Happy Halloween!

Nothing too much to say about Halloween. I tried my hand at using power tools to carve a pumpkin, though.

I am always impressed by the amazing jack o lantern photos I see around this time of year. Some awesome shading effects are possible with the right tools and an enviably deep skill set. I've got the tools (pretty much) and the interest, but knowing that I really didn't have an idea for how sculpting in the medium of “pumpkin” would feel I figured I would stick with a more traditional design instead of swinging for the fences this year.

In addition to a knife and a set of manual woodworking tools I used a Dremmel and a power drill for this attempt. I used the advice of a couple of websites out there that you should wrap your power tools in a loose plastic bag to prevent them from getting all covered in goo. I was a little worried about overheating the tools but I was a lot more worried about being involved in what I think the kids nowadays call an “electrocution fail”. Short bursts with the Dremmel ensured I didn't overheat it.

My dull scroll saw bit was good for smoothing out rough areas but I was surprised that a much sharper bit would be required for quick, controlled cuts. It was taking far too long to cut the main outlines and the one time I tried to rush it I nearly cut through Jack's septum when the tool got away from me. From that point on I used a 3/8-inch bit in the drill to perforate the large cutout areas and a knife to remove the bulk.

The area between the nostrils is about 3/8 inch wide which. I have learned, is about as thin as I want to go, structurally speaking, but it is thin enough to see through even without a lot of light...

Blah, blah, blah... You know, this started off boring and is flaming out quickly. I am glad I learned what I learned, but let's just take this article to see the rabbits.

The pumpkin turned out fine. My two-year-old was at first delighted with the pumpkin and then, 10 seconds later, was terrified of it. He said “I don't want the jack o lantern to sing,” then buried his face in my shoulder. Although I couldn't agree with him more, having to sincerely reassure someone that a pumpkin is not going to spontaneously burst into song is definitely one of the stranger things I have done in my life.

Later, after trick-or-treating we learned that a single Reese's Peanut Butter cup enables a toddler to vibrate their molecules through solid matter.

Bathtime was fun.

Go Fix Me A Turkey Pot Pie

I happened to glance at the back of a box of Band-Aids while I was brushing my teeth this morning and this is what I saw:

Now, I know this is just a few paragraphs that are supposed to give an old-timey feel-good summary on the origin of this company's flagship product. Or maybe it's just to fill otherwise blank space on the back of the box. Now that I think about it, I am probably one of the few people outside of the individuals responsible for the manufacture of the box itself that have actually read this little story.

Does anyone else feel like there are large chunks of the narrative that are not being told? I mean, really... That poor woman, toiling away while “suffering (???) from minor cuts and burns”? Are you trying to tell me that, before this invention, people just walked around with bleeding, seeping wounds and made no attempt to do anything about it? I realize medical knowledge in 1920 was only moderately more advanced than leech-craft but c'mon... nothing? NOTHING?!

No. Something is missing from this story. But what? Even one more sentence would tie it all together, but where should it go? Let's see if we can fill in some of the gaps. Maybe one or more of the following patches can help us Sherlock Holmes our way into a cogent plotline. Just pick one and shoehorn it into the story where you think it makes the most sense.

1. … gingerly stepped over the carcass of a fearsome badger that had obviously been choked to death by a woman's apron strings after an hours-long battle in the kitchen, when he noticed his wife suffering from minor cuts and burns...
2. “Yes, I know I look a fright, Mable. I am so clumsy sometimes. I mean, just yesterday I repeatedly tripped and fell into my husband's fountain-pen-nib-and-lit-cigar-butt collection. That's the noise you must have heard last ni... oh my God he's home early go go go go...”
3. … because cotton-buyers in the early twentieth century always kept a roll of surgical tape on them at all times, being the only ones outside of doctors and clergy deemed trustworthy enough to handle the magic healing paper...
4. After the wounds were healed she was repeatedly re-injured in a like manner to act as an experimental control to quantify how much longer the healing process was without the bandages...
5. After roughly packing enough raw cotton into her wounds to prevent her from passing out from blood loss until after the roast was done...

Ok, fine. It's probably not any of these. But something is not right here... Do you have an idea? I'm all ears.

