The Omnicron Imperative (Part V)

(Continued from Part IV)

"The footage you see here," General Steel announced, "was taken from an ATM surveillance camera across the plaza from the restaurant in Milan where our target was eliminated. Our computer team was able to computer-enhance, using state-of-the-art computers, the original black and white low-resolution one-frame-per-second video feed into the full-color high-definition 30- frame-per-second digital file you see here.  In addition, we further processed the data to bring out important details usually visible only in the infrared."

The screen silently showed a number of diners enjoying their meals and chatting at a crowded outdoor bistro.  Tourists milled to and fro across the adjoined piazza snapping pictures of each other standing awkwardly in front of various pieces of statuary, while locals smoked cigarettes, rode bicycles, and sold souvenirs from overladen carts.  A couple of children kicked a soccer ball in the morning sunlight.  A typical day in any Italian city.

At the touch of a button, the General zoomed in and slowed the recording to one-quarter speed.  A hugely fat middle-aged man in a white suit and the table at which he was sipping coffee now occupied much of the scene.

Enrico Fantagucci, notorious weapons dealer and human trafficker, put down his cup and summoned to someone off camera.  A waiter arrived and presented him his check and cleared the table, temporarily blocking the target from the camera's view.  When the waiter slowly turned to depart with the dirty dishes and payment for the meal, Enrico was visible again and reaching for his ivory-colored fedora.  Now a bright red spot, brought into visible spectrum by the digital magicry of the processed footage but invisible to him, appeared in the center of his gaudy paisley cravat.

He continued to reach for his hat in super slow motion as another red light joined the first.  Then another.  And another.

By the time his chubby ringed fingers had touched the felt of the brim over one hundred infrared lights from snipers hidden in discrete locations around the plaza decorated his massive chest.  He had no idea he had mere seconds to live.

The lights began to meet. They simultaneously converged to an impossibly bright dime-sized spot nine inches below his short-cut beard.  His tie instantly erupted into flames from the combined thermal energy of dozens and dozens of low powered IR lasers.

He leaped up, knocking his chair backwards and began to futilely beat at the flames with his hat.  Even with no audio it was obvious that he was screaming.  The waiter and several of the restaurant patrons turned toward him in alarm.

Just then, a watermelon-sized hole produced by scores of simultaneously fired high-powered rifle rounds appeared in his torso.  Four throwing stars and a blowgun dart lodged in the fat in the side of his neck.  He looked down comically and slumped to the ground, dead, as panic overtook the curiosity of the now-fleeing lookers-on.

(To Be Continued...)

The Omnicron Imperative (Part IV)

(Continued from Part III)

One thousand feet below the surface of the Earth in a repurposed tungsten mine in rural Virginia, the uber-elite ANON team assembled in the debriefing auditorium to review their last mission.

No one, not even long-time locals, would have guessed that the abandoned-looking mining payroll office on the outskirts of this one-stoplight town actually disguised the main entrance to the single most sophisticated Intelligence Gathering center in the world.

The cracked and faded macadam lot and the adjacent 4-acre weed-strewn field were filled to capacity with cars, trucks, dirt bikes, four-wheelers and any other motorized vehicle you care to name.  Several exhausted besaddled horses picked through the moonlit scrub around the cooling Chinook helicopter and ultralights that had converged on the spot over the past several hours.  A few discarded parachutes drifted lazily like the ghosts of tumbleweeds to the nearby canal, where they became entangled on a host of moored speedboats and jetskis.

Each of the team members, at a moment's notice, could be recalled to HQ in less than 14 hours from anywhere on the planet should they be summoned to active duty.  Twelve hours and eleven minutes ago that call went out and now the last of the 637-member team to arrive settled into his seat.

"Excellent time, ladies and gentlemen,” Brigadier General Vic Steel slurred gravelly and nearly incoherently into his lapel microphone. Six decades of saving the world had taken a heavy toll on his once athletic frame, leaving in its place a wheelchair-bound mass of scar tissue and hard-core experience. Even at 84 years of age, his tactical mind was as sharp as ever and he would be damned if some know-nothing Washington bureaucrats were going to force him to retire. His country came before any silly fishing holiday.

The susurration of the crowd halted as the amplified sound of his voice echoed around the stone walls of the former cavern. He cast his good eye around at his hand-picked team with something akin to affection. He had personally saved each of their lives during one mission or another, and they had saved his bacon more times than he could count.

