MEANINGLESS?

I need to rant a bit about electronics ruining my life. I say ruining my life in such a way that you should not take too seriously. However, I am absolutely serious about this:

As a young man I played video games extensively. Many games were designed to be difficult, some too difficult (i.e. Earthworm Jim, Contra). I have no problem with games that were difficult, in fact I welcome them. I enjoyed the puzzles and other difficulties that arose, however, I did not appreciate the game designers making games with the ability to cheat. Some games would make it impossible to win. NBA JAM CHEATS!

I have never played a game that cheated more so than NBA Jam: Tournament Edition. There were many nights ending in demolished win streaks thanks to that game. Many will recall my "moratorium" from life. My gaming flourished during that period of my life. I played NBA Jam with my former roommate Denny for hours and hours late at night. I would play against him, and he would win every time. Eventually, fatigued from the same result night after night, game after game we decided that we would try to play the computerized players. We would get a streak of 20 or more games going, and then the cheating would begin. (I would like to note that we would not play all these games in one sitting. If you know the inner workings of a Super Nintendo you will know that they would award codes to continue progress, in a way it would save your game progress) Eventually we would get far ahead in the game, and the simulated players would become impossibly good. They would be able to steal the ball and make a basket in one second. This will be more impressive to those of you that have played. My argument: The game would cheat to ruin our winning streak.

You tell me how the players can steal the ball instantly from the guy in the red "trunks".

Now, I know what you are thinking. Surely there is not a possibility that another style of game could do the same thing. This is where I say, "You are incorrect. There is such a game". YAHTZEE®, you got it, it is battleship.

Psych, it is actually electronic Yahtzee. This is what I have observed in the hundreds, or more probably, thousands of games I have played. It is impossible to get a yahtzee on the first roll. I realize that the odds of rolling 5 dice on the same number is fairly low, however I would expect the occasional first roll yahtzee would be in order. I have also noticed that I have rolled hundreds of first roll "large straights". I understand that the odds of doing this is better but I have a hard time believing that the amount that I have rolled is within the odds. My argument: Yahtzee is cheating just like its old pal NBA Jam.

PICTURE OUT OF PICUTRE

Recently at my home, my roommate bought a new television. This television is a major step up from our old tv, but it has one problem. The new television doesn't have a DVD player built in like the older model. The solution to our problem? Hook the new tv up to our "DVD player" (aka. our old tv) and watch the DVD on the new tv. The problem with this is that the DVD cannot be played without the tv showing it. It must look strange to people that visit for our living room to have two televisions, but we think it is awesome to have a movie playing on 2 screens at once. I have never been a fan of the picture in picture feature on televisions, so I am thrilled that we can now do picture out of picture.

CONFUSION

I was hanging out downtown tonight at the Gallivan Center Plaza. There are [no charge] concerts that they do every Thursday night, and "Iron & Wine" was playing, and since I kinda like the music and am pretty strapped for cash I thought it would be some good entertainment for no money. It was okay.

Now, I will get to my point. Taking TRAX is an ideal way to get places in my opinion, especially when parking your car costs money, or there are going to be many people leaving at the same time you want to. Therefore, I chose to take TRAX to the Gallivan Plaza. I have noticed many unusual things on the train, to say the least. Tonight I was sitting on a bench near my friend Chelsea. I was reading the restriction signs aloud (i.e. no skating, no riding bikes) when she pointed out that one of them was completely confusing.
Below this sign it says, "Stay off the tracks and use sidewalks". I would argue that the picture doesn't say that though. To me it says walk in front of the train.... I guess you should be the judge.

OFF TO COLLEGE

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Off to College

My little Robbie (that is me) has left for college. What a sad day at the Carlson house. We were glad that he got to stay with us for a couple of weeks. He was a very good guest. He helped around the house and always cleaned up after himself. We all miss him and he is welcome back anytime.

Posted by Aimee at 11:38 AM 2 comments

Heather, I want this to count for me too.

