Monday, April 30, 2007

Hey you

Yeah you, the one coughing up your phlegmatic lungs and spreading your germy ickiness all over the office. There’s this thing called a sick day… there’s a reason for them. See, when you wake up and find yourself coughing more than you are breathing, this is a sure sign that you need to call your boss and inform them that you will not be coming into the office for fear of spreading your contagion to everyone else. 

As a mildly asthmatic individual, I prefer to keep my lungs free of pollutants and phlegm. So if you could pack up and send your diseased self home, I’d really appreciate it. Thank you.  Dumbass.

Friday, April 27, 2007

Feeling under the weather?

A coughing coworker was saying how he was feeling a little under the weather today. I always thought that was a curious, and stupid, saying. Yet eveyone says it. We all know what it means, but why does it mean that? The sky is pretty high up there. Unless you’re in an airplane, you’re always under the weather. Does this mean if you’re sick, and you get into an airplane and get above the clouds, you’ll automatically feel better because you’re now over the weather?

Silly, I know, but then again so is the phrase. I wanted to get to the bottom of this, because I don’t want to be one to perpetuate things that make no sense, so I looked up its origins. Apparently, back in the nautical days of yore (whenever that was, back when it was more common to travel by boat), people often got seasick on the rocking boat when the weather was stormy. They would send these people below deck. That was the first explanation I read. It still made no sense. You wouldn’t be under the weather, you’d be under the deck.

Further investigation yielded better explanations. During inclement weather, there were usually high winds. These high winds would not only toss the boat around, it would also cause your vomit to fly where it shouldn’t. Yeah, ew. No wonder they were sent down below. The deck was often called the weather deck. Ding! Finally, it all makes sense. You were sent below the weather deck, so you could toss your cookies under the bad weather and not coat yourself and everyone else with the nastiness. Now I’m satisfied. The phrase finally makes sense to me, and I don’t have to make fun of people who use it anymore. Yay.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

I'm so glad he's not in my department

At work, I’m part of a the web team that makes updates to the various corporate sites. Numerous people send us requests to make changes and updates.  Yesterday I received the following email from one of them:

Can someone clarify why the Important Information Alert can still be viewed if you click on MORE for one of the two existing tech alerts, the pop up window still reflects this important information alert listed?

We get tons of requests a day, and errors are bound to happen. Most people simply contact us informally to let us know of the error so we can quickly correct it. This guy, however, sends belligerent emails and cc’s a whole bunch of department heads in the process. This prick is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. I didn’t bother “clarifying” anything for him. I simply fixed the problem in two seconds and informed everyone on the distribution list that it had been corrected. What I really wanted to do instead was reply to his little email with:

You need clarification about why this happened? It’s because you’re a dickhead, you flaming asswipe.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

No sci-fi for her

After a satisfying meal one night (and I probably gorged a little more than I should have), I was absently rubbing my tummy, which was a bit rounder than usual due to its… density. My sweety, of course, had to comment…

Her: Are you Buddha?
Me: Maybe I have a good luck tummy?
Her: Or Joda?
Me: ... Joda?
Her: The Hutt.
Me: Ohhhhhhh… you mean Jabba the Hutt!
Her: Jabba?
Me: I think you created a new character—a big green blob with pointy ears.
Her: There’s no Joda?
Me: There’s a Jabba and a Yoda.
Her: Oh.
Me: Do us both a favor and don’t quote Star Wars anymore.
Her: Heehee. Okay.

In case it wasn’t apparent, she’s not a fan of sci-fi of any kind.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

What if

In my first year of high school, I went to the one that was closest to my house. It didn’t have the best reputation, but it was walking distance. For some reason, even though I was in a “gifted children” program in junior high, I was placed into regular classes. What a breeze. Everything was so easy, and I was surrounded by people who either weren’t all that bright or couldn’t care less. I remember the biology teacher being completely bored with the usual mediocre students, but behind that bored exterior he was pleased to have at least one star student. It kind of shone in his eyes now and then when he would hand back test results. It felt good to know that I was the source of that bit of pride, that I outshined everyone else.

