Category Archives: Lite

Watson

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I’ve been following Watson’s progress against human contestants on Jeopardy. While I’ve been reading along I couldn’t help but think of Blaine the insane monorail train from the Dark Tower series of books from Stephen King. As Roland, Eddie, Suzannah, and Jake attempt to riddle for their lives against the broken personality of Blaine the similarity struck home. Watson is good at answering trivia questions, but if you started to pose “stupid” questions, just like how Eddie did to Blaine, would Watson suffer the same ill effects?

I could almost see Kevin Jennings standing over Watson screaming at the top of his lungs with spit flying “Why did the Chicken cross the road?!?” 🙂

Ringtones, Music, Themes… People.

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So now that I can create custom ringtones, I want to assign custom ringtones for everyone I know. This is rather tricky. What musical-person pairing should I select? I have the pair for my sister down pat, but for the rest of my friends and family?

This is going to take time.

I’d like everyone to please give this some thought and volunteer what you think your theme song might be. Please share in the comments or if you want it private, email me.

Thanks!

Being Without

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This past weekend I was without my Blackberry as the number port took through Verizon and the phone was in a box en-route to Kalamazoo through FedEx. It was an odd feeling, being potentially connected through the fail-a-licious Blackberry and then suddenly not having anything. No phone, no sms, no alerts, no twitter. It was rather humbling. There were some seriously good moments of comedy that I was going to share but couldn’t, some of them were:

  • At the GR B&N, they had a sign up for Black History Month and right underneath it a load of product from the BBC.
  • The Apple Store at Woodland Mall in GR, a packed madhouse! It was if it was a fresh release day and people were starving for the sleek and shiny.
  • Scott’s test drive of the car that has caught his eye, the Nissan Juke.
  • Browsing the Pioneer Wine Trail, which runs north and south of Jackson, MI.

Of course, throughout all of this I’ve been impatient for the delivery of my new iPhone. Waiting has been uniquely annoying, especially since FedEx doesn’t really update their package status as well as UPS does, so for the past few days the shipment has been cooling it’s heels in Grand Rapids, until just a few moments ago when it turned out to magically appear in Portage.

I did enjoy myself immensely this past weekend however, got in a lot of mallwalking, bought a few bottles of very good (and cheap!) wines from the Pioneer Trail region, saw the Juke which was exceptionally cute, and had a chance to spend time with friends.

 

Mr. Handyman Finished

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It took an hour, $20 worth of materials and $148.00 later I no longer have a hole in my wall. I have to say that I’m very happy with ServiceMagic.com and Mr. Handyman. I left a glowing review on ServiceMagic.com. You can notice the color difference in the repaired spot, but other than that, you can’t tell at all there was any damage. I gave them five out of five stars and that’s a very rare thing from me. I only wish they could have processed a credit card transaction, but I had enough in my rainy-day fund to cover the expense with cash. This sucker would have taken me days to complete and I would have screwed it up if I was all on my own. Considering what was done, I made out like Flint.

Mr. Handyman

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A few nights ago I discovered to my chagrin a grapefruit sized hole in the wall right underneath Scott’s desk. I don’t know how it got there and nobody is claiming responsibility so the only party that is non-verbal and might be responsible are the cats. Anyways, there is a hole in my drywall, about the size of a grapefruit.

Last week I contacted ServiceMagic.com and they recommended a local franchise service by the name of Mr. Handyman. So, today at 1pm a Mr. Handyman drywall specialist will visit, carve out the damaged section, put in a patch, tape, mud, and sand.

They are bonded, insured, and they gave me the rates up-front. It’s time and materials, $84 an hour, $44 dispatch fee and the rest is the cost of materials. I could have done this repair on my own, but I would have needed a lot more tools and a lot more knowledge of drywall than I have. I could have bought a book and followed it and made a real mess of things and probably spent in time and trouble the same amount I’m about to spend with Mr. Handyman. The fellow will arrive at 1pm, we’ll see how quickly and how well he does his job. I’ll post another update afterwards, so for those who might be considering hiring this company, watch this space. I have a good feeling that they’ll do it correctly.

West Hills Snark

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I just got a big beautiful 12 page paper mailer from West Hills Athletic Facility. It’s an athletic club that the University bought that nobody I know actually goes to because it’s too expensive. It’s like any other athletic club, looks good on the outside, smells awful on the inside, it’s overpriced and I’ve got no interest in it at all. It’s good to know they have cash to burn on these big mailers. What would be more convenient for everyone and save them lots of money is if they’d just ship out PDF files in email, save the paper costs, the printing costs, and enable me to place the from address into my junk mail list and have it sent to the great bit-bucket in the sky. A win for West Hills’ advertising budget and a win for me and everyone else who doesn’t want to have to find something like this in their campus mailbox just to immediately toss it in the recycling bin.

I suppose I could just clearly print on a sticky-note on our campus mailbox a list of all the spammy bits of debris that we elect to not get. That’s an idea! 😉

Triops

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For Christmas 2010 Scott gave me a Triops kit. I’m always fascinated by complex biological systems and in a way, this is my gay tropical fish phase without the fish. The kit was small and cute and meant for 7 year olds. I of course have a little money to spend so for fun, why not give these prehistoric precursors to horseshoe crabs a tank full of paradise? So off to the pet store we went. Two gallon glass tank was $7 bucks (yay discount rack!), fancy food was $4, sand $3, tank ornaments $5. We waited for a while, letting the dust settle from our holiday travels and a few days ago I set up the tank, filled the bottom with sand, placed the ornaments and filled the tank with distilled water. Then I followed the great instructions from the Smithsonian (which boxes up the kit) and opened the Triops eggs and put half of the container into the tank. It looks like someone emptied a tobacco pipe into a big goldfish bowl.

