I was looking through my wordpress admin page and I noticed more than 1,000 spam responses in the comments section.  By default I don’t post any of these to my site, but just for fun I looked through some of the stuff that people are trying to get on my site.  About half of the comments were in, and I’m just kind of guessing here because there were a bunch of backwards Rs and other symbols I didn’t recognize, Russian or some similar language.  If these spammers are so smart, can’t they figure out only to spam sites that at least use the same character set?

While I was messing around with my website setup, I thought I would give the “automagically post this to my facebook page” plugin another shot.  I tried a few months ago but wasn’t able to get it to work. Here goes attempt number 2.  Engage!

I put off talking about this topic because there seemed to be so much wedding stuff to blog about, but here is the official news:  Katherine is pregnant and due to deliver in mid December.  Here is our first ultrasound, taken May 6, 2009.   I was going to scan this into my computer, but it was already quite blurry so I just used my cell phone camera.

I have no idea what is in the picture, but Katherine explained to me that the big dark blob is her womanly parts, the small gray blob inside that is the baby, and the pink object on the right is my thumb.  At the time the ultrasound was taken it was roughly the size of a gummy bear, which is what led us to the nickname “Walter.”

No word yet on the gender.  Everyone seems to have an opinion this topic, but I’ll just be happy if it comes out one or the other and not both.  We should have more information on the boy/girl issue after our August appointment.  We may even get a three dimensional ultrasound even though it is more expensive than the regular two dimensional version.  Most of the extra cost involves hiring an artist to be present in the exam room during the procedure to create a clay model based on a compilation of various two dimensional views.  Once the model is air dried it gets fired in a kiln after which time we can apply color glazes as we see fit.  It will look great on the mantle above the fireplace.

So until next time– happy gestating Katherine!

I’m getting married in June, which means I’ve got a lot of stuff to do before then. Of course I’m putting off all those things and procrastinating by writing a story about my old myspace profile when I really should be going to the Men’s Warehouse to get fitted for a suit. Anyone looking to meet people on the Internet is going to have to create a profile to describe who they are. A good profile will catch the attention of the type of people you would like to meet. A bad profile will repel these types of people, and, in some extreme cases, get your name permanently added to several government watch lists. Below is my old Myspace profile, along with some pointers in bold.

About Me:

First of all, I’m a delivery driver in Northern Colorado. Saying where you live and what kind of work you do is a good place to start, but don’t be too specific.

What does this mean to you? I’m pretty active since I’m running around town in a big brown truck 45 hours a week. I have a nice tan, except for the fact that my feet are totally white from my socks. I’m in good shape, except my love for Taco Bell means I have a few extra pounds to deal with. Be honest about your age and physical description. And while I’m on the topic, make sure to put up a reasonably new picture of yourself, preferably looking somewhat happy where your body takes up at least half the image. Sending a picture you took at a bar with 17 other people all wearing novelty Saint Patrick’s day sunglasses isn’t going give the other person much to go on.

Finally, I have a habit of droning on about work related stories, but I’m currently getting counseling and electro-shock therapy to keep it under control. References to electro-shock treatments can be a good ice breaker.

I’m also a writer. Not the kind that had made any money, but I keep plugging away at it. My goal is to get one of my stories on Saturday Night Live or Mad TV. I run a website at Newfunny.com where I put a lot of my writing. Mentioning what you would like to be doing is a good idea. Not too many people work at their dream job, so knowing that your soul hasn’t been crushed from years of cubical nesting gives your profile a positive spin.

What else do I do? I’m currently building an entry for next years Kinetics Race in Boulder. Once I get my hands on some welding equipment and some industrial grade marine Styrofoam I’ll be 80 percent finished. OK, this brings up a concept that many people don’t grasp too well. Many people assume if you write about your strangest hobbies everyone will thing you are crazy and nobody will talk to you. In reality, a certain percentage of the viewers will be turned off by this, but the ones who aren’t will be even more intrigued. For example, saying that you’ve been to one or more Star Trek conventions will make 90 percent of the viewers move on to the next profile, but the remaining 10 percent will be 90 percent more likely to keep reading. On the other hand, saying you like movies and going out to eat isn’t going to win points with anyone. You might as well say you like breathing air and drinking water.

I also like to play pool, ride my motorcycle, and meet new people. I’m very outgoing when I’m working, but more quiet and reserved when I go out socially. For some reason the UPS uniform gives me special powers– I can park where ever I want, ask random questions of total strangers, and of course run to the front of the line at any business without anyone getting mad. Talking about your job is good in moderation. Just remember to keep is positive. Starting a sentence with, “My boss is such a jerk-off for the following eleven reasons…” isn’t the best way to go, even if have detailed documentation to back up your claims.

Who I’d like to meet:

What do I want from a woman? Well, have you ever seen “Lord of the Rings”? All I want is a beautiful elven princess, like, say, Arwin (played by Liv Tyler) who possesses eternal beauty, courage, passion, and kindness but is willing to give it all up for a stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf-herder (hmmm… I might be mixing my sci-fi metaphors a bit here). Am I asking too much? If you fit all of these criterion but are only a regular human princess, give me a call. If you are Liv Tyler, give me a call right now. This section is largely a trick question. Many of the things you want from a potential mate you can’t come right out and say in the beginning, like, say, “I want to meet someone who will paint my house on a regular basis. And not just going through the motions either. They need to do all the proper preparation like scraping the old paint, filling in the cracks, and laying a solid coat of primer.” And when you say “paint my house” you really mean something else like “cook all my meals,” “do my laundry,” or “satisfy my deviant sexual fetishes.”

Seriously though, I want a woman with a strong sense of balance. Not falling over too much, being able to ride a bicycle, and perhaps even the ability to juggle a few tennis balls is a good start. But more important is having a balance between your own needs and the needs of partner. Give and take is a big part of a strong relationship. Like saying, “OK, we can watch the stupid History channel special about subway construction (which I’ll bet you’ve already see before) but I get to put my feet up on your lap and so you can rub lotion on them during the show.” or “I’ll do the laundry if you do something about that rotting dead hooker in the trunk.” Another thing about what type of person you want to meet: You don’t need to say that you are looking for someone who shares common interests. That is kind of assumed. Nobody looks at profiles and thinks, “I want someone who is totally opposite than me in every possible dimension so we can just sit at dinner silently night after night knowing that any attempt at communication is destined to fail until the weaker willed of the union can’t take it anymore and, in a fit of uncontrolled anger, throws their dinner plate across the table accidentally decapitating their partner and damaging beyond any hope of repair, the Persian rug sitting underneath the dining room table that had been in your family for two generations.”

