Idle Worship

Reality is a Fraud

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 06:06:00 +0000

Only the truly self-delusional ever believed that most things billed as reality television were true slices of life. The crazy antics and unlikely situations of “Duck Dynasty” are as spontaneous and genuine as the outcomes of every WWE match. I guess it is just too much to hope that there are Tiffany Lamps and antique musket rifles dating back to the Revolutionary War buried in every abandoned storage locker. Yet, it still hit me pretty hard when I learned that one of my favorite 30 minute time wasters had has much integrity as Honey Boo Boo. “House Hunters” seemed like a format that didn’t really need to be “enhanced”. There wasn’t staged conflict or outsized personalities. Someone was buying a house and we got to see a couple of the houses they looked at. Simple enough. But I guess not. It was all a fraud. A charade. There was a wizard behind the curtain. How did I not see it? All the signs were there. Just look at this old episode of “House Hunters International”. Two of the houses they looked at are owned by incredibly famous people who were obviously never going to sell. As the blogs reported, they were obviously just friends of this episode’s subject who allowed their homes to be filmed. I bet that wasn't even a real princess. I guess from now on I will just stick to the TV shows that I know are staged, scripted, and full of lies. Like Presidential Debates.

PENS!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 05:18:00 +0000

When I set out to write a blog post a day and laid out thetopics I was going to try to address on a semi-regular basis, I intentionally gave the week day posts subjects that I thought could be handled with very short prose. To help myself actually achieve my goal, I was going to take the nights that was typically I buried in real, paying work and only do a post for the blog that required minimum time, thought, and verbiage. The problem that I realized as I was typing out a third paragraph on the subliminal meaning of the baby blue color of Genome Quebec’s free pen is that I have a real problem with being succinct. I appear to be so in love with my own words that I can’t seem to stop typing them, even when I know I have more important things to do. Either that or I just decided not to type them at all because I know I won’t be able to limit myself. But now that I have engaged in this bit of introspection, I am going to pledge to be a better, more concise man going forward. Monday through Thursday. Unless of course I have something really, really important to say about the role of free promotional pens in struggles of an oppressed people and their drive to achieve self determination. I wouldn’t want to rob the world of that brilliant geopolitical analysis just so I can post another web-only add for Bio-Rad.

Now, the newly condensed Pen of the Week review.

Company – Hyatt.com, website for the hotel giant.

Color – 7 - Black and Silver. Classy colors gives you the feeling of seriousness and formalness. Like a pen wearing a tux. Yet it certainly doesn’t catch your eye. Never find this in a dark room. Hard to find when it gets knocked of the table and under the bed.

Tip Ejection – 2 – This pen ejects the tip by twisting the pen. Once ejected, the pen does not solidly lock into this position. So the tip could easily withdrawal unexpectedly. Could have disastrous results if your life depends on writing out the first line of the Declaration of Independence in cursive in under 10 seconds.

Quality of Construction – 1 - Light weight and made of cheap plastic. Pocket clip is also weak. Would clearly break off if once you start playing with it during a particularly boring meeting.

Design – 0 - Couldn’t be more basic. Hyatt went to the promotion pen store and asked for the cheapest pen they have. Said stick our name on that one.

Writing – 7 – Tested the writing on standard paper on a hard surface. Ink immediately came out without any pre-scribbling and tip banging. Once going, wrote smoothly without any breaks in the ink. Would be willing to use this pen to write my 8^th grade essay on the birth of communism in Eastern Europe.

Grip – 3 – Very thin pen. About the diameter of your average pencil. No ergonomic enhancements so doesn’t fit in your hand any better or more comfortably than your average number 2. Because it lacks any heft, you have to do all the work of pushing it on to the paper. I got pen pushes your hand down on the paper.

Overall Score – 1 – They didn’t even try. Given this is a hotel pen, it is not surprising they went with the cheapest possible promotional pen. They expect you to steal it and promptly loss it on the airplane home. Still this is not a pen you want to stand for your brand.

This blog post was sponsored by the Primatech Paper Company.

Solitaire Update

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 04:23:00 +0000

Day 60 – 1 of 10 (200.5)

Day 61 – 2 of 7 (200.5, 4, 48.53)
Day 62 – 1 of 5 (201.5)
Day 63 – 1 of 3 (201.5, 4, 48.52)
Day 64 – 1 of 5 (199)
Day 65 – 1 of 3 (199, 4.01, 48.36)
Day 66 – 0 of 6 (199.5, 4.01, 48.34)
Day 67 – 5 of 13 (199.5, 4.01, 48.13)
Day 68 – 0 of 7 (201)
Day 69 – 1 of 2 (201, 4.01, 48.03)
Day 70 – 0 of 2 (199.5)
Day 71 – 1 of 7 (199.5, 4.04, 48.19)
Day 72 – 3 of 8 (202, 4.02, 48.08)
Day 73 – 0 of 7 (202)
Day 74 – 2 of 10 (203.5, 4.04, 48.23)
Total – 108 of 611 (17.7%)

Still logging an uptick in my success rate so I am still unable to say what my true nature ceiling is. Yet I am missing one critical piece of data necessary for providing context to this success rate. I can only tell if my hours and hours of dedicated practicing and playing is powering me to an elevated level of Solitaire consciousness if I know what the statistical chance of any ordinary Joe winning in any given deal of the deck. After a less than thorough investigation of the internet, the best I could find was this computer simulation by Bill. Based on his parameters, Bill calculated that one should be able to win only 8 to 9 times out of every 100 hands of Solitaire. This is of course means that I am way over achieving. Go team me. But there are some caveats. Well, one really big one. It appears that Bill’s simulation model only allows you to go through the deck of cards 3 times. I, of course, do not put this restriction on my playing. Certainly if I do, my success would be much less. For now though this is the best I can do. I will keep looking for something more appropriate but for now I will assume that I am KILLING IT.

Solitaire Vocabulary Update

I am picking of the low hanging fruit with this one. The pile of cards that we draw our codons from will hence forth be known as “The Deck”. Make it so.

This blog post is sponsored by Aperture Laboratories.

Um Bop

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 01:56:00 +0000

This music hits me right in my sweet spot. A cappella plus sci-fi and cartoon theme songs. What more could I ask for.

What Does TLC Stand for Again?

