I know this has probably been floating around the Intrawebs for some time, but I still got a really big kick out of it:

I’m pretty sure this very poster was hanging in Capt. Ramsey’s stateroom on the Alabama.

Ooooooooh-ooo-ooo-ooooooooooooh!

Not bad singing on a journal, eh?

My mother-in-law got me a 2010 Sodoku calendar for Christmas. Not having the heart to tell her that the last time I tried to solve a Soduku puzzle I got an almost uncontrollable nosebleed, I bought myself a Jeopardy! calendar instead.It’s pretty neat, with each day’s question having a particular dollar value, lines on it to jot down your weekly winnings, and Final Jeopardy! occurring on Sunday.

It’s kicking my ass!

I used to fancy myself pretty good at Jeopardy, but because this is a desk calendar and not the actual game show, I’ve made a few rules (since the calendar came with none of its own):

• As the only contestant, I am compelled to buzz in and must answer every question.
• I cannot use any “lifelines” (e.g. no googling stuff, or asking co-workers).
• Instead of five seconds to submit an answer, like on the show, I have until I leave work to submit an answer.

Because I must answer every question, the hard ones are killing me. Naturally, they’re worth more, and when I get them right, Jackpot! But when I get them wrong, I almost assuredly end up in the red when I get to Final Jeopardy at the end of the week and have nothing to wager.

I haven’t skipped ahead in the calendar–that would give me an unfair advantage–but I’m wondering if there are Daily Doubles on the holidays. That would be neat.

So here’s my winnings so far:

Week ending 1/3: $1,600
Week ending 1/10: -$3.600
Week ending 1/17: $0

So far, I have no net winnings. Boo.

Guess I’m not going on Jeopardy! anytime soon…

I’m a voracious Engadget reader, so when Barnes and Noble introduced the Nook right before Christmas, I was intrigued. My commute takes up four hours of my day, and since I’d rather carry a gizmo than a bunch of books around (to each their own, right?), I’d been investigating various electronic baubles to do the job.

I’d been looking at the Amazon Kindle 2 for a while, but until now, I hadn’t had the courage to take the plunge–$260 was a lot of dough for me to spend on a doohicky that only read books, and I already have a BlackBerry Storm 2 that–which, when coupled with Mobipocket Reader, lets me read e-books just fine.

Only it’s not as fine as “just fine” could be.

The screen is tiny–even though it’s big for a phone, it’s tiny for an e-book–and staring at it for hours on end resulted in some serious eyestrain for me. After reading Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol on it, I was less than impressed with the whole “e-book on my phone” thing.

So despite Engaget’s optimistic-yet-critical review of the Nook, I went over to Barnes & Noble to check it out.

My impressions:

• The thing was slow. Not just slow, but slooooooooooow. It had to really think about the direction given it by the user–just like Engadget said it did, but I had to see it for myself nonetheless.
• The interface was cool, with the color iPhone-like screen on the bottom and a beautiful E-Ink display on the top. But that lower display is hella bright, and very, very distracting until it shuts off after 30 seconds.
• The foreward to the Nook was written by Dave Barry (whose writing style he obviously stole from Conman). It was hilarious. Favorite line was the opener: “Congratulations on your new Nook! We’re sure it will give you many years of trouble-free enjoyment until next week, when we come out with a newer version.”
• Barnes & Noble’s website did not make it even remotely obvious which of its titles were Nook-friendly and which weren’t. Boo. This is in very stark contrast to Amazon’s Kindle e-book section.

But the real kicker, and why I don’t have a Nook right now? Barnes & Noble are completely out of stock, and they will only start shipping again February 1st. The petulent child in me demanding instant gratification threw a temper tantrum as I dragged it out the door of Barnes & Noble.

But upon further reflection, it gave me an opportunity to sit down and compare–really compare–Amazon’s Kindle 2 to the Nook

It’s good thing, too, because I found some glaring differences:

• The Kindle 2 doesn’t have Wi-Fi, like the Nook. But it does have its wireless service provided by Sprint PCS–unlike the Nook, who gets theirs from AT&T. Boo.
• The Kindle 2 has a built-in PDF reader, as does the Nook. But where you have to plug your Nook into your PC with a USB cable and transfer the PDFs manually, you can send PDFs over-the-air to the Kindle 2–just by e-mailing them.
• The Kindle 2’s battery goes about twice the distance of the Nook’s a week as opposed to four days.
• The Kindle 2 is thinner and lighter.
• I like real buttons. The Kindle has them, and the Nook does not.
• The Kindle’s content-buying website is organized a thousands times better than the Nook’s.
• The Kindle will read your books to you via text-to-speech. A kitschy feature, true, and that’s why it’s at the bottom of the list. But it seems cute, and I was disappointed that the Nook didn’t do the same.
• All the reviews said that the Nook still has several major bugs to work out. And after playing with it for an hour, I can tell that it does, too.

In the end, I purchased a Kindle 2, a leather case, and a light. I can’t wait until they get here!

Well, by my wristwatch, it’s about 52 minutes into 2010. Happy New Year!

That would make this the very first journal entry in The Corsair Journal of 2010. Fireworks burst outside as I write this entry, and my head is swimming with a combination of several liquors that I have consumed during the evening’s “festivities.”

As I try to compose this journal entry (I still $#&@*! hate the word blog), it would seem pretty obvious that I’ve made pretty “merry” in the early hours of January 1, 2010. Suffice to say, I didn’t go to any parties. Rather, I stayed home and played board games with my family.

However, despite winning American History Trivial Pursuit (even with a good dose of Smirnoff and Jack coursing through my veins I’m still a trivia whiz; that just goes to show you exactly what a geek I am), I feel I’ve embarrassed myself pretty good.

I’ve always been particularly careful in front of my step-kids, especially considering that their legal father was always considered a fair man with the bottle. While I do not posses the highly-trained liver that my stepkids’ father possesses, I think I hold my booze pretty good. I’ve always been a happy drunk and with liquor in my system, and have a very easy laugh.

I can only hope that with the light of day, and the hangover I have surely earned through the early morning’s activities sequestering me to the master bath, that my wife and stepkids don’t judge me too too harshly.

I want to wish all of my loyal readers a happy 2010. May the new decade bring you much peace, happiness, and success. And may it bring me a hangover cure that wasn’t borne from Southern lore–where I come from, a Pepsi and a Moon Pie is the most tried-and-true hangover cure there is. Well, all I have to ring in the New Year is Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi, and I don’t have any Moon Pies. I’ll have to go to Publix and grab myself a 12-pack of RC and some Little Debbie Swiss Rolls.