Some Blog Site

One of the amusing clips from the Pixar movie Onward had the sight of unicorns rummaging through garbage cans. Sometimes when I see how woodland creatures are portrayed in movies, especially animated movies, where they are whatever the opposite of villainized is – made to look cute and cuddly and harmless – I want to invite the writers over here.

Earlier this week I almost tripped over a muskrat because he ran across the driveway right in front of me. I had groundhogs chewing through my extension cords (no, they were not plugged in at the time) and rabbits eating flowers I planted in my flower bed (begone with you Peter Cottontail). And if a car sits for several days without being driven then the squirrels store walnuts in the engine bay and mice chew throgh wires.

It was amusing though one time when I started down the driveway and the now-disturbed mouse tried to escape by running for the nearest light, which happened to be the cowl so he ended up on the bottom of my windshield and didn’t know where to go next since he couldn’t scale the glass.

I’m not complaining though, I just make sure to plant things like daffodils and marigolds that rabbits and deer don’t like. And garlic and hot pepper on things I don’t want groundhogs and squirrels to touch. I leave the muskrats alone – they’re fun to watch. Deer and Canada geese on the other hand – I actively chase them away. My family doesn’t like it when I chase them while we’re in the car and I’m driving though.

In the last week or so, we had the announcement of the 2025 NFL schedule. Now that we know who will play whom and when, we can start predicting wins and losses.

I keep my predictions over at Some Fun Site. View results of previous football seasons.

2024 Summary

Last year, I predicted that

• Denver Broncos = 5-12
• Detroit Lions = 13-4
• New York Jets = 6-11

How they actually did was

• Denver Broncos = 10-7
• Detroit Lions = 15-2
• New York Jets = 5-12

Not bad on the Lions and Jets. Broncos was a ways off though.

Read the rest of this entry »

Subtitle: in which I improve the government’s records

Allow me to introduce to you the 2024 SFS List of Baby Names that Combine Similar Pronunciations. That baby name list is the place to go in case you are wondering what are the most popular baby names in 2023 regardless of how they are spelled. The Social Security baby name list does not adjust the rankings based on alternate spellings (like Catherine/Katherine), but SFS does.

It is almost Mother’s Day, so the SSA released the name rankings for 2024. Last year’s champion, Liam has repeated as the most popular boy’s name in the US, for the second year, so the trend is official. Liam and Noah and Oliver repeated as the top 3 and with large gains, whereas Jackson is on the decline.
No controversy for the girls – it’s Sophia again, and by a similar margin as last year.

Some Stats

• In the top 11 names for the boys, names 4 and 5 switched spots, and then 6-11 have a bunch of shakeup except name 11 stayed in place, and Lucas and Luca switched spots.
• The top 9 names for the girls are the same as 2023, and in the same order for the first 5. Then 6-9 get all mixed up.
• Again, Liam has the title of the highest-ranked boy’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 1.
• Again, Emma is the highest-ranked girl’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 4.
• Girl names still have more spelling variations than boy names (248/1000 vs. 176/1000 alternates)
• Kayson once again took the prize for the most spelling variations for the boys at 9.
• The girls finally don’t have a tie for most spelling variations – Kehlani gets top honor with 6 ways to spell it.

2024 Improved Baby Name List

Click on the link above and peruse to your heart’s content!

Since I’ve been tracking them, the baby names have been released by the Social Security Administration on the Friday before Mother’s Day.

It is the Friday before Mother’s Day and the names have not been released. Note that it appears the SSA does have the list and let People magazine see it. Why not just let the rest of the world see it too? I’m hoping it will go live this weekend and I can have the baby names updated early next week.

I did not have another blog post planned for this week, and now I’m out of days for this week, so I’m posting this to say why there’s no blog post this week.

Upgrades and Downgrades

Child 1: I used to be awesome. Now I’m … really awesome!
(A short time later he does something annoying.)
Child 2: You’ve been downgraded to semi-awesome.

