I wanted to organize a big Halloween bash but Donnie was like “lolz halloween’s for sux0rs noob” and Mr. E said “Naw, man, I’m too old for that stuff.”

So was I stuck deciding whether to crash a party or pulling a trick and stealing the kids’ treats (haha, see what I did there?) Now I’ve only been in human culture for a year, so someone had to advise me that it’s not impossible I’d get “arrested” if things got out of hand. So I decided to just hand out egg-free food to local trick-or-treaters.

I needed to get a treat, so went to the store and bought a box of raisins. Unfortunately, I ate most of the box so there wasn’t very much left come evening, so each kid would have a strict ration of 5 raisins. Here’s an example of how it went:

Next year, I’m crashing a party.

Another excuse to use the “chess” tag. Click for biggie size.

So over the weekend my main computer died. It was an eMachines comp which has actually served quite well for the last 3 years. I was trying to upgrade the graphics card, which required a power upgrade from a measly 300W.

What I didn’t know is that eMachines comps often require a proprietary power supply. To my sorrow, I only deduced this after buying one, returning and swapping for another one, having that not work and finally testing an old power supply I knew was problem-free.

By that time, the motherboard was fried, so I had little choice but to get a new motherboard and CPU. Having little time to do research, I took one of Fry’s mid-priced combo deals, one which included the odd triple-core processor Phenom X3. I’d probably have been better off with one of Intel’s dual-core offerings. (FYI, few programs today take advantage of more than two cores. Oddy, I actually have at least one.)

The final stroke was the RAM. After spending a bit trying to shove my original memory sticks in the new motherboard, it dawned on me to take a look at what types of memory I was dealing with. Sure enough, I was trying to shove DDR sticks into DDR2 slots.

After 4 trips to Fry’s, 3 to Best Buy, and 1 to a local shop, I finally had a working system again.

It was a very aggravating day.

Recently, I realized it’s been almost two years since I broke up with my ex-fiancee. In that time, I’ve spent almost no time pursuing anyone else, except for muffing that one opportunity on an airplane. I’ve generally been happy with bachelorship. However, I’m 29 so maybe it’s time to get a move on. (And to finally sell that engagement ring, which is laying around here somewhere.)

There was an article with the premise that when you’re on the prowl for a mate, make sure you know what qualities you’re looking for and not settle for worse. It helps save time and heartache by preventing pair-ups with someone incompatible or inadequate.

So over the weekend, I figured out which qualities in a woman are most important to me:

1. Demonstrates kindness to people.
2. Not too hideous-looking.
3. Mentally stable.
4. Convicted of 2 or fewer felonies (optional).
5. Hasn’t had a sex change.

First, I should blame my parents for indirectly instilling the urge to undertake this: my dad for having me help with gardening growing up and my mom for making me more aware of the stuff I put in my body.

This weekend, I started what will be dubbed “The Fail Garden” (cf. the Victory Gardens of the World Wars). Primarily, this is due to my lack of expertise and I fully expect most of the plants to produce little to nothing.

I live in an apartment without a yard, but have the great advantage of having windows with a southern exposure. This makes an indoor vegetable garden a more plausible endeavor.

Empty milk jugs make for perfect plant containers if you don’t mind looking cheap.

As far as what to plant? I needed to plant stuff that could conceivably grow–and at the same time stuff I actually use. Some good candidates, like beets and radishes, I simply don’t eat enough to really want to grow.

I decided to go with 3 herbs (basil, cilantro, and spearmint) and 4 veggies (lettuce, spinach, carrots, green onions). Should have thought of tomatoes, too.

Mushrooms I cook with a lot, but as I try to go light on the A/C, the place is too warm for their optimal growth. Maybe this winter.

The tall one’s for the carrots

OK, so I’m already bored of writing this. To make a long story short, I had to go to three places before finding seeds filled up the pots and got everything sowed.

With the cilantro, I bought one of those “Herbs for Noobs” type packages where they pretty much have everything in one package; you just add water and you’re good to go.

Expectations are low: I expect the cilantro, one of the other 4 pots of herbs, and maybe one of the 7 pots of vegetables to make it.

The seeds I used, plus the herbs for noobs package

Water, feed, and hope

Yes, yes, the Wilson Gambit. Er.

A handful of weekends ago, I made my return to Houston and for the first time, went to the Houston Chess Meetup advertised by Tacticus every so often. It was at a Chinese buffet this time around, which generously offered the use of a room. We could pay for one meal and sit on our tushies as long as we desired.

Arriving fashionably late, I discovered people played not only chess, but a variety of board games. In fact, most people played other games while Glenn waited for someone, anyone else who was there for the chess.

That person…was me (a few others did show up later). After eating, we got down to business. Glenn has one of those 5-min clocks and we played a ton of blitz that afternoon. The first few games I thought way too much in the opening, always getting in time trouble. Even after getting “in the groove”, I didn’t have much success, as might be expected when an Expert plays a Class C. It was something like +2 -7 =2 (includes one sympathy win where I was dominant but only had a few seconds left vs 2 minutes. Glenn still resigned.)

