more yada yada

Somewhere in our culture, where we teach all men to like football, burp, fart, and generally be disgusting, we have added to that a lack of urinal etiquette. Now, you might ask yourself "Self, why do I need urinal etiquette? I already know how to pee." Ah, you are correct; you do know how to pee. Unfortunately, you do not know how to pee in a public restroom.

In junior high school "Health" class, when we teach our teenage boys about their twig and berries and all the joys that they can bring, I propose we also teach The Urinal Commandments, consisting of the following... all of which have been violated in front of me far too recently.

1. Thou shall keep your head forward at all times - If you really want to get a peek at my junk, then I guess you will violate this rule. If you are not interested in seeing the goods, then just watch the nice white tile that is behind the urinal.
   
2. Thou shall not talk to strangers - No ones cares about any amusing anecdote that either just happened to you, or IS happening to you. In fact talking at all is only allowed if you are a good friend of the person peeing next to you, in which case Commandment #1 still applies.
   
3. Thou shall use two hands at all times - For those of you that are very well endowed, you already do this, so skip ahead. Others of you, regardless of whether you need one hand, no hands, or a tweezer, to keep your peter straight, let's always use two hands. There are two reasons for this. First of all, if there is a divider between the urinals, it is meant as that, a divider, not an armrest. I don't need your elbow next to my face while I pee. Secondly, see below about keeping pee within the receptacle.
4. Thou shall not express your relief in any way - Assuming you are adhering to Commandment #2, no other audible noises are acceptable (with the exception of farting). Not the least of which is a big sigh of relief closely resembling what you might sound like mid-ejaculation.
5. Thou shall keep your feet a maximum of shoulder length apart - This is a close relative of Commandment #3. Unless you are looking for a Senator Larry Craig style liaison, I do not want to see your feet while I am peeing. You have a whole urinal to yourself, and this should be plenty. If not, use a stall.
6. Thou shall keep all pee INSIDE the urinal - Possibly the most important of all commandments. For the life of me, I can't figure out how people can miss the urinal. The collection area is approximately 100 times the area of a cross section of your pee stream, how can you possibly miss? If this is a sporting event or a bar, where there is a high probability of intoxication, it is marginally acceptable. But in an office? wtf? If you are in accordance with Commandment #3, then this should never, EVER, happen.

Since this is my blog and not yours, I can post about pet peeves that I have. One of which is cable clutter. For those of you that don't know it by this name, it is also known as "the pile of wires going in and out of my computer which are all tangled and stacked at the foot of my desk, collecting dust and looking like shit". I was inspired by this and other postings where people have come up with various solutions to this problem. I decided to take it on myself.

First let's review the number of wires most people have going to/from their computers. Mac users can ignore this, since their fancy iMac's don't have this issue, as I briefly mentioned in an earlier post.

1. Power cord for CPU
2. Power cord for monitor
3. Power cord for printer
4. Keyboard USB cable
5. Mouse USB cable
6. Monitor data cable
7. Speakers
   
8. Microphone
9. Ethernet
10. Cable Modem power cord
11. Wireless router power cord
12. Ethernet cable from modem to router
13. Webcam USB cable

It's perfect for piling up all of those annoying cables. The other thing I used was a set of nylon ties that you can find at any hardware store for a buck or so. The resulting mess (all semi-neatly piled) is now in the basket and out of sight and out of harms way.


I left just enough cable for each device to comfortably reach the CPU. Even the surge protector can be laid on top of all of the cables. And since everything is held together with the nylon ties, no tangling. You want to make sure you leave the mouse/keyboard wires on top, since they will tend to get pulled and maneuvered more often. The resulting workspace looks like this:

Yes, I know there are still cables visible... but they do need to reach the CPU somehow. More than anything it is 10 times better than the pile 'o' crap technique I used to employ.

Last Sunday was the annual Abbot Kinney Festival in Venice. Ujj and I had never been there before and since she loves these street fair type events, we decided to go. LOTS and LOTS of jewelery, art, and "organic" clothing. Lots of "green" items. All of which were of course overpriced.

We didn't really know exactly where this thing was taking place, so we hopped on a bus going in the general direction, ended up overshooting the optimal stop and basically starting walking in a huge circle till we found the place. We did end up here however:


After I dunked on these guys one too many times, they asked me to leave. Said it was unfair to let me keep playing... discrimination if you ask me! Incidentally this is the court where they play in White Men Can't Jump, for all of you fans. We did eventually find the tents, and once we did, they seemed to stretch on forever.

It only took over a year (almost 2 I think) for Dell to finally make an LCD that has a camera and microphone built in. Too bad Apple has been doing this for quite a while. It's such a simple and sensible idea that one has to wonder how it can take so long for the geniuses running non-Apple computer manufacturers to implement these ideas. I suppose there is a reason that Apple's laptops are gaining marketshare.

The only thing left now is for them to figure out how to cram the entire PC into the monitor casing and have a computer with only (gasp) 3 necessary cables running to it... instead of the 6 that most WinTel machines need. My pet peeve about cable clutter will be saved for a future post this upcoming week.

Dell LCD with webcam

This was sent to me by Jason. You just can't make this stuff up. The best part about this link is that not only does it make fun of gun toting mid-westerners, it also makes fun of the number one ranked felon for the Bengals, Chris Henry.

Outspoken critics of the Bengals "D" face persecution

I figure after I sent a proselytizing email against Internet Explorer to all Vino users, I should post this picture depicting the difference between some popular web browsers.

Firefox vs. Opera vs. Internet Explorer

I always joke with my wife that the Indian cricket team chokes whenever it really counts (a la their thrashing at the hands of the Australians in the last World Cup Final)... well it looks like they have gotten over that hump! They won the first ever Twenty20 World Cup. Slightly different format match that is MUCH shorter (thank god!!).

The icing on the cake for Indian fans I guess, is that they beat Pakistan in the final. Let's see them win the actual World Cup now :)

India crowned champions after thriller

I found this posting yesterday and tried it. Since I work for JPL, I get a 15% discount on my monthly cell phone bill! Not bad at all. It's definitely worth taking a look. You do have to give them your work email address, so that they can send a confirmation email to you, making sure you do work for whomever you say.

How to score a discount on your monthly cellular bill

Who doesn't appreciate a good cheap bottle of wine? Ok, well maybe not all the time. I don't think I could say that about the Charles Shaw wine that graces the Trader Joe's shelves so rampantly. Although, "two buck chuck" did make it to this article, not to worry, it wasn't one of the recommended wines.

There are some interesting choices on this list, especially the ones from South America. They chose one from Uruguay which most certainly don't associate with winemaking.

Happiness for $10 or Less

Given that we just moved, I figured this was an appropriate first post. I didn't know about this site before we moved, so thankfully none of our current neighbors are listed.

One of the blogs I often visit, Lifehacker, mentioned this web site last week. Rotten Neighbors is another interesting use of Google Maps open API. Some of the listings are quite funny... while others are a little sad, and yet more are quite scary!

Here are some other interesting uses of Google Maps:
SignalMap - Help truly map cell service throughout the country
WalkScore - How walker friendly is your home?

So I caved in finally after contemplating whether or not I wanted to maintain a blog. Not sure how often I will update it, but there's no harm in trying.

For those of you that didn't understand the name of the blog, it's a reference to Seinfeld. I figured since this blog will be about basically anything I find interesting, whether it be things around LA that I see or news stories/web sites... you know, like every other blog out there :-) A reference to 'yada yada yada' from Seinfeld was appropriate. Hey, if Elaine can yada yada sex, then I can yada yada anything I want...