There was no stronger bond than that.

He pushed a button on a remote control and the fifty-foot American Flag behind him on the stage parted to reveal a movie screen. “Let's get through the debriefing of the Milan assassination as quickly as possible so we can get down to the real business at hand.”

The lights dimmed and the screen lit up as the ANON team members looked around at their comrades, puzzled as to what “real business” the General had in mind.

(To be continued)

Plinko Project

When I was overseas I amassed a pretty good-sized collection of foreign coins.  All the pounds, francs, drachma, marks, etc, lived in an old CD container for a decade and a half until my son discovered them a few months ago.

He has a blast rifling through all the coins and he is especially delighted to hunt for the six coins that have holes in them (Spanish 25-peseta pieces).   He likes to count the metal discs (well, up to 14, anyway) and attempts to "sort" them, although I have yet to deduce his binning strategy...

The plastic CD container filled with shifting coins is too large and awkward for a just-two-year-old to carry around.  My temporary solution was to give him the fancy wooden cigar box his birthing day "hey I'm a new dad" cigars came in, with the intention of making a similarly sized wooden treasure chest later.

It didn't take me long to realize that by solving the minor carrying problem I accidentally created a danger.  The cigar box is about one-third the size of the CD holder, so now several pounds of metal were now concentrated in a much smaller area and was just as awkward for him to carry.

Yikes.  Something had to be done to fix the now-obvious potential toe-breaking hazard.

I wanted a place where he could have access to the coins but not be tempted to haul them around en masse.  Searching through my scrap wood bin I discovered some leftover material from a toybox I made for him.  I also found some scrap one-eighth-inch clear plastic from a previous picture frame project.

It was a leftover dowel in the bin, though, that got me to thinking about the Plinko game from the Price Is Right.  You know... the one where the contestants drop plastic disks down a 10-foot-high, nearly vertical board embedded with hundreds of metal posts with prize bins at the bottom.

Well, let's scale that down a bunch, make the posts wood instead of metal, and replace the bins with a simple tray to catch the coins instead.

The picture on the left is where the project stands now.

The plexiglass cover sits in routed grooves with a permanent wood stop at the bottom and a removable one at the top.  This is to allow me to slide out the window easily if it gets damaged or if and when something gets jammed in there and can't be dislodged by other means.  This WILL happen.  Its just a matter of time.

The posts were spaced to allow for most (but not all) of the coins to bounce freely from top to bottom. 

Why not all?  Two reasons. 1) Some of the coins are fairly large (like the British 50 pence pieces) so if I spaced the posts for that diameter the smaller ones could drop straight through the spacings without hitting a single post.  2) I am making this out of leftover materials in my garage, and I didn't have enough wood (of this type) to space the posts an integer number of "large coin diameter + dowel diameter + a smidge" apart.  Even if I did, the contraption would have to be much wider and taller than it is now to support enough posts to make this fun to play with.

It actually took longer to make this (about 5 hours) than I thought it would.  A lot of this was design work since I was just making it up as I went, but a huge amount of time was spent just routing the guides for the Plexiglas window.  I have a plunge router jig and a 1/8th inch bit for my aged Dremmel but I nearly burned it up just trying to make two twelve-inch shallow grooves in the pine board.  It really complained when it hit a knot and there was a lot of waiting around while the tool cooled down.

After initial assembly and sanding I was in the garage giving the project a few test plinks when my son poked his head out of the kitchen door to see what I was doing.  He smiled and said "Daddy, can I play with it?"

Even though it was not "done" it was definitely "done enough" to use, so I figured it would be a good idea to see him beta test it. This would give me an idea of changes I need to make before I commit to staining and sealing it.

I put it down in his playroom with the coins and watched him for a long while he dropped every single one of the hundreds of coins down the board.  He was content and quiet and "on task" the whole time.  He didn't even mind when the 100 drachma pieces got occasionally hung up on the edges - he just says "That one got stuck" and gets them going again by tilting the Plinko game a little to the left or right.

No big changes needed.  Cool.  It looks like we have a winner.

Now all that's needed before staining and sealing is to gussy up the top by adding a simple decorative piece with some words or a design or something.  I was considering using the Dremmel/router for that but I am re-thinking that since it was such a hassle to route the window grooves.

I'll post another pic when it is "done-done".

