Monthly Archives: May 2006

Hrm…


SELECT * FROM ALL 2004-CORVETTES WHERE MODEL = Z06


Price Car Mileage Color Miles to dealer Dealer/Private URL
$39,500 19,101 silver 9 d URL
$38,995 9,247 black 85 d URL
$35,500 12,000 yellow 134 p URL
$34,000 43,500 black 134 p URL
$38,998 11,282 red 136 d URL
$39,975 10,416 yellow 140 d URL
$37,995 12,500 black 142 d URL
$39,987 21,799 black 151 d URL
$39,888 23,402 red 155 d URL
$43,995 6,728 blue 156 d URL
$36,500 19,184 silver 163 d URL
$37,998 22,797 black 166 d URL
$37,500 32,000 black 168 d URL
$38,995 14,000 blue 171 d URL
$41,995 3,700 red 171 d URL
$48,991 3,728 blue w/ stipes 174 d URL
$40,477 16,443 yellow 182 d URL
$37,537 17,757 black 185 d URL


SELECT * FROM ALL 2006-CORVETTES WHERE MODEL = Z06


Price Car Mileage Color Miles to dealer Dealer/Private URL
$77,509 1,962 orange 185 d URL
$77,500 2,500 black 185 p URL
$76,599 178 yellow 145 d URL
$74,000 3,000 silver 154 p URL

links

Star Trek ads for G4 (brilliant) link via

100 pictures of 10’x10′ residences in Hong Kong link via

A game theoretic approach to the toilet seat problem link via

Rented apartment full of beer cans link via

Sculptural pieces created solely with paper by means of scoring and folding link via

Blogging the Bible. What happens when an ignorant person actually reads the Bible. link via

Camera array imaging and image processing techniques link via

Cardboard SLR camera link via

Millionaires that started out with nothing link via

Mark: “our ancestors still were mixing it up with those of the chimps until 6 million years ago” Dan: “And some of our friends were doing it 6 minutes ago” link1 link2 via

Complaining about being asked to write a file copy function for a job interview (or why my life sucks) link via

Angry/negative people can be bad for your brain link via

If Java was styled after Lisp link via

Disc Golf 05/20/2006

parking next to truck

It has been a while since we played at the Lutheran Church. This course is much closer to Adam and Rehana, but it is tiny (only nine holes). There is a big parking lot and it is empty on Saturday (apparently not a day of worship). But I am A.R. about parking away from other cars (and taking two spots). So Jon gave me grief. He joked that another car would park by me even though I was pretty distant from anything. And guess what happens? Mike parks right next to me! This was his first time to the course, so he spotted my truck and parked next to it.

disc at tee

After playing at Old Settlers Park for so long, the holes here seem so tiny in comparison. I could use my putter for the whole course. On hole two, I can overthrow the hole with my putter. However, I usually stick with my long range disc since it gives me some more options for throwing styles. John recently discovered the “Thumb throw” where you hold the disc straight up and grip it with your thumb on one side and the fingers on the other and throw it like a baseball. You can throw it high over the trees. And it flies essentially straight (well +/- 20 feet). John used it for most of his throws off of the tee.

Speaking of tees, my throw off of tee 3 veered off to the right and landed at tee 4.

disc at tee

For lunch we went to Red Robin. I tried their taco salad which looked like a huge starfish alien. Not only is it far too much food for a meal, but they drizzle ranch sauce over it (200 extra fat-based calories). So I got them to substitute salsa for it.

Afterwards we drove down to King’s Hobby and browsed. And then off to The Gas Pipe on Burnett. We bought some more discs cause we keep loosing them, you know?

Disc Golf 05/19/2006

disc on top

Adam joined us for the usual round of disc golf on Friday afternoon. It was hot out there and it was at least in the 90s. This is a bad sign for the comming summer. I hope to continue playing Fridays. But we shall see though. On the first hole, Adam’s disc lands on top of the goal! Which, unfortunately, does not count as in and I gave him the first letter in PIG by sinking it myself.

flowers

On hole two, we lost John’s Wraith. We assume that it went into the creek and tried looking for it. Either it went into the deep (and obscured) part or it was laying somewhere on the grass and we never noticed it. But I did notice a set of colorful plastic flowers that were trampled into the mud. So ephemeral…

Es

On hole four Adam loses his disc into the lake. Luckily it was floating on top and was buoyed by a pocket of air. But when we threw the retreiver at it, it promply sunk and dissipeared into the murkey depths. Adam went in wading but was not brave enough to go far enough in to get his shorts wet. So we called it a loss.

