Archive for the 'Annoyances' Category

The law goes into effect in 2008 forcing anyone wishing to use a cellular phone while driving in California to purchase a hands-free device, such as a headset, or face a fine. Headset manufacturers and resellers rejoice statewide. It is interesting to note that a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that although using a cell phone while driving is hazardous, “units that allowed the hands to be free offered no safety advantage over hand-held units.”

When radios were first installed in cars there was serious concern that they would be too distracting to the driver. They would make accidents much more common and put everyone in jeopardy.

I don’t think that people are better drivers with a brick plastered to the side of their head, but I do have a problem when scientific evidence shows something and laws are passed based on unscientific ideas to the contrary. Either let everyone use cell phones when they drive or ban their use outright. Maybe it is a question of enforcement. I can imagine that it would be trivial to disguise the use of a hands-free device. “I was practicing a speech I have to give, officer!” Or perhaps, “I was just singing along to my favorite song that came on the radio.” Maybe even, “Well, I know there is no one else in the car. I’d like to be on my way now… filthy hobbitses! They took the Preciousss, but we will show them!” Anything to avoid the ticket, right?

So there you have it. A useless law that will only take away more of our freedom. While we’re at it we should make it illegal to drive if you have kids in your car. Now there’s a distraction just screaming “serious collision.”

I parked in the Institute parking lot this morning like I always do. On my way back to the parking lot at around 4:40pm I was greeted with caution tape completely barring access to the section of the road that the gate leading to the Institute is on. On top of that the gate was closed and locked with even more caution tape on it. There were lookouts all around the perimeter ensuring that no one would enter the swarming bees zone. It was hard to take the signs seriously as they were made using Comic Sans MS. It looked all whimsical when it was supposed to be stern. I don’t have any direct evidence that there were any bees, but they sure did make me mad. I had to walk an extra half-mile to get around the bee warning area. It was huge. I can understand that they want people to be safe, but I think that the measures they took were a little extreme. I think some large signs warning of danger would have been enough. If I want to take the chance of running into some bees then that should be my prerogative.

I was planning on going to Costco to get some of their really inexpensive pairs of jeans, so I was on my way to the car about thirty minutes earlier than I needed to be to go pick up Krissy, so at least I had that going for me. I wasn’t all that upset, really. If I had gone out there with just enough time to pick her up, though, and had run into the cordoned-off road and gate with no time to spare I would have been positively angry. As it was, I was afforded a nice walk, even though the sun was a bit warmer than I would have liked.

When I got to my car there was a prospective Institute student who was wondering when the Institute would be open so he could sign up. We had a nice chat and I was off to get Krissy. I was way early picking her up, but I didn’t have enough time to go and do anything else, either.

Oh well, here’s a nice picture to reward you for reading so much.

A new school year means another round of insanely overpriced textbook purchasing. I’m not buying textbooks; I’m purchasing them. This is in the same sense that one does not merely buy a Mercedes; one purchases a Mercedes. Textbooks are like the Mercedes of books. They cost more than most books even though they don’t really do anything more than other books do. They are in such high demand that people are willing to buy certified pre-owned textbooks and textbook dealerships are willing to take old textbooks as trade-ins against the price of new textbook purchases.

Used book sales generally don’t bring the publisher any profit, thus they discourage these sales with the following tactic. Textbook writers and publishers frequently jumble up material from previous editions, slap on a new forward and book cover and call it a new edition. Professors then frequently require the newest edition of the textbook and the market value of the older editions drops to less than ten percent of the original purchase price. Students then recoup little to none of the cost of books that they no longer want or need. New students must purchase brand new books at higher prices than used books. Why would professors do this though? Many professors are textbook writers or plan to be in the future. Some are given incentives by textbook publishers with the understanding that they will help out the publisher whenever a new edition is published.

More Professors are beginning to feel compassion for their students and are allowing them to use older editions of the required text. I have done this for a few classes with great success and huge financial savings. This proves the point that new editions are not usually required even when professors artificially make them so.

