A Bunch Of Unrelated Things

A typical conversation at my house

ignatiof — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:03:55 +0000

She: Hi sweetie, how are you?
Me: I’m good, how are you?
She: I was talking to the cat.
Me: Oh.

My New Hobby

ignatiof — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 14:38:33 +0000

My latest hobby is making fun of vocm.com. I like to count the number of mistakes in their news articles. My record so far is 9 in one article. Here’s one I found today, copied verbatim, without permission, with mistakes listed below. I’m not going to get into the HTML problems or style concerns.

Collision On The Grand Banks
July 12, 2008

There was an usual incident about 160 miles off the coast last night. Maritime Search and Rescue Coordinator, Andy Caines, says it involved a minor collision between a French catamaran-style sail boat, the Traid Union and a Newfoundland crab fishing boat, the August Gale. The Wilfred Grenfell was dispatched to the scene and picked up the eight crew members. They are headed to St. John’s from the Banks but near-zero visibility is keeping speeds low.Caines says the condistions in the area were probably a contributing factor in the collision. No injuries are being reported but marine traffic is advised to be on the look-out for the abandoned and drifting boat.
Also, Friday saw Coast Guard activity off the South Labrador. The Coast Guard auxillary vessel, the Elizabeth Ann, towed a fishing boat, the Robert Bradford, into Cartwright today. The Bradford was disabled by engine failure off Grady Run. They should arrive in port today.

The article title should not have the words ‘On The’ capitalized.
The boats’ names are not italicized (5 times)
There is no space before the sentence that starts ‘Caines says’
‘Conditions’ is spelled ‘condistions’
There is an unrelated news item in an article called ‘Collision On the Grand Banks’
In the sentence starting ‘No injuries are being reported’, the two clauses are unrelated.

What a Piece of Shit

ignatiof — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:09:00 +0000

Most writers would use a title like ‘Very Low Caliber’ or something else with a lame pun to describe just how bad the Dodge Caliber is. I am not one of those writers.

It was very hard to find things to like about that car when I had it as a rental last month. Here’s the short list:

The gauge cluster looks nice in white
There is a hole in the passenger’s head restraint so you can grab something other than your girlfriend’s breasts when backing up. (They don’t like that.)

Everything else about the Caliber needs improvement.

Aww nuts.

ignatiof — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:37:29 +0000

Peanut Butter - An Interlude

ignatiof — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:20:23 +0000

I bought a jar of the natural peanut butter the other day. Of course you have to stir this stuff cause the oil separates. Let me tell you - ground peanuts don’t ’stir’. It’s like trying to stir a bucket of gravel. And then of course not only did the oil not mix in, but it overflowed the container and ran down the sides and all over the counter. And there’s nothing overtly sexual about it at all.

It was quite the mess. I’ll definitely be buying it again.

I Have a Bad Feeling About This

ignatiof — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:49:06 +0000

Have you ever been at work, where people can see your computer monitor, and you’ve incorrectly typed in the URL to a harmless website?

We all have. In fact, you’ve probably also had that feeling in the pit of your stomach that maybe - just maybe - your mistyped URL will lead you to a porn site, or something equally inappropriate for the office. You don’t wanna get caught with that stuff on your screen.

That feeling is so freaking scary and so unique, I thought it needed a word of its own. Naturally, I couldn’t think of anything, so I asked my brother. He came up with ‘typornaphobia’. Awesome or what?

Properties of Plants and Animals that I Sometimes Wish Humans Had

ignatiof — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 23:58:37 +0000

Here’s a few:

1. Ability to regenerate body parts that were damaged/lost
2. Smell/Hearing of a dog
3. Echolocation ability of a bat
4. Ability to totally freeze solid and thaw out (without dying - very important)
5. Ability to change colours like a chameleon

Got any more ideas?

The New Car

ignatiof — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:43:35 +0000

So I’m now on car #6. There’s another story about that but I will get to that in another post. Here’s some interesting facts about my car history.

The new car is:

my 6th motorized street-legal vehicle with four wheels and a trunk
my 3rd midsize car
my 5th sedan
tied for the most I’ve paid for a car
the 2nd I’ve bought with an extended warranty
the 5th car I’ve purchased
the 5th car I’ve acquired used
the 3rd silver car I’ve owned
the only car I’ve been in an accident in
the 1st car I’ve had with a 3-spoke steering wheel
the 1st car I’ve had with heated seats
the 2nd car I’ve had with aluminum wheels
the 5th car I’ve had with a four-cylinder engine
the 1st car I’ve had with all-wheel drive

Batten Down the Hatches

ignatiof — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:29:48 +0000

Watch for black ice tonight!

It’s an Indy Weekend

ignatiof — Sun, 25 May 2008 22:17:06 +0000

I am not one for theme weekends, but sometimes they just sort of happen. Like this one, for example.

Yesterday, I went to the movies with my significant other. We saw Indy 4. It was entirely appropriate, I thought.

Today, we watched the Indy 500. Scott Dixon won it, but it was largely uneventful - no horrible crashes, and no dramatic turns of events. All told, I will probably remember Indy 4 more.