It IS Supposed to Be Stick Dudes

Imagine you regularly visit a gaming portal where other people post their home-made video games for the world to rate. You’ve been doing these reviews for a while, and have even contributed to getting some really pathetic games kicked off of the site (a.k.a. “blammed”).

One day, you stumble across an RPG game that has a moderate score, so you decide to check it out. Turns out that the game is absolutely pathetic. The controls don’t let you do much, the progression of the game is pedestrian, and yet many people give it a high rating.

You can’t understand why, so you decide to expend the effort to give this so-called “game” a bad review. The unsuspecting should be forewarned.

Black Friday

Occasionally Black Friday happens more often than the day after Thanksgiving. In this case, May 13th, 2011.

I heard about Rebecca Black’s music video from my students mere days after it was released.

It was absolutely shocking. In a William Hung sort of way.

Arthur Luck

Arthur Luck—if anything can go wrong, it will, and at the most inopportune time

Arthur Luck appears to be a genetically heritable characteristic and can vary in its manifestation and extremity. Unlike most afflictions, Arthur Luck is utterly predictable. Arthur Luck WILL happen. The only questions are when, where, and how.

I remember when my parents left one of my brothers on the front porch when they went to church. Three hours later, he was still there, locked out and upset that his family had deserted him. Or, when my family came to see me off before a trip to Thailand, and my sister spent the whole time at the airport puking into a trash can.

Classroom Performance

Today I taught a class on networking--Service Oriented Architecture, specifically. While discussing with the class, I mentioned that we could use different protocols to communicate between applications.

"You could use TCP which is faster, or you could use HTTP if you don't need that particular performance enhancement."

Pause.

"That didn't come out right at all..."

Visual Verities

I was at the local college doing some work while waiting for my wife to finish teaching when I saw my brother who shall not be named just 20 feet away. He had graduated from college, but I could tell he was probably helping some friends study.

Rather than wave at him or directly greet him, I decided to text him.

“What are you doing in the Tanner Building?”

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Last year, my wife and I regularly taught a group of 8- and 9-year-old children. Many of these kids had read the book “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” seen the movie, or wanted the book for their birthday.

To better connect with our kids, my wife suggested that we go and see the movie. I, however, was reluctant, and she had to do some serious persuading before I agreed to see it.

Different Strokes

Some of you may recall an 80s TV show of that name, and I just want to say that has nothing to do with the topic of this blog.  Ah, Gary Coleman at his finest, may he rest in peace…

In a recent discussion, a friend revealed that his father had suffered a stroke at a surprisingly young age. Despite a small loss of motor control, his father could still get around well.