Gravity

Objectively, time is experienced the same by everybody, yet subjectively there are subtle differences on how it's experienced.  I personally experience time in seconds, hours, days, months and years.  Yet other people see their life only in months.  This particular view of time makes it highly probably that they will always be late for everything.  Now it's not impossible for MONTH-ONLY (or monther) people to be on time, just highly unlikely (get your calculator ready - see uncle calculator if you missed it).

There are 60 minutes in a hour, 1440 minutes in a day and 44640 minutes in a month.  This allows somebody like myself who experiences individual minutes to have 44640 measures of time to 1 measure of time for a "monther".  If you could bet on which type of person would be on time, the odds would be 44640:1, which also happens to be the same odds as the Winnipeg Blue Bombers to win the Grey Cup.

But why is a monther always late and never early?  For the answer, I went to my wife who has a lifetime of experiencing months only.  She finally heard the question a week later and I was eventually given an answer in three weeks.  As it turns out, she has no idea what I'm talking about.

The reason why a monther must always be late and never early is because it's a law, similar to the law of gravity and really bad Winnipeg football teams.

Acronyms

Acronyms are used for the purpose of taking something long and complicated and making it short and incomprehensible.  Somewhere along the line we've confused incomprehensible with cool.  There are new acronyms being made on a daily basis, making life more confusing by the hour.  Sometimes I'm unsure what language these acronym-people are talking so to avoid being left out I'll start spellings words in an attempt to be part of the conversation.  "The W.E.A.T.H.E.R. says that there's a chance of S.N.O.W. tomorrow."

The city of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan has a north side and a south side.  The south side commonly called south hill is generally only seen when a driver makes a wrong turn leaving KFC and gets trapped going southbound on a one way street.  The driver then returns back to the north side of town and purchases a GPS device so such an event won't happen again.  A few years ago, the people of south hill decided that they wanted to get some people over to their side of the city and breathe some life into the businesses business, Family Pizza or FP, on that side of town.

The plan was to have an entire weekend dedicated to the south hill.  Since they live south of the bridge connecting the north and south side of the city it was suggested to call the event "South Of The Bridge Days".  Only two people attended the meeting, real-life BFFs, and this name was quickly agreed upon.  Wanting to make the event sound cool and appeal to a younger demographic, while saving printing costs all at the same time, an acronym was put on a huge banner.  It proudly declared "SOB Days", greeting whoever makes a wrong turn out of KFC.  After receiving a "big crunch combo", I accidently made the wrong turn and was greeted by this "SOB Days" sign.  Expecting to get empty beer bottles thrown at my car or have somebody pick a fight, I decided to quickly turn around and go back to the more civilized north side.  But remembering the Family Pizza, I thought, "Why not see if they have a promotion on for SOB days?"  It turns out that the only business on south hill decided not to participate in the event but there was at least a dozen balloons decorating a street lamp post or so I'm told that there was until some SOB stole them A.L.L.

Names

Names are more contagious than injuries in baseball.  It doesn't matter if it's the name of a store or a person's name.  Once a name is given, expect similarity to follow suit.  If you're hungry for a burger, you could go to Burger King, Burger Flame, Burger Cabin or Burger Fuel.  That actually sounds more like the days of the week to me or more specifically a friday night but the point is that they all just have the name burger followed by a noun.

Then there's the companies that name their business after the street that they are on.  This kind name is the most addictive of them all.  Businesses that find themselves on these kind of streets are given the choice of naming their business after the street or move to a different street.  These streets are very powerful often holding prominent positions within municipal, provincial and federal government.

In an attempt to stop this, a local business "687 Takeaways" tried to leave their street name out of their address.  However, not fully understanding the exponential law of business names, soon other business started following the trend.  Now there's 587 takeaways, 543 bakery, 843 clock repair and 444 printing.  These numbered businesses are refusing to cooperate with the street-named businesses, which have created a bunch of confused people driving around unable to find anything and even forcing a small group of people to actually cook their own meals eat at home.  Why not vote for an actual person in the upcoming election instead of a street to start solving these problems?  I might but right now my vote is leaning toward a broom or possibly a mop to clean this mess up.

Critic

There are some jobs out there that everybody wants.  A lot of those dream jobs end with the word critic. There's film critic, book critic, art critic,  video game critic and food critic.  This got me thinking, why not become one of these critics?  Then I realized, why would I want to limit myself to criticize just one thing when I would prefer to criticize everything?

