personal

I recently ordered a book^[1] via amazon.com, or rather, from Warehouse Deals, Inc., one of the zShops at amazon.com. In their own words, Warehouse Deals, Inc. is:

… an Amazon.com subsidiary. We offer open box, refurbished, and slightly damaged merchandise at reduced prices with the benefits of Amazon.com fulfillment and customer service. Satisfaction is guaranteed!

It sounded like a good deal. Getting the book from them shaved nearly $15 off the price, and yet amazon.com would actually be fulfilling the order? Cool.

The book arrived a few days after I ordered it, as I’ve pretty much come to expect from amazon.com. As they filled the order, it came in the usual amazon.com box. However, something was a bit - off. Observe:

Looks pretty normal, right? But wait… what’s up with the rubber band? That’s a new feature. Let’s see how things look on the flip side (literally). Aha!

Apparently, they figured out that if they just replaced a big swath of packing tape with one rubber band, they’d save millions of dollars in the long run. Unfortunately, one rubber band isn’t quite as secure. That is, it’s not secure at all. I’m glad I’m a nerd; if there’d been something in there that someone normal would actually want, I probably would have received an empty box. My rubber band might have even been gone!

Bad, amazon.com! Bad!

1. Using French, for those of you who’re interested. More of my foreign language geekery over here. [↩]

Four days ago, the wife and I were sitting on the porch listening to the rain. It had been raining heavily for about an hour, and it looked as if it might go on for some time. While we were sitting, a black dog with a collar showed up, looking for a place to get out of the rain. We called her up onto the porch, as she was soaked and looked rather miserable. She hasn’t left our place since.

After the rain stopped, we tried shooing her off, hoping she’d go home. But she’d not have it. She’d either ignore us completely, or walk a few feet away and then come right back. We even went inside for a few hours, figuring if we left her alone, she’d head home - wherever that might be. However, when we checked the porch, we found her curled up on one of the chairs, looking at the door. We left her for a few hours more, and while she did get off the porch, she just walked around our house, never going more than 50 or so feet away. We thought this was pretty weird, as it appears that she’s either got puppies, or had puppies very recently, as it looks like she was nursing them.

We also discovered that whoever she belonged to trained her to play fetch, as well as how to take a walk properly (that is, go on a walk without pulling the owner’s arm out of its socket). It appears that she was taken care of, so why won’t she go home?

We’re thinking that perhaps someone dumped her, for whatever reason. Maybe they couldn’t afford to feed her anymore; I don’t know. Her being dumped off in an area she’s wholly unfamiliar with is the only explanation we can come up for as to why she wouldn’t leave.

She’s in our dog pen now, with my dog Gandalf. We were concerned that if we just let her wander around our house, she’d get hit by a car. Here’s the problem: we’d like to keep her, but we don’t want to be stealing someone’s dog. I’ve called all of the local radio stations and reported her; they didn’t have any reports for a dog like her. I’ve walked her around the neighborhood, hoping her owners might see her and say “Hey, she’s mine!” No luck. I even asked a few people if they’d simply seen her before; they hadn’t. I’ve also been keeping an eye on the newspaper: no mention of a dog like her at all.

At this point, I don’t really know what to do. While we’d love to keep her, I’d love it even more if her owners would come get her. But I don’t even know if she has owners anymore. And if she does, how long am I supposed to wait for them to show up looking for her? I’m not crazy about the idea of keeping her in our pen for three months, feeding her and caring for her, just for her owners to show up and say “Gimme’!”

What should I do?

Well, I just had a rather embarrassing moment at the store. I was standing in line, waiting to pay for my things; I was next to be rung up. The guy at the checkout said to the lady in front of me, “You’ve got one more 2 liter of Pepsi here, too.” I glanced forward and saw 10 or 15 large bags of potato chips as well. The checkout guy then told the lady her total: $67 and some change.

I put the 2 liters of soda, the chips, her total, and tomorrow’s date together, and commented, “Wow, looks like you’re getting ready to have a big party.” The lady just looked at me and smiled slightly. She said nothing. Okay, I thought, so much for small talk…

As she was pushing her cart away, though, I looked at its contents. Only two 2 liters of soda. No bags of chips. She had a lot of different things, including a rather large assortment of household cleaning stuff. I looked at the checkout counter and saw that all of the bags of chips hadn’t belonged to her - I was looking at a display of chips, simply situated next to the checkout counter. D’oh.

No wonder she wouldn’t talk to me. Yeah, lady, looks like you’re getting ready to throw a big party with a cart full of Windex and scrubbing pads.

Ugh.