Food, Glorious Food

It is not often an e-mail nearly makes me weep with joy, but it happened today. First a little backstory...

A couple of decades ago I moved from the Western New York area to here. Over the years, I have discovered that most of the local food is absolutely bland-tastic. I would say it's almost like eating cleverly sculpted servings of Gerber's Baby Food, but that doesn't adequately describe the abject disappointment I feel as I dig into a typical meal. Maybe Southern-fied MREs would be a better taste analogy... I don't know. What I do know, though, is the attempts at Buffalo Wings here are just plain insulting and might even be cause for The City of Light to file a libel suit if the city fathers were feeling particularly litigious.

About five years ago my brother got tired of me comparing myself to Ray Liotta's character at the end of Goodfellas where he is living the rest of his life in the Witness Protection Program, or, to a lesser extent, Steve Martin's character in My Blue Heaven living out the rest of his life in the Witness Protection Program. So we decided to brainstorm solutions to getting me some decent grub and possibly shutting me up about it.

Sure, everyone knows about Buffalo wings. Maybe you even know about Beef on Weck and are still digging phantom caraway seeds out of your gumline years after your last exposure. But the prime standard for Western New York fast food is Mighty Taco. That was our clear objective.

Although my brother has one just down the street, the closest one to me is a little over 500 miles away. Here are a few of the schemes we came up with to deliver psuedo-Mexican awesomeness to my belly:

• Cannonball Run – He hops in his car, me in mine. We drive as fast as possible and meet in the middle, probably in Maryland. Problem: Mighty Taco take-out barely survives a five-minute car ride without getting all mungy – I would hate to see what it would look like after 5 hours sitting on the passenger's seat of a vehicle. No, those electrified thermal bags wouldn't do it, I'm afraid – you would just end up with a partially desiccated nightmare.
• Fraud, Waste, Abuse – We get a friend that is stationed at the Air Force base in Niagara Falls to fly some MT down in a C-130, possibly air-dropping the food as it flew over my house. Problem: aside from the obvious string of federal crimes this solution implies, it would still take several hours to get here and the hard-shell tacos would end up more like floppy-translucent-shell tacos.
• Science! - Order tacos, wrap in Mylar, plunge into liquid nitrogen, and drive down here. Thaw, re-heat, and eat. Problem: The issues involving the cost and logistics of transporting a dewar of LN2 500 miles in a car are dwarfed by the fact that uncontrolled rapid freezing would cause the cell walls of the lettuce and meat to rupture into a greenish brown goo. I am pretty sure the cheese and the shell would survive the process, but at what cost?
• Be an Owner – This is where I buy a Mighty Taco franchise and have all the greasy goodness I want. Problem: There are no franchises available at this time. Oh, yeah, sure. .. “Lack of availability” is the only thing holding me back, here.
• Parts is Parts – My brother or a friend of his gets a job at a local franchise. Instead of filling the taco order (placed when the store first opens) as normal they take each of the parts (meat, cheese, shell, lettuce, etc.) - place them in vacuum sealed bags and then into an awaiting coolder of ice. My brother drives like hell here and we re-heat the meat and assemble the tacos and enjoy. Problem: Actually, this is the best solution we had come up with. Maybe a small bribe could replace the need to actually get a job there...

Believe it or not, we had a few more rough sketches of ideas. Those others, though, were shouted down by the committee of Reason and Common Sense. You heard me. I said we had even worse ideas than the unworkable ones above. Sadness reigned and I resigned myself to a life of (shudder) Taco Bell.

But today I got the heart-stoppingly beautiful news that Mighty Taco now delivers to the lower 48 states! Sure, the menu is limited to only beef and cheese burritos right now, but it is a start! They claim that the taste of home is only a microwave away, which is pretty cool. Even cooler is their claim that it is “perfect for carpetbaggers and snowbirds”. Priceless.

For only $40 (plus $22.70 for shipping and handling – yikes), starting November 9th, one dozen flash-frozen burritos can be delivered to your door in a dry-ice container shipped via 2-day air. I placed my order and the only downer is that their online store is a little clumsy to navigate. Oh, don't get me wrong, it gets the job done. I just couldn't figure out how to buy the burritos AND a t-shirt at the same time without having to fill out the form twice, so I didn't bother to get the shirt. Hmph...I think I read somewhere “Always make it easy for people to give you their money”...

