Really enjoyed Jeff Bezos’s commencement speech at Princeton — thought provoking, and not boring, about choices and choosing.
When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story.
<via kottke>
This morning, I woke up, and for a second I really thought it was Saturday! I thought I’d set my alarm by mistake; I even started to think of what I wanted to do. Soooo disappointed. Hot chocolate for breakfast to make up for it! Actually this is the first time since Trader Joe’s that I haven’t had a chocolate covered cherry for breakfast. Or three.
Trader Joe’s is Evil. OMG, I don’t know how my sister goes to Trader Joe’s all the time. A new one just opened nearby and we went and you know what we bought? Chocolate covered cherries, chocolate covered blueberries, and chocolate covered espresso beans. And in fact, if memory serves me correctly, when I go with my sister to TJ’s, I always make her buy chocolate covered something. And now it’s walking distance away and the first thing I ate when I woke up was chocolate covered stuff. Uh oh. Hopefully the novelty wears off. But those chocolate covered cherries are so delicious.
Watson, an IBM supercomputer, is supposed to be able to answer natural language questions (or I suppose in this case, provide questions for natural language answers?). First Deep Blue played chess, now Watson’s going to take on Jeopardy. I hope it has a chance to play again Ken Jennings. :)
Many years ago we were trying to decide what to do, and since Jimyo was always looking for people to play Monopoly with him, we agreed to play Monopoly. Hours and hours later, we were still at it, and I had a headache. Compounding this was that we’d all made terrible deals with Jimyo (terrible for him; he was in elementary school I think) and it looked like the game was going to last forever. We were playing as fast as we could but omg, Monopoly had stopped being fun. We don’t play Monopoly anymore, it just takes too long! Longer even than Trivial Pursuit! But that’s a topic for another day.
Too bad it didn’t go like this:
[via kottke]
I don’t know if it’s actually the theoretically shortest game of Monopoly, but they are so funny with their nerdy glee! I wonder what’s the shortest game of Monopoly wherein everyone plays the way people normally play (but without auctions). I mean, like buying properties when they have the chance and stuff.
* CT likes to complain that she’s run out of stuff to look at online. I like to tell her that it’s impossible to run out of internet and then send some random interesting link to something. :)
Okay, okay, I know, I am really late! And it’s not cos I’m playing Flash games, cos I’m kind of sick of Flash. It’s not like I own lots of Apple junx or anything, but I am so sick of updating Adobe Flashplayer (and Acrobat) and I’m so sick of security warnings about ‘em and I hate stupid webpages that are Flash based for no good reason (like practically every restaurant site for example) and so… if Apple wants to stop supporting Flash in some of their products, and it causes more websites to require less Flash, then I am happy, and I don’t care about the whys and wherefores!
But also, as y’all know, we moved this year, right around the time of the tournament (I know, what were we thinking?!) and it was so busy. I am sure there are people out there who are organized and label their boxes and then unpack them and clean and blah blah, and even they don’t like moving. Well… I am NOT organized and there was no labeling, and at the end, we were throwing stuff in paper bags and moving those over and then the cleaning! There are floors that need mopping, and trees dropping branches and leaves, and laundry, and etcetc. It’s calmed down a lot since the beginning, but still. (Hrmmm, actually quite a number of you have had to deal with my litany of complaints every time you say “hey” so let this be a preview and warning to you. Although CT gets it the worst, I have been sending her whining unsolicited emails inviting her to visit me so I can show her the new place but we both know I just want someone to unpack stuff and put it away and organize and clean and get me a drink!)
But ANYWAY, enough of that, FOR NOW (more coming, that’s a threat, not a promise)! For doing so well (note how I am being gracious, although less so now that I am pointing out my graciousness), I thought K deserved an acknowledgment, late or not.
