A recipient of one of those Nigerian email spam scams turns the table on the scammer and get's them to think they're entering an art scholarship for $150,000 - eventually sending a wood carving sculpture of a Commodore 64 keyboard.

Read more about it here.

Remember that piece of metal Kim found in her take-home sandwich from The Cheesecake Factory?  Since we were making a trip up to Costco (which is in the same area), we decided to take it up there and show it to the manager this evening. 

We talked to Leslie A., who looked shocked when she saw the piece.  "You didn't bite into it, did you?" was one of the first things she asked.  She then took it to the general manager, and they thought it looked like it broke off of a dicer.  According to Leslie, the piece would be sent up to corporate with a report.

She thanked us several times for taking the time to bring it back and let them know, and even gave us a $50 gift card for our trouble.

All in all, I think they handled it well, and odds are we'll eat there again, though I don't know Kim will get the chicken salad again.

It's official!

A friend of mine is a museum registrar, and she passed this story along today privately via her non-public blog.  I thought it very funny, so she has allowed me to re-post it here with changes to protect her job.

Kim and I went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner on Saturday night, where Kim ordered her usual chicken salad sandwich.  She took half home.

On Sunday, when she was eating the leftover half for lunch, she found a nasty little surprise inside:

Yikes!  In the future, we'll take our chicken salad without the half-inch piece of metal, thank you very much.

Earlier this week I posted a blog entry about Amazon.com's outdated systems page.  The next morning, Joystiq - a popular video game blog - ran the story, linking to my page as the source.

It looks like someone at Amazon also saw the story, because now they've updated the Browse by System page (rather hastily, too, by the look of things).

My friend Calvin recently started working at Jay's CD & Hobby in Des Moines - a place that carries tons of new and vintage action figures.  I asked him to keep his eyes open for a complete original Optimus Prime a few weeks ago.  Last night he called to tell me they had one.

I went up and bought it - it was in good condition though it could use some cleaning (it is 20 years old after all) and some of the stickers are peeling (though there are sites that sell reproduction stickers for them).

What's funny though is how much *cheaper* the original Transformers look than we remember them.

About a year ago, I bought a 20th Anniversary Optimus Prime - a deluxe figure put out designed to look as much like the Optimus from the cartoon series as possible.  You see, what most people don't realize is that the toys were out before the cartoon, so the cartoon modified the design of the toys to be more visually appealing.  As time has passed, we tend to remember the look of the cartoon as being the same as the toys, which they really weren't.

In the picture above, the 20th Prime is on the left, while the original is on the right.  It's so much simpler!  The 20th prime takes nearly 30 steps to transform, while the original is around 5 steps.  To transform the original, you actually have to pull the hands off of the figure - who remembers that?  I certainly didn't.

I've had friends over who have seen my 20th Prime out and said "Yeah, I remember having that figure as a kid!"  Nope, that's just how we remember it.

Like I said, I bought the original figure anyways.  It may not be as cool as the new figure, but I've always had a soft-spot for Optimus.  Having the figure on my desk reminds me of when I was little, putting the Optimus figure on lay-away at Richmond Gordman and waiting what felt like years to pay it off and take it home. 

The original Prime once transformed.

After getting a DS lite a few weeks ago, I've been looking for a good accessory for carrying around those little game cards it uses.  After striking out at Best Buy, I decided to give Amazon a try.  Not really knowing the name of the product I was looking for, I decided to browse by system.  I went to their Computer & Video Games section and not noticing the system links on the side of the page, I clicked the Browse by System link at the top.  That is where I found this:

Click to view full page screenshot

Let's see...  no Nintendo DS listed, nor is the Xbox 360 listed.  But they have the original GameBoy, N64, PlayStation and Sega Dreamcast listed.

I can't help but suspect that this page has not been updated in several years.

This reminds me of when I went to the south Des Moines Wal-Mart earlier this year looking to pick up a copy of Ghost Recon.  While there I noticed a sign stating "The Latest Games" above their game cabinet - on it was a logo for the N64, the Playstation and the Dreamcast.  I went back there a month ago looking to get a camera phone shot, but they'd since used black marker on the logos.

I now have our wedding photos up on my website!  Click here to see them!

Word was swirling around the game blogs yesterday that some Wal-Marts and Targets had broken the June 11th release date of the Nintendo DS Lite (the new sleeker, brighter DS), stocking and selling the units before the allowed street date.

Calling around to the Des Moines-area Targets and Wal-Marts, the most common response I got was "lights for the DS?", but the Windsor Heights Wal-Mart reported having 9 of them.  The hunt was on.

Sure enough, the 9 units were sitting on the bottom of the shelf with a hand-written sign with "$129.88" written on it.  I called Phil, who like me had pre-ordered one earlier from GameStop but didn't want to wait until the 11th when he didn't have to, and picked one up for him as well. I then picked up a third unit intended for Ebay but that ended up with Jessica and Adam.  When buying the DS Lites, a slouchy young salesperson came over to the register:

Wal-Mart Guy:  I thought the Nintendo sales rep said these weren't coming out for a few weeks.

Me:  Well, other places are selling them. <None around here, I didn't tell him.>

Wal-Mart Guy:  I guess she didn't know what she was talking about.

Me:  <Phew>

So now I have the DS Lite a couple weeks early, and have been playing away at New Super Mario Bros. and Brain Age.  I also picked up Tetris DS and the new Mario and Luigi role-playing game (I had previously played the GameBoy Advance RPG which was hilarious).