There’s a developer behind me who is chewing out an ECLSS guy who tested his load and found several things that were broken.   As much as I hate the fact that this guy is a butthead and the fact that our guys are too pacifictic to talk back to these guys, he does earn the Quote of the Day:

"I’m 99% sure that this is your fault."

Oh yeah, answers…  I think no one got 3, 4, or 7.  I was surprised by 3 & 7…  I guess the lyrics of 3 can kinda get pushed to the background…   and 7 I thought someone might get just because it was the opening line of the song…  

One day, I’ll slip a Tori song past Manda…  some day…   maybe…      oh yeah, maybe next time I should chose a song that’s not her favorite.   

1. "what if I’m a mermaid?"  – Silent All These Years, Tori Amos 
2. "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit."  – Chop Suey, System of a Down
3. "tired friend / times are gone / for honest men."  – Black Hole Sun, Soundgarden
4. "I never realized I was spread too thin / til it was too late…"  – Broken Home, Papa Roach
5. "I have a college pal who says we can pay one price for two"  – Video Bargainville, Moxy Fruvous
6. "they’re probably drinking coffee / and smoking big cigars."  – Folsom Prison Blues, Johnny Cash
7. "I was lost til you were found."  – For Crying Out Loud, Meatloaf
8. "I give her all my love / that’s all I do."  – And I Love Her, The Beatles

One of coworkers just walked by my cube singing softly to herself, "rock the cat box, rock the cat box…"   

Yeah, I didn’t want to interrupt her, but you really have to wonder if she really thinks those are the lyrics… 

While getting lunch today, I saw a building with a giant sign GUARD DOG ON DUTY!   After sitting there for a minute, a little Scotty terrier came out of the door and walked around the porch and sat in front of the sign…  if only I had a camera.

There were a few other interesting observations I was going to make, but naturally, I have forgotten them.  Yay. 

Oh yeah, weekend was fun, but didn’t get to make any DGS…   but apparently my jello-shot making skills have not diminished…  good to know. 

And on a work related note, the Japanese class that I’ve been fighting to make happen for six months was just opened up to public enrollment…   I swear if I get bumped from this class, I am not going to be a happy person.   I fight for six months to make the class happen, and then some higher "priority" student will see it and be like, "oh yeah, that looks cool… I think I’ll do that."   bump.   Sucks.

Sorry, I forgot the most amazing people of all, and this is definitely in that omg-are-you-really-that-stupid? sort of way.  An Omaha brat decides he wants to be famous, so he leaves a suicide note saying that he’s going out in style, and saying that he’ll be famous, then he grabs a gun, and goes down to the local mall and opens fire.  Ok, stupid, sure.  What amazes me are the idiotic news people who immediately fulfill his request!  CNN had a three hour expose on this kid and his "troubled past" on this morning. 

I hate the media.  I hate it with the burning passion of a thousand firey suns.  Why, oh why, would you do that?  We’d never bow down to the requests of a hostage holding terrorist, but hey, if he goes ahead and kills everyone, then yeah, sure, we’ll do exactly what he wants. 

Why don’t we just paint big signs on malls and schools and public gathers that say "shoot here for instant fame"? 

People amaze me.   Two examples:

We bought a Christmas tree a couple of days ago.  One of those nice, big, expensive trees that should last us many a year to come.  Only, when we went to put it up last night we realized that we didn’t get what we paid for.  Someone had bought the big expensive tree, took it home, swapped it out with their small, USED tree, and then took the new box with their old tree back to walmart.  Naturally, walmart accepted it without checking and put it right back on the shelf for sale, where guess who got it…  yeah.   Opening the box and taking out a small, used tree (with some broken ornaments still on it) just pissed me off.  What kind of imbecile would steal a Christmas tree?  And the people at walmart weren’t even surprised.  They said it’s normal.  Isn’t that a problem??   Anyway, by the time we figured all this out, every walmart around here is sold out of those trees.  Figures.

The next example is less of a wow-you’re-stupid! and more of a wow-you-didn’t-know-that?   Was just talking to a co-worker who is in the process of signing up with the very expensive "green" energy company around here.  I wasn’t going to make fun of her, because to each their own, and all that, but I did comment that I went with whatever was cheapest since it’s the same energy as anyone else gets.  Her response was sort of a "really?  You think that’s how it works?"  Now, I understand that the general populace may not understand the inner workings of our nation’s power grid, but I would expect the common person to realize that buying energy from a different company than your neighbor does not mean they’re going to run special lines directly to your house.  I would think it would be obvious to the casual observer that dispite the fact that there are over 20 energy companies in houston, there are not 20 sets of power lines fed into each neighborhood around here.  Then again, my definition of obvious differs greatly from most people’s, I guess. 

Ok, back to work.  I’ll post music answers after more people have had a chance to read them.

Music at work means that it’s time for Name That Tune:

1.  "what if I’m a mermaid?"

2.  "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit."

3.  "tired friend / times are gone / for honest men."