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 20:37:00 +0000

I admit, I have never really understood the appeal of “reality” television. These highly scripted skits have similar production value and believability of your high schooler’s production of “Avenue Q”. Yes, I did religiously watch the first seasons of Survivor and American Idol and when I am really desperate for entertainment late at night, you might catch me watching a random episode of Auction Hunters or Pawn Stars. And yes, I will be forced to check out Comic Book Men when it appears. But the moment the focus turns to Chumley’s latest scripted idiocy or contrived foul-up, I check out. At that point the very thin illusion of reality completely melts away and you are left watching regular old, really bad TV. If that is the case, why not watch the latest episode of Up All Night. At least it has a cute baby to distract you from the slowly encroaching darkness of death. Yet, even in the cesspool of reality TV, I think there is a special ring reserved for the shows that TLC puts on the air (and Lifetime, which is essentially the kid sitting at the next desk copying off TLC’s test). For some reason, this channel has decided that the best use of their broadcast time is to televise child abuse. No longer is it enough to sit back and laugh at the revolting actions of “adults” as they interact with other “adults”, TLC has decided to make stars out of people whose only defining characteristic is that they are evil to children. Whether it is by deciding they want to personify the baby-making machine of “A Brave New World” or borrowing all of their parenting techniques from the “How to Raise a Stripper” guidebook, the featured performers know that the secret to their success and fleeting fame is their irresponsible parenting and the more awful a parent they are, the more attention they get. And oh how they need that attention. Apparently though there is an audience for these things. I have heard all kinds of rationalizations for why people would want to revel in a child’s televised misery, but not one excuse has made any sense to me. Then again, I don’t understand the appeal of “reality” TV.

This blog post is sponsored by Dunder Mifflin.

The Muppets - This Week on Meet the Press

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 01:08:00 +0000

I am already on record of being big supporters of the Muppets. Now I have one more reason to continue my life-long membership in their fanclub.

What Soda Works Best For Disposing of a Human Body

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:58:00 +0000

A little while ago, the interwebs came alive with news that Mountain Dew could turn a mouse into a gelatinous blob. Given my quite real addiction to the yellow stuff (if a go a couple days without a hit of the Dew, I feel awful, complete with splitting headache), I was particularly intrigued by this story. Yet I don’t feel the need to go into detail about how this news effects my ritualistic consumption of the beverage of life because I couldn’t say it any better than this commentary by Chuck Klosterman. Instead, I decided I wanted to witness these miraculous flesh-dissolving powers first hand. So, I set up a very modest experiment.

The experimental design is actually quite simplistic. I took raw chicken legs and wings and put a single piece of chicken into 14 different mason jars. I chose to use the chicken legs and wings because they would provide I nice mix of muscle, skin, fat, and bone that gets as close as possible to an actual animal without raiding a hatchery. The next step was to add sufficient liquid to the jars to completely cover the chicken. Now here is where it gets interesting (at least to me). The only way to really appreciate the true destructive power of Mountain Dew is to put it up against some of the lesser stomach corroding drinks that we commonly imbibe. Each of the 14 mason jars got a different beverage. I tried to include as varied a selection of sodas and soda-like substances as possible. We know that those artificial sweetners in the diet soda give you cancer but do they eat skin. Can we answer the universal question of Coke or Pepsi? Red Bull may give you wings but what does it do to actual wings? Over the course of the next couple of weeks we will find out. The final roll call of this experiment is as follows;

Mountain Dew
Mountain Dew Code Red
Mott’s Apple Juice
Schweppe’s Ginger Ale
Caffeine-Free Diet Coke
Coke
Pepsi
Stop and Shop Brand Grape Soda
A&W Root Beer
Sprite
Red Bull
Monster Energy
V8 Splash Fruit Medley
Water (our control for this experiment)

After filling the jars, the lids were screwed on and the jars were placed in our basement. And there they will sit, undisturbed, while I observe and document the changes that our battery of liquids is inducing in our chicken. This is of course not a perfect experiment. The mason jars are not air tight, so the soda will likely lose their carbonation more quickly than a sealed bottle of soda so if the pressure and carbonation is important to the degradation process, we will miss that. Also, a basement is not exactly temperature controlled so variations in heat could artificially speed or slow the corrosion. But at least all of the samples will be exposed to the same variations. Finally, I am somewhat disappointed that I don’t have any quantitative measures for assessing what is happening to the chicken. The fact that this isn’t the perfect experiment won’t stop us from doing small “s” science though. Life’s great unanswered questions need to be answered and sometimes the means chicken wings in mason jars in a basement.

This blog post is sponsored by Slurm.

Feudal Mario

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:10:00 +0000

There is a lot to like about the artwork of xiaobaosg (see it at his deviantart site and blog or buy it on his Etsy shop). Although he is a self-described amateur artist, I am not really seeing how the quality of the artwork lines up with that amateur status. Given his location on this planet (as best I can discern it), it is not surprising that his work all carries a heavy influence from traditional Asian/Chinese drawings. True, his artwork has a bit too much panda for my taste but an interesting choice and one that plays out quite interestingly in some of his communist propaganda pieces. But really what really got me excited about his work are the two pictures of his that are below. A Mario and a Contra re-imagining in feudal China. Sure, the Mario take is a bit of a new one but certainly there is no shortages of Mario art on the web. But to do Contra? That is a home run. It is one of the few video games I have actually played all the way to the end (I clearly remember battling the level boss in the picture). A true classic of the old blow on the cartridge Nintendo system. That just rocks. Really, after finding this fine piece of art I am only left to ask, why not more Contra pop-art on the interwebs?

This blog post is sponsored by Oscorp Technologies.

PENS!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 02:16:00 +0000

Tonight, we turn our pen review skills toward Genome Quebec's entry into the competitive field of free novelty pens.

Genome Quebec is the regional franchise of the much larger Genome Canada research organization. Genome Canada, a non-profit organization supported by public and private money, is pretty much the Canadian version of our National Human Genome Research Institute except they devote a much larger portion of their budget to the genetic engineering of the perfect maple syrup. So what happens when Canadian brains and tax dollars turn to creating the perfect give away?

The Genome Quebec pen is not just a pen. The top hides a blue highlighter. The two in one utility is of this item is a nice, frugal touch but it does cause some problems with functionally . The pen has the curved contour to fit comfortably in your hand when you are writing but flip that puppy around to use the highlighter and suddenly you have square peg/round hole syndrome. Additionally, the highlighter is positioned where the button for extending the pen tip should be. If you don't put the plastic cap back on (or more likely you lose the cap), you find your self with a blue thumb the first time you instinctively try to click this pen. As a result, the button for extending the pen tip got moved down the body of the pen to the curve that typically rests in the crux of your hand. If you are planning on doing any marathon scribing, this is not the pen for you as that cheap little grey piece of plastic will start to chafe.

