www.presidentmatch.com tells you who to vote for based on your opinions of various issues.

It's time for another weekend. I'll be heading down to William and Mary for another wedding; this time Jason and Rosie. I should be back early on Sunday morning sometime. No updates on Saturdays and no updates on Saturdays with weddings, so no updates, by induction.

Stuff in my Drawers Day

an occasional look at the worthless detritus of childhood from my file cabinet

It's a simple enough exercise that everyone has to do at some point in school: write a word down the left side of your paper and then use those letters to make new words that describe the original word. It is fitting, then, that I started THANKSGIVING with "turkey", but from there, something may have gone horribly wrong. (1985)

This was a fake advertisement from the 7th grade, one in a series of many (1991). It later won a national contest and was published in the Dec '92 issue of Boy's Life. SIKE.

When your face turns blue from smoke inhalation, follow the hallucination of the Michelin Man to the nearest window. This has been a public service announcement from your local fourth grader (1989).

This is a heartwarming rendition of the Challenger shuttle launch made in 1986. Apparently I liked it so much that I wanted it to be put up on the refrigerator. That Berenstain Bears sticker shows that I was successfully immunized.

Here is a letter I wrote to my parents on our old typewriter (which I was still using as late as 1996 to do college applications the old-fashioned way) in 1985. Note the helpful translations recorded by my Mom in the margin.

A letter of this caliber only has one appropriate response:

Game Day

One of the reasons why Apples to Apples has such an extended shelf life is the ridiculous number of game permutations you can come up with using the same tired decks of cards. To inaugurate the first day of a Frameless URI! Zone, here's one I made up last weekend, called Apples Poker, for three or more players.

During each round, one player is the dealer/judge and does not get a hand. This player deals four red Noun cards to the other players. Even though the Adjective card is not revealed yet, players can choose to discard what they think is their weakest card and draw a new one. They can also sacrifice all four to get a completely new hand. A round of betting follows this (antes or blinds -- it doesn't matter).

After the first round of betting, the dealer flops a green Adjective card on the table. Players must now try to create a four-card hand of Nouns that are best described by the Adjective. They can replace one, two, or three cards in their hand, but not all of them. Another round of betting follows.

When betting is complete, all players show their hands, explaining why each card is a good candidate for the Adjective card (creative answers are acceptable). If some of your cards are horrible, you do not need to show them unless Chris Smith is also playing. The dealer then goes hand by hand, approving or vetoing each card. The dealer can assign half points with discretion.

At the end, each player now has a score between 0 and 4. The player with the highest score wins the pot. In cases of ties, the pot is split.

You can also have Dealer's Choice rounds, where you play 4 Adjectives to 1 Noun, or use Antonyms and other crazy combinations. Enjoy!

List Day: My To-Do List

July

• Add the Google Web Toolkit to my palette of web technologies that I can use inappropriately and overzealously.
• Fine-tune the look and feel of the URI! Zone to show off just how attractive a fourteen-year-old website can be (but not so much that it starts to attract creepy old men). What neat features would you like to see here?
• Fix the rear gear shift on my bike, which performs wonderfully in 1, 2, 3, 6, and 7, but bounces around endlessly in 4 and 5.
• Retake my yearly ethics training course at work.

August

• Become the webmaster for a local middle school band in Centreville.
• Schedule (and attend) a dentist appointment in which they stop obsessing about my wisdom teeth.
• Create wedding reception seating charts, rewarding the 50 people who have already RSVPed with seats as close as humanly possible to the wine bar. If we have shrimp, Philip will get some.

September

• Turn thirty!
• Retitle the list, Things to Be Done Before Thirty, as Things to Be Done Before Forty.
• Organize my CDs so they actually fit in their cases.

October

• Get married on the 3rd.
• Leave for Kauai on the 5th to stay in a fancy-shmancy resort for four days.
• Decadently remain in Kauai for another ten days, just in slightly cheaper surroundings.
• Consider possible permanent relocation to Hawaii, since my company does, in fact, have an office there, or arrive back home on the 20th if not.

List Day: 10 Skills I Leave Off My Resume

• I can turn off light switches with either one of my nostrils.


• I can spread cream cheese across the hole of a bagel, without having it fall through.


• I can complete a Costco shopping trip from door to door in under ten minutes.


• I can spot every Toll Road speed trap while they're still on the horizon.


• I can dial the phone numbers of all of my friends manually from memory.


• I can fast forward through the credit sequences of most popular TV shows without overshooting the actual start of the show.


