Mineswept

As those of you who have seen me at a computer know, I'm a pretty big gamer. Not World of Warcraft, not Counterstrike, but solitaire and minesweeper. And none of that spider shit flies with me, just give me good old reliable. But at any rate I starting playing minesweeper fairly regularly when I was (not) writing my thesis and it's kind of carried over into my professional life. Beginner is perfect because you can pound out a few games in a couple of minutes and take a break from whatever you're usually doing. But since I started playing on the regular three or so years ago I'd never been able to beat expert. It's a 16x30 rectangle with 99 mines, so basically you've got a 1-5 shot at clicking on a mine when you begin. But I decided now that I'm on vacation I could spend a couple days (well, late nights, because being a lazy piece of crap I try not to do anything during the day) going after a W. Last Wednesday around 3am I got to a two by two square left with two mines to go and just a guess to solve (those of you who've played know what I'm talking about...when you've got the mines at a kitty corner and it can go either way...It's a royal pain in the ass). Needless to say, I guessed wrong. So I took a break and went back to work Friday night (Saturday morning would probably be more appropriate), and sure enough around 4:15am I got the job done. I've got some visual evidence but I haven't taken any photos off my camera since the trip to the VA, so whenever I get around to doing that I'll throw up the proof. 298 seconds, not a great time but it's a starting point, I suppose. Other stats are: Beginner - 2 seconds (no big deal), and 53 ticks for Intermediate, though I think I got to 47 seconds on another computer in a lab back in my younger days. I don't know (other than the beginner time, I'm a stud in that department) if these are actually good times or not, but it made me feel all warm and fuzzy when I finally saw the sunglasses on expert. This just goes to show if you have a goal and work hard to achieve it good things will happen. Cheers.