How To Succeed in the Dentist Chair

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I went to the dentist this morning and faced my biggest fear ... nose hair. Mine.

That's right. In a recent survey, 9 out of 10 people said dental pain is nothing when compared to pain of social embarrassment. The tenth person simply twitted, "OMG! I just wet myself at the dentist and I feel fine." (This survey must be true; I read it on the Internet. After I wrote it.)

So why should I fear nasal follicles, especially mine? It started a couple of years ago when my body crossed that half-century mark. Seemingly overnight, random nose hairs - once slow-growing and stealthy-black - began mutating into a rapid-sprouting shade of white known as "mistakable thin slivers of snot".

I groomed them several times a week. But even with an industrial-strength weed-whacker, my trim job didn't cut it. If I were bald, a week without trimming would give me a handle-bar comb-over guaranteed to gross out the best of you.

I wasn't worried about reclining in the dentist's chair. My embarrassing worry was of a wayward hair or five waving frantically at the dental technician while I tried to breath and she tried to clean my teeth. All I could imagine was her thinking, "Why can't this unsophisticated idiot clean his nose?"

So I decided on a brilliant tactic of diversion. Just before the appointment, I ate two boxes of Oreo cookies.

With the creamy white filling scrapped off.

My plan worked very well. By the time I clogged the suction tube for the 3rd time, they had the vacuum pressure turned high enough to pull my belly button inward.

More importantly, the dental hygienist didn't say a thing about my nose hairs. Not only did she not look towards my nose, she hardly looked at me at all.

Although it was a bit awkward when she tried to floss my chin.

Let me predict the royal birth

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Judging from the news, billions of people are obsessing on one life-changing event, an event that doesn't even involve them: When is the birth of a certain baby?

It's not like we are talking about the start of the second coming, or the arrival of an expected savior (or destroyer) of our species. No, an awful lot of people (at least in the news and entertainment media) are rather excited about the continuing lineage famous for living rent free these past centuries.

The world wasn't this excited about your birth. Or about mine. (Although "royal" was often used to describe me, always with the word "pain".)

But let me try to help. Being the skilled mathematician that I am, I would like to offer my prediction. I base my almost-always accurate forecast on real data, this time provided by United Nations and the World Health Organization.

Over the next 12 months, our human race will grow by 143,328,412.6 babies. This means the Middleton/Williams offspring will be born … whenever it's ready along with millions of other squalling infants.

Why are billions of folks obsessing over the birth of one unrelated child? Couldn't they just act like the soon-to-be royal baby and get a life?

Run for the border? Nah, you go ahead.

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According to the latest news, one country now has the honor of being "fatter than the United States". Congratulations, Mexico.

We in the United States shouldn't be surprised. Sure, I could shed a pound or 50. But who has the time and motivation. If someone asked me to travel 100 mile in the hot sun with little or no food for three or four days, I would have to say, "You go ahead. I'll catch up with you later. In fact, why don't I stay here and mind the food that you're leaving behind."

Traversing the US–Mexican border is not for the faint of heart. While you don't have to be a triathlete, you do have to give up a several servings of donuts and put in a several days of cardio.

So we're dealing with simple math. As the more motivated, athletically inclined Mexicans moved north and their fluffier counterparts stayed behind, Mexico became a weightier nation. Hurray for our side.

Will our hefty Hispanic neighbors ever migrate this way? Not if Wal-Mart is any indication. Have you seen our large North-American associates get around the aisles in those electric shopping carts? "Run for the border" would be more of a motorized crawl. Not much of a chase for the Border patrol (as long as they're in shape).

Don't worry. Mexico's achievement is temporary. The ambitious will continue their momentum and travel north into Canadian lands. The really ambitious will overshoot Canada, skidded pass the north pole, and stop their rushin' in Russia. The number of skinny folks in the US will drop and we will regain our title as "Fattest Country of the Solar System".

USA! USA! USA!

What are you heffer?

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In the realm of udderly sad news, a cow falls through a roof of a Brazilian man, Joao Maria de Souza, and lands in his bed ... on top of Mr. de Souza. As romantic as it might sound to certain people, Joao later died from the injuries.

