The results are in!

You'll have to forgive me a bit for dragging my feet on determining a winner to the free lunch contest. The past few weeks have been a bit hectic, and just as I went to finish this off, my laptop died. For me that's a kick in the junk the size of which you wouldn't believe.

Just like last year, we'll take a look at the guesses before we get to the answer:

$41.38 - Exzavier
$65.87 - Anna
$68.43 - Servant
$83.17 - Dave
$87.53 - Ghedoicy
$95.96 - TR
$104.00 - Matt
$110.50 - Liang
$111.38 - Motz
$111.69 - Nikki
$122.12 - Miranda
$136.00 - Jo
$141.67 - Adam
$152.37 - Jesse
$158.00 - Megan
$169.69 - Beadle
$191.43 - Rose
$202.00 - Andrew
$212.00 - Stacy

And the grand total was....
$140.13

Just like I predicted, a cute girl who is in to short nerds won it all. Everyone congratulate Adam on his win. I'll get with you later on how we manage to get you a free lunch from 5600 miles away(That's 9100 Kilometers for you Adam).

Nerd Games: The Free LunchYear Two

Me going on vacation is about as frequent as a Halley's Comet visit, but I'm going to be out in Cali for almost a week coming up. With that in mind I figured it was time to toss up the Free Lunch contest for this year. I don't think change accumulated as fast this year as it normally does, but then the contest ran a little long. That means this year it's anyone's game. Good luck, and see you in a week or two!

Just like last year I'm inviting everyone to guess how much money is in my change jar. The closest to the exact dollar amount gets a free lunch from/with me.

Feel free to comment, email, IM, or even tweet your guess to me. A winner will be picked in roughly 10 days.

Rules:
1. The location of the dinner must be mutually decided upon, and the value per meal not to exceed 25 dollars. If the winner lives out of state, then some alternative prize will be awarded.
2. I reserve the right to kick anyone out of the competition for any reason.
3. Results may be modified to ensure the winner is a cute girl who is single and in to short nerds.
4. Non-US currency in the jar will not count towards the total.

This year, for comparison's sake, we'll use a standard sized Coke can and a half built Lego Minstorms NXT Robot, since everyone should know the exact size of that. Feel free to click on the images for a bigger picture.  

I'll give you a hint. Guess more than twenty bucks.

Five Lines or Less

You're currently reading this post for one of a few reasons. Please read the appropriate section, and only the appropriate section, for a personalized message just for you!

You're a loyal supporter of the blog, and read everything I post-

Mom,

How's your work day going? I'm considering going out of town this weekend, but if I don't, wanna hang out and maybe catch a movie?

Jesse

You received something in the mail with this web address-

Dear Sir/Madam,

I'm sorry. You were probably hoping it was some romantic gesture from that boy/girl you've been crushing on for the past few weeks, and it turns out to be a gift from a short nerd living in Phoenix. I would have fully explained on the card, but they only give you 5 lines to use on those things. How ridiculous is that? Asking me to write something that short is like asking Tim Burton to direct something bright, shiney and fluffy.  It's just not possible.

The reason you received something in the mail is most likely because someone entered you in my contest (click here to view the contest). I'm sorry to say that you didn't win the grand prize, but as I'm currently not paying girlfriend tax I thought it appropriate to send out some consolation gifts. I hope you enjoy them.

Jesse

You did a Google search for anyone famous I've written about and the word "feet"-

Dear Sir/Madam,

The number of hits I get each day for "Felicia Day Feet" and "Shirley Manson Feet" is getting out of hand. My blog name has the word "foot" in it and apparently Google is smart enough to translate that to "feet". I respect that everyone has their "thing". I myself like short nerdy girls, but I'm not out constantly Googling around looking for them. Knock it off.

Jesse

Okay okay, kidding aside, the contest is over and the stuff has been sent. I'm surprised by how many people were curious about it, so I created this mini-faq:

Q. Did I win?

A. Short answer: No.

Long answer: Nobody actually won. Somebody will receive the "big prize" though. That person gave me a very solid reason to send him/her flowers, and as such I did. It just wasn't necessarily contest related.

Q. So you ran a contest, got everyone to enter, and then changed the rules?

A. Not exactly. I stuck to the letter of the rules, and one of the entrants will receive flowers. Others may receive a consolation prize. I hope that everyone is happy in the end. That's the point after all.

Q. So who did get the "big prize"?

A. I'm not telling. If he/she wants to discuss it publicly here be my guest.

Q. But I got flowers. That means I'm the winner?

A. Not unless there's an absolutely horrible poem attached to them.

Q. Did you send that poor inmate something?

A. No. While the whole thing was rather amusing, even I have limits as to the amount of potential crazy I'll invite in to my life.

Q. So when does this "consolation" prize arrive?

A. Having something arrive on Saturday was like 15-25 bucks more, so "prizes" should be arriving between now and Friday.

Q. The consolation prize is probably something crappy right?

A. Probably

Happy Valentine's day everyone.

Nerd Games: The Free Flowers (Year 2)

Given that it's now almost February, the chances of me having a Valentine reside statistically in the "Not Probable" range.  I believe I've given or sent flowers for at least 7 or 8 years running now, and it seems a shame to let the streak end.

Given that, and my motto that every girl deserves flowers on Valentine's, I've decided to open up the free flowers competition again.  The rules are the same as last year.  

1. Nominate someone to get flowers. Write a reason/explanation, or don't.  I don't care. A good reason helps your chances though.

2. I'll pick a winner and pay for and send flowers. I'll also write a very crappy poem which you can help with if you'd like.

3. Contest ends on the 9th.

*I reserve the right to half ass it like I did last year if I get a slight case of death again.

Here are some sample entries that I just made up to get you started:

I think you should send flowers to my wife, because her husband is a jerk.

A dozen roses to Ruthie that read:
Dear Ruthie,
Please move back to 11-L so that Jesse has something to write about.
Love, Sesquipedalis Readers

Send flowers to Leyda with a card that reads, "Happy Valentine's - James Franco"

Where we're going. Where we've been.

It's been a while since I've posted. I'd like to say that it's because I've been working on some amazing and humorous stories, but that's not necessarily the case.

Sesquipedalis Year 2 is drawing to a close, and I find myself in need of a new direction for the blog. The amusing thing about writing a blog is you start off thinking, "Man I've got some funny stuff to write", but then 3 weeks later you've written those 2 stories that were really "money" and you're left winging it for the remainder of the blog, which for most people is about 4 entries in.

Year 1 was all about me and my inability to function socially, especially when relating to members of the opposite sex. Through the significant efforts of a few people, most notably a couple of fantastic neighbors, I've worked through the majority of those issues.

Year 2 I branched out a little and tried to share more of my people(Nerds) culture, and do some more off-topic type pieces like reviews and such.

For Year 3, I'm at a total loss. I could easily turn this in to a day by day status update. There's nothing wrong with those blogs, but it's just not what I want this to be. Others have done that and do it better than I ever could.

I've had a few ideas, but nothing has jumped out and grabbed me.

I considered taking a fast food joint job once every month and seeing how quickly I could get canned. How fun would it be to work at Pizza Hut again, but not care about anything? The issue here is that I'm quite lazy.

I considered turning the blog in to a piece of fiction. Adam had told me to just start making things up. Base them slightly in reality, but never let the audience know. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm that creative.

My last idea was to "get involved" with something, anything. The big stumbling block here is that I'm the least opinionated person you'll ever meet.

In the end so far I've resorted to not writing anything. Maybe I'll put the nose to the grindstone and finish up some other stories and wait for inspiration. This blog has more loose ends than a gay cowboy rodeo at an abandoned tampon factory, and maybe I should tie them up some day.

Hang in there kids, and stick with me. We're gonna get through this together. Feel free to leave suggestions and tell me what sucks/what doesn't.

Credit goes to the lovely and talented Kendall for the tampon joke.

Ratings? What do you think?

If my past few posts didn't clue you in, I'll let you know. I rarely, if ever actually look at my own blog. Proof reading is for sissies and people who want to be "accurate" or "grammatically correct". That's not what I'm about.

So it came as a surprise today when I accidentally checked it and saw this new "rating" system. How long have these little stars been on my blog? I'm not sure how I feel about them. Feedback is good, but only when it's positive.

Let me know what you think. I spent a good 10 minutes trying to figure out how to turn them off if I decide to.

This message will self destruct.


Edit: Since JMNLMAN asked, here's how you remove them, if anyone is curious:
Click on the pictures for full size.

First, click the "Layout" tab of your blog on the dashboard.

Second, click the "Edit" button on "Blog Posts"



Third, deselect the ratings. I think that should do it



Edit Again: They appear to be gone again. Maybe blogger is just acting up today? Who knows. I'll leave this post here for a while at the very least.

The Free Lunch - The results are in!

Right after work today I drove my bucket of change down to the Fry's to get the results of last week's contest. But before we get to the results let's take a look back at everyone's guesses.

