Funnus Quizzus Answer

A while ago I had Google Translate turn chunks of four songs on my iPod into Latin.

I said that after the original post slid off the bottom of the page I would post the solutions if no one had guessed them first.

Here they are:

Song 1: Banditos - The Refreshments
Song 2: Roots Radical – Rancid
Song 3: Teenagers – My Chemical Romance
Song 4: Eye of the Tiger – Survivor

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

"Alright, people... we have had a banner year - profits are way up and our brand recognition is second to none.  What we need now is an idea that sounds good on paper, but is actually an open invitation to a non-stop stream of completely justifiable lawsuits..."

Trimming the Tree

Our cheap-o artificial Christmas tree died last year after more than a decade of faithful service.  The disintegration process really stepped up its pace over the last couple of years and many of the bendy wire bits were breaking under their own weight.

We decided to go with a real one this year, which is awesome.  I love the smell of a fresh cut pine tree and I even enjoy the ritual of watering it twice a day.

Getting rid of it is kind of a hassle, though. The last time I had one I decided to get rid of it by cutting it to pieces and chucking it in the wood burning stove. 
Oh... My... God...

It looked like a solid cube of angry fire was being barely contained behind the tempered glass, and I would not have been shocked to get a phone call from the neighbors alerting us to the twenty-foot flames roaring out of the top of the chimney.  I am pretty sure it would have been a more controlled burn it I had decided to chuck water balloons filled with gasoline in there instead.

Speaking of things my wife won't let me forget...

A very long time ago when my wife and I were dating my roommate and I got a real tree for the holidays.  We jumped the gun on decorating, and, because we didn't let it settle long enough, it fell over a couple of hours later.  No big deal, but to hear my wife tell it you would swear she was going to whip out an old newspaper with the headline "DOZENS PERISH, HUNDREDS INJURED IN TRAGIC XMAS TREE MISHAP.  ISMAY SAFE, MRS. ASTOR MAYBE, NOTED NAMES MISSING".

To prevent a repeat of that and to offload the blame when it eventually trundles my way,  I asked “the Google” how long a Christmas tree should settle before decorating it.  Basically, the Internet shrugged its shoulders and grumped "I dunno... a day, maybe?".  I was a little surprised there wasn't more of a consensus, but I was even more shocked to read the claim that "there is no wrong way to decorate a Christmas tree"...

Oh, really?  (strokes beard) I accept your challenge...

1. Do not hang the ornaments from the little hooks - use a jai-alai scoop to fire them into the tree at upwards of 100 mph.
2. Use a hot glue gun to affix hundreds and hundreds of grocery store birthday candles to the branches
3. Pour all of your decorations into a giant bin and dip the tree into it and swirl it around as though you were making cotton candy
4. Wind the lights as tightly as possible as though you were hogtying a calf or a damsel before she is placed onto the railroad tracks.
5. Go door to door with the tree asking for one ornament at each house, stone-souping your way to a fully decorated tree.
6. Blindfold and spin each of the decorators around and around pin the tail on the donkey style
7. If it takes two people one hour to decorate a tree, it should take 30 people about 4 minutes.  Try it.

As usual, suggestions welcome.

Bathroom Project (Part II)

(Continued from Part I)

We went out as a family to pick tiles and get the rest of the stuff to start the flooring project.  My poor son has spent more time in his short life in the Lowe's flooring section than what is reasonable for any human to endure, nevermind a two-year-old. I guess Friday night was the last straw for him because he totally lost it moments after hitting the tile aisle.  Only the promise of seeing the array of inflatable Santas and snowmen on the other side of the store could mollify him. 

This is not something you typically witness on home improvement shows, but it would be awesome to see folks forced to pick kitchen cabinets or whatever in three minutes or less because a toddler in the group is going into meltdown:

Designer: (bellowing to make himself heard over the screaming kid) YOU SEE, THE LIGHT REFLECTING FROM THE OAK REALLY ACCENTS THE COUNTERTOPS...
Home Owner: (waving him off impatiently) SURE, SURE, WHATEVER JUST PICK SOME AND LET'S GO! WE'LL WORRY ABOUT THAT #$%! LATER!