Hrafn from Think Artificial tagged me a few days ago with a meme to write 7 things about myself. So, without further ado:

1. My love affair with RPGs began quite early. When I was 9 or 10, I discovered a copy of Dragon Warrior for NES at a yard sale and bought it for $5. Many late nights weren’t spent boop-boop-booping around that fantasy land of skeletons and green and red slimes. RPGs are still one of my favorite game genres, 15 years later.
2. When I was a teenager, I avoided haircuts if at all possible; my hair was often down below my shoulders. My bangs could cover my whole face, hanging down to the front of my neck. My hair has migrated now, however; I prefer a shaved head, but I also sport a goatee at all times.
3. I’ve never tried any illegal drugs, not even the relatively minor league marijuana. No desire to, either.
4. My thumbs are double jointed, and I delight in twisting them backwards and popping them out of their sockets to make people squirm. I don’t have any other double jointed fingers or limbs, alas.
5. I have the awful habit of biting my nails.
6. I have a birthmark on my right eye which is more or less like a small cataract that doesn’t get worse (ophthalmologist’s explanation, not mine). My eye appears fine, but my right eye vision is substantially blurrier than my left.
7. When eating, I really dislike for my different foods to get mixed on the plate; I don’t want corn bumping into my mashed potatoes, or my biscuit sitting upon a serving of green beans.

The rules of the meme said I needed to tag 7 people, but I must say - I’m not sure I can. Between Hrafn and Edrei, they’ve very nearly pointed to all of the folks I’d tag. There are a few left, however - Liz at LearningNerd, Gordon from One Man Blogs, and Tom. Of course, you three aren’t obligated to do this - but I’d certainly like it if you did.

In keeping with making myself accountable, I figured I’d let everyone know how my exercise habit is coming along. There’s good news, and perhaps inevitably, bad news. But the good news is really good, and the bad news isn’t catastrophic. So:

The Good

The good news is, I’ve stuck with the exercising. I’ve not been exercising every day, but when I started the routine, I hadn’t planned on exercising every day. My goal was every other day, which I’ve largely achieved. Why every other day? Because my primary exercise has been punching bag work, which, due to its high impact nature, you shouldn’t do every day. I have, however, been doing other stuff as well: crunches, squats, push ups, and some weight lifting.

All in all, I’m happy with the progress I’ve made. I’ve not been obsessive about checking my weight, but I know my arms are already more muscular and a bit more toned. At any rate, exercising every other day is certainly a heck of a lot better than sitting on my butt and not doing anything at all.

But, like I said, there’s bad news, too…

The Bad

The not-so-good news is that I’m not going to be able to do punching bag work for a while. No, I didn’t break a hand (though I have twisted my wrists a few times - ow). Last night while I was doing my workout, I thought I saw some small, white particles falling around the bag. A few more punches, and I was sure I saw them. I gave the bag a really hard punch and looked up at where it’s mounted - white dust was in the air. Uh oh.

Upon further inspection, I found lots of those little white particles on the floor. These turned out to be pieces of, um, plaster. Apparently, all of the stress from the bag bouncing and swinging around has been silently taking its toll on the woodwork where the bag is mounted. In other words, if I keep using the bag where it’s at, I’m probably going to destroy the woodwork, and perhaps even some of our ceiling. That doesn’t sound particularly healthy, does it? That, and the Missus probably wouldn’t appreciate the destruction of our ceiling very much…

There are stands available for punching bags, but those run around $150 (or up); doable, but they look rather large, and I’m not really sure where I’d put such a device. There are also wall mounts, but again - I’m not really sure about a location for one, and honestly, I’d be afraid of the whole thing ripping down one of our walls. As I’ve mentioned before, a carpenter I am not.

So, for the time being, no more punching bag at home. I’m a bit bummed about it, truth be told, because I’ve really been enjoying it, but I’ve run out of ideas as to where to put it, and destroying the house in the name of fitness just isn’t going to cut it.

The Ugly What Now?

What’s the game plan now? Well, I’m going to keep exercising, that’s the plan! While I can’t use my punching bag currently, I’m going to keep doing the things I mentioned above, as well as start adding some other stuff into my routine. I’m aiming to alternate between upper body and lower body workouts, so I need to figure out what exercises will allow me to “cover all of the bases”, so to speak - I don’t want to neglect any muscle groups, as that can lead to injury (or so I’ve read over and over).

I’m not, however, going to stop exercising while I plan it all out with half a dozen books and three different color coded notebooks. I could do that, and I have such things in the past, but not this time. I’ll work on the details while I keep the routine going. I refuse to get bogged down in nitpicking over every little thing right now. The primary thing is to keep myself exercising regularly.