What is IQ? Raw Intelligence? The word Intelligence is difficult to define. Is someone smarter becasue s/he has learned a better vocabulary? Had the money to goto college and learn some math skills? Guesses right or is a "good" test taker? Ahh there's the rub then. While most tests are a set of culturally biased questions, and real Intelligence cannot be given a number (not even in GURPS). Strength can be more easily measured based on muscle mass, work/time, or some other quantifyable aspect. Intelligence cannot. For one, its too vague. Some think Wisdom adds to your intelligence while others insist its knowledge and memorization of raw data facts. Afterall, if you can remember a lot of stuff, people tend to think you're "smart". This doesn't mean someone with photographic memory is a genius though. Knowing facts and providing useful analysis of the data is totally different. Computer's can store/retrieve vast amounts of data, but that's all it is. Data. There's no information contained in it. That requires intelligence.

Anyway, today's rant is brought to you courtesy of Tickle IQ, one of the more reputable IQ tests (MENSA probably being the top respected one).
Anyway, my results:

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This number is based on a scientific formula that compares how many questions you answered correctly on the Classic IQ Test relative to others.

Your Intellectual Type is Visionary Philosopher. This means you are highly intelligent and have a powerful mix of skills and insight that can be applied in a variety of different ways. Like Plato, your exceptional math and verbal skills make you very adept at explaining things to others — and at anticipating and predicting patterns. And that's just some of what we know about you from your IQ results.
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Apparently this puts me in the top 10%. Take for that what you will I suppose. MENSA accepts only the top 2%. Naturally they want me to pay for the rest of the results, which I won't do. When I was a kid myIQ was rated at 145, so either I'm dumber in my old age or the tests are slightly different (most likely both of these things are true). I'd also like to say, for the record, that I have a TERRIBLE memory and would very much like to be the subject of an experiment to give me DVR (Digital video recording) like memory (Photographic memory is so 80s).

I forgot to mention that I went to Target after going to Best Buy, CompUSA, and Staples. Don't go to Target on Black Friday. It's bad. Standing room only and lines to the back of the store in nearly every isle. I reccommend against it.

Violet and I went to the mall later in the evening, around 5 or 6. Picked up Tomb Raider: Legend for the Xbox 360 for 25 bucks (used) from Gamestop. Not bad. I had already played the demo and liked it well enough.

Stopped at Hot Topic and got a Nintendo backpack for 18 bucks. I couldn't find a product link anywhere for it outside of EBay, which is wierd. The sales associates couldn't find it either (online) and it took 3 of them to find one with a tag (which I personally think they just made up). Maybe its too new. I dunno. But it's my new gaming bag since I had to keep borrowing Violets. I also got a large black fuzzy dice looking thing that's actually a box with a zipper. It was a meager 10 bucks.

I also have to mention the smokin' hot redhead sales associate that also tried to sell me a nintendo belt. She also has, and apparently loves, the Wii. She showed me her Legend of Zelda belt (and most of her damn fine stomach since her shirt wasn't very long) too. I give her a 9.2. She'd get a higher score but was a little too thin to warrant it. Anyway, I didn't get the belt (it was a cub scout style elastic band and buckle with Nintendo icons on it) , since I don't much care for belts.

The Nintendo backpack combined with the Nintendo wallet I already have (and love, its awesome, and I get positive comments on it all the time) is pretty much all the same-brand name stuff I wanna have on my person. Besides, I've never owned or really played any Nintendo product. Doh!

You are The Sun

Happiness, Content, Joy.

The meanings for the Sun are fairly simple and consistent.

Young, healthy, new, fresh. The brain is working, things that were muddled come clear, everything falls into place, and everything seems to go your way.

The Sun is ruled by the Sun, of course. This is the light that comes after the long dark night, Apollo to the Moon's Diana. A positive card, it promises you your day in the sun. Glory, gain, triumph, pleasure, truth, success. As the moon symbolized inspiration from the unconscious, from dreams, this card symbolizes discoveries made fully consciousness and wide awake. You have an understanding and enjoyment of science and math, beautifully constructed music, carefully reasoned philosophy. It is a card of intellect, clarity of mind, and feelings of youthful energy.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Warning: The name of my blog is Roland's Ramblings. So there.