So now that my days of online dating are over, I hope this helps out everyone out there who haven’t met/seduced/started stalking their favorite lover. Keep your spirits up, your profile up to date, and your dates full of spirits.

So Katherine ended up getting me a nine inch diameter glazed doughnut for Father’s Day. Apparently I was a little bit off the mark with the whole Lisa Loeb coming over to my house and making me pancakes. Katherine explained to me how she really tried to get Lisa to stop by, but apparently she is married and has a few kids to look after. (I know how that can dampen one’s social life!)

So I put up a link to the pancake song that she recently releases on my last post, but I didn’t even know about it until I googled “Lisa Loeb pancakes”. I was thinking back to her short lived food show “Dweezil & Lisa” where they spent an entire show preparing and hosting a pancake party. I guess I’m not being the best fanatic that I could be in this area.

While going on a date with Lisa is kind of out of the question, maybe we could arrange a play date with our kiddos. Isabel and Samantha have a lot of cool toys and plenty of space to run around. But if I don’t ever get to meet you in person, I’ll always remember you as “the queen of being sexy without letting all your junk hang out, even though you have the figure to wear trampy attention grabbing outfits, because you want the world to appreciate you for your artistic abilities.” I totally get it.

So despite the lack of sexy rock stars at our house this weekend, I really enjoyed my Father’s Day. And yes, I ate the whole doughnut myself!

I now have the honor of being part of an elite group  of Americans who have come down with the shingles. [LOOKS OVER AT THE INTERNET]  Oh, wait, apparently one in three people get it sometime in their lifetime. If you are thinking quietly to yourself, “hey, isn’t that the band who sang that catchy song in the movie The Garden State?” you are probably getting the band The Shins. I’m not sure if anyone in the Shins have ever had the shingles, but the odds are there.

If you are thinking it has something to do with having experienced the chicken pox as a child, you are on the right track. Apparently the virus that causes the chicken pox hangs around inside your body just waiting to cause problems at some random point in the future.

So about a week ago I started getting daily headaches and my neck and right shoulder started to feel sore. Being a UPS employee for almost a decade now, none of these symptoms seemed particularly alarming. A few days later I got a rash on my neck and right ear. Just looking at it in no way relates to the pain I was feeling. Laying my head down on my pillow caused tremendous pain. I eventually started plans to build a bacta water tank that helped heal Luke Skywalker from a severe wampa attack at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back. Katherine was not receptive to this idea.

The pain in my ear can be described exactly as the scene in Star Trek when a younger, more fit, and, well, I suppose less passed away Ricardo Montelbon places mind-controlling bugs in crew members of the Enterprise.

So, in conclusion, the shingles really suck. Really. And I know that I’m the type who, on occasion, may tend to exaggerate my pain situation to gain sympathy. And the fact that they just randomly pop up for no real reason makes it that much better. So if you know of anyone who get the shingles, the best thing to do is to sneak up behind them and inject them with large dose of horse tranquiler. Just let them sleep the whole experience away. Do not, and I don’t think I can stress this enough, sneak up behind them and give them an Indian burn on the effected area. This will most likely cause them to die. Literally.

A lot of people in the world are curious about how computers work and would like to know more about the evolution of these machines in our modern society. I have no idea if any of these people actually visit my web site, but I’ve never been one to worry about such issues. This is just another example of something I let the marketing department worry about. (Note to self: Check to see if I have created a marketing department yet).

I’ve decided to adopt a more traditional approach to the method of delivery for this information. While most everyone wants to jump right into the “fun” stuff like receiving AOL for free, getting the 250 dollar Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookie recipe, and finding out how to get paid thousands of dollars a month for surfing the Internet, I am taking the approach of “starting from the beginning”. This will guarantee that any interest in the topic will be exhausted on largely irrelevant background information. This is the exact model used by my high school English department. I don’t really know why beginnings aren’t as exciting as the middle or the end, but I will do what I can to make the beginning as fun as the rest of the story.

Stay tuned for the EXCITING BEGINNING of the story!!!

The first computer ever used by mankind was small enough to fit inside a human nose. Surprisingly enough, this computer’s exterior dimensions are remarkably similar to the interior of the aforementioned orifice. I’m referring to, of course, one of the most common human appendages to be inserted in the nasal cavity-the finger. The twenty or so digits found on the hands and feet of an average person can be used for counting and keeping track of relatively small positive integers. Some notable exceptions include James Doohan (“Scotty” from the original Star Trek series) who can only go up to nineteen after losing a finger in World War II, and Marilyn Monroe who could, according to some sources, count up to twenty-one with the help of an extra toe on her left foot.

While not the most powerful of computers, fingers are still the most widely used computational machine in the world today. In addition to being quite user friendly and durable, fingers are located very conveniently at the ends of our hands and, if maintained properly, are pleasing to the eye and include a soft tactile sensation. Sure, you can’t very well set up a Linux e-mail server or load Microsoft office on your fingers, but fingers can’t be beat for elegance and simplicity.

It didn’t take long before people found a need to keep track of numbers bigger than twenty. The next logical step was to use small rocks to account for possessions. For example, if you were one of the first humans to domesticate livestock, you could have a pile of stones that represented how many live chickens you owned at the moment. When a new chick was born, you would add a stone to the pile. When a chicken was taken away, you would pick up a stone and throw it at your lousy neighbor who most likely stole it when you walked back to the cave for an afternoon nap.

One of the oldest examples of this technique can be found in the Middle East. After learning of this new system for counting things, an ancient Egyptian commanded a high ranking official to use this procedure to keep track of how many people lived in the Nile Valley. In an attempt to please the Pharaoh, the largest possible stones were cut into precise shapes and carefully piled on top of each other. After seeing the massive scale of the pyramid, the Pharaoh called the officer into a meeting at the royal chamber. The bulk of the meeting consisted of the Pharaoh pulling out his gold and blue striped question mark shaped stick and using it to attack the officer in a series of short but solid smacks to the head. The meeting ended with the Pharaoh deciding to use it as his final resting place to avoid ridicule from the rest of the known world.

While this information may not seem terribly useful, at this stage it is best to take a holistic view of the world. Everything in the universe has its place and is related to everything else is some way. While I like to ask questions such as “What do they put in Chicken McNuggets?” and “What happened to Marilyn Monroe’s extra toe?”, I am quite confident that eventually I’ll find the answers. The trick is realizing that all of the questions and answers aren’t all lined up all the time. Having said that, I hope everyone joins in next time when the revolutionary concept of the abacus explored in excessive and possibly historically inaccurate detail.

