In honor of tonight's Ig Noble Awards, I thought I'd give you a couple of other useful links:

The Journal of Irreproduceable Results
The Fortean Times
The Journal of Universal Rejection

Enjoy. :-)

There's system maintenance tomorrow at my place of employment, and an e-mail went out asking everyone to make sure they're logged off so the changes to login scripts and the LDAP server upgrades propagate properly. A little while later, a follow-up e-mail went out saying "It was brought to my attention that instructions on how to log off your machine may be helpful. To do so..."

I'm just thinking, in this day and age, how many people who use a computer at work *don't* know how to log out of it? Really? The number just *can't* be that high. It really isn't hard.

"That kind of guy."

I just had a fairly amusing conversation with my ex. We'd had an agreement with Aidan that, once he met a certain milestone, he'd get a copy of HeroScape. I have a copy myself, and Aidan really likes it - you get to build terrain out of plastic bits, and then play on it with little guys, and he's vastly amused by the entire process. I'd been in that area yesterday - went to Zombie Planet yesterday and everything, though really for a different reason - and offered to buy it (we agreed to pay half each), but she was oddly hesitant, saying she'd rather get it herself. I didn't worry too much. So I get a call today as she's leaving Zombie Planet, asking if there were other stores in the area that may have it, suggesting she might buy it online; I asked why, knowing ZP happened to have a copy of one of the starter sets. Her problem, apparently, was that the master set there was the Dungeons and Dragons master set (as opposed to the more Norse-themed one I have, the alien-themed one after it, or the super-hero-themed one that came out after that). She said it didn't seem appropriate for someone his age, so I asked why. She said she "wanted him to have a good grasp on reality." When I asked her if she was trying to suggest she should get the super-hero one instead of the D&D one because it was more realistic, she sounded very insulted and just said "No. I just don't want him to become that kind of guy."

I suppose I should probably be insulted, but honestly, I just think it's funny.

Mystic Empyrean

All y'all who like role-playing games should check out this:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/level99games/mystic-empyrean-create-discover-become

Yay free stuff! (tee hee!)

I’m entering to win a Nook Simple Touch Reader from Cheap e-Reads, my favorite site for FREE and CHEAP nook books! You can enter to win here:  http://the-cheap.net

Some of you are familiar with ICD-9 and ICD-10, some of you aren't. Well... Whether you are or not, you need to read this:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904103404576560742746021106.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsFifth

Stress Relief at Work

http://cars.failblog.org/2011/09/06/funny-car-photos-armor-windshield-ak-47-gun-texas/

So here's a question for you all: starting from the assumption that a person's life can be broken down into distinct phases, 1) What are they and 2) What are the demarcations between them?

It's sortof a vague question, and it's meant to be. I mean, there's the classic sphinx approach (4 legs, 2 legs, 3 legs); there's the common parlance approach (infant, toddler, child, teen, young adult, middle-aged, old-aged); there's the simple approach (young, old); there's the family-based approach (living with your parents, living by yourself, living with your kids). There's a kindof depressing description I found once in a post-apocalyptic story - love (your parents caring for you), necessity (caring for yourself), duty (your kids caring for you). There's the 5 trees for the Sunrunners from the Dragon Prince series. There's... Well, probably more than I could write.

What "system" do you think demarcates a person's life best, from whatever point of view you choose?