Brandon Notices

Haven't Updated in a While...

2011-05-06T11:57:00.001-07:00

Wow, it's been a while since I made an update on here!

Some news! First of all, I've been in a great relationship with my wonderful boyfriend, Andrew, for almost eight months now. He seems utterly perfect for me; he's intelligent, creative, sweet, kind, fun—what more could I ask for? He's often late, but I wouldn't change anything else about him. I love being with him. He's a piano teacher, and a pretty successful one at that. Contact me if you or your child need piano lessons in the Seattle area, and I'll hook you up!

Second of all, I finally graduated from the University of Washington! My last two quarters were crazy. In the fall, I took Spanish. I didn't really need it because I already had my language requirements taken care of by German, but I needed to take another class, and why not take something that might be useful? For the last two quarters, I also took some statistics classes which heavily used computers, and some advanced probability classes.

Third of all, the bathrooms at the Mukilteo Taco Time don't require a bathroom key anymore, and I'm grateful for that. Last time we went, I got their Sugar Free Berry Tea, but it was okay. I'd rather have water.

I've been enjoying making myself salads recently. Some lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, sunflower seeds, carrots, croutons, and a little bit of ranch dressing really come together to make me a yummy snack. I don't know if I've ever said it before on this blog, but I love salads.

Bathroom Spoon

2010-11-17T08:16:00.001-08:00

The Taco Time in Mukilteo started requiring customers to request the bathroom key, which is attached to a huge metal spoon. It's kinda gross to think that some people have carried that spoon who don't wash their hands after using the bathroom. I actually thought about this, and after I washed my hands, I carried the big metal spoon back to the front counter by holding on to it with clean paper towels. But then there was nobody at the front counter, so I just left it there on the counter. Hmmm, I wonder if I should start going to a different Taco Time restaurant...

Zero-Minute Limit

2010-10-29T20:49:00.001-07:00

A while ago, I wrote about the Mukilteo Walgreens' absurd thirty-minute parking limit. My local Lynnwood Walgreens has taken this parking time limit to a maddening extreme!

Great Pumpkin Book

2010-10-19T19:24:00.000-07:00

Last night, I was a bit restless from doing homework, so I went to Fred Meyer with my cousin Kevin. While we were there, we looked at Halloween stuff. They had a bunch of Halloween books at 25% off, including this one.

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is a hardback novelization of the popular Halloween special of the same name. It's not a very large book—it's about as large as my palm—but it has over a hundred pages, many of which are just text. However, there are cute illustrations from the cartoon sprinkled throughout the book. I haven't read through it yet, but it looks like they tried to include every event in the cartoon. Even at 25% off, $3.75 seemed like a bit much for this tiny little book, but it was what was on pages 108 and 109 that convinced me to buy the book:

These might be the two greatest pages in all of English literature. So, of course I bought the book. After seeing those pages, I couldn't resist. During the Halloween season every year, it'll probably exist on the coffee table, maybe picked up and skimmed through on occasion.

You Think You're Smarter than Me?

2010-06-03T18:30:00.000-07:00

When you're writing to compare two things, it can be a little confusing to decide whether to use a subject or object pronoun. For example, should it be, "He likes candy more than I," or, "He likes candy more than me"? Actually, each sentence means something different.

The trick is to flesh out the sentences. Be wordy and duplicate the verb. Looking at the first sentence, we can see that "He likes candy" is the first part. The second part involves "I," a subject pronoun, so when you flesh it out to match the first part, you get, "I like candy." Putting it together, you have "He likes candy more than I like candy." So I like candy, but he loves it.

Let's flesh out the second sentence. The first part is "He likes candy" again; the second part has "me," an object pronoun, so this part becomes "he likes me." So the whole sentence means, "He likes candy more than he likes me." So I guess he'd rather eat candy than be with me. Oh well.

Regardless, if somebody gets upset with you for some reason and asks, "You think you're smarter than me?" it's probably not a good idea to correct him and say, " 'smarter than I.' "

No Parking Sign

2010-05-21T18:16:00.001-07:00

A recent wind storm has tipped this no parking sign over. We had the government install it because people were parking their cars in front of the mailboxes. They still do park in front of the mailboxes and in the cul-de-sac, despite the sign. It'd be really funny if the sign blew over and damaged a car.

Crazy Cuckoo Cpedia

2010-04-25T11:40:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month, the search engine Cuil (which I've never heard of before) released Cpedia, the Internet's first "automated encyclopedia." When I told my friend about this, he asked, "I'm sorry, what's an automated encyclopedia?"

According to the website, you give it a search, and "For each query, Cpedia algorithmically summarizes and clusters the ideas on the web and uses this to generate a report." I summarized this to my friend: "It apparently finds information online about a topic, then mashes together questionably relevant content." Right now, the site is in its alpha phase, but perhaps they were a little hasty in releasing it to the public, because hardly anything on this site makes sense.

For example, check out Cpedia's article about mowing the lawn (archived). The first paragraph starts out reasonably encyclopedic, if not a bit too conversational, but quickly falls into criticism of lazy people who don't like mowing the lawn. Then, a later paragraph reads, "When outside, especially when doing yardwork (like mowing the lawn), use a dust mask and close-fitting goggles to keep allergens out of your nose and eyes. So I did things like mow other people's lawns, shoveled snow and even had a lemonade stand from time to time." I don't see how these two concepts even follow! It just seems like random sentences somewhat related to mowing the lawn are put together haphazardly.

What made me laugh the most was a quick read-through of the article's table of contents: Physical Activity, Cinderfella, Memphis in January 2008, Chore. The Cinderfella section says, in its entirety, "Cinderfella did not like living with his family because they made him do all of the work around the house like washing the car and mowing the lawn." The Memphis in January 2008 section is an apparently irrelevant diversion: "When the company relocated to Memphis in January 2008, Mr. Hudson, 52, decided not to move." What company? No context is given in the article, but at least the site provides a link to the article it pulled the sentence from.

The article about microwaves (archived) says absolutely nothing about electromagnetic waves, or how microwave ovens work. Actually, it reads more like a sales pitch for luxury hotel rooms and appliance shops.

You'd think that there would be an article for everything, since an automatic encyclopedia could theoretically create an article upon request. However, while there is an article for running red lights for fun (archived) (which contains information only about blondes being the life of the party), there exists no article for tickling porcupines.

Cpedia's about page says that the purpose of the site is so that users don't have to look through search result links; they can instead go to Cpedia and get "a summary of the topic." I feel that an automated encyclopedia is an interesting idea, but the articles it comes up with are often so confusing and meaningless that it just doesn't work.

Perfect Water

2010-04-18T19:01:00.000-07:00

My friend and her husband hosted a party this afternoon, and I was surprised to find that there weren't really many people there. This party was an opportunity for them to teach us about the new website they're starting. On the website, they'll be offering a variety of health and beauty products, and an old couple demonstrated a few of these Amway products to us.

One of the products was Perfect Water, which is a product with some pretty amazing claims. They purify water to zero parts per million, then they ionize it (to my knowledge, though, purified water can be broken down into ions, but it would quickly reverse to more stable neutral water molecules). Then, they add minerals back in, which makes me wonder what was wrong with the minerals they took out in the first place.

The man presenting the products singled me out, and poured me a small cup of bottled water he picked up at Starbucks. I said it tasted okay. (I've never fallen in love with water before, but the stuff that comes out of my kitchen tap is pretty great stuff.) Then, he asked if I would stand up, and cup my hand at my side. I was instantly reminded of this video, in which James Randi hosts an experiment to see if crystals have special healing-type powers:

I expected a very similar experiment would happen with me in the next minute. He pushed his fist down on my hand, and I didn't feel much like falling over, so I stood firmly.

Then, he gave me a cup of the Perfect Water. I drank some of it. It had a funky aftertaste. He wanted to perform the same test again. I wondered what I ought to do. I was expected to stand more rigidly—to be stronger, and have better balance. Of course, I didn't believe that this water would grant me this power. I wondered if it would be funnier to collapse on the floor in a heap, and perhaps vomit on his shoes.

It turns out that I tried to duplicate the results from the first test, by standing firmly. But at one moment, he pushed a little harder than he probably meant to, so I let myself slip a little and lean toward him. He commented that it doesn't always work, or that it can be hard to tell sometimes.

If he really wanted to impress me, he would have performed a blinded test, like in the video of the crystal testing. Actually, from the start, I was hoping he'd give me a blind taste test—but the Perfect Water would have lost.

I didn't buy anything at the party, but I had a great time playing Frisbee after the salespeople left.

Insane Deal on Amazon?

2010-04-12T23:29:00.000-07:00

These Purex Laundry Sheets (forgive me for not typing out the full name listed) on Amazon.com appear to be an unbelievable deal: 90% off! This is pure madness! You would be stupid not to buy these at such a bargain!

But seriously, they're $6.99, marked down from the list price of $71.92. Come on... Really? I can't imagine anyone buying this product at that price. Are they just jacking up the list price to make this sound like an unbelievable deal? This doesn't make sense otherwise.

Stripes on Straws

2010-03-21T16:31:00.001-07:00

Why do straws have stripes? I don't see how they are useful.

Woo Woo

2010-03-07T15:24:00.001-08:00

Somebody at the Lynnwood Goodwill must have a sense of humor. In the books section, unfortunately, the science books and the "science" books are shelved together (a book by Carl Sagan is five books away from one by Sylvia Browne), but at least the "woo woo" sign provides some warning. It appears to be pieced together from parts of other signs.

Bring Back Old Facebook

2010-02-25T18:54:00.000-08:00

Whenever Facebook makes a major update, usually to the layout, I notice many people joining "Bring Back the Old Facebook" groups on Facebook. I feel that these people's protests are usually a bit hasty, and that they haven't given the new layouts a good chance. Some of Facebook's changes over the years have been good. I'm a fan of the combination of the Wall and Mini-Feed on everybody's profiles, because everything is tied together more chronologically. (What you did and what people wrote to you used to be in separate lists on your profile.)

But I've been a user on Facebook for nearly four years, and I have had enough time to think about the various changes that have been made to the site. And in some ways, I want them to bring back the old Facebook.

Now, it seems much more difficult to find people on Facebook. There used to be a great feature where you could list your classes, and then see who else was also taking those classes. It was a great way to find classmates if you needed to discuss something for a class. Or if you didn't know your friend's name, you could just browse through your classmates. Facebook removed this feature when they introduced applications. They said that somebody would certainly create an app for it, but without a default standard, it's no good. Recently, I was trying to find one of my classmates on Facebook, but I wasn't sure how to spell his last name. I guessed a half dozen times before I finally got it right.

Facebook has also removed most of the advanced search options. You can search for somebody by name, and narrow it down by school or location, but that's about it. I'm pretty certain you used to be able to narrow search results down by age, religion, relationship status, etc. Now, you can't filter results like this. It makes it harder to find the sort of people you might be looking for. That's not a good thing for the most popular social networking site.

In your profile, you used to be able to click on something in your favorites lists—such as a movie title. Then, Facebook would take you to the search results for that movie, and it would show all your friends who also listed that movie. Then, it would show other people in your network, too. It was fun to see who liked the same shows, movies, and books as I did. (Now, instead, it's more likely to take you to search results listing fan pages for the movie or book, made by random users.) Facebook even had a sort of game on the site about favorites. It was called the Friend Game, and it would present you with somebody's favorite movie, song, quotation, or something else, and you had to guess whose favorite it was. That was a fun game; it's too bad it's gone now.

I'm sure I'm not the only one to complain about this last point: There is too much clutter on Facebook now. Ever since the introduction of applications and fan pages, it seems that some certain percentage of my friends seems determined to join every application, become a fan of every possible silly thing, and fill my News Feed with irrelevant stories. It's a neat idea that someone playing a zoo game could ask their friends to feed it while they're away from the computer for a few days, but I just don't care about some stupid digital baby tiger. There used to be the option in the News Feed to have certain types of stories appear less frequently—like I could have pictures of my friends appear less often—but there is no option like this anymore.

Over time, Facebook seems to have become a bit easier to use, and more people are on it than ever. It's just a shame that Facebook has removed such great social networking features.

Sewers

2010-01-17T14:29:00.001-08:00

Is one who sews called a "sewer"? This is on the display for the Polder Reversible Tabletop Ironing Board, at Costco. When "sewers" is accompanied by the places "dorm rooms" and "apartments," I have no choice but to assume that "sewers" must also be referring to a place.

Time Control Device

2010-01-17T13:54:00.001-08:00

This sign is on the inside of the window at Starbucks. I think it sounds funny. It reads as though the safe is protected by some kind of time-travel machine, or something that can otherwise affect the flow of time.

Awful Shower Radio

2010-01-04T16:47:00.000-08:00

This is probably the most frustrating electronic device I've ever tried to use: the Totes Shower Clock Radio.