Meh, no biggie – I told my brother the problem and he said he would pick one up for me next time he goes there.

So, yes, I am paying about $5.25 per burrito for the honor of capturing the taste of home once again. I am aware that they may not be all that I remember them being. Heck, my Armistice Day snack might even be downright vile, but this is not the point. Frankly, I am impressed that this possibility even exists. Everything else is just gravy.

If nothing else I will have a story to tell. Maybe I will be telling you, maybe I will be telling the paramedic with the stomach pump, who knows? But, for the price of an Xbox game, I get to recapture a lost childhood comfort if just for a little while.

Totally worth it.

Sigh. Fine. I'll Take Two.

I realize that tech companies are not going to scramble to register the slogan "You never know.  It might not suck." with the US Patent and Trademark Office, but I am tired of feeling like someone is constantly trying to trick me. Frankly, it's exhausting trying to predict if the actual happiness I will get from a tech purchase will meet the level of joy the advertisers imply I will have after I buy their gizmo. 

Picture a frontier town in the late 1800s.  A traveling snake oil salesman rolls into town and hawks his wares and leaves.  Maybe the potions and elixirs work, maybe not.  Maybe he gets lynched or run out of town on a rail, maybe not. 

Now picture that same town hosting an endless parade of the shysters, where the number of the salespeople far outnumber any possible posse that could be mustered to mete out old-timey justice. The the bar for what is acceptable gets lower and lower and lower. Some of the seemingly never-ending parade are selling obvious junk, but some have stuff that you might want.  Some even have things you actually need.  The kicker is that every item is advertised exactly as enthusiastically as the next, blurring the line between what is actually awesome and what is merely garbage dressed up for church.

Terrible products become marginally acceptable and marginal products get re-branded as awesome. As long as the product meets an easily attainable bare minimum and no one gets hurt, the salespeople are lynch-proof, because, after all, everyone is doing it. If the device works, or, if rumors of it working are “leaked”, that info actually makes the news.

This is probably why many supposed general tech/science news sites are mostly about cell phones, Facebook, Angry Birds, and the like.  Oh, occasionally you will see an article or two about some real science thing.  As of this writing, the token science article on Google Sci/Tech news talks about saving endangered vertebrates.  The other 19 articles are about gadgets you should consider buying or online services you should use because everyone else does.

I have no one to blame but myself for allowing myself to get suckered into buying things that seem to serve no purpose except to make me angry.  For example, my Prius infuriates me on a daily basis.  Hey, the 50 mpg is great.  The car is very roomy and is peppier than my old Escort.  So why the anger?  Well, the car bristles with awkward, barely functional techno-bling and it is like a paper cut to my soul every time I sit in it.  I could fill a whole blog post with whiny annoyances but the short story is that the gestalt of all the petty shortcomings I have noticed over the years is a big ol' ball oozing with irrational hate.

That level of bizarre hate is nothing compared to how I felt about my Treo (Windows) for the same reason - it did a million things, all badly. Speaking of which...

I consider Microsoft to be the "Democratic Party" of the tech world -  they can take a great idea and seemingly unlimited funding and magically turn it into suck at the drop of a hat.  Sure, they say they can do all these awesome things but, when it comes right down to it, all they are good at is saying that they are going to do awesome things.

I like the idea of the Kinect for the Xbox, but I have seen no real-life demos of the hardware and software and all the stuff online seems uber-contrived.  The people in the commercials seem to be having a blast but the cuts between scenes are so short I can't objectively judge what's going on.  There is a definite three-card-Monte feel to the whole thing, almost as if the salespeople thought "Hey, maybe if we jump from image to unbearably happy image fast enough, no one will notice video synchronization problems or the fact that the delighted family appears to have a living room the size of the banquet hall at Hogwarts."

Yes, I still want one.