Now the title of "critic" alone would be great but as soon as you add a suffix to the end it's just a way of limiting the things that you can complain about.  Think of all things that your opinion would no longer be valid for.  "What do you know about politics, Nick, you're just a food critic?"  I couldn't even watch a football game with my friends anymore.  "Oh look.  Mr. Book Critic thinks he knows about sports now too; it must be nice being a nerdler-know-it-all."  Now in all honesty, I hear those complaints already, just without the term food critic or book critic on the end.  But why should I add fuel to the fire?

I've been told by my wife that the purpose of a critic is to judge the merit of something and not merely criticize it.  However, I feel that the title of "critic" affords one the right to criticize if thats what he or she want to do.  I'm not entirely certain that everything that I'm saying is a criticism either.  Is it my fault that I thought the ice cream was way too cold and that the sky's too blue?

Wood Grain

The idea behind veneer is that you cover up a cheep wood with a thin layer of nicer more expensive wood.  My mom used the veneer philosophy with t-shirts when I was growing.  She would buy cheap multi-packs of plain white shirts then proceed to paint various brand names and logos onto the shirts.  To be fair, my mom has an incredible talent for painting and drawing.  Nobody at school ever knew that the "Guess" shirt I was wearing was actually just a veneer hiding a plain shirt recently purchased from Zellers.

Wood veneers are not new.  They've been around for hundreds of years.   In the '70s, plastics started being produced.  The goal with plastic at the time was to try and make it look like wood .  Soon plastic wood veneers started showing up on everything from televisions to tables.  This happened until the '80s, when somebody realized that not everything had to look like wood and plastic could simply be a solid color.

Eventually something cheaper will replace plastic.  We'll be so accustomed to plastic that we wont be able to simply get rid of it.  To fill the transition period the new product will have to be made to look like plastic.  "That looks exactly like a plastic wood grained veneer, I would have never guessed that it wasn't plastic."   Why not start collecting all of those future plastic antiques now?  I would but I'm in the middle of a law suit from wearing one of the shirts that my mom made me.   Something about copywrite infringement involving a maximum $250,000 fine and up to 7 years in prison.

Offensive Playbook

I never thought that I would say this pre-invention of a time machine "the Saskatchewan Roughriders have just won first place in the western division".  Actually, they tied for first place and then won the game of rock-paper-scissors over Calgary.  Luckily, Calgary has become predictable always picking rock, allowing us to pick up an easy win by simply selecting paper.  Calgary wanted a best 2 out of 3 but rules are rules.

The Roughriders haven't finished in first place since 1976.  Considering that there are only 4 teams in the division thats 6.5 times less than they would have if the league had in 1977 adopted the proposed sharing of victories to encourage cooperation and generosity among the younger and more impressionable fans.  I can see the reasoning for voting against such a proposal at the time but history has proved that decision wrong.

I've gone over some game tape of past roughrider seasons.  My goal was to find out why there have been so few 1st place finishes in the franchise's history.  I'm not a football expert, but I do believe that when your offensive playbook only consists of three plays (run, pass, punt) it makes it very difficult to put together a winning season.  This kind of offense relies heavily on shut-out defense that produces turnovers within field goal range and consistent punt returns for touchdowns.  Why not change up the playbook this Sunday?  Because Calgary always picks rock.

Hover Mower

Mowing the lawn can be extremely dangerous at the best of times.  To help kids become more responsible, we put them in charge of an inverted helecopter that can cut off their limbs or anyones around them with one missed step.  I'm just wondering who was teaching my parents responsibility while I was out cutting the grass?  

I first learned how to mow when I was 9 years old.  At the time, I was a little over 4 feet tall.  That means the push handle was parallel to the top of my head.  I was definitely not tall enough to go on the ride but that didn't stop my dad from teaching me.  By teaching me, I mean he would start the mower.  Mowing the lawn really isn't that difficult, but imagine the mower being 6 feet tall and weighing the same as you.

So obviously the problem is that the mower's just too big and heavy for a kid until they are at least 12 years of age.  That problem has been solved by the good people at Flymo.  They have invented a mower that hovers above the lawn making it virtually weightless.  Now kids as young as 5 or 6 will be able to get out and risk injury via the lawnmower.  Why not starting learning responsible when your younger rather live to learn about it when your older?

