A Sample of Efficiency

I like to do things efficiently if I can. I have my computer all pimped out so that I can do a million things with my keyboard. Rarely do I have to waste time by reaching all the way over and grabbing the mouse. With my setup, I can knock out a blog post, peruse Facebook, write an email, fire off an IM, or browse through my RSS feeds, all without ever taking my hands off the keyboard. Aren’t you impressed? Well, my desire for efficiency is especially manifested when the things I’m to do require me to leave my seat. (For those of you saying that I’m really just very lazy, zip it! This is my post, and I’m telling you, it’s all about efficiency.) If I have to get up and go somewhere, I like to knock out a couple of things at once. If I have to scan something, I’ll drop a couple of soda cans in the recycle bin. If I need to meet with someone on the other side of the building, I’ll stop by a friend’s office to visit while I’m in the neighborhood. If I need to fill up my water bottle, I’ll go ahead and go to the restroom if I need to.

That last one got me thinking, though. If I were a random person who just happened to see me (or someone like me) head into the restroom with an empty water bottle, what would I think? Would that random person think that I was going to collect a urine sample? In the case of my 1 liter water bottle, an impressively large urine sample? Discuss amongst yourselves.

An Unexpected Hosanna

I stopped to get gas on the way to work this morning, and for some reason, I looked over at another woman who was there. She was walking a little toward me, and asked, "Did you hear what I said?"

I shook my head. She said, "It used to cost me 75 dollars to fill up that car. It just cost me thirty-three seventy-five. God is good!"

It's good to be thankful, I guess.

Something We Can All Agree On

Can we just all go ahead and agree that garbanzo beans are the funniest kind of beans?

 

Thank you. Have a nice day.

How Big Is Your Car Hole?

For a long time now I've enjoyed talking about the size of garages on houses. Granted, some people, like Moe on The Simpsons, don't approve of the word garage, as explained in this exchange:

Moe: Garage? Hey, fellas, the garage. Well, ooh la-di-da, Mr. Frenchman.
Homer: Well, what do you call it?
Moe: A car hole.

Still, la-di-das aside, I think what got me started talking about garage sizes was when I heard someone talking about how their house had a "one and a half car garage."

"A 1.5 car garage?! That's absurd!" I said. "Is that for your extra half car that you have lying around?! Reediculous!"

Had I applied a bit of a filter between brain and mouth, I might have been able to figure out that it kind of makes sense to talk about garages that way. I mean, garages can be useful for holding things other than cars. They're dead useful for storing things like tools, lawn mowers, rakes, boxes full of random A/V cables, fishing gear, and other things that one doesn't use all that often and/or that just don't have a sensible home inside. Anyway, after hearing about a 1.5 car car hole for the first time, I started noticing that the size varied quite a bit.

By way of example, Lawton must have at least a 2.5 car garage, given that it can hold 2 decent sized cars with ample space between them for opening doors and even some room left over for storing some other shit. I've claimed for years that my mom has the biggest no car garage in the world, full to the brim as it is with junk and Emergency Backup Furniture just sitting there hoping that some of the Primary Furniture will break or be otherwise ruined thus leaving an opening for EBF to gain entry to the house.

When the Girl and I moved into the Halfway House, I decided that we have a 1.0 car garage. I suppose there are some shelves at the end of  it that make it a tad bigger, but it's not much more than 1.1 at the most. My car is both long and wide, meaning that I have to favor the right side when I get to park in there just so I can open my door enough to get out. I also have to pay attention to how far I pull in there to make sure there's ample room for the door to close. Still, a 1.0 car garage is better than no car hole at all, and I'm generally glad to have it.

