I have no idea if its got a chance of winning, but competition is good and EA's practices here are not very competitive. At best, I might get a discount or free game, at worst, I wasted 5 minutes filling out the form. After the ATI/Nvidia price fixing scheme netted me a check that paid for my next video card upgrade, I look at these and figure "ah, what the hell".
Essential purchase or not, EA has had this coming for a long time.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
I'm not saying you shouldn't get in on the action. I just don't understand what the problem is, when to my general knowledge these games cost the same as, say, my Rockband game or Red Faction 2 did when I bought them brand new. I don't see how consumers have it so bad. I can see maybe other game production companies wanting to cry foul, but seems silly to clog up courts with this drivel.
I was having a merely ok day, but then this happened.
OH MY GOSH NEW LAST EXILE SEQUEL TRAILER HNNNNNGGGGG
I enjoy blank walls.
Chemistry related stuff is making me happy, once again.
Today was a fairly shitty day at work, since our lab is currently working on synthesis which involves using disturbing amounts of methyl acrylate. Methyl acrylate is a compound with a characteristic overwhelming acrid odor. Imagine the most disgusting constituent of the smell of nail polish, and multiply that by a thousand or so to get an approximate idea. This compound also has a double bond in its structure, and I don't know why, but compounds with multiple bonds in them seem to stick to clothes and hair, in small concentrations - just enough to feel their odor for a while after having handled them.
The happy part - I seem to have managed to work my way around a reaction I really want to avoid. The reaction is an aromatization of a partially hydrogenated naphtalene derivative. It looks simple enough on paper - two hydrogen atoms are removed from the ends of a single bond, thus turning it into a double bond, which becomes a part of aromatic system. In practice... Well, looks like people have never needed such a reaction for compounds similar to mine. Some guy in 1915 used bromine for this reaction (and neat bromine is something I'd like to avoid for several reasons, such as possible side reactions, and the feeling that the gloves we got at the lab might not provide sufficient protection), and the method I tried previously involves heating my compound with elementar sulfur for several hours (this produces hydrogen sulfide, which stinks. Think rotten eggs.), then vaccuum distillation of the resulting mixture. In theory, this should provide the pure target compound. In practice, this fills the valves of the vaccuum pump with elementar sulfur, thus killing it. At least that happened the last time I tried this method, and there's no reason to destroy another pump. No other purifying method gave satisfactory results, either.
To avoid the sulfur nightmare, I tried to use a more up-to-date method. There's this oxidant, called DDQ, which is supposed to work like a charm in aromatization reactions. That'd be too simple, though, so my first attempts failed. That was more than two years ago, and the situation appeared so hopeless that my boss gave me another synthesis to work on.
This time I tried to first prepare a derivative of my starting compound, which might be more eager to get aromatized. Getting the derivative was already a great success. The method mentioned in literature said it'd take 32 hours and special equipment. I thought "screw this", and used a more general method, which worked fairly good, yielding a little less pure product in 4 hours of simple heating. Then, upon oxidation with DDQ, I obtained a compound that was different from the starting material. The yield was miserable (the workup was an improvization, I suspect that to be the reason), but I got the proton NMR spectrum today - it's exactly what I wanted to obtain. So... Yay!
Carthāgō dēlenda est
Reading your Chemistry blurbs make me happy BalticSailor!
Hunting around for some hard-to-find items and landed at Vermont Country Store. Hadn't seen Lifebuoy soap in ages, but my gramps used it (and would stick the slivers together to make another bar). Wow, it's amazing how something as simple as a bar of soap can elicit strong memories!
“I grew up on a farm in Vermont around 1950. I went to school in a one room school with around 13 students from grades 1 through 8 and we all lived on farms and helped with the morning chores. Needless to say we all smelled a little like cows but as we all smelled the same, nobody noticed. We got a new teacher who was from the city. After a week or two he came in with a bag and told us he had something for us. He gave us each a bar of Lifebuoy Soap. The next morning the smell of Lifebuoy Soap overpowered the smell of cows. In thinking back I think that was what he had intended.” — Gail Drysdale, Milford, MA
Dear Mr. Orton, My dad always talked of Lifebuoy soap, he couldn't believe it when we found it online . . . your product arrived in time . . . my dad got his last bath with Lifebuoy soap before he passed away on June 13th of this year. We even buried a bar of it with him! Thanks for giving him a memory with one of his favorite soaps.