So, tiles were chosen basically because they occupied space and had mass. Their looks, which were nice enough, were incidental.

I began tearing up the linoleum in the bathroom Saturday morning.  It was actually pretty easy to get up - I didn't need the crowbar I mentioned after all. :) Well, I did, but only to remove the trim and baseboards.

Jimmydunes helped me cut the cement board into the appropriate jigsaw puzzle shapes.  We used a Black & Decker 4 1/2 inch angle grinder with a masonry blade to make that happen since the utility knife was not up to the task.  I used this tool before to shape the blocks and the capstones for the garden and firepit.  It worked well especially for the seven inch toilet hole but the ON/OFF switch started acting up and then popped off altogether two cuts from completion.  The thing would operate only by jamming a screwdriver into the slot where the switch was.  Since operating the tool that way would take four hands and a complete and utter disregard for our safety and the safety of those around us, we decided to score and snap the last bits instead.

Screwing the cement board down was time consuming but fairly uneventful.  I had to use a 20-year-old corded drill to do most of that step - my cordless drill was just not up to the task. After electrical-taping the mess out of the embrittled and frayed cord, the screws went in easily. That is the last time I will use that drill, though...

Laying the tile was actually a lot of fun.  I was pleased to discover that the distance from the sink cabinet to the wall, when using quarter inch grout spacing, was an integer number of tiles.  The closet was similarly conveniently sized and shaped.  I still had a lot of cuts to do, though, and I  burned through a 4" tile saw blade before I could complete laying the tile.  That was fine with me since I had been at it for twelve straight hours and needed a break anyway.

The last cuts were made the following morning and the last tile was set into place around noon.  I had six hours to kill before I could grout so I went to the gym and afterward we all went and picked out a Christmas tree (a live one this year).   After hauling it up into the loft dealing with the stand, fun time was over and it was time to get back to work.

I finished grouting at about 9PM.  I thought the white grout would look a little weird with the off-white tiles, but it looks just fine. 

I re-installed the toilet today, and everything seemed to go fine. No leaks (yet). Props to Jimmydunes for the suggestion that a small sticky note with the words “HEY, $%#*, DID YOU REMEMBER TO TAKE THE RAG OUT OF THE HOLE?” printed on it be stuck to the toilet. This reminds the installer that the rag that he/she stuffed in the outlet piping to allow him/her the privilege of breathing more oxygen than sewer gas while the floor was put in should probably be taken out BEFORE the toilet is re-mounted. Apparently, this comes from experience...

So far, so good with the bathroom project. Next comes the painting, I think... but we might be looking at a new sink this week. We will see.

(To be continued...)

Bathroom Project

I hope that everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving!

One thing that I am especially thankful for is that the family will be gathering at our house for Christmas this year. My goal is to make the place so delightfully festive that Normal Rockwell pukes in his grave.

But, before I can get around to decking the bejezus out of the halls, I have a project to do. Mrs. Snowurchin wants the floor in the hall bathroom replaced so, since it is long overdue and I have not had a project in a while, I am pretty amped.

The idea is to take up the original linoleum and put down stone tiles. Obviously, this is the perfect opportunity to repaint the room, recondition the baseboards, add decorative trim top and bottom, install a new shower head, replace doorknobs and hinges, reseal the sink, install higher quality towel racks, and install some stone wall tiles in a bare area above the bathtub.

I honestly wonder how much of that other stuff will actually get done before Christmas...

The important thing is to get the floor finished as quickly as possible, though, so that my wife can have her bathroom back and my 2-year-old can go back to “bathtime” instead of “quickly hosing off in the shower time”.

It is 9:07 AM Friday. The wife, our son, and her dad are out at Wal-Mart doing the Black Friday thing and I am most certainly not (Hey – yet another thing to be thankful for!). While they are out fighting the crowds and trying to see how many linear miles of rainbow-colored duct tape they can buy for fifty cents, I am coming up with a list of things I am going to need to make the new floor happen. This is definitely one of those situation where we are both thinking “Sucker!”.

