“Big Things Come in Big Packages”

This post is over 14 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

I went to my workplace’s office today to meet with my deputy, and for dinner, we went to Taco Bell.

I recalled seeing a Taco Bell advertisement on my website advertising the XXL Chalupa, so I decided to try it. I wasn’t able to click on the advertisement for more information because I’m not allowed to click on the advertisements on my own website, but I’ve had Chalupas before so I had a feeling that this was going to be good.

Apparently, it comes in a box (and I’ve never seen anything from Taco Bell come in a box before.)

XXL Chalupa Box

Just by looking at the box, you might think that the Chalupa really is extra-extra-large. But when I opened the box, I was slightly disappointed. They could have made the box about half its current height and it still would have had plenty of space to fit the XXL Chalupa.

So I concluded that the Chalupa isn’t XXL, but maybe just a regular L, or possibly XL at the most.

And yes, I know that my mouse is low of battery. That’s because my deputy and associate always for­get to put it in the charging port after they’re done using the office computer.

 

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Credit Union Security Fail

This post is over 14 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

I got a letter in the mail today from my credit union (which is like a bank owned by the people, for those of you who don’t already know).

Several days ago, I updated the address on my account from my old address to my new one. As a se­curity measure, they sent me the letter to make sure I was really the one who made the change.

But instead of sending the letter to my new address, they sent it to my old one.

I understand that this was done so if my new address was not my real new address, I would be notified at my old address. But what about in the case that the change was legitimate? Fortunately, I got the letter due to a mail forwarding service, but what if the forwarding service failed or was not applied?

I think this is creating a bigger security issue in case the new person living at the old address gets this letter and is able to hunt me down.

If you’ve been keeping up with my blog since earlier this year, you might remember that sometime in late March, I started having a sudden surge of visitors coming to my door. This is an excerpt from my blog post from March 30, 2011:

If you happen to be reading this and you know where and in which room I live, please don’t visit me, and please stop sharing the information. I become very annoyed when people come knocking at my door before 8 AM when I’m still sleeping. I’m on the verge of asking my apartment staff to electrocute my door so people will stop knocking on it.

And as a side note, this isn’t just today either. There has been a sudden spike of visitors this past week or two, so I’m guessing that someone figured out what room I live in and is starting to spread this information to whomever wishes to find out. So I highly discourage you from trying to visit me, because I’ve resorted to not answering my door at all because of all the strange people that show up here.

I really don’t want this to happen again, and now I’m starting to think that a security issue like that was the reason my old room number was leaked (which was 424, for all of you who asked me while I was living there; I don’t care if you know it now because I don’t live there anymore).

 

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Clumpy and Misshapen Hair

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My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Today happened to be a day that I, for once, did not have morning classes.

But that doesn’t matter. There was a fire alarm at my apartment this morning, so I left to main campus ear­ly anyway.

Sometimes I wonder what I possibly could have done to cause good luck to eschew me like the plague.

I didn’t want to stand outside in the freezing cold to wait for the fire department to come into our apartment and tell us that there wasn’t really a fire and it was just some idiot who doesn’t know how to use his oven, so I quickly packed everything up and headed to the library. I didn’t get a chance to shower, so if you happened to see me in person today, now you know why my hair was particularly clumpy and misshapen.

During my sociological enterprise lecture, we had a guest lecturer come to talk about sexuality on Face­book. I think the most interesting part about this presentation was that the guest lecturer’s hair was pink.

From what I got out of the presentation, this sociologist basically did research by interviewing a lot of homosexual and bisexual people about their experiences with their sexuality and how much of it they reveal on Facebook in what manner. The bulk of the presentation felt like the lecturer was biased in favor of homosexual and bisexual people, and it seemed like the lecturer was just complaining about how homosexual and bisexual people are not treated in a perfect manner by their peers.

She was audacious enough to even say that in the new Facebook timeline interface, “coming out of the closet” should be added as one of the default life events that you can add to your timeline, along with events such as getting married and having your first child.

I didn’t mention this during the presentation because I didn’t want to point out how pathetic of an ar­gu­ment she had, but I’m sure you can clearly see why that’s a horrible suggestion. According to Wiki­pedia, about 3.8% of Americans are LGTBQRSTUV. Why would anyone cre­ate an item that would only be used by 3.8% of the pop­ulation?