We watched for two days and nothing really of measure was happening. At the end of the second day I spied a Triops nymph swimming about. I did some reading and found out that cold water can slow down their development, so I remembered that I had a heat-lamp in the garage (from last winters kitty-visitor) and I went out and got it. I got the lamp set up and pointed it at the tank and let it run for a while. Everything warmed up nicely, the tank got into the 80’s and the water was nice and warm. Then I saw two more nymphs in the water, totalling 3. I dropped in some pellet food and this morning gave the tank a good stir.

These little guys are voracious, even if they are the size of a flea. Everything I’ve read states that they’ll consume 40% of their body mass in food per day and grow in just a week to several centimeters. As they develop I’ll see if I can get pictures of them to share. Science is just grand. 🙂

Needlessly Complicating Everything

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Today has been a comedy of complications. First it turns out that retail doesn’t give a damn about whether or not the roads are passable. We just endured the Snowpocalypse 2011, and while the sky did fall, it wasn’t as dire or dangerous as people had feared it might be. Overnight we accumulated probably 12-15 inches of snow and they all built up around my car and down my driveway. After I had some breakfast and relaxed a little, as Western had closed for business on Wednesday, I decided to try to get the garbage out to the street side for pickup. I got all dressed up, found some winter boots in the closet that I didn’t know we had, and opened the garage up. I got my shovel and started to heave-ho the snow out of my way. I got halfway down the driveway and one of my neighbors with a snowblower came up and asked if I wanted him to help me clear my driveway for ten bucks. I agreed and he went to get his pint-sized snowblower. He made quick work of the plow-drift that had built up at my driveways entrance and as he was snowplowing I was clearing off about a yard of snow with each push-and-shovel throw. He helped clear my driveway in about 5 minutes, dug out a notch in the snowbank roadside for my garbage trundle and even plowed clean a path for the mailman to get to my front door. All in all worth the ten bucks I think, he didn’t have to help me, I would have struggled through it, but it would have taken me much longer. I think it was an even deal.

But of course I don’t carry cash on me. So he was willing to wait for the money. This is the start of the complications. I needed to get $10 from the bank. This should be easy. It was not.

My first step was, after comics lunch with Scott I dropped him off at work and went to the PNC Branch at the corner of Westnedge and Romence roads. It’s a rather big branch and it was 2pm on a Wednesday, I didn’t think there would be any problems. Well, the bank was closed. The blizzard did that right quick. So no human beings at the bank, so I thought maybe I could pull the money out of the ATM, but I knew that the PNC ATM’s were only handing out $20’s. I thought I could cheat by going to Meijers and buying something cheap and then using my debit card, pull an extra $10 out, giving me what I’d need to pay off my neighbor. I got to Meijers and thought about what I needed or wanted. I couldn’t think of anything off the top of my head so I picked up a six-pack of Labatts for $5 and headed to the help-yourself checkout lane. After proving my age, I ran my debit card and tacked on another $10 to the deal. The Meijers system puked out the transaction and apparently there is a bank/computer glitch that renders all PNC Debit Card transactions invalid. So there I was in the help-yourself lane, with beer that was already ordered and I already verified my age so I bought it anyways using my budget-money, for which I certainly have enough to cover a $5 six-pack of beer. So now I had beer, but still no $10. Frustrated I left Meijers and I was driving home the safe way, which is down Kilgore Ave to Sprinkle and take that home, it has only very gentle grades, and it isn’t Westnedge Hill after a blizzard. On my way home I remembered that all the Speedway gas stations in Michigan are now outfitted with PNC ATM’s. So here I was, all the way full circle. I got to the Speedway, I withdrew $20, I went to the cashier and bought two $10’s with the $20, which elicited a grumpy comment from the gas station attendant – oh whatever – and got back in my car. Then I drove to the PNC Bank on Gull Road (closed as well, what a shocker!) and deposited back the extra $10, leaving me with a six-pack of beer and $10. I took Gull down to Texel, and counted off the addresses. Then I discovered to my chagrin that Texel is even-numbered halfway along and then it switches at the bend. *twitch* I finally got to my helpful neighbors house and knocked on the door. His wife opened the door, I handed her my $10 and thanked them for their kindness.

Now I’m home, I’ve taken care of what I had to and only had to go through this craziness because the banks were closed and ATM’s only spit out $20’s. At least I don’t owe my neighbor anything and that isn’t a cloud over my head.

Creeping Dead Zones

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Has anyone else noticed that there appears to be two very prominent creeping dead zones that surround the weekend? I mean, think about it. Nobody is really conscious Friday after lunch, and when you get to “High Tea” around 3pm, where really civilized countries are napping already, you could strip buck naked and streak through the office and NOBODY WOULD NOTICE. The same fuzzy non-time surrounds the beginning of the week too, that nothing of meaning ever happens between Friday afternoon and Monday afternoon.

The comical part of me sees this as a creeping problem. First we lose Friday afternoons and Monday mornings. Then as time goes on, people start making allowances for Friday mid-mornings and Monday afternoons. The work week is being effectively gnawed down on both sides by this creeping inertia.

Case in point, a help desk’s ticket throughput during these dead zones. Nobody has problems, principally because they’ve already checked out and can’t be bothered. I swear that sometimes you can hear tumbleweeds dashing along our office during these dead zones, it’s so quiet. So we keep busy. I bet a monumental amount of network traffic is bound for Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, and yes, my dear readers, WordPress.

The people who manage productivity should be alarmed. The weekend has sharp pointy teeth and it’s getting bigger! 😉

P.S. This is the first time the WordPress Proofreader didn’t have piss OR vinegar for me. YAY!