Don't trust the GPS

In an episode of "The Office," Michael Scott drove his car into a pond when he put too much trust in his GPS navigator. I knew that some of the details could be a little bit off in the real world, but now I know I can't even trust my Garmin to plan a route. On a recent drive in the New Orleans area, the female voice told me to "Turn right, board ferry." With all the bridges around, I knew that it did not require a ferry to go from New Orleans to Lafitte. However, this damn device had actually directed me away from where I needed to go just because it thought a ferry was closer. How can I make this navigator plan a decent route? In the setup options I had never seen a checkbox for "favor bridges" or "avoid ferries." What an annoyance. "Recalculating," she said as I drove past the entrance to the ferry boarding area. Recalculating is right, you stupid box of electronics. What's next? "Jump curb for shortcut"? "Activate amphibious apparatus and cross swamp"? "Speed up and jump over missing bridge section"? "Increase speed to 88 miles per hour and enter year 1955"?

Telephone contact where

Telephones have evolved from fixed, expensive devices on wired networks to cheap, mobile devices on wireless networks. Our placement of calls has likewise evolved from reaching out to places to reaching out to inviduals. I used to call my grandmother at her house, so my intentionality was calling her house in hopes of reaching her individually or whoever else may answer. Calling my mom used to be like that, but since she relies on a mobile phone these days, the idea is like calling my mom's purse rather than her house. So when I call her I know the call is directed at her personally rather than her residence. That means she might answer while she is in a grocery store, and it means I'll have fewer conversations with my stepfather.

Sometimes, though, you don't want to reach someone if she is not at home. If she is not at home, she may be busy, and you only want to talk to her if she has free time and not bother her otherwise. Other times, though, you want to reach someone regardless of where they are, and it is disappointing if your only option is to catch them at home. So it is interesting to have two options to fit different moods and different reasons for calling.

I can't guess what the specifics might be, but it seems like mobile phones have an implication for our society in the way we reach out to people and where we talk to them. We're often reaching people's persons rather than fixed places now.

The 'at' sign on Twitter is stupid anywhere else

If you aren't on Twitter, there is no reason to use the "@" character when responding to people on comments on webpages. See, before there was Twitter, and before there was the Internet, if you were addressing a written passage to someone named Fred, you would type:

Fred, I am responding to ...

You just type the person's name and then a comma. If you go back in time before Twitter, no one would type:

@Fred: ...

See, the "@" symbol has a function in Twitter's programming, to direct the message to the account called "Fred." Anywhere else it looks stupid.

Senior citizen entitlement

We've heard too much about how younger people supposedly have a sense of entitlement and expect rewards without hard work. Supposedly the older generation knows the value of hard work and gratitude. However, there are members of the older generation who demand their senior citizen discounts at fast food restaurants and act offended when a cashier charges their coffee at regular price. Who has the sense of entitlement now, buddy?

I'm not sure why we even have senior citizen discounts. Is their loyalty to a restaurant worth more than mine? Is it because old people need a break? The senior citizens eating breakfast at my regular fast-food joint would likely rant against socialism and progressive taxes and government-funded healthcare, but they'll do it while drinking their discounted coffee. Sure, some older people are on modest, fixed incomes, but others have amassed a lifetime of wealth and could buy the whole restaurant.

Antivirus conspiracy

What if McAfee or other antivirus software companies are secretly paying hackers on other continents to develop malicious software in order to keep themselves in business? It would be like the police planning crimes for their own job security. It would be like my earlier theory about bread and toasters: I'm pretty sure that bakeries have paid toaster manufacturers to skew their heat controls so that it's very difficult to find the ideal spot between too burnt and too white. That way people use more bread than they need and have to buy more from the bakeries.

Daylight Saving Time never saved jack

How do I get adjusted to Daylight Saving Time? I still want to wake up at 6 a.m. standard time; I just can't get with the program. How can I reset my body clock? I've some ideas:

1. Skip sleep one night so that I'll be really tired and go to bed extra early, and then maybe I'll be able to wake up an hour earlier the next day and the day after.
2. Take a three-day weekend and stretch it out into two long days of being awake for a long time and asleep for a long time.
3. Take a whole week and sleep on the human body's natural sleep cycle of about 28 hours. That means sleeping about five times over six days. Get back on schedule when I get back on sync with the solar day.
4. Take sleeping pills to go to bed earlier.
5. Lobby the Georgia General Assembly to consider an emergency bill called "Eli's Law" that will immediately discontinue DST in this state.

I'm frustrated because back in 2007 I was able to wake up easily enough at 6 a.m. DST. I was all prepared to keep my body on the same schedule when the time changed, to get up at 5 a.m. standard time. But then I got bronchitis and lost a lot of energy and a lot of sleep, so I started sleeping later.

Useless birth certificate cards

Why is it that some states issue a wallet-sized birth certificate? They are not real birth certificates because they can't be used for things that you need birth certificates for, like getting a passport. It's like they've been punking all these people who have been born in their states. "Here's your birth certificate -- Psych! It's a birth card! Ha!" I mean, what is the point of these little fake doll-sized cards?

