David S. Atkinson's Blog, page 216

Uncontrollable Urge To Parody Hello Kitty

So my wife made me take her to the first international Hello Kitty convention in L.A. recently. While we were there, I saw the following sign on the trash cans:

Immediately I had the urge to parody this sign.

I mean, I know that this is just supposed to be a Hello Kitty themed sign asking people to use the trash cans instead of throwing garbage all over the place, but it struck me as weird. We won’t even get into the fact that it appears to be banning Hello Kitty getting mad at rats for littering and will just accept it means no littering. However, Hello Kitty looks really upset here. Perhaps even like Hello Kitty is screaming. Maybe like Cartman from South Park.

Given how easy it is to modify text in an image like this in Microsoft Paint, I had to:

It Is Not Always Five O’clock Somewhere

Yesterday I took exception to someone using the phrase “a broken clock is right twice a day.” Keeping in that spirit, I’d like to take exception today to the phrase “it’s five o’clock somewhere.”

I know this comes from the Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett song, but people have taken it way beyond that. I wish they’d put it back.

After all, it’s only “five o’clock somewhere” when the time is exactly at an hour marker. That’s just how time zones work, unless there’s something I’m missing (which is always possible). If it isn’t, then it’s not “five o’clock somewhere.”

3:23? Nope, at best it can be 5:23 somewhere.

7:30? Nope, still only 5:30 somewhere.

You get the idea. At least, I hope you get it. I also hope people stop saying this phrase.

I Don’t Think A Broken Clock Is Necessarily Right Twice A Day

I saw someone recently use the phrase “a broken clock is right twice a day.” I stopped to think about it, and I don’t think it’s necessarily accurate. I think the phrase is “a stopped clock is right twice a day.”

After all, this is supposed to mean that even if the clock is stuck on a particular time, that time will roll around eventually. But, what about a 24 hour clock? Even in that case, it’d only be right once a day. This still presumes a clock with hands as opposed to digital. A stopped digital clock might not show any time at all, and thus never be right.

But back to the broken clock thing…a clock can be broken a lot of different ways. It can be fast, it can be slow, it can get faster and slower. Without more specifics there just isn’t a way to be necessarily sure when it’ll be right.

I’m not even sure why I’m thinking about this so much. I just get irked by platitudes and couldn’t leave this alone.

I Wonder If Any Election Results Were Influenced By Voter Verification

Elections are finally over for a while. The last thing you probably want to hear is anything about the election, but I have to wonder if the modern voter verification procedures in any jurisdictions influenced any outcomes. After all, there were some close races across the country. I just have to wonder.

I haven’t voted in person for years. I think the last time was 2004 in Nebraska. Maybe 2005 or 2006. I don’t know. That wasn’t so bad. There was a small bit of a line, but it went quick. They checked some kind of ID against a list and you got your ballot. Since then I’ve done mail in ballots.

However, this year my ballot was lost in the mail so I had to vote in person. Actual voting took maybe four minutes. It was about the same for everyone else. There were tons of voting booths open…because the line for voter verification was endless.

I’m serious. There were maybe at most 100 people ahead of me in line when I got there. It took an hour for me to get a ballot.

I don’t know what it is about these verification procedures, but they take forever. They have to use a computer database here now. Once they verify you they put a sticker on a form you have to sign and give you a ballot. I guess it’s kind of nice because you can vote anywhere in the county instead of an assigned spot, but an hour line just to get a ballot when there are always at least half the booths open for voting?

I’m sure special situation people caused lots of problems. People not registered to vote. People who moved. Whatever. Whatever the cause, it took way longer this time than it every has before. I just have to wonder…did everyone wait the whole time? How many people saw the line and just went home instead, or waited a while but not long enough, or weren’t able to get through the line in time before the polls closed?

Some of these races came down to a couple thousand votes, regardless what or who you were hoping would win. How many weren’t able to vote, or just didn’t end up doing so, because of the lines caused by the voter verification? I wonder, and I wonder if it would have made a difference in any of the races across the country.

I just hope I get that mail in ballot next time.

Funny Voting Situation

It’s funny, I believe there is supposed to be a big push in Colorado for mail in voting…that everyone is supposed to get a mail in ballot for the first time and they can just vote in person if they want. However, this is the first time I haven’t received a mail in ballot.

