2 Mini Fails

I tried my first field-test of my Stateriffic app today.

Well, honestly, the first fail was the rename. "Stat Tracker" sounds way too generic, even though that's what it does. But I don't like naming it anything ending in "er", so I tried to come up with a better name. Stateriffic came to mind, which I meant in the same vein of "Twitteriffic". Namely stat-terriffic. But seeing it spelled out looks like State-riffic. So I'll probably change the name again before I call it good.

But! My first field test was an utter failure due to a small oversight. In lamens terms, my app simply wouldn't load. In technical terms, I had assumed using Apple's apple-mobile-web-app-capable meta tag would download and cache all webapp files for use offline. I still don't think it's an unreasonable assumption. But alas, my phone didn't have any access to my code over 3G (since I haven't posted the app live anywhere yet) and so I couldn't try it out for real. Nuts.


Second is a gaming fail. Kathryn & I both play You Don't Know Jack. We both liked the decades-old PC trivia game, and I jumped at the chance to buy the new Xbox version, hoping that my hours and hours of playing other quick-reflex games would give me a slight advantage. I need all the advantages I can get when going up against her; she is a trivia master.

They have this new gameplay mechanic, called the Wrong Answer of the Game. They tell you some fake company that is sponsoring the Wrong Answer of the Game, and that's your only clue to finding it. In one of the 10 questions in the game, there will be an obviously wrong answer to the question at hand, but it will sound very similar to the fake sponsor. Choose it, and instead of losing money for a horribly wrong answer, you'll gain either $4,000 or $8,000 dollars and a special prize. It makes us guess some obviously wrong answers in the hopes of getting all the hidden prizes.

For example, I won a bucket of blood from Blood Co. when they asked a question about real-life doctors and I chose the illusive Dr. Acula. Clever, eh?

Well, there's another game mechanic called Screws. The idea is if you don't think your opponent knows the answer to the question, screw 'em. They'll have to answer, and you get money if they get the answer wrong. However, you lose money if they do happen to get the answer right. And you can only screw once per game.

We always wondered what would happen if you got screwed and then chose the Wrong Answer of the Game. It'd have to be super-devastating; you could win up to $8,000 dollars and the other person would lose, well maybe not that much but certainly a good chunk of change.

Nuh-uh. Turns out you can find the Wrong Answer of the Game, but if you're being screwed while you're doing it, then nobody can get the prize.

And I did that. Twice.

Booo.


Bonus Mini fail!
Kathryn can attest to this. They had a question that was along the lines of this. Say a headline to some tabloid is "(Jon + Kate) + 8 - Jon!". If that's actual math, what does the exclamation point stand for?

We both got it pretty quick. (The answer is factorial). But then the narrator went on to describe what that function does. He said it would be Jon multiplied by Jon-1, multiplied by Jon-2, etcetera etcetera all the way to 0.

Which is wrong. It goes to 1. Otherwise (any number)! would always equal 0.

I was quick to correct the man inside the video game. But I don't think he heard me.