Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

I Wanna Be an Astronaut
March 27, 2006

As I grew up I held a great fascination for space. I have a fond childhood memory of using my telescope to look into the night sky for the moon and planets on a very frosty winter evening.

Time progresses, and this fascination starts to work its way through many other interests. I wrote a game in elementary school that used space as its backdrop, with alien worlds and their inhabitants as scenery. I grew to love science fiction, reading classic works of Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Jules Verne. Space cartoons were my favorites, like Star Blazers and Voltron.

I tried to convince my dad to build me a space ship. My brother and I had some panels set up in the basement with paper taped to them, and many sophisticated drawn instrucments scattered about them. We were expert pilots.

Perplex City
March 23, 2006

I have been mulling over how to re-introduce everyone to Perplex City, a game about which I blogged briefly before. I stumbled upon a “quickstart guide” which has more specific information than even I was going to provide.

Essentially, Perplex City is a sort of puzzle game where you collect puzzle cards (no, not virtual cards but actual hold-in-your-hand cards) and solve the puzzles contained thereon. Each puzzle is generally self-contained, but several require you to visit some web site of another to get the information required to solve the puzzle.

When you have solved the puzzle, you scratch off the silver area at the top of the card, revealing a 12-digit code. Entering this code into the Perplex City web site, you can attempt to answer the puzzle. If correct, you will be awarded points. You gain a set number of points for a single card, and if you solve all of the puzzles in a group of four cards (every group of four cards is assigned a different name, like “maze”, “circles”, or “ivy”) then you get additional points for solving the whole group. Red cards are the easiest to solve, followed by orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, and silver.

The silver cards seem very difficult and offer the most points. The rarity of the card is directly related to its color, so red cards are quite common in the random pack assortments, whereas silver cards are quite scarce.

On top of all of that, there is a grand prize for finding an artifact called “The Receda Cube” of $200,000.

Trial Part 2
March 22, 2006

This is the last post about this trial, I promise. Instead of starting directly in with trial details, let me write a bit about jury duty itself, which should expose a few details that might be of general interest.

When I arrived on Monday morning, there was a line for the metal detectors at one of the two public entrances to the courthouse. You would think that after learning of the metal detectors - which they should know are set far too sensitively when they pick up candy foil wrappers - that people would leave their hunting knives at home. But no. Maybe they think it’s amusing when they have to check their foot-long knives with the sherrif at the detector. Whatever.

Also on the hitlist at the detector were cell phones with cameras. I guess you’re not allowed to take photos inside the courthouse. I’m not sure whether this prohibition extends to regular cameras or other devices with cameras embedded, or if it’s just with phones. In any case, you can avoid holding up the line by simply leaving the thing at home. But how irritating!

Enough with these annoyances, though. What can you expect as a juror ar Chester County Courthouse?