Before leaving, we got in one last game. Instead of my usual Pirc, went Center Counter…and, oh man, that match is seared within my memory forever. In fact, I can probably recreate the exact moves to the final game. With little variation it can be replayed here.

To let it be known, I’m not ashamed of losing. I am ashamed of losing like that.

Growing up, our family had cereal for breakfast multiple times a week as many American families do. I don’t remember my mom’s or sister’s favorite cereals. Or mine, either; maybe Peanut Butter Crunch. But my dad would always have Frosted Flakes. This must have been why I had the misconception that Frosted Flakes was an “adult” cereal, and kids simply didn’t eat it.*

One morning, at the age of 7 or 8, I was sitting at the table while my parents were preparing breakfast. All of a sudden, I get a bowl of Frosted Flakes thrust in front of me. Subconsciously, “This is grown-up food!” runs through my mind. My eyes reacted by widening in terror and welling up with tears. “I don’t like Frosted Flakes…” I whinily muttered in complete intimidation (and even though I’d never even tried it before).

My dad irritatedly said I didn’t need to cry if I didn’t want it, and got some Cap’n Crunch. It was about 3 or 4 years until I had the guts to try it. Never found it that good.

What about you, dear reader? What was one of your bizarre fears?

A couple years ago, we were making fun of T.O.’s fan club at work. All of a sudden, the above page popped up on our department’s wiki.

Yes, I got paid for doing that. Mysteriously, no one ever signed up, even though it cost only half of T.O’s club.

But don’t ask if you can join the DB Fan Club. Its demise was generally attributed to the failure to emphasize that the prunes were already pitted.

Last week, while going to the supermarket, I stumbled upon one of those blood donation vans. There was some portly dude in shades trying to lure me with Marlins tickets into handing over my hard-earned blood. Being overdue for a donation, I let him pretend he was a good salesman and agreed to enter the van.

One of the blood-taker girls was about to leave for the day when she asked to look at my veins. Nodding and “mmm-hmm”ing like she had her choice of men at La Bare, she asked my blood type (O+). She was extra-satisfied at this response, knowing that most people can receive O+ blood.

I think she was a vampire.

They asked me to do a double red blood cell collection, which takes longer and makes me ineligible to donate in four months rather than two. I agreed, and they were kind enough to give my plasma and platelets back.

I was actually slightly light-headed afterwards, which is unusual. And will probably affect me breaking a 13-minute mile in the near future. But it saved someone’s life, and I got two free Marlins tickets and an apple juice.

I fail at chess.

Two Wednesdays ago, I played a USCF-rated game for the first time in months. I managed only a draw against a 3rd grader, rated 1180. (Grats to him; no one below 1300 has managed a draw against me before.) He vaguely resembled me as a kid and used a MonRoi, which completely threw me off psychologically. At least that’s the best excuse I could come up with.

He seemed about as tactically aware as I was, and was really eager to exchange off his Knight for a Bishop. He never generated any real threats, but I wasn’t good enough to hurt him. Need to post this game later.

Tonight I went to a restaurant called the Knife. It’s an Argentinian-style steakhouse (it’s a meat buffet). Oh, man, they have a lot of beef. And free wine; I’m not drunk, but definitely tipsy, so I may live to regret this post in some way.

Unfortunately, wine comes with the meal (which is $28 on weekend nights). The bad part is that I don’t drink much, and I accidentally had too much. Since win isn’t a “hard liquor”, I tend to treat it like drinking water. You don’t know how many times I re-typed some of these words to get them right.

Anyway, it’s a meat buffet, and it’s massive. Insert standard joke about the arteries hardening just looking at the food. The table near us had these two girls, with diving, diving, DIVING necklines; I don’t know if neckline is the right word it was so far down. One of them saw me looking but somehow I think they did not mind the attention.

One of the things my ex told me is that there is a sliding scale of how women react if a guy is staring. Like if it’s Brad Pitt, they are flattered, but if it’s obese 60-year-old guy it’s not so welcome. Being still 29 and not ugly, I can get away with more than say old fat guy but it’s also good not to make the girls uncomfortable. At least I think it is polite to keep eyes reasonably in control. Rule of thumb as I have heard is “glance OK/flattering, stare creepy”. What do you girls think?

Anyway, the beef was really good and for dessert was flan which was good. The coffee was average; they probably used Maxwell House or something.

An airline passenger discovers there is no joy in being assigned the “other” jumpseat. (Story)

Than Shwe, you held your sham vote instead of helping millions of your cyclone victims. Grats. (Story)

Bank tellers tend to get a little suspicious when you start throwing around 360 billion dollar checks. (Story)

My exercise habits have been very poor. This morning, I discovered I now run a 13 minute mile.

A 13 minute mile.

Now maybe in 30 years, that’ll be something to be proud of. But I used to be able to run one under 7. Nowadays, if you stick me in a race with the 38-ish chessloser and 50-something Polly, they’d be breezing through like a couple of Olympians to the finish line while the crowd starts mocking me as I’m only halfway through, wheezing and gasping.