Quickies: 2007.01.30

Two from the BA:

And by BA, I mean Badass, and Bad Astronomer, interchangeably.

1) Sign an internet petition to get Sylvia Browne to take the JREF Million Dollar Challenge. Yes, I know internet petitions are practically worthless as legal documents, but it's the spirit of the thing that matters. I'm #192 on the petition. :-)

If you don't know who Sylvia is, she was the TV psychic that told Shawn Hornbeck's parents that he was DEAD three years ago. Real nice publicity stunt, lady. For more on that, check out this YouTube clip from Anderson Cooper 360.

2) If you have an astronomy related question, submit it to thebadastronomer at gmail, and he'll answer it in his weekly 'Q & BA' video blog. I sent in mine. We'll see if it gets answered. (I asked about measuring distances in the sky using your hand, at arms length. A technique I've used before, with mixed success.)

HealthWatch:

My condition improves, despite a cough that basically kept me up all night. If not for that, I would have slept and been pretty well recovered today. I'm self-medicating, drinking as much tea as I can, and trying to keep my activity level down. I've been giving myself a pass on missing the workouts in the morning due to the illness. Karen has relapsed, Evelyn is getting through the tail end, and Henry is improving daily, though he has been in "must be held" mode for the last few days. He slept in my arms for a while yesterday, through a rousing Sudoku session, and woke up immediately when I attempted to put him down. Daddy.

Games:

I don't remember mentioning it, but if I did, I apologize for bringing it up again. I have been addicted to sudoku for some time now. I would encourage anyone who likes logic puzzles to check it out. I purchased the Zen of Sudoku game off of Steam, and have been absolutely pleased as punch with it. Note, you can get it cheaper off of Steam than by purchasing it directly. In the game, you can get trophies for achieving certain goals. I now have both my expert and master level trophies for solving those puzzles without any help at all. I did attempt to cheat a little bit on the Master level one by printing out the puzzle and using pencil marks, but that ended up being futile anyway. I just tried a few different solutions until I figured it out on my own. Fun stuff.

Half-Life 2 was fun, and provided several hours of enjoyable carnage. I've replayed it a few times, in various parts, and it remains fun. After beating the game legitimately, it's fun to go blasting back through with heavy cheating, just to see what you can get away with. (i.e., facing a small squadron of Alien Combine soldiers and a tank with the gravity gun and a couple rocks.) Fun stuff.

And that's all for now. Later, folks.

-D.