NotWeasel: The whole world has gone to crap.

My X-Games Event Idea

I've come up with a new idea for the Winter X-Games.

I think they should send people down a slalom course inside a big plastic hamster ball wearing roller blades. They'll probably need some special gloves with very low-friction fingertips and a big rubber stopper in the palm.

Picture it. Awesome, right?

Leap Paycheque!

I, and most other people who get paid bi-weekly, get 26 paycheques a year.

Someone pointed out to me that if I take my gross pay and multiply it by 26, it comes out to less than my supposed annual salary.

As it turns out, it comes out to my annual salary minus exactly a day's worth of pay. This isn't accounting for leap years, when essentially I work an extra day for free.

I figured that there had to be some accounting for this discrepancy. Is there an adjustment somewhere? Is there some reason for this?

Well... I did some digging... which is to say I printed off a bunch of calendars and worked out the pay periods and found that every 14 years, there is a LEAP PAYCHEQUE! A year with 27 paycheques in it!!!

Now, this would have been a lot more exciting if it were nearby, but it's not. I figured out that if you get paid biweekly on Thursday, like I do, and if tomorrow is pay day for you... then the next Leap Paycheque will occur in 2020. 2020 will have three-pay months in January, July, and December!

So... woot! You heard it here first. Only 8 more years...

Incidentally, if you're on the opposite cycle, and NEXT Thursday is your payday, then your Leap Paycheque will come in 2015. Only 4 more years for you, you lucky bastard!

That's the Spirit!

Some guy just drove by me in a 350Z with the roof down.

I gave him a thumbs up.

He reciprocated.

Top down in January in Toronto. That's a proper Canadian! It brings a smile to my face. :)

I Made Pies!

I'm not sure I've ever done a food post here, but here you go. I made these and they were delicious!!

Firstly, turkey pot pies, made from some of the leftover xmas turkey... which I'm still eating... still...

They were awesome! And hey... it was a different way to eat the turkey.

And for dessert...

Delicious cherry pies! I only got to eat one of those. The slightly gimpy one came about because I used the wrong plastic bit to cut out the top piece and cut big lines through it. I'm just happy it ended up pie-like and was still delicious. I gave my wife the awesome looking one. :)

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

Merry Christmas, and my very best wishes to you and yours for all the holiday season!!

The Titanic Slide??

On my way in to work this morning, I saw a truck with big pictures on the side of various party novelties. I expect they're one of those party rental companies where you get bouncy castles and what not.

What I found particularly disturbing though was that one of the major items was a Titanic themed slide.

Seriously. For a small fee, you can have your children laughing and playing while re-enacting the deaths of 1500 or so people. What fun!

Is it just me or is this in really bad taste? Wasn't that an unthinkable tragedy?

What's next? An Auschwitz-themed bouncy castle? Would that be ok??

NASCAR Streak to the Finish: The Mopps 2011 Final Standings

Here's the final standings for The Mopps.



Rank    Overall   Name         Longest Streak   Bonus    Total 
1       550       ToyotaChick       8            540     1439
2       863       Tilly             7            470     1351
3       1458      Sunraven          4            300     1238
4       1709      Wild Weasel       6            380     1200
5       3829      Jakob Tilford     3            180     966
6       4484      brew-san          3            150     903
7       8731      toyotachicjr      3            70      471

Overall a huge showing for the Tilfords this time around! The Hopps rallied at the end to at least keep half the Tilfords behind them, and Bruce made a valiant effort at chasing down Jakob. Special props to Paige who, after starting quite late, very nearly ran down Kevin before he got up and running near the end.

Congratulations, Tony Stewart!

Congratulations, Tony Stewart, on winning the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship!

And THANK YOU for giving us what was probably the absolute best championship battle ever seen, and what may well have been the best racing I've ever watched.

Last night's final race of the season was the stuff of legend. If they'd made a movie about it, you'd be rolling your eyes halfway through, thinking the writers had taken it just a tad bit too far.

I mean... Rocky getting knocked down and counted to 8 can only happen so many times before you say "Ok... I get it... he's gonna get back up..." and just think the movie is plain silly.