I have a class that requires a textbook costing ninety dollars used at the campus bookstore (textbook dealership). Used books are always a gamble, so I like to limit my risk by shopping around to get the best deal. The class requires the textbook beginning on Wednesday. The bookstore accepts returns for a couple weeks. I found the book for sale at half.com for forty dollars. On top of all of this the first chapter is available for free to download from the publisher. It’s a bit of a juggling act, but when money matters sometimes it pays to use your brain. Besides, aren’t critical thinking and problem solving among the skills college students are expected to develop.

If this whole textbook ordeal is just another test, I’d like to think that I am passing.

This weekend we are making homemade ice cream. We need lots of ice for the task, so I stopped by the local supermarket on my way home from running some errands. All I was buying was a twenty-pound bag of ice. It was surprisingly busy for a late Friday morning so I get in the express lane. I wanted to get out as quickly as possible so I took out four one-dollar bills and held them in one hand while I grasped the top of the bag of ice with the other. The ice cost $3.99 according to the price tag. There was an older gentleman ahead of me paying with a credit card. His vision was obviously not as good as it once was and after swiping his credit card asked if it had worked. The young man behind the cash register casually responded with another question: “What does the screen say?” He was obviously patronizing the older man. This did not make me too excited to deal with this person. After he was done harassing the customer ahead of me it was my turn.

I hefted the bag up off the ground expecting him to have a secondary gun-style scanner he could whip out and scan the bar code with, but he instead took the bag and swiped it over the in-counter scanner. I handed him my four dollars and was ready to be on my way.

“Four thirty is your total.”

“Four thirty!? How could the total be $4.30 when the sign said $3.99”, I thought. So I questioned it out loud. “There’s tax on ice?”

“Yep.” Well, that’s just great. I can buy any food product in the store tax-free, but ice is taxed. Even junk food isn’t taxed. I never payed very close attention to this before, and I suppose it’s been this way every other time I’ve bought ice. I just didn’t expect it. So be warned. Taxes may crop up in places where you’re not paying attention. That’s how they get you, you know.

I really think it’s silly that people leave the startup sound set to the familiar Microsoft sound when they know they will be using their laptops in libraries. People really don’t think ahead and they often don’t care much that they’re bothering others. Take a look at the ultimate revenge.

It’s really hard to eat potato chips when you have to actually look at each one before you shove it into your mouth. It kind of takes the fun out of junk food. This bag of Ruffles that we’ve been working on this week is filled with charred spuds. It seems like you get between four and eight of them every serving.

Now, I’m not saying that it’s usually as bad as this particular bag, but there always seems to be at least one chip that makes it through three or four rounds of the cooking process before it decides to finally follow the other normal chips into the bag. Hopefully you catch it before you eat it, but usually there will be one person in a group that ends up with the burned chip in their mouth. While generally funny for onlookers, the onlookee tends to be less amused, running for the nearest flavored drink to wash the flavor out.

That happened to me last night. It makes it very unlikely that I will be reaching for potato chips any time soon. I guess it’s healthy snacks for me from now on.

Now, where did I leave those mini chocolate donuts?

They smell like rotten coconut to be exact. I know this because we have been attacked by the little things. When you crush them between your fingers they stink. You can’t just kill them and have them get the point, though. No, they just keep coming back. I followed the trail outside our apartment. I was hoping to find the colony and deal some Windex-powered mayhem thoroughly rocking their collective world. The trail led outside our front door, over to the stairs. They went under the stairs on a metal railing that holds each individual concrete step in place. Halfway down the steps they cut across the landing and enter a crack in the stucco. They then appear to go inside the wall and out near the ground on the outside of the staircase area. This trail then continues out toward the sidewalk that runs along the fence near the creek. They follow the sidewalk’s edge for about ten feet until they finally cut across the sidewalk at one of the spaces in between the slabs. They then went under the wrought iron fence and down the cement wall until I couldn’t see them anymore.

