Well had another Scrabble meeting tonight – and it looks like I’m the only one that’s going to try to get to the Boston Regionals as a Newcomer this year.
I’m hoping to be able to head down at the end of next month on Saturday, and play 6 games in the day and then head back up. I want to have enough to buy some Protiles and a bag for them.
Also joined the ISC – Internet Scrabble Club, and played a couple games tonight.
Through them I found a TON of Scrabble websites devoted to wordlists, stems, hooks, and just about every statistic know to Scrabble.
I hope I can do well in the tournament. I’m still learning my 2’s and my 2 to make 3’s as well.
I need to learn my Bingo prone tiles as well. I’m pretty good at balancing my rack, but I need to work on my playing speed.
Hopefully I’ll be able to print out some helpers at work next week.
Speaking of work – I finally got my raise – up to $10.20 and hour, and I had an excellent review. Marlene and Teri are looking into the 7 weeks of retro pay that the bank owes me from my merit promotion.
So thing are going well here in Maine – It’ll be nice when summer hits too (
Monday, March 27, 2006
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Scrabble!
Too cool! Turns out that there is a local chapter of the National Scrabble Association, right here in Auburn!
There was a meeting tonight, although it was just myself and lady who runs the chapter. It’s snowing like crazy, but since it was over at the Auburn PD, it was easy to get to.
I’m going to join the NSA tomorrow, because there is a tournament in April down in Boston, that I’m going to try to attend. The Scrabble for Literacy is being held at the Hilton in April, and I’m also hoping to get some people from work involved – I’d like to see us have 2 or 3 teams play this year.
I’m just stoked that there is organized play in the area. The NSA has also added 5 new two letter words to the play list, with 2 in particular that will change the face of the game.
QI and QIS n. the vital force that in Chinese is thought is inherent in all things. – and
ZA and ZAS n. a pizza
These two words alone will make thousands of play possibilities in game. The only 2 letters that DO NOT have a 2-letter play in them are C and V. I can’t wait until I can play some more games. They meet on the 2nd and 4th Sunday of every month, so I’ll have to only play D&D every other week. But that’s OK, I’m going to have a blast playing Scrabble for a while.
There was a meeting tonight, although it was just myself and lady who runs the chapter. It’s snowing like crazy, but since it was over at the Auburn PD, it was easy to get to.
I’m going to join the NSA tomorrow, because there is a tournament in April down in Boston, that I’m going to try to attend. The Scrabble for Literacy is being held at the Hilton in April, and I’m also hoping to get some people from work involved – I’d like to see us have 2 or 3 teams play this year.
I’m just stoked that there is organized play in the area. The NSA has also added 5 new two letter words to the play list, with 2 in particular that will change the face of the game.
QI and QIS n. the vital force that in Chinese is thought is inherent in all things. – and
ZA and ZAS n. a pizza
These two words alone will make thousands of play possibilities in game. The only 2 letters that DO NOT have a 2-letter play in them are C and V. I can’t wait until I can play some more games. They meet on the 2nd and 4th Sunday of every month, so I’ll have to only play D&D every other week. But that’s OK, I’m going to have a blast playing Scrabble for a while.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Computer... computer.. computer
This is too cool!
I did a MAJOR upgrade to my computer – Bought a 256MB video card, 1GB of ram, and also a S-Video to Composite converter.
I can finally watch movies on my TV! Looks fantastic too.
And my games run great! I love my computer now (
I did a MAJOR upgrade to my computer – Bought a 256MB video card, 1GB of ram, and also a S-Video to Composite converter.
I can finally watch movies on my TV! Looks fantastic too.
And my games run great! I love my computer now (
Monday, February 06, 2006
The mission - should you be able to log on and do anything...
Talk about an ACTUAL impossible mission.
Mission Impossible 3’s HUNT started at 8:00pm EST. It’s now 9:35, and it’s STILL not up and running.
The site – hunt.missionimpossible.com is not up – and Chat is wonky at best.
Did the admin’s not do a stress test on the game before launch? There were only 120 people in the chat room, and I can’t possibly believe that 120 people crashed a server – considering over 30,000 people signed up for the game.
I find this comparable to the stress test I did for Star Wars Galaxies during their closed beta – The admin’s would tell us in the chat room to all try to log in at once and see how long it took the servers to crash – just so they could figure out the bugs BEFORE the game went live. The only problem is – they are supposed to be live NOW. This should have been taken care of at least a month or 2 ago – either in house or as a closed beta.
But when you (as a company) promise to have a site up and running – especially when there are actual prizes on the line – I find it inexcusable to have this many problems on day one of a game. 1 Hour and 45 minutes into the game, and no one has even see what the screen looks like yet (as far as I know).
I do hope that the admin’s figure out what’s wrong and then fix it, because I like stuff like this, and it would be a shame to see an opportunity like this to go to down the tubes.
Mission Impossible 3’s HUNT started at 8:00pm EST. It’s now 9:35, and it’s STILL not up and running.
The site – hunt.missionimpossible.com is not up – and Chat is wonky at best.
Did the admin’s not do a stress test on the game before launch? There were only 120 people in the chat room, and I can’t possibly believe that 120 people crashed a server – considering over 30,000 people signed up for the game.
