Relying on dumb luck

Back where I used to live, so many of the people in my social circle relied on luck when it came to their day-to-day dealings. Not strategy, not planning, not skill... luck. It was insane. When playing billiards, for example, they would often just let the cue ball go wild, hoping that it would sink a ball or two. So much for counting on skill. They took the challenge out of the game. The same thing happened when it came to video games. They would fire wildly, hoping to hit something. Or when I'd be playing a card game, they'd advise me to try a move, saying "Who knows? You might get lucky." What about figuring out the odds instead, maximizing your chances for a win? Relying on blind luck is just dumb.

Dear EXX 6016 driver

To the driver of the vehicle with license plate EXX 6016...

You nearly tagged my car as you were weaving in and out of traffic while driving southbound on I-71. I watched you speed away, and I saw that you continued to weave through the traffic. You must have really been in a hurry to endanger other motorists that way.

Please don't do that. Safety first, please. I won't claim to be a perfect driver, but I do understand the importance of driving safety.

It don't mean a thing

IT DON'T MEAN A THING. Get it? This is a pretty funny shirt design. I'm sure that a great many folks would not get the joke, though. I'm talking about those poor misguided souls who have never heard of the classic Duke Ellington tune.

Coffeshop noise and language

I'm sitting in a coffeeshop which tends to be kinda loud. The last few times I was here, there was a group of men speaking very loudly and energetically in Hungarian. Now, their speaking in a foreign tongue doesn't bother me, but they do seem to be pretty loud, especially for a coffeshop. (Is this a cultural thing? I have no idea.)

It is pretty annoying.

Another parking story

Speaking of parking, I was at Costco last week. As I was loading stuff into my car, I noted that another vehicle was hovering nearby. Its driver was obviously hoping to snag my parking spot as soon as I pulled away.

This annoyed me a bit. Why? Because there were numerous other parking opportunities just a few slots away. He really, REALLY wanted to nab my spot though, just so that he could park a little bit closer. Heck, in the time that it took for me to load my groceries into my car, he could have easily pulled into one of those nearby slots. Also, I didn't want to be rushed.

I don't recall what I did after that. I remember packing up my groceries and getting into the driver's seat. I think that I either tried to make a phone call or looked for some info on the web via my Blackberry. Whatever the case, there was stuff that I was doing, and I wasn't about to hurry up just so that someone else would have the luxury of parking a few precious feet closer to the Costco entrance.

After a while, I noted that this guy got the hint and parked somewhere else. Good for him.

It could have been worse. I once related the story of someone who started blowing her horn at me, obviously wanting me to hurry up so that she could take my spot -- and yes, in that situation, there were other parking spots available to her as well. Some people are just that lazy.

A bizarre person searching for a parking spot

I was going to the lab one afternoon, back in my grad school days. As I was walking along the campus streets, a motorist stops alongside me and says, "Hey, where are you parked?"

I thought that was a strange thing to ask a total stranger. It was even rather inappropriate; after all, why should I tell her where my vehicle was, or even if I had one? And no, I did not own a vehicle at the time.

With a puzzled expression, I replied, "Why do you ask?"

"I want to take your parking space. Are you walking to your car?"

"No, I'm not," I said. "I don't even have a car." She drove off after that.

I understand that she was probably getting desperate in her search for a parking spot. Still, her question was kinda clueless, and even rather crass. I mean, she just ASSUMED that I was walking toward my car, and she ASSUMED that I was about to drive off. She also assumed that I'd be willing to tell a complete stranger where my car was, without any explanation of why she needed this information. Heck, even the manner in which she asked ("Hey, where are you parked?") implied that she was somehow entitled to this information, as opposed to respectfully asking a boon from some hopefully helpful stranger.

Yeah, that was pretty crass.

Woman gives birth right after Chicago marathon

The interwebs are abuzz with discussion of this woman who completed the Chicago marathon despite being 39 weeks pregnant. Some laypeople say that she was stupid to do this and put her child at risk. Others, including various physicians, say "You go girl!"

