Some Blog Site

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

Around here, there are a lot of red-winged blackbirds. They usually look like this:

Fun fact: all the red-winged blackbirds you see are males. The females are a dappled sort of brown and white. I saw one once. I keep looking for more, but the males are all around the pond by the road and the females are nowhere to be seen. Maybe because they blend in better or maybe because they don’t go out and about as much – I don’t know.

And I don’t normally get a good view of them flying, so that side profile is the one I usually imagine if I’m picturing a red-winged blackbird.

For good measure, here is a view of a red-winged blackbird with his wings out.

I do like red-winged blackbirds, and I also like SR-71 blackbirds. So I thought I’d combine the two.

Behold, the red-winged SR-71 blackbird:

I think it never caught on because normally if military planes have any particular colors, they are the colors of their country. In that case, these planes might have been mistaken for being from Spain or Catalonia, or from Liechtenstein 200 years prior.

There are plenty of downsides to the Covid-19 pandemic, but there are also some benefits to how things are going. Here are some of the silver linings I’ve seen.

1. Teens get enough sleep. Enough studies were showing that schools have their start times backwards that some schools around here were looking at changing things so the elementary schools start earlier and high schools start later. It’s better for teenagers to be able to sleep in. But the district that was seriously considering it decided it didn’t want to mess with the status quo so it dropped the matter.

Then the coronavirus arrived.

Now, my teenagers get up whenever they want to. Although if the oldest one isn’t up by lunch we remind him to wake up. Their developing bodies get all the sleep they need. They do their schoolwork in the afternoon, and still have time for whatever in the evenings.

2. The open office plan is dead. Before this, the company where I work was just about to convert our office from standard cubicles to the open floor plan for “increased collaboration”. We’re an engineering department, we need decreased distractions. No one in our building wanted the open office, but headquarters decreed it so it was going to happen.

Then the coronavirus arrived.

Now, an open floor plan means “increased contamination” and CDC guidelines make it a bad idea. When I do go back to the office (see point #3) it will remain old-school cubicles for a while longer until management decides what the new CDC-friendly trendy office plan will be.

3. Work from home is required. Working from home was always an option, but it was frowned upon if one took too much advantage of it. It always helped to have an excuse of why you needed to be home that day, such as a sick child or an appliance being delivered. I suppose a sick appliance or a child being delivered would also have been valid. Officially, no excuse was needed – the excuse was just to avoid being seen as a slacker.

Then the coronavirus arrived.

Now, those of us who can work from home are discouraged from going to the office. In fact, we must get approval beforehand if we want to go into one of the buildings. I’m saving hundreds of dollars on gas each month, I’m getting to enjoy hours of my life each week not commuting, I eat lunch with my family, I don’t have to think about packing a lunch – I just open the fridge, I get to sleep in, I get to be outside while it’s sunny, I go days without combing my hair, etc. Work-from-home is a major part of social distancing, but it’s good for many things besides that.

I might be able to come up with some more benefits, but those are the main things to me.

For those of you who enjoyed the heyday of the Magic Eye posters, whereby focusing your eyes at a depth that’s not the surface of the paper you could see a hidden image, I have used my considerable knowledge of spreadsheets to produce a 3D image.

Behold, the Magic Spreadsheet:

Uncross your eyes until the letters align; unfocus your eyes until the double image matches up with the image next to it.

What I did here was put the bottom row with the same indentation of 0, the middle row gets an extra space each cell to the right, and the top row gets two extra spaces each cell to the right.

The shading was just for fun.

For your next presentation, try hiding some cheap stereograms. If you’re presenting your screen from a work-at-home situation, no one can see you cross your eyes.