google suggestions – let’s point and laugh

so it’s been around for a while now, but google has suggestions for searches.  we all know and use them and they can be very helpful.  but what happens when you stop and look for a second at what is being suggested for you?  i did a little experiment today, mostly by accident, during one of my searches through firefox’s integrated search.  i only got part of the way into my search when i started laughing uncontrollably at what was being suggested.

now bear in mind, these aren’t specific to me, as i am not logged into google at the moment and my account doesn’t keep search history, nor does my browser keep any history beyond a session.  here’s what was suggested when i searched for: possible to

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

personally i find it hilarious that a possible search is “possible to iterate multiple times over an iterator“.  what is that? and more importantly, who searches for that?  so as a follow-up i searched for: what are the chances

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the scary part was that out of the top 10, 9 of them were dealing with pregnancy in some way.  have we lost our minds?  got any other really normal searches that get some super-random results?  hit us up and let us know.

how dr dre saved my trip to costco

it was a surprisingly warm winter day and i needed to go to costco.  other than the usual stocking up on crap like yogurt, napkins, canned tomatoes, etc this was turing out to be a typically abysmal outing with nothing to really liven up my day.  in my quest to digitize my life i now keep my lists for shopping and to-do stuff on my newly acquired ipod touch.  it’s handy, holds my music and videos and keeps me on track.  i get what’s on the list, don’t dawdle, and get the fuck out.

i needed some music to make my trip more enjoyable.  after i flash my card to the man at the door, yeah you know it’s like access to the vip section at a club, i hit the shuffle button and begin my quest.  what’s the lead track that comes on? let me ride – dr. dre from the original chronic cd.  i can’t tell you how sweet it was.

i walked slower, more purposeful.  i imagined creeping down the street on a warm summer day convertible.  i wasn’t in a hurry and i flashed the ‘what’s your name’ nod to the ladies as they were going by.  everything was in slow motion, it was fucking great.  i felt as though i needed to have some hydraulics on my car or at least some daytons.  the tempo of the song commanded my shopping trip.  ”and i’ll be rollin’ in my six-fo” echoed as i shopped the meat section and tossed a case of yogurt in my cart.

i was in no hurry and the music saved what was to be a abnormally bullshit trip to a big box store.  what songs have you had come on that have set the tempo for something you have been doing?

big bird syndrome: justifiable stupidity

please enjoy this psa.  it was paid for by the box andy foundation: people for the advancement of boxes.  

we’re men.  we do weird shit.  especially when one of our old friends comes around.  this precisely is the reason that we might go on a jameson fueled wednesday night bender for seemingly no apparent reason.  we fall under the spell of big bird syndrome.  we get eclipsed by it and can’t see any other way.

let’s take a step back shall we.  first: who is big bird?  well he is that lovably yellow character from sesame street that we all seem to remember whilst growing up.  he is a figure from our childhood.  he evokes different feelings in different people.  second: what is a syndrome? dictionary.com defines it as 

a group of symptoms that together are characteristic of a specific disorder, disease, or the like.

put the two together and what do you get?  a justifiable reason to revert to a former pattern of action from an earlier time in your life.  see, in real life right now you are a mild-mannered cubicle monkey, but earlier in your life you may have been ‘frank the tank’, able to drink a fifth of vodka in one sitting and bong 3 beers an hour.  you were great.  you may have peaked, you might not, either way you are different than you were and you yearn for the chance to get back to that former self.  you want so badly to feel like that again.

when your friend comes around you instantly revert to this former self.  why do you ask? because that’s all you know and the only connection you have.  it’s not like your “couples friends” that you have now.  this is a perfect excuse for you to get drunk and pull stupid shit.  ”hey wanna get blitzed off jager and shit in someone’s mailbox?” or “let’s get a 30 pack of natty light do a century club!!”  these all seem like plausible nightly activities when you under the spell of big bird syndrome.

so to everyone out there, don’t try and get in the way of our drunk and disorderly conduct when our buddy rolls around.  just suck it up, let us have a good time, listen for your cell phone because it might be us asking for bail money and please, please dear god please do not ask us where those cuts or whip marks came from.  chances are we don’t even know so let’s leave it at that.

what i learned from taking a cruise

i got back a few days ago from taking a 2 week cruise on the mediterranean and i have learned quite a few things.  