The thing is, she had her physician's permission. She was in excellent health and was very much used to running. In addition, she didn't run the entire distance; rather, she walked for about half of the course, and she averaged out to about four miles per hour -- the equivalent of a brisk walk. She also listened to her body, watching to see if she was getting light-headed. Heck, she didn't even expect to finish the marathon, but she did.

I say "You go, girl!"

Infection?

Dang. I think I have a sinus infection. This really stinks.

My immune system could use a major supercharge. Blech.

Martin Kessman

He's the obese fellow who's suing White Castle because their booths aren't large enough to accommodate his rather large girth. Good grief.

I'm not trying to ridicule the obese; after all, I used to be fat myself. However, this is just a totally frivolous lawsuit being levelled by a guy who can't be bothered to accept responsibility for his own size and weight. Based on comments on the blogosphere, even other obese folks think that he's a waste of time and air.

Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi

Now that's an impressive gal. I like her a lot, and she's really gifted.

An interesting exchange

I encountered the following exchange on the 'net today:

"I'd be afraid to put a Darwin fish on my car. Some religious nut will go berserk. So much for religion and morality."

Wait, what? Your saying that religious people are hypocrites because why they preach religion and morality, in your head they respond to your hypothetical Darwin Fish by vandalism? I've heard of people being accused of thought crimes, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone accused of a crime that happened in someone elses thoughts.

Inception

Watching "Inception," albeit not too attentively.

'Trying Hard12' on PlentyOfFish

Oh, my gosh. The more I re-read this fellas postings on the PlentyOfFish forum, the more unlikable he becomes. This fella is a real piece of work. I expect people to act like that when they're in their early teens, but not as grown adults.

Maybe he's a nice enough guy in person. Maybe. Personally though, I think that when people behave this way online, it's a pretty big red flag. People may suppress certain behaviors and personality traits in real life, but they remain there, and they will doubtlessly emerge at some point. Yeesh.

Patellar tendinitis

I need to remember the following tips when it comes to treating patellar tendinitis. I've discovered that physicians aren't always up-to-date on practical methods for treating this condition, or even pharmacological considerations.

This text has been excerpted from the message board of a vendor's website. I was actually kinda impressed, since a lot of vendors fail to write in a logically coherent fashion. There were a few errors, such as the capitalization of the adjective "patellar," but apart from that, this text was pretty well written.

The best course of treatment for your condition will vary depending on the severity of your Patellar tendonitis, and also the degree of inflammation and scar tissue development.

If you have an acute injury (relatively new), and it is swollen, tender, red, severely inflamed, or hot to the touch you should apply Cold Compression Therapy (also known as the R.I.C.E. method) by resting, icing, compressing and elevating your knee. At this point the inflammation is inhibiting adequate blood flow, which is a necessary process required for your body’s natural healing process. Apply ice to your injury will effectively reduce the swelling and inflammation enough to allow for blood flow to reach your injured Patellar tendon.

If you have already reduced swelling, but the area is still relatively inflamed you should continue to apply ice to get rid of the rest of that inflammation. You can also begin to introduce Portable Ultrasound Therapy which allows for deep tissue warming and massaging on a cellular level. This warming and massaging effect will ultimately break down any scar tissue that has started to form around the tendon, and also get rid of any cellular waste. Applying these two therapies at this point will ensure that your injury doesn’t get much worse than it currently is.

If all of your inflammation has been reduced, but you are still experiencing a dull ache, pain after activities, or notice you have lost a considerable range of motion in your knee and leg you most likely have a significant build up of scar tissue in and around that injured tendon. When normal healthy tissue is injury, scar tissue will form as a “band-aid” solution for your tissue. This scar tissue is meant to aid your tendon in rehabilitation, but unfortunately that tissue is also much denser and less fibrous than normal healthy tissue. It is almost like your body has replaced a rubber band (healthy tendon) with a piece of string (injured tendon with scar tissue). Obviously your flexibility and movement just aren’t the same. Our bodies will then force this scar tissue to operate as normal tissue, which creates more micro-tearing and results in the formation of additional scar tissue. The portable ultrasound will get rid of this scar tissue once and for all – allowing you to regain mobility and reduce pain in your knee. You can also incorporate the use of a Blood Flow Stimulant such as our Inferno Wrap to increase the flow of nutrient and oxygen rich blood to the site of your injury which will speed this healing process and work well with the Portable Ultrasound.

