by ·0 Comments

I’ve gone from being a very dumpy 22″ neck to a more fitting than snug 20″.  Should I make it to a 18″ neck, the world will be my oyster, but until then, I’ll accept the garb of the cross-over brands that mark JC Penny’s Big and Tall section or alternatively the small mens section at the Casual Male Big & Tall having Amazon-sampled a selection of shirts from each to find my new stock blue pocketed oxford.  The first change I’m making is opting for a long-sleeve shirt as after asking a cross-section of people with greater fashion acumen than myself, each agreed that the rolled up sleeve was an acceptable style for daily wear which also provides for the unrolled up option when a bare forearm would be unacceptable.  The second change is the transformation of the breast pocket from man purse containing my phone, fitbit, 3 pens, and a notepad, to just a place for my phone as the breast pocket seems to digitally sized to either accommodate all of my items or just my phone.

While I can understand that the size of pant pockets change with the size of the pants as the user’s hands will be scaled appropriately, I don’t understand why breast pockets wouldn’t be standardized as they are on suit jackets.  I never rest my fist in my breast pocket, nor does it normally contain contents that’d scale with its wearer like socks or a pair of leather driving gloves.  With a set of rare-earth magnets and some stolen nametags, I think I could create a pocket extender that’d allow any shirt to have the size pocket I want.  To the USPTO.

by ·0 Comments

Coworker: Terry, I saw this Jazz reggae fusion group this weekend and the lead was playing this crazy instrument that looked like a really short saxophone but it was straight and had keys on the side like a flute and a harmonica had a baby.
Me: That sounds like a soprano sax, did it have the mouthpiece on the side or at the end?
Coworker: It wasn’t a sax, the mouthpiece was at the end.
Me: I’ll ask around.

*call music nerd friend*

Music Nerd Friend #1:  Sounds like a soprano sax.

*call music nerd friend*

Music Nerd Friend #2: Sounds like a soprano sax.

*hours later*

Coworker: Terry, I did some checking.  Have you ever heard of a soprano sax?

by ·0 Comments

I set aside today to finish my woodbadge ticket as it is due tomorrow right before midnight.  My ticket items revolved around the merit badge program in Scouting and improving Scouts’ access to these tools.  You can see my efforts at https://www.suburbanadventure.com/woodbadge-ticket/ or http://ifinishedmyticketstopaskingaboutit.com/, the second I’ll probably let go of in a year.  Some notes:

  • I needed to kill space on the merit badge instructor information flyer so I added a QR code that leads to the council web page.  I think it looks keen and makes us look modern.  All the links are also bit.ly links so I can see if they’re are used.  So far: 0.
  • Putting together the video references for First Aid took a stupid amount of time, for instance, I found an awesome video on dealing with strokes that breaks out into a 3 minute ad in the middle.  Kids probably won’t like that.  Other videos presumed the viewer was a doctor, was in an ER, or was a naturopath.  I probably should have just recorded some from scratch.
  • For the last CIT World requirement, I couldn’t remember that that an Ambassador lives at an embassy, which is odd as I remembered the word earlier but in that it was a long requirement and I didn’t want to re-record it, I refer to it as “the ambassador’s place”, good job, Terry.
  • My ticket was approved with 10 hours to spare.  I finished Eagle with 45 minutes to spare.  I’m growing!

by ·0 Comments

We woke at 9:45 AM for the program that was to start at 10.  I am glad I packed the night before.  Despite these 10 hours of sleep, I still fell asleep during the deathly dull session on logic traps during which many of the presenters seemed to also have their eyes closed.  The preceding session was by John Allen Paulos who has not aged as gracefully as his promo shot suggests.

20110410-619-NECSS2011

No Mail

He mostly retold anecdotes from his books and during the Q&A period I asked him why he never emptied his mailbox at Temple University.  He said he did, but as chair of the math department, he sits upon a throne of lies.

The day’s events finished off with an “arts” performance of someone singing the ingredients of a Twinkie, about North American mammals, and the ways we will die.  There are times where the skeptic movement apes the trappings of a traditional church.  There are times when it shouldn’t.

Final Thoughts:

  • Best Presentation – Dan Gardner’s presentation on imperial skepticism and the need for there to be a completion to the analogy of “homeopaths are to medical skeptics as politicians are to”
  • Best Panel – The US Founders and Skepticism.  All the panelists had done their homework, and were will to disagree among the group when one deviated from fact.
  • Best Host Moment – Todd Robbins swallowing swords, he was an able replacement for Jamie Ian Swiss.  Todd Robbins swallowing a sword
  • If I had the option to re-do the weekend, I would have gone strictly for Saturday, saved $190 in hotel fees and gone to the speakers’ cocktail reception.
  • Presentations, except Eugenie Scott’s, required polish.  I would have trouble recommending NECSS to anyone but someone already familiar and interested in the skeptic movement.

 

by ·0 Comments

The Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism opened its doors at about 9:50 AM and I was surprised to see how orderly a queue, brights, radicals, skeptics, and free-thinkers would form.  Phil Plait was the keynote speaker and he seemed off his game as he spoke about addressing the scientific requirement that an idea is never proven vs. the practical requirement that one eventually recognize a fact claim as truth.  He’s otherwise a dynamic presenter and a likeable fellow but the speech he gave was more of the kernel of what will be a good speech.   He did issue the notable line of “the only thing homeopathy cures is thirst”.

