Hue Test

I'm pretty colour unaware. Sometimes people have asked if I'm colourblind. It's not that I can't see colours, it's just that I'm not really interested in them. I don't really mind what colour stuff is, and I don't notice. Sitting here, for example, I couldn't tell you what colour our bedroom is. I'd guess it's yellow, 'cos the room I'm in is a bedroom in our apartment, and it's yellow. But it wouldn't surprise me if it was red.

Hang on, I'll go and look.

Gosh, it's a kind of slightly rusty, mellowed orange. That's fairly close.

It's lucky I don't care about what colour things are, 'cos Susanne cares a lot, and if I cared, we'd have to fight about it all the time. She claims that there is a colour called 'English Red', and often seeks things out in that colour. If there was such a colour as English Red I, being English, would know about it.

Anyway, I'm digressing. But that's the point of a blog, isn't it. I mean, no one would sit there politely and listen while I spout this crap. And, on reflection, it's possible that no one is still reading.

I came across a Hue Test the other day, which tests your 'Color IQ' - that is your ability to distinguish between different, but similar colours. I scored 12 (which means 12 errors), but it didn't really give much information about what that meant, relative to anyone else, except to say that people of my age and sex have scored between 0 and 1999. If you do it, let me know in the comments what you get.

Winning / Losing

Today (Saturday) was Fitness and Health day at school. So being the involved parents that we are, we went and were involved. In particular we bought school bags, school sweat pants (as we call them here, but that sounds grim, doesn't it), school bags, school shirts and school jumpers. I wasn't allowed to buy school blankets. Susanne said that they were the wrong colour. Or something.

There was, as there tends to be at these things, a raffle. I used to be one of those people who say that they never win anything at raffles and similar things. I've discovered that the way to win things at raffles and the like is to buy a lot of tickets. Being the socialists Obama supporters that we are (or would be, if we were allowed to vote, or donate, or anything) we think that taxes should be higher, and education funded better. So instead, we buy a lot of raffle tickets.

So we won a Hannah Montana frisbee. I'd just found someone to give that too when we were offered a plastic golf caddy for kids instead, complete with a 'gold club' and 'golf ball'; the club looked like a plastic stick, about a foot long, and the ball looked like a table tennis ball. We managed to get rid of that too - the boy we gave it to was very pleased. Then we won a recycled basket ball (the basket ball wasn't recycled, it was made of recycled stuff). Then we wone the grand prize - a Wii Fit. And finally, two Washington Mutual water bottles. (There were about 50 WaMu [as we say] water bottles, which is probably related to the fact that Washignton Mutual are one of the plethora of banks that have collapsed.)

Wii Fits, you might not know, are pretty hard to get hold of in the US. (Conspiracy theorists say that they are sent to Europe, because of the exchange rate). Amazon currently says:

"Wii Fit" purchase limit policy
As you may know, the Nintendo "Wii Fit" is in great demand, and there are shortages of this product across the U.S. In an effort to provide as many customers as possible with the opportunity to purchase a "Wii Fit," we are limiting the total number of "Wii Fits" that can be purchased. As a result, each household may only purchase one Nintendo "Wii Fit" unit total.

Which would be more relevant if they actually had any in stock. But they haven't. So we are one of the privileged few to get our hands on one. And we made a profit on the raffle.

However, a Wii Fit ain't much use without a Wii to stick it into. And our telly is a bit old and tired, and if it's got a Wii Fit in it, then Susanne won't be able to watch 'Jon and Kate Plus Eight' and we know what a disaster that would be.

So first I went to Consumer Reports to look at tellies. And after contemplating driving to shops and getting harassed by salesemen, I ordered it from Amazon. Another advantage of buying from Amazon is that you don't pay any sales tax, which here is 8.5%. In theory, you should confess to all the stuff you bought from Amazon on your tax return at the end of the year, and pay the tax on it. I confess some of it, 'cos otherwise I think it looks suspicious, but in fact this makes me a weirdo.

Then I went to shops to try to buy a Wii. Wiis have been around for almost two years, and they are still really hard to get hold of. Again, there are conspiracy theories aplenty about this, but we're not going to worry about that. In one shop I went to they said they might have some in a couple of weeks. In the second shop, they told me that they release an advert at midnight on Saturday night. If there are Wiis on it, they will have them in store on Sunday morning. If I wanted one, I should try to arrive at the store half an hour before they opened. If I really wanted one, I should try to arrive at the store an hour before it opened.

If you're going to buy a Wii, you have to get Rock Band. That's almost a law. And a wireless guitar. And probably a charger thing. And whatever extra bits and bobs they try to sell you. (And there's no shortage).

The amount winning the raffle has cost us is now into 4 digits. Dollar digits, which isn't quite so bad though.

Lost has spoiled CSI

I was in a Borders (near Durham, New Hampshire, but that's another story) and the first series of Lost was on sale, very cheap, on DVD. So I bought it, and then over the Summer when CSI wasn't on, we watched it (4 years too late), and became obsessed. So I had to join Netflix so we could get the rest, and make an attempt to catch up with the TV.

Last night, CSI came back. It was all very exciting, and resolved the cliffhanger that ended the last series, Sarah ('the cute one', as we call her. Or I do) came back. It was all very emotional.

But it was also a little dull, and I think that was Lost's fault.

In CSI, you start at A with a bad guy killing (usually) or injuring badly (sometimes). You move to B, with lots of evidence and dubious science and speculation, and move to C, with the bad guy in jail. In Lost, you start somewhere near K, or at least what you believe to be K, but turns out to be S, move and end up and T, which looks like Y, moving via B and F and what really was Y. It's so complicated and mysterious, and most of the time you have no idea what's going on. Things that seemed incidental 12 episodes ago suddenly become profound and important "So was he driving the SUV? Was it them in the bar? It was her? What happened to his wife then?") CSI, by comparison, just seems like Scooby Doo.