It’s been LONG overdue, but I’ve decided to give my blog a fresh look. If you read my posts via RSS or facebook you won’t see the new look (you’ll have to go to kevinrossen.com). I’ve got some more updates to do still, but let me know what you think.
Category: Personal
Super Bowl XLII Commercials
So the game is over. I thought it would be a good game and it turned into one of the best Super Bowls that I’ve seen. Eli Manning came up big time in the fourth quarter. Miami Dolphin fans are happy because of their precious perfect season record being in tact. That’s about all that I can say about the actual game. On to what most people care about: the commercials.
I’ll get to my favorite commercial in a minute, but there was one commercial that really sneaked something very subtle in that I really don’t understand. Near the end of the Sobe Thrillericious commercial one of the lizards passed gas. I’m not kidding. Here’s a screenshot of the actual moment:
If there is a good reason why this is in here, please let me know. Check out the full commercial (the farting happens at 0:51):
About to cash in your change jar? Read this first.
Not too long ago I decided it was time to cash in the change that I had been saving in a jar for the past few years. Brea and I had just replace our desktop computer, so I figured we could use the extra money. I wasn’t too excited about this process, because the last time we cashed in our change it involved first wrapping all the coins before taking them to the bank. I did not want to this again.
I decided that I was going to take the coins to a coin counting machine that I knew was at a local grocery store. There was going to be a service charge, but I was willing to pay the money to save the time and effort it was going to take to wrap the coins. When I went to the grocery store the coin machine was out of order. At first I was upset, but it turned out that this was a blessing in disguise.
While driving around trying to figure out what to do next I drove by a Century Bank and remembered that I had seen something about them having a coin counter. This turned out to being one of the best investments I have ever made. Century Bank does not charge a service fee for using their coin counter. On top of that, they will give you $50 for opening a free checking account with a minimum $100 deposit.
I had about $300 in coins saved up, so here’s the math:
Coin Star: $300 in coins – 8.9 cents service charge per $1 = $273
Century Bank: $300 in coins + $50 for opening accound = $350
Difference = $77 or about 28% increase
That’s good money. If you happen to decide to open an account after reading this, please mention that you heard about it from me (Kevin Rossen). They give a $25 credit for every person you refer to them, so that little out of order machine might end up making me even more money.
We’re Having a Girl!!!
A week ago, Brea and I found out that our baby is going to be a girl.
It’s an amazing thing seeing our unborn child on the ultrasound. The sonographer, or whatever she’s called, was looking at all the blobs of light on the screen and calling out what she was seeing. “There’s one of the kidneys…here’s the brain…there’s the lungs.” There was no way that I was going to be able to pick out any of those things on that screen. Part of that is due to my total lack of knowledge about human anatomy, but that’s another story. It was so cool sering our baby girl moving around months ahead of her birth.
I’m glad I have a few months to prepare for being a dad for a girl. I don’t really worry that much about taking care of her the first few years of her life. Taking care of girls is not that much different from boys in the early years, at least that’s my theory. What I’m glad I have time to prepare for is the fact that I am going to shape the spiritual and emotional well-being of someone who will one day base most of her understanding of God, life, and men in general on her relationship with me. That’s scary!
As a man, I feel much more prepared to raise a boy. After all, I am one. I know that one day a boy will basically need tough love. He will throw a fit, be mad for a little while, but eventually get over it, just like most boys do. A girl, however, is another story. I’m worried that when I raise my voice she will start crying. Tears from a girl are good tools of daddy-manipulation. Thankfully, I’ll have a few years to figure that one out.
Overall, I’m really excited. It’s going to a challenge, but it’s going to be incredible becoming a dad.
Close encounters of the “Me Planet” kind
While standing in line for food at the Mavericks game tonight, I ran into the kind of person that Brian Regan describes as “Captain Me Planet.” I was the next person in line to order at the cash register when a guy, who sounded like he was from either Europe or New Zealand, came marching in front of everyone. There are some situations in life that this would be anbr accepted practice, such as if you were at Chick-Fil-A or another one of your favorite fast food restaurants and you are only needing a quick refill of a drink. I’m not sure why it has become this way, but most people accept this as an acceptable reason to barge in front of everyone.
But that wasn’t why this guy was jumping in front of everyone else. He came marching up to the cash register to boldly announce that his buddy had just dropped all of their food on the ground. I’m serious. That’s what he was telling anyone who would listen (on a side note, I’m not sure why a guy was carrying food for another guy, but that’s another story). I don’t normally make it a practice to make fun of my friends to complete strangers (this might be common in British humor, which I just don’t get), so this struck me as odd. He didn’t say that his friend stepped on a slick spot on the floor that made him lose control of the tray of food. Nor did he say that an employee shoved the tray of food off the condiment counter laughing hysterically at him. Basically, his friend was a klutz and he wanted the food service at the American Airlines Center to pay the price. I don’t really blame him for this, seeing as it costs $3.75 for a bottle of water, but is seemed very presumptuous to assume that they would just give him free food.
It turned out that the AAC is in the business of paying for other people’s mistakes. They gave this guy complimentary replacements for everything they ordered. I guess this just goes to show you that it never hurts to ask. However, if you make the same mistake one day and devastatingly drop all of your precious gourmet AAC food on the ground, please wait in line to ask for replacements. There are other people in the world than just you.
