Because nothing says gangster like infants

From the "Downtown SLC Newsletter"'s description of an upcoming hip-hop show:

Don't miss this year's biggest hip hop show to hit downtown SLC, Summer Jam at the Gallivan Center. This year's Summer Jam features J. Cole, Kirko Bangz, Kid Ink, Baby Bash, and more.

Tickets are $20 at all Smith Tix location and children 5 and under are FREE.

Average Garbage Collection

The garbage collection situation at my work is an interesting on.  When I first started here 2 years ago, it seemed like people came fairly regularly to empty the trash cans in our office suite.  I definitely remember that every Friday afternoon someone would come and vacuum right outside my office and I'd have to close my door.  But somewhere along the way, things got weird. Sometimes we'd go days at a time without having anyone show up to empty the trash, and then randomly we'd get someone coming every day for a week.  Sometimes I joke that our trash collection is done on a Fibonacci scale (1 day,1 day, 2 days, 3 days, 5 days, 8 days, 13 days...)  We don't generate enough trash to merit daily pickup, but we definitely could use it more than every couple of weeks.  When things get really bad, we eventually call central dispatch and ask them to send someone.

Then this new year started and suddenly they were coming every day again.  Not sure what changed, but at you didn't have to worry about running out of space for trash.  Then just as suddenly, a week or two ago, they just stopped coming again.  And the trash is full.  Here's mine (complete with today's breakfast plate and a healthy supplied of used tissues):



The large can in the common area of the suite has had an old keyboard and a fluorescent light tube balanced on top for about a week now.

In the end we've decided that the janitorial staff must be contractually obligated to pick up our trash an average of once a week.  So they just decided to come 52 times in January and be done for the year. :)

Update: Someone must have called them down, because they are now in the process of gathering up all the garbage and piling it in the entry way to our suite.  I assume this is an intermediary step on the path to actually getting rid of the garbage, but if not, I think I liked things the way they were before better.

Soñando con los Fueginos

Got fooled by the ol' Ushuaia dream again last night. The funniest part is every time when I'm having the dream, I think "Ha! I finally did make it here this time. Now next time I dream about it I'll actually be able to really remember where stuff is." Every time I consciously think during the dream that it's not a dream. So strange...

April? Meh

For some reason, when it comes down to the numbers associated with months, I always have the hardest time remembering which months go with 4 (April) and 5(May). I mean, if I think about it I can figure it out quick enough, but all the rest just seem to immediately snap to mind. But 4 and 5? Hmm...

I realized that today when I got an email talking about something happening on 5/26. Had to make sure that wasn't this week. And obviously it's the 30th today so it must be next month (May). But the fact that I don't automatically see 5 and think "May" puzzles me. Maybe it's because there aren't any major holidays associated with April and May? I don't know. 1 (January), 2 (February), and 3 (March) are easy because they are right at the start. 6 (June) and 7 (July) are right in the middle, and 10 (October), 11 (November), and 12 (December) are right at the end. My birthday is in 9 (September) so that probably helps me also remember 8 (August).

Anyway, how's that for a random thought to end April and start May? And in case you didn't already know it was snowing here last night and this morning. Meh.

What's Wrong with Our Income Tax #1: Yarr!

Just got my W-2 at work, and was taking a minute to dig into the tax code to try to figure out if I was going to get much of a refund or not. I know (or at least have heard) that charitable donations are deductible, but was trying to find that in the tax code, so I went to a section on "Charitable Donations", where I was bemused and a little frustrated at this section that was just thrown in there in the middle of a list of things that were deductible:

Expenses of Whaling Captains

You may be able to deduct as a charitable contribution the reasonable and necessary whaling expenses paid during the year in carrying out sanctioned whaling activities. The deduction is limited to $10,000 a year. To claim the deduction, you must be recognized by the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission as a whaling captain charged with the responsibility of maintaining and carrying out sanctioned whaling activities.