Cat Videos

You could search for anything on YouTube and no matter what, it will yield at least one cat video.  Soon, nobody will able to load anything new to YouTube because the servers will be full of cat videos.  Imagine all of the important videos of...  okay I'm really not sure what the point of YouTube is, but there won't be any room for it.  This will cause a new rule to be put in place banning the upload of any new cat videos.  Once the new servers are in place and there is room for new uploads I doubt the rule will stop the cat video unloaders, due to their unquenchable thirst for putting videos of cats on the Internet.  They will just invent code words for cat to avoid the video from being flagged.

Why not market next years model of video cameras on their usefulness towards cat videos?  That's all video cameras are ever really used for anyway.  "This model here works well for young cats.  It has a very fast shutter enabling you catch your cat in full-sprint running up the stairs without getting any motion blur.  This particular model works great Persian whites.  The contrast level is specifically suited for the snow white color tone.  This model is perfect for black cats.  Unlike the previous model, this one pulls the contrast back and increases the brightness, enabling you see your cat even in low light situations.  This allows you to film your cat at night when it's most active."  They would make a fortune.

I have thrown my hat into the ring and have started up a cats-only videographer company.  Basically, I show up with a camera and videotape your cat.  Then I post the video directly on to YouTube.  So far, I've upload a five-minute video called "cat sleeping" and another five-minute gem called "cat napping".  They weren't paying gigs but I'm hoping that the free promotion will parlay itself into dollars soon.

Oil Light

Can you imagine installing a fire detector that only turns on after your house has burned down?  Or a home alarm that alerts you to the intrusion once a burglar leaves your house?  You know what would be really handy?  A reading light that would only turn on during the day.  Better yet, a traffic light that did not let you know what colour it was until after you passed through the intersection.  They really need to come out with something that informs you after the fact that the engine in your car has been wrecked.  Oh wait, that one already exists!  It's called the low oil light.  


Somehow, my car expects me to have my seat belt on immediatly after opening the door.  It will give me a stern talking to if I leave the lights on after taking the key out of the ignition.  Countless hours have been spent by some dummy, inventing those irritating locks that automatically unlock themselves if you don't hold the handle up while you close the door.  But who thought up the oil gauge?  It works by letting you know that your oil pressure is to low to safely drive your car without damaging the engine.   To warn you of the impending end of the car's usefulness as a method of transportation, a picture of a boat that has some water dripping off the front appears followed by a pleasant intermittent ding. 


By the time the oil pressure gauge light comes on, it's already too late.  Why not give the driver a bit of warning so that you can pull over, and save your engine, before losing total oil pressure?  Then, install a real warning system once it hits the danger zone.  The car should disable the stereo controls and start blasting "MMMBop" by Hanson, thereby forcing you to pull over and turn the car off simply to make it stop.  Unless of course, you're a burglar and the idea of an alarm that only turns on after you've left the house is very appealing.

VHS, DVD, HDTV and Blu-ray

When DVDs first came out, there would be an ad just before the preview promoting the great new technology of the digital video disc.  It would have a great looking picture on half of the screen and then this totally blurry picture on the other side.  Of course, the ad was captioned "DVD" on the clear side and "VHS" on the blurry side for obvious comparison.  I remember thinking, "Wow, that DVD picture looks great!  It's too bad I don't own a DVD a player and I have to watch this movie on my blurry-looking VHS."

This ad was obviously placed toward stupid people like myself, who weren't smart enough to realize that we were watching the amazing picture and sound of the DVD on a VHS tape.  I'm pretty sure that somebody was messing around in the editing suite with a new "blurry filter" plug-in he just got and applied the effect to half the screen while leaving the over half unaffected.  As a joke he wrote DVD on the normal half and VHS on the blurry half.  Just then, his boss came in but he wasn't quick enough to switch the screen back to the project they were supposed to be working on.

After a stunningly successful campaign, the big brains realized that nobody was wise to their advertising trickery.  So when HD TVs came out, they brought the same thing into the big box store.  Half the screen is blurrier than bigfoot and the other half's showing stunning coastlines from a helicopter.  Still, I can't believe that I watch that blurry mess at home.  The sign says "High Definition" vs "Standard Definition" and I have standard definition at home so that must be how my TV looks.  "It's funny how I never noticed it before," I remember thinking as a carried my new TV out of the store.

