Remember the section in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy about machines with Genuine People Personalities? Our new Wii Fit has one. The little animated Wii Fit pad (which I am temporarily naming Stiive, though I'm not sure it's a good fit) turns out to be a bossy, patronizing, catty, backstabbing little bastard. Don't do so well at a fitness ( Read more... )

I had myself a merry little Christmas. Good food, good company, good times. The presents were nice too: I got some clothes, a whole bunch of books, a new camera, and some handy kitchen items. And Beth got, among other things, a Wii Fit, which we spent several hours playing with yesterday ( Read more... )

Last week Beth and I were talking about the internet, and what we did with it at the beginning, before Facebook and Google Reader and video streaming. Back In The Day, in the early 90s, when mice still had trackballs and Windows 3.1 was the hip new thing. From this time period, when we rocked our 14.4 modem and were the only elementary schoolers we ( Read more... )

Bethykins got a Wii for her birthday, so essentially I got one too. Yay! I haven't had a game console of any kind since I left the N64 at home to go to college, and I've been lusting after the Wii since it came out. We had a great time last night boxing, bowling and baseballing, and reliving our childhood with Super Mario 3. It's fair to say we're ( Read more... )

To ease the tedium of worklessness over the past few days I've been playing Oregon Trail. I suck at this game. I just can't get a cart full of people to the Willamette in one piece. The first wagon I took was full of my pub quiz buddies, every last one of whom died of typhoid 3/4 of the way through. It got me too. The second time I took my family ( Read more... )

Passing the time at another interminable temp job, I started playing around with the magic 8-ball at the receptionist's desk. It predicts a sunny year for me. Will I get a job this year? It is certain. Should I give up on the Belgians? My sources say no. Will the World Cocoa Foundation call? Yes. Will I have a boyfriend this year? Yes, definitely. ( Read more... )

The history of the world from the beginning of WWII. As performed by food.

Click to view

EDIT: Cuba. They're Cuba. Duh.

Also: Super Obama World

Thursday I take the Foreign Service Exam. Again. The most frustrating thing about the test is trying to figure out how to study for it. Sure, a basic grasp of US and world history and geography is essential. Economics is handy to know, and they always ask some management theory questions. They want to make sure you know how to use a computer. But ( Read more... )

From the BBC:
To say Scrabble is taken seriously in Senegal is an understatement ( Read more... )

Cookbooks as MMORPGs My favorite example:

Posted: 12:48 a.m. by Goku1440 I found an awesome loophole! On page 242 it says "Add oregano to taste!" It doesn't say how much oregano, or what sort of taste! You can add as much oregano as you want! I'm going to make my friends eat infinite oregano and they'll have to do it because the recipe says so!