Speaking of cheap, the overall quality of the pen's construction is not high. It is your typical pen exoskeleton. The kind that if screw the top and the bottom of the pen together one turn to far, you get a Liberty Bell crack up the side of the pen. This pen is not made for endurance. A misplaced step by a ballerina will crush this pen into more pieces than can be found in a Reese's factory.

Final topic to cover is the color because of the symbolic meaning it has. This "Canadian" pen passes on the classic red and white color scheme of maple leaf flag for the baby blue of the Quebec fleurs-de-lis. Sure, this may make sense given this is Genome Quebec pen. But these seditious separatists are now using their pens to passive aggressively state their belief that French Canadians deserve a homeland.

In the end, this pen is not that flattering for the Genome Quebec group. Like all Canadians, they will try really, really hard to provide everything that you need. They will conduct genetics studies with their Canadian pedigrees. They will attempt find drugs for their Canadian diseases (Maple Syrup Urine Disease). In fact, they will go over the top to show that, yes, our cute little neighbors to the north how to use both a centrifuge and a PCR machine. Bless their little hearts. But in end, they just can't match up with the utilitarian functionality, quality, and productivity of the American scientific industrial machine. Also, French Canadians can not be trusted. They will sabotage your experiment in a second if it means they can look better in the eyes of the boss.

Free Pen Rating - 5.7*

* Rating includes the standard Canadian bonus point that all Americans give when considering all things Canadian. They are just so cute. Like Ewoks. But it loses 0.5 points for being French Canadians.

This blog post is sponsored by Holden and Charles Corporation.

Breaking News - I Can See The Future

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:32:00 +0000

In what can only be called transcendent clairvoyance, I, me, the guy typing these words, correctly predicted the final point total of the New York Giants in the Super Bowl. Just how rare and amazing is this feat? ESPN has no fewer than 71 of their finest "experts" guess the final score of the game and not a single one of them had the Giants final score as 21 points. How was I so incredibly on the mark when so many others were so horribly off-base I am sure you are not asking. Well, it is my proprietary, neural network-based algorithm which incorporates chaos theory, the anti-life equation, and the number 42 that I have honed and refined in my 53 years of intense football studies. My Dartboard 5000 system is without equal. So, now you are probably not asking yourself, how to I get access to the Dartboard 5000 so I can take down all of Vegas like the crew of Oceans 11 (but not Oceans 12 and 13, those movies were terrible)? For a limited time only (which is from the moment you decide to give me money to the moment you decide to stop), you can have the keys to kingdom for only $9.99 a month (plus shipping and handling). You get all of my sure-fire, can't miss predictions as soon as they come out of my head (predictions not guaranteed to be right, just guaranteed to be predictions). Sign up now and watch the money to start rolling in (to my bank account).

(For clarity sake, we will not discuss my predictions for the New England Patriots final score or the winning team. We wouldn't want to confuse the message.)

While We Are On the Subject

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 01:36:00 +0000

Now seems like the perfect time to wrap up all of our football related writing so let's go ahead and tackle my annual round-up of college bowl games with my usual focus on the interconference competition. And from that perspective, this was the worst year yet in a long line of really disappointing years of college bowl games. I guess it wasn't surprising though. After a string of mid majors embarrassed the champs from the power conferences, the powers that be decided that if you can't beat them, take your ball and go home. Even though their were small conference teams that arguably deserved a shot at the national title, they didn't even get a single BSC invite. Boise State in the MAACO Bowl against a 6-6 Arizona State is an embarrassment. It is amazing that any watches these games. One thing that can be said for little guy is that they took their lemons and squeezed them into the cuts of the big boys. In the 4 games that matched a power conference teams with an underdog conference team, the underdogs went 3-1. What I love about this result is that the argument against including the mid-majors in the bowl games is that their high win totals are artificial. They just benefit from weak competition. That the 10th best SEC team would get 10 wins in the Mountain West. Well, guess what? The talking heads are wrong again. These results once again show those tropes to be horribly wrong. Penn State came within a win of taking the Big Ten and they got destroyed by Houston. Wouldn't an LSU/Houston match-up have been ten times more interesting than what we got in the championship game?

So what did we learn from a bowl series that just paired mid-major against mid-major and power conference against power conference. Nothing really new. The ACC is clearly the red-headed step child of conferences. They finished dead last in this years games (tied with the WAC) and further secured their basement position in the overall standing for bowl games since I started tracking these things. My question is how is that the ACC stood strong through all of the conference realignment tumult while real football conferences like the Big 12 were on the verge of death. The best thing we can do for college football would be to just disband the ACC and give their automatic berth to the Moutain West which is clearly more than just Boise State. At 18-7, the MWC is second to only the SEC over the last five years. Speaking of the SEC, I guess I have to give this one to the talking heads. Yes, the SEC is the best football conference out there, although it does help when you get to play five of our bowl games against the Big 10 and ACC. If only they had the guts to play the MWC.

One final note on this. I will be starting the cumulative conference win totals over next year. There has been so much realignment at this point that the conferences of next year will bear little resemblance to those that were part of my first 2007 round-up. So crediting 2012 Pac-12 wins to the 2007 Pac-10 would make as much sense as saying, "I can't understand why the Pirates are so bad, they have Willie Stargell and Barry Bonds." These conferences got plastic surgery, new identities, and entered the witness programs. I mean West Virginia was last seen crossing the Rio Grande with a fake mustache. So, we will start fresh. That is if I even bother to care next year. College football is horrible.

Final College Football Bowl Standings

Conference	W	L	GB
Big12	6	2	-
SEC	6	3	0.5
MAC	4	1	0.5
C-USA	4	1	0.5
Big East	3	2	1.5
MWC	2	2	2
Ind	1	1	2
Sun Belt	1	2	2.5
Big10	4	6	3
PAC12	2	5	3.5
ACC	2	6	4
WAC	0	4	4

Bowl Season Performance - 2007-2011

Conference	W	L	GB
SEC	30	16	-
MWC	18	7	1.5
Big 12	22	14	3
Pac-10/12	15	14	6.5
Sun Belt	6	5	6.5
Ind.	5	4	6.5
Big East	15	15	7
C-USA	14	15	7.5
Big Ten	18	23	9.5
MAC	7	15	11
WAC	5	15	12
ACC	15	27	13

This blog post is sponsored by Burt Johnson Construction.

