triviageek

Drat! According to this Millionaire Maker calculator, the EARLIEST that I'll become a millionaire is at age 73. What good is that?

Zoe, Best European Blog - Bloggies 2005, is a bit under the weather, so she asked for guest blogger volunteers.

However, she had specific requirements for them that I thought I wouldn't be able to provide, so I didn't volunteer.

Well, now I regret it....

Is it too late to step forward now????

Today I watched the end of the Indy 500 on TV and cheered Danica Patrick as she became the first woman to lead several laps of that race. She subsequently went on to win 4th place (not bad for an Indy rookie) due to combating a running-on-empty fuel status.

Interestingly the winner, Dan Wheldon, DID run out of fuel after crossing the finish line and literally had to be pushed to the winner's circle.

But my one overriding thought whenever I watch the Indy 500 on TV is always that I blew my best chance to see the race in person. Once upon a time my brother lived catty-cornered across the street from the North Gate of the Indy 500 racetrack. All I would have had to do was WALK across a large field/parking area to attend.

In case you don't know, the city of Indianapolis explodes with tourists/race attendees every Memorial Weekend. It's like the town goes nuts. It quite literally doubles in population, traffic is a mess, locals in any type of service indusy all wind up working overtime (including my brother), etc.

All I would have had to do was time my sisterly visit properly -- staying just a few days, and WALK across a field.

And then he moved out of town.

ARGH!

Bye bye convenience. Bye bye best chance to attend. I blew it.

I owe Sir Arthur Conan Doyle an apology.

When I first read (actually via an audiobook) his, A Study in Scarlet, I was delighted to find a description of the initial meeting of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Then the book diverted into a description of a massacre perpetuated by members of the Morman Church.

I was horrified.

Even though I'm not one myself, I was positive Mormans just don't do things like that.

Well, apparently they did -- according to an episode of Investigating History "Mountain Massacre" (in 1857 Utah) on the History Channel tonight and the book Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Sir Doyle just wrote a fictionalized account of that true event as motivation for the crime Holmes was investigating.

Well at least I'm justified in thinking that bad drivers are in abundance in my locality. (HA an understatement if there ever was one.)

From the ranking by state, it appears that I learned to drive in the state with the 14th best ranking of drivers and I now reside amid the 6th WORST.

If you've ever wanted to dine on foods like the classic Romans did, now might be the right time to visit Pompeii. As part of the research of Pompeii's archaeological team they've recreated some of the Roman menu items and persuaded a local restaurant to offer them.

OK, I admit it. I'm old enough so that I CAN remember most of these. And yes, I double-dog-dare YOU to pass it along too!

Via Andrew Tobias

Via an Amygdala post, I learned today that the Sci-Fi channel is going to be showing all the episodes of the short-lived (but much beloved) series, Firefly, starting in July.

That's just in time to prepare everyone for the Serenity movie debut currently scheduled for September 30.

P. T. Barnum (of all people) in his 1880 book, ART OF MONEY GETTING or, Golden Rules for Making Money expresses caution about young people falling into the trap of debt.

The hardest thing about writing this blog is writing the trivia questions. Did you think I was getting them from some other source?

No, so far, I've been writing them myself, out of the vast quantity of trivial information that fills my head. And since most of the time, I try to verify the answers via google, it takes quite a bit of time for each question. (Excepting of course those that I just inherently KNOW that I know so confidently like the coffee/computer language question, that I don't bother.)

I'm not sure how much longer I can keep it up. And it's not as if anyone actually READS the trivia questions and answers....

Have I calmed down enough yet to be able to write about the either the ending of Star Trek: Enterprise or my unfortunate experiences with the WORST credit card company (as I've promised to do someday)?

Ummm, no I guess not.... Almost. Maybe. Soon?

HA!

It was liberating NOT to feel the need to rush home by 8PM to watch either Joan of Arcadia or Star Trek: Enterprise. Switching Enterprise from a Wednesday night time slot to Fridays, perhaps contributed to it's demise, but it had effectively weaned me from watching Joan of Arcadia (which I'd begun doing sometime during the middle of it's first season).

Now that Enterprise has ended it's run so disastrously, I do not feel ANY need to watch re-runs of that series. So henceforth, my Friday evenings are free of TV viewing obligations. Yay! And I thought nothing good would come of Enterprise's ending.

