We Had the Hot Seat, Now You Can Have A Cool Seat.

First we had the USB missile launcher. Then came the USB nuclear missile launcher. Then we got less warlike in our USB gadgets with the creation of the secret base emergency button, and finally, our laziness was shown with the invention of the USB ash tray.

But now, we have something for the What the Fuck department to analyze. It’s the USB…drum-roll please…bum-cooling cushion?

Yipper, that’s what it does. Don’t believe me? Then I quote.

How does it work? A built-in fan pulls in cool air from down near the base of your chair and pumps it up and out through holes in the seat of the cushion to cool your posterior down to a more comfortable temperature.

Have you ever sat in your chair and thought “Gee, my ass is hot. No other part of me is hot, though. If only I could cool my ass…” I never have, but maybe I’m in the minority. Or maybe these people are just weird. Either way, there it is.

Homeboy Got a New Cellphone!

I know, I know, that was only funny for Steve, the lady at Rogers who I talked to when I got this thing, and me, but that’s never stopped me before, hahah.

Remember when I jumped up and down about Rogers’s new phone that you could buy with the Talks software already installed? Well, guess who went and bought one? Yipper, that would be me, and I’m pretty damn impressed with it. I’ve already set my own ringtone, set the clock, put some contacts in the contacts directory, learned a whole bunch of the Talks functions, can check the battery level and signal strength…and I have much, much more to learn.

First off, to anyone who wants to buy one of these, if you choose to call rogers and buy it through there, be very very sure that the rep knows you want the Nokia 6682RVI, which is Rogers’s cute name for the bundle with Talks. They will say they don’t see such a thing, and try to just sell you the Nokia 6682, but you don’t want that. So make sure they find it.

The box came with some pretty cool stuff in it. There was a Talks Manual in mp3 and word format, a little braille sheet that explained that the phone had Talks preinstalled and said the formats the user’s manual was in, and a whole bunch of cool accessories. There was a headset, a USB cable, another cable that I haven’t the foggiest clue what it does, a 64-mb memory card, a funky wrist strap, some cool Nokia software, and of course the battery and charger and such.

It is so nice to be able to monkey with my own phone settings. I was able to set the clock, the ringtone, see how much battery power I had left, turn on training mode so I could mess with stuff without it doing anything, and all in the first night of having it. Now I just have to figure out who I can send a thank you letter to for going ahead with this. God I’m going to be known as the thank you blink before too long, hahahaha.

>I Think Somebody’s A Little Squirrely

>Are squirrels super valuable in Israel? If not, do any of you have another way to explain
this?
I hope so, because I’ve got nothin’, at least nothin’ better than mental illness.

The victim, whose name was not released, said he was carrying his pet squirrel in his fanny pack when Surami grabbed it and tried to take it with him. The man stopped Surami and took his pet back.

Later the same day, the victim allegedly received a phone call from Surami in which he threatened to burn down his house if he didn’t turn over the squirrel.

Afraid of losing his home, the man complied and met Surami, who allegedly proceeded to shove and slap the complainant, as well as attempt to attack him with a kitchen knife.

The man managed to escape, but two hours later, Surami allegedly torched his bike.

Bits of Trixie goodness I forgot about.

I knew I was forgetting some things about Trixie that I wanted to say. So here are the things I forgot.

I have now discovered she likes squirrels. They tempt her whenever we walk through the university campus. Always something new.

When we’re playing, sometimes she pins my head down and sniffs my ear. I think she’s imitating me when I sniff her ears. I can almost hear her saying, “How do you like that?”

She does the funniest things sometimes. She has this tendency to let out these huge sighs, and at the perfect times too. I will have just finished saying “Oh I have so much work to do.” and from Trixie, I hear the biggest sigh. It’s hillarious. Or, right after I correct her for doing something she knows is wrong, she’ll shake her whole body as if to say, “What was I thinking?”

Whenever there’s a sudden noise, she jumps. She especially likes to jump when Steve makes a beer bottle make that train whistle noise.

Have I got them all now? I think so.

Paging the What The Fuck Department

10 Jun, Sun, 03:10:34     
Google
:  girls getting smucked to sex

What does that even mean? What could this person possibly have been trying to find? The only thing I can think of is that somewhere out there, there was a person who got hit, [or smucked as some say], by a vehicle of some kind and just so happened to land vagina first on a penis.

More Trixie goodness!

I think it’s time for an update on the Trixter, along with some things I’ve noticed because of her.

Because of her, I end up spending considerably more time loitering around the outside of the apartment building. I’m not really loitering, I’m waiting for her to do her duty. But anyway, it means more time downstairs, which means I get to observe more weird stuff. I got to see people yelling at our poor property manager and got some juice about someone having ridiculously noisy neighbours. I got to watch two people screaming at each other across balconies. I know all the kids’ names in the apartment building. Speaking of little children in the building, they seem to be leaving me alone more. I don’t know whether Trixie has simply become uninteresting, they got fed up with me going into the bushes, or maybe it’s because a cat scared Trixie in the bushes and now she won’t go in the bushes, only by the fense right beside them. Or maybe it’s because the pool is open now, so they’d rather swim. At any rate, it’s good for me!

I notice that, now that I have Trixie, people don’t say hello to me. they just say hello to Trixie. Yep, she’s the star.

People are funny. They get upset if I give Trixie a correction, but if Trixie is being goofy, they get upset because she doesn’t seem to be behaving like a guide dog should. Well, the only way to stop goofy behaviour is to say no and give her a correction.

