I Had A Random Thought...

[Reyturner]

An hour to make something delicious and 10 mins clean up isn't worth the 30 seconds it takes for me to eat.

 

[undermind9]

I don't really care for roller coasters, mostly because if you ever want to ride on one, you have to wait somewhere between 30 minutes and 3 hours. Waiting in line for something that only lasts a fraction of the time you waited in line is something that really annoys me.

 

mm, gotta get in on those sweet exclusive days.  Last time at 6-flags Chicago was "3M Day" and had to have gotten tickets through 3M staff (big vendor of mine and knew a gal who worked there).  It was pre-summer season and place was at roughly half capacity, not all carnival or food stands were open, but rides were going and waits were <5 minutes with the quick half-way turn around gates all opened up.

 

Of course its usually massive corporations that have enough people buying in to subsidize something like this, but occasionally a local radio station will get it promo organized as well.

 

 

to the root question, I have a limited concern of heights (heights arent the problem, weird fear of jumping is).  My joy comes from the anticipation at the top of the hill and the weird feeling in your gut when going over the drops - yet in a controlled safe environment (whereas airplane turbulence is not enjoyable).  

[Badfinger]

Do you just... not go to theme/amusement parks? Because that's all that really is.

 

No I do not, because roller coasters suck. Same as horror games. I do my best to avoid being scared because scared is bad.

[jennegatron]

6-flags Chicago 

 

Raging Bull is the greatest roller coaster of all time.

[Ben X]

It's apparently National Fried Chicken Day. Should I go with KFC, Popeyes, or Church's Chicken?

I don't know the other two, but I recommend a KFC bucket with two sides of gravy. Mmmm-mmm.

[JonCole]

I took the lazy man's option of not driving out to any chicken place, and instead ordering fried chicken wings from my regular Chinese takeaway. I do not regret my decision -

 

[Golden Calf]

If the program I wrote is correct (I think it is), the number of ways to make change, using only pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters is as follows:

 

    $10 -             142511

   $100 -          134235101

  $1000 -       133423351001

 $10000 -    133342333510001

$100000 - 133334233335100001

 

I have never seen this numerical behavior before (the expanding sections of 3, 3, and 0), and thought it was interesting. The largest result took several minutes to run, so I don't know how long it continues. I don't know if this has been described before, or if it has any significance, but I thought it was cool.

[jennegatron]

If the program I wrote is correct (I think it is), the number of ways to make change, using only pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters is as follows:

 

    $10 -             142511

   $100 -          134235101

  $1000 -       133423351001

 $10000 -    133342333510001

$100000 - 133334233335100001

 

I have never seen this numerical behavior before (the expanding sections of 3, 3, and 0), and thought it was interesting. The largest result took several minutes to run, so I don't know how long it continues. I don't know if this has been described before, or if it has any significance, but I thought it was cool.

 

 

This is a combinatorics problem! (aka my 2nd favorite sub-discipline in Mathematics).

All I can think about are generating functions & expansions and it's tickling all the parts of my brain that the best kind of Math does. I will think about this some more and figure out if I can describe this pattern in a thoughtful way.

[dibs]

Calf. If you rerun with euro coins what happens? We have 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50c and 1 and 2 euro if you so wish.

[Ninety-Three]

There is this recurring joke shared among me and my friends, which looks like this:

 

[snoop Dogg comes up in conversation]

"When he plays basketball, he's Hoop Dogg."

"When he plays horror games, he's Spoop Dogg."

...
"When he's performing stable time travel, he's Loop Dogg."
"When Mario jumps on him leaving only a shell, he's Koopa Dogg."
"When his clones form a telepathic hivemind, they refer to themselves as Group Dogg."

 

We somehow fixate on a phrase and start doing wordplay with it until we exhaust pretty much every rhyming and vaguely-rhyming word, our explanations growing increasingly elaborate as we try to fit the more difficult words to the situation. The reason I bring this up is to ask A: Does anyone else do this, and B: Is there a name for it? We recently realized we have no idea what to call this activity, and we couldn't figure out a good one.