As as aside, I should mention that the Girl and I have differing opinions about the garage door and just how important its status is in our daily lives. Whenever we leave together or come in through the garage together, she is always very insistent that she watch the garage door to make sure it closes all the way. She claims that's important for home security, in that it helps make sure no one can enter our garage as the first step in stealing her. Her insistence on watching tends to annoy me, because the garage door is clearly going to close all the way. After all, that IS why we have a garage door opener, and there can't really be a problem with a piece of machinery doing such a simple job that it has done many times in the past. Never mind the fact that there have been a few times when the door allegedly went almost all the way down, only to change its mind and rise up again. That was due to some rakes partially covering the sensor, a situation that I have since remedied. I suppose to give you a complete picture of our differing opinions about the garage door, I should mention that there are times when I will leave via the garage in the morning well after the Girl has gone off to work (having parked across the street to avoid having to move the car out of her way in the morning, thus giving me some extra snooze time in the AM). We have a couple of locks on the front door, and it's much simpler to just hit the close button on the remote than to deal with the multiple locks. A couple of those times, I have received calls from the Girl asking me why in the world the garage door is not even pretending to be closed, and I have had no choice but to sheepishly admit that not only did I not watch the door close, I never even hit the button to tell it to close. So ... we definitely pay different levels of attention to that garage door.

The other night I came home from work after a pretty long day with several work things bouncing around my brain. I parked in the driveway, hopped out, and came in through the front door, only to discover that the Girl was putting in an even longer day at work. So I went back out through the garage and pulled my car into the car hole, still thinking about work. On my way in, I hit the button to close the door, paying its ensuing activity all the attention I typically think it is due, which is to say none. A while later, the Girl finally made it home, and I heard the garage door start to go. I figured she must have also had her mind on work to open the garage door when she knew I was already home and parked in there. No matter, though. I waited for her to come upstairs. And then I heard the door opener start up again. It seemed to be going on for a while. Something was not quite right. So I hopped up and went down to see what was going on. I poked my head out and asked, kind of smiling, "Why you keep runnin' that door up and down?"

"I'm not. I'm just trying to close it. It was wide open when I came home."

"Whaaaaaattt? Oh no."

And I walked around to the back of my car to see the results of my distracted parking. Apparently, I had not made sure to pull all the way inside the garage. Thus, unsurprisingly, the garage door had encountered my rear bumper and absolutely scraped the shit out of it in an attempt to close before deciding that something was wrong and going back up. That sequence repeated itself twice when the girl came home and tried to get the door to close.

The moral of this story? I think there might be several, most of which I'm probably not clever enough to grasp. In fact that may be one of the morals. But the ones that are apparent to me are 1) don't park distracted, 2) don't think about work when you're at home -- or anywhere else outside of work, 3) in the case of car holes size may very well matter, and 4) the Girl may be right about the garage door opener deserving at least a little more attention.

But 5) don't you go telling her I said so.

300 of the Universe

My TiVo recently received an update that allows me to use it to watch YouTube videos on my TV. That's not really earth-shattering, but it was neat enough to try out. To that end, the Girl recommended that we watch two videos. Specifically, the first was for background. You should watch it now:

I know, I know, that's just a trailer for a not new movie. Granted, it's a pretty cool trailer, but still. That video was just prelude to this one that the Girl's friend did ... Damn! I can't embed it. Sigh. Go and ahead and take a look at it on YouTube. I thought it was pretty cool.

Quote of the Weekend

OK, so it wasn't originally said this weekend, but that was the first time I heard it, and I had to share it. My brother and I were talking about something we considered endless and futile, and he told me something his friend Seth once said: "You know why salmon swim upstream to spawn every year? It's because they're Sisyfish."

My Phone Sees Things...

... and so can you.

My cell phone has this little camera thingy on it. It takes crappy pictures, but it comes in handy once in a while to take note (well, picture, really) of something that grabs my attention.

For instance, in my office building, I recently came across this:

 

Part of it's a little hard to read, but I think you can get the idea. When I saw this, I couldn't help wondering how in the hell a door can be out of order. Seriously, does that mean it won't open? If so, the sign's pretty useless, don't you think? I mean that would be pretty obvious when it didn't open (although I suppose such a sign would keep people from calling the management, as the sign would indicate they already knew about it). Or does it mean it won't close? No, that's clearly not the case, as the door is currently closed in the picture. I suppose it could mean that, if you do open the door, it might fall on you and possibly kill you. Or it might be broken such that it will only open into another dimension where you are likely to fall prey to the Dreaded Ass Bite of the Evil Buttmunchosaur, at which point out of order doors will clearly become the least of your concerns. If it were one of these last two things (or something else along those lines), doesn't it seem like a more ominous and official-looking sign would be in order (sorry for the pun -- couldn't help myself). Something like "Beware the Dreaded Ass Bite" would likely keep me the hell away from that door. As it was, I opted to pay no heed all the bad things it did to the proverbial cat and indulged my curiosity by grabbing the handle and opening the door and walking right through and watching it close. A few days later that sign went away, and I have no idea what changed.

