Road Trip Tips

I bought my car at the end of last May and I find that I don't use it that often (one tank of gas from Labor Day to Thanksgiving), but when I do use it, it's on long road trips (yesterday: 15 hours, thanks to the traffic trap that is Chicago). In having 15 hours to myself in the car, I've come up with the following tips that others may find useful in their travels.

• Gas: Prices are going to fluctuate from exit to exit and town to town, but the biggest fluctuations will come across state borders, due to differing state gas taxes. In the midwest, Minnesota is generally the cheapest, with Ohio and Indiana being only slightly more expensive. Wisconsin and Illinois are the most expensive, especially the closer you get to Chicago. Try to avoid filling up near Chicago at all costs.
• Food: Avoid McDonald's. If you're travelling across wide distances, don't be afraid to get off the freeway and try the local favorites. (Josh will argue with me on that -- it does slow down your forward momentum.) If you see a sign that says "Voted Best Pies in the Country," pull off and you may just have a slice of the best pecan fudge pie you've ever had (Norske Nook in Osseo, WI). Listen to friends who have lived in the area -- if someone tells you that the Courier Cafe in Urbana, IL has the best potato skins ever, he's probably not lying and he may even be leaving out the fact that they have delicious chocolate phosphates as well. If you must go for fast food, go for the local chains. In Ohio, this means Skyline (have a three-way) and in Wisconsin and surrounding states, this means Culvers (have a butter burger and a cement shake). If you're really lucky, you'll have friends that live along your route who might be up for making you some delicious soup.
• Audio entertainment: Books on CD/tape are your friends. Try to find ones that are approximately the same length as your trip (or shorter), and will hold your interest. Yesterday I listened to The Stupidest Angel and it turned out to be too short. If and when that runs out, pick music that's got a good driving beat. I love A Charlie Brown Christmas, but it's not the best stuff for keeping me awake. And if you have a friend who likes to make mix CDs, make sure they know your travel plans.
• Chicago: If Chicago is on your way, reroute your trip, especially if you're going to be driving on one of the busiest driving days of the year (like the Sunday after Thanksgiving). If you can't, because there is no bridge over Lake Michigan, re-think the road trip and fly instead. Stop-and-go traffic starting in Wisconsin is not enjoyable.

Revenge of the Fishgina

I noted in the referrer logs that the average daily number of hits for this site has nearly doubled in the past two months. I originally noticed a small increase back in October and attributed it to the fact that the Johnny Damon cake ranks fairly high in the Google Image search for "Johnny Damon." (I also have a picture of Kirby Puckett and me that's on the first page of images for "Kirby Puckett," but less people are searching for Kirby these days.)

However, this most recent jump in traffic seems to come from http://www.backstreets.com/btx/viewtopic.php, which initially struck me as odd because it appears to be a message board for Bruce Springsteen fans, and I don't think I've ever blogged about Bruce Springsteen, even in passing. So I poked around the site and discovered that user "Ando" was hotlinking to the thumbnail of the Damon cake as the signature to all his messages.

Now, I'd have to ask Rodin what the bandwidth limits are for chronosilence, but I doubt that he's really endangering my ability to stay under those limits (especially since the site survived all the hits from the Time Traveler Convention). But it does annoy me that he's linking to the picture without any reference to the site where it came from, especially since that's a picture Laura took of a cake she made from scratch. And so I did something about it -- enter the Revenge of the Fishgina, another of Laura's photos from that same birthday party. Now every single one of this guy's posts contains a picture of the fishgina, in its full 2272 x 1704 pixel glory.

Update: He changed his signature, which seems to have automatically updated all of his posts. That's anti-climactic -- I was sort of hoping for a reaction.

Microsoft Puzzle Challenge

I was waiting for the puzzles to be posted before I wrote about this, but last weekend, I participated in the Microsoft Puzzle Competition and took second amongst the Michigan teams and sixth overall (out of 170), winning a $100 gift certificate to Best Buy as a result. (First prize was a non-iPod MP3 player and the grand prize (first amongst all schools) was an Xbox 360, which I probably would have ebayed.)

I was a little worried going into the competition, because the puzzles from 2004 weren't that great -- lots of leaps in logic, non-intuitiveness, and a meta puzzle that didn't use the lower puzzles' answers. Still, a guy I know in the physics department really wanted the Xbox and, having heard my stories about Mystery Hunt, asked me to do it, along with a guy we know in the math department. I asked around the CS grad students and found a guy in one of my classes who was interested, and we registered as Cryptic Orchids. (By the way, I'm really evil and didn't tell them where the name came from until we had already registered.) I figured that even if the puzzles were terrible and unsatisfying, it would still be at least mildly good practice for the Hunt this January.

But it seems that the people at Microsoft have learned their lesson. With one glaring exception (which I'll get to), this year's puzzles were all pretty decent, and some of them were even good. A few of them I was able to backsolve -- and was the only person at Michigan who seemed aware of this concept. One of the members of the "ground crew" (Microsoft employees who are physically on the campus and distribute the puzzles and make sure we're having fun) was amazed that I had "thought of it." I had to explain to him that it's a tried and true method for long hunts.