I feel sorry for people with pet dogs who Trixie takes an interest in. They feel guilty because their dog distracted mine. I tell them not to worry about it, as long as they have their woofer on a leash.

Speaking of woofers, there’s a big one who, from time to time, thinks it would be a swell idea to bark at us from his yard and run in our direction. I have to ask someone if he’s contained in any way, because he scares me sometimes!

As time goes on, Trixie evolves and I learn more and more about her. She has changed her morning routine. She will come out onto our rug we have in the living room, flop around like a fish and snort. She now likes tug toys, and has already laid waste to one tug toy and has done a pretty good job on another one. Man, those are some pretty lethal jaws. She also thinks that the towel is the biggest play toy in the world and attacks it when I wipe her down after a rain.

She did the funniest thing the other day, although I don’t know if poor Steve found it so funny. She ran at him, sort of made a running jump and shoulder-blocked him right in the groin. He says it didn’t hurt much. Poor guy, he wonders if she has it in for him. If I’m not right there to lay down the law, she’ll try and lick him to death.

She barks a lot less now. Woohoo! That was easy…I hope.

It’s weird that it took me a bit longer this time to find my rhythm. Just when I thought I had it, everything would seem like a ton of work. But I think now, things have fallen nicely into place and what seemed like extra jobs is just part of the daily routine.

Here’s a scary thought. By Sunday, I will have had Trixie longer than I had Babs. During my time with Trixie, she has had no ear infections, and the only trips to the vet were made after I thought she stepped in glass, when my dad noticed her limping a bit, and one day when she wouldn’t stop hacking and horking all over the floor and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t anything serious! Things are looking good!

I think that’s about it for now. Hopefully I’m not forgetting a whole bunch of things. Oh well, if I am, it makes for another post. Hope you guys enjoy this stuff.

Young Canada Works…to Be Confusing and Say the Same Thing in As Many Ways As Possible.

I always knew that anything to do with the government was full of redundancies and other unnecessary crap. But I had the point driven home this week.

I decided to join this Young Canada Works thing and see about finding an internship through there. I was filling out their 12-step aplication and it was making sense, until it got to the place where I was supposed to list my qualifications. This was the list of qualifications that I was supposed to look through, select 3 that I felt needed work and 5 that I was good at. I’ll comment in between *’s.

Adaptable
Analyzing
Assertive/Persuasive
Assessing/Evaluating
Coordinating
Conceptualizing
Creative /Innovative
Decision Making
Dynamic
*what the hell does that even mean?*
Flexible
*isn’t that being adaptable?*
Goal-Oriented
*wouldn’t that be part of coordinating?*
Initiating
Interpersonal Skills
Interpretative Skills
*wouldn’t that be called analyzing?*
Leadership
*wouldn’t that fall under initiating? You can’t very well lead without initiating something, and if you’re initiating something, aren’t you, um, leading?*
Learning
Listening
        *um, isn’t listening part of interpersonal skills?* 
Negotiating
*I would assume that you wouldn’t make a very good negotiator if you weren’t assertive or persuasive.*
Observant
Organized
Planning
*um, planning? coordinating? Goal-oriented? Aren’t they pretty much the same thing?*
Problem Solving
Public Speaking
Reading
Resourceful
*I guess it’s a little bit different than being adaptable, but aren’t they kind of in the same camp?*
Self-Motivating
Service-Oriented
Supervising
Teamwork
Time Management
*isn’t that part of being organized?*
Understanding
*if interpersonal skills aren’t listening and understanding, then what are they?*
Writing Skills
Other  

Ug. And I was supposed to pick 3 that I felt needed work and pick five that I believed to be my strengths. When there’s so much repetition and overlap, how do you do that?

It asked you to talk about all kinds of things that I never thought belonged on a resume. It asked to talk about your intrests, achievements, leisure and travel! I understand the first two, but leisure and travel? What boss is going to care about the trips you took with your family?

Then, at the end, when I got to the employment equity section, I got another surprise. Having a disability wasn’t on the list of minority groups of which you could be a member. I didn’t know how to feel about that. I don’t want a pity job, but I don’t want an employer to run away screaming once they find out I’m blind, which some do. I was surprised that in a government program, that wasn’t even mentioned.

All I could think was, yup, you can tell this was put together by the government. There’s all kinds of extra stuff you don’t need, and not enough of the stuff you do need.

Pencil Sharpeners Don’t Kill People, Idiots With Pencil Sharpeners Kill People

Some days I find myself thinking that we really ought to just wipe the world clean and start over. After seeing
this,
it’s safe to say that today is definitely one of them.

First it was the shatterproof ruler. Then came the compass with a soft point.

Now one of the UK’s biggest stationery manufacturers is redesigning the pencil sharpener to stop it being used as a weapon.

Helix is producing a tamper-proof version of the trusty sharpener, which has been employed by generations of schoolchildren, after complaints from teachers.

Schools have reported incidents in which pupils unscrew blades and use them to attack classmates. Some head teachers have been forced to ban them altogether.

In an announcement yesterday, Helix, which sells two million sharpeners a year, said it was redesigning its products to allay fears over their safety. The new sharpeners will have a special screw head which the company claims, cannot be removed, even with a screwdriver.

A primary school in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancs, has banned sharpeners after a pupil slashed another child’s neck and a Derby junior school imposed a ban after children were found stamping on them to remove blades.