David S. Atkinson's Blog, page 158

I Need This Today

I went looking for Shatner animated gifs. Thankfully, I found this one:

I really need this today.

Look at it! He’s eating the carrot! Eat your veggies, William! I’m so grateful that someone bothered to do this.

An Odd Bible Verse Out Of Context

There’s a bible verse I know about that bugs me. I only remember it in isolation, and don’t remember the context. I’m sure the context would make it make sense, but I prefer not to go find that context. It’s much better on it’s own.

New American Standard Bible Judges 1:19:

Now the LORD was with Judah, and they took possession of the hill country; but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had iron chariots.

Sure, I could go find the context and logically explain what this is actually saying. Don’t even tell me if you know, because I don’t WANT to know. Instead, I think I’m going to go get me an iron chariot. Then I don’t have to worry if I’m wrong about God or not.

God is powerless against iron chariots. (Note: this is satirical.)

A Garfield Minus Garfield That Doesn’t Work

Many people love Garfield. However, many people hate it. Some even insist that Garfield himself is utterly unnecessary. There is even a strip, Garfield Minus Garfield, that removes Garfield from strips to show how they work just as well, though perhaps a little more strangely (I believe they look at them as existential comics), without Garfield. However, I found one that doesn’t work when Garfield is removed:

Here is the original, courtesy of this site, in Russian (I gave up looking to find it in English after two minutes, since it was such a perfect one for this, so I’ll just reproduce the English text below it):

– Sometimes I sleep so much that I don’t know (if) it’s day now or night.







– Sometimes I eat so much that I don’t know (if) I’m full or still hungry.




– Ignorance is power!

See? Bit of a problem for this one if you remove Garfield. At least, I think so. Maybe some would still argue it works and is still better without.

Have You Reviewed Not Quite so Stories on Amazon And Goodreads Yet?

Hey…if you’ve read Not Quite so Stories, have you reviewed it on Amazon and Goodreads yet? Authors need reviews to live. It’s what we metabolize instead of food (we still eat food, but mainly to keep up appearances so the rest of humanity doesn’t hunt us down like vampires), so it’d be really cool if you did.

Of course, if you haven’t read Not Quite so Stories yet…why not pick up a copy? Authors need that too so we don’t end up following you around to ask for spare change. Every little bit helps.

Binary Search

I posted yesterday about that game a firm I’d been a summer associate at had done to try to get the summers to know the partners better. I detailed the process I used to figure out which of the partners had once boxed Muhammad Ali. I won the second round of that game as well, which of the partners had golfed in a PGA affiliated game, but that one wasn’t as deductively impressive.

I sat down to look at the question. After revealing my process from the previous week, I felt a certain amount of pressure. Which partner golfed in a PGA affiliated game? How was I going to figure out that?

I checked name associations with the PGA, of course. That didn’t turn up anything. It must have been a small game of some kind and not had much about it on the Internet. It seemed likely it would be an older partner. After all, golf was once mandatory for any decently powered attorney. It still played a big role in some places, but not as much as it once did. Still, it could have been a younger person as well. It just wasn’t as likely.

Did I know about anyone’s golfing habits? Not really. I could look in their offices for golf memorabilia, but I wasn’t sure that was the best way to go about things.

Then I thought about the binary searching we’d covered in my various computer courses. I had the ability to ask yes or no questions, right? Why not see if I could find yes/no questions that would split the population of partners in half each time. That’s a fast searching method, the bulk of the overhead being in organizing a data set into a form upon which a binary search can be done.

Is the person a man? Is the person over fifty? I got down to a pretty small population pretty fast with just a few yes/no questions designed to split the partners in half. Then, once I had a small enough group, I made a few guesses. Guesses worked fine once you had a small enough group to guess from.

I won again.

Now, I don’t think they were as happy about my win that time when I detailed the process I used to go about this round. I’d kind of gamed the system, and the strategy would have worked for pretty much any round regardless of the person or question. The other summers basically gave up and didn’t play any more…and all I really got was whichever of the firm logo plastic cup or stress ball I hadn’t won in the first round (I don’t remember which I won for which).

