What better way to kick off the festivities around here than with that pillar of modern time-wasting: The Flash game. But not just any old Flash game. Proper procrastination isn't just about wasting time; you should also feel like you're accomplishing something as you're wasting time. The Cisco Binary Game seems to be tailor-made for just such self-deception. It's a hypnotically repetitive kind of reverse Tetris for math nerds. Solve the binary problems as they appear on the screen before the screen fills up with unsolved problems. This game works on so many levels: First, as dull as it may sound, it's actually pretty addictive. If you've got 15 - 20 minutes to fill between meetings, this should do quite nicely. Second, it helps you sharpen your binary math skills, and who couldn't use sharper binary math skills, right? Also, if you're not familiar with binary math, you're actually learning something by playing this game. Lastly, as your brain scrambles to justify the increasing amount of time you've been playing, you can start to convince yourself that the game is a secret interview for some high-level job at Cisco. Kind of like Google's billboards. If you hit a high score, maybe you'll get a pop-up message from John Chambers congratulating you and inviting you out to San Jose for a beer. If you stop playing now, you'll never know.
