Now that the Girl and I are co-habitating (for those of you who didn't know, the Girl and I are now co-habitating), I find the differences in day-to-day life are subtle. We still stick to mostly different diets, she still sleeps more than would seem humanly possible whenever she has time, and I still try to play golf as often as I can. There are certain obvious differences, but what stands out to me so far is the TV.
I probably consume a somewhat standard diet of TV shows for a sports fan/geek. I like to watch football and college hoops just about as much as I can. I like 24, Lost, Heroes, The Office, etc. I stay the hell away from reality TV because I think it is the worst thing to happen to television since the first lower corner pop-over ad showed up on one of those damned Turner networks. I have actually seen a few of them, and their formulaic nature is downright disturbing to me. I just don't understand how people can watch more than one of them in a year. It's do some stuff, have a Challenge to win Immunity, someone faces Elimination, Take a Maudlin/Funny Look into Contestant Q's Life Outside the Show, find out Who's Going Home ... when we come back. Rinse and Repeat. Seriously, how anyone can stand to watch those hour-long results shows live is beyond me, given that there's a grand total of about five minutes of actual new information. It seems like a Tivo would allow a motivated person to watch those in no more than 10 minutes.
All of that said, the thing is that we are still in midst of the Sports Doldrums (although college football has officially started now, and not a minute too soon, but the Doldrums don't officially end until the NFL season starts), and none of the shows I like to watch are new. So the Big Ass HDTV is often tuned to things that the Girl wants to watch, as they are new. And the Girl like reality shows, be it American Idol, Big Brother 765, or ... whatever. As things would work out, I've seen a few of these shows. In fact, I don't mind Last Comic Standing too much, because it's about being funny (but I'm still irked that they had a "challenge round" in that show). The show that's on my mind, though, is VH1's the Pick Up Artist.
I've mentioned more than once before that I'm not so smooth when it comes to attempting to get my schwerve on with random chicks of the female persuasion, but this show is supposedly about helping guys who seem hopeless. I have to admit that parts of it are interesting, and they do suggest some useful things. For instance, they pointed out to the guys, that having two guys approach two girls is a near-ideal situation. However, the thing is that, in trying to make the tips they give seem more exclusive or rare, the guy who runs the show (and has a business helping losers pick up chicks) has invented a whole vocabulary with arcane terms like "set," "IOI," "high-value individual," "IOD," blah, blah, blah. It annoys the ass out of me. More than that, though, is that the guy calls himself Mystery and wears top hats with huge goggles wrapped around them. I have no idea why. Nonetheless, the Girl loves that show because she enjoys watching those awkward or anti-social guys try to be smooth. (Of course she loves that; otherwise, she wouldn't be dating me.) And I can't claim to quite hate it, as much as I want to smack that Mystery dude and tell him to stop wearing fuzzy, wide-brimmed hats.
Thankfully, the NFL will come calling next weekend, and good TV shows will be back on the air before the month is out. I definitely can't recommend this show over real TV, but you might get a chuckle out of it before that goodness comes back on.
Have a great holiday weekend.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Super Useful / Cool Orienteering Tip
I just ran across this tip for using your watch as a compass over on Lifehacker, and I thought it was just neato. I thought it was the sort of thing MacGyver might make use of when he was lost in the woods. But thinking about it made me wonder just how useful the tip was.
First of all, you get into the whole "this tip is opposite if you're in the southern hemisphere" thing. Not really a big deal, since I'm pretty much never in that half of the world, and I kind of expected it, having learned at a strangely young age that clocks only go clockwise because they are built to mimic sundials and were developed in the northern hemisphere. Had they been created south of the equator, they would go counter-clockwise. Or, I guess, they would still go clockwise because saying that a clock goes counter-clockwise in normal operation would be stupid, but clockwise would be the opposite of what it is now. ANYway, ruminations aside, I'm thinking that the hemisphere caveat makes the tip a little more complex, and tips ought to be simple in order to be memorable and, thus, useful.
Even more complex is that you're supposed to subtract an hour if you're in daylight savings time. Originally hailing from Indiana, where they absolutely ignored daylight savings time until a year ago (I always thought that TV stations just moved their schedules up for the warm part of the year), since I moved to the land of changing clocks, I have always had to be told when daylight savings time started and ended because I just never had a good grasp of those dates. Then, last year, They went and changed the dates on me just as I was starting to get an idea of when to expect them. So I'm all sorts of confused, and that doesn't help me make use of this tip.
