Why I Like Digg.Com

I do like the sort of news that is aggregated there, but I really like another aspect of the site a lot more.

You see, when you are a registered user of the site, you can not only read the comments about the link to the story, but you can give them a thumbs up/thumbs down. You know when you hear someone say something really dumb in the line at the grocery store? This is just like that, only you can do something about it.

It gives me a grim, perverse sense of satisfaction. And I like it.

Wii Have News

Apparently as a surprise for my mister's birthday, the news channel for the Wii has just gone live a day early, and it's actually fairly nice. In precisely eight minutes (the Wii keeps track of how much time you spend doing stuff...I guess so parents can go in and see how much time the kids have spent playing games instead of doing homework or something) on it and got a really nice snapshot of the news in many different categories.

After just about a week of Wii ownership, I must say, it's pretty cool. When the B gets up from her nap, we'll go out in search of a new SD memory card (I really like that the memory slot isn't proprietary) and maybe a rechargeable battery system. Between the Wii and the B's toys, we don't half go through some batteries these days. Maybe I'll get a couple of classic Nintendo controllers too, since we have the GC Mario DoubleDash on the way from Amazon for part of the mister's present.

Damn, where are all you good double-dashers when I need someone to win all the hard races to unlock everything?

What Did Millard Fillmore Talk About?

Haven't you always wondered?

This page of cloud-type tags from select speeches from 1776 all the way through the most recent State of the Union Address will give you a little snapshot of what was on the mind of the president and the country at any given time in history.

Actually quite interesting, especially if you linger in areas away from the major wars and other well-known issues.

ETA: I posted this before I saw it on Boing Boing, actually, just so none of you think all I'm doing it re-posting BB stuff.

Star Wars: The 'Defies Description' Edition

I can't believe I beat CK to this. If you haven't seen this yet, it means you haven't been reading Boing Boing. (Which is, of course, your prerogative.)

Whee!

Our Wii came early! It only shipped from the next state over (Illinois) and the retailer upgraded us from three day shipping to two day + Saturday delivery.

At noon, it was dropped on our doorstep. The boxes looked like they'd been playing soccer with them, but everything inside was unmolested once I got 'em open.

There was a blip installing it, but it was my fault. Our Video 4 input has two different inputs, but once a cable is plugged into one type, it locks out the second one. I have a cable for my laptop in one of them, and I initially accidentally plugged the Wii in the other side and worried that it wasn't working. Moved it and everything was smooth as silk.

Our Miis are designed, our weather channel is set up, and I'm eying Altered Beast from the Wii store. (Only $5!) I played Zelda while the B slept, and a little while she played. I tried all the Wii Sports—I rule at boxing, mediocre at Bowling, and suck at Tennis.

When the B goes to bed, MONKEY BALL!

Wii, Bitches

So we've been trying to get a Wii. I think I wanted one, at this point, mostly because the "collector" in me wants the ultra-rare foil shiny thing safe in my binder. I mean, don't get me wrong—that's certainly not the only reason. It looks like a fun console, I can see us using it to unwind after the B goes to bed, and it's certainly the most money-conscious of the three "big" consoles. But they're hard as bejeezus to find.

We tried the early-morning stuff only to find we were too far back in line, or that the consoles were accidentally put on the shelf the day before. I was recently put onto an online app called "Refresh Thing", which has a page for Wii online retailers. I loaded it yesterday and checked it a couple of times, not really seeing any good leads.

I opened it again today, telling myself that I would not (and with the B, I cannot) obsessively refresh it over and over. I'd just check it occasionally, and if fate's hand reached down and showed me a store that had 'em in stock, I'd contemplate purchasing it.

Now, I'd ruled out several retailers who are forcing the console into $600 bundles with a bunch of games I don't want, but Circuit City (I know CK, you hate them...sorry) was on the short list of retailers because their bundle had only two games in it, and they were Zelda and Madden, which I could see us buying anyway. (Although I would happily switch Madden for Super Monkey Ball.) The first, and I mean FIRST time I loaded the page today, Circuit City was showing them in stock. I clicked through and grabbed my credit card, thinking I'd miss the window for sure.

The order did go through, but I still reasoned that they might have sold too many and would send out "sorry, it went out of stock while you were buying it" emails. I waited, happy that their website said it would ship today if it shipped at all, so at least I wouldn't have to wait too long for the verdict.

Around 5:00, the shipping confirmation popped into my email box, with real live tracking numbers and everything. The console and both games shipped, along with our extra Wiimote (our TV is shivering in anticipation of a Wiimotedisaster). Should be here by Wednesday.

And I don't have to wait in the cold in it in front of a Target before it opens this Sunday, which was the next super-sekrit release day.

Whee! Who wants some Monkey Ball action?

Life Just Got a Bit More Interesting

...because she can pretty much walk with impunity now. She's been teetering on the verge for awhile now, but the needle's pointing at "I'm walkin' now, so there" without a whole lot of question. (In the interests of full disclosure, she does still revert to crawling when she gets to a new environment until she's sure the floor is solid and safe, but I regard that as a good, safe reflex for her to have.)

A Snub for Blu-Ray

For the record, my family bought a Betamax VCR way back in the dark ages of the VHS vs. Betamax wars. I can tell you for a fact that it worked better and that it was easier to store the damn tapes because they were smaller. There's a reason that the television industry hung onto that format for a long time after it was dead in the consumer market.

However, it seems that the pornography industry has something against Sony's video formats, because Wired has just reported that, in the next-gen DVD format wars, pr0n has gone with HD-DVD. This, many argue, is similar the move that killed Betamax: when the porn video distributors went with VHS as a standard instead.

Will it happen again? Only time will tell. Technology has come far enough now that there are already dual-format players in the works, and if I had to guess, I'd say that will become the "standard". They'll be more expensive at first, but I betcha the price will come down once there is a certain volume of them on the market. We, as consumers, have the distinct advantage this time that the two formats are burned onto stunningly similar media.

Don't even get me started on the disadvantage we consumers have that both of these new formats are DRM'ed up the wazoo. I'm rooting for either a) both of them to fail or b) a third contender to enter the marketplace, with less of a reliance on handcuffing me to their idea of what it's "safe" for me to do with the media that I legally buy and own.

So I suppose what I'm saying here is, "Meh."

A Quick Math Quiz

I was offered a choice of three coupons for a major retailer for signing up for their free loyalty program. Here are the buttons I was given to select from:


Okay, quick. Which one is worth the paper you'll print it on? If you get this right, you may have the math skill necessary to go on Deal or No Deal. (Was forced to watch this over Christmas and it seemed like a very simple application of probability and only really needed the ability to do a quick 'n' dirty average of some numbers in your head so you can see if you're getting a good deal or not, but I digress.)

Let's throw out the one in the middle right away. A free hot beverage? Eh. Are you really gonna go in there for a damn coffee and not buy either one item worth $20 or a group of items worth at least $50, either of which is a better deal than the free coffee, which I can't imagine is more than $4, the smallest possible value of either of the other two coupons. (And if you're buying $5 coffee at this joint, then you have bigger problems than choosing a coupon.)

From this point, the coupon on the left seems like the best deal, until you see the "one item only" that you get your 20% off of. But hey, let's say you've been eyeing, gee, I dunno, some big box set of DVDs or something. You could turn a $100 box set into a $80 one, which doesn't suck.

From this point, all you have to do is figure out what you're likely to buy on your trip. If your largest item costs less than $50 but you will still be spending at least $50, the right one is your guy. If you are buying at least one item of $50 or more, then you go with Mr. Lefty.

But I wondered as I clicked the button, "How many people actually do the math, and how many just pick one based on whether it dazzled them with sheer implication or not?" I think that percentage would be worryingly high. Oh well. More good coupons for the rest of us then, huh?

Poor Santa

Who the heck is this guy!?!?

There were three pictures...the first was confusion, the second was mild panic, and then there was...this.

Hats off to the photographer at the hospital, where they did free pictures with Santa at the new mom's group, for spending an entire morning photographing babies who were just terrified of this creepy lookin' guy.

(The Santa at the hospital was also lovely. He had the patience of a saint and hung right in there even though pretty much every baby just cried when they sat with him. Poor guy.)

Plurals

One of the silly things that came out of our time at CK and LWC's, a random silly conversation of the sort that has been sadly lacking for me since The Company went boom, was a short discourse on plurals.

I don't know why the two words are similar to me, but peek-a-boo has always seemed oddly the same sort of a word as cul-du-sac. Now, if one is to properly pluralize cul-du-sac, it is actually culs-du-sac. This all came out when we were talking about peek-a-boo, as the B has been known to play a single sitting of that game for nearly twenty minutes, and she was in the middle of just such a sitting when this silly conversation occurred.

Though peek-a-boo does not find its etymological roots in French, there is still some part of me that wants to say "peeks-a-boo" instead of "peek-a-boos". Or perhaps it's "peeks-a-beaux".

Yeah, that all still sounds as ridiculous as it did the first time.

Whirlwind Tour, or We're Not In Kansas Anymore

The last few weeks have been interesting, but we've been able to see a lot of people we had to wave goodbye to when we left VB a little over a year ago. First up, Joe and Erika were here as a stopover as Joe moved to take up a new job.

We got the excuse to do a few things that we haven't done yet because we had company in town, including going to a large local farmer's market and also up in the Arch. To wit:



After some airline shenanigans, Erika did get a flight out after helping to get Joe ready for the second leg of his trip, though we all did like the Arch-visiting and fondue-eating part more than the packing part, I'm sure.

After a little car-loading Tetris, we determined that if we packed lightly for ourselves, we could just barely fit me and the B in the minivan as well, so we could make the trip and visit Dr. H, CK, and LWC. CK and LWC very graciously put us up (no mean feat when one of us is only one year old and chewing on everything she can get her little hands on. As you can see, she learned a lot about how to kick back while we were out West.



We had just a little time to spend there, as the mister needed to get back in time to go on a trip for work, so we savored those bare hours as much as possible before we started the trek back, also known as "When the hell will we be out of freaking Kansas?"

The B was a little trooper in the car, though admittedly the trip back was much pleasanter with an almost-empty van and plenty of room for me to sit in the second row with her and entertain her with various silly toys. We were glad to get home again, if only to get back into some sort of routine, but the B and I are both uncommonly sad to be here on our own for a bit until the mister returns from his work trip. We'll get through, though, and it will be a little strange to have everything back to normal again.

Please Stop With the Lead Poisoning

The U.S. Consumer Safety Division publishes a set of feeds of their recalls, and I subscribe to the one that deals chiefly with the recalls for childrens's products. There is a definite trend recently having to do with excessive amounts of lead being used in clothing and toys. It seems as though every other recall has the word "lead" in the title.

Um, WTF? Can't you possibly stop trying to poison my child with all this frickin' lead? Is it really that cheap? Did we just not know any better? Or was everyone asleep at the wheel?