Friends, readers, literates; spare me your thoughts for a moment
I say goodbye to Borders and not heap its praises
the corruption and bad practices of corporations often live after them
the good ideas that they had will be liquidated with their inventory
the devoted employees that worked for them will be the first turned from their doors
so let it be with Borders
in its time- just fifteen years- Borders did many things
with their major competitor was their biggest accomplishment achieved;
the pioneering of the Big Box Bookstore co-created with Barnes & Nobel
to their credit is also responsibility for the graphic novel boom
and they will be remembered for bringing pastries and caffeine to their stores-
a concept which cannot be removed from the heads of their consumers
but despite the veneer Borders suffered from an inner sickness
poor management hobbled them
near-sighted misunderstanding of how the Internet works dealt a grievous wound
relying on the mysterious cure-all of branding over business sped their decline
a business plan that did not make money led to their ultimate failure
they serviced the faceless masses and primarily opened stores in underserved areas
and yet the corporate world has deemed that their customer base isn't worth as much as their inventory
from the way that people speak of Borders while it's still being inhumed-
one would think that three times they would have crowned it-
if only bookstores could wear crowns
yet I doubt if presented that Borders would have three times refused
still- I wish not to praise Borders or to spit on its name-
I wish only to present what important notes about its life as I can
many did love Borders once and it was not without cause that they loved
so why not now grieve for this passed giant?
if you grieve for Borders you may feel your heart is in the ground with it
but please let us pause so it may come back to you
because as surely as Borders is dead there was a reason that you loved it
and that reason is the same reason you must take your heart back
Borders was first and last a bookstore
and any love that lay with them had its heart first and last within books
so surely Borders may be worth mourning
but you would do yourself wrong and books wrong and authors wrong
if in mourning Borders you say this is the death of books
books existed sixteen years ago and forty years ago and, indeed, eight years ago-
eight years ago when Borders was at its peak of thirteen hundred stores
but though Borders will soon be gone books will remain
so after you have grieved for Borders or cursed its name
I invite you to start a new book or begin a new chapter
because the death of Borders cannot and will not be the death of books
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
Oxygen "Therapy"
If you had an interesting chemistry teacher or even an interesting general science teacher you may have heard the rhyme: "Little Billy is gone from earth, his face you'll see no more- because what he thought was H2O was H2SO4." H2SO4 being colorless and liquid at room temperature, it has no apparent smell and if still is indistinguishable from water by sight alone. The implication of the rhyme is that poor little Billy was thirsty and accidentally drank some sulfuric acid (H2SO4) instead of water. While it's unlikely you'll ever come across a glass of sulfuric acid and drink it thinking it's water there is another colorless, ordorless liquid you could potentially fall victim to- especially if the wool has been pulled over your eyes by a proponent of so-called "oxygen therapy". This third clear liquid I refer to is H2O2- otherwise known as hydrogen peroxide.
Now, I'm not exactly knocking hydrogen peroxide here. I use both tooth paste and mouth wash that contain hydrogen peroxide and I keep a bottle of it to use as a disinfectant or to clean clogged ears or an ear infection. In fact, hydrogen peroxide has many safe as well as beneficial uses. You can use it to disinfect your counter tops and cutting boards, remove tough organic stains from clothing (be cautioned that it may also remove the dye) or organic residue from other surfaces, sanitize your toothbrush, clean small cuts or abrasions, and many, many more things. However, keep in mind that the hydrogen peroxide you buy in a drug store in that brown bottle or what is used in products like mouthwash is actually an incredibly low concentration of hydrogen peroxide and the label on that brown bottle explicitly warns you that it is intended for external use only. Both my mouthwash and toothpaste also state that they should not be swallowed and if they are swallowed to contact the nearest poison control center.
What I do intend to knock is something called "oxygen therapy". Oxygen therapy does not recommend, as you might expect, heading out to the nearest California-style oxygen bar and inhaling green apple flavored concentrated oxygen for an hour while you facebook on your netbook and pay exorbitant amounts of money for the privilege. The oxygen therapy guidelines don't even recommend deep breathing or quitting smoking or, in fact, any activity that increases the amount of oxygen in your blood stream beyond a single mentioning in a disconnected statement with no follow-up, that deep breathing, fresh air, and exercise are also 'very important'. Instead the proponents of oxygen therapy tout the manifold and seemingly miraculous medicinal benefits of hydrogen peroxide. Not the kind of medical benefits I was referring to before such as disinfecting cuts or unclogging cerumen-filled ears but outrageous claims like killing cancer cells or preventing cancer from forming as well as helping people suffering from AIDs, flu, asthma, heart disease, and gangrene among a long list of medical maladies.
