The games are pretty quick (about 30 seconds to around 3 minutes), so it’s a good short time waster.  The one part that’s not really intuitive at all is that when you finish one game and it says retry or back to menu, if you go back to the menu after each game, you can see that you earn points for achievements that you can use for upgrades (both their own screens with links from the main menu), which make it easier, gives a few more goals past staying alive, and makes the game longer.

I thought it was fitting for this time of year when the honkers are flying overhead and pooping on the paths around the lakes.  I think Minnie would approve.

Via Kottke.

This was also accompanied by the Tim Tebow drinking game – while watch college football at any point in the last season, drink any time the announcers mention Tim Tebow.  Two if he’s not on the field at the time.  Three if neither of the teams playing in the game you’re watching is Florida.  You get trashed, fast.

I didn’t make much of it, because I thought of the game near the end of the season, and I figured it wouldn’t work after Tebow disappeared into being a backup on some NFL team for a few years.

I was wrong.

Last weekend, I had a preseason NFL game on in the background, and it happened to be the Steelers vs the Broncos.  Did I mention Tebow apparently ended up with the Broncos?  So, I figured I’d try out the old Tim Tebow Drinking Game again.  It still works.  Really well.  I finished a beer in less than one offensive drive.  In maybe 5 minutes of football, the announces said Tebow’s name 14 times.  Which doesn’t count the number of times that they referred to him simply as “He” (and yes, I’m pretty sure they capitalized it while they spoke), because it was obvious who they were talking about, because he was all they were talking about.  For the entire drive.  Which he didn’t even score on.  For reference, if I had held to the “3 if Florida isn’t on the field” clause, that would have been 42 drinks in five minutes, or roughly three and a half cans of beers.

If you care to give it a try, the Vikings and the Broncos will be kicking off their last preseason game shortly (Thursday at 7:30 pm central).

Part of me wants Tebow to be the starter in the regular season so the drinking game can stay alive.  However, another part of me doesn’t want him to start because that part would like to be with me past 40, and it’s name is my liver.

As you may notice on reading the cards, a few (read: almost all) of the squares on that version are vaguely to really, um, not so nice.  And, the squares are mostly the same across cards, just a little shuffled.  Well, Lazy Lightening to the rescue!  (via Because Emily Says So)  Lazy Lightening made up a whole, whole bunch of new ones, with way more options.  Also, there’s a kids edition, which, though less amusing, would seem like a good option for those who don’t want to keep them tucked away for most of the time.  Don’t worry, the new grown up version has some new squares that fit well with the old style ones too (I believe “Cougar on the prowl” is new, among others) though on the whole, it’s a bit more tame (for better or worse, depending on your view).

There’s now a part of me that, knowing these cards are at least reasonably well known now, wants to get together about 5 to 10 people, and dress up to make a complete blackout of one of the cards of the old version and walk around the fair for a day together, just to see how many people get it.

1. I’m that much of a dork
2. It’s sort of fun to see how much you actually remember from geography class (see point 1)

Globetrotter XL has you try to pin point the location of cities around the world.  For each level you have to be a little more accurate to keep going.

Statetris is like Tetris, but instead of colored blocks, you drop states (up arrow to rotate).

Both are good reminders that I have no idea where anything is in Africa, and that Eastern Europe is pretty fuzzy in my mind.

So, most people on 35W who want to stay on 35W bunch up in the left lane of 35W as they approach the Commons, as that’s the only lane that remains 35W through the Commons.  In doing so, they form a bit of a wall, which is all well and good, except that anyone who is on 62 and would like to remain on 62 has to move from the furthest left lane to the furthest right lane in order to stay on 62.  As you can imagine, fun is had by all and traffic tends to back up in all directions around it.  (They’re currently doing some massive construction to try to fix this, but at the moment, it’s still very much intact this way.)

Now, on most days this is the low light of the commute, by far, especially given the merging skills of the average Minnesotan.  But today it occurred to me while driving through this mess that, really, the highways are just playing a large scale game of Red Rover.  It made me smile the rest of the way home.

I came across this video on Boing Boing:

And it’s sufficiently addictive (catchy song, amusingly random, cute girl, probably all of the above) that I watched it a couple of times.  I eventually decided (a couple of days later with it still stuck in my head) that I was going to figure out where it came from.

So, I eventually figured out that there’s a game called Plants vs Zombies that you can play the first few levels of online for free.  It’s an okay game, a decent time waster, but nothing too spectacular.  But once you play it for a while, the song starts making more and more sense (still not lots, but more at least).

So, even more eventually (at least a week, maybe two, since watching the first video, as I played the game on and off 5 minutes at a time in the evenings until I ran out of free levels) I watched the video on youtube, and in the related video section was this, which sort of made it all come together:

The other great part of the State Fair is, of course, the people watching.  Last year some co-workers and I took an afternoon off to go, and one of them forwarded us people watching fair bingo cards (pdf).  I have no idea where it came from originally, so I unfortunately can’t credit whoever it was that originally came up with it, just got it as an email forward.  It’s great, terrible, but great.  Not having been to the State Fair before, I mostly thought it was a joke.  Not so.  We forgot to print off cards before we left, but by the end we were pretty sure we were playing for a black out card instead of a simple line, and I think we all would have won pretty easily.