Collateral Bloggage

24-Oct-2008

EMPLOYEE COMMUNICATIONS

Dear Valued Employee,

Perhaps you’ve noticed that our high-tech yet unreliable automatic paper towel dispensers have been even less reliable lately.  Please do not assume this is accidental.  We at Corporate found that employees have simply been relying too much on paper towels for their hand-drying needs.

As a result, Corporate has mandated that the towel dispensers only dispense lengths of 1.5 to 3.5 inches.  While this may not seem adequate for completely drying your hands, we think you will find that things will go just fine for you if you just try to dry smarter, not harder.

In addition, the towel dispensers will be calibrated over the next few weeks to both maximize cost savings and minimize environmental impact.  Part of the calibration process will include installation of biometric scanners which will prevent employees from using more towels than their allotted quota.

Employees will be asked to visit Badge & Key to submit fingerprints and retina scans for the biometric scanners.  These scanners will then be able to identify individual employees and make a determination of whether to dispense a towel.  Employees over their quota will be denied a towel, and there will be a limit of one towel per use.

Should you find that the petite towels are not sufficient for your drying purposes, we encourage you to get creative with alternative drying methods.  You may wish to wear absorbant clothing in order to provide yourself with a backup for a little extra drying, or in case you go over your limit.

Found wet and crumpled up next to the sink in the vending/refrigerator space by O. Handwasher.

Perhaps you’d expect to see this announcement over at the Handwasher Blog, but Mr. Handwasher and I agreed that if less is more, imagine how much more more could be!  So, you may see this in two places.  The announcement?  October 15th.  Save the date.  It’s Global Handwashing Day!!!

Now, I realize that the “holiday” is meant to bring awareness and improved cleansing of hands around the world, particularly in developing nations and places where infectious disease is more of a threat than here in the good-old-U.S.  But I think it’s a great time to encourage all the fake-hand-washers you know to make some sort of attempt at actual hygiene.

Don’t think you know any fakers?  You do.  Just pick ten random men that you know.  Eight or nine of them are fakers.  I’m totally going to make a sign to post on the mirror in my work restroom.  I’ll post (er, I mean, Mr. Handwasher will post) a picture of it on the Handwasher Blog.

Oh…linkage.  Check out the Global Handwashing Day website.

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Just a random thing about me…I don’t like shoes.  I feel they have extremely limited utility.  I like my Birkenstocks, but mostly even then because I can easily kick them off while at my desk.  I nearly always buy shoes with no laces so I can slip them off whenever I feel like it…which is most of the time.

However, I have a pair of Steve Maddens from Famous Footwear that I rarely take off even when I could.  I actually like a pair of shoes!!!

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As much as I harp on football, I actually do enjoy football highlights.  I just don’t like that Sportscenter can always find a way to lead with football even when it’s not football season.  Yesterday, Ethan and I turned on Fox to watch the NLCS and caught the last few minutes of the Cowboys-Cardinals game.  Ending it in overtime on a blocked punt touchdown was awesome.  And the Cowboys lost, which always brings a smile to my face.

There were actually two blocked punts on Sunday.  Cool.  There was a cool double reverse pass thingy…nice.  I’m a sucker for trick plays.  Baseball’s still better, but I can appreciate the good parts of football, even if the over-the-top celebrations for well-timed tackles bother me.

And I’ve realized that Ethan’s sports education is a bit one-sided.  He knows that you can take first base if the catcher drops strike three and first base is open, but he had no idea what a touchdown was.  He thinks football is a game we play out in the greenspace, where I kick the ball, then let him get to it, pick him up, and shake him upside down until he drops it.  At some point maybe I’ll fill in some of the blanks for him.  I don’t want him to be one of those guys who’s nervous to go to a Super Bowl party because he’s afraid the other guys will find out he doesn’t know anything about the game.

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While The Fair Elaine was out of town, I decided to cook.  I made awesome Lentil Soup.  Here’s the recipe if you’re interested.  It’s vegan and delicious.  Oh, and it was an alteration of a recipe from the Veganomicon.

2 cups lentils (Any of the brown/green/black variety should work.  Pink or yellow not so much)
8 cups vegetable broth (I used Imagine Foods’ “No Chicken Broth”)
4 carrots
4 stalks celery
1 small/medium onion
4 Yukon gold potatoes
4 cloves garlic (feel free to adjust to taste)
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp tarragon
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp paprika
salt and pepper to taste

Finely dice the onion.  Mince the garlic.  Chop the carrots and celery into 1/4″ slices.  Cut potatoes into chunks of whatever size you wish.