To be clear, the cow did not leap into the roof from the shock of getting a Brazilian. It had conveniently "wandered" from its job as a lawn moo-er and on to Mr. de Souza's thin roof, which collapsed under the cow's slim one-and-a-half-tons.

Coincidentally, unofficial news report say Mrs. de Souza and the cow left the scene to escape grilling by the police - a mis-steak by some accounts.

A few rumors have the couple in a romantic tryst in the India. But that would be udder nonsense.

While it is reported that Mrs. de Souza enjoyed the company of 25 varieties of black Angus and of 25 varieties of white Charolais, this story is not about the 50 shades of graze.

How do you get to space? One Grasshopper at a time.

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"Grasshopper, when you can land accurately on a single pebble, it is time for you to leave."

Get the Kung-Fu reference? Anyone? Anyone?

Sorry, I'm in awe on this amazing video of SpaceX's Grasshopper pin-point landing:

I'd really like to have that Hexacopter used to take this video ... hint, hint

Required field must not be blank ... For fun and profit

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Sometimes it feels like those hard-working folks at Google add infuriating features just to remind us who's in charge. Maybe it's their way of taunting us with their rewarding careers of free lunches, of free day care, of high pay, and of a working environment filled with play.

You may have found the latest "enhancement" when you tried to edit your blogger.com blog. As you created a post, you immediately got an error message:

"Required field must not be blank. Ignore warning"

Google can't tell you which required field should be blank - that would defeat the purpose of taunting you. In fact, you can't even save any of your work in a draft form until you solve this mystery.

And clicking on the "ignore warning" link only brings the warning back in a few seconds. Nah-NAH nuh Nah-NAH!

So let me help. Just put some text in the title field. Ta-Da!

Of course, whatever you use for in the title-block becomes part of your post's web address. Forever and ever.

This can be a bit of a problem if you use something like "I'd love Hitler", then work on your draft on and off for several days, finally realizing your piece really needs to be published with "I'd love to kick Hitler in the groin" in its address. Too bad. (Although, your initial title may spike your web traffic as numerous, soon-to-be-disappointed skinheads flock to your site from a miss-interpreted search. Yes, I agree. Serves them reich, er, right.)

I know there are rare writers out there who have a headline in mind before they begin to compose their masterpieces. Unfortunately, I'm not that proficient. I have to write my ideas down first, and then develop the working title afterwards.

But if Google is changing the rules of the game, so be it. I'm going to try the old SEO approach to naming my preliminary drafts.

"SEO" is the web version of those catchy headlines you see at the checkout counters on the magazine covers - those glossy, over-priced tabloids that promise life-changing advice if you read their articles. Usually, these stories are the same sort of advice you rejected from your parents.

Remember the defiant attitude of a younger you when your mother freely told you to "eat your vegetables"? Yet now, as an adult, you'll pay good money to magazines that promise "how to live forever with the revolutionary pea and broccoli diet".

A lot of successful bloggers use the same newsstand trick to get people to their sites. Often, the posts don't quite deliver on their banners.

So I apologize ahead of time if you are mistakenly enticed to read my entries and learn it's not what you expect. (Not that that should be any different from before.)

So here are a few titles that may show up in the addresses of my posts:

"Five ways to remove road tar from your mosquito's wings."

"Bikini wax: A soldier's best friend for that shiny bikini."

"How to tell if your goldfish is not into you."

"If at first you don't succeed (the joys of celibacy)"

"10 things you should know about 3 secrets involving your friend's 100 highlighted hairs."

"Thyme and Tide wait for no man: A Bachelor's guide to cooking and laundry."

"How to live the life of luxury as a Google employee while giving your customers more aggravating lives." (Just kidding, Google guys. Wait. Don't .....)


!UPDATE! !UPDATE! !UPDATE! !UPDATE! !UPDATE! !UPDATE!
After further investigation, I have to you tell that I was wwwwrrrrr, I was wwwrrrrooonnn, I was ... wrong. There! Feel better?

You CAN save your draft under one title and then publish your post with another. I found this important fact at the blog "The Real Blogger Status".

I apologize to the Google for implying any elitist attitude by their developers. I hope this means we can still do lunch. At your campus, of course.

