, and I was immediately greeted by a chirping from my phone that indicated I had missed not one, but two calls - both from the great Sommarstrom. He was calling to get my address, as the plan was to carpool out to the Tri-Cities in his folks' Honda Pilot. Information was communicated and I immediately launched into a whirlwind of packing activity.

Cleats, food, clothes, and entertainment were all thrown in a pile by the door (with a bit of booze for good measure). I also got the hot tub set for stun (heat!) so that the Sunday return from physical exertion could be met with a solid dose of soaking. Chris showed up around noon, and we played a bit of Rockband 2 before heading out the door around 1:30ish (?). A quick stop was made on the way towards I-90 to drop Lance off at the kennel, and the journey eastward started. The roads were wide open with the early start, and we made good time.

The initial stages of the trip were spent examining the new car for the bits and pieces that would allow us to plug in Chris's iPod. This effort ended in failure and we moved on to playing with the satellite radio, which gave us plenty of options. We swung from Alternative hits (Soundgarden! Pearl Jam! Alice in Chains!) to Comedy (DL Hughley, George Carlin, Chris Rock) to Metal (Cattle Decapitation) to talk radio (Trucker Radio!, Air America). The little XM guide that came with the car was mostly accurate (it looked like a few stations had been added, some removed).

A stop was made along the way to stretch out our legs, toss a disc, and drink a beer. A strange occurrence. A trucker emerges from the bathroom at the rest stop while we sip our beers and toss the disc around obstacles. As he heads in our direction he turns towards us and asks if we want some corned beef hash. Chris replies in the negative. I myself have nothing against the CBH, but the manner of the proposition lends a certain hesitancy. I sip my beer in silence, and let Chris's answer stand for both of us. We continue to toss, and I watch the trucker open the back of his semi- and pull out 5 one-gallon cans of corned beef hash. He stacks them in a pyramid behind his truck, surveys his work, and then begins moving them into the cab of the truck. Whether the stacking display (he stood looking at the stack for a minute or two) was to tantalize us is a question that I will probably never know the answer to.

Refreshed, we get back on the road and finish off the trip. We roll into Richland about two and a half hours before anyone else from the team and grab dinner at the Atomic Ale House brewery. Food was eaten, beers were consumed, and a text was received from the wonderful Lora Flewelling. Our mission, if we chose to accept it, was to find a nearby liquor store and determine its hours of operation. I asked our server, and he pointed us in the general direction, and we proceeded. Once at the store, I got back in touch with Lora to find out where she was at, and whether she wanted us to pick up the martini making materials that were the reason for her inquiry.

The martinis of course were a prop (albeit a prop that would be consumed over and over throughout the weekend) that went along with our team costume theme. The Howl, in way of explanation, is a costume tournament. Each team picks a theme and runs with it. Over the course of the next couple of days, we'd get to see teams of Frat Boys (the Bros), Gnomes, Lifeguards, LARPers, ghosts, types of Whiskey (Crown Royal represented by a kingly figure, Wild Turkey by dude in a turkey suit, ...), and Saturday Night Live figures. We, in a play off our name Rainmakers, attended the tournament as Moonrakers. We were Bond. James Bond. And of course other elements of the Bond universe were present as well. Bond girls. Jaws (Chris wrapped his teeth in tinfoil early in the day on Saturday before switching to duct tape later), Moonrakers, and a large number of Bonds. We would be dressed to the nines, and require our martinis. Shaken. Not stirred. And to this effect, vodka and vermouth were purchased.

Still having time to kill, Chris and I settled into the Honda Pilot to wait for Lora, who had booked the rooms that we would be staying in. The laptop was pulled out and we started watching License to Kill. While this may come off as heretical, I think that Timothy Dalton is one of my favorite Bonds. Over the weekend, I watched both License to Kill and The Living Daylights, and his interpretation of Bond seems to be in a similar vein to what Daniel Craig is doing with his stint. Bond is dangerous, impulsive, and darker in his hands. There's humor, but mostly of the gallows sort. I find myself thinking that I need to sit down and watch a selection of each of the actors' work to make a better assessment. I also think this is one of those cans of worms that I'd like to open with my dad. Possibly as divisive as politics, but less serious.

About an hour in, we're able to get into the hotel and I immediately find the looming prospect of intoxication. Gin and tonics, gimlets, and cheap beer come slowly at first and then quickly as it appears that all of the ultimate players in the hotel are converging around our hotel rooms (the hotel has an indoor pool, and we are poolside. The abundance of tables, central location, and the fact that we were there early makes it an ideal spot for the steady accretion that turns into a party).

Bed comes eventually, and I wake up periodically. Each time, I toss down water, to stave off the impending apocalypse of a hangover. Eventually breakfast rolls around. My stomach is unsettled but I grab a muffin or two and drink more water. My head doesn't protest too much and moving around is starting to get me going. I grab my stuff from the hotel room, and Chris and I head over to the fields.

Math and Granularity!

A bit that's been distracting me recently. About two weeks ago I finished reading the first book in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, Quicksilver, which provides a narrative that encompasses the dispute between Liebniz and Newton regarding who created Calculus first (well... there's a bit more then that, but it provides background for a number of different narratives).

After revisiting the wonderful world of Math through fiction, it finally became clear to me that Calculus is an extension of geometry. Which I blissfully disregarded through the 2 or 3 calc classes I took. Sometimes, the minor epiphanies that you experience from taking a step back and looking at the whole (as opposed to focusing on the abstraction in front of you - in this case, just numbers, symbols, and the operations that translated these from one state to another), allow you to better understand how the smaller details fit together.