I removed it from the package and couldn't even get the battery compartment open. I hurt my thumbs trying to turn the knob and pull on the door. I'm not sure if I wasn't turning the knob hard enough, or if I wasn't pulling on the door hard enough, because I had to ask my dad to open it for me. It's very easy to remove after the first time, but I have never had so much trouble just to get batteries into something. And the trouble didn't stop there.

Setting the clock was more difficult than opening the battery compartment. The clock's buttons didn't even seem to depress when I pushed them. Maybe this has something to do with waterproofing the device, but it didn't even feel like the buttons were designed to be pressed. I had to put all my body weight into pressing them. I physically exhausted myself and hurt my thumbs trying to press them. When I finally thought I had set the time, I was disappointed to realize that I had set the date instead.

The radio has nice volume, but it doesn't seem to tune anything in very well. The tuning dial is very touchy, but I haven't been able to get anything that wasn't very noisy and staticky. I couldn't get anything at all in the AM band except for a loud buzzing tone.

The mirror seems like a clumsy addition. The manufacturers intend for you to hang the device on the showerhead, but unless your showerhead is at eye-level, you won't be able to see anything in the mirror except for the ceiling's reflection. If you're able to hook the shower radio onto anything lower than the showerhead, then you could use the mirror.

I received this from my parents as a Christmas present. I've asked them to return it. I don't recommend that anyone try to put up with this shower radio. I've posted a similar review on Amazon.

Typing with Colemak

2010-01-03T10:50:00.000-08:00

There are some fundamental problems with the QWERTY keyboard, mostly because of how it was designed. The keys were arranged the way they are to prevent the typewriters' typebars from jamming together—commonly used letter pairs were arranged on the keyboard so that the typebars wouldn't collide and get stuck. That said, there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to the way the keys are arranged on the keyboard. Have you ever noticed where T, the most commonly used consonant, rests on the keyboard? You have to reach all the way up there!

There's QWERTY on top and Colemak on the bottom.

Colemak was released in early 2006; I've been using it for a year and a half. The keys are in a more comfortable arrangement: many of the most frequent letters—E, T, A, O, I, N, S, H, R, D—are all on the home row, so you don't have to move your fingers far. According to Wikipedia, "the 'top twelve' letters comprise about 80% of the total usage," so this is sort of a big deal. All of the symbols are in the same place, except that O is where the semi-colon is in QWERTY, but I never felt that I used the semi-colon that often anyway. Some of the letters are in the same place—in fact, except for N being switched with K, the entire bottom row is the same. This is very nice, because frequent keyboard shortcuts which benefit from muscle memory and proximity to the control key, like Ctrl+C (copy), Ctrl+V (paste), and Ctrl+Z (undo), are in the same place. The Caps Lock key becomes Backspace. Since this feature isn't available yet in Windows Vista or 7, I can't vouch for how much of a good thing this is, but it must be a relief from having to reach my right pinky to the awkwardly distant Backspace key.

One of my favorite things about the Colemak keyboard is that it can be used to type international characters by turning the right Alt into an AltGr key. This is especially useful for me because I'm a student of German, and it helps me type the foreign letters that aren't on my keyboard. To type an eszett (ß), you type AltGr+S. To type ä, ö, or ü, you type AltGr+D (for the umlaut) and then a, o, or u. AltGr+E is é; AltGr+N is ñ. If I want to type an em dash (—), I type AltGr+Shift+hyphen. I love em dashes. There are combinations for cent, yen, pound, and euro currency signs. There are also some special combinations using the backslash. AltGr+\ then D gives the degree symbol (°). AltGr+\ then T gives the trademark sign (™). It's very nice to be able to type these characters without having to resort to the Character Map, or even without having to move the position of my hands.

Learning Colemak didn't take as long as I thought it would, but it was of course a bit disorienting at first. I started without incremental lessons. I just printed out a layout of the keyboard, color-coding the keys which are typed with each finger, and referred to the chart when I wanted to type a letter. Typing was slow at first. I did this during the summer, when I didn't have a lot of important homework to type. I'd say I was up to pretty good speed after a few days or a week, but this was over a year ago, so I can't say for sure.

Now that I know Colemak, QWERTY seems awkward to type, especially the letters T and P. I am a little more prone to making mistakes while typing in QWERTY, especially when I try to type S or N. Looking at the keyboard helps me remember that I need to be typing in QWERTY; otherwise, I get a bit confused.

I suggest Colemak to anyone who is capable of touch-typing, looking for a more comfortable keyboard, and wanting to easily type international letters and special characters. If you want to try it out or read more information, go to colemak.com.

Disintegrating Water Balloons

2009-12-28T12:12:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I was at the Meridian Cost Cutter in Bellingham. I was a bit surprised to see that within the grocery store was a small dollar-store section. They had shelves of merchandise including cheap toys, housewares, pet stuff, and food—all for just one dollar! They also had a few shopping carts filled with junk. Inside them, my cousin found some water balloons in horrible shape.

The balloons were disintegrating! They were dried out, and parts of them were flaking apart! I suspect these balloons were cheaply made; do normal balloons ever get to this point? I wouldn't buy these to use as water balloons, not even for a dollar! They'd probably break apart instantly... or possibly melt into a colorful slime. Also, the label has "balloons" misspelled.

Snail Decoration

2009-12-18T18:29:00.001-08:00

This decorative snail-on-a-pedestal was in the half-off clearance area at Wight's. I tried to convince Kevin to buy it and display it proudly on his mantle, but he wasn't very interested in the idea. I would like to spray paint it gold and award it as a trophy, perhaps to the slowest competitor in a footrace.

Nordstrom Ack

2009-12-12T16:28:00.000-08:00

We went to Best Buy down by Alderwood Mall to do some heavy-duty shopping. Across the street, I saw this Nordstrom Rack sign, with the R burnt out in the funniest way possible.

I took a picture with my cell phone, but I was too far away, so I crossed through the parking lot, waited for the signal and crossed Alderwood Mall Parkway (which seemed very dangerous because of all the Christmas shopping traffic), and walked into Nordstrom Rack's parking lot to get this picture.

I personally don't like Nordstrom Rack—I never find any good clothes in my size there—so Nordstrom Ack is kinda how I feel whenever I have to go there.

Ivar's Gets an A+ in Festivity

2009-12-12T13:14:00.000-08:00

I just enjoyed a lunch of fish and chips at the Ivar's restaurant here in Lynnwood. I was excited to see how much Christmas decoration they had put up around the restaurant. Twinkling Christmas lights bordered the roof and ran along the front counter. Big, shiny Christmas present boxes were arranged on the counter and between booths. Thick, red ribbons spiraled up the structural columns, reminiscent of candy canes. And, here in this picture, you can see the ribbons tied in a similar manner on the ceiling lamps, complete with big red bows.

I'm impressed not only that Ivar's has tremendous Christmas spirit, but I'm also impressed with the amount of work they went though to achieve this decoration. Those lamps are high. And there are at least a dozen of them these lights in the restaurant. The employees must have visited each lamp with a ladder. I applaud Ivar's for going to such lengths to make their restaurant warm, inviting, and festive for Christmas.

Peppermint Patty Joins the Christmas Tradition

2009-12-11T19:21:00.000-08:00

A Charlie Brown Christmas is one of my favorite cartoon Christmas specials. I was excited to see a hardcover book version by Hallmark at Bartell Drugs today.

Inside, I saw something that amazed me. Peppermint Patty and Marcie have joined the fun! Peppermint Patty might be my favorite Peanuts character.

The Christmas special originally aired on December 9, 1965, but Peppermint Patty wasn't introduced until August 22, 1966. Since then, she has become an important Peanuts character, with important roles in the Thanksgiving and Easter specials. In Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown, she arguably has a more important role than even Lucy, as she appoints herself the leader of the girls' rafting team.

Some may complain that adding characters to a holiday classic will taint the story and its tradition. They might object especially to the decision to give Peppermint Patty spoken lines in the story. But I like Peppermint Patty, so shut up. I find the idea of Charlie Brown and his friends celebrating Christmas without Peppermint Patty and Marcie to be rather unrealistic in this day and age, given all the things they've been through together. It would be sad to leave them out.

This isn't the first time that Peppermint Patty's been put into this story, though. There's this picture which I know I've seen somewhere before. I can't place where I've seen it, though. There's also this puzzle, which I bought on sale last January.

Don't Sand Our Hill!

2009-12-10T22:12:00.001-08:00

Who is responsible putting sand on the roads after it snows? I suppose that would be the Department of Transportation. The weather's been getting colder, and I've recently been hearing on the news about de-icers and sand being used on the roads.

Last winter, they dumped heaps of sand on the steep hill outside my cul-de-sac. For some reason, I suppose this makes it safer to drive on. It was pointless, though, because nobody in their right mind would want to drive on that hill anyway, especially when they could just go around the block instead.

It made for some very disgusting brown, gritty snow. After the snow was melted and gone, there was still the slippery sand on the hill for months. Cars or people walking on the hill would skid on the sand. After the snow was gone early this year, we called them to ask if they'd be cleaning the sand off the road, since it now seemed to make it more dangerous. But they said they'd be keeping the sand on the road in case it snowed again.

It wasn't until late spring or even summer when a street cleaner went up and down the hill and finally removed the stuff. I don't want them to sand the hill. I bet I couldn't stop them, though...

I'm Eager for New Jelly Belly Flavors

2009-12-06T10:45:00.000-08:00

At Fred Meyer last night, I walked by the bulk Jelly Belly dispensers. I was seriously considering getting a few dollars worth of Very Cherry beans, when I was distracted by the flavor menu pamphlet. (You can click the picture to see inside.)

Jelly Belly releases a new pamphlet every few years to keep consumers up to date with their ever-changing flavor lineup. I was excited to see the new flavors listed in the Official 50 Flavors section. I wrote about the new flavors back in July, but here's a summary of the changes:

In: Chili Mango, Pomegranate, Sunkist Lime, Mixed Berry Smoothie, Sour Cherry
Out: Grape Jelly, Jalapeño, Peanut Butter, Café Latte, Caramel Apple

Also, some of the citrus flavors have had "Sunkist" appended to their names. I don't think they taste any different.

I looked through the bulk flavors again to see if I could find any of the new flavors, but I didn't see any. In fact, I've occasionally been looking through candy aisles to see if the bags with the new flavors are in stores yet. I haven't seen any yet, though. When will the new flavors be in stores? This pamphlet indicates that it may be soon.

For months now, the new flavors have been available online at the Jelly Belly website. Shipping is a bit expensive, though, so I prefer to buy the candy in stores.

It's exciting that they have 73 distinct flavors in the menu, if you don't count the sugar-free flavors (they're just sugar-free duplicates). Well, it's 83 if you count the "weird & wild" Bean Boozled flavors, such as Pencil Shavings, Baby Wipes, Canned Dog Food, and Moldy Cheese. Hey, they changed the name of Vomit to Barf! I don't know why Jelly Belly decided that this is a good change, but I like it! (I like the name, not the flavor. I don't want a Bean Boozled box for Christmas.)

Insanely Illegible Credits

2009-11-28T00:38:00.000-08:00

Before I watched Monk last night, I caught the end credits at the end of Elf on USA Network.

They seemed to rush by pretty quickly. By my observations, any given line of text is on-screen for about 13 frames, which means you have 0.43 seconds to read it. One line is scrolled onto the screen per frame, so you must read 30 lines per second.

Also, the credits are shrunken down so much that they're practically unreadable. Does USA expect people to kneel down in front of their TVs, squinting and speed reading these credits? I bet that most people don't usually read the credits after movies, but even those who wanted to would be unable to under these conditions. Why does USA even bother showing them?

Diffracted Tree

2009-11-27T01:12:00.000-08:00

Christmas tree + diffraction grating + boredom

Facilitated Communication

2009-11-24T13:59:00.000-08:00

Here's a news story that aired yesterday on MSNBC, about Rom Houben, who awoke from what doctors thought was a coma; however, he allegedly may have been conscious but paralyzed the entire time.

An important element of this story is that they are using what is called facilitated communication for Houben to correspond. Facilitated communication is a dubious practice. It was first used in the 1970s, designed to to help autistic children communicate. A facilitator would support a child’s hands over a computer keyboard, and the claim was that the facilitator was there just to keep the child's hands above the keyboard—the child would be the one typing the messages. Some of these messages contained terrible things, including reports of sexual abuses occurring in the home, and many of these children were separated from their families because of this.

However, some blinded tests were performed to see what was going on. In these tests, the facilitator and child wore headphones, and they were asked questions. Sometimes, they each got a different question, but the messages obtained through the facilitated communication were always answers to the question the facilitator was asked, and not answers to the child's question. This revealed that it was the facilitators who were subconsciously cueing the children to type specific messages.

The same kind of effect could be happening with this story. Maybe not—I can't possibly know for sure, but in the video, it's the facilitator who's looking at the screen; Houben doesn't even seem to be looking at it very often. Arguments revolving around this case might be used in arguments about a patient's right to live or die, so I hope they ask Houben these same questions again, but with a properly blinded facilitator the second time.

