Hubski braintrust quite insufficient to get rich at HQ Trivia. 
Last call for players in Hubski Game III of Diplomacy. Two slots remain open and the game starts tomorrow night. https://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=220603 Join code: hubski My favorite part is when mk accidentally sends private dispatches to the public channel.
On the way to packet pickup for the Devil Dog Double, I bought some bitcoin at a gas station ATM. The machine by the door was dollar-based, so I hunted around and found a Satoshi1 machine in the back. The process was quite painless. Enter a mobile number, receive a five-digit verification code via SMS from Austin number 512-233-6843. The exchange rate was quoted as $1588 buy $2188 sell for up to $1000, a bid-ask spread of 27%, fairly high for a currency exchange. The spread was 16% ($1765 buy $2110 sell) for larger purchases, up to $10,000. (The price on BitStamp was between 1920 and 2010 that day.) I fed a 20 in and elected to receive a new paper wallet rather than showing my own QR code. Out came a thermal-printed receipt with my new stash. I tried a second transaction using a Google Voice number, but it was immediately rejected as a voice-over-IP number. Smart money says you should not trust a wallet generated in a gas station, so I am trying to transfer the value out before I spill something on the receipt. This has been a learning process. Contray to my earlier dismissal, transaction fees are no longer less than a penny. My client software suggested that I include a fee worth more than a dollar, which struck me as pure frivolity. After insufficient research I offered 0.00025 BTC to the mining gods, still over fifty cents. Now I realize that my offer of 97 satoshis per byte is likely to leave my transaction unconfirmed indefinitely. Apparently the network will forget about my transaction in a few days and I'll be able to try again. Bitcoin remains a stark example of the Subjective theory of value, that a thing is worth whatever someone is willing to exchange to get it. At the race, I pushed hard to set a good PR at my first 5-miler, but did not even hit my conservative goal of 40 minutes. Then it was tough to find motivation to run the half marathon, and the lazy pace evident in my pace chart resulted in a finish almost half an hour slower than my best. Probably I should have walked up Hospital Hill.
Biking No crashes to report. I continue to make efforts to avoid, rather than survive, any wreck. After seeing rumors of daytime lights being useful, I ride with front and rear lights at all times, and always use eye protection and no headphones. Apart from the few car drivers I encounter at unavoidable intersections, mamils may be the biggest threat. One sped past this morning sporting a teardrop helmet, sure to escape the beautiful weather and arrive at his meeting ten seconds earlier. Someone at the office always removes their front wheel before locking, making me wonder if he or she knows something I don't. This morning the wheel was sitting loose, and the frame was secured by nothing more than a brake cable. The Future It's getting silly out there. I skimmed a report that predicted, with arguable plausibility, 90% more better everything thanks to Transport as a Service. From page 8: This would be comfortable win territory for my double-or-nothing oil bet. I got out of the habit of checking cryptocurrencies for a few weeks and everything went wild. Ripple took second place after Bitcoin in market cap with an ongoing hockey stick tear. A guy at work who kept saying "bubble" last week went to a Bitcoin ATM last night and bought in. In other news, cryptocurrency ATMs exist. He said something about two-factor authentication and I was impressed that someone could get a machine to comply with know-your-customer and anti-money-laundering requirements. But when I pressed for details about the transaction, he said he didn't have to smile at the camera and showed no ID. Enter mobile number, insert cash, then get (or display?) wallet address QR code and you are a player. I aim to give it a try, but if anyone else can test drive the system please do report in. Also: Urbit.
Oil demand will peak at 100 million barrels per day by 2020, dropping to 70 million barrels per day by 2030. That represents a drop of 30 million barrels in real terms and 40 million barrels below the Energy Information Administration’s current “business as usual” case. This will have a catastrophic effect on the oil industry through price collapse (an equilibrium cost of $25.4 per barrel)
DC is at DEFCON 2 security level, with riot fencing lining blocks adjacent to Pennsylvania Avenue. There is a thin blue line leading to the White House, and scores of uniformed officers milling around talking about the Friday weather forecast. The kid is curious about the spectacle, but with the chance of rain and certainty of crowds and pat-downs I am suggesting the view will be better on TV. I made another idiotic bet ($6.50 for 15 shares of NO) on the speech, still trying to recover from the November upset. Or maybe we should finish watching Game 3 of the 2003 American League Championship Series. YouTube says there is a brawl.
Soccer season just finished, and now the kid is talking nonstop about baseball, wants to go to the park and play wiffleball in the dark when I come home from work. He doesn't get it from me, I never got past tee-ball and find televised baseball a tiny bit less boring than golf. Still, I thought I could be an adequate instructor, and could probably work out the details of the infield fly rule if I think about it. But his questions about rules made me recognize an ambiguity. The batter is allowed to overrun first with immunity from a tag out, but if he decides to go for second, he is again in play. The status seems to depend on the runner's state of mind. Does this ever come into play, and how do the rules, or the umpire, decide? I love being able to research these questions online, but I also miss the time when the best way to get answers was to interact with other people. Sometimes asking someone questions leads to more and better insights. The kid now has a wooden bat and glove but keeps asking for more gear. He never asked for toys before this year, and now he is making up for lost time, always asking for more stuff. While he was searching for catcher's equipment, an autocomplete mishap caused us to learn that body armor for cats is a thing.
"There's too many people in front of us!" the kid complained, as we waited for the start of the Father's Day 5K. He got to work on the problem as soon as we were underway, dodging through the crowd and soon getting so far ahead I couldn't see him. He's in the white shirt behind #433, I am barely visible in a blue cap far in the back. This was an experiment, his only previous race being a kid's mile event. We did a practice "run" a week earlier, taking over an hour to cover three miles on a hot Sunday morning. I gave up the idea of a 5K after that festival of whining, but kids are moody and he got his mojo back so we decided to go for it. It was warm again on race day but the course was shaded except for a loop on the high school track for the start and finish. I managed to catch up enough to keep him in sight, but my expectation of casually jogging alongside providing water bottle sips and encouragment had changed into a hard slog. I figured he had made the standard mistake of starting out too fast. We did the first mile in 8:06. He was pacing a kid of similar age, the two of them passing adults now and then. I heard them talking, and figured one of them would blow up and they would both start walking. We did the second mile in 8:02. My personal best time was at a 7:07 pace in ideal November weather, and the heat of June was taking a lot out of me. We had talked about meeting at the finish if we got separated, but now I wanted to see which kid would finish first. We did the third mile in 7:56. He dropped the kid and kept going. I managed to catch up, wheezing and remembering all the races in which annoying kids had passed me. He skipped all the water stations and refused the bottle. We got back onto the track and he asked if we should finish together. I had nothing left for a kick, but managed to keep up. We crossed the line under 25 minutes, found a shady spot and sat down to watch the other runners come in.
Meet the belligerents: Our host, galen, enjoying a bonus supply center and sipping vodka in the Russian motherland. War, securely stationed and decorously monitoring the situation from England. OftenBen girding for battle and chanting war songs in Deutschland. blackbootz on holiday and enjoying la dolce vita. Quatrarius comfortably ensconced in France and well-situated to protect the Iberian peninsula from foreign aggression. cgod brewing a strong cup of Turkish coffee and contemplating the glories of the Caliphate. wasoxygen the Austrian appetizer, centrally located to provide easy access to conquerers from all directions.
