Javabeans!

I just found the 1991 Maryland Ren Fest program when going through some boxes. I wasn't part of the Fest back then, but some of you were there! It was my first visit...

The year was 1535, Baron Deiter was in town to collect 500 years of back taxes, and the Seymour family is foisting daughter Jane off as a potential replacement for the insuffiently fertile Anne Boleyn.


Bill Huttel as King Henry VIII
Mary Ann Jung as Queen Anne Boleyn
Tom Plott as Suffolk
Theresa Flynn as Jane Seymour
Randy Dalmas as her brother, Edward
Stephon Walker as Baron Deiter
dashrippington as a Royal Guard (my, oh my, has he gone downhill since then!)

Tim Shaw was in "The Pyrates" (not listed as Pyrates Royale)

The village was headed by Mayor Bribeworthy (David Marsh) and his sister Lady Rhiannon (Mia Reeves)

Stephen Denz as Dr. Croaker

On the map, there was no Thistledew (Um, I mean Fortune) or Jury Rig or archery booth. Near the joust arena was the "Chess Stage" and the Red Barrel. There was a Center Stage (where Piland's is now) and a Symphonious Stage (where the Climbing Wall is now). I don't see a Gatehouse Stage, but the Lyric, Globe, and Royal are there.

Special event days were Children-Free weekend (I mean, children got free admission); Deaf awareness day, Scottish weekend, and Seniors day.

The season was eight weekends, and the day started at 10:30, with the royal arrival at 11, the third joust at 5:30, and pub sing at 6 at the Red Barrel.

One of the foods was cannon balls (deep fried breaded meatballs on a stick!)

Hmmmm w-4 form. How many allowances should I claim? If I can claim 5, should I? Maybe I should claim 3 instead. What will the impact on my paycheck be?

Here's a great Paycheck calculator that will approximate your paycheck based on your annual salary, number of state and federal allowances, etc.

You can use it to see the impact of changing your allowances.

(the "free" calculator works just fine, no need to upgrade)

Does LJ create persistant active content upon leaving the site?

I'm getting active content warnings whenever I go to my (local) homepage after visiting LJ, and I know there's no active content on my homepage.

Thomas Edison gets credit for inventing the phonograph, but according to this MSNBC article, sound was being recorded for decades prior to Edison's device. So what's the big deal with Edison? He was the first to play back the recorded sound.

Apparently, there is a new method of breaking into houses called "lock bumping." This involves using a easy-to-make key and a hammer to open most house locks (including dead bolts) in about three seconds.

Here's a video newscast describing it:

Newscast video at YouTube


And here's the Snopes article confirming that it's not an urban legend:

SNOPES about lock bumping

Here's another website that explains why common "cylinder-type" locks are vulnerable. It also notes that with bumping, there is no sign of forced entry, which makes it more difficult to file insurance claims and police reports.

So what can you do? Well, bumping works with many locks, but not all. Soem newer lock types have complex mechanisms that prevent bumping, and electronic locks are not susceptible. Unfortunately the bump-proof locks can be expensive, and you may have multiple entries to your home.

For a while, I've been under the impression that the caffeine ration of soda:tea:coffee is roughly 1:2:4, but what are the actual numbers? Here are a couple of web sites that help answer that.

The first web site basically shows that caffenated sodas are about 25 to 50 mg per 12oz can. Tea is about 50mg per 8 oz, and coffee more than 100mg per 8 oz. There is some variability.

The second web site gives more details, but isn't great for direct comparisons.

Have you ever wondered about the word "mall"? What an odd word, especially as it applies to the big open area in DC and to large enclosed shopping buildings.

The word seems to have its origins, oddly enough, in the Italian maglio which means mallet. Already you can see some connection, eh?

A game called pallamaglio (palla = ball) involved hitting a ball with a mallet through an iron ring, similar to croquette. The game was played in an alley or shaded walkway. In England the game and such an area both acquired the name pall-mall, or simply mall.

From there, the word evolved to mean any area for pedestrians, such as the big open green space between the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial, or an indoor area lined with shops.

Oddly enough, the expression "pell mell" seems to have no relations to any of the above, coming from the French pele-mele which goes back to the Old French for "to meddle."

This problem doesn't have the romance of the great classics, like Fermat's last theorem, or the Riemann hypothesis, but it's a neat question that you don't need a degree in mathematics to understand. It was first proposed about thirty years ago, and was only recently solved.

Known as the road coloring problem, the basic idea is this: you've got a set of locations (maybe houses in a city) and paths between them (roads). Color all the roads (some will be the same color). For any given destination, can you give a set of directions (road colors) that will work no matter where you start. For example, suppose the directions to the Baltimore Aquarium were "orange blue blue red green" -- then from anywhere in Baltimore you could take an orange street, then a blue, another blue, a red, and a green, and you'd be there! One trick, of course, is how to set up the colors. For the problem to work, you need certain restrictions on the map (so you are physically able to get from any point to any other point, and you can't get stuck in an infinite loop, like being stuck in a traffic circle!)

The wikipedia link above has a better, mathematical example.

Borders (yes, the book store chain) stock has dropped dramatically in the last year, from a several-year average of about $23 to a low of about $8 yesterday, and today has been slammed to about half of that.

I know there was some talk of a Barnes-and-Noble purchase of Borders, but is B&N really doing any better in this Amazon/Wall-mart world?

EDIT: Apparently they are open to the idea of merger/sell-out, but they also have enough funding to continue operations for at least a year while they try to rearrange their business model. They'll probably sell-off more international subsidiaries, and create their own e-store (they've been working with Amazon). They'll probably change their Borders Rewards program again too.