"I shouldn't have spent" only lasts a lifetime

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Life is full of regrets. The worse remorse probably comes at the end.

The dying man in a hospital who thinks, "I shouldn't have spent so much time at work instead of with my family."

The elderly woman wasting her final moments in a nursing home with thoughts of "I shouldn't have spent my life so safe and boring."

The man plummeting down the side of a tall building, thinking "I shouldn't have spent $299.95 for this flying portion."

Good news though - these lamentations are temporary. For example, one day you will no longer worry about "I shouldn't have spent time reading this post."

Courage in the Check-out Line of Fire

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My girlfriend scowled and grew angrier by the second. I had given up by that point and could only laugh at the absurd situation.

We stood with our groceries in the shortest check-out line. Only 3 people stood between us and freedom from the store's din. The lady in front of us held a gallon of milk. The two ladies in front of her each had a half-full basket of food, with the front-most woman putting her last item on the conveyor belt.

That's when the fun started.

When the cashier announced the total of the bill, the woman embarked on a lengthy search through her purse. At first, I thought it was one of those embarrassing "Oh no! I left my money at home!" moments. But no. She stopped her less-than-frantic search when she handed the cashier a small mountain of coupons.

The annoyed clerk spent the first few minutes scanning and rescanning mangled coupons. She then spent another couple of moments reviewing the long grocery printout. Finally, we all endured the next five minutes as cashier and customer haggled over the legitimacy of the reject coupons.

Ultimately, after glaciers had crawled a few inches further on the Earth, our cash conscious shopper agreed to the total and spent another agonizingly long time searching her purse for ... wait for it ... we did ... a check book.

As this wondrous transaction concluded, our line of weary shoppers contained their celebratory cheer. Our coupon clipper moved up to wait on the next woman behind her.

Now, you and I - being contentious citizens of the check-out line - would have had our coupons and payment ready before that last item hit the price scan. But what do others do? That's right. They form shopping clubs. And our line was privy to one of their meetings.

Her friend waddled forward to begin the sequel: "Day Of The Damned ... Coupon Clippers". Yes, her friend graciously gave us a repeat performance.

By then, the patient lady in front of us left the line. Her gallon of milk had expired.

When Fate promoted us to the front of the line, we placed our few, meager items on the counter. The check-out clerk asked how we were doing. My girlfriend said, "Not using coupons."

I shouldn't knock coupon users. With these pieces of shiny paper, our thrifty time-wasters saved $10 each (according to the cashier ). And it only cost those of us in line 20 minutes of our lives ... each.

Had I known ahead of time, I would have given those women $20. But that's the action of a richer man. Maybe I should be cutting coupons. And maybe I can get a deal on a bullet-proof vest to wear while checking out.

Watch out for falling rocks

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Let me introduce myself. I am the Sisyphus of blogging. I spend months struggling to push that burdensome rock of frequent posts up the steep slope of popularity. Then, when I take a few days off from blogging to rest, that rock careens down the slope, taking my hard-earned audience with it. Then, like Sisyphus's punishment, I begin the laborious work all over again.

I've been repeating this fruitless cycle for several years now - always motivated by hope that enough popularity would transform into financial rewards. I write; you like; you tell your friends, and one of them has the business connections to keep me gainfully writing.

Then I wake up.

Lately, that blogging rock has become much heavier. And more discouraging. From my rumble of words, I find it harder to release an acceptable post.

But you probably have noticed that. Or not.

Yet Another Facebook Danger: Cloning

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My daughter's facebook account just got cloned by some idiot. Apparently, cloning someone's page is the latest in security attacks on your FB site. Here is an article on how it happens and how to prevent it: Facebook Cloning

always glad to help the innocent animals

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I showed up fashionably dressed to my friend's party. His wife said I was the cat's meow.

Well, of course I was. Their cat had laryngitis and someone had to be the voice for this pathetic creature.

This is better than being called the cat's pajamas. Since I'm big enough to cloth several sleepy felines, I avoid psychotic cats who frequently rub lotion on you and knead your skin to see how soft you're getting.

You're making this up, aren't you...

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What?! The IRS has been going after groups that chant, "Down with the IRS!"?

Yeah, right. Sure thing.