Phantom mail

My Windows XP login screen always says there is "1 unread mail message" even when I have no unread mail. Where is this phantom message and how do I delete it?

Bookkeeping in everday life

How to record urination in the general journal: debit toilet, credit bladder.

Fax machine advice

"Face down, butt up." This little gem will be forgotten as obsolete fax machines disappear through attrition.

Injunctions on sale

Some people threaten going to court and easily getting an injunction against someone like it's on the shelf at Wal-Mart. If it's that easy, go to Sam's Club and get a dozen. Bring home one dozen injunctions all wrapped together in shrink wrap.

I hate sunlight

I hate sunlight. It hurts my eyes and gives me headaches. I have thought I should move to the Seattle area in order to enjoy their climate which has fewer sunny days. I found this map of the U.S. which shows "sky cover," and apparently Erie and Buffalo are also pretty cloudy. So I should figure out whether it would be easiest to get a license in my profession in Washington, Pennsylvania, or New York, then we can move.

25 Things

The Facebook fad is to post a list of 25 things about yourself. Here are 25 things you may not have known about me.

1. I have accidentally tasted dog droppings.
2. I eat pears (on purpose).
3. I was the first person to go stir-crazy on the moon.
4. I am an expert in men's fashion.
5. There is a portal to another universe on my face.
6. I like to listen to Gregorian chants.
7. I eat chicken liver and beef liver (on purpose).
8. I love chocolate more than I love my wife.
9. I can whistle and hum at the same time.
10. I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU.
11. I am a card-carrying member of the NRA.
12. I am a card-carrying member of the public library.
13. I have a separate wallet for all my freaking cards. I call it my "satellite wallet."
14. I overslept and missed a class trip to Ottawa.
15. I used to keep gerbils as pets.
16. (Reserved.)
17. I like to learn about land use regulations.
18. When I was a kid I drew a picture of what I would have seen if I were flying upside down over the Mississippi River while eating a banana on which a fly wearing sunglasses had landed.
19. (Repealed.)
20. My first memory was when I was about 10 months old. I got spanked for spitefully pulling on my mom's hair.
21. I used to drink a lot of Dr Pepper.
22. I used to drink black coffee, but now I pollute it with milk and artificial sweetener.
23. I have a Glock and drive an Impala, but I am not a gangsta.
24. I have two front yards.
25. I am a debt relief agency.
    

Evil plotting

How to tell if your cat is plotting to kill you -- this page is thought provoking. It says, for instance, that if your cat is digging in the litter excessively it is probably practicing burying bodies. If it kneads its paws on you, it is actually checking your organs for signs of weakness. Anyway, I'd like to add another sign. Today one of my cats was rubbing her head against me and purring. Then she pressed her head hard against my hand, but that hand was holding a coffee mug. I spilled coffee on my legs. She was trying to burn me to death, but what a feeble attempt.

Wheat bread dilemma

The ingredients list on Sara Lee wheat bread says it's made of stone ground wheat flour, and that's good, but it also contains high fructose corn syrup, which is bad. Arnold brand wheat bread boasts that it does not contain high fructose corn syrup, but the ingredients don't specify that it's made of stone ground wheat flour. Which bread is better?

"It works"

The year — probably '95. The scene — the shop at the residence of my friend Kingsley. He and I were hanging out as we often did, and we always acted silly. One of my jokes was completely unremarkable: I picked up the telephone handset, listened for a dial tone, and hung up. “It works,” I announced. Later that day, Kingsley's sister came home, and she picked up a telephone, put it to her ear, said, “It works” — and she hung it up. Had she been spying on us? No, she was not even home at the time, it seemed. I think fate was just trying to amuse us. I hope so. (Or she did a good job of hiding.)

Later in life I became a telephone company technician. I often had to check dial tones. And then later Kingsley's sister and I both went to law school.

Free POP access to Yahoo! Mail

Yahoo! Mail still doesn't allow free POP or IMAP access, but some inventive programmers have developed a workaround. YPOPs! is an application that interfaces between Yahoo! Mail on the web and the e-mail client on your computer. It provides a local POP server for your e-mail client to reach, and when contact is made this program reaches Yahoo! Mail through its usual HTTP interface. YPOPs! fetches your messages and sends them on to your e-mail client (such as Outlook or Thunderbird).

The result for your e-mail program is that it can download your Yahoo! messages as if they are on an ordinary mail server. YPOPs! is a free open-source application. The developers warn that they are not sure if this violates Yahoo!'s terms of service, but I'm sure Yahoo! can easily block such applications if they want.

Visiting extremes in elevation

In June 1990 my father took me to visit the Grand Canyon. The rims are eight and nine thousand feet above sea level, and the bottom is almost a mile deep. We hiked partway down, so we spent a great deal of time at the edges of cliffs and ledges. Later we visited Death Valley, and it was there that I slid and fell and scraped my arm. Fortunately there was no further distance I could fall, being at the lowest point below sea level in North America. So after all that time at the Grand Canyon I later fell in the geographically safest place possible.