Play One on TV

The following picture is dedicated to two or three of my readers that will swear, on a stack of Bibles no less, that this cannot possibly apply to them. They can stop anytime they want to. Really.

If you’re looking for a reason to feel inferior, try standing next to Leyan Lo, who broke the world’s record for solving a scrambled Rubik’s Cube at the Caltech Winter Competition 2006. His history-making attempt clocked in at 11.13 seconds, which beats my best attempt by several orders of magnitude. My last attempt took five hours, and that includes the hour it took to drive back to the store and buy the cheat book.

Makes me wonder what the life of a Speedcuber is like. Is there fame and fortune? Huge contracts from MIT or Hasbro? VH-1 “Behind the Cubing” specials? Do you get your own groupies? I’m not sure if “Speedcubing” has any groupies, but if they do, I’m betting they probably don’t shriek and throw their panties at you. Slide rules, maybe.

Did a double take at this ad on the “for sale” bulletin board at work:

Ryobi Cordless Router. Works great. $20.

Wow, a wireless router for 20 bucks? I had to have it. I was halfway through an email to ask if it was 802.11G compatible before my brain slapped me upside the head and said, “Ryobi makes power tools, you idiot.” The closest this router would ever come to networking would be cutting the wall channels for the Ethernet cabling.

I am such a pathetic geek.

A real conversation with my sister, the non-geek:

Nancy: When waiting in line for hours to see the latest “Lord of the Rings” movie, do people really play games like Stratego?

Joe: Actually, Stratego wouldn’t be complex enough to keep me occupied that long.

Nancy: …

Of all the answers she was expecting, this was clearly not one of them.