Brandon Notices

Time Limits in Video Games

2009-05-28T08:04:00.000-07:00

I've noticed that many newer video games don't seem to have time limits, but there's something about them that have been bugging me.

Think back to Super Mario Bros. The timer for each level would typically start with a few hundred "seconds," even though it always ticked down much faster than that. When the timer reached 100 or so, the music would speed up, causing a great deal of panic for the player. When the timer reached 0, Mario would die.

I understand that this just is a gameplay device to add some challenge to the game, but why does he die? By what mechanism is Mario killed when the time runs out?

TI-30XS Multiview Calculator

2009-05-23T10:32:00.000-07:00

I was at Walgreens yesterday, looking for a new portable FM radio. Instead, I bought a calculator.

The TI-30XS Multiview Calculator, normally about $22, was on sale at $15, and it looked cool, so I got it. It has a neat feature called MathPrint mode, where it displays mathematical expressions in a more natural way (like how you write math on paper) rather than relying on a bunch of parentheses and junk.

On the left above, you can see a particularly complicated and useless expression as it would have to be typed on the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition. It has a lot of parentheses, and it's kinda hard to see what's going on. On the right is how the expression looks on the TI-30XS Multiview Calculator, with the MathPrint mode on. It's obviously a lot easier to see what's going on. (MathPrint can be turned off so that expressions can be typed in the classic mode.)

The TI-30XS also automatically simplifies fractions and roots. The first picture in this post has two examples of it doing this. On a different calculator, the answers would instead be displayed as decimals. There's a button you can simply press on the TI-30XS to convert these fractions or roots to decimals and vice-versa. It seems to be called the answer toggle button, and the button looks like this ◄ ►. There are two ways to input division: as a stacked fraction, or simply using the ÷ sign. The stacked fraction will try to give another fraction as an answer; the ÷ sign will yield a decimal answer.

You can see in the picture above that the calculator is also pretty smart with trigonometry. The TI-30X IIS on the left above calculated the sine of π as an ugly decimal. The TI-30XS is smarter than that, though. It displays the answer in exact terms using a fraction and a root, as it should. By pressing the answer toggle button, this can quickly be converted to a decimal, too.

So the TI-30XS seems to be able to do everything the TI-30X IIS can do, but there are still a few gripes I have with it. The answer toggle button is right above Enter (=), which is where plus usually is on TI calculators—the +, -, ×, and ÷ buttons are all moved one button up on the calculator, which takes a little getting used to. I keep pressing the answer toggle button when I mean to press plus.

Another issue is that there doesn't seem to be a way to wrap fractions or roots around expressions you have typed already. For a simple example, say you've typed 4, but then you realize you need to take the square root of 4. On the TI-30X IIS or the TI-84, you could move the cursor back in front of the 4 and insert a square root symbol. If you try to do that on the TI-30XS, though, it'll put a square root radical to the left of the 4, but there'll be a blank inside the radical, waiting for you to type in a number to go under it. The 4 will be to the right of the root, implying multiplication. I suppose you could work around this by raising 4 to the 1/2 power, but that seems imperfect.

Overall, it's a snazzy little calculator with a bunch more features I didn't even mention. The colors are bold and modern looking, but one of my friends said it looks like a child's toy. It's pretty thin (even more so without the cover slide case) and fits comfortably in the hands, and the buttons repsond well. (I think the TI-30X IIS is a bit too narrow to hold comfortably, and if you try to press a button before releasing the previous button, it'll ignore the second button press.) I would recommend to anyone looking for a cool calculator.

Ctrl + Backspace

2009-05-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

Being able to type flawlessly, without error, is a great skill to have, but for most people, the only way to decrease the number of errors is to also decrease the speed of typing. Thank goodness for the backspace key. With a single press, you can delete the last letter you typed.

The problem with this is that maybe you made a typo early in a word, but you didn't notice it until after you finished typing the entire word—for example, "spgahetti". You could backspace all the way back to the P and then start typing again: "aghetti". But that requires 7 backspace presses. You could move your hand to the mouse and highlight the errors, but it takes time to follow through with that.

One easy option is that you could simply press Ctrl + Backspace* and delete the last word entirely. "But then I have to type the whole word all over again!" you whine. Well, it isn't so bad. First of all, I find it hard to gain typing steam having to start typing in the middle of a word. Typing "aghetti" doesn't seem as natural as typing "spaghetti". Second, perhaps forcing yourself to retype the word will give you practice typing it correctly, particularly if it's a word you find yourself misspelling all the time.

