6-29-06

Quite a few of the campers are in love with Settlers of Catan. Today six of them played a game that lasted three hours and none of them complained. The game even commanded a small audience. The final score was 10-9-8-8-8-8.

6-28-06

If someone from another school tries to befriend you on Facebook, you can look at their profile before accepting the invitation.

6-27-06

"Big piles of meat are not fun." -- Christian, my computer game programming professor

===

Experimental gameplay project. I haven't tried too many of them, but I do like this one.

6-26-06

Planarity was written by a Case student.

6-25-06

The campers arrived today. Half the kids in my class are WoW addicts. Another one has been playing Everquest for six years. Sigh...

6-24-06

You can insert assembly language into C++ code.

===

ABA games. Torus Trooper and Tumiki Fighters are pretty cool.

6-23-06

Ann Sathers, a restaurant in Chicago, makes amazing cinnamon rolls.

6-22-06

Gorilla glue. Like super glue, but even more super.

6-21-06

Sai, the weapon of my favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, Raphael, are homonymic with the Greek letter psi -- which is also exactly what they look like.

===

If you remove the letter 'e' from the word 'biotech,' you get 'biotch.'

6-20-06

In the game of Set, you can have up to twenty cards without a set.

===

I am legally blind.

[9-25-06 note: the kind lady who checks my eyes at Lenscrafters assured me that the second fact, which I got from Amanda, is not true. You're not legally blind until you're so freaking blind that even glasses thicker than Michael Moore won't help you.]

6-19-06

It is only in Ohio that you can avoid an eat-in tax by placing your order to go. In other states the tax applies regardless. In that case it's not really an "eat-in" tax but a food tax, which Ohio doesn't have.

6-18-06

The world record for a Jenga tower is 40 and 2/3 levels.

6-17-06

Everyone is familiar with the front of a Snickers bar: SNICKERS in blocky italic letters inscribed in a parallelogram. What I did not know is that the back side of a Snickers bar says SATISFIES in the same style. This must be new, because I've eaten many a Snickers bar following an abysmal evening at Leutner, and never seen it.

===

A hot cashier recently began working at CVS. I think I made a very solid impression on her the first time I was there. First I fumbled about like an idiot for my CVS ExtraCare card because I couldn't get my pocket open. Then I couldn't get a five dollar bill to come out of my wallet. It snagged on some of the other bills; I yanked it and ten one-dollar bills spewed out all over the floor.

Today I saw the danger coming and took some precautionary measures. I prepared my CVS ExtraCare card and a five dollar bill miles before I approached the register. I paid for my goods and she gave me change. Things were looking good. But just as our exchange was about to conclude, I jumped the politeness gun and cut her off as she was wishing me a nice day. The conversation went like this:

Me: Thanksalot.
Hot Cashier: Have--
Me: Haveaniceday.
Hot Cashier: ... You too?

I am now determined to complete at least one transaction at CVS without making an ass of myself.

6-16-06

Sam's Club sells 72-pouch boxes of fruit snacks.

6-15-06

I didn't learn how to walk until I was one year and five months old. My startling incompetence could be seen at an early age.

===

The Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleev is best known for his discovery of the periodic law, but the periodic table is only his second greatest contribution to mankind. As a graduate student, Mendeleev went on a quest to discover the perfect vodka. After one and a half years of (no doubt) grueling research, he concluded that the ideal vodka contains 38% alcohol by volume. We therefore have Mendeleev to thank for the tasty 40% vodka we see in stores today, and I think we can all agree that vodka plays a role of much greater importance in our lives than some stupid table with letters and numbers written on it.

While we're on the topic of vodka, let me add that the 21% nonsense you pick up at the drive-through is garbage, suitable only for mixed drinks or hitting people on the head with (preferably the ones who bought it).

6-14-06

You can construct a regular n-sided polygon with a compass and straightedge if and only if the prime factorization of n includes only 2's and distinct Fermat primes. A Fermat prime p is of the form p = 2^(2^t) + 1.

6-13-06

There is a card game called Hentacle. You can read a review here; some highlights follow:

"Hentacle is a fast paced game of, er, anime-tentacle-porn for 2 to 4 players. ... Truthfully, I see this game as being a very niche game, basically for fans of ... tentacle-porn."

"It takes an awful lot to offend me, and I happen to like anime. Truthfully, I've never seen any tentacle porn, but I have a passing familiarity with the genre."

"Special Cards can be played at any time, but there are only a few of them. Each girl has their own Special Card that can only be played on them. For example Chiaki, the Space Girl, has a card called 'It's In My Suit.'"

"Exclamation Cards are cards that can be played at any time, and are usually bad things, so you'll want to play them on your opponent. For instance, "Need A Break" forces a player to miss a turn, and "Performance Anxiety" cause[s] a player to discard their entire hand."

