Coin Puzzle - Are You a Genius?

Okay, I know I said I'd take a few days off, but I'm feeling better and can sit for a little bit, so ... Here is a post I was holding onto. Just watch the video below, and follow along with it. Just to help you out a bit, you will be asked to get five coins: three large and two small. (Quarters and pennies work well.)

I'm ashamed to say it took me 5 tries. I am typically much better at these logic puzzles, especially after seeing the solution. D'oh! In my defense, I had a sinus headache and was under the influence of Sudafed and my usual cocktail of prescription medication.

If you go to the website shown in the video, there is a slew of comments to the video saying how they completed this coin puzzle in four moves or less. By the rules in the video, yes, they did. But I'd add another rule to the puzzle which states, "When moving the paired coins, their ending position must have one of the two coins touching at least one of the non-moved coins."

How well did you do?

Few Days Off

I likely will not be blogging for the next few days. A painful medical condition has arisen that precludes me from sitting too long. I'm too embarASSed to tell you what it is. Butt, hopefully I'll have some PREPARATION done for when I return, TUCKing away little ideas and such.

Until then amuse yourselves with Star Wars: Attack of The Hemorrhoids!

Kitty Say What?

Now I got this song stuck in my head! Nooooooo!

D&D&Me

Wow ... that D&D video was perhaps the most boring and poorly put together piece of promotional crap I've ever watched. I put the wrong video up. I had meant to post this one:

A much more light-hearted look at Dungeons and Dragons over the years.

I've played D&D since Summer 1979. Yes, my first time playing was when I was 8-years-old!

All I really recall is I was given an elf to play. At that time elves were not a race, as much as a class. They were a combination of warrior, archer, and magic-user. I didn't care about that then, though. I knew my elf could shoot a bow and cast Magic Missile! Of course, my mental image of Magic Missile was of miniature ICBMs flying out of my elf's hands, not mystical shards of light doing force impact damage. I was eight! Whaddaya expect?

The only other thing I recall from that very first experience was encountering a stegosaurus. Now, I loved dinosaurs at the time. One of my favorite toys was a pack of cheap, multi-colored plastic dinosaurs I would play with for hours, doing mock battles, attacking my other toys, growling and roaring.

The fact said Stegosaurus was in a 10'x10'x10' room in the middle of an underground dungeon never crossed my eight year old mind. Nor did the fact that Stegoaurs do not eat meat, yet piles of bones and half eaten goblin corpses littered the hallway surrounding the door into the dino filled closet. What did register is that the damn thing killed my elf in one lousy hit. This was after my Magic Missile spell bounced harmlessly off its scaled hide, as well as a slew of hastily shot arrows.

I didn't really get into playing D&D until a few months later in 1980, after the Christmas break, when a friend of mine got the Basic game from Santa. Our small group of friends spent hours and hours pouring over the rules, creating new characters, and trying to draw what our carefully crafted characters looked like. All before we ever stepped foot into a single adventure.

The Keep on the Borderlands was my first, real adventure. Fighting orcs, goblins, and the occasional Ogre and undead in the Caves of Chaos is still a warm memory. My elf made it all the way to level 3 this time ... before a black dragon ate her. She had no chance, really. The dragon was hiding under a pile of dirty goblin clothing in a small side cave. The DM (Dungeon Master) added that little encounter into the published adventure after deciding we had done enough Dungeons, it was now time for the Dragons part of the game's title. =/

I was beginning to hate reptiles.

The rest is history.

Playing D&D gave me a way to unleash my imagination, a love of reading (mostly fantasy stories at that time), exercised my math skills with its often arcane rules of figuring out if an action succeeded, broadened my communication skills through story-telling and role-play, and taught me how to research by looking up rules in the books, as well as all sorts of esoteric things relating to medieval times from the library. (Yeah, I learned the difference between a bill-guisarme and a halberd, as well as what a buttery was, and why a longbow was deadlier than a crossbow, among other things. You know, important knowledge to help me in my day-to-day life!)

I've played, and collected, D&D since. I used to have several of the varying Basic Sets (but they were lost or otherwise misplaced over the last 27 years). I have many original 1st edition rulebooks, most of the 2nd edition core rule books, the vastly underrated Skills and Powers options set of rulebooks (more like a 2.5 edition), and the core rulebooks for 3rd Edition.

I never "upgraded" to 3.5 Edition, though i do have the 3.5 Basic Game box set which I keep intending to teach and play with the boys, but never do. Mainly because, by the time the weekend rolls around, we are so busy with one thing or another, someone is on restriction for something, or Mom isn't feeling well (the only real gaming spot is a table very near her bedroom), we have no time. Plus I play WoW ... a lot. More than I should.

Which brings us to this weekend and the lack of posts Saturday and Sunday. I could have, but they would have been made in the late afternoon, almost evening. Evenings are times when I like to pop into WoW and hook up with online friends to hang out. Plus, one of the kids was in big trouble (for something I felt was minor and way overblown, but Grandma wouldn't let it go! *sigh*) and the house was an unpleasant place to be, let alone try to write a blog.

All in all, I'd rather have been in a 10'x10' room with a Stegosaurus.

D&D 4th Edition

An official video about the recently unveiled, upcoming 4th Edition of the venerable Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game.

More to come later ...

Another Fine Chinese Product

This is a Chinese made bubble blower called Bubble Breezer (or Bub L Breezer). Yes, he blow bubbles out of his butt. No, I'm not providing a link to where you can get one. You'll know how to find one if you really wanted one ... not that anyone would. Right?

Besides, with all the Chinese recalls lately, you'd be lucky if this thing didn't blow up in your face, or create leaded bubbles.