Sanctioned whaling activities are subsistence bowhead whale hunting activities conducted under the management plan of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission.

Whaling expenses include expenses for:

• Acquiring and maintaining whaling boats, weapons, and gear used in sanctioned whaling activities,

• Supplying food for the crew and other provisions for carrying out these activities, and

• Storing and distributing the catch from these activities.

Glad to know that whaling activities are specially mentioned and explicitly deductible (assuming you have the blessing of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission). Not sure why this falls under charitable donations, though.

Poking holes in yourself

Random thought while sitting in church yesterday looking at a girl with 2 earrings in each ear:

How did it become fashionable to poke a hole in your ear lobe and then use it to put jewelry on? And after that happened, who decided that it was perfectly normal, but that poking holes in other parts of yourself or more holes in your ear was weird?

Not saying I disagree with Pres. Hinckley's statement that men ought not to wear earrings and women should stick to one pair or less. Just saying that it seems like the whole piercing thing is pretty strange, and that the difference between poking holes in yourself and not poking holes in yourself is much larger than the difference between just putting one set of holes in a specific spot and putting multiple holes in various places.

Thank goodness for long weekends

I've been back from my cruise for nearly a week, and don't feel like I've had any time to relax yet (been hiking, to institute and discussion group, a birthday celebration, Utah's opener against USU last night, and going to Grantsville tonight to see my brother play), and have definitely not been doing a good job of catching up on the sleep I got behind on during the cruise. Thankfully, Labor Day weekend will be upon us shortly, and I'm hoping to catch a few extras Z's along the way.

At some point I'll start blogging up some stuff from the cruise, but in the meantime, I'll leave you with this thought:

On our redeye flights to Atlanta and then to Miami at the start of the cruise, I managed to fall asleep before hearing the safety presentations, and then I got to wondering, "Has anyone ever been benefited by the safety presentation?" I mean, how many airplane crashes do people walk away from? And when they do walk away, was it because of careful listening during the safety presentation? Jerry Seinfeld successfully mocked the seatbelt portion ("Oh, lift UP on the buckle. I was going to try to break the metal apart."), but has anyone ever used a seat cushion as a floation device, or needed a "light in the water"? Maybe they have, and I'm just not aware of it. But in the event of an emergency exit, would the flight crew refuse to explain everything to me again, if I'd failed to pay attention during the original presentation? "Excuse me, should I put my oxygen mask on first or that of the child I'm traveling with?" "Sorry, you should have paid more attention earlier..."

Holiday Weather

Take a look at the two 5 day weather forecasts below. Can you guess which one is for Salt Lake City (where I live) and which one is for Seattle (where I'm going for vacation this weekend)?





Amazingly enough, the forecast that is all sun is Seattle while Salt Lake is staring at some more rainy days coming up. My only worry is that bad storms will keep my getaway car plane stuck on the ground. Let's hope not.

Part of what's wrong with Healthcare

I'm sure that everyone out there has their own opinions on health care and what's wrong or right with it and what does or doesn't need fixing. Now that I finally have a job with benefits (starting next month -- the benefits, not the job), and am no longer obligated to seek all of my medical care through the student health clinic, I decided I ought to find a new Primary Care Provider to meet with and talk about my persistent, nagging, discomfort in my side. Given that I work for the largest healthcare provider in the state, I have a wide variety of doctors I could choose from. How to decide?

Someone I know suggested contacting the insurance company's "advocates" as they could help me find a doctor near me who was taking new patients, etc. I called them today and told them I was a new patient and needed some help choosing a doctor. I asked them if they had any quality measures or feedback from other patients that might help me in making my choice. The first answer was "no". The second answer was "yes, but we don't share that." The third answer was "Don't worry, though, because if anyone complains we really do care and try to resolve their complaint."

So basically, they told me that while they DO, in fact, have information about which doctors are better than others, they can't use that information to help me, their customer. But don't worry, because if you do choose poorly and have a problem (remember these are health problems we're talking about, not car problems), they really will do all they can to resolve my complaints. Unless, of course, my complaint is that they won't tell me who the best doctors are.

