“I think I’ll go with the Tommy Hilfiger dress. That’s more my style.”
“Um, not that I have a style in women’s toddler clothes.”
(I often wonder what sharing my weird observations on this blog do to my internet search results. Considering I was once a search hit for “vibratory stress relief”, who knows what this post will bring in. (And yes, the fact that repeating that increases my hit-ability was not lost on me.))
On my little vacation last weekend (Vegas Baby!) I got bored w/ my paperback book, the third Harry Potter novel. I’ve been having a hard time getting through this one b/c it doesn’t seem to be holding my interest like the others.
So, I whipped out my Palm and started playing games. I realized I had downloaded a book that was free off the internet (free as in beer). It was Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow. I must have come across it because he writes for Boing Boing, a blog I read.
Well, the book was excellent, and I highly recommend it. I’m going to go download and read the first one as well…
But, we may finally be closer to the horror of mouse (mice?) baldness.
Now, we just have to make up for the mouse genocide we caused in order to find out that 300 packets of Sweet N’ Low is enough to kill a mouse (in a laboratory).
(In all fairness, the article is a good sign as to some of the benefits of stem cell research. Lets hope that research is fruitful and unencumbered by politics.)
Would you like to purchase a 2 year service agreement today?
No, I would not. Why? because the darn thing is going to break in 2 1/2 years and then I’ll feel stupid. I went to buy a new cordless phone over the weekend. It was to replace a cordless I’d had for about 8 years, which lasted a long time, but the batteries were pretty dead and would only hold a charge for a short while. It was time for a bit of an upgrade anyway. I declined the 2 year service contract on that item, figuring the cost was not worth it (about 20% of the purchase price). I was pretty disappointed to read the included documentation (yes, I read the manuals, it’s amazing what you can learn) said the battery was only expected to last one year!
Then, yesterday, I noticed something funny in my shoe. I was pissed to find that my orthotics had broken. It’s such a pain to get a new pair, and they’re really necessary if I want to avoid foot pain, especially when I’m walking a lot. Calling the doctor, I find out they are under warrantee for 2 years. Which does me no good, since I got them about 3 1/2 years ago… which was 3 years after the last pair broke… but that was about 10 years since I got the first (original) pair. The original pair lasted almost a decade and some major abuse, but I came to find out that they no longer made them out of that material because it was no longer allowed to be manufactured in the US. Why? Who knows! Probably because it never broke!
What happened to durability?
My mother was an english teacher in Brooklyn before my sister and I were born. By nature, I’m much more of a math and science kind of guy (big surprise, I know). I had a hard time in elementary school writing good essays and learning all the constructs of grammar. But, my mother always corrected my paper and I got so used to all the red marks, that eventually I learned to write quite well. With proper grammar, too.
So now that I’m in the business world, at a company filled with computer type people… it’s a curse. It’s not that the writing is SO bad, it’s that I’m so conscience of grammar mistakes, I have to hold back from breaking out the red pen. Every missing comma, spelling error, poorly formed sentence… I see it and cringe. I have learned not to criticize people, and have to be especially careful because a large number of people I work with are not native english speakers…
Hence, I do the needful.
(And no, I do not check all my blog posts for proper grammar, spelling or anything else. To me, striving for XHTML validation is more important.)
