I can't be alone with this

I have tried and tried to keep this stuff to myself. Alas, I can not hold back any longer. Brace yourself.

Two sisters mailed a hot dog to each for 54 years
The same hot dog? For over half a century? And the only thing you can think to ask me right now is if I want onions on mine?

Cadaver Calculator
My own body is worth almost $4000. Hmm, that's only eight iPhones.

Boomshine
This game should be called Blow Up You $%^&#%& Bubbles!!! Do NOT start playing this "addictive ... casual" game unless you have some time to kill or papers to avoid writing or a fresh nappy on the wee one. It's Flash crack. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Verify our position with one ping only, Vasily.

About Face
Flash is all the rage for internet games (see above) and animation. Flash, I would like you to make your ancestor: crayons on paper. This is very cool animation, the old school way.

Pizza Delivery, extra spicy
You want WHAT on your pizza? Canada is looking better and better every day.



Any ideas on what this sign might mean:



A pair of shoes to go with every outfit—even the bikini! I predict these will be in some future Bond 007 movie, unless my posting them here has caused them to jump the shark already.



Honey, where's the remote?



If this is what the ATM said, we'd all be saving more money.

I'm Joe's Beer

Am I the only one who remembers those educational flicks shown in elementary school, like I'm Joe's Heart, produced by Disney or some Disney-clone? I know this particular film lasted for over an hour, but all I remember from Heart is that, if you must sit for a long period of time now that you've acquired a white-collar job since you've come home from the war, sitting with your feet up helps get the blood back where it belongs: your butt. I also have a somewhat random memory cell imprinted with Goofy telling Mickey he keeps his car tires' air pressure low because he thinks that gives him a softer ride. I believe future Ford and Firestone executives were also raised on this movie.

Anyhow, not to be outdone, the beer industry also has some educational movies out there. Well, OK, I don't know if there are plural movies but the one I found is a fantastic piece of propaganda! I believe it can be summarized thusly: Without beer, civilization would not have happened. Without beer taxes, the government couldn't meet the budget. Without honest folks to serve beer and police themselves, the prude side of the Force will bring another Prohibition. The main thing I learned is that there is a Beer Institute. This lobbying group exists, apparently, to inform the public that the 4th of July is the biggest beer day on the calendar as well as to collect other fascinating beer facts and statistics.

All this pondering about the benefits of beer has made me thirsty. I'm sure it's happy hour somewhere so I'm off to hoist one.

Nothing says "civilization" like a serving tray,
men in ties, and women in hats.

Car smarter than human, cat a distant third

June 30th was our 1-year anniversary of having joined the other gadget cult: Prius owners. 365 days and over 20,000 miles of unadulterated bliss.

The T and I are thrilled thrilled thrilled to own this car. At the risk of sounding like the marketing campaign for every single item available for purchase today, let me say that this car really is Fun to Drive. Hooked on Phonics—make learning to read FUN! Fruit Roll-Ups—make snack time FUN! Monistat—make yeast infections FUN! Well, the Fun part of driving the Prius is the LCD panel in the center of the dash reporting your overall mileage, as well as your mileage at this very moment, or at least the moment a moment ago. You can also see what is propelling the car, gas or electrons or both. For a data-head like me, this constant flow of info is car-topia.

Aside: My brother, Dr. Sarcastic, also has a Prius and is current holder of Best Snappy Comeback in the Mileage category. When asked about his mileage, he replied, "I have an appointment scheduled next week to learn how to put gas in it."

In addition to all its features and comforts, the car is also sporting a computer brain bordering on artificial intelligence. Yes, this car is smarter than me. For instance, in our ongoing attempts to fuse all of our gadgets together into one giant gadget, we upgraded the base package a few clicks and got the Bluetooth feature so our future phones could be integrated into the car's audio system. We could then have phone conversations through the 42-speaker JVC stereo system (just imagine what "pick up some milk on your way home" can sound like with that extra sub-woofer under the passenger seat). The smart part of this particular package is the smart-key system: I only have to have the key on my body in order to unlock the car and start it up. This means that I never have to know where the key is, I just have to wear the same clothes over and over. The day's attire: one less decision I have to make because I own this car.

One result of this smart-key system, besides having far less laundry, is that I have totally disassociated the act of shutting the car off from a physical action. Turning a car off is typically associated with physically turning a key counter-clockwise, pulling it from the steering column and dropping said key into a purse or pocket or other synthetic blackhole. Having a smart-key means I just press a button to turn the car off. Pressing a button is the same action I use to get cash out of an ATM, start Mr. Coffee, fire up the iPod, get a can of high fructose corn syrup out of the vending machine, etc., etc. The act of shutting off my car is no longer unique in the annals of mechanical devices and, therefore, it is now utterly forgettable.

