Stylish Blogger Award

Okay, so thanks to Jay over at Blood and Blades for nominating my blog for being Stylish. I'm not exactly sure what that means. But I do know there are rules that go along with being Stylish:

-- Thank and link back to the person giving you the award (see above)
-- Share seven things about yourself
-- Select 10-15 blogs who you think deserve this award (difficult... I don't read many)
-- Contact these bloggers and let them know about the award

Also, I've got to say seven things about myself. I don't know why it's seven of them, but I feel like I'm back in college with those email chains. Let's see... it's 2:16 PM. I'm listening to the soundtrack to Sunshine....

1. I firmly believe that the best days of my life have yet to come, even though almost every day of my life is pretty friggin' awesome as it is. If your best days are behind you, how sad that must be!

2. I never really saw myself as a kid person, but watching my nieces and nephews, and my friends' kids growing up is a neverending source of entertainment for me. I swear - kids say somet of the funniest things.

3. Every once in a while I think of how cool it would be to pick up and go somewhere else and just start anew. Much less now that I'm married, have a house, etc., but it does still hold some appeal. Problem now is selling my house and selling my wife on the idea.

4. I'm a fairly competative guy, so much so that I have actually quit playing in tournaments for my games for a while. I found myself becoming "that guy" at the tournaments - the one who always had to win.

5. I love to cook. I mean, who saw that one coming? I was in high school cooking up my grilled cheese sandwiches, and now I'm cooking a ton for my wife. It's fun to try different combinations, but man, I hate using recipes. I would rather just look over a recipe as a guideline and then do whatever I want. Sometimes my experiments turn out well. Sometimes... not so much.

6. I wish I had more time to write. I used to write all the time up through college, but once I entered the workforce, I've stopped. I haven't written a story I can remember in nearly ten years.

7. I pride myself on my roleplaying games, though. I love to GM, and I love to come up with complex stories that keep my players trying to figure them out. If I can get that wide-eyed "Oh S! I figured it out!" from my players during the game, I feel like I've succeeded.

Okay, so other blogs.

Dan's blog - Mongoose Blog
Bill's blog - Dead Tau Project
Chris' blog - Truddenia

Straight from a 4 Year Old

My wife just sent me this link to a site where a man is letting people send random questions to his four year old son and he'll type, without editing, the answers back. Some of these things are hilarious! For example:

Q: "Now that you are one year older, what do you wish you knew when you were 3?"
A: "I wish I knew how to flip over. Actually I already knew that. Never mind, I already knew that."

Q: "Heya Kid, why do earthquakes happen? I mean, what's down there?"
A: "I think there's just meteorites that streaked and hit other meteorites back and forth and then I think it stops."

Q: "What's the scariest thing ever?"
A: "A green man changing into aliens who can shoot things out of his mouth and throw up and the throw up can turn into guns and start shooting people."

Q: "If you had a whole day to do whatever you wanted, anywhere in the world, how would you spend it?"
A: "I would be the king! And I would kill everybody else except my family."

So yeah, clearly some of them get a little dark, but still. Really fun to see what a kid says to random questions. Enjoy!

New Furniture

Over the weekend, Laura and I went to IKEA with her mother to take a look at picking up a couple new pieces for our house after our flood. Our hope was to find a corner-style bookcase, but we came up empty on that front. Instead, we found a new organization system for our DVDs and an awesome new craft table. Add that to the hutch we picked up from Laura's house and our main room is looking pretty cool now. Take a look at the new things.

First is the hutch. We picked this one up on Thursday from her parents' place. It's quite heavy, but looks really nice. It was her grandmother's back in the day, and soon will be filled with all the china and silver we're inheriting from her grandmother too.

The next thing is the new DVD rack we've got. It's three pieces all lined up next to each other. Over the weekend we went through our collection and cut it down by what we want to keep and what we are willing to part with. There's another set of DVDs this large that we're going to start selling off.


The last piece is a lot of fun. When it's all closed up, it works well as an end table next to our loveseat. But the real excitement is when we want to use it as our craft table. There's a table on each side that folds up, so both Laura and I will have space to work. Add in the fact that there are three drawers down each side of the piece to store all our paints and the like, and you've got a pretty solid table. Whenever we're ready to do crafts, we'll just pull the piece out and set it up, and then when we're done, we'll be able to hide away our supplies and the like, hopefully keeping our house a little cleaner.

All in all, I think we made out pretty well. Now if only we could do something about this crazy heat!

Fun With Graphs

Evidently there's a website out there where the guys just puts up tons of funny graphs about truths we hold self-evident. Here are a few for a laugh. Enjoy!

Probability

I have two children, one of whom is a son born on a Tuesday. What is the probability that I have two boys?

If you answered 13/27ths, you'd, evidently, be correct.

It's a bizarre puzzle that stems from the old: Mr. Smith has two children. At least one of them is a boy. What is the probability that both are boys?

One would think the answer is 50/50, since the sex of one child is independent of the sex of the other, but mathematically, that's not the case. Since the boy could either be the younger or the older child, the analysis is a little different. You could have one of the three options:

boy, girl
boy, boy
girl, boy

Which means that only 1/3 options leads to a boy/boy combination.

Take a look at the above article if you're at all interested in math puzzles. It makes for an interesting, if somewhat confusing, read. And makes you wonder what the odds are if someone says, "I have two children. One of them is a hat-wearing, blue-eyed, kazoo-playing, weight-lifting boy who was born in the morning on a Wednesday. What are the odds both my children are boys?"