Last night's race had the equivalent of that at least 5 times, and that's just what I'm thinking of off the top of my head.

In an unbelievably incredible effort, Tony was able to win the race and the championship by tying Carl Edwards in points and winning the tie-breaker due to the number of race wins... ALL of which came in the Chase.

This story had everything. My favourite driver vs. my least favourite. Plenty of adversity. Downright lunatic driving. It was definitely one for the ages!!

Congrats again on number 3, Tony! You earned it!

What is Wrong With the Greeks?

So the Greeks seem determined to plunge the world into another deep recession.

Now... the fact that they're able to do this is a topic of its own, but that's not my point here.

I'm just wondering whether they're doing it on purpose to line their own pockets. The people in charge are part of the infamous 1% right? So this seems like the sort of thing they'd do... and rest of the world be damned.

If the Greeks look like they're about to resolve their issues and take care of business, the markets go up like a rocket.

If they give the indication that they're full of crap and can't resolve anything at all, the markets drop like a rock.

So if you're in charge there... and you buy a bunch of index funds... you'd do well to announce to the world that everything is under control.

Then you sell your funds at a massive profit. You then short-sell a bunch of ETF's and... I don't know... maybe announce that you've changed your mind and decided to let the people decide in some snap referendum.

There's another massive profit.

And so on and so forth.

I mean... these guys know exactly what's going to happen based on what they decide to do. How do we know they're not all just messing with us for their own gain? They're politicians, right?

Kyle Busch Has Lost His Mind

Yesterday's NCWTS race was quite the entertaining event. Kyle Busch got run up into the wall by Ron Hornaday and then proceeded to absolutely lose his mind and wreck both their trucks at high speed under caution.

See the link below for the story and video on NASCAR.com.

Now, despite Hornaday's excuses afterwards, it looked to me like the initial incident was entirely his fault. He got a good run on Kyle but didn't have enough room to get through. Kyle squeezed him down to defend the position, but he tried anyway. He nearly made it, but didn't. Then, after making contact with the lap truck and moving up into Kyle, with only a thin veil of control left he STILL didn't let up and ended up moving Kyle right into the wall. That was a dick move, and I can't help but think that his relationship with Harvick and disdain for Kyle may have factored into the utter disrespect it showed.

Of course, he should have thought twice about who he was dealing with.

There's really no excuse for Kyle then going completely batshit crazy, but it sure was fun to watch.

So then... Kyle's been parked for the rest of the weekend and you can be sure that Hornaday will be looking for revenge at some point. There's going to be plenty of drama for the rest of the season and probably into next year.

I mean... Kyle is effectively eliminated from the Chase for the Sprint Cup. Would he do whatever needs doing to ensure Harvick doesn't win it? If he did, he'd be ensuring that neither of them will ever win a championship for as long as they're both still in the sport. Hopefully that occurs to him before he does anything even crazier. This feud should really be kept out of the Sprint Cup.

It's like the US and Russia fighting the cold war in Afghanistan. They want to puff up their chests and throw some punches, but nobody wants to muck up the home turf.

As a final thought... there's been some talk about double-standards here. Why is Kyle being penalized so strongly while Burton wasn't penalized at all after wrecking Gordon under caution a while back? What happened to "Have at it, boys!"?

As of now, there's no details about the reasoning behind the penalty, but in my own opinion, as much as I like Kyle, I think NASCAR is justified in parking him and that they really need to send a message here. I like that they're letting the drivers self-regulate their behaviour this year, but this move was just plain dangerous. If Kyle had waited for them to slow down and then just ploughed into Hornaday's truck, I doubt the penalty would have been as severe, if there were any at all. As safe as NASCAR is these days though, you just can't have people purposely wrecking each other at over 100 mph. Especially after the recent autoracing deaths. The cars are safe, but nothing is perfect and you can only imagine what the racing landscape would be if Hornaday had been hurt or killed. I'd expect Kyle would be behind bars right now.

If Kyle is going to retaliate on the track like that, I sure hope he's spending some free time working out in the gym. He's gonna have to learn to throw a few punches if he wants to earn some respect with this sort of attitude. Nobody is going to respect a guy who will run into someone with a racecar but turn turtle when confronted in the garage.