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Status Challenge

Years ago, as a writer friend of mine was struggling to maintain his creativity in a university IT shop (yes, I'm talking about you, Kevin), I thought I would help out by giving him random phrase to work into his weekly status updates. As I got more and more random, he had funnier and funnier status updates. I like to think I saved what was left of his sanity.

Recently, a series of deadly boring teleconferences resurrected this game. Holly, a colleague of mine, was giving her status update when I instant messaged her to work the word "hiccup" into her update. Without missing a beat, Holly spoke of the server hiccup that required a restart. Thus, the Status Challenge was reborn.

Every week, I will twitter a word. Your challenge is to work it into your status (update, meeting, report, whatever) without arousing suspicion. This week's word was "crawdad." You may choose to use the word as a folksy metaphor "We'll wait for that crawdad to grow a bit first", an interesting comparison, "I love that idea more than crawdad gumbo!", or as an intentional malapropism, "That really sticks in my crawdad" to work it in. However, if someone calls you on what you're doing, you get no points. Award yourself points for using the word, more if no one comments, and even more for style.

If you want to play, follow my twitter @gelsbernd, but let me know by sending me a DM with #statuschallenge in the message.

Good luck!

P.S. Don't play this with Jason - he wants to suggest impossible words such as "vas deferens" - look it up.

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40th Anniversary of the Moonwalk

There is so much being made of the 40th anniversary of the moonwalk going on this week (rightly so). Here's some more facts you might not have heard:

The Boy Scouts of America teaches young people to be good citizens and trains them to become leaders. These qualities are also found in the U.S. astronaut program.

Of the 312 pilots and scientists selected as astronauts since 1959, at least 207 have been identified as having been Scouts or active in Scouting. The list includes:

39 Eagle Scouts
25 Life Scouts
14 Star Scouts
26 First Class Scouts
17 Second Class Scouts
13 Tenderfoot Scouts
3 Explorers
10 Webelos Scouts
25 Cub Scouts
1 King’s Scout
2 Wolf Scouts
32 with unknown ranks, including 27 who were Girl Scouts.

Of the 27 men to travel to the moon on the Apollo 9 through Apollo 17 missions, 24 were Scouts, including 11 of the 12 men who physically walked on the moon's surface, and all three members of the crew of Apollo 13.

All three of the astronauts who died in the Apollo 1 fire, four of the seven who died in the Challenger launch explosion, and five of the seven who died in the Columbia re-entry explosion were Scouts.

This week makes me proud to be both an American and a Boy Scout.

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So Bad It's Good

There is a fine line between awful and so awful it's great. These are the guilty pleasures that we all enjoy when watching something that is so horribly written, acted or directed that you can't help but laugh. That's what made Mystery Science Theater 3000 such a blast - you got to poke fun at the movie you were obstensibly watching along with Mike, Crow and Tom. Here are a couple of my more obscure "So Bad It's Good" confessions. If I can get comments working, I'd love to hear your confessions as well.