While being completely organized has never been one of my strong points, I have yet to forget my girlfriend Kristin’s birthday. One reason for my impressive track record in this area is the fact that we have only been dating for a year and a half. The other, and by far more relevant factor is the consistent effort on Kristin’s part to make sure I remember. After twenty-three casual verbal reminders, three email messages, and one formal printed birthday “wish list,” Kristin did everything humanly possible to ensure that May 27, 1976 was a day not to be forgotten. And don’t even get me started on the “Countdown to My Birthday” lighted, animated marquee sign she constructed (at, I’m sure, considerable expense) in the living room.

Last year I made Kristin a website that anyone in the Internet-free world can go visit at Krisser.com. The site contains a collection of her writing along with various photographs of places she has visited over the years. While the website probably isn’t going to cure cancer or get any new Democrats elected to congress in 2004, it’s a fun place to poke around from time to time. Kristin really enjoys having her own website, despite the constant disagreement with the web design team (that would be me) about the image on the main page showing her in a moderately low-cut t-shirt. But, she does admit that it is better than a picture of me showing too much cleavage.

This year I decided to take a less traditional approach to Kristin’s birthday. While I could have simply gotten her something off her birthday list, I wanted to surprise her with something else. As I drove to the local Wal-Mart I used a highly specialized process of meditation specifically designed to make me think like Kristin. When I arrived at the store I was a five-foot-two, red-headed, nine-fingered woman. Fortunately, nobody else in the store was aware of my transformation.

After about twenty minutes of shopping, I decided on a set of steak knives, and a headset for her cell phone. As I was heading towards the checkout area, a motorized bubble making machine caught my eye. Not literally, thankfully. It basically consists of a series of plastic loops that get immersed in bubble solution and then move in front of a small fan. It looked like fun and was consistent with my birthday shopping mission. I picked it up, paid for everything, and went home to wrap Kristin’s presents.

I swear I didn’t know it at the time, but one of these seemingly innocent gifts might very well be [NOTE TO READER: prepare for sudden topic change.] TURNING MY GIRLFRIEND INTO AN ECSTACY ADDICT!

A few days after Kristin’s birthday, I saw an anti-drug advertisement on the television. It turns out that blowing soap bubbles is a common activity for people high on ecstasy, also known on the street as “E.” Or is it “X”? Well, the word ecstasy doesn’t even contain the letter X, so now I’m not quite sure. And why do the letters “CS” make an “X” sound?

Putting my annoyances of the English language aside for the moment, the commercial displayed half a dozen other types of ecstasy paraphernalia. After letting the facts digest for a few moments, I called Kristin at her office to address the issue. Here is the gist of the conversation:

Her: Thank you for calling, how may I help you?

Me: The game is over, Madame Lovejoy. I know you are hopped up on E!

Her: Huh? Is that you, Omar? This is Tiffany. Do you want me to get Kristin for you?

Me: Oops, um, yeah. Thanks.

Kristin: What’s up? I was in the back room catching up on some filing.

Me: So are you an ecstasy addict?

Kristin: Uh, no. Why would you think something like that?

Me: I found out people who get high on it like soap bubbles—and you have a soap bubble machine.

Kristin: Well, honey, you bought it for me as a birthday present. It wasn’t even on my wish list.

Me: STOP TRYING TO CHANGE THE SUBJECT! And what about those angel wings? That is another sign.

Kristin: I don’t own any angel wings. Maybe you are the one on drugs here, Omar.

Me: What, are you going to pretend I don’t spend time carefully examining every image of that Victoria’s Secret catalog you get every few weeks? Every issue has women in various states of undress wearing angel wings.

Kristin: You are driving me nuts.

Me: And the television commercial told me that small stuffed animals are another sign. You can’t deny that you have a large basket of them on the living room floor.

Kristin: HELLO! Those are for the dog. You love watching her play with all the squeaky toys.

Me: Things are worse than I thought. Now you are giving your dog drugs? Have you no sense of right and wrong?

Click.

Me: Hello? I can’t hear you. Must be some problem with the phone line…

Well, that phone call didn’t seem to resolve anything. Kristin is still denying being an ecstasy junkie, and this whole episode has put a bit of a strain on our relationship. While I’m not really sure if I learned anything here, I have decided that next year I’m going to just pick something from Kristin’s birthday wish list. And I might even consider buying her one of those silly, girly DVDs she is always talking about starring some silly, girly actor like Hugh Grant and/or Colin Firth. If that isn’t a sign of true love, I’m not sure what is.

I got the day off on Tuesday, so I decided to get a few errands taken off my to do list.  I took my car to the shop to get the driver’s side power window fixed, a saw my doctor for my annual check-up, oh, yeah, and I went and married Katherine.

“You did what?” many people have asked.  We are having a wedding in June, and we are going on a honeymoon to New York City in May.  Since we weren’t really doing anything in the traditional order, we decided to get the paperwork out of the way.  It turns out that getting married in Larimer County, Colorado is fairly simple. Katherine filled out the forms online, and the next day we went to the office to get the paperwork.  Actually, it is the same place where car registration takes place.  The only strange part of the process was the fact that we weren’t allowed to sign the marriage certificate at that office.

So we went home, and in a very beautiful ceremony that involved Katherine, myself, and the dog, we signed the marriage license.  We wanted Maury to sign as the witness, but when we put the pen in his paws he kept trying to tear it apart with his teeth.  But he watched us– hoping to get a treat when we were finished.  The next day Katherine took the paperwork back and now we are officially married.

So now Katherine Herbig is now Katherine Lutfey who gets to change her name.  I don’t have do to any of that– I won the coin toss over whose last name we were going to use.  We thought of combining our last names, but then we decided that if we have kids and they wanted to get married to someone else with a hyphenated last name they would have four last names, and that just seems like a bit much.  So now Katherine has the exciting privilege of changing her social security card, driver’s license, passport, and Starbucks frequent drinker reward card.

Today I was making a delivery when a helicopter landed about 50 feet from my truck. And not just a typical television news one either– if my extensive viewing of the Discovery Channel is any help, I believe this exact model is used to move large battleships around. Standing-next-to-a-landing-helicopter-hair is the worst, but fortunately I’m bald.

