Seventy Views!

How the heck did I get seventy views on Tuesday?  Must’ve been that Indiana Jones IV pic…

Indiana Jones IV

Woo! Here’s the first pic available from the new Indiana Jones movie that’s in development!

The Wheel of Time

I finished the second book of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series last night. Man, what a good series so far! That guy really knows how to write. The story is epic in scope, but manages not to get dry and dull like the final third of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. If you enjoy fantasy novels, you cannot miss this series.

Expand Your Mind

Today’s new concept: Hedonic Treadmill

Things I Hate

These two Things I Hate are related:

• When people ride their bikes down a busy road in the middle of the city when there’s a bike path specifically created for them not more than two meters to their right. I know cyclists have a right to use the road, but the bike path is smoother, safer, and provides a more aesthetically pleasing ride!
• When pedestrians use the street instead of the perfectly good sidewalk right beside it. I still remember you “senior-citizen-who-jogs-down-Nassau-at-five-in-the-morning -on-icy-roads-in-the-winter-even-when-the-sidewalk-has-been-cleared”!

These paths are for everyone’s safety, and we all pay taxes for their upkeep. I don’t want to run over you with my car. There is no reason to put yours or anyone else’s life in danger, and these paths — which run parallel to the road — are not really that inconvenient.

I Hate Vista!

I was forced to move to a Vista computer at work the other day.  Wow.  Off the top of my head I can’t really think of any improvements it has over Windows XP, besides a shiny new way of drawing windows (which I promptly turned off because it’s horridly slow).  Options and settings are strewn about in different windows and dialogs with inconsistent interfaces.  Many important options are completely missing, since Microsoft apparently knows what you want better than you do.  I am not impressed.

Would you like some cheese with your coffee?

Don’t you love it when you make a nice cup of coffee in the morning — with freshly ground, hazelnut cream flavored beans — and you pour in some cream, stir it around, and watch in horror as little curds float to the surface? It was bad enough the store only had half-and-half cream when I bought the carton; now I get shafted again by having it go bad three days before the ‘best before’ date!

Argh!

Alternate Reality

I had another dream in that alternate reality again. This time I talked with two neighbors from across my back lane. The first guy — whose house was directly opposite mine — wasn’t really interested in talking to me. When he said his name, it sounded like he said “Daniel”, but when he spelled it, it was something like “Danahjo” (A quick google brings up only one result for that word — it appears to be a the username of some spammer on a private message board). For some reason this guy was throwing out a complete Voltron figure, which I swiped from his trash pile in the back lane.

The other guy was the neighbor to the right of the first guy, when looking across the back lane from my house. He was much more talkative and friendly, but, for some reason, he wouldn’t give me his name when I introduced myself. He described our neighborhood as being known by the term “M&M”, for some reason. He then proceeded to show off his M&M candy themed wall clock, as though it could be appreciated on another level seeing as how it was in the neighborhood known as “M&M”.

I’m also getting faint recollections of being in a school again. I think it was the alternate reality high school. Maybe more will come to me later on.

Mars Attacks

The last two times a Shrek movie has come out in theaters, Mars, Inc. released “ogre-sized” M&Ms. Now, a common problem with peanut M&Ms is their chocolate to peanut ratio. There was always too much peanut and too little chocolate. With the time-limited arrival of these “ogre-sized” M&Ms, this imbalance was rectified (in fact, the ratio went a little to far to the other end of the flavor spectrum, but I digress…) by the temporary increase in size of the chocolate coating.

Recently, however, during the time between Shreks two and three, M&M started using smaller peanuts in their candy. Now, I’m not complaining –these smaller peanuts tasted better and provided a better peanut-chocolate balance — but I noticed something odd after the release of the third Shrek movie. The “ogre-sized” peanut M&Ms this time around were nothing like their previous incarnations! The thickness of the chocolate coating remained the same, but the peanut inside was larger! In fact, I am almost certain the peanuts were no more than 15% larger than their size prior to the M&M Peanut Shrinkage event of a few months back! And not only was the amount of peanut increased instead of the amount of chocolate, the peanuts themselves tasted terrible.

I am very displeased with this bait-and-switch tactic used by Mars, Inc. to destroy my enjoyment of their tasty treat. Did you think I wouldn’t notice? Did you think I was that dumb just because, for a brief moment, I thought M&Ms were printing capital Es on their candy during this past Easter (yes, that’s a true story — I was a complete moron for a few seconds there)? Well, I did notice. And I’m mad.

Argh! Why are my favorite foods always the first to be taken away? Frankenberry cereal, Booberry cereal, Old Dutch Mexican Chili Chips, Mexican Chili Nuts & Bolts, Choclairs, Old Dutch “Double Dutch” Mesquite BBQ Chips… What’s next?

The Law

I read in a local paper recently that some guy was fined for parking his RV on the street. Doing so apparently violated some by-law because of the RV’s length. What bothers me more than the fact that stupid little by-laws like this exist is the following fact: when the victim of this by-law (who knew nothing about it) asked the city for a list of its by-laws so that he could comply with all of them, the city refused to give it to him, stating that there are too many by-laws to be giving out copies to everyone who asks for it.

Now, combine this with the old saw “ignorance of the law is no excuse”: how on earth is this fair? Personally, I believe that ignorance of the law is an excuse for precisely the reason that there are too many damned laws. No one can be expected to know them all. How can anyone be held accountable to arbitrary laws?

Now, I can see people being held accountable for laws based on fundamental wrongdoings that every person with a healthy conscious agrees with (i.e. murder, theft, etc.), even if they do not know the letter of those laws. However, holding people accountable to laws that they cannot be reasonably expected to know is not only wrong, but breeds disrespect for the entirety of the law among the people.

In my opinion, if cities are going to implement by-laws, the city should be responsible for publishing said laws and distributing them to all citizens. Also, violation of said by-laws should warrant a warning for the first offense (provided it’s not blatantly obvious the violator knew what he was doing). “Mystery fines” are not an acceptable way to enforce the law.

Going beyond the local by-law issue, there’s also the problem of there being way, way too many laws on the books at the national level. The number of laws a nation has is a sign of the degree of corruption in its legal system. And what’s worse about this situation is that we have a governing bodies whose job it is to write more laws, but there are no corresponding entities whose job it is to go over old laws and get rid of the ones that are no longer necessary. The system just keeps getting worse and worse.

To me, it seems that there is inherently wrong with the idea that there are far too many laws for any one person to ever know. Sure many laws are not applicable to most, but how would you know if you did not read every law?

Argh.  This issue always gets me upset.