Tag Fun

Hunting for Easter Eggs

Michael Leave a comment

Are you still looking for Easter Eggs? Not the colorfully dyed ones. At least I don’t think they’re colorful. Honestly, I really don’t know. I only found one and it was ok. A little color in the corner and the links were in the traditional Internet hyperlink blue, but mostly it was black and white. What am I talking about? Easter Eggs.

See, I’m not a gamer so even though I have heard about cheat codes I never really understood what they were or how they worked and I never heard how video game programmers would hide writing credits in the program. Since I didn’t know of these I certainly wouldn’t know that those who do know call these things Easter Eggs. Nor did I know that EasterEggsthe term had then expanded to include other surprises hidden in programs and apps, on DVDs, and even on Google.

Last week I was reading a blog on Dictionary.com and discovered my own little surprise. I’m sure I remember someone once telling me of Google’s fun presentation when you search the word “askew” but I don’t remember ever actually seeing it. Of course, after I read the on-line article I had to type the word into my Google and sure enough smiled when the page returned was itself somewhat askew. That’s when I began my hunt.

Reading that many Android devices have Easter Eggs hidden in their operating system “about” sections and knowing I have a handful of the devices literally at my fingertips every day I set on a search, an Easter Egg hunt if you will. I haven’t found any yet but I know if I keep my eyes open and follow my instincts I’ll soon end up with a basket full!

Oh, how this reminds me of the days when we’d play every Beatles record we could find backward. Of course back then we did call any found secret messages Easter Eggs. We just called them weird.

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

‘Tis the Season, Spring 2017 Edition

Michael 4 Comments

I’m pretty sure I should have been born the son of an Italian wine maker. Or perhaps an olive grower. I could see myself spending Sunday afternoons on a rough stone terrazza nibbling on marinated olives and peppers and artichoke hearts sipping a glass of wine, listening to Old World folk songs and letting the sun warm me where the wine doesn’t. Ahhhhhhhh.

Instead I have jelly beans and a leftover beer I found waaaaay back in the fridge, trying to find a spot somewhere on the 4×8 patio that is out of the wind driven rain storm, hoping the next lightning bolt stays waaaaay on the other side of that hill over there.BOC

That’s all on me though. I couldn’t pick where I was born but I could have moved if I really wanted to. I chose to stay in the only city in America with less sunshine than Seattle. (That’s what I’ve been told. I didn’t believe it so I looked it up and they were WRONG! That particular proverbially always rain-logged Washington hamlet actually has less sun than my burgh but just barely, coming in at Number Nine of the Top Ten Cloudy Hit Parade with a 57% chance of clouds compared to our 56%. What is the number one least sunny city in the US? Juneau, Alaska. Sorry Land of the Midnight Sun dwellers. Apparently that’s not enough for the midday darkness the rest of the year.) Where was I? Oh, yeah. I stayed.

I chose to stay here where the chance of pressing my own olive oil is somewhere around the chance of me removing my own appendix. Wine making might have a little advantage, but still it’s not likely I’ll be trading in the Miata for an Alpha Romeo and riding it along a strada panoramica overlooking the Baia di Napoli. I’ll just have to keep an eye on the morning forecasts and pick those choice hours when the sun will come out and the top will go down and the drive will be just as scenic. Even if it is of the access road leading to the 27th worst commuter road in the country. And we do better than Seattle there, too. (They have the 8th worst commute. Sorry.)

Thank God I don’t have to go to work in either city. More time for olives and wine. Or jelly beans and beer. Happy Spring!

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

And the Survey Says…

Michael 6 Comments

Two or three times a month I take an Internet poll. I’d love to be one of those people who make $100,000 a year taking polls on line. Frankly, I don’t have 48 hours a day to take that many polls and if I did, even with no life, I have a life. And even more franklyer than that, two or three a month is getting to be too many any more.

