What a day, what a day (*)

Getting to work this morning was not fun. Freezing rain overnight, turned to medium-heavy rain in the morning. Wish I'd had my camera, with the drippy icicles covering everything.

Speaking of cameras: somebody recently emailed me a photo from a party d and I were at a couple weeks ago, and it's not as embarrassing as I thought.

No, not that kind of party. One of the themes was "balloon animals."
( Silliness was made. )

A kid there brought one of those new (ish) 20 Questions toys- it was good enough to beat me twice. First try I was thinking of, "snowman" - it asked such questions as "is it wet?" I presesd the "sometimes" button. "is it round?" I said "no." "Does it contain water?" "no". I was obtuse on purpose. And none of the questions were directly related to its snowman-ness, as far as I could tell. After the 20th question it said, "Aw, you win! I give up..." (pause) "Just kidding! I win!" (pause) "You were thinking of a snowman."

Apparently the thing holds a neural net programmed from questions and answers supplied by visitors to the above website. Neat stuff. $15 US from their website. I'm sort of tempted, as an office toy.

(*) The title's a quote from Candide, which d. and I saw for the first time on Saturday. "What a day, what a day, for an auto-da-fé." That song was probably my favourite. Good acting and singing; bad musicians and possibly writing. I'm willing to believe there is a version of Candide that makes sense, but this wasn't it.
The Assimilation Song didn't seem to fit with the story at all. Did this production leave parts out? Or is Candide always a mess? Reviews all seem to be mixed or negative. I'm not sure I'm motivated enough to read up on Voltaire and/or to find out for certain what is the best version of the operetta, unless dpolicar or some other theatre buff wants to recommend one. :)