Archive for 2020

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Chocolate for Breakfast, Part 4

Aug

6

2020

My earlier post had been about a new chocolate cereal. We found another chocolate cereal that has joined the breakfast game: Chocolate Life.

image of Chocolate Life cereal

Officially, it is chocolate-flavored Life. I think that sounds better than other cereals that bill themselves as chocolately, since chocolately makes it sounds like it’s fake chocolate. I think both terms (chocolate-flavored and chocolately) mean the exact same thing though, as they both have cocoa as an ingredient. Probably the best way around it is just to call your product cocoa-whatever, as that is both true and doesn’t sound fake. In this case, Quaker went with chocolate instead of cocoa.

It doesn’t really matter though.

It doesn’t taste like chocolate, or cocoa, or chocolatiness. It tastes pretty much like regular Life cereal does. Which is not a bad thing, but don’t pay extra for this just because it says chocolate.

Still, it’s better than Special K with Chocolately Chunks.

You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men.

Matthew 5:13

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Lottottery

Jul

29

2020

Take a look at this shot from Google street view and tell me what you notice, or rather what you think I want you to notice:

image of a lottottery store

I had never heard of a lottottery before, but apparently there is a convenience store that can meet your lottottery needs.

Curious, I tried to get a better view of the store.

image of a convenience store that sells lottery

It turns out that Google was just trolling me with some deepfake image. I thought it was pretty well done, after I compared the two images. All the other views of the convenience store showed they sold regular old lottery tickets, not the fancier lottottery tickets.

Not the most interesting thing on Google street view, but it’s something.

As he finished speaking all these words, the ground that was under them split open;

Numbers 16:31

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My Way

Jul

22

2020

I was inspired to modify a song to fit with recent news about President Trump. Imagine Frank Sinatra’s voice before you peruse the following image.

image of Donald Trump singing the Frank Sinatra song My Way but about rejecting Huawei

Note: if the image is too small to read easily, click on it and you should be able to zoom in better.

For those of you not keeping up on things, the Huawei company has been banned from doing certain business in various countries. Trump has weighed in on things, and around that time I saw a comic of Bucky Katt singing his version of I Did It My Way, and the two things just clicked. I left a bit of the song out, keeping just the most memorable and applicable lines to the situation.

I considered my ways And turned my feet to Your testimonies.

Psalm 119:59

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Kitchen Design Idea

Jul

15

2020

I don’t plan on moving anytime soon, much less building a new house, much less designing the kitchen for a new house. But if I did, I know what I’d want to do: two dishwashers.

We seem to have the problem of slowly-moving kids who don’t necessarily get the dishwasher emptied before the next meal. So the dirty dishes from that meal ended up piled in or next to the sink, to be loaded into the dishwasher when it is next available.

This could be solved by having two dishwashers – they’d take turns holding either the clean or dirty dishes. Think about it – you could set the table from the clean dishwasher and put them into the dirty dishwasher after the meal. Then when the dirty dishwasher is full you run it. And in theory the clean dishwasher would be empty at the same time so then it becomes the dirty dishwasher.

Now someone’s objection could be that having two dishwashers would cut out significant cabinet space. But since one dishwasher is storing clean dishes, you would need less cabinet space. It is, in effect, a cabinet with plumbing.

So the benefits to this arrangement are that kids don’t have an excuse not to put things in the dishwasher and fewer transactions are needed (dishes go from dishwasher to table and back without needing the middleman of the cabinets).

The drawbacks are increased cost and I was going to say having to track which one is clean/dirty but that’s already being done with one dishwasher so that’s not anything different.

Also the earthenware vessel in which it was boiled shall be broken; and if it was boiled in a bronze vessel, then it shall be scoured and rinsed in water.

Leviticus 6:28

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German Accent

Jul

8

2020

I realized I mentioned the German accenterator wasn’t working but I never indicated that it was back online. I had to re-write the whole thing from, well not from scratch but mostly new. I’m pretty sure it’s not exactly how it used to be, but it makes one sound more German than nothing.