On hole 5, my disc veered off to the left and hit the road and skipped to the other side. Someone had spray painted E’s across the road (some of which looked like stick figure Klingon bird of preys). Who knows what that signifies.

fence

Unfortunately all of this searching for discs caused us to skip three holes. We did throw at hole 18 and I some how slid my disc under a fence that protects a transformer.

It was late and I only missed a couple minutes of my Pilates class.

A letter to Playboy

I went to Gumbo’s for lunch today. This is currrently on of my favorite restaurants. And the food was excellent as always. But what was interesting was the conversation that I overheard which sounded like it was straight out of a letter to Penthouse (which I only read for the articles, of course).

To my right was a table of four young males. One of them was telling a story and he was obviously bragging. Which went something like this:

He travelled to some town (which I did not catch the name of — I was not really paying attention at this point). Apparently, it was a Wednesday night and the night life was rather dull. But he goes to a bar and checks it out. After circling the place he goes and orders a beer. Not two minutes later, but this woman walks up to him and asks him if he wants to go somewhere else. He is interested, so he goes with her and leaves the beer. He doesn’t go into much detail what happened that night. But apparently, they start seeing more of each other and somehow the Mother enters the picture. Mercifully, he does not go into detail about the Mom.

The next surprising thing that I hear is that she is about to have cosmetic surgery performed on her. His audience now jokes about if something is added or removed. It seems that she is having her breasts enlarged. So he remarks that he gets to see the before and the after. He also mentions that he is going to rub cocoa over her scars. (I imagine that they are non-existent now adays. They can go through the belly button after all!)

All throughout the story, he kept stressing how special he was. How unique he was. Blah, blah, blah. One example was when he mentioned that the next time he goes to this bar, other men would be lined up to see the new look. They would remember him and wonder why he was picked when they were there far longer than he was.

Good thing I was facing away from them. I would not have kept a straight face at all…

Game Day 05/18/2006

Game #1

Elfenland

We had six people tonight, which is a hard number. Do you play a six player game or break up into two 3 player games (ignore other useless combinations, please)? It had been a while since we went with six. Elfenland was brought out onto the table and we all agreed. I view this game as rather dry and boring since I just view it as a travelling salesman problem with spurts of player-screwage, dealing with the bad cards that were dealt to you, and living with the poor set of tiles to choose from. But, it had been a while, so I acquiesced to the groups wishes.

I started out all right. But, during turn four, I was near Marty, who was obviously in the lead. And the difficulty chips came out on Marty’s likely path. Which happened to surround me. Sigh. It didn’t help that I recieved bad cards and unhelpful tile placements.

Game #2

Traumfabrik

Mike left early. With five people, the game choices increase. And Traumfabrik was brought out. I like this Knizia gem and happily played it. I really should get off my ass sometime and print out the paste ups for this game. I like playing with the English language movies and studios rather than their German equivalent. Marty was trying to deduce the English language film names during the game and I didn’t help him much by substituting monkeys in the title (like Gentlemen Prefer Blonde Monkeys).

With so many Grimms and one Ashley-Rollman in the game, this game took a while to play. I didn’t mind the wait so much for the bidding because that is the core to the game and you need to be thoughtful about it. However, what I did mind was the agonizing waits over tile selection in the party. Mike would choose first. But before he did that, he would slowly look at each person’s movie and figure out what they would need. And then go around the table again for good measure. So, I was in no mood to do that same thing at the end of the game for the final party. Yes. I could take my time, figure out what people’s scores would be if they could choose tiles, and hose them. But that just destroys the mood of the game. This should be a nice, fun social experience and not a long drawn out calculating process.

I quickly went for the actor that I needed to finish my movie and get me some points. Yes, I should have taken the agent since it had another star and also was a wildcard. But I wanted the game to be over quickly. Mike was happy to take the agent and apparently this gave him the lead in the final scoring. I could live with that. However during the clean up of the game, I got to hear from multiple people many times of that fact. Yes, I realize that. Even after the third time you told me. Sigh. It was more painfull than the calculation. So the next time I will try and figure out what everyone needs and how to hose them.

Or, I could just play Nicht die Bohne!