This was proven later that year when they handed out yearly transcripts of our progress, which included a ranking of all students. I was number one in my class. When students found out, they were impressed and looked upon me with new respect. It felt really good. I was just starting to get over my low self-esteem issues and this was just the thing I needed.

That summer I started thinking about college and what they were looking for in prospective students. I had heard that you had better chances of being admitted if you were from a better school, and in honors classes. So with this in mind, I transferred to another high school that had a good reputation for its honors program, and made sure I got into all honors classes. It was no longer a breeze. I was surrounded by bright students who were both smart and outgoing. I still did well, but I was no longer the top student.

I guess this is good for preparing you for college coursework, but in all honesty, I don’t think I would have fared that badly without this “preparation”. What I’m bitter about is how the school rated you. For taking honors classes, you get a “weighted” GPA, because your classes are harder. This means makes it possible to get higher than 4.0. This would be great IF they would take that into account when determining valadictorians. In the end, I found out they use the unweighted score. What the hell? Had I stayed in the regular non-honors classes, I could have breezed through with continuous straight A’s and been number one in my class the whole way through. I was quite peeved to find out that the valadictorian of our class was a girl who took mostly non-honors classes.

I felt totally gyped.  We both applied to some of the same universities, and she got accepted to most, and I didn’t. I think having the title of “valadictorian” in your application makes you a prize and much more likely to be accepted than merely having a weighted GPA. I often wonder if I had stayed in that first high school and continued on as I did, would I have eventually become valadictorian with more choices in where I wanted to go? I know it doesn’t matter now, but I just hate thinking about how misinformed I might have been in those days.

Monday, April 23, 2007

And I thought *I* was oblivious

It’s back to work for me. Ho hum and blah. Over the weekend I stopped by a Subway to pick up… can you guess what? What? A job application?? Shut the hell up! I’m done with food service, y’hear me? Done! I did that in my early college days, back when I had no mad skillz, k?

Ahem. So I was picking up a sandwich and waiting in line when the lady ahead of me asks the cashier what soups were available. We were both standing in front of this sign:

It’s a crappy photo, but the sign clearly stated what soups could be had that day, along with a photo of it. Seriously, it couldn’t have been much clearer. It just goes to show, no matter how excellent and in-your-face the signage is, there will always be someone too oblivious/stupid to notice/read it.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Not working, but not traveling either

Yesterday was supposed to be the first day of our Napa Valley vacation. We decided not to go. I can hear the shocked gasps all around (and a few yawns). Just last week we had come back from a very long road trip to Sacramento (it was a short-notice thing). We weren’t all that keen on traveling again so soon, even if it was by train. Another thing was we figured it would be a good idea to not spend so much at once, having just leased a new car and all.  And finally, how could you look at this face and say, “I’m going to be leaving you for 3 days?”

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Why Nissan sucks some serious ass

Nissan builds some pretty good cars, I’ll grant them that. I find no fault with their vehicles. However, their corporate office really needs to pull its head out from its ass because they seriously don’t know how to run things. Here are a few fine fuck-ups I’ve encountered with them:

1. After leasing one of their vehicles for 2 years, none of the credit bureaus have any record of it. Every single payment has been on time, but according to the credit agencies, it’s as if nothing happened. Nissan failed to report our activities to them.
2. Awhile back when we were thinking of trading the Pathfinder for a different vehicle, we visited the dealer to go over our options. The lady we spoke to said our lease ended in April this year. Much to our dismay we found out there are actually two more years left on the lease. What the hell was that lady smoking?
3. I co-signed the lease, with the understanding that my sweety was going to be the primary driver. We made this clear to the leasing agent. Or so we thought. My name started appearing on all the bills we received. It took three separate calls and a letter to get them to put her name first on the account.
4. A family friend finished her lease and returned the car to Nissan. Months later she got a letter from them demanding the return of the vehicle. WTF? What kind of scam are they trying to run?
5. Nissan has very lackluster support for hybrid technology. They are finally beginning to offer one or two hybrid cars, but only in select markets. Apparently they think it’s just a fad.