The "science" behind their theory is based on two main things. One, that every cell in your body can produce H2O2 in order to fight bacterial infection and viruses so obviously ingested or injected hydrogen peroxide absolutely must have wonderful medical benefits for your body. After all if a little hydrogen peroxide breaks down a single bacterium that wormed into a cell surely a lot of hydrogen peroxide ought to break down cancer, get rid of gangrene, help people with AIDs, Multiple Sclerosis and even people with Alzheimer's disease. Two, hydrogen peroxide is a fairly unstable molecule and will quickly break down into water and oxygen. 30 ml of 35% hydrogen peroxide breaks down into 3.5 liters of oxygen. Since we as human beings need oxygen to survive surely getting more of it must be good for us. Really? Then why is it that there's also the wildly-popular antioxidant health craze? Perhaps because oxygen is what breaks down our cells (indeed, just like ferric metals people rust or more truthfully oxidize, too) and causes us to age? Right? So, why would you want to flood your system with it when you're already getting enough to survive (after all if you weren't you'd be dead)?
I first learned about "oxygen therapy" from a regular customer at the store I work in who comes in each day to buy a newspaper. This man is eighty years old (something that I wouldn't believe if I hadn't seen his birth certificate once the day he was renewing his driver's license) but I'd say he looks more like he could be in his sixties. He still works, seems to have energy and rarely seems to get sick. He talks up the "oxygen therapy" he's been doing every chance he gets. He claims that his original hair color is coming back in in his hair because of it and while to me it still looks totally gray he does have a lot of hair for a eighty-year-old man. He talks about the power of oxygen fighting cancer and just the other day was telling me a new one about how the arthritis in his hands the last couple of months has felt so much improved because of it.
Despite the fact that he's been doing this thing for a while I never thought much about it because the way he described ingesting it seemed bizarre. Basically, according to him and the website he told me I should check out (drinkh2o2.com) you have so many drops each day of "food grade" hydrogen peroxide. I, at first, assumed he was crazy because you can't have "grades" of a molecule. You can have solutions of a chemical but what they actually mean is that this hydrogen peroxide does not contain the normal stabilizing agents in typical drug store style hydrogen peroxide that are known to be harmful if ingested. And if he is doing so many drops in so much water that means he's drinking the kind that comes in a molarity that is 35% hydrogen peroxide. Not the few drops of the 3% kind I have in my cupboard that probably wouldn't cause too many problems but a concentration more than ten times higher? Even in relatively small amounts that can kill you. Hell, even in "relatively small" amounts 3% hydrogen peroxide can kill you. And proponents of "oxygen therapy" don't just recommend that you drink it they also suggest shooting up the stuff as a method of delivery.
When you use 3% hydrogen peroxide in a normal way and you get it on your skin it's recommended that you flush the area thoroughly with water. When you ingest it you can cause chemical burns and ulcers in your gastrointestinal tract as well as a dangerous build-up of gas in the stomach among other symptoms. If injected hydrogen peroxide will create bubbles in your blood stream and much like the clots and plaque they recommend you use it to destroy those bubbles can cause cardiac arrest with equal effectiveness. But that's not all you can win by ingesting or injecting hydrogen peroxide! All those claims about getting rid of gangrene and helping asthma and AIDs patients? All based on the fact that your cells produce hydrogen peroxide in order to help destroy bacteria and things like that. And that is a fact but the theory that ingesting or injecting it will have the same or greater effect inside your body is shaky at best. After all, hydrogen peroxide is produced in the cells in response to bacterium or viruses but hydrogen peroxide introduced into the body all the time does not have a specific purpose and can destroy your tissue as well as viruses and bacteria. Oh, and lest we not forget that claim about curing and preventing cancer it is completely and totally unsubstantiated. It even says that on the website (as per FDA regulations).
So if the bottom line is that it doesn't actually do what it claims and it can seriously harm or even kill you then why in the world would you do it? Aside from typical human irrationality there's the fact that their website trails into related and unrelated biological technical jargon mixed with complete bullshit and outright lies. Most of it sounds more or less legitimate because it's couched in scientific language but it only takes a little knowledge of highschool-level biology (if that) to start unraveling the supposedly scientific basis for believing their loads of crap. The rest you can easily turn up as lies through a few quick google searches that reveal actual scientific definitions and the context for facts and real data on the subject.
So if you've been considering (or encouraged to use) so called "oxygen therapy" I strongly recommend you do not do it. A good diet and exercising will be far more beneficial (and certainly not detrimental) to your health than hydrogen peroxide. And if you still don't believe me just read the FDA required disclaimer, the list of lovely potential side-effects, or google something like "poison control ingestion of h2o2". Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to run up and down the stairs a few times to get some actual health benefits from increased oxygen.
Now, I'm not exactly knocking hydrogen peroxide here. I use both tooth paste and mouth wash that contain hydrogen peroxide and I keep a bottle of it to use as a disinfectant or to clean clogged ears or an ear infection. In fact, hydrogen peroxide has many safe as well as beneficial uses. You can use it to disinfect your counter tops and cutting boards, remove tough organic stains from clothing (be cautioned that it may also remove the dye) or organic residue from other surfaces, sanitize your toothbrush, clean small cuts or abrasions, and many, many more things. However, keep in mind that the hydrogen peroxide you buy in a drug store in that brown bottle or what is used in products like mouthwash is actually an incredibly low concentration of hydrogen peroxide and the label on that brown bottle explicitly warns you that it is intended for external use only. Both my mouthwash and toothpaste also state that they should not be swallowed and if they are swallowed to contact the nearest poison control center.