A Completely Made-Up Free-Time Metric

How do you spend your time when not doing things that are 100% mandatory, like going to work, mowing the lawn, or what have you?  Well, if you are the type that needs validation by being graded on practically ungradeable aspects of your life, read on.

Time is precious.  We all have a finite number of heartbeats granted to us when we are born, and it is how we decide to use them that matters.  But how can you put a number on the worthiness of these pursuits?  Here's one way.

 

Free-time activities can be judged using three categories:
1) Self-Destructive/Self-Improving 2) Consumer-Based/Producer-Based and 3) Unhappy-Making/Happy-Making.  Let's give each of these categories a scale that runs from 1 (bad) to 10 (good).

 The first, Self-Destructive/Self-Improving (SD/SI), measures the extent of what you are doing with regards to how good for you or how bad for you it is. The word "you" here also includes your immediate surroundings both physical and social, btw.

 The second, Consumer-Based/Producer-Based (CB/PB), is a little more difficult to define.  Basically, if you are using a resource or product without creating a tangible end-product, then that is CB.  It is PB if you are filling a void in the world with something you're doing.

 The third category, Unhappy-Making/Happy-Making (UM/HM), is by far the most slippery to nail down.  Instant gratification is not the same as happiness (although sometimes it smells the same). You need to take into account the long term happiness/unhappiness of everyone involved in your pastime for an accurate assessment.

 Remember, each of the scores is what you feel the score should be.  There is no wrong answer since you are needlessly attempting to measure intangible features of something using an arbitrary ruler made up on the spur of the moment by someone who has probably never met you.  That said, be honest and try not to "lawyer-up" the scale.

 Got it?  Great.  Here comes the math.

 Score your activity using the categories above, add the scores together, and divide by three.  Now you have an average of your measurements.  The idea is to get as high of a score as possible.  Use the examples below to get a feel for the grading.

• Sitting quietly, doing nothing: (5 + 5 + 5)/3 = 5.0
• Watching a TV show you don't care about: (5 + 3 + 5)/3 = 4.3
• Eating an entire large pizza while watching your favorite show: (2 + 1 + 8)/3 = 3.7
• Chucking Faberge eggs at pedestrians from your Hummer: (1 + 1 + 1)/3 = 1
• Injuring yourself in an expensive way: (1 + 2 + 1)/3 = 1.3
• Same as above, but posting it to YouTube: (1 + 3 + 8)/3 = 4.0
• Teaching yourself to play an instrument: (8 + 10 + 7)/3 = 8.3
• Going out drinking with friends: (4 + 3 + 9)/3 = 5.3
• Staying home, drinking alone: (2 + 3 + 3)/3 = 2.7
• Planting a garden: (6 + 9 + 7)/3 = 7.3
• Planting a poison ivy garden: (3 + 6 + 1)/3 = 3.3

You get the idea.

 Most of the realistic things we do during our free time will have an overall score between 4 and 6.  That's just fine. Less than 4: maybe consider a new hobby. Over 6: well done, you over-achiever, you.

 The scoring isn't perfect because there are lots of complicating factors.  For example, a one-hour treadmill workout at the gym gets a high score (9 + 4 + 7)/3 = 6.7 but following it up immediately with another one would be a bad idea (2 + 4 + 1)/3 = 2.3.  Likewise, playing a fun video game (although it is inherently a consumer-based task) might get a score above 5, but doing that to the exclusion of all else day in and day out not only is self-destructive, the happiness achieved no longer comes close to the happiness expected and you end up just going through the motions.

 Kind of like heroin, I guess.

 Anyway, the next time you are lazily plowing through a can of Pringles while channel surfing (2 + 3 + 5)/3 = 3.3, think : can I do a little better? 

 If your answer is "no", don't worry - just change the numbers to justify your worldview, like so: "Hey, I think this is the best can of processed potato mush I have ever had, and that makes me unbelievably happy. Also, buying this can was a good thing to do, what with the bad economy and all, so I am actually producing job stability for the vendor.  On top of that, my body is dangerously low on artificial sour cream flavoring, so eating this might actually be good for me." And voila: you have a score that puts that smug sculptor/bodybuilder/reader-for-the-blind next door to shame.

100 Is The New 90

I threw this together while I was mowing the lawn on Saturday.

Please forgive the sloppiness of the meter.  Whereas Samuel Taylor Coleridge's inspiration for his gibberish was opium-based, I can only afford the less fun muse of Sunstroke.  Meh, at least I finish what I start...

