Yarrr!

% Ahoy! T'day be International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and if ye don't know what that means, I suggest ye go visit the UK Headquarters at www.yarr.org.uk. It be fun for the whole family / dorm / class / workplace / construction site / asylum / coven / brother/sisterhood / hive. Aye, I know that the list there ain't very piratey, but ye haveta make allowances for the landlubbers.


% It is somewhat difficult to use pirate talk for conversation that doesn't involve at least a few vaguely nautical terms. I'm unused to it, and want to get this posted tonight. So we're switching to normal speech.

% As I was walking home tonight, the street light right above me went out. While rare, it is not so impossible as to be worrisome, though it is always creepy to have the light right above you go out for no apparent reason. Still, no cause for alarm, really.

% Except that the exact same thing happened last night, at the same street light. And it isn't that the street light broke once and hadn't been fixed - it actually went out, while I was under it, two time in a row.

% If I don't post tomorrow, you might want to send a search party after me, preferably armed for battle against ghoulies and ghosties of various sorts and descriptions.

% Or you could assume that I'm being my normal self, and that another post will occur in several months at the latest.

% Yarr, that be it for tonight. Avast, me hearties!%

Sabius

To My Ashke

When we started, three years seemed like a long time. Maybe not forever, but it was definitely in the "unforeseeable future" category.

Now three years have passed. There have been some rough times, and it hasn't passed "like no time at all", but it has also been wonderful and a joy to spend this time with you. I feel privileged to know you, and honoured that you enjoy spending time with me.

Though we spend so much time apart, it is wonderful to know that we are there for each other, if only in spirit.

For making my life a joy to live, I thank you.

May we be laughing together this time next year.

Love,

Your Tinkerer

Careful what you wish for

@My landlord/housemate wants me to get her a microwave. Specifically, a nice red microwave that can be found for $50 at Walmart (we will ignore for a second that I am boycotting Walmart) which will go really well with the decor in the house.

Unwise Microwave Oven Experiments

I think I agree with her. I'll pick one up next weekend.@

FooL

Can you tell I'm procrastinating?

@ OK, quick update before the main point of this post. Basically, it was decided that April was going to be a continuous "FooL's day". This was decided back on April 1st, but it's turned out that April was a lot more hectic (heck, life has turned out to be a lot more hectic) than planned. Thus, there haven't been many posts.

@ One of the things that have been making my life hectic is that I had to go for an IQ test. The results finally came back, and the good news is that they're negative. The bad news is that apparently they want to do more testing.

@ Anyway, the thing that inspired this post was the following thought: What would it be like to be a telemarketer and call up someone like Mother Theresa? Or Ghandi, or St. Francis? Someone who is famous for giving up most of the stuff in their lives. Here you are, trying to sell encyclopedias or accordions, and they don't even have a second shirt. What would you do? How would you react? How would they react? Would they just say "No, thanks. I'm too busy taking care of the poor to learn to play the accordion" "I don't think your encyclopedias would fit in my house, and they would probably fall apart pretty quickly due to the conditions here" "I don't believe we have any ducts. We don't even have heated water."? Or would they try and convert the telemarketer to their way of life? Would they say "Accordions are the instrument of the devil! Sell harps instead!"? (Somehow I doubt it...) In some ways, I guess the question I'm asking is: How does one act in love towards a telemarketer, who in some ways plays the role of a leper in modern day society?

@ To my friends out there who read this and happen to be atheist or agnostic, I ask you to pardon the fact that a large number of the posts here end up, in one way or another, coming back to God, religion, or similar topics, even when it's a light hearted, random post. It's something that's been on my mind a fair amount, and tends to be important to me, so I won't apologize. Feel free to ask questions or comment about it - helps me to think more clearly about these subjects, rather than run around in circles over the same topics. <- This is probably the most serious you will ever see me... ooh look, shiny fish! @

FooL

Viral Marketing

^ I generally don't like viral marketing, at least not the 'let's trick the public into liking our product' type. 'Amateur' websites promoting a product, fake blogs, seemingly meaningful catchphrases attached to a url that leads to something not even remotely related all seems rather underhanded and wasteful to me. If your product is actually that good, then you shouldn't need to trick me into finding out about it. It should be obvious. You should be able to put up a picture of your product, maybe with some text extolling it's virtues (why it is better than the competition, not why I need it now even if I had never wanted it before), and that should convince me that your product is worth buying. Creating a 'sensation' to sell your product suggests that your product isn't worth the bubble wrap it is packaged in. (I may be overly generous in this sense - bubble wrap has given me numerous hours of entertainment, and I doubt some of the things advertised through viral marketing campaigns would do the same thing.)

^ The method that bugs me the most is having something that seems meaningful or interesting attached to a url that then links to the companies website. The reason it bugs me so much is the waste of the sentence. Often, I look at the phrase and I think "that would make a good inspiration of a poem or a painting, a song, a sonnet, or a sculpture". There's depth, meaning, or purpose that could be behind the phrase. And then... and then it is thrown away, used simply to prop up a lousy gaming console or a pair of shoes. It's a waste.

