Planetary Storage

I want many things. But then, who doesn't? A pony, a new bike, the latest computer system, there's simply so much stuff to have. And so much stuff to want. I think I want so much stuff, that I'm not sure where to even start listing it. I'd go alphabetically, but then there'd be no chance that I'd possibly get that zoo pass I've been wanting to pick up. Because I want to see the zebra.

But then, I recently got rid of many things. Some of which I didn't really want to get rid of, some of which I had a hard time putting in that 'I'm never going to see this again, whether or not I ever decide I want to do so in the future' pile. And then some of the things haven't worked for years and I forgot I even had, seeing how they were hidden in the far back corner of the closet. The one that I forgot I even had--closets only have one back corner, right?

I'm happy to no longer have the stuff, even though I'm fairly certain I'll regret getting rid of some of it in the future. But then I'll forget about it again. If I didn't remember it before I started cleaning, I won't remember it again in a month or two when the next shiny thing comes along. But now that I've removed so much stuff from my life, I feel like I should have more room.

More room means it's time to get more stuff. Right? Right?? Please?

'cause I like stuff. There're many things I want. I just wish they didn't weigh me down so much. I'd like to find somewhere to keep all my stuff, but I hear the earth's already taken.

Maybe I could make an offer on Venus. But then I'd have to find somewhere to store it.

Red, Yellow, Green, Red, Blue, Blue, Blue

The first year I went away for school, we got split into groups for a massive "intellectual" competition. Building bridges, flying paper airplanes, coming up with good ways to do fun things. So my group was doing fairly well, and then we get to..the jelly bean competition.

You know, there's a big jar, it's filled with small pieces of candy of some nominally uniform shape and size, often jelly beans or M&Ms. The point is to attempt to guess the number of tiny pieces of candy in the jar, and if guessed correctly you win. Depending on the situation, the prize can differ. For example, in middle school this was a game at a birthday party I attended. Sadly, I was off by 15.. but the next closest was about 200 away, so I got a jar of M&Ms to call my own! Until all the candy was eaten and then I only had a jar until my mother decided to can some more fruit, and then I only had the bittersweet memory left. That and the glory. Can't forget the glory.

This time, though, the prize was more points for your team. Not that the points really mattered either, but it's the whole glory thing again.

So off we went, looked at the jar, smelled it, shook it some, used our x-ray vision and powerful math skills. Anything we could to get the correct number. Compare our answers, and decide which answer to use from them.

I learned one thing from this. Being able to convince someone you're correct is more useful than being correct to start with.

Well, that and you really need more than a day to eat a jar of M&Ms.

Full-Contact Chess

You got your tricks
Good for you
But there's no gambit I don't see through
Oh I'm the Arbiter I know the score

From square one he'll be watching all 64
Chess (The Musical)

Chess is great. (The game, I've not actually seen the musical. But the music is a lot of fun too--seldom does one hear songs from musicals on popular radio stations.) I've never been much good at it though. I've yet to figure out how to think about it such that it doesn't take tons of planning, looking many moves ahead. Doing that takes more memory than I seem to have. Instead, I try to figure out an overall plan, try to move into a better position. Alas, against people that actually play the game, it doesn't do very well.

Thankfully (or perhaps not), most of my chess-playing experience is against the inexperienced. Kids at the camps that I've worked decide that I look like a good opponent, but I manage to hold my own. I never won them all, but I did fairly well. Of course, it could be my playstyle that won out. Generally I'd make fast semi-random moves, and they'd think that I knew more than I really did. I psyched them out, and they made bad moves, allowing me to gain the upper hand.

Of course, playing the game isn't my favorite thing to do with chess. Rather, it makes an amusing answer. When playing the "meeting-people" games at camp, one of the standard questions is "What's your favorite sport?"

Noone managed to forget that my favorite sport is chess.

Give Me a Hand!

Eons ago, or at least while I was attending grade school, I loved the Choose Your Own Adventure series of books. Didn't own them all--that was way too expensive for my allowance (plus pay for mowing lawns), but I did have a pretty good number. Between one of my other friends and I we were able to cover most of them.

It was always nice, the idea that you could go back and try again if you made a mistake. Or that you could re-live the same choices over and over again if you really liked finding the buried treasure on page 54. There was surprisingly little actual adventure, given the title, but the stories were generally fun, and didn't take too long to read through a single try.

Of course, to read the entire book, I often ran out of fingers.

I'd keep track of the choices I'd made in the last pass through the book, holding a finger in each of the choices made along the path. I'd get to the end, die a horrible, gruesome death (almost invariably, the first time through), and then back up to the most convenient finger, and keep going. Keeping track of where I was in the book was the most I ever had to make use of short-term memory, holding a half-dozen or ten different plot-points in my mind at once.

But armed with a fistful of fingers and an often-flaky memory, I was able to live through one life, over and over. Making choices, for good or bad, until I saw what all the possible outcomes were. Alas, while life tends to come with at least a fistful of fingers and the often-flaky memory, once a choice has been made, a finger can't be used to give us somewhere to return.

Which I suppose is probably a good thing. Given the difficult choices I'm faced with, I'd run out of fingers sometime by the middle of breakfast.

And I don't eat breakfast!