I do most everything on a mobile device nowadays. Even when I’m not out of the house I’m more likely to be on my tablet than on the desktop computer – which, oddly enough is actually on a desk. I don’t think that it’s so unusual that I’d rather connect with a handheld device in the comfort of a comfy chair. Yet more often than not when I open a survey invitation polling people’s opinions on “technology,” I’m presented with the error message explaining “that survey does not support mobile devices.” Am I using old tablet technology?

ResultsThis weekend I opened my emailed during one of the intermissions in the hockey game I was engrossed with on TV (and you thought I was too old to multi-task) and found a survey opportunity on “social issues.” The notice claimed it would take about 15 minutes to complete the poll. Since I had 17 minutes of non-hockey time left I clicked the link. There I was presented with a survey on “social issues,” AKA what I think of my cable provider. Such burning “social issues” we should face every day.

Yesterday I did a little shopping and was presented with an opportunity to express my opinion on a truly pressing “social issue.” Let me see if I can present it in poll-like fashion.

People who stop suddenly as soon as they cross the threshold to a shopping establishment, i.e. stop in the middle of the freaking doorway:

[    ] should be avoided with all available alacrity so as to not be made to feel like their presence is at all any sort of intrusion into your space lest you intrude into their space.

[     ] will have their shoppers reward cards revoked and never be allowed in public without a escort

[     ] must be run up the back of their ankles with any available shopping cart

[     ] truly deserve the death penalty

Now that’s a poll on social issues.

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

No Skeletons in my Closet*

Michael Leave a comment

If you’ve noticed, over the past few weeks I’ve included posts about counters and drawers and cabinets. That’s because I’ve been paying more attention to those spaces as I prepare for the annual fun fest known as spring cleaning. Last weekend I was in the bedroom closet. My bedroom closet is about the size of my first apartment and has just as much in it. So I thought it would be a smart idea to perhaps whittle down some of the extraneous pieces there before attacking the disaster it has become over the winter months.

For some reason I have clothes like you wouldn’t believe. Actually I know the reason. Over the past couple of years I have lost a remarkable amount of weight, about 120 pounds all told. Now, some of it (maybe 2 or 3 pounds) was planned but the most of it came off as numerous surgeons removed, rearranged, and reconstructed various pieces of me. Although I’ve been picking up new pieces (of clothes, that is) along the way I haven’t done a good job of eliminated the old. As a result, in addition to the few pieces Hangersthat actually fit I have clothes that are anywhere from too large on me to OH MY GOD WAS I REALLY THAT FAT BEFORE!!! So where does one start?

After taking an entire weekend de-hangering, cleaning, folding, and sorting I have a nice pile to donate, a few that will become welcome additions to the rag bag, a couple that are probably even too disreputable to throw away in a middle class neighborhood, and remarkably enough, some that fit. And still the closet bursts at its seams.

I know I could have avoided all of this if I had adhered to a few tried and true methods of preventing the clutter before it started. Things like remove one old item for every new one bought. That worked well enough when I picked up a new piece here and there. It went out the window last year when I came home with a few totes full of new stuff since I had no summer wear that didn’t fall off me and the neighbors kept asking about that guy with the suspenders holding up his swim trunks. Then there’s the old trick of turning all one your hangers facing away from you at the start of a season and reversing them as you wear what’s on them. Let me tell you right now that I don’t have OCD but if I did I wouldn’t go more than two days before being driven bonkers by the disarray on the closet rod. I can tell you for sure and indeed that I know I don’t have OCD because I made it all the way through a whole week before having to correct that madness. Perhaps you subscribe to the Forty Hanger Rule. Limit your wardrobe to whatever can be stored on 40 hangers. Everything else must go. I don’t know how women do it. I’m just a guy and I have over 100 hanging pieces plus all the sweaters on the shelves and the shoes on the rack and the ties, oh the ties. Why, I have more than 40 hangers tied up in golf shirts, football jerseys, and hockey sweaters.

