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Archive for January, 2010

So cold

January 21st, 2010 No comments

To celebrate my birthday (I’m old! Again!), I’ve decided to spend Superbowl Sunday sending my body into shock and possibly dying on a beach. It’s for charity, though, so it’s all good. That’s right: I’m participating in the Lewes Polar Bear Plunge, which takes place not in Lewes, but Rehoboth. (Makes sense.) If you would like to sponsor my insanity, which supports the Special Olympics, greatly appreciated donations can be made here. Thanks!

Categories: Holy carp, mad fun, wtf Tags:

Cracked

January 19th, 2010 No comments

Do you have an iPhone? Did you feel that a plastic case was unnecessary? Did you then drop it face first onto concrete and shatter the glass? Did you then take it back to Apple? Did they tell you it would cost $199 to replace even if you paid for an AppleCare plan? Did you then weep openly and gnash your teeth? All is not lost!

This here’s the story of how I voided my warranty and fixed an iPhone 3G…

First, if you’re planning to do this yourself, there’s a few important things to consider: 1. these instructions are for the iPhone 3G only (the other ones are similar but slightly different), 2. I replaced both the glass digitizer (touchscreen) and the LCD screen, 3. this takes about an hour or two of your time, and 4. this totally voids your warranty.

Categories: geek Tags:

Spread ’em

January 18th, 2010 No comments

A nice football weekend for me, I went 3-4, picking all the spread winners and only missing my money-line selection on Dallas, although in my defense even a spread pick on them would have failed since Brett Favre made them his prison girlfriend. Thoughts that occurred to me:


  • I picked Dallas to win outright because they were getting 2.5 points; since Vegas usually allocates 3 points to the home team, that meant they considered the Vikes and Cowgirls to be roughly equal on neutral turf. Since Dallas mopped the floor with the Eagles (theoretically also a pretty good team) twice in a row, they should be able to keep up with the Vikings, right? Uh…no. This train of thought naturally leads to “I guess the Eagles weren’t even remotely good,” which shouldn’t really surprise me, but still depresses the hell out of me considering I don’t see them adding anything of value for 2010.

  • I love, repeat love, close money-line games. Which makes sense: if you think Dallas is going to cover 2.5 points, they almost certainly are going to win, right? What are the odds they lose by 2 points? Well, so far there have been 264 games this year, and 16 of them (roughly 6%) have been closer than 3 points. So historically, the odds of the Cowboys covering a 2.5 point spread and not winning the game are no more than 6% (since that value would also include situations where the Cowboys win by less than 3). A spread wager was the usual -110 (you would have to wager $110 to win $100, or if you wager $100 you win about $91), but the money line on the Cowboys was +120 (wagering a hundo nets you $120).


    Okay. Bear with me, it’s about to get Mathy up in this piece. Say the Cowboys and Vikings were to play the same game 100 times with the same players in the same conditions each time (say in a Many Worlds theory kinda thing). And assume that Vegas sets the spread at 2.5 because they know there’s a 50% chance of Dallas covering (they don’t, but from a consumer point of view it might as well be true). One guy bets a hundred bucks on each of the games, on Dallas to cover. He stands to get $91 from each game he wins, which happens 50% of the time, or 50 times. He wins, therefore, 91*50, or $4550. (Technically he also gets back his original outlay on those 50 wins, or another 5 grand, so his total is $9550, a pretty crappy investment of 10 thousand buckeroos.) So for one game, his expected return is $95.50.


    But: in 2009, 6% of games ended with a score closer than 3 (including the aforementioned underdog winners) If that’s true, then in at least 94% of the 100 games against Minnesota in which Dallas covered, they won. That’s 47 wins out of 50 covers (since we’re assuming they cover in half the games). So there’s another guy, a smarter guy, who wagered $100 that Dallas wins each of the hundred games outright, he wins $120 times 47 or $5640. Added to the original $4700 outlay for the wins (he’d obviously lose $5300 on the losses), he would total $10,340. Divided over a hundred games, he’d expect to earn at least $103.40 per game!


    I’m sure I’ve broken your brain. Mine is spinning. Just know that, in 2009 (plus the playoffs), if you wagered on 2.5 (or less) point underdogs to win outright, you probably won money, even though this particular Dallas pick was not good. Unfortunately, next week’s lines are -8 (Colts over Jets) and -4.5 (Saints over Vikes), so I’m not seeing money-line bargains, although if you don’t think the Colts can outscore the Jets by 8 points you are probably high.


Categories: sporty spice Tags:

Disastrous

January 14th, 2010 No comments

Beware: many of these pictures of the Haiti Earthquake are unpleasant, involving nasty injuries and dead bodies.


Have you donated to the Red Cross?

Categories: Holy carp, sad Tags:

Let the dogs out

January 12th, 2010 No comments

Argh. To expand on what I said on Twitter, rooting for the Eagles is a lot like going to a bar with friends, randomly meeting an attractive woman, hit it off with her, take her home, start making out, she takes off your pants, and then punches you in the balls as hard as she can and takes your wallet and runs. Every year the Eagles rope me (and the rest of the Delaware Valley) in, and then they not only lose, they waddle out to mid-field, take a big dump, and roll around in it.