Enjoy!

With its air that's drinkable

And mercury unsinkable

To go outside's unthinkable!

Oh, how I hate this place.

Today 'twas one oh three point three

With forty percent humidity

That's one fifteen to you and me.

Man, I hate this place.

Whether this sauna's atypical

An anomaly statistical

Or merely something cyclical

I still hate this place.

I know it's hotter elsewhere, see.

I don't expect your sympathy.

I'm just whining via poetry.

But I still hate this place.

The Omnicron Imperative (Part III)

(Continued from Part II)

The remaining attacker overcame his initial shock at the unloaded weapon and exposed a mouthful of golden teeth. He began his downward killing stroke and unleashed the traditional ululation of triumph as was the custom of his tribespeople. He did not notice Captain Awesome had swung his improvised weapon until it had already struck him squarely in the right temple.

Individually, dime-store sparklers and throwing snaps are harmless fun for children.  But when hundreds and hundreds of the poppers are combined with the crushed up casings of sparklers and crammed inside of a tube sock, he knew from his Master's Degree in chemistry, the result is an explosive mixture that could vaporize a human skull.

The attacker's cry of joy was cut short as the impromptu mace impacted its target and detonated turning everything north of his lips into a cloud of bone fragments and goo.  The sword clattered to the ground and what remained of him swayed backwards and crashed onto the debris-littered floor.

Captain Awesome dropped the smoking remains of the sock onto the corpse and lowered his sidearm.  He opened up the Webley, refilled five of the six empty chambers, then gave the cylinder a good spin before returning the weapon to its home in his custom made boot holster. He hated dry-firing the gun but it was worth it to see the grin on his opponent's face just before he wiped it off. Permanently.

Upon completion of final training all members of Team Alpha Ninja Omega Niner performed one ritual that distinguished their group from the hundreds of other independent covert ops organizations in America : each graduate ceremoniously crippled their primary weapon in some small but critical way. 

Some chose to replace their firing pins with a soft metal that would wear down with time.  Some took a rotary filing tool to their gun's sights.  None of these modifications disabled the firearms but this process significantly reduced their reliability or accuracy at critical moments, forcing each ANON team member to become either master improvisors or instantly dead.

This is why they are the best of the best.

At the ceremony for then-Cadet Awesome, instead of filling in one of the chambers with lead solder as planned, he swore an oath to always carry one round less than his Webley could hold so he would not have to damage the antique firearm.   It was his own choice, however, to randomize the cylinder after he loaded the gun so even he didn't know where the missing round lay. A colleague once asked him why he handicapped himself even further than the team charter dictated.

"To give the bad guys a fair shot," he replied with a grin.

Looking around at his handiwork and helping up the filling station patrons he noticed that each of the attackers bore a tattoo on his right palm of a violet poppy wrapped around a swastika.

He grunted with recognition, pulled out his encrypted cell phone, snapped a picture, and pressed SEND.

(To be continued...)

The Omnicron Imperative (Part II)

Continued from Part I

His grandfather, a successful oilman and landowner whose ranch encompassed most of Western Texas and portions of Southern Oklahoma, first taught him to fire a handgun on his seventh birthday. He was a natural. After a couple of wide shots he was flawlessly plunking tin cans off of rocks at 75 yards with the Webley Mark VI service revolver.

Later, after the ammunition had run out and the cans had been reduced to a fine metallic fuzz they began the long horse ride back to the jewel-encrusted racing helicopter. The old man, swelling with pride and deafened by the near-constant gunfire over the last several hours, failed to notice the pack of rabid mountain lions rapidly flanking them on their left. The younger Awesome yanked the revolver out of his grandfather's holster quick as a coked-up rattlesnake and dispatched all five of the creatures in under three seconds.

The excitement was too much for his grandfather's aging heart and he collapsed off of the stallion and half into the shallow mountain stream they were crossing. With his final breathes he bequeathed the antique firearm to his grandson, notarized and signed over the deeds to his vast business and land holdings to him, and gave him a brief but thorough tutorial on how to load the horses into the helicopter and fly it back to their closest mansion.

His grandfather was gone but he kept practicing as a way to honor his memory. By the time he was eight he had won several county-wide speed and accuracy competitions. By the time he was ten he was blacklisted from all shooting contests nationwide because he was simply too good.