----
Mook, Douglas. "The Cautionary Tale of Clever Hans." Classic experiments in psychology. 2004: p.221-224. University of Washington Electronic Reserves.

Greetings from Germany!

2009-10-25T21:45:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month, I wrote about the German Garfield book I got at Value Village. This article is about the other eight books that were inseperably packaged with that book. The other books included in the bag were Angeln, Der tag der einheit, Viel Spaß beim Fotografieren, Viel Spaß beim Fliegen, Du läßt dich gehn!, and three books about Bremen, Germany.

Here's the fun part! Five of those books have writing in the inside covers. And they're all addressed to someone named Jonathan A. My cousin suspected that the books were from an exchange family that Jon stayed with, but they're mostly all written in English, and they seem to be from peers from various locations.

My guess is that a group of people traveled to Germany together. My Garfield book doesn't have any writing in it, but the Du läßt nicht gehn book has this line from Brenda, which I think is funny: "I'll always admire your 'logical thinking' skills, although you'll probably hate me for saying that. Good luck in Montana next year, but don't forget your little buddie in Wisconsin! I'll be seeing ya next summer!" So maybe some of these people were planning to travel again. I don't know. There isn't enough information.

The writing by Corné in the cover of Viel Spaß beim Fliegen says "It was realy [sic] great getting to know you!" So maybe some of these people were strangers. In the inside cover of Angeln, Shawn A. gives his address—it's Canadian—and he invites Jon to come fishing with him in Vancouver. Corné also wrote "I wish you a happy birthday and one heck of a long life!" so maybe these people conspired to all give Jonathan books as a birthday present.

One of the Bremen books has several signatures in the inside cover, and it's dated 01.08.92—that's August 1, 1992. So these books are old! Since then, I suppose Jon stopped reading these books, and decided to donate them to Value Village. I only got the package of books for the Garfield book—most of the rest are too hard for me—but it was fun to figure out what all these books had in common. Thanks for the Garfield book, Jonathan.

German Garfield Book Comparison

2009-10-12T18:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I found a German Garfield book at Value Village. Now, being a huge Garfield fan (I have all of the first 36 Garfield books) and a student of the German language, I was excited to come across this. The book was bagged with a half dozen other German books that I really wasn't interested in, but the employees refused to sell just the one book, since they were all bagged together.

Obviously, that's the English version on the left, and the German version on the right. They are both book 14, and they contain the same strips. But the covers are wildly different! The English book is titled Garfield Swallows His Pride and the German version is called Garfield läßt nicht locker which translates to "Garfield Doesn't Give Up." These are very different titles!

I was surprised that I was able to understand the first strip in the book, posted above. Perhaps it helps that I'm familiar with the English material, though. The strips are almost entirely literal translations of the English versions.

According to Wolfram Alpha, a typical translation to German is 10% longer than the original English source, which means more letters. Accordingly, you can tell that the font size in the German Garfield strips is smaller, to accommodate more letters in the same amount of space.

Like in the English version of Garfield (and nearly every other comic), the German version of Garfield capitalizes every letter. This is worth noting because the German letter ß (eszett, or sharp s) exists only as a lower-case letter. If you want to capitalize "ß", you turn it into "SS". So words like "weiß" and "Spaß" become "WEISS" and "SPASS", as in the strip above.

I also noticed that the German Garfield strips remove Jim Davis's name, the copyright info, and the date from the strips. The playground strip above seems to be an exception, though—it looks like they forgot to remove the date.

And now, the fun part: ONOMATOPOEIAS!!!

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, onomatopoeias (or sound words) are different in different languages. German for "scratch" is "kratzen", so I can see where "KRIIIETSCH!" comes from. It's odd, though, that I imagine a different sound in my head when I read both comics.

Garfield's trademark SPLUT! sound becomes the even more comical FLATSCH! Something else they changed in this panel is the lettering on Garfield's bowl. It says the same thing, but the letters are different. (This is a lot easier to see if you scanned the books and were flipping through the images.) It's not a big change, so I wonder why they bothered redoing it.

Anyway, now I have to collect all the German Garfield books too.

Dumb Family Feud Answers

2009-10-09T08:05:00.000-07:00

Here are actual responses given by contestants on the game show Family Feud (or the British version Family Fortunes). I admit, it may be mean to call some of these answers "dumb", so if you'd like, you can call them "erroneous" or "funny" if you prefer.

Name something in a bird cage	Hamster
Something you'd find in an operating room	Operator
Something that comes with a summer storm	Snow
Something you'd yell at if it stopped working	Spouse
Something worn only by children	Clothes
Something you might buy that could turn out to be phony	Horse
An animal with three letters in its name	Frog
An animal with three letters in its name	Alligator
Something you feel before you buy it	Excited
The price of a dozen roses	$1.75
An article of clothing that children always lose	Pants
An animal whose eggs you'd never eat for breakfast	Hamster
Something you might accidentally leave on all night	Shoes
One of the three bears	Yogi
A holiday named after a person	January
A holiday named after a person	Easter
One of Santa's reindeer	Nixon
One of Santa's reindeer	Adolf
Something Russia is famous for	Russians
Something that comes in pairs	Bananas
A time when people wake up	Morning
A time when people go to bed	Night
A state with good skiing	Florida
Something you buy in a larger size if you have a large family	Jeans
Something you buy in a larger size if you have a large family	Games
A city in the state of Georgia	Alabama
A pie that does not contain fruit	Lemon Meringue
Something that kills a lively party	Guns
A brand of gasoline	Regular
A brand of gasoline	Ethyl
A job around the house that has to be done every fall	Spring Cleaning
A man's name beginning with the letter K	Kentucky Fried Chicken
The month where a pregnant woman begins to show	September
A food that's red on the inside	Kiwi
Something people do clothed that others don't	Ride a motorcycle
The heaviest item in your house	600 pounds
The heaviest item in your house	Husband
Something you put in tea	Tea bag
A holiday where stores are always busy	Monday
Something made of leather that a cowboy uses	Purse
The first thing you take off after work	Underwear
A weather term that can also describe your wife	Wet
A day of the year when you want to be with friends	December
A department in a supermarket	Lingerie
The most lovable breed of dog	Kitten
Something women borrow from each other	Husbands
An invention that has replaced stairs	Wheel
Something you often misplace in your car	Steering wheel
A famous “Arnold”	Arnold & Willis
A reason you might stay indoors on a beautiful day	It's raining
Something associated with the show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire	Bob Barker
A yellow fruit	Orange
A kind of attraction you see in almost every parade	Merry-go-round
Something you stroke	A match
A tradition associated with Christmas	Hanukkah
A holiday where men buy last minute gifts for their wife	Thanksgiving
A food people give as a gift	Lasagna
A vegetable you marinate	Grapes
The one thing that the people living near you have that you want	A beautiful wife
Something you buy and then have to be careful about how you carry it home	An infant
Besides a house or a car, the most expensive item you own	Car
A food with an edible skin	Banana
A piece of clothing wives buy for their husbands	Halter tops
A street name that is common to cities all over the US	Hollywood Boulevard
A kind of bear	Papa Bear
A real person who made a living scaring people	Red Skelton
Something a hostess does to let her guests know it's time to leave	Goes to bed
An animal with really good sight	Bat
A state beginning with the letter M	Mexico
Something an Indian chief might use	Squaw
Something that floats in the bathtub	Water
A word beginning with “Egg”	Excellent
A city named after a president	Carson City
A sport in which two people compete against each other	Checkers
An occupation in which you disguise your appearance	Doctor
Something that flies that doesn't have an engine	Dishes
Something that flies that doesn't have an engine	A bicycle with wings
Something a blind person might use	Sword
A song with “moon” in the title	Blue Suede Moon
An occupation where you need a flashlight	Burglar
A famous brother and sister	Bonnie & Clyde
An item of clothing worn by the Three Musketeers	A horse
Something you wear on the beach	A lawnchair
Something red	My cardigan
A number you have to memorize	Seven
Something you do before going to bed	Sleep
Something of yours you hit when it's not working properly	Your spouse
Something you put on walls	Roofs
Something in the garden that's green	Shed
Something in the garden that's green	Scarecrow
Something you might be allergic to	Skiing
A famous bridge	The bridge over troubled waters
Something a cat does	Goes to the toilet
Something you do in the bathroom	Decorate
Something associated with the police	Pigs
A sign of the zodiac	April
Something slippery	A conman
A kind of ache	Fillet 'O' Fish
A kind of ache	Pancake
A jacket potato topping	Jam
Something with a hole in it	Window
A food that comes in instant form	Asparagus
A non-living object which has feet	Plant
A domestic animal	Leopard
A part of the body beginning with the letter N	Knee
A part of the body beginning with the letter N	Name
A way of cooking fish	Cod
Something you open other than a door	Bowels
A part of the body everyone has only one of	Big toe
Real or fictional, a famous Willy	Willy the Pooh
Something you squeeze	Peanut butter
A bird with a long neck	Penguin
A continent	Italy
A sport you can never play on grass	Baseball
An occupation starting with "J"	Jackhammerer
A phrase some husbands dread hearing	"Honey, I'm home"
A bad occupation if you don't like kids	Mortician
A question you don't like to be asked	"Are those real?"
A European country in which you'd expect to find castles	London
Something every doctor has	Speculum
An animal with horns	Bee
A medieval weapon	Hand grenade
Something made of wool	A sheep
Something a bridegroom might wear	A dress
Someone you wouldn't expect to see in a strip club	Animals
An animal with a long tail	Rabbit
Something you put out for the birds	Worms
A way to prevent snoring	Put a pillow over his face
A word used to describe a very hot day	A very hot day
Someone who works early hours	Burglar
Something made to be wheeled around	A hammer
A reason for kneeling	To be beheaded
A nickname for a slim person	Slimmy
A measurement of liquid	Paint
Something that's nice to wear next to your skin	Pants
A famous Dick	Carrot
Something that Santa Claus does when he comes to your house	Feeds your pets
Something that comes in 7's	Fingers
Something associated with Liverpool	The Yellow Brick Road
A boy mentioned in a nursery rhyme	Little Red Riding Hood
Something associated with Queen Victoria	Her husbands
Something you hide in your socks when you go swimming	Your legs
A place you would keep a pen	A zoo
Something you beat	An apple
Something you make into a ball	Eggs
A game that uses a black ball	Darts
A way parents reward chidren	Time out
A popular TV soap	Dove
Something you might find in a garage	A grand piano
A fast animal	Hippo
A famous Peter	Peter
Something you keep in the garden	A cat
Something that gives you goose bumps	Mumps
A character from Little Red Riding Hood	Hansel and Gretel
Something that has a shell	Batman
Something a policeman might say	"Spread 'em"
Something that frightens Dracula	The King of the Vampires
A mode of transportation that you can walk in	Your shoes
An animal with big ears	A bear
Something you do on water	Wallpaper
A musical instrument you can play in the bath	Drum kit
Something associated with Egypt	Cigars
Something you pull	A potato
An animal used as a form of transportation	Turtle
A Thunderbirds character	Doctor Spock
Another TV game show with the word 'family' in the title	The Generation Game
Something that makes you scream	A squirrel
A food that can be eaten without chewing	Chips
The ideal everyday temperature	98.6 degrees
A type of record	A floppy disk
A type of large cat	Persian
A job that a working dog does	A slave
Something you use a microchip on	A fish-fryer
A game played in the dark	Charades
A part of the body you have more than two of	Arms
Something you find on a fire engine	Coal
The first place detectives look for fingerprints	The floor
Something you associate with the sea	A coffin
A famous Arthur	Shakespeare
A weapon in the game of Clue	Dice
Something people take to the beach	Turkey
A reason someone digs a hole in the road	Grave digger
Something a girl should know about a man before marrying him	His name
An item of clothing a woman might borrow from a man	Underpants
Something taken from a hotel as a souvenir	The lamps
Something you keep in a garden shed	A gardener
Something you wear on the beach	Deckchair
Fruit used in fruit salad	Cucumber
The last thing you take off before going to bed	Your feet
Something that has to warm up before you use it	Your wife
A noisy bird	Chipmunk
A car known by its initials	Corvette
Something you keep handy by the front door	Spittoon
A job that helicopters are used for	Tuna fishing
A famous robber	Cops
A famous resort area outside the continental United States	Tahoe
An American state where people speak with accents	Mexico
Something a man has that he'd be upset if someone else used it	His jockstrap
Something London is famous for	Pasta
Something you wouldn't want the police to find in the trunk of your car	Pickles
A game you could play in the bath	Scuba diving
A food that makes a noise when you eat it	Really loud hamburger
Something that your wife would do that would be shocking	Greet you at the door naked
Something you throw away when you're moving away	Pantry
A dangerous animal that some people keep as pets	Wolf
When you sneak out of work, the reason you give for leaving	"I'm going to the beach!"
When you sneak out of work, the reason you give for leaving	"Going to another job"
An animal that eats mice	Rat
Something you have that you wish worked better	Spouse
Something you wouldn't try even once	Sex on a train
A famous male dancer	Betty Grable
An occasion for which you stayed up all night	Lost my virginity
Your favorite country western singer	Van Whalen
Something that falls from the trees	Bird shit
Something a dentist says	"Just a small prick"
An excuse that a girl uses not to invite you in after a date	Her husband's home
A name that rhymes with "Larry"	Larry
Something you just won't buy unless it's on sale	Cake mix
Something you just won't buy unless it's on sale	Drapes
Besides an animal, something with a tail	Tailpipe
Something that gets accidentally run over by a lawn mower	The lawn mower's cord
An occupation where someone wears a robe at work	A fireman
An occupation where someone wears a robe at work	A graduate
A sport that people sometimes play by themselves	Tic-tac-toe
A household pet you can leave by itself for a couple of days	Monkey
A part of the body people love to have massaged	Hips
An activity that makes people cry	Playing games
A vegetable that is grown in a patch	Strawberry
Something some people fear that starts with the letter S	Squirrels
A reaction someone might have if they got really scared	Laugh
An occasion when family photographs are taken	Photography
Something that comes after the word "double"	U
Something you'd hate for the plane you're on to only have one of	Pillows
Something your spouse does in the bedroom that rhymes with "mumble"	Pumble
Something you should do in moderation or you'll be sorry later	Sex
A famous group of singers	The Simpsons
A breed of dog that starts with the letter C	Cheetah
A vegetable that takes more than one bite to eat	Apple
Something every dream home must have	RV parking
A word that rhymes with "bubble"	Fubble
A question, such as, "How old are you?" that you might answer with a lie	18
A question, such as, "How old are you?" that you might answer with a lie	50
A question, such as, "How old are you?" that you might answer with a lie	I'm 39
Something you see along the side of the street	Carnage
Something that people stick a pin into	Their eyes
The perfect dessert for a supermodel	Chocolate cake
The perfect dessert for a supermodel	Brownies
A country that has exactly four letters in its name	China
A city famous for its museums	England
A liquid that pours slowly	Milk
A fruit that is red	Kiwi
A way of toasting someone	Over fire
Something you keep in a kitchen canister	Cans
A way which you can make bathing a sexy experience	401(k) jelly
Something a man might hate about his chest	Flat
A place where people are scolded for falling asleep	On the airplane
Something you might find in a manicure set	A wig
A part of a telephone	The bottom part
When kids finally move out of the house, something specific they often leave behind	Their parents
When kids finally move out of the house, something specific they often leave behind	A blender
When kids finally move out of the house, something specific they often leave behind	Their boyfriend or their girlfriend
Something that guests get hit with a Jerry Springer	Keys
Something a teenage boy can do for hours at a time	Masturbate
In order to get a three-day weekend, a holiday usually celebrated on Mondays	Thanksgiving
In order to get a three-day weekend, a holiday usually celebrated on Mondays	Someone's birthday
A part of the body people dab perfume on	On the tongue
A liquid that people drink when they're sick	Vicks
Something you can't use without water	An ice cream cone
A place where you might see a dead body	In your house
Something frogs do that people don't	Turn colors
Your wife's most unappealing habit	Picking her feet
A night with the worst TV programs	UPN
A word that rhymes with "Coke"	Float
A word that rhymes with "Coke"	Moke
Something that dries up when it gets old	Water
A mischievous animal	Beaver
Something of yours you hope doesn't start making noises	Cell phone
Something of yours you hope doesn't start making noises	Bed
Real or fictional, a famous Dennis	Buddy Holly
An animal that starts with the letter R	Rectangle cow
Someone you have to lie to once in a while just to keep the peace	Dog
A famous fictional island	Rhode Island
A famous pig	Your mother-in-law
A reason a man takes off his toupee	To show off
Something that you hope your husband never loses	His pants
Something with claws	Christmas
Something you associate with Godzilla	Gorilla
A card game that's easy to cheat at	Checkers
One of Oprah's favorite people	Regis Kelly
Something nailed down in a hotel room	The soap
A type of bean	Lesbian
The month with the best weather	January
A slang term that means wife	Bitch
The birthday men dread the most	Their wife's
A sport that husbands and wives can play together	Kickball
A food that's good for your heart	Steak
Something people learn from a how-to book	Read
Something you should not do in someone else's car	Get arrested
An animal you would recognize by its ears	A chicken