There was once a time when I wouldn’t buy tires for the car. Trying to decide between tread patterns, mileage ratings, whitewall, blackwall, white-lettered. It was all too much. So I would just trade in the car. I wonder if I can do that with closets………

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

*There’s no room.

Wordsmithing for Fun and Profit

Michael 2 Comments

I just started a new book. Reading, not writing. As with many written offerings, before I turned to the first page of the story I was presented by the author an epigraph. A short Lackadaisicalexcerpt from I presume one of his favorite authors. I always read them. They often provide a glimpse into the authors mind at the time he or she was working on that piece. But it wasn’t until this time, this epigraph, that I really stopped to think about what I was reading. Not the metaphorical, the inside  glimpse, etc., etc., etc. The actual. Why that the epigraph, those borrowed words, are indeed an epigraph.

Why “epigraph” and not “group of words?” Who decided this group would be an epigraph. And how did that person come to that conclusion. We have too many words in our language. Just reading this post you’ll read and at least unconsciously recognize five groups of words: title, sentence, paragraph, post, and epigraph. You could throw in phrase and incomplete sentence. And now that I think about it, question. It actually goes on and on. And on.

Where do they all come from? Not the words. Not in English at least. We know where they come from. They come from every other language on earth. The English language is said to have close to a million words in it. I’m not sure who counted that but the most complete, or as they would put it unabridged dictionary of the English language, the Oxford English Dictionary, has about 620,000 words. But language doesn’t equal vocabulary. And vocabulary doesn’t equal language. The average educated English speaking person knows around 20,000 words and uses but about 2,000 words in a week of talking and writing. )I know, sometimes it seems that I try to cram all 2,000 into a single post but that’s a different post for a different day.)

GraphSo that brings me back, do we need all those words? If they made sense I’d be happy to learn all 600,000 words. But so many of them don’t make any sense. Look at two of the ones that I mentioned: epigraph and paragraph. Both have “graph” and both are similar in that they are a group of words. But when I think of graph I think of a picture.

Let’s concede that “graph” actually means “to write” and see how we’ve modified it with the prefixes “epi” and “para.” Neither really gives a clue as to what we are writing. “Epi” comes from ancient Greek meaning on or upon like the epidermis of your skin. “Para” is also borrowed from the old Greeks and means side by side, like the lines of a parallelogram. So an “epigraph” is actually a “picture on top” and when we call a group of words that come after each other “paragraphs” we are actually calling them “pictures that are side by side.”

TheCatsPajamasAnd if that’s not enough, then we have to use words that we know don’t fit a particular situation because that’s the in way to speak and Heaven forbid we aren’t trendy. For example good can’t be good. Since the time when I was torturing my parents with popular vocabulary “good” has been groovy, cool, bad, righteous, divine, outstanding (emphasis on the out), epic, excellent, rad, sick, and ridiculous. But what did they expect? They’re the generation that came up with cat’s pajamas and bee’s knees. Unfreakin’ believable.

No wonder I’ve been so misunderstood all my life.

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

 

The Hi Guys

Michael 6 Comments

“’S’up.” “Hey” A nod up. Then another. One went east, one west. And the world kept turning. Thanks in part to the Hi Guys.

The Hi Guys are those guys (generically speaking of course – guys, gals, hims, hers, undecideds, too young to tell, too old to matter, too desperate to care – all of those) those guys are the guys that nod a “hello” to a perfect stranger one meets walking down the road, crossing a lobby, waiting for an elevator, or standing in front of or behind in a really long, really slow line – or on the line if that’s your geographic preference.

HiGuys

Drawing by me. Can’t you tell?

It’s just a nod, a recognition that says “Hey, you too are human and we are all part of a team and I recognize your contribution even if I don’t know you, don’t care if I ever know you, might never see you again, and will be just as happy if I do or if I don’t.” Sometimes that’s really hard to do. It’s easy to give that little finger wave over the steering wheel when you see a neighbor taking the dog for a walk along your own street on your way to work in the morning. But to acknowledge a total stranger, no, more than that, to show value to a total stranger is quite another.