Next, you'll be telling me that the Department of Justice has been secretly seizing the phone records of reporters.

This is America, in case you've forgotten - where our governmental officials act with the up-most of integrity. At least, until they get caught.

Look Ma, I'm back in College!

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So I'm about to plow into week three of my class through coursera.org. Even though Ohio State University offers their rhetorical writing class for free, they still have it set up as a full course complete with lectures, several assignments, and student-teacher interaction.

What amazed me about this course is that there is over 20,000 people signed up for it, several thousand on the forums, and a few thousand participating in the assignments.

The class's syllabus mentioned there would be about six hours of homework. Maybe it's because I haven't been in college for several years, but this work is taking a lot more than six hours.

One of the first assignments was to simply writing an article that introduced yourself to the "class". Here's what I wrote:

"Know your audience" and "Let them eat cake" are both well-quoted pieces of advice. And, had she listened to her publicist instead of her baker, Marie Antoinette might have lasted into the 1800s.

So, "How do I get to know my audience?" I wondered about this as I nibbled on my tasty dessert. I know you're out there. I can hear you typing - all several thousand of you (based on this course's statistics).

Not only do I have to know all of you, but this assignment is titled "Getting to Know You" as in "you knowing me". This means opening up, exposing myself. I might as well be helping people eat better by strolling by fast food restaurants wearing only a Speedo. As that poster child of unhealthy eating, I can have people spitting up those dollar cheeseburgers in no time.

Sorry. I apologize for that imagery. I hope you are not eating as you read this. However, if you have a sudden loss of appetite, please let me know. I might be on to the next greatest infomercial product for weight loss. No dancing involved. Just a lot jiggling.

Yes, I know. Should people get to know me only if they're armed with a barf bag? That doesn't inspire confidence for any beginning writer, does it. "Say, have you read my latest?" "Excuse me, … bbbbbBaARF." "Sorry, is my grammar that bad?"

So who are you? What would you like to know that will enrich your life? Perhaps, the first time the power of writing revealed itself to me?

In third grade, I wrote a story involving my friends as dirty snowballs. While reading that story to the class during our recess period, one of my friends laughed hard enough to spew milk out of his nose. This was pretty amazing since we weren't drinking milk. (Just kidding. He was breast-feeding at the time. It was a very progressive school.)

I tell this in hopes that you aren't a former classmate. Or my former friend who now has a debilitating nose injury and seeks retribution. Or a lawyer who loves creating legal briefs for dirty snowballs.

I'm just pointing out the power I discovered at an early age. It was like being a superhero who wears a cape made of paper and magical words. I felt I could throw this cape at the worst of fiends, then overpower them while they lay helpless with laughter. (As a youngster, I believed all fiends were readers. Look at comic books. Show me one crook who failed to react to Superman's speech balloon. That's a fiend reader, my friend.)

Almost a decade later, writing revealed its power of empathy. It was during my high school "senior writing assignment of death". You know, that final course grade that means the difference between graduating on to college, or being condemned to a job of repeating "you want fries with that?".

To graduate, I did what every responsible teenager does - I waited until the last few days of the deadline and then threw my adolescent angst into a story. Yes, I got an "A". I later discovered that my woeful tale ended up being circulated throughout the school. Apparently I wasn't the only one suffering turmoil of pimples and unpopularity while trying to laugh about it.

The muses of writing came to my aid in my adult years too. As an engineer and manager, my writing consisted of thrilling - well, almost - technical documents, often-ignored instruction manuals, and diplomatic emails to my bosses.

Diplomatic email? Anyone can point out the asinine ways of their gracious overlords. But a skillfully craft message keeps your job intact, and has your boss readily agreeing with you that he (or she) is an ass.

The next alluring moment of scrivening came during one of those wonderful, life-changing events: a costly divorce. To survive and to care for my family, I set up a blog and began earning money. I learned the fine art of writing meaningless reviews and of creating entries with SEO links. Sure, I put in lots of hours while pocketing less than minimum-wage. But those posts paid bills.

For example, one client assigned me the keywords "wedding reception". So I wrote about the marriage of two TV antennas. They had a terrible wedding, but a wonderful reception afterwards. While my post paid five bucks, it - like most of those assignments - only cost me a tiny bit of my dignity.