I'd like to thank Adam Buckley, Carrie, Laura, Ling, Lori, Paul, Sean Willett, and Zach for helping me compile this list!

I'm Not Falling for the New Fall Shows

2009-09-16T12:02:00.000-07:00

I reached the peak number of hours I spent in front of the TV about a year and a half ago, when the TV networks came out with five great, funny, exciting shows: Samantha Who, Back to You, American Gladiators, Million Dollar Password, and best of all, Pushing Daisies.

These shows were all cancelled. Back to You and Pushing Daisies were both cancelled mid-season, and were not allowed more episodes to allow plot lines to reach a conclusion. This is not a satisfying way to tell a narrative.

Unfortunately, TV networks these days are in it all for the money, and this requires them to continually air new shows in the hopes that they'll be huge hits. If one show quits doing so well in the ratings, another potential hit takes its place. When the number of viewers die down, so does the show.

The networks consider their viewers only as a huge mob; they give little consideration as to how their various individuals feel. I tuned into each of the above shows every time they aired, but I alone wasn't enough to keep these shows going. What else can an individual do? After seeing all my new favorite TV shows cancelled, I don't think I can trust the TV networks anymore. I don't want to invest my attention and devotion in new shows that I might fall in love with. How can I trust that the networks won't cancel them?

Keychain Collection

2009-09-08T23:48:00.000-07:00

This is my current keychain collection. I have more than 200 keychains. You can click on the picture to zoom in. Let me know if you have a bunch of old keychains you want to give me! I want to have many more!

Mismatched Birthday Candles

2009-08-26T18:59:00.000-07:00

I'm at Bartell Drugs, looking at birthday candles. Why oh why are the nines a different color than all the other numbers? What could have brought this about?

What It Is, Is Annoying

2009-08-16T19:40:00.000-07:00

I've noticed an annoying speech pattern lately. What it is, is people are using superfluously wordy noun phrases which usually result in the speaker saying "is" twice in a row. The previous sentence is an example of such a pattern. Here are a few more examples I found on the Net:

"...it is not a self help book. What it is is a sampling of what makes people happy and why." (Amazon review)

"Tell us exactly what happened this morning" — "What it was, was that the Beetle and the suspect in the car came and pulled in..." (KCAL 9 news report)

"The Cosmic Game comes across as fresh as a debut and surprisingly indifferent toward being the in thing. What it is is music for music's sake, all laid out with the utmost care..." (Music review)

I've seen it with and without the comma. These clumsy constructions likely come about because people lead themselves into their sentences before they know what they're going to say. It's redundant to include all those words. In most cases I see or hear, a simple noun would fill in rather easily as the sentence's subject. Usually, "What it is, is" can be simplified to "It is".

Confusion over Abbreviations Rule in Word Game

2009-08-11T14:16:00.000-07:00

In the word game Quiddler, players are dealt a hand of cards, each with a letter or two, and the goal is to rearrange the cards so that they form words. On Saturday, I was playing the game with some relatives: Carla, Shelly, and Russell. In one round, Shelly played the word "ad." Russell challenged her play of the word, pointing out in the game instructions that abbreviations are not allowed, and that "ad" is an abbreviation of "advertisement."

We turned to the electronic Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (our family's agreed-upon dictionary—we use it for Boggle and other word games) and found it in there, of course. Russell, however, referred us to the entry in a large print dictionary for "ad," and pointed out that next to the word was an indication that the word is an abbreviation. He then referred us back to the point in the Quiddler rules that abbreviations are not allowed.

I understood his point, but my argument for allowing the word ran along the lines that while being short for "advertisement," "ad" has become a word itself through common usage. It seems that we all discussed this for no less than ten minutes, and Russell didn't seem to care that the word was present in the Scrabble dictionary because it's an abbreviation either way. It got to the point that Shelly withdrew the word herself and asked to just take the 7-point penalty. (The word wasn't even worth very many points!)

Call Failed Please !!!

2009-07-29T13:26:00.000-07:00

Phone reception at Fort Ebey State Park on Whidbey Island got bad at times. This is the strange message my phone gave me when it failed to make an outgoing connection: "Call failed please !!! Try again". This made it only more frustrating that I couldn't get a signal.

Jelly Belly Changes Flavor Lineup

2009-07-21T17:21:00.000-07:00

Jelly Belly regularly comes out with new flavors every now and then. Their newest flavor is Chili Mango! It is being added immediately into the Official 50 Flavors (no rookie stage!). I haven't had the chance to try it yet, but Jelly Belly describes it as "fresh mango with a sprinkling of spicy chili." Considering that Mango is one of my least favorite Jelly Belly flavors, as well as the fact that I don't really care for very spicy food, I don't expect myself to enjoy this bean very much. I'll reserve commentary until I've tried it myself, though. Jelly Belly has, however, posted a picture of the bean online. It looks to be a dirty orange color, which might be hard to tell it from some other orange beans, but it also seems to have some dark specks of color too.

Along with Chili Mango, Jelly Belly is adding four other established flavors to the Official 50 Flavors mix: Pomegranate, Sunkist Lime, Mixed Berry Smoothie, and Sour Cherry. Mixed Berry Smoothie, I recall, is very good, and very smooth, and happens to be my favorite of the Smoothie Blend mix. Sour Cherry is also pretty damn good, and it's my favorite of the Sours mix. When Pomegranate was first introduced as a rookie in 2007, I originally dismissed it as Jelly Belly jumping on the health-consciousness bandwagon, but when I tried it, I was pleased by its sweet flavor and slight tartness. (Açaí Berry, which is also based on one of the healthy fad fruits, won the recent flavor vote, and Jelly Belly will be making it a rookie flavor too before long. Sigh, I voted for Honey...) I'm unfamiliar with Sunkist Lime, since I haven't tried the Sunkist Citrus mix but I bet it has a strong, sweet flavor.

To make room in the Official 50 Flavors (Why stop at 50? Variety is the spice of life!), Jelly Belly is retiring five older flavors. Jalapeño is being hurled out, with the door slamming on its butt. Good riddance. Grape Jelly is also gone, which might sound like bad news for the grape crowd, but as long as Jelly Belly keeps making its Soda Pop Shoppe mix, Grape Crush will pass as an alternative. Peanut Butter is also being retired. This is fine by me. For some reason, it reminds me of the Bertie Bott's Ear Wax Bean. I wonder if the peanut-allergic community is celebrating this bean's retirement. Café Latte is gone too. It was hardly one of my favorite flavors, mainly because I'm not really a coffee person. For the coffee aficionados, Cappuccino is still in the mix. Lastly, Caramel Apple is gone, which isn't a huge hit, since Jelly Belly also already has Green Apple, Red Apple, Pineapple, Sour Apple, and Cold Stone Apple Pie. Uh, cross out Pineapple. But still, my Jelly Belly Carnival won't be the same with only Cotton Candy and Caramel Corn...

I am recalling some older flavors Jelly Belly experimented around with. Cinnamon Toast was the most delectable bean I'd ever had. It was sweet and sugary, and even tasted better than the real thing (trust me, I did a taste test—it wasn't a blinded test, though). C'mon, Jelly Belly, please bring this bean back!

Misinformation on Twitter

2009-07-13T14:05:00.000-07:00

I signed into Twitter a few minutes ago to see what was new with all the people I'm following. One of my friends posted about an Amber Alert, giving a brief description of the suspect's vehicle and license plate number. Twitter's a great tool to quickly spread urgent information like this, especially because it takes little effort to help propagate the information. All you have to do is copy and paste!

But I've read online that some people will post false information in such an alert on Twitter, either to see how fast a fake report might spread, or for more deceitful means, such as linking to a website to sell junk or spread computer viruses. I decided to check my friend's tweet against the Amber Alert information posted on the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) website. I found information on the site which seemed to match my friend's description, but the license plate was off in one place!

It's great that Twitter allows for fast distribution of information, and I applaud people for passing along information which may turn out to be very helpful in rescuing these children. However, this is a clear example of how social networking sites like Twitter can also assist in spreading misinformation. The license plate number became a Trending Topic on Twitter, which means that it was among the most-tweeted terms on Twitter. People need to make sure to double-check information against a credible source (the NCMEC site for example) before reposting it.

Eleven O'Clock Noon

2009-06-20T18:53:00.000-07:00

This is from the cover of the menu at Sabor a Mèxico in Mukilteo. I'm a bit confused about when they open on the weekend. That's okay, I'll just stay home.

AUGH

2009-06-06T19:20:00.000-07:00

Look what I made! (This is something Charlie Brown would yell.) I bought it at Hallmark. It used to say "LAUGH".

-196°F

2009-06-04T14:00:00.000-07:00

I wish people would stop complaining about the heat! Does everybody really want to go back to this situation???

