When a co-worker calls your extension to discuss something, and you can hear him speaking through your other ear because he is right around the corner, that is a work foul. I get co-worker in stereo, except the right channel is a little tinny.
On the other hand, I could easily see talking to my boss like that (he sits 30 feet away, directly behind me) just to be retarded.
"Hello, R?"
"Yes Aaron?"
"Can I show you this spreadsheet?"
"Sure."
"Okay, turn around."
Friday, July 25, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
Pop-culture cross-breeds
I was re-reading Prince Caspian from the Narnia books on the flight to Georgia this morning, and I happened upon a funny paragraph that never really caught me before.
It comes after the Pevinses children and Trumpkin the dwarf kill a wild bear (not a talking bear) that ambushes their party:
... this from a book that was written in 1951, three years before I Am Legend was originally published, 18 years before Night of the Living Dead, and a good 50 years before 28 Days Later. Granted, I'm sure Lewis meant it as Christian allegory (it is a Narnia book, after all), but zombies, vampires, and doppelgangers were the first thing that popped into my head when I read about little Lucy and her worries.
It comes after the Pevinses children and Trumpkin the dwarf kill a wild bear (not a talking bear) that ambushes their party:
"Such a horrible idea has come into my head, Su."
"What's that?"
"Wouldn't it be dreadful if some day in our own world, at home, men started going wild inside, like the animals here and still looked like men, so that you'd never know which were which?"
... this from a book that was written in 1951, three years before I Am Legend was originally published, 18 years before Night of the Living Dead, and a good 50 years before 28 Days Later. Granted, I'm sure Lewis meant it as Christian allegory (it is a Narnia book, after all), but zombies, vampires, and doppelgangers were the first thing that popped into my head when I read about little Lucy and her worries.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
I am Andy Rooney
Hey, time for me to complain again.
For the past week, I've been away on business. That means I've been eating out a lot. A lot to me would be twice a week, but this is every meal. There are only so many restaurants in the Alpharetta area, so we've gone to a couple of them more than once.
One place is an upscale (i.e. expensive) deli. And eating there twice, I can now firmly put my finger on what I hate about sandwiches at restaurants.
Keep in mind, that this hate is limited purely to sandwiches at restaurants; at home a sandwich can be the greatest food item ever. With the right bread, condiments and trimmings, it can be a square meal in and of itself. I recall some ham sandwiches piled high with alfalfa sprouts on home-made dill bread from my youth that touched on enlightening... but I digress.
Restaurant sandwiches usually have very good trimmings. There's a variety of stuff to put on it, all kinds of dressings, mayonnaises, mustards, roasted vegetables, and everything else that makes a good sandwich great. The bread isn't usually stellar, but it is rarely bad. They are usually overloaded with meat too; up to a quarter pound of the "body" of the sandwich. The fact that they are made by somebody else can only help their case. So what do these sandwiches lack?
Structural integrity.
If you get a turkey on wheat from a deli, you get a ball of shredded turkey that is slapped between two pieces of bread with some shredded lettuce and a couple tomatoes all in the center of the bread. And then, they cut it in half for you. Of course, when you cut a ball in half, it's going to just fall apart, so they use a couple fancy toothpicks to hold it together. When you try to eat it, you either start in the middle and eat all the meat out of the bread, or you start at the edge and half the meat falls out.
This is unacceptable.
A sandwich should stay together using nothing but the force of gravity. It's really simple how to make it work: spread that meat out. Don't make it a ball. Make it a layer, not unlike another piece of bread. Then put your stuff on top (evenly, not center-loaded), and the last piece of bread. If you must cut it in half, it will stay together this way.
Jason's Deli: I'm talking to you.
For the past week, I've been away on business. That means I've been eating out a lot. A lot to me would be twice a week, but this is every meal. There are only so many restaurants in the Alpharetta area, so we've gone to a couple of them more than once.
One place is an upscale (i.e. expensive) deli. And eating there twice, I can now firmly put my finger on what I hate about sandwiches at restaurants.
Keep in mind, that this hate is limited purely to sandwiches at restaurants; at home a sandwich can be the greatest food item ever. With the right bread, condiments and trimmings, it can be a square meal in and of itself. I recall some ham sandwiches piled high with alfalfa sprouts on home-made dill bread from my youth that touched on enlightening... but I digress.