I’m signed up to always get a mail in ballot so I always vote and never have to go in. But…I never received one. Instead I’m going to go vote in person. I’ve been getting ballots mailed to me without an issue for about six years. The first time there’s a problem? The first time everyone is supposed to be getting a mail in ballot.

Funny, no?

Not a big deal. I’ll go in and vote. Could be a problem in trying to mail out so many ballots or in the post office trying to deliver so many. I don’t know the cause, I just think it’s funny that the trial of the mass ballot mailing is the one time my usual mail in ballot doesn’t arrive.

Squirrel Ends Up Respecting My Art

I mentioned recently how apparently a squirrel was going to be helping me carve my Halloween pumpkin this year, but that we were having creative differences. I said this because I was keeping the pumpkin on my back patio before carving and the squirrel who lives out there had started chewing it. However, I have an update. The squirrel ended up respecting my art.

When I realized what the squirrel was doing, I put the pumpkin up on my window ledge back there hoping to keep him or her out of it. I thought I was good, because there was no further chewing before I carved. Then I carved, my options somewhat limited (single large mutant eye) by where the squirrel had chewed, and went out of town. I got back last night and discovered that more chewing had occurred post carving.

However, the squirrel did not attack the face of my jack o lantern. Instead the little bugger had somehow managed to remove the lid, move the lid away from the pumpkin, and chew furiously on the lid. The face was strangely untouched.

What can I say? I guess the squirrel ended up liking what I carved.

Attempting To Distract You

You might wonder where my post is today. Wait…look at this monkey!

(Note, this is not a lame attempt to distract you so you don’t notice that I didn’t write a real post today. That would be ridiculous.)

Facebook Messenger Update

Just as an update, though no one cares, I still haven’t caved in on the Facebook Messenger app thing. I still haven’t downloaded it. Obviously, I’m therefore not using it yet.

Again, it isn’t the privacy terms that are bugging me. I’m sure I agreed to stuff just as bad by downloading the Facebook mobile app. However, it bugs me that they took the message functionality out of the Facebook app where it used to be. I don’t want a separate app. I want it to be in the app just like how I get to it in Facebook.

Petty I know, but whatever.

For the moment, messaging still works by access Facebook through a browser on a smart phone even if it’s been stripped out of the mobile app. They’ll probably close that eventually, but until they do it looks like I can hold off from downloading Facebook messenger indefinitely.

It’s still switching apps to check a message, but it’s an app I’m going to have anyway…and it isn’t what they’re trying to force me to do.

Sometimes I just like being contrary.

Recent Experiences With A Discount Airline

So, I have a recent experience with one of the discount airlines that I wanted to share. I haven’t even taken the flight yet at the time I’m writing this, but I already have issues. I’ve decided to not name them for reasons of my own, but I will say that you pay for carry on and they aren’t Spirit Airlines.

As it happens, there is assigned seating on this airline…but you don’t get assigned one when you buy the ticket. They pick for you unless you pay one of the many fees. My wife really is happier in an aisle seat, less claustrophobic, and they wouldn’t even guarantee our two tickets purchased together would be assigned adjacent seats if we didn’t pay the fee to pick our specific seats.

I hate cheapskate airlines.

Anyway, so we went online to pay the $12 seat fee and pick out seats. We did, but before we checked out my wife decided to change seats. No problem, right? After all, we hadn’t finished the transaction yet. We edited the cart to delete the ones we’d selected and picked two new ones. Then we went to check out…and discovered that we were scheduled to pay $24 instead of $12. That’s right, despite deleting the old seat assignment selection, we were being charged for four seat selections.

We only have two tickets.

Well, we just thought something was wrong…so we did it again. $36. We closed out the browser and tried again. $48. We closed the browser and deleted all temporary files. $60. We tried from a different computer. $72. $84.

I think you can see where this is going. Finally, we called. It took 45 minutes to get through on the phone…that time filled with a hold message saying how we could do all this stuff on their web site. Liars. Eventually we got through. The person on the phone had us try something again online ($96, remember that we still only have two tickets), before finally fixing this all up on her end.

What a mess. We finally have our assigned seats for the $12 we were supposed to have to pay, but it was definitely not worth what we had to go through to get them.

I’m a little nervous about what the flight is going to be like.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

Enjoy the holiday, everybody.