.

After doing some research, I found that this is more commonly referred to as an oyster fork. I couldn’t find any information on why it’s on the right or how it was developed. But after looking at some image searches of oyster forks, I have a theory.

I think they evolved from oyster spoons that conformed to the shape of a shell. I found very few references to oyster spoons in general, and not at all in place settings. I guess they were more effective with prongs, but already had a place on the table back in olden times. Based on this, I believe that a spork would also be placed on the right of a dinner plate in a formal place setting.

What if there were some way for individuals to register their mailing address and name and associate it with an email address? Companies could then pay to have their mailings distributed via email. Even if it cost as much as postage, the money saved in paper and printing would still be significant.

Could the post office incorporate this? Companies could be assured (as much as they would be with physical mail) that their distribution would go to the appropriate individuals. But people could keep their email addresses private if they so chose. And there would be much less chance of getting mail for years for people who used to live at your address multiple tenants ago.

People could opt in and out as desired, the post office would incur revenue from it while continuing with the potential decrease in mail delivery days. Granted, implementation of this would require more manpower — different from what they currently have at their disposal, I’d assume.

Just thinking out loud, mostly… but I’m selfishly hoping it’ll happen.

One of my coworkers and I have been discussing buying hardhats back since sea trials last summer. It was mentioned again last week at happy hour and she took the initiative to put the order in. The hats arrived today and now I’m ready for any shipyard related trips to which I might need to attend. *giggles*

I think this is going to be a perfect opportunity to use my gmail unicorn sticker. And I need to go find some of those Hello Kitty stickers I’ve been joking about for the past few years.

Oh. My.

I’m going to end on this because I have nothing more to add. I went looking for Hello Kitty stickers… and started clicking around amazon and found this:

Ian and I arrived a few minutes early, so we had just enough time to stop by a few of the tents to see what was going on before venturing into the crowds for the opening clues.

We started at the debate puzzle where the two participants were debating House Bill #98999 and emphasized how we needed to focus on the TEXT of the bill. The key was accountability.

In high spirits, we solved that and moved on to the Memorial of Failed Monuments. I didn’t bother fighting through the crowds to get a good shot of the middle statue, which was a vacuum cleaner:

That one took a few minutes longer, but we were soon pleased with our find. “Boo-cannon,” “Hoover,” and “Eyes-an-hour.” Buchanan, Hoover, Eisenhower. Next!

From there, we went to the statues… which we were clueless on for a good half hour before deciding to move on to the other clues and come back to this one (I’m not sure what I did with our clue sheet, so this is the gist of it):

According to Native American legend, Earth was originally pooped out of an eagle.

PLUS

It is believed to be the world’s largest freestanding polyp.

MINUS

Little Alice enjoyed hanging out with Uncle Henry, but always kept a sledge hammer close by in case he got frisky.

We were slow going on the next clue, which was handed to us by a silent man. It wasn’t until we realized that he was this week’s feature First Person Singular that it all made sense.

The last of the main clues was back at the start, where [fake] money was being thrown out to the crowds. Ian solved this in about 15 seconds, which only lead us to be suspicious of the puzzle/answer. But it was the only answer that made sense.

With over an hour left, we headed back to the statues and waited for Mindless and Chu to arrive. Once they did, we went over the thought process we had gone through and all continued to scratch our heads until it was time for the Final Clue.

The music started up: “Old MacDonald had a farm…”

And we were told to “turn that around in our minds.”

The 1337 puzzlers that we are, we paired that up with one of the other answer clues to call a phone number telling us to find, “an important message immediately after 4.”

That’s about as far as we got. We doubted ourselves too much because of our missing clue. And as it turned out, we could’ve gotten to the next step with what we had, but the missing clue from the statue puzzle was key to move on from there.

All in all, a fun day. But those statues sure did stump us! In the end, we were supposed to go to the locations of the statues on the map and not just look at the map. It sounds kind of obvious now, but we thought all the information we needed for the clues was at that location. Oops.

Next year, though… I think we’re getting better. And we made a lot more progress than our team last year. Maybe we’ll even make it to the part where we leave the main stage area for the final puzzle next time. :)

I went to Ian’s company outing thing yesterday and got to visit his coworker’s alpaca farm! We got to meet many of the alpacas, their pet pig, the ducklings and chickens, the horses (including the surprise pregnant one!), and the miniature donkey (so cute!).