This year’s Know-Nothing Official Final Standings although we all knew how it was going to pan out a long time ago:
Special K (nice job, only one to break 60 points): 63
mim, Pol (beginner’s luck!): 59
Yut: 56
President of the US: 55
Lew, Chalk: 54
CT, misa, Seth (way outta the cellar): 48
shio: 46
YuHK (alone at the bottom!): 45
I have put CT in charge of your prize! Collect it when you see her. Congrats, aren’t you glad Air Force wasn’t in it this year:)
Sorry for the late post, but we just finished moving, and omg, I realized, moving is hard! Also, there wasn’t any good news. It’s true, SpeK has sewn this up. She’s the 2010 winner! We’ll let it play out to get the final scores, but yeah. So, since you won so early, I’ll take a prize request under consideration. But there’s no guarantees you won’t get junk that we just started packing into bags to hurry things up! :p For the rest of us, we got beat by SpeK, what happened, people?! <sigh>
Rankings:
SpeK: 63 (and she has 14 available points still, if W. Va wins it all)
mim: 59 (6 more possible points)
Yut: 56
Pres: 55
Lew, Chalk: 54
Pol: 53 (6 more possible points)
CT, misa, Seth: 48
shio: 46
YuHK: 45
Everyone else has no more possible points. If Duke wins, Pol will get 6 points, but that won’t beat K’s 63. He could tie with me though, thanks to n00b luck. My 6 possible points are because of West Virginia, so no matter what, K will get those points too. Durn it. On the other end of the spectrum, YuHK LOSES! Soooo badly! Yes, you needed me to point that out, eh? :)
I was supposed to post this yesterday, but my computer was down — we were trying to, and failing at, putting a desk together, so there were pieces all over the floor and my computer wasn’t hooked up. No worries, two hours yesterday, and then five more hours today, and now we have desks! Well part of the time was when we went to the local tool lending library (at one of the branches of the public library) to borrow a drill. The tool lending library is pretty great — more public libaries should have them. ANYway, never mind about my personal failures, let’s talk about our common problem: the inability to pick the correct team to win. Half of the Elite Eight is over, and the scores don’t reflect that; I’ll put those up tomorrow.
Rankings after the Sweet Sixteen:
mim, SpeK, POTUS: 55
Yut: 52
Lew, Chalk: 50
Pol: 49
CT, misa: 48
shio: 46
YuHK: 45
Seth: 44
So I’m still in the lead! Who knew that picking based on what I hoped would happen would be such a good strategy! Although I’m still lamenting MD’s loss. And the fact that Cal didn’t beat Duke! Okay okay, I’m not in the lead by myself — I’m tied with SpeK. I’m afraid that this year may be the year that I have to stop making fun of her for picking Air Force like four years ago. Well, there’s still time left: I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M TIED WITH THE GIRL WHO PICKED #13 AIR FORCE IN 2006!!! Ahem. Lew actually did the best in the Sweet Sixteen, he picked more correct teams than anyone else. The last few games are worth more points than ever, but we’re all quickly running out of teams still in the tournament. We’ll just have to see what happens. Today, Butler (no one called this) and West Virginia (me, Seth, and K) made it into the Final Four; I’ll update tomorrow after the Michigan State/Tennessee and Duke/Baylor games.
So… Syracuse is out. Kansas State is still in, by the hair of their chinny chin chin — they won in double overtime. No one has all of their Final Four teams still in contention. Some of us (namely YuHK and CT) have only one team left!!! And it’s only the Sweet Sixteen!
Standings:
mim, SpeK, POTUS: 52
Yut: 49
Chalk: 47
Pol: 46
CT, misa, YuHK: 45
Lew: 44
shio: 43
Seth: 41
The President, K, and I are steady in first. I don’t mind being tied for first with Obama, but K?! Sheeeeesh! Well regardless, I’m enjoying this as long as it lasts. Duke was supposed to lose to Cal, according to me, so if they keep winning, this’ll be bad.
Maryland lost. Some Michigan State dude chucked in a three-pointer at the last tenths of a second to give Mich. St. a two point victory. It was a little bit of a heartbreak. And then Cal lost to Duke. Well the first lost lots of us points, but the second didn’t lose too many people any points because most people picked Duke.
Well, see for yourselves:
Standings:
mim, Pol, SpeK, Yut, President Obama: 43
YuHK: 42
shio: 40
CT: 39
Chalk: 38
misa: 36
Lew, Seth: 35
There are a lot of us tied at the top now. SpeK and Yut have been vying for the lead throughout, but Polaris came outta nowhere, only missed calling two games today! Well ok, nowhere as in third place, but tied with CT. YuHK has come up too — he was in last after the first day, but now he’s in second.
The bottom of the ranking has been much more stable: Lew’s still down there, now joined by Seth. Still, I don’t think these standings are going to remain the same: lots of Points Already Lost (since the team you picked to win is already out of the tournament). It’s going to be exciting stuff, especially if the upsets continue!
Just for fun, the number of correctly chosen Sweet Sixteen teams:
Pol, YuHK: 10 (62.5%)
Yut, POTUS: 9 (56.25%)
CT, mim, SpeK, Chalk: 8 (50%)
Lew, Shio: 7 (43.75%)
misa, Seth: 6 (37.5%)
