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RSS FeedAugust 15th, 2010
BZOOMN Vanity Plate
This was not a sports car, but a sporty sedan, and the “BZOOMN” vanity plate was quite apposite, at least when I saw it close to the Trader Joe’s.
But the next day when driving to work I came across a different one – “H8N 6T6″. Now considering the every day mad house parking lot at I-66 (and everyone hating it), I was thinking that the BZOOMN gal probably does not drive on I-66, or she would certainly not be zooming.
Oh, and I had no idea that vanity plate was my most used tag. I probably need a new hobby.
July 1st, 2010
A chess vanity plate
I always wa
nted to have a chess vanity plate, like Qxh7pp. Yesterday I came across a good one: e4Nf3, although I was wondering why not e4Nf6 or e4e5Nf3, but perhaps the person wants to make a point that he can play 1. e4 and 2. Nf3 IRRESPECTIVE of black’s first move.
May 29th, 2010
Two interesting plates
One interesting vanity plate I saw close to Trader Joe’s: QTT PIE. Very apt, considering it was an Audi TT.
Another one was I11I1I1. Also apt, considering it was a sports car, and the owner probably assumes that by having a tag where 1s and Is can be confused will allow him to speed and not be caught. Don’t know if that is true or not.
May 16th, 2010
Another cool vanity plate
Saw this one on I-66:
IZ4LVRS
The state name “Virginia” was on top. Really cute, and matches the Virginia’s official tag line.
May 13th, 2010
Cool vanity plates
Saw these cool vanity plates:
- HVRKRFT: This was a BMW, and since they can obviously fly and swim, it seems pretty apt.
- 2K9s4me (2 Canines for me): I didn’t see any dogs in the car, but I don’t believe the vanity plate is about dentists or false teeth either.
- (Heart sign) 2ISK8 (Love to ice skate): This I thought was a really cool one, but obviously the person must *really* like skating to put this on the vanity plate.
April 25th, 2010
Phew – blog transition completed!
This (technically) doesn’t take that long, but by the time you have updated the blogrolls, the themes and whatnot, you are 48 hrs behind.
☺ Well it is done now, and I am looking forward to focusing back on blogging.
April 14th, 2010
What does that vanity plate mean?
Sometimes you see a vanity plate and wonder hey wonder what that means. So, this is what I saw today, and here is what I think it meant. Correct me if I am wrong.
MNATLVR: Manatee Lover
HET MECT: (Russian) Niet Mist – There is no space
January 6th, 2010
A new year’s wish (Thoughts on happiness, success and satisfaction)
As the year 2010 dawns, here is a simple new year’s wish for you: May you be happy! But of course, that “simple wish” brings us to a central notion of what is happiness. There are quite a few related terms, and we can try to establish some general relationships among them:
- happiness
- success
- satisfaction
Do these concepts always go together? Perhaps not.
Let us begin with the obvious. Can we measure someone’s success? If so, then how? Two different individuals may have different conditions and different goals, in that case, how might we be able to compare them on their end result in any sense? Even if two individuals had similar conditions and similar goals, might it be possible that the individuals had different priorities for those goals? Pushing this argument further, we can reach the conclusion that the success is just as subjective a phenomenon as satisfaction, and only an individual can judge or measure their own success. Success is usually not independent of money, social power, family structure and other such measures, but it is also not any of those things by itself (or even in a combination) consistently for every single individual.
Can success be a measure of satisfaction? Is it possible that a highly self satisfied individual may recognize that they are not the most successful they can be? If so, does that contradict their self satisfaction? Do we then reach the conclusion that:
Being satisfied implies being successful.
In formal propositional logic, this would be written as:
satisfied(x) -> successful(x)
Another way to phrase this is to say that “Success is a component of Satisfaction”.
Similarly, can happiness be a measure of satisfaction? Is it possi
ble that a highly self satisfied individual may recognize that they are not the happiest they can be? If so, does that contradict their self satisfaction? Do we then reach the conclusion that:
Being satisfied implies being happy. Similarly as before, we can write this as:
satisfied(x) -> happy(x)
“Happiness is a component of Satisfaction.”
So, we arrive at the notion that the satisfaction is really the super concept here, and happiness and success are (at least) two components of satisfaction. We further need to evaluate the relationship between happiness and success, and explore what else we missed. Here is a cheesy graphic of the simple conclusions we drew.
Perhaps, the new year’s wish should really be: “May you be satisfied.”
December 10th, 2009
When one is two and two is one
Today, both of my flights are running 3-4 hrs late, allowing me to make my connection, thus reaching my final destination (1 times) 4 hrs late. If however, only my first flight was running 4 hrs late, then I would have to take another connection, getting to Amsterdam 8 hrs later instead.
Xkcd could probably make funny cartoon from it.
July 9th, 2009
Quiz for people who know everything
Ok, so I finally got a copy of quiz for people who know everything.
For people who have not seen it, here it is:
Quiz for People Who Know Everything
This is a quiz for people who know everything! I found out in a hurry that I didn’t. These are not trick questions. They are straight questions with straight answers
1. Name the one sport in which neither the spectators nor the participants know the score or the leader until the contest ends.
2. What famous North American landmark is constantly moving backward?
3. Of all vegetables, only two can live to produce on their own for several growing seasons. All other vegetables must be replanted every year. What are the only two perennial vegetables?
4. What fruit has its seeds on the outside?
5. In many liquor stores, you can buy pear brandy, with a real pear inside the bottle. The pear is whole and ripe, and the bottle is genuine; it hasn’t been cut in any way. How did the pear get inside the bottle?
6. Only three words in standard English begin with the letters “dw” and they are all common words. Name two of them.
7. There are 14 punctuation marks in English grammar. Can you name at least half of them?
8. Name the only vegetable or fruit that is never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form except fresh.
9. Name 6 or more things that you can wear on your feet beginning with the letter “S.”
And here are my answers:
1. No idea! (Correct answer was Boxing. Hmmm, oh well.)
2. No idea! (Correct answer was Niagara Falls. Nice, very clever!)
3. No idea! (Correct answers – asparagus and rhubarb. Ask me again in a week, I still wont know.)
4. Strawberry!!! (Yay!)
5. I thought that the answer was that the fruit was squeezed in slowly, but obviously, the actual answer as I found out is that the bottle is tied on the tree when the fruit is a bud. Very clever. In my humble defense, I have never seen a pear brandy.
6. Words beginning with “Dw”, I got “dwarf” and “dwell”. Yay! 3rd word I found out was “dwindle”. Nice!
7. I got: period, comma, semicolon, question mark, circular parenthesis, colon, exclamation mark, and then I gave up.
8. Now, this one is weird, I did think of lettuce, but somehow I thought that frozen lettuce is sold. Actually, lettuce is not frozen, only refrigerated (sometimes with ice, but that is not equivalent to freezing)
9. I got: shoes, socks, skis and stockings. (Only 4.) Other possible choices are sandals, sneakers, slippers etc as I found out from the answers.
Oh well, 3 out of 9 is not that bad.