Longtime readers of this blog will be familiar with an early post entitled “Party Like A Rock Star” in which friend of the blog Kat! wrote about kids drinking energy drinks as a legal substitute for alcohol. Energy Fiend has taken this idea a step further by giving caffeine junkies a tool to calculate exactly how much hyper-caffeinated beverage they can imbibe before they die of caffeine overdose. The appropriately titled “Death By Caffeine” calculator can be found here.

For the record, Wired X294 had the highest caffeine concentration I could find, with a whopping 294g of caffeine per serving. After pounding 44.11 cans, I’d be a dead man. You have been warned. Happy calculating!

Thanks, Preston.

OK, so I have some doubts as to whether this is really a MENSA-sponsored competition (The Washington Post had nothing on it when I did a search of their website), but I thought they were funny so I’ll post them up anyway.

The Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are this year’s {2005} winners:

1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

2. Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.

3. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.

9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

11. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

12. Karmageddon: It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.

13. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

14. Glibido: All talk and no action.

15. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

16. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.

17. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

18. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.

Some people look like movie stars. In fact, they probably get comments about it all the time. They may even get a shot at being a double in a film. I am not one of those people. Now, as a kid, I got it a lot more. Apparently I had a strong resemblance to Macaulay Culkin. Fortunately, as I’ve matured (debatable) or at least gotten older, I look less and less like him. But now that’s left me without a celebrity lookalike. Enter: the MyHeritage Face Recognition program. This AJAX-based program actually analyzes the facial features of any frontal face shot you submit and returns a list of celebrities whose features best match yours. Check it out, it’s pretty sweet. And for the record, I now have a strong similarity to Brendan Fraser. Huh.

I was cleaning out my little brother’s room a couple of days ago, and I came across an interesting little pamphlet entitled “Men of Metal: Eyewitness Accounts of Humanoid Robots,” purporting to be an excerpt from a book written by a British journalist who had chronicled the paranormal happenings in the countryside surrounding the town of Oxford, England. When I was a kid, I was a sucker for Sasquatch, the Loch Ness monster, the Abominable Snowman, the Bermuda Triangle, and pretty much everything else. So naturally, I was fascinated by this new twist of the paranormal. As I started to read, I became engrossed by this well-written, believable account of a journalist who was investigating the reports of giant androids roaming the Oxford countryside, aiding motorists who were in danger. As his investigation proceeded, he came across the name of Dr. Colin Mahew, a design engineer and robotics enthusiast who was involved with the Mini Cooper’s design team. Though his questions to the good doctor were fruitless, the journalist was led to believe that Mahew had “overengineered” the Mini Cooper to allow it to be retrofitted to become a gigantic android. The pamphlet’s arguments were interesting and didn’t smell of conspiracy theory, but being the unbeliever that I am, despite my early interests, I packed the pamphlet away, intending not to think about it again. However, I had this nagging recollection of a graphic design site that I visited some time ago that featured some transformer-esque Mini Cooper androids. So today I decided to let the all-powerful Google answer my questions.

What I turned up wasn’t really shocking, actually. These androids actually exist! In fact, they can be seen starring in this commercial. But seriously, apparently the marketing firm that BMW had hired placed these false book excerpts in Automobile, Rolling Stone, and other magazines to create a buzz. There were fake websites created to corroborate the story, thus lending credibility to the tale of android Mini Coopers. Ultimately, the hoax was unveiled in the form of toys and a prominent ad in downtown New York. So in the end it was all just a clever marketing ploy, but it was definitely memorable, and somewhat viral. There was definitely a lot of discussion previous to the hoax’s resolution. So that’s the story. There are no giant android-Mini Coopers roaming the Oxford countryside. That’s because they’re in Oregon, hanging out with Bigfoot.

Permit me to indulge in some work-related geekiness, but I came across this really cool product today, and I had to say something about it. I’ve been using Matrox stuff for years. In fact, one of the only times my dad actually paid for a name-brand video card, he bought a Matrox card. And if I remember right, X-Wing: Special Edition ran like a champ on it. Ever since then, I’ve had a pretty high opinion of the company.

So we’ve been selling this Matrox DualHead2Go at work, and it’s been a great product for us. Basically, it lets you add extra monitors to your computer to increase your desktop space, which is a really cool concept to me. As an aside, I just want to say how sold on multi-monitor desktops I am. I have two monitors here at work, and this week one of them broke. So there I sat, in front of my lone monitor, and tried to get down to work. Yet, somehow, without that extra monitor, I couldn’t accomplish anything. I felt cramped, restricted, hamstrung, whatever. I just couldn’t work, and it was misery. What a relief when my replacement monitor showed back up. It was one of the best days of work ever.

So let that experience preface what I am about to tell you. Matrox has announced the big brother of the DualHead2Go. That’s right, prepare yourselves for the TripleHead2Go! (Duhn duhn duhn) So I thought this was really cool. Now you can hook up three 19″ monitors to your computer’s VGA port for a ridiculous amount of desktop real estate. I found the way it works to be fascinating. Apparently, the TripleHead2Go fools your computer into thinking that it’s dealing with one giant monitor instead of three separate monitors placed side-by-side. Matrox pointed out that this setup is great for gaming. You can set the monitors up so that there is a wraparound-style image, so even your peripheral vision gets sucked into the illusion. Anyway, the thought of having that much space makes me giddy, so I’ll stop, but if you’ve got an extra $300 sitting around, and you’re willing to wait until April, you can pick the Matrox TripleHead2Go at SewellDirect.

So tonight I attended the “Radio From Heck Friends of the Program Utah County Outreach Ice Cream Social” (RFHFOPUCOICS) or something like that. Basically, it was all you can eat ice cream courtesy of Meadow Gold Dairy. Let me first say that Meadow Gold is no slouch at making ice cream. And, by direct association, at making me sick as well. As a hint to my loyal readers, Taco Smell and ice cream are NOT a good combo. Take my word for it. In addition, at said social, I met Miss Utah, won some free tickets to the Dinosaur Museum and Gardens at Thanksgiving Point, and chilled with the kids from the Radio From Hell morning show. All told, not a bad evening. In conclusion, x96 mixers: two thumbs up.

Short note about my encounter with Miss Utah: So she offered her autograph to us, as we were sitting at her table, which I thought was quite sporting of her. Yet, somehow, even though she could come up with something for the rest of my friends there, when she got to me she drew a blank. (Should I be concerned? Or flattered?) Anyway, I digress. Her friends told her to write something yearbook style, and she confided that she had never signed yearbooks. (What!?! How do you get to be Miss Utah without signing a few yearbooks on your way up?) Anyway, I told her to write “Have a great summer! Call me!” Much to my surprise, I am now the proud owner of a photo of Miss Utah, autographed with “Have a great summer! Call me!” Sweet. Yet, somehow, she forgot to write her number down on the picture. Hmmm…