I have lots of other catching up to do, but I am also a bit swamped this weekend. So at least let me do the March 2021 celebrity deaths.

March 2021: Sir Alan Bowness was the director of the Tate Gallery in the 1980’s. Jahmil French was an actor, known for appearing in Degrassi: The Next Generation. Vernon Jordan was a civil rights advocate. ( Read more... )

I am still having trouble with executive function. That is, there are lots of things I should be doing, but it’s hard to motivate myself to do them. Today, I did manage to set up an account I need at work (a temporary thing for a specific project) and I made an appointment to get my car serviced next week, so I feel somewhat productive ( Read more... )

Back in late January, I devised an initial set of rules for a game I called Safety: It’s Not Jeopardy. Based on some feedback on the National Puzzlers’ League facebook page, I made some minor tweaks to those rules, mostly to randomize how players passed questions. I also somehow changed the word "Safety" to "Security" and wrote 60, rather than 42 ( Read more... )

Celebrity Death Watch:Paul Terasaki was a notable scientist whose work enabled tissue typing and organ transplants. The personal significance is that I used to work for his brother, Dick. Paul Kantner and Signe Toly Anderson were both part of Jefferson Airplane. Bob Elliot was a comedian, half of Bob and Ray. Jack Elrod used to draw Mark Trail, ( Read more... )

You may recall that I complained last year about how male-dominated the after hour games at the NPL con were. In the interest of lighting a single candle, I’ve been working on developing a trivia game. I could just do a Jeopardy game, of course, but I thought it would be fun to devise a slightly different game mechanism. I want things to be less ( Read more... )

Celebrity Death Watch: Mervin Field founded a polling company. Elizabeth Peet McIntosh was a spy, both with OSS and its successor, the CIA, and wrote a couple of books about women spies. Ornette Coleman was a major jazz composer and saxophonist. Christopher Lee was an actor, noted particularly for horror movies. It wasn’t his fault that the ( Read more... )

Good Jobs for Women: There was a piece in Forbes several weeks ago listing the 10 best jobs for women. Aerospace engineer came in 10th. For the record, many jobs on the list had some science / math orientation, e.g. oceanographer (3), geoscientist (8), surveyor (6). Supreme galactic empress was not on the list, alas, but I still aspire to that ( Read more... )

It seems I am busy enough doing things that finding time to write about them is a low priority. This episode gets me only half-way through last weekend and covers primarily much randomness, rather than what I've been up to. I will get caught up real soon now.

Celebrity Death Watch: The obvious celebrity death to note is Whitney Houston. Her ( Read more... )

Convidence was this year's National Puzzlers' League convention. As the pun suggests, it was held in Providence, Rhode Island. For a number of reasons, I flew up on Thursday afternoon, instead of Wednesday evening. I had a unique and bizarre experience with the flight up. United uses the same gate at Dulles for multiple express flights. They ( Read more... )

I have an unexpected weekend free, so here's another catch-up entry.

Free Weekend: I had planned to go to Staunton for a VASA board meeting and stay overnight to do a Volksmarch today. The board meeting got cancelled. My condo is grateful for the attention.

Commuting: I've had a few annoying metro moments lately, suitable for haiku. Let's ( Read more... )