I AM A SUPER DUPER GENIUS

W00H0000000!

Finished, for the first time in forever, with one peg left! (Just picked up the game again after a few years.)

Well, this can be one more thing added to my modest list of accomplishments this year...

mi profondo in scusi

So che per niente ho stato stupido stupido stupido, e forse distrugguto la nostra amicizia, ma ti vorrei chiedere un perdon e se puoi trovare nel tuo cuore a perdonarmi...

(Not So) Brainy

A Case for RSTLNE

When Wheel of Fortune goes to the bonus round, they automatically give the contestant the letters R, S, T, L, N, and E as a "gimme", and then ask the contestant for three more consonants and a vowel.

So it got me thinking, are they really the most frequent letters? I remember, when I was growing up, that almost all contestants guessed RSTLNE for their letters. I also remember an episode of The A-Team where H.M. goes on Wheel of Fortune for some reason, and I remember that he studied letter frequency charts to gain an advantage. I decided to make my own letter frequency charts off that Boggle program that I have laying about. 26 nicely-formatted lines of code later, the results are in!

The top five occurring consonants are: S (140948), R, (105133), N (101329), T (99367), and L (78503). So, that's OK. The highest-frequency vowel is far and away E (170788) -- so that's OK, too.

Now comes the tricky part. What should the next three consonants be? If memory serves me correctly, most contestants currently pick C, D, and G. Is that just following a pattern, or is that based on frequency? According to my chart, the three next-most occurring letters are C (59257), D (50962), and M (41840). In fairness, G is next in line, and I think people pick M frequently, too. Vowels at this point are a toss-up, as long as you don't pick U (this assumes that you have no idea what the word is when picking letters -- one puzzle about a month or so ago was URUGUAY, which obviously was picked to blow the letter-frequency charts out of the water).

I think I've had way too much time on my hands to think about this sort of thing...

Last night

Yesterday I somewhat randomly popped over to the FARMS (Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies) website at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute to see what they had. I wasn't really sure what I would find there, but I knew I needed some reading material to keep me occupied while I was scanning a whole bunch of documents at work.

What I found completely fascinated me. I printed out two articles to read at my leisure: an article on the records kept by the Jaredite people, and another article on Moroni, more specifically comparing and contrasting his three attempts to close the record of the Book of Mormon.

I especially enjoyed the article on Moroni. As I read through the final pages of the Book of Mormon, his life really came alive before my eyes, and I understood a lot about his narrations and his commentaries on the stories he was telling. I came to understand how he, like us, was a spiritual wanderer in a strange land, unsure of what the Lord had in store for him, but having complete faith and trust in His plan. The main difference between us and Moroni is that Moroni knows exactly what we are to "get" from the Book of Mormon. He saw our time, and knows the important lessons that we are to learn. And fortunately for us, he recorded them all in Moroni 10.

I've always seen Moroni 10 as the "conclusion" to the Book of Mormon. Well, what I managed to forget in this case is a basic principle of good writing: the conclusion needs to re-state the thesis statement of the work, and summarize it clearly and concisely. Reading the final chapter of the Book of Mormon as both introduction and conclusion, I was able to gain a large amount of insight as to what is important to look for while reading the Book of Mormon, and I am extremely excited to re-read the Book of Mormon yet again, and really focus on the things that Moroni emphasized in his final exhortation to us.

I've been trying really hard recently to study the scriptures, but not only that, to be a student of the scriptures -- really apply them to my life. I picked up a study manual for the second half of the Old Testament, and began reading about the rise and fall of King Solomon (1 Kings 1-11). The manual helped point out that the fall of King Solomon was mostly due to three things: pride, mismanagement of wealth, and a strong desire for acceptance by the world around him. I started thinking about my own life, and the past couple of months. I've really seen a lot of that in my personal life as well, I'm ashamed to say, and I've almost completely gotten away from the things that helped me identify myself as, well, me. So, I made a list, and I carry it around with me on my PDA, and I'm going to be referring to it frequently as I try to keep myself on course. I think this is a good thing to start the new year off with, seeing as how last year was made up mostly of ambiguous goals and scattershot attempts to be 'productive' and 'improve myself'.

