james nunn | blog

Saturday night I discovered a very disconcerting aspect of my life. I got the opportunity to be a capitalistic pig … and I liked it! I mean, it really felt good.

Of course, there is a saving grace to the potential of me slipping down this pathway. My capitalistic urges tend to have been limited to the game of Monopoly.

This all happened after Jonas’s birthday gathering. After making the trek back north, Bobby, Ian, Layton, Chris and I returned home to consume some hot buttered rum (courtesy of Layton’s culinary talents). We then decided that the night was young, and a game or two was in order, and given the recent Diane Rehm show on the history of Monopoly, we all agreed it would be fun to give that a try.

Early on in the game, it appeared that Bobby was going to be leading the way to an early victory (he was the first to acquire a monopoly of properties, and started building houses and then hotels). Of course, as we all know in the game of Monopoly, those that rise, sometimes fall, and this was the case. Towards the end of the game, Chris, Layton and Bobby had all been bankrupted, and it was down to Ian and I. Ian had hotels on the yellow properties, and I had got hotels on the light blue and dark blue properties.

For a short time, we exchanged large amounts of rent with each other, however my greed was nourished when Ian landed on Park Place (for a nice rental amount of $1500) and the rolled snake-eyes (two ones) and landed on Boardwalk (for a lovely rental amount of $2000). With the hotels firmly in place, Ian checked out, and I salivated at my victory (I may have even yelled a “woo hoo”).

Then I felt dirty.

Update: I failed to mention that I think I ended the game with more money than the bank!

2nd Update: I found this entry I made last year that justifies my disgust in myself.

Your IQ score is 127

This number is based on a scientific formula that compares how many questions you answered correctly on the Classic IQ Test relative to others.

Your Intellectual Type is Facts Curator. This means you are highly intelligent and have picked up an impressive and unique collection of facts and figures over the years. You’ve got a remarkable vocabulary and exceptional math skills — which puts you in the same class as brainiacs like Bill Gates. And that’s just some of what we know about you from your test results.

Don’t you hate it when you log into your blog site and find draft posts still waiting to be published? The following was started a couple of weeks ago, and I was going to just discard it, but I kind of liked what I wrote, and it will remind me of what I did on this weekend. The weekend this post references is October 6-8, 2006.

» Read the rest of this entry «

For those of you who do research, or write papers, you will understand the difficulty with making the appropriate citations (as required by your professor). Over at Lifehacker, they mentioned this tool called Ottobib. A must save for your bookmark list!

Find By Click have now incorporated Starbucks Coffee outlets on their google-map-ified website. Click the city you want, and voila – the location for all the Starbucks. (Source: Lifehacker) This could be extremely useful for this guy.

This is actually quite cool, not to mention artistic!

Ian passed on this really cool history learning website. It provides options and education. Try and figure out what the reward is if you get all the answers right

Check it out today, and learn you something!

Reporting live from Six Flags, Chris and Ian have now just released from cell block number 2 (aka The Wild Catter). It seems that we are doomed to have someone get stuck on this ride each year (yep second year in a row this has happened). They are free now – we are continuing on our way. More soon.

Yesterday, Chris, myself, Bobby, Ian, Jonas and Layton trekked down to New Braunfels to tube along the Comal river. After the initial shock of the coolness of the water, the next two and a half hours was spent bumping, grinding, and floating to the sounds of people drinking and peeing in the river. Given the sensitive nature of the event, no photos were taken. In fact all the boys, except me, went for round two. A fun day had by all.