DRUGS OR EXHAUSTION

Last night I was driving my car home, to Salt Lake City when all of a sudden it started to get sick. I was about 6 blocks away and every single warning light on my car lit up. I had all of a sudden applied my parking break, worn out my breaks, and had a few other problems all without knowledge I was doing anything. Needless to say, when all my warnings came on I was a bit concerned about my little car. I was only six blocks away, so I watched my temperature and drove cautiously listening to the car. The temperature was rising pretty quick. If I would have had to go much farther it wouldn't have made it. I pulled to my house and got out. I looked at the road behind my car, and it had a streak of wetness from where I had driven. I then thought it was a bigger problem than I had thought. I looked under the hood, and couldn't see anything. I walked around to the passenger side and what did my eyes behold? They beheld car vomit.

It turns out that if you make your car do over 9 marathons in a row it gets sick. It threw up all over the road and in the gutter. I would have thought that it was just sick, but the fact that it had waited to get to the gutter to pass out and vomit all over made me suspect that it was a drug addict. It is stereotypical for drug addicts to be in the gutter. I am a firm believer that stereotypes came from somewhere, and although are not always correct, they are often correct.

What issue does my car have? (one point) (this is your chance jace)

DAH DAH DAAAA

I had a bad alternator. I pulled out the bad one and put a good one into my car. When I was told that I would be the one putting the new part in, I thought that it would be a great deal harder than it turned out being. It was not as easy as it could have been though.

Here is a before picture.

Before

After

After

As you can see from the photos, there is a huge difference before and after.

WAR PED

I have never enjoyed going to Van's Warped Tour more than I did in 2009. It is always interesting to see the various people of all walks of life.

There are many versions of folks there that are aimlessly walking around. I think that the funniest kids are the ones that do "hardcore dancing". It is hard to not laugh at them as they are doing this style of dance. I don't like it, but I certainly respect it. On many occasions I have been in an area where this is going on, and I get scared for my face. I have witnessed more than 5 people getting stitched up after this, and countless people with bloody eyes, noses and mouths.

I can get down with the "circle pit" but I can't get myself to go into a pit with hardcore dancing. While at Warped Tour I will occasionally go into the circle pit. While I was watching a band with some hardcore dancing going on I had an overwhelming desire to jump into the pit. When one goes into the circle pit the idea is to rough up some peers a bit by pushing or elbowing them a bit. My experience was a bit different. I was just pushing people around, minding my own business, when a kid behind me for some reason or another developed a pique towards me. For some reason he was specifically targeting only me, and pushed me about 5 times, until he successfully knocked me off my feet. There is an interesting relationship with your peers in a pit. You try to hurt them, and rough them up a bit, but once you actually do it is a different story. Back to when I got pushed down..... I was pushed into the wall of people, and was tripped up somehow. It was a bit of a domino effect, and the person behind me ran into me and pushed me to the point beyond recovery, and I was forced face down onto the asphalt. The person that was directly behind me stomped on my ankle and twisted my shoe off. Before I could comprehend the events that happened to me just moments before, I was already being lifted up by every person that could reach. The friends that were out of reach were pushing people out of my way so that I could recover my shoe that had vanished so quickly from it's matching foot. I took the pushing down and the loss of my shoe as a warning from the pit ogre that was pushing me and bailed on it.

Being in a pit was somewhat reminiscent of fake punching towards a friend's face. Buddy, you will remember this, and will be able to more clearly understand this. The story as I remember it was I was punching close to Buddy's face, and got one a bit too close, and actually landed a punch right on his beak. I was not trying to hurt him, but once I did I felt bad and instantly tried to give him some comfort. This is exactly what happened to me at Warped Tour. EXACTLY.


I also got some cool merch from my trip.

RESEARCH

I am afraid that I have a problem. If I scratch my stomach it leaves a red mark for about 20 minutes. It is time for another contest. I would like for someone to do some research and tell me if giving myself "tiger stripes" is an unhealthy thing to be able to do. Also, I will award a single point to the person that gives the best made up diagnosis, and a single point to the first person that does the research and tells me the actual condition.

Points

I am awarding points from Villian post.
Aimee- Two points
Annie- Two points- Mostly because you made me laugh with "skinny smackdown" (nearly offensive)
Bud- One point for giving me a signature move that caused me to laugh at when I read it.
Jace- Two points for "Robhurt Gore-ly" and a mass of names (I awarded points although some will argue that i only asked for one name and didn't know that they could do more than one) (not my problem)
Heather- Two points

My ruling is final, and I will not appreciate gripes about the points awarded.