Superbowl and Comics

• I assume everyone is going to be gorging themselves on beer and chips and watching the Superbowl this weekend.
  
  While I would normally be looking forward to this weekend in anticipation of the big game, and making friendly bets with friends based on my non-existent knowledge of sports ("50 bucks says that New England wins the coin toss..."), I am more worried about the new commercials that the company I work for is debuting. Good ad campaigns are so difficult to formulate. I just hope they aren't embarassingly bad.
  
  In other news, 30 second commercial spots during the Superbowl are up to $2.7M [yahoo.com].



• Recently, a friend pointed me out to a comic strip called The Order of the Stick [giantitp.com], which pokes fun at Dungeons and Dragons and all of the obscure consequences stemming from the way that the rules have been written.
  
  
  I have found it to be totally hilarious (being a Dungeons and Dragons player myself), and have started reading them from the beginning.

Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookies

A friend recently made cookies that he called "Oatmeal Scotties", which were a kind of oatmeal butterscotch cookies. They were awesome, so I tried to find a recipe.

One that I tried making was this one [allrecipes.com]. They were very good, although not quite what I was looking for. So, I don't know if I am going to stick with this one, or try another one.

If anyone does want to try that one, note that the dough will not roll into a ball, because it will stick to your hand. With normal cookies, I took a tip from my mother-in-law and roll the dough into a ball, so that it turns into a perfectly round cookie after it bakes. The dough from this recipe also expands by a surprisingly large amount while baking, so don't place them too close together on the cookie sheet. The other cookie recipes I have baked before have not expanded nearly as much.

Rainbow Fish vs. Red-Finned Shark

Heimlich has posted more videos of our fish to YouTube. You know, because we're those crazy fish people that treat their pets like surrogate children... We are those people you would expect to act like stereotypical Star Trek fans - showing up to fish keeping conventions dressed in costumes to look like their fish...

ANYWAY, we have noticed some new weird behaviors with our fish. We have had a rainbowfish and a red-finned shark (named Rudolph) in our aquarium for about 7 years or so. The red-finned shark (which is actually a kind of catfish) goes around and bullies all of the other fish all of the time. You know, he steals their lunch money and stuffs them into their lockers before gym class, etc. No, seriously, he does what many other red-finned shark owners complain about, in that he chases the other fish around, and nips at them. It's not something that I have ever really worried about, though.

Recently, our rainbowfish has decided that he's just not going to take it anymore. So, after 7 years of bullying, that little, awkward, pimply kid on the playground is taking the fight to the bully. He now constantly hangs around the mouth to Rudolph's cave, and makes sure that he can't come out. And whenever Rudolph does stick his head out, the rainbowfish nips him. It's hilarious.

In the video, the rainbowfish is the open water swimmer, and Rudolph is the bigger fish that won't be let out of his cave:

My Neighbors Think I'm Crazy

As I've mentioned numerous times before on this weblog, I am obsessive-compulsive about a lot of things. Heimlich is beginning to think that clearing the driveway of snow is something else that I am OCD about - because I am out there way too often and when none of the other people on our street are shoveling. This has caused me to wonder what our neighbors think when they see me out there. I clearly have too little to think about while I'm pushing the shovel around.

Anyway, the scene in our neighbors' houses probably goes something like this:

Girl:	*looking out window* "Mommy, what is that man doing?"
Mom:	"Stay away from that man, sweetie. He's mentally ill."
Girl:	"What does 'mentally ill' mean?"
Mom:	"It's what we call assholes who wake up their neighbors at 7 in the morning on a weekend, because they are trying to shove a tenth of an inch of snow. Now, get away from the window!"
Girl:	"Why does he keep walking over to his car every few minutes?"
Mom:	"Uh, I don't know... *pause* That is weird... *pause* Wait, does he keep doing that so that he can check his hair in the rear-view mirror? What a freak! Like I said, he's mentally-ill. Stay away from him."

Sounding Annoyed on the Phone

On Monday, I linked to an article listing 50 things that a Chicago Tribune columnist had learned in 50 years. One of the things in the list was the following:

28. Two cheap, easy self-improvement projects: Develop a strong handshake and start smiling when you answer the phone.

Until very recently, I always answered the phone the same way. Apparently, that "way" was by saying hello in an extremely annoyed tone of voice. It wasn't because I was actually annoyed. I think that sounding annoyed is my default tone of voice. If my goal were to get people to call me less, it definitely worked.

So, for 2 decades or more, I have been doing this, without even realizing it. It wasn't until one of my friends started imitating me answer the phone that I got the hint.

