Ponderings 12/4/11

1. Standing up at a stadium to cheer quickly causes a cascading effect of making everyone behind you stand up so they can continue to have an uninhibited viewing path. The best part is how frustrated people get when the people in front of them stand up when they don't want to stand up. I am going to try this out in movie theaters.

2. Right turns on a green light when pedestrians are crossing always cause close calls. This is especially true if you want to cross the street and someone is racing to catch the green light.  

3. Associating songs with memories is a great way to relive memories every time you hear that song.

4. The popularity and amount of daily deal sites has not made be shop more but has made me expect to see something discounted at 50% before even considering buying it. Furthermore I usually end up trying something out once and then not returning unless their is a similar deal.

5. The worst feeling after a nice shower is to have to dry yourself with a damp towel.

6. Its a bad idea to set deadlines in December.

Ponderings 11/27

1. After seeing Bunga Bunga be a candidate for Oxford Dictionary's word of the year I have added getting a word in the Oxford Dictionary onto my lifetime bucket list.
1B. Unfortunately blogger does not recognize Bunga Bunga as a word yet.

2A. You can always count on family dinners with friends to bring out embarrassing stories and things you would have liked to forget. But after the third or fourth time it happens you start enjoying the embarrassing stories as well.

3. Imagine how many times you have had to write your name. Now imagine if the length of your name had been a couple letters shorter.  

3b. Turns out a longer name (3 additional letters) probably has only wasted you a few hours (3-6 depending on a couple assumptions) but make sure to tell your parents they owe you those hours back.

4. I remember thinking Google Wave was going to be one of the coolest innovations ever. Now it is going away and highlights the point that amazing technology does not equal amazing product.

5. It would be great if people carried "catch up on my life" 1 pagers in their pockets. This time anytime you meet someone after a long time you read the 1 pager and immediately get caught up on basic events on a person's life so that the conversation can be deeper than the usual: what do you do for a living?, where do you live?, etc.

Ponderings 11/20/11

1. More couches need to have pullout desks so I can sit on my couch watching TV, working on something on my laptop without the scare of cancer. These desks would also be great for eating food. Most coffee tables are too low to do anything.

2. This week's wrecking of the top 10 showed why we need BCS playoffs. Every conference needs a conference championship and the top 8 go to the playoffs. Bowls still rotate so each of the top 4 bowls get a chance to be the National Championship every 4 years. Also I hope Arkansas beats LSU so we can have all kinds of madness in the BCS standings.

3. Toasters should have digital displays like microwaves to countdown time. I get so antsy waiting for my Bagels to pop out of the toaster.

4. Without getting into any of the actual politics. I have always wondered why riot police can't use things like really cold water or something else that would be very unbearable but not physically burn like pepper spray.

5. Having Thanksgiving fixed to the 4th Thursday of the month makes it really easy for traditions. You always know its going to be on a Thursday and so it easy to keep traditions with friends and family.

Ponderings 11/13/11

1. I don't understand why we needed to learn every cursive letter when all we use cursive for is signing our name? Why else did we learn cursive?

2. Dominos Tracker seemed like a great idea to help show customers where their pizza is. However, every time I use it I get more frustrated waiting for my order because I keep checking the tracker and waiting for real time updates.
2B. The tracker needs to be updated to include specific locations of where the delivery driver is.
2C. It would be great if I could use a similar tracker for friends. So when they say I will be there in 5 minutes, I know that they are actually still at home.

3. There is no better way to kick start the week than with a 49ers win and no better way to kill it with news that the NBA will remain locked out.

4. In order to make sure you get enough sleep start setting alarms for going to sleep and waking up.

5. The sleeves on hooded sweatshirts always get in your way so you try to roll them up but they keep coming down. We should all consider Bill Belichick's cut sleeves technique for hoodies.

6. I still don't really know if I like coffee. I think I do but its not like juice where I know I really enjoy the taste of this.

Ponderings 11/6/11

1. NBA please come back!
1A.The players who returned to college have to be feeling good about their decision.
1B. Why are there not more hockey games on TV? This is hockey's chance to become more popular.
1C. I am dying to see World Peace on a jersey.

2. Famous people may pretend to forgive but they never forget and whenever it is time for their autobiography everything comes back out. Its one of those lessons that makes you realize that all of your actions no matter how old can always come back to haunt you.

3. Every year I always forget how great getting an extra hour of sleep feels.

4. There has got to be a better use of hair that is cut at barbershops than just throwing it away.I would use it for Halloween wigs, blankets, fake mustaches, paint brushes. Apparently it can also be used for oil spills. Anyways next time you get a haircut request to keep your hair or have it donated. 

5. I wish my nails didn't grow as fast as they do. I hate cutting my nails. After cutting my nails, my fingers are useless for the next 2 days.

6.  The dime makes absolutely no sense. Why is it smaller than a penny? 

Ponderings 10/30/11

1.   Using a cane is great. You can scratch your body easily, rest on something when you are tired of standing, poke people, etc. I don't know why more people don't use canes. Try it out next Halloween if you don't believe me. 

2. Here are some rules that all clubs should follow:

    A. 1 hour before closing time if the place is not at capacity it needs to stop charging cover. 

    B. Clubs should provide free finger foods like chips and salsa, bread and olive oil, fries, etc. 

    C. Have beach balls and balloons floating around all night. 

    D. All clubs should be playing SportsCenter so you can catch up on highlights on any boring song. 

3. I always wonder what happens to all the pumpkins after Halloween? Also instead of wasting a full pumpkin for a jack-o-lantern, grocery stores should sell hollow pumpkins which have been emptied for a pumpkin pie or something and are still fresh to carve. 