They stopped the game after those two rounds. It was supposed to run each week the full length of the summer program.

My bad.

Odd Memory Connected To Muhammad Ali

When Muhammad Ali died recently, I found myself thinking of an odd memory connected to him. I summered for a law firm quite a few years ago now. During that program, they had come up with a game to try to get the ten to thirteen summer associates or so to know the partners of the firm better. A number of the partners had something unusual about them, and we had to figure out which.

What would happen was that we’d be given a factoid. One of the partners once did X. We couldn’t ask them, but there were attorneys who would answer our yes or no questions about such. There was supposed to be a little prize for each round.

Now, the first question was “Which partner once boxed with Muhammad Ali?” This one actually interested me for some reason, so I thought about it. Getting an official fight list for Muhammad Ali was easy, and matching it up with the partners in the firm directory led nowhere. I looked under Cassius Clay as well, but didn’t really find more fights.

The more I thought about it though, it had to have been before Muhammad Ali changed his name. It had to have been something small in order for it not to leave a record, and by the time he was Muhammad Ali he wouldn’t have been part of much that wasn’t recorded in multiple places.

It had to be something really small.

So, I looked at Ali’s bio. He did Golden Gloves. I was sure things were a lot more amateur when he was getting started with that, possibly involving unrecorded sparring matches.  However, one wouldn’t travel as much for things like that as for bigger, professional matches. Ali was from Louisville, Kentucky, so something small would likely have been around there.

Of course, the partner’s biographies on the firm site didn’t really list where they were from as kids…but I did find one guy who went to the University of Kentucky. Did it mean he was from Louisville? No. However, I figured at that time it was much more likely someone went to the University of Kentucky if they were from Kentucky. I had no clue about any other partner being from Kentucky (one other one went to school in Tennessee, and he was my back up guess).

So…I asked if it was the University of Kentucky guy, and I won. When I was given my prize (a plastic cup with the firm logo on it or a stress ball with the firm logo on it, I don’t remember which was for this one), I had to explain how I got the answer. When I laid out all the above, the questioner (a litigator) asked if I’d ever reconsider my decision not to become a litigator.

I’m way more proud of this than I deserve to be.

Wasps!

I stepped outside the other day to realize that wasps had built a small nest under my gutter.  I looked around a bit and ended up finding five more. They’re all small nests, but still. This is what I wanted to do:

Note: this animated gif actually despicts use of a flamethrower against a hornet nest as opposed to a wasp nest. Still, you get the idea. Also, I called an exterminator instead of doing this or anything else by myself.

I’m not that stupid, or at least not that stupid in this particular way. I know full well that the side of my house is made of wood.

Awww yiissss!

Aw yis!

Ten foot floor to ceiling bookshelves installed in the study. Room for more books!

Come See Me As The Featured Reader At The Art of Story Telling Reading Series Friday June 17, 2017 at 7:30 pm At The Collection Gallery In The Aurora Arts District 9801 E Colfax Ave Ste 120 Aurora CO 80010

Hey! I’m going to be the featured reader at The Art of Story Telling Reading Series Friday June 17, 2016 at 7:30 pm at the Collection Gallery in the Aurora Arts District (9801 E Colfax Ave Ste 120 Aurora, CO 80010, across the street from Aurora Fox Theater and the MLK Library). You should come on out!

This is a great series. It pulls together diverse groups of Denver writers who usually aren’t found in the same place, encouraging everyone to develop a broader understanding of who all is writing out there in the community and what they are doing. I’ve read there before during the open mic portions, and they delighted me by asking me to feature.

So, come on out. Listen a bit, or even read something of your own during the open mic portion. I’ll be reading something from Not Quite so Stories, the plan currently being to read something from that which I haven’t read before.

It’ll be cool.

Wonder What Kind Of Abe Vigoda Animated Gifs There Are Out There?

Hi…have you ever wondered what kind of Abe Vigoda animated gifs there out there? No? Well, I have. There’s at least this one:

Chew with me people (Or whatever the heck that is. Doesn’t it look like he’s chewing nothing?), chew with me.