We are 21

Alice and I are now level 21 in our game. B-net was being a bit flaky today, but we only missed about 45 minutes of play time out of the dozen hours or so we played today and yesterday.

Our last completed quest was teaching the Claw Vipers that it's not polite to steal the sun and make the world go dark. (It was funny tho, I mentioned to Alice as we were approaching the entrance to the Lost City that if we go there, it would get dark. She said something like: "It's already dark." Well, in we go and it did get dark. She was like: "Oh. I see what you mean.")

I didn't take any cool pictures of our battles today and the one picture I took in town is sorta more of the same as the last post, so I'll skip it. Besides, it's in there and I'm in here so I don't have it handy and I've got to get to bed now.

Relaxing at Atma's Tavern

Another great night of playing Diablo. :)

After killing Andariel in the catacombs, we crossed the desert to Lut Gholein. Although tired and weary upon our arrival, the grief stricken Atma implored us to venture into the sewers beneath town and extract vengenence on some Radiment dude.  Being the kind hearted girls we are, we obliged her.

In this screenshot, Alice and I are taking it easy in Atma's tavern after our adventure underground.

(That's me behind the bar preparing to get a drink for Alice.)

Alice and Jessie Tackle The Smith

I had a delightful time tonight (or this morning depending on your perspective) playing Diablo with Alice. We just turned teenagers (level 13) and cleared out the monastery. It seems Charsi was in such a hurry when they all fled that she left behind her hammer.

In this screenshot we are fighting The Smith who is guarding it.

After that we did a little bit of the first jail level and then decided I should go to bed and Alice should have breakfast.

My Lovely Amazon Girlfriend

After some trial and errors, Alice and I finally got our computers to let us into the same Diablo II, Lord of Destruction game.  Here we are in town after a short bit of playing tonight (or early this morning in her case).

(I'm the short one on the left.)

We cleared the Blood Moor and the Den of Evil. Akara was really happy about that.  Next we ventured into the Cold Plains, killed a few monsters and then ran into a rather nasty boss pack of Shaman's with their cute little Fallen hoards.  I wasn't dressed for the occasion and still hadn't assigned my stat points, so we ran back to the waypoint and jumped to the Rogue Camp.

The picture above is after allocating my stat and skill points and shopping for clothes. I haven't yet set my hot keys for the skills to assign to the mouse buttons. I'll be sure to do that before we venture out into the wild next time.

New Moon and Eclipse

I was driving home from work today and Nellie decides to go somewhere else.  I hung on wondering where she was taking me.  Turns out we went to my favorite store in the whole world.  (The store which only had Twilight last time but this time had the next two books.)

Now I've got to be extremely careful and not open them while work is so busy.

Twilight is Excellent

Wow!  I absolutely loved this book.  Both the writing style and the story itself are excellent.  I got very little sleep last night, barely made it to work on time today and I faked a reason to come home early to finish reading it.

It was fun too because there are Alice and Jessica characters in it.  (But I don't get nearly as good a role as Alice does.)  And Alice's brother makes a brief appearance in it as well.

I highly recommend Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. :)

Twilight for me from Alice

I was chatting with my girlfriend the other day and she mentioned how much fun she was having reading fanfic based on Twilight.  So I asked her for the author's name (Stephenie Meyer) and she also told me the titles of the other 3 books in the series (New Moon, Eclipse, & Breaking Dawn).

Today I went to my favorite store in the whole world (Half Price Books) and found the first book.

I love how the preface starts out: "I'd never given much thought to how I would die -- though I'd had reason enough in the last few months -- but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this."

Now that is catchy.

Makes me want to continue reading to find out what happens. And just who is narrating this thing anyhow? (Turns out to be Bella but that isn't revealed until page 4.)

So, I am pretending that it is a gift from Alice and I think I'll quit my job and spend time reading it.

A Letter I Can't Send

Dear Mom,

I'm sure you'd think it's very silly for me to write to you on my blog, but I wanted to say that I think of you often. Most especially today since it would be your birthday. I fondly remember how we'd make our birthdays a special day just for us. It's hard for me to believe it's three years this month since you passed away. Maybe by writing to you here someone who reads this will go right now and tell their mother how much they love her like I wish I could tell you.

With all my love,

Jessie

Snickerdoodle Cookie Recipe

This was my mom's recipe for Snickerdoodle cookies. I think it came from her mom or maybe my great-grandma.

Sift together:

1 cup shortening
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs (slightly beaten)

Then stir in:

2 3/4 cup flour
2 teaspoon cream of tarter
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Roll into small balls (about 1 inch diameter)
Dip top half of ball into cinnamon & sugar mixture
Place on ungreased cookie sheet
Bake at 400° fahrenheit for 8 to 10 minutes

These cookies puff up at first, then flatten out with crinkled tops.  Makes about 5 dozen 2 inch cookies.  They are exquisitely delicious.


Edit: I've been asked if there is a substitute for the cream of tarter. My online research shows that the cream of tarter combined with the baking soda is the levening agent which makes the cookies rise. The general rule appears to be to substitute 1 teaspoon baking powder for each 1/2 teaspoon of cream of tarter and 1/4 teaspoon baking soda.

So, in this recipe, skip both the cream of tarter and the baking soda and use 4 teaspoons of baking powder.

My Car at 281,000 Miles

Go Nellie, Go!

Viggo Brun's Constant

So, I was reading this article: Easy as pi: how Google bid against Apple and Microsoft for patents and at one point it mentions Brun's Constant.  Off to Wikipedia and I find that is defined as the sum of the reciprocals of all of the twin primes.  (See: Brun's Theorem.)  Here's a screen shot of the equation since I don't know how to do all the fancy formatting to type it out myself.

Then according to Thomas R. Nicely's Enumeration to 1.6e15 of the twin primes and Brun's constant article this converges to 1.90216 05824 +/- 0.00000 00030 and he states that represents a 99% confidence level.  Mr. Nicely also clarifies that the validity of the Hardy-Littlewood approximation of the twin prime conjecture is central to his estimation of Brun's constant.  (If I'm understanding it right.)

Anywho, what I noticed is the value of Brun's constant is eerily similar to the 9th root of 326 which is 1.90215 71760 (to the same number of decimal places) and that is 99.9998209% of the calculated value for Brun's constant.

All that to say: Jessie's conjecture, based on nothing more than what would look pretty, is that Brun's constant should be equal to the 9th root of 326.  Or perhaps the 17th root of 55,873 which is an even closer match.  Then again the 29th root of 125,362,647 gets closer still.  It being 99.9999999% of Nicely's approximation.  Is there any correlation here?  I dunno.

Next I got sidetracked by reading about Brun's constant for prime quadruplets and the Enumeration to 1.6e15 of the prime quadruplets article shows Mr. Nicely's calculation for that as 0.87058 83800 +/- 0.00000 00005 which is quite similar to the 5th root of 0.5 at 0.87055 05633 (to the same number of decimal places).  This is 99.9956562% of that number.  Coincidence again?

BTW, here is a fun site to play around at: WolframAlpha.  Click on examples to get started.

Jessie's Old Drawings

I think I was prolly 11 or 12 when I drew these pictures.  They are on an off white / tan paper and also have water damage around the edges.  I've tried to fix the colors as best I could.

For this next one, I was trying to learn a bit about shadows and shading.

These next three were prolly about a year later.