Some Blog Site

With the new James Bond movie taking up some room in the news recently, I got to thinking about various titles.

I came up with a few, these here:

• Never Say Tomorrow
• A View Never Dies
• The Day of Enough Gold

But then I thought about “what if I made a simple webpage that would auto-generate the titles?”. And I checked the internet and, sure enough, someone had already done that.

So to save myself time, I’m just going to direct you over to that site where you can auto generate some random titles for James Bond movies.

It’s a fun way to waste 3 minutes.

Like everyone else these days, we’re getting a lot of things delivered rather than going to the store to buy them. But with a combination of various personalities of the people doing the delivering, and the layout of our driveway and front walkway, we were never sure where our packages would actually end up.

Our driveway, naturally, ends up at our garage. Some people would park next to the garage, then walk the package across the front of the house to the front porch. They probably do that to keep the package safe from rain/snow/spy satellites/etc. And I appreciated that. But that’s a longer walk than they need to take, and I’d like to help their day go quicker.

Some people would park next to the garage and put the packages on the ground just outside the garage, moreso when the garage door was closed, but also sometimes when it was open. If it was when we were out, there were multiple times when I’d pull up to the garage, stop and get out to move the package, then get back in and pull into the garage.

Then there are the delivery guys (yes it is guys, as the gals all seem to be in the first category of walking it to the front porch) who put the packages inside the garage if the door is open. Sometimes just inside the garage, sometimes behind our minivan, and sometimes halfway in the garage.

So, lots of options where people can and do delivery stuff.

In general, I like to avoid ambiguity. And this situation had some ambiguity that I realized I could prevent. So I did.

I built, right next to our garage door, a package delivery nook thingy.
It has a roof so the conscientious people can leave things there, knowing they’ll be protected from the rain.
And it’s right next to the garage, so the people who don’t want to walk much don’t have to go very far.
And it’s about at the height where the bottom of the box is for someone carrying it with their arms down, so there’s no bending down involved.
And it has a sign, so the people know it’s for them to use.

I put it up, and on the very next delivery the person used it.

Here it is, the first thing delivered to the new package nook:

Now I am happier that things should be delivered more consistently, and I hope the delivery personnel are better off too.

Since football season has started, I’ve been catching some of the games, and thus I’ve seen the NFL logo a few times.

It’s been the same logo for a couple years now, but the problem with it is just now bothering me.

If you look at the logo, pay attention to the bottom point, in the middle. See how the “shield” surrounding the NFL acronym is nice and symmetric, with a sharp point right in the middle?

Now see how the NFL letters are fitted in a similar shape as the shield, except the bottom middle point (the lowest part of the ‘F’) is not in the middle.

Why couldn’t they notice that when they were making the logo and do the alignment then?

But since they didn’t, I went ahead and did that for them.

I think it’s better.

I’ve been a card-carrying member of Home Depot for many years, and I thought I knew how store aisles worked.

But today I learned something new.

Here’s what happened: I was looking for an item but it was a small obscure item (lamp socket adapter) so – while I was in the store – I looked it up on Home Depot’s website. It said there were several in stock, and it was located in aisle 44 bay 11.

I found aisle 44 and bay 11. That had a bunch of electrical boxes but no adapters of any sort. So I hailed a nearby employee who asked a couple questions then took me right to the item. Which was in aisle 44 bay 11.

But the other aisle 44 bay 11.

Which made no sense to me.

I saw the sign for aisle 44 and went down aisle 44. I thought aisle 44 was on one side of the aisle, like if you’re looking down an aisle then 44 would be on the left and 45 would be on the right. But nope, they have aisle 44 being both sides.

And that would be okay if the bays were numbered differently, such as odd on one side and even on the other. Or 1->n on one side and n+1 -> n+n on the other side.

But nope, they have 1->n on one side, and 1->n on the other side.

It would be like if your address were 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, but there was also a 1600 Pennsylvania Ave across the street from you.

But now I know – there are two separate places to look any time the HD site gives the location of an item.

Here is a guest post I wrote for SCL back in the day (2011 in case you’re wondering). I think it wasn’t run because he had something similar. I can’t check though, because the SCL site is broken for anything not on the front page.

I am on the conservative side of things when it comes to swearing. If you’re anything like I am, you refer to the martial arts actor as “Jean-Clause Van Darn” just so there is no possibility of confusion.

My upbringing may have something to do with my stance on language. After all, I’ve heard my father swear only once in my life.

It was at Christmastime, of all things. Dad had just finished setting up the tree and we were about to start decorating it.

However, the tree was not quite level and it started leaning. Dad spent several minutes adjusting and re-adjusting the tree so that it would stand straight. Finally, he had the tree where he wanted it and he stood back to make sure it looked right.

… at which point the tree started falling, which was not what my father wanted to happen As it was crashing, my dad voiced his now-famous exclamation:

“Moses!”