Writing such pieces taught me another important lesson. In fact, I want to share it with you ... and you, and you, and you, and you. And especially - you. That lesson being this: Meet your word count by padding your writing with needless filler phrases. (800 words, here I come.)

Know what else I've learned? Being a writer isn't as complicated as we might make it out to be. We simply record our thoughts so others can read them. What others do after they read your inspiring prose is up to their lawyers and your elected officials.

What I'm trying to say is this: We are all writers. Placing your signature and a gratuity on your dinner tab is writing. Granted, you're not going to win any Pulitzer prizes. But, if you aren't a stingy bastard, you made your waitress or waiter a very happy reader.

So, do I know you? Do I challenge your thoughts, or put you to sleep (not a bad thing if you are suffering with insomnia)? Did you enjoy this passing of time, or do you have regrets about the minutes lost reading my drivel?

OK. Here we are, finally at the end. As I stressed over this assignment's goals, I realized something - in 100 years, no one will care. In 1000 years, no one will remember.

Unless, of course, these scribblings becomes an epic work. In that case, I would like my royalties now please. Cash gratefully accepted; banknotes of 50s and 100s always welcome.

If you've made it this far, I know one thing about you. You are a patient group of readers. Thank you. Please enjoy your cake.

Buzz off, Suckers!

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Today's summer time helpful hint comes from my co-workers who enjoy lazing outdoors after work.  They say you can keep mosquitoes from biting by surrounding yourself with lemongrass. 

No one seems to know why this works. My guess is that, after hungry mosquitoes take a hit of that lemony plant, those little buggers aren't biting anything with a puckered proboscis.

7-years of my driving as a chart

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Early in the last decade, my life became blessed by that truly life-changing experience: a bitter and costly divorce. To survive, I tracked every penny as I worked to take care of my family.

Part of my penny-pinching strategies involved obsessively recording my gas receipts. I did this because some of my job includes tracking trends and data analysis. Since my Hyundai Tiburon crossed the 100,000-mile warranty mark, I wanted to catch and prepare for any upcoming mechanical failures.

Also, and truth is, I'm a math geek. There. I admitted it. Feel better?

I would record each ticket into a spreadsheet: the cost per gallon, my miles driven since last fill up, the amount of the gas purchase. The spreadsheet would then calculate the cost per mile, my miles per gallon, and trend lines about the data.

So now, after retiring my faithful Tiburon at 325,000 miles, I have almost 8 years of recordings. Today, I had one last look at the data I've collected. It's interesting because of the historical reporting of gas prices in my neck of the woods.

For some silly reason I thought I would share this with you. Perhaps I can do some good for anyone with insomnia. You can click on the charts for a bigger, better view. Oh joy!


The miles per gallon chart shows the average for each month. This is all of the miles driven for that month divided by the total gallons I put into the car.

One of the first troublesome trends the chart told me about was when my miles per gallon dropped dramatically as you can see. Turned out that my car's speed sensor was acting erratic. I didn't have to replace it immediately because I was testing various GPS systems for my company and relied on the speed reported by those units. This bought me a few months to put money together for the repair that October 2006.


This lengthy chart shows my cost per mile and the average price per gallon for each month. You can see on we had that ridiculous gas price bubble in 2007. And you can see how prices change seasonally.

And being the geek that I am I like to try and find correlations between groups of numbers. In this graph I'm comparing my cost per mile to my cost per gallon. That slope of the trend line in the midst of all those points gives you an approximate idea of my miles per gallon.







And so, there you have it - I drove a car a lot miles, put gas in it, and lived to tell about it.  Are you still awake?

Free College Courses

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I don't mean that someone has jailed college courses and we need to free them. No, most college classes are out in the open and readily available. "Readily" being an old English word meaning "more money than you have".

I think that's what it means. What do I know. I can't afford to go back to college and learn otherwise.

That's way I'm happy to report what I've found: Several big-name institutes of higher ed-u-ma-cation offer free courses. But, since you are smarter than I am, you already know about coursesa.org. Sorry, I'm riding the short bus of the Internet, so it takes me a little while longer to catch-up.