Restaurant sandwiches usually have very good trimmings. There's a variety of stuff to put on it, all kinds of dressings, mayonnaises, mustards, roasted vegetables, and everything else that makes a good sandwich great. The bread isn't usually stellar, but it is rarely bad. They are usually overloaded with meat too; up to a quarter pound of the "body" of the sandwich. The fact that they are made by somebody else can only help their case. So what do these sandwiches lack?
Structural integrity.
If you get a turkey on wheat from a deli, you get a ball of shredded turkey that is slapped between two pieces of bread with some shredded lettuce and a couple tomatoes all in the center of the bread. And then, they cut it in half for you. Of course, when you cut a ball in half, it's going to just fall apart, so they use a couple fancy toothpicks to hold it together. When you try to eat it, you either start in the middle and eat all the meat out of the bread, or you start at the edge and half the meat falls out.
This is unacceptable.
A sandwich should stay together using nothing but the force of gravity. It's really simple how to make it work: spread that meat out. Don't make it a ball. Make it a layer, not unlike another piece of bread. Then put your stuff on top (evenly, not center-loaded), and the last piece of bread. If you must cut it in half, it will stay together this way.
Jason's Deli: I'm talking to you.
Monday, June 9, 2008
TSA: Another winner
This blog has basically become a platform for bitching, but whatever. Look at this!
http://www.tsa.gov/press/happenings/enhance_id_requirements.shtm
You can't get through security if you refuse to show ID anymore. However, if you forgot or misplaced your ID, you can still get through.
So: if you are a terrorist, just say you forgot your license. If you have your license but don't want to show it to a dubious government agency that has the most visibly inconsistent policies, and most obtrusive security measures, you won't be able to fly.
http://www.tsa.gov/press/happenings/enhance_id_requirements.shtm
You can't get through security if you refuse to show ID anymore. However, if you forgot or misplaced your ID, you can still get through.
So: if you are a terrorist, just say you forgot your license. If you have your license but don't want to show it to a dubious government agency that has the most visibly inconsistent policies, and most obtrusive security measures, you won't be able to fly.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Another boring religion post
I read this mock-interview, and it really covers a lot of good points. Considering it was written by one dude, and that it covers both points of view pretty fairly, I think it's pretty good:
A conversation with Tim Keller
The main topic is: How Atheists and Christians can have discussions of philosophy without stabbing each other.
A conversation with Tim Keller
The main topic is: How Atheists and Christians can have discussions of philosophy without stabbing each other.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
One of the big problems with religion is that it attracts morons
Pray-in at S.F. gas station asks God to lower prices.
This is just so depressing, on so many levels. Humanity has developed its society to be pretty damn-near dependent on a limited, unrenewable resource. We have known this for decades, at least half as long as we have been using it. Once you take into account all the hundreds of other factors that influence the cost of gasoline (location, refineries operating, weather, whim of whomever is in charge...) it can be pretty well reasoned that it is basically our own fault that gas prices are high, and it is our own fault that we even care that gas prices are high.
This guy is praying to God, the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient deity that created the entire universe, to lower the price of gasoline. Because He has nothing better to do than save you from trading a few more green pieces of paper for some smelly liquid.
At any given moment, there are genocides being committed, natural habitats being destroyed, and our environment is being polluted beyond recognition. But this guy wants God to let him pay less for gas.
Now, I'm not saying that nobody has ever prayed to God for something that's in their own self-interest. People pray before basketball games, before they put on plays, heck, before most meals my family prays that our personal meals was blessed by the Heavenly Creator himself. This isn't uncommon, and it isn't bad. So clearly, God can sweat the small stuff.
But this guy is having a pray-in. With the news reporting on it. If I prayed for a new bike:
(and Kate would be mad at me if I did), that's one thing. If I start trying to get everybody else to join me in group prayer at the bike shop, that's pretty stupid. A large newspaper writing a story on it is epically retarded. But, a blogger writing about it with righteous indignation is divine.
So, my recommendation to this religious "leader" by the gas station: start praying for a bike. At home.
This is just so depressing, on so many levels. Humanity has developed its society to be pretty damn-near dependent on a limited, unrenewable resource. We have known this for decades, at least half as long as we have been using it. Once you take into account all the hundreds of other factors that influence the cost of gasoline (location, refineries operating, weather, whim of whomever is in charge...) it can be pretty well reasoned that it is basically our own fault that gas prices are high, and it is our own fault that we even care that gas prices are high.
This guy is praying to God, the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient deity that created the entire universe, to lower the price of gasoline. Because He has nothing better to do than save you from trading a few more green pieces of paper for some smelly liquid.
