I was approached during the Roundtable by a leader who’se never seen quite eye-to-eye with me about Scouting and program and such when he asked me a question:
Leader: Terry?
Me: Yes.
Leader: I had a question about the Klondike Derby Packet
Me:Â I didn’t think your unit was participating.
Leader: We’re not, I was wondering what font you used for the top part.
Me: Copperplate Gothic
Leader: Thanks.
Wow, what kudos! I think I’ve made a real breakthrough with this guy.
I failed Exam MLC the first time. I’m ok with that as the pass rate is about 30% as first time passers seem to be Act. Sci. TAs whose tenure depends on such things. I have a job and have once again overcommitteed myself in Scouting and sometimes hope that glutton is added to the three Gs of gay, gal and godless which provide reasons for eviction so I can take care of some things, putting multiple choice tests behind me being one of them. Seeing my time dwindle preparing for the Klondike Derby I reached a state of calm regarding my impending failure, much like the driver who removes his hands from the wheel upon realizing his car has broached the edge of cliff or the accountant that straightens his die when he realizes he’s outmatched in a Tiajuana Standoff. I’m being periodically hit by bolts of inspiration whereas suddenly the undefined expected value of the Cauchy distribution makes sense or I predict the success rate of children crossing a busy street by constructing an impromptu Markov Chain, although I assume once the first child was hit by a cement truck the distribution ceased to be stationary. I’ve slept well, and see reality pass me like the river to a rock, knowing it will eventually be worn down to sand. I’m not getting angry about people who ride the right lane approaching a constriction and merely chucked with the fellow from housekeeping threw out my unfinished lunch having stepped away to get more pepper. And then, I found the piece that brought it all together:
Via Somethingawful.com, by CosmoDNA
No matter what happens, I’m still better off than Paul Granger, pseudo-writer of children’s fiction. Although it would be a spot funny if an actuary wrote Choose Your Own Adventures. Especially if it started with a personality profile upon which the approximate path take could be guessed and the path would be strewn with “I knew you were going to go this way” and “really, this way? I must have given you too much credit”. That’s the kind of loathing can be reduced and used as pancake syrup it’s so thick and rich.
Well, let’s shrug that whole thing off with what I think is the most amazing video on the Supreme Court ever:
Supreme Court Rules Death Penalty Is ‘Totally Badass’
My boss asked me about modern graphics cards for a bit and we talked about how GPUs and CPUs had diverged and what way each is optimized for. He asked me to look into nVidia’s entry-level supercomputers and I reported to him. He said there’s a possibility we’d get one to speed up rendering drawings and asked if I could help set it up and test it.
Dear God, please make this happen before I leave. If we get this, and I can test our supercomputer with a Folding@Home install, I will get soooo many F@H points I could finally cash them all in and get that Red Rider BB gun, and with 4 cards with 240 streaming cores each, I might finally get more than 24 FPS in Crysis.
Mondays are baked goods days at work. Not because of some company policies but because I brought in baked goods four Mondays in a row and that broke the repetition barrier required for something to become a tradition. It was 1 AM on Monday and thought I’d go for the reliable pineapple upside-down cake but I only had 1 egg. So I decided to make a Various Pie containing:
Using the maxims of “if all else fails add butter” and “if all else fails add sugar” (does not apply to grilling) I think I made a passable pie. Someone said it was a bit smoother than normal; that was probably the caramel filling and “over ripe” apples. I need to find a way to keep an emergency stock of eggs a la “In Case of Emergency Break Glass” kinda way. I Googled “freezing eggs” and learned quite a bit about the cryonics of preserving human ova, sadly they’re far too small to cook with.
I received the following message:
tERRY;
wHAT’S WRONG WITH MY COMPUTER? hELP!
Sometimes it’s the simple pleasures in life…….
I’ve never played Magic at Six Feet Under Games and bein’ in God’s country I was walking on egg shells to a certain extent. This was amplified when the store owner issued the following warning to a Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament that was about to start:
Attention Yu-Gi-Oh! players. You are the worst bunch of people that are ever in the store. You are foul-mouth, rude, don’t pick up after yourself and are horrible human beings. If you disagree with this, you’re lying and should leave. If you’re anything but polite you’ll be kicked out. If you don’t leave, I’ll call the police. I’m posting the store rules and if you’re under 13 I’ll need your parents permission and want them to know who you hang out with.
Well then. I was a bit concerned until I started yelling “IN YOUR FACE!” at someone I beat without reprecussions. Maybe years from now the pursecution of Yu-Gi-Oh! players will be recorded as one of the moral outrages of the early 21st century.
Each attempt to post this as an article on 5-Color.com resulted in a slightly larger fail than the previous attempt, so I figured I’d just post it here as an article.Continue reading
Now that the New Year has begun I’ve started to go through the Scrabble Calendar. Each day’s puzzle is more ludicrous than the last with the people who complete them being capable of bending spoons with their minds.
Fake Examples:
What three standard endings can be added to WEEPING for a 14 letter word: SWEEPINGNESSES.
_E_U_ _ A _ R
With a rack of NNPHXTI, what tiles can you lay to spell a type of Egyptian Lily? NENUPHAR. Right on the tip of my tongue.
The worst are the “What’s your play?” pages where it’s an existing Scrabble board and you have to make the best play and guides are given like: 50 points – learning, 80 points – good, 190 points – expert and I get around 12. On the plus side, none of the tiles fall out when I throw the entire calendar at the wall.
Happy spelling!
Coworker: Well, how many pizzas should we have for the meeting?
Coworker #2: Normally, 5 feeds the core group.
Coworker: Does that include the guy that transferred from R&D?
Coworker #2: No.
Coworker: Seven it is.
Normally I can confidently crush 3/4 of a pie at work, but somehow the person thought that my appetite would spur further consumption through either imitation or diffused fatness.
The brownie as a tool of office diplomacy has long been in my arsenal. I missed two days of work without appropriately notifying my bosses and the last hints of angst were dismissed over a week-old brownie created during the Great Guest Exodus of New Years Eve. But the brownie can be used for a more sinister purpose, intimidation.
Me: Would you like a piece?
Coworker: Sure, I’ll take a piece.
Me: Oh, that’s it. I thought you’d said you’d take a piece. Not a crumb.
Coworker: Hey, I just had lunch.
Me: And you need a quality confection to top it off. The portion you took is like a shot of beer, insulting to the drinker and the bartender.
Coworker:Â Ok…. I’ll be back later to get the rest.
Me: No! You’ll be back now to get the rest. Get in there, and take a slice.
Me: Would you like a piece?
Coworker: Yes, I’d love some, thank you. I really like brownies.
Me: Oh, so that’s how you show your love? With what appears to be a portion the size of mice leavings?
Coworker: I just started a new diet.
Me: The first three letters tell you all you need to know “DIE”. Are you trying to kill your tastebuds?
Coworker: I’ll try more.
Me: Try? Do or do not. There is no try.
Coworker: Ok…. *cuts larger slice*
Me: I’m going to check back with you later to see if you finished it.
Who new baked goods could be such precise tools of demasculation? Next week: Decimating self image with coffee crumb lemon bars.