A Tendency Towards Stasis

So this one is likely to fall into the realm of "Setting things down so that I can go back and reevaluate, tear down, and refine later".



The starting point of all this is going to be Conway's Game of Life, which I was initially introduced to in a computer science class at the University of Puget Sound. For an expansive bit about it, you can head here.



The general idea is that Conway's Game of Life simulates a 2-dimensional universe with a finite set of rules that dictate how the state of a two dimensional infinity x infinity universe progresses from one turn to the next. Each point (cell) in the universe has one of two states, alive or dead. The "player" sets the initial states of however many cells that they would like and hits a button to start the universe. The rules take over from there. No additional input from "player" is required.



Once things start, the following rules dictate what happens to each cell in the universe:




1 - Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if by loneliness.
2 - Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overcrowding.
3 - Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives, unchanged, to the next generation.
4 - Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours comes to life.



The rules are applied simultaneously to every cell in the universe, producing the next generation, which is used as the seed for the following generation (ad infinitum).



Many patterns simply die out by virtue of the above rules, but others maintain a static configuration (consider a 2x2 grid where all cells are live). Some fluctuate between a series of multiple states (consider a line of three consecutive live cells in a horizontal bar - one turn later, the bar has become vertical, then switches back to horizontal on the following turn). Others move through the universe. They move in a direction without end (as long as they're not acted on by an outside object.... which starts to resemble Newton's laws of motion... but what else would you expect from a math game). There are even configurations that create the above patterns at a fixed period (shooting off moving bits every couple turns, leaving behind static or repeating chunks as they themselves move forward through the grid).



There's a Java based applet that you can play around with here that should give you a feel for Conway's Game of Life.

(Delay in completion of post. Approximately 3 days. Also, I am now at least partially drunk. Hell. All drunk. I poorly made Gimlets, and about 1/3 of a bottle of gin is now gone. After watching my dog Lance for about 2 hours, and finishing reading the book Microserfs by Douglas Copeland. Which, in the last couple of chapters starts talking about things of this nature. Also, I am now at the Mandolin Cafe, drinking coffee, imagining that I will be drinking more in the near future. Such a life. Amusing. My liver protests, but I say, to hell with it. Life less then 100 years ago was a matter of death by TB, Typhoid, infection. 200-300 years ago, plague. And more virulent and painful manners of death beyond. We did not have a life expectancy of 70.1. )

So to step in after the fact. The idea that I'm grasping at here is the thought of stability and the plunge into stable forms of existence. Any number of starting patterns in the game of life end up in a null state immediately. There are an infinite number of single cell starting points that terminate one round in. There are an infinite number of 2 cell starting states that end in failure one round in. And so on and so on. On an infinite grid, there are an infinite number of starting positions of one cell that end immediately. There are an infinite number of two cell starts that end immediately. There are in actuality an infinite number of X cell starting positions (with cells non-neighboring) that fail immediately. Ditto for 2 consecutive cell positions. Failure is not a miracle, but a fact of the game that is true in an infinite number of cases. But, if you were to look at this by itself, you become inundated with the possibility of immediate failure. There are also an infinite number of positions that result in an infinite lifetime for that very same universe simulator. Take a single periodic figure or generating figure, and you have a start state that runs forever. The thought of multiplying infinity is ridiculous, but, for a grid that is infinity x infinity (ever-expanding, no upper bounds, no lower bounds), there are an infinite number of start states that run forever, and infinite number of start states that end immediately. This fails to mention states that do not end immediately, but fail after a particular number of generations.

Those states that end immediately (or in X number of iterations), are inconsequential in this particular theoretical investigation. This universe has not ended yet, and while we may be X number of iterations from this event, (the Big Contraction...), we are currently on the way out, with no anticipated return date. And beyond this, matter in proximity to other matter is not unaffected in general, but is subject to gravity, which in turn is a product of X number of non-discrete distance related measurements.... Physical reality is a bitch when sober, and when drunk becomes an incomprehensible mumble. The only thing that we can hold onto here is that we exist now. And have existed X iterations in the past. At worst, this universe is a starting state that does not stop immediately. It goes on, and on and on. It may end un-heroically at some point. But it has not done so yet.

And perhaps our universe is not governed by rules of the quantity of proximal nodes (0r maybe it is). But it seems apparent by the actuality of existence that there are definite rules. Look to Newton, and the idea and rules surrounding gravity pop into the equation. To phrase this in terms of a Conway universe, you might add a rule to the effect of :

-If X exists in position (a,b) and Y exists in position (c,d), then the positions of figures X and Y in the next generation are determined and affected by the positions of each other.

But this is not the be all and end all of rules of attraction and conjunction. Think about high school chemistry and the idea of Valens electrons jumps in. Elements bond due to the number of electrons in the "outer sell" of a unit of that element.

The fact of stable compounds is a matter of bits and pieces of reality falling into stable forms. The idea of entropy is an idea of the component pieces of the universe falling apart. But things don't fall apart after joining without external forces. Entropy takes on a separate life under this constraint. Entropy becomes bits of the universe falling apart before they can become joined. Or joined pieces drifting apart before forming superstructures. While any universe can start with an infinite number of stable forms of existence (perpetual in themselves or given to propagation), it can also be said that a universe can start with both non-perpetual forms as well as forms that are perpetual as well. After a given number of generations, the non-perpetual forms will die out while those that have a form that encourages persistence will continue.

Life and existence then becomes a matter of matter falling into the forms that are in fact stable. By definition, anything that fails to fall into one of these forms will die off in a finite number of generations.

(To be continued...)