Everybody laughs. The guy suggesting “joint” is embarrassed, but in an amused and unconcerned way. He doesn’t fear social scorn, outcast, or legal investigation.
So why are drugs illegal? Remind me?
Required fine print: I don’t use drugs. Don’t sell them. Never have. But, in light of the costs we face in keeping them illegal, and because I basically don’t care what you do to yourself, I’d prefer they be made legal.
Amount of time typical Tulane graduate spends testing alarm clocks.
A Tulane graduate from 2005 has lost her job due to being late, she claims, because of a glitch in the iPhone calendar app.
If you had warned me about the glitch, I could have at least picked up a $5, battery-operated alarm clock that would have saved my job,” she wrote in an open letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs posted on the Huffington Post.
I test apps before I depend on them. For instance, before I ever used the Android’s alarm, I set it to go off through the day. This saved me from a bad volume setting. Now, they didn’t cover this at Utah State. Computers were as big as houses when I went there. How could they? But I did have an alarm clock, and I did TEST it before using it. You ALWAYS test alarm clocks before using them. Anything you depend on should be verified. Life 101.
Related… why 5 years later, is a Tulane graduate tending tables? What degree? Tulane, btw, costs $50K a year to attend.
Similar… was the reporter a Tulane graduate? She didn’t ask questions that seemed pretty obvious to me. Like “Did you test it?”, “Why are you waitressing?”, “What was your degree?”.
The graduate in question, btw, did not answer questions about if the tardiness was a habit. Which means “yep”.
I know, I know, I’m being unreasonable on the school. But I just couldn’t resist. I hope she doesn’t have too much school debt for what, by any reasonable view, was an economically fruitless time spent in college.
I’d have done this, but had no ketchup at our table
I’ve been traveling for 1.5 months now. This has me eating out a lot more than normal, as well as shopping and interacting with “staff” a lot more than in my typical life.
And it hasn’t been pretty…
Service has declined. I’m pleased to report that surliness hasn’t increased, blessedly, but I’m definitely experiencing consistently poor service.
First… kudos… Allegro Towers in San Diego. A fine, helpful staff that was awesome. Second, Aqua Adventures – kayaking in San Diego, terrific as well. As were the folks at the San Diego Bike Shop (on C street). These folks are all at the tip of the recession – in businesses where people can cut back first. They know it and respond with excellence.
Alas, elsewhere, the picture wasn’t so pretty. At movie theatres (audio fails, 1/2 hour wait), restaurants (30 minutes, no sushi), sailing charters (boring), car service centers (left tires 30 pounds low resulting in freeway blowout), and ESPECIALLY hotels (how many beds did you need?), service has been consistently poor. I hate arriving at a hotel at 9PM after a driving struggle, and taking 15 minutes to check in. How hard is it? I booked a reservation, you have all my info, GIVE ME MY KEY! Yet, even now in 2010, I’ve got people taking rubbings of my credit card and needing to know my license plate number. Silly.
Others have noticed as well. As we waited in line at Borders last night, the folks around us were restless. They reported bad service as well. I speculated it was because of staff cutbacks and that the existing staff were just overworked, and possibly that because they were likely newer (cheaper) workers, or relatives, they might not have the chops to do it right.
As you may know, my house flooded (broken water line) whist in San Diego. It will be a big repair job, and since I’ll be living out of hotels for the next couple months, I’m not looking forward to more of this “Obama” era service. Nope… I long for the good old Bush days, when folks were too busy to help you, but when they did, they generally did a good job of it.
Postscript…. Even Google has let me down. Normally, I document my experience with a business on Google Places (an app on the Android phone). For instance, I wanted to caution folks about last night’s Days Inn, or yesterday afternoon’s 30 minute no sushi place. Alas, Google Places wouldn’t let me review or rate them and kept crashing.
Cool. I’m going to try this, in some form, in July. No promises for August. And digital.
http://photooftheday.hughcrawford.com/
I encountered two gals doing a 365 pictures of themselves project recently. They were quite creative and used radio remotes. We met them at the Utah State Capitol building, where they were using the architecture to good effect.
My project for July will record a sabbatical I’m taking there for all of July. I’m toying with photos documenting each SD Trolley stop as one “concept”. Alternately, I may strap a GPS watch on and sync my photos to my location and map them on a map of SD.
Something to do anyway (-:
No comparison!
I didn’t write this. It is in today’s Spectrum
St. George
Mandela better than our president
I recently watched a movie called "Invictus" starring Morgan Freeman as President Nelson Mandela. I also watched the opening of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.
I watched the editorials on the life President Nelson Mandela and immediately saw the difference this president was compared to our President Obama. President Mandela loves his country, went to prison for 27 years for his country. He is compassionate, honest and his first thoughts have always been for the betterment of his country and his people. What a difference.
Obama loves himself. He is not compassionate or honest. He blames everyone else for things he can’t resolve. He instructs his Democratic cronies to write bills he doesn’t even read and forces them through Congress against the will of the people. Nelson Mandela received a Noble Peace Prize, which he deserved because he changed his country and removed apartheid for the Republic of South Africa forever. Obama receive the same prize for political reasons only. What a waste.