In a large pot (I used cast iron), saute the veggies in the olive oil until the onions start to color.  Maybe 5-10 minutes.

Add the spices, vegetable broth, and lentils.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and cover.  Simmer 45 minutes or until lentils are tender.

Serve with whole grain bread.  Yum!

BTW, I also added some leeks because I had them.  But I don’t think they’d make or break the recipe.  Oh, and Ethan loved the soup.  He even ate leftovers the next day.

There’s a new Ender book coming out in November!!!  Yes, Orson Scott Card posted on his blog that Ender in Exile will be coming out in November!!!!  Did I mention it’s coming out in November!!!???

You might guess I’m a huge fan of the Ender series.  You’d be right.  If you’re even remotely interested in Science Fiction, you need to read Ender’s Game.  It’s a classic, and it’s an easy read.  The sequel, Speaker for the Dead, is currently my favorite book.  I don’t see that changing.

Thus far, there are eight major fiction works in the Ender series (although half the series is really a spinoff, albeit a really good one).  I’m excited to read number nine.  Did I convey that adequately?

Oh, and my birthday’s in November.  Just sayin’.

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The Bathroom Blog is now well underway.  Mr. Handwasher is doing his level best to inform and appall the world about what’s wrong with our restrooms.  Go over there and check it out.  He’s lonely.  I promise there’s some funny stuff over there.  And he takes submissions from readers.

And yes, I called it a Restroom Blog last week.  So maybe I’m (I mean, Mr. Handwasher is) confused about what it should be called.  There’s even a poll there for helping choose the title.  Seriously…go!

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It’s the season of Politics.  I’m tempted to do political posts (the JibJab one doesn’t count).  But like many bumper stickers that, regardless of what they say, boil down to “let’s not hang out,” political posts generally do more harm than good.  So, let this be my lone political post.  And the content?  “I’m not going to do political posts.”

I hope this lapse into political discussion hasn’t alienated anyone.

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I love baseball, and I’m saddened that football has now begun.  I follow the stories of football, because I’m also just a general sports fan, but I don’t spend much time thinking about it or watching it.  Baseball, on the other hand, I consume in typical American portions.

As a Northwest Baseball Fan, there really hasn’t been much to celebrate this year.  The Mariners have stunk it up through a mixture of Front Office and Managerial Ineptitude and On-The-Field Suckiness.  One of the only bright spots this year has been Brandon Morrow.  Early in the season, J.J. Putz went on the DL (Disabled List), and the M’s needed a closer.  Morrow stepped in and blew hitters away with almost exclusively cheddar (meaning really, really, really hard fastballs).

Then, much to the delight of the Mariner bloggers, the organization realized they’d be better served by having Morrow as a starting pitcher.  They sent him down to Tacoma to stretch out his arm and finally put him against big league hitters as a starter on Friday.

All he did was come within four outs of throwing a no-hitter.  That was awesome.  I’ll be completely glued to his next start (which will come against the Angels, and it won’t be easy).  Finally, a reason to watch the Mariners.  Not that I’ve needed one thus far other than “they’re there.”  Still, it’s nice to have a reason.

Ethan got his first Rubber Band Kill last Wednesday.  I’m extremely proud.  He stood on his bed, aimed carefully, and destroyed a spider.  It was a perfect shot (not an easy one, either…probably four feet).  It’s our version of hunting.  True, we basically do it for sport, but we don’t take trophies.  My collection of taxidermized flies, mosquitoes, spiders, and skeeter-eaters would be impressive, but I just always felt that kind of thing was kinda tacky.

I’m a great shot with a rubber band myself, but I don’t think I was as good as Ethan at his age.  I’m announcing it right now…Ethan for Gold Medal in Olympic Rubber Band Marksmanship in 2016!!!

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Perhaps you’re worried about terrorism, or maybe even Climate Change (snicker…sorry, can’t help it).  But I’m telling you right now that we face an even more dangerous danger…the Apostrolypse.  Perhaps you’ve never heard of such a thing.  What is it?  It’s the end of the world, brought on by the misuse of apostrophes.  Oh, I mean apostrophe’s.  If you don’t get it, you’ll want to do some reading.

Why do I think we’re in danger?  Elaine and I went to the Murray Hill Café the other day (just for dessert) and found this gem on the menu:

Lindsay’s’ Dessert of the Day

At least she didn’t go with “Desert,” which one encounters more than one might expect.

I didn’t find a dessert menu online, which was disappointing.  I did happen to look at the dinner menu and found a few things I’d like to try.  But I’m going to have to say something about that Dessert item.