The Ten Commandments state that thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

The Ten Commandments do not state that thou shall not take the names of other Biblical characters in vain. I think that makes them fair game.

SCL has already touched on the point of swearing occasionally, but not the various lengths that people go to in order to sound like they’re swearing but without crossing the line.

And where exactly is that line?

Here are a few places it could be:

Based on the FCC
The infamous list of words that can’t be broadcast in the USA is a good place to start. But what about Christians in other countries? Or those who don’t speak English? The FCC doesn’t apply to them, but I bet most every culture has some taboo or extra-rude words that would be the equivalent. I think the Smurfs were the first to creatively get around the FCC by substituting the word “Smurf” for any stronger language.

Anything other than God’s name
The third commandment is an obvious line in the sand. I’ve known some people who use common epithets that usually involve God’s name, but they replace God’s name with the name of a “deity” from another religion. It’s amusing, but it got me wondering if that people could be considered to be praying to a false god, which would violate the first commandment.

Line? What line?
Some people think lines are legalistic and shun them. But if everyone thought that way, then SCL would have lasted about 3 days. SCL needs lines.

Normally at the end of a blog post, there’s a question to garner comments and responses. The first questions that came to mind for this post were “What are your swearing substitutions?” and “What are some of the crazier phrases you’ve heard?”

But then I started thinking about what kind of comments that would get, and I started to worry. So I’m not asking any official question here. Just write whatever comment you feel like writing, related to the topic of swearing substitutions.

But remember that Jon’s grandmother will be reading your comment.

And that’s the guest post I sent over to Jon Acuff about a decade ago. I hope someone gets that old site working, so we can peruse the treasures within.

I realized our boys never experienced one of the little joys I had growing up – cottage cheese.

Now this is not just any cottage cheese, but enhanced cottage cheese.

I don’t know when it started, but I don’t remember ever eating cottage cheese at home without putting jello on top.

Now this is not just normal jello, but raw jello. Just the powder, straight out of the box.

If you think about it, it’s a perfect match. Jello powder adds everything that cottage cheese is missing – color, flavor, and sugar.

There was usually an open box of jello in the cabinet drawer, if not, then just pick your favorite flavor and open it up. Dump a bit of powder on your cottaqe cheese and you’re good to go.

I thought I would introduce our boys to the delight that is jello powder on cottage cheese. The older boys weren’t at dinner that day, so it was just the younger two.

I prepared them their bowls:

I like to not stir the jello in all the way, because then you get some more intense bursts of flavor. But just for fun, I stirred one all the way through.

I’m sharing this here because when I mentioned the practice of putting jello powder on cottage cheese, my wife was surprised. That was not something she was familiar with. And if she didn’t know it, probably a lot of other people don’t know it either. Thus it falls to me to spread the news, or recipe rather.

In case you’re curious, the boys were not fans of this dish. But their reasoning was the texture of the cottage cheese, not anything with the jello.

Thanks to a comic I saw on Dry Bar Comedy, I was inspired to find my actual skin color. If I remember correctly, he went to the store and got paint sample cards and figured out that he was the color “Chocolate Decadence”.

So of course I went to the store and grabbed some paint sample cards. It was a little awkward holding my arm up in front of the display case, but I grabbed some of the closest shades I saw and now I get to share the results with you.

One of the problems I encountered was that I did that in February, which in Michigan is the season of least melanin as it’s near the end of winter. I decided then to wait on the results until after I could redo this experiment after summer sun exposure.

Another problem I encountered was that my arms have two skin tones – the top side that gets more exposure to sunlight and the under side that stays lighter.

Another problem I encountered was that my skin is not an even tone. There are all sorts of variations and freckles and such, so this is kind of a subjective eyeballing result.

Final problem is that this was not a controlled experiment. For example, the winter paint samples were from Lowes but the summer paint samples were from Home Depot. And the winter photos were taken with an iPhone 5 but the summer photos were taken with an iPhone 7.

First up: winter arm top:

Photos aren’t clear, so it’s hard to read the names. But in this case it looks like the closest to my skin tone is Quaint Peche. Or maybe Mellow Coral.

Next up: winter arm bottom:

I’d say my palm is Indulgent Peach and my forearm is either Coral Perfection or Pink Glamour. I like the sound of Coral Perfection better, but if I had to narrow down the colors to the one best option, it would be Pink Glamour.

Next up: summer arm top:

My vote on this one is Terra Cotta Clay.

Next up: summer arm bottom:

I liked the color of Sunset Drive but it was too bright. I thought Nairobi Dusk had the right feel to it but was too dark. So what I’d like to do is mix 50/50 Nairobi Dusk and Sunset Drive.

I’m not sure how to conclude this blog post, other than maybe since there are so many colors I am, I think I can just pick the one I like best, or make one up, or just say “it depends”.

What color am I? I self-identify as Coral Peach Salmon.