• people are impatient as shit when it comes to elevators and getting on or off
• apparently pushing the call button for the elevator numerous times makes it come faster
• anyone who looks like cloris leachman is scary as hell and eye contact should be avoided
• do not take pictures of people going through airport security. the men with the fully-automatic machine guns don’t like it very much
• airlines should require certain people to purchase 2 seats when flying. (i’ll leave it at that)
• americans are not that rude.  i mean, we are but many from germany, french canada, and asia are really big fucking assholes
• feigning like you don’t know a language is no excuse for corralling your friends and letting them cut in line
• i know cruise lines make a ton of money on passengers who buy photos, but enough already
• my real name is not mark and my fiancee’s name is not alexis no matter how many times you call us by these names
• sherbet and sorbet are two different things.  don’t insult my intelligence
• people needed to be smacked by their parents more when they were growing up
• old fat bald guys shouldn’t wear speedos
• old fat women need to cover up more
• don’t breast-feed your child while flying in the seat next to me
• allow your baby to sleep and don’t keep bouncing him up and down.  what a shocker, he likely won’t throw up on you
• when it’s double odds craps in the casino you best believe i’m gonna pimp that shit for all its worth and take the house for as much as i can
• personal space is mine and mine alone.  invade it and i might just stab you in the eye

well that’s a few of them.  please do think of them what you are looking to go on your next cruise and prepare yourself.

toilet bowl lottery

it’s a game we all play, we just don’t talk about it.  it’s the toilet bowl lottery game and it occurs everytime you go into the bathroom and there is someone washing their hands that just got done in a stall.  both men and women play the game and it’s as creepy as it is hilarious.  the object of the game is simple: choose the toilet that wasn’t occupied by someone’s ass just meer moments ago.  a certain someone you just passed at the sink as you were on your way into the stall.

in my office, we have only 3 stalls for use at any one given time.  one of them is slightly hidden by a half wall, making it a perfect spot to spend some train taking care of business while the other 2 are exposed with no wall to hide them.   to make matters worse you actually have to look at the person and know that your ass might just touch where their ass just touched.  it’s a calculated guess and you only have a moment to decide.

today i walked into the stall and chose the slightly hidden stall on the right.  bad move.  as soon as i closed the door i realized just how big a mistake i made.  there were slight floaters and the water was still circling and rippling.  fuck.  it was too late since the door was closed and the former tenant of that stall was still in the bathroom.  

next time though i am prepared.  i’m choosing the middle stall.  i’ll be damned if i’m gonna care about who is taking care of business on either side of me.  i hopefully won’t see them before and i don’t care if they see me after.  so the next time you are in the bathroom about to take care of #1 or #2 just think about the lottery for a quick second.  you might be surprised to realize you give a whole lot more thought to which stall you choose than you ever imagined.

finding a job on a bell curve

finding a job sucks. honestly, root canal without any drugs or an amputation without being knocked out is easier to take. okay, maybe i took that too far. but it still sucks. to make matters worse is not just getting your foot in the door and getting the interview, but now you get to wait…..and wait…..and wait…..and wait for there to be any response. often times there’s no response at all. this can be frustrating to say the least and while i understand that the company often doesn’t make split-second decisions regarding personnel the job seeker is still left in a lurch.

i have, after many nights of not sleeping well, have come up with a theory about the probability of getting a job post-interview. here’s the scenario: let’s say that you interview on a thursday and you interview well, ask and answer questions well, and they tell you that you should hear from them in 3-5 business days. i propose we look at the idea of getting a call back on a bell curve.

we all know and hated the bell curve. it was that one geek that ‘screwed the pooch’ for the entire class by getting a good score on the test. what i’m thinking is that on the two ends of the spectrum we can refer to as the length of time in days. the shorter and longer the ‘callback time’ the less likely you are to get one. however, that sweet spot is in the 2-4 day marks where the standard deviation says that the probability is best.  if they call you back in the 2-4 day area they are interested and not desperate (like calling after getting a potential date’s number).  there is a certain amount of restraint in waiting that period of time.  i say this because right now i’m sitting outside of the sweet spot and i want to tear out what little hair i have left.

now before any mathematicians or professors jump all over me for using a bell curve, it’s more of a visual aid, rather than any actual mathematical process. so there.

nutritional information: an inconvenient truth

it’s no secret that americans have a weight problem. more than that we have a denial problem and a ‘it’s not my fault that i’m fat’ problem. we like to blame others. we like to sue others. what we have failed to do is accept responsibility for our actions and change course to correct them. however in attempting to help others work with issues regarding weight i am perplexed as to the lack of support by nutrition labels. okay, follow me here. in the u.s. we use the standard tables for weights and measures: pounds, ounces, gallons, tablespoons, etc. this is crazy confusing to the average user. i have a culinary degree and at times it’s confusing to me. the remainder of the world uses the metric system: grams and liters. that’s it. nothing more. if it’s weight, it’s measured in grams and if it’s volume, it’s measured in liters. here’s the thing though, u.s. nutritonal labeling is done in grams. this causes much confusion for the simple fact that 99% of people don’t have any idea what a gram looks like (save for drug dealers) and only know what a liter looks like because it’s so close to the quart.

