Monthly Archives: January 2005

Tips on Playing Doctor

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My two year old, dearest Abby, loves to play doctor. Wherein she insists on shoving a fake plastic thermometer into my mouth. Wherein I refuse and get in trouble with ‘Dr. Abby.’ However, it’s safer that way because I know that she has no concept of what sterility is, cleanliness is and generally no sense of hygiene. I love to play with her, but I have to draw the line somewhere because just like working 168 hours a week you might be able to do it, but it would eventually come back to bite. I might actually have to go to the real doctor to fix the ailment that I got from the two year old doctor.

So, I recommend the following:
Over react to everything you pretend have. Make a big stink about being sick
Don’t let anything actually get into your mouth.
Don’t actually take any of the pills that a young doctor might try to cram into your face
Above all fake the intake of the item, whatever it may be. If it looks like you got it into you, the world is a better place.
Lastly, don’t play doctor too long, come up with other things to do together, like playing stuntman who jumps out of tall trees. Then, when you get injured you can really go to the doctor.

Bleu Cheese

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I’m just full of confessions today. I’m about to confess something that no one else knows right now, so get ready:
my hands smell like Bleu Cheese. I crumbled some on my lunch today and now no matter how many times I wash my hands they still smell like Bleu Cheese. Since I have to go to the dentist Monday I’m considering taking a large bite of that and some fresh red onion so that I may set a new record for the stinkiest breath ever to be blown in the face of a dentist’s face [that’s a joke, I love dentist, or so I keep telling myself]. I figure that it will match the condition of my teeth in general: poor. I haven’t been to the dentist in some time because frankly I don’t trust them. Not that all dentists are untrustworthy, but that the dentist I went to last seemed so shady that I couldn’t go back and have the tooth drilled and filling installed. The guy’s office was so creepy that I couldn’t handle it.

Worse still the job I had before Alt-N was at a dental supply place that put me in contact with a lot of shifty individuals. Pretty much all dentists fall under two categories for me, the honest and the crazy, cheap, that may be a cavity so lest fill it just in case variety. Sure, I’m a pessimist when it comes to this sort of ‘medicine’ but I’d much rather go to a chiropractor and have them adjust my molars. Of course that won’t help with cavities, but I wonder if they could do that instead of going to an orthodontist. Probably not but it would make for a great movie. Much better than Ballistic anyway.

OK, I’m going to go wash my hands again.

Swimming Lessons

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I have been able to be buoyant in the water for some time. But when I ‘swim’ it usually involves way more splashing than is necessary. In fact, I wish that I was only wet while in the shower so that I could not embarass myself with my, “Holy Cow! That man must be drowning!” approach to swimming. I’m not drowning, really. I’m just moving through the water with the gracefullness of a cow being eaten by piranas.

However, tomorrow I’ll be starting swimming lessons. My goal, and I’m not making this up, is to be able to swim in the pool and not get noticed. I also hope to get some cow-print speedos. OK, I’m lying about the speedos.

Please, Dear Frontier Not PDF

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Dear Frontier Airlines,
I have written several times about your extra-ordinary customer service. Y’all have really done quite a good job. Except I found one thing that makes me scratch my head: Emailing me my receipt as a PDF. What is the reason for that? When I open it up it contains only text and one hyperlink to your web site. Why not HTML, why not just a plain text document? I placed my order online where I used an HTML browser to get the tickets, I opened up the email which could have displayed plain text or HTML email (preferably both for email clients that don’t handle HTML), and lastly, I didn’t want to open up the glut of a program known as Adobe Acrobat. If I was using an Apple I would have without question enjoyed the PDF because of OSX’s great real time rendering of PDF, but I’m not, currently I’m on a Windows machine and I’m terribly frustrated by the slow performance of Adobe on this machine, which has one gigabyte of RAM.

Thank you for your time and consideration of bandwidth, end user friendliness and customer service.

Regards,

Randy Peterman

Gas

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Happy Thirtieth Birthday Dave! You old fart. There’s nothing like getting older to remind us of eternity. I know that turning 27 was hard for me, mostly because my wife started telling me I was past my prime 😉 Now I have to work out at the gym, drink Ensure and I get really interested in certain commercials 😉 But enough about me.

I hope that your birthday is especially bright because your little one is relaxed, your wife is smiling as beautifully as ever and your car doesn’t get stuck in a snow drift. Oh, that’s not too likely there, but the snow is really coming down here.

Tax SoftWhere?

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Last night I spent some time on the phone with one of my favorite tax specialists, my dad. He’s got lots of experience in accounting, finances and way too many other things. “Why?,” you ask yourself. Thanks for asking, it makes it easier for me to answer. The reason for my call was the fact that the tax software I bought to use for my 2004 tax return pointed to what appeared to be the wrong line in my previous year’s return filing papers. What’s really weird is that I think that there’s an error. So, I’ve got to contact the (hopefully) nice people at H & R Block and raise some Cain so that I can get an answer. The issue is that the software says to look at line 56 in one place, line 55 in another [referring to the same information] and the wording is ambiguous as to what information they’re definitely looking for. I’m pretty sure they want line 55 since line 56 is self employment tax and they ask for it on the next page of their ‘interview.’

I know as a software developer myself that there’s a fine line between testing your software and doing quality control. I know that I’ve been responsible for a bug or a whole pack of bugs, however, I don’t think that my bugs had any legal ramifications. If I screw up my tax return I could be liable for those mistakes, not H & R Block. So, word to the wise: just because tax software is easy, doesn’t mean it’s right, double check the software.

File Under Double Speak

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Piracy hits Hollywood in the wallet
OR
Record Profit from Movies

You pick. I doubt that the internet is undercutting the movie industry, the fidelity of the movies you can get online comes no where close to the giant screen that I saw Meet the Fokkers on last Sunday. And if Hollywood was producing outstanding films with regularity maybe people would be going to the movies more often rather than waiting to see them on DVD. Speaking of which, Mark Cuban has a good idea (again) along this line.

Filter Out Certain Commercials

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A Whole Lotta Nothing: Cialis Disfunction: Can we please stop airing special commercials about fixing various penile issues? I really like to see commercials about erectile disfunction, really, it makes me feel so manly knowing I don’t need it. However, I really, really, really don’t want my two year old seeing things like that. The last thing I need is for her to be sitting at the breakfast table in a restaurant and say something like, “I want pancakes and viagra. Oh, and Milk!”

(via James Robinson III)

Better is Better

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I just saw a commercial for some acid reflux pill that made me want to stop and turn off the TV in the front room. It was about how the pill (whose name I don’t know, but I’m sure someone will post it in a comment) will make you better. Their clenching statement was, “Because better is better.” Thanks for nothing pill people.