Brandon Notices

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?

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:

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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".

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

It is very windy out!



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

IT'S GROUNDHOG DAY!



Boooooooooooooooooooo. Stupid Groundhog. Why is everyone cheering for you? Go back in your hole.

Tomorrow is Groundhog Day, and like many of you, I am going absolutely crazy, anticipating whether Punxsutawney Phil will see his shadow.

If the groundhog sees his shadow, it means that we are doomed to live through another six weeks of this living hell winter. If he doesn't see his shadow, boom, automatic spring.

I don't know about you, but I sure could go for an early spring this year. I am literally sick of winter. I had to stay home today, I'm so sick.

My groundhog prediction:

HE WON'T SEE HIS SHADOW.

Of course, I have a bias, because I want him to not see his shadow.

Unfortunately, Phil has a tendency to see his shadow. Of his 112 past predictions, he has seen it 98 times. Last year, he didn't see his shadow, but the seven years before, he saw it.

In terms of his prediction accuracy rate, I see vary wavering figures. According to Wikipedia, he is correct 37 to 90 percent of the time.