20110409-549-NECSS2011

Phil Plait

The end of Phil Plait’s keynote had a Q&A section where dumb people asked stupid questions.  This would prove to be a fixture of the weekend including comments from “don’t blame journalism guy”, “postmodernist girl”, and “cogent question man” of which the third almost never appeared.  After a surly lunch, Eugenie Scott gave a wonderful presentation on the recent efforts to wedge creationism into the classroom.  One of her adverts involved a 7th grader saying “why can’t you let me choose what’s true?” to which Ms. Scott responded “because you’re in 7th grade, dear.”

20110409-583-NECSS2011

"The atheist" Eugenie Scott

The first panel of the day was “Skepticism and the US Founders” on which Brooke Allen, Jennifer Michael Hecht, and Susan Jacoby sat.  Each had done their homework, which was refreshing, and Brooke Allen rebutting Washington’s piety by noting him having used “god” only 6 times in 27 volumes of letters was satisfying.  A questioner brought up Washington’s first inaugural and each panelist scrambled to be the first to say “IT WAS WRITTEN BY HAMILTON”.  The second panel was unremarkable but Dan Gardner’s presentation on imperial skepticism was quite nice.  For next year, I think I’m going to offer to vet questions during the Q&A section during which only two of the 10 didn’t suck.

That evening, I had a 4 lb chicken pot pie at a pub and then walked to the Empire State Building and back.  We were in bed by 11:00 PM.  Us rowdy skeptics.

by ·0 Comments

NECSS had a group rate for The Marcel at Gramercy which normally charges about $310 a night for the room; Pat, Clara, and I paid $180.  I was saddened to learn that cost doesn’t necessarily correspond to size when I found that the main shot on their webpage is taken from the exit of their vestibule.  The room shot shows probably a full third of the room and I’ve seen minivans that were more spacious.  While sitting at the book shelf masquerading as a desk no one could fit between me and the bed even while using the desk as a dunlop shelf.  Had I opted to use the toilet it would have been in a pose I’ll politely call side saddle and was very happy that Baruch college had a proper potty.  The bed seemed spacious, but probably because removing the score of pillows on it doubled its apparent size.

The only non-comically tiny items in the room were the TV and the minibar whose tray covered a quarter of the desk.  Were one to have consumed all the items on it, one would owe the hotel an addition $132, excluding the $14 “pleasure pak”.  $7 condom, anyone?

by ·0 Comments

I’m going to Chicago over Easter to help someone move but instead of my normal tactic of driving straight through, I will be leaving after work Wednesday and and will stop for the evening at a friend’s house along the way.  Clearing this with him required some negotation:

Me: Could I stay over with you Wednesday evening?
Him: Well, the only available bed is tiny.
Me: I’ve literally stayed in a single size pink princess bed before.
Him: This isn’t much better.  Also, you may have to contend with my parents going into “house guest mode”.
Me: What’s that entail?
Him: Two things, first the first floor and where you are staying will be spotless and you can’t leave until after you’ve had pancakes.

I don’t know how I’ll survive.

by ·0 Comments

Most of today went into a long day at Job #1 followed by doing some pre-preparations for my weekend trip to New York and a short social outing.  Around 2 AM I approached my bed and felt terror like I had forgotten to do something and found nothing after going through my email inbox, my rememberthemilk.com task list and even checking my bank web pages to make sure some due date hadn’t passed without me noticing.  As a last effort, I checked the district web page and noticed tonight had been the District Committee Meeting to which I had no longer reason to attend.  They were probably going over Pinewood Derby prep in which I had no hand and Spring Camporee operations about which I didn’t even know the theme.

A month and a half ago I was running a 400-person Klondike Derby and today I was “just doing other things”.  Scouting was something whose egress I was worried would linger on for a while with a continual feeling of guilt about abandoning it and constant reminders of what I could be doing.  I’m glad that hasn’t been the case and life moves on.

by ·0 Comments

Troubleshooting a particular work device has been complicated by the fact that there is no documentation for the many valves, manifolds, redirection paths, and flow meters within the device and proper flow is impossible to determine as a T-intersection may have lateral flow either because it’s supposed to or because the base of the T is blocked off.  Today, I found the website for one of the valve manufacturers who had been bought and now operated under a different name but no valve diagram existed.  After googling the firm, I found out they had a youtube channel and on a lark played one of the vidoes where I was astonished to find that the diagram I needed flashed by in the background during the closing.  By screencapping the movie when the needed frame appeared I was able to get the basic flow information for at least one of the valves.

Getting the right screen cap took a few tries and I’m pretty sure my coworkers thought I was playing a game as they heard catchy music and me yelling “damn it!” repeatedly.

by ·0 Comments

During the bustle of my camera bag again being flagged for dissection by the TSA on the way home from Phoenix, I lost track of my Fitbit which had been loaded into one of three screening bins and it never made its way back to my pocket.  I wasn’t going to pay $115 for a new one and after having a morning where I made no progress on my work project I fired off a letter to Fitbit.  I mentally prepared for the phone conversation when they declined my request for a free replacement; after all the prostoletyzing I had done for them, how I was an early adopter, and, oh, by the way, how their little device couldn’t possibly cost $115 and must be mostly for the back end stuff,  I was ready for a fight, and if I won or lost I was going to feel good.

Later that day, I got a response of “replacement will be issued within 24 hours and should arrive in 5-8 days”.  After I had spent a whole afternoon planning on getting angry the jerks reply with quality customer service in a timely fashion.  The nerve.

[Editor’s note: I’ve come to learn that recently some people think things like the line above are to be taken literally, e.g. I was angry I didn’t get into a fight.  They are not.  It is a commentary on the humorous reversal of me being prepared for a cliche battle with customer support and it’s avoidance through Fitbit’s quality response and only the momentary hint of disappoint at not being able to argue being replaced with a much better outcome.  Thank you.]