I have long ago made peace with the fact that I am a gullible idiot and the scent of long-chain monomers outgassing from new techno-junk easily overrides what little remains of the common sense center of my brain.  If it wasn't for the fact that I am successfully married (and, therefore, have outsourced a significant portion of my cash and decision-making ability to someone far more capable and trustworthy than myself) I would probably be living under a bridge and muttering profanities at my shopping cart filled with kinda-working, next-big-thing electronics gear.

I look forward to being happily angry at the maybe-awesome-but-very-probably-not Kinect as early as next week.  Not “how come I gotta fill out 47 license agreements and personal info forms to use my iPod” angry like I was a couple of nights ago, I hope. That frightened even me.

Just in case, though, I am going to spend the next week or so practicing fuming at my own idiocy so I am in tip-top shape and don't cramp up when the time comes.

... And a Side Order of Melted Timepieces

I ordered a meatball sub from a local Italian chain restaurant and discovered this printed on the bag.  Although I would be quick to use the word "generous" to describe the portions,  it would take me much longer to come up with the above unless booze and Mad Libs were involved. 

Oddly enough, a Google search on that phrase does not come up with the restaurant here in Virginia - it finds one in Ohio, though, called Ferrari's Little Italy.  So zero points for "originality" but full marks for "crazy", I guess.

A Roil Paean in the Aas

I am getting a lot of mileage out of my Kindle.  I am happily surprised about that.  Here we are in the year 2010 there is a 50/50 shot that the gizmo/software I allow myself to get tricked into buying makes me way more angry than happy.  I'll talk more about that in tomorrow's post – for now let's talk about something else.

I downloaded Scrabble for the Kindle a couple of weeks ago.  Its a pretty good implementation for five bucks and it is addictive enough where I have played 47 games over the past two weeks (about 10 or 15 minutes a game).  “For the love of God, why?” you ask? Well, I am sort of in between books right now and Scrabble appears to be a less traumatic way to pass the time around my two-year-old than Red Dead Redemption.  A lot less rocking back and forth in fetal position while whimpering the word "horsey" over and over again, you know?

It does lack something, though. I really would like to see the definition of a word pop up after it is played - there is plenty of room on the screen to make that happen and no reason not to do it.  After all, if you are having a friendly game with another human and they lay down a word you are unfamiliar with, you are probably going to say something like "AORIST, huh?  What the hell is that?", then you would either learn the definition of a new word or you would learn that your friend is a petty cheat and a liar. 

On the other hand, they might grin slyly and say "Are you challenging the word?".  The rules say bluffing is okay, but anyone doing that smug-ass smile thing with me would find the game terminated right then and there.  They would also find themselves suddenly and violently weighing 100 Scrabble tiles more than they did when the game was started.

Anyway, the AI scans its tiles and the board and its dictionary chock full of "pfft-there's-no-way-that's-a-word" words and lays out the one with the highest point total.  I am sure that it is not cheating (What would be the point?) or broken but I still get ticked when it lays down stuff like PEDRO, ZAS, VUG, PROTEI, or some other "word" that I somehow have spent four decades not learning the meaning of or even ever coming across.  Frankly, I am surprised the damn thing hasn't tried to lay down QUIJIBO or KLIMPALOON yet.

Oh, I know what ROIL means, and any geek worth his salt knows that AA comes before AARDVARK in the dictionary.  I have even seen the word PAEAN awkwardly but enthusiastically crowbarred into a letter of recommendation for a student, probably by professor who was trying to justify writing off their fancy new "Word-a-Day" calendar on their office expense report.

But, c'mon...  MM, NTH, and CWM?  Really?  Actually, there are twenty legal Scrabble words with no vowels (not even sometimes y).  Got a Q but no U?  No worries - there are about ninety words you can make according to Wikipedia, 25 are actually acceptable in Scrabble.  Basically, after playing this I have learned that if a random handful of letters is even remotely pronounceable it is probably a word, so you might as well try it since there is no penalty for doing so.

The AI does not seem to care a) where it is laying its tiles as long as it gets the highest possible score that turn or b) what letters are probably left in the bag or in your rack.  It will cheerfully lay the word REHEAT, for instance, smack between two triple word score blocks, not caring at all that you could have a P, a S, a blank, or a combination of those things in your rack.  So you find yourself routinely answering the AI's 20 or 30 point plays with 50 or 60 points with no effort. In the above example you could get up to 117 points for laying down just two tiles.

