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Scrabble sets only have two y’s

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I experienced an episode of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon this afternoon. The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is when you stumble across an obscure piece of information and then encounter it again seemingly at random very soon afterward.

Yesterday I was reading a Wikipedia article, The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, where it talks about Arthur Dent spelling out the Ultimate Question using Scrabble tiles. The article mentions that it wouldn’t be possible to spell out the Question (“What do you get if you multiply six by nine?”) has three y’s in it, and that it wouldn’t be possible to spell out the Question because official Scrabble sets only have two y’s.

This afternoon I was showing my new blog design to a friend and he commented that the word Syzygy would be an excellent hangman or Scrabble word. He quickly corrected himself, however, and said that you wouldn’t be able to use Syzygy in Scrabble because official Scrabble sets only have two y’s.

It was so weird to hear him say that, so I brought up Baader-Meinhof and explained what I had been reading about yesterday. He said he had also been reading about Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on Wikipedia, so I immediately assumed we had read the same thing about Scrabble tiles. This turned out to be yet another bit of synchronicity, however, as he had not read the part about Scrabble tiles. He explained that he knew about Scrabble tiles because he had been playing Scrabble a few weeks ago. I haven’t been able to shake this odd feeling since then.

Adventures in waking up, day 21

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I stopped blogging about it, so you probably all thought I gave up on it, right? Well, I didn’t. I’m still going strong getting up at 5:00 am every morning. I’ve had a few rough mornings where the alarm clock failed to go off and a few mornings where I took a little “nap” after getting out of the shower, but I’ve been on time to work every day for the last three weeks and I’m pretty proud of that.

I love having time in the mornings to get things done. I’ve been so much better about spending time alone with God and reading my scriptures. I’ve also had time to catch up on my finances and budgeting, and to work on a few other projects that have been ignored far too long.

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Adventures in waking up, day 5

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I woke up at 5:00 am this morning to take my mother-in-law to the airport. I think I’ll stick with 5:00 am from here on out. I’m feeling good and today was the first day that my waking up was almost automatic. I can feel this slowly transitioning from willpower to habit.

I feel bad because haven’t commuted by bicycle all week, but Janene and I did go on a nice two mile ride last night. It was her first time on a bike in a while and I’m still getting back in shape, so it was good for both of us. I’m starting to eat healthier and I’ve even started taking a multi-vitamin. I’m beginning to feel really healthy, but Janene keeps asking me what I’ve done with her husband. :p

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Adventures in waking up, day 4

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Well, I’ve successfully gotten out of bed the first time my alarm has gone off four days in a row, and have risen at 5:30 am or earlier for the past 3 days. I’ve been pushing my alarm clock back about 5 or 10 minutes each day, so today I actually got up at 5:15. I plan to continue pushing back until I hit 5:00 am. I’ll try that for a while and see if I feel like I have enough time to get things done, and then we’ll see if I want to go even earlier.

I’ve told a lot of people about my plan, mostly so I can stay accountable, just like people who are trying to quit smoking or lose weight usually tell their friends. I think having other people watching you and wanting to know how you’re doing helps a lot when you’re trying to reach a goal. Reactions have been mixed. Most people seem to think it’s a great idea, but there are the select few folks who turn up their noses and ask why anyone would want to do this. I suppose I would’ve reacted that way to myself no more than a month ago. No matter; I press on toward the prize.

The prize is bigger than I initially realized, by the way. Not only do I regain my night owl hours by getting up early in the morning, but by making it to work at 8:00 am instead of 9:00, I regain an hour not having to stay at work until 6:00 pm. I get to leave work at 5:00 on the dot and go home and spend the evening with my wife. Not to mention all the other things that go along with being an early riser: I don’t feel so groggy in the morning, I’m more productive at work, I have two hours to myself in the morning when I can spend alone time with God reading scripture, I can read a book (I haven’t read a book in months), or I can work on my blogs. I’m convinced being an early riser is going to change my life.

My plan to take over the world

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Okay, so it’s not a plan to take over the world, per se. It’s just a plan to be healthy, wealthy, and wise (and that’ll help me take over the world, right?). I’m going to become an early riser.

I stumbled across a couple of Steve Pavlina’s posts about sleep and becoming an early riser last year on Jordan’s del.icio.us links. I initially thought Pavlina was mildly crazy, but some of his ideas about sleep made a lot of sense to me. His posts on How to Become and Early Riser and How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off have especially good advice in them. I used to think some people were morning people and others weren’t, but Pavlina claims that anyone can become a morning person if they’re willing to discipline themselves, and he offers some practical (albeit slightly unorthodox) ways of doing just that.

I’m not sure why I didn’t put these ideas into practice back when I read this stuff the first time, but Tom’s del.icio.us links recently drew my attention back to Pavlina’s site and this time around I’ve decided to go for it.

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New Header Images

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I’ve replaced the header images both on this blog and on my Foundation blog. I had to finagle a half-transparent box just to make the text readable on both sites, but I don’t think it looks half bad (note that I haven’t looked at it in IE yet). One down side is it breaks when you increase or decrease your text size. I’d love to rip this all down and start over, but I don’t have the time, and I think this small change will keep me satisfied with this layout for a few months more.

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The Wedding Video

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I feel like this blog has been overrun by wedding video segments, but this should be the last post on that subject. The DVDs were delivered last night and I’m pleased to present all four segments here for your viewing pleasure.

Windows Media Video File Our Love Story
lovestory.wmv
20.8 MB
Windows Media Video File The Wedding
wedding.wmv
9.8 MB
Windows Media Video File The Reception
reception.wmv
8.0 MB
Windows Media Video File Blooper Reel
bloopers.wmv
4.3 MB

The video was created by “Pinnacle Weddings”:http://www.pinnacleweddings.com. If you’re getting married in the Salt Lake area you should definitely take advantage of their services. They’ve been absolutely amazing to work with and I think the finished product speaks for itself.

Circles

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My cheeks hurt so much from laughing at the new segment of our wedding video I just got from the videographer. I told you there was something good coming down the pipe, and here it is:

Windows Media Video File The Blooper Reel
bloopers.wmv
4.3 MB

The videographer has offered to make *.wmv versions of all the segments, so there should be three others up here in the next couple days.

Janene’s Graduation

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I Made It!

Janene graduated from University of Utah last week with a Bachelors of Science in Speech and Hearing Science. I just uploaded some photos1 of the event to Flickr (you may have noticed them randomly appearing on the sidebar mixed in with our wedding pics). It’s easiest to view them using Flickr’s slick slideshow feature.

Congratulations, Janene. I love you!

  1. Ironically, I’m wearing that same blue shirt and tie I always seem to wear in pictures. Cameras seem to be attracted to that ensemble. I have lots of other shirts, I swear. [↩]