Dr. Mental

The other day I came back to my office to find my office-mate in a discussion with his boss.

As I sat down, his boss said, gesturing to me, “You know, you have to call him ‘Doctor’ now.”

“What?” came the reply.

Edginess

A few weeks ago I traveled out of town to visit family. When I got back on the following Tuesday I realized that I had forgotten the power cord for my electric razor at my in-laws’ house.

My skin is more comfortable with an electric razor, but my beard looks awful when I don’t shave. I might look rugged for 2 days, but pretty soon my face looks like a mangy mutt with various splotches of fur that point in random directions.

White Washing

I went downhill skiing, for the first time ever. My father-in-law took me and he is a great instructor. He helped me learn the rule #1: don’t lean. I also learned how to turn, how to have fun, and most importantly, how gracelessly fall.

While traveling down the mountain for the first time my father-in-law was saying “turn” each time I needed to turn. Apparently I need to remember to “just keep turning” and I can travel downhill pretty well.

Just as I was getting the pacing, he stopped vocalizing the instructions. The hill was getting steeper. I was coming up to an orange rope delineating the un-groomed snow which had a bunch of bushes sticking out of the snow.

I could see that I needed to turn.

Like Butter

On Saturday I decided to unpack the speakers for my computer. I found the box they were in, but it was taped up. To open the box I needed a sharp implement. Because I had lost my pocket knife to the TSA, I grabbed the nearest such item in the room: a butter knife.

As I attempted to open the box, the knife just wouldn’t cut the tape.

I thought these things were serrated.

Inspection of the blade revealed that it wasn’t. (Looking in the utensil drawer later, it turns out half of our matching sets of butter knifes are serrated and the other half are not. Weird.)

Missing Memories

Recently, at the airport, I was in the screening line. I had half walked through the metal detector when I notice that I forgotten to take my watch off. I sheepishly took it off and held it up to the screener and he waved me through anyway.

I was on my way over to the conveyor belt to wait for my personal items when a different agent waved me over, held up my keychain, and asked,

“Is this yours?”

Embarassing Purchases

There are many things I love about my phone. It has a data plan, lots of apps, and a really cool keyboard that allows me to type up messages faster than ever.

But I also find that I hate my phone. People ask why I hate it, and with so many things I don't like about it (largely because I am trained to notice the things I hate) I find myself stumbling as to what to tell them. So I decided to find the key reason I dislike my phone so I can have it on hand whenever someone asks. And the key reason is:

Pursed Lips

My wife and I walk to the car and I go to open the door for her.

Because I need her to unlock the door so that I can open it, I pause and say, "You have the purse."

"No I don't. You do."

Sure enough. I had placed it under my arm as we walked out the door.

What's worse is that I knew I had the purse just as I finished stating that she had it.

Ancient Aztecs

One benefit of being slightly older than my peers in school is my age gets me a few extra perks. For instance, when I traveled out of state with two colleagues and we rented a car, I was the only one who could drive it; I was 25, everyone else was 24 or younger, and they would have had to pay more for insurance.

Woo hoo!

The car rental place even upgraded our car to a Pontiac Aztec, for free! And because I was using a platinum credit card, I didn’t have to pay extra for the insurance. Things are looking up!

Tipped Off

I recently bought Billy Joel’s best-of album. I love it. I’ve heard some of these songs before, but now I have a much wider array of his work.

One of my favorite songs of his is “Piano Man.” It’s a classic I’ve heard before, and have enjoyed it—Although, because of Weird Al, any time this song comes up I find myself mentally substituting parody phrases.

While I work I set my music player to just play random songs. I usually don’t pay much attention to what is actually played. I often can’t understand the lyrics anyway.

Bathroom Cleaning

So, I’m not the only one.

Lindsay had an extremely awkward conversation with her neighbor. Apparently, the fogged windows in her bathroom--which she relied on to keep privacy in their bathroom by blurring light passing through them--actually worked the other way; it blurred light coming into the room.

And her neighbor noticed.

He husband went to stand in the bathroom shower (clothed) while Lindsay walked outside to look in, and sure enough he was crystal clear, but only from about the waist up, which is only somewhat bad. From her husband's view, she was just a smudge

For Your Eyes Only

Today my wife sent me this text:

Sexy…

I unlocked my phone so I could respond. As expected, my phone deposited me at the text messaging application. I quipped:

Want me to shake it for you? ;-)

I waited and waited for my wife to respond. Finally, about five minutes later, I received a reply:

Home Alone

My wife and I just moved. We’ve been living out of boxes ever since we arrived 6 weeks ago. In fact, for the last 4 weeks, it’s just been me at home. She’s in another state trying to prepare our house for renting out so I am left here taking care of the house trying to keep up with all the work I need to do.