I'm imagining being lost in the woods somewhere, wondering which way is North, finding a clearing (so I can see the sun ... duh), pulling my watch off and orienting it with the 12 to the left, aligning the hour hand with the sun, and thinking ... lessee, it's March 2nd ... has daylight savings started yet ... dammit! I don't know! How can I find which way is South, so that I can then deduce which way is North?!
And what if I happened to be in the southern hemisphere? Do they even use daylight savings time down there? And, if so, do they do it opposite of when we do? How can I possibly figure all this out?!
Of course, that example is ridiculous, in that there is no way I'd be anywhere near the woods on March 2nd because it's difficult to watch absurd amounts of college hoops from the woods. But let's not focus on that right now.
Still, maybe this whole discussion is moot because my cell phone has become a modern day pocket watch, and my wristwatch has been sitting in the console of my car for 2 years wanting a new battery and a better clasp on its band. (Strangely, it has not managed to procure those things from the console of my car, even though it has had two years to do so. I thought putting it there might make it get out and help itself if I ever ventured near a mall. That was not so smart, though, because how can it possibly get out and help itself when its battery is dead?) Sure, I could go to the car and pull out my watch, then go through the placing, orienting, and kvetching, but if I'm at the car anyway, I might as well just turn it on and look at the nav system. That's why I bought the damned thing. (Fine, I bought it because it's a cool gadget, and I like cool gadgets, but I did think it might be useful if I ever wanted to know which direction was North.)
So while this tip may be neato, I'm thinking it's not particularly useful to me, except for breaking my writer's block. Namaste!
First of all, you get into the whole "this tip is opposite if you're in the southern hemisphere" thing. Not really a big deal, since I'm pretty much never in that half of the world, and I kind of expected it, having learned at a strangely young age that clocks only go clockwise because they are built to mimic sundials and were developed in the northern hemisphere. Had they been created south of the equator, they would go counter-clockwise. Or, I guess, they would still go clockwise because saying that a clock goes counter-clockwise in normal operation would be stupid, but clockwise would be the opposite of what it is now. ANYway, ruminations aside, I'm thinking that the hemisphere caveat makes the tip a little more complex, and tips ought to be simple in order to be memorable and, thus, useful.
Even more complex is that you're supposed to subtract an hour if you're in daylight savings time. Originally hailing from Indiana, where they absolutely ignored daylight savings time until a year ago (I always thought that TV stations just moved their schedules up for the warm part of the year), since I moved to the land of changing clocks, I have always had to be told when daylight savings time started and ended because I just never had a good grasp of those dates. Then, last year, They went and changed the dates on me just as I was starting to get an idea of when to expect them. So I'm all sorts of confused, and that doesn't help me make use of this tip.
I'm imagining being lost in the woods somewhere, wondering which way is North, finding a clearing (so I can see the sun ... duh), pulling my watch off and orienting it with the 12 to the left, aligning the hour hand with the sun, and thinking ... lessee, it's March 2nd ... has daylight savings started yet ... dammit! I don't know! How can I find which way is South, so that I can then deduce which way is North?!
And what if I happened to be in the southern hemisphere? Do they even use daylight savings time down there? And, if so, do they do it opposite of when we do? How can I possibly figure all this out?!
Of course, that example is ridiculous, in that there is no way I'd be anywhere near the woods on March 2nd because it's difficult to watch absurd amounts of college hoops from the woods. But let's not focus on that right now.
Still, maybe this whole discussion is moot because my cell phone has become a modern day pocket watch, and my wristwatch has been sitting in the console of my car for 2 years wanting a new battery and a better clasp on its band. (Strangely, it has not managed to procure those things from the console of my car, even though it has had two years to do so. I thought putting it there might make it get out and help itself if I ever ventured near a mall. That was not so smart, though, because how can it possibly get out and help itself when its battery is dead?) Sure, I could go to the car and pull out my watch, then go through the placing, orienting, and kvetching, but if I'm at the car anyway, I might as well just turn it on and look at the nav system. That's why I bought the damned thing. (Fine, I bought it because it's a cool gadget, and I like cool gadgets, but I did think it might be useful if I ever wanted to know which direction was North.)
So while this tip may be neato, I'm thinking it's not particularly useful to me, except for breaking my writer's block. Namaste!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
