In the spirit of the “How many five year olds can you take in a fight” quiz I wrote about almost two years ago, The Accountant™ passed along the “how many 90 year olds can you take in a fight” quiz.

Some new rules apply here versus the original:

• Everyone is ambulatory (no wheelchairs)
• Everyone is wearing groin protection — this is a big update from the first quiz
• The “arena” is bigger, about the size of a basketball court

My results:

I could take down 35 90 year olds in a fight.

This is all in good fun. If you are thinking about submitting my results before the court, this in no way implies that I would actually take on 35 90 year people at once, or that I would want to.

Let’s be honest: motorcycles don’t have much going for them in the event of a crash. Braking distance is longer for a motorcycle than that of a car, stability is compromised at lower speeds, and then there’s that whole “fly off the bike” thing if you collide with an object.

The two big advantages motorcycles have over automobiles are acceleration and size. You’ll need them both when an automobile attempts to change lanes into you. Here’s what I do to avoid lane incursions.
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Mental Floss has a really sweet quiz on matching Monopoly Chance and Community Chest art to the right card. It’s a twelve question quiz. Unfortunately the usability of the quiz sucks, and I had to write down 1 – 12 and cross the numbers off as I made my answers.

http://www.mentalfloss.com/quiz/quiz.php?q=739

I got 9 out of 12, how did you do?

Thanks to Jumbotron for showing me this at work last week.

My buddy Jumbotron sent this to me at work: the Real Age Virtual Age quiz on sonnyradio.com. It’s Flash-based quiz that asks up to 34 questions to determine your “virtual” age and your life expectancy. Your virtual age is how old your body and mind are based on diet, exercise, lifestyle, and family history.

Unfortunately I initially took this test at work, and had my information architecture and usability hat on. I bitched about the poor question phrasing and goofy slider the whole time. For example, the race question is flawed. There’s a radio button that makes you select one race. There needs to be at least a “Mixed” option, but a multiple select would be even better. I imagine the scoring algorithm isn’t complex enough to handle multiple racial vectors.

The answer options are mostly on a scale, and sometimes the scale doesn’t make sense. For example, on the “Male conditions” question answers range from “average” to “bald and stocky.” I’m bald, but not stocky. So where do I put this slider?

Another stupid question was about marital status. “Cheating” is at the bottom, and “Happily married” is at the top. “Married” is one down from “Happily married,” but what if you’re in a happy committed relationship? According to answer slider, being happily committed is less healthy than being not-so-happily married. Weird.

I don’t put too much stock into the results. It’s hard to agree with my virtual age of 23.6 when my right knee is bothering me from over-training with kettlebells. My life expectancy is also really high at 84.4 years. No one in my immediate family has made it past 74. Although I don’t drink or smoke and am not overweight, there are a lot of genetics that have to be overcome.

My final results were:
Virtual Age: 23.6
Your Life Expectancy: 84.4

Give the test a run and report back if you feel like it.

Call of Duty 4 is my favorite Xbox 360 game of all time, and I am anxiously awaiting the launch of Modern Warfare 2 in November. Infinity Ward, makers of the Call of Duty “even” numbered franchises, released this trailer of the upcoming Modern Warfare 2 game for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation3. Watch it and then come back.

Okay, a few thoughts:

1. The title of the trailer mentions the AC-130 gunship … but there was only a few seconds of footage of the new unlockable kill streak reward. What gives? What happens to you when you activate the AC-130 mode? Do you stand still with a lightbulb over your head, like in COD4 when calling down an airstrike? This shit’s important!
2. The game looks much better than COD4, which I thought looked pretty good when I first bought it. The biggest thing that stood out in my mind was the greenhouse scene in the trailer; the detail and lighting is a lot more vivid than the original Modern Warfare.
3. The weapons look great, does anyone know what the rifle with the radar readout on the left side is supposed to be?
4. I like that the overall team score in the lower left hand corner now has a very simple “WINNING” or “LOSING” status. It would be even better if you could customize the user interface. I don’t really care about the score, I just care about winning or losing. If I could get rid of the score altogether I’d do that in a hot second.
5. I don’t like that there are a ton of status messages that appear right in the center of the screen. Yeah, it’s cool to see that you just stopped DonkeyRapingShitEater from an 11-kill killstreak, but do I really need that flashed up in big letters in the center of my HUD?

   

6. Is it November yet? This might be the first game I’ve ever pre-ordered and scheduled a day off for.

I found this linked up from the Lounge forum on Ars Technica: a lady plays popular movie soundtracks on her Yamaha Electone electric organ. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but I was blown away by the performance.

The lady performs all of the major parts of the orchestra by herself simultaneously using the Electone. By what I can tell she doesn’t have any part of the score pre-programmed into the machine. There are times in the video where she adjusts some settings, but I don’t think that makes her job any easier.

I searched for “star wars electone” on found more videos, so if you like this one give the others a try.

Okay, I admit it. I’m a sucker for the Keyboard Cat Internet meme. The concept is simple: take a video on the Web that involves some sort of disaster, and mix in a cat playing a goofy tune on a keyboard.

I have many Keyboard Cat favorites: the two people trying to wheelchair backwards down an escalator, a breakdancer vs a baby, and the fat lady dancing on a flimsy table.

However, my latest favorite involves four teenagers, some stupid behavior, and the need for a full-face helmet:

No matter how bad your Monday is today, just remember you could be this kid.

I have spent a ton of money with personal and home office computer parts and electronics e-tailer newegg.com. Their prices are usually very competitive, but the reason I keep shopping with them is their fast order fulfillment, and easy return process. When they offer free shipping on items, it only sweetens the deal.

NewEgg recently added a search option for “Free Shipping,” which is good — except that the search option isn’t available on every page. I don’t know why, and I don’t know the combination of searching criteria and options that enables the “Free Shipping” variable.

What I did, however, is find out how to modify NewEgg’s product URL in order to only report back items that qualify for free shipping.
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Have you ever gone to a favorite Web site, only to see a cryptic error instead of a blog about zombies, motorcycles, and guns? Worried that your connection is jacked, or curious if the Web site is down? Check out Down For Everyone or Just Me, a Web site that attempts to contact the same Web site you are.
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The latest trailer for the Transformer: Revenge of the Fallen movie is up on YouTube and Apple.com. The sequel to the 2007 summer blockbuster features the original cast and a bunch of new Transformers.
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