4. Its always amazing how many unique traditions different sport teams have. Someone needs to write a book about visiting every stadium and documenting each of the traditions. I would love to be that someone's guest to all the games. 

5. It is really weird to celebrate Halloween for a weekend and then have Halloween actually be on Monday.   

Ponderings 10/23/11

1A. Hot Fudge Sundaes are amazing, sometimes I forget how good they are.
1B. Before ordering desert, take a look around the restaurant to see what little kids are ordering for desert. Order that and you will not be disappointed.

2. I swear I listen to more than Britney Spears on Spotify but every time I go to my Facebook profile it  always shows some Brittney song.

3. Facebook's new ticker has given me ideas for new tickers that would be fun.
A. TV feed of what friends are watching.
B. Food log of what people are eating/drinking. This could easily get competitive.

4. Baseball needs to do something or Major League Baseball will not be around in 25 years. Here are a couple ideas on how to fix up the sport.
A. Shorten the season to end before the NFL season starts and take advantage of the lack of sports during the summer.
B. Allow 8 more teams in the playoffs. The longer teams are in contention the more people will continue watching.
C. After 9 innings if still tied start a sudden death home run derby.
D. Add teams from Central America, and Japan.

5.  Deciding what to be for Halloween is difficult. You need an idea that people will understand, yet unique enough that it won't be duplicated. Here are some ideas for people still struggling:
- A locked out homeless NBA player.
- A 7 layer burrito
- A dart board. (Be careful with this one)

 

Ponderings 10/16/11

1. Everybody needs a way to universally say: "Hey I really need to rush so please stop talking and let me walk away". We all have our ways of hinting this but often it does not work even when we blatantly tell people we are in a rush. Instead we need a universal and polite way of saying this like making the peace sign with your fingers.

Here are some ways to try at work this week:
A. Cough loudly - By coughing loudly people will immediately switch focus to your coughing at which time you can walk away with an excuse.
B. Fake cell phone call- Pretend like you are getting a cell phone call that you need to take. Make sure you have cell phone service in your office or people will not believe you.

 2. People need to invent waterproof insulated pockets for swimming trunks. This way when I am in a swimming pool or at a beach I don't need to worry about my wallet or cell phone being stolen or being damaged by water.

 3. Every once in a while you go to a store or doctor's office where they have those candy machines where you put in a quarter and turn the knob to get candy. Have you ever wondered how old that candy is and whether that stuff is ever refilled?

 4. I don't think it is possible to eat Bugles without putting them on top on your fingers.

 5. I am starting to think the only solution to our debt problem is Government Casinos.

 6. I can't remember the last time I used a pencil.

 7. When you attach files to an email you should be allowed to change the file name.

 8. My only question for people posting images of handwritten notes on Facebook is "Did you know Facebook allows you to type notes directly on the site?".

 9. I hate how Fantasy Football keeps adding more and more features to be able analyze trades, players, and manage a team automatically. The whole point of fantasy was to create trades that would rip your friends off.

9B. Also you know you are in too many fantasy football leagues when every play helps you but also hurts you.

 10. For some reason anytime I put on a baseball cap people think I look 5 years younger. Hopefully this will continue working 10 years from now.

Ponderings 8/28/11

1. I am having a hard time deciding whether it would be cool to have a hurricane named after you. Imagine having to go New Orleans and introducing yourself as Katrina.

2. It takes a surprisingly high amount of ice cubes to take a cup of hot coffee and turn it into iced coffee.

3. There needs to be a cell phone app for identifying someone when you see them. How many times have you seen someone and been unsure whether you know them or not? With this app you pretend like you are staring at your phone while this app identifies the person.

4. For some reason those five finger/toe shoes really crack me up.

5. I hate getting to the bottom of a tissue box where the tissues stop popping out one after another.

Ponderings 8/21/11

1. The trick to drinking more water is to use water bottles instead of glasses. Most people end up finishing the glass but never bother to get another glass. If you do this with water bottles you don't need to remember as often and you will end up drinking more water.

2. All the Olympians who ended up getting Silver Medals must cringe every time they see how well Gold is doing.

3. Sinks and Showers need to have temperature displays in addition to hot and cold indicators. The temperature display would accurately show the water temperature as the water comes out.

4. When I beat my alarm clock I know it's going to be a productive day.

5. As easy as it is to take notes on a Computer I still prefer taking notes on paper but then I realize no one else can read what I write and before I type it up I lose my notebook.

6. In order to help men aim better and to make using the bathroom more fun Restaurants/Bars should install horse races with targets for each urinal. The target would be placed in the urinal and the game would work just like the carnival game where you shoot water at the target to move your horse. When you flush the horse would go back to the front.

Ponderings 8/14/11

1. Getting regular (snail) mail from someone feels so much better than getting an email from that same person.

2. There is no way to remember all of your passwords. To make it even worse most work places and secure sites will make you change your password after 3 months. Anyways until sites move to bio metrics or lengthy quizzes here are my password guidelines:

A. Email is sacred and your most important account. Protect it protect it protect it and since you access it everyday you should use your most secure password and change it every 6 months.
B. Build a tier system where you use different passwords for different sites based on how important the data stored on them is.
C. For sites that you never know if you are actually going to use again just give a bogus password. You do not know if the site is actually secure and if you start visiting the site regularly you can use forget password functionality to change your password.