Think of the number of times you run across somebody you don’t know versus the number you do of the number you do. (It might be awkward but if you parse that sentence you’ll see it works. Just like the Hi Guys!) An Oxford University study (Oxford, really) confirmed that the human brain can manage only 150 friendships. A simple “Hey, how ya doin’?” can expand your circle to unknown numbers. And make you smile at the same time.

Remember when you were a baby – probably not but you probably have seen babies. When a baby smiles at someone and makes that baby gurgle that only babies can make, everybody smiles back. Even me, and I’m usually fairly grouchy. So if a baby, who probably doesn’t understand that the world needs a little help to keep turning, can make a total stranger smile and feel good even for just a second or two, you can do it also.

So, keep the world turning. Become a Hi Guy*!

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

*I thought of this a couple of days ago when I was running into the store and stopped at the entrance to let a fellow carrying a double armload of grocery bags come out of the doorway before I went in. I didn’t expect a thank you for anything since I didn’t do anything. The door was automatic and wide enough for both of us.  As I passed him on my way through I did my usual nod and said something like hi or h’lo (the local equivalent of hello). He paused and sort of half-turned and said back to me, “Hey. Thanks.” And smiled. A real smile. I thought to myself, wow, somebody really does pay attention to that half-grunt I make now and then. That could be blog-worthy. Well, after I wrote this I thought I’d do a quick search for “Hi Guy.” I don’t know why, I just did. Maybe because I’m getting sort of up there in years and things sometime mean different things now than then. And sure enough I found something. My go to for stuff like this, the Urban Dictionary, defines “Hi Guy” pretty succinctly as a salutation to a man or woman. Clean enough for my purpose. Then I went one step further and plugged it into Google. There I found a link to “Lingomash” pronouncing that my Hi Guy in slang means “(1)Excl. When something outrages (sic) or unusual occurs. (2)Excl. When you don’t agree with one’s actions.“ Well that’s not right at all. Since I don’t have anything else to write about I’m going to ask that if you know “Hi Guy” as this completely antithetical twist to what I just wrote, could you please not tell anybody else. Thanks.

Oh, and one more thing. Some of you might remember “Hi, guy!” from the Right Guard commercials of the 1970s when two guys share a medicine cabinet and every morning they “bump into” each other in the bathroom. They were great. One guy would open the cabinet on his side of the wall and the other would be there and he bursts out with “Hi, guy!” It went on for years and the actor (Chuck McCann, an already well established actor) became known as the Right Guard Hi Guy. Except that in the very first commercial of the series he never said “Hi, guy.” If you should be wondering, here’s a link to it. Hi Guy.  (by Genius via YouTube)

I just realized my “post script” is longer than “letter.” I should stop now. In fact, I will. Really.

What’s In a Name?

Michael 2 Comments

I once read that the two most common ways a person will select an alias are turning his first name into a last name while picking a very common first name (thus John Doe becomes Bob Johns) or picking a famous person’s name then shrugging off the similarity (“Well, this is the first time we’ve had Johnny Carson stay with us,” is replied to with HMNI2“Yeah, I get that a lot.”). The problem with these is that they don’t work well for women. While Peter can become Peters and Jeffrey turns into Jeffries, what’s Melissa supposed to become or who would believe Mary Catherine unless she was wearing a habit. Why I was researching aliases is the topic for a different post.

