Dear Omar Minaya:

Put down the crack pipe and slowly back away from the bad contract.

Tuesday stuff

The three-week-late Amazon package finally arrived, which means we have gifts to now get to glenn5, gwynraven, and my Mom, and I was able to give Shadesong one of her remaining gifts (Wasteland, the only Francesca Lia Block book she needed). Shadesong gave me American Idiot, which ITunes is ripping right now. I'm happy. :-) Elayna, of course, made out like a bandit, getting the Maroon 5 CD from us (yes, our little girl has become a pop music fan) and a Harry Potter Quidditch PS2 game from the grandparents.

Then, we had ocean_song over. Yay! Attendees included alladinsane, dark_blade, museumfreak, karlita, photognome, kunfoogirl, and static_eddie. I was, alas, exhausted, so I crashed long before the festivities ended, but rumor has it that everyone had fun. Apologies to all for vanishing so soon.

Other stuff:

CNN is reporting that Christmas is the deadliest day for Americans. And that's only taking into account accidents and heart attacks. Let's not forget psychos dressed as Santa and mutated pets from strange Chinese markets.

Blockbuster is finally dropping their late fees! A few years and way too many dollars too late, of course.

The temperature when I woke up was 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Fuck. 18 with the windchill. Double fuck. And yeah, I know it's colder up north. But the one small blessing of living here is supposed to be the weather, dammit!

Elayna has requested that I make brownies for her class party. That means buying margarine (yes, I know it's the tool of the devil, but Elayna's allergic to dairy). It also means a nice chocolatty smell in the house. Until I make my key lime pie the next night for our work party.

Annoying trend in spam -- messages from "Perverted Elf." At least the spammers are getting seasonal.

EA has signed an exclusive deal to make the only NFL-Based games. I love the Madden franchise, but I'd like to see some decent competition, alas. Take Two/Sega were helping drive the market.

80GB iPods are on the way!

Finally, Orson Scott Card is going to be writing the Ultimate Iron Man series. I'll reserve judgment until I see the series (Iron Man, in any universe, is a tough character to write, and even Warren Ellis has done an utterly mediocre job so far with the non-Ultimate version). And Andy Kubert art is never a bad thing.

An old but still useful logic puzzle

This came up in a discussion at work today.

[Poll #403118]

Yes, there is a correct answer to this. It's not a matter of opinion. But a lot of people insist on arguing over it. I'll post an answer in a bit, although I suspect a lot of you (tablesaw, pbmath, jet_li_wannabe, etc) are probably blinking at this, wondering how anyone could not know.

The solution

Warning: This is the solution as presented by a liberal-arts person who hasn't taken a math class in over twelve years. So I may have left gaps unfilled.

( cut for those who want to go back to my last post and see the question itself )

grr. Not fucking now

Noticed that my throat was getting sore after lunch. And now I think I may be getting a low-grade fever. Grrr.