Pound of Dice

This past year I started playing Dungeons and Dragons.  I have been playing in a campaign for about 7 months.  My character is a 6th level elven sorcerer.  When I first told some people about this, the main reaction was "wow what a nerd".  Well I guess sitting around a table playing a game with 6-8 friends is nerdy, hear that all you jocks who probably don't read this blog, your are all nerds to.

However, starting this week we are taking a break from our regular campaign and I will be DM'ing a campaign.  In this campaign I will also be playing some characters, who will technically be NPC's.  The first character is a Half-Dragon Goliath Barbarian.  This effectively means he is incredibly good at smashing things, is hard to hit, can breath fire, and can fly.  But enough about that.  Dice.  D&D runs with dice, the dice decide if you are successful, and than how successful you are and how much damage you do on attacks.  I had bought a set of polyhedral dice when we first started playing.

 

The DM requires a lot more dice than for a regular character.  So I went online to buy some more dice.  This being the internet I easily found more dice.  In fact a pound of dice.

Now that is a lot of dice.

Collection of d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20's.

Crummy Choices on CITI Course

I recently took an online course about how to ethically run experiments with human participants. Some of the questions were pretty funny.

Some helpful info

Thus, if you are asked to complete a CITI Program course for someone else or if you provide or receive quiz question answers:

• Don't do it unless, you have explicit written permission from your IRB or compliance office!

• Don't put your employment, academic status and reputation at risk!

Now for the question:

Select the appropriate statement then click the Submit button:

	I attest that I have read and understand the above statement. I attest that I am the person listed at the top of this page and I assure that I will complete the required ethics course work with the highest degree of integrity and professionalism.
	I attest that I have read and understand the above statement. I am NOT the person listed above, and would like to confidentially provide information before continuing with the course.
	I attest that I have read and understand the above statement. I am NOT the person listed above, and would like to continue with the course. I understand that my activities may be considered fraudulent and that this course will be flagged by the software and my institution will be notified.

Some of the questions on the quizzes were quite difficult, like this one:

If found guilty of committing research misconduct, what consequences might Terry face?

	Praise from fellow doctoral students and faculty.
	Increased access to institutional or federal grant money.
	A PhD and position in the lab.
	Being permanently or temporarily barred from the doctoral program.

Why you should skip expensive wine

A friend of mine (A. Green) held a small wine tasting event where the guests guessed the price of each wine as they tasted them. She bought the wines and arranged the tastings but did not guess. The participants were pretty educated, but not wine experts. I did not participate, and there were no plans to graph the results until I discovered the data so hopefully these are completely unbiased.

Creative Commons photo by Dalem

Below we see that there is no correlation between the actual cost of the bottle and the price that it tastes. The conclusion? Save your money and don't buy wine over $15!

In case you are curious, below you can see all the data points.

Thanks to alert blog-previewer Eli we have the following relevant links about how the price of the wine can actually change how good it tastes for you.

• news article
• actual study

There, I fixed it

Well, I didn't fix it, but I saw this at the Brooklyn Brewery, on a temperature monitoring panel:

I imagine one of their fancy, integrated temperature sensors broke, so they just replaced it with a $40 off-the-shelf probe thermometer.

Don't Mind Me I'm Just QWOP'ing Along

QWOP, the ridiculously hard pointless game.  Well me and some friend had a marathon, to see who could actually beat it before they ran out of patience.  I present to you...

Credit Card Image Designs part 3-4/?

I've been trying for a while now to get a ridiculous image on my credit card. See tries one and two. Each time they seem to reject it for one reason or another.

I think they rejected this one because of this clause:

Any photo that might result in non-acceptance or other problems at the point of sale

My plan was to tell the cashier "no, its the center oval that turns blue if stolen" or "it is only starting to turn blue because you are holding it"  and then mutter something about how low-tech it is not to tell the difference between another person just holding it and actually having stole it.

Anyway - I have high hopes for the card below that still has a chance to make it past the capitalone sensors!

Edit: Card rejected ... an appeal has been submitted.

Edit: Appeal rejected

A Week of Me

Well we have made it, a week of me.  That's right I now hold the blog record for consecutive posts SEVEN.  Yep, I had ulterior motives.  Not only did I want to make it up to our loyal readers for a missed month but I wanted the record, MWAH HA HA HA!!!  But its not all bad, you got the posts I should I have posted and some bonus posts.  Also, I have now helped with the poorly represented Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday by increasing the number of post on those days.  Plus since that 5th anniversary post I have been working tirelessly (literally) to makes sure that the 4-5 AM time slot is represented, come on I dare you to see how many times I have posted between those times since October.

Speaking of October and our fifth anniversary.  Since then and until recently I missed almost no posts, this is just another thing I have been doing for you loyal readers.  Let us see how many other records we can break here today.  Eli holds the record for number of comments in one post at 16, I think we can beat this with all you loyal readers saying what you think about this momentous event.  Although, I think it is silly to try and break Yoni's 29 image in one post record (here at least).  I will however point out that in this week I have posted 29 images so far, so I will post one more and call it a day.

Welding

Prepare to be amazed by a blast from the past.  I took a welding class about 3-4 years ago.  That's right this blog post has literally been years in the making!  The class was offered by a local vocational school and was geared as adult continued education.  I learned arc weld, MIG weld, brazing, and how to cut steel with an oxyacetylene torch.

 This was my basic welding setup.  I had an auto-darkening helmet, this meant that when I struck an arc the goggles immediately darkened so I wasn't blinded, but when I wasn't welding I would be able to see what I was doing.  Additionally, I am wearing a welding coat, its treated cotton.  Also, thick leather gloves.  On the right is a wire brush for cleaning up welds and on the left is a welding hammer, its to clear off slag.

This is my brazing and oxyacetylene cutting getup.  Same shirt and and gloves but wearing brazing goggles.  On the theme of a long time coming, I was clearly way ahead of the times.  Watch out guys, we're dealing with a badass over here.

Master of Engineering Part 3

At about 11:30 at night while working on the final project for my combustion course (analysis of a RD-180 rocket engine), I recieved this email.

Dear Graduate Student,

Rutgers Counseling, ADAP (alcohol and other drug assistance program) and Psychiatric Services office, located at 17 Senior Street, is available to help you resolve the many pressures you face as you juggle your classes, research, teaching, jobs and family responsibilities. Please, if you need help, get completely confidential help from this office.

After the inexplicable crazy laughter ended, I leaned over to my friend Sergey with whom I was working on the project and said "But who has the time."