The Nittany Turkey

Primarily about Penn State football, this is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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CyberScrabble Strategems

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This Turkey has been sporadically playing interactive games via computer since long before there was such a thing as the Web. I don’t play a lot because I lack the reflexes for shoot ’em ups and I lack the patience for real-time card and board games, which entail baseball-like pauses in the action while the opponent makes a move, a bet, or whatever. In the past few years, I settled on a couple of board games on Facebook, both of which allow players to make their move and go do something else while waiting for the other guy to move. One such game is the Dot Game, a computer version of dots and crosses, and the other is Scrabble, which is the subject of this article.

I’m pretty certain that you all know what Scrabble is—a crossword game in which players earn points for valid words they spell out on the board. The on-line version is identical to that which you would play at home on a card table, at least in terms of the mechanics and rules of the game. However, there is a significant difference in how players determine which words they will play.

In the card table version, players agree in advance on house rules regarding the use of dictionaries or other aids in various situations. Bending those rules is not possible without agreement among the players. In the on-line game, a spelling validator and a list of valid two-letter words are provided to each player with the intent being to level the playing field. It is assumed that all players have access to these tools and that they are free to use them. However, there is generally no discussion among the players about the use of aids.

When I started playing on-line Scrabble a couple of years ago, I noticed that I was being clobbered with regularity by people from diverse backgrounds with varying levels of education. While I have a pretty robust vocabulary, these people were coming up with words that I had never encountered in nearly six decades of reading. It didn’t require consultation with a Mensa member to figure out what was going on. At least some of my opponents were using computers—either via the Internet or local—to generate plausible words, including some rare ones that stuck out like sore thumbs. What to do? I decided to fight fire with fire.

I did a little research to find some convenient Scrabble crutches on the Internet. The simplest are anagram solvers, which merely generate all the words that can be formed with the letters one inputs. On the next higher rung are anagram solvers with sensitivity to Scrabble boards, where the user inputs the letters on hand in the rack plus potential prefixes, suffixes, and internal letters on the board. This one allows the user to input “blanks”, the Scrabble equivalents of wild cards and it generates words with specificity to the board situation presented to it. One more step up is a program into which the entire board can be entered, along with the contents of the user’s rack. This nifty tool will, in split seconds, tell the user exactly what the best play is on the entire board. With certain browsers, this program has a plug-in that allows it to import the board in one fell swoop. Finally, at the top of the heap of cheats is a fully automated “bot” that runs on a local computer and will play one’s opponent without human intervention once it is turned loose.

Experimenting with anagram solvers, I found that many times the program would find words I would have missed. Moving up to the program that keeps the state of the entire board saved in memory and displayed on the screen, it was pretty easy to stay on top of the heap. However, being an honest Turkey, I quickly developed conscience pangs, so I began to tell opponents that I was using a crutch. A few of them gave me an “lol”, stating that everybody else did, too, but no one usually tells anyone about it. “Sometimes,” said one, “I only use it when I get stuck.” Oh yeah, well that makes a big damn difference, doesn’t it! LOL!

After playing this way for a while I decided that it was getting boring. I was leaving the heavy thinking to the computer. There was no real joy in winning. It wasn’t my brilliance doing the winning; it was a 3 GHz Core2Duo. [Read more…]

DWI: Driving While Imbecilic

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Yes, this will be yet another post about driving. Overpopulation coupled with poor funding of highway infrastructure has led to some pretty annoying situations out there on the road. I’m here to talk about five of them.

What I’m not here to talk about are obvious offenses such as drunk driving about which you can find better information on https://attorneyatlawmagazine.com/are-dui-lawyers-worth-it, failure to wear a seat belt, yakking or texting while driving, following too closely, driving too slowly, speeding, or deeming the turn signals present on every car sold in the past 75 years a worthless option. These infractions are obvious, they’re dangerous or at best, they’re obnoxious, and they annoy everybody. Well, almost everybody. There are obviously those who are completely oblivious behind the wheel and who have no clue whatsoever as to what is going on around them.