here’s where things go south quickly: we have to do math when looking at nutrition labels and that brings us back to the lazy part: we won’t do the math. okay, okay, before you attempt to chastise me for going off like this, i will back up my findings in some upcoming posts (more on that later) and look, most specifically, at sugar. why sugar? because we all have a frame of reference for sugar, in what it looks like and how much it should/shouldn’t be. this can give you a rational look at what a gram is you can use it to enrich your lives. sugar is in just about everything (save diet sodas and whatnot) even the buns at fast food restaurants.

here’s a quick one for you: mike and ike’s (the rabbit’s #2 favorite candy, btw) have 1 gram of sugar per piece of candy. what does this translate to: each piece is equal to roughly 1 teaspoon of sugar. so that means if i’m having a serving of mike and ike’s (23 pieces or 40 grams, however you want to look at it) i am putting down the equivalent of 7.66 tablespoons of sugar. yes, that’s tablespoons, for those keeping track at home. it took a bit for that to settle in, seeing as how i put down almost an entire box, which is about 7 servings.

what i will do over the course of a few posts is look at various food items, not just candy, and show you side-by-side the actual measured sugar content of a serving, can, bottle, etc when put next to the actual product. it was alarming to me and possibly will be alarming to you. i’m not saying to go out and get on the south beach diet or anything, but in taking it from a pro i hope to shed some light on difficult issues.  stay tuned for future deets.  that is all.

i’ve lost my mind when it comes to groceries

i have. i used to be a hunter. i would have my list of what i needed (yes needed) to get, go in the store and make a bee-line for the products on the list. now i meander through the aisles and seek out “new and interesting” products, mostly to review here. it’s gotten so bad that my lady now does the same thing too. i’ve now crossed over to the dark side am now a gatherer. it’s a sad day in my world folks. i died a little bit inside when i came to this realization. to put it in perspective, i can take a 15 minute shopping trip and turn it into a 45 minute excursion and go over budget by as much as $25. now that’s poopy.

while we enjoy trying new things, sometimes it can be exhausting. like for example when it’s a saturday afternoon and you are fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with customers in tj’s or the local supermarket. occasionally i will do the whole asian-food-market thing and find some product whose language i can’t understand and have no clue what it is just to purchase and try out.

so i ask you all, since product reviews are some of the main reasons you come here: what product(s) do you want me to review? give me some ideas and i will totally roll with it. not that i am out of ideas, but i want to know what you want to see. also, since the review of the mcskillet burrito is so high on the charts, do you want me to go back an retry it? post a comment and let me know.

an interview tip for employers

okay, not that i am in a position to give interviewers tips on how to conduct interviews to potential employees, but i thought i would share this little nugget of goodness with you.

today, while in the throws of an interview with what was a very dull potential boss i look down to inspect the desk and keep from falling asleep and see my resume. what was stuck to the resume was a note outlining the thoughts of the screener as he was conducting the pre-interview interview. i just about stood up and called him on it when i saw the first line written on the note:

i picked this guy for the hell of it

wow motherfucker, way to show a candidate that they at least have a shot. and while you’re at it are there any other ways that you can show your boss that you are wasting his time? speaking of wasting time, when would you like me to thank you for wasting my time? listen, i don’t care that you had a quota of candidates you had to present to your boss but at least have some decency and not call attention to it.

so there you have it. don’t write shit on anything that’s visible to the potential employee that you don’t want him to see. moreover try not to degrade him too much before you even meet him. keep that shit in your head or relegate it to water-cooler talk. you’ve been warned.

is the commercial jingle dead?

you know the jingle; it told you what name your bologna had and it helped you realize that if you were a wiener, what kind of wiener you would like to be. these days i’m noticing a trend: the death of the jingle. let’s start first to define what i believe the jingle to be, “a short song encapsulated in a commercial that defines a product, what a product offers, or whom the product is tailored for”. it also has a sticking-factor that embedded it into your brain and bugged you when you were trying to sleep. you might have other ideas of what a jingle is, but i don’t care. well i do, but for consistency-sake we’ll just stick with my definition.

when growing up the jingle was a staple of the advertising world. it made me want to buy, no, need to buy something. it made me need something so bad that i would nag my mother incessantly until i got said product. nowadays the jingle seems to have gone the way of the dodo in advertising, with the exception of a few ‘old world’ products from conglomerate companies.