If you are convinced that your injury is healed, and you have taken care of most of that scar tissue but you still experiencing periodic pain you should apply both Cold Compression and Blood Flow Stimulation Therapy. Use of the Inferno Wrap and Freezie Wrap will maintain good health of your injured tendon, because previously injured tissue is always much more susceptible to re-injury. In that case you can use the Inferno Wrap each morning and evening, then incorporate the Freezie Wrap after you exercise or after any sort of activity that may have resulted in more intense pain and could cause swelling or inflammation in the tendon.
[/The best course of treatment for your condition will vary depending on the severity of your Patellar tendonitis, and also the degree of inflammation and scar tissue development.

If you have an acute injury (relatively new), and it is swollen, tender, red, severely inflamed, or hot to the touch you should apply Cold Compression Therapy (also known as the R.I.C.E. method) by resting, icing, compressing and elevating your knee. At this point the inflammation is inhibiting adequate blood flow, which is a necessary process required for your body’s natural healing process. Apply ice to your injury will effectively reduce the swelling and inflammation enough to allow for blood flow to reach your injured Patellar tendon.

If you have already reduced swelling, but the area is still relatively inflamed you should continue to apply ice to get rid of the rest of that inflammation. You can also begin to introduce Portable Ultrasound Therapy which allows for deep tissue warming and massaging on a cellular level. This warming and massaging effect will ultimately break down any scar tissue that has started to form around the tendon, and also get rid of any cellular waste. Applying these two therapies at this point will ensure that your injury doesn’t get much worse than it currently is.

If all of your inflammation has been reduced, but you are still experiencing a dull ache, pain after activities, or notice you have lost a considerable range of motion in your knee and leg you most likely have a significant build up of scar tissue in and around that injured tendon. When normal healthy tissue is injury, scar tissue will form as a “band-aid” solution for your tissue. This scar tissue is meant to aid your tendon in rehabilitation, but unfortunately that tissue is also much denser and less fibrous than normal healthy tissue. It is almost like your body has replaced a rubber band (healthy tendon) with a piece of string (injured tendon with scar tissue). Obviously your flexibility and movement just aren’t the same. Our bodies will then force this scar tissue to operate as normal tissue, which creates more micro-tearing and results in the formation of additional scar tissue. The portable ultrasound will get rid of this scar tissue once and for all – allowing you to regain mobility and reduce pain in your knee. You can also incorporate the use of a Blood Flow Stimulant such as our Inferno Wrap to increase the flow of nutrient and oxygen rich blood to the site of your injury which will speed this healing process and work well with the Portable Ultrasound.

If you are convinced that your injury is healed, and you have taken care of most of that scar tissue but you still experiencing periodic pain you should apply both Cold Compression and Blood Flow Stimulation Therapy. Use of the Inferno Wrap and Freezie Wrap will maintain good health of your injured tendon, because previously injured tissue is always much more susceptible to re-injury. In that case you can use the Inferno Wrap each morning and evening, then incorporate the Freezie Wrap after you exercise or after any sort of activity that may have resulted in more intense pain and could cause swelling or inflammation in the tendon.

Novelty Bobble

Been reading some postings by another guy named Novelty Bobble. He is a real... well, let's just say that he lacks civility and maturity. I'll leave it at that.

Some of the people that he and Lobohan have been conversing with, on the other hand, have exercised remarkable restraint.

Lobohan

Read some postings by a guy named Lobohan. He's being a bit of an -- unreasonable person -- today.

Actually, I wanted to use a four-letter word that begins with "d," but I decided against it.