Silent Hill is Real

Okay, so maybe not quite. But head over here and check out these photos. It's a real ghost town that was abandoned after a mining accident. It may not have all the ash falling from the sky, but it certainly is a bit unsettling.

The New Olympic Mascots

So London has unveiled the new mascots for their 2012 Summer Olympics: Wenlock and Mandeville. I don't know what to think of them. I don't even know what they are. Somehow this pair is supposed to help raise 15 million pounds through merchandising. I suppose it's possible. After their issues with their logo, I suppose I thought they might take a different track with their mascots. Oh well.

Part of the reason for the cyclops-style eyes, evidently, is so that they can make digital cameras that look like them and have their single eye be the lens to the camera. I tell ya, these guys think of everything!

Spare a Dollar?

Here are a few humorous pictures I thought I might pass on. Enjoy!

Too Much of a Good Thing

Can you imagine two of this guy?

I was having a conversation with Dan about how much I'd like to be able to clone myself so I could do two different things at once. Ignoring the whole illegality of the plan, I started to wonder what would happen if I did.

If I had two different activities I wanted to achieve at the same time, how would I determine which one of me would do which one? Clearly there's an option I would want to do more than the other, but that means my clone would also want to do the same option more. Not just an abstract "more", but equally "more". He'd also be equally as unwilling to do the second option, would have the same breaking point, and the same stubborn level. So how would we determine who does what? Presumably we'd both say at the same time that we want to do the action that we'd rather do, so we couldn't figure it out that way. And all the thoughts I had before we were cloned, he'd also have had, so he'd know my plan to speak up first.

And it's not like I can spend all my time before being cloned thinking about wanting to do the less desirable thing so that when we're cloned, I can pick the more desirable thing, because my clone would already be doing the same thing.

Hmm... maybe cloning me isn't such a great idea after all...

Just Because You're Undead Doesn't Mean You Can't Be Socially Conscious

I was over on CNN and found this article about a charity walk done by the living dead. Way to take part in the society that feeds you!

Reminds me of the time Laura and I happened to find a ninja marathon when we were on vacation. If only we'd brought our garb.

How To Be Unemployed With Style

Here's a story I just couldn't help but pass on. I can see some HR Professional thinking this is a great idea. In 2006, Northwest Airlines laid off thousands of ground workers. To make things go over a little better, they offered a handy guidebook called "101 Ways to Save Money." It includes such gems as "Don't be shy about pulling something you like out of the trash" and "Take long walks in the woods as a low-cost dating alternative." Don't worry. Your blind date won't think you're a serial killer.

And Strangely the World Did Not End

The first protons collided in the Large Hadron Collider today, and despite the worries of many, we did not create a black hole that would suck the world into nothingness. They hit each other at a record energy of seven trillion electron volts. I can't even conceive of that kind of voltage. What would that power?

Regardless, great news for the physicists. This event marks the start of the LHC's research program. As CERN Director General Rolf Heuer says, "It's a great day to be a particle physicist."

A Decade Too Late?

Ten years after it was set to film, we finally have someone apologizing for the tragedy that is Battlefield Earth. Writer J.D. Shapiro, who blames a large portion of the writing on an overactive libido, even went so far as to say he wish he'd used his pen name, Sir Nick Knack, but sadly he had been paid too much to attach a false name to it.

In all fairness, I cannot rip on the movie too much, as I spared myself from seeing it at any point. I admit I've had a morbid curiosity from time to time, the same morbid curiosity that led me to watch Jack Frost (no, not the Michael Keaton version), but I'll draw the line at any point the writer says

The only time I saw the movie was at the premiere, which was one too many times.

Well That's Handy

Dan ordered some escort ships for his fleet. I also tacked on an order of them for my fleet. So now he's got them. And he's had them for a while, but he keeps forgetting to bring them to me.

But he's got a plan. And he sent me a picture of it to prove that the plan is in motion.



Not enough people write on their hands anymore. I think it should make a come back. Usually I write on my hand - there's a spot between my pointer finger and thumb that I usually use as my message board whenever I have something I want to remember. It's pretty easy to spot out of the corner of my eye, so it's a constant reminder. Many a thing in my life have been remembered because I wrote on my hand.

Now hopefully this will remind Dan to bring me my escort ships. Not sure I'm completely confident, though. Once he was supposed to bring me something (a movie, maybe) and he put it on top of his miniatures case in the morning so he wouldn't forget. Only when he got ready to go, he picked up the movie off his case, put it down elsewhere, and walked out the door with his case.

But this time he can redeem himself. And soon I'll have escort ships....

Tax Dollars At Work

It's been high on everyone's worries, I'm sure. I know it's been high on my list of concerns. Fortunately, in the midst of everything going on in the world, the Transportation Security Administration is giving everyone a very clear understanding of how they will determine if your helper monkey is going to be a threat during air travel. Now we know that service monkeys will be brought through metal detectors on a leash, and that our FSA Security Officers have been trained not to handle your monkey.

Don't Wander Too Close to Neptune

Evidently, Neptune is a pretty hungry planet and has a shortage of moral codes. Scientists have long wondered why Neptune and Uranus, so similar in size and position in the solar system, are of such drastically different temperatures. Neptune, it seems, runs hot. Evidently, Neptune may have swallowed up a nearby planet and stolen its moon to boot! He's like the bully on the block. Jupiter's got to step up and get a handle on things out there.

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

Is life really like a hurricane here in Duckburg?