I was going to put up some others, but I'll hold off on those for now. We'll call this Part One or something. I hope your Monday is as good as can be hoped ... and devoid of out of order doors. But maybe you should Beware the Dreaded Ass Bite, just in case.

Photo Bombing Fun

Non-somnolent reader FJ just emailed this photo essay to me, and I had to share it right away. Just marvelous.

Fast and Loose with Definitions

Driving home from a round of golf yesterday, one of those signs with removable letters on the front caught my attention. I didn't notice the building it was in front of, but I have to assume it was a church. It said:

THE BIBLE HAS A WORD TO DESCRIBE "SAFE" SEX. IT'S CALLED MARRIAGE.

I don't know a whole lot about defining words, and I certainly don't know how the Bible does it, but I'm not sure how exactly the word marriage describes sex -- at least in the context of intercourse -- be it the safe or some other variety. A co-worker of mine (the same one who likes to ride tricycles), upon hearing about the sign said, "That's not describing sex; That's describing abstinence."

Not in My Office You Don't!

A friend recently emailed this rant of his to me, which I have copied here in its entirety:

I’ve decided today that I have had just about enough of people bringing in their damned babies that are too young to do anything but sit there on one parent’s shoulder, make awkward faces, and shit in the doorway of my office.  I’ve had enough of their parents standing there waiting for me to give the appropriate level of praise (“Good job, Chris, you really knocked the bottom right out of your wife the right way this time, huh?”).  I’ve had enough of the weird small talk and not knowing what to say (“Wow, Melissa, you must have some Asian in your family tree somewhere, because your daughter doesn’t look anything like your husband”) or whether to touch the thing or tell them it looks like one or the other of them or whether I should know if they’re old enough to be sleeping through the night.  I’ve had enough of being introduced to random spouses that I’ve met 5 times already and wasn’t impressed with the first 5 times, or who I wondered how the hell you managed to convince her to stick around with you long enough to procreate – maybe next time I’ll ask them how the conversation about you wanting to hire the smoking hot au pairs went.  So please quit wasting my time, take your puke factory home where it belongs, and get back to your office and do your f-ing job.

Thank you.  And if I at some point procreate and drag that child into the office, please forward this back to me.

I very much enjoyed that rant, but as a fellow non-procreator at this point in my life, sending it to me was pretty ineffective aside from its obvious entertainment value. But I'm glad I don't work in his office because a) I would share a lot of his feelings about the baby parade, and b) I might be inclined to visit him sometimes if I worked there, and it might be hazardous -- I don't consider myself a germophobe or anything, but his office doorway must be filthy.

Bitter Much?

The letters have eluded me lately, and I should probably offer an explanation for that, but those letters seem to be eluding me, too.  Instead, I'll offer a link to a fake personal that made me chuckle once or twice.  Hope you enjoy it.

Not Everyone's Like Me ...

... and it's a Good Thing.

Just yesterday, as I headed out from the office, I stopped to tell my co-worker, whom we will call Sam, that I would be working from home today. "My couches are supposed to finally be delivered," I explained. Not that he needed an explanation. We work from home sometimes. Still, for some reason I explained. Maybe I was being friendly.  Maybe I was just Sharing. Since I had Shared Sam decided to reciprocate.

As background, Sam has a young son, whom we will call Jeffrey. Jeffrey is of that age that I can't possibly remember. You know the kind: parents are likely to still talk about it in a number of months to everyone, even though, speaking for at least myself and probably for all people who have never had kids, if it doesn't translate directly into half years it doesn't mean anything and the rounded half years would suffice. Terms like newborn, one half, one, one and a half, two ... you get the idea, are probably enough.

Anyway, in his Sharing, Sam told me that he was about to pull the trigger on a cool tricycle. I responded thusly: "Oh? For Jeffrey?"