I usually make breakfast for myself on my way to work. In our previous house, it was a homemade sausage, egg, and English muffin breakfast sandwich. $1.50 in materials and 2 minutes to make. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a store here that carries the egg patties. Worse, I haven’t found the toaster, so I have been eating the English muffins without toasting them.

Not cooking English muffins has worked so far, but the last few days my stomach has started to churn. So much so that just the thought of untoasted muffins makes my tummy tumble.

The Purple Pal

Traveling through the security gates, today, one of the agents commented ”Nice bag!”

”Yeah, my wife loves it.” With a genuine smile.

Not 10 minutes earlier, my wife commented on the fact that I am willing to travel with this bag...and that I have glitter all over my face from her lip gloss. But I digress.

Mirror Images

My wife and I were at her friend's house admiring his new exercise equipment which its setup in the garage. She mentions to his wife that she could decorate his garage as well. They start talking about various accessories, the sealer that could be put on the floor, and what could be done with the walls.

”You could install mirrors on the walls so that he could observe his technique.”

”Oh, that could work.”

Luck be a Lady

A few weeks ago my wife and I needed to catch a plane from Seattle to Utah for vacation. We had recently moved to the Puget Sound area for a new job opportunity, and I wanted to maximize my work hours.

We planned out the trip so that she came out and picked me up and then headed to the airport. Traffic on a Friday, starting sometime before 4, is abysmal. Thankfully we could get into the carpool lane, but even then it was slow as molasses.

At some point we got stuck behind a motorcyclist with his lady-friend on the back seat who would only go 30 mph above what the neighboring traffic was traveling at, even though there no cars in sight in front of him. Grumble grumble grumble.

Sweet Assurances

I was on my way home from work today when my wife called. I had just gotten on the shuttle bus and was on my way to a drop-off point where I would transfer to another station.

We talked for a while about how our day was going. In the mean time the bus stopped at a midpoint and several passengers disembarked.

As the shuttle got moving again, my wife and I got into a discussion about how much we love each other. Many days, regardless of how well or poorly the day went, we just can’t wait to see each other again.

Speaking Plane

Waiting in the airport concourse as my flight is starting to board. I am assigned to board in a late zone, and it seems like the attendants are taking forever to transition toward my zone.

My watch ticks to the next minute and I can see that I have been sitting here for a half hour. They have been boarding for over 15 minutes, now. Apparently someone needs extra assistance getting onboard, and I don't begrudge them the time. I'm sure that we will still depart ontime.

The Least Empty Bag

My brother was about to pour a large quantity of packing peanuts into a garbage bag that already contained some peanuts and I said, "Is that the least empty bag you could find?"

"Nope," as he pulled out a fresh bag.

Then my wife looked at me funny and started to laugh.

"I knew what you meant," chimed my brother.

Too late. Energy was already wasted sending blood to my face.

Midnight Madness

Lately, my wife and I have been borrowing a truck while we move many of our belongings to a storage unit. Our garage is still full of stuff so we cannot park either of our cars in it and we normally park both of our cars in the driveway. However, for the safety of our friend’s truck, we park it in the driveway with my wife’s car, and I park my car on a nearby street.

I stopped for some food and supplies on my way home. To save some time bringing in those items I parked my car in front of my house. I reminded myself that I needed to move the car after taking the trash out to the street.

It IS Supposed to Be Stick Dudes

Imagine you regularly visit a gaming portal where other people post their home-made video games for the world to rate. You’ve been doing these reviews for a while, and have even contributed to getting some really pathetic games kicked off of the site (a.k.a. “blammed”).

One day, you stumble across an RPG game that has a moderate score, so you decide to check it out. Turns out that the game is absolutely pathetic. The controls don’t let you do much, the progression of the game is pedestrian, and yet many people give it a high rating.

You can’t understand why, so you decide to expend the effort to give this so-called “game” a bad review. The unsuspecting should be forewarned.

Black Friday

Occasionally Black Friday happens more often than the day after Thanksgiving. In this case, May 13th, 2011.

I heard about Rebecca Black’s music video from my students mere days after it was released.

It was absolutely shocking. In a William Hung sort of way.

Arthur Luck

Arthur Luck—if anything can go wrong, it will, and at the most inopportune time

Arthur Luck appears to be a genetically heritable characteristic and can vary in its manifestation and extremity. Unlike most afflictions, Arthur Luck is utterly predictable. Arthur Luck WILL happen. The only questions are when, where, and how.