Geremy 1.00
Anne 12.00
Jim 15.00
Andrew 23.67
Misti 28.00
Needs 33.00
Mike 34.21
Mom 34.56
Kendall 37.54
Ben 42.37
Josh 43.00
Jason 50.00
Beadle 50.69
Jenn 52.85
Mikele 58.63
Patty 59.25
Adam 66.83
Anna 67.57
Liang 71.13
Chase 75.00
Rose 76.11
Holly 77.77
Troy 85.07
Monique 88.00
J.R. 90.00
Pollack 100.00
Rachel 100.00
Mandi 105.00
Erik 120.00
Nikki 139.69
Scot 150.00
Jesse 157.42
Tom 183.10
Rahul 240.00
Bruce 300.00

I've highlighted in red the people who only saw the coin jar via pictures, and the people in black are the ones who saw it in real life. It's somewhat interesting that people who saw it through photos tended to guess significantly lower.

There were 35 total entries(If I counted correctly). I have to say that I'm overwhelmed by the number of responses that I've gotten. I've asked for ideas with regards to women, help getting a date, and thoughts for presents before. At the most I've gotten 1 or 2 responses, usually making fun of me, but as soon as there is free food on the table(har har) everyone figures out where the reply button is.

I was questioned on rule #3 specifically once or twice. In case you've forgotten rule #3, it was the following:

Results may be modified to ensure the winner is a cute girl who is
single and in to short nerds.

For anyone who knows me, it should have been obvious that this was a joke. I'd pretty much buy any cute girl who was single and in to short nerds a free lunch any day of the week. Heck, she doesn't even have to be all that cute, or all that in to short nerds. I'm pretty firm on the single part though.

Okay, enough Howey Mandeling this, it's time for the results...

According to the coinstar there was a grand total of.... $162.57 in the jar(Before the coinstar deduction). Which looking back over the results(since I can't win) means Scot won the free lunch. Scot's my boss and the former drummer of my non-existent band. He's also notoriously thrifty with concerns to lunches and free stuff, so despite the fact that he's a manager at a software company, this win for him roughly equates to me being invited to have a sleep over with Shigeru Miyamoto for a night of Smash Bros., so I gotta be happy for him.

Nerd Games: The Free Lunch

Generally, sometime around the New Year, I take my coin jar and cash it's contents in for the much more convenient paper form. Three years ago I started offering a free lunch to the person who came closest to guessing the value of the coins in the jar. I would also place my guess.

Unfortunately(for everyone else) I've won three years in a row. This leads to me having a celebratory lunch by myself, which isn't as exciting as it could be. This year I've decided to extent the contest to.... well, anyone who wants to wager a guess. If you don't live in Phoenix and/or I don't know you, then we'd have to work something out, but we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.

The winner will be decided sometime next weekend, so feel free to comment a guess, email a guess, call, web cam, carrier pigeon, or however you choose to contact me.

Rules:
1. The location of the dinner must be mutually decided upon, and the value per meal not to exceed 25 dollars.
2. I reserve the right to kick anyone out of the competition for any reason.
3. Results may be modified to ensure the winner is a cute girl who is single and in to short nerds.

Edit: After two guesses now in the 20 dollar range I feel it's impotant to state that the jar is apparently larger than the photos give it credit for. Therefore I took 2 more pictures of it comparing it to a normal sized coke can. It still looks small for some reason though :/

What do you do?

Long before she (re)skyrocketed to fame with such great hit shows as American Idol Season 1 and American Idol Season 2, Paula Abdul was a multi-platinum recording artist who's philosophical and thought provoking lyrics helped to shape a generation.

With great lines such as "Oh I Love what ya do when ya do what ya do", how could you not love the 5'2 half Canadian songstress?

The question at hand then is do you love what you do(when you do what you do)? It's a conversation that I seem to be having a lot lately. Enjoyment of one's employment seems to be a rare quality these days, which is somewhat surprising to me. Some don't dislike their job, but in my mind that's a far cry from enjoying it.

Sean said it best when describing his wife's attitude towards her job, "She feels about the same as I did when I worked at the dollar store in high school. Collect a paycheck and go home."

So, what do you do for a living? How did you come to do it, and how do you feel about it? What would you rather be doing with your time?

My Answer:
At age 7 I felt I had some positively brilliant and original concepts for video games. There was the Voltron video game, the G.I. Joe video game, the other Voltron video game, etc. In the absence of anyone who wanted to create these video games for me I decided it couldn't be that hard and decided to do it myself. Years later I still hadn't done much more than write a program that would print out, "Jesse is cool!!!", but that didn't stop me from trying.

Now some 20 years later I've written websites, printing applications, and flight simulators. The amazing part is that someone paid me to do something that I probably would have been doing anyway. I can't really imagine doing anything else for a living, and can't imagine a job more suited towards me.