I find this comparable to the stress test I did for Star Wars Galaxies during their closed beta – The admin’s would tell us in the chat room to all try to log in at once and see how long it took the servers to crash – just so they could figure out the bugs BEFORE the game went live. The only problem is – they are supposed to be live NOW. This should have been taken care of at least a month or 2 ago – either in house or as a closed beta.
But when you (as a company) promise to have a site up and running – especially when there are actual prizes on the line – I find it inexcusable to have this many problems on day one of a game. 1 Hour and 45 minutes into the game, and no one has even see what the screen looks like yet (as far as I know).
I do hope that the admin’s figure out what’s wrong and then fix it, because I like stuff like this, and it would be a shame to see an opportunity like this to go to down the tubes.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
WOW. Not World of Warcraft
Found a TON of cool links for stuff.
I’m into cryptography. Letter frequencies, word patterns, cryptograms, Scrabble (which I believe is the ultimate combination of math and English), sudoku (number logic puzzles), WWII era cipher machines – you name it, and I’m pretty much into it.
I had a roundabout way of getting to www.elonka.com. I was doing searches for “The Beast” which was a online murder mystery the ran as an advertisement for “AI Artificial Intelligence”. That in turn led me to the new Mission Impossible 3 game that starts up on Monday. And from there I decided to go to the Da Vinci Code movie website. And from there I find out that Dan Brown (the author of “The Da Vinci Code”) put a reference the Kryptos cipher (located at the CIA) into the illustration on the dust cover of the hardcover books. So I finally get to elonka.com, and I hit a virtual jackpot of cryptographic goodness.
Here are some fun links:
What nerdier than Nintendo? How About Acapella Nintendo
http://www.collegehumor.com/movies/138298/
Cool Optical Illusion
http://blogs.msdn.com/ianm/archive/2005/08/19/453737.aspx
RuneQuest
http://members.aol.com/scirealm/RuneQuest.html
Coolest Rube Goldberg Commercial… ever…
http://www.boardsmag.com/screeningroom/commercials/581/
I’m into cryptography. Letter frequencies, word patterns, cryptograms, Scrabble (which I believe is the ultimate combination of math and English), sudoku (number logic puzzles), WWII era cipher machines – you name it, and I’m pretty much into it.
I had a roundabout way of getting to www.elonka.com. I was doing searches for “The Beast” which was a online murder mystery the ran as an advertisement for “AI Artificial Intelligence”. That in turn led me to the new Mission Impossible 3 game that starts up on Monday. And from there I decided to go to the Da Vinci Code movie website. And from there I find out that Dan Brown (the author of “The Da Vinci Code”) put a reference the Kryptos cipher (located at the CIA) into the illustration on the dust cover of the hardcover books. So I finally get to elonka.com, and I hit a virtual jackpot of cryptographic goodness.
Here are some fun links:
What nerdier than Nintendo? How About Acapella Nintendo
http://www.collegehumor.com/movies/138298/
Cool Optical Illusion
http://blogs.msdn.com/ianm/archive/2005/08/19/453737.aspx
RuneQuest
http://members.aol.com/scirealm/RuneQuest.html
Coolest Rube Goldberg Commercial… ever…
http://www.boardsmag.com/screeningroom/commercials/581/
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Tax time!
Woo hoo! 1300 bucks back from taxes (
That’ll get my windshield fixed, my brakes fixed, with LOTS of money left over for setting aside for my next set of insurance payments.
I hope to get some RAM, and a new video card for the computer. I figure if I can bump my RAM to 1 gig, I’ll be fine.
That’ll get my windshield fixed, my brakes fixed, with LOTS of money left over for setting aside for my next set of insurance payments.
I hope to get some RAM, and a new video card for the computer. I figure if I can bump my RAM to 1 gig, I’ll be fine.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Tons of stuff happening lately
First and foremost – I got a promotion! I’m now a Data Entry Clerk III – I know, big whoop. But think about it this way – this is the first time I’ve ever been promoted on the sole basis of the fact that I’m damn good at doing my job. And I love the sound of that.
Some fortunate soul on the newsgroups has posted the first 6 seasons of DS9 for my viewing pleasure – and what a pleasure it’s been, I just finished the first season about 5 minutes ago.
Haven’t been sleeping well at all lately, I’m taking Flexerall for my back to help me sleep at night, but I’m still not feeling rested when I wake up. Even my supervisor commented that I looked real tired.
Got a new temp yesterday – and she’s keying in monetary already. I hoping she’s a keeper – she seems real excited about working for Banknorth. From what I understand – she called her and told her she was excited because she had a cubicle! Hehe.. It’s nice to see that type of enthusiasm for a job. And she cute too, which helps my disposition as well.
Some fortunate soul on the newsgroups has posted the first 6 seasons of DS9 for my viewing pleasure – and what a pleasure it’s been, I just finished the first season about 5 minutes ago.
Haven’t been sleeping well at all lately, I’m taking Flexerall for my back to help me sleep at night, but I’m still not feeling rested when I wake up. Even my supervisor commented that I looked real tired.
Got a new temp yesterday – and she’s keying in monetary already. I hoping she’s a keeper – she seems real excited about working for Banknorth. From what I understand – she called her and told her she was excited because she had a cubicle! Hehe.. It’s nice to see that type of enthusiasm for a job. And she cute too, which helps my disposition as well.
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