Go visit the German accent page to try the accent.

Foreigners pretend obedience to me; As soon as they hear, they obey me.

2 Samuel 22:45

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Sundry and Various Thoughts

Jul

1

2020

Here are some thoughts I jotted down that aren’t quite sufficient for their own individual blog posts. If you’re the type of person who likes Twitter, pretend each of these is a tweet.

  • We got something that was in a tamper-proof box, and was labelled as such and conveyed that it was an important package. I think that’s the wrong approach. I would rather the sender of such an item try to go unnoticed, fly below the radar. Put something bland and useless on the outside, so as not to be enticing to others. Like “Oatmeal” or “Wart Remover” or just no description.
  • Why is the word “beheaded”? Should it be “be-not-headed”? Or maybe “deheaded”, like “decapitated”.
  • I saw a sign that said “Life is short, so eat more dessert.” It was probably in a candy store or something. But my thought was they got it backwards. Your life is short because you’re eating too much dessert. If you took better care of your body by eating less dessert, maybe your life wouldn’t be so short.
  • There is no shortage of articles about how Warren Buffett and Bill Gates think rich people should pay more taxes. They want the government to change tax laws so that certain people pay more taxes. Those two guys have pledged to give a bunch of money to charity. If they think the government is in need of more money, why didn’t they give their money to the government? Actions speak louder than words – they know the government isn’t the best use of money. They should be advocating for more charitable donation writeoffs.
  • “Lisp” is a bad word to pronounce for someone with a lisp. I thought that was bad, then I learned the word for having trouble pronouncing the letter L is “lambdacism”. But the word for a specific type of lambdacism is “lallation”. It’s like they’re making it as bad as possible for those people to say their own condition. The letter R – “rhotacism”. At least they didn’t name anything “rarrism” for people who have trouble with R.

Immediately the king sent an executioner and commanded him to bring back his head. And he went and had him beheaded in the prison

Mark 6:27

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Follow Directions

Jun

25

2020

My wife bought a bag of gluten.

Side note: if you ever wonder what they do with all the gluten they take out of things to make them gluten-free, apparently they put all the gluten in containers and sell it separately. I bet they get to charge more for the gluten-free stuff, plus they charge people to buy bags of gluten. It’s a win-win for the company, I suppose.

But that was not the point of this post. The point was the marketing stuff they put on the bag. maybe not so much marketing, but the character or personality they’re trying to portray for the company.

Here’s a photo of the back of the bag:

image of a bag of gluten saying not to look under the bag

The part that I noticed was at the top, in prominent letters, almost like they wanted you to notice it most. So I suppose it worked.

I, knowing they wanted me to wonder was was so forbidden about the underside of the bag, did not give in and went about my normal business, ignoring the bag.

But my younger son was not so good at self-control and has not learned to insulate himself so much from marketing. He picked up the bag and said “Look, dad!” So I looked, and that prompted a dad lesson from me, which I’m going to start after I show you the bottom of the bag.

image of a bag of gluten saying they like people who don't follow directions

As you might be able to guess, my complaint is their furthering of disobedience. They are saying they like people who don’t follow directions? Then they say to store in a cool dry place. Does that mean they’ll like it if I store their product in a hot tub?

If they ever send me recipes, I know those’ll be worthless.

And the person who decided to put that stuff on the bag – what if his boss told him to do something? Is the culture at that company such that he would get promoted if he went against some simple clear instructions from his boss?

At least these people ended up somewhere where it doesn’t matter too much. Can you imagine if they worked somewhere else, like at a tax-preparation place or a hospital or airplane maintenance? I get that sometimes you have to disobey orders or instructions, but you should at least have a good reason and it should not be your default attitude.

Or maybe they’re saying they like incompetent people. I suppose that’s slightly better, as it’s not willful disobedience. But I doubt that’s what they were trying to convey.

Against whom do you jest?
Against whom do you open wide your mouth
And stick out your tongue?
Are you not children of rebellion,
Offspring of deceit,

Isaiah 57:4

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