I sprayed around as much as I could, but killing workers is truly a futile exercise. While I was windexing the ants’ brains out one of our neighbors came out of her apartment. She and her friend were talking about me spraying the ants. She told me that she had really bad problems with ants last year and she loaned me some bug spray. I sprayed all around the front door and the grate housing our AC and our water heater. I’m going to call tomorrow and see if the maintenance man will dust around the building like he did last year.

These last two days have been record high temperature days, so it doesn’t really matter what we do, they’re going to come in to get out of the heat. Until the maintenance man comes I doubt we’ll have any relief from the recurring infestation.

Well, no, not really. But I did have “It’s a Beautiful Life” inexplicably stuck in my head in class today; inexplicable, that is, until I realized that the words “Change of Base” were being bandied about all day. (If you want to know what the change of base formula is you can click here, but be careful because following this link may cause blood to shoot out of your eyeballs. Thankfully Wikipedia comes to the rescue with a concise and non-ugly presentation of the change of base formula.) But there are more important things to consider about my Algebra class.

We took a test on Friday and nearly three quarters of the class did not finish the test. We got our tests back and the mean score was somewhere near 50%. How could so many students be struggling to the point of failure? Consider this sample from my test.

I got every part of the answer right. The table is correct. The graph is correct. I failed to show how that (1/3)^-2 is equivalent to 3². But the next step was performed properly. Such a simple calculation as taking the reciprocal and squaring it is an autopilot operation to me. I tried my best to meet the draconian “show all work” requirements set by my teacher, but according to her I skipped a step. I guess I skipped it twice, so that’s why I lost two points for a correct answer. Okay, let’s take a look at the next problem.

How? Maybe I followed the directions and used my calculator’s graphing functionality? And insects? I leave off the word “insects” on a math test and I lose 2 points? What the heck!? And these were the questions I got right!

With grading like this I shouldn’t be surprised that I need to get 88% on the rest of the quizzes and tests in the class just to pass. I’m tempted to go drop the class, but I switched the grading to credit/no credit a couple weeks ago, so I guess I ought to just finish it up and give it my best shot. At least it will help me when I take the class again. Oh, and there were some people that learned today that no matter what they do they can no longer pass the class. They seemed really happy about their plight as they grabbed their belongings and stormed out of the class. I wonder how many people will end up passing. I’m guessing less than one quarter of those that started.

U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch says sanitizing movies to delete content that may offend some people is an “illegitimate business.” According to a CBC article, Matsch ordered CleanFlicks and three other similar companies, to immediately stop producing, creating, and renting out edited films. I had heard before that they got around the issue by legally framing it in such a way that individuals were really buying movies and then requesting CleanFlicks remove the content on their behalf. Apparently this method of circumventing current copyright laws doesn’t hold water anymore.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) should really step in here. It would be a great way to get politicians and religious groups on their side for once. Copyright holders have been granted far too much power recently. One of the goals of the EFF is to rollback the legislation that has made copyright in the United States a losing proposition for both consumers and the culture in general. These directors, including Steven Spielberg, Robert Redford, and Martin Scorsese, are arguing the same thing. According to a DGA press release about the ruling, Michael Apted, the president of the Directors Guild of America, had the following to say:

As creators of films, we oppose giving anyone the ability to alter in any way they choose, for any purpose, and for profit, the content of a film that we have made, often after many years of work. Directors put their skill, craft and often years of hard work into the creation of a film. These films carry our name and reflect on our reputations. No matter how many disclaimers are put on the film, it still carries the director’s name. So we have great passion about protecting our work, which is our signature and brand identification, against unauthorized editing.