Marmaduke Mystery

2009-05-28T16:22:00.000-07:00

This is from April 2 of this year. I found it odd and downloaded it to my computer. I've stumbled across it again, and I thought I might share what's possibly the strangest Marmaduke comic I've ever seen. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON???

Time Limits in Video Games

2009-05-28T08:04:00.000-07:00

I've noticed that many newer video games don't seem to have time limits, but there's something about them that has been bugging me.

Think back to Super Mario Bros. The timer for each level would typically start with a few hundred "seconds," even though it always ticked down much faster than that. When the timer reached 100 or so, the music would speed up, causing a great deal of panic for the player. When the timer reached 0, Mario would die.

I understand that this just is a gameplay device to add some challenge to the game, but why does he die? By what mechanism is Mario killed when the time runs out?

TI-30XS Multiview Calculator

2009-05-23T10:32:00.000-07:00

I was at Walgreens yesterday, looking for a new portable FM radio. Instead, I bought a calculator.

The TI-30XS Multiview Calculator, normally about $22, was on sale at $15, and it looked cool, so I got it. It has a neat feature called MathPrint mode, where it displays mathematical expressions in a more natural way (like how you write math on paper) rather than relying on a bunch of parentheses and junk.

On the left above, you can see a particularly complicated and useless expression as it would have to be typed on the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition. It has a lot of parentheses, and it's kinda hard to see what's going on. On the right is how the expression looks on the TI-30XS Multiview Calculator, with the MathPrint mode on. It's obviously a lot easier to see what's going on. (MathPrint can be turned off so that expressions can be typed in the classic mode.)

The TI-30XS also automatically simplifies fractions and roots. The first picture in this post has two examples of it doing this. On a different calculator, the answers would instead be displayed as decimals. There's a button you can simply press on the TI-30XS to convert these fractions or roots to decimals and vice-versa. It seems to be called the answer toggle button, and the button looks like this ◄ ►. There are two ways to input division: as a stacked fraction, or simply using the ÷ sign. The stacked fraction will try to give another fraction as an answer; the ÷ sign will yield a decimal answer.

You can see in the picture above that the calculator is also pretty smart with trigonometry. The TI-30X IIS on the left above calculated the sine of π as an ugly decimal. The TI-30XS is smarter than that, though. It displays the answer in exact terms using a fraction and a root, as it should. By pressing the answer toggle button, this can quickly be converted to a decimal, too.

So the TI-30XS seems to be able to do everything the TI-30X IIS can do, but there are still a few gripes I have with it. The answer toggle button is right above Enter (=), which is where plus usually is on TI calculators—the +, -, ×, and ÷ buttons are all moved one button up on the calculator, which takes a little getting used to. I keep pressing the answer toggle button when I mean to press plus.

Another issue is that there doesn't seem to be a way to wrap fractions or roots around expressions you have typed already. For a simple example, say you've typed 4, but then you realize you need to take the square root of 4. On the TI-30X IIS or the TI-84, you could move the cursor back in front of the 4 and insert a square root symbol. If you try to do that on the TI-30XS, though, it'll put a square root radical to the left of the 4, but there'll be a blank inside the radical, waiting for you to type in a number to go under it. The 4 will be to the right of the root, implying multiplication. I suppose you could work around this by raising 4 to the 1/2 power, but that seems imperfect.

Overall, it's a snazzy little calculator with a bunch more features I didn't even mention. The colors are bold and modern looking, but one of my friends said it looks like a child's toy. It's pretty thin (even more so without the cover slide case) and fits comfortably in the hands, and the buttons repsond well. (I think the TI-30X IIS is a bit too narrow to hold comfortably, and if you try to press a button before releasing the previous button, it'll ignore the second button press.) I would recommend to anyone looking for a cool calculator.

30-Minute Parking

2009-05-22T20:08:00.000-07:00

This is a sign I saw in the Mukilteo Walgreens parking lot. What I find interesting is that this Walgreens has a one-hour photo lab, but they apparently insist that you leave before your pictures are done. Walgreens seems to be really serious about the 30-minute limit: they have a half dozen or so of these signs posted in the parking lot. The parking lot was mostly empty, so I don't see what they're worrying about.

Ctrl + Backspace

2009-05-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

Being able to type flawlessly, without error, is a great skill to have, but for most people, the only way to decrease the number of errors is to also decrease the speed of typing. Thank goodness for the backspace key. With a single press, you can delete the last letter you typed.

The problem with this is that maybe you made a typo early in a word, but you didn't notice it until after you finished typing the entire word—for example, "spgahetti". You could backspace all the way back to the P and then start typing again: "aghetti". But that requires 7 backspace presses. You could move your hand to the mouse and highlight the errors, but it takes time to follow through with that.

One easy option is that you could simply press Ctrl + Backspace* and delete the last word entirely. "But then I have to type the whole word all over again!" you whine. Well, it isn't so bad. First of all, I find it hard to gain typing steam having to start typing in the middle of a word. Typing "aghetti" doesn't seem as natural as typing "spaghetti". Second, perhaps forcing yourself to retype the word will give you practice typing it correctly, particularly if it's a word you find yourself misspelling all the time.

After a while, it doesn't feel weird typing Ctrl + Backspace (especially if you use the left Ctrl key), and with practice, this is a very efficient and natural way to correct your typos.

*I use a Windows machine; I don't recall how this works on Macs, and I don't care to look it up. Also, some programs are stupid and for whatever reason don't support this, instead doing nothing or typing a dumb box instead.

Calm Fountain

2009-03-13T16:18:00.000-07:00

I got to the university faster than usual this morning, so I was half an hour early for my 8:30 class in the Electrical Engineering basement. I sat down in the classroom, but decided that instead, I should walk around outside. I walked up to Drumheller Fountain. I noticed that the water was insanely calm, and I could see some insanely undisturbed reflections.

Reflections in Drumheller, facing toward Red Square.

Bagley Hall and its reflection in Drumheller.

There were no ducks in the pond. If it weren't for the fascinating reflections, this fact would have disappointed me. Actually, the reason the pond was so calm was because the ducks weren't in it. (They must have been asleep still.) Also, it probably helps that the fountain wasn't running.

The EEB, Guggenheim, and smokestack.

I checked back after my classes four hours later to take a comparison shot. Ducks were frolicking in the pond now, making tiny-enough waves to completely ruin the awesome calmness.

Tiny waves in the fountain, later in the afternoon.

Does anyone know what the deal is with the floating crocodile heads? They look like the result of some people just having fun, but I thought they would have been gone by now.

Unit Price Perplexity

2009-02-16T19:43:00.000-08:00

I was at Safeway this evening, looking at the huge variety of toothpaste products, trying to choose which one to buy. I was looking at the price tags, and noticed something very irritating.

This Crest Whitening Plus Scope Toothpaste has a red sale tag, and it says that the box of toothpaste costs $2.99. It also displays the toothpaste's unit price: 37.4¢ per ounce.

This Colgate Total Advanced Whitening Toothpaste also has a red sale tag, and it is the same price, at $2.99. The unit price is displayed on this price tag too: $8.26 per pound.

Wait! Why does Safeway give the unit price for the Crest in cents per ounce, but gives it for Colgate in dollars per pound? These are not compatible!

It should be that I could look at the price tags for both the Crest and the Colgate and be able to compare them very easily. But I can't do that, because the units are incompatible! I would have to pull out my calculator and multiply the per-ounce price by 16 to compare them. (Incidentally, the Crest toothpaste contains 8 ounces of toothpaste, whereas the Colgate has 5.8 ounces, so you get more toothpaste per dollar with the Crest.)

AUGH! I shouldn't have to do this! I thought the point was to give customers the opportunity to quickly compare the price per amount of something without having to whip out the calculators!

This last example makes the whole situation even worse. This 6-ounce Colgate Max Fresh Toothpaste has a red tag price of $2.49. Unit price: $41.50 per 100. Per hundred of what? From what I can tell by shaking the box, there seems to be only one tube of toothpaste in it. If I bought 100 of these boxes, that would cost $249.00, not $41.50. I thought about this a moment and did some calculations to check: Safeway means that this toothpaste costs $41.50 per 100 ounces! Why??

Safeway, you're driving me crazy!

Cowardice

2009-02-02T06:58:00.000-08:00

I think it was great that ABC took the risky decision of putting Pushing Daisies on in the first place. Taking risks is a great, but scary, thing for such a huge network to do. Most of the time, it seems that networks don't go for the risky shows because they know what their audience likes already. But when a network takes a chance and goes with a risky decision, it can pay off.

That said, I'm disappointed with how you, ABC, are handling the consequences of the risk you took when you chose to air Pushing Daisies. I really appreciate the risk you took: I really love the show. I'm sorry that Pushing Daisies didn't get the large number of viewers you were hoping for, but it's wrong for you to pull the plug on the show.

Your actions have consequences! Cutting the show short, mid-season, is a cowardly thing to do. You gave the show the go-ahead in the first place. In doing so, you created a contract not only between yourself and the studio making Pushing Daisies, but also innately with your audience—especially the show's greatest fans. You should be obligated to allow the season to run its course. Cutting the show short is disrespectful to the production companies and the audience who also went into this risk with you.

You need to give Pushing Daisies some more episodes, not as a chance for the show to pull in bigger numbers, but as an opportunity for the show to reach a conclusion. (Kristin Chenoweth, who plays Olive on the show, has reportedly said that the show, as is, will end with a cliffhanger and loose plot ends.) You allowed the show to be on TV in the first place. Shouldn't you give your viewers the chance to watch the full story to its narrative conclusion?

Stupid Decision

2009-01-24T01:18:00.000-08:00

My understanding from what I've read is that one of the problems with Pushing Daisies is that it isn't the kind of show that a person can just sit down and zone out to. A viewer really has to be paying attention in order to understand and appreciate the show, especially when the characters talk fast. It's a show you really have to think about. And thinking, unfortunately, seems to be something which is lacking in the United States these days. This means that large numbers of people might watch Pushing Daisies, but they won't get it, so they won't tune in next time. The show's ratings were good to start with, but they started to drop.

The problem is that if these people aren't watching Pushing Daisies, then ABC isn't getting the ratings the advertisers want. In other words, Pushing Daisies is too smart for television. So ABC cancels it and replaces it with something that the masses can understand, like more reality shows, or perhaps another spin-off featuring characters from poorly-written car insurance ads. Television becomes a reflection of society: it airs what the masses want to see. This is bad because people want to see stupid stuff. I know that America's Funniest Home Videos shows a lot of stupid stuff, like old women falling down, or men getting hit in the groin.

I'm reminded of an episode of Dinosaurs, which aired on ABC. The lead character, Earl, becomes a network executive and since he's a pretty stupid dinosaur, he chooses to air only stupid programming, such as The Happy Colors Show (and maybe a show about cavemen... I don't remember). As a result, all the dinosaurs become stupid and they quit thinking. Earl decides that he should air smarter programming. He airs educational programming, and everybody learns new skills and puts them to good use. (Also, everyone stops watching TV...) I guess my point here is that society becomes a reflection of television, as well.

So it's a vicious cycle. Stupid programming leads to stupid viewers, which leads to more stupid programming. As I mentioned above, thinking seems to be a problem in this country, which means that stupid programming will likely prevail on television. But adding some smart programming, like Pushing Daisies, can certainly help to avert this problem, and it also lends ABC the credibility of maintaining intelligent programming. ABC needs to make the decision between airing smart programming or stupid programming.

It seems that ABC is going with the stupid decision.

Careless Mistake

2009-01-22T14:15:00.000-08:00

I'm taking Math 300, where we deal with all sorts of math reasoning, proofs, and logic. I got back one of my homework problems. The question was this:

A certain island is inhabited by two tribes of people. The members of one tribe always make true statements, and the members of the other tribe always make false ones. (And they are all skillful logicians.) The natives all know who is a truth-teller and who is a liar, but a visitor cannot tell the truth-tellers from the liars just by looking at them. . . . Suppose you meet three natives — A, B, and C — and the first two make the following statements:

A: B is a liar.
B: If A is a liar, then so is C.

Using only this information, figure out whether A, B, and C are truth-tellers or liars, and explain your reasoning.

And I made a rather careless mistake, right at the end:

Ack! I lost one point out of ten for this...

My Tribute

2008-12-16T00:53:00.000-08:00

Look what I made!

It is a scene of Linus, Lucy, Sally, Snoopy, and Woodstock gathering around a Christmas tree. Lucy wants to put the star on the tree, but Woodstock is already sitting on top. It looks like Linus wants to hand Woodstock a Christmas card.

The pages are laid out, not even taped together yet.

The poster is made of thirty sheets of paper, taped together to fit the size of my window, which is about 34″ × 59″. There is a reason why the picture looks off-center: the frame between the sashes blocks part of the picture. If I had centered the picture in the window, the tree and Woodstock would be blocked behind it. This would look bad.