I remember when my parents left one of my brothers on the front porch when they went to church. Three hours later, he was still there, locked out and upset that his family had deserted him. Or, when my family came to see me off before a trip to Thailand, and my sister spent the whole time at the airport puking into a trash can.

Classroom Performance

Today I taught a class on networking--Service Oriented Architecture, specifically. While discussing with the class, I mentioned that we could use different protocols to communicate between applications.

"You could use TCP which is faster, or you could use HTTP if you don't need that particular performance enhancement."

Pause.

"That didn't come out right at all..."

Visual Verities

I was at the local college doing some work while waiting for my wife to finish teaching when I saw my brother who shall not be named just 20 feet away. He had graduated from college, but I could tell he was probably helping some friends study.

Rather than wave at him or directly greet him, I decided to text him.

“What are you doing in the Tanner Building?”

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Last year, my wife and I regularly taught a group of 8- and 9-year-old children. Many of these kids had read the book “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” seen the movie, or wanted the book for their birthday.

To better connect with our kids, my wife suggested that we go and see the movie. I, however, was reluctant, and she had to do some serious persuading before I agreed to see it.

Different Strokes

Some of you may recall an 80s TV show of that name, and I just want to say that has nothing to do with the topic of this blog.  Ah, Gary Coleman at his finest, may he rest in peace…

In a recent discussion, a friend revealed that his father had suffered a stroke at a surprisingly young age. Despite a small loss of motor control, his father could still get around well.

Blinker Blankness

Several years ago I got into a conversation with one of my coworkers, “Carol,” about Utah drivers. She had lived in several other states and countries, and had experienced the driving habits of drivers in each of those places. Her dearly held opinion was that Utah drivers were the worst. I agreed, but asked what her reasoning was. So Carol mentioned that she knew someone who did not use his blinker. When confronted, that person mentioned that if he were to use his blinker, it would “burn out more quickly.”

Really? What on earth is the blinker for, if not to signal that a person is changing lanes or turning a corner? As a different coworker of mine mentioned a few weeks ago, “Driving is more than getting from point A to point B; it's getting from A to B in a predictable way.”

Instructional Indignancies

Recently I gave my students an exam. The students had spent all semester next to the same people, with whom they likely studied. So, the first thing I did for the exam was rearrange the classroom. I didn’t want people to be comfortable enough to cheat. I also encouraged students to spread out a little bit. Several seats were available in the back of the room.

Three students arrived late. I handed the first one a test and told him to sit in the front because one large gap was available there. I then handed tests to the other two and told them to go to the back of the classroom.

I Hate Mondays

And I owe a debt of gratitude to Jim Davis’ Garfield.

Monday, just over a week ago, I had a series of unfortunate and horrific events. They all started Monday morning when I went to work and forgot to take my benefits documentation with me.

I started a new job at the beginning of last month. As with most companies, they gave me about 30 days to make a decision with regard to my opt-in benefits. However, my wife and I have been incredibly busy this last month. We had not taken any time to consider our options, and, despite an email reminder the Friday before, I forgot to look at the documentation over the weekend and bring it to work Monday morning.

Mini Mort

My earliest mortifying moment came when I was quite young. In fact, I don’t remember the experience, but my mother is rather fond of the retelling of it…

My parents met inside a computer. My dad was tutored Fortran. Three years later, after their marriage and my birth, they still worked in that computer—yes, literally, inside the computer. (And no, this is not a Zoolander reference.)

Back in those days, computers filled entire rooms—rooms that were equipped with false floors in addition to the standard false, tiled ceilings. The floor was tiled to allow workers to get under the computer and fix wiring problems. The tiles had holes in them so that the room’s dedicated air conditioners could pump cool air in through the floor to keep the computer from overheating. The sheer volume of heat that these machines generated required a tremendous cooling capacity, and the consequent flow of cool air generated a lot of noise.

Descriptor Disaster

I have a new job teaching. I get to interact with students and help them learn new topics and ways of thinking. I love it.

Yesterday in class, I held a small discussion on how to design alarm clocks. I was trying to help the students learn how to identify the difference between requirements (what results are needed) and specifications (particular approaches to gain the results).

As part of this discussion, we talked about how the alarm clock needs to wake a person up. This is a requirement. A buzzer, on the other hand, is a specification. Other ways of waking a user up might include a radio, blinking lights, MP3 player, or throwing water on someone.

In the process of generating ideas about potential approaches to waking people up, a student piped up “it could shake the bed.” Great idea! Not wanting to spend much time writing so we could continue to discuss options, I turned around at the whiteboard and wrote a succinct summary: