More to sleep than sleeping?
There’s few things about day to day life I dislike more than waking up. Seems like no matter how much or how little I sleep, I never wake up feeling rested. Sure after about 10 minutes of being up I feel rejuvenated and ready to face the day. But that first waking moment that you’re laying in the bed squinting at the sun filtering in through the blinds, there’s nothing I’d rather do than go back to sleep. I’m just not a morning person I guess.
I usually go to bed around midnite or 12:30 and set my alarm for 8:30. I figure that’s a good eight hours of sleep. Today I decided to change up my routine for one reason or another, I set my alarm for 7:30 instead. I still hit the snooze button once, but I got up much more easily today than in recent memory. There wasn’t the general haziness, I was up out of bed and alert…weird.
I’ve always heard you can sleep too much, but I thought they meant like ten hours (not eight) being too much! They also say you’re supposed to set a consistent time to go to bed and a consistent time to get up. I believe that, and I guess that’s why I’m so surprised I got up as easily as I did the same day I changed it.
So less sleep is more I guess? Fine with me. It just gets in the way of things I’d rather be doing anyway!
I’m not “hardcore”.
I just realized today after messing around on the IGN Message Board, that I’m not a “hardcore gamer” anymore.
The poll was:
Is there anyone else who considers themself a hardcore gamer, and only owns a Wii?
- Yes, I am a hardcore gamer, and I only own a Wii (117 votes)
- No, I am a hardcore gamer, and I own Wii and 360 (47 votes)
- No, I am a hardcore gamer, and I own a Wii and PS3 (5 votes)
- No, I am a hardcore gamer and I own a 360 and PS3 (10 votes)
- No, I’m not a hardcore gamer, but I only own a Wii (5 votes)
I realized I don’t fall into any of those categories. There was a point in time not too long ago that I had a Gamecube, PS2, and Xbox and plenty of games for all of them. But I haven’t picked up and really haven’t played any of the new consoles at all. I guess that doesn’t make me “hardcore” like I used to be.
I don’t know that my interest in video games has decreased a whole bunch, I still often find myself wishing I had more time to play. And according to my Xfire profile I’ve racked up almost 300 hours playing Guild Wars. But it’s just not like it used to be back in the day. Not that I wish I were a hardcore gamer like before, I just didn’t realize I wasn’t anymore until I read that poll. Never really thought about it I guess.
06.10.07No wonder!
Remember that old red car that was in too many accidents to count? Well I always had this little guy riding around with me as my co-pilot.
Ain’t he CUTE!?
But as we were packing, I discovered something about this little buddy that I should have figured out long ago.
WELL THAT EXPLAINS IT!
Not to be confused with another famous “Buster”.
A lil’ history.
Well, this all started probably a month ago when I decided to take an alternate drive out to Hays to visit Biebs. I decided to take Old Highway 40 instead of boring ol’ I-70 the whole way. It was a really pretty drive, and a lot of old downtown areas. There were also a lot of old stone buildings too. Outside of Junction City, I drove by an old schoolhouse. I remember as a kid, driving up to Sabetha, and when we’d get close to Junction City, Mom would tell us to look off to the south and you could see her old house, and that it was an old stone church.
I thought for sure this was the place!
I was wrong. But hey! In my defense, it’s not like I had ever seen the place before! I had been talking to Grandma on the phone for a while and she said it was further down the road. About 6 miles from Junction City. A couple days later, I got some pictures in the mail of the old house.
I think I recognize those pillows!
And I also got a few pictures of family.
So armed with this new information and a rare sunny day, I set out to find the place as it exsists today.
The guy that Grandma sold the house to, Lyman Budden still owns it. I got to talk to him a bit, and he’s a pretty interesting guy. He put the addition on the front. Said he pulled it in on a trailer with a pick-up truck, backed up the the house, then let the air out of the tires of the trailer to set it down and hasn’t moved it since! He said he bought the house back in the day for $10,000. Now the road that heads up to the house is a paved path. There’s several small buildings he built around it for vehicles and equipment. And from what it looks like a lot more trees.
