Blog

Gift turns numerically frustrating

October 14, 2005

I recently received as a gift a little bag of blocks, which make an excellent fidget toy for my desk. (The blocks are actually tiles left over from a bathroom remodelling project in my boss's house--- he gave them to us all after he quit. Perhaps the timing of this was because he didn't want to be responsible for our productivity once we were constantly being distracted by little gleaming blocks.)

Unfortunately there are exactly 15 blocks, which means that when I make a pyramid out of them, I have one lonely extra, and when I try to make other shapes I have not quite enough. (Yes, I can make the 2D pyramid, and that is exactly 15 blocks. If I hadn't made that in my boss's office 300 times already, I might be satisfied with that.)

So my only real course of action from here is either to throw one of the blocks into the ocean, or else break into my boss's bathroom in the middle of the night with a pick-axe and liberate a few more. (I suppose this strategy is likely to work at most once.)

Any votes?

Posted by rus at 04:38 PM

Comments

I vote for breaking into his house. I know for a fact that he personally installed many of the doors/windows, so I'm thinking security is pretty much non-existent if they even latch at all.

Posted by: Christopher Morace at October 14, 2005 05:09 PM

Couldn't you just steal them from your coworkers?

Posted by: Darcy at October 15, 2005 03:02 AM

Number of blocks given was scientifically calculated to maximize annoyance. It was the least I could do. To be perfectly honest I thought I gave everybody 16 (perfect square) so I would be really suspicious of your coworkers.

p.s. can you make it so it doesn't show our email address? I mean I love spam as much as the next person but...

Posted by: Scott Johnston at October 15, 2005 11:11 PM

I'll look into hiding it, but the email address isn't a required field, so you don't actually have to put it in if you don't want.

Posted by: Rus at October 15, 2005 11:51 PM

Okay, fixed

Posted by: Rus at October 15, 2005 11:57 PM

Perhaps a mischevious co-worker stole one of the blocks just to provoke the ensuing onion-worthy blog headline rant...if that's the case, then all 14 of this blog's readers owe that person a debt of gratitude.

Posted by: frisbeememex at October 17, 2005 01:42 PM

I vote you brake into his house and install the 15th tile back into his bathroom, let him deal with his own scientifically designed annoyance!

Posted by: Anonymous at November 1, 2005 09:09 AM