Mohammed Nadir Shah, king of Afghanistan for 4 short years, and Zoe, the first frozen embryo baby!
Looks like I might have been wrong for Nadir Shah, and completely wrong about Zoe. Oddly, Zoe’s birthday seems to be widely reported as when the embryo was removed, instead of when the baby was born? Oh well, at least my real birthday remains hidden =P
Machiavelli
Sugar Ray Robinson
James Brown
Yeah, I can live with that.
I’ve recently discovered that the game which we call ‘peaknuckle’ (I’ve never written it down before) has no resemblance to the actual game Pinochle. We basically play Uno with a deck of cards - 2 being pick up 2, Jack being pick up 5, 7 change order etc. I’d never looked up the real Pinochle before and assumed Uno was just a snazzy implementation of that game.
So why my Dad taught us this game and used the peaknuckle name (I’m using that spelling now to save confusion with the other game) I have no idea…
I shall next be at work in 1288 hours. (Academic leave combined with not taking a summer holiday.)
I’ve just found out my eBay account (which I haven’t used in donkey’s years) has been permanently suspended as it showed a history of activity that was a danger to the eBay community.
I’ve only used it like twice in my life.
How bizarre
Not buying stuff is a danger to the eBay Community. If you would like to keep your account in good standing, please spend money on eBay.
Literally (almost) the conversation was “Your account has been permanently suspended for a pattern of activity posing a danger to the community. No we wont tell you what pattern. The supension is permanent and unrevocable. Now fuck off.” [Customer support team has terminated chat]
So bizarre.
That is nearly as bizarre as us getting a speeding ticket from Austria this summer when we had proof that we had been at home… it was from late at night, too. We had all kinds of fun theories that were exciting like someone doing a heist with specifically our license plate and car-type … in the end they had misread the license plate…
The abruptness of the interaction probably indicates there’s a concern for liability on eBay’s part. So, likely it was either your account got flagged as a false positive for something criminal, or your account was compromised and they aren’t willing to conclusively prove it wasn’t a weakness in their systems that allowed your account to be compromised.
I’ve been having a go with this fun little tool:
https://bggfingerprint.herokuapp.com/
It creates word clouds based on your recorded plays on BGG. I made a couple for the last two years:
Scaled by average play time.
I made a quiz in the spirit of the KWC one.
I tried it out, and it just reminded me how infrequently I record plays.
I don’t know how hard your quiz is, but the King William’s college one is a nightmare! I used to go on the QI forum and it took them, all together, an age to answer most of them.
I record my plays on an app which syncs with BGG - much easier!
I’ve found the shelves big enough for @pillbox’s collection
Do games keep longer when cooled?
If it is cold enough in the room, they would definitely take longer. Just think of the time taken by pulling off your mittens every time it is your turn…
The room in which I store games is often rather colder than the room in which I play them, and surprisingly cold components can be quite a disconcerting experience. (Condensation doesn’t seem to be a problem, though - not that cold.)
