Biggest Elephant Shrew

No, that's not analogous to jumbo shrimp. Scientists recently (if you call 3 years ago "recently") discovered what is now known to be the world's largest elephant shrew. They found it in Tanzania. (That's in Africa, for the geographically challenged.) It took a year to positively identify it properly, but that still seems like a long time to wait to make the formal announcement.

Even though the little critter is about the size of a squirrel, scientists claim that it's more closely related to the elephant that to true shrews. Don't look for them to be cross-bred anytime soon though.

The Lyrebird

The lyrebird can apparently imitate almost any sound it hears -- including chain saws.

eBay vs the Other Guys

eBay is lowering its listing fees apparently to compete with the likes of Amazon.com which doesn't charge a listing fee at all. Listing (or insertion) fees are going down anywhere from $.05 to $.80 per auction. However, final value fees are going up basically 3.5% across the board from 5.25% to 8.75%. It's a little more complex than that, so go to their fees page for details. (As of this writing, that page hadn't been updated yet. The lower fees were only listed in an announcement.)

Happy anniversary, LEGO!

Today is the 50th anniversary of the LEGO brick. Too bad they don't have more special sales to celebrate. I'm trying to make a large map of the United States (similar to a mosaic in some ways) and could use a break on the cost. I especially need standard old green bricks. Got any?

FileZilla

FileZilla is a free FTP client that can be used to upload and download files to and from a Web site that you manage. Unfortunately, I can't get it to work with a Website Tonight account at GoDaddy.com -- even after following all the directions in their help area. Sigh.I can't tell where the problem is for sure, but it feels like something isn't activated at GoDaddy.

Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian

This is going to seem like I'm promoting Blogger, but I'm not. Not that it's an awful system or anything...after all, I'm using it. It's just that what I learned today was that Blogger can now handle 3 right-to-left languages - Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian. I think that's pretty cool.

Zarf

A holder, usually of ornamental metal, for a coffee cup without a handle.

Though it sounds more like something from a Douglas Adams book, the zarf comes from the Levant (a word I happened to see in a news headline today as well). These are the lands bordering the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

Zarf was the answer to a crossword puzzle clue my son was working in the newspaper today.

Aluminum

Not everyone knows about recycling aluminum.

Gasp.

A paraphrased conversation:

"The school is having an aluminum drive to raise money for one of the students in need."

"Oh, I just put my garbage out today. What would be involved? What would I do differently?"

"Just bring your aluminum cans to the school instead."

"What would be aluminum?"

Bites tongue.

"You know, pop cans, beer cans."

"Oh, okay."

"Not your soup cans or others like that."

"Oh, I see."

And no, this person really does not live in a cave. You'd never have thunk it if this hadn't actually transpired.

Arranging

I can arrange and "Finale" a hymn suitable for a small praise band in about half an hour -- even late at night.

Ashley Flores Hoax

Ashley Flores is not missing. An Amber Alert has not been issued for her. I received today this info via email.

Amber Alert
Staff Sergeant Rick Williams
Rolla Police Department
1007 N. Elm St.
Rolla, MO 65401
(573) 364-1213
Fax (573) 364-6346

Part of the email has this message which is supposedly from her mother.

If anyone knows anything,please contact me at:
HelpfindAshleyFlores@yahoo.com

A picture of "Ashley" was also included.

Always, always check snopes.com before forwarding this garbage.

Missing post #14

I'm sure I learned something more important than this today, but I want to note here instead that I somehow missed posting to this blog on January 14. I also just realized that it may not be possible to record one thought here every single day (and that's 366 days) this year because I'll likely be away from home and unable to access the Internet -- especially when at the in-laws.

Sad day for Packers fans

It doesn't happen often, but you can occasionally win a football game scoring mostly field goals. I especially hate it when a game ends with a winning field goal by the other team either in regulation or overtime. That's what almost happened to the Packers in regulation today, and what did happen to them in overtime.

I don't even want to think about next year yet.

Move the bell

It can really hurt your chances of winning in Mystery of the Abbey if you forget to move the bell from round to round. You have to do penance, which means losing a turn. So this is especially true if you forget twice.

Exit now

To get from our house to the Board Game Barrister, you must exit on 43/94/41 south. Do not pass that exit and go all the way to 794 because you'll end up in St. Francis instead of Bayview.

Super Bowl?

Sadly, I learned today that a co-worker of nearly 10 years was not sure what the Super Bowl was. Granted, she wasn't born in the U.S., doesn't care at all for football, and rarely watches TV at all. Still, I would have thought that simply living in Wisconsin would have been enough to have that information acquired by osmosis, if nothing else.

Happily, I educated her on this all-important topic. :-)

Doctor's orders

"The drug resistant forms of TB have developed largely because patients don't stick to their six-month course of treatment."

So it really does pay to obey doctor's orders. This form of TB, known as XDR-TB (eXtremely Drug Resistant) is apparently found in the Soviet Republics and southern Africa...and perhaps other places that doctors and researchers haven't heard about yet.

Never give up

Whether this idea ever makes it all the way to the market or whether something else similar does, what some scientists did is a neat example of not giving up. They are developing rechargeable lithium ion batteries with 10 times the life of current ones using a concept that was scrapped years ago because no one could solve a problem that made them pretty much useless.

Never say, "Never," eh?

