The screwed up sidebar pictures I had? That’s the result of FTPing image files using the “text” transfer protocol. Remember, kids, binary transfers for image files; text transfers for text files! (My FTP program also has an automatic setting, but for whatever reason that likes to screw up my Movable Type installation—which, you may recall, I was updating over the weekend.)

Now you may witness the true chaos I’ve unleashed in brent//BLOG Extreme! Ha ha ha ha ha!

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Over the weekend, Brian and I attempted to predict the outcome of the recent election (it’s hard to predict past events, but we tried our best) via repeated application of Soul Calibur II. Brian decided (and I agreed) that Yoshimitsu was most like Bush, and Voldo was most like Kerry. Brian also supplied the latest Newsweek, which had a nice map of which states were leaning which way. The setup was simple: if a state was solidly for a candidate, we gave that state to them; if a state was tentatively leaning one way, that character got infinite health and the opponent got 100% health (meaning, effectively, the only way the other candidate could win would be to ring-out his opponent before he ran out of life); if it was a true swing state, both characters got 200% health. Time was unlimited, and the matches were best-of-nine. We flipped a coin for each matchup, to determine who would play which character.

It was a grueling campaign.

And, at the end of the day, Kerry squeezed through. Obviously our model is fine—it just has a perfect negative correlation with reality. The fact that I happened to be the master of cheap knockout moves, Brian took a good while to figure out how to throw me off my cheap game (namely, to stay down on the ground for longer than I expected), and that I had a string of rounds where I represented Kerry, in no way biased the outcome.

Needless to say, we’ll be all over the 2008 presidential election. Maybe even before it happens.

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My folks are off in vacation-land right now, which has left me and my sister to take care of Yoshi and Calliope. Marin’s in a crunch-time at school, though, which effectively leaves me to take care of walking Yoshi. This normally wouldn’t be all that big of a deal (aside from the time commitment—Yoshi likes to walk), except that recently he’s taken to wandering around the park behind my house some, followed by wandering around the neighborhood streets. I anticipated the park—and failed to anticipate the streets that would follow—and so wore a pair of ill-fitting boots the last two days.

Ow!