Music superstar Billy Joel married his 23-year-old fiancée Saturday in a small ceremony in Long Island, New York. When asked about the nature of their relationship, the young bride explained, “I have always respected and admired Billy’s musical abilities for as long as I can remember. In fact, when I told my mother we were engaged she informed me that I was conceived to ‘Piano Man.’ Now just how perfect is that?”

If you happen to be familiar with my annual Christmas letter you may be scratching your head thinking, “But Omar, it’s not anywhere near the end of the year– how can you already be posting your Christmas letter?” I decided that publishing my Christmas letter only once a year is not consistent with my idiom of working on “Internet Time.” I’m not exactly sure how to define “Internet Time,” but for the purposes of this letter it is me being up at 3 in the morning in my boxers and a T-shirt surfing the web because I got tired of watching infomercials on the television.

What do women want? This question has plagued mankind since God kicked us out of the Garden of Eden (which I believed contained no menstrual cycles, beauty magazine quizzes, or clothes that made Eve look fat). When contemplating what women want, I prefer to approach the problem from a different perspective. It is possible to list all the things that men could possibly do, take out the things that woman don’t want, and what is left, by the process of deduction, is what women want. While creating a list of all possible actions mankind can take is well beyond my attention span, I am willing to add a few items to the “don’t do” list.

First of all, women like compliments. There are, however, some important issues to consider when telling a woman “I love you.” Fellow men out there, I cannot stress this enough: only say this to a wife or established girlfriend. In general, a woman you have met for lunch once or twice and exchanged a few E-mail messages with does not meet these criterion. If you are invited to a party, it is generally considered bad taste to repeatedly yell out to the woman hosting the party “Angie, I love you. I know you don’t love me back, but that’s OK.” For whatever reason you may think it’s a good idea at the time (i.e. EXCESSIVE ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION), it will ultimately do more damage than good.

Secondly, trying to hit on women after excessive alcohol consumption is generally not a good idea. For example, you may think that going around at a party after downing a few drinks telling women you have never met they have a nice tail and a blouse full of goodies is an example of your witty banter, but in reality they usually just smile politely, leave the room for some reason or another, and strangely enough you never see them again.

And last of all, it is a good idea to stay after the party has died down and help clean up the mess. It is a bad idea to stay after the party has died down and repeatedly throw up in the sink before you pass out on the couch until the next afternoon. No further explanation is needed for this point.

I really can’t continue until I confess something here. I didn’t just use my overactive imagination to create three random activities women don’t like. I attended Angie’s Christmas party, got drunk, professed my unrequited love to her, told several other women they had nice tails and blouses full of goodies, threw up several times (for history’s sake, I remember it being once in the sink, and three times in the toilet), and passed out on their couch. Around eleven in the morning, on what I think was my last trip to bow down to the porcelain God, I looked down at my boxer shorts and bare legs and commented to Angie, “I’m not wearing any pants” in a somewhat matter-of-fact tone of voice. It was well past noon when I finally thought I could make it home without blowing chunks in my car.

I can’t say that I’m really proud of what I did, but I have to admit that it’s pretty amusing despite the fact that I am the ass in the story. In general I like to write stories where other people look stupid– it makes me feel better about my shortcomings in life. While I could have altered the facts of the story to make me look better, I don’t think it would have made for a funny story. Since I put (slightly) more importance on being funny than being truthful, I recorded the events as accurately as my impaired brain recalled them.

For reasons that I greatly appreciate yet do not totally comprehend, Angie doesn’t seem to hate me. I suspect it is analogous to the episode of “Cops” where the guy in the beat up old pickup truck gets caught with the prostitute only to realize SHE was really a HE while handcuffed in the back seat of the patrol car. Sure, you can send him down to the station to be booked, but in all reality everything that happened before the police and television crew arrived will torture his soul a lot longer than any consequences of legal proceedings. As far as Angie goes, I think it is safe to assume that her name will not come up in future letters any time soon. If I manage to get invited to next year’s party, I think I’ll be the designated driver.

And, just in case you are wondering, I took that line from the movie “Hot Shots.” The actual quote is “Not playing to win is like sleeping with your sister. Sure she’s a great piece of tail with a blouse full of goodies, but it’s just illegal.”

I truly believe that people, organizations, and entire nations expose the true content of their character when cruelty and misfortune test the limits of human endurance. When the fringe elements of a culture force their views on the rest of society through radical and unlawful acts, we must strive as a country to respond with swift justice. I’m referring to, of course, the recent theft of the ceramic penis art display from the Boulder Public Library.

Just to make sure everyone is on the same page, here is some background information on how this whole thing started. Robert Rowen, age 49, recently stole 21 ceramic penises on display at the Boulder Public Library to honor Domestic Violence Awareness month. Robert then placed an American flag in the area to replace the art. The next day Robert confessed what he did and the police recovered the stolen property.

I would like to spend some time analyzing the actions of this Robert guy. I often get criticized for oversimplifying situations, but my first reaction was something along the lines of “if something visually offends you, THEN DON’T LOOK AT IT!” I must admit I don’t know exactly what state Robert was in the first time he viewed the ceramic dildos. But unless the library staff physically restrained the man in a chair with his head strapped down and his eyes forced open like the government did in the movie “A Clockwork Orange,” he would have been able to leave the vicinity of the display of his own free will.

Perhaps most simple minded folks would have just walked away and have forgotten the whole ordeal by the time they got to the book check out area. But not Robert. He was so offended by the display that he came back to the library, walked over to the display area, put his hand around each of the 20 ceramic penises as he placed them in a box, and took the offensive material back to his house. The irony here is that the person supposedly most offended by the artwork is the one who is sure going out of his way to spend a lot of time with them.

And then there is the message Robert is sending to his young child. While it’s possible that my sense of right and wrong may change a bit once I have kids of my own, I just don’t see how bringing twenty stolen sex toys into the same house with a five year old female is a very good idea. While there has been no evidence to suggest the daughter had any contact with the stolen artwork, the general message conveyed to the child is that theft is an acceptable action when settling disagreements.

I’m not sure why Robert seems to think he gets to impose his sense of right and wrong on the entire population of Boulder County. Is it OK for people to steal books from the library if someone deems it offensive? I don’t like the four way stop sign on the road next to the library, but that doesn’t give me the right to go and cut them down with a hack saw. Robert needs to learn a similar lesson.

Every now and then I wonder what my life would be life would be like if I got married and had a couple of kids. The only thing I know for sure is my television viewing habits would not change too much. If any of my future children want to spend countless hours in front of the television set I’m going to make sure at least two-thirds of their programming options revolve around World War Two documentaries on the History Channel. Since my days of matrimony and reproduction are not in my near future, I have recently experienced the next best thing: Spending a week with two dogs in the house.