Word coinage

Adding new words to the Calabresi-coined lexicon today:

"AIMspeak": the multitude of abbreviations and shortenings that take place within instant message windows, text message conversations, MySpace, etc.

"Intellectual Ice Age": what is going to result from the continual dumbing-down of our society.

Oh yeah

On a completely unrelated note to anything, I just wanted to say that Pantera's album Vulgar Display of Power is awesome to listen to when I want to:

• get something done
• drown out co-workers
• do both at the same time

In fact, the only thing it's probably not good for is driving late at night while tired (I missed my exit way back in 1999), and cooking... I can't imagine working in the kitchen to this kind of music, unless I was cleaning or something. Come to think of it, I think I'm going to play this stuff really freaking loud this week while Michelle and the kids are gone...

Indignancy

Dennis Miller once said something to the effect of: "You know you're never more indignant in life than when you are shopping in a store you feel to be beneath you and someone mistakes you for an employee."

Well, I've never had that happen to me, but I have had an "almost"... I've decided to start dressing better, and not short-changing my reputation or first impressions on the basis of a t-shirt with a nifty slogan ("I'M BIG IN EUROPE") and some baggy jeans. So, it's mostly nice pants (sometimes jeans), a collared shirt, and a sweater if the weather warrants (which, recently, it has been).

Last night I went somewhere, and if I wasn't "dressed up" per se, I was at least dressed better than I usually have been. And I still felt underdressed for the function I was at. Sigh... no win for me this time around... :-(

Recapturing some of the magic

It's time for Animaniacs / And we're zany to the max / So just sit back and relax / You'll laugh till you collapse / We're Animaniacs!

I downloaded got the first few episodes of Animaniacs on DVD yesterday, and spent this morning reliving some of my better TV-watching moments from my younger days. It's pretty cool to watch all of this stuff; in fact, it's the hardest I've laughed at something on TV or in the movies in a long, long time. That says a lot, seeing as how I don't care to watch TV or movies all that much. I need to get my hands on some more episodes, maybe even the whole first couple of seasons, so I can share them with everybody.

On a slightly-related note, I'm anxious for a career change. Not that my current job hasn't been good to me and my family, but I'm just not creating anything at my job. I figured out that that's what is at the bottom of my desire to be a cook -- the act of creating things for other people to enjoy. I made my first bûche de noël (Yule log) this weekend, and it went over well enough that I'm going to make one more for my friends at work, and another one for my mother's birthday, coming up in a couple of weeks. It's good to know how to make them, because they're really good, but they're also very expensive (I think about $15 for a small one) at the local French bakery. Also, with practice, my skills improve. :-)

Albums of the Year (so far)

Two albums really stand out for me this year -- I know technically the Imogen Heap album was released in late 2005, but I didn't get my hands on it until this year.

By "Albums of the Year", I mean albums that were released relatively recently that spent the most time in my car or CD player, or in my playlist at the office.

I have nothing to say.

But, after getting thrown up on tonight and with both kids asleep and everyone else perched in front of the television, I have really nothing else to do. I've read up enough on Jericho, and the constant buzz of background noise, coupled with my fatigue, is enough to really block any sort of creative juices from flowing right now. While STephen is recovering very nicely from his bronchitis, I think that he may be somewhat allergic to the cat here, and he is not sleeping well at all. Very noisy and I was up constantly last night. I got some sleep in the recliner during the day today, but other than that, I am found wanting, as I have proceeded to eat myself into oblivion.

There's a talent show coming up in one week for church... I've decided on doing a solo bass guitar rendition of O Holy Night. I'm excited, as that has been one of my most favorite Christmas carols for a long time, even if I don't know the words all that well. I'm not sure if I will be intruding upon a ward tradition by playing that; generally it's not Christmas in the ward if Ssiter Halula doesn't sing it in her operatic voice. Not that I have anything against that, but I generally don't like being stuck in ruts. I have big ideas, or so I think, and acting on them is very important to me.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to be doing some shopping for Christmas... Home Depot has a sale on a set of really nice power tools, so hopefully I'll be able to do what I want to do, and get some custom furniture and accessories made for the house. I'd really love to get the booth for the dining room taken care of, so we can get rid of the dining room set, or at least put it into storage until we need it again.

We'll see what happens.