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It never fails. People are always tinkering with things. Seeing how far they can push them. I guess it's just instinctive.

Most of the time the tinkering has a real tangible sense - especially if it involves mechanical parts. I had a friend in high school who never tired of this. He put a Monza engine in his Camaro. He somehow hooked up something that flashed his hazards, brake lights and backup lights in a sequence. He even ran little hoses from his washer outlets to above his rear wheels, filled his washer tank with bleach, and when he would peal out he would squirt bleach on the tires for a nice smoking effect.

I myself am guilty of tinkering with things less tangible. It started with DOS where I would use HIMEM.SYS and LOADHIGH to try to cram as many drivers into expanded/extended memory as I could. Recently I've become aware of having that same obsession with my Pocket PC, but now it's about moving as many files/apps as possible out of the RAM of the device and onto the storage card. Not just the easy stuff like in Outlook where I can store attachements on the card. No, I'm speaking of course about registry hacks that let me put my temporary internet files on the card, moving just about everything in Program Files over to the card and updating the shortcuts (except for that cursed VoiceCommand which has to be in RAM), and so on. Fun.

But I digress. What I really wanted to tell you about was Rock-Paper-Scissors Variants. A guy who saw that the classic Rock, Paper, Scissors (and the occassional random gestures that smart alek folks toss out and try to justify) wasn't quite challenging enough. So he expanded it first to 7, then to 9, then on up to 25 gestures. Enjoy the detail to which he gives the outcome of each permutation...