After a while, it doesn't feel weird typing Ctrl + Backspace (especially if you use the left Ctrl key), and with practice, this is a very efficient and natural way to correct your typos.

*I use a Windows machine; I don't recall how this works on Macs, and I don't care to look it up. Also, some programs are stupid and for whatever reason don't support this, instead doing nothing or typing a dumb box instead.

Unit Price Perplexity

2009-02-16T19:43:00.000-08:00

I was at Safeway this evening, looking at the huge variety of toothpaste products, trying to choose which one to buy. I was looking at the price tags, and noticed something very irritating.

This Crest Whitening Plus Scope Toothpaste has a red sale tag, and it says that the box of toothpaste costs $2.99. It also displays the toothpaste's unit price: 37.4¢ per ounce.

This Colgate Total Advanced Whitening Toothpaste also has a red sale tag, and it is the same price, at $2.99. The unit price is displayed on this price tag too: $8.26 per pound.

Wait! Why does Safeway give the unit price for the Crest in cents per ounce, but gives it for Colgate in dollars per pound? These are not compatible!

It should be that I could look at the price tags for both the Crest and the Colgate and be able to compare them very easily. But I can't do that without pulling out my calculator and multiplying the per-ounce price by 16. (Incidentally, the Crest toothpaste contains 8 ounces of toothpaste, whereas the Colgate has 5.8 ounces, so you get more toothpaste per dollar with the Crest.)

AUGH! I shouldn't have to do this! I thought the point was to give customers the opportunity to quickly compare the price per amount of something without having to whip out the calculators!

This last example makes the whole situation even worse. This Colgate Max Fresh Toothpaste has a red tag price of $2.49. Unit price: $41.50 per 100. Per hundred of what? From what I can tell by shaking the box, there seems to be only one tube of toothpaste in it. If I bought 100 of these boxes, that would cost $249.00, not $41.50. I thought about this a moment and did some calculations to check: Safeway means that this toothpaste costs $41.50 per 100 ounces! Why??

Safeway, you're driving me crazy!

Cowardice

2009-02-02T06:58:00.000-08:00

I think it was great that ABC took the risky decision of putting Pushing Daisies on in the first place. Taking risks is a great, but scary, thing for such a huge network to do. Most of the time, it seems that networks don't go for the risky shows because they know what their audience likes already. But when a network takes a chance and goes with a risky decision, it can pay off.

That said, I'm disappointed with how you, ABC, are handling the consequences of the risk you took when you chose to air Pushing Daisies. I really appreciate the risk you took: I really love the show. I'm sorry that Pushing Daisies didn't get the large number of viewers you were hoping for, but it's wrong for you to pull the plug on the show.

Your actions have consequences! Cutting the show short, mid-season, is a cowardly thing to do. You gave the show the go-ahead in the first place. In doing so, you created a contract not only between yourself and the studio making Pushing Daisies, but also innately with your audience—especially the show's greatest fans. You should be obligated to allow the season to run its course. Cutting the show short is disrespectful to the production companies and the audience who also went into this risk with you.

You need to give Pushing Daisies some more episodes, not as a chance for the show to pull in bigger numbers, but as an opportunity for the show to reach a conclusion. (Kristin Chenoweth, who plays Olive on the show, has reportedly said that the show, as is, will end with a cliffhanger and loose plot ends.) You allowed the show to be on TV in the first place. Shouldn't you give your viewers the chance to watch the full story to its narrative conclusion?

Stupid Decision

2009-01-24T01:18:00.000-08:00

My understanding from what I've read is that one of the problems with Pushing Daisies is that it isn't the kind of show that a person can just sit down and zone out to. A viewer really has to be paying attention in order to understand and appreciate the show, especially when the characters talk fast. It's a show you really have to think about. And thinking, unfortunately, seems to be something which is lacking in the United States these days. This means that large numbers of people might watch Pushing Daisies, but they won't get it, so they won't tune in next time. The show's ratings were good to start with, but they started to drop.

The problem is that if these people aren't watching Pushing Daisies, then ABC isn't getting the ratings the advertisers want. In other words, Pushing Daisies is too smart for television. So ABC cancels it and replaces it with something that the masses can understand, like more reality shows, or perhaps another spin-off featuring characters from poorly-written car insurance ads. Television becomes a reflection of society: it airs what the masses want to see. This is bad because people want to see stupid stuff. I know that America's Funniest Home Videos shows a lot of stupid stuff, like old women falling down, or men getting hit in the groin.

