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Here are some thoughts I jotted down that aren’t quite sufficient for their own individual blog posts. If you’re the type of person who likes Twitter, pretend each of these are tweets.

• “Dollar-cost averaging” could be summarized as “two wrongs don’t make a right, but lots of little wrongs are okay”.
• No, the station is not supported by viewers like me. Viewers like me never contribute anything.
• I wonder how many parents would pay extra for Lego sets to be in silent packaging. Just for the fun of being able to surprise kids with Legos for Christmas or birthday presents.
• Now the other way is easy: any present can be made to sound like it is a box of Legos by throwing a handful of Legos (excuse me, Lego bricks) into the box. Or buy a small box of Legos and wrap it together with the other surprise present. Any shaking of said present will then produce a Lego sound and the child will not expect the non-Lego gift.
• If “cat” is pronounced “cat” and “cate” sounds like “kate”, why isn’t “caterpillar” pronounced “kay-ter-pillar”? Shouldn’t it be spelled “catterpillar”?

We are planning a trip down south that involves a stop for one night near the Smoky Mountains. Looking for a place to stay, Some Wife found a variety of rental cabins around Gatlinburg.

Since it was going to be off-season, the rates looked reasonable: $160/night, $180/night, and higher of course. But I figured $180 for a night for a cabin that fits the whole family is a good deal. Too good to be true, which of course it was, but I didn’t know that at the time.

I thought the rate would be $180 for a night, plus some taxes and fees, so I started booking it. It was open the night we wanted, good there. I entered my name and address and then they gave me the total so I could proceed to enter my financial information and book the cabin.

That $180 turned into $480 with taxes and fees.

Not a good deal.

Here’s the breakdown:
Cabin: $180
1-night stay fee: $75
Hot tub fee: $40
Cleaning fee: $80
Premium service fee: $50
Sales tax: $54.19
——
Total: $479.19

I think they really want you to stay longer. The fee structure seems to be setup that way.

Let’s see how it looks for a week (7 days / 6 nights).

Cabin: $180 * 6 = $1080
1-night stay fee: $0
Hot tub fee: $40
Cleaning fee: $80
Premium service fee: $50
Sales tax: $159.38
——
Total: $1409.38

So you can stay 6 times longer for less than 3 times the price.

1-night effective rate: $479.19
6-night effective rate: $234.90

My recommendation if you’re staying in the Smoky Mountains National Park area and really want a cabin: go for a longer time and find a cabin without a hot tub.

A few years back, I wrote about phrases that are wrong. I now have one more to add to the list:

I lied.

At its face value, there is nothing wrong with that statement. I mean, the action it is describing is morally wrong, but the statement is fine.

But people, more and more I’ve noticed, don’t say it when they’ve lied.

They say it when they are merely wrong.

Lying requires an intention to deceive. You think something is A, but you say it is B. If you think something is A and you say it is A, you are not lying. If it really is B, you were just wrong. Please don’t call it lying. That dilutes the wrongness of lying and promotes (or demotes?) it to being a mistake.

Now that no one is talking about Font-fil-A anymore, it’s time to announce that Font Grill has released a new font.

Introducing: Beast Font

Go download Beast.

Why Beast? People will remember that more easily than BeEast, which is the logo it was based on.

For some reason or another, the song Baby Shark is very popular with our kids. All our kids, from the high-schooler down to the second-grader.

The problem is, after hearing one or more of them singing/humming/whistling Baby Shark, I find it is easily stuck in my head too.

In order to share this wonderful experience with all of you, I present ways to help keep the song foremost in one’s mind.

Try asking your kids the following questions:

• What’s the best Mario Kart track?
• Why is that room scary?
• How do you know which tree is a dogwood tree?
• Why won’t my car start?
• What do the herald angels sing?

Trust me, after a few of those questions, the kids will be begging you to stop.

If you want the answers, scroll down.

• Baby Park
• Cause it’s dark
• By its bark
• There’s no spark
• They sing hark

Okay, okay, it is 2019 at this point, but the results are headlines as 2018 because they match with the 2018 predictions made in 2018 for the 2018 season. Also, the results are not all-haiku, just the predictions were. A more accurate title would be “Results for the All-Haiku Predictions made in 2018”.

Before the bowl games commenced for this past college football season, I made some predictions. Here, for your reading enjoyment, is the tally of those predictions. Note that the results are not in haiku form, in contrast to the predictions.
Read the rest of this entry »

It is time once again to update Some Blog Site readers on the results of my Some Fun Site project to create a more accurate football prediction method.

The 2018 NFL season is over, and here are the most accurate methods for predicting regular-season game results (wins-losses):

• MPWHFA: 63%
• MPW: 61%
• HTW/ITP/DP: 60%

No new prediction methods this year. Either no one could find a better method, or they did but they have moved to Vegas instead of commenting on this blog.

And if you think you have a formula that can predict the winner of an NFL game better than 63.3% of the time, let me know and I’ll add it to the list.

(For the ideas behind the methods, please visit the Some Fun Site page.)