Plus videos of his coworker’s wife spinning some string out of alpaca fur, their pet pig wandering around outside, and the miniature donkey hanging out in the stable with the horses.

What is wrong with people?

And how awesome is my blog?

I went down to Blacksburg on Thursday for my design presentation, which went fairly well. Met my design team for the first time after working with them for close to a year. We presented on Friday, had lunch with the advisory committee, and came home.

I’d spent the better part of the past week working on our presentation and finalizing assignments that needed to go into the presentation. We’re working on the report now and have that due in a little over a week.

Still to come, a presentation and report for my other class and a kickoff meeting for a study at work that I’m leading.

In exciting news, I went to see the DC Rollergirls a few weeks ago. And it was a life-changing experience. I had been considering joining since I found out DC was starting a league a few years ago. But then I started grad school instead. And, for some reason, thought I wouldn’t have enough time for both. So… I have put that off until I finish. But I’m almost certainly decided on joining. Or at least trying out. I’m hoping my years of ice skating will translate well to roller skating.

Oh, and batting a thousand… wore my Quark Quark shirt to the roller derby and had someone stop me to ask where I got my shirt from. Happens every time.

On the grad school front, I think I might finish before 2012! I am sold on the idea of doing a thesis. I was hesitant mostly because I didn’t want to defend, but I find my public speaking skills almost completely dependent on my confidence in my work. And if I’ll have worked on something for over a year, I’m going to think I know my stuff. During my group’s design presentation, I found that I was able to answer questions for other people in my group when they were trying to dodge answering, not because I knew more than them, but because I was familiar with what the people on the committee (all people working in industry) were looking for.

In any case, with the thesis option, I’ll be able to continue my studies during semesters when I don’t have other course options. Plus, I came up with a thesis topic last week! And I mentioned it to one of my profs when I was in Blacksburg and she said that was an interesting idea that we could definitely work with. I could still make use of our design project (which was the original idea when I signed up for this course), but is much more interesting to me than studying aluminum.

Other stuff I’ve been up to…
- Volunteered for SeaPerch
- Went to Dahlgren for a couple meetings only to find out one of my friends knocked up his wife
- Also during the trips to Dahlgren, went with TLD to buy a new car
- Hosted a brownbag session at work, “Introduction to MathCAD,” which was received with a surprising amount of enthusiasm
- Later met with some MathCAD employees who were interested in the brownbag session and want to come in to do a follow-up
- Set date and found location for wedding (unfortunately, no moonbounce)

Saturday, I tried out the boot camp class at the gym. Ian thought that was more age-appropriate for me than the step class I attended last week. Aside from the fact that the step class was demoralizing because the elderly women were all better than me and I was unable to figure out the calls fast enough to even face the right direction on my step… it wasn’t terribly aerobic or high energy. Boot camp was more physically challenging and required slightly less coordination. And then there was the whole age thing. So I think that’s my new weekend class for the semester, which is a little early for me for a weekend, but works out with my homework schedule and family lunch.

Thanks to Ian for saving my last 5 years of memories. And it only took him a couple hours! :)

Today is National Depression Screening Day. So if you’ve been thinking about getting screened or know someone who should, consider doing it today.

This new stuff is so nice! I can upgrade all my plugins with one click now, there are so many more options in the settings, and everything is just a little prettier.

So very pleased so far. Need to click around some more.

I know most (all?) of you are registered already. But I wouldn’t be doing my bloggy duties if I didn’t make sure. So, if you haven’t already, do it. Do it now. We’ll wait…

Their technology is far superior to what the other networks demonstrated. Their HD broadcast had 6 analysts who were scoring the debate real-time, as well as independents in Ohio with dials who could react throughout the debate.

I love watching independents react. Last week’s debate, they reacted positively every time someone spoke. Last night, they were divided on the graph as men and women. At one point, the men went back in time and reacted very negatively. The women reacted positively as stereotypically expected — personal stories, things that would cause empathy or other strong emotions, etc.

And then the analysts! Last week, Begala was asleep for the first half hour, but totally came back and had a score close to the rest of the analysts.

Rosen and Rollins were the token extremists. Their scoring was clearly partisan, sometimes giving their candidate more points than the other analysts combined. Last night, Rosen was keeping up and was pretty even with Rollins… until about 10 o’clock. At which point, Rollins fell asleep on the plus button for Palin and gave her 10 points all at once, even though she had stopped talking. This was obviously a mistake, because soon after that, he reduced that to only a 9-point increase.

