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Selfie sticks elicit reactions from people. General concensus seems to be disapproval of selfie sticks, but some people might find them useful.

But that is the reaction to using the selfie stick to take pictures of oneself.

What if the selfie stick were being used for a different purpose?

I propose that the derision the selfie stick provokes is not due to the stick itself but at the selfish nature of a person who takes many photos of himself. And a selfie stick used for a different purpose would not be scoffed at.

Lighter Stick

For example, given the number of injuries reported in the news this summer due to fireworks mishaps, people should be encouraging the use of lighter sticks.

That would keep fingers and such out of harm’s way when lighting fireworks. Any explosions would damage an easily-replaceable selfie stick and the person’s hand would remain unharmed.

Spray Stick

Another example is wasp spray or bug killer or whatever. Yes, they have the cans that can spray a jet of fluid a good distance, but there are situations where those won’t work well. Or maybe you have a homebrew wasp or hornet repellent and you can’t get it to squirt that far.

Plus, the wasps would be so busy laughing at the sight of a selfie stick approaching them that they wouldn’t be able to form an attack.

Snake Stick

Sure, there are already commercially available pest-control harness or snake tongs, but this item is more to upgrade the perception of the selfie stick in the mind of the general public.

I mean, who is going to mock someone who is carrying a Cobra Stick?

Any other suggested uses for selfie sticks?

Based on the popularity existence of last year’s article predicting bowl games in haiku form, I present to you this year’s all-haiku bowl game predictions. Still America’s only all-haiku college football bowl game predictions.

These are listed in order of date (earliest first). Some picks are whom I think will win, and some picks are whom I want to win. I’ll leave it to you, the reader, to decide which is which.
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We are about to send out our Christmas cards. I’ll try not to spoil anything here for those of you on our list.

We get them printed at a nearby printing/copying center (PCC). Last year, I had our Christmas cards printed by the PCC and they were fine. But we ran out, so I had to go back. I did not get the same employee at the PCC, and he did not do as good a job as the first one did. Here’s what happened then.

I produced the card as an image file (JPG, in case you’re wondering). I made it large enough that the resolution would be good when printed on a normal sheet of paper (8.5×11″). When the second PCC person loaded the files, he remarked how large my file was – “You have it set to be over 2 feet wide!”. He then informed me that he fixed it to fit on the size I wanted. He printed a test sheet and held it up. It looked good so we ran all the copies.

When I got home later and looked at the copies at a normal distance, instead of a dozen feet away, I noticed that the images were blocky/pixelated. I then realized what happened – he had his resolution set at 200 DPI instead of the 600 DPI I wanted. That made my image larger than expected. And rather that increase his DPI, taking advantage of the file size to produce a good resolution, he just reduced my file to a bad resolution.

Now fast forward to this year. I took my files to the PCC, one file for the front of the card and one files for the back of the card, just like last year. Determined not to make the same mistake again, I asked for the test sheet so I could make sure they didn’t mess up the resolution. They got the resolution right, so I was happy and gave them the okay to print the rest. I paid and left.

Then I remembered to check the orientation of the front against the back. To my chagrin, I discovered that the back was printed upside down. It would not have been hard to tell with the test sheet, but I was thinking only of the resolution and forgot about how it would look when folded.

So, if you receive our card this year and you think the card is upside down when you open it, you’re right. Just pretend the front of the card is the back and vice-versa and it’ll work out.

This is related to our vacation, which was recapped on this blog.

One of the problems was that, due to the fault of the hotel, we had a problem buying lunch at the amusement park.

When I was talking to the guest services representative during the problem, trying to figure out how to get lunch, one of her suggestions was that I could buy a packet of meal coupons and have it charged to my room. I thought, but did not say, that a place with good customer service would have offered me free meal coupons to make up for how they inconvenienced me.

Since they did not offer that, and I don’t know that she was high enough up to be authorized to give away anything anyway, we ended up paying full price for our lunches. Which was what we were trying to do in the first place, but good businesses try to please the customer. If the customer is not pleased, what is he to do?

So the next morning, since we got back so late the day it happened, I went to the front desk with the hopes of getting either the meal prices refunded, or coupons for a free upcoming meal, or something. When I complained to the front desk, the lady there fixed the issue, thought about it for a second, then told me to wait right there until she came back.

I thought she was going to get some authorization or something, but she came back with a gift basket. Of course, being Hershey Lodge, it was a basket full of Hershey products. Although I was hoping for a free meal, I forgot to be disappointed and couldn’t help but smile at the sight of all that chocolate.

I think that’s why they do that.

And I’m sure all that costs them less than the price of one meal, let alone the six meals that our family would have needed.

Here are the contents:

A nice variety of items, and all the large sizes. But what they don’t want you to notice is this:

Not to look a gift box in the mouth, but it looks piled high with chocolate when it’s full because the bottom of the box is about halfway up.

Still, I did enjoy the chocolate. But I don’t recommend relying on the hotel room key as your only money source when in Hershey Park.

In case there are people out there who need help optimizing their trips to the grocery store, I have a few tips. Although, chances are good that if you’re reading this then you’re old enough to have been to the grocery store enough to have your own system.

• Park near a cart corral.
  This is in order to facilitate your exit. If you park near a cart corral, you won’t have to go very far to return your cart after loading the groceries into your vehicle. This is especially helpful if you have small children to buckle in car seats. If you have an ineffective conscience and can leave shopping carts scattered around the parking lot to annoy other customers, then this tip is even more important because you need the help to take care of your cart.
• Start at the deli counter.
  Unless, of course, you don’t have any deli items on your list. But if you do, go to the deli first. Grab a ticket and see how close they are to your number. If it’s close, stick around and get your stuff soon. If it’s not close, start your shopping and check back in from time to time so you don’t miss your turn. Last time, I was able to get all my other shopping done (not a big list) in the time it took for them to get through the other deli customers.

  You may be tempted to look at the deli line and tell yourself you’ll come back at the end of your shopping trip if the line’s short, so that the cold cuts can stay cold. But if you do that, the line will have grown significantly when you return, and then you’ll have to wait around uselessly. Either get your deli items or take a number at the beginning of the shopping trip.

• Load big or heavy items on the conveyor belt first.
  This is not what most people do, because they usually have the smaller, lighter items on top of the bigger, heavier items in the cart. And people naturally grab what’s first and work their way down when at the cashier. But this then causes problems when taking the bags from the bagger and putting them back in the cart. You end up putting the lighter, more fragile items in the cart first and then have to try to fit big things in later.

  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So you won’t have to worry about anything when putting bags in the cart if you just grab the big items first. I grab big items (except for things under the cart), then I do smaller heavy items like cans and jars, then I do all the frozen items, then the refrigerated items, then the soft or fragile items. That way, the loaf of bread doesn’t end up squished by the bag of apples.

Any other tips?

Give this guy a wide berth if you happen to be driving near him.

Settlers of Catan is a fun game. It can get involved though, which is another way of saying lengthy. And when you’re playing with a 6-year-old, it can be too long.

So, between me and Gamma, we came up with a few ways to make the game go faster. If you’re not familiar with SoC, then this won’t mean anything to you.

House Rules for Settlers of Catan

• At the beginning, draw cards for each of your initial settlements, not just the last one. So you start with 6 cards.
• The minimum distance to build is 1 road segment, not 2. So you can build close together.
• You can build a city by itself – it does not need to replace a settlement.
• Rolling a 7 has no effect until the first city has been built. Just pretend it didn’t happen and re-roll.

It does reduce some of the strategy involved, but there had to be some tradeoff.