Month: April 2004

Was asked for information about go-ped style scooters, so of course I had to create a webpage. Feedback welcome.

I’ve got a washer and dryer. They’re great; got ’em from the used appliance store (along with a free burn barrel!) My kind of labor-saving appliance.

When am I going to get a folder? I mean, really. That’s the part of the whole cycle that’s still time-consuming manual labor. I’d pay a couple hundred dollars for a shiny new G.E. electric clothes folder. It doesn’t even need to have an ironer.

In fact, that’s a good thing to do with my tax refund!

Then again, last time I was in Euro, they still hadn’t caught on to the novelty of the clothes dryer – that or they’re all exhibitionists who like to display their delicates on the clothesline for all the neighbors to see.

Clocks that automatically set themselves forward: cellphone, computers (looks like, every one of them including the Sun Linux boxes), living room (atomic), GPS (also atomic). Probably several others I won’t notice.

Clocks that I didn’t set themselves: Bedroom alarm, car (I used to have a dashboard clock and a car radio clock, which didn’t keep in sync – I’m sure you can imagine how that annoyed me; the Pinz has no clock). The Swiss Army Land Rover watch that hangs from my bag has a dead battery. I stopped wearing a wristwatch years ago and rarely miss it. The clock on the stove that never keeps time properly anyway. Probably several others I won’t notice, for a while.

One reason I prefer Spring Forward to Fall Back: ~10 fewer keystrokes. Or 22. Or a somewhat shorter period of holding the button down and waiting, hoping to set it properly without having to roll all the way around again.

But at least no manual twisting, so far.

By the way, I’m not one of those people who sets clocks ahead so they get places on time; I tried that for a while but decided it was better to know and use the actual time properly and aim for getting places a little early. But for those people, should these automatic clocks have an option of “15 minutes ahead of standard time”? I’d think it would work better if it had them set themselves a random amount of time – say 5 to 30 minutes – ahead of standard so you could never be sure how early you were and you’d have to stay on your toes.

What is the bizarre compulsion people have, for creating fake news stories on the internet for April Fools’ day? Most of them aren’t even funny, but they are dumb. Slashdot is always littered with them, destroying my faith in nerds and geeks having any worthwhile sense of humor at all. It’s so bad that people pretty much assume every story posted today is a joke of some sort. Macsurfer has fewer joke stories but they’re even worse! U.S. Department of Homeland Security Standardizes on Macs – “…Apple stock rose $4.01 on the announcement…”

Give me a break. April Fools pranks should be mean and nasty and humiliating – cruel and unusual. Involving mayhem if possible. They may be simple, but are better if they’re elaborate. But please, don’t waste my time if they’re just plain stupid!