- Apparently, the makers of the T9 (Text on 9 keys) system are affiliated somehow or another with the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare. Everytime I hit 6529 when sending a text message, “olaw” comes up first; hitting the next word button brings up “okay.” I’m fairly positive “okay” is a much more common word than “olaw.” I’m also pretty sure I never added “olaw” to my phone, so it simply must be a conspiracy. (Seriously, though, does anyone else get this on their phone?)
- “The mountaintop exists not to belittle you, but to be aimed at.” I quite liked this quote. Via AJATT. (No, I’m not learning Japanese, but a lot of what he posts can be applied to other languages.)
- To the dear, dear spammers who are sending me spam via my contact form: knock it off. If you’re going to spam, at least (attempt to) do it via comments where more people will see it. Idiots.
Tidbits
Free time, what am I going to do with you?
Ah, freedom – almost. I have but one final left, tomorrow, and then I’ll be done with this semester.
It’s been a rough one. While I’ve always been busy to some degree during college, this semester had me swamped all the time. Through a weird bit of Unglück (bad luck), I ended up in classes which all had heavy writing workloads. It’s truly been a case of finish one paper, start two more. The papers are thankfully done, though, so I can breathe a sigh of relief about that.
I’m looking forward to being able to, you know, do things other than read, write, and study. I’ll be reading some more books, certainly, but books that weren’t assigned to me. And I’ll be watching Stargate. And doing other things that are relatively mindless in comparison to what I’ve been doing lately.
(Oh, and yes, I’m aware of the irony of celebrating being done with writing papers by writing a blog post. I’m a strange creature.)
Someone stole my box.
There’s a first time for everything, I guess. Or at least a lot of things – I can think of many things I’ll never be convinced of trying. Anyway… After years of regularly buying things online and having them delivered to my door (or to my porch, as the case often is), something I bought was stolen. Last week I ordered a new, larger backpack from amazon.com, as the one I have is 1) not big enough to comfortably hold all of my crap and 2) falling apart in a few places.
The tracking information shows that it was delivered yesterday morning, but I was gone until around 3PM. I got the regular mail, and figured that the package just hadn’t arrived yet – it wasn’t even supposed to be here until the 27th. It was only later in the evening that I checked out the tracking, and was informed that the item I hadn’t found on my porch had been delivered. Oops.
I called the post office, and they weren’t a great deal of help. Essentially: “It was delivered. Sorry for your luck.” I didn’t expect much more than that (they did do their part, after all), but the lady I spoke to could have been a little sympathetic, no? Amazon, as usual, seems to be willing to bend over backwards to achieve customer satisfaction. They told me that if the post office doesn’t come up with the package, they’ll send me another one with overnight shipping. While I do want my backpack, I’m going to feel pretty weird / bad about accepting the replacement. Amazon did their part – they shipped the item to me, and it even arrived ahead of time. Why should they eat the cost of another one because some asshat stole the box from my porch?
Update: I assumed right away that the box was delivered to my house and then stolen from my porch, but after thinking on it some more, I’m not sure that’s the case. It may have actually been delivered somewhere else. The tracking shows that it was delivered at 9:11AM, but our mail never runs that early. Usually it’s in the early to mid-afternoon when stuff shows up. That, and I was still home at 9:11 – not for long, as I had class at 10, but I was in the house, and I heard no knocking, etc.
If I were ever to get into graffiti…
… I would probably end up being a bit like this:
It drives me nuts when I see graffiti and I can’t even decipher the letters.
Comic is by The Rut.
One Razor Blade to Rule Them All
I recently changed my shaving routine a bit, from shaving sporadically (almost always ending up with a beard of some sort), to shaving regularly. I also changed my razor, going from a Mach-something-or-other (it had a bunch of blades) to a safety razor. After using the safety razor for a few weeks, I’m rather amazed that the overpriced razors / razor blade replacement packs ever caught on at all.
The single double edge blades are a fraction of the price, and do a fine job. As there’s only one blade, there’s really nowhere for hair to get stuck constantly, and anyone who’s ever used a razor with multiple blades knows that they love to become jam-packed with little hairs. Oh, and did I mention that the blades are ultra-cheap? Well, it’s worth mentioning twice.
When I first started using the safety razor, I was worried I was going to butcher myself. I was surprised to find that the only nicks I got during the first shave were, ironically, on razor burn spots from previous shaves. I’m still occasionally cutting myself with the safety razor, but certainly no more than I did with the “superior” razors, and razor burn has mostly disappeared.
In short: All of us have been had. We don’t need some aerodynamic, 23-bladed razor from the future to get a decent shave. Just get a safety razor and learn how to use it, which shouldn’t take more than 5 or 10 minutes (there are plenty of guides online).
But no, I’m not quite ready to get a straight razor just yet…
