Friday, October 10, 2008

Universe Ending Alert

It took me nine of the fifteen puzzles, and asking a pretty stupid question to the editor (hey, those menus are in alphabetical order, aren't they?), but I got the P&A meta. Now I don't have to do Post! Or Kidd! Or O'Connolly! (Although I have that answer from backsolving.) Or Sharp! Or Milk! (I have that answer too.) I'll still probably try to finish Reade, since I have 90% of it.

Added: I went back and backsolved the rest. So now I have all the answers! I just don't know why.

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

The Stock Market is a Young Man's Game

The mutual funds in my 401k, since July 1 of this year, are currently earning from -50% to -77% on an annualized basis (according to me and my HP12c calculator, so YMMV). Fortunately the bonds are earning -25%.

On the other hand, I'm certainly buying a lot of shares compared with this time last year.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

P&A Update 2

We've got ourselves Baker and Linkletter. Still a bunch of words in Sharp and Reade with nothing happening. No movement on Milk or Kidd, and I don't really have any plans to try Post. Completed the word search part of Turner (which had a twist) and found out that the next bit was not what I expected at all, in that anything I can think of isn't working. Hooray. Still not really enough answers to try to get at Mehta in a non-orthodox fashion.

Saturday, October 04, 2008

P&A Update

Update on the puzzles:
Sharp: Still no clue.
Post: haven't started.
Ridge: got the "duh!" clues in the intro, but not all the answers seem to fit the pattern. Don't know why.
O'Connolly: the same glimmer, the same not-really-anything.
Baker: I had another idea, but I'm not good enough to follow it all the way to the end, I fear.
Reade: Fixed one flaw in my reasoning, but have a big pile of letters and that's it.
Kerry: I think I did enough Googling to get the answer. Again, missed a "duh!" in the intro, but got past that. I should probably do more Googling to check (I only actually did five of eight.)
Linkletter: Moved forward a bit: left side done, right side pretty empty.
Turner: About to start now, and I hope I don't need scissors.
Milk: A little farther, but not much.
Kidd: I see like three different things to do, but not how they tie together (if they do) or what actually happens here.
Mehta: I think I'm a little farther here -- let's put it this way: I have a plan, but I need more than five answers to see if I'm right.