You can take leverage this mechanical play pretty easily. For all of its Rainman-esque advantages, it still plays badly enough for me to beat it on its highest level a little over 50% of the time. 53.19149% to be exact. It seems stupid to me that the game reports a win/loss ratio out to seven significant figures, but there you go. After I play my ten millionth game or so I might have a different opinion.

I don't care that it doesn't play the best possible game. It's well worth the money to sit and relax and not get beaten hollow by a machine.

For once...

Site Update

Gussying up the site a little.   Nothing too much to say about that, I guess.  Or anything, really. Hmmm...

I moved the most recent puzzle to the Picasa Web Album in the sidebar and put in a list of stuff I have recently read on my Kindle.

I hear rumors that there is a Z-machine interpreter for the Kindle.  I hope it is true - I would love to have the entire Infocom collection in the palm of my hand, assuming Activision and Amazon can play nice together,,, BTW, if you are interested in the old-school docs for the original games, some dedicated folks have put them here.

More interesting things soon.

Is "Crutepy" a Word?

It's been a long time since my last quiz.  The muse is upon me.  Let's do dis thang.

Kids and kids' toys are cute.  Mostly.  It's all about context, really.  Sometimes there is a fine line between what is cute and what is creepy.  Let's see if you have the eye for detail necessary to discern between the two:

1) Pick the creepiest of the three scenarios below:
a) A two-year-old spontaneously struggling his way through the Pledge of Allegiance as he plays with his Legos (This happened a few days ago, to our shock and delight.).
b) A room full of two-year-olds listlessly struggling through the Pledge with left or right hands somewhat on their chests. (This apparently happens at school during the week).
c) A grainy black and white film showing a room full of two-year-olds flawlessly reciting the Pledge at attention and on command while rousing Sousa music plays in the background and a 75% transparent overlay of some sort of black, red, and white flag waves majestically over the scene. (This has not happened... Yet.)

2) One is cute, one is creepy.  Choose.
a) A two-year-old pouting on the bottom step of the living room stairs because his parents put him in "Time Out" for using his fork to catapult his chicken nuggets into the potpourri dish. (This happened, but it was probably my fault for complimenting him on the first one.)
b) The same child pouting in "Time Out" because put himself there for no discernible reason whatsoever (This actually happened, too - he suddenly stopped happily playing with whatever it was, stomped over to the step, and sat down, and pouted, until we reassured him he wasn't in trouble.)

Clearly, cuteness and creepiness are highly context dependent. A nice looking toy on a shelf in a brightly lit toy store can take on a definite Chucky-esque quality sitting by itself on the living room table in the semi-dark after the kid has gone down for the night, for instance.

This next question was inspired by one of the worst toys in our kid's arsenal. The Toy Story 3 inspired contraption is a sort of “fishing” game where 18 little plastic aliens rotate on a turntable while occasionally bobbing up and down. The goal is to use a fishing pole (of sorts) to grab the little guys when they bob up. The person with the most aliens wins. Whee.

This thing is L-O-U-D. According to the sound level measuring app (deciBel) on my phone, this thing clocks in at 78 dB at a distance of about two feet. On carpet. Not only is that about as loud as a washing machine, but almost all the noise is irritating high frequency stuff. The low rumble of a operating washer is acoustic bliss compared to this.

My high score so far is zero. Why? The turntable is too fast, the bobs are too fast, and the fishing poles grabby claw parts are too weak to do anything, much less try and capture a slick alien head moving in three dimensions. I am the first to admit that I am not the most coordinated person ever, but those of you that know me know that I am persistent and usually don't give up very easily. It's not me. This is just a badly made thing.

Wow... that got ranty for nearly no reason. Let's get back to the quiz and have some fun with the aliens.
 
3) Which picture is creepier?

4) How about here?

5) Pick the best caption:

 a) "Cool.  An alien!  Let's be friends!"
 b) "Two men enter, one man leaves..."
 c) Worst. Kirk vs. Gorn remake.  Ever.
 
Yeah, its all about context...