And yes, I have forgotten to shut off my Prius a number of times. But the Prius is both wise and patient. When I try to walk away from the still running car, it will chirp a few times. I interpret these chirps as, "get back here you idiotic carbon-based lifeform and shut me off." These chirps sound similar to the chirps for "I am shutting off the passenger air-bag because the unit in the seat doesn't weigh enough to be an adult" and "You left the hatch unlatched—again" and "You can't initiate a phone call while the car is moving."

Well, the last time I failed to press the button and left the car running, I walked away without hearing the chirp. So the Prius kept running. And running. And running. Granted it was parked out back on it's landing strip in the alley behind my abode, but the engine was on and running efficiently. Twenty (two-oh, 20, XX) hours later, when I was leaving for work, the car did not start up because it was—all together now—still running from the previous morning.

I think the thing that saved me from having to learn how to jump the car without blowing it up was that the climate control was set to "comfy-68°". Overnight, the gas engine kept kicking on to maintain the cabin temperature and also, thankfully, send a little juice over to the batteries. To it's credit, the Prius did not chirp sarcastically when I got in. In fact, it's silence was more damning than any comment it could have blipped or beeped. The only indication it gave that an electron crises was just narrowly averted was the LCD image of a very, very purple battery-juice level indicator line very, very low on the gauge. Oy. I dropped my mileage for that tank of gas from a typical 50+ miles per gallon to a mere 40+ miles per gallon. Sitting still for 20 hours will do that, I guess.

Well, patient Prius, consider this lesson learned ... until the next time.

iCall therefore iSheep?

I just noticed my previous iPhone post was mis-titled. Apparently I was so distraught about not obtaining an iPhone on iDay that I forgot how to count. It should have been titled iDay +1.

My iPlacebo is starting to lose its power of ... of ... placebo-ness. The Force is strong in this new Apple gadget. This is the phone I'm looking for (picture Obi Wan waving hand while doing Jedi mind trick).

... must ... resist ... urge ... to ... buy ... online ... willpower ... growing ... weaker ... want ... to ... click ... want ... to ... join ... mob ...

Have a seat

The next time a student turns in a homework assignment or quiz or test or anything completed in ink, I'm going to ask him or her to have a seat in the chair of Carbon Honor.


After 12 weeks of handing back inky math papers with 0 points earned out of n possible points, I had a student turn in a final exam done in ink! And—get this—his name was written in pencil!! wtf? Oh, if I only had this chair eight days ago.

More photos

iDay +2

Those of you who know me and know of my particular XA chromosomal makeup, aka: the homo apple configuration, may be wondering why my blog has been empty of iPhone posts. As the deadline for release of the latest iGadget came and went, this here space was oddly (?) missing any mention.

In my defense, all I can say is that there is no way I could have posted anything worth saying that hasn't been posted someplace else already. Let me show you what I mean.

TIME/CNN: I Take the iPhone Home
UK/Reuters: Some people can buy iPhone without the 2-year contract
iPhone-iPod.org
everythingipod.com: The revolution has started
iPhonenews.com
CNN/Money: A Tale of Woe
Mercury News: I Got the iPhone (and the Steves (Jobs and Wozniak) joined the party!)
C|Net News.com: Palm expects iPhone effect
Newsday.com: Behind the iPhone Frenzy (I don't know how could they pass up "iPhrenzy")
Forbes.com: Philadelphia Mayor gets iPhone
Reuters/India: Apple iPhone launch draws gadget geeks and hired help

You see my point? What could I, a lowly branch on the Apple tree, possibly add to the conversation? Gizmodo alone has 100+ posts about the iPhone, the people in line, the dude first in line in SoHo who doesn't even know what he is in line for, the accessories, what people are wearing in line, the updating of the Apple Store windows in preparation for the 6 PM launch, the onboxing of iPhones, the dismantling of a sacrificial iPhone (please tell me you bought 2!!!), the synching of iPhones, the typing on iPhones, the stupid talking TV head who flubbed using the iPhone live on the air, and even (drumroll) an iCake!!!

via Flickr

I confess that I did download and construct a paper iPlacebo to get me through until I do buy an iPhone.













It's been fun to watch this carnival from the sidelines. You'll hear plenty from me when I have my very own.

Blessed are the Not-So-Bright...

... for they make the rest of us laugh out loud. And on occasion we must use all our willpower to keep from spraying iced tea through our nose.


Overheard at La Cuillère Graisseuse* this morning:




Patron: Can I get a piece of coffee cake to go, please?

Waitron: Yes. Would you like that heated? With butter?

-pause-

Patron: Could you heat it with a microwave?




To the waitron's credit, she replied 'of course' and walked away. I had no such escape, perched upon the counter stool as I was, and I think I did physical damage to my sinus cavity making sure the iced tea went down and down the correct pipe.