Is this fair use? According to Judge Matsch it is not. I can’t see any reason why this is not covered by fair use. The discs are bought by the company, so the directors and everybody else involved in the film industry get their money and people who are willing to pay for this service get to watch movies they would never see otherwise. No one is hurt. Everybody wins. But that’s not good enough for the directors. They want everyone to watch the movie their way. Next thing you know they will make it so you can’t watch the movie unless you have 5.1 stereo surround sound, since that’s the way they intended the film to be viewed. What about locking out black and white TVs, or TVs that aren’t big enough? Does this sound absurd to you?

Think back to the days when all rented and purchased movies were on VHS tapes. Imagine there had been advertisements for other movies placed before the actual movie you wanted to watch, which was often the case on rented tapes. Now imagine that the fast-forward button didn’t work while playing that portion of the tape. Sounds pretty absurd doesn’t it? Well, DVDs have been doing this for years.

The directors hail this as a boon for them and their creative talent. They claim that this editing is unauthorized and that the films will now be viewed the way the director intended. Well, what about those movies that are released later labeled as the director’s cut? Does this mean *gasp* that the original version of the film was not the director’s original vision? You mean sometimes the movie we watch has been edited in ways the director did not intend? This is often done after focus groups watch the movies and respond unfavorably to certain aspects of the film. So this means that the movie studios can edit the films in ways that don’t represent the director’s vision. So producers and executives can alter the films for commercial gain, but individuals can’t pay a third party to edit a movie to their specifications?

I think people should have the right to fair use. I think this use falls into that category. This use is especially “fair” because the movie industry gets more sales from this activity than they otherwise would. I know a number of people who own copies of “scrubbed” movies that they would never own uncut version of.

Where does all this leave CleanFlicks then? I don’t know. This ruling was only made on July 7th 2006 and no mention of it has yet been made on the CleanFlicks website. They are still taking new signups, so maybe this somehow doesn’t affect all of their business model. I just hope that they make it through this.

Last night I noticed that it seemed a little warm in the apartment. We were watching a TV show, so I didn’t worry about it much at first. I got up and took a look at the thermostat and the temperature was 76°F even though the AC was set to come on at 73°F. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. The last time this happened things sorted themselves out, but those who know me might recall one of my favorite sayings, Davis’ Dictum (for which I happen to have to reference; I would appreciate any help finding one, though) which states that “Problems that go away by themselves come back by themselves.” That’s why I don’t get all that excited when I’m trying to fix something and it starts working again without me knowing what I did to fix it.

All through the night the temperature steadily rose. I opened up the windows to try and keep things cool. There was almost no breeze here last night so that didn’t help much. We’re fortunate in that we have a fan. It was really humid in the apartment, but that fan at least made it bearable and possible to sleep.

When I woke up this morning I checked the temperature: 80°F. I looked online at the thermostat manufacturer’s website and tried all the troubleshooting tips including bypassing the thermostat altogether by crossing the three wires that trigger the AC to power up. None of this worked. I thought I might be able to figure it out like I did with the Evil Light Switch, but I couldn’t, so I called the on-site manager and let her know our problem. She paged the maintenance man and he was here within twenty minutes. He began by switching all the breaker switches off then back on again (which was the first thing I had done as well) then got to work on the AC itself.

He opened the panel that houses the AC and poked around at it for about ten minutes. Then he put the panel back on, got up, and told me that there was no power getting to the AC at all. He proceeded to inform me that he would have to contact the company that manufactured it and that it would not be fixed until at least Monday. Well, I’m not one to shoot the messenger, so I hid my disappointment in his verdict and thanked him for his time and his quick response.

According to wunderground.com today’s high should be 85°F and tomorrow should be 82°F. I’m almost glad that Krissy and I spent five days in Arizona this last week because my body has learned what hot really feels like and doesn’t seem to mind the current temperature of 81°F too much. I was trying to keep the heat out by closing the windows and blinds, but the temperature inside finally reached the same as the temperature outside, so I’ve opened up everything again.

I don’t particularly relish the idea of being without the AC for the rest of the weekend, but I feel worse for our friends who will be here on Sunday night for dinner and Monday night for Family Home Evening. Let’s just hope they can get it fixed before FHE.