White Sponsorship : Update

It was field maintenance day for my son's Little League. Lots of the coaches and parents showed up to help get the fields ready for the season. This was the perfect time to investigate further into dealings of the sponsor for my son's team.

I saw two guys having a private discussion. I've seen these guys before. They have been involved with the Little League for at least 7 years. And I was pretty sure they both have lived in this town for their entire lives. Surely they know something.

me:	“So, what's deal with the White C****e club.”
Mr. Defensive:	“What do you mean?”
me:	“I just wanna know more about them. No one seems to know very much.”
Mr. Defensive:	“They're a great sponsor. That's all you need to know. They've been sponsoring local sports programs for like 50 years.”
me:	“Great. So their money is green. What color is their membership?”
me (in my head):	“Nice and subtle. Good job.”
Mr. Scary:	“You wanna know if they're a white supremacy group?”
me (in my head):	“Wow...I wasn't ready to get to the point that quickly.”
me:	“uh...yeah.”
Mr. Defensive:	“Look. It isn't like they are going around lynching people. They may have started that way, but that's not what they are about.”
me:	“OK. I called the borough office and asked about them.”
they both laughed briefly
Mr. Scary:	“What did they say?”
me:	“Hardly anything. Just that they're a men's club. And that they haven't caused any trouble.”
Mr. Defensive:	“See? They are just a men's club.”
me:	“Yes. But I...”
Mr. Scary:	“Look. Let me give you some advice.”
me (in my head):	“Oh great. I love unsolicited advice.”
Mr. Scary:	“If you are ever invited to the White C****e Club, they'll offer you two ashtrays, a white one and a black one. Take the white ashtray.”
me (in my head):	“Cool. I'll just asked one of my racist friends for an invite.”
me:	“...But I don't smoke.”
Mr. Defensive:	“Just take the white ashtray.”
me (in my head):	“Don't say anything. Don't say anything.”
me:	“We couldn't have asked for more beautiful weather today.”

Grammar Schmammar

Here is a slice of a conversation I had with a co-worker (well, the client):

co-worker:	“That's a whole nuther thing.”
me:	“What did you just say?”
co-worker:	“Huh? What do you mean?”
me:	“What did you just say about the other thing?”
co-worker:	“Oh. I said that's a whole nuther thing.”
me:	“You do realize that 'nuther' isn't a word.”
co-worker:	“It sure is!”
me (in my head):	“This can't be happening.”
me:	“I think you meant to say 'That's another whole thing.' or 'That's another thing.'”
co-worker:	“No. I meant to say 'That's whole nuther thing.'”
me (in my head):	“And to think, I had you on my 'Smart People' list.”
me:	“You can't be serious.”

He then presented me with this site.

The co-worker that never gives in: 1
JC: 0

Test Results

The AQ Test: 31 (Of course 31 is definitely not 32. Definitely 31. Bang! 97-X!)
The Brain Speed: 44ms (1^st try), 34ms (2^nd try), 25ms (3^rd try)
The Nerd Test: 98%

. . .And that was the happiest day of my life

Ever since the crash, I've been living in a world without Quake. A month without Quake is tough. I found myself mentally firing rockets at various people in the real world.

Shortly after my Linux box crashed I got a new computer. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get Quake to run on it. Running the game resulted in a unresponsive white screen. Well, it wasn't entirely unresponsive. If I pressed the Enter key the game (white screen) would exit. Beautiful.

For weeks I've been trying to use the power of the interweb to solve my white screen of death. The gaming forums were uninformative and infuriating. If you've ever tried to solve a problem this way, you know the routine:

person #1:
subject: Help! Getting white screen trying to run quake3 on OSX.
I installed the latest patch of quake3 on my new mac...person #2:
subject: re: Help! Getting white screen trying to run quake3 on ...
Did you install the latest patch?

person #1:
subject: re: re: Help! Getting white screen trying to run quake3 ...
Yes I did. argh!!

person #2:
subject: re: re: re: Help! Getting white screen trying to run ...
hummmm...works fine on my new mac.

completely random jackass:
subject: re: re: re: re: Help! Getting white screen trying to ...
I just installed quake. It's awesome! I'm getting 500 frames per second. Yeah!

person #1:
subject: re: re: re: re: re: Help! Getting white screen trying ...
Never mind. I found my problem.

sparrowlegs:
subject: re: re: re: re: re: re: Help! Getting white screen ...
Can you post your solution?

------ [end of thread] ------

OMFG! Shoot me.

I finally got Quake to run of my new computer¹. Sigh. Now I can uninstall the Methadone Quake replacement games: Cube, Sauerbraten, and Unreal Tournament 2004 (yawn).

I'm sure I'll get complaints from my wife about the speed of our internet connection as I download all of the maps and mods.

¹ I doubt anyone cares...but here is the solution.

I'm less trustworthy than a Muslim

Please don't trust me. Chances are -- I don't trust you.

Why? There are so many reasons. Ummmm...how about...war. Here is a list of all of the wars started by those distrustful Atheists.

Formatting Changes

I updated the formatting of the comments. I hope you like the new look. Deppen kept complaining about the comments being difficult to read.

Deppen, with your approval, I'd like to update the status of this bug to "closed."

Baseball Reentry

I don't completely understand the sport of baseball, nor am I good with children. So you can imagine my surprise when I was asked to be an assistant coach for my son's Little League baseball team.

At the last practice I was told to operate the artillery pitching machine. I was also told that I should use a speed setting no greater than 6. Yawn.

After the entire team had a chance to bat, I turned the pitching machine around to face the outfield and pointed it toward the sky. The idea was to have the kids catch fly balls. They were excited. I was excited too, because I turned the speed up to 11. The machine made a sound kind of like a jet engine spinning up. Cool.

I dropped the first ball in machine. I've been to a few major league games...I have to tell you...I don't think I've ever seen baseball fly so high. The first kid to field one of these pop-flies wasn't that strong of a player. He was standing in center field waiting patiently for the ball to come down. I was kind of bored by the hang-time so without any thought, I dropped another ball in. I knew immediately that I had made a mistake.

Most of the players knew about the other ball in the air. Unfortunately the kid who was fielding the first ball was completely clueless. I started to get a sinking feeling in my stomach.

The boy was unable to catch the first ball, which is good, because I think it would have blown the webbing out of his glove. He walked around looking for the missed ball. Meanwhile in reality-ville, the rest of the team yelling "Watch out for the second ball! There's a second ball!". I held my breath as I was watched the ball accelerate toward Mr. Oblivious. The screaming seemed to intensify as the ball approached. Just as he bent over to pick up is missed ball, ball #2 hit the ground two feet from where he was standing.

Wow. That was close.

Just as I was about drop another ball in the machine, the head coach unplugged the machine. What a wet blanket.