This product might explain doggy breath:


It can't be be any worse than the possible upcoming US introduction of the well-made Chinese automobile manufacturer Chery Amulet. See how well it fares in a standard crash test.

That's pure quality there, folks! You just don't get full body accordion crumple like that in American cars these days. (Technically, that was a Russian crash test demonstration of the Chery Amulet).

Chrysler has inked a deal with Chery to begin selling its cars here in the US. Mainly compact and sub-compact cars in the $10,000 to $15,000 range. And, yes, they will still make money on such cheap automobiles manufactured in China and shipped to the US. [cite]

Chrysler is going to have to do a Hell of a job selling this piece of crap to the American public. Oh, sure, they will likely get it up to American safety standards. But, the stigma of being Chinese made, especially after the recent spate of dangerous Chinese made recalls, will make most people think more than twice about buying one. The viral video above will be burned into a lot of peoples' consciousness. The Buy American segment will surely use any and all manner and media to discredit the purchase of these cars.

We're a ways off from seeing them in the US, and Chrysler is probably more interested in growing their brand name in foreign markets, where these cars, even in current state, would sell nicely. Still, the US market could use a reasonably priced, safe, fuel efficient small car (think VW Bug a few decades back.)

Time will tell. Maybe these Chery built cars will be a good thing.

And, maybe it'll blow bubbles out of its tail pipe!

Adventures in Foosball

Two Christmas's ago, we bought the kids a Star Wars Foosball Table. It was a Wal-Mart special, only %59.99. A deal, I thought. Until I had to put the monster together.

Fortunately the kids were visiting their Grandparents in Michigan. I'm not sure their tender ears would have withstood the blistering tirade of curses, oaths, and mumbled dire imprecations for the designers of this do-it-yourself game from Hell.

Not that the instructions were difficult; indeed, they were quite clear, concise, and relatively easy to follow. Not that the parts were packed poorly; everything was labeled, each hardware component was packaged separate and marked, nothing was damaged, chipped, worn, or scratched.

Sportscraft, the maker of the foosball table, did an excellent job with this product. Other assembly-required manufacturers would do well to emulate Sportscraft when packaging their products.

No, the trials and tribulations of assembling the game table came from two sources: the sheer volume of parts and the idiocy with which I went about putting it together.

Clearly this was going to be a two person job. Of course, I went it solo.

I had my trusty Black & Decker cordless power drill. I had my case of Craftsman hand tools. I had plenty of floor space in which to work. I had ample lighting. I had a big-screen TV with all sorts of Christmas specials on to entertain me as I worked.

I was ready to work!

Except that I had forgotten to charge up my drill. And, several screwdrivers, the Allen wrenches, and my crescent wrench were mysteriously missing from my tool case. And, the volume of pieces from inside the tightly packed, deceptively small box grew to take over the living room, the couch, and portions of the walking area between the front and back of the house. The lighting was fine ... from one angle; the rest of the place may as well have been the dark side of the moon. The television was fine. Except that with all the product pieces carefully strewn about I couldn't comfortably see anything, let alone sit down to watch it while waiting for my drill to charge. It did give me time to locate my missing tools. Most of them. A few are still AWOL. You might see their pictures on the sides of cans of WD-40, right under the "Have You Seen Me?" caption.

Long story short, after several long sweaty hours, a few splinters, a scraped knuckle or two, and much moaning, groaning, and general cursing, standing before me in all it's glistening glory was a bona fide, working foosball table. A 48'' x 24'' x 32.75" monument to perseverance, ingenuity, and sheer stubbornness.

I couldn't have been prouder.

Until my mother came out to see it and asked me if all the handles were supposed to be on the same side of the table.

...

Longer story shorter, after another sweaty hour, more splinters, a scraped knee to match the knuckles, more moaning, groaning, and enough cursing the FCC threatened to shut me down, I had wrestled the table apart, swapped the bars to their correct positions, and reattached everything. In the meanwhile I cracked an important stabilizing piece and almost cemented myself to both the floor and the table with some strong wood glue.

Did you know wood glue is great for removing fingerprints? Off your fingers?

The game table looked sharp. Darth Vader glowered from one side. Yoda brandished a lightsaber on the other. Clone Troopers and Federation battle droids faced each other in stony silence (well, hard plastic silence), waiting for the momentous occasion when the first plastic ball rolled onto the slate battlefield. The goal nets waited like ravenous maws. I swear I could see them salivating.

Well, the kids came back home, oohed and aahhed over the foosball table ... then proceeded to play their new Gameboy games.

Over the last two years, the table has been used several times, but serves mostly as a convenient travel path for the cats to get from the couch to the top of the television.

Yesterday was one of those days where the plastic clone troopers and Federation driods did footie battle.

The kids and I played a cut-throat tournament of winner-plays-loser. Star Wars foosmen spun like demented dervishes, dancing wildly across the table. The ball spacked and popped back and forth, a white blur on the blue-green field of deadly battle. You could almost hear the roar of a crowd as fancy moves and well-timed kicks sent the ball soaring into the awaiting maws of the goals.

Okay, what really happened was I had my ass handed to me by a 13 and 10-year-old.

I jammed my pinky trying to quickly grab one my sticks to block a shot. I pinched the skin of my thumb in the small hole the pole slides through. My back seized up trying to awkwardly stoop down so as to reach the gaming rods. And once, the ball flew out of the table box with enough force to knock my glasses askew.

After a celebratory dance by the kids, whom ended up tied when i called a halt to the tournament (no fool, I), the table was slid back into its customary spot.

The cats were pleased their highway was returned and promptly sat on it, shooting looks of scorn at their crazy humans who needed plastic men mounted on rotating rods to bat a ball around. That's what paws were for. Sheesh.