I just rented a DVD, and you guessed it...  There was a commercial before the previews that split my TV in half.  One side showed me the crappy picture that I watch all my DVDs on and the other side showed a brilliant looking picture that I could see only if I buy a Blu-ray player.  It saddened me to think that I was going to have to watch the movie on crappy DVD.  Why not just keep watching movies on DVD?  Because Blu-ray looks so much better - I saw it with my own eyes on the last DVD I rented.

Post Card

The following was my attempt to make my Grandpa Lamb think that I had gone crazy.  I've been living in New Zealand for the past 10 months (moved from Canada) so I wrote him a postcard trying to talk as much Kiwi slang as possible.

Giday Mate!  It's spring here which means there are heaps of fresh fruit and vege.  The kumara and passion fruit are especially choice.  Driving over here can be a bit dodgy on the metal roads.  It's good as if you can stay off the footpaths.  We pay the rent for our flat every fortnight instead of monthly.  The scenery is great especially up in the wop-wops.  Just be sure to pack some hokey pokey in the chilly bin if your going on a tramp.  It makes a great snack with a couple of bangers fresh off the barbie.  Our car got stolen by a hoon right in front of the bach.  It was just a bog-standard with not many horses under the bonnet and no gold in the boot.  I got to go take out the rubbish without a whinge.  Love you heaps.  Cheers.

Shoes

Adults didn't play video games when I was a kid. Video games were a toy and once you reached a certain age you would move onto more important things... like watching tv, doing puzzles and trying to remember that persons name who used to live down the street.

Video games were released on a schedule revolving around the winter and summer olympics. If you didn't like the game that had just come out you had to wait two years until the next one came out or get back in line for "Pong". To my parents a video arcade game as they called them was something you did until the shuffle table was free or as a warm up for bumper pool. If you have a spare hour I dare you to ask my dad about the time the pinball machine was broken and he was forced to play "Night Driver".

All of this to say I've started to see an alarming number of kids wearing roller shoes. They are actual shoes with wheels on them that parents give their kids to make them think walking is now fun. Getting grocery's, taking out the garbage, mowing the lawn, going inside the Burger King because drive thru line was too long are all jobs now being done by kids wearing roller shoes. They are everywhere. I wonder if these kids will grow up and keep wearing their roller shoe's the way adults now play video games. Eventually people won't remember how to walk, which really isn't very different from how I still can't remember the guy's name who used to live down the street.

Umbrella

Rain has a very good friend called wind with which it almost always travels. Wind presents two major problems when it comes to the umbrella. The first being that you still get wet because rain doesn't travel straight down, contrary to its appearance in comic books. The other problem is that the wind gusts will actually cause you to stumble around, giving the appearance of intoxication. So now you are tottering around with a flying projectile that has a sharp pointy tip.

If, by some random chance, you make it to your destination not having:

A. Been propelled by your umbrella into oncoming traffic.
B. Poked out an old lady's eye who was waiting for the bus.
C. Had it do the inside out thing that all umbrella's like to do.
D. Been voted off the street because your taking up more room than the guy who's walking three dogs at the same time.

Now that you have made it to your destination you must stand outside in the rain and make the judgment call of whether the umbrella will actually fit through the door. If it's a single door, then you will never fit your umbrella through without tilting it on an angle causing water to drip all over you. Now if it's a double door, the proceedings will inevitably look like a scene from an old silent movie.

Defying all odds, you have gotten into a building without getting wet using an umbrella. All you have to do is put it away. Have you ever closed an umbrella that's still over your head? All that water that you have been keeping off your body gets released onto you from some hidden reservoir built into the top of all umbrella's. There's a trick that I have seen done by holding the umbrella away from you with outstretched arms and close it with the tip pointing towards the ground. These are the people that I call professional umbrella users. Wanting to be like the professionals, I tried that same technique only to have the umbrella jam, causing an involuntary reflex to bring the umbrella over my head again to inspect the malfunction. After closing the hinge, the umbrella proceeded to close swiftly over my head followed by an indoor rainfall, defeating the whole purpose of using such a terrible contraption.

Why not just leave the umbrella at home? Trust me on this one, I always do.

Google

It's time relax and look up some useless facts on the internet.  Let's see I'm at google, now I only need to think of something to search for.  Here's a list of the most popular google search's in Canada for 2008.  

1. facebook
2. youtube
3. lyrics
4. weather
5. games
6. google
7. hotmail
8. yahoo
9. map
10. canada

I can hear the conversation between me and my wife now.  "Nick, what are you doing on the computer.  "I'm looking up google". 

"You mean your using google to search".  