61. VHS tapes made in the USA are generally not viewable in Great Britain and vice versa because two different recording formats are used in those countries. What are the names of those two formats? Answer.
62. In the classic sci-fi movie "The Day The Earth Stood Still" the alien, Klaatu (portrayed by actor Michael Rennie), assumed an alias in order to mingle with and hide among ordinary Earth people. What was the name he used? Answer.
63. In the Graham Greene novel, Travels with My Aunt, the main character's "Aunt Augusta" was not really his aunt. Who was she? Answer.
64. While claiming to be the fastest, Opera, is only the third or fourth most popular Internet browser. The Opera browser was not written in the USA. Name the country from which it originates? Answer.
65. A TARDIS is the vehicle used by the main character in a long-running TV-show. What is the name of the TV-show? Answer.
66. A ship named the Beagle made a long voyage that later triggered both a controversy and a revolution of sorts. How? Answer.
67. Actress Jamie Lee Curtis is the daughter of well known actors. Who are her parents? Answer.
68. On the traditional color wheel, what color is complementary (opposite) to orange? Answer.
69. What singing/songwriting duo is reponsible for the hit, Bridge Over Troubled Waters? Answer.
70. What is Ribena? Answer.
71. The life of Mary Ann Todd (1818-1882) was both notable and tragic. Who was she and how was her life tragic? Answer.
72. Francis P. Church wrote an editorial in the The New York Sun in 1897 that has been reprinted many times. How is it often referred to and summarized? Answer.
73. A meat product of the Hormel Foods Corporation has become associated with a comedy team and indirectly thru them also to unsolicited commercial email. Name the meat product and the comedy team and also explain the association. Answer.
74. Washoe is the chimpanzee that became famous for being the first to do something. What was it? Answer.
75. What is Visual Basic? Answer.

Previous Trivia Summary.

All the hype about the last Star Wars movie in the series is still growing. But I have NO INTENSION of actually going to the movie theatre to see that movie until most of the hoopla had quieted down. Even tho I'm very much a sci-fi fan, I am just NOT the person to stand in long lines (for days even) to see a movie. Nope not me.

Unlike many others, IBM has adopted a corporate policy to encourage blogging by it's employees.

(Noting as part of their announcement that unfortunate employees of other organizations have often been variously advised to never admit who you work for, hide your IP address using anonymous proxies, password protect your blog so that only certain people can read it, etc. and that the only really safe way to blog is to not blog at all.)

Ummm ... maybe you'd better not ask me the name of my employer (since I DON'T currently work for IBM).


Via CNET News

Dentists are reputed to have a high rate of suicide because they have difficulty with their patients hating them.

My dentist is a nice man. Really he is. He greeted me with a friendly, "Hi, I haven't seen you in a while. It's great to see you again!"

All I could do was mumble a reply, "Well I'd love to see you SOCIALLY!"

More than 465 audiobooks arrived in my mailbox today. No, I don't have a mega-sized mail container, they were on SIX DVD's from audiobooksforfree.com located in the UK.

All of these audiobooks titles are copyright free classics (ie. "older" books) with only a performance copyright (held by audiobookforfree) for the actual verbal reading/recording of the books. And they fit recorded in the MP3 format onto those six data DVDs sold at the bargain price of $120. US dollars. Yay!

Newer audiobooks titles can sell for $70. EACH so I got a real bargain.

I am STILL depressed about the way the producers chose to end the Enterprise series. In other words, that #%@#'ing TV-show has ruined my whole weekend. ARGH!

To try and cheer myself up (after watching the Star Trek ending last night) I went to see the new movie The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

It's a bit hard for me to rate this movie. Except for the musical number at the beginning, I rather liked it but not as well as I liked the British version I saw on PBS several years ago.

I read one review that critized the special effects of the earlier version, but I have to disagree. I PREFER the special effects of the PBS version, the entries of the Hitchhiker's Guide were better done there. The only improvement I saw in this movie version was the factory/workshop of Slartibartfast showing the construction of Earth below their feet as they whizzed overhead.

Overall I think more jokes were included (and they were funnier) in the earlier version. And it was a miniseries that actually covered more of Douglas Adams books that the current movie does.

So if you get the chance to see that earlier version, do so. Otherwise, the current movie is better than never seeing Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at all.

Today is Friday the 13th and I can't think of a more appropriate day to have ended the Star Trek: Enterprise series THAT WAY!

Why, oh, WHY?

Why do producers think that ending a series THAT WAY is a good way to reward fans? ARGH!

I'm so depressed that I don't even wanna write about it tonight. I'll blog more of a critique later (if or when I feel up to such an unpleasant task). Sheesh!

I found one talent that I have that's a bit unusual in this day an age -- and I owe it all to my 5th grade teacher.

On this page of USA Geography tests I scored 100% in 133 seconds on the easy version of Locate the State. In the intermediate level, I got 46 perfect out of 50 turns and a 92% score with average error of 7 miles in 532 seconds. And for Place the State - Advanced, I got 68%, which is 34 perfect out of 50 with an average error of only 37 miles in 768 seconds.

Now let me see YOU beat that!!!

Mythbusters was on TV tonight and I watched it as usual. But doing so reminded me that for the past several months there have been ONLY TWO TV-shows that I've watched every episode -- Mythbusters and Enterprise.

And the second one, Star Trek: Enterprise, is about to end. On Friday night the final two Enterprise episodes are supposed to be broadcast. Then that's it; no more new Star Trek. And I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Or rather I should say, I have mixed feelings about Enterprise ending now. I was one of the original fans of Star Trek (the original series) way back when. I loved that series so much than when they threatened it's cancellation after the second season, I was one of the thousands of fans that wrote letters begging that it NOT be cancelled.

And we succeeded.

The original Star Trek returned for a third season. A very bad season, in my opinion. I didn't care for the plots of a lot of the episodes that year. So when it was once again threatened with cancellation after that season, I DID NOT write a letter again.

And it was cancelled.

While I certainly missed the Star Trek of the first two seasons, I didn't care about seeing any more episodes like those of the third season. But it was a looooonnnnggg time before there were any Star Trek movies.

The animated series that followed first was ho hum. I dunno if it was better or worse than third season. Different anyway. The animation allowed some effects that could never have been performed with a physical cast and studio set. But the animated series aired only briefly and it definately was not as good as the beginning of the original series.

Finally, after many years, Star Trek returned with The Next Generation and I generally liked it and watched all the episodes. It lacked the novelty of the first series, but it was pretty good except for Wesley Crusher. For some reason Wesley always annoyed me and episodes that revolved around him were barely tolerated by me. But overall he was a small part of that series and I always watched the episodes.

Not so with the Deep Space Nine and Voyager spin-offs. I watched them for a while but eventually just stopped bothering. In particular I did not like the stories that focused on Jake Sisko, Bajoran politics, or Seven of Nine. And as these characters/situations seemed to dominate more and more time on-screen, I gradually watched less and less until not at all.

I welcomed the new series Enterprise. It initially harked back to the thrill and novelty of space travel. It met new (to them) species and did a lot of exploring -- during the first and second seasons.

Then, at the start of the third season, they wrote the devastating attack on Earth and the season-long arc wherein the Enterprise crew pursuded and eventually defeated the Xindi responsible. That was a terrible season and I very nearly stopped watching.

Adding insult to injury, they switched what had seemed to me as a growing attachment between Captain Archer and T'Pol to an attachment between T'Pol and Trip. And they did it via what seemed to be the very far fetched and artifical means of those Vulcan relaxation sessions between T'Pol and Trip. UGH!!!!!

Anyway I've still been watching faithfully although sometimes, it seems like I'm just barely hanging on.

This final season has been a bit better in terms of NOT having a season long Xindi arc, but I seriously think they should have used the Time Travel gimmick to UNDO THE EARTH ATTACK!!!!! Undoing the Earth attach and the T'Pol/Trip relationship would have restored a lot, in my opinion.

But they didn't. The producers/writers didn't choose to go that way. Or maybe the actors portraying T'Pol and Trip lobbied for their on-screen relationship. Whatever. I still think it was a mistake.

So now the series has been cancelled. And I remember my feelings at the end of the third season of the original series .... and all the years afterwards of no Star Trek at all.

And I have very mixed feelings.

Geraint Wyn Davies has won the award for outstanding lead actor in a resident play at the 21st annual Helen Hayes Awards last night.

Also, in a separate announcement, Monty Python's 'Spamalot' has received 14 Tony Award nominations, including the nomination for best musical.

Yuck. The news says that the pollen count was high again today. I dunno why, but this year, the pollen seems to be bothering me worse than ever before.

I can't get to sleep tonight and my ankle hurts (a lot). Pollen=ankle? What's up with that?

I know a couple of people who claim membership in MENSA and I probably know a lot more people who either are, or could be members too. (There are a lot of very intelligent people who work where I do.) But the guy behind this Fourmilab website seems to outshine all of us.

I mean the guy tries to explain Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity! And that's amid a lot of other pages on a wide variety of topics and several interesting downloads.

I wasn't able to attend the ONLY Time Traveler Convention that'll ever need to be held.

However, writer Donna Andrews has asked for any time traveler from the 2300s or so (who's attending) to please stop by and give her a lift.

Well I need a ride too, and it wouldn't REALLY be much out of your way since she just lives on the other side of DC from me, so could any time traveler who picks her up, stop by and give me a ride too.

From the website at http://web.mit.edu/adorai/timetraveler/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Time Traveler Convention:
May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC)
(events start at 8:00pm)
East Campus Courtyard, MIT
3 Ames St. Cambridge, MA 02142
42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W
(42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)


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

This is a once in a lifetime chance to meet a time traveller. Errr ummm, actually if you haven't already RSVP'ed you may already be too late if you AREN'T a time traveller yourself. They're already filled the capacity of their designated convention location. For actual time travellers however, there're willing to make an exception and allow you in without an RSVP (but you should be willing and able to PROVE that you're actually from the future).