3.Shazam or another similar app needs to have a mode where it identifies every song over a period of time. So when you wake up the next day and have a song stuck in your head you can go back and find out exactly what song it is.

4. American football announcers need to learn from Spanish futbol announcers and start announcing touchdowns in the same way goals are announced in futbol. TouchDoooooownnnnn TouchDoooooownnn TouchDoooooown!

5. Friends should rotate a decision maker. On that day anytime a decision needs to be made the decision maker must make a call and the call is final.

Ponderings 8/7/2011

1. All coffee places should start putting jokes on the bottom of the cup. (Outside not inside since the inside will be stained by the coffee.) After you finish your drink you flip the cup to read the joke. This idea is basically taking the jokes on Popsicle sticks idea to the corporate world. It would be perfect every morning everybody would be running around asking each other coffee cup jokes. Also you would be able to tell someone to stop drinking coffee when they come around for the fifth time with a new joke.

2. As soon as you are able to call someone by a nickname then you know you have gone past just being acquaintances and are actually friends.


3. Turning on something you want to use and realizing that it is out of battery is very frustrating. (Ex. MP3 player, Camera) Instead of providing no feedback when off all of these products should have battery indicators that are on even when the device is off.

4. Landlords really need to buy two dish washers for tenants so there is one for the dirty dishes and another for the clean dishes.

5. We will know competition in high school and college has gone too far when the grading system moves to the credit rating system. "Son why did you only get an AA+, if you want to be able to go too one of the top Colleges you need be pulling all AAAs in your classes."

6. Auto-correct is one of those things you always wanted that always gets you into trouble.

Ponderings 7/31/11

1. Someone needs to make adult bibs popular before I run out of unstained t-shirts.

2. They should make the NFL free agency period short every year. The past week has been great in terms of the excitement and big moves happening.

3. Does anyone else really want to meet the Dos Equis guy?
There are two things I have always wondered about him:
A. How much pressure does it take to be the most interesting man in the world. What if he just wants to relax but someone catches him being boring.
B. Why is this guy always thirsty? Someone needs to hook him up with some water to quench his thirst.

4. Why does August have 31 days? If I was a kid learning about the year and the days in a month I would be yelling at my teacher asking who designed the system.

5. When deciding what to eat I open the refrigerator and freezer several times. Instead of having a solid color fridge why not make it a window so I can always see what I have inside without having to open the door.

Ponderings 7/25/11

1. Do people still poke people? (Other than the people you are in lifetime poking wars with)

2. Remember when erasable pens were the coolest things in the world and then you learned that crossing things out is so much easier.

3. People need to branch out from "How was your weekend", and any "chat about weather" small talk.

4.There has to be a way to design bumpers to be more scratch resistant. A little love tap should not scratch up a car. (Note: I am still car less so no I didn't hit anybody)


5. I know it is a stereotype but 8 out of 10 people who play Ultimate Frisbee are extremely nice. The only arguments are when both teams are arguing on behalf of the other team.

Ponderings 7/17/11

1. What happens when you get pulled over with more people than you are allowed to have in a car? (For example squeezing 6 people in a 5 person car) Do they make you draw straws and kick one person out or do they let you keep going.

2. Telling people your on an island automatically makes you feel baller.

3. Sports Gods exist and if you don't believe me you did not watch the US Japan World Cup Final.

4. All parks need to get web cams and someone needs to make a site called PickUpSports.com where you enter your zip code and see all the nearby parks and what is going on at each of them. This way you always know what is happening at each of the parks and know where the best pick up games are at.

5. Harry Potter ending feels the same as your favorite sports player retiring. I just hope we don't find out in 10 years Potter was using steroids in his quidditch games.

Ponderings 6/26/11

1. I want to bring back hacky sacks. Playing with hacky sacks would be a great workplace activity allowing you to have a short break while getting to know your coworkers better.

2. Browsers need to have a feature that get rid of your tabs after you have more than 10 open. I never close tabs and end up creating a new tab for a site that is already open somewhere. In general multitasking is overrated.

3. Indoor pools kill half the fun of swimming.

4. If the government wanted to address the problem of obesity they should start by regulating who is allowed to go to Costco, eat Fast food. That being said I am soon going to be obese and I still want to go Costco so never mind.

5. Does anyone younger than 40 regularly watch an evening news program? (Don't include special addresses, Sportscenter, the Daily show, and Colbert report)

6. Imagine if concerts allowed you to play sports while watching the concert. Imagine playing games of pick up basketball with live music blasting in the background. May be hard to do for an indoor concert while still getting the desired amount of people but it could work for outdoor concerts.

Ponderings 6/19/11

1. It is really easy to lose pens in your pockets.

2. Email needs the following features:
a. Undo email (Lot of technical challenges to do this well although some email systems have started doing this)
b. Auto Nag where you can set up an auto resend interval if a person does not respond to an email.
c. Public status of email (I.E. If you choose when you read an email you can mark the status of the email as read so that the sender knows you read the email. Feature would allow someone waiting on a response to see the current state of the email.
d. Merge email - Without needing to copy and paste anything you can instantly merge email threads. (Have seen some email providers kind of do this but it needs to be simplified)

3. I miss Popsicles. Someone needs to bring those back.

4. Every time you think someone is a class act in Professional Sports something gets uncovered about them.

5. For those of you who cut mold of the bread it is suggested that you should stop doing that but apparently bacteria in the bread is usually not that harmful. My take keep doing this is until you are 30 and build your immunity and then stop.

