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Now that we have a piano, I figured we might as well get some use out of it.

I’ve been practicing some songs, which is actually pretty laughable because the last official piano lesson I had was probably 35 years ago. At the time, I really didn’t want to take lessons, but agreed to slog through them until I could play the main theme from Star Wars, at which point I would consider myself an accomplished pianist and quit my lessons. And so it was. Now, 35 years later, I can barely read music and I have no idea how to place my hands on the keyboard. But hey, how hard can it be, right?

I’ve managed to figure out a few songs (right hand only!) and even play them in seminary without too many snickers from the kids.

I told my friend Dave– who is a very talented musician– that maybe within a year I’d be at a point where I could jam with him. Hah! Onward and upward.

I’m working on my Halloween costume and found something I need on Amazon. The product description has me a little confused, though:

Although I’m glad it’s “carefully manufactured, tested, inspected, checked and packaged by experienced workers” (we can’t have inexperienced workers doing this sort of thing!) I don’t know if the ankle cuffs are elastic or non-elastic…

Holy cow I thought this was hilarious. It’s true… so painfully true. But if you’ve never read one of these books as a kid, you will completely, absolutely, unequivocally not understand this joke.

Yeah, I’m an adult. Yet I still derive some crazy sense of glee and fulfillment when I open a Tootsie Pop and see the native American shooting a star on the wrapper.

Everyone knows that’s lucky.

Apparently I lost my business credit card… I last used it at a restaurant in downtown Denver, but I called them and they haven’t found it. I can’t track it down in my car, or the laundry, or anywhere sensible. So I resigned myself to calling Chase to get a replacement, dreading the complicated maze of their customer service phone tree and then the inevitable security verifications.

As it turned out, I was able to login to my account online, click a link for “Replacement credit card”, and confirm which card I wanted to replace. BAM. Apparently a new card will arrive in a few days.

It’s nice to be pleasantly surprised by a big bank…

Now that we have a pinball machine in the house (temporarily), I’ve had to learn a few things about it. One of the flippers started to “stick” a bit, making it hard to play at times. I opened up the case to see if it was something obvious and easy to fix. I’m not exactly Mr. Fixit.

As it turns out, the guts of a pinball machine are amazingly complex. I guess it’s not too surprising, since they’re mainly mechanical, but I shudder to think what would happen if I had to do a serious repair.

This is beneath the playfield:

There are solenoids everywhere!

And here are a few ball’s-eye shots from the surface of the playfield:

Fortunately in this maze of wiring, I was able to figure out a few adjustments I could make to get the flipper back in line. Now it’s back to attempting to get a new high score (I’m the record-holder at 356 million points, beating Zack’s previous high of 333 million)…

There are so many people in this world who are much more clever than me.

Well played, whoever you are.

As I’ve been listening to Pandora, I’ve noticed that many of the ads are targeted at people in the “greater Albany area”.

Modern browsers have the ability to send location data to sites that request it, so I figured maybe something weird was going on there. Perhaps the IP address associated with my internet connection was somehow linked to an ISP in Albany?

Then it hit me. In my Pandora profile, I’d given my ZIP code as 12345. That’s Schenectady, New York… about 30 minutes from Albany. Schenectady is my old standby whenever a site asks for a ZIP code and has no real need for it. Take that, Pandora advertisers!

Last night I read a fascinating study of people in elevators by a psychologist named Lane Longfellow. By “fascinating” I mean “I can’t believe someone actually studied this, but it’s fun and cool and exactly what you’d expect”. Here are the highlights of the study:

See? Fascinating!