NFL Conference Playoffs

Since the Giants beat the Cowboys today, the Packers will play the Giants next weekend for the NFC Conference Championship. Also, the Chargers beat the Colts, so the Chargers will play the Patriots for the AFC Conference Championship.

Common thought is that the Packers and the Patriots will win their games. If so, Super Bowl XLII will be a rematch of Super Bowl XXXI, which the Packers won in 1997.

Job security

Corbin Bernsen is not relying on that new game show for job security. He's also doing ads for a company called Advantage...something-or-other.

XXXX/0030

I learned that I should pay closer attention to the descriptions in eBay auctions. I won a football card that I thought had a total print run of 30, making it quite rare. Turns out that the card was the same as one of those 30, but it had four X's where the serial number should have been.

At first I thought the card was a fake, but after rereading the auction description, I saw that it was exactly what the seller said it was. He didn't pretend that it was one of the 30. I may have read that at the time I placed my bid, but I had forgotten it in the meantime.

I don't think I overpaid for the card. It's still probably quite rare -- just not one of the 30.

How much is enough?

How much is enough? is the name a a game show (using that term loosely here) for greedy people. A game show that doesn't even allow vicarious home viewer participation much less contestant interaction, skill, or knowledge will not last long. At least I hope this one doesn't.

Oh, what did I learn? I learned that host Corbin Bernsen will be looking for more work soon.

Scorpions

From the Discovery Channel...some species of scorpion mothers may carry as many as 100 baby scorpions on their backs. The little ones are kinda cute.

Rock on!

T.Y. talked me into playing drums for one song using his Rock Band video game. At the easy level (on a song I did not recognize) I scored a paltry 56%. So I'm no Drummer Boy. I suppose I'd get better with practice, but I'll stick to keyboards and real, live music, thank-you-very-much.

Tarapoto or Nueva Amistad?

I learned today that the church some of our members at Living Word helped to build last year is actually located in Nueva Amistad, Peru, and not in Tarapoto. It was originally going to be built in Tarapoto, but they found a better location in Nueva Amistad -- one that would be more likely to attract more people.

Why didn't I know that before? Well, maybe I had heard it, but I had forgotten, and no one mentioned that the information on the Living Word Web site was wrong. I found out for myself when I was given some pictures of the completed structure.

Bad, worse, worst, worster

In describing himself before his conversion to Christianity, the Apostle Paul coined a word in Greek. He thought of himself as worse than the worst sinner because of how he had treated Christians before Jesus personally called him into his service. I don't have the actual word Paul used, but in English it would be very similar to worster, as in, of all the sinners in the world, I am the worster.

NFC wildcard

The Seattle Seahawks beat the Washington Redskins this afternoon, 35-14. I didn't really watch much of the game. I kinda kept tabs on the score while playing a couple rounds of Mystery of the Abbey. The football game was really only interesting in that we learned who the Packers would play next week -- the Seahawks. The Packers had earned a bye this week.

Google spreadsheet tabs

I want to write something here daily, but it's technically not today (1/4/08) anymore. It's already tomorrow, so what I'm writing now counts for yesterday. This may happen about twice a month because of our JBGS game night that starts in the early evening and usually lasts till the early morning.

I figured that this might be possible, but I didn't learn whether it was so until today. You can move the tabs around at the bottom of a Google spreadsheet (much the same as in Excel). This is very handy for the moderately (or less) computer literate people who need to use such an application that you previously setup for them. They can see the sheet they're supposed to use as soon as they access the spreadsheet instead of having to find the right tab (of a multi-tab spreadsheet) to click first.

Mystery of the Abbey

Today we go back to the wonderful world of board games.

There's a game called Mystery of the Abbey that has the feeling of the old classic Clue. A monk has been murdered! It's your job to figure out whodunit. You don't care where or with what weapon he committed the crime though, so the majority of the cards in your hand are monks. You want to see all the monks if possible.

Sometimes everyone gets to see one or more of these monks at the same time. When trying to keep track of all of this on your secret information sheet, I learned that it's a good thing to make note if everyone has seen a certain monk so that you don't unnecessarily ask about him as if he were still a culprit later in the game. I had thought I was avoiding that when we played tonight, but I was later informed (after losing) that I had slipped up twice in that area. (Next time, Brother Gadget! Next time!)

Of sorts

I program in COBOL on a mainframe computer by day (and sometimes by night). I also work with a widely-used sort routine into which you can pass information (parameters, or parms) to make the sorting go the way you want. Today a co-worker used a parm called NZDPRINT that I'd never heard of before. I could guess what it meant and what it did, but I had to look it up in the documentation to be sure. Here's what I learned:

ZDPRINT specifies if positive ZD [zoned decimal] summation results are to be converted to printable numbers.

ZDPRINT, the default, enables conversion to printable format. NZDPRINT prevents the conversion.

This option determines whether the sign byte of a positive summarized ZD field will be converted to a printable format. More precisely, the option specifies whether the zone of the last digit should be changed from a hexadecimal C to a hexadecimal F.

Carcassonne: The Castle

I like to play games. Lots of games. Especially since I discovered "Eurogames" just over a year ago. Earlier today I calculated that I played games 686 times in 2007. That's based on what I recorded at BoardGameGeek.com.

While playing the game Carcassonne: The Castle today, I learned that you can usually win by reusing your meeples as much as possible. Leaving scorable areas unfinished in this game normally doesn't give you any points at the end, so it makes sense to finish areas quickly and move on to another potential scoring area.