Thanks a lot, Echo

The Scene: the kids have been using the Amazon Echo to do various things, mainly starting a song that someone else doesn’t like then he tells Echo to stop that and play his song instead. After that was done, the boys were interacting with each other, until one tired of the other.
Gamma: Hey Delta, turn off

Which Brand

Me: Time to go, get in the car.
Gamma: Are we taking the planet car?
Me: We are taking the Mercury. Oh, yes, I suppose that’s the planet car.
I need to get a Saturn so he will have to be more specific next time.

Not in Real Life

The Scene: We are driving down the driveway in the morning pre-dawn fog. A flock of turkeys, which we had always seen walking around but never flying, comes flying in from the left and lands in front of us and then they walk off into the fog on the lawn. Since turkeys are big and not well organized, they appear kind of one at a time right in a row rather than all at once.
Delta: We found the turkey spawn point!
Yes, that boy has played video games recently, why do you ask?

Here are some things that are like magic to me, in that I can see them happening but they don’t make sense. You can explain and I can follow the explanation but it still is a mystery.

• How a knot makes a rope weaker. You have a rope. It can hold so much weight. You tie a knot in the rope. Now it can hold only half the weight. But the rope is still all there.
• How British people sound American when they sing. I have heard some new song by some new singer and not thought much about it. Sounded fine. Sounded normal. Then later I heard an interview with this person and realized at that point they were British or Australian or whatever. Only rarely (e.g. “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by The Proclaimers) do singers have such thick accents that it comes through in their singing.
• Where dirt from a pothole goes. I have a dirt driveway. It gets potholes. I want to fill in the potholes. Ideally the dirt that came out of the pothole should go back in the pothole, but there is no pile of dirt anywhere. Matter has been destroyed.
• How a grain bag stitch holds. Grab a bushel bag of grain from a feed store. Pick it up and toss it in your car’s trunk (or pickup bed). Take it out and toss it in your wheelbarrow. Do just about anything normal with it and it stays together. Then pull the string and the whole end unravels and opens up and you can dump the grain out. It’s like the Prince Rupert’s Drop of bulk storage.
• How a baby starts to breathe. This one I’ve seen in person a few times. Baby is surrounded by fluid. Lungs not using air. Baby is born and then the lungs just start working. It’s even more amazing if you can see a video of an en caul birth.

The Refrigeration Cycle was going to be on this list, but I found an explanation that made sense to me. For those interested in that, here it is. Phase change is not affected by only temperature, but also pressure. If you have a fluid in a closed system, you can make the phase change by adding or removing heat. If you add or remove heat, you’re also affecting the pressure as the fluid expands or contracts. The Refrigeration Cycle is just that equation but from the other direction, like in math you can flip the equation around and it still works (because energy must be conserved). So the cycle works by adding or removing pressure to a fluid to change the phase and that has the result of adding or removing heat. Because if it didn’t add or remove heat then energy would not be conserved.

I’ve written about the game Fluxx before. I decided it needs an update.

I decided that after hearing the news these last few weeks, specifically around what is coming out of the White House, and even more specifically the record number of executive orders that Trump is making.

I’m not going to weigh in on the pros and cons of said executive orders, my only personal opinion on the topic is that I am disappointed he has not issued an executive order reinstating Pluto as a planet.

Anyway, the number of executive orders and the effect they’re having on people and businesses got my attention and reminded me of the game Fluxx, where the rules and the goals keep changing.

I took it upon myself to start making an Executive Order Fluxx game. The Rule cards and Action cards can really stay the same, as the game flow works fine that way. The main change is to the Goal and Keeper cards. The only thing I would add to the Action cards is the Filibuster card.

Here is my initial set of XO Fluxx cards. Print them off and play to your heart’s content. I could have come up with more Goals and Keepers, but with more news being generated every day I had to cut it off at some point.