Category: Life

I heard on the radio today a commercial for the newest and bestest Lasik eye surgery techniques, which explained that whatever new gimcrackatron they’ve devised certainly beats the traditional Lasik methods.

Undoubtedly, Dr. McCoy would agree that those old, traditional means of Lasik surgery (such as those deployed against Virginia Postrel) were medieval butchers and that they were only one step above using leeches to suck that astigmatism right out of the eyeball.

Pardon me, but my family doesn’t have a generations-long tradition for opening the front of the eyeball like a can of french-cut green beans and firing a computer-guided thing-we-used-to-call-a-“laser” against the retina until it scorched enough of the cones and rods to make things better, as though it was a military expedition to win over the hearts and minds of my optic nerve with napalm. Oh, yeah, and then they close it back up, and it either works or you’re blind, oops.

Pardon me, but I have done too much QA with computers to trust them with anything like the impressionist-themed remainder of my vision, thankyouverymuch. Sure, I realize that the chances of failure are slim, but I buy lottery tickets with slimmer odds.

So my traditional Lasik surgery technique is mocking the very prospect. And as a conservative, remember, I demonstrate:

• Fear and aggression of losing what remains of my sight.
• Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity in adhering to my gruesome description of the procedure.
• Uncertainty avoidance because new technology bad.
• Need for cognitive closure so let’s just drop the subject.
• Terror management by thinking happy thoughts instead of Lasik procedures as I go to sleep to keep away the nightmares.

So thanks, but no schnucking way thanks.

This sentiment guaranteed only until next midlife crisis.

My darling wife has discovered that people get fat from cleaning the plates put down in front of them in restaurants.

Pardon my french fry-induced coronary, but come on. Parents throughout the country made their little boomers clean their plates, and the boomers tried to enforce this dictum on Generation X. So when restaurants started putting pounds of high-margin plate fillers in front of paying customers to make the customers feel like they were getting four RBIs’ in their Grand Slams, the customers would have made their parents proud. And they got four bags, all right, sagging upon their bods.

People have been conditioned to eat what’s in front of them, but hey! You’re Pavlovian pooches. Stop drooling when you hear the dinner bell, and push it away. You can still have your after-dinner Guinness. The waitress won’t think less of you than she does already, you hard-to-please pinhead at table 42.

How about you only cook half the box of Taquitos, muchacho, or put half of them into the refrigerator for tomorrow. You’ll still get all that good yummy Xanthan, Guar, and Carob Bean Gums and annatto colorant, but because you spread it over two servings, you’ll get a better chance to savor them.

I understand thinking about what you’re eating doesn’t burn as many calories as just indiscriminately shoveling crap into your gaping maw, but sometimes it works better.

If you ever wanted to fully understand what I am saying, you need to visit this guide to Wisconsin slang.

This page also affirms the existence of cannibal sandwiches, a staple of my diet when growing up.

Honey, I see you’ve linked to a CNN Story about how hometown cable television maven Charter Communications has introduced a sooper cable box that plays DVDs and MP3s. Soon, cable boxes will also play video games, vacuum our entertainment rooms, and from then it goes down hill into drinking all our Guinness Draught and tying up the phone line all night.

You lament that we gave up cable before this became available. Honey, we were existing customers.
They wouldn’t have given us this box without charging us extra anyway.

I was listening to Weber and Dolan this morning and they were going on about the business practices of cable companies. Bob Dolan went off on that cable companies have packages that are less expensive than their basic packages and that the customer has to specifically request that package; sales people will never bring it up on their own. Cable companies, and many of their counterparts in high tech services, want to squeeze you for as much as you can when you sign up, and if you’re an existing customer, you get nothing until you complain or cancel.

Anecdotally, it’s why AOL customers get cheap rates only when they try to cancel. Or why all of our equipment said AT&T for years after Charter took over AT&T’s territory here in Casinoport, Missouri, and why the menus were all in middle English and the transmission was in pre-Arabic numerals (1 and who cares, which lead to snow in our reception).