Sam just nodded and proceeded to show me pictures of the trike in question, proving that he is a far better person than I. Had the roles been reversed, I'm sure my left eyebrow would have nearly popped off the top of my head as I lapsed into dark sarcasm. As it was, I pointed out that I had just asked a question that at least had to be considered for status on the all time list of dumb questions. When I pointed it out, he grinned and took the bait: "Nah. I just like trikes. They're pretty fun to ride around once you get on them."

Apt Analogues

Not too, too long ago, I was chatting with the BHK, and he relayed to me something that Steve Czaban had said. For those of you who don't know, Czaban is a radio sports talk guy.  Really, he's just a guy.  He likes to talk about sports, women, and HDTV.  He's the rare non-techie talking head who actually knows a few things about HD, and I don't mind him talking about it.  Sometimes, I even enjoy it.  That's not the point right now, though.  The point is that Czabe was talking about femme-o-the-day acress Katherine Heigl. And what did Czabe have to say about her?  "She's not all that." 

I was surprised by that take, but I have to admit that she doesn't trip my trigger in the most impressive way.  She's certainly attractive and all, but I can see what he was saying, and I told the BHK so. I followed up by saying that I was kind of surprised that Heigl's Grey's Anatomy co-star (and putative leading actress in that particular show), Ellen Pompeo, wasn't able to parlay the show's success into more roles on the Big Screen. I first remember seeing Pompeo play the flavor in Old School, and I thought she was, apart from needing someone to give her a sammich, fairly hot.  However, as the BHK pointed out, she's a skosh old to be the new hotness in Hollywood. I countered by saying that I get that, but she seems to have the bigger role, perhaps the more important role, on Grey's. And the BHK came back by saying, "So she's the Anthony Edwards on ER to Heigl's George Clooney."  I don't think it could have possibly been summed up any better.

On Sneezes

Sneezes are interesting things. I've long found it odd that one can "steal" a sneeze by touching someone in the throes of a long sneeze windup. I don't recommend doing so all that much, of course, as it tends to make the victim of said theft quite angry.  In general, I'm inclined to argue about the terminology there, since I think that you're not so much stealing the sneeze as destroying it. It's not like I can steal someone's sneeze then enjoy it for myself.  Not that I'd really want to.  Really, I'm not quite sure why people get angry about having their sneezes stolen.  But they do. OK, I'm not being entirely truthful, I understand why at least one person would be angry.  One of my Former Neighbor Chicas always claimed that sneezes were "orgasmic," a description I could never agree with.  Still, if I thought of my sneezes that way, I would probably be pretty pissed off if someone came along and stole one.

But Stolen and Orgasmic aren't the only kind of sneezes out there. There are also Multiple Sneezes. Another Former Neighbor Chica couldn't sneeze just once. Nor twice. Nor three times. She generally sneezed at least 4 times, and sometimes upwards of 7. (I suspect this tendency made her roommate, the Orgasmic Sneezer, quite jealous, especially since I can't recall having ever seen/heard the Orgasmic Sneezer actually let one fly. But then again, maybe that was something she was only willing to do in private.) Once, whilst Lawton and I were playing PlayStation hockey, the Multiple Sneezer unleashed one, which Lawton responded to with a "Bless you."

Another sneeze followed, leading to a "Gesundheit" from me.

A third one, met with silence.

A Fourth, causing Lawton to say, "Cut it out."

A fifth.  "Gahdam!" says I.

A sixth, resulting in a resounding, "Bitch, please!" from Lawton.

And that was the end of it because we were all laughing. From that day forward, those responses acted as a sort of protocol for handling the Multiple Sneezes, and that particular female always worked hard to stop before getting the dreaded, "Bitch, please!"