Lunch Time Tichuers 05/18/2006

Mike, the random wisher, was threating to sit on my right but did not. Apparently, my complaints about the random wish has become legendary. On the second hand, Adam might have made a four wish but chose not to since I was his partner. This would have taken out Jon’s bomb. Sigh.

For the last hand of the game, Mike started and played a number of cards (two straights). When he led a single and had two cards left, I risked it and called Tichu. I had two Aces, the Dragon, a medium single and a long straight. True, there was a chance that Jon had a bomb and a dog. But I had to call it just the same.


The scorecard for a game of Tichu

GT or T bet made or lost

This team scored more points than the other or one twoed

GT/T Team #1 GT/T GT/T Team #2 GT/T
MarkH & AdamR MikeA & Jon
 
75
  T- -75  
  120    
80
T+
 
310
T+   90  
  510     90  
T+ 615    
185
 
 
685
  T+ 315  
  820 T+  
380
 
T+
1005
    395  

Lunch Time Tichuers 05/16/2006

Wow, what a short and painfull game — at least for the other team! On the second or third hand, I had a dilemma: should I Tichu on this hand: AAKKQT9876543M ? I wasn’t worried about the straight, but I would play the Mah Jong next. I had two Aces but no Phoenix or Dragon, so I can count on neither Ace gaining a lead for me. Also, with the Phoenix out there, the pair of Kings might not be good. So I didn’t call Tichu. But I did go out first.

Ed had a dilemma of his own. Twice, Adam calls Tichu (or GrandTichu). Mike has only one card left. It is up to Ed to play high enough to stop Mike. And neither time could Mike be stopped from eventually going out first.


The scorecard for a game of Tichu

GT or T bet made or lost

This team scored more points than the other or one twoed

GT/T Team #1 GT/T GT/T Team #2 GT/T
Ed & AdamR MikeA & MarkH
T- -65    
65
 
  -25    
125
 
  -125 T-   325  
  -280 GT-  
380
 
  -350 T- T+
550
 
 
-455
GT-   555  

links

Bukkake super soaker link via

Bananas prove God exists link via

Coke video (seems inspired by Michel Gondry) link via

Wiltshire takes a helicopter journey over Rome and then draws a panoramic view of what he saw, entirely from memory link via

Gas taxes by state link via

Google maps on ASCII link via

Trebuchet on car link

Why road signs should be locked link via

Fuel efficiency and lessons from Europe link via

… has managed to fit five units of wrongness into only four declarative statements! link via

From the moment of my birth, light [that I could have influenced] has been expanding around the Earth and light [which could influence me, from an increasing distance of origin] reaching it — this ever-growing sphere of potential causality is my light cone link via

How to cure your asthma or hayfever using hookworm – a practical guide link via

Pet umbrella link via

Power tool drag races link via

Electric race car prototype link via

A FAA Radar track sequence of a bank of FedEx aircraft getting into Memphis as thunderstorms pass over the airport link via

Handling a gun increases testosterone levels while boardgames do not link via

20 story car tower with robotic retreival link via

Caution: The Model Rocket Safety Code does not approve of filling rocket motors with highly reactive chlorate-Oreo mixtures link via

“Dr Spock’s Baby Care is a best-selling owner’s manual for the most complicated ‘product’ imaginable — and it only has two levels of headings. You people have 8 levels of hierarchy and I haven’t even stopped counting yet. No wonder you think it’s complicated.” link via

Disc Golf 05/13/2006

Revolving weekly mini - Ladies only
Flying solo Memorial Open

For our Saturday round of disc golf, we played at Cat Hollow after learning that the new course in Williamson county was still unfinished and was missing its goals. There were a couple of announcements on the message board (apparently, there are enough women around here to make a weekly mini).

Jon in tree again

Adam threw a disc at an angle high up over the trees and it landed, after punching through the canopy), in a playable spot. So I took a chance and tried the same style of throw. Unfortunately, my disc was a little too far to the right and did not come back over the course. It also failed to puch through the tops of the trees. Thanks in part to the pervasive clinging thorny vines that climb over trees and starve them of light. So, I called in the heavy-hitting tree-climbing Jon. He was able to climb up to the top, grab the disc, and throw it down. There was a little scare when the branch he was using as a foot hold gave way. But he held on and found another spot.

Adam missed

Adam had two interesting putts. From our location, the steep and downward flight path of the disc looked on target to hit the goal. But it missed and cratered the earth. When we got to the goal, we noticed how close it was. Only a foot or so away…