Tonight on Petite Tour:

• Crossing a Lovecraftian ocean in the board game Unfathomable.
• A trip to the wine country.
• New York is Canada's chimney.
• Visiting the safari park and thoughts on the Tesla 3.
• Beer exploration in Kearny Mesa.
• A solar-only pool heater?

Since Corey is moving away the board game crew got together for a bon voyage session. We chose a travel-oriented game Unfathomable, which is basically Among Us + Arkham Horror set aboard a Titanic-era steamship.

The passenger ship - probably named Unfathomable but I didn't check - is crossing the Atlantic besieged by two oceanic elder gods and their tentacled minions. The creatures of the deep climb aboard the ship and try to kill passengers and crew (both players and NPCs) and damage compartments (bridge, medbay, engine room, etc.). Running out of people or pieces of ship is a failure condition, as is depleting food, fuel, and sanity. The creatures are easy enough to kill but they spawn regularly.

So it's a lot like Arkham Horror's spawn gate whackamole but things don't explode quite as readily. Players/abilities/items are similarly like Arkham Horror - everyone has lore, a special action, and one or more items.

After each player turn, the creatures and/or elder gods move and the ship sometimes progresses toward its destination. There's also a global crisis to resolve via players secretly donating their plentiful skill cards to hit a required point value. If the crisis is not averted, something bad happens, like ship damage, creature spawns, or the depletion of resources.

And here's where the amogus element comes in: there is at least one traitor who wins if the ship never makes it to Boston. Traitor roles are secretly assigned at the start of the voyage and the midpoint (so players might change sides). Traitors can sabotage the ship in secret and eventually declare themselves allied with the elder gods. Once the big reveal happens the traitor rules change so that they're less powerful but also less susceptible to the actions of the human players.

The traitor mechanic is fun and tactical, but probably hard to pace on your first playthrough. Our traitors both drew their roles at the journey midpoint, so they didn't have a lot of time to act. Still, we sailed into harbor with a couple damaged ship compartments and creatures of the deep all over the place. The mechanic of announcing your traitordom is also unpredictable. One of our traitors was basically forced to announce when he had a very obvious turn to play (saving colocated passengers). He could have saved the passengers and remained in hiding, but the mid-journey role change put him - er, it - on the clock. Our other traitor kept his fishy secret until the last round but was guessed to be the turncoat simply because he took the least valorous actions (such as donating cards to save allies).

The reason I didn't love Unfathomable more is this: Arkham Horror-like survival games pit a co-op group against an unrelenting enemy. It requires teamwork and luck to succeed against the odds or, more likely, fail spectacularly. Unfathomable feels like Arkham Horror, but the sense of interdependence and camaraderie turns from asset to liability. To be fair, Unfathomable is a different game and should play like a different game, but having played a couple Arkham Horror versions and the snow zombie game and some others, I can't shake that mindset.


Elsewhere, the people remaining in town have started Clank Legacy. The core game is a deckbuilder with geography (as in, move actions and location-dependent things). The game is lored around basically being Bilbo's expedition in The Hobbit. We're halfway through the prologue and I'm liking the gameplay, the entrepreneural theme and card flavor texts are amazing.


We took a trip up to Napa to see Great Grandma. Ted and Chrissy, Rob and Hayley, and Dad also stopped by.


Jeff sent some pics from New York a few weeks ago.

		What's for lunch?		Derrick
Me	Pajamas. [Ed: wfh day]
		I had that for lunch three days in a row. [Ed: D had been sick]
		I'm in NY so that's up to y'all!		Jeff
	Lollllll what a time to visit.
		You have no idea.
	I mean, I was in SD for both wildfires and Paris for the Notre Dame fire so I know a little.
	(What is an idiom anyway?)
		Hmmm... you were there for SD AND Notre Dame fires?
		Methinks Interpol might want to have a word.
		Think people will give me an odd look if I try to order a Smokey Manhattan?

Rob suggested the meme that was on every San Diegan's mind:



We took Dani to the safari park. The lion and okapis were a big hit.


The trip gave me a chance to try out the Model 3 we rented while Jes's car is in the shop. And yeah, I was a little surprised to see that Hertz was renting Teslas and they weren't one of the max upgrade options.

Since this was my first time really driving a Tesla, so here's my review.