What I do intend to knock is something called "oxygen therapy". Oxygen therapy does not recommend, as you might expect, heading out to the nearest California-style oxygen bar and inhaling green apple flavored concentrated oxygen for an hour while you facebook on your netbook and pay exorbitant amounts of money for the privilege. The oxygen therapy guidelines don't even recommend deep breathing or quitting smoking or, in fact, any activity that increases the amount of oxygen in your blood stream beyond a single mentioning in a disconnected statement with no follow-up, that deep breathing, fresh air, and exercise are also 'very important'. Instead the proponents of oxygen therapy tout the manifold and seemingly miraculous medicinal benefits of hydrogen peroxide. Not the kind of medical benefits I was referring to before such as disinfecting cuts or unclogging cerumen-filled ears but outrageous claims like killing cancer cells or preventing cancer from forming as well as helping people suffering from AIDs, flu, asthma, heart disease, and gangrene among a long list of medical maladies.
The "science" behind their theory is based on two main things. One, that every cell in your body can produce H2O2 in order to fight bacterial infection and viruses so obviously ingested or injected hydrogen peroxide absolutely must have wonderful medical benefits for your body. After all if a little hydrogen peroxide breaks down a single bacterium that wormed into a cell surely a lot of hydrogen peroxide ought to break down cancer, get rid of gangrene, help people with AIDs, Multiple Sclerosis and even people with Alzheimer's disease. Two, hydrogen peroxide is a fairly unstable molecule and will quickly break down into water and oxygen. 30 ml of 35% hydrogen peroxide breaks down into 3.5 liters of oxygen. Since we as human beings need oxygen to survive surely getting more of it must be good for us. Really? Then why is it that there's also the wildly-popular antioxidant health craze? Perhaps because oxygen is what breaks down our cells (indeed, just like ferric metals people rust or more truthfully oxidize, too) and causes us to age? Right? So, why would you want to flood your system with it when you're already getting enough to survive (after all if you weren't you'd be dead)?
I first learned about "oxygen therapy" from a regular customer at the store I work in who comes in each day to buy a newspaper. This man is eighty years old (something that I wouldn't believe if I hadn't seen his birth certificate once the day he was renewing his driver's license) but I'd say he looks more like he could be in his sixties. He still works, seems to have energy and rarely seems to get sick. He talks up the "oxygen therapy" he's been doing every chance he gets. He claims that his original hair color is coming back in in his hair because of it and while to me it still looks totally gray he does have a lot of hair for a eighty-year-old man. He talks about the power of oxygen fighting cancer and just the other day was telling me a new one about how the arthritis in his hands the last couple of months has felt so much improved because of it.
Despite the fact that he's been doing this thing for a while I never thought much about it because the way he described ingesting it seemed bizarre. Basically, according to him and the website he told me I should check out (drinkh2o2.com) you have so many drops each day of "food grade" hydrogen peroxide. I, at first, assumed he was crazy because you can't have "grades" of a molecule. You can have solutions of a chemical but what they actually mean is that this hydrogen peroxide does not contain the normal stabilizing agents in typical drug store style hydrogen peroxide that are known to be harmful if ingested. And if he is doing so many drops in so much water that means he's drinking the kind that comes in a molarity that is 35% hydrogen peroxide. Not the few drops of the 3% kind I have in my cupboard that probably wouldn't cause too many problems but a concentration more than ten times higher? Even in relatively small amounts that can kill you. Hell, even in "relatively small" amounts 3% hydrogen peroxide can kill you. And proponents of "oxygen therapy" don't just recommend that you drink it they also suggest shooting up the stuff as a method of delivery.
When you use 3% hydrogen peroxide in a normal way and you get it on your skin it's recommended that you flush the area thoroughly with water. When you ingest it you can cause chemical burns and ulcers in your gastrointestinal tract as well as a dangerous build-up of gas in the stomach among other symptoms. If injected hydrogen peroxide will create bubbles in your blood stream and much like the clots and plaque they recommend you use it to destroy those bubbles can cause cardiac arrest with equal effectiveness. But that's not all you can win by ingesting or injecting hydrogen peroxide! All those claims about getting rid of gangrene and helping asthma and AIDs patients? All based on the fact that your cells produce hydrogen peroxide in order to help destroy bacteria and things like that. And that is a fact but the theory that ingesting or injecting it will have the same or greater effect inside your body is shaky at best. After all, hydrogen peroxide is produced in the cells in response to bacterium or viruses but hydrogen peroxide introduced into the body all the time does not have a specific purpose and can destroy your tissue as well as viruses and bacteria. Oh, and lest we not forget that claim about curing and preventing cancer it is completely and totally unsubstantiated. It even says that on the website (as per FDA regulations).
So if the bottom line is that it doesn't actually do what it claims and it can seriously harm or even kill you then why in the world would you do it? Aside from typical human irrationality there's the fact that their website trails into related and unrelated biological technical jargon mixed with complete bullshit and outright lies. Most of it sounds more or less legitimate because it's couched in scientific language but it only takes a little knowledge of highschool-level biology (if that) to start unraveling the supposedly scientific basis for believing their loads of crap. The rest you can easily turn up as lies through a few quick google searches that reveal actual scientific definitions and the context for facts and real data on the subject.