"No, I'm looking up google on google".  

"Why"?  That's when the conversation would get awkward because I'm really not sure why I'm looking up google on google.  I guess it seemed more interesting than map or lyrics.  

Nobody's really looking up anything on the internet.  Why are we searching for generic lyrics.  No song it particular I just want to know some lyrics.  I have always considered google to be an index for this giant encyclopedia of information.  It turns out to be nothing more than a barometer showing how stupid we really are.  Why not look up something useful on google?  Because I'm to busy using it to search for yahoo.

Postal

The best part about the postal service is that everybody complained so much when the price of stamps kept going up by 2 cents every year that they made a stamp that never loses it's value.  This stamp will always be worth the amount needed to send a letter.  It's actually the safest place to put your money because it's guaranteed to rise equally with inflation.  RRSP, property, stock's, mutual funds... Those are all for sucker's; I've got my retirement fund all tied up in permanent stamps.


I'm really glad that I don't have to negotiate with the postal service because they would clearly have the advantage.  I would like to send this letter from Auckland to Christchurch.  Yes, I am aware that's over 1000km.  Of course, I know there is also a three hour ferry ride necessary just to get there.  Yes, I am also aware that fuel cost's $1.80 a liter.  Let's see you want me to make an offer.  Hmmmm...  I don't know, $200 sounds fair to me.  Before long, they would have me up to $300, realizing I had no alternative other than driving it there myself.


In reality, they only want 50 cents to mail my letter.  Why not put the post office in charge of the space program?  They would have a postal outlet setup between mars and the moon in under a year.  But it wouldn't take long for the people on Mars to complain that those permanent stamps they bought on earth weren't being honored in space.  I would just be happy to send a post card to Guy Laliberte for $5.  

Pro Athlete

The dream of every elite pro athlete is to retire after winning a championship while they are still a first rate player. On the other hand there are a lot of pro athletes that love the game and want to play it as long as they can and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. They will bounce around from team to team hardly getting any playing time but still hanging around the game they love. Most of these players hope to transition into coaches. Helping out the younger players in a mentoring role is a great way to achieve this.

Not me. I consider myself one of the greats in my sport and a real professional that wants to go out on the top of my game. My worst nightmare would be being remembered as the person who had a good run but was a shadow of their former self in the latter years of his career. Why not play a second game of scrabble against my wife? Because I won the first game!

Upon victory I quickly realized that I would never be able to repeat. My brain has a governor on it that limits me to focusing on 3 and 4 letter words. Sometimes I'll add an "s" or "er" and take the points of the larger word but usually those words weren't my original creation. You can tell that I've being playing scrabble because the board usually consists of either tools or things that I can actually see around me such as saw, sander, cup, lamp, shoe. How I won the game I'm not entirely sure. Cat on triple word score does add up I discovered. Maybe someday I'll put my title on the line but for now I'm 99.9% sure I'll stay retired.

Car Battery

My previous post got me thinking about car battery's and how we boost them.  Why not have a smaller second battery inside your car that can be used to boost your car in an emergency?

Lets pretend that I had job that was actually important and beneficial to society, say a doctor and I left my lights on all night.  I get up to go to work and my battery's dead.  Okay maybe that's a bad example because a doctor would drive a new car which would turn off the lights automatically.  How about this doctor's driving a courtesy car because their car's in the shop.  Plus it's the middle of winter and they didn't want to take out their summer car, I mean my summer car.  The sick people of the world are depending on me to help them get healthy again.

Instead of waiting at least an hour for the tow truck to come and give me a boost I just flip a switch inside the car that draws power from the backup battery and away I go.  It's also a win for the tow truck companies because they will just make up the lost revue from car boosts by charging more for a tow and do less work at the same time.  Then once they've established their new towing rates people like myself will soon start to leave the switch on and drain the second battery, gaining back all their previous clients.  I see a future post wondering why not a switch that automatically flips back to the main battery once the car's been started.

Forgetfulness

I forget things all the time.  I'm an equal opportunist with my forgetfulness.  It doesn't matter if it's for myself,  somebody else or the grocery list.  By that, I mean the whole grocery list.  I'm great at remembering to make a grocery list but it rarely finds it's way to the store with me.  If I do remember to bring it with me, the only thing that list does is double the amount of time that I'll spend there. Because how am I supposed to remember to bring a pen to check things off the list?  The problem is the items on the list don't line up exactly with the layout of the store.  I'm presented with two options.  Use my fingernail to try and scratch the item off the list, which turns into a big game of memory trying to remember what's still on the list and what's in the cart.  Or sequentially work my way down the list.  I'll end up passing by the banana's three times, wondering why my wife couldn't put the bananas, oranges, apples and grapefruit together.

