I had a weird dream last night. In the dream, I made a gazillion dollars because I wrote a program that automatically generated wholly truthful and accurate status reports. (This is especially funny if you ponder the irony of designing software pointing out software ironies.) It was based on MadLibs, rendered in a template like […]
Whomever writes the Sunday’s Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer careers section has a sense of humor, taking advantage of the slow Labor Day weekend. The “What This Job Pays” column for the week of September 5, 2004 featured the job of … a Rodeo Clown. Qualifications: Called the unsung heroes of the rodeo, clowns
Rodeo Clown/Product Bullfighter Read More »
My Sunday paper will arrive in five hours. Using my psychic powers, I will predict its contents. The Sunday paper will contain 60% advertisements, 10% comics, 3% “Parade” and local weekly magazine, 5% TV section, and 22% news content. The ads Aaron Brothers is having a 1-cent frame sale. For unexplained reasons, I will receive
My bank sent me an “Equity Accelerator” flyer. The concept is by paying half my mortgage payment every two weeks instead of the current monthly installment, I will reduce the time to pay off my loan, preserving equity and saving interest payments. Mortgage math is tricky. For example, my first loan’s payment was determined by
Equity Accelerator — feh! Read More »
By the time I stopped traveling for a living in early 2001, I had accumulated about a million frequent flier miles. Unfortunately, these were spread among too many airlines (and hotels) to make them useful for any kind of family vacation. I would have been content to hold onto them, but US Airways, Delta, United
Perpetual magazine renewal notices Read More »
When asked for birthday gift hints, my sister-in-law’s husband said he wanted an MP3 player to replace the outdated Walkman he runs with, and even suggested a specific model that we could all chip in on. That should have made things pretty easy. However, because this is an electronic item, with computers involved, there was
Engineers and a birthday gift… Read More »
A friend of mine is going back to school because she’s felt frustrated in her field, and especially with her employer. She asked me about what she should put in her resignation letter. Some of her friends have suggested her letter should contain a “go to hell, do not collect $200” theme. Although there may
Resignation letters Read More »
Since last October, I have been gradually taking over the formal dining room, turning it into my “work space.” Using the wireless laptop in the dining room seemed innocuous: we don’t entertain much, and the clean horizontal service was beckoning me to put junk on it. After the laptop found a cozy place to park,
Purging Books and Tchotchkes Read More »