I'm reminded of an episode of Dinosaurs, which aired on ABC. The lead character, Earl, becomes a network executive and since he's a pretty stupid dinosaur, he chooses to air only stupid programming, such as The Happy Colors Show (and maybe a show about cavemen... I don't remember). As a result, all the dinosaurs become stupid and they quit thinking. Earl decides that he should air smarter programming. He airs educational programming, and everybody learns new skills and puts them to good use. (Also, everyone stops watching TV...) I guess my point here is that society becomes a reflection of television, as well.

So it's a vicious cycle. Stupid programming leads to stupid viewers, which leads to more stupid programming. As I mentioned above, thinking seems to be a problem in this country, which means that stupid programming will likely prevail on television. But adding some smart programming, like Pushing Daisies, can certainly help to avert this problem, and it also lends ABC the credibility of maintaining intelligent programming. ABC needs to make the decision between airing smart programming or stupid programming.

It seems that ABC is going with the stupid decision.

Voting in Alaska

2008-11-05T15:39:00.000-08:00

Last night, at 8 p.m. (PST), NBC declared Barack Obama as the next president. An hour later, Obama gave his victory speech. An hour after that, the polls closed in Alaska.

I wonder what it felt like to cast a ballot when the election for president had already been decided.

Couple on the Bus

2008-10-29T14:01:00.000-07:00

I'm taking the bus home right now. I'm sitting sideways on the bus—three seats are facing three seats on the other side. The girl sitting next to me has been talking to the guy across from her. I figured that it would be nice for me to ask the guy if he wanted to trade seats with me so that he could sit next to her, especially because it would be too loud to talk on the freeway, once we got on it. We were at the last stop before the freeway, and I was going to offer the guy to trade seats with me, but the girl never stopped talking and gossiping. I never did get to offering, and I think I have done this guy a favor because of it.

Make Up Your Mind!

2008-10-11T17:07:00.000-07:00

I'm using Microsoft Office Word 2007 to type something for my composition class:

Uh oh! It says there's an error. It says to change "seven" to "7." Okay.

Now what? It wants me to change it back to "seven." Word says to do this because I should spell out any number less than 10. So I make the change, and it says to change back to 7. (Augh! I could do this for hours!) I think the problem it's having is that it thinks that "seven died" is a part of the preceding list, and it's trying to make my list consistent somehow.

Silly Screen Saver

2008-10-07T19:06:00.001-07:00

If you leave Comcast's DVR paused for too long, a screen saver pops up to protect the TV from burn-in.

Is this an oversight? It's an HD cable box, presumably designed for widescreen TVs—it's weird that the screen saver fills only the middle 4:3 area of the TV. Isn't the rest of the screen at risk of burn-in? I hope that Comcast will resolve this issue with their next update.

Update (Oct. 8): Comcast has e-mailed me and is taking steps to resolve this matter.
Update (Jan. 24, 2009): I suppose the issue is still being investigated.
Update (Apr. 12, 2009): Wow, if Comcast is still working on this, then it must be a tremendously difficult problem.

Garbage Ghost Hanging

2008-10-05T19:39:00.000-07:00

This year's garbage ghost is up! We did the same thing last year, and we've done it before.

Jesse and I made the ghost yesterday. We used two garbage bags this year, taping them together to make a much larger ghost. We stuffed the head with plastic shopping bags, using just a little paper to cover the Safeway logo so that it wouldn't show through. Jesse drew the face on with a Sharpie. I am impressed by how generic he drew the face. I was afraid he might draw a stupid-looking half-scary face. The moaning ghost look is very appropriate. We stopped working on the ghost to rescue his cat, who was stuck meowing on his roof.

Hanging the ghost is very tricky. (I want to mention that the fishing line is attached to the top of the ghost's head—it is not tied around the neck.) Jesse plays a lot of sports, so he is a much better thrower than I. He tied the fishing line to a rock and threw it over the street light. Once we got it over, but before we pulled the ghost up, I messed things up. I stepped in a loop of the fishing line and got it tangled around my foot. I don't know what Jesse was thinking, but he cut the line around my leg, and this messed up this hanging.