*ring*
Me(annoyed):	Hello!?!?!
Bowen	Hello!?!?!
Me:	*pause* I do not sound like that.
Bowen:	Are you kidding me?!?! I should record you the next time. Every time you answer the phone, you sound exactly like a 6-year-old just shot you in the face with a Super-Soaker, and you're worried that your hair got messed up.

This is the precise reason why every time I answer the phone, I make a conscious effort to sound more like a valley girl...

Unhappy Lexus Customer

I haven't always done all of my own car maintenance. I did some of it here and there. But it wasn't until last year when I really made a conscious effort to get up off my lazy ass and do as much of it myself as possible. And like many other weekend mechanics, I am finding that paying a dealer or a mechanic to do the work for you doesn't work very well, because they often don't do the job properly.

We have a fairly old Lexus that I used to take to the dealer for maintenance, back when I was too stupid to know any better. I've had bad experiences at some domestic brand dealers with service, but figured that a luxury brand like Lexus would be far better.

Except that now that I'm doing all of the maintenance myself, I am finding all of the half-assed things they did. According to the maintenance schedule that I found for my vehicle, it is now due for a new cabin air filter. So, I bought one, figured out how to take apart the dashboard, reached inside and found... nothing. There was a slot for one, but no cabin air filter was installed.

Of course, I wasn't doing my own maintenance, so I had no idea how long it has been like this. It's possible that it never had an air filter. I then discovered that many other people have complained about the same issue. This annoyance is just one of the latest in a series of things that have caused me to be fairly unhappy with Lexus -- a brand you would expect to have the best customer service (or nearly so) out of all of the makes.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorders

Yesterday, I linked to an article listing 50 things that a Chicago Tribune columnist had learned in 50 years. One of the things in the list was the following:

34. Laundry day is much easier when all your socks are the same and you don’t have to sort them.

Those who know me well probably know why I found this so humorous. See, I learned a bunch of weird things from my parents while growing up. But because I was living at home, I didn't realize they were weird. Until I got to college, and every time I did anything, it drew odd looks from everyone around.

My parents pinned everything to everything else. Here's a great example: they pinned their socks together, so that they wouldn't have to sort them when they did laundry (or lose one sock of a pair). And that is why, to this day, all of my pairs of socks are pinned together. Every single person who has ever seen my laundry has shown their obvious disbelief that I could be that anal.

To this day, I can't figure out whether I have all of these obsessive compulsive disorders because I picked them up from my parents, or because I am just a weird person. But Heimlich is also very OCD about a number of things, and we unfortunately reinforce each other.

For example, we are almost incapable of being late to anything. When people invite us over for parties, we are those annoying people who show up at exactly the time they told us to, because we are so socially challenged that we don't know that they actually mean, "show up an hour after this invitation says to." We learned recently that we are notorious among our group of friends for being the first people to show up to EVERY event. Yeah, we are those people...

50 Things Learned in 50 Years

On Rebecca Blood's weblog, I saw a link to 50 things I've learned in 50 years, a partial list in no particular order, written by a regular columnist at the Chicago Tribune.

Most are very astute observations. The main thing he is able to do better than I is express the observations succinctly. Like Rebecca, I agree with most of them.Here are some choice excerpts:

• 9. Cough syrup doesn't work.


• 14. It’s not "political correctness" that dictates that we try not to insult others' beliefs and identities. It’s common decency.


• 25. In everyday life, most “talent” is simply hard work in disguise.


• 47. Your education isn’t complete until you’ve learned to take a hint.

Many of them were surprisingly thought-provoking. Actually, they jump-started my brain on a bunch of topics that I'll post about later.

The Gift

One of the other books that I read over the holidays was The Gift: A Novel [amazon.com] by Richard Paul Evans. The main character is a guy who goes around catching employees who are stealing from a national chain of stores. And in the process, he meets a boy who has a supernatural power.

The book touches on the nature of giving, and is framed in the context of a Christmas story. Unfortunately, describing the book like that makes it seem so boring. The key to the book is in how each of the characters are developed into people that you can't help but love. Part of the character development is in the poignant dialogue, such as:

"It seems that the most significant events in our lives happen while we're worried about something else happening."

And:

"Is there a hell?"
"I don't know. I think maybe it's here [on Earth]."

The book was surprisingly touching. I ended up reading the entire thing in almost one sitting, because I couldn't put it down.

Airborne

Right now, there is a post on the Flickr blog [flickr.com] with links to some really hilarious pictures of people in the mid-air.


Amazing. Those pictures are starting to get my creative photography thoughts flowing.