6. Do people still ride trains in America?

Ponderings 6/12/11

1. Someone needs to invent Tupperware with a digital expiry date. When you put your food in a to go box you get to put the date of expiry and once a green light shines until the food expires when the light turns red. Taking it one step forward you could receive an email once your food is about to expire as a reminder to finish it.
2. Restaurants need to invent a mechanism to help you remember the Togo box. This is particularly a challenge since we cannot see the food. The solution to remember your food is to keep your to go box open so you can still the visually appealing food.
3. Put a slinky in someone’s hands and watch as they spend at least 15 minutes playing with the slinky.
4. Department Stores need to create cell phone apps to be able to find items within the store. Finding a specific item like a black light bulb can be extremely frustrating.
5. Why are glass-bottles considered higher quality than plastic bottles? Each time a glass bottle breaks I wonder why we don’t demand more products in plastic bottles.
6. Dancing with suspenders on is so much better than dancing without suspenders. If you don't believe me try it.

Ponderings 6/5/11

1. At many places they have introduced a 3 bin system for trash: a trash bin, compost bin, and recycle bin. Most people broadly understand what can go in each bin but after eating a meal there will always be one or two items that they have no clue about. What happens when we make a mistake? When people throw non-recyclable items in recycle bins what happens?

2. Why have airplanes not gotten faster? Have we already reached the speed where going faster will increase the chances of casualties? (This is the argument for cars.) Imagine being able to fly from California to New York in 2 hours. The ability to do any flight in Continental US without a stopover. International flights without dreading the long flight.

3. One of the hardest things to figure out is arm rest etiquette on any type of public transportation. If the arm rest is shared who is supposed to get it and what is the appropriate amount of physical contact once someone has claimed it?

4. Drinking fountains are usually placed close together with one short and one tall fountain. But the problem with these fountains is that they are close enough to each other that most adults will not use either fountain if the other one is being used. When installing new fountains either only put in a single fountain or space the fountains far enough so that two people can use them comfortably.

5. I hate buying tickets on TicketMaster. I think I am buying a $50 ticket but as soon as I confirm that I am a human they let me know that I need to pay an additional $20 convenience fee. The worse part is they often have an option where the shipping charge for standard mail costs money while printing the ticket is free. Someone needs to break the monopoly.

Ponderings 5/22/11

Ponderings 5/22/11

1. They need to adapt alarm clock technology to showers. After you shower for the set amount of time the alarm rings. You can press snooze but every time you press snooze the temperature of water becomes 10 degrees cooler. This would be great for enforcing your shower times when you are in a rush and also making sure all your apartment mates don't hog all the hot water.

2.What is the actual name for the tape scotch makes?


3. When you go to restaurants or search for restaurants on Yelp you can find ratings for the entire restaurant and overall comments about the restaurant. In order to provide more value restaurant menus should include ratings and comments per menu item. This way when ordering at restaurants with a lot of menu choices you get help on what items are the best.

4. From last week's poll the hardest task was a close call between giving up TV for a week and trying to run 10 miles without walking. The winner was running 10 miles without walking. My only comment is for everyone who answered "running 10 miles without walking", stop reading this blog and start jogging.

5. People need to start naming their children more uniquely.The purpose of a name is to be something unique that people can identify you by. But check your Facebook and notice how many Mikes or Michaels you have as friends. People should look into horse racing to get ideas for names. Here are some recent names from horses in the Derby and Preakness.

1. Mucho Macho Man
2. Stay Thirsty
3. Dialed In

5b. Another consequence of not having unique names is that it is very easy for people to forget other's names. If someone introduced themselves as Stay Thirsty I would have a lot better chance at remembering their name.

5c. Finally while on the subject of names. If you want to remember a name when you are introduced to someone make sure to repeat it at least 3 times in your preliminary conversation.

Ponderings 5/15/11

1. Getting yourself to stop eating and wrap up your remaining food is extremely difficult. Here are some tips to improve how to do this:
A. Split food into portions before you start eating.
B. Make sure to make at least 2 servings. If you make 1.2 or 1.5 servings you are likely to think that there is not enough for another day's worth of food and you will eat the extra food.
C. Eat in containers that can be put in the refrigerator so there is no extra work in putting your leftovers in the refrigerator.
D. At a restaurant ask for the takeout box before you start eating. Additionally put the food you want to save in it before you start eating.
E. Get a roommate or pet who will finish anything.
F. Become the roommate who will finish anything.


2.Think about one of your younger friends or a younger sibling of one of your friends and try to guess what grade they are in. Then actually do the math and realize that they are a lot older then you thought. Repeat the steps above and it will happen again.


3. From last week's poll it looks like most people crave watermelon as the weather gets warmer. I agree with the results and love cooling down with some cold watermelon. I am also starting to experiment with watermelon ice cubes. I also don't understand why people buy seedless watermelon half the fun of eating watermelon is spitting the seeds.

4. Making phone calls in concerts to others at the concert will result in both parties not hearing anything and repeatedly saying I cannot hear you.