I could tell that Jesse was getting tired, and when his mom asked if he wanted to go with her to pick up his sister, he went with her. Patrick and Jeanina had come outside to watch, but I realized that none of the three of us would have an easy time throwing a rock over the light in just the right place. I got out my Foxtail, tied the string to the tail, and flung it up and over the light. Unfortunately, I forgot to have someone hold onto the other end of the string (not attached to the ghost), and it got pulled up by the Foxtail's weight, so I had to do it again—I got it on the third try. I pulled the ghost up and anchored the string to the bushes underneath.

The ghost is really cool! With breezes, it spins slowly around, and its tail floats behind it.

It seems like the ghost is alive (or undead, at least), looking around the cul-de-sac. I hope this ghost stays up through Halloween.

The Ol' Stuples Gag

2008-09-17T11:28:00.000-07:00

I got the latest issue of Mad a few days ago. You might remember the news that last month, someone working at Circuit City overreacted about Mad's "Sucker City" spoof. I personally thought that it was very funny, so that's why I was delighted to see Mad do another spoof. This time, the victim was Staples.

Stuples!! I told my dad about this, and he thought it was a little funny, but he was too busy to look at it, so I left it open and set it on the bar. A few hours later, he returned and started looking through it. He had forgotten that it was a spoof! He told my mom how crazy this staple gun was.

He was actually considering getting it, probably because of how awesome it looks. Then he noticed the required 5-day waiting period, and that's when he began doubting how authentic the ad was. Then he flipped the magazine closed and realized that it's Mad!

My favorite product in the fake ad was the Crayola box of crayons.

Spore Is Given One Star

2008-09-09T09:57:00.000-07:00

It looks like there are several people who are disgruntled about the new Spore game, which came out on Sunday. A look at Amazon's customer ratings breakdown should point out that many people seem to be dissatisfied.

Wow, 93% of reviewers gave the game one star. The number of one-star reviews increases by the minute.

Nearly all of the one-star reviews I read mentioned Spore's digital rights management (DRM). The point of DRM is to obviate piracy of electronic software. It sometimes works, but it also sometimes hurts the honest software users.

For example, if someone downloads music from the iTunes Store, he can put it on his iPod, but not his Zune. If he downloads music from the Zune Marketplace, he can put it on his Zune, but not his iPod. This means that if he wants to have a Zune and an iPod (or if he is replacing one with the other), he'll have to pay twice for songs he wants to put on both devices. I think that's crazy. Nobody should have to pay twice for the same song.

In the case of Spore, this means that people can install the game only three times. They must activate their software online, and DRM software installs itself on their computers and apparently cannot be removed. Each of these brings some limitation to the installation and use of this game, and this is what has irritated these reviewers.

I can relate the most with the last of the reviews I posted above. When my family was beta testing Windows Vista, Microsoft would often take our computer and reinstall the latest version of Vista. Every time, we would have to reinstall all our programs. I would have to reinstall Adobe Photoshop. Eventually, Photoshop failed to install because I had reached the installation limit, which I didn't know of. I called Adobe, and they gave me a new activation code, but it's crazy that I had to go to such lengths.

I applaud that people are using Amazon's ratings system to tell others what they feel about this game. A lot of people say that if you don't like something, then don't buy it—I'm glad to see that people are leaving reviews warning others of potential DRM problems they could come across with Spore.

I Want HD Wheel!

2008-09-08T19:47:00.000-07:00

I tuned in to KOMO HD this evening to watch the season premiere of Wheel of Fortune. I was disappointed (but not surprised) to see that KOMO still isn't showing Wheel in high definition.

Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! are starting their third year of distributing HD episodes. These shows are syndicated, and they aren't packaged with the HD ABC programming that KOMO receives. KOMO doesn't yet have the correct receivers or converters or something, so they are showing Wheel and Jeopardy! in boring old 4:3 upconverted SD. I want these shows to fill our 16:9 screen with sharp, colorful image. I've read that Wheel looks very impressive in HD.

The worst part is that during every single episode of Wheel, KOMO pops up an irritating banner which scrolls along the bottom of the sceen, warning viewers of the upcoming digital switchover. (I wrote about this back in May.) Sometimes, this banner sticks around for an entire round. KOMO has the nerve to say in the message that they're "getting you ready for the future," but they themselves aren't even set up for the present! How can KOMO claim to be "Working 4 You" if they aren't working to bring us the highest quality programming?