There were 20 lower level puzzles, of which we solved 16, and one ridiculously long meta puzzle of which we finished about 40%. (The length of the meta puzzle was something that even the groundcrew complained about at the after meeting -- only one team (from MIT) solved it.) My favorite were the following (puzzles are in pdf format -- I'll try to avoid spoiling the answers for those who want to try solving them):

• Granera Parsley All Star Game (solution) -- This was my fastest solve by far. When the puzzle came out, Sam was looking at it first and said, "Does anyone know how to read a baseball scorecard?" And I took the puzzle from him and solved it in about five minutes, earning us three bonus points for being the first to solve it amongst all teams.
• Elementary, My Dear Watson (solution) -- I didn't solve this one quite as fast, but it was enjoyable from start to finish.
• Mangled Works (solution) -- Without giving away the twist, this was one of the few puzzles that our team actually solved as a group. Our "a-ha" moment came as a result of off-handed comments made by each one of us, at least one of which (mine) wasn't intended to be a serious suggestion. That's not to say that it was a great leap in logic -- just that when I corrected Aubrey about a pop culture reference, I never thought it would lead to the solution until Sam combined it with something Tony said.
• Don't Drink and Derive (solution) -- Just a simple, clean puzzle.
• Sudoku (solution) -- There are better Sudoku variations out there, but we did get a bonus point on this puzzle for solving it third fastest, so I should probably list it as one of my "favorites."

And the glaring exception that I said I'd get back to? Avoid the Sharks (solution) -- which really ought to be Avoid This Puzzle And Just Backsolve It, which is what we wound up doing. Because I disliked this puzzle so much, I'm just going to ruin it for you so you don't waste any time on it. It's a broken connect the dots puzzle, in which the connected whales supposedly spell "PODS" (which is questionable) and you have to recognize that the whales are orcas to get "ORCA PODS." This was by far the poorest puzzle of the hunt, from start to finish, and the only one that I truly disliked from every point of view.

The World According to Johnston

There are very few fellow MIT alums who are slower than I am at picking up on modern technologies. Scott Johnston is one of those people. Our resident loveable luddite sent me a screen shot of what he sees when he looks at my blog, stating "My web browser still rocks." So I thought I'd give him a chance to see what he's missing and give the rest of you a glimpse of the world from Scott's point of view. (Of course, I'm putting the images in a table -- that might be a problem for those of you using lynx.)

The Johnston View	The Rhode View

At least he's moved up to using a browser with graphics. Welcome to the 90s, Scott! As for me, I'm still not sure about the icicles. The top banner looks really empty and unbalanced without something there, but with it I'm beginning to think it's a little too cluttered. Anyone with a browser that can see them want to weigh in?

New Stylesheets

Well, I suppose I don't need to write an entry for you to notice that there is a new design for this little corner of the web. But never fear -- it's only temporary and the baseball layout will return in the spring. (If you really miss it that much, it's still here.)

Speaking of baseball... no MVP for David Ortiz. I can't say I'm that surprised. After all, I'm still a baseball purist at heart. MVPs should play offense and defense. If interleague play has to happen, it should be exhibition only. World Series participants should have the best record in their league. (Did I just imply that the Red Sox didn't deserve to even be in the 2004 World Series, much less win it? Maybe a little...)

Snow!

Let the madness commence...

Oh, the weather outside is frightful,
but the fire is so delightful,
and since we've no place to go,

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

Did you ever wonder...

... what happened to Oliver Smoot? For those unaware, Oliver Smoot is the man who's body was used to measure the Harvard bridge during a fraternity pledge event in 1958. The Lambda Chi Alpha brothers laid him end to end, measuring the length of the bridge to be 364.4 Smoots plus 1 Ear. So, just what happened to this infamous standard of measure?

He became the chairman of the American National Standards Institute and president of the International Organization for Standardization. Would you have expected anything else?

"Philly Cheesy Chili Dip"

I just saw a Philadelphia Cream Cheese commercial for this recipe. They forgot to mention that the key ingredient to this -- key -- is that the chili be Skyline. (And upon checking the website, there is a Skyline restaurant within an hour of me!) Now, if only the Ann Arbor Kroger would start carrying the cans... luckily, I still have some from the last time I went to Cincinnati. So I think I'm going to make some "Philly Cheesy Chili Dip" and make it right.

Michigan Vaginas

I've been thinking for awhile that I might want to attempt to get involved in the University of Michigan production of The Vagina Monologues as a stage hand or web designer or whatever they could use me for. Yesterday, by complete chance, I picked up a copy of the Michigan Daily for the first time. In it was a letter to the editor, which made me very sad. It seems that this year, the organizers of The Vagina Monologues are looking to have an "all women-of-color" cast, at the total exclusion of white women.

My reaction to that is the same as the author of the letter -- striving for diversity is a wonderfully noble thing to do, but this is not a show about race. Excluding all white women means excluding other women who might also be a minority of some kind that generally benefit from this show: lesbians, lower income individuals, and, most importantly for this play, women who have been victims of sexual violence.

I've tried to contact the Michigan campus coordinator to see if perhaps this is all a misunderstanding and they are merely trying to increase the diversity of the cast. To make my stance clear -- I've never intended to audition for the show here, as I've had my opportunities to be in the show (twice) at MIT. Thus, I don't feel that I am personally being slighted. But it does anger me to think that women I have known who have greatly benefitted from being in the show wouldn't even be allowed to audition here.

A Discovery

Mint flavored mouthwash and white cranberry-peach juice combined tastes like vomit. And I don't mean that in the way that many people say "Ew, this disgusting thing tastes like vomit/ass/garbage." I mean it has almost the exact same taste as what is left in my mouth after I throw up. I suspect that it has something to do with the two acids combining (or is mouthwash a base -- anyone know?). Interestingly enough, I've not experienced the same effect with orange or apple juice.

Despite the fact that this was a great scientific discovery, I don't think I'll be buying the white cranberry-peach juice anymore. Vomit for breakfast is just not that appealing to me.