(Update: Thanks to a reader named Alexa for pointing out that the percentage of LGBT is 3.8% and not 3.5%; I forgot to add in the 0.3% of transgenders. It has been fixed above.)

On my way back from class, I witnessed an old woman with a cane crossing the street at a speed of about a kilometer per hour and holding up traffic. You see the theoretical comic scenario all the time, but I actually saw it in real life.

That definitely counts as an accomplishment.

 

The Daily Shoot (@DailyShoot)

#DS570: Illustrate time in a photograph today. (Assigned June 8, 2011.)

An out-of-focus shot of my iPod.

iPod Touch Time

 

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“Is Someone Sitting Here?” “Go Die.”

This post is over 14 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

I had an eventful morning today.

After stepping out of the shower, I noticed that my electric razor was plugged in and charging overnight through a power strip that wasn’t turned on.

Discouraged, I grabbed my steam iron’s cord and plugged it in while walking back into the bathroom to brush my teeth.

After coming out with sparkly clean teeth, I noticed that I accidentally plugged in my mini-oven rather than my steam iron. Apparently, my subconscious mind wanted to iron my clothes with oven plates.

In other news, I don’t understand why people come into a lecture hall and ask if someone is already sitting in an empty seat near you.

Sure, it might be considered respectful to make sure the seat is not already occupied, but it annoys me out of my mind because the seat is clearly empty and nobody is already sitting there. If someone was actually sitting there but temporarily left, you would think that they would leave their bag or other stuff behind so nobody sits in their seat.

If they were truly concerned that they were actually causing an inconvenience to someone else by ac­cidentally taking their seat, they should at least spend the time to formulate the question so it doesn’t inconvenience the person being asked the question. Something along the lines of “are you saving this seat for anybody?” would be much better and more intelligent.

So if you’re someone who asks “is someone sitting there,”

Stop.

 

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Hey Look, It’s My DNA.

This post is over 14 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

You might remember a few weeks back that I took a picture of a mussel and a baby squid from my zoology lab. According to my website access statistics, that blog post got passed around quite a bit (probably because of the baby squid and not the mussel). Unfortunately, there will be no more pictures of adorable baby animals anymore, because the remainder of the labs that involve animals are dissecting dead ones rather than looking at alive baby ones.

Such as next week, we’ll be dissecting a rat.

I’m pretty sure everyone will hate me if I post a picture of that on my blog, so if you really want to find out what that looks like, you can go to Google Images and search for “rat dissection.”

Fortunately, we didn’t dissect anything this week, and instead we learned about meiosis. As a part of the lab, we extracted DNA from our own cheek cells. Pictured below is mine.

DNA

I love how my camera focused on my lab partner’s notebook and her jacket rather than on my DNA.

For those of you who haven’t noticed yet, the white wispy stuff in the test tube is DNA. It was extracted through a process of scraping off cheek cells, adding a substance that opened up the cells, then adding another substance that made the DNA rise up to the top.

 

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My Reminders App is Fixed

This post is over 14 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

If you read my blog post from three days ago, you know that I installed iOS 5 and had problems getting my Reminders app to work. I asked for help on my blog, but I got more people asking me what I meant by the + button missing than people trying to help me out.

Also, people are still sending me suggestions, so I decided to announce that I managed to get my Re­minders app working. And for all of you who were curious what I meant by the + button, I took a screenshot of the app so you can see what I mean.

Reminders App

The problem was that I did not have Reminder syncing enabled in iCloud. Once I turned on syncing for Reminders, I was able to start adding reminders to my list. I don’t know why it’s necessary to sync your reminders for you to be able to even use it in the first place, but either way, I’m glad that it’s working now.

On the other hand, I’m not very glad that it’s not compatible with syncing with Google Tasks. I like to add tasks and reminders to my list of things to do from my computer because it’s a lot faster, and I use Google Tasks relatively frequently. It would be nice if it was able to sync with Google Tasks so I would able to access my task list from my mobile device. Google Tasks compatibility wasn’t available in pre­vious iOS versions, and I was hoping the OS upgrade would provide something basic like this, but apparently not.

 

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