Zebra Keeps Its Stripes

2008-09-08T17:52:00.001-07:00

I was at Woodland Park Zoo today. It's a great big park, so a map is necessary to ensure that you see everything. Something I saw on the map was that animals are represented on the map by silhouettes. This isn't true of the zebra, however!

The zebra keeps its stripes! (This is also true of the tiger on the map.)

You can see more pictures in my Facebook album, whether or not you're a Facebook member. (If you're Facebook friends with me, you can comment on my pictures!)

Are zebras white with black stripes, black with white stripes, or is it all just an optical illusion?

Spaces Between Sentences

2008-09-07T00:16:00.000-07:00

I grew up typing two spaces between sentences. I guess it was my mom who had me doing this—she said it was the proper way to type. This was more true back in the old typewriter days, where every character was the same width (monospaced typefaces): I and W would take up the same amount of space. Using two spaces between sentences made it easier to tell when one ended and another began. Now that we have digital printing and proportionally spaced typefaces (where I is less wide than W), two spaces between a sentece look weird. I found some illustrations if you want to see this for yourself.

Typing two spaces between sentences was never really a problem until I took Journalism in eighth grade. Our teacher didn't have much of a style guide (in fact, he wasn't really even concerned that his students would misspell all kinds of words), but one of his rules was that we had to use one space between sentences. I found this surprisingly hard to abide by. It was a force of habit: after I pressed period, I would automatically press the space bar twice. After writing an article, I would have to go through the whole article and remove all the double spaces. (There was no universal replace tool.)

Another issue that would occasionally crop up would be whenever the end of a sentence reached the right margin of a page, or the right edge of a text box. If the software wasn't set up correctly, it would handle the first space just fine, but the second space would sneak to the beginning of the next line and indent the line by a space! Totally unacceptable.

I suppose there was no real need for me to switch to using only one space, but there was no reason for me to be using two.

Text messaging probably helped me make the conversion to being a one-spacist. My cell phone would automatically capitalize the first letter of a sentence only if I used one space before it. Using two spaces would result in having to press buttons three times (space-space-shift) instead of just once (space).

What probably helped me the most was when I started learning a new keyboard. Tired of the boring old qwerty keyboard, I decided to learn the more comfortable Colemak keyboard. Being forced to slow down while I learned the keyboard gave me the opportunity to also adjust to typing just one space between sentences.

Now it feels natural to type just one space between sentences. It feels silly to use two, now.

Turn Over, Hook Up

2008-09-06T13:29:00.000-07:00

My sister is preparing her things to take with her when she moves into her dorm later this month. She decided to leave behind her 7-inch Aluratek digital picture frame so that I could load it with pictures and display it here at home. I planned to insert a SD card full of pictures, but first, I wanted to remove all the silly pictures of her friends goofing off.

The frame has built-in memory which can be accessed by connecting to a computer with a USB cable. This is where she had copied her pictures. I connected the picture frame to the computer with the USB cable, but the picture frame wasn't showing up in my Computer folder. I also tried my laptop, but it wouldn't show up there, either.

I started searching through the picture frame's built-in menus to see if there was an option to delete everything, but I couldn't find anything like that. I turned it over to see if there was a reset button on the bottom, but there was nothing like that. When I set it back down, however, I noticed a message on the screen: "Disconnected with PC, please restart!"

That means it must have been connected at some point! I also noticed on my laptop that it said that it had found a new device, or something like that. I figured out what I had to do to access the picture frame.

I had to hold it upside-down. I held it in my left hand and used my right hand to delete all the files saved to the picture frame.

I Like My Aquarium!

2008-09-02T22:29:00.000-07:00

What do you think of my new aquarium? My fish sure look realistic, don't they? Well, actually, the fish aren't real at all! They are video game characters!

Actually, I wouldn't really call it a game, but it runs on a game system. My Aquarium was released Monday morning as a download for Wii. It cost 500 Wii Points ($5), and I was a bit reluctant to buy it at first. After I watched a few videos online of it, I caved in and decided to get it.

There's a lot to do in terms of customization in this game, which is good news for me because I love tinkering with things. You can choose what every aspect of the tank looks like: what fish populate the tank, what decorations fill it (unfortunately, there are no underwater castles or plastic scuba divers), what the floor and background look like, and even what kind of lighting illuminates the tank. You can create up to six tanks. My first looks like a generic tank. The second has a riverbed theme.

