Drinking fountain etiquette

There is a certain etiquette when you are getting water from either a fountain or a water cooler and you are trying to fill a very large container. If there are people waiting to simply get a sip or small cup of water while you are trying to fill a 1 gallon container, consider stepping to the side and letting the next person go in front of you.

Thank you.

28

Today I turn 28. 28 is actually a lucky number for me. It is not only the day of my birthday, but it is also the day my sister and brother were born. In fact, every child born with my family name in America is born on the 28th. Kind of strange huh?

It has been quite a year. It really doesn't seem like a year ago I was taking a break and visiting Jenny in Princeton. A year ago I wasn't living with my girlfriend, I hadn't even met her yet. I was still living in California and I was still at my previous job.

So much has changed, and I must say it has all been for the better. I'm much happier in this time and space than I have been in a long time.

[sappy]

The largest contribution to that change in attitude is no doubt the girlfriend who always manages to put a smile on my face. I love that I have someone to share my day with after a long day at work. I love that she always takes such good care of me, even when I am a pain in the ass. I love that I never feel lonely anymore because I get to wake up next to her everyday

[/sappy]

Also a major factor is the change of job. The job isn't perfect but its a vast improvement over the previous employer. The work is just a lot more interesting. It's good to try and solve problems that actually matter to a large majority of people. I joke about it at work but here is the sad statistic. I spent 4.5 years at my previous employer. In that time I worked on several small projects but spent most of the effort on 2 major products. By the time I left, we had sold exactly 1 unit each of those products. ONE EACH!!

Compare that to the more than 1,000,000 subscribers we will in all likelihood reach with my next product and you can see the vast change in scope I am working on. True, my indvidual role is much more limited in my current job. But even so, it isn't 1,000,000x less.

What a year. I can't imagine that my 29th year on this planet can bring about any more change than my 28, but hey you never know.

Aftershave

Wearing lots of aftershave is bad.

Wearing lots of aftershave to work is worse.

Wearing lots of aftershaves to work when you work with mostly men is unexcusable.

Fixing Ikea Furniture

I found a great way to fix cheap Ikea furniture. One of the problems with buying Ikea furniture is that it is often quite fragile. The dowels and the screws they give you to put together the furniture is bound to fall apart. The joints just won't hold when put together with this cheap solution.

I have a table I bought from Ikea. Despite the fact that it was one of the more expensive pieces that they have, it too suffered from the "Ikea Wobble". I've own this table for well over 4 years and have never been able to tighten the joints tight enough to prevent it from wobblign. Sick of this, I decided to try and fix it. So I bought this glue called Gorilla Glue. It works great. I used it on all the joints of the table and now the thing is sturdy as a rock.

Must Resist ...

I'm not sure what is going on but I am slowly starting to use products made by Microsoft. Most of you know, I hate Internet Explorer, or more precisely I hate IE 6. I much prefer browsers like Firefox because of tabbed browsing, which in my opinion is a must-have feature.

But in the spirit of helping out, I dowloaded and installed IE 7 which currently is a public beta. I figured I would give it a try because it has things like tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking and I have to stop believing that Microsoft is the evil empire. Further, there are still many sites that just don't render correctly on Firefox, specifically ones with more multi-media. However, I refuse to use a product I don't believe is any good just because the company I work for may happen to create it. If Microsoft can't make a good product, I will be happy to use a competing one.

Well I'm here to say that IE 7 is a big improvement. So far, I don't have any real complaints. I'm not ready to endorse it over Firefox, but Microsoft is closing the gap. It's funny though, I still have some reluctance to help out Microsoft even though I am now Microsoft. I don't trust myself :) Some of my willingness comes from the fact that I know in my product, there is a ver concerted effort to protect users privacy.

Wait. Did you hear that? I swear someone just said, "Resistance is futile."

Seattle Rain

Coming from Southern California, you can take for granted that when it isn't rainng, it most likely is not going to rain in the next few minutes. No such luck in Seattle.

I walked out of my apartment today. It was a nice day, somewhat overcast but not too cold and not raining. I only left with the sweatshirt on my back and not much else. I then got to work and decided to check out the library. Again, no rain and the library is only down the street, so I decided to walk.

It wasn't raining so I took for granted that it wouldn't rain on my way back. Mistake. Of course, this is Seattle, not Los Angeles, and sure enough it was raining on my way back in. Somehow, I'm going to have to try and remember that no rain now is no guarantee for later.

Jelly Belly's Deceptive Marketing

I love jelly beans, especially the Jelly Belly brand, but they just did something that really pisses me off.

I bought a box of Jelly Bellys. They are expensive, and I recognize this, but I like them enough to buy them anyway. But I bought a box which was a fairly good size, probably 8" x 5". Now it was clear that the box didn't contain all jelly beans and there would be somewhat less than a full box but when I opened the box I was greeted by a bag that wasn't even half the size of the box.

Now why on earth do you package a bag of candy in a box that is twice its size. There is only one good reason, to trick your customer. It's bad marketing and bad business. Even though its my favorite candy, I may have to think long and hard before I buy any more Jelly Belly branded Jelly beans.

Sugar

In the category of "one of those small things that makes you really happy."

I come into work today and go get my standard 1/2 cup of coffee to start the morning. I am the type of coffee drinker who goes light on the cream but HEAVY on the sugar. One of the most annoying things about it is that I have to open lots of little packs of sugar to get my coffee just right. It's trivial, I know, but doing it every time I want a cup of coffee can be really annoying.

Well the miracles of all miracles has happened. I now have sugar which I can pour from a can. I'm very excited.