The world's dullest console game

I have an MP3 player by Nextar like the one in this picture, and I like it because it plays MP3s, it doesn't insist on crippling DRM, it is fairly durable, and didn't cost too much. One place that took some getting used to, however, is the operation of the controls. Here, for instance, is the sequence of button presses you need to do if you are listening to a track you are tired of, want to erase it, and start listening to the next track:

S-L-L-S-S-L-S-L-S-C-R-S-R-C

where S is the button on the side, L and R are the buttons to advance and go back, and C is the button in the center of the ring. (You don't need to touch the up or down buttons or the A-B button.) Typically I need to execute this maneuver one-handed, while driving, not looking at the screen, and I'm getting pretty good at it. Still, it seems like they could have done away with a prompt or four to simplify what should be a rather common operation.

10 tips for those let go from finance

With the number of high finance executives being downsized from Shearson Loeb Rhodes Pierce Fenner and Smith Mae Mac and the like, it is time to think of ways in which the affected workers can make a positive step forward in their lives. Here's the list I came up with:

1. If you were an experience in Structured Investment Vehicles, get yourself to Detroit and see whether they might be able to use you in a new line of concept cars of the same name.
2. Employers are probably completely swamped with resumes from your colleagues right now, trying to figure out whether all the acronyms are real or made up. Hire yourself out as a resume reader to help filter the good ones from the bad.
3. Contribute a foreword to a new published edition of Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
4. Take your skills offshore to bring the home of universal homeownership to the common Chinese citizen. Learn Mandarin first.
5. Don't you know there's a crisis in the health care industry in this country?! Get a set of scrubs on, pull on some surgical gloves, and learn to do something useful, anything!
6. If you are still occupying space in an office, open up an account at Etsy and sell the crafts you make from leftover office supplies.
7. Form a monastic order with your coworkers, roam midtown Manhattan begging for alms and doing good works. Call yourselves the Mad Mendicants.
8. Get yourself to the State of Alaska, where all citizens are granted an annual stipend from the state, making it the ideal socialist paradise. And IT folks: while you're up there in the frigid north, you could make a living running computer datacenters with natural rack cooling provided by the Arctic air, and piping the warm air to heat dwellings. Ample diesel supplies to power the backup generators are available as well.
9. Entrepreneurship may be a good option. See the picture for one concept.
10. Appear as a contestant on a new reality show for mortgage insurance specialists forced to live by their wits and set in the jungles of Papua New Guinea. One challenge could involve defrauding the local denizens of their swine and roots. Attire: formal business wear.

My evil side

I am doing my part to fill a great need for websites advising evil masterminds on how to be better villains by putting up my new website evilHow. It features a wiki, a blog, and user forums for anyone who wants to discuss such stimulating topics as How to destroy the planet. There are still a few kinks in the presentation, but still worth a look if I do say so myself.

Edit: That site is defunct, but still can be accessed via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine if you really want.

Top 20 names for a stoat

This post has been scientifically designed with an optimal title which will appeal to blog readers everywhere.

1. Chrome Hrothgar
2. BeeBeeBeeSharp
3. Michael Phelps the Ferret
4. Arwen Undersofa
5. Overclockster
6. Dawg
7. Kilometry Cyrus
8. Sssssss
9. Unhandled Exception
10. Mahdi Fruvous
11. Antiquark Aggregate
12. Kansas City, KS
13. Madame Bovril
14. Lowermost Saxony
15. Finasteride
16. #AA328C
17. The Ruler of Sol 3
18. Strawberry Finn
19. Edward Teach
20. Password:

I'll get right on it too

I just wanted to post this list of top searches at eHow as a sort of time capsule to the archaeologists of the future who might want to know what the average Net-savvy person's concerns were as we come close to the end of the Year of Our Lord 2007.

Though one should be forewarned that certain commercial entities might just have engaged in gaming the list. Just possibly.

Google gives advice to the lovelorn

I'm envious about how this page at WikiHow gives much more useful advice about how to deal with infatuation than I did, but not very surprised.

What did surprise me, however, was the useful advice presented over in the sidebar courtesy of Google Ads:

That should do the trick: a drum crusher, to beat the man (or woman?) at their own game, thus leading to happiness! So sweet - it makes me want to buy this ultra-soft throwdown throw pillow.

On the closely related WikiHow page entitled How to Forget About Your Impossible Crush (which now redirects to the same link as above) there's this lovely sequence:

When given a choice, I should think it is always a good idea to go with the solution which has "Tertiary Impact" in its name.

A hack for a Harry Harrison fan

A brass rat
+
Liquid stainless steel
=
A stainless steel rat

Combine and conquer

Compare the recommended techniques for playing with a piglet and with kids. I'm thinking that the ideal solution is to bring a piglet to one's babysitting assignment. "Best. Babysitter. EVAR."

Impulse control

Some things one encounters in life are seductive, but dangerous to pursue. Consider the legal concept of the Attractive Nuisance, for instance. Oftentimes, the attractive object has actual benefits, whose siren call are liable to wear ones defenses down, despite all the rational arguments marshalled against the object.

In my experience, the most successful way to fight off the Attractive Nuisance does not rely on rationalization, but on fighting emotion with emotion. If you look hard enough, everything has a flaw of some sort — something unappealing, imperfect, or undesired about it somewhere, perhaps in the most minor of ways. Concentrate on this failing with all the attention you have, and the negative perception will eat away at the positive ones, and if you are lucky it will be enough to hold you back. The fancy new gadget has low battery life, the good-looking individual has hands which are too big or too small, the door to the new place to live is hard to shut. Sometimes, you have to work pretty hard to perceive or to imagine a blemish, and when comes to mind at last, it arrives as a relief.

This is not a strategy that is good to use for everything indiscriminately, because that is a recipe for sapping all enjoyment out of life. That is what Oscar Wilde meant when he defined a cynic as "someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." That's no way to live, in my opinion. I prefer to bring out this gambit only in the face of great temptation which my left brain recognizes as being a quick path to great danger.

Now, I just have to come up with a short and catchy name for the technique. It's something like "sour grapes" but with intention behind it. Any suggestions?