I'm Too Easily Diverted

Ever on the lookout for more excuses on-line for procrastination under the guise of keeping the grey cells in tiptop form, I happened upon this simple, but maddening word game.

The object is to determine the appropriate five-letter word (I'm really practiced at the four-letter ones). Each time you guess, you will be shown whether your word was before or after the goal word alphabetically. Simple, eh? How many five-letter words are there anyways? Actually, a whole shitload when you consider that most four-letter words can be extended by an -s or -d or -y.

My best score is 10,893. What's yours?

And don't forget your blends, dipthongs and digraphs.

The Day Time Stood Still

Out satellite earth station finally made it back up around 7:30 PM last evening, after 13.5 hours of heavy slogging to get it pointed at a new satellite and adjusted (hopefully) to work at optimum.

As an avid social scientist, I availed myself of this blackout period to assess the impact of the removal albeit temporarily of a technology just so recently introduced.

On the home front, I can attest to a palatable reduction in violence amongst my offspring - no Internet removed the need for four teenagers to pull out each others' hair to get the chance to sit in the control seat of the one functioning computer they are allowed to use. As a matter of fact, the kids seemed to evaporate entirely preferring to play street hockey and chase boys around town.

At the office, it was as if someone replaced my normally energetic and enthusiastic colleagues with robots on Mandrax. Instead of their usual frenetic multi-tasking (ie IM-ing while checking a 100 social sites on Bebo while simultaneously peaking at their status of their latest bid on eBay) all the monitors showed the same picture - the solitaire game that comes bundled with XP. The only sound other than my phone ringing with enquiries about when the Internet was going to be turned on was the sound of the electronic riffling of the virtual deck of cards as yet another solitaire game became stymied.

I, on the other hand, was the very emblem of enthusiasm as I defragged my hard disk, backed up my data, polished my keyboard and scraped a month of sneezes and coughs off my LCD screen.

So I can conclude, based on the evidence, that the Internet is an essential office tool and a cohesive force within the family unit. Before I publish my findings I wondering if you guys could confirm my data?

Meditations on a Walrus

As I was walking down the strand, as is my wont after lunch before returning to the office, I chanced upon this scene. The more I looked at it, the more I became engrossed by it.

The closed eyes lent a serenity to what was otherwise rather pathetic remnant of a young male walrus who has lost his head, or lost his body depending on your point of view. The address tag was a nice surreal touch, and begged the question for whom the head was intended or whether it was on sale.

My mind began to wonder other things: Who placed it there right on the shore of our wharf? Why did they do it? Was it forgotten? Or did it accidentally fall out of someone's truck and roll there? Might it have been washed ashore by the recent winds?

Is it a portent of misfortune or a sign of good luck? Why haven't the dogs eaten it?* What is the collective noun for a group of walruses?** Was it Paul or John who was the walrus? What excuse can I come up with for being so late back to work after lunch?

Here is a Canadian bilingual pun - did the hunter feel any remorse?***

Walruses have been kind to this blog - a full 18% of all entry pages to The White Bear's Blog is accounted for by one single post I did early in my career, something about walruses' genitalia. I wonder if this entry will garner as much interest.

* In reality, dogs seem turn their snouts up at walrus skin and blubber, and won't eat it generally. Nor will people.

** The actual terms for a group of walruses are the unimaginative "herd" or "pod" as reported by people who collect collective nouns. I'm sure we can up with something more evocative of these huge, brooding, stinking beasts. Any ideas?

*** Did any of you get it?