Too Lazy to Fail

In high school, I worked at a used video game store. We, as employees, would often find ourselves gifted with store credit. I used this to expand my hoard of Nintendo Entertainment System games, and eventually gathered up over 200 of them.

After I started working real jobs, started going to school full-time, and got married, I found that the NES with accompanying boxes of games sat in the closet, becoming less and less valuable as long-lived game makers re-released their old games on new systems.

So Tracie and I made a difficult decision, and I started listing the more valuable games on eBay. Being left with some very good but not very valuable games, I got in touch with PDB about the possibility of selling my entire setup to him in one lot.

Negotiations continue, but in the mean time I’ve been packing it all up and preparing it for transport. Then came the admission from my dear wife: “Oh, is that the gun thingie? I never got to play Duck Hunt as a kid…”

Well, you know I couldn’t just let that one slide.

She got some of them…

But some of them were lucky. Oh so very lucky.

When things looked desperate, I picked up the Zapper and got down to the terrible business at hand. Many ducks were slain.

Then Tracie played some Tetris.

The cats were not amused, choosing instead to play in the boxes.

Farewell, dear Nintendo.

Stories of Self Defense

Over 1000 stories of civilians defending their lives, usually with firearms. All include references to newspapers and/or police reports.

“Weapons are the tools of power. In the hands of the state, they can be the tools of decency or the tools of oppression, depending on the righteousness that state. In the hands of criminals, they are the tools of evil. In the hands of the free and decent citizen, they should be the tools of liberty. Weapons compound man’s power to achieve whatever purpose he may have. They amplify the capabilities of both the good man and the bad, and to exactly the same degree, having no will of their own. Thus, we must regard them as servants, not masters–and good servants of good men. Without them, man is diminished, and his opportunities to fulfill his destiny are lessened. An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it.”

-Jeff Cooper

Hat tip to Xavier.

So tonight I had to trek to the peril that is Wal-Mart to buy an HP 10BII financial calculator for my finance class.

It’s a piece of… well, suffice to say that it has far fewer features, implemented more clumsily, than a $30 calculator in the year 2006 should.

The thing is, I have a TI-86 that does everything I need to do, including occasionally mopping the floor and doing my laundry when I’ve had a tough week, but I can’t use it because it has internal storage and might allow me to cheat.

So I think I finally understand the frustration of those guys with a $300,000 sports car that have to drive a Mazda on the freeway because they can’t drive their Pagani Zonda on the streets.

Just saying. Who wants this thing in December? $15 and it’s yours. I might consider a trade for a box of ammunition or a spare magazine.

The new title is Too Lazy to Fail, after a story-within-a-story by Heinlein.

So if you find yourself linking often to my weblog, and want something more witty than Paul Simer, you may feel free to refer to this as Too Lazy to Fail, or TLF, or whatever.

Please ignore the timestamp. This is what happens when I study late into the evening, and I will undoubtedly pay for it when I rise to go to class in the morning.