Now: I’m no football expert. I never played the game, because I value my knees and concussion-free noggin. (My son, who is conservatively predicted (by me) to grow to at least 6’5″, will be steered towards baseball, basketball, and soccer, sports that might wreck your knees, but which don’t appear to lead to Alzheimers setting in at age 47.) So my grasp of football strategy is tenuous. However, I have one very important question: if you have a guy who is probably the greatest pure athlete in the league, doesn’t it behoove you to play him a little more often?


Michael Vick is an above-average passer, and runs like an eight-point buck. If he’s on the field, he has to be accounted for. I’m envisioning an offense where he’s sort of an “offensive rover,” always in motion in the backfield, sometimes lined up in the slot, sometimes next to McNabb. If he lines up at wide receiver, they have to put a corner or fast linebacker on him, right? So then McNabb audibles, and Mike trots over and stands next to him. Now the defense has to account for the fact that he might actually take the snap, and then what? Will he take off? Will he drop back? What’s McNabb going to do in that situation? Every play’s a trick play! And don’t forget Brian Westbrook’s back there too. McNabb can fake a hand-off to Vick, and then lob it to a wide open Westbrook streaking through the flat with blockers. I think this would be routinely unstoppable.


And of course, Vick played, what, 100 snaps all season? Argh.

Categories: sporty spice Tags:

Safety rants

January 7th, 2010 5 comments

Someday, I’d like someone to explain to me why it is that Americans think they have a right to never be scared by anything. Over the last few weeks, Gilbert Arenas has been waving guns around, and a guy tried to blow up an airplane with his crotch, and suddenly everyone’s losing their minds.


Arenas will probably do serious jail time, and may never play in the NBA again, despite the fact that nobody actually got shot. A couple of schmucks waved guns around, and because they’re black, the white establishment thinks “Boyz n the Hood” and drops the guillotine. To put things in perspective: Gilbert Arenas may end up in jail longer, for a victimless crime, than Michael Vick was for murdering dogs. (My feelings on Vick’s rehabilitation can be found here.) He may get an suspension from the NBA that’s longer than Ron Artest got for charging into the stands and beating up the wrong fan. I’m not saying that Agent Zero shouldn’t get disciplined; at the very least, he’s demonstrated that he can’t be trusted with firearms. So take them away, suspend him for a while, fine him, whatever. But let’s not take away his freedom and livelihood for merely frightening David Stern.


Along the same lines, in response to one idiot lighting his dick on fire, the TSA is enacting restrictions that make flying about as enjoyable as prison rape, and don’t do a damn thing about making flying any safer, and just makes folks drive long distances instead of flying them. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good road trip, but you’re more likely to die by driving from Chicago to New York than by flying. (Folks like to throw statistics around that say that, in 2006 for example, only 655 people died in airplane accidents and 45,316 died in car crashes, but that ignores the fact that the average American drives, what, a hundred times as many hours as he flies? So for each hour, I’d say the odds of dying in a plane crash are about the same as in a car crash. It’s certainly not the 2 orders of magnitude difference that flying enthusiasts say. The problem is that driving a given distance takes roughly 10 times as long as flying it, so for a given trip, it is an order of magnitude difference.) The problem is that news reports about brown bearded men trying to blow up planes scares people, and driving around in a 3 ton SUV makes them feel in control. So thanks, TSA, for killing Americans. You’re doing a bang-up job.


Dear America: you need to make a decision about whether you want to feel safe, or be safe. Locking someone up for a victimless crime (be it drug use, or “being stupid with a gun”) does not make you safer; every time you put someone in jail, he becomes far more likely to be a violent criminal than he was when he went in. So congratulations: you turned someone from “moron” to “mugger.” Just take his guns away, put him on probation, help him stop being an idiot. TSA: the odds of me blowing up the plane with my iPhone are remarkably low. How about we just agree that I can use it anytime I want, and I’ll promise to not pack C4 into my scrotum? Awesome. Citizens: sometimes scary stuff happens. How about you stop being such wusses?

Categories: anger Tags:

Give it up

January 6th, 2010 No comments

Happy belated New Year! Did you make a resolution? Jonah Lehrer bets it falls apart!

Willpower, like a bicep, can only exert itself so long before it gives out; it’s an extremely limited mental resource.


Given its limitations, New Year’s resolutions are exactly the wrong way to change our behavior. It makes no sense to try to quit smoking and lose weight at the same time, or to clean the apartment and give up wine in the same month. Instead, we should respect the feebleness of self-control, and spread our resolutions out over the entire year.


My own resolutions are unsurprising: I need to lose a whole bunch of weight, and I want to have a complete early draft of a first novel. I’m scared that the first resolution will be easier, given that I still don’t know what I want to write about.


I’m a little leery of setting an actual “weight” goal, because I intend to facilitate slenderization via dieting, a little cardio, and a whole lot of muscle-building. It would be foolish to say “I want to weigh 200 pounds” if I get myself crazy ripped and still weigh 235. I think what I’m going to do is set a goal of having a waist measurement the same as my inseam (34), which is a good long way off. I’m around 40 inches around now, so frankly if I get down to 36 I’ll be pleased as punch.


What are your resolutions? To be more awesome?

Categories: musings, rolling with the fatness Tags:

SO IN

January 5th, 2010 No comments

A flip of the beanie to Andrew for this’n:


Categories: a beautiful thing, mad fun Tags: