Brian A. Paul

Bunnie over at Bunnie: Studios posted the answer to the name that ware November riddle, which I wrote about previously. I suggest you click through for a full explanation and photos but let’s just say that my “That must be some kind of MP3 player with Secure Digital expansion slot” was not only too simplistic but way off the mark besides. At least I know when I’m in over my head, which is why I didn’t hazard a guess in the comments.

Bunnie’s stated reason for these contests is to foster an interest in reverse engineering and hardware in general. I think that’s pretty cool. A lot of people, myself included, began the road to their technical skill set by looking at what those who came before us had done. I can’t help but imagine there’s some person out there just starting down that path and that fun, interesting challenges such as this will help them gain the passion and enthusiasm they’ll need to make truly great contributions. To me this is exactly the kind of thing that helps build expertise in an industry.

Recently I wrote about the small religious icon I purchased for 50 cents from a vending machine at my local Fry’s Electronics. It turns out that my 2 inch tall, made in China, pope isn’t Benedict XVI at all, he’s ‘Pope Jean Paolo’ which is to say Pope John Paul. I’m not entirely sure whether he represents John Paul I or John Paul II but based on his appearance I would guess John Paul II is who this thing is meant to represent.

All this is very awkward. Not only am I here printing my first correction/retraction but also I’ve been calling him ‘Ben’ in our conversations as he stands around on my desk watching me work. “Ben, do you think we need a unsigned int 10 for this table or an unsigned int 11?” or “Ben, I really just don’t like the way ‘do{’ looks in my editor when implementing a do-while loop so I tend to avoid them, what are your thoughts?” To be fair he never corrected my mistake, but how do you handle the conversation immediately after you’ve been enlightened about your error over someone’s name? Do you confess and apologize? Just switch names like nothing was ever amiss? Tell an inappropriate joke?

I’m sure John Paul and I will work it out, I doubt our friendship is on the rocks. Also, this probably explains why my dog has been giving me funny ‘what the hell are you doing?’ looks whenever I talk to John Paul.

All seriousness aside, candymachines.com clued me in to my faux pas with the following image:

Which is exactly the display that caught my eye initially at Fry’s.

Oh and as one last aside, a 250 count of Santos Figurines Vending Capsules goes for $48.00 plus shipping and handling of $12.75 which works out to $60.75. That comes to $0.24 per figurine. Before whatever other costs (fuel, person to keep the machine stocked) come into play, they made 26 cents. I imagine the big earner in this whole scenario is the person who owns the factory in China that makes these things.

The Church of the Customer blog has an interesting piece about a religious order of silent monks and how they sell their beer. I’m not as interested in the ‘niche marketing’ aspect as I am the ‘niche culture’ aspect of the requirements these people place on themselves and others for acquiring this beverage. An interesting aspect of this is that these monks prohibit the resale of their beer. If you think you’ve found a source for this beer other than directly from this abbay then you are either looking at a counterfeit or at someone who has agreed not to re-sell the beer and then done so anyway. I certainly would love to try this this stuff but I think my wife would have some reservations about me hoping a plane to Belgium to buy a beer.

Articles like this open up a whole world of possibilities in my mind. How many other monastic orders, artistic enclaves, or other small groups of people organized around some principal or goal are producing unique things for consumption? Also, is it entirely possible that these monks have always sold their beer this way and that it has just become anachronistic to my sensibilities because of cultural or temporal divide? I wonder if at one time beer sold this way was just the way things were done and it only looks strange and cool to me because of my perspective.

As my friend Loren Says:

“Any fight is pretty much over when the other guy starts throwing his head at you.”

I caught this post over at BoingBoing regarding special rules for Canadian winners of a Starbucks sweepstakes. Essentially if you win and you’re Canadian then you also have to solve some sort of math problem. For a few minutes I went through all the screwy reasons I could think of that this might be the case and then it suddenly occurred to me that Starbucks has no plainly visible business reason for implementing this clause. Canadians aren’t any worse at math than anyone else, generally speaking, so this doesn’t look like some kind of loophole that would allow Starbucks to decline payment of the prize. That being the case I quickly came to the conclusion that something this asinine must have origins in the law. Viola, Wikipedia knows all:

“Notably, Canada and several European countries require entrants to solve a mathematical puzzle, making it a contest of skill, in order to overcome requirements that would classify sweepstakes as a form of gambling.”

In this case specifically, avoiding breaking the law seems to be the idea. Now, I entertain myself with what kind of mathematical operation might be required of the winner. 1 + 1 if they’re blatantly side-stepping the law or possibly one of these if they’re more interested in holding onto their prize. Correct if I’m wrong but I believe that in the U.S. the prize must be placed in escrow (the company offering the prize cannot keep it even if no winner is forthcoming) for the sweepstakes to be legal.