The Webley remained his constant companion over the next three decades. He had long ago lost track of how many hundreds of thousands of rounds he must have fired from his trusty sidearm over the years, but the eidetic memory of his reflexes and muscles recalled every single shot.

He lept behind a display as he yanked the weapon from the top of his left Italian snakeskin riding boot and shot five of the would-be thieves between the eyes, just as he did those mountain lions all those years ago. The remaining man raked the aisle uselessly with his AK-47 while Captain Awesome crouched safely behind the racks of beef jerky and discount bullet proof jackets.

As bullets and shrapnel shredded bags of corn chips and shattered jars of pickled eggs around him he scanned the nearby shelves for something he could improvise as a weapon. He found what he needed and quickly gathered the supplies for his counter-attack.

The Afghani's third magazine went dry and he searched his garments for another. Finding none, he unsheathed his razor sharp scimitar and slowly crept his way around the bodies of his fallen comrades and the still prone hostages. He raised the curved sword over his head and jumped around the corner into his prey's aisle where he found himself staring into the barrel of the old Webley. Captain Awesome smiled and calmly pulled the trigger.

Click.

(To be continued...)

Three Mini Projects

The weekend started off slow but I did manage to throw together three quick projects... Well, two and a quarter, I guess.

The first was building a replacement key and wallet holder for the kitchen.  The original one did not fit with the new kitchen modifications - too country.  I scavenged the pine shelves and metal hardware from the original unit and built a new back for it from a leftover maple piece I rescued from a discarded table many months back.  The stain/sealant combo was leftover from other projects as well.  Total cost: one chip brush.

The second was a set of wooden blocks for my son's second birthday.  Whenever he is in the garage he always wants to play with the leftover wood pieces (from a recent railing installation) laying on the workbench so giving him his own official set is a cheap and easy gift.  All of the pine, poplar, and oak blocks and dowels were either small hunks of existing scrap, leftovers from old projects, or taken from larger boards that were too warped to use for big jobs.  The missus suggested I include some arches, so I will crank those out tomorrow, sand the lot of them, and figure out a way to fit everything into the five dollar plastic bin for the one and only time they are all in the same place.

The third mini project you may have already noticed.  I have started a short story called The Omnicron Imperative.  I got the idea to write this based on the over-the-top writing styles of some of the action/adventure authors you see in the sidebar on the right (Cussler, Meaney, etc.) .  It is basically my way of ripping on the formulaic "Top secret team of covert badasses save the world through sheer awesomeness sprinkled with pseudo-science."  I realize it's silly - it's supposed to be.  I'm not sure how long I will carry the "story" through - my attention span is short but randomly variable.  Enjoy!

The Omnicron Imperative (Part I)

[Editor's Note 10/29/10: This whole thing was just supposed to be a short rip on the writing style of certain over-the-top action schlock novels.  The whole thing started as an inside joke between me and a friend of mine that loaned me a Cussler book (The Chase), and it sort of ballooned into this...  It is not meant to be funny, per se, nor is it supposed to be a serious attempt at a novel.  Think of it as a mockumentary of all the bad "super awesome team of super rich handsome people save the world again" books that are out there.  I may never finish the story... it just depends on time and motivation (what doesn't?).  Enjoy.]

Captain Wonderful Q. Awesome, formerly a member of a secret elite counter-terrorism agency simply known as Team Alpha Ninja Omega Niner, expertly piloted his chrome-plated 1896 Velocitymobile into a vacant spot at the desolate, dusty filling station.

The familiar ramshackle structure was his preferred stop for refueling his unbelievably priceless Brass Era road machine. McGinty's was not only the single filling station left in 2010 America that stocked the imported brand of bituminous coal and kerosene the car's steam boilers and headlamps demanded, the owner did not mind when he paid his bill with gold doubloons he always seemed to have on him. He always slyly winked and told her to keep the change anyway.

His boots clocked up the wooden steps as he removed his leather riding goggles to reveal the most exotically colored eyes ever to be blessed upon a human being.  It was impossible to tell exactly what hue they were because to stare into them for too long would be to fall in love.

Many women had tried to win the heart buried inside of his handsome, rugged exterior but he only had room in his life for two loves.  The first was making soft plinking noises behind him as its gleaming steam plant cooled in the gentle autumn breeze.  The second was America...

Little did he know that he was walking into a situation that would test his training to its very limits and force him to choose between the two.