5. After taking a hot shower your bathroom mirror (if not in separate room) is out of commission for 5 minutes. (Unless you want to wipe the mirror). Someone needs to fix this.

6. I have decided to invest in every color of wristbands and keep a couple of every color in my wallet.

Ponderings 5/8/11

1. If I eat without napkins near me I don't need any napkins but the second I have a napkin container near me I end up using 5-8 napkins and start wiping my mouth after every bite.

2. People really like rainbows. Anytime there is a rainbow try to find someone who is not looking at it or someone who says something bad about the rainbow.

3. The results of the last week's poll showed that most people move to the side when in a situation where they are on course to hit a person coming in the opposite direction. In addition to the small poll I kept track of people's encounters the past few weeks and noticed that most people move to the side early on and the other person can pass. However, another common phenomenon was both people moving to the side. Often people would move to the same side and then start doing a tango of switching from side to side with no solution to the dilemma at hand. To solve this we need everyone to bare to the right (culturally hard to do) or you can try out my solution. I turn sideways so regardless of the other person's tactic I can squeeze past them.

3A. I still don't know whether my washing machine or dryer is the thief, but one of them keeps stealing my socks.
3b. Also while on the topic of Dryers why are lint compartments so small? They should be designed like Vacuum cleaners and with enough room for lint to store 10-20 drying sessions before you need to dump it out. (Until the new design comes out make sure to throw your lint away because this is one of the biggest cause of home fires)

4. Does anyone use Pandora One (payment version)? And have those people heard about Grooveshark? Between free Pandora and Grooveshark not sure what else you need.

5. A couple of people told me to use Linked In. I had an account for the past few years but I had never really used Linked In. I tried it out for the past week and observed how people used Linked In vs. Facebook.

Here are some of my observations:
A.
Facebook: Ok to add friends who will hack into your account or write obscene things on your wall.
LinkedIn: Those friends have not made it onto Linked In or you have not accepted them.

B.
LinkedIn Contacts: Lot of colleagues from work.
Facebook Contacts: Only Colleagues who are also friends from work. (Or special privacy settings)

C.
Facebook Profile Pic: What is picture that will get me the most comments?
LinkedIn Profile Pic: What is the picture that depicts me in the way my mom wished I would turn out.

D.
LinkedIn Status: Pretty sure 90% of Linked In Users have not used this feature.
Facebook Status: 90% of users update this at least weekly.

E.
Amount of time spent on Facebook in a day: 1-5 hours.
Amount of time spent on LinkedIn in a day: Less than 5 minutes.

Ponderings 5/1/11

Ponderings 5/1/11: It's MAY!

1. Has anyone washed dishes at a restaurant because of not having enough money to pay at a restaurant? It would be a pretty good deal for a $100-$200 dinner. I am wondering if that would be a good date idea: good expensive dinner followed by some bonding time washing dishes.

2. On a 10 point scale when you cook your own food you automatically give yourself a 2 point boost. Remember that when your friends tell you to try their amazing food! It will be amazing -
2. Each year the person cooks regularly they improve by 1/2 a point as well.

3. Why do they make ketchup and sauce packets so small? Nobody ever takes just one packet even if you ask for ketchup from a drive-thru window the server will at least give you three packets. They should move to the dipping containers they use for dressing like ranch or just bigger packets.

4. On the NFL draft coverage why do the broadcasters reveal the pick before it is revealed on the podium by the Commissioner? This kills the entire point of the announcement on the podium.

5. Houses and apartments need sun roofs. Open it up on a sunny day when you can't go outside due to a playoff game, open it up at night to check out the stars, open it up to peep your head out.

6. Whenever I am walking passed houses, any house with a basketball hoop subconsciously gains more respect in my book. How old are you allowed to be before if it is creepy to ask for a jump shot when you are passing kids shooting on a hoop?

Ponderings 4/24/11

Ponderings 4/24/11

1. I would love the be the guy who decides the title for Fast and Furious movies.
Movie 1: The Fast and the Furious
Movie 2: (It's the second movie lets throw in a 2) Fast and the Furious Two
Movie 3: (Let's hit up Japan what should we call it?) Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift
Movie 4: (We need to make more money then the previous movies so lets not make it sound like a sequal lets just remove the "The") Fast and the Furious
Movie 5: (How many of these have we made? Oh Yea 5) The Fast Five

2. Home court advantage in the hockey playoffs is the biggest tease.

3. Are you supposed to eat Broccoli stems all the way to the bottom? I buy Broccoli from the grocery store and am paying for all this stem weight that I don't know if I can eat or not.

Also Broccoli is really good I realized it is in my top 5 vegetables now.

4. How many fruits are you allowed to "try" at the grocery store before it is stealing? While I am asking how much are you allowed to try for the loose candy that you fill into bags?


5. Usually at this time of year I have a countdown for end of classes, end of finals, and summer vacation. I need a new countdown!

6. I don't know if it is because my TV is huge (got to throw in a brag) or if laws have passed but every commercial has a bunch of fine print and it usually is a pretty big negative for the advertisement.

Pondering 4/17/11

1. When driving with a GPS you will see an estimated arrival time. I always pay attention to that and see how much you can beat the arrival time by.

