When I was little, whenever I felt something wasn’t fair, and I went and complained to a parent or teacher, etc., and got a “well, life’s not fair!”, that response always bothered me. I would reply, “Yeah, life’s not fair, but the whole point of everything we do is to work towards making it as fair as possible, so ‘life’s not fair’ is just a cop-out, it’s you saying that although you recognize that this situation isn’t fair, you just don’t care enough to do anything about it.”
I’ll remember this in case I ever end up with kids someday, so I can respond more diplomatically when I really don’t care enough to do anything about it.
The woman in the passport wing of my local post office was nice. She reminded me to check my parking meter based on the time she’d seen me walk in. She posed me oh-so-carefully for my Polaroid photo: “Turn your head a millimeter to the left, okay, now up a tiny bit, no, a few angstroms down, good.” (Those weren’t her exact words.) The photo came out well. I wanted to ask her out, even though she is probably 20 years older than I am. Maybe I’m just kidding.
Experience points gained from:
- Installing and driving with tire chains.
- Lodging in a real lodge, i.e., less than 20 meters from slopes/lift.
- Rolling around in snow, jumping back into hot tub. (Observation: causes pain!)
- Preparing over twice as much food (with five people) as would have filled us to capacity, including broiled steaks.
- Eating all of the above.
- Digging my car out from under a mountain of powder.
- Extremes of soggy clothing.
- Smoothness of driving after chains are finally removed.
- General lack of soreness.
Experience points applied to:
- Increased snowboarding skill.
Minor site redesign. Now you can comment. Importing old posts. Writing new. Vacation is nice. Reading. Got an iPhone.
iPhone has interference issues when placed next to electronic things with speakers. If it’s within a couple feet of my alarm-clock-radio, the radio emits a low morse-code sort of noise every few minutes. You may have heard this kind of interference sound caused by someone’s BlackBerry. If within a few feet of my music keyboard (e.g. in my pocket), I also get this through the keyboard’s speakers. Electronic resonance.
Activating the iPhone, I tried the “999-99-9999″ Social Security Number trick (as referenced in the Ars Technica iPhone review and elsewhere, which didn’t work. “Invalid Social Security Number.” So I tried “111-11-1111″. Same. So I tried “111-11-1112″. That worked, and I was kicked over to AT&T’s contract-less GoPhone service, paying a little more per month but avoiding a two year contract. Such half-heartedly cat-and-mouse-like disabling of a couple SSN’s is silly. I can’t call myself a l337 h4xx0r when the h4xx1ng is just barely so.
Why you should always have health insurance coverage: A friend of mine moved from one job to another and didn’t get around to mailing in a check for COBRA (Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, although what that has to do with health insurance, I don’t know (sounds like a manufactured acronym, or “manufacronym”, as it were)) insurance form. This allows you to simply pay directly (whatever your previous employer had been paying) to keep the same health insurance you had while at work until some other form of insurance kicks in.
He broke his arm snowboarding, and needed surgery to set and pin the bones. The hospital bill was around $25,000, and he has to pay that out of his own pocket. He can pay the bill over a period of time (several years), but that’s still a sizable chunk of money.
Admittedly, there was a period in between jobs (when I left my job-before-last and went off on my own, actually) that I also did not continue under COBRA and was uninsured for a period, though I made it through just fine (before signing up for a Blue Cross PPO plan at about $60 per month), and there’s no decent safety net, otherwise, for what can end up costing far more than you can afford.
What’s odd: He says COBRA was around $300 a month. That’s strange, considering the cost of my simple Blue Cross plan. (Correct me if I’m mis-remembering the exact figure, but I do know the difference was very large.) Why is it so much? Isn’t this a government program to encourage and facilitate people moving between jobs keeping medical insurance at all times?
I was walking down the street. Sneezed. Sounded like someone honked a horn at that exact moment. Horn kept honking; apparently it was a car alarm. So my sneeze was powerful enough to set off a car alarm from at least ten feet away. Impressive.
It doesn’t matter what your talent is; as long as you’re prolific you’ll probably end up making something cool.
On Monday, I took the bus to work. Just felt like doing something different. Busing it takes an hour whereas driving takes half an hour. I’d planned to spend as much of the time as possible reading, and got through 30 pages of “The Know-It-All”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743250621. Not nearly as fast as I hope I can read without jarring bumps as the bus goes over pot-holey streets, without distracting announcements by the driver as we pass each stop, without time spent squirming in uncomfortable seats and glances out the window to check my stop isn’t nigh, and this isn’t a particularly cerebral book either (despite the title), but it’s something. It was nice not having to pay attention to traffic, wait for red lights, shift gears or flip endlessly through radio stations. There’s also that element of connectedness, of being part of the life of working Los Angeles, going about its daily business, not isolated in my own box. I think I’ll do it again tomorrow.