I Think There Might Be a Game on This Weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 04:01:00 +0000

With football dominating the national conversation one last weekend, now seems like a good time to revisit my beginning of the season predictions for the National Football League. Here is what I predicted versus the actual, deeply flawed real life outcomes.

AFC East           Predicted      Actual
New England       13-3             13-3
New York Jets    11-5              8-8
Miami                  4-12             6-10
Buffalo                 4-12             6-10

AFC North
Pittsburgh            14-2             12-4
Baltimore              9-7              12-4
Cleveland             7-9              4-12
Cincinnati             4-12             9-7

AFC South
Houston              9-7               10-6
Indianapolis         8-8               2-12
Tennessee           8-8                9-7
Jacksonville        3-13              5-11

AFC West
San Diego          13-3             8-8
Denver                7-9              8-8
Kansas City        6-10            7-9
Oakland             2-14             8-8

NFC East
Philadelphia             13-3       8-8
Dallas                      11-5       8-8
New York Giants    10-6        9-7
Washington              4-12       5-11

NFC North
Green Bay              14-2       15-1
Minnesota                8-8        3-13
Detroit                     7-9        10-6
Chicago                  3-13        8-8

NFC South
New Orleans    13-3      13-3
Tampa Bay             10-6        4-12
Atlanta                     9-7        10-6
Carolina                  3-13       6-10

NFC West
St. Louis                 9-7         2-14
Seattle                    8-8         7-9
San Francisco         7-9         13-3
Arizona                  5-11        8-8

With a Super Bowl of San Diego over New Orleans.

Overall, I have to say I didn't do too terrible with my first public attempt at playing NFL oracle. Although both of my Super Bowl picks were wrong, I got 4 of the 6 AFC playoff teams and 3 of the 6 NFC playoff teams right. I did put both the Giants and the Pats into the playoffs and even on the playoff teams that I missed with, I wasn't embarrassly off. Probably my biggest mistakes were St. Louis, Tampa Bay, and Cincinnati. St. Louis and Tampa Bay turned out to be bad teams that capitalized on a weak schedule the year before only to return to form this year. Cincinnati, I would say, is this year's version of St. Louis and Tampa Bay. I fully expect Cincy to be a losing team again next year. On the good side, I picked Houston's first ever playoff appearance.

The one lesson I learned from this exercise was not to try to pick final records based on individual game match-ups because it is impossible to pick the upsets before the season starts. What you end up with is your really good teams with too many wins and your bad teams with too many losses. Once you realize the top and the bottom of the league are too out of whack you end up just randomly picking upsets to better balance wins and losses. And that kind of defeats the purpose. Next, your I will just pick final records based on realistic exceptions of what NFL record distributions look like.

One final note just because I like to say I told you so. NFL parity is no more real than Bigfoot and compassionate conservatism. The conference championship games featured 3 teams that have been the most winning teams of the last decade and the 4th team was one of the most successful franchises of all time that just happened to fall on hard times of late. And now the Super Bowl is the same exact set of teams that were in the Super Bowl four short years ago. In fact, in the last 9 Super Bowls, only 3 different teams have represented the AFC in the big game and only 4 teams in the last 11 championship games. You do see that kind of repetitiveness in a league dominated by parity. I think it is time to put that one to bed.

My pick for the winner of Super Bowl XLVI - New England Patriots 32, New York Giants 21

This blog post is sponsored by Bach Worldwide.

The Presidents The Way They Should Be

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:14:00 +0000

I continue to envy those that are skilled at the creative arts. I like to pretend that I have some capacity at creative writing (I have the great American novel in me if only I had the time to write, I say to myself in my most delusional moments) but even my skewed self imagine doesn't allow me fool myself into thinking I can create anything that would be considered art. Of course my definition of art is flexible. Typically, the type of art that I appreciate most is that which allows us to visualize what ordinarily would only exist in our imagination. And this is the kind of art I want to try to highlight every Thursday. First up is what I think is a perfect example of the kind thing that I would create if I had any real artistic skill. Jason Heuser created a series of posters that show us how our greatest president's would have responded to such real world issues as zombie outbreaks and Sasquatch invasion if they would have faced them while in office. This is the world I want to live in and I appreciate those that can bring it to life.

This blog post is sponsored by Schrute Farm.

A Science Like Substance

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 04:00:00 +0000

After the kids saw this ad during this past week's My Little Pony episode, they were demanding that they get Taq Polymerase for their next birthday. Bio-Rad knows how to market to the kids.

In case you didn't see the theme in last five sponsors (including today's), farewell to Chuck. You won't be missed and barely, if ever, remembered. Your lightweight storytelling that completely wasted the great Jayne made you immensely ignorable. But hey you stayed on air for 5 years by selling your soul to Subway, so that has to count for something. Congrats on that.

This blog post is sponsored by Orange Orange.

PENS!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 03:20:00 +0000

You can tell a lot about a company from the free pens they pass out at conferences. So let's be judgmental about unrelated products and services based the quality of their associated novelty writing instruments. First up is Kreatech Diagnostics, a biotech company that primarily sells dyes for conducting karyotyping (counting your chromosomes in order to figure out what is wrong with you).

Let's start with the color - orange. Brilliant choice. Only the best color in the rainbow. I also appreciate the novel design of the clip. The Swiss cheese design with an aluminum finish gives it the faux-industrial feel that we all enjoy at our local Chipotle. The thick body of the pen provides for solid gripping for your most challenging writing conditions. The big button for retracting the tip is responsive and its size means thumb injuries from missing the button in instances of emergency tip withdrawal will be limited. The overall look of the pen is hurt by the semi-opaque nature of the pen. The shadow of the inner workings of the pen show through disrupting the otherwise clear lines of the pen. Also, it shows a lack of commitment on the part of the pen designer. Either hide the spring and let your spring flag fly. Don't play cutesy with me. Finally, the heft of the pen is wanting giving it a cheap feel despite the otherwise slick appearance. It may be made of flimsy plastic but it shouldn't feel that way. Put a rock in that thing.

So what does that say about Kreatech and their products? In my opinion, based on their pen, Kreatech is a company of all style and no substance. They pretend that they believe in corporate transparency but they are really have a lot of dirty secrets that attempt to hide. They make up for the poor quality of their products with pretty packaging. You know that extra chromosome 21 you thought you had? Turns out it was just a French Fry that Kreatech accidentally packaged in their reagent. See what a free pen can tell you.