So if you've been considering (or encouraged to use) so called "oxygen therapy" I strongly recommend you do not do it. A good diet and exercising will be far more beneficial (and certainly not detrimental) to your health than hydrogen peroxide. And if you still don't believe me just read the FDA required disclaimer, the list of lovely potential side-effects, or google something like "poison control ingestion of h2o2". Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to run up and down the stairs a few times to get some actual health benefits from increased oxygen.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Long-haired Freaky People
You may recognize the title as part of the opening line in a song called Signs
by the Five Man Electrical Band. If not, that's okay! It was written over forty years ago and I suspect a good percentage of you are not that old. But if you like your music retro or you have to listen to oldies for some reason it's a pretty good song. I used to have it on my iPod, in fact, even though it was written a full two decades before I was born (my enjoyment of both oldies/classic rock and alternative rock seems to be a constant source of frustration and confusion for Pandora). But the point of that? Of course there's a point; I have lately been considering growing my hair out. Not to be fashionable in any way or because I think this will particularly improve my appearance. I'm certainly not doing it because I feel nostalgic about my long-hair phase growing up. I've been considering it because my nephew's mother said she would quit smoking if I did.
I've been thinking about it for over a week. I thought I should maybe do the logical thing and weigh the pros and cons. Pros: My nephew's mother quits smoking. Cons: I have to grow my hair. This was far less helpful than you might think. Hair clearly ought to be less important than getting my nephew's mother to quit smoking but obviously there's a reason she thinks my hair is important enough to me to be worth it to her to help her quit smoking. So what follows this will be a history lesson about my hair. This may seem to imply that I am a huge narcissist so I must assure you that this is not true (although my ego, on the other hand, is another story).
When I was young I had the same haircut for years. Why? Because I was a little kid and I didn't care much. It was short. It didn't get tangled up in things or require lots of brushing. I had what my mother always referred to as a "cap cut" which, judging by a google images search, does not actually mean anything. When I got older my oldest brother and I both had our longest hair style (not coincidentally) at around the same time (when I was twelvish). My oldest brother grew his hair out because he was going to go into the Navy but he had to wait quite some time before actually going to Basic (which I believe was mostly to do with how long you have to wait after you stop taking ADD medication before you can enter but when you score in the 99th percentile they are willing to wait) so in the meantime he decided to grow out his hair. In his entrance photo thing he has hair more than down to his shoulders and looks a lot like I imagine the protagonist in the "Signs" song does. At the same time my hair was the longest it has ever been.
The problem lies not in the teasing or anything like that or the fact that it bothered my mother. 'Hair is hair. It grows.' That's something that my mother would say. It didn't bother her how we wanted it cut or if we wanted to dye it. The problem is the quality of my hair. Jared and I both have thick hair (an unusual quality for a redhead) but where his is sort of coarse and difficult to get a comb through sheerly because of the thickness my hair is.... not like that. While I have many strands of hair, making it thick, each individual strand is very, very fine. Add in the fact that I actually liked to play outside in the woods with the sticks and the pitch. Or I would sleep on it without plaiting it or putting it in a ponytail at least. And I hated brushing it. Hated it because I have a sensitive scalp and I can't just yank the brush through the tangles the way my mother does hers. So basically my hair was a tangled mess that, as I could not braid my own hair, and didn't want to brush it, required the attention of another person a lot. And for some ungodly reason I kept it that way for quite a while.
I finally had it all cut off between seventh and eighth grade and I remember moving my head and marveling at how light it felt. I'd actually had enough hair to cut off to donate it to Locks of Love so some little girl or boy has a pretty red wig that used to be my awful unkempt hair. But since then I haven't really had it long enough to need a brush. I prefer a hairstyle that looks like it's supposed to be messy because my hair sort of does that anyway. I don't keep it super-short because my hair grows fast and if I wanted it that way it would require constant cutting. Because of my bad experience with long hair I'd prefer to keep more or less the same shaggy mess I've had for years.
On the other hand I am an adult and I do own a brush so I ought to be able to keep my own hair tangle-free. My hair also isn't really short (as I mentioned) to begin with and it grows fast so I figure I can have it down to the specified length by about December. I wouldn't lose my job (or not get one like the guy in "Signs") and if the appearance bothers me immensely I suppose a hat and some hairpins would fix that. There's no huge downside other than my reservations. Six months of annoying hair versus helping my nephew's mother quit smoking? I think I know which one I'll choose. I think I'll need to invest in some hair elastics. After all: "Hair is hair. It grows."
by the Five Man Electrical Band. If not, that's okay! It was written over forty years ago and I suspect a good percentage of you are not that old. But if you like your music retro or you have to listen to oldies for some reason it's a pretty good song. I used to have it on my iPod, in fact, even though it was written a full two decades before I was born (my enjoyment of both oldies/classic rock and alternative rock seems to be a constant source of frustration and confusion for Pandora). But the point of that? Of course there's a point; I have lately been considering growing my hair out. Not to be fashionable in any way or because I think this will particularly improve my appearance. I'm certainly not doing it because I feel nostalgic about my long-hair phase growing up. I've been considering it because my nephew's mother said she would quit smoking if I did.I've been thinking about it for over a week. I thought I should maybe do the logical thing and weigh the pros and cons. Pros: My nephew's mother quits smoking. Cons: I have to grow my hair. This was far less helpful than you might think. Hair clearly ought to be less important than getting my nephew's mother to quit smoking but obviously there's a reason she thinks my hair is important enough to me to be worth it to her to help her quit smoking. So what follows this will be a history lesson about my hair. This may seem to imply that I am a huge narcissist so I must assure you that this is not true (although my ego, on the other hand, is another story).
