Some final World Cup blather

Wow, the final game was amazing. It's a shame that it couldn't be decided in regulation or overtime, I thought it sad that it had to be decided with penalty kicks. But what absolutely amazed me was the head-butt! What a way to end your career, much less for that act to be remembered as the last thing you ever did on the field.

Unfortunately I didn't get to see the third-place Germany/Portugal game, it was shown on an ESPN channel that's part of a subscription package that we don't get. Much thanks to Wuglet for sending me a YouTube URL that had highlights of the game.

Here's something you may not have heard about: the Berlin coordinator shot himself in the head after Sunday's final in an apparent suicide attempt. Story here.


And now a question for those of you more knowledgable about the structure of the World Cup: how is it organized? It strikes me as sort of the same organization as the Olympics, so that, for example, a player for Country X who is a citizen of Country Y plays for Y's team, and they take their best players for said team. Is that more or less correct?

Geek Gambling: "Aliens Took My Money"

I wasn't going to post this story, but then he talked about a Monty Python slot machine that goes "Ni!" every time you pump up a credit.

http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,71356-0.html

Aliens Took My Money

By Lore Sjöberg
02:00 AM Jul, 12, 2006

I recently spent some time in Reno, Nevada -- Las Vegas' Canada. I spent most of my gambling time playing video slots.

I used to prefer poker, because it's a game where lightning-quick calculation and a keen intuition for human nature gives you a real edge over the other players. Eventually, however, I realized that this is only a good thing if you're the one possessed of those qualities, and I switched to a game where I can lose money at a rate unaffected by my own skill level.
( Read more... )

Hybrid/Greener Cars

Short blurb on Wired. It's not terribly interesting, but it brought up one point that I hadn't considered, the same point also explains (at least partially) why we're unlikely to see Brazillian sugar cane fuel here: the E85 fuel, made with 85% corn, represents a huge amount of money for Archer-Daniels-Midland. Never mind that it's only 10% more efficient than petroleum (1 unit of energy used in production produces 1.1 units of usable fuel), whereas sugard cane ethanol is much higher.

We would have loved to have gotten a Prius when we bought our Matrix, but a priority was to get 4WD. Maybe in another five or so years they'll have such a vehicle. (yes, I know Toyota is coming out with a hybrid Rav4, but I want more of a sedan vehicle than a Jeep-type vehicle.)

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.07/play.html?pg=6

I got ripped off at a gas pump Monday

I was really tired heading home Monday night. I was also really low on gas. I didn't have the low fuel light on yet, but I knew that it would be on before I got to the top of the mountain (14 miles) and I'd have to put gas in it in Cloudcroft, which would require the +$0.10/gallon mountain tax (an exaggeration, there is no mountain tax except that everything in Cloudcroft is a little bit more expensive). So I stop at the Chevron at the base of the mountain and fill it up. It takes longer than usual, but maybe my time sense was screwed up because of my tiredness.

Pump shuts off and I look at the display and my receipt. It says that I pumped 12.507 gallons. Slight problem. My gas tank is an 11.something tank.

I didn't have my owner's manual in the car, it was at home as I'd looked something up in it and hadn't put it back in the car. So I check, and sure enough, I have an 11.9 gallon tank. The regular Toyota Matrix has a 13.2 gallon tank, but I have the 4WD version which requires a smaller tank for the additional transmission components.

In short, I've been slightly robbed. And no, I didn't spill a half gallon of gas all over the side of my car and on the concrete of the station. I just reviewed my notebook where I log all of my gas purchases, and found that we were similarly rippped on our trip to BlingFest, most likely in a town in New Mexico whose name eludes me for the moment, they're on I-40 not too far from the Texas border. Russet filled that tank and didn't notice it, and it's probably too late to do much about it.

Tuesday AM I stop at the store and tell the clerk what happened. He seemed fairly uninterested, said he couldn't do anything about it, and gave me the manager's phone number. I called and left a message, it's now been almost 36 hours without a reply.

Tomorrow I call the New Mexico equivalent of Weights & Measures, the bureau that certifies gas pumps and other measuring devices. I have the receipt, I have my notebook. I'm probably out $3-5, I would like to have that money back, but I definitely want the station whacked if they're pulling this on a routine basis.

I have since found out that this gas station is rather infamous for overcharging people like this. If they get called on it, they refund money, otherwise they just go on quietly ripping-off people.

Lovely.

A tie between identity theft & methamphetamines?

Also possibly a tie with illegal aliens?

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/07/identity_theft_3.html

Identity Theft and Methamphetamines

New trend or scary rumor?

When methamphetamine proliferated more recently, the police and prosecutors at first did not associate it with a rise in other crimes. There were break-ins at mailboxes and people stealing documents from garbage, Mr. Morales said, but those were handled by different parts of the Police Department.

But finally they connected the two. Meth users -- awake for days at a time and able to fixate on small details -- were looking for checks or credit card numbers, then converting the stolen identities to money, drugs or ingredients to make more methamphetamine. For these drug users, Mr. Morales said, identity theft was the perfect support system.

(more in article)

World Cup Head-Butt

Zidane, the head-butter, apparently had his mother and sister insulted by the head-buttee, Materazzi. No specifics. Apparently a lot of France has forgiven him.

Strange stuff. It'll be interesting to see how it resolves.

http://sports.yahoo.com/sow/news?slug=ap-wcup-zidane&prov=ap&type=lgns

A Joke (perfectly SFW)

A man decided to go on a safari in Africa. He took his faithful pet dachshund along for company. One day the dachshund began chasing butterflies and before long the dachshund discovers that he was lost.

So, wandering about, he notices a leopard heading rapidly in his direction with the obvious intention of having lunch. The dachshund thinks, "OK, I'm in deep trouble now!" Then he noticed some bones on the ground close by, and immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat.

Just as the leopard is about to leap, the dachshund exclaims loudly, "Boy, that was one delicious leopard. I wonder if there are any more around here?"

Hearing this, the leopard halts his attack in mid-stride, as a look of terror comes over him, and slinks away into the trees. "Whew," says the leopard. "That was close. That dachshund nearly had me."

Meanwhile, a monkey who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the leopard. So, off he goes. But the dachshund saw him heading after the leopard with great speed, and figured that something must be up.

The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the leopard. The leopard is furious at being made a fool of and says, "Here monkey, hop on my back and see what's going to happen to that conniving canine."

Now the dachshund sees the leopard coming with the monkey on his back, and thinks, "What am I going to do now?" But instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers, pretending he hasn't seen them yet ...

and just when they get close enough to hear, the dachshund says, "Where's that monkey? I sent him off half an hour ago to bring me another leopard."

Sunday night on Iron Chef: The White House Chef competes!

Could be interesting, he goes up against Kat. No idea what the ingredient is, I hope to watch it. Should be fun.