This blog post is sponsored by Carmichael Industries.

The Triumphant Return of the Solitaire Update

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:05:00 +0000

After briefly pausing at our new base camp, our climb up Mount Everest has resumed. Despite suffering through the setback of a 1 for 27 stretch, we ended up advancing our overall win percentage to 17.2%. Winning at a 20% clip now seems like it is an obtainable goal. To win 1 out of 5 hands of solitaire seems above average mean to me. But then again, soon it will be quite average for me. That is the greatness that is my solitaire mastery.

At the beginning of this exercise, I said I was going to start giving some names to the various aspects of the game so that I could more efficiently communicate my grand strategies. I already introduced the term "gutter ball" to mean finishing a hand of solitaire with out being able to make a single card play. Today we add another vocabulary word - "codon". From hence forth, this word will be used to refer to the set of three cards you turn over from the deck (see picture below). My word is law.

Day 48 – 2 of 8 (199.5, 4.01, 49.56)
Day 49 – 4 of 8 (201)

Day 50 – 0 of 6 (201, 4, 49.38)

Day 51 – 2 of 9 (201)

Day 52 – 1 of 1 (202, 4, 48.56)

Day 53 – 0 of 5 (200.5, 4, 48.33)

Day 54 – 0 of 10 (200.5, 4.04, 49.36)

Day 55 – 1 of 12 (200.5)

Day 56 – 3 of 7 (201)

Day 57 – 1 of 6 (201)

Day 58 – 1 of 4 (201)

Day 59 – 2 of 8 (201.5)

Total - 89 of 516 (17.2%)

The Sure to be Wrong Prediction of the Week

This week I am going to take a shot at predicting the first movie this year to break the $100 million mark. Since none of the movies released so far this year stand a chance of reaching the century mark (Sorry wolf-punching Liam Neeson) this is truly a forward looking exercise. In 4 out of the last 5 years, a movie released in January or February reached 100 mil. So I am going to play the odds and say we are going to have our first century club member in hand before Rare Disease Day has passed. By making that declaration, we dramatically limited the field. So let's take a quick look at the remaining candidate.

There is no clear cut blockbuster in the February slate. There are several recognizable names releasing films but none of them really are the type that carry big money makers. The Rock, Ryan Reynolds, Denzel Washington, Drew Barrymore, Nic Cage, and Harry Potter all stand a good chance of getting a movie a $50 million gross but not much more. We also have a couple of sequels on our hands but the original Journey and Ghost Rider movies barely made it to $100 million last time and no one seems to really be clamoring for another go around with these stories. So what does that leave us with?

The three movies that I think have the best chance to go big time are Chronicle, This Means War, and Wanderlust. Chronicle feels like a really interesting, decidedly dark take on the superhero trope and the found footage angle clearly still has legs. It is hard to get a real feel for how interested people are for this because it is such a genre movie and the it features unknowns in an understated advertising campaign. There is a chance this could be another Cloverfield but in the end I just don't think there is enough critical mass behind this movie.

Next I will tackle Wanderlust. This one actually does have a star that has shown she can deliver a $100 million dollar movie. Jennifer Aniston has scored two $100 million comedies in a row. But this movie seems fairly generic. Another movie about harried professionals slowing down and learning to enjoy life. Haven't seen that story in the theaters....since last month 6 months in a row. Also, it is released the last week of February so all the other movie in front of it have to fall down in order for it to be first to the finish line.

That leaves us with This Means War. Bane (an English national working for the CIA?) and Captain Kirk fight over Reese Witherspoon who every seems to have stopped caring about 10 years ago. But it is a big budget action/comedy coming out around Valentine's Day. That "holiday" has helped other movies break through to the rarefied air. And has alot of the look and feel of Mr. and Mrs. Smith (the folks that made that movie made this one too), which was quite successful and really enjoyable. So, I am going to put all my Monopoly money down on This Means War as the year's first $100 million movie. (my hedge - I would not be surprised if this movie topped out at $75 million).

Bonus Prediction - This one isn't mine but I agree with the person who said it - Reese Witherspoon turns out to be a spy too.

This blog post is sponsored by Weinerlicious.

There Is No Call For That Language

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 05:48:00 +0000

I enjoyed this video. Yes it is cliched and stereotypical. But what do they say about stereotypes. They become stereotypes because their is a nugget of truth to it that everyone recognizes. I know for me, the first 15 seconds or so of this video are a common part of my everyday life. And no, it is not endearing.

But here is the thing I don't get. Never have. The title of the video. The completely unnecessary pejorative. I know it may seem silly and maybe prudish. Yet here I go into my grumpy old man routine.

I personally stay well clear of working blue but I have no real problem with it in the right context. Big fan of South Park. Greatly enjoy the comic stylings of Daniel Tosh and Kevin Smith. Let's not forget that fondness for always naked residents of True Blood. Yes, this isn't exactly cutting edge stuff but still it is entertainment that can make one squirm when watching in the company of a parent. So, even if I don't partake doesn't mean I can't take a little pleasure in a well placed profanity. What I don't get is the totally unnecessary one, like in this title. It adds not one extra giggle to the skit or a deeper meaning to the proceedings. It is swearing just to swear. Just as most swearing on the major networks. Feeling pay cable envy, your routine procedural will now include a choice #$@?! or *$#&)!% in any given 40 minutes of time wasting. Doesn't make the action more believable or the characters more credible. In fact it is more the other way. Growing up expecting a certain level of censorship on my TV, the precess of a network cuss immediately pulls me out of the show. It is lazy writing. By Grabthar's Hammer, can't they smarten up a bit and think of something more intelligent for their fraking screen avatars to spew from time to time?

This blog is sponsored by The Nerd Herd.

A New Leaf

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 03:30:00 +0000

As we now head into our next 100 blog posts, it seems like a good time to rethink how I go about doing my irregular writing. I recently read an article about a guy who did a blog post about Mario (The Plumber not the former Bayside Wrestler) every day for the year. I found that article a bit inspiring. Why can't I do that? Maybe if I found a topic that I really cared about it might be easy to bang out a little something, something everyday. Heck, if this person can do a post (almost) everyday, why can't I.

The problem isn't a topic that I am interested in enough to dive into it for a full year. I certainly don't have that passion for a video game (except for maybe Tecmo Bowl and Agent USA) like my inspiration. So instead of fixating on a single topic, I am going to try doing a rotating schedule of alternating subject matters to power me through this mission.