Being the stupid person that I am, I woke up at 6:30am (mostly due to attic noises) and went early bird shopping today, on Black Friday. In case you didn't know, my understanding is that it's called that because that's when retailers finally see some profits, thereby going from the red (ink) to the black (ink). Kinda dumb if you ask me. I'm not sure how 1 month of holiday shopping can make up for 11 months of losses. Of course, I could never figure out how a store could sell something for a buck, unless they sold a LOT of them. Figure the mark up is 100% so profit is 50 cents. Then the company's rent is tens of thousands of dollars, payroll is hundreds of thousands of dollars, utility bills, insurance, advertising and marketing.. I just can't see how anyone stays in business. Does the dollar store really sell millions of units a month? I don't get it. I'm not sure I wanna get it. My mom always wanted me to take a few business and finance classes. Bleh I say. But I digress...

I went to Best Buy. I noticed 2 things. A line just to get into the store, and lots of lots of litter. Why can't people just carry the donut bag and coffee container they've already been carrying since 4am when their crazy asses got in line and put them in the trash cans? Litter was all over the parking lot (since the line extended well beyond the sidewalk and arond the building's corner). People are lazy, careless, and fairly self-absorbed. They don't care that the 18 year old kid has to come out 3 hours later with a snow shovel to scrape up the car-tire-ran-over litter. Perhaps Best Buy, knowing litter happens because, well, I assume they had this kinda thing happen last year, should put out several extra trash receptacles. Of course this would not eliminate the litter entirely, some people aren't just lazy, they're evil... but I'm pretty sure the trash in the parking lot would be greatly reduced.

Anyway, I eventually made it inside. I figured things would get beter once I got inside since they were obviously limiting the number of people inside due to some fire code or something. Errrrrr. Wrong Answer. Standing room only. God forbid if you had a cart. No aisle was safe, no corner unoccupied. Lines formed per department, not just at the front registers. Wanna LOOK at a camera?
BestBuy: "Wait in line."
Me: "But I'm not buying, I just wanna look."
Bestbuy: "Wait in line."

So I have to wait in a REALLY LONG line to just LOOK at stuff? Ouch. The Television department had 2 aisles of people waiting. Camera's had about 40' worth. Car accessories had 3 aisles full. Computers had 5 ailses worth of lines, though since I didn't get into the store until about 730am only 2 or so of those 5 ailses were full. Naturally, any good deals they may have had were gone. I didn't really wanna wait 2 hours in line to buy a bargain $2.99 dvd, so I left the store empty handed.

I walked across the parking lot to Compusa. No waiting. Not even a lot of people. Mysterious. Best Buy probably has better advertising. I dunno. I didn't see anything at CompUSA stand out either so I once again, left empty handed.

Driving wasn't SOOO bad, but keep in mind that I'm in New Hampshire, and I'm not at a big mall. It's a 6 lane road with fairly distributed shopping on both sides. Anyway I drove down a few blocks and happened to drive into a Staples lot. About 10 people per register but the store itself wasn't as full as I expected. Most of the bargain tables were picked clean though. I found one though that still had a few things in stock. Picked up a Maxtor 200GB hard drive for 20 bucks (after 50 instant savings and 50 easy rebate) and a 13 dollar (after 17.00 instant rebate and 6.00 easy rebate) 1GB Memory stick Pro Duo which came with a free Duo Adapter sleve. The Pro Duo fits in my PSP, and then I can put the memory stick into the adaptor sleve and put it in my digital camera. Cool Beans (I've been wanting one of these). The purchase line took FOREVER though. At least 15 or 20 minutes.

I also noticed a lot of people on their cell phones coordinating with their family or friends who were also shopping, either in the same store, comparing prices somewhere else, or were apparently online and giving advice on how good that bargain product really is.

Feeling a little sick in my stomach from getting up early and dealing with Best Buy, I went home content in the knowledge that my effort wasn't wasted. I was happy with what I got and my checks won't bounce. Now that's financing 101.

Monday is usually date night. Violet and I always go out to dinner and a movie, or something, on date night. Lately though we've been trying to save money by only going to the movies once a month instead of once a week. Otherwise we watch a movie at home thanks to netflix.