The Game Show Problem

Has everyone heard of the Game Show problem? It is also known as the Monte Hall problem [wikipedia.org]. This is a notoriously deceptive problem in probability that usually sparks fierce debate anytime it is brought up. It was once described in Marilyn vos Savant's Ask Marilyn column in Parade magazine as the following:

"Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, 'Do you want to pick door No. 2?' Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?"

Most people will conclude that there is a 50/50 chance of winning if you switch, but the actual answer is far more interesting.

I made the mistake of posing this problem to my college-aged nephews over the holidays, and now Heimlich wants to kill me because of the length of the ensuing debate.

The solution is counter-intuitive and most people won't believe it until a demonstration is given. We used cards to represent the three doors, and my nephews were astounded to find that they won almost every time if they chose to switch.

If you are interested in a thought-provoking puzzle and haven't heard of this one before, I urge you to read the solution (one explanation can be found on the Wikipedia article linked to above).

Alter Ego Costume Party

Over the weekend, we attended an awesome costume party. Our friends had the idea that everyone should come dressed as their alter egos. Here are Heimlich and J:


And our friend Di:


I came as a zombie. Or Zipper Man. Or an accident victim. Or Tom Cruise. You just can't tell.


Oh, I crack myself up. More pictures here [flickr.com].

Remaindered

• Ohio's the earthquake capital of the Big Ten [cleveland.com]

  "Tuesday's earthquake beneath Lake Erie -- a mild 3.1 magnitude shimmy felt in some lakeshore communities -- was the 55th recorded quake over 2.0 magnitude in the Buckeye State in the last decade."

• Wikipedia: List of Airliner Shootdown Incidents

  "BOAC Flight 777, a scheduled British Overseas Airways Corporation civilian airline flight on 1 June 1943... was attacked by eight German Junkers Ju 88s and crashed into the Bay of Biscay, killing several notable passengers, including actor Leslie Howard." One theory for the reason it was shotdown was that it was suspected of having Winston Churchill aboard along with several suspected British spies.

Akron Pride

Now that I work in Akron, OH, I am constantly hearing all kinds of Akron propaganda -- you know, how every city claims that they invented everything and that they are the linchpin of human civilization... You wouldn't believe the things that the world has to thank Akron for.

The latest one that I heard was the the zipper was invented in Akron -- a claim that seemed really unlikely. So, I did some "research" (which is really just a fancy word for doing a Google search and then believing any crap that I found on the internet).

Here's what I found... A number of sources cite Whitcomb Judson as the first person to try to market a device for clothes fastening which caused two edges to become attached to each other. Judson was from Chicago, and according to the Wikipedia article on zippers [wikipedia.org]:

Judson, together with business partner Harry Earle, founded... the Universal Fastener Company. The design deficiencies [of the fastener], combined with difficulties in getting the machinery needed for mass production to work... led to a series of reorganizations and... relocations, first to Catasauqua, Pennsylvania; then to Elyria, Ohio; Hoboken, New Jersey; and finally Meadville, Pennsylvania.

"Gideon Sundback, a Swedish-born immigrant, joined the company, then called the Automatic Hook and Eye Company, in Hoboken, in 1906. At that time the company's product, still based on hooks and eyes... had a strong tendency to pull apart, and wasn't any more successful than the previous versions. Sundback finally solved the pulling-apart problem in 1913, with his invention of the first version of the zipper based on interlocking teeth, the 'Hookless Fastener No. 1'."

So, it seems clear that the invention of the attachment device had nothing to do whatsoever with Akron. According to this source [about.com]:

The popular 'zipper' name came from the B.F. Goodrich Company [which was headquarted in Akron at the time], when they decided to use Gideon's fastener on a new type of rubber boots or galoshes and renamed the device the zipper, the name that lasted.

This assertion is supported by the Wikipedia article about the University of Akron [wikipedia.org] which states:

The University of Akron's athletic teams are known as the 'Zips,' originally short for 'Zippers,' overshoes that were nationally popular in the 1920s and 1930s... The university's mascot is 'Zippy,' a kangaroo... Zippy is one of only eight female college mascots in the United States.

The above reference claims that the mascot was chosen because the inventor of the zipper (Judson) was of Akron, but I could find no source which supported that claim.

So, it appears that Akron's claim to fame was the marketing of the first products in which the attachment device was popular, and the invention of the name "zipper", but not the invention of the attachment device itself.

Kill Zone

Over the holidays, I managed to read some books. I enjoy reading, but I bail out of more than half of the books that I pick up in the first 50 pages.

One of the books that I didn't bail out of was Kill Zone: A Sniper Novel [amazon.com], which was another one of those great military thrillers.

