A New (Albeit Broken) Toy, Ten Reasons to Put Off Retirement, And Tower Defense Games Destroy Productivity

Let's see if I can get through today without talking sports.

By the way, why is it so hot?!?

- So yesterday, I got some "as-is" computer parts: an Athlon64 3000+, an Abit KV8 Pro motherboard, and a new Cooler Master heatsink/fan (the latter from Newegg.com). The seller told me that he had sold the board to someone else, and that the parts wouldn't boot up, so I figured I'd take a chance on them. At worst, I was only out the $35 or so in parts, and I could always try to resell the parts as-is to someone else.

Unfortunately, I could not get the parts to work, and I'm pretty certain that the board is toast. Oh well, guess I'm stuck with my Athlon XP 2000+ for a bit longer.

- (from Krunk) I thought this list was a bit peculiar, especially since it was found at IRS.gov: 10 Reasons to Put Off Saving for Retirement. Assuming this is not a joke, what the heck is this article doing here? I'm guessing this is one IRS employee's way of killing some time, by going David Letterman with a "Top 10" list. Anyway, I love the first three reasons, especially #3:

Maybe I won't live long enough to retire. Life is so uncertain. Why should I miss out on the high life now when I might not even need to have money put aside for my old age? (If married, change pronouns in this reason to the plural.)

and #4 made me LOL. I've heard of 5-8, but I've never heard anyone seriously say #9:

I might get lucky. You never know, I may win the lottery. Or I may be remembered in the will of a long lost relative. Or I might find that my house is right in the middle of a diamond field.

or #10:

Taking care of me financially will provide wonderful character-building opportunities for my children. And so many chances for me to feel warm gratitude toward them.

though #10 was damn funny!

- Talk about a Time Waster: Desktop Tower Defense (TD) has been played, according to this article, 12 million times in April and May! For the record, I have played it a couple of times, and still have not been able to beat the game on Normal difficulty. I remember the first flash-based tower defense game I played--Flash Element TD, based off a Warcraft III map--and immediately got hooked on to that game.

According to the article, the game has "brought in more than $12,000 in ad revenue and donations...even though the hand-sketched game started as a hobby project with few costs." And the guy's got cubicle geeks all over the world to thank!

Damn, my blog queue is so full...one of these days, I'll get around to clearing it out, before finding new stuff to talk about :P.