Well, have no fear. I have the perfect manner for a person of the female persuasion to disappear into the ephemera as easily as her male counterpoint. You probably have seen this since it has been floating about the Internet in one form or another since at least 2011. Everyone has six names. Those are:

  1. Your real name
  2. Your soap opera name: Your middle name + the street you live on
  3. Your Star Trek name: First three letter of your last name + first two of your middle name+ last 2 of your first name
  4. Your superhero name: The color of your shirt + the item to your right (or left if you prefer)
  5. Goth name: “Black” + the name of one of your pets
  6. Rapper name: “Lil” + the last thing you ate

Thus George Bush (one of my favorite aliases (aliai?) becomes:

Herbert Bizzell (of course I meant Daddy Bush (really),
Bushege,
Gold Shredder,
Black Millie (we may have to work on that one), or
Lil Peanut Butter depending on the  particular alias requiring circumstance

So you see, this is not only a terrific party game but also an amazing alias break for all opportunities. Going to a night club and don’t want your significant other to find out. Have no fear Melissa Elizabeth Mainlady of 123 Elm Street, Elizabeth Elms will be your wing woman. Gong to Comic con and prefer your law office buddies don’t find out. Maielmel will cover the registration fee. Yes, the possibilities may not be endless but they should cover almost any possible alias requirement.

So now, speaking of researching aliases…oh yes, that’s a topic for another post.

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

 

Name That Gadget

Michael 4 Comments

Dear followers, readers, friends (and who’s to say you might not be all of the above) and other people who have just wandered onto this but also might someday become follower, reader and/or friend, I need your help. But first, a story.

A few months ago a number of TV cooking shows that I watch and cooking magazines that I read featured bad gadgets. Everybody seemed to want to do their version of the Top Ten Worst Kitchen Gadgets. I didn’t get it. Why waste all that time and space on things that don’t work. It seems to me that most people with enough brains to operate a toaster oven can tell the worthwhile helpers from the culinary dreadfuls.

That being said, I indeed also have bought an occasional pig sticker in a poke. Usually they end up used once, uncovered for their uselessness, and then relegated to the “save for the next garage sale” box.

By the same token there are those gadgets that were once useful but now take up space in the drawer and have been made less useful to me because of changes in the things or way I cook or because new and improved really was. Every once in a while I take a turn through those cabinets and these items find themselves in that aforementioned box though not due to any fault of their own.

However (dramatic pause more than you might typically ascribe to a comma please), there is one gadget that I use with some regularity and I wonder why. No, it was never on any Worst Gadget List and it has never been supplanted by a better version. At least I don’t think so. You see, I don’t know what it is. I know what I use it for but I don’t know what it’s used for. Exactly.

And now, question time. What the heck is it?

thing

It’s about the size of a dinner fork, made of hard plastic, has no markings on it, and bears a familial resemblance to a crochet hook. I use it to clean the inside edges of the beaters from a hand mixer. It’s also handy for cleaning out the underside of a squeeze bottle cap and flicking open the battery compartment of thermometers, timers, and scales. It’s also good for digging small seeds out of small fruits and vegetables, and probably animals if you had that kind of mind. (Yes, there once was a time when my life wasn’t even quite this thrilling.) I would ask somebody around here but I’ve had it forever and nobody who was here then is still now, or anybody who is here now wasn’t there then.

If you know what it is, please help.  Otherwise I’m going to have to put it out at the next garage sale and wait for someone to pick it up and say, “Oh look, a whachamacallit like those people at the rare kitchen gadget store had on display for 43 billion dollars. And it’s only a quarter. Let’s offer him 20 cents.”

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

 

Luck O’ the Irish

Michael Leave a comment

FIFTY-FIFTY! GET YOUR FIFTY-FIFTY HERE! FIFTY-FIFTY! THE MORE YOU PLAY, THE MORE YOU WIN!

Anybody who has been to a high school football game, band festival, or cheerleading competition knows that call. The fifty-fifty raffle has long been a stalwart fund raiser for these and other family-supported extracurricular activities. I remember some years ago being on the calling end for my daughter’s high school band and color guard counting up $300, $400, sometimes $500 dollars in the Saturday competitions pots. But you don’t expect them at the professional levels.

