WCS: How to see if you have lost your glasses

[Prologue:] About half a dozen years ago, I was in an airport and I somehow picked up a book, "Worst Case Scenarios at the workplace" or something like that. It was very comical yet very serious at the same time, which is quite a joy to read, with hilariously real illustrations... haha... so I picked it up and enjoyed it.

The other day I was watching Conan O' Brien and he was talking with the author of these books, and talking about his new book, "The COMPLETE Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook", which is the ultimate WCS book... they showed some of the illustrations (which I'll post later), and they were so funny, and I already like this type of book, so I amazon.caed it and now I have it.

So every now and then I might post an entry from the book and what I think about it... starting with this one... [End Prologue]


How to See if you have lost your glasses
Draw 2 circles about the size of a pair of lenses on a piece of paper. Use a pin or thumbtack to poke at least a dozen small holes in each of the circles, and then hold the paper to your face to see.

I did that.

It sort of works. And after thinking about it, I understand why.

See, when you don't have your glasses, everything far away is blurred, everything closer up is less blurred. So let's say you have the letters A and E together, like

"AE", and if you're nearsighted, it would blur together into a really weird blurry symbol. However, if you have this piece of paper trick, in one tiny hole you'll see the A, and it will be blurry, but by itself it sorta looks like an A. And then there'll be this white non-hole part you see, and in another hole you'll see an E, blurried up, but by itself a blurry E still looks like an E. Therefore, instead of AE being blurried together into a nonsensical mess, you have A by itself, a "space", and then E by itself, both a bit blurried but by themselves, and you can read them better.

It works! Next... gotta try "How to Survive an Elephant Stampede"...

Facebook Wall-to-Wall

So it's my birthday, and I get all these "Happy Birthday" messages on my facebook wall.. and I'm the type of guy who, instead of changing my status to "bao thanks everyone for their birthday wishes", I'm the guy who would respond to each one with a possibly slightly different response to each one (thanks, thanks long time no see hows it going, thanks we should do stuff, etc)... so I open up a new tab for each wall-to-wall for each person... and it's kinda funny, how most of them look almost exactly like this:

March 12, 2008: Julie says: Happy Birthday Bao!
June 23, 2007: Julie says: Thanks!
June 23, 2007: Bao says: Hey, long time no see, Happy Birthday Julie!
March 12, 2007: Bao says: Thanks!
March 12, 2007: Julie says: Happy Birthday Bao!

Heh.

Food and RockBand

Last time I blogged about Rockband, the time before that about food. Before I mentioned how "Simpsons" "made me" never go to Arby's... I thought about it, and I know there's one food I don't eat in restaurants anymore. I still eat chicken nuggets and chicken fingers sometimes... but I never order fish and chips anymore. Maybe I just don't care to buy that stuff, maybe it's something that Vinh eats all the time so I don't want to buy that.

In RockBand news... heh. I got stuck on some songs for drumming, so for fun, I had Vinh come by and have him operate the bass pedal while I concentrate on the hand part... and we win songs with that! It's so cheating, like keytarring, but it's funny and... I think it's something we'll have to resort to during the EELS. Vinh's good with the bass pedal, I'm pretty good with the drums, so it works out well. yay. haha.

I Don't Get By!

Yesterday I sang the first 40%-48% of "I Get By" like, 20 times. ARGH! What a horrible song. The worst (best?) part is that I've convinced myself if I get to 49%, then the rest would be pretty smooth sailing. But I haven't got past 48% on that song. Such a horrible part, that 35-48% part where the guy is like, "talking to himself" in some random melody. So wow... this is being a real pain in the butt.

That said, Vinh says we're probably okay for that song on the Expert Endless Setlist (short form for now is EELS), since you just need to save the guy once at that part. Also, I've tried Foreplay/Longtime once and died at 86%, but the song is shortened so in the full song that's probably 91%, so a nice save there is also good enough to get through the EELS. Well, I haven't tried "I'm So Sick", "Can't Let Go", and "Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld" on expert yet, but... well, we'll see.

But that's sorta weird, since I'm going to be the official drum afficianado, so me singing songs is probably not so important (that'll be Eric's job)... but sometimes he might want to take a break or I would want to take a break from drumming, so I would be able to sing or play guitar as well.

There are some other hard songs, namely Blood Doll and Reptilia, but the rest are somewhat doable. Anyway, that's all for now... I'll try some more "I Get By" later...

oh yeah, that reminds me - Practice mode for Vocals is total garbage. In all other modes you can choose parts of the song and you can slow it down, but for vocals, you just sing the whole thing and it tells you how excellent you did. Pure garbage.

::edit 11:36pm, Mar6:: - Okay, so when I came home, I watched a youtube video of someone passing "I Get By" with 5 stars... and then later tonight Vinh and I were playing (vocal+guitar, expert expert), and I passed the song without his help... aww man, the time I pass the song, it doesn't count...

Anyway, so I play it solo later, fail once, try again, and then I pass it, yay. After a while, passed the next 3 special songs... and then... well, it's a good thing I actually LIKE singing Foreplay/Long Time... since it really only gets hard after 80%.. so I sang maybe 7 times, between 75-89%... ooh, 11% left, until I unlock 140 pts worth of achievements :)

Additionally, although on a lesser case, I also like guitarring Green Grass High Tides... sort of. The first time I tried it, I got 85%. The next 10 tries or so, I got below that, between 68% and 78%, but then I finally got up to 91%. Should've switched to the solo keys sooner... anyway, so that's it. So I have 62/64, 62/64, and 63/64 on hard drums, expert guitar and expert vocals respectively. One day, I'll suddenly have an additional 380 gamer points from rockband :)

I'm thinking Arby's

I have almost never been to an Arby's restaurant. Maybe it's their sauceless meat sandwiches, with nothing but meat and bread. Maybe there aren't that many Arby's restaurants. Maybe whenever there's an Arby's in a food court, there's something better there too. But I think the main reason might be a subconscious one. I think when that girl from Simpsons said "I'm so hungry, I can eat at Arby's", I think from then on, I deemed Arby's as an inferior restaurant. I think from then on (which was a looong time ago), I have not wanted to go to Arby restaurants.

And back to the first point, their sauceless sandwiches do actually look pretty boring, those 2 for $4 or 3 for $5 sandwiches. I think in the new commercials they have some really sauce-ful sandwiches, maybe if I find an Arby's restaurant I will try it, but I somehow doubt it. That said, I did go to an Arby's restaurant once, in a food court, probably in the US. I had some deluxe chicken sandwich with fried chicken breast, lettuce, tomato, cheese, and maybe bacon. It was a bit expensive, of course, being a deluxe burger, but it was wondrous. So it wasn't of the usual fare that you see on TV, of those sandwiches with just meats in them, but instead it was a deluxe chicken burger. It was pretty good.

Maybe next time I see an Arby's I shall try it out...