http://toosigma.com/archive far from normal Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:30:39 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Consider the following tales: Alice hires Bob to build a house and they agree to a payment of $100,000 for the service. Bob completes his work, receives his payment, and goes on his way. Fifteen years later, however, Bob decides that he deserves more money. He asks for another $100,000 - ... http://toosigma.com/archive/2009-11-09/copyright-extension-is-theft/ In my daily perusal of news, I stumbled across the South Carolina Powerball results. The question posed in the article is definitely thought provoking, and I decided to share my results here. This is basically my plan for pretty much any windfall, but includes a few more details on specifically ... http://toosigma.com/archive/2009-08-21/what-would-i-do-with-2599-million/ The mobile phone carriers are some of the worst offenders of monopoly power. Case-in-point is the pricing of the text messaging system. A recent New York Times article explores it in some detail - but I don't think they go quite far enough. Consider that the average ... http://toosigma.com/archive/2008-12-29/text-messaging-is-a-ripoff/ As an ardent fan of the new 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons, I've been creating power cards for my players to speed up and simplify play. After discovering the exceptional Magic Set Editor cards created by several designers on the ENWorld forums - I've resorted almost entirely to ... http://toosigma.com/archive/2008-12-05/dd-software-project/ As a resident of Colorado, I have a lot of research to do regarding the various amendments and referendums that will appear on November's ballot. I've found a couple sites that purport to give a "fair and unbiased" suggestion on how to vote, but I don't really believe there ... http://toosigma.com/archive/2008-10-20/colorado-ballot-initiatives-2008/ This post was prompted by this article at Marginal Revolution, which was in turn prompted by a recent court case denying ID "scientific status" and access to science classrooms. The article presents the hypothetical situation - if you find a watch in the forest, do you assume that it was the ... http://toosigma.com/archive/2008-09-12/why-intelligent-design-is-not-science/ After a holiday weekend of excess, I've decided that it's definitely time to get back in shape and lose some weight. Since my last few attempts to gain momentum in weight-loss have failed, I've decided to start making my efforts more public and to (hopefully) improve my accountability. ... http://toosigma.com/archive/2008-05-27/a-time-to-lose/ My primary Windows machine, which had happily been running Windows 2000 for nearly 5 years, finally gave up the ghost about two weeks ago. While sad at the loss, I had been contemplating an upgrade for some time, so I broke down and bought the new hardware. Given ... http://toosigma.com/archive/2008-04-12/grr-vista-sucks/ The Chatty DM just posted an excellent article that sums up a lot of what I've been trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to express about D&D 4th Edition. http://toosigma.com/archive/2008-04-06/the-feel-and-design-of-4e/ This is a response to Phil's Global Warming post (also posted as a reply on his site): First, there is no "correct" amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - the concentration has varied dramatically throughout history, sometimes being many times the current value (such as during the Mesozoic Era). Using ... http://toosigma.com/archive/2008-04-02/response-global-warming/