When I was young I had the same haircut for years. Why? Because I was a little kid and I didn't care much. It was short. It didn't get tangled up in things or require lots of brushing. I had what my mother always referred to as a "cap cut" which, judging by a google images search, does not actually mean anything. When I got older my oldest brother and I both had our longest hair style (not coincidentally) at around the same time (when I was twelvish). My oldest brother grew his hair out because he was going to go into the Navy but he had to wait quite some time before actually going to Basic (which I believe was mostly to do with how long you have to wait after you stop taking ADD medication before you can enter but when you score in the 99th percentile they are willing to wait) so in the meantime he decided to grow out his hair. In his entrance photo thing he has hair more than down to his shoulders and looks a lot like I imagine the protagonist in the "Signs" song does. At the same time my hair was the longest it has ever been.
The problem lies not in the teasing or anything like that or the fact that it bothered my mother. 'Hair is hair. It grows.' That's something that my mother would say. It didn't bother her how we wanted it cut or if we wanted to dye it. The problem is the quality of my hair. Jared and I both have thick hair (an unusual quality for a redhead) but where his is sort of coarse and difficult to get a comb through sheerly because of the thickness my hair is.... not like that. While I have many strands of hair, making it thick, each individual strand is very, very fine. Add in the fact that I actually liked to play outside in the woods with the sticks and the pitch. Or I would sleep on it without plaiting it or putting it in a ponytail at least. And I hated brushing it. Hated it because I have a sensitive scalp and I can't just yank the brush through the tangles the way my mother does hers. So basically my hair was a tangled mess that, as I could not braid my own hair, and didn't want to brush it, required the attention of another person a lot. And for some ungodly reason I kept it that way for quite a while.
I finally had it all cut off between seventh and eighth grade and I remember moving my head and marveling at how light it felt. I'd actually had enough hair to cut off to donate it to Locks of Love so some little girl or boy has a pretty red wig that used to be my awful unkempt hair. But since then I haven't really had it long enough to need a brush. I prefer a hairstyle that looks like it's supposed to be messy because my hair sort of does that anyway. I don't keep it super-short because my hair grows fast and if I wanted it that way it would require constant cutting. Because of my bad experience with long hair I'd prefer to keep more or less the same shaggy mess I've had for years.
On the other hand I am an adult and I do own a brush so I ought to be able to keep my own hair tangle-free. My hair also isn't really short (as I mentioned) to begin with and it grows fast so I figure I can have it down to the specified length by about December. I wouldn't lose my job (or not get one like the guy in "Signs") and if the appearance bothers me immensely I suppose a hat and some hairpins would fix that. There's no huge downside other than my reservations. Six months of annoying hair versus helping my nephew's mother quit smoking? I think I know which one I'll choose. I think I'll need to invest in some hair elastics. After all: "Hair is hair. It grows."
Saturday, July 9, 2011
New Look
Assuming you have read my blog at least once before this past thursday you will have noticed it looks quite different. The template with the dots and such was never intended to be forever. In fact, I intended it to be much more temporary when I started but, you know, things happen. I've been thinking about changing it to something a lot like this for a month or so. I even considered asking my coworker (who has a degree in "new media" but cannot find work in that field and does freelance stuff in the meantime) to design something for me but decided against it. You may notice some further (much smaller) blog changes in the future as I make things less messy and more functional.
My coworkers sometimes complain about the lack of fancy programs on my boss's computer to make awesome-looking signs and stuff. Between my Toshiba laptop (running Windows 7) and my Apple desktop (running Snow Leopard) I have both the Mac and PC version of OpenOffice, OfficeSuite for Mac (which I got back in the days when it still belonged to Microsoft and I needed it for a data-entry thing), Bean, all these dubious-looking Microsoft Works programs (anyone else remember when Apple still had Appleworks or ClarisWorks?) that I haven't used and a whole host of things that look like maybe you could make pictures on them in the depths of my Applications folder on my desktop computer. So naturally I made my entire background online using two very different and completely free programs. On the internet.