• It drives well. I've rented a lot of cars for work and personal trips, the Model 3 is considerably more responsive than its <= $35k ICE peers. And it goes without saying that an electric motor blows the doors off any automatic transmission.
• I've read more than a few articles about how people don't like touchscreens for car controls. They're largely right, although a computer interface is mandatory for satnav and it's a great place to store controls for all those things you never use (climate vent selection, mirror adjust, turn signal, etc.). The Tesla 3 is too minimalist and I hate having to look at the center console to see my speed. But I also don't want a cheap plastic knob to control the Cadillac's dual buttock climate zone seat warmer.
• The door leaks. There's a not-especially-quiet wind noise coming from the driver's door/window. There's no obvious rental car damage or seal issue but there's no sound on the passenger side. I'm not sure if this is a Hertz thing or a manifestation of the build quality issues the internet loves to talk about.
• The lane nanny got really annoying really quickly, I was happy when Jes found the off switch. I get that people like to think as little as possible about driving when they're driving, when I'm next to a big rig I'm going to give it most of my lane. And so when my deliberate safety measure puts me close to a painted line that I'm fully aware of, it's really annoying to have my car squawk at me. Similarly I had to muscle through lane assist to change lanes - though I assume I just didn't flip on my turn signal early enough for it to let me move over a lane without fighting back. Again, all of these things can be turned off, so from an ownership standpoint it's not a huge deal.
• The aesthetics and thoughtfulness are such a nice departure from traditional auto manufacturers. Drive modes aren't new, but calling the economical one 'chill' is neat (the warp speed mode and plaid mode stuff already got their day in the sun). When lane assist was yammering at me I turned on Joe Mode to reduce the chime volume - it didn't actually seem to do it but maybe it faded the sound to the front? I kind of want to know why it's named Joe Mode but I'm afraid it'll involve Elon. And then there's dog mode which (I'm told) runs the AC in park. Returning to an earlier point, all of this is possible through software and infinitely-deep GUI. In contrast, the Fords, Chevys, and Koenigseggs of the world would say, "Dog mode? But not everyone has a dog, why would I dedicate a button to this? Let's just leave that spot as an ashtray."

In summary, the Tesla 3 is not for me, but I like some of what they're doing and wouldn't hate it if Jes bought one.

Least necessary dazzle camouflage ever, well played.

This month's GBES event happened to be on Father's Day. So I basically went from breakfast in bed to Ataraxia Aleworks where they were pouring such beers as Pale McPaleface and Harambe. We watched F1 and golf and ordered some grub from Dumpling Inn.


We're still moving dirt around on the upper terrace. Far below, the pool is being prepped for fiberglass.

Left to right: deck, pool, trees, sun.

Years ago I ripped out a (water-)leaky gas heater that had served one or two February pool parties. With the fiberglass resurfacing ongoing, I thought a bit about increasing pool usability (warmth). Here's the sitch:

• Trees block a lot of sun on the pool.
• I like the trees so I don't want to cut them down.
• Gas is really expensive.

The traditional pool approach is to connect solar heaters in line with the pump and filter. I had a small solar grid on the pumphouse, but it suffered from the same shade issue. Since my house/roof is fifty feet from the pump, moving water up there isn't ideal.

Having replaced most of my pool equipment at some time, I am sensitive to the economics and wear/tear. If I can, I want to minimize load on my six-hours-per-day mission critical pump, so asking it to also push water up and through solar isn't ideal. Indeed, my recollection is that some friends' new pool installations have a variety of pumps and water circuits. The traditional approach also means you have to run the filter pump during the day so the sun can heat the circulating water. Midday pool filtering has gotten quite a bit more expensive in recent years.

The other traditional approach is to get a ton of photovoltaic solar panels and just not worry about the utility bill ever again. That's my backup plan, but the last few years have validated my early skepticism about how solar adopters would be treated. The latest hit was AB 2316 which I agree with in large part (since $12/month doesn't cover the grid), but it's a huge shock for solar people.

What about

Pump pulls cold water through solar heaters mounted on the deck railing.

Since we've established that solar pool heating requires sunlight and solar panels require sunlight, what if photovoltaic panels powered a separate, heating-only pump? I haven't seen this anywhere, so clearly a solar pump can't pull water up eight feet?

baloydi

How do I create a solar pump setup without battery? I want a direct setup from the panel to the pump. Which means my setup only works when there is sun light availabe. What materials should i use? I will be using the smallest 12V water pump.

The internet was pretty dry. Google's top link was Amazon advertising an off grid water pump in womens shops. There was a time that posting somewhere like Reddit's /r/diy would be an option. The astroturfy-sounding 'diysolarforum' seemed to have legitimate amateur content, the question above was more or less what I was looking for. Responses included:

RSInouye

www.rpssolarpumps.com i've been using one of these for 7 months. Good customer support, easy installation into a well (drilled by someone else).

Abodyofscience

10w will get you 1 GPM to a height of 16' or 2 at 8'. Maybe.

Ah, solar pumps for wells. That's way more than eight feet. And it looks like one batteryless design is to pull water into a cistern during the sunlight hours. If I could use that design to pull water into a solar heating grid, I'd have ten hours of heating per day. I looked at some of the sites.

Features - Battery less operation - Variable Frequency drive incorporated for smooth operation even during minimum sunlight - Transformer less design makes the product smaller in size and also cost effective - Can be installed to the required load of pumps upto 15KW (15hp). Some of the most popular applications are: - Drinking water supply for small habitations - Horticulture farms, orchards, vineyards, gardens and nurseries

They're in India, so maybe not viable here, but 15hp is like 15x what is used in pools. The other place, RPS, was a bit closer to home and had some diagrams that matched my MSPaint aesthetic:

Source.

I believe they listed both submerged and aboveground pump applications, I'd need the latter. I'm not sure how priming would work, but I imagine there is a solution. I think I don't care about the flow rate much?

I will noodle on this more and @ Erik.

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