Yet, certain mundane acts go by without ever being forgotten.  I have never heard anybody say "I can't believe I left the shower running all day long.  That's the second time this week!"  Could you imagine forgetting to turn the lawnmower off?  "There goes the neighbor cursing up a storm because he left the mower running again for over a hour."  Or the how about leaving the vacuum cleaner on.  "What's that noise coming from the closet?  Silly me, I must have forgot to turn off the vacuum when I put it away."

Sadly, I see the trend of forgetfulness increasing in my life.  I don't think that I could remember to turn off my headlights everyday for an entire year.  Up to this point in my life, I haven't successful reached this goal.  To combat this, I purchased one of those portable car boosters.  It's saved me a couple of times.  The only problem is that I took it in to charge up the battery one night and forgot it in the house.  Why not look at the bright side?  Soon, I'll have forgotten all about it.

Stupid

I really hate being stupid!  It's no fun at all, take my word for it.  I'll have conversations with my wife and have no clue what she's talking about because she's using words like incredulous or superfluous.  See, your thinking what kind of idiot doesn't know what those words mean, that's exactly what I'm talking about.

"Nick that was really incredulous of you to return the toaster after you broke it".  First off I don't think that I broke it.  The manufacturer should have had a label saying not dishwasher safe.  Secondly I believe it was mearly a coincidence that it stopped working, while still under warranty I should add around the same time of my ingenious cleaning method.  Now a smart person would know how to respond to my wife's statement.  A person of average intelligence would simply ask what the word means and move on.  A stupid person like myself pretends they know what the words means and then adds it to their vocabulary without even looking it up in the dictionary.  Why would I waste my time looking it up when I have clearly heard the word being used in a sentence and it's painfully obvious incredulous means something similar to incredible because of how incredible I am for returning the broken toaster to the store and getting a new one for free.

"That TV is the most superfluous purchase you have ever made", with new TV on the brain I was trying to figure out what I had just been told.  My wife has no idea that I don't understand half the words she says because they aren't big words to her, hardly even worthy of being used in a game of scrabble.  A big word to her consists of the letter z and q used twice without the letter u.  Being an optimist I come up with the most plausible definition of my super fabulous new TV.

This kind of thing happens everyday around our house all the time.  Why not give more examples?  I would, but quite honestly I'm to stupid to remember them.

Email

My main e-mail address is lambnick@hotmail.com .  I've had this address for 15 years.  When I signed up I was actually upset that nicklamb@hotmail.com was taken.  Then I realized a couple of years later that friends were putting underscores and numbers into their names for an e-mail address.  If I was just signing up for a hotmail account today the address would look something like la_mb15_nick1999_73@hotmail.com .  All of the good e-mail addresses are taken unless your super old like myself or you use one of the home based e-mail addresses.

Why not just start putting underscores and numbers into kids names.  That way every kid can have his or her own hotmail account without adding additional numbers or underscores to their name.  If my parents had named me N_ic_78k I could get a hotmail account with name no problem.

To avoid doubles and devastating disappointment from not having an e-mail account with your name before leaving the hospital you would have to name your kid by picking a hotmail account for them.  If the name chosen was already taken you would be given a list of suggestions resembling the one you choose.  This actually takes care of two problems.  No more having two kids named Chris in class.  There would be Chris_98_r and Chris_3_4_ , teachers would love it.  Now everybody will have their own unique name along with e-mail address.

No Slip

I spend a lot of time at the hardware store. They sell anything you could ever need for building a house. This particular time I was picking out a new tub for a rental property that I have. There's a large selection  out there for something that just holds water. I guess the major piece of engineering would be the hole in the bottom that we are given the option of keeping water in and letting water out. There was not much difference between the tubs except for size and price then I noticed that some of the more expensive tubs were called "no slip" tubs. Why not make all the tubs "no slip"?

I wanted to call the salesman over just to hear him try and sell me one of tubs.  "Over here we have our no slip tub which as stated does not let you slip when either getting in or getting out of the tub. And over here's our slippery tub, it's basically made out of thousands of banana peels. I dare you to try and get into this tub when it's full of water with out injuring yourself."