That kind of talk wouldn't have been at all appropriate for the most memorable sneeze from my college days. One day in a huge lecture hall (It was a Chemistry class, I think. I can't be sure, though; I had a bunch of classes in that same room.), a dude about six rows down from me brought his hand up to his mouth to restrain an impressively violent sneeze.  It was a good thing he did, too.  At least it was good for the people in front of him. As he slowly and uncertainly moved his hand away from his face, we could clearly see that his hand was completely covered in Ghostbusters-grade slime. It was disgusting. Naturally, my friends and I sitting there engaged in several minutes of that kind of silent but seemingly endless lecture hall laughter.  I don't remember what that guy did with his handful of snot, but I know he didn't have a lot of options. He was smack dab in the middle of the row, and he didn't seem to have a hanky with him. He might have even been wearing shorts leaving him with a much smaller surface area of clothing to wipe it off.

But I didn't really start this post to write about Stolen, Orgasmic, Multiple, or even Voluminous sneezes. The other day I experienced a new kind. Just before lunch, I had filled up a water bottle and was heading back toward my office. As I reached for the door handle, a sneeze sneak attacked me. What to do?! The hand on the door handle was obviously too far away to get back to my face to cover it up.  I had a big water bottle in my other hand, and that wasn't going to be much use for containing the sneeze. It would really be uncool to sneeze onto the door handle. A co-worker was right behind me making loosing the thing into the air in general or especially directly behind me a bad option. So I kind of pointed my head down, stopped, and tried to constrain the thing with my mouth. I don't know if you've ever tried this, but I strongly suggest that you don't.  There are physics involved, see. I remember in elementary school that everyone liked to talk about how sneezes travel at 100 miles per hour and how your heart stops when you sneeze.  I don't know about any of that, but I do know that this particular effort felt like someone had shot me in the gullet with a slingshot. Or maybe as if someone had used my mouth as one of those bomb squad shells to contain an explosion. My throat hurt for a good 30 minutes.

Beware the Bomb in Your Mouth Sneeze.

Quote of the Night

"Girl Scout Cookies do kinda taste like March Madness."

- The Girl

For Your Edutainment

This is really just entertainment, but it's good times, despite the fact that it connotes a "Skynet becomes aware" kind of thing for me.  A co-worker sent it: Animator vs. Animation.

This is more of the edutainment variety. I keep doing it, and I can't get past level 10 (I think).  My highest traveler IQ? 113.

The Case Against Professional Photography

I've never really known what to do with those little pictures I get in the mail of people's kids. I look at them, think they're cute, ugly, or hilariously odd. After that, though, the confusion sets in. Should I frame them? Put them on the fridge? What if people saw them in my house? Would they think I was some kind of perv? I can't be having that. But some people think that throwing away pictures of someone else's kid is a sin on par with carrying on more than 2 oz. of liquid at the airport or ripping off mattress tags or something. So what I typically do is put them in a pile for what I consider an appropriate amount of time (which tends to be until I notice them the next time several months later), after which I throw them away. Still, my discomfort with these pictures doesn't really show the general problem with them, especially with group shots. To that end, I give you this link, sent to me by non-somnolent readers FJ (over a week ago) and the Spaceball (just yesterday). (Really, they emailed me the contents, but we know how to use Google here at the Chronicles.) Go ahead and check it out, and beware the photos you commission.

I will just add one more comment, though. The one that really sticks with me, and not in a good way, is the one with the mousy teenage girl flanked by the two mullet-adorned, bare-chested males. I can't decide if that's a strange, fetishist kidnapper situation, or a perhaps stranger family photo. If it's the latter, can you imagine that girl explaining that picture on the wall when her first boyfriend comes over in high school? I can't either.

Waiting to Explode

This weekend, for some reason, I grabbed a box of Mentos at the grocery store. Finding them in my jacket pocket on the way to work this morning, I ate a couple. They are the fresh maker after all, and fresh couldn't be a bad way to start the work week. However, remembering the video makes me wonder what will happen when I drink the Diet Coke sitting in front of me. So this is a warning to all of you that this may be my last post ever. If you hear a pop in the distance, that might very well be me exploding.

The Season of Not Giving

My family has operated Christmas based on lists for as long as I can remember. If you wanted gifts, you had to make a list. And having those lists was huge for my brother and me, given that we almost never did any Christmas shopping. We always did Christmas buying, and we always did it on or around the 21st - 23rd of December, as that was when we arrived in Indy from our more coastally located homes. (It's really kind of impressive. We're machines when we do that.) Over the years, though, we've had more and more trouble coming up with lists. Part of it is that we don't think we need much stuff. Part is that I went through a traumatic experience when moving out of a house I lived in for 6 years and ended up throwing away enough stuff to fill a small apartment, and, as a result, I try to be somewhat resistant to stuff accumulation. And part is that these days, for the most part, when we want something, we just buy it.