[Dewar]

The most recent Giant Bomb East podcast had some of that. I think it's fairly common, though I've never done it myself.

[tberton]

If the program I wrote is correct (I think it is), the number of ways to make change, using only pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters is as follows:

 

    $10 -             142511

   $100 -          134235101

  $1000 -       133423351001

 $10000 -    133342333510001

$100000 - 133334233335100001

 

I have never seen this numerical behavior before (the expanding sections of 3, 3, and 0), and thought it was interesting. The largest result took several minutes to run, so I don't know how long it continues. I don't know if this has been described before, or if it has any significance, but I thought it was cool.

 

If you noodle on this a bit more, you should submit it to the On-line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences.

[Golden Calf]

Calf. If you rerun with euro coins what happens? We have 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50c and 1 and 2 euro if you so wish.

 

Fortunately, I was able to drastically speed up the program (at the cost of quite a bit of memory - 64 bits per cent of desired total). My results with those denominations are:

  €10 -           321335886

 €100 -    1133873304647601

€1000 - 2575420646487095281

 

Unfortunately, however, at €10000 the result overflows an unsigned 64-bit integer and becomes uninterpretable. The values grow much more quickly with the increased number of denominations to choose from. Also, I'm not able to discern any pattern in those results anyway.

 

 

If you noodle on this a bit more, you should submit it to the On-line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences.

 

Cool, I'll check that out. I may modify the program to use larger integers, to see how much further the original pattern continues, but I haven't done that before so I don't know how long it would take.

 

Also, you can get the desired result by finding the Maclaurin series for 1/((1-x)(1-x^5)(1-x^10)(1-x^25)), then finding the coefficient for the term with the power of desired cents. E.g. for $10, you find the coefficient of the x^1000 term. However, my math skills are so pathetically rusty at this point that I doubt any further investigation in this direction will be fruitful.

[osmosisch]

There is this recurring joke shared among me and my friends, which looks like this:

 

 

We somehow fixate on a phrase and start doing wordplay with it until we exhaust pretty much every rhyming and vaguely-rhyming word, our explanations growing increasingly elaborate as we try to fit the more difficult words to the situation. The reason I bring this up is to ask A: Does anyone else do this, and B: Is there a name for it? We recently realized we have no idea what to call this activity, and we couldn't figure out a good one.

I don't have a name for it, but I used to do it with friends with Kermit the frog and Paulus de Boskabouter. In Dutch so it won't really translate.

[Patrick R]

There is something I find unspeakably moving and powerful about the song "Tarzan Boy" by Baltimora and it confuses the fuck out of me.

 

 

Honestly all the connections I have to this song are gross homophobic YTMND memes and the ending of TMNT III. I don't know why I would possibly be so affected by it. Best I can figure is that it feels so irrepressibly triumphant, combined with the fact that the lead singer died of AIDS. Like, somehow my brain interprets this as this defiant shout of gay pride? It's fucking weird, but here I am choking up watching this totally ridiculous music video. 

 

Are there any pieces of low or cheesy pop culture that nonetheless fills you with intense emotions?

[Ben X]

We somehow fixate on a phrase and start doing wordplay with it until we exhaust pretty much every rhyming and vaguely-rhyming word, our explanations growing increasingly elaborate as we try to fit the more difficult words to the situation. The reason I bring this up is to ask A: Does anyone else do this, and B: Is there a name for it? We recently realized we have no idea what to call this activity, and we couldn't figure out a good one.

 

Well, my friends and I often get into pun wars. Say, if we're talking about someone who loves cheese, we'll all make a load of dreadful cheese puns until we've exhausted it. There's also a pun thread in pretty much every AV Club comments section ever.

[dibs]

Fortunately, I was able to drastically speed up the program (at the cost of quite a bit of memory - 64 bits per cent of desired total). My results with those denominations are:

  €10 -           321335886

 €100 -    1133873304647601

€1000 - 2575420646487095281

 

Unfortunately, however, at €10000 the result overflows an unsigned 64-bit integer and becomes uninterpretable. The values grow much more quickly with the increased number of denominations to choose from. Also, I'm not able to discern any pattern in those results anyway.