I phoned the 800 number for the second worst credit card company and so far they haven't credited me with the payment I've already mailed. *sigh*

Actually I should have probably explained that one reason that I don't care whether I ever use that credit card again, is that six months ago I had applied for and received another credit card. So I can just switch over to the new one.

The second (and more important reason) that I don't care is, that apparently unlike most Americans, I currently do NOT have any credit card debt. Nope, none.

I an not carrying a big balance to MBNA, Citibank, or any of the other usury specialists.

Hmmmm, here's a list of tips for starting your own blog.

46. Name the author of the series of novels featuring the character James Bond. Answer.
47. What was the name of the character who was the best friend and sidekick of Jeannie's master in the classic TV-series 'I Dream of Jeannie'? Answer.
48. You've probably heard of the BBC news and perhaps watched another BBC production. But what is its full name, ie. what do the initials B. B. C. represent? Answer.
49. The long running TV-series "The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet" also featured the real life sons of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson. Their younger son Ricky became well known as a singer. What is the name of their elder son? Answer.
50. Tony Hillerman has written an award winning series of mystery novels featuring two cops. One aspect that makes his fictional characters unique among mystery detectives is the police force which employs them. Name this organization. Answer.
51. The parents of President Gerald R. Ford divorced when he was an infant. Later, his name was legally changed to match that of his step-father. What was his name at birth? Answer.
52. What is the name of the waxy substance secreted by a species of whales and which is used in making perfumes? Answer.
53. What computer language shares a name with coffee? Answer.
54. The name, Terre Haute, (a city in Indiana) means what? Answer.
55. What is Thiamin? Answer.
56. By what name is Marion Morrison better known? Answer.
57. Linus Torvalds is world famous for creating something unusual, something important, actually it's monumental. What did he create? Answer.
58. Who co-starred in both classic TV shows, I love Lucy and My Three Sons? Answer.
59. What is lemon grass? Answer.
60. Mark Twain is the well-known pen name of an author. What was his real name? Answer.

Previous Trivia Summary.

Well my O2 powers on and it comes up with the menus built into the microcode. But I'm going to need to load an OS before it does anything more useful than a hinv command.

And I've slacked off on taking my own brown bag lunch to work ... again. After all I went thru getting more of the disposable containers, I'm just going to have to buckle down and pack my own lunch more often.

An announcement from the website at http://web.mit.edu/adorai/timetraveler/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Time Traveler Convention:
May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC)
(events start at 8:00pm)
East Campus Courtyard, MIT
3 Ames St. Cambridge, MA 02142
42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W
(42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)

What is it?

Technically, you would only need one time traveler convention. Time travelers from all eras could meet at a specific place at a specific time, and they could make as many repeat visits as they wanted. We are hosting the first and only Time Traveler Convention at MIT on Saturday, and WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Why do you need my help?

We need you to help PUBLICIZE the event so that future time travelers will know about the convention and attend. This web page is insufficient; in less than a year it will be taken down when I graduate, and futhermore, the World Wide Web is unlikely to remain in its present form permanently. We need volunteers to publish the details of the convention in enduring forms, so that the time travelers of future millennia will be aware of the convention. This convention can never be forgotten! We need publicity in MAJOR outlets, not just Internet news. Think New York Times, Washington Post, books, that sort of thing. If you have any strings, please pull them.

Great idea, I'd love to help! What should I do?

Write the details down on a piece of acid-free paper, and slip them into obscure books in academic libraries! Carve them into a clay tablet! If you write for a newspaper, insert a few details about the convention! Tell your friends, so that word of the convention will be preserved in our oral history! A note: Time travel is a hard problem, and it may not be invented until long after MIT has faded into oblivion. Thus, we ask that you include the latitude/longitude information when you publicize the convention.

You can also make an absolute commitment to publicize the convention afterwards. In that case, bring a time capsule or whatever it may be to the party, and then bury it afterwards.

Can't the time travelers just hear about it from the attendees, and travel back in time to attend?

Yes, they can! In fact, we think this will happen, and the small number of adventurous time travelers who do attend will go back to their "home times" and tell all their friends to come, causing the convention to become a Woodstock-like event that defines humanity forever.

Unfortunately, we of the present (2005) don't have time travel, and so we only have one chance at observing the convention. If the time travelers don't leave us their secrets, we won't be able to go back in time and see our convention in all its glory unless it is publicized in advance.

This unusual site of Name Generation named me: Sister Arrow of Peace.