I currently live in a house which, on average, contains one dog. This dog, named Henry, belongs to my roommate, named Scott. One of Henry’s most unique physical characteristics is the fact that he has two different colored eyes. Scott, on the other hand, has two eyes that are, for the most part, the same color. Total strangers often times come up and ask about Henry’s eyes. Rarely do they ask about Scott’s eyes.

But enough about my roommate’s chromatically symmetrical eyes– this is a story about the dogs. Henry has long beige hair that is in a constant state of renewal. While I haven’t submitted the following theory to the rigorous process of the scientific method, I strongly suspect that on an average day, Henry’s body sheds more hair than the local Great Clips. When Henry and I are alone in the house he generally sleeps in the basement all day long. Every now and then, just for a change of pace, he walks up the stairs, looks at me blankly, and then proceeds to lay down next to the kitchen table before falling back asleep. His overall interest in Scott and I only peaks when he needs to go out side, be fed, or be taken on a walk. Henry and I get along quite well this way– we don’t expect a whole lot from each other.

This brings me to the second dog– Murphy. Belonging to my girlfriend Kristin, this dog is half Greyhound and half Black Lab. While her shedding habits occur on a much smaller scale than Henry’s, she does have her own list of peculiar habits. Most notably, she is very skittish. It is quite natural for animals to be scared of things like sudden noises, unfamiliar places, and the actor known as “Carrot Top.” Murphy, however, is pretty much scared of everything that isn’t Murphy. For example, I took Murphy out one night and she ran as far away as she could on the leash from the slight rustling noise produced by a series of plastic flags on the “for sale” sign on the house next door. On another outing she was overcome with fear because a tumbleweed was a few feet away from the sidewalk. I suppose I would have had more sympathy for the dog if the shrubbery in question was actually moving in any way.

Another quirk about Murphy is that she doesn’t want to be more than three feet away from Kristin or myself at all times. This makes walking with Kristin and the dog quite a chore. While Kristin generally refrains from spastically running around me in tight circles, the same cannot be said for the dog. Murphy always wants to be at the exact midpoint between Kristin and I while at the same time running around in circles. The interaction between the three of us is analogous to Luke Skywalker’s two-sunned home planet of Tatooine (but on a much smaller scale.) That would, of course, explain why Luke’s mother and stepfather had such difficult time harvesting crops.

Each of these dogs, by themselves, is generally calm and well behaved. So I figured that bringing Murphy over to my place in Loveland while Kristin was out of town for a week wouldn’t drastically alter my lifestyle. Unfortunately, I didn’t take into effect how the two dogs would interact with each other. The most immediate effect I noticed when I brought Murphy home was what I call “The Canine Cold War Mentality.” It usually starts out with both dogs sleeping peacefully on the floor in the main living area. This is known as Defcon 5 (or mauve, if you are using the new Homeland Security color coding system). If the dogs were the United States and the Soviet Union, this situation would be analogous to the first few months after World War Two or the eight years Bill Clinton was in the White House. This state of peace and quiet is inevitably shattered by a strange noise outside, one of the dogs sneezing, or the random motion of air molecules in the room.

Once this happens, one of the dogs will look up, causing the other dog to look up. (Defcon 3) Not to be outdone, the first dog stands up. (Defcon 2) This escalation procedure continues until both dogs are frantically running around the house barking at the top of their lungs. (Irreversible Intercontinental Thermonuclear War) After a few minutes
they calm down and eventually go back to sleep. (Analogy breaks down here.) While most people would consider this to be a minor inconvenience, I find it quite difficult to lay down on my couch and concentrate on the afternoon episode of “Trading Spaces” with such a racket going on in the background.

Another issue I’ve discovered with Murphy is how she goes to the bathroom. Like human females at nice restaurants, Murphy cannot go do her business alone. Being a smart dog, she knows where the backyard is. Being a smart person, I usually leave the back door open so both dogs can go outside whenever they feel the need. It seems like a simple enough solution, but whenever Murphy’s bladder fills up, she will run through the house until she finds me. Then she sits down and starts whining frantically until I walk with her outside and watch her pee. Which is exactly what I want to do at two in the morning. At least I’m not asleep yet.

Despite these minor issues, we all got through the week without any major problems. Eventually Henry and Murphy
both realized they were going to be living in the same house together. My threats to send them to Tatooine for the summer must have done the trick.

So, it is New Year’s Eve and the clock says 9 PM (mountain standard time, for those who need to know) and I’m sure that everyone expects me to be heading out the door with the wife, kids, and dog out to experience the legendary Loveland clubbing scene.  But no, I’ve got other plans.  For example, just to get the evening ball rolling, I have upgraded WordPress on my newfunny.com website from version 3.2 to version 3.3.  Next on the agenda, view the annual stats WordPress was nice enough to send me.

So, according to WordPress, my website was viewed roughly 8,200 times in 2011.  Now don’t get me started about how to measure how many people visit your website in a given time period.  OK, you talked me into it– you see, I could log onto my goDaddy account and download every single http request and tell you that number is how many people looked at my site, but that would count a whole bunch of stuff (like automated processes that are looking to index information on my site) that has nothing do with actual people looking at my site.  As far as I can tell, WordPress seems to give a more accurate gauge of actual people.  And really, there are more methods of calculating web traffic than there are ways to deep fry a Snickers bar, so take anything anyone says about it with a grain of salt.  And then, of course, then you can try sprinkling it on your deep fried Snickers bar, which I hear is surprisingly tasty.

“Omar, what are the top viewed posts on your website in 2011?” you were probably just thinking to yourself.  Well, here is the top 5:

1 The Dukes of Hazzard  August 2009
2 Funny and Sexy– Is it possible?  August 2009
3 Come on Holmes  February 2010
4 Back to the Future, Part 4  October 2010
5 Thank you letters  January 2011

I’m pretty happy with these results, but I do want to give a shout out to a few of my long time favorites that don’t get as much traffic as I think they deserve.

Iron Chef Amsterdam
This Old Crack House
I Should Be an SNL Writer

That is the most interesting information from the WordPress report. A little known fact about the “Dukes of Hazzard” and “Iron Chef Amsterdam” is that I was approached by an editor of an out-of-state Marijuana magazine about republishing these stories due to their pro-pot themes.  I gave them permission, but then they went out of business.  As far as I know they weren’t ever published in any magazines, but since I wasn’t going to get any money for it either way I didn’t really look too hard.

