Wednesday, December 14th, 2005
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5:41 pm - En Garde
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A coworker showed me a really fun free game: En Garde. We've been playing it all week on breaks, and it rocks. All you need is a deck of 25 cards (five of each value from 1 to 5), a board with 23 spaces in a line, two pawns, and some way to keep score. (You can make the deck from an Uno deck or two decks of standard playing cards with similar backs. Or you can print out free materials from the game's website.) Here are the En Garde rules. (Those rules, though simple, are written in a fairly awkward manner, so I'm tempted to rewrite them.)
Conceptually, the game simulates fencing, and for such a simple game, it does a great job of actually feeling like a fencing match. The pawns lunge and thrust at each other, retreat from attacks, parry and riposte, dancing back and forth along the piste until one gets stabbed or forced off. Then they return to their starting positions and do it again.
A full game of En Garde plays until the first player scores five hits, which takes about 15-30 minutes. For longer or shorter games, adjust that number to taste. Luck and strategy both play significant roles, so new players have a fighting chance against experienced ones.
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(7 comments | comment on this)
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1:04 am - Weird Books
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I keep running into weird books on Amazon.com, so I thought I'd share a few. While I haven't read any of these books, the Amazon information about these books (especially the reviews) are pretty interesting.
Spanking: A Loving Discipline
It's a Christian spanking book, which isn't so uncommon a thing. But check out that first lengthy "review", the Open Letter to the author, where the adult victim describes the horribly extreme methods outlined in the book. Scary stuff.
How to Good-Bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?
As far as anyone can tell, the author is trying to explain a couple of exercises, and argue that they can make you live longer, have better sex, etc. But he lacks the basic grasp of the English language that you would assume one would need in order to publish a book. But it sounds like a really fun read!
Knitting With Dog Hair
Two of the best things in the world are humor so dry you can't tell if they're joking, and totally serious stuff that doesn't know it's funny. The reviews claim that the book doesn't mention anything about rain, so I wonder if this isn't actually a very straight-faced practical joke.
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(7 comments | comment on this)
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Tuesday, December 13th, 2005
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3:23 pm - Let the Public Outcry Begin...
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Monday, December 12th, 2005
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2:30 am - Not Quite A Moratorium
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Ya know, I think I'm officially done with the whole "it's funny because he's black and he's making fun of niggers" thing. When a black comic takes the mic, safe money says he'll make fun of blacks, make fun of whites, and make fun of ways whites and blacks interact. And while that stuff can be funny, I feel like that whole territory has been done to death.
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(9 comments | comment on this)
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Sunday, December 11th, 2005
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12:25 am - Look at me!
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Friday, December 9th, 2005
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5:32 pm - Quick Question
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4:43 pm - Happy Immaculate Conception
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Happy Immaculate Conception, everybody! Yes, the Christians expect us to believe today is the 2,005th anniversary of the day Mary became pregnant with Jesus. Christmas (the supposed anniversary of Jesus' birth) is in a mere 16 (shopping) days. Wouldn't you think Immaculate Conception would precede Christmas by more like 9 months?
I'm not just trying to be a snarky atheist; I'm genuinely curious how Christians (especially fundamentalists) explain this 16-day Immaculate Gestation.
Edit: Special thanks to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kill9 for pointing out that I had confused the Immaculate Conception (the conception of Mary) with the Miraculous Conception (the conception of Jesus).
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(8 comments | comment on this)
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Thursday, December 1st, 2005
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1:33 pm - Debunking Multitasking
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Ever try to talk to someone on the phone and hear them clacking away on their keyboard? Their end of the conversation is nothing but muscle-memory autopilot. "Uh... yeah... uh-huh... that's cool... oh, what? (typing stops) Yeah, I'm listening. I'm just... (typing resumes) uh... finishing up this... uh... Go on. Oh, uh... (typing stops) what do I want to do with that? Oh uh. (typing resumes) I dunno. What do you think?"
That seriously gets on my nerves. It's plainly obvious to me that the human brain cannot parse language from multiple sources simultaneously. It seems to be able to alternate attention between two or more, but not without ignoring one to process or the other at any given moment. But most folks really do think they can have a normal conversation while listening to an audio-book and typing an email. So, every once in a while I get into a "yes I can; no you can't" argument about that.
Does anyone know of a study or psychology textbook entry or something that proves or disproves the human brain's ability to process multiple information sources simultaneously? All I've been able to find are studies that show that it takes longer to alternate between multiple simultaneous tasks than to do each task in succession. Those studies seem to operate on the assumption for which I'm seeking the proof.
