The Olympics are in August?

With the amount of coverage the Olympics are getting recently, I assumed that the games were starting sometime in the next couple of weeks. However, I just saw a promo flash up on the screen that said something about August. So I looked it up, and confirmed that the 2008 Olympics don’t begin until August 8th.

This is almost as bad as the election that they’ve been covering for 4 years. I’m so numb to the buzz that if I didn’t vote by mail, I’d be afraid that Election Day would come and go before I noticed.

Stop annoying me

I figured that since so many companies think it’s okay to annoy me, it’s time to dedicate an entire category of my blog to Annoying Marketing.

From today’s mailbox…

As you can see, while the item was addressed to “Valued California Resident,” (spam spam spam!) it was marked as “official business” (possibly important) so I decided to open it.

Envelope with "OFFICIAL BUSINESS" printed on it.

As soon as I opened it, I knew it was junk. A fake check. “This is not a check” is a term that in annoying marketer language means “Ha! Tricked you! We got you to look at our offer!”

This is not a check.

The best part about this fake check was how much trouble they went through to make it look like a real check. They implemented security features including microprinting.

Thanks a lot, unnamed big company of which I am already a customer, (they could have addressed me by name!), you just annoyed me.

Future Eyes

I usually wear contacts, but recently I’ve started wearing glasses on a more regular basis. One of the reasons I like wearing them is that they are the kind that automatically turn into sunglasses when necessary. I’m a sucker for little tricks like that, especially since whenever it happens I remember that commercial from a few years ago that described the lenses as being from the future. My contacts don’t get darker, but it would be cool if they did. After contacts, the next step would be to go beyond laser correction and make it so a person’s own eyes automatically block UV rays. That would be so cool.

Speaking of laser correction, I think it’s a neat idea, but unfortunately I’ve been told that I have large pupils so I’m not a great candidate. Also, I’d want to have it done outside of California, because it would be scary if there was an earthquake during the procedure.

3:21 AM

It’s now a bit after 3 AM and I’m trying to decide if I should go to work really early (and then get to bed early) or get some sleep and go to work really late. Usually when this happens, I go in late.

My plan right now is to take a short nap, then head in early. Use the comments below to guess what will really happen. No cheating if you’re reading this in the future and know the answer.

I know I’ve been blogging more than usual lately, but that’s only because I was recently reading my old blog, and was disappointed in how much I’ve slowed down compared to when I was in school. I’m not trying to match my old blogging intensity, but it would be nice to reach an average of one post per day. Oh, and since this is going out at a crazy hour of the morning, I’d also like to take this opportunity to point out that the time stamps on my old blog are 3 hours off — it looks like they all got converted to PST even though at the time I was blogging from EST. So if you see an entry that was published at 1 AM, it was actually worse… I was blogging at 4. Note that my old old blog shows the correct time.

Self control

I started marinating carrots on Friday night. They’re supposed to marinate for 3 days before being served. That means I have 24 hours to go.

I haven’t cheated, but all weekend I’ve found myself opening up the refrigerator and just staring at the bowl. I even think about the carrots while I’m driving. It makes me think of how bad I feel when people train their dogs to stare at a treat before being allowed to eat it. I’d be such a sad dog.