4.  "I never realized I was spread too thin / til it was too late…"

5.  "I have a college pal who says we can pay one price for two"

6.  "they’re probably drinking coffee / and smoking big cigars."

7.  "I was lost til you were found."

8.  "I give her all my love / that’s all I do."

Yeah, 8 should do for now.   Some are easy and some are obscure.  I’ve listened to all of them today. 

Don’t know if I mentioned this, but they recently decided to replace the bridge right outside of neighborhood.  The result is a very fun three months where I have to take a mile and a half detour just to get home (which I have forgotten every day except about two, leaving me very grumpy by the time I actually make it to the house).

So, today, I’m headed out taking the normal detour, when lo and behold, there are giant signs on the detour saying road closed to through traffic.  Ok.  I was slightly annoyed to say the least, but the sign was right next to a neighborhood entrance, so I figured it’d be a short detour through the neighborhood.  After wondering in the neighborhood for 5 minutes or so, I realized that the neighborhood on this side of the road closure did not connect with the neighborhood on the other side of the closure, so I had to backtrack all the way back out of the neighborhood, back through the detour, and take another detour path which took even longer. 

On my way out of the neighborhood, I stopped to ask the workers, who were intently examining the road closed sign, if this was some sort of joke or something.  Their reply?  "Well, it’s been on the website for weeks now."   oh, yes, I forgot, as a citizen of the almighty Pearland, I should be checking the city construction website daily.  Stupid me.  I forgot it was my civic duty to keep up with idiotic city planning. 

I thought about strangling the guy, but I couldn’t reach him.  Plus, he had a shovel and a hard hat.  (it’s the hard hat that’s intimidating, of course.)

In other news, it’s worth mentioning that Rock Band is awesome.  It’s awesome by itself, but when you put it together with three good friends, it’s even more awesomer.    

My thoughts on strip games, from a purely academic perspective:

What defines a good strip game? In a random quest to define the parameters that would make for a good game, I have come across several ideas that I’d like to share.

After significant thought on the matter, I believe that all strip games should fall into one of two categories: players vs players, or players vs time.

For players vs players, all games should meet the following criteria:
– Games must rely on luck and either skill or strategy.
– Players must be able to win and lose. Meaning, the players should be able to win clothes back from other players.

Rule #1 insures that all players stand an equal chance of winning, because we all know that luck trumps skill. Rule #2 insures that the game isn’t just a one-way path to get naked. (Here the author interjects that he does understand most strip games are excuses to get naked, but I’m trying to define a good strip game.)

Some examples of good/bad strip games of the player vs player type:
– strip sharp shooting: bad. almost no luck involved, and the loser is likely to be holding a gun. This would, however, provide the mechanic by which he/she retrieves clothing.
– strip risk: questionable. there is luck, but strategy is a big factor. The mechanic by which you win back clothes would take creativity. game takes forever.
– strip texas hold ‘em: good. luck, skill, and win back clothes from other players. (See The Break Up for complete rules). brings new meaning to several key poker phrases.

For players vs time, all games should follow some basic guidelines:
– Players should be waiting for some random, non-player controlled event that will eventually cause someone to lose some clothes.
– The time limit for such games should be set before hand.
– Games should be structured such that there is a roughly 50/50 chance of any one person becoming naked in the prescribed time.

I think the last rule could use some explaining. While slight adjustments can be made to the percent chance of becoming naked, you don’t want to move it up too much, or else it takes away the excitement of the game, and it becomes an excuse to get naked.

I’ve done some additional analysis on this type of game, and these types of games can best be modeled as a Poisson’s Process. The players simply have to determine the average number of articles of clothes (k), choose a time (Tau), and an event that occurs at a correct time interval (lambda). I was going to solve for lambda to give you a simple equation to use to determine an appropriate event, but after 14 pages of math, I gave up and it’s left as an exercise to the reader. (The author here notes that you shouldn’t be intimidated by the math, as an interative solution would work quite adequately and would take only a few seconds of your time). As a quick rule of thumb, for a 50% game, choose something that occurs roughly once every [num_players * num_clothes_per_player / (2* total_time)] per unit of time. This is an incredibly rough hack and I highly suggest you work out the proper lambda for yourself.

There are many examples of good/bad games of this type. Mainly, be creative. An excellent example is padiddle, where the last person in a car to respond to a particular event loses that round. The key, as is key for most of these types of games, is choosing the correct event. Busted headlights, for example, seem to be perfect for most trips. (The author points out here that he saw 7 busted headlights on the way home, but had no one in the car with him). Pointing out red F-150’s, though, would be bad… unless you’re driving in Italy. Other bad ideas include stop signs, trees, potholes, illegal lane changes, and starbucks.

Overall, I hope you have enjoyed this academic approach to strip games, and any comments on the approach presented here would be appreciated and will probably be incorporated into the theory at some point, if the idea is sound. and probably even it if isn’t.

Overanalyzing a conversation on overanalyzing conversations…  poetically aquarian.