I looked around on the internet and found one site with doctor reviews (ratemds.com), and the doctor they ended up recommending to me, based on location and the fact that he was taking new patients, had only one review, which was very positive. Another site someone mentioned to me is Angie's List (ala Craig's List), but unlike Craig's list, it is not free for consumers. Not tons of help, but better than nothing, I guess.

I just can't see how it isn't in the insurance provider's interest to funnel more patients to the doctors that do the best job, whether in terms of patient results or satisfaction, or in terms of cost effectiveness. It seems like somebody ought to be benefitting here, right? If not, where's the motivation for the doctor to do a better job? Just in the goodness of her heart? Not to say doctors don't want the best for their patients, but if there's no reward for being better, why try to be anything but average?

First cup sizes, then everything else...

Went to the newly opened "Five Guys" Hamburger Joint today for lunch. I'd been years ago in DC, but didn't remember much aside from liking it. Anyway, I ordered a regular bacon cheeseburger (as opposed to the "Little Bacon Cheeseburger"). Turns out a "regular" is a double quarter-pounder. And the "little" version is JUST a quarter-pounder. You live, you learn.

10-Key vs. Telephone

Who was the person who decided that a ten key and a telephone should have their numbers in a different order? Strangely enough they actually share two rows in common, 4-5-6 on the 2nd row from the top, and 0 at the bottom. I only notice this when I start doing some 10-key work after a long time of not doing, and I sometimes go up instead of down or vice-versa. There's probably a discussion of this on the internet already. Just seems kind of strange.

A little too ironic...and yeah I really do think

Had a random thought in the shower this morning...if liberals are so sold on evolution, isn't it a little ironic that they are the ones most in favor of government intervention/regulation/etc? Evolution seems like the biological equivalent of a free market, or I guess maybe that's natural selection I'm talking about, but still. How do the United Steelworkers feel about that? Was Mother Nature passing out foodstamps to the dinosaurs? I'm sure there are some subtleties that I am missing (I guess believing in evolution doesn't necessarily make you a proponent of it), but on the surface it was an interesting thought.

For all your hard-hitting news...

Browsing through the D-News tonight and read an article about David Archuleta and his dad being banned from being backstage or something or other. Anyway the second half of the article was about his visit to Utah, and had this gem of a paragraph:

The singer and his family declined to be interviewed at the event, but David Archuleta did speak with the Salt Lake City Fox affiliate, KSTU-TV. "Wow," he exclaimed as he viewed the cheerleading squad outside his stretch limousine.

Thats all the information they give about his "speaking" with Fox News. Glad they included that.

A wonderful bird is the pelican...

So this morning on my way to "work", I was on the transfer ramp from I-15 Northbound to the 201 going west, and as I came around a bend right before I had to merge right onto another portion of the spaghetti bowl, up ahead on the road there was a pelican just sitting there chilling. At first I wondered if it was a real live bird or just a stuffed one or something, but as I got closer it was looking around and I could tell it was alive. It was just sitting there in the middle of the road. It wasn't in my lane so I just went past it, but I can't imagine it surviving long there. Weird.

Making Marriage Work

Making Marriage Work
Originally uploaded by Jake T.

I realize the camera on my phone quite possibly takes the world's worst pictures, but hopefully you can see enough here to see that a "Lunch & Learn" class is being taught at my work, entitled "Making Marriage Work" and its taught by one Mr. Curtis HOOKER. I wonder what he recommends?

Update: I keep chuckling at the thought of the guy who comes home from work and tells his wife, "Hey honey, today at work I learned how to improve our marriage from a Hooker.", or maybe "Hey honey, today while I was at work, a Hooker taught me some things that might improve our marriage."

The Big Digital Gets an...Eyebrow Trim??

