Sledding with Engineers

My friends from and I decorated sleds as part of a Christmas challenge this year. Since we're all electrical engineers, the designs were a bit strange. Two of them had lights, and the others had some stylin' (or embarrassing) paint jobs.

On Sunday, we took them out to a hill in Oconomowoc that has a bad reputation among the EMT's in the area. There are a lot of injuries on this hill, because it's steep, tall, and ends abruptly in a ditch. Luckily, only one of us needed to be hospitalized after this event, for a dislocated shoulder. He handled it really well. The whiskey he'd been drinking helped to numb the pain.

Here's a photo of the sled that I designed. The ground effect lighting was really fun to watch as it went down the hill.

Programmer or Serial Killer?

It must be a thin line between serial killer and computer programmer.

Take this quiz, you'll see. All of these guys look like they've been hiding in the same basement for too long.

Hat tip: Lisa

Laserium

Terry Woods Post on the "Light Organ" reminded me of something I do remember as a teenager.
It was called Laserium.
It was just about the coolest thing in the universe for a teenage dweeb like me.
I remember the hardware at the time cost like $40,000 dollars or something outrageously expensive.
It was held at the Grififth Observatory in Los Angeles.

ELP Rocked back then.

No Explanation Needed

Here's Some Work That I Don't Mind Outsourcing

The Chinese seem to have cornered a developing market: video games. They're not doing it by developing new video games. They're turning PLAYING video games into a business.

Many online video games are role playing games (RPGs). They require hours, just to build a character that can compete and survive in the online world. Many players, who may already forking over monthly subscription fees, are paying to have other players build their characters up to a respectable level.

This "work" is finding its way into China, where young people are happy to play video games for pennies an hour in what the article dubbed "virtual sweat shops." As with the Pokemon and Magic card game craze, powerful characters are also being auctioned for big bucks online.

Truly, this is becoming a leisure economy.

Implosion World!

SWEEEEEET!

Hat tip: NursingFawns

New Words for 2005

BLAMESTORMING:
Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

SEAGULL MANAGER:
A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps all over everything, and then leaves.

ASSMOSIS:
The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing the boss's butt rather than working hard.

SALMON DAY:
The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.

GENERICA:
Features of the North American landscape that is exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, subdivisions.

404:
Someone who's clueless. >From the World Wide Web error message "404 Not Found" (meaning that the requested document, like the person's brain, could not be located).

MOUSE POTATO:
The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.

WOOFYS:
Well Off Older Folks

CUBE FARM:
An office filled with cubicles.

PRAIRIE DOGGING:
When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.

CROP DUSTING:
Surreptitious flatulence while passing thru a cube farm, or any other public place, then enjoying the sounds of dismay and disgust (this often leads to prairie dogging).

Gbradley says - See also: Sniglets