^ This is why, when a certain webcomic decided to hijack a viral marketing campaign, I decided to join in, even if I was a little late. The following text was apparently put up, with no explanation, on billboards in New York. The webcomic they lead to is one of the best out there, and also happens to be one of the first links you'll get if you search for any of these terms in Google (due to people doing exactly what I'm doing - linking to the comment page with this text as the link text).

THE ALGORITHM CONSTANTLY FINDS JESUS
THE ALGORITHM KILLED JEEVES
THE ALGORITHM IS BANNED IN CHINA
THE ALGORITHM IS FROM JERSEY

^If you're curious who the actual marketing campaign was for, I suggest you follow one of those links, click on 'News/Blag' at the top left of the page, and then go to the first (bottom) post from April 19th. Oh, I think you might also have to read the comments to get the full story. Alternatively, you could just 'ask' me. I might even give you the answer.^

CirKus.

The Miscellaneous, Slightly Worrisome, Post of Doom

% The title of this post is somewhat misleading. It erroneously implies that other posts have not been one of the following: miscellaneous, slightly worrisome, or posts of doom. As far as I know, all posts to this blog have, in some way or another, fit into all of the preceding categories quite nicely.

% That being said, on the the actual content of the post.

% When I was younger there was a considerable amount of time and energy devoted to teaching my fellow classmates and me about fire safety. Various teachers spent hours teaching their impressionable students to be panic stricken by the mere thought that a fire might someday occur in their vicinity by calming reiterating what to do and what not to do in case of a fire using the same tone of voice that a doctor uses when ey say "This will only hurt a bit". I know I, for one, started to refuse to sleep with my door open because a) the smoke detector light that I could see from my room glowed red and made me think that something was wrong and b) smoke would find it more difficult to get through doors, and we all learned that smoke is what killed people who were in fires. Anyone who knows my habits around fire now are free to take a moment to speculate about what made those habits change..... OK, moment's up, speculation is over. Though feel welcome to post a comment about it.

% One of the situations they never seemed to go over in those classes, however, was what to do if something caught fire in the oven. Or maybe they did go over it, and I just knew that I would never be let close enough to an oven for it to be a worry. At any rate, I was given cause to wonder about this. If something catches fire in the oven, what do you do? After turning off the oven, I mean - I figure that is a pretty self evident first step. What's the next step?

% On the one hand, can you think of a better place in the kitchen to have a fire? There is limited air flow, the only fuel available is what is in the oven, and the fire is surrounded by a metal box that is built to contain heat. I realize that it might not be built for a fire, but unless you have something fairly large that can start a good blaze, an oil fire (which, come to think of it, is likely to be the case), or you were cooking from the Anarchist's Cookbook, it shouldn't get too much hotter than the maximum rating for the oven, and it shouldn't stay hot for a significant period of time. (To all of the National and International Security people who found this blog due to the mention of the Anarchist's Cookbook: Welcome. Relax, stay awhile, browse around. I'll make it easy on you - I have not read the book, though if I didn't have a backlog of reading material to go through first, I would probably consider doing so.) So my thinking is, it might be best to just let it burn itself out.

% On the other hand, there are different fingers.

% The problems with leaving the fire in the oven is that, while the oven might be rated to withstand heat, there is no assurance that the pan you were using is rated for the same amount of heat, and it is probably in much closer contact with the source of heat than the actual oven is. Burning your backing sheet is bad, especially if it is the type of backing sheet that is likely to hold flavours. And that's the other thing - will all future food you put in the oven end up tasting charred, because of the fire that was in there? That would be rather unfortunate, to say the least. Not to mention, if you leave the fire in the oven, your food is a write-off. OK, so maybe it would be anyway, but it's a write-off and you didn't even try to stop it. Wouldn't that make you feel helpless?

% But the moment you open the oven door, there's going to be this influx of nice, oxygen rich air into the oven. The flame will likely get higher, and hotter, which just increases the damage it will do. And if you happen to be unlucky / dumb enough to open the door and lean in just as some of the liquid in there boils and splatters, you could end up with scalding liquid on your face, which I can tell you is not a pleasant experience (it really isn't). And what are you going to do when you open the door? Throw water in? I don't know how many of you have tried throwing water into an oven door (or any enclosed area at about that height, with a small opening). It is surprisingly difficult, cause you don't want to get the area around it wet, and the water will actually tend to fly higher than the door opening. Then there's avoiding the steam burns when the water hits the hot elements, etc., plus the fact that I don't know if I have ready access to a bucket (suppose I could use a mixing bowl), and it's really a tricky proposition.

% The conclusion that I've come to so far is that the very next step, after turning off the stove, is to turn on the range hood to get rid of the smoke, and then start looking for a long stick and some marshmallows. If I'm going to have a fire in the stove, I might as well cook something with it.%

Sabius.
Finished the 22 day of April, Year of Our Lord 2007.

(The fact that this will appear quite far down the page, due to it having been started significantly before it was posted, is purely happy coincidence. Thank you for scrolling down the page to read it.)

Moving Again

Sorry guys. Things have come up, and in all good conscience I had to move my site again. I couldn't continue living this double life anymore. The new blog is here.