It’s a shame the maker of such good cars can’t get its act together. Unless they are giving away cars for free, I will NEVER buy from Nissan ever again. (Come to think of it, even if they did give me a free car, I’d probably receive a bill for it later.) Let’s hope Toyota runs things better.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Red is the new green

For the last several years, my sweety has been tooling around town in one SUV or another. First it a Nissan Xterra. It was very rugged and stylistically different from all the other SUVs. It looked really cool, unfortunately it was a little too rugged. It bounced like an old truck and didn’t have the luxurious touches that she tends to prefer. So she traded it in for a new Pathfinder. A much nicer ride, and highly versatile. We LOVED the fold-flat 3rd row seating, allowing for 7 people to ride in that thing, or you could fold down all the seats and stick a couch back there.

However, realistically, how often did we need to cart around a couch or 7 people that would justify driving this thing every day to work? If it was every weekend, then definitely yes it was worth it. Possibly even once a month. But honestly, it was more like once every few months. Not worth the $50 in gas every two weeks, or the extra pollution we cause. It was time for a change.

We’ve been watching the hybrid cars with interest for years. The Honda Insight was the first of its kind available to consumers, and boy was it ugly. (That cheap attempt to make the thing look futuristic just made it look cheesy.) It also had some problems that would have made it a really annoying car to own. I like to wait until they work out all the kinks before adopting new technology. The wait for us is finally over. They got ‘em running smoothly now, and in normal-looking cars that people actually want to look at. Yesterday, after a 6-hour marathon of negotiating (but mostly just waiting around for them to crunch new numbers) we finally came home with this baby:

The 2007 Toyota Camry in this gorgeous shade of red. It’s got an on-board GPS that talks to you (we’ve always wanted one!) and an audio jack for MP3 players. It’s got a lot of other things too, but these were the two niftiest things that we cared about other than its hybridness. It gets 43 mpg city and 38 mpg highway. Compare that to the 15/21 mpg of the Pathfinder! I hate that we wasted an entire Sunday at a car dealership, but she came away with a great deal in the end. They had no idea who they were dealing with!

Friday, April 13, 2007

Name that machine

Do you recognize what this jumble of mechanical craziness is? (Pardon the picture fuzziness caused by substandard photography equipment.) Could it be life support equipment? A film developing machine? The battery portion of a hybrid car? What could possibly require so many knobs, levers, and user diagrams?

That, my friends, is a copy machine. Impressive, isn’t it?

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Something wicked this way comes... sometimes in your cereal

In the last post, Robin commented that Grape Nuts Flakes was one of her favorite cereals. I used to like this cereal a lot, many many years ago before I moved out of my parents’ house. Used to? Let me tell you what happened…

I’m a devoted cereal eater.  It’s quick, yummy, and if you choose the right ones, good for you too. One morning, as I was watching my Saturday morning cartoons, I got the bowl, cereal and milk ready for breakfast.  Let’s just say my attention was more on the animated characters than on my food. I poured the cereal and ate the first bite. Mmm, Grape Nuts Flakes is good. Next bite, is there something weird with this cereal? Maybe it was just that one bite. Third bite… munch munch… okay something is definitely off.

I managed to tear my eyes away from the television long enough to look into my bowl. I saw an ant floating on the milk. Oh great, I ate an ant. I’m not that squeamish about ants, so I just shrugged, removed the ant, and continued eating. I figured it was just a couple. Why throw out a bowl of good cereal over two ants?

Fourth and final bite, things definitely have not improved. In fact, it’s really gross. It’s like a weird chemical-like aftertaste that permeated throughout my mouth and to my nose. I peered inside the box of cereal… oh… my… CRAWLING WITH ANTS!  The whole box is infested with little black ants. Who knows how many I sent to my stomach. Gross! Yack! Ptooey!