• I can work in a DOS environment without needing Cygwin or other aides.


• I can order at Red Robin without a menu.


• I can determine the potential tastiness of sushi, just by evaluating the city in its name.


• I can finish an Uncle John's Bathroom Reader in under a month (without removing it from the bathroom).

List Day: 7 Nicknames People Have Called Me (In Real Life)

in chronological order

• Bub


• Brian the Bestest


• Briguy


• Mr. Fuzzhead


• The URINATOR


• URI!


• BU

What are some of your own memorable nicknames?

Memory Day: Snapshots

This picture was taken 29 years ago this month, in July 1985. We were digging a hole at Calvert Cliffs, MD, and just barely tolerating the photographic interruption. Luckily for you, the photographer was persistent!

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Before Sunrise (R):
We tried out the first in this relationship trilogy by Richard Linklater after enjoying Boyhood. It was an interesting experiment but your enjoyment will be directly proportional to how in the mood you are to watch two characters walking slowly across a city having deep, meaningful conversations. Obviously, we were not in the right mood as we turned it off after about 30 minutes.

Final Grade: Not Graded

Catastrophe, Season One:
This is a fun, brief relationship comedy about an American who knocks up an Irish woman while on a business trip. The characters feel organic and the dialogue is frank and humourous, like one character's description of birth as "seeing a little troll come tobogganing out of your wife's snatch on a wave of turds". A scene in the final episode feels a bit misplayed in terms of how quickly tensions escalate, but overall it was a fun way to spend a few evenings. The female lead, Sharon Horgan, reminded me of an Irish Sarah Chalke. Free on Amazon Prime.

Final Grade: B+

Secrets of People With Extraordinary Willpower by Katie Morton:
Katie Morton was the former creator of the Dating is Hell blog long, long ago, and was last seen here on the URI! Zone after winning a 2009 caption contest. Rebecca and I donated to the crowdfunding of her first novel and received our personalized copies a few weeks back. This book is actually a self-help book written in the form of a novel. The format is successful in sustaining interest and keeping the plot moving, although sometimes the self-help sections feel like monologues (see also, Victor Hugo and the 300 pages of Les Miserables about sewer construction). I am definitely not the target audience for this book, so take my grade with grain of salt, but Rebecca said she enjoyed it. Congratulations to Katie for completing such a daunting undertaking!

Final Grade: B- if you have male genitalia, potentially higher otherwise

Last of Our Kind by The Darkness:
The newest album from The Darkness hits all of the right notes -- they return to their bombastic rock roots without evolving too far out of what their listeners want. A high percentage of tracks on this album are infectiously catchy and come off sounding frantically like the most important rock song you'll hear before the end of the world. In particular, I greatly enjoyed Mighty Wings. I can picture the lead singer singing "Open up your might wings and fly!" to the heavens surrounded by smoke machines, as the soundtrack to what would simultaneously be the worst and the most awesome Maxi Pad commercial of all time.

Final Grade: A

New Cert Day

Now that I've acquired the six main path AWS certifications, I'm on the lookout for new certifications that I can pass without much studying effort. If you know of any certification exams that match these skills from my current skillset, please let me know:

1. Once drove home from Fredericksburg to Sterling in 71 minutes by way of I-95 N.


2. Earned an epic PvP mount as a level 59 priest in World of Warcraft in 2006.


3. Can still play the entire Marching Virginians 1st Trumpet playbook (circa 2000) from memory.


4. Can consistently park in the same spot in front of the house (with a margin of error of about 2 inches) by triangulating tree trunks, in order to leave room for the mailman, the trashcans, and a 2nd guest parking spot.


5. Killed two Widowmakers in less than 3 seconds with Mei icicle headshots in Overwatch in 2016.


6. Can recite from memory the General MIDI patch numbers for all orchestral instruments (59 is the Tuba).


7. Once attained 100.0% code coverage on a non-trivial Java project.


8. Have read The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin over 20 times.


9. Can devise an accurate "lovechild" profile of any actor or actress based on their looks (Jason Sudeikis is the lovechild of John Krasinski and Ed Helms).


10. Can ruin birthday surprises by accurately guessing what the present is without even touching the wrapped gift.

Maia's Drawings Day

All of that bunny drawing homeschooling continues to pay dividends. Maia is always drawing her own bunnies now.

Here is a picture she drew after her first trip on the Silver Line on Monday. We went into the city to Ballston, where we stopped, hit the loo, and came back out to the boonies (the bunnies). You can't see me in the picture because I'm "sitting behind Original Bunny".