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.
A bunch of my friends and I are participating in one of those things where you walk around and somehow it cures a disease. I’ve never been the biggest fan of these (I’d rather just donate money than have some sort of gimmick), but if that’s what it takes to get people to donate, then I’m for it. Plus I’m sure those who have a closer personal connection to the cause get something out of it.
Anyway, as I was signing up, I was reminded of my previous post: Wysz hates charities! The registration process was confusing and long, and if I hadn’t already committed to my friends, it’s something I honestly would probably have given up on if I was just doing it on my own. (I’d still donate, just not participate.)
Here’s the first page I had to deal with, which confused me:
Then, I saw this form, which filled my vertical 24″ monitor:
I finally got through it (with help). You can help me reach my goal by donating here. If I’ve met my goal, help out Koklynn, Charlene, Reid, or Nelson. And as I already had to specify earlier today, it’s not for cancer, it’s against it. While you have your credit card out, you could also help to fight Alzheimer’s. It’s an easy form.
You don’t want the customer’s first experience with your product to be frustrating (or painful):
Yes, that is me opening my new electric toothbrush. I knew I had to get out the video camera when I saw it was that dreaded plastic packaging. Even worse, this whole bit was in a cardboard box, so the plastic is completely unnecessary. Compare this experience to opening a product from Apple.
From the article linked above:
According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, injuries from plastic packaging resulted in 6,400 visits to emergency rooms in 2004.
I’m surprised the number isn’t higher.
The good news? After all that, I like my toothbrush.
I didn’t want this new blog to turn into a complaint–fest like my previous blogging attempts have, but I don’t know how many more cross-country flights I can handle. I’ve written about having to listen to in-flight commercials before, but it bothered me so much on a recent flight, when all I wanted to do was relax, that I would have asked the flight attendant to turn it off if I thought that would accomplish anything. Maybe I was just irritated that they had just announced the in-flight movie was Something’s Gotta Give, a movie that in additon to being for people completely outside my demographic, was released four years ago. Plus I had already seen it.
My mother was recently invited to a “miscellaneous” bridal shower. I had never heard of such a thing, but then again I don’t get invited to a lot of bridal showers. Apparently at a miscellaneous shower your gift isn’t expected to fit any particular theme. If I were ever invited to a shower that was explicitly labeled as “miscellaneous,” I would try to bring the most random item possible. Maybe a handful of receipts that I found in my car for miscellaneous items. This is probably why I haven’t been invited to many bridal showers.
There was also no time listed on the invitation. I guess you’re supposed to show up at any miscellanous time. 3:41 is always good.
Ever since my Wyszonut post, I haven’t had to worry about getting in early on Fridays. Donuts just magically appear on my desk. Here’s what I found yesterday:
Thanks, Sophia Steve.
I often feel like I know nothing about life, as simple tasks such as laundry can leave me hopelessly confused. But then once in a while I hear a story from one of my friends that reminds me I’m not alone in my troubles with daily life. For example, I now know I’m not alone in avoiding situations where tipping is involved. Many of us can’t stand the awkwardness and lack of standards.
I just read Koklynn’s first blog entry about building a cabinet, and I can’t wait for part 2. Stuff like this makes a guy who cooks soup in a frying pan feel a little more normal:
It said, “Apply some glue and lightly tapping the dowel until 5/16″ visible.” Never mind the bad grammar…what I read was “Apply some glue and lightly tapping the dowel until 5/16 visible.” If you missed the difference, I didn’t see that it was supposed to be 5/16th of an inch. Instead, I spent 5 minutes pulling my hair out trying to figure out why someone would use that kind of fraction for this tiny piece of wood…
I don’t intend to use Twitter right now (though I agree it is arguably useful/cool), but I like to claim the username “Wysz” on any service that I might want to use at some point in the future. So I figured I’d go ahead and register it on this microblogging thingamajig. It looked like it would only take a few seconds to register (as it should), but at one screen I was about 10 seconds away from giving up and not registering. Here’s what I saw, an option to check if any of my email contacts were already using Twitter:
I didn’t want to give a third party my email account information, and I didn’t want to spam my friends either. So I clicked ‘continue.’
Twitter then told me that I missed something:
Ugh. I had noticed in the upper-right a ‘skip’ option, but honestly I clicked ‘continue’ because it was closer to my cursor. And, in my personal opinion, that should have worked. But it didn’t, so I was forced to find my way to the tiny link to get me past this step:
After that, all I had to do was write my first status update, and that was it. I have enough trouble populating a blog and podcast, but who knows, maybe someday you’ll see constant updates on twitter/wysz.
Recently, I was getting ready to do laundry, and after removing one of my pillowcases, I noticed washing instructions on one of my pillows. I didn’t know you could wash pillows. Then I started to panic. I’ve had these pillows for over a year and never washed them. If you are supposed to wash something, going a year without doing it is pretty gross. Does everyone else in the world wash their pillows? What if I’m some kind of sicko and the only person in the world who doesn’t wash his pillows? I decided I needed to wash my pillows and my shame immediately, and threw them in the washer. After the wash cycle, the damp pillows went into the dryer. And after the dryer was finished, they still felt… not dry. So I ran the dryer again. And again. And they still didn’t feel right. They didn’t quite smell right, either. I asked around at work. Nobody washes pillows.
So I bought new ones. The memory foam kind that I’m confident no one expects me to wash. They arrived today, and they will never be cleaner.
While researching my previous post, I learned that there is an article about Ted in the German Wikipedia, but as of this writing, not in the English edition.