Last Friday I was at the hockey game and thought about buying a fifty-fifty ticket orpot-of-gold eighty. Yes, at the hockey game. A professional, NHL type hockey game. Our local team’s affiliated foundation uses fifty-fifty raffles at all of the home games to help fund their philanthropic activities. To date they have raised over $3 million for local charities. That means over $3 million dollars have been awarded to lucky ticket winners. I wasn’t one on Friday even with the special Luck o’ the Irish promotion of 80 tickets for a $20 donation versus the routine 40 tickets.

As I saw the total pot announcement during the third period ($57,000+) I wondered what the odds were of hitting that. There were over 18,000 people in attendance. If 10% bought tickets and the average purchase was 20 tickets that would be 1:36,000 odds of hitting the jackpot. Not bad when you consider similar odds in the Powerball (1:36,525 last Saturday) will net you only $100. Actually that will gross you $100. You’ll need to spend two bucks on the ticket. Sometimes even I spend those two dollars. With winning jackpots averaging about 100 million dollars, why not. Well, the odds for one reason.

The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot change with how much is played but you can figure they’ll be around 1 in 290,000,000 (that’s million). The Mega Millions is about 1 in 250,000,000. The odds of winning the Publisher Clearing House $1 million a year for life jackpot are one in 1.3 billion (with a B), but at least you don’t have to pay for one of those chances. Long odds but for big winnings. Still, not something you want to bet the mortgage on.

I have nothing against betting. I’ve already documented my big winnings (Confessions of a Lottery Winner, July 5, 2014) and even helped out at our state lottery drawing (Pressing My Luck, September 22, 2016). But even with the unfathomable amounts that are possible out there I think I’ll stick with the local band fifty-fifties. And if I ever should win one of them, I’ll probably donate my winners back to the kids.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

Have you ever hit it big in the lottery? Sweepstakes? Basket raffle?

Five Letter Words

Michael 10 Comments

I was working on a crossword puzzle yesterday, had just started actually, when I was presented with a gift by the puzzle maker. A five letter word for “What you post on Pinterest.” You post pictures, a computerism for picture is image, I-M-A-G-E is five letters, write that puppy down! (OK, so I get a little excited when I’m puzzling.) From there I moved on. And on, and on. After the first pass through on the acrosses I had a handful of obvious answers, another handful that I had no idea where we were going wih, and most that could have been one of two or three choices and would have to wait for at least the first down trip through the grid to be clearer. Fairly normal for me.

CrosswordOn the first round through the down clues I came across another present from the riddler until I started filling in those squares. That’s when I ran smack dab into my Pinterest picture holder so to speak and discovered that one of those gifts was more fit for a Trojan. I left that one and moved over a space and found a similar misread. Hmmm, perhaps my image wasn’t the perfect picture. (Stop it!) It wouldn’t be the first time I encountered a gimme that was anything but. After all, if crossword puzzles were easy nobody outside of the Pyrenees would know what an ibex is.

So I worked my way around a time or two again and came back to the five letter word for a Pinterest post. Staring at me from those black and white squares was this.  _ H _ _ O.  I decided I needed a break. Actually by then I needed a bourbon but a coffee refill was closer so I took that road. And the caffeine was clearly what I needed to clear my cloudy brain. It’s amazing what you can come up when you stop thinking, in this case stop thinking about the Pinterest part of the problem and bring the real riddle into focus. As in a picture. As in a photograph. As in P-H-O-T-O.

And then I beat myself silly for being less than stellar with that one. But then I stopped and thought about this some more. We already have conceded that crossword puzzles are a bit of a challenge but the challenge should be challenging like “what a snake does to its skin,” (6 letters) or at least like “to hasten oneself,” (3 letters). Not a word nobody has used since Fotomat went out of business.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

PS. Who uses photo anymore. Pic. Image. GIF. Visual even. But photo? Sheesh!

PPS. If you’re wondering, the answers are “slough” and “hie.”