Presented in pseudo-code style:
>Launch Firefox
>>Goto Google.com
>>>Click on "more"
>>>>Select "documents" from drop-down
>>>>>Click on "create new"
>>>>>>Select "drawing" from drop-down
>Commence working
>>Look up certain quotes and equations for veracity
>>>Place all quotes and equations in separate text boxes for manipulation purposes
>>>>Change orientation, font sizes, add font effects, distort text box size
>>>>>Slot everything together closely on page
>>>>>>Fill in any large-seeming gaps
>>>>>>>Save
>ctrl t
>>Goto photobucket.com
>>>login
>>>>attempt to upload image from web
>>>>>error message
>tab back to Google documents
>>
|
|
|
|
V
Download to computer
Upload to Photobucket from computer
/ \
|
|
|
|
>edit new image
>>add distortion effects
>>>Use all distortion effects at least once
>>>>Look through every possible image change on photobucket
>>>>>Ignore most of them
>>>>>>Finish
>>>>>>>Save copy
>Goto jacequin.blogspot.com
>>Select "design"
>>>Select "change template"
>>>>Click on "background"
>>>>>attempt to upload image from web to Blogger
>>>>>>human error - no such option available
|
|
|
|
V
Download to computer
Upload to Blogger from computer
/ \
|
|
|
|
>Preview new template
>>Change settings so background image does not scroll with text
>>>Change template link settings to prettier colors
>>>>Decide prettier colors may be hard to read
>Tab back to photobucket
>>Mess with brightness and contrast settings excessively
>>>Decide that must be good enough
|
|
|
|
V
Download to computer
Upload to Blogger from computer
/ \
|
|
|
|
>Preview new template
>>Forget to change settings so image does not scroll with text
>>>Grumble about tiling and have half a heart-attack upon the background scrolling
>>>>Change settings so image does not scroll with text
>Goto instant messenger
>>Message Chris to ask his opinion on the new look
>>>Realize multiple messages later that it is not Chris I'm talking to but some other very confused person on my buddy list
>>>>Apologize profusely
>>>>>Confused person agrees that it looks pretty good
>>>>>>Continue to change minor things in Blogger template for at least one hour
>>>>>>>Decide that Chris is probably not coming online in the near future
>>>>>>>>Ask other people's opinions instead
>>>>>>>>>Eventually get ahold of Chris who agrees that it is good and the tiling is okay.
>Go into human defrag mode
Text version of the above: I used Google documents (for which all you need is a gmail account or another e-mail address and to sign up) which is like officesuite but free, online, run by Google, and offering up to ridiculous amounts of free hosting to save your documents. Despite the "documents" name you can make more than just text files (presentation, like powerpoint, spreadsheets, like excel, drawing, like drawing, forms, like templates) and you can also share these documents to any collaborator you want (as long as they have a e-mail address) and allow them to either just view or also give them editing power. I used the drawing one and, of course, filled it with nothing but text boxes of normal and wildly distorted sizes, in various orientations filled with text and of various sizes and font effects. I tried to upload this image from web to photobucket but it didn't work so I downloaded the original to my computer and then uploaded it to photobucket. I used photobucket's image editing tools to add all the distortion and fade it a little. I had to download it again to put it on blogger and ended up deciding it needed to be darker overall so I changed that in photobucket, downloaded the new-new version and uploaded that to blogger. I had half a heart-attack when I went to preview and the image scrolled because I forgot to change that. When I was (sort-of) happy I tried to ask my friend Chris about it but messaged the wrong person who was very confused but still told me she (I think?) liked it. I then tweaked the template a lot but Chris still wasn't online so I asked other people about it until he eventually was and I pestered him. We both agreed that the tiling was okay even though tiling is generally evil and to be avoided on principle.
Conclusions drawn: Fancy software is overrated. I should look at people's usernames beyond the first two letters before messaging them. In the future I might remember that Chris is staying with people who might think constant internet is bad and we should maybe have an actual conversation at some point instead of all the "finger-waving" (as my father calls it) that we usually do.
My coworkers sometimes complain about the lack of fancy programs on my boss's computer to make awesome-looking signs and stuff. Between my Toshiba laptop (running Windows 7) and my Apple desktop (running Snow Leopard) I have both the Mac and PC version of OpenOffice, OfficeSuite for Mac (which I got back in the days when it still belonged to Microsoft and I needed it for a data-entry thing), Bean, all these dubious-looking Microsoft Works programs (anyone else remember when Apple still had Appleworks or ClarisWorks?) that I haven't used and a whole host of things that look like maybe you could make pictures on them in the depths of my Applications folder on my desktop computer. So naturally I made my entire background online using two very different and completely free programs. On the internet.