After we leave here and arrive back home I will take some measurements and also take an inventory of the tools and materials I have on-hand. Tonight we will go to Lowe's and buy all the stuff I need for Phase 1 (new floor, minimal life disruption) of this project. Jimmydunes is scheduled to come over tomorrow morning to help me move the toilet and to teach me the ins and outs of that sort of plumbing – something he has done but I have not.

I just hope the linoleum is easy to tear up, but I have a strong suspicion it will not be. Here is my reasoning. It's long and rambly, but I do get to the point eventually - just hear me out.

See, I have a belief – call it a delusional superstition if you want – that most events that happen in our day-to-day lives that are ever so slightly outside of the norm are not happenstance, but occur for a reason. Bits of slight fortune somewhat balance the bits of slight misfortune that happen, and vice-versa.

An unexpected $500 bonus in your paycheck somewhat offsets the unexpected $600 tax bill you get in the mail a week later. The power supply in your work computer fails causing you to lose the last 15 minutes of your presentation hours before a gaping network security flaw exposes your entire organization to a vicious hacker attack. I am sure you have noticed stuff like that in your own life.

So what is this supposed “reason” that I am talking about? It is nothing magical or mystical. It has nothing to do with angels or demons. It just has to do with balance. Oh, and not “balance” in a creepy sissified Zen way, either. I am talking straight-up, purely mathematical balance.

Look at it this way. What I see as a normal day might be seen by others as a rainbow-and-unicorns filled existence straight out of an old Disney flick. Other extremely fortunate people might see my day-to-day comings and goings as something sadly comical and possibly even worthy of pity. Everyone has their own personal yardstick as to what is “normal” that evolves as the major events of their life change who they were yesterday into who they are today.

Obviously, little things happen just to the plus and just to the minus of your baseline all the time, regardless of where that line relates to anyone else's. People are nearly infinitely adaptable. Heaping fortune or misfortune upon someone causes what they see as “normal” to shift until a new personal baseline is reached, with little ups and downs jittering around that new level.

Just to be clear: I am not talking about huge life events. I am talking about things that are barely out of the mundane - stuff like finding a wheat penny in your change, not the birth of a child or being involved in a near-fatal car wreck. Not stuff that is “all part of God's grand plan” or whatever – after all, no respectable deity is going to give a damn about whether or not you left your umbrella at the office as it starts to rain. I am just talking about the little things, and I am just talking about one way to appreciate the statistics behind them.

My belief is that, by acknowledging this “law of averages”, you can see the little pluses and minuses in a new light. Using retrospect, totally and genuinely unrelated events can be forced to fit together in a “why-because” framework in a very satisfying and sometimes fun way. Why did my shoelace break? So I could run into an old friend at Wal-Mart when I went to pick up a new set. Why did I find $20 a couple of weeks ago? To help pay for the speeding ticket I got today. Why did I drop that lightbulb in the kitchen? So, while sweeping up the shattered glass, I could find the wedding band I lost last year.

Thinking about things in this way helps make visible the gossamer thread that connects the billions of infinitesimal events in everyone's lives, and it lets me enjoy the small pluses in my own that much more.

What does this have to do with the bathroom floor? Well, a while ago the installation guys accidentally left a medium-sized crowbar in the back of a closet after they finished with the downstairs flooring renovation. They may have used it to tear up the old linoleum in the kitchen.

So “why” did they leave the crowbar behind? So I could have an easier time pulling up the extremely difficult old flooring in the bathroom six months later!

Of course, sometimes a crowbar is just a crowbar... :)

I will post with updates when I can.

Now, That's MY Kind of Planetarium!

I don't know what goes on in there, but I want in...

My Google-Fu Has Failed Me

My brother sent me a text today asking if I could find contact information for a new Yahoo data center that was commissioned in Lockport NY last month and I said “npiaitcsiwlwighok” - no problem, I am in the car so I will look when I get home, ok?

