The object of the game is for you to balance the budget according to your values or goals, such as emphasis on national defense, health and wellness, economic stimulus, etc. You then play various cards from different categories representing sectors of the budget including among others, defense, school and kids, health care, and environment.

You're supposed to pay attention to the deficit meter and think about what impact your choices will have on future generations. You can then print out your budget and use it as a discussion point with others and even perhaps your elected representative.

We're happy to report in our own game we balanced the budget through 2028 and the budget bust point would not occur until 2070. We did this by repealing the Bush tax cuts, saving money on defense by having the troops come home soon, and raised taxes on the top 1% of wealthy Americans. We also raised the retirement age to 67, cut school lunch for kids who are not poor, and increased spending on mass transit.

So what's the big deal about balancing the budget?

We played this engineering game for the first time almost a week ago, and have yet to make it past level one. Now we've decided to ask our dear readers to help us out on beating this thing so we can get back to more important things like blogging.

The idea behind the game is fairly simple. You're given a little island. There are eight different types of engineering you can bring to the island and you decide which order to activate them in. Each development will affect the others you've already activated in allowing the island to grow so it's important to pick the right order. The ultimate goal is to get each advancement level maxed out (developments max out at 9 or 10 levels), and then you proceed to the next level...a level which we have never seen.

The Choices are Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Civil Engineering, Applied Chemistry, Aeronautic, Marine and automotive engineering, Architecture, Environmental Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering. We've managed to get pretty far: our island dwellers have fell in love and had children, built rocket ships that travel to the moon, and created robots that build tunnels and bridges. Right before we select our last thing to add however an alien like creature always comes out of the volcano on the island and drips some sort of hyperactive sludge on our community. Our final numbers usually include maxing out 3 or 4 sections but then being at level one or two on others.

Some things we've learned: If you have people living in your house and don't activate "Environmental Engineering" then your little man walks outside, doesn't have anywhere to throw away his trash and in retaliation goes on a tree cutting down spree that seems to end in his death as well. If you activate "Applied Chemistry" too early then the volcano trembles and breaks your beaker before you can do anything with it...maybe there's a way to stop the volcano?

So we beg you: help us. If you figure it out tell us how you did it.

[Thanks (we think) Jay]

Finding Time Wasters to blog about should be considered a high-risk activity. While there's no doubt that it's a fun way to spend our time, the truth is that our productivity takes a serious hit every time we start testing out possibilities for inclusion as daily time wasters. Some are worse than others in this regard, but recently Blocky has been stealing a ridiculous amount of our time.

Like all really great games, the concept is simple - draw a rectangle around any set of squares where the four corners of the rectangle have blocks at them of the same color. It's colorful and lively, with a countdown timer that keeps you mindful that if you don't hurry up and find a set of blocks to remove, your game is going to be over. And the level of challenge goes up just right as you start to get the hang of the game.

As always, don't say we didn't warn you.

Today's time-waster Cursor Run is a mouse race like no other. In the game your only job is to put your mouse cursor inside the circle before your computer opponent does. As the game progresses the circle appears much faster and your opponent gets much more difficult to beat. The game is extremely simple in concept but also extremely difficult in practice and highly addictive. Give it a try.