I Can Kill You With My Brain

Here’s the definitive “rule set” for Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock (RPSLS).  RPSLS is the same as the good ol’ game of Rock Paper Scissors that you are most likely already aware of, but it adds a lizard and Dr. Spock from Star Trek.  It’s nice and geeky, no?  You make the lizard hand gesture by putting your thumb beneath the other 4 fingers to look like a sock puppet.  You make the Spock hand gesture by throwing up the well-known “Live long and prosper” Trek hand signal.

I originally heard of this geeky version of the old classic on the hilarious television show The Big Bang Theory.  I thought they had created it, but Wikipedia says someone else did.  Either way, it’s all kinds of awesome.  I plan to keep a copy of this image on my phone until I have all the combinations memorized.  I suggest you do the same.  You don’t want to be caught wondering what Spock does to scissors (he smashes them).

I’ve been hit with a doozy of a cold the last few days.  I’m not sure exactly where it came from, but I’m going to blame my friend Amethyst right now.  She had a cold two weeks ago and while it was mostly clear of her system when I spent the following weekend with her, it is a bit odd that I started feeling the early effects of the cold the next day.  Friends Care!  Friends Share!

The actual head cold was not that bad at all.  It hit on Tuesday and was already making it’s way into my throat and chest on Wednesday.  For me, this usually takes several days.  I had dreams of this illness quickly making it’s way through my body and be back to all systems at 100% by the end of the week.  Wrong!  Persistent cold is persistent and it stuck in my throat giving me one of the worst coughs I’ve had in years.  But the cough didn’t even rear it’s ugly head immediately, but chose to just tease me with the appearance of not being that bad until the weekend.

Friday night the coughs started coming a bit stronger and Saturday night they were really bad.  Sunday night was a repeat of Saturday night, so I upped the strength of my cough medicine for Monday night.  Fail!  Monday night was the worst of the nights, yet.  It’s almost as if the cough took a look at the medicine I sent it and then evolved into a stronger, more evil cough that uses this medicine as fuel for it’s dastardly coughing deeds.

This morning I’m cautiously optimistic.  My coughs, while frequent, are not nearly as strong and deafening as yesterday’s.  As I type that, I had a powerful cough.  I can’t win.  Anyway, I’m sticking to water and hot chocolate today, but more importantly staying away from my beloved green tea.  For whatever reason, that stuff dries out my throat and is exactly the wrong thing that I need to have done to my throat.  I’m also staying away from the vocal tours in both “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero: World Tour”.  That might be more of a favor to my ears than to my throat.

Wil Wheaton is the man.  This blog entry by him is the best thing I’ve seen on the web all week.  I must share it with you.

Here’s an excerpt:

I MUST KNOW THE ANSWER RIGHT NOW SO THAT I CAN FINALLY SEDUCE WOMEN!

Yeah, it’s that kind of awesome sauce.

I finally picked up an iPhone back in January.  It didn’t take me long to completely fall in love with it.  2 months later and I’m still in awe when I use it.  Just last week I remarked to my mom that it is by far my favorite piece of tech that I have purchased in the last several years.

And then Thursday night I dropped it.  I’ve dropped it before and it’s been fine, but this time it landed almost flat on the glass screen and not on it’s side.  There was a clear impact point and a spidering effect across the glass.  I took a picture but I don’t even want to look at it myself right now.  I was heartbroken.

I took it into the Apple Store and asked if they could do anything about it.  They said they could replace it, but it wouldn’t be covered under the warranty.  Due to the clear impact point, the damage was not due to any faulty iPhone components.  Even though I had paid for the extended AppleCare warranty, it still wasn’t covered because it was clear that the damage didn’t occur through normal wear and tear.  I couldn’t argue with the guy.  He was right.

My only option was to pay $200 and they’d swap out my iPhone with a new one right there.  Well, the other option was to pay $200 and wait a week for them to fix my personal iPhone, but then I’d be out an iPhone.  Now that I think about it, a third option presented to me was to continue using my screen-shattered iPhone, as all of the core functionality still worked, it just looked terrible.  It took me about half of a second to make the decision to have my iPhone fixed.  This will go down as My $200 Lesson ™.

But I’m a little paranoid I’m going to drop it again, so I now pull my iPhone behind me in a rickshaw that has soft, velvet covered pillows and a shock system for the tires that would make the space shuttle jealous.