Do I believe that this is the trick that it will take for me to post regularly? Not in a million years. How long do I think it will take before I miss a day or abandon the schedule all together? Wouldn't be surprised if it was within the week. But hey, why not at least try. And with that as my introduction, here is the tentative schedule with explanations to come as to what many of these topics actually represent.

Sunday - The Solitaire Odyssey Update

Monday - Pen of the Week

Tuesday - A Science Like Substance

Wednesday - Art Apprectiation

Thursday - This Week in Pirate Futility

Friday and Saturday - What ever strikes my fancy

And there you have it. The quest begins. But before I call this post to a close let's enjoy a fine piece of classical music. Rock it Rockapella!

This blog post is sponsored by Buy More.

A Momentous Milestone

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 04:10:00 +0000

My 100th blog post. Few thought we would every see this day. Mostly because no one has actually spent anytime thinking about this blog, let alone how long it might continue on in abject anonymity. But here we are so let's take the time to reflect on a few things. This blog got its start on June 27, 2007 so it is taken me 4 and a half years to reach the century mark, a pace that would put a tortoise to sleep. Good thing, my livelihood isn't determined by my creative word per decade output or I would have starved long ago. In that time, the Idle Worship blog has been visited 3,498 times. Of course the majority of those visits have likely either been me looking at my own words or my sister (a real live, documented reader of the blog that is willing to openly admit it). But there are those unlucky few that I have been tricked into clicking through to the blog by some keyword that I typed and that Google zeroed in on. Residents of 95 different countries have stared confused at their web browser and pondered why they were looking at the Idle Worship blog (a shout out to my Moldovian visitor). I am surprisingly popular in Germany. And on the home front, I have enjoyed hits from 48 states and D.C. (If anyone out there knows someone who lives in Alaska or Montana, please ask them to visit. I want to collect them all). What is driving this thundering herd of wandering eyes your not asking? Well, as I mentioned before, it is actually may favorite part of doing the blog and it has nothing to do with what I write. It is my sponsors. 224 visitors came from searches for Goliath National Bank. Number 2 on the search engine referrals, Massive Dynamic. Many times during this historic run of blog posts I thought I might run out of sponsors but without failure another company stepped up and laid down the Monopoly money to keep the words flowing. So, in honor of the sponsors that have been so generous to this little person, I am going to use this post to do a complete review of all of our benefactors up to this point. But before we get to that please watch this video about what you can do to help support your favorite corporation from those that would seek to hurt them.

This blog post is sponsored by All of These Great Companies.

The Worst Thing in the World Ever (or Maybe Just Right Now)

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:52:00 +0000

Speaking of the movie that I would give my Razzie vote to as worst movie of the year – Twilight : What To Expect When You Are Expecting Vampire Spawn Part 1…. What an awful, awful viewing experience. I don’t think words can express how truly bad this movie was. And really, I won’t try. It is pointless at this point. One thing the internet is not short on is Twilight take downs (One thing the internet is short on – more little kids getting hit in the head with oversized balls please). It would be like staking Edward after Buffy and Abram Lincoln were already done with him. So, instead of piling on with yet one more overwrought dissection of this cult phenomenon’s sexism, disturbing messages to teen-age girls, or undercover Mormon evangelism, let me instead just highlight the most memorable moment for me from this most recent episode of “As the Pampered Teen-Ager Pouts”. And can there really be any argument about this. Clearly the best part of this movie, ney, the whole series, is when the spurned werewolf of the central love triangle falls instantly in love with the less than 1 day old vampire progeny of the story’s protagonist upon locking eyes with it (By the way, the resolution of the love triangle in Stephanie Meyer’s other book “The Host” was equally creepy and off-putting). Then, in the translating of bad book writing by poor screenwriting into dreadful cinema, the vampire boy narrates this perverse bond of man and child wife for the benefit of the audience (It is their most sacred law). So, you don’t misunderstand there cosmic bond. For more Twilight bashing, enjoy the below video.

By the way, the remake of Arthur is actually pretty good.

Solitaire Update

So much for that upward climb I was crowing about last time. I seem to have plateaued in my rapid ascension to solitaire royalty. Of course, their might have been another reason for my continued improvement overtime besides the one I gave the last time. And that is my addled, aged mind and its inability to keep track of how many games I have actually played at any given time. I give it the old college try but many times I find myself asking, was that game four or five. To my benefit, when I do question myself, I go with the higher number. Darn you natural aging process.

There is one other variable in the ebbs and flows of my success and failure - the device and version of solitaire I play my games on. I tend to play my games with either the default Microsoft Solitaire on my laptop or the game that is found on my Blackberry. Originally, I had assumed these to versions of the game both simulated the randomness of a deck of cards. But I am not so sure anymore. It may just be me (and I am not willing to do the game tracking to figure this one out. At least not yet.) but it seems like the Blackberry pays out fewer winners than the laptop one. I don't think I ever came across a gutter ball (a hand that you can't make a single card play with) on the laptop but I know I have with the Blackberry. It seems to me that the laptop always gives you a chance to win, you just have to make all of the right moves. But the Blackberry simulates the truth of the cold, hard world. Or it could just be my senior brain playing tricks on me again.

Day 35 – 0 of 9

Day 36 – 3 of 18 (3.75, 48.52)

Day 37 – 3 of 9 (200.5, 3.88, 50.51)

Day 38 – 1 of 9 (202.5, 3.75, 48.58)

Day 39 – 0 of 9 (203)

Day 40 – 2 of 5 (203, 3.5)

Day 41 – 2 of 8 (200.5)

Day 42 – 4 of 10 (200.5, 4, 52.16)

Day 43 – 1 of 5 (201.5, 4, 51.54)

Day 44 – 0 of 11 (201.5, 4, 51.34)

Day 45 – 1 of 5 (200.5)

Day 46 – 0 of 6 (201, 4.01, 50.41)

Day 47 – 2 of 10 (200.5, 4, 50.11)

Total - 72 of 432 (16.7%)

This blog post is sponsored by Knight Industries.