Of course, were we to come crawling back (I mean, try to get the best deal as consumers), they’d throw us all sorts of bones. Want a cheaper rate for 6 months? Want a new box? Maybe some clear reception worthy of the nomer “digital”?

Part of our rebellion in ending the cable tyranny was our response to this sort of business plan which takes advantage of loyal customers and just milks them like old Holsteins already in the barn. Sure, we rebelled against the fact that suddenly our cable bill was double our electricity bill for much less use, but we also rebelled against the Business Plan wherein the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Customers who pay their bills for years without fail should get the latest and greatest automatically to reward their loyalties, but that’s not the contemporary way, and we, in our own small way, tried to assure that this erroneous contemporary way of doing business is overthrown.

Did you think we only gave up our cable content, and hence our television, to save money? Where’s your crusading spirit?

No, not me. This piece takes X-Treme marketing to task for its ALL CAPS HYPE THAT STAID PRODUCTS ARE NOW EXTREME!!!!!

Obviously, the author of this piece is too old to get it. Get out of the way, fogey, and just give Gen AA (the 1-3 year olds) your credit card.

(As seen on The Weigh In.)

Don’t act like a piñata unless you want to take some whacks.

As some of you know, my beautiful wife has a bike now, a biking team of which she is a part, and an urge to ride 150 miles in two days to benefit the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

I urge you to visit her personal MS 150 page and sponsor her for a couple of dollars.

The more you all sponsor her, the less we have to dip into beer money to meet her goal.

Thank you, that is all.

New technology offers bountiful rewards as Arkon TL 129 His ‘n Her Motion Activated Toilet Night Light will automatically glow red if the toilet seat is up or green if the toilet seat is down, preventing those middle-of-the-night accidents that have caused many marriages to fail or combust in a blaze of murder/suicide glory. However, before this product became available, our marriage was guaranteed safe from this hazard by obsessive compulsive behavior.

You see, we always put the toilet lid down in our bathroom to prevent a flush from spraying germs in festive patterns across the fixtures and paraphernalia in the bathroom and to establish a certain procedure for toilet usage. You always lift the lid and/or toilet seat and then replace it/them when you’re finished. By resetting the Toilet User Interface to a common starting point, we assure that it’s in a known state each time we want to use it.

Our marriage is safe, and we’re not out $30 plus shipping and handling.

Perhaps I should patent the business process of obsessive compulsive behaviors and then make a mint from people who cannot help doing them! Sounds like a better retirement strategy than how my 401k plans have done the last few quarters.

I know we had thought that in the movie of our lives, Lolita Davidovich would be perfect to play Heather, but after some persuasive arguments inadvertently provided by Kim du Toit, I heartily agree we should go with Angie Everhart.

By the way, Everhart, pistols or no pistols, rates A Good Deal Of That And Some Cheese Popcorn.

I, of course, could only be portrayed by Paul Bettany.

Who would be you?

Business 2.0 (who has helpfully decided sometime today to put much of its content behind a subscription, thanks, guys) has a brief (briefer now with everything but the lead hidden away, thanks, guys) piece on trick interview questions.

The article, and the lead (which you can yet see) describes them as “sadistic” and “puzzling” attempts to see how the interviewee fares with “sadistic” and “tricky” and potentially “unanswerable” questions, because obviously that’s the nature of the corporate environment.

As a service to my readers, I have put together this handy list of answers you can use in case the sadistic HR nutbar whips this out (the technical interview guys would never entertain such a fad, right?):

Question: Why are manhole covers round?

Because the manholes are round.

Question: Why are Coke cans tapered?

Before you answer this, challenge the interviewer to prove they are, in fact, tapered.

Bonus alternate answer: To use the mystical powers of the pyramid to preserve the soda’s tooth-dissolving power.

Question: How would you weigh the world’s fattest man without using a scale?

You cannot. The definition of weigh implies putting on a scale to determine the impact of gravity on an object.

Bonus alternate answer: “I wouldn’t.”

Question: How many tennis balls are in the air in New Zealand right now?

New Zealand is 15.5 hours ahead of the United States. Odds are, none right now unless they’ve started middle-of-the-night tennis leagues.

Bonus alternate answer: 1,472 American tennis balls (2,447.62 New Zealand tennis balls). Answer right away, and let the interviewer prove differently.

These answers will prove to your interviewer that you’re decisive when it comes to selecting a plausible lie, which is only reinforcing the impression he or she has gotten from your resume and the interview this far.

As one of the finishing touches of preparing my home office, I am replacing the little scrips of paper and index cards with inspirational quotes upon them to their rightful positions around my desk. For lack of a better topic this afternoon, I shall publish the quotes here, so you can be inspired, too, perhaps even to “ride a century,” which contrary to what it sounds, is not sitting in the passenger seat of a Buick on a beer run.

“Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare current.” (Those who cross an ocean change their sky, but not their soul.)
Horace

“It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out where the strong man stumbled, or where a doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, and who comes up short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause. The man who at best knows the triumph of high achievement and who at worst, if he fails, fails while daring greatly, so that his place will never be with those cold timid souls who never knew victory or defeat.”
Teddy Roosevelt (thanks to dropbears.com for the cut-and-paste opportunity

“Fortune knows
We scorn her most when most she offers blows
William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra Act III, Scene XI

Power is only Pain–
Stranded, thro’ Discipline
Emily Dickinson, “252“

“love to wyde y-blowe
Yelt bittre fruyt, though swete seed be sowe.” (Love too widely blown yields bitter fruit, though sweet seed was sown)
Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde (384-385)

“An error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith.”
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Unlucky the hero born
In this province of the stuck record”
Syliva Plath, “The Times Are Tidy”

My goodness, I feel inspired and motivated to get up out of this chair and go get another beer!

Business 2.0 lists some interesting industrialist and capitalist tours available.

The piece lists some cool factories that offer public tours, but don’t expect free samples like you get in brewery tours from companies like Boeing.

Researchers once again provide a handy rationalization for me: napping is good for you.

My crack feline team, particularly Dominique and Aurora, has often acted as an experiment group by sleeping upon my lap as I spend an hour in the afternoon reclined and, er, working on my astral projection abilities. Typically, I close my eyes and project myself an hour into the future, refreshed and ready for a night of chores or blogging.

Now that napping, too, has proven good for me, I am proud to add it to my daily regimen of healthy vices. Two cups of coffee, two drinks of alcohol, and a nap, and I will live forever.

In this column in Wired, DeLong admits his problem:

In the spring of 1994, I wiped the game Civilization off my office computer. I wiped it off my home PC. I wiped it off my laptop. I threw away the original disks on which it had come. It was clear to me that I had a choice: I could either have Civilization on my computers, or I could be a deputy assistant secretary of the US Treasury. I could not do both. It wasn’t that my boss ordered me to – she herself played a mean game of computer solitaire. In this, I was the boss, and I had decided that with Civilization on DeLong’s hard disk, DeLong’s productivity would be unacceptably low.

I, too, have struggled against Civilization since my esteemed spouse convinced me to install it on my old 486. And then Civilization II. And now the accursed Civilization III.

There have been times when I have removed it so I could better discipline myself to spend more time writing than manipulating little civilizations into conquest or other policy. When I have had to rebuild my computers from software or hardware disaster, I have often delayed putting it back on, but the la belle game sans merci hath me in thrall (sorry, Johnny).

I think he says something else in the piece, but I only saw the name of the game before feeling the compulsion to start a game. The CD’s already in the drive, don’t you know?

Courtesy of the Chicago Sun-Times’ Richard Roeper:

“The true definition of multi-tasking is to do several things half-assed, all at once.”

Compare and contrast our flood with the Rybarcyzk flood.

We’re keeping up with the neighbors, all right. Except Bob doesn’t have an Arkanoid or a Heavy Barrel, and he cannot do an Agent Gollum, so I remain King Geek of Casinoport, Missouri!