Pro dancing? Hardly!

I'd like to continue a thought from my previous blog posting.

I read some comments on that POF forum from people who scoffed at the need for a clean floor. They said "We just want to have fun. If you want to do the kind of dancing that needs a clean floor, you should go somewhere else." I see several obvious problems with this.

First is the notion that they just want to have fun. Well, so do other people who want to do dance. Who's to say that this dance should only be for the folks who don't need to move their feet and thus, don't need a clean, stickiness-free floor? That's basically reverse elitism.

Second, and this is pretty obvious, that kind of response is just rude.

This, there is this implicit notion that if you just dance to have fun, you'll be safe. Again, that's wrong. There are all sorts of moves that could be damaging to one's knees if you have a sticky floor. If you're just shuffling in place, no, but some kind of aggressive turn could be cause for hurt.

Why do I mention the knee? Because the knees can be pretty delicate. I know this from personal experience, as I'm nursing an injured knee right now. My friend Melissa, a practicing nurse, could tell you stories about people who tore their ACLs from moving in just the wrong way on the wrong kind of surface. Gotta be careful, folks.

I understand that these folks want to have fun. I just think they were being kinda childish about it, and that they were unwilling to take reasonable precautions that any dancer should know. Heck, I'm not a great dancer by any means, and yet I knew about these things long before I learned anything about how to dance!

Trying Hard12: He's trying too hard to be unreasonable

Let me elaborate on this Trying Hard12 fella.

I came across a discussion on PlentyOfFish about some singles dance. One guy complained that people were venturing onto the dance floor with damp shoes, stating that this was making the floor sticky. I don't doubt it. This was apparently referring to some dance in February, so I'm guessing that the shoes were probably salty as well, thanks to the wintery weather. That would definitely make the floor kinda sticky.

Now that's bad news. Even before I took any dance lessons, I already knew that one shouldn't track mud or water onto a dance floor. I didn't know any real moves, but I could have already told you that that would be a bad idea. Heck, even if it didn't make the floor sticky, it would still be less than considerate.

Apparently, this Trying Hard12 guy didn't understand that. Now, if he disagreed with that need, he could have simply made a case for why wearing dry shoes wasn't necessary. Instead, he threw out snotty remarks like "You're a real complainer, aren't you?" Not exactly a sign of maturity on his part.

He wasn't the only one. There were some cool and rational heads, but a few other people were also childish. I could tell that trying to jump in would have been futile, since it's very difficult to intervene when people are acting like children.

Sadly, it seems like common sense and common courtesy aren't all that common anymore.

Some people didn't think the floor was sticky at all, or they didn't think that a dance floor needs to be clean. One person even said, "If the dance floor was bad, I would have noticed!" I'd like to make a couple of educated guesses.

My first guess is that the dance floor was probably stickier in some spots than in others. That's what you'd expect when people are tracking water and salt onto the floor. Second, I'd guess that the scoffers were probably dancing the way a lot of people do -- mostly moving their upper bodies, without a lot of confident foot movement. It's the kind of dancing that you typically see at a bar or club, the kind that lends itself to the unfortunate "white guy dancing" stereotype. There's nothing wrong with dancing that way, but when you do, you probably won't realize how important it is to keep the floor from getting tacky.

POF abrasiveness

I understand that some people like to vent on the Internet. Heck, that's part of why I have this blog. Some folks tend to step way over the line, though.

Came across a few postings on POF by some guy named "Trying Hard12". Boy, this fella is a real piece of work. He's obviously a very unpleasant fellow, based on his postings.

OOP misconceptions

I read an old Internet posting wherein somebody basically scoffed at object-oriented programming. He dismissed it as nothing more than the natural outcome of being able to call functions.

This shows that this person had absolutely no understanding of what object-oriented programming (OOP) truly means. Sadly, there are a lot of folks like that out there. A lot of people, including some computer science majors, think that OOP basically means keeping one's data private and using a set of public functions in each class. That's not it at all. It's not even a good example of information hiding, for pity's sake.