The Future is Bright...Sorta
"So, dude, what's your major?" It was a question that I dreaded being asked during my later years college, particularly when I was out at parties trying to have a good time. Some bright-eyed young freshman would come up to me and ask me what my major was. Every now and then, the question was genuine, but more often than not, the other person was clearly hoping that I would reciprocate and ask them their...
May Show Signs of Aging
I always wonder when I'll wake up and think, "Man, I'm old." It hasn't happened yet. I wonder when it will dawn on me. Maybe when I hear a Nirvana song on an oldies station. Sometimes I miss being 21, like most guys, but most of the time I'm glad that I've managed to attain some stability in my life. But I don't feel like I'm past the prime of my life and I'm not...
Traffic Signs, Where Lacking
One area where I think usability should really be addressed, for safety's sake, is in the creation of traffic signs. Have you ever been driving in an area with which you weren't all that familiar, and you're looking for the entrance to a highway? You need to head north, and as you approach the highway, you see the entrance ramp for southbound, and sign pointing you to continue over the overpass to enter the northbound...
The Travelling Entrepenuer
I don't travel a whole lot, but when I do, I'm always astonished by how terrible the stores at the airports are. Airports themselves are dens of tedium; they are magnets for boredom and long wait times. Usually, I've got at least four books that I'm reading, so I am able to keep my nose stuck in a book to pass the time. That, and airports are a great place to people-watch. You can pick...
That Always Ends Up Drivel
I'm not a very sentimental person. I'm definitely not sentimental about things. My parents were ferocious packrats, and so now, they have a large house that is filled to the hilt with stuff that they will probably never use, but because they might one day need it, it's better to be safe and hang onto it. In some way, packrats like my parents keep stuff around as a means of remembering past events. It's kind...
A Philanthropic Idea
Back in April, while driving the long stretch of lonesome road between Phoenix and Tucson, AZ, I started to think about the homeless problem in Santa Barbara. From what I've been told, there was a mental hospital here that closed down a few years ago, and when it finally shut its doors, they just released all of its inhabitants without anywhere else to go. This brilliant idea resulted in the fallout you would expect: there...
A Philanthropic Idea, Part Two
When I was home visiting Michigan back in August, I read something in the newspaper about the large number of cherries in the north. There was such a surplus that many farmers were required to let them rot instead of taking them to market to sell. This is an economic problem. If there's too many cherries in the market, the price for them goes down, and when that happens, none of the cherry farmers make...
You Want the 32oz or the Large?
I remember in one episode of The Office when it was "pretzel day", the one day of the year the building property manager brings in a pretzel cart to hand out free pretzels to the tenants of the building. After the announcement that the cart has arrived and is now serving pretzels, Steve Carrell, barely containing his excitement, strolls casually down the lobby to get his pretzel only to find there is a huge line...
The Biggest Mistake I've Ever Made
There is a mistake that I have made at several times during my life, and even now that I'm aware of it, I still fall into the trap of making it sometimes. The mistake to which I'm prone is assuming that life is easier for other people than it is for me. This has implications in my actions. During high school, a time I spent immersed in a weird combination of self-absorption and self-loathing, I...
We All Have Blind Spots
Seeing some old pictures online of the house where I lived in college for my senior year got me thinking about the people that I used to live with. I'm friends with many of them on Facebook, but in that context, they're all just people that I once knew at some point in the past. It's rare that I actually reflect on the days when we were all living together, and think back to the...