Last Halloween

There was a period in time where I was too busy to keep up with the blog and I didn't even post pictures from Halloween. So here they are. We had a Pride, Greed, Wrath, Sloth and Lust.

T-day

Happy Turkey Day everyone. Hope you're all enjoying some good food, friends and family.

It's A Wedding!

Just wanted to share some of the Lauren and Donovan wedding photos. We had a ton of fun in AZ getting to see everybody. The free dinner at the wedding was really good too. I have this thing about free food, it always tastes better and I can never refuse it or stop eating it. I think I have a highly tuned survival instinct. I MUST eat when it doesn't cost me money, who knows where my next meal might come from? I might have to beat down a rhino or something. Anyway, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Rat Race, but the guy who plays Mr. Bean was in it and his most memorable line was "It's a Race!" Guess you have to watch it to understand. Anyway, that's what the title of the blog post is about.

From Terry Wedding

A bit of science geekery

So, I was hanging around in the lab today and realized something that shook my understanding of the video game universe. Like many of you, I played Duck Hunt on the Nintendo during my childhood. I'd use the zapper to shoot each duck, thinking that somehow the TV was registering my shots. But think about this for a moment. There is no way in hell that the TV could figure this stuff out. So how was this gun working anyway?

Fortunately this sort of question is exactly what the internet was designed for, and I quickly found an answer. It seems that the gun doesn't shoot the ducks on the TV, rather it detects an instantaneous change in the display when you pull the trigger, and registers this change based on an electrical pulse from a photodiode located inside the barrel. The change in the screen occurs much faster than you can see which answers the obvious question of why you never saw it. Think of all the subliminal messaging fun!

Basically, after pulling the trigger the entire screen goes black and on one frame after another, each duck is represented by a white square. The game is able to tell which duck you hit by which white screen was onscreen when the photodiode activates.

What I want to know now is, if I were to point the gun at a bright light, would I automatically get a duck everytime?

I guess this doesn't only happen in cartoons

No, I'm not talking about the suspension of gravity until you look beneath your feet to open air.

When I went to the water fountain today, I bent down for a drink and all of a sudden the water squirts out and hits me in the eye!

wtf! I didn't think that actually happened in real life!

Finders Keepers

Many of you have already heard this story, but it's such a good one I've got to tell it again. Scott and I were hanging out on campus at ASU on Wednesday and saw a little carnival set up on the lawn. So we went to check it out and play some of the games just to kill some time. As Scott was finishing a game of darts we turned around and he noticed a wallet on the ground. So of course we picked it up and looked at the ID hoping to see who it was in order to return it. The Florida license had a picture of The King as in The Burger King which I thought was kind of a funny joke on some college kid's part. But then we flipped it open and saw a little sticker that said "Attention Would Be Good Samaritan! Don't worry about lost & found. The King wants you to keep this wallet and everything in it." Inside was a dollar that at first glance I thought was play money because it had the King's face on it, but upon closer inspection I saw that it was actually just a sticker put on a dollar bill. Then we opened some more pockets and found a $5 Burger King gift card. Definitely the best marketing ploy I've ever seen. It's tough to describe how good it is just by telling the story. But just think of the emotions you feel when you find something valuable that someone has lost. Just for a second you hope that you might have gotten lucky, but then you start to resign yourself to spending some time trying to find the missing owner etc. Then imagine actually getting to keep the thing. Hey it's a nice leather wallet. It's also like winning the lottery without even entering. I decided I wanted one too so we went looking around and I hurriedly picked another one up that Scott spotted. One of the carnival operators saw me pick it up and tried to take it from me so she could put it in the lost and found. Very well done Burger King marketers. I felt compelled to blog about it and give them the extra marketing they were hoping for.

Don't Take the Golden Ticket

So last night Scott and I went to this NYU Tisch Gala. It's one of those swanky fundraising dinners that I just happened to get tickets to through work. First episode of note occured in the bathroom where I heard a real person respond to a compliment on her shoes with "they're last season though." Some people apparently really do care.
We found our seats and luckily I was sitting next to someone who could point out the famous people walking by. Tony Bennet, Alec Baldwin, Ira Cantor (some society lady). I thought it was neat to see, but none of them really blew my socks off. It was fun to see Rainn Wilson from The Office present some awards and the Coen Brothers too. The guy who invented Skyy Vodka was even there. I tried to get some pictures, but they were all really blurry since I only had my little camera. The best part of the evening was when Elaine Stritch (who plays Alec Baldwin's character on 30 Rock's mother)came out on stage in nothing more than a pair of tights, a shirt, tie and sweater vest. She sang him her favorite love song about how some man's love made her love herself and did this double handed leg pat thing that couldn't help but make you laugh. Especially when she's over 80.
As we were walking to the dinner portion of the evening people were trying to direct me to a different room from everyone I came with because I had a pink ticket and theirs was yellow. We got it all straigtened out though and they gave me a yellow one. Apparently I should have kept the pink ticket though since that was the VIP room! Oh well.
On the way out, Scott went to the restroom and I was waiting outside when I saw people taking a picture and heard a vaguely familiar voice. I snuck around to the front side of the group and saw it was Tina Fey! Every other famous person I saw that night didn't impress me much, but Tina Fey is just so awesome I was definitely a little star struck. I think she was with her husband and they were headed towards the elevator. I saw Scott coming and gave him the hurry up hand wave to get him to come along and I got to the elevator just as the doors started to close. I didn't want to force my way onto the elevator like a crazy person, but Tina Fey's husband (I think) held the door for me and I got to ride the elevator down to the ground level with Tina Fey. Yup if only I'd kept the pink ticket I could have been wining and dining with her. Sigh, the elevator ride was pretty exciting though.

Here's Scott practicing his Tina Fey hand signal.

From 2008_11_17

Off to AZ

I'm headed out tomorrow to sunny AZ to join the hubby who has already been enjoying the sun. Hopefully I'll come back with some pictures and renewed blogging spirit.