 

 

 

Cool, I'll check that out. I may modify the program to use larger integers, to see how much further the original pattern continues, but I haven't done that before so I don't know how long it would take.

 

Also, you can get the desired result by finding the Maclaurin series for 1/((1-x)(1-x^5)(1-x^10)(1-x^25)), then finding the coefficient for the term with the power of desired cents. E.g. for $10, you find the coefficient of the x^1000 term. However, my math skills are so pathetically rusty at this point that I doubt any further investigation in this direction will be fruitful.

Thanks! Also, uncool result^^ Stick to the US coins.

[tberton]

There is this recurring joke shared among me and my friends, which looks like this:

 

 

We somehow fixate on a phrase and start doing wordplay with it until we exhaust pretty much every rhyming and vaguely-rhyming word, our explanations growing increasingly elaborate as we try to fit the more difficult words to the situation. The reason I bring this up is to ask A: Does anyone else do this, and B: Is there a name for it? We recently realized we have no idea what to call this activity, and we couldn't figure out a good one.

 

You should listen to The Flop House. It's a podcast about bad movies, but like Idle Thumbs or My Brother, My Brother and Me, it oftens devolves into complete nonsense. One of the hosts' preferred vectors of nonsense is the very game you describe. They call it "Words that sound like other words." For a good example of it, listen to Episode 158: Labor Day, where playing this game leads them to craft an elaborate story where Alan Ruck was king of the elves.

[Zeusthecat]

Jared Fogle versus Prince William. Yeah it's not a perfect comparison but they both have that lifeless, dead inside look hiding behind those freakishly toothy smiles.

 

[Mangela Lansbury]

I'm flying next Wednesday and I accidentally bought the kind of ticket that doesn't let me upgrade to priority boarding. I am super bummed out. I hate being in that final crush of people trying to board the plane, having to make the choice between maybe being forced to check your bag if you just wait and get on last and fighting disgruntled businessmen and stressed out families for a spot in the line to board.

 

The ever-tightening arc of people nonchalantly standing around the gate like, "oh, don't mind me, I'm just here checking my phone, not much going on, just chillin at the airport and picked this spot for no real reason," is just the worst.

[jennegatron]

I'm flying next Wednesday and I accidentally bought the kind of ticket that doesn't let me upgrade to priority boarding. I am super bummed out. I hate being in that final crush of people trying to board the plane, having to make the choice between maybe being forced to check your bag if you just wait and get on last and fighting disgruntled businessmen and stressed out families for a spot in the line to board.

 

The ever-tightening arc of people nonchalantly standing around the gate like, "oh, don't mind me, I'm just here checking my phone, not much going on, just chillin at the airport and picked this spot for no real reason," is just the worst.

 

Air travel can be so stressful, that, if you're able to, paying extra $ to ease that is so nice, and I'm sorry that you can't afford yourself that : (

 

(I referenced the hot dog as sandwich argument in the I had a random video game thought thread. If you are interested in this weird argument here's what spawned that: http://www.foodrepublic.com/2014/07/29/is-the-hot-dog-a-sandwich-experts-debate/ )

[SuperBiasedMan]

Finally got my internet in the new place, 120Mb/s is sooo good and totally unnecessary since it amounted to a maximum of 15Mb/s downloading on Steam... though that's still ludicrously good.

 

(Weirdly this is basically the lowest speed this provider offered, so I didn't even choose this speed so much as wanted the low level plan)

[eot]

120 Mbit/s = 15 Mb/s

Sure you didn't get it mixed up?

120 Mb/s = 1 Gbit/s

[SuperBiasedMan]

Oh, I got mixed up in my notation. You are correct. That is a lot less ludicrous, but still much better than I'm used to.

[elmuerte]

b = bits

B = bytes

 

So, it's 120 Mb/s = 15 MB/s