Yesterday in History

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 03:31:00 +0000

20 years to they day, we remember a seminal day in the history of computer science as Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology took a quantum leap forward. On January 12th, 1992, the Heuristically programmed algorithmic computer, or HAL for short, was brought on line in Urbana, Illinois. HAL, to put it mildly, was a revelation in how we thought about the potential power of computers and our ability to program into them independent thought, reason, adaptation, and improvisation. In fact, the HAL computer system was so far ahead of its time that even the subsequent generations of supercomputers, such as Deep Blue, Deep Thought, and the Ken Jennings-spanking Watson, have been incapable of approaching let alone replicating HAL's near human ability to process problems and respond to them of their own accord. Of course, this failure to produce an equivalent technology in the intervening years has less to do with an inability to recapture silicon lightning in a bottle than an willingness to replicate the tragedies of the past. For, as most people know, the HAL 9000 computer was deactivated in 2001 after it intentionally caused the deaths of 4 astronauts on the Discovery One mission to Jupiter. As important as the discovery of humans' ability to create a new digital intelligence was, the lesson of what would happen when we released that intelligence into our world was equally as important. Can you imagine what would have happened if HAL 9000 had been wired into our national defense grid? He would have had the power to not just eliminate a few extraterrestrial explorers but to make humans subservient to a new race of robot overlords (Terminators if you will). Thank goodness that is a reality we have been able to avoid.

This blog post is sponsored by Protovision Games.

It's Not Easy Earning the Green

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 03:35:00 +0000

It has been awhile since I have seen a really good movie at the theater. Granted, I haven’t had the chance to see the latest releases like Sherlock Holmes 2 and Tom Cruise in Sunglasses11 but I fully expect them to be nothing more than moderately entertaining, largely uninspired time wasters. This is understandable given that my movie going experience has been largely limited to kiddy fare (with the eye-clawing exception of Twilight Saga : Please Make This StopBefore I Hara-Kiri Myself Part 1). This has regrettably brought me face to face with such delights as the toy-hawking Cars 2 but it also gave me a convenient excuse to see the Muppet Movie.

Unfortunately most nostalgia-fueled kids’ movies have largely been excruciating money grabs. Us children of the 80’s remember how much we think we enjoyed the Smurfs, Chipmunks, and Yogi the Bear as kids and then rush out to the movie theater so that our progeny can experience the joy our brain’s way back machine convinces us we had when we first saw them on Saturday morning. Of course, within 10 minutes of the lights going down, we realize that the Hollywood machine has completely befouled our childhood memories and then quietly weep through the remaining 70 minutes of brain liquefying computer animation while our children mentally make out their Christmas lists with everything they see on screen. Of course, if we think really hard about it, we might even admit to ourselves that the source materials for these movies wasn’t of high quality either (I did love the part in Smurf where Doogie Howser questioned the naming system of the Smurfs). And that is a key division point between these ankle biter of equivalents of the G.I. Joe movie and the Muppet-based movie. The Muppets are legitimately funny.

The Muppets have always walked that thin line between giving the kids what they need for a good giggle while engaging in enough puns, word-play, and general absurdist humor that the adults that were brought along for the ride could have a good time as well (The Phineas and Ferb of its time). In fact, in recently rewatching the original Muppet Movie with the kids, it bordered on being too adult-paced and teetered on the edge of losing them. Me – I still found it as good as I remembered. And thankfully those that made the new Muppets movie retained all of the cleverness that was contained in those classic Friday night episodes that I fell in love with as a kid. They didn’t decide to computer generate them in 3D or put them in a world that they didn’t understand so you could do the standard fish out of water trope. Instead it was same as it always was and should be. That same world that found the existence of talking puppets to be normal and the presence of a flesh and bones and a felt-made brother pair to be unextraordinary. The same fourth-wall acknowledging dialogue (quick aside – after explaining what the term fourth wall means to my eldest, she greatly enjoyed pointing out all of the instances in the Muppet movie of their fourth wall-breaking behavior. Our youngest hearing this but not understanding, enjoys pointing out when things break the 2^nd and 3^rd wall). Even the new characters introduced to the Muppet Universe in this movie were completely consistent with this tradition. In fact, one of my favorite parts of movie was the character of “80’s Robot”. Although he was responsible for one of the most generationally divisive joke of the movie. The screeching sound of the dial-up modem that he used to connect to the internet produced a hardy chuckle out of the adults in the audience while the kids stared up in them in confusion asking what was so funny.

My greatest disappointment associated with the Muppet Movie is that it is going to finish well behind The Smurfs and the 3^rd Chipmunk Movie in box office receipts. This is a movie that deserved better. We are likely going to get a second dose of unnecessarily created Smurfs (I am looking at you Gutsy – couldn’t you have just been Hefty or Handy) before we get to find out if Tex Richman remembers to let those showgirls out of his closet now that he has amnesia. At least TinTin is dying a predictable death and won’t be back for more creepily realistic animated adventures. If only we treated all of the Belgian cartoon immigrants with the same indifference. Come on people, buy American. Buy more Muppets. Maniacal Laugh. Maniacal Laugh.

Solitaire Update

See I was right. I had a very good reason for not stopping at 200 hands played. My win percentage continues to climb. Still not ready to conclude anything from this quite yet but it might actually be suggesting that just the act of playing solitaire again and again has actually improved my ability to play this game of skill (A solitaire player who blames bad luck for their losing ways is just a solitaire player that doesn’t truly understand the game). I am beginning to see the dead-end moves that I would have previously made impetuously but now can avoid. And as a result, each time I have tallied my results, my win percentage has gone up a percent. For now, I am going to keep chugging along and see if my Solitaire learning curve finally plateaus. But, until then, I will continue my climb to solitaire immortality.

Day 21 – 1 of 4 (203)

Day 22 – 2 of 12 (203)

Day 23 – 1 of 12 (200.5, 3.5, 47.07)

Day 24 – 1 of 4 (200.5, 3.64, 48.6)

Day 25 – 2 of 10 (199.5, 3.56, 48.29)

Day 26 – 2 of 11 (198.5, 3.76, 50.26)

Day 27 – 2 of 9 (199.5)

Day 28 – 0 of 7 (200.5, 3.77, 49.4)

Day 29 – 2 of 5 (200.5, 3.71, 49.33)

Day 30 – 1 of 8 (199, 3.75, 49.27)

Day 31 – 1 of 3 (200.5, 3.75, 50.1)

Day 32 – 1 of 4 (200, 3.75, 49.49)

Day 33 – 1 of 12

Day 34 – 6 of 26

Total - 53 of 318 (16.7%)

This blog post is sponsored by Richman Oil.