Al Andreas
St George
Al misses that Mandela’s ANC was also a terrorist organization that committed many atrocities. But to Mandela’s credit, once he got power, he handled it quite well.
Unlike Barry.
I’ve got Elton John on my iPod – and you should too.
He played Israel when other artists, like the Pixies and Elvis Costello, canceled.
Well…. IMHO Israel got the better of the deal. Elvis Costello is an overrated Bruce Springsteen wannabe who gets a quick flip of the dial anytime one of his few modest hits come on. The Pixies… yeah, you probably haven’t heard of them have you. I have, but that’s because I read guitar magazines, that interview Pixies members all the time – but you won’t hear them on the radio often (or at all).
And in a BIG bonus, Elton just played Rush Limbaugh’s wedding too. Where can he play next to earn the trifecta of hate from idiot liberals? Maybe the NRA convention?
Kudos for playing where you are paid to EJ!
Get your Elton on here.
There is a saying, about Russia, that a goatless Russian faced with the problem of his neighbor Ivan having a goat, would kill the goat rather than figure out how to get his own.
This seems to prove true in this interesting tidbit about the Russian edition of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”.
Russia: In Russia, the ‘Ask the Audience’ lifeline isn’t one that the contestant would often use because the audience often gives wrong answers intentionally to trick the contestants.
A country where everybody roots against you is, indeed, a nice place to be from!
Unfortunately, I think our current President and Congressional leadership are more likely to kill Ivan’s goat than let his neighbor go out and earn one.
Sascha Rothchild advocates “starter marriage”, using her 2.5 year marriage at age 27 as an example. I’m not going to get all huffy about the sanctity of marriage, as I don’t believe it is the formal “marriage” that is important – but the commitment between the couple.
I just don’t know why she bothered to get married. What she advocates needs a new word, like “temptial” (temporary and nuptial). Temptial need new law; should a temptial get 1/2 your crap, or pension?
I’d love my “wife” married or not. I don’t leave her because I love her. I don’t mess around with other woman because that would hurt her, and I love her.
Marriage is about mutual sacrifice. Not compromise. She describes, for instance:
I loved Hollywood; he loved Venice Beach. So we bought a condo in a place we both hated: Sherman Oaks. This sense of democracy just left us feeling unfulfilled.
That’s just dumb. If my wife loved Hollywood, then we would live there, assuming it was feasible. But my wife, knowing her, would press to live in Venice, cause she knew that is what I liked. See how it works?
In the end, Sascha might as well be saying that if you are a self-centered narcissist with a proclivity for bad decisions, you should probably expect a short first marriage.
And I agree completely.
Woman are becoming so rare, and valuable, in China that they are calling the shots in the marriage game:
Or as Anna puts it: if you won’t cook for me, I don’t want to marry you. I can only begin to imagine the whole new cast of human relationships in the offing if Anna happens to be right.
Of course in my house it would be “if you don’t order in delivery from where I want, I won’t marry you”… (-:
Obligatory caveat: I don’t think men should call the shots in marriage. It should be roughly equal, as long as the gal gets her way.
http://www.redbookmag.com/fun-contests/celebrity/chris-odonnell-interview
A nice interview with Chris O’Donnell, actor, who decided to focus on family rather than a huge Hollywood career. He seems like a nice, grounded, guy. I’m glad he is having success with the new NCIS: Los Angeles show.
Posted for my wife’s reading pleasure.
Sean Young took Super-8 video behind the scenes of the movie Dune in 1983. I thought of it because I discussed Dune, and Frank Herbert’s (and his sons) writing this weekend.
Given unlimited resources, an excellent crew, and cast, Dune is largely regarded as one of the biggest failures in movie history.
Dune, the book, wove a tale of a world and characters that grabbed you and kept you. For a movie to compress that richness into 2 hours… even with all the resources… a difficult task that money can’t buy. Either you can write it or you can’t.
I’ve seen the movie, once, long ago, and in snippets on cable perhaps as recently as 2 years ago. They got the scenery, costuming, mood dead on – but the script. Ouch.
I wouldn’t mind if somebody gave another go at it. Especially if they were committed to 2 or 3 movies.
Only ONE banned on 5 May
You can’t wear an American flag shirt to school in California. It might offend the Mexicans.
On any other day at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Daniel Galli and his four friends would not even be noticed for wearing t-shirts with the American flag. But Cinco de Mayo is not any typical day especially on a campus with a large Mexican American student population.
I support the message that we shouldn’t be celebrating other country’s holidays. Some might say St. Patrick’s day is a “Cinco De Mayo”, but that is originally a religious day.
School bureaucrats did what they do best – acted like weenies, then collected another day of generous salaries, great benefits and a nice secure pension.
Update: similar silliness… no whites allowed!
Screen cap from Leigh Nash’s video for her song My Idea of Heaven
I’m a sucker for songs about growing old together. Country, Rock, Pop – whatever. For instance Alan Jackson’s Living on Love.
She has a solo career but also was the singer with Sixpence None the Richer. If American Idol had been invented 10 years earlier she would have won it easily. Plus she seems just darned nice.
[Re]-Discovered as I hunted for some decent, non-Disney factory tunes, for my daughter’s iPod. Leigh’s solo tunes and Six Pence None the Richer fit the bill well. This search will queue up a few songs so you can decide for yourself.