I sleep in until 8:30 in the morning. Get to work where I read the daily nerd news, solve some problems, and spend half of my day incubation thinking my way through issues(Read: Making fun of the Seans and playing practical jokes)

I don't say this to gloat. There are certainly other areas of life that require my attention enough that this one can be considered marked off the list(For the time being). I'm just curious what others are doing.

Cute Tax Girl from Floor 7

One morning last week, while walking from my car to the elevator at the office, I apparently paused to let a car go in front of me. I didn't commit this event to memory because there was nothing extraordinary about it at the time. The girl who then parked and got out of this car was a good 30 feet behind me, but I held the elevator for her because the parking garage elevators are quite slow.

"Wow, you let me go in front of you and held the elevator for me. That's really nice", she said as she got in the elevator.
"Well, I'm in no rush to get to work anyhow" came out of my mouth while "Holy crap you're a robo-babe! I love you" stayed locked safely in my head.

I kept talking to her during the elevator ride, and then as we walked in to the building. I told her where I work, and she told me where she works (7th floor doing taxes for Price Waterhouse Cooper.) We talked for a while, and it was probably the best conversation I've ever had with a complete stranger.

As we got off the first elevator and headed in I noticed my co-worker Sean about 20 feet ahead of us. He turned around and glanced but didn't say hi and just kept walking. He later told me that he had thought, "That sounds like Jesse" but when he turned around he realized, "No, he's talking to a cute girl, can't be Jesse."

As we hit the elevators to go up to our floors we said our "Goodbye"s and "Nice to meet you"s. She works on the 7th floor, and I work on the 15th, and that means we take separate elevators inside the building(Damn the segregation). As I got into the elevator Sean was waiting and told me that I was "Floating".

"Damn, what got in to you baller?"
"I have no idea. That was crazy. You saw it right? I haven't gotten so delusional that I just imagined myself talking to a cute girl have I?"
"Yeah, what was her name?"
"Dammit... I forgot ask"

I was really pumped from the experience, but tried to concentrate on my work that day. That didn't work, so naturally I spent half the day writing her name on my trapper keeper with hearts around it, putting "Mr. and Mrs. 'Cute Tax Girl from Floor 7'" on my notepad, and drawing what I personally feel is an exceptional likeness depicting her riding a dolphin through the ocean under a rainbow while the sun is setting.

All kidding aside... she seemed pretty cool and I came away with a positive feeling about the experience.

It just so happens that yesterday I ran in to her again in the parking lot.
"Oh, hey" I said, curious if she'd remember me.
"Oh, I remember you," she said, "I didn't catch your name last time."
At the same time, not wanting to miss her name, I held out my hand and introduced myself, "I'm Jesse"
"I'm Linda"

We had another lengthy discussion trading questions back and forth, and again I walked away with a really good feeling.

Note to the reader: The above drawing was actually made by Sean in reference to a joke on another blog. More info on that coming soon. Show of hands from the class... how many people thought I actually drew that picture of a girl from my building?

Reader Participation: Pick My Poison

That's right, it's time for the fifth annual reader participation week here at Sesquipedalis. It's that time of year where the 2 to 3 loyal readers band together to give me a digital kick in the ass and help me create a moment in my life that will become the next story.

Do you want a funny story, a sad story, a depressing story? It's up to you the reader.

Here's how it works. First you read the story above about my new building crush Linda and then respond to this post with what you think I should do. If you've been paying attention to stories such as this one, you'll know that I'm socially retarded enough to take advice from two drunk girls. If that's the case then I'm more than willing to take advice from random people on the Internet.

"But I don't know how to leave a comment", your sad sad nontechnical brain is thinking right now. Normally I'd tell you to get the hell off of my blog, but it is reader participation week, so open those mouths baby birds because momma is about to feed you some knowledge.

Just click on the bottom of this post where it says, "2 comments". If you haven't figured it out, that 2 will change to however many comments there actually are. I've even enabled anonymous posting for those too lazy to sign up for an account.

It's that easy. Give me good advice, give me bad advice, make me look like an idiot, it's up to you. I'll choose one, or go it on my own, but one thing we can all be sure of... I'll probably end up making an ass out of myself. Don't forget to tell a friend! Prizes will be awarded based on random criteria picked at a later date by me.

Here's a few examples from fictitious readers that I just made up to get you started:
"Leave a note on her car confessing undying love"
"Give up, go out with somebody else"
"Buy a ring and propose"
"I don't know, build her a cake or something"

Void where prohibited by law. Not open to residents in the state of New Jersey. We here at Sesquipedalis do not recommend that you try anything listed here on your own. Jesse is a professional at making an ass out of himself, and as such these stunts should not be attempted by anyone hoping to get to first base or further with any real life girl.