At any given moment, there are genocides being committed, natural habitats being destroyed, and our environment is being polluted beyond recognition. But this guy wants God to let him pay less for gas.
Now, I'm not saying that nobody has ever prayed to God for something that's in their own self-interest. People pray before basketball games, before they put on plays, heck, before most meals my family prays that our personal meals was blessed by the Heavenly Creator himself. This isn't uncommon, and it isn't bad. So clearly, God can sweat the small stuff.
But this guy is having a pray-in. With the news reporting on it. If I prayed for a new bike:
(and Kate would be mad at me if I did), that's one thing. If I start trying to get everybody else to join me in group prayer at the bike shop, that's pretty stupid. A large newspaper writing a story on it is epically retarded. But, a blogger writing about it with righteous indignation is divine.
So, my recommendation to this religious "leader" by the gas station: start praying for a bike. At home.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Weekend of Adventure! And then lazy.
Saturday, I went mountain biking. Super fun. Until this happened. I was going down a trail full of little jumpy-things. I came upon a bigger-jumpy thing, and went slow so I wouldn't launch myself into the stratosphere. Approaching it, it looked like this:
Since it was my first time on the trail, I didn't know that it actually looked like this:
And, because I was going slow, I landed like this:
So, needless to say, I got tossed. Hard. A lot of rolling, sliding, and a little bleeding. But I came up relatively unscathed. Which is saying a lot, because my riding buddy had just broken his foot at the top of this little trail. He got a little bit of shadenfreude in, so at least I helped him out.
Sunday was soooo lazy it was awesome. We watched a couple episodes of "The Universe", a PBS series that came recommended by Kate's dad. We just got finished watching Planet Earth, and I thought it would be kind of like that - super-dry, just footage with a boring narrator.
NO WAY! It had more animations and graphics than I have ever seen. Including some depressingly poor animations of a meteor striking Big Ben. I had a lot of gripes about their misrepresentations of scale (showing the sun as about 4 times the size of the earth and about 5 earth-diameters away), and certain omissions (neglecting to say that photons are massless), but it was pretty interesting nonetheless.
And there was no shortage of unfathomable figures thrown at us: The force of 100 million Hiroshima bombs! The 100-billion times the mass of Mount Everest! How to they quanitify that? Where does the mass of Mount Everest end? At base camp? At 5,000 feet? At the ocean? Everything within a 10-mile radius of the peak? Seriously.
Then I played a lot of this:
For those of you who own a Wii and never had a gamecube, go to your local used-game store, buy a used GC controller, and get a copy of this. I maintain that it is one of the greatest games of all time, and is cute and awesome too. So much fun. It just can't be stopped. Usually Zelda games don't have a lot of replayability, but for some reason Windwaker works.
Also, we filled up Kate's car with gas and it cost a ton of money. I feel really guilty about driving to work again... time to get riding.
Since it was my first time on the trail, I didn't know that it actually looked like this:
And, because I was going slow, I landed like this:
So, needless to say, I got tossed. Hard. A lot of rolling, sliding, and a little bleeding. But I came up relatively unscathed. Which is saying a lot, because my riding buddy had just broken his foot at the top of this little trail. He got a little bit of shadenfreude in, so at least I helped him out.
Sunday was soooo lazy it was awesome. We watched a couple episodes of "The Universe", a PBS series that came recommended by Kate's dad. We just got finished watching Planet Earth, and I thought it would be kind of like that - super-dry, just footage with a boring narrator.
NO WAY! It had more animations and graphics than I have ever seen. Including some depressingly poor animations of a meteor striking Big Ben. I had a lot of gripes about their misrepresentations of scale (showing the sun as about 4 times the size of the earth and about 5 earth-diameters away), and certain omissions (neglecting to say that photons are massless), but it was pretty interesting nonetheless.
And there was no shortage of unfathomable figures thrown at us: The force of 100 million Hiroshima bombs! The 100-billion times the mass of Mount Everest! How to they quanitify that? Where does the mass of Mount Everest end? At base camp? At 5,000 feet? At the ocean? Everything within a 10-mile radius of the peak? Seriously.
Then I played a lot of this:
For those of you who own a Wii and never had a gamecube, go to your local used-game store, buy a used GC controller, and get a copy of this. I maintain that it is one of the greatest games of all time, and is cute and awesome too. So much fun. It just can't be stopped. Usually Zelda games don't have a lot of replayability, but for some reason Windwaker works.
Also, we filled up Kate's car with gas and it cost a ton of money. I feel really guilty about driving to work again... time to get riding.
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