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I’ve done it.  My webhost sent me a coupon for a free domain hosting package, and I set up my Restroom Blog.  There, I’ll start doing exploratory posts on the subject of the Restroom, in pursuit of my dream of publishing a book my mother would so NOT approve of.  If you’d like to help out with my research, head over there and keep an eye out for questions, surveys, and general mayhem.

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And now we’re heading for the Coast.  Buh-bye.

WARNING: Restroom Fixation Disorder symptoms forthcoming.

I’ve known for some time that I’m blessed with a less demanding bladder than many of my peers.  I’ve left exactly one movie for a trip to the bathroom (and it was The World is Not Enough, which didn’t require much attention) in my adult life.  I use the restroom during plane travel just to break up the monotony.  At work, I pretty much go when the restroom intersects a path I was already taking.

I generally characterize myself as having a “Five-hour bladder,” but I’ve never actually studied it.  Should I decide to, I know what I’ll call my data-collection: a Jourinal.  When I came up with that name, I actually LOLed, so I just had to blog it.

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Ethan and I went to see Star Wars: Clone Wars with our neighbors, and it was a lot of fun.  It’s not exactly The Shawshank Redemption, of course, but it was still cool to see with my son.

Really it wasn’t even a movie, but more like an extended pilot.  By that measure, it succeeded really well.  It also maintained much of the typical Star Wars feel.  You know, cool fight scenes, bad dialogue…

The really cool thing about this series (and the former one), is that animation allows the Jedi to really be shown as superhuman.  The movies did a decent job of showing glimpses of their skills and powers, but I’m excited to see what they do in an all-CG universe.

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Somehow, with my torrid reading practices, I’ve only managed to finish one book in August.  Since July, I’ve started to read eight different books.  I suppose it’s natural that I’d only finish one of them by now (I finished five others during the month of July).  The library just keeps sending me new books before I can finish the old ones.  My policy is, when I get a new book, I read the first chapter or so to see if it’s more interesting than one I’m currently reading.  It usually is.  Hence, I start reading the new one until I get a newer one.  I’ll need to double-back to catch up on some of my partial reads, and I’ll have to cut the cord on a couple of them.

The “newer” book I just finished is Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution.  I know.  I’m going to hell just for reading such a book.  But I like to keep an open mind on such things and read all around the issues.  I’ve read several Young Earth Creationist books, and a couple Old Earth Creationist books, and now I’m reading some Evolutionist books.  This wasn’t a very good one.

Actually, as a concise history of the Creation/Evolution debate, it was really good.  Very readable and well balanced.  But it failed to deliver on the promise of the title.  In the introduction to the book, the author mentioned that he’d had to reinterpret the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, and Original Sin.  He then failed to elaborate on his reinterpretations.  He never got back to it.

Basically, the book was about how wrong-headed the Creation/Evolution debate has gotten.  Granted.  But I was really hoping he’d actually discuss the theological implications of his belief in evolution.  The closest he came to it was this paragraph in his concluding chapter, titled “Pilgrim’s Progress”:

God’s creative activity must not be confined to a six-day period “in the beginning” or the occasional intervention along the evolutionary path.  God’s role in creation must be more individual - so universal that it cannot be circumscribed by the contours of individual phenomena or events.  We must resist the temptation to make God into a “superengineer” or “master craftsman” or “grand artist.”  God may indeed have all these attributes, but we ought not to suppose that any of them capture more than the tiniest intuition about God’s role in creation.  It seems to me a more hopeful perspective to step back as far as we can and examine the biggest possible picture in the hopes of getting a glimpse of what it means to say that God created the world.

Nice thoughts, but it still doesn’t really help in anything but the most broad theological terms.

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That’ll do for today.

Last week, on vacation, I learned my new favorite joke.  And here I will reprint it for my loyal readership.

“Have you heard of that movie, ‘Constipation’?”

“It hasn’t come out yet.”

This still makes me ROFL.

An alternate punchline would be, “It’s really slow.”

I was going to post the famous “Male Restroom Etiquette” Youtube, but it’s kinda gross, and I can’t be responsible for its content.  Even though I avow it is truly too funny.

I had to add something to my previously posted Musings.  Who knew I’d have something new about which to muse so soon?

I just got back from the loo, and I noticed something I’ve rarely seen:  another man with apparently more germophobia than I have.

Not content to merely wash his hands and shut off the water with a towel, this guy, who shall be called G, used the urinal, then walked over, grabbed a towel, flushed using the towel, then used the towel to turn on the water at the sink.  He thoroughly cleansed his hands, then got a new towel, dried his hands, shut off the water, then got another towel and used it to push the door open.  He then dropped the towel in the little trash bin next to the water fountain.

Obi-Wan has taught him well…