David S. Atkinson's Blog, page 244

Since Everyone Is Busy With The Super Bowl Anyway….

Since everyone is busy with the Super Bowl anyway, anyone that actually stops by here can just watch this:

Sorry, Michael. I couldn’t help myself.

I Still Think It’s Weird That Everyone Is Looking Forward To Super Bowl Commercials

I’ve been hearing talk from people anticipating the upcoming Super Bowl commercials. This seems weird to me, and always has. I understand to some extent, but it still seems weird.

I mean, I know these are supposed to be some of the most entertaining commercials we get. I understand this. I know a great deal of money gets put into these. However, they’re still commercials. We’re excited about people trying to sell us stuff.

Please! We can’t wait for you to try to sell us stuff! Sell us stuff! Our lives have no meaning otherwise!

Admittedly, I’ve specifically watched Super Bowl commercials before. I’ve tuned in to see the commercials even when I didn’t want to watch the game, skipping the actual program. I admit this.

However, it doesn’t make it any less weird.

Why Did WordPress Remove The Spelling Help?

I have to ask…why did WordPress remove the spelling assistance? I’ve been posting on here for a few years now and it has at least been mildly useful. It kind of sucks that it’s gone now.

Maybe this is just gone for me for some reason. On the post editing window, it still will tell me when it thinks a word is misspelled. This isn’t the handiest thing in the world, as I apparently know many words that WordPress does not. Still, for words that it did successfully identify that I misspelled, it was handy to be able to click and select the correct spelling instead of having to retype the whole word correctly.

It doesn’t do this anymore.

Instead, when I click a word that has been flagged as misspelled, WordPress offer to let me cut, copy, paste, configure spelling and grammar or font or paragraph direction. There are no spelling suggestions at all. I have to correct myself, or even look up the word if I can’t remember how to correctly spell it.

Presuming it isn’t spelled correctly already and isn’t just a word that WordPress doesn’t know. If I’m unsure in that case, I have to copy and paste the word into Google in order to merely verify that it is already correct. I could have at least partially figured that out before when WordPress insisted a word was misspelled but could not offer a correct spelling.

I just don’t know why this was removed, or why if it’s just me that it suddenly doesn’t work in my browser. It isn’t a big thing, but it is kind of annoying.

Funny side note, WordPress is one word that WordPress identifies as misspelled.

My Wife Fools Me Yet Again

My wife fooled me the other day. I have to admit it, she did. Again.

You see, she’s been trying to get me to go to this upscale taco restaurant that she’s been craving and I am not particularly fond of. We were going to go the other night, but ended up instead going to a coastal Mexican cuisine place that was really good. Supposed to have the 9th best guacamole in the country according to some thing my wife found on Yahoo. Anyway, we avoided the upscale taco place that night but I was still willing to bite the bullet and take her there again at some point.

So, the other night I figured we might as well go. I called her to ask if she wanted to and she said that the coastal Mexican cuisine place had satisfied what she’d been craving. Instead, she asked, wouldn’t I like shrimp pasta?

I thought she was offering to cook. Pasta is one of the things she makes most frequently and I thought she was offering to make some new pasta dish she’d been dreaming up. I said: Oh, that actually sounds pretty good. I was surprised. After all, I was offering to take her out to dinner and she was preferring to cook instead.

That lasted about a second. I was fooled, but not long.

As it happens, there is a shrimp pasta dish I typically get at a local cajun restaurant that she digs quite a bit. She always gets their fried catfish, of which she is particularly fond. She’d been craving fried catfish recently as well.

Yup, she wasn’t turning down my offer to take her to the upscale taco restaurant in favor of cooking at home at all. She’d momentarily fooled me into thinking that, but she was being magnanimous about not making me go to the upscale taco restaurant so she could sneakily try to con me into taking her to the cajun place that she wanted to go to more. Deviltry.

Of course, it worked.

What ‘Omaha’ Really Means

People have been obsessed with why Peyton Manning keeps yelling ‘Omaha’ during games. Supposedly, he answered this somewhat already. However, I know the truth. He’s threatening the other players.

That’s right. He’s telling them that if they don’t win they could end up having to move to Omaha.

It’s very motivating.

Mind you, I lived in Omaha for a very long time. It is actually a pretty decent place. It’s even colder in the winter than Denver, and much more hot and humid in the summer, but that isn’t the real threat behind it. Remember that Nebraska doesn’t have an NFL team. As such, what would a threat that they’ll have to move to Omaha mean?

Remember Tim Tebow? Remember how big of a star he was going to be? Remember what happened with his career? It wasn’t that he couldn’t have been a real star player someday (and might not still if something changes), but he wasn’t yet…though he was presented that way and everyone relied on that. He couldn’t live up to the expectation at that point, he just needed more time to develop, and bad things happened. He then received an offer from the Omaha Beef to play for them at a rate of $75 a game.

This is where the threat to an NFL player is in the word ‘Omaha.’ Don’t live up to expectations? Your career could wind up with you getting offered $75 a game to play for the Omaha Beef. Better win.

I think we can all see why the word ‘Omaha’ is so motivating now.

The Grammies Apparently Happened Recently

Apparently, from what I’ve heard, the grammies happened recently. Personally, other than the fact I heard about it, this doesn’t affect my life at all. I had to even try to remember what the Grammies were awards for.