2. After skiing there is nothing better than a cup of hot chocolate.

3. Splitting checks is much easier in Canada than America but still unnecessarily difficult. A cell phone app or even minimal restaurant effort could drastically improve this process. Bar tenders are able to keep tabs so why can't waiters? Or an app where you insert everybody from Facebook, add all the items onto their tabs and then can have one person pay and have IOU's or a screen that you show to waitress with the amount to charge to each card by name.

4. Each person you add to a group after 4 makes the decision time get exponentially larger. Same metric is also true for amount of time to get ready, shower, etc. I expected the latter to be linear but recently I have proven to myself that it is definitely exponential.


5. There is no efficient of way of bringing in a large group that does not arrive at the same time. Most restaurants currently do one of the three options.
A: Do not allow your group to sit unless the entire group is there.
B: Provide a table for the requested amount of people and as people come in they can take chairs.
C: Group sits down with desired group and as others come they pull up chairs and try to get Restaurant to bring more tables.

Here is my proposal: Keep section of unused chairs so it is easy for groups needing several more chairs to figure out the squeezing on their own. If you allow reservations go with option B otherwise go with combination of A and C. The combination is you need 50% of your group to get your desired table and all unused chairs after 10 minutes are moved to the unused section.

6. I still always wonder why all electronics need to be turned off for takeoff and landing. There is no way to enforce this and airlines other then friendly reminders and a quick couple scans do not check.
Apparently this law may be related to lawsuits.

7. The corporate world needs to extend concept of dedicated and flexible vacation time. This model some what exists but instead of dedicated vacation just being National Holidays, the Corporate world needs to introduce a Spring Break, Winter Break, and Summer Break. Each can be limited to 3 days but this would allow everyone to easily be free at the same time.

4/3/2011 Ponderings

Ponderings 4/3/2011

1. If I dated my Ponderings as 4/1/2011 everybody would immediately raise their gullibility guard.

2. NCAA really needs to start the season one week earlier, so that March Madness is truly March Madness.
1B. The worst part about VCU getting knocked out is that during the Final I won't be able to yell BOOOM SHAKKKA LAKKA every time VCU scores, or the broadcast showed Coach Shaka.

3. The government should reveal all of its technology development secrets on April 1st every year. People would laugh it off as pranks and then 5 years later when the technology is shown the government could say: "We told you about this precisely in this article on April 1st". If for some reason the secrets ends up not being developed they can say: "It was a April Fools Joke".

4. We need to change mailboxes to be painted neon pink instead of Dark Blue. How many times have you wanted to mail something and it takes 10 minutes to find a mailbox which is literally one block away? (Note: Mailbox here is not referring to your e-mail inbox.)


5A. When India won the world cup, I realized how Facebook and social networking in general has revolutionized the Sports World. People, who don't know the rules of Cricket found a way to watch the match, keep track of the score, and post a status on Facebook.

5B. The next part about Facebook and social networking is the recent change of loving a game to having a specific allegiance. (This is not new but the number of fans I am calling Facebook Fans has increased because of Facebook.) The majority of fans love teams, not the Sport. The "Sports Fan" watches every single game because they enjoy the specific game, the Facebook Fan watches their team and could care less about the rest of the games (unless it has an impact on their team). These are not mutually exclusive as most sports fans have teams they love. But the thing to note is how easy it is for people to jump on an allegiance without necessary understanding the game. In the Sports World this is fine and actually quite exciting to see how a community gets behind a team, but if this behavior translates to other places it is quite scary.

6A. April Fools Day becomes worse and worse every years as you grow up. Every year you are aware of more pranks and based on the setting pranks tend to become less and less frequent for various reasons. For example, this year how many April Fools Jokes did you see? I saw maybe 6 and was a part of 2 of those 6. In order to bring back this I propose the following:
A. Any time you successfully Prank someone they owe you $5
B. You cannot prank someone twice until they have pranked you back successfully.
C. If you don't have a successful Prank on April Fools you owe $5 to a common pool which goes to the person who does the best prank on April Fools Day as voted by the pool.(Nobody is allowed to vote for themselves.)


6B. All pranks needs to have several components: novelty, execution, element of surprise, and they need to be good natured (at least for pranks for your friends, colleagues, etc.)Being able to pull this off is extremely difficult on April Fools Day because everybody is on their guard. Instead the system should be changed too allow everybody to prank everyone once a year anytime, anyplace, anywhere. If people think that plan is too stressful then we introduce a month of pranking so at least people are a little bit less on guard.

Ponderings 3/27/11

Ponderings 3/27/11

1. All restaurants need to provide a pre-meal appetizer. There is nothing worse then showing up to a restaurant hungry and then having to wait and wait and wait for the food to come out while watching everyone one else around you eat. Mexican and Italian restaurants already do this right but here is my proposal for the other cuisines. The restaurants can still sell appetizers but need to offer something to start munching on. And while we are on subject Mexican or Italian restaurants that charge for chips and salsa or bread or for refills are just wrong.
Mexican - Chips and Salsa
Italian - Bread
Indian - Papad and yogurt.
Thai - Peanut Sauce and Vegetables (Open for suggestions)
Chinese - Green Tea + Bok Choy (Open for suggestions)
American - French Fries.
Pizza Places - Breadsticks
Persian - Hummus and Pita.

2. Does anybody miss the tune of signing into AOL via Dial Up?

3. As you add things to your resume eventually you need to delete something. After a certain point there is something you know you should delete but you just can't get yourself to do it. I still haven't removed my HS Basketball and Track and Field stuff.