I’m getting prepared for the end of Palm OS
For about the past six months I’ve been coming to grips with the fact that Palm will be coming to an end…soon. I had hope for them, both as a company and a maker of the mobile OS, but that hope disappeared with the Foleo fiasco. Not that the product was a terrible idea, it could have been useful for a lot of people, but they were so way out of touch with what the general public was looking for in mobile devices that I realized their time was up.
Ever since that day, I’ve had the feeling that it was time to start thinking about what my next mobile device would be. I really like a lot of what the iPhone has to offer, but I have a great phone plan with Sprint that I want to stay with them. Google’s announcement of the Android OS and Sprint’s joining of the OHA has given me motivation to wait until at least mid-2008 to replace my Treo 650. I’m really starting to look forward to that day that Sprint releases their first Android phone.
We switched our email to Google Apps earlier this year and it has been great. They have the best calendar software I’ve ever used. The email platform is so good (KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS!!!), and I’m starting to use the Docs feature more and more. With these things in mind, I’m thinking the Android will be the perfect phone for my situation. With that in mind, here’s what I’ve figured out so far: Google calendar will be my main calendar (not Palm) and Remember the Milk will be my task manager. With those two figured out, I don’t really think leaning Palm will be too hard.
If you’ve switched from Palm to something else, let me know what you miss, what you don’t miss, and any advice you have.
Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death
I had to get my original Xbox 360 replaced because of this same problem. No more Halo 3 for me for a while. Thankfully I should be able to get this system repaired/replaced for free since it’s still under warranty.
Simplifying Communication
I’ve been considering applying a new rule to every lesson or message I give in the future: the text message rule. My theory is that anything that is worth saying should be able to be summarized short enough to fit in a single text message (144 characters, including spaces). One reason I’ve come up with this theory is that I think text messaging has become so popular partly because it has to be short and to the point, which people like and makes things easier to remember. I’m not saying that we should only communicate in text messages, since my blog posts would have to be much shorter in general, but we should be able to know our material well enough that we could send the main concept in a text message.
Here’s an attempt at summarizing the above applying the txt msg rule:
Everything a person wants to communicate should be able to be summarized in 144 characters or less.
(99 characters)
Google Send to Phone will let you test your summaries.
Word snobs are out of touch with reality.
I don’t like to use big words that sound intelligent. I understand a lot of them, but they are out of place with my everyday life. Most people today don’t walk around using a graduate-level vocabulary. Just look at your most recent text message. You’re more likely to see things like “cya,” “whatsup,” and “how r u?”. We’re a generation that likes to get to the point.
A news story about new words added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary reminded me of my dislike for fancy words and my appreciation for new combinations of words. MW will be adding “ginormous” to its newest dictionary this year (and I have to add it to my Firefox dictionary, too). If you’ve been hiding inside a cave for the past few years, you might not have noticed, but ginormous has become ginormous. I’ve heard it used in everyday conversations, tv shows, movies and more. It makes sense to add it to the dictionary.
Word snobs, like Allan Metcalf, a professor of English at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill., and the executive secretary of the American Dialect Society, don’t get it. Here is what Mr. Metcalf had to say about ginormous being added: “A new word that stands out and is ostentatious is going to sink like a lead balloon. It might enjoy a fringe existence.” There are two things about his statement that irritate me. First off, he’s implying that a word like ginormous won’t last because of its novelty. That might be true, but it might not. All of our language is basically an evolution from previously existing words, so why wouldn’t a new word stick.
The other thing that bugs me is the fact that he used the word “ostentatious” to talk about a word that would fade away. When was the last time you heard anyone use that word? I had no idea what it meant, so I had to look it up at webster.com. Its definition is “marked by or fond of conspicuous or vainglorious and sometimes pretentious display.” Mr. Metcalf is being pretentious with his vocabulary to degrade a word that he considers to be pretentious.
The fact of the matter is that in order to communicate effectively you have to use language and terminology that your audience is familiar with and is relevant to them. I applaud Merriam-Webster for not living up in ivory towers, but trying to stay in touch with the average English speaking person. This should pay off for them in the long run.
Creative Editing
My wife and I have been going to more movies this past month than usual. It seems like we’ve been showing up to the theater about thirty minutes early. It used to be that being at the theater that early meant you’d be listening to crappy music and watching the same 14 slides repeat on the screen. Now they’ve got some pre-show entertainment, which I personally enjoy. It makes the wait seem shorter.
One of the best parts about being there that early is that you get to see the extra previews for movies and TV shows. Brea and I really like previews, and we usually will comment about whether or not we want to see the movies that are coming soon. One problem with this is that previews don’t always give you the most accurate portrayal of what the movie will actually be like. Sometimes, especially in comedies, the previews have a good portion of the best parts of the movie, which pretty much means you’re wasting $9.
Another problem is that you can edit video to make it look however you want. Need proof? There have been a lot of videos uploaded to YouTube that take creative editing to the extreme. Check out a few examples below. If you want to watch more, check out http://www.thetrailermash.com/.
The Shining (Comedy)
Office Space (Suspense)
Mary Poppins (Horror – Great Title, Scary Mary)
The Sound of Music (Horror . . . which is probably an accurate edit)