Presented in pseudo-code style:
>Launch Firefox
>>Goto Google.com
>>>Click on "more"
>>>>Select "documents" from drop-down
>>>>>Click on "create new"
>>>>>>Select "drawing" from drop-down
>Commence working
>>Look up certain quotes and equations for veracity
>>>Place all quotes and equations in separate text boxes for manipulation purposes
>>>>Change orientation, font sizes, add font effects, distort text box size
>>>>>Slot everything together closely on page
>>>>>>Fill in any large-seeming gaps
>>>>>>>Save
>ctrl t
>>Goto photobucket.com
>>>login
>>>>attempt to upload image from web
>>>>>error message
>tab back to Google documents
>>
|
|
|
|
V
Download to computer
Upload to Photobucket from computer
/ \
|
|
|
|
>edit new image
>>add distortion effects
>>>Use all distortion effects at least once
>>>>Look through every possible image change on photobucket
>>>>>Ignore most of them
>>>>>>Finish
>>>>>>>Save copy
>Goto jacequin.blogspot.com
>>Select "design"
>>>Select "change template"
>>>>Click on "background"
>>>>>attempt to upload image from web to Blogger
>>>>>>human error - no such option available
|
|
|
|
V
Download to computer
Upload to Blogger from computer
/ \
|
|
|
|
>Preview new template
>>Change settings so background image does not scroll with text
>>>Change template link settings to prettier colors
>>>>Decide prettier colors may be hard to read
>Tab back to photobucket
>>Mess with brightness and contrast settings excessively
>>>Decide that must be good enough
|
|
|
|
V
Download to computer
Upload to Blogger from computer
/ \
|
|
|
|
>Preview new template
>>Forget to change settings so image does not scroll with text
>>>Grumble about tiling and have half a heart-attack upon the background scrolling
>>>>Change settings so image does not scroll with text
>Goto instant messenger
>>Message Chris to ask his opinion on the new look
>>>Realize multiple messages later that it is not Chris I'm talking to but some other very confused person on my buddy list
>>>>Apologize profusely
>>>>>Confused person agrees that it looks pretty good
>>>>>>Continue to change minor things in Blogger template for at least one hour
>>>>>>>Decide that Chris is probably not coming online in the near future
>>>>>>>>Ask other people's opinions instead
>>>>>>>>>Eventually get ahold of Chris who agrees that it is good and the tiling is okay.
>Go into human defrag mode
Text version of the above: I used Google documents (for which all you need is a gmail account or another e-mail address and to sign up) which is like officesuite but free, online, run by Google, and offering up to ridiculous amounts of free hosting to save your documents. Despite the "documents" name you can make more than just text files (presentation, like powerpoint, spreadsheets, like excel, drawing, like drawing, forms, like templates) and you can also share these documents to any collaborator you want (as long as they have a e-mail address) and allow them to either just view or also give them editing power. I used the drawing one and, of course, filled it with nothing but text boxes of normal and wildly distorted sizes, in various orientations filled with text and of various sizes and font effects. I tried to upload this image from web to photobucket but it didn't work so I downloaded the original to my computer and then uploaded it to photobucket. I used photobucket's image editing tools to add all the distortion and fade it a little. I had to download it again to put it on blogger and ended up deciding it needed to be darker overall so I changed that in photobucket, downloaded the new-new version and uploaded that to blogger. I had half a heart-attack when I went to preview and the image scrolled because I forgot to change that. When I was (sort-of) happy I tried to ask my friend Chris about it but messaged the wrong person who was very confused but still told me she (I think?) liked it. I then tweaked the template a lot but Chris still wasn't online so I asked other people about it until he eventually was and I pestered him. We both agreed that the tiling was okay even though tiling is generally evil and to be avoided on principle.
Conclusions drawn: Fancy software is overrated. I should look at people's usernames beyond the first two letters before messaging them. In the future I might remember that Chris is staying with people who might think constant internet is bad and we should maybe have an actual conversation at some point instead of all the "finger-waving" (as my father calls it) that we usually do.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
So... what you're saying is that you think I'm fat?
Here's a punchline I hope someday to use. When someone, someday, asks me how I get ideas for my blog I'll say: "Oh, well, you know, sometimes they just come to me or I'll be reading and I'll get an idea or sometimes someone will walk up to me and hand me an idea. Literally."
The other day I was at work in the evening and there was this guy who had been shopping and he walked up to the counter. He looked like he wanted to ask a question so I asked if I could help him. And the first thing he says to me is something like: "Are there a lot of overweight people in {city I live in}? I mean, the demographic. It's related to a business opportunity." I think I must have stared at him for several seconds. The wheels were turning in my head. At first I wondered if this was in any way related to the store that I work for and us selling things. "Uhm. I'm not sure I really know..." I temporized. "Do you have a piece of paper and a pen?" He asked me next. We do. I gave them to him in the hopes that this will cause him to buy his magazine and go away sooner rather than later.
While he wrote on the paper he spoke, making the writing go much more slowly. He sounded vaguely excited about whatever it is that he's talking about but I find it difficult to understand people who are talking in the direction of their own hands (unless their hands are between my face and the person talking). Phrases that I remember him say during the entire conversation include: "It's a meal-replacement shake. 170 calories. I did it. I'm a biker. I race bicycles. But I couldn't get rid of that fat around my belly but this did it. I know people that make 30,000 dollars a month. I make 15,000 dollars a month and I'm a pilot. It's real easy. You just have to do it and you lose weight and if you can get three other people to do it it pays for yours. After that you make money from it. And you don't have to talk to family or anything. You can tell anyone. You'll be helping them to lose weight." I also remember something about a BMW and protesting that I could not drive. I think he also invited me to call him.
I realized that he might never go away if I did not agree with him so I told him I would visit the website he had written down and check it out. Apparently satisfied he bought his magazine and finally left. Once he was gone I had time to actually digest what he said. Especially as I briefly told my coworker about him when she came back to the front of the store. And basically it boiled down to: There's a multi-level marketing opportunity to sell meal-replacement shakes. First you take the "ninety-day challenge" and then you can sell it to other people and make money from it.
