The Self-Sustaining Threeble

If an outside intelligence observed the goings-on at my community college over the course of a day, they would likely determine that, based on average intelligence, most humans would not make it to age thirty before expiring of stupidity-related consequences.

If the parking situation is not enough, mull on this for a bit. I saw a man stumble and fall off of the sidewalk while he was texting.

While I waited a half-hour for a parking place, nearly being rammed several times by people who feel they must get the nose of their car into an available parking place before the preceding car is fully out, I played some Brain Age Express: Sudoku while idling in a faculty parking place. (A girl saw me stopped there and gleefully parked beside me before heading into the school. She will have a parking ticket when she comes back out.) As I played, a logical situation that my brain automatically termed the "self-sustaining threeble" presented itself to me in the game. It works like this:



Because the middle row of possible numbers all sort of rely on each other for their eventual existence, the bottom space is clearly available to the missing number eight. I wonder if the Japanese have their own name for it. I also wonder what "sudoku" means in Japanese. I would have just named the game "puzzuru".

Slowpoke are commonly found at the water's edge.

Sometimes everything about a dream can be all wrong, but in the end it's somehow just right.

In the beginning, I was fishing. I was near another guy, but he didn't mind the company. (Was he my grandfather? I've always held a grudge that he took my brother fishing and not me.) As I cast, I landed something big, which I assumed was a piece of debris under the water. So I gave it some slack to float away from the debris, and pulled again - but it was a catch, all right, and a big wide mouth came out of the water. With a mighty yank, I managed to pull what I thought was a huge bass out of the shallow inlet, but it turned out to be a Slowpoke - a very realistic Slowpoke, which looked more like a pink water bear. And the longer it was out of the water, the more it dried up from its original housecat-like size into a small, skittering miniature version! I pulled my DSi from its holster and immediately began snapping pics, but never got one that would have been good enough for Professor Oak.

As I went into the marina, I began to realize that I was at a very crappy Pokémon theme park; crappy as in low quality, but I was never discontent in feeling while I was there. I passed by a group of three people my age, one of whom had ordered the Slowpoke Tail from the place's diner. It was really just a foldover with some ham and cheese inside. As I sat with the people, I mentioned that this place would be a lot better if they had a Team Rocket section of the park, and was informed that I was sitting in it. Sure enough, Rs had been half-assedly painted all about to infer that this was the Team Rocket area. I also overheard a female hostess saying that there would be a Team Rocket impressions contest in about five minutes.

The whole area was just folding tables in a cheap "party room" type layout, so I gave the hostess some suggestions about how to improve it, which were taken good-naturedly. I then ordered myself a Slowpoke Tail, went outside where it was now raining, and got in a van with my family. My dad turned to tell me that some old thing or another had gone wrong, something about a key being mailed back to us, so we would have to go to a place. But I didn't care, and woke up with a smile on my face.

Block Bank!

Last night in bed, all my musings about the nature of how Nintendo should handle Achievements came together, finally, to make a system that not only will work, but will revolutionize the way people play Nintendo games - and with the right minds behind it, it will be easy. This is an idea freely given to Nintendo, with, at best, a hope that my name could be included in the developer's credits.

For both the DSi and the Wii, we have the Block Bank, downloadable from both systems' stores. Iconized on the menus by the familiar Super Mario Bros. question block, the Block Bank is a museum of your achievements that is browsable by game title. For events that you have not yet completed, a description or hint about them is available, written beside a question block. Once they are activated, the block disappears and an item or small picture representing the event appears.

Block Bank doesn't run in the background of your games. Instead, when you go into the Block Bank, you prompt it to scan your game files and look for benchmark events that it can reward you for. Once they're found, the familiar "per-toink!" of a question block being hit is shown, and the block is opened. If it was me, I would also make it so that each block that is activated credits the user's Club Nintendo account with one coin.

The Block Bank can also include exclamation point blocks which represent milestones in how many question blocks you've opened. When you get 25 or 50, for instance, an exclamation block can pop and reveal, for instance, a classic Game and Watch game that you can play with your Mii. Other exclamation block prizes could be special videos with animations of Nintendo characters, or small puzzle games that could be beamed wirelessly to the DSi. Another reward could be your own Block Bank ATM card, similar to the Xbox's gamer cards. This style of mini-prizes is not dissimilar to the bonus things that were found on the eReader cards of several years ago.

The inclusion of this system would revitalize interest in games that have been considered completed, but in truth could have statistical challenges that are not yet met. This is good for Nintendo and good for the players, as it could increase game sales as well as renew gamers' enjoyment of Nintendo products. Please contact me if there is anything else I can do to help herald the creation of this system.

Wii Fit (or, Dog Chasing for Fun and Profit (Prof Fit?!))

Christina finally buckled down and got Wii Fit, which was both good and bad for me. It's good because I love Nintendo and want to lose weight with its help, but it's bad because I weigh too much to use the Balance Board.

Eventually figuring she would just use her own weight as a proxy under my profile on the game, I decided instead that I wanted a more realistic view of my weight. So I had the terrible idea to have her stand on it while wearing a backpack full of books and hand weights on her belly, and holding two jugs of liquid in her hands. We fooled the game into realizing that my body mass index should be at the very top of Obese, and I felt more like it was suited to me. However, it still thinks I only weigh about 270 pounds.

Once we got past that part of the process, I got to do what I really wanted to do - jogging in place! You don't have to stand on the Balance Board. Instead, you just put a Wiimote in your pocket, and its movements sense your pace. I jogged for 15 minutes straight, and since I never actually lift my feet up, there was no impact on my tender tootsies. But don't think that I was cheating - I got all sweatied up, and kept my heartrate up for the duration of that time. It was great! I look forward to playing more often.

Whoops, I almost forgot to mention the dog chasing. James informed me that if you pass your jogging trainer when the cute little Fisher-Price dog passes you, you can chase the dog, instead! By the time I was done, I got to the point that I had tangented off after three different dogs. It was really fun!