So this year we kind of suggested that our folks not bother getting us Christmas presents. We weren't really lacking for stuff, and it seemed kind of silly for anyone to buy us things that we didn't really want or need. Due in part to some other circumstances, our folks pretty much agreed. There were a couple of gifts that had already been purchased before we negotiated the cease fire, but we really didn't do much gift giving. And that was fine. Really, it would be nice to just get together and relax and enjoy each other's company until we drove each other nuts and then go home.

Now we didn't intend this cessation of gift giving (which was really motivated by a desire to avoid gift receiving, but you can't have one and not the other) to be a far-reaching thing. In fact, before I departed for Indy, I saw that my company was collecting money to give to a local homeless shelter, and I gave the cash in my wallet one afternoon. It wasn't a big deal or anything, and it's certainly not something I should pat myself on the back about. It was just one of those, "Oh. Here you go," kinds of things. So why am I bringing it up, you ask? Good question.

The reason I'm bringing it up is that I got a call from the receptionist today saying that she had some money for me. I thought that was odd, but I'm not inclined to argue when someone randomly says she wants to give me money, so I went up there to collect it. [Notice how I've avoided all tasteless jokes about how certain females had better have my money at certain times lest they experince unpleasantness. The thought never even crossed my mind. Are you proud or disappointed?] It turns out that something hadn't worked with giving the money to the homeless shelter while I was gone, and they were just returning my donation. I guess that non-gift giving thing extended farther than I expected or intended.

I hope you got everything you wanted for Christmas this year, even if it was nothing.

Hi, I'd Like to Write a Blog Post

Having just recently polished off lunch, my brain is filled with a topic I have to share, hopefully flushing it from my brain in the process. I had a pita sandwich from a local place that I've been patronizing for well over 10 years now. When I started going there, they only had the one little store, and they were only open from 8 AM - 3 PM on workdays. They've grown over the years, adding a couple of other stores, one of which is even open part of the day on Saturdays now. Anyway, the first location is the one that I go to most of the time because it's closest to the office. It's just a little building with no place to sit down or anything. You pretty much walk in, wait in line, place your order, move around for a little while to get out of everyone else's way that you are constantly in while waiting for your order to be prepared, pick up your order when they call your name, and get the heck out to go eat. That's one way of doing it.

The preferred method of interacting with the place, though, is to call ahead and place your order, which they prepare before you get there. That way, you can just go to the special call-ahead register to quickly pay, pick up, and leave. I used the preferred method today, but the start of that call got me thinking about how it's a bit awkward. Obviously, when they answer, they're not expecting small talk about their health or the weather or anything. They're busy people, and they have a job to do and they don't want to talk to you just now. However, I feel some compulsion to announce my intention to them: "Hi, I'd like to place an order for pick up," is something you might hear me say if you were around me when I called to place an order for pick up.

And maybe that's fine, but it seems silly to me. First of all, of course I want to place an order for pick up. It's not like they deliver. And it's not like I can place an order to dine in. Really, the only option I have is to place an order for pick up. Has ordering pizzas so conditioned me that I'm inflexible in the way I start a food order call? Why can't I just launch into my order? Why do I need the preamble? Do I somehow think they might not be ready to write it down, sort of like the protocol where you ask people if they're ready to write down a phone number when you give it to them over the phone? Do I worry they might not know I'm calling to make an order, that maybe I want to know when they close or whether they sell things other than pita sandwiches or where my socks are or some such nonsense? Am I concerned that they can't process my order without the preamble?

I mean, what would you do if I called you and said, "Hi, I'd like to talk to you on the phone now?" I'd like to think that you would either hang up or say something to the effect of, "Duh." but I guess that reaction would cure me of such things. Sigh. I'll probably keep doing it until they respond with a "Duh."

I'm going to stop writing this post now.