That about wraps things up.  One more thing now that I remember we are back to “standard time”: although I have decided that part of my 2024 Congressional campaign is going to include a push for moving to daylight savings time all year round.  Mostly because I hate delivering packages at UPS in the dark in December when I see the sunrise an hour before I go to work.  I think there is a better chance of getting Congress to change the system of time than to get UPS to change the times it flies all their planes around the country.  Although now I think about it, maybe it seems like a 50/50 proposition.  But in the end, the only people who benefit from the current system are peppy morning people, and nobody likes those types– especially when sunlight is in short supply.  So full time daylight savings time it is!

OK, so I’m not exactly posting all this stuff in chronological order.  In fact, as I write this, Isabel is celebrating her 30th birthday and I’m a crazy old man in a retirement home yelling at my cats and repeatedly showing the staff members the litter box.  But I digress.

So here is Isabel’s second ultrasound taken in August 2009.  We decided against the three dimensional ultrasound.  Apparently the procedure uses high energy nutrino beams which scientists believe led to the creation of Magnito, high fructose corn syrup, and Sarah Palin. Maybe not, but in the end we decided that we would be able to wait for the three dimensional version that was planning on squirming out in a few months. This high tech image of Katherine’s insides confirmed what we suspected all along: her belly is getting bigger.

One thing that has been surprising is my wife’s mood.  It really hasn’t changed at all– she is as happy as a clam.  I don’t know why we think clams are all that happy to begin with, but, hey, that’s the expression.  Too late to change it now.

So stay tuned for more retroactive baby updates aged in a bath of sarcasm, powdered with a touch of nostalgia, and dressed up in a cute onesie of experience.

After spending quite a bit of time getting all my websites organized, I thought I would spend a few minutes explaining what actually goes into running a website like this.

I’ve owned the domain name “newfunny.com” for ten years now.  To get an idea of exactly how long that is in “internet time,” Steve Jobs and Bill Gates weren’t even born in the year 2000.  (note to self: fact check this later– I’m pretty sure at least two of the people on this list are robots who exist outside the conventional time/space continuium.)

Things were quite a bit different back when I started up this site.  For example, I actually built a computer to host the site and connected it to the Internet with a static IP address.  When the website went down I would call up Scott and ask him to reboot the system.  If that didn’t work I would call up Scott and ask him to reboot the system again.  Repeat as needed.

On the software side of the equation things were just as complex.  Designing a website consisted mostly of looking at other people’s websites and stealing their source code. In addition to knowing HTML, a web designer had to also be familiar with manually transferring files through FTP, configuring file permissions, and, obviously, understanding the complex language of the gnomes that run through the tubes of the world wide web.

Now things are quite different.  Any loser with a credit card and an internet connection can build a website.  And trust me, there are plenty of losers who have done exactly that.  With today’s existing technology, you can simply speak into the microphone of your computer “I want a webpage!” and a flying robot will be dispatched to your house to take care of all the details.

On a slightly serious note, I use WordPress for all my current websites.  It is very easy to set up and use on a daily basis.  You can set up a free account in just a few minutes with a domain such as “mydomainname.wordpress.com” (sure, it isn’t as cool as something like, say, newfunny.com).  Basically, if you can use email and basic word processing, you can have your own blog.

Mitt Romney is still working to clarify his statement, “I’m not concerned about the very poor.”  On an unplanned trip to chat with reporters in the rear of his campaign jet, the former Governor of Massachusetts worked to explain his intentions of the comment in question.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” Romney proclaimed. “I was referring to the fact that the very poor have a safety net.  Let me give you an example here– I was watching television up front and witnessed a story about a pretty young homeless woman who came into the emergency room with a mysterious illness.  During her stay at the hospital she received top-notch care from the best doctors in the building and not once was refused treatment based on ability to pay.  This reassures me that our safety net is working.  Thank you Doctor House.”

Joseph Black
Nina’s Captain log
October 12, 1492

In the course of fifteen minutes Michael incinerated all but one of my ships, killed half my crew, and effortlessly detained the survivors on shore. What really shakes me up, however, is that after talking to this strange man over the course of that first evening I held no anger towards him and realized my destiny exploded unimaginably beyond that of a ship’s captain. By dumb luck I was introduced to the most powerful man on the planet who revealed to me technology I could not have imagined just the night before. I move forward balancing on the knife’s edge of serving Michael and keeping the world from thinking I’ve gone mad.

Michael stole another glance at his wristwatch while sitting on the beach with the native population he recruited to his cause. “Any moment now.” he said to nobody in particular. His son, Michael Junior, had acclimated from the journey surprisingly quickly given the last minute change of plans. Despite being terribly exhausted, Michael worked nonstop to build the necessary defenses. While not perfect, he knew arriving any sooner would have potentially jeopardized their guest’s itinerary.

One of the younger natives jumped up and pointed out towards the sea. The excitement quickly spread throughout the group and everyone took up their preassigned positions. Four small groups moved out along the beach and the rest gathered at the newly constructed trebuchet. 

The three ships steadily sailed towards the beach utterly unaware of the danger ahead. The crew of the ships could hear a series of different pitched drum beats as they approached the shore, but they could not have imagined the sounds were trigonometrically isolating their position. Soon the crew realized that the sounds were occurring in a regular order– each drum was struck between one and five times. They theorized this was some type of local welcoming tradition and continued on course.

Their theory was disproved when all four drums were struck five times and an unknown flaming object was launched at them from the trees at the edge of the beach. It exploded approximately 100 meters directly above the ship closest to the shore. Before any of the crew could react to this new development the entire ship and most of the crew was covered in a flaming sticky mess. The remaining crew below deck were unable to abandon ship and quickly drowned as the ship retired itself with amazing efficiency. There were no survivors.

As the second fireball launched from shore the crew of the second ship were much more eager to abandon ship. While not a direct hit, the sails were solidly on fire and everyone on board realized any attempt to save the ship would be a fool’s errand. With the exception of a few severe burn victims, the crew was able to swim to shore.

As the Captain of the remaining ship, Joseph Black only had a few moments to decide on a fight or flight strategy. This became a moot point as an ever increasing percentage of his crew jumped overboard and began the trip to the shore. Not having resources to put them on trial for mutiny, Joseph dropped the anchor, gathered the remaining crew on the dinghy, and reluctantly headed towards whatever new fate awaited them on the beach.