The hard part was coloring. I could have printed the pages in color, but I decided to go with the coloring book style because I was worried that color ink would run if it touched condensation on the window. Crayons are small, and I had a lot to color, but I think it'll be safer this way.

With the lights on inside, the poster is illuminated for outdoor viewers. In the daytime, I hope the sunlight will pass through the poster so that the image can be seen from inside.

I got the picture design from a paper Christmas decoration I found in a Christmas decoration bin. I scanned the picture so that I could use it as my desktop wallpaper.

The original decoration, about a foot wide.

Here is the poster, seen from inside my room.

Gotcha, Charlie Brown!

2008-11-29T22:22:00.000-08:00

I found the Charlie Brown popcorn tin! It was $4.88 at the Mukilteo Rite Aid. This is awesome!

The tin has two scenes. The first is Charlie hanging the red ornament on his scraggly tree. This is moments before his Christmas is temporarily ruined.

The other side has all the kids gathered happily around the tree. This picture is very faithful to the original scene—the tree is decorated the same, and the kids are all arranged the same way

I Want This

2008-11-20T20:22:00.000-08:00

I saw this on the X-Entertainment Blog today. It's one a popcorn tin sectioned into three flavors. I like eating popcorn (especially the cheese-flavored popcorn—the caramel, not so much), and these popcorn tins are great to have around during the Christmas season. What's even better is that it has a scene from the Charlie Brown Christmas on it! I have to get one of these.

Voting in Alaska

2008-11-05T15:39:00.000-08:00

Last night, at 8 p.m. (PST), NBC declared Barack Obama as the next president. An hour later, Obama gave his victory speech. An hour after that, the polls closed in Alaska.

I wonder what it felt like to cast a ballot when the election for president had already been decided.

Couple on the Bus

2008-10-29T14:01:00.000-07:00

I'm taking the bus home right now. I'm sitting sideways on the bus—three seats are facing three seats on the other side. The girl sitting next to me has been talking to the guy across from her. I figured that it would be nice for me to ask the guy if he wanted to trade seats with me so that he could sit next to her, especially because it would be too loud to talk on the freeway, once we got on it. We were at the last stop before the freeway, and I was going to offer the guy to trade seats with me, but the girl never stopped talking and gossiping. I never did get to offering, and I think I have done this guy a favor because of it.

What Do You Say?

2008-10-25T22:46:00.000-07:00

I handed out candy at my dad's work today. Every year, on the Saturday before Halloween, the businesses in the Greenwood area around his store participate in a trick-or-treating thing, and my dad hires me to give out candy for his store.

Most kids are too young to know to say thank you. Most of them I'm sure don't even know what's going on. (That doesn't mean they have to stare at you after you give them candy, though.) I was surprised by how many kids were saying thank you today. Several of them really seemed to be excited to be trick-or-treating, and I think this was a great thing. There was one group of girls, slightly older than the rest, each dressed up to give her a pallid look, and they weren't smiling at all, and they hardly said thank you. Were they in this just for the candy? It didn't even look like they enjoyed being together.

The worst part is when you give a kid candy, he turns around, and the mom or dad says, "What do you say?" The expected answer, from the kid to me, is "Thank you," but it doesn't always come to that. Often, the kid will just stand there, staring awkwardly, until the parent thanks me. Actually, what's worse than that is when the kid does say thank you, but the parent says, as they're leaving, "DID YOU SAY THANK YOU?" It's too bad that the parents don't trust their children. Did they harass them like this at every store?

There was one little girl who came in the store right as the event was ending at three. I gave her a Rocky Road candy and wished her a happy Halloween. Then, her mom asked her, "What do you say?" Instead of giving thanks, though, the girl said, "I'm allergic to nuts." So I had to take the Rocky Road out of her hand (it has cashews!) and replaced it with a Laffy Taffy.

Make Up Your Mind!

2008-10-11T17:07:00.000-07:00

I'm using Microsoft Office Word 2007 to type something for my composition class:

Uh oh! It says there's an error. It says to change "seven" to "7." Okay.

Now what? It wants me to change it back to "seven." Word says to do this because I should spell out any number less than 10. So I make the change, and it says to change back to 7. (Augh! I could do this for hours!) I think the problem it's having is that it thinks that "seven died" is a part of the preceding list, and it's trying to make my list consistent somehow.

Silly Screen Saver

2008-10-07T19:06:00.001-07:00

If you leave Comcast's DVR paused for too long, a screen saver pops up to protect the TV from burn-in.

Is this an oversight? It's an HD cable box, presumably designed for widescreen TVs—it's weird that the screen saver fills only the middle 4:3 area of the TV. Isn't the rest of the screen at risk of burn-in? I hope that Comcast will resolve this issue with their next update.

Update (Oct. 8): Comcast has e-mailed me and is taking steps to resolve this matter.
Update (Jan. 24, 2009): I suppose the issue is still being investigated.
Update (Dec. 15, 2009): The problem is still persisting, but I am confident that Comcast is hard at work with an upgrade to fix it.
Update (Aug. 29, 2010): I just noticed that the screen saver has been fixed! It stretches across the whole screen. And now instead of Comcast, it says xfinity, whatever that means…

Garbage Ghost Hanging

2008-10-05T19:39:00.000-07:00

This year's garbage ghost is up! We did the same thing last year, and we've done it before.

Jesse and I made the ghost yesterday. We used two garbage bags this year, taping them together to make a much larger ghost. We stuffed the head with plastic shopping bags, using just a little paper to cover the Safeway logo so that it wouldn't show through. Jesse drew the face on with a Sharpie. I am impressed by how generic he drew the face. I was afraid he might draw a stupid-looking half-scary face. The moaning ghost look is very appropriate. We stopped working on the ghost to rescue his cat, who was stuck meowing on his roof.

Hanging the ghost is very tricky. (I want to mention that the fishing line is attached to the top of the ghost's head—it is not tied around the neck.) Jesse plays a lot of sports, so he is a much better thrower than I. He tied the fishing line to a rock and threw it over the street light. Once we got it over, but before we pulled the ghost up, I messed things up. I stepped in a loop of the fishing line and got it tangled around my foot. I don't know what Jesse was thinking, but he cut the line around my leg, and this messed up this hanging.

I could tell that Jesse was getting tired, and when his mom asked if he wanted to go with her to pick up his sister, he went with her. Patrick and Jeanina had come outside to watch, but I realized that none of the three of us would have an easy time throwing a rock over the light in just the right place. I got out my Foxtail, tied the string to the tail, and flung it up and over the light. Unfortunately, I forgot to have someone hold onto the other end of the string (not attached to the ghost), and it got pulled up by the Foxtail's weight, so I had to do it again—I got it on the third try. I pulled the ghost up and anchored the string to the bushes underneath.

The ghost is really cool! With breezes, it spins slowly around, and its tail floats behind it.

It seems like the ghost is alive (or undead, at least), looking around the cul-de-sac. I hope this ghost stays up through Halloween.

Silly PowerPoint Slides

2008-09-17T13:05:00.000-07:00

I came across a PowerPoint presentation I made last summer when I was extremely bored. It's about cats and dogs, and which we should love more. It's supposed to be stupid. Here are two slides from it.

The Ol' Stuples Gag

2008-09-17T11:28:00.000-07:00

I got the latest issue of Mad a few days ago. You might remember the news that last month, someone working at Circuit City overreacted about Mad's "Sucker City" spoof. I personally thought that it was very funny, so that's why I was delighted to see Mad do another spoof. This time, the victim was Staples.

Stuples!! I told my dad about this, and he thought it was a little funny, but he was too busy to look at it, so I left it open and set it on the bar. A few hours later, he returned and started looking through it. He had forgotten that it was a spoof! He told my mom how crazy this staple gun was.

He was actually considering getting it, probably because of how awesome it looks. Then he noticed the required 5-day waiting period, and that's when he began doubting how authentic the ad was. Then he flipped the magazine closed and realized that it's Mad!

My favorite product in the fake ad was the Crayola box of crayons.

Spore Is Given One Star

2008-09-09T09:57:00.000-07:00

It looks like there are several people who are disgruntled about the new Spore game, which came out on Sunday. A look at Amazon's customer ratings breakdown should point out that many people seem to be dissatisfied.

Wow, 93% of reviewers gave the game one star. The number of one-star reviews increases by the minute.

Nearly all of the one-star reviews I read mentioned Spore's digital rights management (DRM). The point of DRM is to obviate piracy of electronic software. It sometimes works, but it also sometimes hurts the honest software users.

For example, if someone downloads music from the iTunes Store, he can put it on his iPod, but not his Zune. If he downloads music from the Zune Marketplace, he can put it on his Zune, but not his iPod. This means that if he wants to have a Zune and an iPod (or if he is replacing one with the other), he'll have to pay twice for songs he wants to put on both devices. I think that's crazy. Nobody should have to pay twice for the same song.

In the case of Spore, this means that people can install the game only three times. They must activate their software online, and DRM software installs itself on their computers and apparently cannot be removed. Each of these brings some limitation to the installation and use of this game, and this is what has irritated these reviewers.

I can relate the most with the last of the reviews I posted above. When my family was beta testing Windows Vista, Microsoft would often take our computer and reinstall the latest version of Vista. Every time, we would have to reinstall all our programs. I would have to reinstall Adobe Photoshop. Eventually, Photoshop failed to install because I had reached the installation limit, which I didn't know of. I called Adobe, and they gave me a new activation code, but it's crazy that I had to go to such lengths.

I applaud that people are using Amazon's ratings system to tell others what they feel about this game. A lot of people say that if you don't like something, then don't buy it—I'm glad to see that people are leaving reviews warning others of potential DRM problems they could come across with Spore.

Zebra Keeps Its Stripes

2008-09-08T17:52:00.001-07:00

I was at Woodland Park Zoo today. It's a great big park, so a map is necessary to ensure that you see everything. Something I saw on the map was that animals are represented on the map by silhouettes. This isn't true of the zebra, however!

The zebra keeps its stripes! (This is also true of the tiger on the map.)

You can see more pictures in my Facebook album, whether or not you're a Facebook member. (If you're Facebook friends with me, you can comment on my pictures!)

Are zebras white with black stripes, black with white stripes, or is it all just an optical illusion?

Spaces Between Sentences

2008-09-07T00:16:00.000-07:00

I grew up typing two spaces between sentences. I guess it was my mom who had me doing this—she said it was the proper way to type. This was more true back in the old typewriter days, where every character was the same width (monospaced typefaces): I and W would take up the same amount of space. Using two spaces between sentences made it easier to tell when one ended and another began. Now that we have digital printing and proportionally spaced typefaces (where I is less wide than W), two spaces between a sentece look weird. I found some illustrations if you want to see this for yourself.

Typing two spaces between sentences was never really a problem until I took Journalism in eighth grade. Our teacher didn't have much of a style guide (in fact, he wasn't really even concerned that his students would misspell all kinds of words), but one of his rules was that we had to use one space between sentences. I found this surprisingly hard to abide by. It was a force of habit: after I pressed period, I would automatically press the space bar twice. After writing an article, I would have to go through the whole article and remove all the double spaces. (There was no universal replace tool.)

Another issue that would occasionally crop up would be whenever the end of a sentence reached the right margin of a page, or the right edge of a text box. If the software wasn't set up correctly, it would handle the first space just fine, but the second space would sneak to the beginning of the next line and indent the line by a space! Totally unacceptable.

I suppose there was no real need for me to switch to using only one space, but there was no reason for me to be using two.

Text messaging probably helped me make the conversion to being a one-spacist. My cell phone would automatically capitalize the first letter of a sentence only if I used one space before it. Using two spaces would result in having to press buttons three times (space-space-shift) instead of just once (space).

What probably helped me the most was when I started learning a new keyboard. Tired of the boring old qwerty keyboard, I decided to learn the more comfortable Colemak keyboard. Being forced to slow down while I learned the keyboard gave me the opportunity to also adjust to typing just one space between sentences.

Now it feels natural to type just one space between sentences. It feels silly to use two, now.

Turn Over, Hook Up

2008-09-06T13:29:00.000-07:00

My sister is preparing her things to take with her when she moves into her dorm later this month. She decided to leave behind her 7-inch Aluratek digital picture frame so that I could load it with pictures and display it here at home. I planned to insert a SD card full of pictures, but first, I wanted to remove all the silly pictures of her friends goofing off.

The frame has built-in memory which can be accessed by connecting to a computer with a USB cable. This is where she had copied her pictures. I connected the picture frame to the computer with the USB cable, but the picture frame wasn't showing up in my Computer folder. I also tried my laptop, but it wouldn't show up there, either.

I started searching through the picture frame's built-in menus to see if there was an option to delete everything, but I couldn't find anything like that. I turned it over to see if there was a reset button on the bottom, but there was nothing like that. When I set it back down, however, I noticed a message on the screen: "Disconnected with PC, please restart!"

That means it must have been connected at some point! I also noticed on my laptop that it said that it had found a new device, or something like that. I figured out what I had to do to access the picture frame.

