OK, look...I don't do this TV thing very much anymore, so I'm a little fuzzy on how it works, and I need some assistance ( Read more... )

Right, this one is really random: So you call some big company for customer service, like the phone company or the cable company or your health insurance provider. As you navigate your way through the automated menus, you get put on hold several times. There's some kind of generic, pleasant classical music while you wait on hold...punctuated by ( Read more... )

Elora and I have recently determined that we may be the last people on the planet without smart-phones. This is somewhat sad, as we regard ourselves as somewhat techie people. We're on T-Mobile, which limits our choices rather severely; we considered switching, but we haven't crossed the threshold of believing it's worth it yet. We're not sold ( Read more... )

Courtesy of hells_satans, a little test for you: Color acuity test. Lower scores are better.

This one's going to be somewhat depressing, but I keep thinking about it. When you have a kid -- particularly a kid who's old enough to ask questions about history, but young enough not to have a solid grip on the scale of time ("Was that when you were a kid, Dad?" "No, the events I'm talking about took place in 1902, so a little before me.") -- ( Read more... )

I had to buy some new photo albums today. I'm a little picky about the style of photo albums we buy (these, if you really care), so I bought a whole bunch of them, in the fear that they might be discontinued by the next time we go to buy them ( Read more... )

Hey, Guitar Heroes and Rock Band gods, I got a question for you. I received a copy of Rock Band: Beatles for Christmas, and Sparky received Lego Rock Band, which means that Rock Band playing around here is going to be a lot more co-op than it has been, meaning I want to acquire a second guitar. I've been using the mock-Stratocaster that came with ( Read more... )

Word geekery time! I've got a DVR again now, and I plan on saving some shows to the hard drive at the time that they are broadcast, so that I may watch them at a later time of my choosing. I've been referring to this process as "taping" -- "I'll just tape that Christmas special" and so on. Elora enjoys pointing out to me that there is no ( Read more... )

This may be of interest to the PSU alumni: I'll be heading to Dear Old State tomorrow (Monday) to speak to the current crop of writing tutors about careers in publishing. (Yes, I know, but just shouting "Don't do it!" and then leaving might be a little less than they expect.) I'll be repeating the talk on Tuesday with the English 250 class, which ( Read more... )

Ethical question for the group: Is it acceptable to pick up someone else's trash ( Read more... )