The main character is a sniper who is caught up in a political battle over the hiring of private security companies (an example of a private security company is Blackwater, which has been in the news [hamptonroads.com] of late).

As a fan of military thrillers, I found this one especially interesting. Watching battles played out from a sniper's perspective is certainly different. The book was written by a former sniper, so it goes without saying that everything in the book seemed plausible. One of my biggest problems with suspense novels is that they rely too heavily on contrived scenarios that just aren't plausible.

This book was something like the Da Vinci Code, only with snipers. Thoroughly enjoyable.

phat l3wt

I almost forgot to talk about all of the loot that I got for Christmas this year. One of my favorite gifts was this box that Heimlich got for me:


I'm slowly organizing the tons of clutter that are piled in my areas of the house. For instance, on my nightstand, I have all of these random knick-knacks -- those plastic inserts for the collars of men's dress shirts, tie clips, etc. And they were all piled on my nightstand. But now I have a beautiful box to put them into, which will keep them organized.

Now, I just need a box about 100x the size of that one to dump my entire office into...

The box matches our bedroom set better than the table it is sitting on in the above picture. Actually, the above picture highlights just how much I need to build that macro stage I have been talking about for years...

Craptastic Presidential Election

I am pretty pessimistic about the crop of presidential candidates right now, but especially so with the main democratic hopefuls, Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton. I recently saw an article entitled, "Does Obama's Win Show US Is Colorblind?" [google.com]. From the article:

"Obama's convincing win in Thursday's caucuses in Iowa — a state with just a smattering of minority voters — demonstrated the Illinois senator's support crosses racial lines and bolstered the notion that America is receptive to electing its first black president."

Bullshit. In my opinion, it doesn't matter whether Democratic voters are ready to elect a black president or not. It would seem to me that the majority of the people who are going to be unwilling to vote for a black or female candidate are on the Republican side.

If Obama or Clinton win the nomination, I think that we are going to see a surprisingly large number of people coming out to vote (many of whom probably that do not vote regularly), just to make sure that a black or female candidate does not win. And if the election is decided upon another slim margin, that could easily make the difference.

Of course, the actual race may be overshadowed yet again by the electronic voting machines that appear to be designed with criminal negligence. The New York Times just ran an article called, "Can You Count on Voting Machines?" [nytimes.com]. From the article:

"For a while, it had looked as if things would go smoothly for the Board of Elections office in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. About 200,000 voters had trooped out on the first Tuesday in November for the lightly attended local elections, tapping their choices onto the county’s 5,729 touch-screen voting machines..."

"On Election Day, poll workers complained that 143 machines were broken; dozens of other machines had printer jams or mysteriously powered down. More than 200 voter-card encoders — which create the cards that let voters vote — went missing. When the machines weren't malfunctioning, they produced errors at a stunning rate: one audit of the election discovered that in 72.5 percent of the audited machines, the paper trail did not match the digital tally on the memory cards."

Car Fuel Economy Increases

I'm sure that everyone has read about the new legislation mandating fuel economy increases for automobiles [yahoo.com]. This is something that I generally support.


The thing is, the last time there was a big fuel economy push, we went through this automotive dark age called The 80s, where all of the cars were crap until the automakers got their heads out of their collective asses. That was the era that spawned the Chevy Citation, the Dodge Omni, the AMC Pacer, the Chevy Chevette, and the Cadillac Cimarron. Need I say more? In fact, it is difficult for me to think of a single car from that era that was memorable for a reason other than how crappy it was. Despite my fanatical devotion to Def Leppard, Van Halen, and Motley Crue, it's not really an era that I would want to revisit.

Even the Mustangs and Camaros were total crap.

Picture of Chevette via dave_7's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

New Year's

By the way, we had a GREAT time on New Year's Eve. We got together with a few friends, and tried not to recreate the experience we had last year where ordnance rained down on us... [fluggart.com]


Here's one of me getting a jello shot rammed down my throat:


Here's D being a ham, as usual, for the camera:


As I said, we had a great time. We saw about 10 too many drunk drivers on the way home, though...

Parachutes

So, if you go here [flickr.com], you'll find yourself at my sister's Flickr photostream. And intermixed with all of the normal pictures are some that are totally embarrassing to me, like the following:


I think the story was that I taped together a bunch of Kleenex with masking tape as a parachute for a GI Joe. You can clearly see that at an early age, I was an engineering genius. I managed to convert a GI Joe from something that would drop like a rock from my 2nd floor window, to a GI Joe that would drag several Kleenex down with it like a rock.

And then showing my entrepreneurial genius, I was going to set up a lemonade stand that sold... crappy parachutes for GI Joes. Because, obviously, there was a huge market for those...