I had to hold it upside-down. I held it in my left hand and used my right hand to delete all the files saved to the picture frame.

I Like My Aquarium!

2008-09-02T22:29:00.000-07:00

What do you think of my new aquarium? My fish sure look realistic, don't they? Well, actually, the fish aren't real at all! They are video game characters!

Actually, I wouldn't really call it a game, but it runs on a game system. My Aquarium was released Monday morning as a download for Wii. It cost 500 Wii Points ($5), and I was a bit reluctant to buy it at first. After I watched a few videos online of it, I caved in and decided to get it.

There's a lot to do in terms of customization in this game, which is good news for me because I love tinkering with things. You can choose what every aspect of the tank looks like: what fish populate the tank, what decorations fill it (unfortunately, there are no underwater castles or plastic scuba divers), what the floor and background look like, and even what kind of lighting illuminates the tank. You can create up to six tanks. My first looks like a generic tank. The second has a riverbed theme.

The fish seem to swim around realistically. It probably wasn't very hard to make them swim convincingly because they just swim around. If you point the cursor at a fish and give the Wii Remote a little jerk, the fish will wiggle and squirm around. The fish start small and grow over time; if you don't feed your fish, they don't die, though. At first, the selection of fish you can have in the tank is limited, but it seems that more will be unlocked as time passes.

I'll probably get bored with My Aquarium before next week, but at least when we have company over, we can have a huge, vibrant, TV-sized fish tank.

Name-Calling Ads

2008-08-22T13:34:00.000-07:00

When I've used Windows Live Messenger, I never expected for any of the text ads on the bottom of the window to insult me, but I guess I was wrong!

Calling me an ass is no way to get me to click you!

Okay, okay, what's actually happened is that the rest just got cut off. The rest of the ad reads, "Associates, Master's, Bachelor's."

In other news, an Elebits sequel is apparently coming to the DS.

Waterless Fountain

2008-08-21T14:48:00.000-07:00

A year or two ago, Alderwood Mall turned off the water in their fountain pools. I'm surprised that people still throw coins in.

MSN Spoils the Olympics

2008-08-12T19:46:00.000-07:00

I had little doubt that Michael Phelps would be able to score his record-setting tenth Olympic gold medal tonight. I was expecting to sit down tonight and see an exciting and dramatic race. Instead, I got this:

I saw this horrible spoiler at the top of MSN.com (Internet Explorer's default home page). I live on the West Coast; footage recorded live is actually delayed three hours before being broadcasted here. So the 200m butterfly race has already happened, even though the Olympics footage hasn't even started on TV here. It makes me upset that I can't even open Internet Explorer without ruining my evening.

I was looking forward to watching the Olympics tonight. I've watched them every night so far. I even told my family that I wasn't going to go out with them to dinner tonight so that I could watch the games. But it's been spoiled for me. There would be no suspense in viewing the races tonight.

I'm going out to dinner now.

Crossword Failure

2008-08-11T22:25:00.000-07:00

My dad, cousins, and I sucked at the crossword puzzle we attempted on Saturday.

Speakers' platforms: ROSTUM
Right-triangle ratios: TIEEM
Cacklers: CHKN
Unfreeze: DTHAW

Our biggest mistake was doing it in pen, but I don't even know what we were thinking on some of these. We kinda gave up after a while, though, and were goofing off before we quit entirely. Keep in mind that this was the Saturday puzzle, the hardest of the week.

I'm a Better Potential Father

2008-08-05T19:19:00.000-07:00

I was bothered by all the apps sending me notifications here on Facebook. But just a moment ago, I got a wonderful notification that totally changed my mind. It said that one of my friends compared me with one of her friends and thinks I am a better potential father. I'm so glad I got this! I don't know with whom she compared me, nor do I even know the name of the app that sent the presumably automated notification, but I now know that this is what they mean by "social networking."

I just feel sorry for the poor sap who got the notification that said that somebody "has just compared you with one of her friends and thinks you are a worse potential father."

Skip Voicemail Messages

2008-07-31T13:40:00.000-07:00

Last night, I tried to call my aunt Karen, and I got her voicemail. I didn't want to listen to her recorded voicemail greeting, so I pressed star to skip it. Instead of hearing the beep, however, I was instructed to enter a password. I had pressed the button used for Karen to log in to her voicemail account.

It turns out that the keys you press to skip the greeting depend on who the recipient's cell phone carrier is. Mine is Verizon, so when you call me, press star to skip the message and get right to the beep. It turns out that Karen's carrier is Cingular; I was supposed to press pound to immediately leave a message. T-Mobile also uses pound; for Sprint, press 1.

The annoying thing is that even if you could remember what button to press for each carrier, you probably won't know what carrier the recipient has. If you were to call me, reach my voicemail recording, and press pound instead of star, you would instead be prompted to enter a password. This is why one of the first things I say in my voicemail recording is, "You can press star to leave a message now." Not only does it assist people in knowing which button to press, but also teaches people that don't know already that it's possible to skip the message.

My advice is that you should include a line like mine near the beginning of your voicemail recording. You could save your callers from having to listen to some thirty seconds of redundant recordings.

Premium Mustard

2008-07-27T20:45:00.001-07:00

I'm out on the annual family camping trip. An idea I had this year, since our site has electrical hookup, was to string up lights to illuminate the tables at night. One string my aunt brought is a bunch of picnic items: watermelon, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, ketchup bottles, and mustard bottles. It's all very whimsical. It's the mustard bottles, however, that got my attention. Why does it say "Premium Mustard"? Why not just "Mustard"? Why did they deem it important to make such a distinction? My cousin and I had a good laugh about this when we were putting them up.

A Waste of Time

2008-07-24T00:02:00.000-07:00

It bothers me when people remove food from the microwave early without resetting the countdown timer. The microwave blinks the time remaining and the message "PRESS START" repeatedly as it waits idly. I'm the one who has to reset it, even if I wasn't the one using the microwave. Someone needs to manufacture self-resetting microwaves.

Use–Mention Distinction

2008-07-23T13:25:00.000-07:00

Here's a riddle you have probably heard before:

Railroad crossing, watch out for cars.
Can you spell that without any R's?

The problem is that the riddle doesn't really work when it's written out. The problem is that there is no use–mention distinction. When in writing a word, you mean to refer to the word itself, instead of what the word means, you need to offset the word in quotation marks or italics.

The riddle at the top of this article could mean different things depending on where you put quotation marks.

"Railroad crossing, watch out for cars."
Can you spell that without any R's?

In this example, the riddle is presenting you with the words "Railroad crossing, watch out for cars." Because the "that" is not in quotation marks, it's assumed that it is referring to the first sentence, which means that the riddle is asking you to spell it without R's ("Aiload cossing, watch out fo cas") or completely redo the sentence ("Locomotives go by, be mindful of automobiles").

Railroad crossing, watch out for cars.
Can you spell "that" without any R's?

In this second example, "that" is in quotation marks, which means that you are literally asked to spell "that" without using any R's, which is very easy to do: "T‑H‑A‑T." See, this riddle really isn't very fun if it's written out.

I want to discuss one last thing. Instead of putting a word in quotation marks, you could italicize it, but I don't prefer to do this. Some people may think of it as emphasizing the word's meaning. In the last example, if you italicized "that," people might think you're emphasizing it (Spell that, sucker!).

Express Lane Grammar

2008-07-08T00:49:00.000-07:00

My mom, sister, and I went to Food Emporium to order a cake. Something I know I'm not the first to notice about the express checkout lines is that the signs are ungrammatical.

You aren't supposed to use the word "less" when you're talking about things that can be counted. Since the number of goods being purchased can be counted, the sign really ought to say "12 items or fewer." Actually, I think this akin to saying "eight minutes and a half"—I would prefer the sign to say "12 or fewer items."

We also went to Safeway. It seems like they try to avoid the entire "less"/"fewer" issue.

Unfortunately, this sign brings up another issue. The limit of groceries a customer can purchase is more generous, but when "15 item" is used to modify "limit", because it is more than one word, it becomes a compound modifier, and needs to be hyphenated. The sign really ought to read "15-item limit."

I suspect that sign makers who know these rules may still prefer to break them, arguing that the signs may somehow be more readable. I also suspect that most customers don't care or are far too excited about finding a 15-item-limit express lane to even notice.

Useless Camera

2008-07-05T20:58:00.000-07:00

Safeway has a bunch of security cameras along the back of the store, pointing down each aisle. This particular camera is blocked by a towering cardboard display for Frito-Lay chips, probably completely obscuring the view. If you were wanting to misbehave at Safeway, now's your big chance.

Aarrghh!

2008-07-02T23:54:00.000-07:00

I'm up in Bellingham, helping my aunts set up for the 2008 Red, White, and Blue Fourth of July Celebration Blast (that's what we've named our party this Friday). After it got dark and started getting stormy, we quit setting up tents and went inside to play Word Yahtzee, a game I found at Value Village a few years ago.

My aunts love to play word games like Scrabble and Upwords, so they each have a little electronic Scrabble dictionary which is also good for "cheating", so they couldn't resist pulling them out at the beginning of the game. We had to play Word Yahtzee in turns, and after a while, when it wasn't my turn, it got a little boring, so I picked up one of the electronic dictionaries and asked it to tell me all of the words of any length—in other words, to provide me with a list of every word. I went through "aa" (rough, cindery lava), "aal" (an East Indian shrub), "aalii" (a tropical tree), "aardvark", and "aardwolf". Then I came across "aarrghh"!

Understand that I was playing with the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary: apparently an authoritative dictionary of words that are acceptable for use while playing Scrabble. Who decided that "aarrghh" is an acceptable word? It's not in the online dictionaries of Merriam-Webster, Cambridge, or Oxford. Why does the Scrabble dictionary say that "aarrghh" is okay, but "whah" and "teehee" are not?

More, More, More About Comcast

2008-06-27T16:55:00.000-07:00

I got a cookie-cutter response this morning from Comcast about the horrible ads I wrote about at 3 a.m. this morning. (You see, in addition to talking live with someone, I also sent an e-mail complaint.)

The response said that Comcast is using the ads "to educate our customers about the value of Comcast Digital Cable service." I just checked what ads are on the screen now. Three of the banners tell me how to use features of the cable box (such as how to set reminders for shows) that I already know how to use. The fourth banner is an ad for pay-per-view wrestling. Wow, Comcast knows me well! Because I love wrestling, and I know absolutely nothing about how to use the cable box we've had for years!

I was surprised that I got another e-mail from a different Comcast employee this afternoon who apparently stumbled across my blog. (Either that, or Comcast is constantly scanning the Internet for criticism about them.) I guess it's a little naïve of me to think that nobody might read this blog, except that nobody ever leaves comments anymore. He thanked me for sharing my feedback and said that Comcast is "working on a new interactive guide" with the hope "to illuminate the issues that you are currently experiencing." To illuminate the issue? As in to lighten up the ads, as in to make them more visibly prominent? This must be a hint at more ads to come. Great.

Maybe he meant to say that they hope to eliminate the ads. But I doubt it. These ads are going to stick around. They're going to make the television look as tacky as MySpace.

But you know what? I still like Comcast. Know why? Because it's Comcastic.

Comcast Makes Me Sad

2008-06-27T02:40:00.000-07:00

THIS IS TOTALLY UNCALLED FOR, COMCAST! HOW DARE YOU?

I just noticed this an hour ago (and I won't be able to sleep until after I've ranted about it). Comcast has completely replaced the bottom of the on-screen guide—an entire row's worth of info!—with advertising space! AUGH! And they aren't even useful ads. These are ugly ads for junk like Close Encounters of the Third Kind or on-demand Beyonce in Concert which repeat every four pages.

It's hardly any secret to those who know me that I despise clutter and advertising.

For years, I've listened to tech pundits bashing and hating Comcast for various reasons, but I haven't sided with them until now. What's wrong, Comcast? Are we paying you so little that you have to resort to putting up ads so that you don't go bankrupt? Or are you afraid that Beyonce won't get enough hits without your helpful reminder for us to watch her concert? Did Beyonce pay you to clutter up my screen? Should I be mad at her too?

So now the guide contains only four useful rows of guide information instead of five, so that means more scrolling. Not only that, but the ads seem to take a short moment to load, so it'll probably take me even longer to traverse the guide in that respect as well. It'll be less comfortable, too, having to avoid looking at that entire bottom portion of the screen.

I even went online to Comcast tech support and chatted live with a polite customer service analyst named Carla.26902 to ask if there was a secret way to remove the ads which are contaminating my screen. She was very patient with me and I'm sorry I wasted her time. I hope she forwarded my complaints ~~to someone who cares, high up in the Comcast chain of command~~.

I guess now I'll instead have to get used to using the mini-guide (which is only two rows high but has no advertising), at least until Comcast sticks ads into there as well. It will be only a matter of time until Comcast starts popping ads up in the middle of the screen during the climaxes of movies and TV shows.