"The art is great! It is in anime/hentai style (naturally) and Mel Wong, the artist, did a great job capturing that vibe. Sure it's about tentacle creatures assaulting girls, but there's a lot of humor scattered throughout."

BoardGameGeek lists Hentacle as a "party game." I'll be sure to pull it out at my next family gathering right after Pictionary and Charades.

===

A third nipple is called a nubbin.

6-12-06

One of my classmates, Sean Santa, has a book coming out around August 1. It's called "Down and Out and" (I'm not sure if that's a really nifty title or a typo on his part) and it should be available on Amazon.

You may remember Sean as the computer guru who offered thoughtful advice such as "your megapixel output is corrupted" (see 4-4-06, below), but my favorite memory of him is from the fiction writing workshop last fall. In that class, everybody had to write a story and listen to his classmates critique it. Sean was the first person to speak during the very first story critique. "I didn't like your story," he said, "and I'll tell you WHY I didn't like it..." I think we all nearly crapped our pants.

6-11-06

Mr. Tatman shaved his moustache and looks years younger without it.

Graduation ceremonies suck, especially when the class president is a ditz the size of Montana. "Let's continue our vertical voyage, shoot for the stars and never settle for mediocrity." No, let's not. And let's not say "In conclusion..." but then continue spouting garbage for another ten minutes. Moreover: nobody cares about what your god damn DENTIST thinks, but if you're going to talk about it, don't include the fact that you saw him yesterday. It shows that you probably wrote the speech at 1:00 in the morning and don't have a [CHILDREN MAY BE READING THIS] clue.

6-10-06

Diesel pumps have wider nozzles than gas pumps so that people won't be able to fill their cars with diesel accidentally. In spite of this precaution, a friend of my parents successfully put diesel in his Honda, whereupon it drove for about ten meters and promptly died.

6-9-06

The Bexley High School drama director resigned last week for "personal and family reasons." But some people seem to think that the fact that he was arrested for having sex with hookers might have also had something to do with it. Read the full story here.

6-8-06

"Priapus is a god of fertility, protector of horticulture and viticulture. His statue, holding a wooden sickle in his hand, was used in the Roman gardens as scarecrow, and his enormous penis as a threat against thieves."

"... If I do seize you ... you shall be so stretched that you will think your anus never had any wrinkles."

Cradle of democracy my ass; the Greeks were screwed up. Read more here.

6-7-06

Until today, Julie didn't know that you can click on pictures in Facebook photo albums to enlarge them.

6-6-06

If anyone wants a free suitcase, there's one lying in the middle of the road on Livingston by the Vernon intersection.

6-5-06

A guy on the board game forums wrote a post about the unfair stereotyping of gamers. The general consensus stereotype of a board gamer, if you are curious, is that of a balding, middle-aged, overweight male who smells bad and has a caffeine addiction. With regards to the odor, the poster wrote:

"For some it is a question of 'to wash or not to wash', for others it is the certain time in their life when they are between childhood and adolescence and their body isn't sure what to do with all the new chemicals, for others it is a medical problem. When I was in my twenties I had that problem. Even if I took a shower only three hours later I smelled like a mediocre torchbearer in the Dungeon of Doom. Thankfully I could take some pills based on natural ingredients to get rid of the problem. Now, according to my wife, I smell very good."

Freshman year we had a guy on our floor who stank like a wet dog in a barrel of rotten human flesh, even directly after a shower. How could this be? Some conjectured that he didn't use soap in the shower; others thought he didn't shower enough; some believed he didn't wear deodorant; others thought he had a medical problem. Previously I wasn't sure whether there really existed a medical condition that could make you smell like ass 100% of the time, but now I know. Poor Don; instead of offering deodorant, we should have given him some pills.

6-4-06

Today I watched a match for the French Open between Sharapova and Safina, both of whom are younger than I am. I feel old.

Sharapova lost in the third set even though she was up 5-1 and is really hot. On the whole, it was a depressing match.

6-3-06

The numbers on a roulette wheel add up to 666.

6-2-06

I finished Complicity by Iain Banks today. It was amazingly average. Who recommended Iain Banks to me? I can't remember, and if it was you, please tell me which of his novels truly showcases his talent, because it seems I picked the wrong one.

6-1-06

My dad caught the national spelling bee on TV tonight and called me over. It was very entertaining, and I regret not having seen any spelling bees earlier. My favorite word of the evening was icteritious, meaning "jaundiced" or just "yellow." I also liked heiligenschein, which isn't in the dictionary but according to this site means "A diffuse bright region surrounding the shadow an observer's head casts on a irregular surface." A really arrogant guy went out on that one, which surprised me given how frequently it comes up in everyday conversation.

5-31-06

If you have one of those crank things that rolls up your garden hose, you should unscrew the head of the hose before rolling it up. Otherwise, the water left over inside the hose will have nowhere to escape and the hose will sprout leaks.