After identifying Joseph as the leader of the group, Michael walked towards the Captain and slowly circled around him a few times before sitting down in the sand at what seemed to be a surprisingly intimately close distance given the recent events. “Whether or not you offer it, I accept your complete and unconditional surrender.” Michael explained. “Please remove the thoughts in your head of retreating to your remaining ship. Your crew is physically exhausted from your journey, you lack food and fresh water, and by now I don’t think I need to convince you that we can convert that last ship into a useless fireball before your first crew member could reach the dinghy. If one of my men is attacked one of your crew will be killed. If one of my men dies three of yours will lose their lives in a drawn out and very public manner. Can I trust you to convey this information to your remaining crew?”

Seeing no other viable options, Joseph kept staring out at the ocean and slowly nodded. While the ropes used to restrain his hands seemed be constructed from local vegetation with the potential of being worked loose over several hours, he reluctantly agreed with his new captor that, at least for the time being, any attempt at espace would significantly increase the odds of his crew becoming more dead than they already were.

“Every thought racing through your head at this moment in time is wrong.” Michael explained. “Suppose for a moment I tasked you with maintaining an earthen dam. During times of heavy rainfall the downstream village’s existence depends on you keeping the water from traveling over the top of the structure. Once the dam is breached the water quickly erodes the soil and an irreversible cascade failure takes place. The question I ask you now is this– are you angry with the very first drop of water that flowed over the top?

Disarmed by this new direction of the conversation, Joseph looked directly at Michael while considering his reply. “No,” Joseph answered. “The water didn’t intend to destroy the dam.”

“Exactly! In fact, if you splashed around in the water right beforehand it would be a completely different drop of water that went over first. But that small change doesn’t change the outcome. You still would have failed in your duty.”

Michael paused to take a sip of water from a canteen from his belt. “Now imagine another scenario where a single human had the ability to destroy all the people of a given religious orientation. Let’s call him Adolf.”

“Ok, but it doesn’t seem very realistic that one man could wield such power. And what would be the benefit of killing such a large civilian population?”

“Oh, no, not killing, I said ‘destroying.’ There is certainly dignity in death. But to destroy a race involves carefully planning a systematic method of arbitrary plunder, rape, murder, and enslavement. Allowing them only enough resources to reproduce and continue the cycle of humiliation. Yes, I killed most of your team today, but I’m not going to let history repeat itself and turn them into little more than livestock to serve my needs. 

Noticing his fingernails digging into the palms of his hands, Michael paused and took a deep breath. “So here is my dilemma– you are somewhere between a drop of water and Adolf. At some point in the past you chose to get on that ship. You chose an adventure with the hopes of acquiring something new at the possible or probable expense of someone you have yet to meet. How should I deal with this situation?

“I never really liked the word ‘should’. It seems like it was invented to give people a justification to do what they already had their mind set on in the first place.”

The world in which we live is far from perfect. The English and Metric systems of measurements are still fighting it out, the Republican party completely pummeled the Democrats in recent mid-term elections, and the soda I just opened exploded out of the can and soiled my last clean T-shirt. While I like to believe otherwise, I have to admit that Kristin, my significant other, is also a little less than perfect. While many of her personality traits fall into the “quirky” category, quite a few people have asked me, “What’s it like to have a girlfriend who is missing a finger?”

For anyone keeping track of this type of information, Kristin is missing her right ring finger. Actually, I wouldn’t say she’s been missing it, Bob. (NOTE TO SELF: Watch “Office Space” movie later on tonight.) In all honesty, she never had the digit in question to begin with. It all started twenty-some years ago when the stork paid a visit to Kristin’s parents. To save some money, Kristin was ordered unassembled. Her parents carefully unpacked all the baby parts and started reading the extensive directions. Unfortunately, they were too busy trying to locate “slot A” and “tab 3” to notice the dog ran into the other room with part RF-0004. By the time they realized the situation, it was getting rather late and the decision was made to wrap things up before the new episode of “The Love Boat” came on at eight. Perhaps if Ethel Merman wasn’t a guest on the Princess Caribbean that night the situation would have been different.

In some ways Kristin’s life is more difficult because of her missing finger. One problem she constantly faces involves finding a decent pair of gloves. Most glove manufactures only make gloves with exactly five fingers on each hand. When she does find four fingered gloves, they usually are constructed of inferior materials and do not reflect current fashion trends. Also, most department stores will not allow customers to mix and match the four and five fingered gloves. Kristin is currently looking for a “complimentary glove life partner”– another woman with similar hand size that is missing the left ring finger. Despite an extensive Internet search, no such woman has been found.

Another problem Kristin faces on a daily basis is balance. Since the right side of her body has slightly less mass her internal balancing mechanism has to constantly readjust for this irregularity. When I first explained this to Kristin, she did not believe me. To prove my point, we drove to a nearby field to test my hypothesis. I blindfolded Kristin and told her to walk in a straight line back to the car. Sure enough, she started drifting away from the straight line after a few steps. She eventually walked in concentric clockwise circles with a radius of roughly forty-seven meters. To help correct this situation, I suggested that she start wearing a watch on her right hand. While not a perfect solution, it does seem to balance her out.

Having an odd number of fingers can have certain advantages. For instance, Kristin has landed a role in the upcoming movie “The Princess Bride 2.” I don’t want to give away too much, but she spends her adolescence as a metalsmith apprentice. In her spare time she creates a custom four-fingered mace for the climatic battle scene with the mysterious six-fingered man. And Fred Savage, well, he is an evil robot. Unfortunately, the shooting schedule has been delayed because the casting director is currently looking for another eight-foot-tall French wrestler to replace the late great Andre the Giant.

The best thing about Kristin’s missing digit is holding her hand. With most people, this process is usually complicated by the issue of finger placement. Personally, I like my thumb to be on top, but I also like to have my pinkie on the outside. Now I can have it both ways, and the overall situation is a lot less crowded. Four fingers seems like more than enough to establish a positive connection. For this reason, I believe this condition will eventually work its way into the process of human evolution. Four fingered people will be highly sought after for their superior hand-holding abilities. Through the process of genetic manipulation (either by the multiple generation-spanning process of natural selection or through shady scientific DNA meddling of mad scientists) human beings of the future will simply stop growing so many fingers. Which actually makes a lot of sense– I almost never use all ten of my fingers at the same time.