In any case, I'm signed up to take a course on "Rhetorical Composing" given by Ohio State University. So if you read my subsequent posts and begin to feel persuaded to do something besides sleeping, well, my short bus is getting a little longer. Prutty soon, I might be able to type without wearing my helmet. But don't expect miracles.

Forgive me, Old Friend.

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We've been together for over 12 years. I thought - I hoped - that we would go further. But age wears on all things - our bodies, our minds, our relationships.

You probably don't know how excited I was in early September of 2001 when we first got together. I know you won't understand how important you were in all of my adventures since then. And you will never feel the depth and pain of my regret when we parted company this past Saturday.

I have no misgivings for the time and money I spent to care for you - especially these past few months. But I can no longer depend upon you. You've let me down one too many times.

After 325,500 miles, you served your purpose. If I were a rich man, I could have kept you restored in an immortal glory. Of course, if I were a rich man, your successor would not have been a cheap replacement.

I never understood how anyone could love a 2-ton hunk of metal and plastic and oil. But then you came into my life. Thank you, my dear, inanimate friend, my motoring companion of the road. Thank you for keeping me alive and safe and employed.

Solving Gardening Problems

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These warm days of Spring make you think you can do anything. I thought I would plant a garden. So I started with something easy: runner beans.

Big mistake.

If you don't keep your eye on them, those beans will dash off. Then you have to spend much of the day hunting them down. It doesn't help with noisy neighbors accusing you of bean stalking. I would use a gun to keep my green creations under control, but this town has restrictions on bean shoots.

So now, I have to raised another plant to keep my runner beans in check. I thought about using dog roses, but they're too easily excited by the cat tails. So I'm going with a more domesticate version: the collie flower.

Electric Car for our Police Force

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Our town joined the 21st and a 1/10 century as our police force added to their patrol squad: an electric car. A proud day for us all.

Almost.

I'm not saying that our law enforcement is just a short level up from the Keystone Cops. But I overheard the training session. Our boys-in-blue had a lot of questions upon learning they had to keep the vehicle charged.

"What crimes do you charge an electric car with? Watt crimes?"

"If we park near a dumpster and the car gets full of flies, can we call in a swat team? Please?"

"Is the car considered green because it hasn't committed any offenses yet? Or, do we have to paint it first?"

"During the charging phase, do you read the car its rights or its warranty? Is it "the right to remain silent" or "the right to remain muffled"?"

"While we try not to get personal, we do run a pretty straight prison here. Shouldn't this AC/DC thingy matter?"

"Pretty Please?! We promise it would be just a small swat team."

"We were told we can "socket it to it". So we don't have to worry about being accused of police brutality then?"

"Do we cram the finger print box with a tread print? If we do that again, can we refer to the vehicle as a retread?"

"Can we pimp-out the car? We considered hanging fuzzy handcuffs from the rear-view mirror. But that might send the wrong message about the police force. Wha'da mean it's too late? Anyway, we're thinking about installing fuzzy dice - the ones that flash when you plug them into the car's cigarette lighter, sorry, power socket. In the event of a crime, should the accessory be charged as an accessory?"

"Are you sure we couldn't call in the swat team? Shocking. No, me, not that precious criminal car."

Ah yes, technological progress in action. Almost.

.

Unnoticed, in the quiet background of world, I have saved lives.

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Each year, a school bus runs over a child who was hidden in the bus's blind spots. Is it possible to prevent these unnecessary deaths and the resulting, burdensome lawsuits upon schools?

To do just that, I helped design a radar system to alert the bus driver about children in the bus's blind zones. That was six years ago. Since then, only a handful of school districts across the country bought and installed this life-saving technology. Even with the blessed benefits of this $1000 piece of hardware, it never quite caught on.

Maybe these tragedies were too infrequent: Given the millions of children riding school buses each year, only 20 to 30 families suffer through this horrific loss of their child. As a result, maybe the school district found it cheaper to pay the insurance claims than to install life-saving electronics.

Still, I have hope. Last week, our system made news in Iowa. All because of one grieving father who - after the death of his son - wanted no one to experience that heart-rendering pain for a beloved child who will never return home from school again.

His story is in the previous link. Here's the news video: