Category: Uncategorized

While on vacation, I picked up the new version of Risk called Risk Reinvented (or maybe Risk Reinvention, it doesn’t actually say anything on the box except that it offers 3 ways to play), which has an optional set of rules to make the gameplay different. If you accomplish a certain objective (like controlling all of Asia at the end of your turn), you may earn the ability to attack or defend with a bonus die. So in the typical instance of 3 attacking dice vs. 2 defending dice, where the defenders win ties (this slightly favors the attackers), you might attack with 4 dice or defend with 3 dice even though only two troops are still at risk.

So I wanted to know what the odds are when you add dice to the mix. It was pretty obvious that the odds got a lot better when I earned the extra defense die. Then I got the extra attacking die and I was wondering how much of an effect it would have. I couldn’t find this on the internet (this was before I made the Risk Odds Calculator program).

So I built a spreadsheet that would generate every dice combination for six dice (3 attackers vs. 3 defending dice). This meant I had to have 6x6x6x6x6x6 or 46,656 rows. I had to check what the maximum number of rows that Excel can deal with and fortunately it was 65,536.
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A couple of weeks ago, I got a notice that someone in China had sent me $4.45 via PayPal. They had actually sent me $4.94 but I had to pay the fees. The name of the person was two Chinese characters that I couldn’t read. I thought about refusing the payment, but then figured if they figured out their error, I would give them their money back (or PayPal would just take it). I was expecting $42 from DealExtreme, a Chinese flashlight dealer whose affiliate program I am involved in, and I wasn’t expecting any refunds from any other dealers. It was just mystery money. I even thought maybe it was some kind of scam where they spam people with money, but that didn’t make any sense.
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I had been catching this show, one of many, many reality shows where they follow people around at work. There are shows about fishermen, lumberjacks, pawn shop owners, restoration people, etc. This show, Storage Wars, on A&E, is about people who bid on abandoned storage lockers. They have four people they follow around as they try to figure out how much an opened locker is worth (they can’t go in, so they usually can’t see everything in the locker), then bid against each other, then go through everything. If they find something interesting (“interesting” = “expensive”) then they take it to someone they know who can give them some background and appraise it. So it is kind of like Let’s Make a Deal where you are bidding on a mystery box. And kind of like a treasure hunt because you never know what you’ll find. And kind of like Antiques Roadshow as you find out what something is worth from an expert.

It is A&E’s top show. The debut of Season 2 was the biggest audience that A&E has ever had. So it has done really well. Tonight was the premiere of Season 3 which they have been promoting by showing all of the old episodes. So I’ve been recording them over the past few weeks and watching them like crazy.
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Last Fall, my contract with Gas South was up. They had been the cheapest 18 months earlier, right around the time of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. I locked in at 77¢ a therm then thinking that Natural Gas prices would stay high due to less production from the Gulf. But I didn’t count on the expansion of fracking which has flooded the market with an inexpensive supply of domestic natural gas (it’s very hard to import natural gas except by pipeline since it involves compressing or liquefying the gas in order to ship it). So prices have been going down a lot lately.

I had signed up with Georgia Natural Gas in part to take advantage of a program they had with Delta to give you frequent flyer miles for switching. I was just short of what I needed for a free ticket, so signing up and getting the bonus was almost like getting a free airline ticket (except I haven’t used it yet and it’s not as simple as that: some flights require more miles than others). I only locked in for six months (at 64.9¢ a therm) because I wanted to be able to renegotiate in the Summer when gas is cheaper rather than winter as prices are going up. My plan expires at the end of this month.

I looked into prices and found that the lowest price now is around 50¢ per therm and GNG would charge 58¢ for renewing customers (51¢ for new customers). I called them to see what kind of deal they could offer. They said the price to renew would be 58¢ a therm. I said “Is that the best you can do?” and they said they could knock 8¢ off (giving me the new customer rate!) or take $5 off my bill every month.

So I made a quick break for my spreadsheet where I’ve been tracking natural gas usage. An 8-cent reduction in 2011 would have saved me $41.67. In 2010, the savings would have been $48.60. So I opted for the guaranteed savings of $60 a year with the $5 a month plan. If I hadn’t asked for the discount, I would have been out sixty bucks. Gas prices could continue to go down, but I feel better locking in.

I’ve been learning a lot about flashlights over the last couple of years and that has meant learning a lot about LED’s. All of the flashlights I have bought have an LED as the light source. For the last couple of years the biggest name in LED’s for flashlights has been Cree, a company in North Carolina. Right after getting into flashlights, they introduced the XP-G LED which put out a lot more light than their earlier XP-E and XR-E LED’s. About a year later, they came out with an even brighter LED called the XM-L which can put out maybe 800 lumens compared to 400 for the XP-G and maybe 200 for the XP-E. But the XM-L also uses a lot more power. In addition to bigger and brighter LED’s, they have also introduced tints other than cool white, such as neutral and warm white tints. Also they have started focusing on higher Color Rendering Index values. Sunlight or incandescent light has a value of 100, but LED’s are often around 70. But “high CRI” LED’s are around 85 or 90.

Here are the XP-E and XP-G LED’s:

Continue reading “New LEDs!”