Knock knock - Who's there? Fishes. Fishes who...

I had an idea for one of those time-management resource-management scurry-of-activity games, like Diner Dash or Cake Mania.

In my game concept, you're on the RMS Titanic moments after it has been struck by the iceberg. Ship's Builder Thomas Andrews (ably portrayed by the great Victor Garber in the 1997 movie) manages to quickly convince the captain that the ship is going down.

As we all know, there weren't enough lifeboats - but there were 840 rooms just counting guest rooms. That's 840 wooden doors - a lot of quickly available wood.

So the plan is to get the hardworking third class passengers out from the bowels of the ship and working on rafts built from doors, tables, rope, and etc. The rafts only need to hold together for a few hours in calm seas.

You would manage your different resource-gathering teams, and coordinate with the little space available on deck for the building teams. Since the rafts would not be designed to be lowered like the lifeboats, they would need to be deployed slowly as the ship sank, which would also mean managing the passengers as a resource. The actual things needing managing would change/progress throughout the game, cutting down on repetition.

When I described by idea to my friend Brandon (I would link to his blog, but he does not), he felt this game might offend a lot of people. Really? It's been 98 years, but still 'too soon'? All those survivors would find it in poor taste? Fine, I'll call the ship the USS Wackadoodle, and no one will be offended.

What do you guys think - would many folks be offended? I know some folks can be offended by a cool breeze and a sunny day, but still.

Cookie crumbs everywhere

It might just be my cookie settings or some such simple thing, but this is weird and annoying - for the past few weeks, logging in to Gmail will not log me in to Blogger, but logging in to Blogger will log me in to Gmail.

Ugh. Now I have to do things like think and remember which order to open tabs, damn it.

(See, I don't store any passwords on my PC or in my browser, so I log in to everything each time I use the PC.)

Fun at Publix Grocery

We discovered a new Publix grocery store in our area with a lot of variety we have not seen since California, or never seen in person. We had fun.


Turkish Delight - Full of Eastern Promise! LOL.


Jammie Dodgers! I have heard about them in many a UK amusement. I want to say I heard of them on Doctor Who (I'm not thinking of jelly babies), but Michelle says it's the Louise Rennison books. I'm sure it comes from more than one source in my memory.


This horned melon does not look delicious. As a hunter-gatherer, I would not spot that and think "dinner?" unless I was very hungry. Which I would be.

Never Played. Please don't hate me

Here's the thing

So there's this guy, right? And he's a serial killer - but he doesn't like to get his hands dirty. He drives around in a pickup truck - the front cab is packed full of stuff, so there's no room for anyone else.

Serial Killer is on the on-ramp of the freeway and stops to pick up a hitchhiker, one of those guys you see by the side of the road wearing a dirty wife beater, a week of beard growth, with a limp cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He may or may not have a mangy dog with him. Let's say not, because I like dogs.

The serial killer stops to pick up the hitchhiker, but there's too much stuff in the cab. SK leans out the window of the picket and tells HH that he can ride in the trailer. It's one of those classic teardrop trailers, made of aluminum. SK tells HH that he's just finished refurbishing the trailer and is on his way to deliver it to the family that just bought it.

HH thinks it's a bit odd that SK would allow him to ride in the trailer, especially since HH is a bit rank, smelling of booze and urine, but a free ride is a welcome thing.

The trailer has nothing but smooth polished metal inside, but still cool since it's morning. It's clean and antiseptic, smelling vaguely of chemicals. HH finds a woman's bracelet on the floor of the trailer and pockets it.

They've only gone a mile down the freeway when HH decides the trailer is too stuffy. He tries to open one of the cute little windows, but it seems they are just for show, not actual windows.

Moments later, SK pulls a lever and an acid bath washes over HH. The screaming lasts only a few moments - not that it matters, since the trailer is very well sealed. The acid sloshes back and forth in the trailer until 19 minutes later when a timer goes off in the cab. SK pulls another lever and the acid is pumped into a holding tank. 10 minutes later, SK pulls another lever, and within a minute he flips all levers back to their original position.

Finally, he presses a button. A red light blinks five times, then turns green.

SK pulls off the exit ramp and into the parking lot of a fast food restaurant. He opens the trailer - holding his breath against the wave of chemical smell - to find HH's clean, bleached bones curled into a tidy fetal position. He uses pliers to pop out the five teeth with dental fillings, and pockets the teeth.