Being a responsible landlord I of course bought the no slip tub. I'm pretty sure that they don't even have any of the slip tubs in stock and the display models just there to get an extra $50 out of everybody. Please do us all a favor and only manufacture the no slip tub incase somebody actually buys the banana peel version.

Movie Commercials

Remember when they first started putting commercials before previews at the theater? I remember people actually booing the commercial when this first started. Now it's so normal that everybody would wonder why the crazy guy's booing the car commercial "he must really hate Mazda".

I am truly waiting for the day when they start putting actual commercials midway into a movie and calling it a convenience so that it gives people a chance to re-fill their drinks or use the washroom. I really hope that they put up signs saying "intermission break halfway through" so I know my commercial nightmare has come true and I can just go rent the movie when it comes out.

I hope that the money I pay to get into the theater will continue to give me movies without interruption but I'm not betting against it. Why not keep putting out movies without commercial breaks.

Self Serve

I use the self service checkout at the hardware store almost exclusively and the grocery store when the lineups are faster. At first I was against it on the principle that people were losing jobs but have justified the choice by telling myself that somebody had to build the self service checkout system and people are needed to maintain them. If somebody really wanted to they could avoid human contact and use the self service checkout system for all the basic necessity's that would be possible. However the greatest need for avoiding human contact is the dreaded car lot why not offer a self service checkout for buying a car.

Who wouldn't buy a new car from a self service checkout if they were offered $1000 discount? Have the computer scan in your ID and run a credit check. Then choose your payment plan, pay the deposit and first months payment and away you go.

A new car without the hassle, sounds to good to be true. To handle the transition period they could keep a couple of salespeople on but I sure hope that none of them come and talk to me. It's really too bad that the check out people at the grocery store aren't as pushy as the car salesman that way I would truly enjoy the self serve checkout.

Video Games

How much horsepower do you have under the hood?  That flashlight's really bright, what's the candlepower?  Wow your new deck's huge, how many feet?

Without knowing anything about cars one can deduce that new car would have the equivalent power of 150 horses.  Also the new flashlight would have taken 500,000 candles to equal a light beam of that strength.  And it doesn't take a carpenter to look down at their feet and estimate what 60 feet would be.

Why not base all new video game systems off of the original Nintendo Entertainment System.  The Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis would have 2 nintentdo power.  The PS3 would have 1687 nintendo power.  Soon people will just be saying the number without thinking about it but we will always be able to go back to the NES to have a base for exactly how powerful you new video gaming machine actually is.

Stats

Every sport out there has a large amount of stats. Baseball keeps all sorts that nobody even knows what they mean. How many people know what a "whip" is besides my friend Brainiac and hardcore baseball fans? Hockey keeps track of the time every player's on the ice. They even break the number down further to how long a player's on the ice while killing a penalty or on the power play. Football keeps track of the yards a player makes after a catch. Every sport out there has a large amount of stats.

Why not keep track of the referee's stats. What percentage does the new hockey linesman have for making the correct call on an offside? He had good numbers at the junior level but will that translate to the NHL. Or how about how many times a football ref made the wrong call on a touchdown. I would like to know how many times a basketball ref made the wrong call on a foul. What's the percentage this umpire makes the correct call for balls and strikes?

Nobody wants to have bad stats so this would create a competitiveness amongst the officials to be the best. Who gets to ref the super bowl? The official with the biggest beer belly that's doing it the longest, fat chance. Give it to the guy with the best stats. Who gets to umpire the world series? That's a stupid question because we all know who the best umpire has been all season long. He just set a new record for making the correct call 99% of the time. He's in a league of his own behind the plate calling strikes and balls. Nobody else is even close.

Drunken Party Pictures

I have noticed a facebook pictures trend. The amount of cat pictures posted has stayed at an alarmingly high level however I have learned to just ignore those. The latest fad in drunken party pictures has me worried. Why not not take drunken party pictures?

There are really only two types of pictures that people post. Cat pictures and drunken party pictures. What is it about being drunk that reminds people to bring out their camera and start taking pictures of everybody. I could see a fire breathing dragon and not remember to take out my camera. Yet somehow these pictures are all over my friends facebook. Maybe the alcohol increases ones ability to use a camera, I always thought that was driving - so confused.

I'm surprised that there's not drunken cat party pictures. Imagine a picture of a cat with a bunch of empties in the background. Another picture of a cat beside a guy passed out covered in shaving cream. One of these days I will remember to bring my camera and hopefully get a picture of drunk guy with a cat being chased by a fire breathing dragon.

