Blog has moved

The JayWalkingNY blog has moved to: jaywalkingny.wordpress.com for the time being.  We'll see what kind of integration Google has in mind with Google+ so we just might return!

Are you bored for Words with Friends yet?

A couple of weeks ago I was turned on to Words with Friends and I was immediately hooked. I remember hooking up my Facebook account and trying to start a game with every single one of my friends. I quickly maxed out the number of games that I could start and even had multiple games with certain friends.

Being a guy I didn't try to read any instructions on how to play, I figured that it was just like Scrabble. So I remember going first one time and dropping all 7 of my letters, thinking that the first spot in the middle would be a double word score, a la Scrabble, but I was wrong. I score about 55 points right off the bat and I figured that wasn't so bad and continued to play trying to make the largest words that I could each time it was my turn. After playing the game with a bunch of people a couple of things came to light that made the game incredibly boring.

Here they are:

1) It doesn't make sense to make longer words if the letters you use don't fall on tiles that give bonuses. It's not worth opening up other opportunities for your opponent for an extra 2, 3, 4 or 5 points. So this really limits you to mostly 3 and 4 letter words.

2) With these 3 or 4 letter words, what you want to do is try to add on to other words so that you can make 2 words and potentiall double your score.

3) Always keep an "S" handy because you can pluralize the words that your opponent makes and make your own as well to get 2 words for 1 score.

4) You can guess as many times as you want with no penalty.

5) Believe it or not the following words work: aa, ae, oi, za, zas, qat, qats, suq, xi, jo, haji, hajis

Here's what I think they should do to make the game more interesting:

1) Give more points for larger words.

2) If you don't put down a real word, you lose a turn. Or give users a limited amount of guesses, like maybe 3.

3) Don't allow words to be used twice.

I think making these changes will make the game more challenging and interesting. Otherwise to me, the game has become just playing the same 3 or 4 letter words that I don't know the meaning to. I used to respond to my opponents moves within seconds, and sit in anticipation of the next move. Now I'll go days without playing, and I don't really care.

Cape May 2011

Last week I went on vacation with my family to Cape May, NJ.  I would have posted some stuff during the week but the internet connection wasn't all that great.  Anyway, It was a series of firsts, starting with going there because we had never been there before.  The drive was rather long but smooth and directionally easy, I mean what’s easier than this:  Go down the Garden State Parkway until you reach Exit 0. 

We had great weather, even when it rained it only rained at night after we were done with the beach.  The temperature was between 80 and 90 degrees most of the time, a little muggy, but that’s ok for the beach. 

So here’s the list of “firsts” that we had on our trip:

 • Derek’s first vacation.

 • Derek’s first time at the beach.

 • Derek’s first trip to a zoo.

 • Derek’s first time eating Chex.

 • First time I’ve ever been in an Acme.

 • The first time we’ve ever walked out of a grocery store leaving a shopping cart full of stuff.

I've posted some photos from the trip on my jaywalking.tumblr.com site.  Feel free to take a look.

Family trips are great, I hope we get to do it again next year, and I wouldn't mind going back to Cape May either.