SK scoops the bones into a surprisingly small bag, and tosses the bag into the fast food restaurant dumpster. He drives away.

Watch Your Step

LeeLoo! Multi-Pass!

Bwa Ha Ha'ing like a super villain (which I think will be my Halloween theme for this year), I downloaded the 'Dragon Dictation' app, which is supposed to be pretty decent speech-to-text program).

The iPhone version of Dragon Dictation does a decent job. I speak pretty clearly as a rule, (Death to Mumblers!) and extra carefully when dictating to an app. Dragon Dictation gets 90-95% of my words correct, which may be a wonder of programming but using the on-screen keyboard to make corrections is frustrating.

Also, Dragon has an option to post your dictated text directly to Twitter - cool!
But Dragon does not display a count of your characters - stupid!

So - Back to the Bwa-Ha-Ha. I warmly basked in a smug sense of cleverness as I recorded a story idea into the 'Voice Memo' app on my phone, and then attempted to allow the playback to dictate to Dragon Dictation, also on my phone.

But no. The two apps will not run at the same time, so much for multi-tasking - this is my first multi attempt after having the phone for a few weeks. This is the only thing I want to multitask, damn it.

I understand that only certain types of apps can run at the same time, and that the OS is just trying to maximize my processor speed experience and battery life. I can see an option in future iPhone OS's to allow multi-tasking of most apps, and pop a warning that running X and Y at the same time may not be recommended - you could allow or deny.

But I do have options now. I could dictate directly into the Dragon app and risk losing valuable details. I could record a voice memo and playback to the Dragon app on Michelle's phone. Or I could use my PC. Meh, meh, meh.

Alan Bradley

If you told me a year ago that I'd enjoy reading a story set in 1950 about a chemistry-obsessed 11 year old girl growing up in an English mansion with her sisters and absent-minded father, I would not have believed you.

Alan Bradley was a 70 year old first time novelist when the first 'Flavia de Luce' mystery was released in 2009, and he did an amazing job. I hope he has the longevity to release a long series of Flavia books - they're really good fun.

First was 'The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie' (with the dubious distinction of also being a stamp-collecting mystery - which doesn't sound interesting, but it is!) where Flavia shows great restraint in not poisoning her irksome sisters while saving her entire family.

I enjoyed the first book most, possibly because Flavia was in actual peril for a good part of the story, and I didn't get to spend as much time with some of my favorite secondary characters in book two (such as Inspector Hewitt). But it's not the author's job to provide me superfluous face time with characters x, y and z but to tell the story that needs telling.

The second book was 'The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag' which is an admittedly awkward title, but a book that somehow manages to combine puppetry, WWII refugees, murder, a pigeon-poop poison remedy and nefarious chocolate in a realistic story.

Transitional Urges

Smokers seem to use cigarettes as a transitional device - after work, after food, after sex, etc.

I feel the need to snack in transitional moments - do you guys have the same problem?

I was going to post about the need for some sort of doggie treat, but for humans, but then I realized that I have blogged about this before.

Credi-Bull #16

Credi-Bull - a news item that might be fact, or might be fiction.

When playing, please avoid definitive answers like "I know this is true, I saw it on the news last night."..Instead, couch your vote as a "guess" - this will help ensure that everyone gets an unbiased chance to play!

George Campbell is a man on a mission - he is developing a class action suit against the U.S. Postal Service. The crux of the case that just over ten thousand of the fifty thousand new postal scales purchased by the USPS last year were shown to have a fault of .001 ounces.

This is a small measure, but Campbell's concern is the 'Forever Stamp' which guarantees to: "always be valid as First–Class postage on standard envelopes weighing one ounce or less, regardless of any subsequent increases in the First–Class rate."

"The problem isn't the scales really, it's the contract that a Forever Stamp makes with the American Citizen who's redeeming it. We had the right to send one ounce, forever, and we were cheated by bad scales."

The faulty equipment is scheduled for replacement, but a speedy resolution is beyond the current budget - all scales will not be replaced until 2013.

Meanwhile, Campbell's quest goes on. To qualify for a Federal Class Action Suit in the U.S., the controversy must be proved to exceed $5,000,000. Campbell is working hard to collect names, though he claims the USPS is blocking his access to the names of its patrons who purchased the stamps.

Real or Fake?
(Vote in the 'comments' section, answer to be revealed there on Saturday).

I respectfully decline

"Hey Mike, when you're finished helping that customer, could you take care of the spider outside by the front door?"