Previews

Going to a movie in the theatre has to be one of my favorite things to do. I enjoy seeing a movie on the big screen. For some reason, I don't feel as bad eating the equivalent of six bags of microwavable popcorn and drinking two litre's of coke because the theater calls that size medium. In the confines of the theatre, the popcorn and drink actually look like the proper amount for a reasonable person to consume.

Everything has been going great so far. I don't even mind that I can't read the free magazine because it's too dark. Now it's time for the the commercials, which I'm not even going to get into on this post; it will surely show up at a later date. What really bugs me these days are the previews. I will actually close my eyes if it's a movie that I really want to see because I know if I watch the preview, the ending will be given away.

Why not only show the first 30 minutes of a movie in a preview? If you can't cut together a two minute preview from thirty minutes of footage, then there's a problem with the movie. I'll take care of the popcorn though, they can leave that full length.

Proper Toaster

And another thing! I love it when people start conversations off that way. It makes me laugh every time because you know that they've been ranting about something in their head and brought you into the conversation mid rant. This is always followed by a lot of head nodding and "yes" on your part with the occasional "your preaching to the choir" if they start to think your not listening. I have tried disagreeing with the and another thing type of person before but that has only increased the volume of the rant in decibels and time.

Here's what happens to me all the time when I'm making toast.  The first two pieces turn out brilliantly.  I've got the toaster dialed in, it took a long time but if I put it on 2 and 1/3 the toast comes out a nice light brown.  This is the where the problem comes in, if I make another batch of toast it will burn every time. Now if I go dialing down the numbers to compensate for the toaster being warmed up it's near impossible to find the sweet spot that the toasters currently set at.

I'm really stuck on this one. How hard of an engineering leap could it be to figure this one out? Maybe we should try to make the products that we already have work properly before we start inventing some new ones and another thing why has the toaster not changed at all in over fifty years. Sure they can make  a toaster with more slots but that does not make my toast any faster or burn it less often.

Uncle Calculator

I'm about to do some math to try and figure out how much money we could put toward public transportation if we didn't own cars so get your calculators ready.  I come from a long tradition of calculator nerds.  My uncle is the guy you see in Costco with a big calculator figuring out the price of coffee per pound and how much he'll save if he buys the 20 pound tin vs the 10 pound tin.  Then he goes back to his excel sheet attached to the clip board, conveniently stored in his hip pack and cross references it to the other stores in town.  I was driving by an auction sale last Sunday and there was a guy with a 8.5 X 11 sized calculator punching in some numbers.  As I laughed I realized that I wanted one.

Here's a breakdown of the yearly expenses of owning a car.
Gasoline and Oil - $1500
Car Insurance      - $1000
Maintenance        - $1000
License                - $100
Parking, Tickets   - $200
Total                    =$3800
Now an important figure not in those calculations is the cost of buying a car. Which in most people's case will add another $3800 a year to your total. The reason I did not add in the cost of the actual car is to avoid the argument of people saying that they already own a car or that they got a car for free.  To make things even more difficult the book value of my car is actually in the negatives, creating a rather complex equation involving protractors and compasses that I would rather avoid.

This whole idea came about because I read in the paper how there are over 3000 people killed by car accidents every year in Canada.  I'm postulating that those numbers would go down considerably if all we ever used was public transit.  It's a little out there but if everybody put all the money that they normally spend on their car and the money that government spends on roads, traffic signs, street lights, and government vehicles then the whole idea starts to sound more plausible. I don't think it will every happen but why not?  All I know is that my uncle has already gone down to Costco to purchase one of those huge calculators.  What I'm really looking forward to seeing is how my Aunt is going to modify the hip pack to fit a calculator of that size.

Square Cans

Why not square cans? I'm not talking about some creepy bra made by a weirdo fashion designer or the outcast can that got picked on for wearing glasses and being a little on the heavy side. What I'm talking about is a can of corn or tomato soup.

The main problem I can see would be opening such a can. The can opener would not be able to make such a tight corner. However I noticed that the cans have been coming with pull tabs lately. Why not put pull tabs on the square cans?

They could fit 1/3 more cans in the same space. This means more efficient warehousing, shipping and retail space. Maybe the cost to change the manufacturing machines are just to expensive? They change other designs all the time but soup just tastes better in a cylinder I guess.