I’ll be talking about five specific driving techniques or maneuvers that bother me. Hey, alright, I’m a self-righteous hypocrite behind the wheel. No doubt I’ll piss off a plethora of pious perusers of this post by positing that a preponderance of drivers are, like me, self-righteous hypocrites. So, be offended. We’re all in the same boat out there. I’m certain that I do my share of dumb things that annoy other drivers, but in my mind, my driving is perfect. The late comedian George Carlin captured the essence of such hypocrisy in this line from his stand-up routine on driving: “How come anyone who wants to go faster than you and passes you is a maniac, while someone in front of you going too slow to suit you is an asshole?” That line has stuck with me, because it pretty much has always been how I view those frequently encountered situations on the road. My choice of labels for the culprits is exactly the same as Carlin’s: maniacs and assholes.

But I digress. Being a curmudgeon, I want to share with you the top five annoying acts of driving stupidity that particularly jerk my chain. I’m addressing this to you, people who offend me, so take heed! You know who you are. [Read more…]

Irrigation Pipe Issue Resolved

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Along the lines of sharing my life with both of you readers, I wish to report that the irrigation pipe leak saga has successfully concluded, thanks to Big Aaron, who once again saved my butt at the expense of his.

Recall that I had a gusher on Tuesday evening; I had great fun times trying to isolate it and shut off the supply. It was an intense leak, causing my water meter’s dials to spin like a whirling dervish. I finally got the irrigation system water shut off,  which made the repair far less time critical. I could have waited a week without feeling any adverse effects.

Big Aaron wasn’t available yesterday, but he came out first thing this morning and started digging. Aaron needed all of his muscle to uproot a large viburnum bush that was impeding his shoveling effort. Said Aaron, “Nothin’ like a little bush rasslin’ to get your heart started in the morning!” The next obstacle was a collection of roots from the turkey oak that had died and was removed last year. Some of them were as thick as my wrist. With loppers,  a saw, and eventually, an ax, Aaron finally got to where the pipes were, about a foot deep.

Of course, as luck would have it, there were three other irrigation pipes lying on top of the main, where the leak was. Thus, Aaron had to cut out a section of one of the pipes to give him access to the leak, which turned out to be in a 90° elbow in the 1½” main line (see photo above). I had never seen a thick PVC fitting eroded in such a way. Aaron said that it probably started out as a pinhole and the water pressure took care of the rest. He cut out the bad section and replaced it, using normal PVC dope plus what he called “blue glue”, which forms a tight, hard seal even if water is running in the pipe. The blue glue reminded me of that plastic bubble stuff you had as a kid. It came with a little straw to blow through to make the bubbles. I never had enough lung power to make the bubbles in the blue plastic stuff, so I was content to sniff the fumes. But I digress. After replacing the bad pipe plus the 1″ pipe he had to cut, Aaron had to wait 30 minutes for the blue glue to cure.

So, he and I went to the shade and started telling dog stories for a half hour or so. Aaron’s wife works for an animal rescue organization. My neighbor, who is the guy who discovered the gusher in the first place, came over to join in the bullshit session. He had his son-in-law’s yorkiedoodle or yorkapoo or poodledork — whatever one calls a Yorkshire Terrier and French Poodle mix. So we had more dog stories. We talked about poodle mixes of all kinds, we talked about pit bulls that play gently with Maltese Terriers, and we talked about the same pit bull taking apart a raccoon. And thus, the thirty minutes passed pleasantly and it was time for the pressure test.

All was well. I went into the house to make a phone call, leaving Aaron with a huge mound of sandy soil, a downed seven-foot bush, and a couple of big holes to fill. I came out ten minutes later to find everything in place and Aaron in his truck writing up my bill. I gave him a check for $185.62, which I consider a bargain for this back-breaking work, and sent him on his way.

Another calamity resolved for the big Turkey. What is next?