The Resistance

Not my favorite game but others including David, our host, really like it so have played a reasonable amount of The Resistance lately, which is a new Werewolf style game but much shorter, with some real information to go on, and where I feel I can play fairly effectively on either side without lying. Last night we played two 7 player games, the first time playing with this many, and not using the special cards as we had two new players. David warned us and it seems absolutely correct that the bad guys have a huge advantage with 7. There are 4 good guys and 3 bad guys and 3 failed mission wins for the bad guys. Thus even if every time a mission fails you can perfectly figure out who failed it, which is by no means always possible, you can still lose as each bad guy can fail one mission. Well, I was a bad guy in our first mission and really it went horribly for the good guys. They didn't realize who any of the 3 of us bad guys were and the special fourth mission which with 7 players needs 2 people to fail it caused the end. Thus would have been super-easy for us to fail the 5th mission as it has 4 people and only takes one failure.

Anyway, the reason I am posting was our second game. I was on the good side. The first mission sent Melissa and I out and Melissa killed it. I normally think this is bad strategy for the bad guys but with 7 it may be fine. Even if people figure her out, there are still two more bad guys and two failures needed. I do think most people pretty quickly realized I was on the good side. I didn't say this, as I have a policy of not, but did later end up doing a bunch of thinking out loud that I would not have done as the bad guys - would have felt too close to lying to me. Anyway, I now knew one bad guy but still two more. In mission two David, Karl, and Dave were sent - I voted for this happening after some thought because it didn't include Melissa. Not surprisingly though, with 3 new people of the 5 I didn't know the loyalty of, the mission failed. This is where the game got interesting for me and why I am posting this. I was the next leader and basically felt the situation was nearly impossible. I knew Melissa was bad. I figured ONE of David, Karl, and Dave were bad - could be two with one sandbagging but probably unlikely. And then has to be one of Bill and Matt who haven't gone on a mission. I need to RIGHT NOW figure out two people other than me who are good or basically we are screwed. We'll need to figure out the last good person too by the last mission but can wait on that. Well, I decided that I didn't trust Matt and chose Bill; often have a pretty good read on Matt and decided I had to just go with it. Also decided that I trusted my read that Dave was good too. I thought David was the bad guy but was less sure of that. Anyway, these were all guesses/intuition based on very limited information but I had no choice but to go with them unless someone I thought was good convinced me they had a better read - couple of weeks ago I went with Karl's read in a situation where I had no idea and Karl seemed confident - turned out I was right that Karl was good but Karl was wrong but still felt better than random which would have been my choice. Now became interesting though as the vote went 4-3 against the mission with only the 3 of us on the mission supporting it. This actually really strengthened my belief that I had picked right however, with Karl just for some reason voting against it. I brought up the vote against and Karl mentioned, quite accurately, that he almost always votes no, regardless of side he is on. I had the impression he would reverse that vote if we did the same group again though so with Dave being the next leader, I pointedly reminded him he could send the same group and he did and both Karl and Matt (to sandbag but too late) changed their votes and the mission succeeded. We also then won the last two missions, adding Karl in, but this third mission really decided everything. The combination of me making good reads and then Dave trusting me and my read enough to go for the same mission when the vote failed the first time were both huge and fun; who knows, though - maybe I was just lucky.

Trying to Lose Weight

On the night I decided to quit WoW, I decided that I would also start exercising more regularly on my exercise bike (which I bought along with my house in a happy sort of accident - not sure I would have bought it myself separately) and outside on weekends and when I could. I figured the regular thing to do would be good if I had any sort of WoW addict cravings and I simply had a bunch of extra time in my days to use - fortunately I didn't have any sort of cravings but I have found I actually am enjoying the bike, whereas I hate gyms. Gives me a nice chance to listen to music which I otherwise rarely do and the combined rhythm of the music and biking is often quite enjoyable and almost never a slog. Bought some small weights too recently but have found those completely mess up the biking as the lifting rhythm is different than the biking rhythm and so I have to really concentrate to do both and that is annoying so only using the weights separately. Started out at first at just 18 minutes per session at level 4 1-2 times a day but am now up to usually 30 minutes at lvl 9, still around 1-2 times a day. Miles have gone from like 25 a week to probably 50 or 60.

Along with this, I decided to try to eat less but hopefully in a completely simple and thus sustainable way. I am not on a 'diet' but my goal is to lose at least 20 lbs and a bunch more would be better. Up to around 13.5 last I checked and it has not been difficult. I basically just try to eat somewhat less (like 2 hot dogs instead of 3 for a simple meal at home and such) and only have desserts and snacks if I really want them. Haven't banned eating anything and am not on any kind of a time line about how long things take. The one most direct change I made to eating (and I don't know if this really has made any difference one way or the other to things) is that I am now eating breakfast most days of one slice (two on weekends as I usually don't eat lunch then) of my Honey Whole Wheat Bread. Used to do this when I made it but am now doing much more regularly. Before I only ate breakfast (but a worse one) on weekends as a regular thing. Am even in the middle of baking more bread right now (writing as it rises).

Coincidentally, a few weeks after I started this I read this post by Neil Gaiman about a sort of similar plan although he is way ahead of me.