The fish seem to swim around realistically. It probably wasn't very hard to make them swim convincingly because they just swim around. If you point the cursor at a fish and give the Wii Remote a little jerk, the fish will wiggle and squirm around. The fish start small and grow over time; if you don't feed your fish, they don't die, though. At first, the selection of fish you can have in the tank is limited, but it seems that more will be unlocked as time passes.

I'll probably get bored with My Aquarium before next week, but at least when we have company over, we can have a huge, vibrant, TV-sized fish tank.

Name-Calling Ads

2008-08-22T13:34:00.000-07:00

When I've used Windows Live Messenger, I never expected for any of the text ads on the bottom of the window to insult me, but I guess I was wrong!

Calling me an ass is no way to get me to click you!

Okay, okay, what's actually happened is that the rest just got cut off. The rest of the ad reads, "Associates, Master's, Bachelor's."

In other news, an Elebits sequel is apparently coming to the DS.

Waterless Fountain

2008-08-21T14:48:00.000-07:00

A year or two ago, Alderwood Mall turned off the water in their fountain pools. I'm surprised that people still throw coins in.

The Olympics Have Been Ruined

2008-08-12T19:46:00.000-07:00

I had little doubt that Michael Phelps would be able to score his record-setting tenth Olympic gold medal tonight. I was expecting to sit down tonight and see an exciting and dramatic race. Instead, I got this:

I saw this horrible spoiler at the top of MSN.com (Internet Explorer's default home page). I live on the West Coast; footage recorded live is actually delayed three hours before being broadcasted here. So the 200m butterfly race has already happened, even though the Olympics footage hasn't even started on TV here. It makes me upset that I can't even open Internet Explorer without ruining my evening.

I was looking forward to watching the Olympics tonight. I've watched them every night so far. I even told my family that I wasn't going to go out with them to dinner tonight so that I could watch the games. But it's been spoiled for me. There would be no suspense in viewing the races tonight.

I'm going out to dinner now.

Crossword Failure

2008-08-11T22:25:00.000-07:00

My dad, cousins, and I sucked at the crossword puzzle we attempted on Saturday.

Speakers' platforms: ROSTUM
Right-triangle ratios: TIEEM
Cacklers: CHKN
Unfreeze: DTHAW

Our biggest mistake was doing it in pen, but I don't even know what we were thinking on some of these. We kinda gave up after a while, though, and were goofing off before we quit entirely. Keep in mind that this was the Saturday puzzle, the hardest of the week.

Skip Voicemail Messages

2008-07-31T13:40:00.000-07:00

Last night, I tried to call my aunt Karen, and I got her voicemail. I didn't want to listen to her recorded voicemail greeting, so I pressed star to skip it. Instead of hearing the beep, however, I was instructed to enter a password. I had pressed the button used for Karen to log in to her voicemail account.

It turns out that the keys you press to skip the greeting depend on who the recipient's cell phone carrier is. Mine is Verizon, so when you call me, press star to skip the message and get right to the beep. It turns out that Karen's carrier is Cingular; I was supposed to press pound to immediately leave a message. T-Mobile also uses pound; for Sprint, press 1.

The annoying thing is that even if you could remember what button to press for each carrier, you probably won't know what carrier the recipient has. If you were to call me, reach my voicemail recording, and press pound instead of star, you would instead be prompted to enter a password. This is why one of the first things I say in my voicemail recording is, "You can press star to leave a message now." Not only does it assist people in knowing which button to press, but also teaches people that don't know already that it's possible to skip the message.

My advice is that you should include a line like mine near the beginning of your voicemail recording. You could save your callers from having to listen to some thirty seconds of redundant recordings.

Premium Mustard

2008-07-27T20:45:00.001-07:00

I'm out on the annual family camping trip. An idea I had this year, since our site has electrical hookup, was to string up lights to illuminate the tables at night. One string my aunt brought is a bunch of picnic items: watermelon, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, ketchup bottles, and mustard bottles. It's all very whimsical. It's the mustard bottles, however, that got my attention. Why does it say "Premium Mustard"? Why not just "Mustard"? Why did they deem it important to make such a distinction? My cousin and I had a good laugh about this when we were putting them up.

A Waste of Time

2008-07-24T00:02:00.000-07:00

It bothers me when people remove food from the microwave early without resetting the countdown timer. The microwave blinks the time remaining and the message "PRESS START" repeatedly as it waits idly. I'm the one who has to reset it, even if I wasn't the one using the microwave. Someone needs to manufacture self-resetting microwaves.