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(11 comments | comment on this)
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Wednesday, November 30th, 2005
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5:43 pm - Car Buying: Done
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I bought a car today. A couple of nights ago, I changed my mind about wanting to order a 2006 Camry LE V6, and went for an in-stock 2006 Camry XLE V6 from Pappas Toyota. I signed all the papers this afternoon drove it away. It's great to finally be done with that, and I'm very happy with the car, the price, and the financing.
current mood:  pleased
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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Saturday, November 26th, 2005
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2:12 pm - Insurance Settlement
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The other driver's insurance agreed to take 100% responsibility for the wreck, pay me the full Blue Book value of my old car, but they'll only give me money for five days of a rental car. Monday they'll let me know if they're going to need to take the wreck away themselves or let me do it. While I could have hoped for more help on the rental car, I suppose the dickage could've been much worse.
( pictures of damage behind cut )
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(comment on this)
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Friday, November 25th, 2005
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8:55 pm - Car Buying, part 2
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With all the bids finally in, (4 bids from the 8 dealers I solicited) there was almost an $800 spread from lowest to highest. The lowest bid (Lou Fusz) was $1,000 over the Consumer Reports Bottom Line Price (what the dealer actually pays), to the penny. The second-lowest (Pappas) was $98 more than the Fusz bid, but includes an extra option I hadn't asked for, but should have (heated seats). That option costs the dealer $252, so that pretty much makes Pappas the better deal. Tomorrow, I'll decide if I want to haggle with Fusz or just take the Pappas deal and be done with it. Unfortunately, there is no 2006 Camry LE V6 in stock anywhere in the region, so it'll be 6-8 weeks before I can accept delivery or sign the final papers.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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Saturday, November 19th, 2005
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7:09 pm - Car Buying
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Well, I've decided I'll be buying a 2006 Toyota Camry LE V6 in the coming week or so, and I'm trying the car-buying method detailed in The Motley Fool - You Have More Than You Think: The Foolish Guide To Personal Finance. The full description is 8 pages. The short story is to fax all the local dealers, requesting itemized bids on the exact car you want. Then you play the best two offers off of each other until you find the best deal. Tomorrow I'll send out the faxes so the dealers will have them Monday morning and I've given them a Wednesday deadline. I'll let you know how that turns out.
Oh yeah, the Fool also advises that one should not go alone on major financial transactions. They recommend bringing a group of friends. The idea is that the car dealership (or bank or wherever) might try some last-minute BS and get you to sign something different than what you walked in ready to sign. It's easier to get people to fall for that stuff when they've got a room full of people nodding along with them and all you've got is your free cup of coffee. It's harder for them to pull that crap when you've got a posse. So, I'm not sure when or where yet, but is anyone tentatively interested in coming with me when I sign the papers?
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(8 comments | comment on this)
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Friday, November 18th, 2005
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8:47 pm - Help Me Save An Innocent Foreskin
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A male baby will soon burst forth from a coworker of mine, and she intends to have it circumcised. (She's not Jewish.) Until I asked her about it, she hadn't given it a second thought, her decision guided entirely by cultural inertia. My argument that circumcision removes 1/3 of the nerves in the penis was quickly shot down with the notion that men cum too quickly without those "extra" nerves anyway.
Like so many topics on which I hold an opinion, I don't really know that much of the argument that supports either side. Can any of you smart liberals out there point me to some high quality anti-circumcision propaganda I can throw her way?
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(9 comments | comment on this)
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Tuesday, November 15th, 2005
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9:29 pm - My '92 Nissan Maxima, Totalled at 214,711 Miles
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I wasn't injured.
I pulled into the parking lot at work, which has a long driveway-style entrance before a T-intersection where you can turn right to park near the medical building or continue forward to park closer to the building where I work. A minivan had just pulled up to the intersection, coming out of the medical building lot to the right. She stopped and appeared to be looking around. (There is no stop sign or signal.) Noting that she's stopped (and that I totally had right-of-way), I continued. Then, once it was too late for me to do anything about it, she pulled out directly into the front of my car. I slammed on the brake, to little avail, and skidded right into her van, which didn't seem to brake until after we hit.
My car was a total loss. The hood's buckled and the driver side door barely opens. The radiator's destroyed, so it won't drive very far without over-heating. On the up side, I've been meaning to get a new car pretty much all year, and this is exactly the kick in the ass I needed to get that done.
She (white female yuppie) was very nice about the whole thing and pretty much admitted fault to the cops. (She told them she didn't see me.) I don't carry collision insurance, but I expect that her liability insurance will pay me most of the roughly $900 my car was worth.
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(10 comments | comment on this)
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Sunday, November 13th, 2005
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11:20 am - An Open Letter To The Powers Of Darkness
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O darkest Lords, you who rule over the deepest pit of perdition, where shadow and flame cavort in eternal awesomeness, I come to you today with a humble request that I think will be pleasing for you to fulfill. My reverence for the unholy music that Our Darkest Master unleashed upon the world last century has been unflinching. When its profane notes pierce my ears, do I not present the Sign of The Goat in His honor? So I call upon you, my fellow servitors of malevolence and debauchery, to listen for a moment to what can be heard reverberating through the ceiling of my apartment. Oh yes, darkest legion, that’s Creed. All weekend long, Creed on repeat. Need I say more? Nay.
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(10 comments | comment on this)
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Saturday, November 12th, 2005
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11:38 am - Sony-BMG CDs Installing Malicous Code
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From EFF.org:
San Francisco - News that some Sony-BMG music CDs install secret rootkit software on their owners' computers has shocked and angered thousands of music fans in recent days. Among the cause for concern is Sony's refusal to publicly list which CDs contain the infectious software and to provide a way for music fans to remove it. Now, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has confirmed that the stealth program is deployed on at least 19 CDs in a variety of genres.
The software, created by First 4 Internet and known as XCP2, ostensibly "protects" the music from illegal copying. But in fact, it blocks a number of legal uses--like listening to songs on your iPod. The software also reportedly slows down your computer and makes it more susceptible to crashes and third-party attacks. And since the program is designed to hide itself, users may have trouble diagnosing the problem.
Full story:
http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_11.php#004146
Oh yeah, and did you know that the U.S. Secret Service got some printer manufacturers to encode tracking information into the documents you print? The EFF is working to crack that code and needs your test pages. (Because they hate freedom.)
Full story:
http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_10.php#004063
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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Thursday, March 24th, 2005
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10:00 pm - Three days was the morning...
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It has been three days since my last cigarette. Last time, I strayed only about two months. Not this time. Things feel different now. The Three Days weren't so bad the second time around. That dark-grey gnawing at the back of my head was much weaker than I remember. And now that I'm out, I'm not going to repeat my previous fatal mistake, letting myself smoke when I drink. This time I'm out for good.
current mood:  accomplished
current music: Jane's Addiction - Three Days
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(13 comments | comment on this)
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Wednesday, February 16th, 2005
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11:06 pm - Anybody want some free money?
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I recently opened an Orange Savings Account with ING Direct. It's a great deal: 2.35% APY, FDIC-insured savings account with no fees, required minimums or service charges.
If you'd like to open one of your own, let me know and I'll refer you. (This is where the free money comes in.) You'll get $25 and I'll get $10. I don't know much about their Home Equity account, but if you open one of those through me, you'll get $100 and I'll get $25.
Bank of America also has a "refer a friend and you both get paid" deal (actually slightly better), if you think you might want to switch checking accounts. But unless you're paying fees or have to maintain a minimum balance for your current checking account, I'm not going to try to talk you out of it.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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Monday, January 10th, 2005
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2:33 pm - On The Productivity Complaint About Smoking at Work
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I've heard numerous people complain that smokers work less than non-smokers because of their periodic smoke breaks. ("I wish I smoked so I could take 20 breaks a day.") I would argue that in the typical corporate culture of daily shifts with a lunch break and two 15-minute breaks, a responsible smoker uses no more break time than non-smokers are entitled.
( the full argument )
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(21 comments | comment on this)
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Friday, January 7th, 2005
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5:42 pm - Live And Active Yumminess
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I have a new favorite yogurt: Blue Bunny Lite 85 Yogurt, Black Forest flavor. (Not shown on their website, so maybe it's some experimental concept-flavor.)
Nothin' organic about this lil vat o' chemicals and bacteria, but it's good and good for ya. Get this, it's yogurt (complete with live and active cultures) and it tastes like a reasonable impersonation of chocolate and cherries. The yogurt and cherries are real. The chocolate flavor is like a top-notch boob-job: fake, but good.
Their other flavors are pretty good, but Black Forest's far and away the best.
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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