Since then I’ve just never had the heart to eat Grape Nuts Flakes anymore.  That taste of crushed ants is permanently etched into my memory. They say smell is a powerful invoker of memories. In this case, the memory invokes the smell.  *shivers*

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

It's Mighty... funny

I like to try different kinds of foods. In a restaurant I try to order different things each time, and in the store I like to try new products. I was in the Trader Joe’s cereal aisle when I saw Kashi’s attempt at making a kid’s cereal, called Mighty Bites. After checking out the side of the box for ingredient info and other stuff, I decided it was made of good stuff and bought it.

I like the effort to make a kid’s cereal that isn’t dripping with sugar, but this seriously isn’t sweet enough for kids to want to eat it. What I found most interesting was their choice of cereal shape. The box is filled with tiny little cereal people. I personally get a kick out of pretend cannibalism, but I’m not sure about how kids would react, or parents for that matter. They don’t even look like strong people, which would keep in theme with their Mighty Bites name. They look exactly like the little guy on the men’s room sign. Mmmmmm men’s room signs… yummy.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Why'd I ever leave?

On the way back from the weekend road trip, we stopped by UC Santa Cruz (one of the University of California campuses to you non-Cali folks). It is totally the most beautiful college campus ever. EVER! The buildings are nestled among a forest of redwood trees and you walk along nature paths to get to class. I went there for two years and loved every second of it.

The problem was I was completely undecided as to what I wanted to do with my life, as far as a career goes. I went undecided for two years (the maximum the university would allow) just taking core classes and exploring my options. I thought about some kind of computer major, but I didn’t even own a computer at the time and it had some math requirements that really scared me. There just wasn’t anything that stood out for me.

I should have spoken to a guidance counselor or something, because the logic that was guiding me at the time was flawed. I thought if I chose a major that was too generic, such as Business, or too useless, such as Social Studies, no one would want to hire me. So I picked a really specific major, and ended up transfering to a university in LA. That was a really stupid move. I ended up hating the major halfway through it, but decided to finish it anyway because I was already on a five-year plan as it was because of the transfer.

After graduating I ended up going into web development and a little bit of IT, based solely on everything I learned from playing around with computers on my own.  So in the end, it didn’t really matter what I majored in at all!

Had I just picked a generic major, I could have stayed at the beautiful campus and graduated in four years. Of course the path my life would have taken would have been completely different, so I don’t regret the decision since I’m happy with where I’m at now. But looking back, I could have spent a little more time in paradise before moving on to the real world.

Monday, April 09, 2007

One more day please

Three-day weekends need to be automatically extended into four. This is because, with the three days, we actually have time to go somewhere, spend all day there, and then come back. The problem is, we’re tired from all that damn traveling and need an extra day to recover. This is why the fourth day is necessary. I’m tired and sleepy right now. How much work do you think I’m going to be doing today, or this week for that matter?  Give me an extra day of rest and watch how productive I get the rest of the week! Makes sense, right? Let’s start circulating a petition.

Saturday, April 07, 2007

Recipe for a bad night's sleep

First, spend an entire day driving to someone’s house across the state. Make sure you arrive plenty late so there’s no chance of going to sleep early because you will spend at least two hours talking (or fixing a computer while others talk, in my case). When it’s finally time to go to bed, see if you can get assigned to the little kids room—The one with the massive quantity of junk balanced precariously on a single shelf that is bent under its weight because it has no middle support… directly above the beds. Yes that one. It’ll do wonders for your peace of mind.

Next, get woken up by a rooster a few hours later. Not just any rooster, make sure it’s one that has no concept of time and decides 4am is time to get up because it doesn’t know the difference between a farm and a city. Even better is if you can get two roosters to get into a crowing competition so that there’s noise every 10 seconds. If you happen to get used to the concert and start dozing off, there should be a clock with hourly bird calls to keep you alert, immediately followed by a 6am alarm from a cell phone that isn’t even yours that was left in the room. Mix well, and you should be well on your way to having nice bags under your eyes.

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