I looked for about five minutes online (aka forever) with no luck. Agmorion and jimmydunes looked briefly, too, but all that seems to be out there are news articles saying that it will be or already is built, they are hiring between 45 and 125 locals with an average salary of $60k, and the place is allegedly green because it uses hydroelectricity for power.

I am sure I am just missing it, but can you find the mailing address, phone number, or any other way of proving it exists in the real world without needing to get there via Platform 9 ¾?

Good Thing He's a Cartoon...

Feeling guilty about eating that entire can of Pringles last night?  Well, Homer Simpson has made a lot of questionable dietary decisions over the years, too. Here's what some of his meals and snacks would look like in Nutritional Information form (all food info from WolframAlpha):

Episode 85: Rosebud

[Homer sits down in the middle of the night to eat cheese]
Homer: Mmmm. Sixty-four slices of American Cheese...
[begins eating]
Homer: ...sixty-four... sixty-three...
[morning comes, Homer is still eating]
Homer: Two... one...
[Marge walks in]
Marge: Have you been up all night eating cheese?
Homer: I think I'm blind.

Episode 184: Bart Star

Dr. Hibbert: Well, your cholesterol level is lethally high, Homer, but I'm more concerned about your gravy level.
Homer Simpson: Now, wait a second. You doctors have been telling us to drink eight glasses of gravy a day!
Dr. Hibbert: [laughs] Well, you're a little confused.
Homer Simpson: Oh, confused, would we?

Episode 220: Maximum Homerdrive

(While trying to finish a 16-pound steak as part of an eating contest)
Homer: Lungs filling... sinuses packed with meat...
Bart: C'mon, dad. Just 1.2 more pounds.
(Homer groans.)

Puzzle for Charity News

A charity for the Puzzle for Charity has been selected!

The Lake Country SPCA in Clarksville, Virginia, is a privately run organization with no state or federal funding – it is totally donation dependent. It is a no-kill shelter (cool) and they even take care of horses (wow).

All the cash in the Charity Pool (currently $50) will go to them when the puzzle gets solved, and all of the cash in the Prize Pool will go to whoever solves the most recent puzzle. I might throw in the puzzle itself at a later date, but for now, it will just be the cash.

For those of you who don't know, here are some answers to some questions you might have:

Where does the money come from, if it doesn't cost anything to participate? Donations, stuff I sell on craigslist, and out of my pocket. I used to ramp up the prize pools a certain amount per day, and I may do that again in the future, but, for now, I just will randomly chuck cash in the pot(s) when I can.

Why are you doing this? It's cool to help others, and this is a fun way for me to do it.

Check out the sidebar for updates to the Prize Pool, Charity Pool, hints, rules, FAQs, previous winners, previous puzzles and all sorts of other info.

What else... Oh, yeah... I have posted Hint #2 to the Anagram Puzzle. You can find all of the Unsolved Puzzles at the Secret Puzzle Page link in the sidebar on the right. Good Luck!

I Have Lost My Mojo

Maaannn....

My Mojo Jojo keychain fob is missing. The thing was 11 or 12 years old, the paint was all chipped and peeled from his turban, and one of the corners of the cape was broken, but it was mine and made the wife and my sets of keys easily distinguishable. Well, really, the fact that my wife has more keys on her keyring than an octogenarian janitor makes the keychains distinguishable, but that's not important right now. I think it might have been a gift from Agmorion and Siun-Kelan, but I may be misremembering some pencils FedEx'd to my place of employment way back when...

No biggie, but it looks like I have a potential project to do. Maybe I will make one out of some leftover tile from the kitchen project, but I may just end up buying one.

A friend of mine suggested some really inappropriate stuff from ThinkGeek. That Robot Chicken one calls to me a little and the wine opener calls to me a lot, but I want one that I can explain to my kid in 10,000 words or less without a lot of “Ummm...” and shuffling my feet when he says “What's that?” and “Why?”

Suggestions welcome.