As soon as he creaked open the door to the service station he felt a certain wrongness he couldn't quite put his finger on.  Usually his entry was accompanied by an array of soft thudding sounds as the proprietress and any female customers in the store simultaneously swooned because he was so handsome.  It happened this time, too, of course, but this time the sound of the group collapse was different - it was tinged with fear.

He quickly took in his surroundings.  The six be-robed sword-and-AK-47-wielding Mujahideen that were in the process of holding up the service station paused to look around confusedly at their now semi-conscious hostages.  That brief delay was to be their last.
 
(To be continued...)

Puzzle News

In case you haven't heard, the United States Cyber Command just came out with their emblem.  Here it is on the left.  A higher resolution image can be found at Wikipedia.

Wired magazine held a contest of sorts offering tickets to the spy museum in D.C. or a Wired t-shirt for the first person to decode the message "encrypted" in the inner ring. 

Three hours later the solution was found and there were lots of disappointed people.  I was one of them.

I wasn't disappointed that someone had found the answer to the puzzle so quickly, it was just the solution required not so much brainpower as it did a Google search for hash algorithms. 

Sour grapes?  Eh, maybe.  But I prefer puzzles that can be solved with some paper, a pencil, and a lot of thought which is why I make mine as though I expected a 19th century (or early 20th century) citizen to give them a go.  No computers required.

I really don't mind spending a lot of time on puzzles that have that kind of feel to them.  The Kryptos puzzle on the grounds of the CIA headquarters is one that I look at from time to time.  I will probably never crack it, but who knows, right?  Another one that I mess around with on and off is the Kahn's Cons Puzzle at puzzlemonster.com.  I have been "pretty close" to figuring this one out for literally years now...  Grrr.

Speaking of puzzles, the last Secret Puzzle has been found by jimmydunes!  Here is what he recently found pasted to the bottom of the art supplies table I built for him last year:

I will post this with the rest of the Secret Puzzles in the sidebar on the right.  As usual, there is no prize other than "Braggin' Rights" for the Secret Puzzles.  The Puzzles for Charity, however, are another story...

Good Luck!

Guest Bedroom Project (Part II)

The printer/scanner stand was built and it and the new desk were stained. I had enough leftover material to make an additional little side table for my wife's office.  I used every single one of my 1 1/4" Kreg screws and every drop of wood glue I had.  Here are the pieces.

The dark stain was leftover from the Desk Restoration project - I have quite a collection of half-filled stain and paint cans in the garage so I really need to use this stuff up before it goes bad.  I used a gloss sealant for the same reason.  The little side table will remain unstained and unsealed.  The total time for this portion of the project was 4 hours and the total cost was $125.  If I had to buy the stain, brushes, desk slide hardware, and whatnot it would have cost significantly more.

The old desk was dismantled, cannibalized for parts, (such as drawer slides and hinges) and taken out to the dump.  It was very happy-making to chuck the pieces into the giant dumpster.

Sadly, a bookcase that Agmorion and I made about a million years ago also needs to go.  The shape and footprint is all wrong for the new room, you see.  Hopefully someone at the local thrift store can get some use out of it.  Although I like to put puzzles on stuff that I make before it goes out into the world, I won't be doing that with the bookcase.

What I did do, however, is create a Secret Puzzle for the new desk.  It is a 5" by 7" oak plyboard plaque that I screwed to the underside of the keyboard shelf.  Since the desk is not going out into the world for discovery, I present the puzzle below.  I will also post it in the Secret Puzzle Page (link in the sidebar on the right).  Good Luck!

I was going to include this next picture as part of a Playroom post but it fits just as well here. 

What you see here is a portion of a whole mess of books that needed to go away to make room for all the changes upstairs.  Hundreds of pounds of never-to-be-read reading material went to the thrift store since the books didn't meet my fuzzy definition of a) timelessness (reference books or classics) or b) irreplaceablity (out of print books like my 1947 copy of Cycles: The Science of Prediction or How to Be a Superhero).

So gone are the Onion compendia and the extensive Dilbert collection and the Simpsons episode guides.  Bye bye to an unbelievable number of programming reference guides and SAMS Learn Whateverthehell in 24 Hours books.  Farewell to books on learning shorthand (garage sale find... shut up), history books from the 50s, bad novels, and most of my old college books.  Again, I hope the people shopping at the thrift store can find some use from them.

(To be continued...)