It's A Trap

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 04:20:00 +0000

Since we are on the subject of ESPN’s “It’s not crazy. It’s sports” advertising campaign, I have to highlight the cream of the crop which plays more like a documentary than a commercial. The great disappointment of this ad and the real life events that inspired it is that real life (and copyright law) interjected itself into the delightful story of an internet meme’s attempt to turn the self-righteousness of the Southern football “tradition” on its head. Wouldn’t it have been great if those prim and proper dance squad ladies that think it is appropriate to celebrate a legacy of slavery with the nickname of their past it's prime ball team had to now wear a shirt with a prune-faced alien to their Saturday tailgate party. Ahhh…what could have been.

Solitaire Update

The updates keep coming. Not much new to report at this point. I am beginning to pile up some sizable N's for what my normal rate of success is. Before I can really appreciated whether any potential strategies that I mentioned in that first Solitaire post has an impact on success, I have to understand what success looks like. Right now we are settling in on a number of approximately 1 win for every 6 hands of cards. Although the almost 200 hands played seems like a lot, there still seems to be some real movement in the numbers. I think to get a true stable baseline, I need to go a total of 1000 hands. So that is my goal right now. 1000 hands of solitaire with the standard straight ahead strategy. Then we will see where we are and go from there.

Day 12 - 1 of 10 (203.5)
Day 13 - 1 of 12 (203.5)
Day 14 - 1 of 1 (203.5, 3.52, 48.34)
Day 15 - 1 of 8 (202, 3.49, 48.16)
Day 16 - 1 of 5 (203)
Day 17 - 3 of 7 (202.5, 3.55, 48.05)
Day 18 - 0 of 9 (202.5, 3.53, 48.05)
Day 19 - 3 of 5 (201.5, 3.56, 47.94)
Day 20 - 0 of 5 (200.5, 3.76, 50.58)
Overall Success Rate - 30 out of 191 (15.7%)

This blog post is sponsored by Allinol.

The World's Most Famous Piece of Terry Cloth

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 02:34:00 +0000

Is it any wonder that ESPN made a commercial that celebrated the fanship of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the single greatest and most successful NFL franchise in professional football history? To be fair, ESPN did make “It’s not crazy. It's sports” spots for other teams but none of the others were as genuine and real as the Steeler one. In fact, the Philadelphia Eagle one was just downright sad for the contrived, artificial nature of it. Whereas taking the Terrible Towel to the far reaches of the earth is completely natural and expected. Watch any Steelers’ game and it seems like it is a home game, regardless of where they are playing. I still remember a Monday night game a couple years back at Washington, the home of a once proud franchise with a supposedly devoted fanbase. Yet, the Black and Gold dominated the screen and it was the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons quarterback that had problems shouting out signals over the roar of the crowd, not the Steelers. It wasn’t like they were playing in Jacksonville. This was an NFL town, yet they couldn’t muster up enough hometown fans to make a decent showing against the invading hordes of the Steelers’ Washington D.C. sleeper cell. This is not uncommon. Steeler fans don’t just travel well. They are in every town and in great numbers. But why is this? It isn’t because the once polluting steel mill smokestacks created generation after generation of ex-patriots that infiltrated every corner of this country. Pittsburgh was just never big enough to have that many former residents. The truth of the matter is the opening statement of this paragraph. The Steelers are the most successful NFL franchise of all time. One for the thumb plus another finger on the other hand (you can pick which finger that is). Eight Super Bowl visits in all. The Steelers are proof positive that the specter of league wide parity and the death of the dynasty is one big myth perpetuated by college football apologists who still think anyone still cares about their sham of a “sport”.

If we just look back at the last 10 years of NFL playoff history, yes you will see that almost the entire league did make the playoffs at one point or another (Sorry Houston, Detroit, and Buffalo - no playoffs for you in the last 10 years). And the system is certainly set up to give better odds at a payoff than any slot machine you will see in Vegas. Firstly, there are only 4 teams in each division. So right off the bat you have a 25% chance in making the playoffs. Not bad. Once you add in the wildcards, you have over one third of the league participating in the post season every year. During the last decade, if true parity were in place, you would expect every team to make the playoffs 3-4 times. Instead, the majority of playoff visits are cluster amongst the a few privileged teams. The NFL’s 1%. In this elite group, you are making the playoffs, at worst, every other year. The 10 most successful franchises (Indianapolis, New England, Phliadelphia, Green Bay, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, New York Jets, Seattle, New York Giants, and San Diego) account for 56% of the playoff spots grabbed in the last 10 years despite only making up only 31% of the league’s teams. The bottom 11 teams (Houston, Detroit, Buffalo, Cleveland, Washington, San Francisco, Oakland, Miami, Jacksonville, Cincinnati, and Arizona) captured 12.5% of the playoff spots (about 1 per 10 years on average) with 34.5% of the league’s teams during that same time frame. People love to point to the yearly turnover of playoff teams as proof of the league’s parity. But this myopic view misses the larger trends that are obvious with a more macro view. One that shows that in fact there are dominant teams that over the long term continue to succeed again and again, while the one year wonders quickly return to obscurity. If you live in Cleveland you can hold onto the dream of parity and the promise it brings to deliver your once in a decade playoff visit. Or you can face reality and become a fan of real winner of a franchise like Indianapolis that gave you a rooting interest in January for nine straight years. And that folks is why there are more Steeler fans in Jacksonville than Jaguar fans (The Jaguars really only have themselves to blame for this – they could have drafted TIM TEBOW!).

Solitaire Update

One of the stated goals I had for doing the solitaire update was to encourage more frequent writing on this blog. Given that it has been over a month since my last blog post, you might say that I missed that goal by a country mile. Well, yes and no. I have been dutifully keeping track of my solitaire success and failures and the presence of that card playing log has been a constant weight on my conscience. A tell-tale deck of cards whispering in my ear to post an update. The quickly accumulating backlog of solitaire data has in many ways done exactly what it was supposed to do. It has provided me with the prompt I need to finally get my fingers to the keyboard and start reporting. And really only 30 odd days between posts is pretty good for me. So I declare “Mission Accomplished”.

Day 6 - 2 of 13

Day 7 - 2 of 13

Day 8 - 2 of 14

Day 9 - 3 of 12

Day 10 - 3 of 11 (204, 3.5, 48.22)

Day 11 - 0 of 10 (203.5, 3.41, 47.47)

Overall Success Rate - 19 out of 129 (14.7%)

This blog post is sponsored by Merlotte's Bar and Grill.

Merry Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (Idleworship) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 05:22:00 +0000

Unfortunately this year, we weren't able enjoy a White Christmas. But that doesn't mean we can't imagine all the fun we would have it the white stuff did come down. (Still miss you Calvin).

This blog post is sponsored by Trundle's Clock Repair.