Happy Friday the 13th! I have a new idea to celebrate the occasion. When someone mentions the date I'm going to say, "hope you get lucky!" Perfect way to celebrate, imo.

Speaking of lucky, I am fast coming to the uncomfortable conclusion that the issues I've been working through on my system were the result of the bad luck of multiple failures piling up: Bad RAM and some bad settings that could be reverted were the cause of my BSODs and graphics glitches, respectively, and some other mysterious issue is behind my 500 and 501 events. I am also getting 100 and 200 events on boot and shutdown, and all these events seem(?) hardware related, and the only hardware in the system that hasn't been swapped is the mobo/CPU combo. Most maddening of all, however, is that investigating my problems with Borderlands 2 shows that something is unexpectedly causing crazy CPU spikes. This is one of those nightmares we've all experienced at some point: There are loads of forum posts from those with the exact same problem: processor usage soaring seemingly unrelated to anything happening in the game, causing stuttering and lockups. The nightmare is that there are almost as many "this might work" sort of "solutions" offered as there are people with the problem.

R.I.P.: Ray Dolby dead at 80. Thanks TV.com.

Lucky Links:	Thanks Ant and Acleacius.
Play:	Zombo Buster. Attack of The Mutant Pet Shop.
Story:	2013 Ig Nobel Prize winners: from opera-loving mice to stargazing dung beetles.
Science:	Toward a truly white organic LED: Physicists develop polymer with tunable colors. Amoebas farm bacteria and carry guards to protect their crops in the wild. 'Cleaning' boosts solar cell efficiency.
Images:	To all my friends who keeps trying to get me to go out...
Media:	Getting my dog out of bed in the morning.
Follow-up:	In a Breathtaking First, NASA Craft Exits the Solar System. Thanks j.c.f.