4a. Coming home from work and seeing day light is the best feeling.
4b. Pink Cherry Blossoms everywhere is the second best feeling.

5. TVs need to invent a feature to let you know when a show is back from commercial. I will be watching something leave it during commercial and then not come back in time and miss something.

Ponderings 3/19/11

March Madness has taken over my life and this week's ponderings have mostly been influenced by the time I have been spending on my couch.

1. Are you allowed to pinch people at work for not wearing green on St. Patty's day?

2. How did NCAA go for so many years with only showing all the games on one channel with no way to pick which game to see when games were played at the same time. Being able to watch any game and flip between games at any point has been great this March Madness. But now when you go to a place with only 1 TV they will have a selected channel and even if the game is a blowout the game will not change to the most interesting game. NCAA needs to go one step further to have the games on different channels plus one channel that shows the most exciting game ala the red zone channel for NFL.

3. Once you fill out more than five brackets in different ways determining who you want to win each game becomes very difficult.

4. The first 4 games that are not accounted for in the NCAA Bracket should not be called round 1. All of the round 2 references and round 3 references have been confusing me all week.

5. Did anyone know what truTV was before the tournament?

6.I wonder how much work was done in America with the combination of March Madness and St. Patty's Day this Thursday and Friday.



5. At halftime of every game they should have the mascots box. The winning mascot awards their team with an additional 5 points.

Ponderings 3/13

1. When you watch a car commercial you will see a very small: "Professional Driver and Closed Course" message. Why do they need to tell us this and who was the genius who sued a car company after trying out something in the commercial?

After watching this I tried to think of anything I could try from a commercial which could potentially cause harm and be a potential law suit. I quickly found that every commercial will cover their behind with some extra small text. But for every new type of company there will be a new kind of law suit available. So if you watch a lot of TV look out for commercials from new industries and plan out a new law suit.

2.ESPN finally hooked up Cricket with a tab on ESPN.com for the World Cup. However, the times are always off that I never see all the previous results I want to see. Similarly ESPN uses logic to populate its main tab where results from the previous night are shown until about 1pm EST. After 1 pm EST ESPN changes the display to show the upcoming games for the day. This works well but has not been adjusted for different time zones.

3. If the football lockout continues and we don't have a NFL season who gets the number one pick in the 2012 draft? Also what the hell are you supposed to do from September to January?

4. Jimmer is my new favorite word.

5. This past week my bus hit a parked car. The bus driver quickly gets out of the bus and puts a business card on the car's windshield. Within a minute the bus driver is back in the car and driving off. Whenever you are having a bad day just imagine the day the owner had when he came to his car and sees a small message about the bus that hit him. (The day was also windy so hopefully the card stayed.)

6. Taco Bell had 88 cent crunch wraps available last week and I was unable to get to a Taco bell because for some reason Taco Bell's are extremely sparse around Seattle. This made me create a new rule for my next location. Rule: Make sure ratio of Taco Bells to Farmer Markets is > 1.

7. The other day someone was arguing with me about why I need to watch entire Sport games instead of just the ending. I made points around every moment equally affecting the end, the fact that I enjoy watching the entire game, not all games go down to the end, as well as others. But I did concede that viewing the outcome of the game is definitely one of the most important parts and if I could only watch 10 minutes I would choose the end. However, that got me thinking sports could do some small tweaks to make things more interesting.
Here are some examples for Basketball:
-After each quarter the last team to score gets the ball the next quarter.
-The team that scored more in the quarter regardless of overall score gets an additional 2 points. (4th quarter not included)
-If you score more than 30 in a quarter you get an extra point, if you score less than 20 you lose a point. (4th quarter not included)
Here are some examples for Football:
-There is a kickoff between all quarters.
-Team that scored more in the quarter gets an extra point. (4th quarter not included)

Ponderings 3/3/11

1. The other day I was wondering why no one uses rolley backpacks anymore. You would think that people are lazy and want to just drag things around but for daily travel people prefer backpacks and smaller bags.

2. Chipotle is great at counting calories. Every menu option has been precisely measured to a range of 1000 calories. Thank you for telling me this meal was between 200-1000 calories.

3. Buying fruits and vegetables and then self checking out at the grocery store makes you respect grocery store workers and there lookup skills.

February:
4. People born on leap year should not be allowed to advance in age until the next leap year. I don't get why we they need so many pity birthdays.
4b. I just realized February (on non-leap years) is the only Month where I exactly do 4 weeks of work and get paid correctly. Every other month I work 2 or 3 extra days. We should all demand 29 extra days of pay.

5. Someone needs to invent a laundry machine that can empty pockets. Every time I do laundry I lose change and get small remains of napkins and tissues on all of my clothes.

6. I always make it a point to have an extra crumpled dollar bill if I ever use a vending machine. Its way too easy and no fun if you use a crisp one.

7. Is it a sign that I have bad taste if I check what movies won Oscars to make sure I don't watch those movies?

Ponderings 2/6/11

1. I did a quick poll of 20 guys and 16 out of 20 say they hate skinny jeans, 2 people were indifferent, and 2 people said they wear skinny jeans. Although my sample size is small I don't understand how skinny jeans are still popular.
1b. I am just hoping whoever sets fashion trends decides to pick elastic band jeans.


2. Costco needs to include a "cart pulling" license test as part of membership eligibility. On my recent trip to Costco I got ran into twice and witnessed 6 crashes with one crash causing someone to drop a carton of eggs that exploded.


