Monthly Archive for April, 2006

The Prankster

Published
by
Mark
on Wednesday 26th April 2006
in General
. 3 Comments

Not to be outdone by Al, lo and behold my humor:

the Prankster

(47% dark, 38% spontaneous, 36% vulgar)

your humor style:
CLEAN | COMPLEX | LIGHT

Your humor has an intellectual, even conceptual slant to it. You’re not pretentious, but you’re not into what some would call ‘low humor’ either. You’ll laugh at a good dirty joke, but you definitely prefer something clever to something moist.

You probably like well-thought-out pranks and/or spoofs and it’s highly likely you’ve tried one of these things yourself. In a lot of ways, yours is the most entertaining type of humor because it’s smart without being mean-spirited.

PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Conan O’Brian - Ashton Kutcher

The 3-Variable Funny Test!

The test tracked 3 variables and how I compared to other people my age and gender:

   
I scored higher than 34% on darkness
   
I scored higher than 31% on spontaneity
   
I scored higher than 48% on vulgarity

So, what we find out here is that Al has a darker and more spontaneous humor than I, but mine is more vulgar than hers. Interesting, no?

Waiting for the Dish Network guy can be so boring.

Monopoly - The Here & Now Edition

Published
by
Mark
on Monday 24th April 2006
in Entertainment
. 5 Comments

Hasbro will be giving Monopoly a facelift this fall. The new edition of Monopoly will be called The Here & Now Edition. It will feature landmarks from 22 cities, including Chicago, San Francisco, Las Vegas and New York. You can vote for your favorite national landmarks at monopoly.com between now and May 12. The landmarks with the most votes in each city will appear on the game board when it is released in the fall.

Traffic research

Published
by
Mark
on Monday 24th April 2006
in Uncategorized
. 2 Comments

Once again I have been foiled by my own apathy. Brandon Hanson has posted an article titled Beating Traffic at OmniNerd (no affiliation with the defunct Omnipotent Creations or my markomni nickname). Since I was in college, I have wondered just how much time you could save by driving a little faster or choosing a different route when commuting from place to place. I have gone so far as to want to compile information about my commute to map out the best times and routes to take in the morning and evening to have the shortest commute times.

Obviously this is less of a concern for me now that I work 5 minutes away from home, as opposed to 30 minutes. While I was working at PHS, I informally took note of commute times. I kept track of times I left work or home, the time it takes to travel from one point to another on a street, and average stop times at intersections. While I took into account extra information that Hanson did not, he took into account plenty of other information for his analysis, including day of week, week of month and whether or not the local school district was in session. That last one I sort of kept track of, of course, being that I work in a school.

I haven’t completed reading his analysis, but it looks interesting. I am convinced that such analysis of traffic patterns can lead to better driving directions when using a computerized map, such as Mapquest and Google Maps. I would need more travel time data in order to put together such a service, so we’ll see if I’ll ever find the time to do that.

Cringely tells tales of Microsoft

Published
by
Mark
on Monday 24th April 2006
in Technology
. 0 Comments

This is old news by now, but I’d like to still post it. Cringely has a post on his site where he paints a picture about Microsoft’s early years, and it’s not a pretty one. It’s a good read for those interested in geek history, and particularly the history of one of the most-loved and most-hated companies in the tech industry.

Barbecue

Published
by
Mark
on Monday 24th April 2006
in Uncategorized
. 5 Comments

I wanted to thank everyone that came over last night for burgers. I’m sorry about the undeadness of the first few that came off of the grill. It appeared to be an enjoyable evening with bocci ball, Citadels (and a more thorough listing at Wikipedia), Teachers, Resident Evil 2 (not a highlight so much as a thing to make fun of), and, of course, food.

I’d post pics, but I haven’t been taking too many pictures with my camera lately :-( Those that I have taken, I’ve been slow to post on Flickr. At any rate, I think I saw some flashes throughout the night, with some directed at even me. So I’m sure Vicki will have some photos up somewhere.

Also, thank you to everyone for putting stuff away. On my way up to bed, I was thinking if I should put stuff away right then and there. I didn’t do it last night because I wanted stuff out in case people wanted said stuff, and I was feeling pretty tired. My plan was to put stuff away this morning, and it was much easier just having to put out the Peapod boxes and swap dishes in the dish washer. So, thank you :-)

Twelve nails

Published
by
Mark
on Friday 21st April 2006
in News
. 3 Comments

Here’s a winner for you: an Oregon man went to the hospital complaining of a headache, but he was found to have twelve nails embedded in his head! The nails got into his head during an attempted suicide when he was high on methamphetamines last year!

PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) — An Oregon man who went to a hospital complaining of a headache was found to have 12 nails embedded in his skull from a suicide attempt with a nail gun, doctors say.

…

The unidentified 33-year-old man was suicidal and high on methamphetamine last year when he fired the nails — up to 2 inches in length — into his head one by one.

…

No one before is known to have survived after intentionally firing so many foreign objects into the head, according to the report, written by Dr. G. Alexander West, the neurosurgeon who oversaw the treatment of the patient.

The man at first told doctors he had had a nail gun accident, but later admitted it was a suicide attempt.

W O W !

No blame on GTA

Published
by
Mark
on Wednesday 19th April 2006
in News
. 1 Comment

A third-grade took his teacher’s minivan on Monday. The kid said that he "just wanted to drive around for a while." The article at CNN.com reports that there was no damage done to the car, nobody was injured and no charges would be pressed against the little car thief. The third-grader was suspended from school for a week, and he will not be able to return to the same teacher’s class when his suspension ends.

The best part is the story is that there is no mention of any video game inspiration. That’s right, this story can’t be used to push some "save-the-children-by-banning-mature-games" agenda.