The Pac-Man game on Google's home page has gobbled up almost five million hours of work time, suggests a study. The playable version of the classic game was to celebrate 30 years since the launch of Pac-Man in Japan and it's proved so popular Google has now made it permanently available on its own page. But software firm Rescue Time suggests that on a typical day, most people conduct about 22 searches on the Google page, each lasting about 11 seconds. The Pac-Man game boosted that time by an average of about 36 seconds. With 504 million unique users visiting the main Google page day-to-day, this represents an increase of 4.8 million hours, Rescue Time says. In dollar terms, assuming people are paid $25 an hour, it claims this equates to about $120 million in lost productivity. (Source: BBC.co.uk)
So what were they smoking?
What Texas police initially thought to be one of the largest marijuana-plant seizures in their history turned out to be weed of the harmless variety. Officers hauled away 300-400 medium-sized plants believing they were marijuana. After they spent more than an hour removing and tagging them, then hauling them to the police department downtown, testing revealed that none were marijuana plants after all.
Parking trap
A reader writes: "Was anybody else cursing and swearing after Disney on Ice at Vector Arena on Saturday? "We arrived back to the Arena carpark only to find that it is not a few dollars for parking, as written in the first few lines, but $20 during an 'event'."
Theft most fowl
"Agence France Presse reported in June that a middle-aged woman in Lausanne, Switzerland, fainted in a supermarket and medical assistance was summoned. A nurse decided to unhook the woman's bra so she could breathe better, discovered a shoplifted frozen chicken in the bra, and concluded the woman had fainted from the cold." (Source: Criggo.com)
Travel tale
Another reader agrees the Snitch traffic delay information is often wrong: "I travel city-bound on the Southern, and I also snort in disbelief when Snitch says it's a 20-minute trip from Papakura to Newmarket. What Southern Motorway are they travelling on? I'd really like to drive on that one, because the one I use is always chocka."
Postal grumbles
Quentin writes: "NZ Post's Postal Users Guide (available on the NZ Post website) states that, for Standard Post, 'all items must have a valid delivery address'. For other services, eg Bulk Mail, it qualifies this by stating that such items must 'include a New Zealand Post postcode'. Therefore, assuming that your correspondent's mail was correctly addressed, NZ Post is in breach of its Public Contract, and they can apply for compensation as detailed in the Postal1 User Guide (which is probably 0!).
Peel me another grape
Further to the grape-sampling correspondence, a reader writes: "My criminal law class once discussed the issue of 'grape thievery'. Surreptitiously sampling one grape would technically fall under the common law definition of larceny (and the Crimes Act 1961 section 219) but if the supermarket called the cops and even succeeded in getting a charge laid and taking you to court, the court would most likely throw it out for triviality and wasting the court's time."
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Today's Webpick: Love it or loathe it, this Sex in the City 2 parody is so on the money. Go here.
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See today's Herald cartoon.
