Category: Deep Thoughts

Next great idea

From the list of things to do when I win the lottery:

#59 Pimp an office chair with hydraulics, chrome-reverse caster wheels, and Rat Fink era eight-ball shifter + lever for controlling seat height. Factory options

  • Sound system preloaded with Santana’s Low Rider
  • Composting toilet seat
  • Neon “batin!” sign

Cross posted under reasons I should never win the lottery, #59.

Silver linings

For lunch I chose the bad Chinese food vendor over the bad pasta vendor. My internals are beginning to convince the brain that this was a bad idea. There are hours until I can deal with this regally. [read: upon my proper throne]

On the plus side, I received a “Get out of grizzly bear free” card in my cookie. Today’s fortune:

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.

“Hey, Mrs. Bear, I wasn’t trying to get between you and your cubs or your honeycombs or your dumpster, or whatever seems to upset you so much. I’m just trying to understand you, man.”

Does not have upper management written all over him

I hate interviews. Not to brag, but I think I’m a pretty good interviewee–at least based on interview::hire percentages. Still, uncomfortable occasions.

But, fffuuuuhhhhhhhh…being the interviewer is orders of magnitude worse. My people battery is completely drained and it’s barely the afternoon.

Nag nag nag nag nag

The smart watch is a pretty cool thing to have around. Except it’s like the biggest nag on the planet. This probably says more about me than it does the technology though.

  1. The default proposed “activity” goal of 10,000 points per day is just not happening. I’m thinking that if this was a smart ring and sat on one of my typing fingers I’d have this knocked out before lunch. But it sits on my wrist and so my watch thinks I’m a fat, lazy bastard. Which I am. So there is that.
  2. Alerts! For the who-knows-how-many-timeth today it has let me know that the Maple Leafs and Islanders play tonight. [Hush, the Islanders are my dirty secret–don’t tell the Canucks.] It’s just picking up what’s on Google Now from my phone and regurgitating that back to me. I could fix that by swiping that card but I like having that card there. Intermittently during the games I can check my phone and get scores in one place. So I don’t want to swipe that yet. Besides, if I swipe that it’ll just tell me that Vancouver is playing Dallas tonight…which is a game I’m more interested in any way. I could swipe that one too but then there’s whatever else Google Now thinks I need to know now. But, still, I don’t need to know this every [sync period that seems to be about 20 minutes]. So, watch, do a little tracking of state and run that alert like a marquee at least. Can we try that?

But the rest of it? Great fun. Sometimes I purposely lose my phone just so I can hit the “Find Phone” button and then do just that. Calling and texting people Dick Tracy style is pretty fun. Managing Spotify from my wrist is fun. I always know the time (weird, huh?) but also the current weather and temperature. And wearing a watch is a cool thing that I think I forgot about when my last watch battery died and I just ditched it for the phone instead of replacing the battery.

So that’s my review of the Toq after having lived with it for a few weeks. Thanks again, baby! You treat me too well.

Yes

You’re standing in the electronics aisle of your favorite hardware store thinking to yourself “I’ve got a razor blade and some pliers. This should work.”  You are wrong.

You’re standing in the electronics aisle of your favorite hardware store thinking to yourself “I’ve got pliers. Maybe the stripping tool is sufficient.”  You are still wrong.

Spend the twenty dollars or whatever for the combo cutting, stripping, and crimping tool. Future you will love you. And in the end you will have saved money because you’re going to get there anyway.

image
Darwin's wire tools

Almost made it

So the blog gets a fair bit o’ comment spam. It gets filtered to the quarantine and every so often I go wading through that slime hole just on the odd chance someone real has commented on a post but got falsely accused. This is the degree to which I secretly covet comments on my blog posts.

Today’s trawl had this gem:

this individual registered with a golden shower tiny team in addition obtained 19 touchdowns in six online casino games as being a receiver.

which I nearly approved anyway because, damn, that’s just about the right mix of creative and funny. Still, I don’t want to be pimping Lois Vinton knock-off uggs and boner pills or what-have-you so I shit-canned the comment.

But, still, funny!