Anyway with all the overtime I was working we haven't really been sticknig to schedule, and since I'm on vacation so we treated ourselves to date night yesterday in the afternoon. We went and saw The Prestige. I liked it ok, but their constant use of flashbacks made the movie not flow very well, so I didn't care for that. Of course, I pretty much always hate flashbacks. Acting was good, sets and costumes were great, and I was very happy to see David Bowie as Nikola Tesla. Of course, I'm always happy to see Scarlett Johansson. But the way things were presented were done in such a way that I didn't care for their resolution. It was a little awkward. I preferred The Illusionist simply becasue the story was more romantic, straight foward (sorta), and had a happier ending. Also, I'm a big fan of Edward Norton. So go see it if you want, everyone else thinks its really great. But me.. bah.. It's merely OK.

Little trivia. I learned how to spell "vacation", and many other words ending in -tion (words ending with the syllable "shun") based upon the song of the same name. My mom would play this Connie Francis song on our old record player, which was more like a huge 8' long credenza with a record player in the middle and space for records on either side.

Anyway, I'm taking some comp time off and just hanging around the house, pestering violet (who is now working overtime.. grr) and trying to play a decent amount of Neverwinter Nights 2 before I go back to work.

My D&D game is back, having played game #6 on Wed. It was a good game but I wish we had more time per session so I could be more elaborate with my storytelling. (sigh). But getting in 3 or 4 hours on a wed night is better than nothing. I'm rewriting the campaign's website to be more blog like, to make it easier to post updates and such to it. I've had limited success thus far but hopefully I can get it to look the way I want it to look.

Oh, and there's a new feature, called LABELS. I can now catagorize each blog post with a title or two so people can quickly find all the posts relating to that topic. Not bad.

Sat and Sun I finally got a chance to sit down and play some Neverwinter Nights 2. Having already played the beta I knew what to expect, so I skimmed over the tutorial. The game gets better as you go.

I enjoy the adherence to the v3.5 rules and the VAST selection of races (all of em, including dark dwarves, drow, and planetouched), classes (including most prestige classes... Dragon Disciple? Red Dragon only. Shadow Dancer. Yup. Blackguard? Yup. Warlock? Yup. If its in the core rulebooks or players handbook 2, its there), spells, equipment, etc. Pretty aweseome.

The interaction with your party members and NPC characters is excellent, and I really get the sense that you can be whatever race or class or alignment you want and get customizable full content for it. No more wattered down or unallowed evil characters and no more ignoring consequences, good or bad, of your actions. The first party member that joins your ranks (if you so choose) is awesome.

The graphics are, well, vastly improved over NWN1. Heightmaps allow MUCH better landscapes and Speedtree allows for more natural looking foilage. Indoors are still tile based but the objects within are all placeable. Much better than NWN1.

However this is no Oblivion. The textures in NWN2 are crude, model quality is laughable, and the character customization (looks only) is barely existant. Maybe its an engine limitation but current RPGs are much better.

Bottom line.. If you didnt like NWN, you wont like this. If you are expecting Oblivion, don't.
NWN2 is a fine RPG, and definately worth checking out. 81/100.

Friday I got in my car and began to backup and immediately noticed something wasn't right. I've had this feeling before. Yup. A flat tire. Front passenger side. Doh. Well, I took Violet's car into work instead. But I ended up taking the day off so I came back home and removed the time. I noticed a rather large, probably 1/4" bolt, in the middle of the tread. That can't be good. It was a good sunny 60 (degF) day, soI thought I might as well replace Violet's 4 tires, which I should have done last winter. Certainly don't wanna do that after the winter hits. Having no Discount Tire Company around its pretty much a crap shoot, so I called around and did a lot (a few hours worth) of comparison shopping and tire size research in order to get the best value. I went with a place a few miles away who could repair my tire for 20 bucks and Violet's tires were on order for Sat delivery, total cost around 450. Well I got there and my tires wasn't fixable. Replacement would be 110 bucks or so and could probably be delivered on Sat. However they had a shipment of Violet's tires that had just happened to be restocked. SOOO Instead of getting my flat fixed on Fri and Violet's new tires on Sat, she got new tires on Friday and I got a new tire on Sat. BTW, remove the jack stand from under your car before trying to back out. Remember, knowing is half the battle.

Violet and I saw The Departed on Wed. Since I was working Monday night we postponed date night to Wed. The movie lives up to its title. Check the description and go see it. It'll definately be up for a few nominations. I didn't realize Boston had such history.