Some days you just need to get out the house, some days everything is too much to bear, today was one of those days for me, it hadn’t started particularly well and was going downhill rapidly, I knew that if i stayed in the house, bad mojo would happen…
So I originally was going to walk around the block, get some air, clear my head and all that stuff… We sometimes walk the dogs round the block in the morning, and we calculated it out to be close to 1.5 miles, so it’s not a little jaunt… And in true Forrest Gump fashion, I started out to the end of the driveway and just kept on walking, I had my iPod playing decent walking tunes (nothing too depressing, nothing too ‘jumpy’ and stuff that was decent enough to whistle along to). Well I got to the end of the road where we turn off with the dogs and head back, but for some reason I kept on going to the main road, once there I decided to walk to the shopping center nearby… Well, nearby in a car as it’s 5 miles away…
Earlier I had been out with Phil in the car, and he said something about going to O’Charley’s for lunch, but we never did and I think that got me hungry for their chicken tenders, oh and the bread, some nice bread they got there… So I walked all the way up to O’Charley’s. It took me about 1 hour 15 minutes in 94° heat to get there, and that first beer never tasted so good. But I didn’t want to stop there.
I was free to go wherever I wanted, I still had a lot on my mind to work out so I went next door to Target and bought ESPN NFL 2K5 for the PlayStation 2, why? I don’t even know… It was only $20 and seemed like a good idea at the time, besides we have every video game console you could possibly want here. After that I went down a little futher to a driving range and took my pent up frustration out on 100 or so golf balls, the first time I’ve swung a club in anger in over 10 years, left handed too… I was tought to play golf right handed despite being left handed as it was all my dad had so it was a welcome change, though a bit strange at first.
Amazing how relaxed one can be after hitting a little white ball with everything you’ve got. I still have my stupid error of looking up a split second before I hit the ball, so my control is all over the place. Maybe something to work out.
By the end of this 4 hour adventure I was thouroughly exhausted, just walking in this heat drains you pretty quickly, and in dire need of a nap, but it was probably the best I’ve felt in a long time… Which can’t be bad.
I got a nice email this morning from Blake Ross of the Mozilla Foundation asking whether I’d be interested in promoting Firefox since I’ve waxed lyrical about it in the past (about Firebird no less)…
Apparently they have a community marketing campaign going on, where they have a list of sites that have said “use Firefox” but not actually “advertised” it… So a list is being drawn up and personal emails sent out asking if they could be so kind to promote Firefox by displaying one of the Firefox buttons.
So, if you’re not already promoting Firefox and using it, prepare to be ratted out, it’s for a good cause…
oh, and p.s.
Watch out for Uno. That stuff is addicting, and we might have to slip Firefox 1.0 because of it!
See, It’s evil…
How to be creative. Some great advise by Hugh Macleod, who draws “Gaping Void” toons on the backs of business cards. “The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you.” [via]
We love Uno. We can’t get enough of it, we can play it for hours on end, it’s such a simple, enjoyable game…
Until we perverted it, just because we could…
Don’t get me wrong, it IS a fun, wholesome game, but we take it to all new levels, levels where bloodshed is almost as regular as a skip or reverse card. Now if you don’t know Uno (and why not?) the rules are simple:
Each player is dealt 7 cards (or in our case, anything up to but not always limited to 30 cards) with the remaining ones placed face down to form a “draw” pile. The top card of the draw pile is turned over to begin a “discard” pile. The first player has to match the card in the discard pile either by number, color or word. For example, if the card is a red 7, player must throw down a red card or any color 7. Or the player can throw down a Wild Card. If the player doesn’t have anything to match, he must pick a card from the draw pile. If he can play what is drawn, great. Otherwise play moves to the next person. When you have one card left, you must yell “UNO” (meaning one). Failure to do this results in you having to pick two cards from the draw pile. That is, of course if you get caught by the other players. Once a player has no cards left, the hand is over. Points are scored and you start over again.
See, simple… But I should mention we play with a stack of mixed decks, off the top of my head we play with regular Uno deck, Travel Uno, Harry Potter Uno, Muppets Uno, Spongebob Squarepants Uno, Peanuts Uno, Seattle Mariners Uno, Hello Kitty Uno, Incredible Hulk Uno, Spider-Man Uno, Care Bears Uno, X-Men Uno and Shrek 2 Uno… Each with their own special rules card, the nastiest being the Muppets Mayhem card (where everyone changes hands, a great way to steal an Uno hand), but since we expanded from the first 4 decks to include the rest, they don’t come up as often anymore…
Now, add in house rules of stacking cards and we have a potent mix, being landed with huge pickups happens all too often. As Erika says:
Since we play stacking rules – meaning if you have say 6 Draw 2′s – you can play all 6 – forcing a pickup of 12 cards.
What we try to do is get that going around so someone gets stuck with picking up 20 cards.
What is evil is doing it as an out. Routinely we try to develop our hands so that we have a lot of skips back to ourself (staking reverses or skip cards) then lay as many forced pickups at a time to go “UNO” and then out. Since the next player in turn has to pick up the forced pickup – they often end up with several hundred points in their hand.
That’s evil
Yes it is… I’ve been left whimpering with over 1,000 points in my hand at the end of a game…
Anyways, why do I mention all this? Cause tonight, for the first time ever, I won my first ligit game of Uno with the 3 hustlers I stay with, and now I formally announce my retirement from the world of unprofessional Uno playing, always best to go out on top…
Can’t The FA do anything right?. “Whenever the FA have been faced with a big issue, they have handled it with all the professional aplomb of Laurel and Hardy attempting to carry a grand piano up a flight of stairs.”
Team America: World Police. The new movie by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, done in a Supermarionation style.
One of those quick life tests that pigeon hole you into a specific category…
The sad thing is, I was honest with it too…
via Simon/Switch