Petals Around the Rose is a dice game that I just recently discovered. The purpose is to teach “thinking outside the box.” It took me a good amount of time to figure out “the rule” of the game, but now that I know I am not telling. Give it a try and see if you can figure it out. Supposedly the smarter you are the longer it takes you to figure it out. All it really takes is an abstract way of thinking, so that theory is not actually true. A few things to keep in mind that you are allowed to be told:

The name of the game is “Petals Around the Rose” and the name is very important.

The answer is always even.

There is always one correct answer.

Should the page I have linked to go down, a simple google search will reveal others as well.

Last Saturday, the 12th I went and watched a Red Wings Alumni game. Now this was by no means as exciting as an actualy Red Wings game, but with the then lack (now complete cancellation) of the 2004 -05 season, it had to do. They played the Toronto Maple Leafs Alumni at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit Mi. I finally got around to getting the pictures off my camera. All in all it was a decent game, even though I did leave a little early to avoid traffic and such. However, it did not even come close to filling the void in my life where this years hockey season should have been. There better be a season next year!

Diabetes is an illness that is very close to my heart, as such I was very happy when I came across this article which reports on the successfull transplant of insulin-producing cells from a mother to her diabetic daughter.

A team at Japan’s Kyoto University Hospital removed islet cells from the healthy woman, and transplanted them into her 27-year-old daughter.

The breakthrough could be a much more effective way to treat type 1 diabetes.

Though this is not a cure for type 1 diabetes, which is “also known as insulin-dependent or immune-mediated diabetes,” it is a huge step forward. Hopefully this will also aid development for a cure or better treatment of type 2 diabetes as well.

I know a lot of people out their watch the big game just for the commercials, hell I know I do. However I was also playing poker that night so I know I missed some of the ads, so I was thrilled when I found this site that has all the commercials for my viewing pleasure.

For the past few years I have been using my trusty Mach 3 straight razor to handle my shaving needs. It has been a good razor, but I was getting tired of constantly spending money on replacement blades. At the same time however, I was unsure of how to handle this situation as it was either shave or join the Amish. Of course I always had the option of getting an electric razor, but I had had a bad experience with one many years back. On the one occasion I had used an electric razor I remember it feeling like the hair was being ripped from my face.

Well yesterday I decided to give an electric razor another chance, I mean after all there have been many changes in shavers since I last used one. Now I had been thinking about getting one for a while now and I finally settled on the Norelco Cool Skin Lotion Dispensing Razor Model 7735X. After bringing it home, reading the owners manual and allowing it to fully charge, I gave it a try this morning.

I am happy to say that I am very pleased with the results. The razor gives a nice close shave that leaves my face just as smooth as my old straight razor did. In addition to this I did not end up with “razor burn” like I used to with my straight razor. This alone is a nice bennifit to me, as my beard does not tend to grow in a normal fashion. As such there is one spot on my neck that always ends up red and irritated after I shave and can be that way for a day, however after shaving today with the new Norelco I do not have that.

The only draw back for me was the razors size. It is obviouisly a lot larger than the razor I am used to and as such will take some getting used to. That aside I find that I am looking forward to mastering the use of my new razor, and with Norelco’s 60-Day Money-Back Guarantee, I know I will have time to see if I can fully adjust to its use.

Today AskMen.com released there list of the Top 99 Most Desirable Women of 2005. I have had the great pleasure to look through this list, and while I may not agree with the list in its entirety, I must say it is rather nice. Not only does the list display an image (in some cases as many as 4) and rank of the Desirable Woman, it also tells why this person is famous. Personally I found this to be particularly helpful because I had not heard of some of these woman before (I don’t watch much TV). It also tells why she is desirable and also gives the womans ranking score (determined by averaging AskMen.com Desirability Score and a prevoted Reader Desirability Score), it also displays their rank (if any) on the previous list. It also appears that AskMen.com has a link to a complete feature on each one of the featured women.

Last night I had the opportunity to go to the Plymouth Ice Sculpture show. Having never gone to an Ice Sculpture display I was looking forward to it. In spite of the sub-zero temperatures and an ice cold wind that cut through all layers of clothing, I had a good time.

The displays were simultaneously more than I expected and less that what I expected. Allow me to explain. Some of the sculptures were very detailed and intricate, which were more than I expected, and others were just pain staking-ly simple. Now I know carving ice is hard and I also know that I could probably not have done even the simplest among them. So why then am I disappointed in the simple ones? Well its not so much that they were simple, I liked the “simple” ones, the ones I didn’t like were the ones that were simply a company’s name engraved in the ice like some kind of name plate.

Anyway, if you would like to view the pictures that I took of some of the Ice Sculptures just click here.

I have this tendancy to read my friends sites on almost a daily basis, and one that I particularly enjoy reading is Joe’s. Joe is a person that I hold in very high regard, for numerous reasons. More often than not Joe has some interesting thought about something he has read or done, and just as often it is about something that I end up thinking “Wow, that is really cool” or “Dang, that is worth reading up on.”

One such instance occured the other day when Joe had a quote up on his site from a speech entitled “What You’ll Wish You’d Known”. Between the quote that Joe had placed on his site and the comments he made about it, I just knew I had to read this article.

I have read it, and all I can say is “Wow.” This speech is powerfully full of great points. I have a feeling that if someone had said these things to me when I was 16 I would have done things differently, and the least of it would have been the way I focused on classes, both high school and college.

Well it seems like I have managed to get wordpress to work. I am very pleased with myself. WordPress in and of itself was not that hard to install, however the required MySQL and PHP was a little rough for me. But I had some help from a few people namely, Joe, Steve, and Chris. Thanks for all your help guys, without it I probably would not have gotten this up and running.

With all that said, I am looking forward to attempting to learn how WordPress works and see if I am even capable of keeping a blog going. I mean I know it will keep going, its just that I have this tendancy to not update a web page for insane lengths of time. Oh well, time will tell.