* desktop translation programs are dangerous in the hands of the monolingual

Yes, but when can I sleep in?

Oy. The quarter ended officially yesterday and I have finally come up for air. I say 'officially' because I believe the last thing of any value that occurred in any of my classes took place days—if not weeks—earlier, yet classes kept meeting. Spring quarter is brutal. I have a sense now of how marathon runners feel: once your legs go numb, your feet move out of habit. Well, my head has been numb for quite a while. My lips kept moving.

A sense of how bad things had gotten as we slogged toward the end was when, after a full 7 or 8 weeks into the class, I was still being asked a question that was foremost in the students minds: how many decimals should we round our answers to? I cannot tell you how low on the list of Big Ideas this issue is yet how high it is on the list of Things Asked Today. For the students to feel that the number of decimal places is a Big Idea means that they are missing the truly Big Ideas. For example, if you have just calculated when a water balloon launched from the roof of a 120-foot high platform is going to hit your younger sibling in the head, taking into account initial velocity and initial height while the variables that can really screw things up are mysteriously ignored and absent from the formula, why are you obsessing over the hundredths place versus the thousandths place?

I would much rather the question be something along the lines of "does launch angle matter" or "will it go farther if initial velocity is increased while height is decreased or vice-versa"? But no. Faith in the formula without understanding the elements of said formula trumps all and the fundamentalists do not question the legitimacy of what they have been told. They instead sweep the formula under the rug and obsess over the stem-cell of the math world: decimal place. I contend that this question would take care of itself if the scenario were considered a little more deeply. If you round to the hundredths place or the thousandths place, does not your sibling still get wet?


Ug. Apparently I'm still a little wound up. And I have 3 full inches of grading to get through between today and tomorrow. And today is graduation. Yea. I do like graduation around these parts. This is an area in which getting a degree is not the expected norm and is still an achievement that needs to be properly honored. These students are truly proud of themselves for their educational accomplishments, as are their families. It is not assumed that everyone will ever have a degree around here. Graduation is not merely a task included in my job description. It is a rite of passage that I am happy to be a part of. So, I'm off to grade a little, then don the robes of the academic mucky-muck, and then do something to help me reboot like mow the lawn and whack some weeds.

Come the Rapture, can I have your iPhone?

The date has been announced: June 29th is the iDay! Thank the stars the iPhone is coming out after school is done for the year. Granted, I am now torn between jumping on the bandwagon and waiting a whole entire week or two until iPhone 2.0 is released with four times the memory, an additional megapixel or two in the camera, and a towel boy to—oh, never mind.

While we're waiting, here's a few tidbits to get us through. Don't mind the crumbs while I (continue to) graze on party leftovers.

DO NOT LET SMALL CHILDREN WATCH THIS VIDEO
Considering that the movie Nemo led to schools of fish being, uh, released by their juvenile overlords, it might be best if the little ones were not in the room while your watched this video. You gotta love the progress meter though, eh?


Time for Mind Expansion, via xkcd.com


I'm off to graze in the leftover paradise known as the fridge. Y'all have a good morning/afternoon/evening.

... yet the police were never called

Let's have a party! suggested Rainbow Hemp. Sure thing! we replied. Well after having that conversation for about six months, it finally happened last night. Here are the highlights:

- Both The T and I went to Costmo' on separate shopping trips and shopped from the same list. The T did not have her cell phone on her and did not get my message that said, "I got out of me meeting early! Do not go to Costmo'!" When we both arrived home and unpacked our cars, we had each gotten items in all the same categories but we had no duplicate name brands. For example, I bought the Utz snack mix and The T bought Chex Mix. Of the 12 bottles of wine we bought, we had no doubles.

- The house is clean. If nothing else, this was true for a window of about 75 minutes when we finally put away the vacuum and broom and the first guests arrived.

- Everyone who RSVPed and answered my question about what beverage they would like on hand and said "beer, dark beer" all of a sudden wanted a Corona when the walked in the door. WTF?

- Using the washing machine as the beer chest was the biggest hit of the party. I have not yet opened the lid this morning (afternoon?) to fish out the last few Fat Tire Ales and Black Butte Porters before spinning the ice dregs away.

- Each guest was asked to put on a name tag with their favorite mavie line written on it—or the only movie line they could recall at that moment. My second favorite event related to the movie lines was when someone slapped a sticker on the chest of the college president that said "Nice knockers." My first favorite was when he knew what movie the line was from and began quoting other lines.

- Quote of the party: What happens in the laundry room, stays in the laundry room.

We have a lot of food left, including an unopened 6 lb bag of pretzels. What was I thinking? I wonder if I can donate it to a shelter or something. I am not wondering the same about the unopened 4 lb bag of potato chips. That can stay. We also have boatloads of fruit salad and veggies and cheese and crackers. Let the grazing begin.