Yesterday I went to my local GreatClips to get a haircut, as is my custom. Of course, its always a crap shoot in terms of quality. But its close, and I don't feel as creeped out as I sometimes do at the $4 place by the University. Anyway, this time I was less than thrilled with the skill of my barber (stylist?). I always get nervous when they're using the clippers on the sides and back and can't seem to do a very smooth job of it, when the clippers feel like they're bouncing off my head as they get rammed against it.

But, beyond the apparent incompetence of the lady cutting my hair, as she was wrapping things up, she did something that in all my nearly 30 years of haircuts I've never seen done before. She put a comb over my eyebrow and ran the shaver she was using to even up my sideburns over the top of the comb, trimming off any eyebrow hair that was poking out. I wasn't sure that that was what she'd actually done until she did it again on the other eyebrow. Now, I'm not sure that my eyebrows didn't need a trim. I mean, they've never been trimmed before, so if its something that should be done, they were probably due. But its not something I asked for, and they've been feeling a little weird ever since. In the future I'll know to inform them that I'm fine with the length of my eyebrow hair.

Different Box, Same Drug?

So, last night I figured I better get to the store and pick up some cold medicine to get some help getting over the sore throat and other suspicious symptoms I was suffering. In the past, I've found Tylenol Cold to be helpful, so I started looking for that in the medicine aisle at Wal-mart. Turns out there are now several varieties of Tylenol Cold. The first one I found was Tylenol Cold - Head Congestion, which seemed about like what I wanted, except that I didn't have much congestion, and I was actually sensing maybe a touch of fever.



After some more looking I found Tylenol Cold - Multi-Symptom, which listed Fever as one of the things it was good for.



But now that I was holding both boxes, I realized that both boxes listed the same active ingredients. I thought, "hmm...maybe there's a different ratio of ingredients between these two." Further inspection of the packaging revealed that, at least as far as I could tell, there was absolutely no difference between the two products. The amounts of each active ingredient, the warnings, everything. Is that weird or what?

From Tylenol's website:

Tylenol Cold Head Congestion Day/Night Pack

Daytime Ingredients:

Active Ingredients
-Acetaminophen
325 mg in each caplet
-Dextromethorphan HBr 10 mg in each caplet
-Phenylephrine HCl
5 mg in each caplet

Inactive Ingredients
Carnauba wax, castor oil, cellulose, corn starch, flavors, hypromellose, iron oxide, silicon dioxide, sodium starch glycolate, stearic acid, sucralose

Nighttime Ingredients:

Active Ingredients
-Acetaminophen
325 mg in each caplet
-Chlorpheniramine maleate 2 mg in each caplet
-Dextromethorphan HBr 10 mg in each caplet
-Phenylephrine HCl
5 mg in each caplet

Inactive Ingredients
Carnauba wax, cellulose, corn starch, FD&C blue #1, flavors, hypromellose, iron oxide, polyethylene glycol, polysorbate 80, silicon dioxide, sodium starch glycolate, stearic acid, sucralose, titanium dioxide

Tylenol Cold Multisymptom Day/Night Pack

Daytime Ingredients:

Active Ingredients
-Acetaminophen, 325 mg in each caplet
-Dextromethorphan HBr, 10 mg in each caplet
-Phenylephrine HCl, 5 mg in each caplet

Inactive Ingredients
Carnauba wax, castor oil, cellulose, corn starch, flavors, hypromellose, iron oxide, silicon dioxide, sodium starch glycolate, stearic acid, sucralose

Nighttime Ingredients:

Active Ingredients
-Acetaminophen, 325 mg in each caplet
-Chlorpheniramine maleate, 2 mg in each caplet
-Dextromethorphan HBr, 10 mg in each caplet
-Phenylephrine HCl, 5 mg in each caplet

Inactive Ingredients
Carnauba wax, cellulose, corn starch, FD&C blue #1, flavors, hypromellose, iron oxide, polyethylene glycol, polysorbate 80, silicon dioxide, sodium starch glycolate, stearic acid, sucralose, titanium dioxide