Nick's Blog » Entertainment

Tastes Like Freedom!

Nick — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:30:47 +0000

Here’s the part of the 4th of July cake Bryn didn’t show you:

It was a hit at the party.

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Woot “We Got Acquired By Amazon” Rap Video

Nick — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 12:30:22 +0000

Woot.com, the famous one-deal-a-day site, was bought by Amazon this week. So they made a video explaining the sell-out in a very non-sell-out kind of way.

I thought the video was pretty great. And love the Zappos shout-out in there too.

Maybe someday I can sell my company and make a monkey puppet rap music video about it. Which is every entrepreneur’s dream.

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Test Your World Geography IQ

Nick — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:30:21 +0000

This is a fun game from TripAdvisor / TravelPod. It starts out pretty easy but gets much harder. I made it to Level 10!

Go here to play the game: http://www.tripadvisor.com/TIQGame

It looks like there’s different settings so you can play a US-only version if that might help your score.

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A History Lesson With Jon Stewart

Nick — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 12:30:58 +0000

I enjoyed this one.

An Energy-Independent Future
www.thedailyshow.com

Talk is cheap. If we were serious, we would have taken action.

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Captain Obvious

Nick — Tue, 25 May 2010 12:30:35 +0000

This is the kind of thing I find entertaining. My package of Delta airplane peanuts was clearly labeled PEANUTS on the front and listed “Peanuts roasted in peanut and/or canola oil” as the first ingredient. Yet they felt it necessary to provide the following allergy warning statement:

“Produced in a facility that processes peanuts and other nuts.”

Who is this warning for? The allergic semi-suicidal customer debating whether or not to risk his life on the off-chance this bag loudly proclaiming to contain peanuts is really full of imitation, allergy-safe peanuts processed in a peanut-free environment?

I can think of two real reasons why the King Nut Company prints this warning. Perhaps they were sued by a non-fictional version of the above customer, and the jury decided the company didn’t do enough to warn the customer of the contents of the bag. Now they go out of their way to cover their butt.

But more likely is that it is required by law. Silly to have on a bag of peanuts of course, but valuable to have on other less-obviously-nutty items.

Another one for the Captain Obvious files: While in New York, I saw a sign for “Japanese Sushi.” Is there any other kind?

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Interesting

Nick — Thu, 13 May 2010 12:30:39 +0000

Angle-in parking certainly is easier, but it’s inefficient; you end up with wasted space on both ends of the row. And then there was this guy who parked next to me at Trader Joe’s on Sunday.

Sure, nobody parks perfect 100% of the time. But I’m amazed anyone would park like this on a busy Sunday and think, “I’m good.” I was in the stall to his right, wanting deeply to somehow leave a huge scrape on his passenger side without damaging my ride as I eased out with an inch of clearance.

Your compact pickup with canopy says, “I’m hardworking, but practical.” Your Vallejo license plate holder suggests a blue-collar upbringing and perhaps a built-in respect for others. But your actions say, “I’m lazy and don’t give a shit about anyone else.” You’re an enigma, sir.

I guess it was a victimless crime so it’s really not a big deal. But seriously what a toolbox.

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MLB’s Beat the Streak

Nick — Tue, 11 May 2010 12:30:28 +0000

For a $3 million prize sponsored by MLB.com, can you put together a 57-game hitting streak? Each day you get to pick one player, and if they get a hit, you live to play again tomorrow. If not, you start over and begin chasing DiMaggio from zero again.

Simple enough. The odds of winning are obviously very small, but it can’t be harder than picking a perfect bracket, right?

Let’s say you pick a different .250 hitter each day (wouldn’t be my first choice but it makes the math easier), and that they always get 4 at bats. In theory, you’ve got it made, if your guy just does average, goes 1-for-4, you’ll soon be collecting that cool $3 mill. But in real life, your guy is not a robot. Every 4th at bat doesn’t guarantee a hit; he could go 0-for-9, then get three hits in a row and still be .250.

So what are your odds of Beating the Streak?

First, we have to find a player’s odds of getting at least one hit in a game. Since the number of hits above 1 doesn’t matter, it is easier to work backwards and find his odds of going 0-fer. I’m kind of embarrassed to say how long it took me and Bryn to figure this out. If a player is hitting .250, that means he gets out 75% of the time. He’ll get out 75% in his first at bat, 75% in his second, 75% in his third, and so on. So the odds he’ll get out in all four at bats in the game is:

(1 – batting average)^(# of at bats) = Probability of going 0-fer

.750^4 = .3164

Conversely, his odds of getting at least one hit is 1 – .3164, or .6836.

A .250 hitter will hit safely in roughly 68% of his games. To calculate his odds of hitting safely for 57 games in a row, we raise .6836 to the 57th power.

.6836^57 = 0.00000000038

Put another way, a career .250 hitter has about a 1 in 2.6 billion chance of “beating the streak.”

But of course nobody picks the .250 hitters! Your odds improve dramatically the better hitters you choose:

.300 hitters – 1 in 6.2 million
.350 hitters – 1 in 73,715
.400 hitters – 1 in 2,729

MLB.com tries to help by showing you the upcoming match-ups where batters have the highest career average against the scheduled opposing starter. These match-ups look great on paper, but as I learned in Baseball Between the Numbers, they almost always fall within the range of randomness, and given a larger sample size, the numbers will likely revert toward average. In other words, the career .300 hitter that is batting .500 against the upcoming pitcher is “due” to make some outs, and might not make a great pick to keep your streak alive.

Here’s my game plan: look at the top 10 hitters in the league, and see who has the weakest opponent the next day, taking into account both the opposing team and the pitcher. I’ll let you know how long I make it.

According to MLB.com, the longest streak ever in this contest is 49 games. Very impressive!

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Wedding Registry

Nick — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 12:30:01 +0000

Haha if we register I can totally see myself in this guy:

Looking forward to abusing my scanner gun privileges.

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Rebel

Nick — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 12:30:54 +0000

The owner of this snowboard throws up a giant F-U to Kirkwood’s management:

Still, not as good as the people at Sea-Tac smoking directly under the no-smoking signs. Civil disobedience — it tastes like freedom!

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Teatro Zinzanni

Nick — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 12:30:45 +0000

Thanks to mom and dad, we had a couple gift cards for Teatro Zinzanni San Francisco. For our anniversary Friday, it seemed like good timing for the dinner-and-a-show musical circus theater. The risk is you might become part of the entertainment. Teatro Zinzanni is well-known for choosing audience members to “help” with the show.

Of course they chose me.

The plot details of my sketch are a little fuzzy. Something about the secret ingredient to the kitchen’s salad dressing. Either way, it involved a large woman seducing me (or vice versa?), a German alias (Herr Mochi), a robe and a fez, some top-shelf cocktails garnished with Froot Loops and gummi-worms, and me getting squirted in the face with water from this lady’s boob.

Unfortunately for me, the top-shelf alcy I poured turned out to be just colored water. But as you can see, the woman was quite the looker:

Turns out I got off easy. The next audience-members selected had to sing and dance in an Elimidate-style competition for her love!

I don’t really have a problem being in front of large groups, giving presentations or something like that, but just get nervous when I don’t have any say in what happens next.

In the end though, I’m glad I got chosen, so we got the full Zinzanni “experience.” But I feel like you should get some free drinks or something since all the other audience members are laughing at your expense. And afterward I was free to enjoy the rest of the show without risk of being on stage again.

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