What does Kristin think of all this? Not too much– most people don’t comment on her missing finger. I guess its just human nature to assume people aren’t missing body parts. While most normal people don’t consider her condition to be much of an issue, Kristin did qualify for a disabled drivers license when she lived in the state of New York. (NOTE TO READERS: No, I’m not making that part up. The only exceptions to that rule are people who lost fingers through illegal offshore wagers or in the making of “Jackass” style home videos.) Of course that does little good since she hasn’t lived there for more than a decade. So until Kristin decides to drive 2000 miles to renew her driver’s license, I just like to think of her as the woman who puts the “hand” back in “handicapped.”

Here are the exact directions (meaning I’m not making any of this up) to 4580 County Road 68, Wellington, Colorado:

Go north on I-25 and get off at the Wellington exit.  Head north on the east side frontage road until you see a sign for CR68.  There is only one house on the road and it is in no way labeled.  Don’t worry– that isn’t the house you are looking for, but it does happen to belong to the guy’s brother.  He will vaguely point you towards three dirt roads in various states of disrepair.  Keep driving until you see another man driving around a front end loader for no particular reason.  He will explain how to get to the small workshop and instruct you to leave the package in the old refrigerator in the back– either compartment is fine.

In my ongoing effort to explore the non-horrible aspect of AI, I created a fun calendar for two besties I deliver to every day as a UPS driver. I took a few pictures of them and then turned to ChatGPT and Google Gemini to create a month by month visual adventure for 2026. And, yes, I did get their permission to put this up on my web site.

The time has come once again to stretch out my brain muscles, fondly recall things I’ve done over the past year, and interface with technology to upload the results to the internet.

In March a rather abrasive windstorm blew through town and did a number on our fence. And by that I mean a big old smelly number two that we didn’t have the luxury of ignoring for a few weeks like all the little number twos the dogs make in the back yard.

Up until then my general plan regarding fence repair involved identifying a part that wobbled too much and fastening it to something that wobbled less. While this worked surprisingly well for the past 15 years, I couldn’t find any zip ties or wood screws that could repair the posts that broke off two inches above the concrete. So, the next weekend we purchased a few hundred dollars of supplies, invited our neighbor Steve to a fence party, and worked hard to convince ourselves we knew what we were doing. In retrospect I should have filmed a “Brooklyn 99” style introduction where we dramatically walked to the damaged area carrying hand tools in slow motion while exciting music played in the background.

Why, yes, I am pulling out the buried concrete with the car jack from our Kia Sorento. And yes, it did work. I also screwed in a bolt to what was left of the wood to get a more secure hold on the concrete. As a side note, if you are currently in the online dating world this is the kind of image you should post to your profile. A recent study revealed that nine out of ten women prefer a partner with fence repair skills to one with visible abdominal muscles. And that other one will most likely cheat on you with her fitness instructor.

So, what is my advice for all the fence repair enthusiasts out there reading my website? There is literally nothing fun about this activity. It is physically demanding, you have to get your body in unpleasant positions, and in the end the absolute best outcome is to have everything work just as well as it did the day before the windstorm came into town. Enjoy!

Nothing helps us relax and reset our emotional pacing like taking a week off and visiting our good friend Fernando. For all of the alert readers out there who do not recognize that name, Fernando is the mouse landlord of the Airbnb we rented in downtown Montreal, Canada. Every other day he would politely check in and make sure everything was going well and offer useful tourist information such as the location of the seven closest Tim Hortons. I suspect this is a polite Canadian thing as our mouse landlord in Manhattan would often crawl on my face and poop in my mouth at night when I started snoring too loud.

I give the city of Montreal a score of 5 (out of 5) maple leaves. The public transportation was efficient, the streets were clean, and the poutine was top notch. (Side note: I know that the poutine wasn’t vegan and that it is totally possible to make a vegan version, but I made a rare exception to my usual dietary choices to try the real deal once.) We arrived at the beginning of June and the weather was perfect for wearing shorts and tshirts. I suspect, however, that the winters are a bit harsh as a large portion of downtown has slowly been burrowing into the ground to escape the cold. Entire shopping malls are underground and many buildings are connected by tunnels to avoid exposure to the surface. I suspect another layer is being built under the mall by mole people. This, spurred along by the rise of artificial intelligence, will be the future home of Zion as foreseen in “The Matrix” movies.  

Are you like me (probably not, but keep reading) and get all excited at Home Depot when an employee uses the track saw to cut a full sheet of plywood in half so it can fit in the Sorento? Do you want one in your garage but are constrained by the realities of your living situation and financial resources? Do you still want it even though deep down in your heart you know it will only get used at best infrequently? Welcome to my world where I don’t let questions like that stop me. I literally spent the better part of a year building my own track saw mostly out of things I found at the Habitat For Humanity thrift store such as used doors and laminate flooring. Attached to the wall of the garage, I can use it to cut full 4×8 sheets of material. When not in use it only sticks out two inches so it doesn’t intrude on our parking situation. The only compromises I made was that it can only make four foot cuts and it doesn’t have that fun numerical keypad safety lockout like at the big box stores. 

I can solve a Rubik’s cube! A few months ago I decided to spend 20 bucks on a fancy new cube that has ultra low friction movement and magnetically aligned corner pieces. Yes, I do have old man hands now, but regardless of age and digital dexterity getting a new puzzle will dramatically increase your odds of success. I could always get the first side solved but didn’t know what to do from there. I learned the “8355” method because 1. It is a number, 2. It doesn’t focus on memorizing algorithms, and 3. I really like numbers.  

With the official world record for solving a cube currently at 2.76 seconds, I would like to propose some new cube challenges. The “unsolve” challenge involves looking at one scrambled cube and transforming a solved cube to the scrambled cube as fast as possible. The “unsolve ultra” challenge is the same except it starts with a scrambled cube which gets transformed to a second specific scramble.

The “fewest moves challenge” is a twist on the more popular speed challenge. You don’t see it online very much because contestants have one hour to find the solution which uses the least number of moves to a messed up cube using only three cubes, a pen, and some paper. This doesn’t exactly make for riveting Youtube short videos like the traditional speed challenge. I’m working on a process to master this challenge that I’m calling the “20/20 Solution.” Twenty movable pieces (8 corners and 12 edges) can be solved in 20 moves. I think of it as twenty incredibly simple puzzles that are beautifully and frustratingly intertwined. All I need to do is take twenty simple solutions and mathematically “AND” them together to get the optimal answer. Admittedly there are some non-trivial details I need to work through before this becomes a reality, but nonetheless I believe this will eventually lead to a “fewest moves speed challenge”. Keep an eye on future Christmas letters where this idea will launch me into the Rubik’s cube high society.