By the end of the night, Rollins definitely had the win for the most total points on his scorecard, awarding Palin 4 times as many points as other analysts and twice what he awarded Biden.

QOTD: “Did Rollins just have a thumbgasm?”

Even in the summer, I get very cold at night, so I have to have some kind of insulation in order to regulate my body temperature.

I was told that this isn’t normal. So, I decided to do some research to see if I had some kind of disorder… (Can you tell I have been procrastinating recently?)

As it turns out, I’m narcoleptic. Yeah, no kidding, right? We already knew that.

But this is a relatively recent finding that demonstrates a relationship between skin temperature and sleepiness: Altered skin-temperature regulation in narcolepsy relates to sleep propensity.

There is an inverse relationship with core body temperature and the temperature of extremities. When your core temperature drops, the heat is dispersed through your skin, causing your extremities to get warmer. Narcoleptics have more extreme variations and slower changes in temperature, which is why I get so cold (core temperature) while radiating so much heat (distal temp) when I sleep and have so much trouble waking up.

… narcoleptics were reported to show an attenuated circadian amplitude and slower morning rise of the core body temperature, as well as an earlier temperature minimum, which both fit the present finding of a continuation into sleep of the increased distal skin blood flow and consequently heat loss.

As a follow-up to this study, there have been experiments with thermosuits and hot/cold foods and drinks to see the effect on excessive daytime sleepiness. Clearly, the solution is here: Electric Coat.

Which, of course, reminds me of Squidgey’s recommendation to me a few years back: The No-Contact Jacket.

I think I’ve seen references to this in passing before, but I decided to look it up today and read the actual paper. It was marginally reassuring to me that the concluding remarks in their paper expressed similar apprehensions as I experienced when reading their results:

In sum, we present this article as an exploration into why people tend to hold overly optimistic and miscalibrated views about themselves. We propose that those with limited knowledge in a domain suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach mistaken conclusions and make regrettable errors, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it. Although we feel we have done a competent job in making a strong case for this analysis, studying it empirically, and drawing out relevant implications, our thesis leaves us with one haunting worry that we cannot vanquish. That worry is that this article may contain faulty logic, methodological errors, or poor communication. Let us assure our readers that to the extent this article is imperfect, it is not a sin we have committed knowingly.

This also brings to mind the confidence that many people have in job hiring processes and their personal judgment when it comes to interviews. I have witnessed the failures in this process enough times to recognize that I certainly don’t trust my own judgment, much less that of others. While I recognize that it is a necessary part of the process to meet and interact with a potential hire in order to finalize the decision, I find it rare that interviewers put in the effort to learn anything new about a candidate aside from what they might have learned from a sheet of paper or a brief phone or email interview. And yet, most interviewers believe that they are a good judge of character and that meeting this person will make all the difference.

Right.

Try telling them otherwise.

But really… After an interview, ask yourself:
- What have you learned about this person that you didn’t already know before?
- How does this person stand out from the average population?
- Do you ask standard questions when you interview? What information are you gaining by asking these aside from what the person explicitly wants you to believe?
- Do you have a better idea of how this person thinks, works, etc?
- How does this person’s opinion of him/herself compare to their actual abilities?
- Do you ask for references? Do you contact those references?

I was discussing in passing with Ian the other day how people should have references from ex-bf/gfs when starting new relationships. But isn’t it the responsibility of the person doing the hiring to ask for those references? So, if you’re dating someone and don’t know their friends, history, etc. it’s your responsibility to do your research. In many cases, it’s not in a person’s interest to offer that information up front. So why wouldn’t you ask?

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transaction is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully,
Minister of Treasury Paulson

Avast! ‘Tis Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Yeah, uh. It’s an entertaining holiday and all, but that’s about all I got. Hope everyone has a fun time today! :)

Why do pirates like communists?
Because of the U.S.S.AARRRRRRRRR!

Why did the pirate ship look so good?
They used varrrrrrrnish!

What did the Pirate who injured his knee get?
Arrrrrrrrthroscopic surgery!

How do pirate programs get input?
Through ARRRGV and ARRRGC!

What did Black Beard say to his men before they got on the ship?
Let’s get on the ship, men!

More Pirate Jokes… Come on. You know you’re going to click it. You need to have some good pirate jokes on hand, especially if you go out tonight.