” — Dee Shackelford, Wauchula, FL
“I grew up with my grandparents on a farm. I never knew there was any other soap but Lifebuoy. Next to my grandpa's aftershave it is the most memorable trigger from my life. I loved him and I love Lifebuoy. Before he died he found a small store in Central Oregon that carried a few bars. As it was no longer available at any store in our city, my grandad bought that store's entire supply. I can just imagine him driving back from his quartet concert with his friends and a case of soap between them. God can take my sight, but give me the smell of memories like that. Thank you for carrying it.” — Brian Livingston, Salem, OR
“I grew up outside of Philadelphia and one ritual of our life in the 1950s and early '60s was to go "down the shore" to Stone Harbor, N.J., for two weeks every summer. My dad helped take care of a neighbor's house on 92nd Street and in return we had the use of this place early in the season when the ocean was still a bit chilly for comfortable bathing. There was a bathhouse at the back of this -- typical white asbestos shingle Harbor Cottage (with the knotty pine paneling inside). In the bathhouse closet was an old Duke Kahanamoku wooden long board, various mildewed canvas beach umbrellas and chairs, a rusty balloon tire bomber Schwinn, and some old-style blow-up canvas rafts that looked like properties from the film "The Cruel Sea." In the shower room, there was Lifebuoy soap. When I shower every morning at the gym, the peculiar, authentic aroma of that soap takes me back to 1962 and all the adventure and romance of the shore as a 14-year-old. Dollar for dollar that stuff is the best mental therapy there is. No matter what problems I may have to deal with, for a few minutes I am there with the little girl across the street with whom I had a shy but tender relationship. What more can I say?” — Philip Tramdack, New Castle, PA
What does it smell like? Good, bad?
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Lifebuoy? I'd say it smells strong but clean. Hard to describe if you've never smelled it. It was "the first deodorant soap" and was common to WWI and WWII people. Reading the consumer comments I learned it's also apparently good for chiggers and poison ivy, so it's probably harsh in some way. I might buy a bar though, along with some Chiclets, just to have a whiff of my gramps again.
I got a 3DS today.
There are no words capable of adequately describing how awesome it is.
I enjoy blank walls.
You're right.Originally Posted by Supermarioman
I was just playing with my son's. I only played the AR archery game, and it was excellent. I hope he doesn't lose the cards.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
I want one, but I haven't seen one in action yet. My local walmart, target, even the mall gamestop...none have one on display. I'm going to wait for the gamestop thats being built a block down the street to open up, then I'll make a decision.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Two of my coworkers have them. I. Must. Have. Too.
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My son is getting one for his birthday.
I think I'll take his dsi then.
I was home within 50 minutes after my plane landed at Schiphol.
Congratulations America
Thats my beta Halo Reach disc that Microsoft sent me to test the new disc formats.
Fuck yeah
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
More Scentific HappiNess!
Seems to be a great number of people who absolutely adore this fragrance just as much (if not more) than Lifebuoy. I won't pick and choose from the comments this time around, so here you go....
http://www.vermontcountrystore.com/p...l?evar3=browse
This makes me happy!
I don't have a problem with authority....I just don't like being told what to do!Remember, the toes you step on today may be attached to the ass you have to kiss tomorrow!RIP Fluffy! 01-07-09 I'm so sorry Fluffster! People who don't like cats were probably mice in an earlier life! My mind not only wanders, sometimes it leaves completely!The nice part about living in a small town: When you don't know what you're doing, someone else always does!
Atari bullshit refugee!!
Astronomers have spent 16 years piecing together the motion of 28 stars orbiting a supermassive blackhole in the Sagittarius A constellation at the heart of the Milky Way ... our galactic core.
Absolutely Awesome Awesomeness.
Got a national-museum-year-card for my birthday from my neighbours
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
My mom has K for the afternoon.
So the question is: Do I clean out the windowsills or sit on my ass all day?
Is there some reason why you would want to clean out the windowsills?
So that I can open them; it's been such nice weather lately. There are dead bugs and dirt in them though, from the winter. Blech.
Oh. Too much pollen for me to open windows. Mine probably have dead bugs, too.
Done! Not as bad as I thought, mostly pollen. Of course since it's still everywhere else, I may have cleaned the windows prematurely. Ah well. Now to sit on my butt! My parents are grilling steaks and corn tonight, so yet another thing to make me happy!
I've switched to electric cigarettes.
Would love to hear how those work for ya.
Been intrigued, but skeptical of them for awhile.
Well, it's been two days, and I don't want a regular smoke.
You can still get that "buzz". I can now smell other smokers, lol.
The battery lasts more than a day. You can either carry around extra 'dosed' cartridges while on the go, or bring the small bottle of 'juice' which, either way is smaller than a pack and a lighter.
Not a pain to use in the wind.
While my ultimate goal is to quit, this just feels better?
Hit me up in a week or so to see what I think.
Chemistry, yet again.
This week, I was surprized by the appearance of a product of certain reaction. It's one of those long reactions where one has to heat the precursors for 8 hours, and the workup follows after a day or so. In this case I have to pour the reaction mixture into a large volume of water. Orange-ish oil appears, and according to literature, it should solidify if left standing overnight. This hadn't happened even once when I ran the reaction, though - it thickened somewhat, but only became solid (and pale yellow) when some ethanol was added. This is what the product looked like usually:
However, this time was different. The orange oil didn't solidify as a whole - but instead of thickening, pale yellow crystals had appeared in the oil. After the usual ethanol wash, the rest of the oil created the typical powder, but I collected the crystals separately. It's not that there's any advantage to obtaining the product in form of large crystals (they might be of higher purity than the usual product, but only if the crystals formed reasonably slowly, and there's no way of telling that), but it's quite a rare sight in organic chemistry lab to see such large crystals form unintentionally.
The quality is limited, since it's taken by a phone cam.
Carthāgō dēlenda est
Looks like polenta.
Anyhow I'm happy that the nights are getting colder and colder here
Um.
I have.
No idea.
What you just said.
But somehow. It really doesn't matter.
I care that you care.
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