3. They need to invent sensors so anytime you drop something from your pockets you hear a beeping sound and do not lose anything.


4. Hooded Sweatshirts - Why is it so easy for one of the sweatshirt strings to get stuck inside the hood but so difficult to be able to pull the string back out once it is stuck inside the hood. I currently have three sweatshirts with the strings stuck in the hoods and no clue how to bring them back out.

5. Tying shoes - Why is it so hard to keep shoes tied? When I play a basketball game I start by double knotting my basketball shoes and my basketball shorts. I use the same knot on both but need to tie by shoe laces 3 or 4 times a game but never need to tie my shorts. Someone needs to bring back Velcro shoes.

Ponderings 1/23

This weeks Ponderings will look at headphones, flossing, liking and poking on Facebook, alarm clocks, ink pens, and jumping in puddles.

Facebook Like button:
1A. Any time I see someone write a comment on facebook saying: "I like this", Facebook should increase the size of the like button to half your screen, if someone does this twice then their whole screen should just be the like button.
1B. What if Facebook turned the Like button into the Likert Scale so you got too choose Strongly Dislike, Dislike, Neutral, Like, Strongly Like. Imagine how fun that would be. Marketing Companies could stop sending out surveys and just post statuses and hope people comment.
1C. Facebook should build a USB finger that pokes you every time you get poked?

2. Cell Phone Alarm Clocks usually go with a design of Snooze and Dismiss. What they should really do is have alarms with basic, advanced, and blind mode.

A. For people who can handle the snooze and dismiss buttons you have basic mode. And for people who struggle waking up you have advanced mode or blind mode.

B. In advanced mode you have to play a new random game everyday and the alarm gets louder every 10 seconds until you beat the game or break your phone.

C. In Blind mode you get a blank screen and the dismiss button is somewhere on the screen you have to click around until you find it. Every time you screw up the alarm gets louder.

Note: Blind and Advanced Mode may make people who live with you leave you but you will never sleep in again.

Headphones
3A. I hate people who don't check if others can hear their headphones before putting them on.

3B. And while we are on the subject of head phones why can't my headphones ever stay in my ear. On average I can get the headphone in one ear to stay in for about 30 seconds.

4. I have recently tried to start flossing more. If you ever break the part of the box to help cut the floss, floss becomes incredibly hard to break. But once you start flossing your teeth the threads split quickly and you need start over again. I don't think I am going to be able to listen to my Dentist for much longer.

5. I love using ink pens and I love being left handed but the two were not made for each other.

6. Jumping in puddles is fun but make sure everybody around you agrees with that statement.

Ponderings 1/16

Another week of great playoff football and lot of comments about fan etiquette got me pondering...

Facebook and Sports
1A. Facebook has uncovered so many more fans for sports. How many times do you go on Facebook and see someone with a status about a game and go wow I didn't they know watch sports or wow I didn't know they were a fan of that team.
1B. Facebook has made non-fans get more interested into sports so they can respond to statuses.

2. Why do people hate band-wagoners so much? What else are you supposed to do after your team loses/ if you don't follow the sport but watch during the playoffs?

3. I know they are going back and forth on the new zodiac sign thing. But I think this is all a conspiracy so that the horoscope writers can say "O Yea you were reading the wrong zodiac sign, so that is why you thought it always was wrong."
3a. Also I fall in the new sign range so I am now a Ophiuchus. What is that and what am I supposed to do before horoscopes start including Ophiuchus?

4. NFL or visa definitely picked the worst person for that advertisement about the guy going to every single Superbowl.

5. I used to think liking black olives on pizza was strange until every time a one topping pizza deal occurs and 5/6 people in the room choose black olives. (When choosing from Vegetarian options)

6. Ever since I started tipping in change I never lose change anymore just the quality of service I get the next time I show up.

Ponderings 1/11/11

This week I will ponder about the Holidays, Bowl Games, and NFL Playoffs.

1. Why do football players not wear more layers. When you watch a cold January NFL playoff game you will see players tearing up, nose dripping, and looking miserable. Yet the majority of the players still do not wear extra layers in the cold.

New Years Resolutions
2a. How many times are you allowed to fail a new years resolution before you realize it is time to give up on that one? 3 strikes rule should apply if you fail resolution three times it is time to cut your losses and find a new resolution.

2b. Saying you don't have a resolution is just boring. Is there really nothing you would like to achieve this year?

2c. If I had a dollar for every person who had a resolution of maintaining their weight (not losing or gaining) I would have 2 dollars.

3. On the Seattle Seahawks final touchdown run by Marshawn Lynch, apparently the crowd caused a 0.7 earthquake. (Not proven if it is coincident yet.) I am very scared of any holiday in India or China now that gets everybody screaming and jumping.

4. The iPhone fans who are excited about the iPhone coming to Verizon must be pissed that it is a tease. Yes the phone is available but in 6 months the new phone is available.

5. Why are both the national championship for NCAA Mens and NCAA Football played on a Monday Night? The Superbowl, which always the highest rated sports event, plays on a Sunday.

6. Anytime I wear hats or beanies in the winter my hair goes wild when I take my hat off. Some people have a similar problem but usually people can take off these hats and be fine. Is there a hat wearing technique to not mess up your hair? My hair is not even long I don't understand.

7. Check out the date of this post.