I'll be lucky if this article makes it up onto my blog. Comcast also provides our internet connection.

Cheese Clump

2008-06-26T11:25:00.000-07:00

Oh my god.

I'm eating a bowl of Cheddar & Sour Cream Ruffles, and I encountered this at the bottom of the bowl. It appears to be a clump of the powder they coat the chips in.

Should I eat it? Would it be good? Would it be too much flavor for one man to handle? Could this kill me? How did it come into being? Is it a mistake, or does Frito-Lay occasionally include these as gifts?

I'm going to eat it.

There is a teensy potato chip inside. The flavor isn't nearly as strong as I imagined—I'm a bit disappointed. It tastes just like eating a handful of chips, only it nearly isn't as big. I wouldn't mind encountering more cheese clumps during the rest of my life, though.

Square Graham Crackers

2008-06-17T14:44:00.000-07:00

S'mores are pretty good, aren't they? But you know what sucks when you're making them? You get the graham cracker, and then you try to break it in half, but it doesn't break perfectly along the perforation, so you're left with two uneven halves of the graham cracker. Misery.

But Nabisco has solved the problem of the ruined graham cracker halves. Squares! Essentially, they have released pre-halved graham crackers. No more wasted graham crackers!

I think Nabisco may have stumbled upon the most brilliant invention of the 21st Century.

Mean Look

2008-06-17T13:58:00.000-07:00

The wild Haunter used Mean Look on my Rhydon, which means that I can't run away from this Pokémon battle, and I can't recall my Rhydon, either. The main reason I keep Rhydon around is because he knows a bunch of hidden moves, such as Strength. The hidden moves he knows are all of the Normal or Fighting type, none of which have any effect on Ghost-type Pokémon such as Haunter. The other move Rhydon knows, Earthquake, won't affect Haunter because she levitates above the ground.

I've looked through my bag, but I don't have any items, such as the Poké Doll or the Fluffy Tail, which will allow me to flee the battle regardless of the Mean Look. I could use Rhydon's moves (regardless of the fact that they'll do no damage) so that they'll eventually run out of PP. Then, he'll resort to struggling against the Haunter, which will finally do some damage. Haunter knows Spite, which reduces the PP of the move Rhydon last used, so that may help to speed up this process.

Or maybe I could wait for Haunter to finish off my Rhydon. The problem is that Rhydon's level is much higher than Haunter's, and this could take a while. Also, the Haunter is paralyzed, so half the time, it can't even move anyway.

Maybe I could catch Haunter. That would put an end to the battle. But its HP is maxed out, and I'm afraid that the Poké Balls won't work very well because of this. But I have a lot of them, so I think I'll give it a try. Nope, it didn't work.

Oooh, Haunter just used Curse. It halved its own HP and subjected Rhydon to the curse; each turn, Rhydon's HP is dropping by about third of its max HP. Now I'm just chucking Poké Balls until either Haunter is caught or Rhydon faints.

Click! The Poké Ball captured the Haunter! And just in time, because Rhydon's HP was so low that some alarm was going off. This was as bad as Wobbuffet versus Wobbuffet.

Digital Switchover Warnings

2008-05-20T23:18:00.000-07:00

In case you don't know, by February 17, 2009, TV broadcasts here in the US will be digital only, which, if I understand correctly, means that televisions with analog receivers won't work anymore without some kind of digital upgrade box or something. I'm not too concerned about it because we have digital cable already, but the television stations want to make sure that everyone is ready for the digital switchover:

Tonight, during both Wheel of Fortune on KOMO and Quantum Leap on ION, I got warnings about how some people's TVs will eventually stop working.

The irritating thing is that KOMO has been putting this irritating scrolling banner on the bottom of the screen during Wheel every day for the last month, if not longer! Today, it repeated during the entire third round! Okay, KOMO, I get it! A lot of people probably don't understand the digital switchover, and their TVs will suddenly quit receiving a signal, and KOMO wants to make sure that they are prepared, but come on! Enough is enough! I've had it with these stupid messages!

KOMO wants us all to be ready for the future, but it still isn't providing Wheel of Fortune in HD! Come on, KOMO! How can you be concerned about the future of TV when you don't even care that your present programming isn't the highest quality possible?

Oh, jeez, I just saw another one of these banners on KSTW/CW, right now! I'm watching Frasier in the background, and a little lower third popped up. Fortunately, their banner was so brief that I didn't even have time to take a picture of it (I couldn't get the SD card in my camera fast enough).

The digital switchover isn't for about 270 days, so I suppose we'll have to get used to seeing these messages every day until February 17, 2009.

By the way, I never post a puzzle without giving the solution. The solved puzzle above is A WALK DOWN MEMORY LANE.

Volume II, Chapter 11

2008-05-18T19:02:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading a version of Jane Eyre, which is a good story, if not drawn out. I was reading an illustrated version published by Penguin, and it is divided into three volumes. It was when I was on Chapter 11 of Volume II that I noticed something odd:

If I didn't know any better, I might think that I was reading Chapter 11 of Volume 11. Or maybe Chapter II of Volume II! The problem is that the text figure 1 and the small caps I look the same in this typeface! I can't tell them apart!

Now, keep in mind that this isn't a rant against Roman numerals. In fact, I love Roman numerals! This is a rant against ambiguity. The Arabic numerals in Chapter 11 look the same as the Roman numerals in Volume II, and that is absolutely not acceptable.

Garfield Shifter

2008-05-10T09:38:00.000-07:00

I was fiddling around with my Garfield Randomizer recently, and turned it into something completely different: the Garfield Shifter!! It takes a random Garfield comic and either puts the first panel at the end of the strip, or puts the last panel at the beginning.

I'll admit that most of the time, the results aren't very impressive, but every once in a while, you'll get something that seems to defy causality...

...or something that changes the punchline...

...or probably something just plain bizarre...

The Shifter doesn't totally shuffle all three panels; it merely shifts them all. It never generates a strip that maintains the original order. You can tell which comic used to be the middle one because it doesn't have the black outline that the other two panels have.

I used to have the Garfield Shifter available online, but I'm sorry to say that it's no longer available.

Missing Obelisk

2008-04-08T18:40:00.000-07:00

I noticed something at the university recently.

The Broken Obelisk sculpture was removed on March 30, but I didn't notice until April 1, so naturally, I suspected that it was some odd April Fools Day prank.

But there is a little sign that says that the sculpture is undergoing some much needed repair. I suspect that it will look very different after the repairs are done, and it will simply be called Obelisk.

The Bald Sajak

2008-04-01T22:57:00.000-07:00

At the end of today's Wheel of Fortune, we got a rare glimpse of a hair-bankrupt Pat Sajak. At first, Vanna appeared not to believe him when he said that he was wearing a hairpiece, but when he made her take it off, it was quite a shocking sight to see! BALD SAJAK! I must say, this is the most shocking thing I've seen on Wheel since Alex Trebek hosted a game exactly eleven years ago!

Snow? Whah???

2008-03-29T18:30:00.000-07:00

It's snowing out. What?? WHY? It's been spring for more than a week now!

It's not fair! I'm sure there's a reason why we label seasons the way we do! Summer means abundant sun. Autumn means colored leaves. Winter means cold cold cold cold cold. Spring is supposed to free us from winter's mean grasp, but I guess this just isn't the case this year. Waaaah!

I suppose the groundhog has been more correct this year than ever before.

We're Bachelors, Baby

2008-03-27T16:00:00.000-07:00

Check out these eight Garfield comics:

AUUUUGH!
Jim Davis! What are you doing??

The first six comics are all from the same week in November of 2006. The seventh is from last September, and the eighth is from today. There is something in common between all eight comics:

"We're bachelors, baby."

Running gag, or creative genius running out of jokes? I have been of the opinion that Garfield reached the peak of funniness in the mid-'90s or so, and hasn't really been as funny since. Recently, it seems to have been picking up a little, but it's repetitive stuff like this that I'm afraid will tire me out.

I'm wondering why Liz thinks their house is messy. I hardly ever notice any clutter. Indeed, all we ever see in nearly every Garfield comic these days is a basic horizontal line representing the edge of the table or floor, and usually nothing else. Garfield will occasionally scratch the chair or the drapes, but Jon usually has them replaced by the next day.

And why is Garfield only now pointing out that they're bachelors? The word "bachelor" was hardly ever tossed about before Jon and Liz started dating. Why start now? Once they get married, you're going to have to stop using your new catchphrase, Garfield.

Sigh... and Garfield didn't even do his cute head tilt today.

In honor of all these comics, I have designed one of my own:

Where Are We?

2008-03-06T20:27:00.000-08:00

It's 1995 or so. It's round three, the category is Where Are We?, and you've just solved the puzzle! Now all you have to do to win a cool $500 bonus is tell Pat where we are!

Hmmm... traps, holes, hazards, and greens? Well, it's obvious!

"Phoenix!"

No, that's not right. I can't believe he said "Phoenix"! He should have said "Golf course". It's not a big surprise that he didn't go on to the bonus round.

You'll Die Anyway

2008-02-24T14:25:00.000-08:00

I saw this sign in Famous Footwear, and was slightly disturbed by it. It says, "Life is short, buy the shoes." Basically, isn't the message that you're eventually going to die, so there's no point in refusing to buy shoes? Isn't this kinda morbid?

Crazy Puzzle

2008-02-22T23:14:00.000-08:00

Before I get into the main topic of this article, I think I'll mention that I am using a new keyboard layout! The standard layout in the US is QWERTY, but I am using a rather new one called Colemak. It is designed to be more comfortable than QWERTY, but easier to switch than Dvorak. I don't want to talk too much about it; you can read about Colemak on its official site. I can't tell if I'll stick with it in the long run, but I'm going to write this article with it.

I've had a Wheel of Fortune game on my cell phone for a few weeks now, and it's a quality game. The other night, however, I got a puzzle with a really weird category: Category Name. (The screenshot to the right isn't the weird puzzle, but the guy on the left is my avatar! Looks like me, huh? I have a Wild Card!) Not only that, but the puzzle itself looked weird—it wasn't left-aligned, like usual:

_ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _

The round played as usual, and I eventually solved the puzzle: "Sample Puzzle". Weird.

The Groundhog Was Wrong?

2008-02-22T13:39:00.001-08:00

Look at that! What is that? It looks awfully familiar! Oh, yeah, I remember. That thing is the sun!

It has been a while since we've had nice, sunny weather. My thermometer is currently reading a temperature of about sixty degrees, which happens to be my threshold for calling the weather warm.

I'm starting to think that the groundhog lied to us. Stupid fucking groundhog... He told us to expect weeks more of winter. And here we are today with spring-like weather.

But you know what? I'm not ready to rule out the possibility that there will be no more winter. I'm not ready to get my hopes up yet. There certainly is a chance that the cold will return.

Rebel Calculator

2008-02-20T15:42:00.000-08:00

AUGH!
My calculator has betrayed me!

That can't possibly be correct! Your answer is approximately what I would get if I divided by nine. But I told you to divide by three! Why, calculator, why?

Incompatible Carts

2008-02-19T19:14:00.000-08:00

Safeway got some new shopping carts recently. They are small and metal. They're fun, but they are incompatible with their older, plastic carts--they won't stack together! They cannot be collapsed into each other! The cart return recepticals in the parking lot are overflowing with carts! Whoever designed these new carts should be fired.

Mysterious Meal

2008-02-17T13:21:00.000-08:00

I was reading Here Comes Garfield, the comic book adaptation of the first Garfield TV special, when I noticed something odd. In the course of the story, this scene does absolutely nothing to forward the plot, and was probably included only to allow the audience to watch Garfield indulge, but it just doesn't make sense. Please click the thumbnail to read a few pages.

Garfield smells food in the middle of the night and goes downstairs to play with it and eat it. The big question is why there is food set out on the table overnight. We can see after Garfield crawls out of his bed that Jon is asleep in his own bed. So why did Jon leave all this food out? He left out a block of Swiss cheese, some eggs, a huge bowl of potato salad, spaghetti, an entire ham, and a pan of lasagna, among other less perishable foods.

There's nothing in the story to indicate that Jon became so tired that he went to bed without cleaning up after his humongous dinner. Garfield hasn't hassled Jon since breakfast because he was out all day teasing the neighbors and lamenting that Odie got captured and taken to the pound.

It's possible that Jon left this food out for Garfield because he figured he would be hungry, not having eaten since breakfast. But I doubt that. We'll just assume that Jon is not used to having to put food away because Garfield usually eats it all anyway.

Ain't a Word!

2008-02-15T19:21:00.001-08:00

You probably can't read it very well, but this Parker Paint sign is mostly burnt out, and the only thing lit up is "aint".

Chalk Kirbys

2008-02-14T14:28:00.001-08:00

I don't know why, but there are a lot of Chalk Kirbys all over campus. I doubt this is worth investigating.

The Wind Did It

2008-02-05T14:57:00.000-08:00

It is very windy out!

This is what happens when you don't take the necessary precaution of tying down your trees.