I did look up the website he gave me. It's vernonSHOPS.myvi.net/challenge. This is obviously not the website for the real product but instead a generic and individualized shop just to convince you to enter your contact information so this guy can contact you and try to sell you this and probably you'll also go on a bunch of mailing lists you'll never be able to get off and telemarketers will call you and that kind of thing. Just by poking around his website it looks as though, if he is indeed making 15,000 dollars a month, he is not doing it through the website. There's extremely little traffic at all, never mind from other people. I decide to move on and from the logo I can tell that the company is called ViSalus so I punch that into Google. I don't even have to bother putting in "scam" along with it because half the websites that pop up along with the actual one contain the word scam in the title. I look at their website and the stuff that they've given away and the things they've done for people.
It appears as though ViSalus is not actually a scam but it is a multi-level marketing scheme. (About which you ought to already know my opinion and if not check out my previous post Pyramid Schemes, Multilevel Marketing, & Paying it Forward.) I wouldn't expect to make money from it and it's not a product I would use. Despite the fact that the name is "ViSalus Sciences" and they have this "scientific" information on their website about the products I also wouldn't think it would be the safest way to lose weight and I'd advise consulting with your physician if you are considering trying it. Their website makes it seem very exciting and like a sure bet kind of thing but as with all of these companies: They aren't trying to make you money; they're trying to make themselves money and if you make some for yourself while you're at it then good for you.
Having checked out the website and knowing what I now know about it I wish I could go back and have that conversation with that guy again. I have some very pressing questions for him. But the one I really want to ask and sort of wish I had (to see if it would have stopped the conversation dead in its tracks) is: "So... what you're saying is that you think I'm fat?"
The other day I was at work in the evening and there was this guy who had been shopping and he walked up to the counter. He looked like he wanted to ask a question so I asked if I could help him. And the first thing he says to me is something like: "Are there a lot of overweight people in {city I live in}? I mean, the demographic. It's related to a business opportunity." I think I must have stared at him for several seconds. The wheels were turning in my head. At first I wondered if this was in any way related to the store that I work for and us selling things. "Uhm. I'm not sure I really know..." I temporized. "Do you have a piece of paper and a pen?" He asked me next. We do. I gave them to him in the hopes that this will cause him to buy his magazine and go away sooner rather than later.
While he wrote on the paper he spoke, making the writing go much more slowly. He sounded vaguely excited about whatever it is that he's talking about but I find it difficult to understand people who are talking in the direction of their own hands (unless their hands are between my face and the person talking). Phrases that I remember him say during the entire conversation include: "It's a meal-replacement shake. 170 calories. I did it. I'm a biker. I race bicycles. But I couldn't get rid of that fat around my belly but this did it. I know people that make 30,000 dollars a month. I make 15,000 dollars a month and I'm a pilot. It's real easy. You just have to do it and you lose weight and if you can get three other people to do it it pays for yours. After that you make money from it. And you don't have to talk to family or anything. You can tell anyone. You'll be helping them to lose weight." I also remember something about a BMW and protesting that I could not drive. I think he also invited me to call him.
I realized that he might never go away if I did not agree with him so I told him I would visit the website he had written down and check it out. Apparently satisfied he bought his magazine and finally left. Once he was gone I had time to actually digest what he said. Especially as I briefly told my coworker about him when she came back to the front of the store. And basically it boiled down to: There's a multi-level marketing opportunity to sell meal-replacement shakes. First you take the "ninety-day challenge" and then you can sell it to other people and make money from it.
I did look up the website he gave me. It's vernonSHOPS.myvi.net/challenge. This is obviously not the website for the real product but instead a generic and individualized shop just to convince you to enter your contact information so this guy can contact you and try to sell you this and probably you'll also go on a bunch of mailing lists you'll never be able to get off and telemarketers will call you and that kind of thing. Just by poking around his website it looks as though, if he is indeed making 15,000 dollars a month, he is not doing it through the website. There's extremely little traffic at all, never mind from other people. I decide to move on and from the logo I can tell that the company is called ViSalus so I punch that into Google. I don't even have to bother putting in "scam" along with it because half the websites that pop up along with the actual one contain the word scam in the title. I look at their website and the stuff that they've given away and the things they've done for people.
It appears as though ViSalus is not actually a scam but it is a multi-level marketing scheme. (About which you ought to already know my opinion and if not check out my previous post Pyramid Schemes, Multilevel Marketing, & Paying it Forward.) I wouldn't expect to make money from it and it's not a product I would use. Despite the fact that the name is "ViSalus Sciences" and they have this "scientific" information on their website about the products I also wouldn't think it would be the safest way to lose weight and I'd advise consulting with your physician if you are considering trying it. Their website makes it seem very exciting and like a sure bet kind of thing but as with all of these companies: They aren't trying to make you money; they're trying to make themselves money and if you make some for yourself while you're at it then good for you.
Having checked out the website and knowing what I now know about it I wish I could go back and have that conversation with that guy again. I have some very pressing questions for him. But the one I really want to ask and sort of wish I had (to see if it would have stopped the conversation dead in its tracks) is: "So... what you're saying is that you think I'm fat?"
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