I Fought the Balrog and *I* Won

My LOTRO kinship took down the Balrog! Hardest fight in the game. :)

I'm the one in the front on the left, playing my lute. Click for larger version.

Did she pick out the dress with this in mind?

Maybe, just maybe you haven't seen this. Most of you who might read this have day jobs and I found this via my good friend Ellen DeGeneres. It reminded me of Dr. Heimlich and his Thriller story, but this also has a charm all of its own.



You have to play through the first part. Bear with me and wait for the awesome.

Oh, Realtors

You sit and listen to us and nod. You seem like normal people. Then you talk out loud, and the following becomes apparent:

a) You don't hear inconvenient details.
b) You willfully ignore anything you don't like.
c) You especially ignore anything that will reduce your commission, even if it's in the best interests of all (say, in getting a house bought or sold in the first place).

You're all very warm and huggy, signing off emails with "warmest regards", but you'd suggest conveying our kids along with the house to make the sale if you thought you could get away with it.

Worst Advice Ever

DEAR [author name redacted]: I haven't had a boyfriend for a while now, and I'm not sure why. Everyone says I'm cool, funny and outgoing. I play video games, sports, and do things that boys think girls would never do (like paintballing in the woods or bungee jumping over and over again).

All my guy friends think I'm awesome, and I do get compliments on my looks as well. I'm not a tomboy, I wear nice clothes and some makeup, but for some reason, whenever I get a crush on a guy, he says it would be "weird" because I'm a "really good friend."What am I doing wrong? I love who I am and so do boys. So why don't they think I could be "girlfriend material"? [advice-seeker name redacted]

DEAR [name redacted]: It may be that "guys" see you as one of them. And because of it, they don't consider you in a romantic way. Therefore, it's time to emphasize your feminine side and present yourself in a different light. This may mean temporarily downplaying your involvement in boys' sports and paintball games, and amping up your "girlishness." Give it a try and see what happens.

-----------------

What a total load of horseshit. "Be yourself" unless you happen to not be girly enough, and then you'd better run off and bake a pie/do your nails/flip your hair if you want a boyfriend, honey. That is such total crap.

How about this:

You haven't met the right guy who is attracted to you for who you are and the things you like to do. Keep being you, keep looking, and don't amp up a single fucking thing that isn't a true portrayal of who are. The right guy will like you even if you *gasp* like to bungee jump.

Want

I'm boring those of you who read Boing Boing, but I want one of these bookshelves REALLY BAD. Enough that I'm starting to wonder how much a scroll saw would cost so I could make the brackets and parens myself.

Oh my god the math geek in me is screaming out for justice. I need to own this, and the flash site for the original designer doesn't say anything about options to purchase one, which either means I can't buy one or it would cost much more than I can reasonably set aside for a purchase like this.

Expelled

Oh, Ben Stein. WTF is this supposed to be?

How can you be so repressed when you're the MAJORITY?

The Explosion

The game is on. The avalanche of new words coming from the B has begun, just as everyone kept telling me that it would. We knew she understood a lot of what we were saying, but now so much more of the noises she makes are actual words instead of gibberish.

No matter how prepared you think you are for it, when she suddenly pops out with "butterfly" (well, okay, "buh-fwy!") while pointing to the embroidered outline of a butterfly on her sleeper, it's still a little mind-bending.

We've been writing down new words on our wall calendar, on the day we're sure she's saying it with intention. That went from a bit of ink on the calendar in September, to a smattering in October, to "oh my gosh, we're running out of room every day" in November.

This morning, she said, "pants" when we were getting out her clothes for the day. She's a little person! She feels more and more like an independent being every day, but it's moments like that when you realize exactly how far she's come.

Dvorak Schmorak

I've had a passing interest in the Dvorak keyboard ever since I first heard of it. The notion of being able to type faster than I already do (~90 wpm) is extremely compelling. Mind you, I've used QWERTY since I was (literally) three years old, learning how to spell in front of a manual typewriter with my mother asking me to find letters and type words, so I would guess my QWERTY typing is so ingrained that it would be impossible to supplant with another system.

(Learning to spell on a keyboard is clearly why my handwriting is so horrible, but I'd pick fast typing over good handwriting any day.)

I stumbled over a Dvorak keyboard article, and went to our old friend, Wikipedia, to get a look at this superior layout. I have to say, I'm unimpressed.

Look at the placement of some pretty commonly-used characters, like "r", for example. Ring finger on right hand, not on the home row. Not exactly a power placement. Common punctuation like (" , .) on the left hand, and not on the home row. Bleh. "L" might not be the most-used consonent ever, but how does it rate being in the gulag up there? The "l" key is the top-row equivalent to the bottom-row key for the same finger, which is "z". Madness.

Writers of any discipline that includes dialog wouldn't benefit from the " moving, would they? To say nothing of ' being so far away from a power position, because I personally cannot say that I would enjoy avoiding contractions and sounding like Data from "Star Trek" all the time.

Vowels all jumbled together on the left hand. Ugh. Every word has a vowel in it. Most people's left hand is weaker than their right. So why overstress the left hand with all that typing? QWERTY puts two on the left and three (or four, if you count "y") on the right, which is a nice balance for most people.

I can't believe programmers of most of the modern programming languages would benefit from this setup. Lots of ":" and ";" used in coding, you know. There are some disciplines that probably use ";" more often than letters like "h" and "n".

And on a personal note, I think all of us would have to look at the keyboard layout above to see how inconvenient typing our names would be, as it's something you usually have occasion to type, especially if you regularly use it in your email address or business correspondence. I have to say, typing my full name would be a complete bummer on this keyboard.

I'm at a loss as to why this keyboard is supposed to be so efficient. Looks like a horrible design to me, but people swear by the Dvorak layout, I know. I guess it works for them, but I'll stick with what I know in this case.

I wanted to like you, Dvorak keyboard. I did. It'll just never work out between us.

The Rumor on the Street Is...

EGM says that Samba de Amigo is coming to Nintendo Wii. Who wants to have some exciting maraca-based rhythm game fun?

Let Science Win

If you give a rat's ass about scientific principles, and about keeping the planet habitable for humans for upcoming generations, for cryin' in the sink, go here and vote for the Bad Astronomy blog.

The blog currently in the lead is a shill operation for political pandering to big corporations who are putting their fingers in their ears and yelling, "La la la! Humans have zero effect on the ecosystem, because that would be financially inconvenient! La la la!" A lot of people from that part of the political spectrum (ahem, that's as nicely as I can put that) are being sent to the awards site to vote for the pseudo-science site, and now it's winning.

I realize in all irony that I'm essentially doing the same thing, and telling you to go and vote blindly in a contest you didn't even know about a few minutes ago. Listen. I'd tell you to check all of them out and vote for the one you like, but in this case, Bad Astronomy has the best chance of winning AND representing the true, unbiased scientific process.

So if you give a crap, go and click. Thanks.