I spent the morning repairing a leaky fuel valve (petcock) on my bike. I rebuilt the petcock with all new o-rings and diaphragms and found that it was still leaking… so I tried just cutting the fuel line and success… the tube was just cracked. I was happy to discover however how easy it is to disassembly the motorcycle, and of course to have stopped the leaked.
I was wandering through the book stacks in Lockwood Library this afternoon, as I often do given the amazing collection of books they have to offer, when I came across a very old looking gem of a book that quickly caught my interest… I flipped open to the first chapter and read:
The education of the girl who comes to the vocational school is a double problem. It must include training in two distinct vocations, neither of which can be considered sufficiently permanent to justify neglect of the other. The training in either one of these vocations, moreover, is not adequate preparation for efficiency in the other.
…
Every evidence goes to show that, while the girl may enter trade, she is, in the majority of cases, at one time or another a home maker. In confirmation of this is her personal, if unconfessed, point of view that wage earning for her is but a temporary affair, which she will leave for a permanent position in her own home. If this is to be a going concern, the woman who manages it must be trained for her work as thoroughly as the man who supports it.
So where did this wonderful piece of literature come from you now wonder? The United States Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1915, no. 1 #625, entitled “Cooking in the Vocational School: as training for home making.” I just felt compelled to share this with whoever takes the time to read my blog as I found it funny, but in a way, after briefly scanning the rest of the guide, thought it was a useful manual that should be distributed to homemakers (gender agnostically of course) everywhere.
Came across this stupid IE8 advertisement and struggles for almost a full minute (eternity in web browsing time) to get the stupid thing out of my way so I could see the actual page content. So of course I had to show the world (or my small readership) just what a poor user experience it is. The key here is that if you scroll off the add to the side it doesn’t go away like a normal roll-over add. Anyways, enjoy, and thanks Microsoft.
Don’t think i’ve posted this on my blog yet. It’s a work in progress but you’ll get the idea. Still need a way to crystallize the inside to make it look like an ice cave. Ideas?
I have invested 32 hours thus far into Mass Effect 2, the sequel to the game I blogged about back in March of 2008. The gameplay is very similar and nothing seems really novel to me; however it remains a fun game. Only part that is truly disappointing? I deleted my Mass Effect 1 savegames so I could not import my character which gets you crazy bonuses. I suppose it makes the game more challenging (I am doing the first playthrough on Insanity difficulty), but I will not make this mistake again.
In terms of the plot, I think it could have been better, although admittedly I am only likely 70% of the way through the game so I haven’t seen the dramatic twists that (ironically) typically arrive at the climax. Much of the game is retrieving team members, which after 4 becomes pretty boring. There is also one enemy type, a YMIR Mech, that is just a pain to fight and typically causes multiple restarts if there are 2+ of them at once. It is not fun, does not add to the plot, and just is irritating.
I’m also disappointed with the depth of character customization and leveling. Your main character has a max of 6 powers that have 4 different levels each you can build up. On the fourth level of each power you get 2 options to further specialize, typically going for power or endurance/duration/recharge or affecting just you or the entire square. It’s very surface level and is upsetting that I can’t customize more deeply since the rest of the game is so deep. Team members are worse, only having 4 powers to level up. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the options for armor and weapons are even worse. Rather than finding hoards of guns and selecting the coolest/most powerful one you like, you gather 2-3 versions of each weapon class (Pistol, SMG, Sniper, Rifle, Shotgun) throughout the course of the ENTIRE game and then just can pay to increase its damage up to 50% and add extra damage against shields/barriers/blah… Armor is much the same way, but you only customize your own armor (not teammates’) and you find even fewer pieces of armor during play; i’m not actually even sure where I got the extra armor pieces since you never actual “FIND” it while exploring.
So I guess overall, i’m not that happy with Mass Effect 2. It is aesthetically pleasing, and consumes a great deal of time, but I think once I’ve earned my 1,000 achievement points i’ll send it back to #Gamefly and never think of it again. At least until Mass Effect 3 comes out and I am pleased to find out I still have my ME2 character to import.
It’s summer… and i officially miss my Jeep. Anyone want a 2004 Mazda 6? It’s on Craigslist if you want to trade me your Jeep Wrangler.
Oh… good times:
Thank you Andy, after going through an SPSS statistics book I found this amazing decision tree which decides the best analytical method to apply based on your experiment condition. Sadly 90% of Human Factors studies involve categorical variables so it’s pretty much between chi-squared and Log Regression, but still… amazingly useful chart for anyone out there that runs experiments.
Score me one original 1983 Star Wars Return of the Jedi poster from Japan in mint condition.
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