As such, I though I’d share a couple quotes from The Simpsons. I think these best sum up how much a part of my life the Grammies are:

From  ”The Mansion Family“ (season 11, episode 12):

Homer Simpson: Oh why won’t anyone give me an award?

Lisa Simpson: You won a Grammy.

Homer Simpson: I mean an award that’s worth something.

[announcement on the bottom of the screen- Legal Disclaimer: Mr. Simpson's opinions do not reflect those of the producers, who don't consider the Grammy an award at all]

From “Homer’s Barbershop Quartet” (Season 5, episode 1):

Bell Boy: Wow! An award statue! …Oh, it’s a Grammy. (Throws Grammy over balcony)

Man: Hey, don’t throw your garbage down here!

I Don’t Know If My Kimchi Should Fizz Or Not

I finally got to try kimchi in the last year or so and I loved it. I was thrilled when the wife and I were at Pacific Mercantile in Denver the other day and found that I could buy it in a jar, not having to wait until the next time we went to a Korean restaurant. However, this ended up giving rise to an interesting question.

When I opened the jar of kimchi after getting home, it fizzed.

Seriously, I opened up the jar and it started frothing over, bubbling and hissing. It stopped after a moment, but I had to wipe kimchi juice off the counter and the side of the jar. It was a bit messy, but it was also a bit alarming.

Is the kimchi bad? Can kimchi go bad? Has the kimchi been tampered with? I just don’t know.

We’re all used to watching for products that have been tampered with or gone bad when we buy them from the store. However, this all depends on us being able to identify these conditions. And, as much as I like kimchi, I just don’t know if a jar of it should fizz when opened. It isn’t carbonated, but it is fermented. Also, this is Denver so there could always have been an altitude change from where it was put into the jar.

Bottom line: I don’t know if the fizzing should have alarmed me or not. Maybe it should have, but I ate the kimchi anyway.

What Decade Should You Be In Quiz Seems Even More Pointless Than What Town Should You Live In Quiz

I’ve been seeing a lot of people on Facebook recently taking that BuzzFeed quiz about what town they are supposed to most belong in. As much fun as wasting time like that can be, I never saw much point to it. After all, I’m betting where most people live in is a matter of circumstance as opposed to where they most ideologically or whatever fit. However, a new quiz I’ve been seeing seems even more pointless.

What decade do you most belong in. (Note, I’m not bothering to look up the exact names of these quizzes. I’m paraphrasing.)

After all, if someone really decided BuzzFeed knew better than them what city they should live in (ignoring where they know people, where they own homes, where they can find jobs, and all that other sort of thing), they could move. They could move if they really wanted to live where BuzzFeed suggested they’d be best suited. However, unless someone knows something I don’t, I think they’re stuck on the decade thing.

Portland is the city where you’d be most suited to live? Great. You can move there. THe sixties were the decade for you? That sucks, given that it’s 2014.

I know these are just supposed to be fun quizzes, but still. They all seem pointless to me and I haven’t taken any of them. I just think the decade one is even more pointless than most.

Comcast App Isn’t Quite There Yet

I finally decided to download the Comcast app so I could control my cable from my smartphone. I rarely watch TV, but my wife misplaces the remote frequently so I thought this would be a good idea. My conclusion? This needs a few features before it’ll really be useful for me.

I do admit, it is kind of neat. From my phone I can choose which of my two cable boxes to control. I can view the guide and select a program from there for either cable box. I can even apparently go through and select on demand programming.

However, I cannot use the app to control either associated TV. I cannot power on either cable box or the associated televisions. I can’t even control volume, either via the cable boxes or the televisions.

This limits the usefulness of the application.

Now, perhaps these features are hidden in the app somewhere and I don’t know about them. I haven’t seen such, though. The remotes Comcast provides can do all these things. I really need the app to be able to do them as well if this is to replace a remote.

I mean, most often if I can’t find the remote and I want to, the TV and cable box aren’t already on. Most times if those two are on already, I know where the remote is. I can turn on the TV by hand if I’ve lost the remote, but not the cable box. It doesn’t have any buttons of any kind and won’t work while off. The ability to select programming in such a case is pretty useless.

Volume control would be nice too.

Thus, unless this stuff gets added, I can’t see myself using this app very often. Perhaps to mess with my wife when she’d watching a show and I turn the channel on her, but not for much more than that. Not until they include the basic essential features I need.

Oscar Finds New Ways To Make Going To Work More Difficult

I mentioned before that the feral cat we adopted, Oscar, was making it more difficult to go to work in the morning by trying to convince me to play with him instead of leave. He isn’t doing that quite as much now, but he’s found other ways to make getting to work in the mornings more difficult. This one? Shoelaces.

Every morning, I get dressed after I take my shower. Then I go check a few things on the computer and put on my dress shoes. Oscar is waiting.

I mean it, he literally comes in and waits for me to put on my dress shoes. He stares, he lurks. Then, as I start to tie my dress shoes, he pounces on the laces as they move. Apparently, dress shoe laces are a much more interesting toy than anything else he has to play with.

This isn’t really a surprise. After all, he won’t be a year old until perhaps April or May. However, it does make getting ready to go to work in the morning more difficult. And, at this point, it’s happening every morning.