Someone should be complaining about me right now

So you may know that I’m getting married in about a month.  You may also know that I typically keep my hair short enough that I haven’t owned a brush or comb since high school.  Usually, the $14 Hair Cuttery special is just perfect for me.

But I wanted something a little nicer for the wedding, so, at the advice of a coworker, I went to Phantacee, which is not a strip club.  Although they do give you a nice scalp massage before they shampoo your hair.

Now, so far I like the haircut, although I just got home and haven’t washed it yet, so it’s too early to really tell.  But I feel bad.  I didn’t realize that I wasn’t going to be able to tip the woman who cut my hair on my credit card when I paid.  I gave her all the cash in my wallet, which was a mere $4 on a $30 haircut.  I apologized, explaining that I didn’t realize I needed cash.  She blew it off, but she’s not a native English speaker, and I fear I may not have adequately expressed myself.

Anyway, there was an ATM across the street.  However, I felt it would be rude to go across the street and come back, have to get change for a $20 from the desk, and then give her a tip.  Is that wrong?  My plan is to go back for a trim the week before the wedding and give her a large tip to make up for it.  Of course, I forgot to get her name, so it may be difficult.  But I intend to make up for my small tip.

Maybe now that I’ve linked to the salon’s website, the thousands of visitors I get here will all get their hair cut there, and that will make up for it.  So, if you’re reading this, and you’re in the DC Metro area, head on over and ask for the girl who got the crappy tip from a guy with an unkempt (but clean) mop of rapidly greying hair.  Then tip her well.

Put a what on you?

Baltimore Orioles : News : Baltimore Orioles News

No matter how many runs you get, you feel like they can come back and put a [hurt] on you like they did the first night.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t you usually use the word in brackets to add or replace words that are a little out of context?  For example, replacing a pronoun with the specific noun if you’ve chosen not to quote the previous sentence where the pronoun was defined.

What the heck is this [hurt] replacing?  Was there some even more obscure slang word there?  Profanity?  Did Sam Perlozzo, Orioles’ manager and the quoted, make hand gestures?  We’ll probably never know.

Also, allowing 5 hits and no runs in 5 2/3 innings is not a “gem”, as the article states.  It’s a solid start, but in my book, a “gem” is at least 7 full innings, and most of those innings better not contain any hits.

A different perspective

Touch Messenger: Braille Text Messaging – Gizmodo

The first time I really thought about things like this was a few years ago when I had a deaf coworker.  Of course I understand the concept of being deaf, or blind, but it never sinks in until you spend some time with someone who actually is deaf or blind.  But you never think about things like, “How would a blind person text message?”

My deaf coworker called his little two way text messager a “deaf person’s cell phone”.  I had never thought about how useful something like that would be to someone who’s deaf, but once I saw him use it, it’s obvious.  But I’m glad to see some of the gadget companies looking around and seeing niches that need to be filled.

Virginia last in voter turnout in the last primary

USATODAY.com – Fewer primary voters ‘define the range of choices’

I found this via Raising Kaine via Daily Kos.  3.5% of Virginia voters turned out to vote in the primary.  At the school where I voted, it was about 6%, which I thought was pretty terrible, but apparently we were ahead of the rest of the state.  Now, I know there’s a Republican incumbent, so the Republican half of the primary is pretty trivial.  But Virginia allows you to vote in either one.  Those who want Senator George Allen to retain his seat certainly could have decided which of the two Democrats had a better chance of winning, and voted for the other guy.

This seems to be either voter stupidity or voter apathy.  We have a President with a 36% approval rating.  If that doesn’t get people out to vote, what will?  Maybe we need to lose some more civil rights to the war on terror.  Maybe we do need a national ID card, something we’d be required to present all the time to prove our citizenship.  Maybe a draft, to send ground troops in to help Israel, or to invade North Korea.

It blows my mind that people don’t vote.  And then they try to use dissatisfaction with the government as justification.  If you don’t vote, then you don’t get to complain about the government.  I don’t care if George W. Bush himself comes to your house, installs a bug in your phone, and then kicks your dog.  I have no sympathy for you if you don’t vote.

All alone

My fiancee leaves for Puerto Rico today.  She’s going for a quick getaway with a friend, and she’ll be back next Wednesday, just in time for me to leave for Vegas on Thursday.  I think it’s good that we take separate vacations sometimes.  I mean, my trip to Vegas is my bachelor party, so that’s obviously separate.  But we’ll continue taking separate vacations after the wedding.  Not all the time, but sometimes.  I mean, we’re going to be hanging out with each other a lot, for a long time.  Having a few days here and there apart makes us appreciate the rest of the time even more.

Hillary after 100 pages

This entire book is a string of little chronological factoids about Bill and Hillary and the various wonderful people they have as good friends, and the various Republicans they strongly disagree with, but respect very much.

It has given me no reason to like or dislike Hillary.  I wish she’d give just some small insight into why she thinks the things she does.  Oh, well.  I didn’t expect anything controversial.  I just maybe hoped for a little something interesting.

I’m not giving up yet.  I don’t plan to give up at all.  But it sure is slow going.

The age of cigarettes may be drawing to a close

San Diego bans smoking at beaches, parks – Yahoo! News

This is a pretty big step for San Diego. It’s one thing to ban indoor smoking, but we haven’t seen too many outdoor smoking bans. The focus of this article, though, is more on the discarded butts than the health hazards. That may be a subtle acknowledgement of the fact that secondhand smoke is unlikely to be too great a danger in huge, wide-open spaces. But it reminds me of my old boss at a summer job in high school. He was a smoker, but he absolutely refused to pitch a butt on the ground. He would twist off the burning end and put it in his pocket until he could throw it away. “It’s my nasty habit, not anyone else’s”. He said.

I wonder how many people would be less adamant about banning smoking if more smokers were as considerate about their habit as he was.

Ken Lay – not Jesus

Whatever: When Ministers Say Goddamned Stupid Things

John Scalzi has a little response to Reverend Dr. Bill Lawson, who compared Ken Lay to Martin Luther King, Jr, and to Jesus. This is worse than PTI comparing Jonathan Papelbon to Mariano Rivera.

By the way, if you’re a fan of science fiction, or even if you aren’t, check out Scalzi’s books. I’ve enjoyed them. His blog’s not bad, either.

Why no response to the bombings in Mumbai?

Deafening silence in the blogosphere – Sepia Mutiny

Found this on BoingBoing.  It seems that, for a change, the “old school” news guys covered this a lot more thoroughly than the “new school” bloggers did. 

I can’t really say why I didn’t say anything about it.  It’s certainly a big deal.  An unnamed political blogger quoted in the article said that he didn’t post it because he had nothing to add, and I probably don’t, either.

I have to say that my technique for finding things to write about is that I post something when I notice and article that interests me.   Often things are going to slip through the cracks. 

I don’t mean to trivialize the importance of what happened there.  This is a big deal, not only for those directly affected, but for the world. 

I think it reminds us that bloggers and traditional journalists don’t have to be on opposite sides. The success of blogs does not have to come at the expense of traditional journalism, and I think we’ll find a good middle ground where everyone (except close-minded and insecure jerks) can live in peace.

The perils of the Blogosphere

I want people to read my blog.  I have pipe dreams of getting 200,000 unique hits a day and making a living with Google Adsense.  I like to think that I have interesting and humorous things to share with the world (My mommy and my fiancee tell me they think my blog is good). In my quest to expand my readership, I’ve been searching around for other blogs and such where I can contribute a comment with a link back to my site, so that maybe I’ll say something interesting, and someone will come read a post or two here, and they’ll enjoy it, and keep coming back.  So I was poking around at del.icio.us, looking for interesting things to read.  Wow, are there some crazy people out there.  There was one person who dissected and refuted an Onion article, accusing them of pushing their agenda, whatever that is.  I won’t link to the post, because I don’t want to encourage her to post anything ever again.  I found an article from some reputable news site that claimed to talk about politicians in Washington regulating the internet, but never really saying anything.  Politicians regulating the internet is a big deal.  There’s lots to say.  Why write an article about it and not say any of them?  I don’t know, either.

My point is that you never know what you’re going to get when you read a blog.  So you need to be careful.  If you read a story at the Washington Post, or the Wall Street Journal, you’re probably getting someone who at least did some research.  And of course, everything you read here is thoroughly researched, down to the most mundane detail.  I swear.

But what about those scurrilous bloggers who would deceive you with lies and half-truths?  They’re out there.  You’ve got people paid by companies to promote products.  You’ve got insane people making things up as they go along.

I’m here to tell you not to trust anyone.  Except me.  You can trust me.  Just ask my mommy.