As we chatted, he talked about shortly after he moved in, and he was out in the pasture northeast of the house, and he found a bunch of marbels on the ground. He raked them up and still has them to this day! Think mom, and uncle David played with these?
The old guy sure liked to talk, and while I found it interesting, I think he’s a bit of a storyteller. He said he took these marbels to an antique shop in Junction City and a guy told him there was a marbel in there worth $1200, and that that whole dish was worth $1500. I find that hard to believe, but then again…I don’t know much about marbles!
One last question was…was it a schoolhouse, or was it a church? Grandma kept saying it was a schoolhouse, Mom always said it was a church. Maybe it was used as both. But the corner stone displays the date the building was erected, and that it was…a church.
“In memory of Chas N. Mc??? by his wife Susan.”
So it’s been an exciting adventure for me at least. I find things like this interesting. Imagining what it was like to be around then, all the stories these places could tell. I hope you find it interesting as well!
09.19.06Was Deal or No Deal Staged?
I was at home last night enjoying a frosty Miller Highlife watching one of the few shows on TV I can tolerate, Deal or No Deal. I’m a pretty analytical thinker, so I enjoy any games where you’re up against mathematical odds. And I’m here to say the final round on last nights Deal or No Deal beat so many odds that I’m convinced there’s no way that it could have happened without some sort of scripting.
First of all, I don’t think that the entire show is rigged. Just the last round of the show on Tuesday with “Matty” the teamster from New York. As I watched, I didn’t think much of it other than he was just another typical flamboyant contestant that frequented the show. But as the round went on, and it became more sensational with each chosen case, I began to become suspicious that something was amiss. That perhaps the entire round was staged to be as exciting as possible (while still being believable) to garner up ratings for the season premier.
First off, the guy pulls a Babe Ruth and calls his first case. Predicting that it will be the $0.01 case. Sure enough it is! He had less than a 4% chance of guessing one cent case correctly.
He goes on to choose other small cases with the occasional big amount mixed in leading to the largest 2nd, 3rd, and 4th offers in the history of the show. Now this can be somewhat explained that 3 million was on the board for the first time in the history of the show and would naturally drive up the bank offers as long as it was on the board.
At one point the bank offer is $400,000. Now the bank offer is calculated based on the known amounts left in the cases on the board, and the odds that the player has the highest possible dollar amount in the case they chose at the beginning of the round. So the bank offer can only be calculated from the cases that are remaining at any given time. In other words, you can’t predict the next bank offer until the player picks the next case.
So when the bank offer comes up as $400,000 the banker himself would only have known the offer for a few seconds. Yet two beautiful women bring out two cases full of $400,000 CASH. There wasn’t enough time to see the offer, fill the cases with cash and bring them out, if they didn’t know what the banker was going to offer before hand. So either they stuff the cases with a random amount of cash that they planned on bringing out regardless off the offer amount, or they knew what cases he would pick before he picked them. Either way, it was a planned attempt to sensationalize the show.
Everything about this guy was character-like. When they brought the cash out, he picked it up, sniffing it and scowling like some bookie that just got paid off after his thugs broke some legs. Also, you know how everyone is allowed to bring three people with them? Well gets four, two of them being his twin daughters. What do they count as one person or something!? Add that to the fact that he keeps saying “I’m good at this game” when there’s absolutly NO WAY that a person can be good at guessing random numbers. It’d be like saying I’m good at winning coin tosses. It’s just not something you can be “good” at!
As the round is nearing the end it becomes almost predictable. He whittles away at the cases until what remains? Only $1 and $1 million and $3 million! Oh what sensational television! He takes the offer of $600,000 or so, but come to find out, he had the three million dollar case all along! (Which he also called at the beginning of the game.) The odds of him picking the $3 million case first and then calling the one cent case like he predicted were 1 in 600.
It couldn’t have been a more exciting round, and it just so happened to be the show’s season premier, where you want to hook everybody for the rest of the season. Coincidence or not? You tell me.
03.13.06New glasses…same hair.
