Areas of Unrest

9 July 2000 - Half a Dozen Brief Rants

QOTD: "It is disillusioning to find that an evil spirit looks like a dead water-beetle." - Dervla Murphy

Reading: Noah Adams, Piano Lessons

Listening to: Fred Small, Everything Possible

Rant the First: Diet Commercials

There is a radio commercial I hear frequently in Colorado that annoys me immensely. It's for a diet system that "works while you sleep." The commercial explains that you stop eating three hours before bedtime and then take a teaspoon of this formula. Are people really so dumb that they don't realize that if they stop eating three hours before bedtime, they're likely to lose weight even if they don't take this snake oil?

Along the same lines, I am annoyed at the Slim-Fast commercials that claim that it is healthy to substitute a can of this diet formula for lunch every day. Oh, it's not as bad as the classic hacker's lunch of junk food from the vending machine, but actual food would be a lot healthier. What I do is keep cups of the rice and beans sort of stuff that you just add boiling water to in my desk at work. That strikes me as a lot better than drinking fortified milk and corn syrup. It doesn't take any more time and, since I stock up during sales, it's a lot less expensive.

Rant the Second: Gay Marriage

I'm completely confused about all of the hoopla over Vermont's civil unions for gay couples. I keep hearing opponents claim that this affects the institution of marriage and I just don't understand how. But then I've always had a hard time understanding why I should care who wants to sleep with whom unless I'm one of the parties involved. I'm more offended by rich elderly men taking teenage trophy wives, but I'm not about to make that illegal.

Rant the Third: Process Over Product

This week's business trip was very frustrating because of people who are so focused on recording meaningless metrics that they don't let anyone get work done. I was working with two people on finding the holes in a set of design products. We didn't finish this on Thursday, because two other people needed some background information and because two of the three of us had other meetings we had to go to. In fact, we only got about an hour of actual time to work on Thursday. I was not pleased when we then got dragged into a two hour discussion of how long it was going to take us to finish. Friday, we outright rebelled and just said, "if you go away and let us work, we'll be done in a few hours." And so it was. But not without a lot of unnecessary ill will.

Rant the Fourth: An Open Letter to the Boston Red Sox

Dear Red Sox:
If you're going to lose horribly, would you please do so consistently and not pull this nonsense of getting my hopes up and breaking my heart again and again?

P.S. to Troy O'Leary: if you run into Nomar again and hurt him, you're going to have to answer to me. And I will find a way to hurt you.

Rant the Fifth: Escalator Etiquette

Stand right. Walk left. If there are two escalators (like at Denver International Airport, which motivated this particular mini-rant), that means that, if you are going to stand there with your oversized wheeled luggage that they should have made you check in the first place, you should use the escalator on the right. Better yet, use the elevator.

Rant the Sixth: Harry Potter

I am pleased that a book is such a big event and it is wonderful that the series is getting children excited about reading. However, I don't think children should be encouraged to stay up past midnight for a book release.

They should be reading in bed stealthily, by flashlight, like we did. Not that there was any chance that we would have been able to get a new hardcover book, anyway. Ever might we ever have that kind of money.