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Losses Not Insured
From the section on “Losses Not Insured” in our new renter’s insurance policy:
War, including any undeclared war, civil war, insurrection, rebellion, revolution, warlike act by a military force or military personnel, destruction or seizure or use for a military purpose, and including any consequence of any of these. Discharge of a nuclear weapon shall be deemed a warlike act even if accidental. [Emph. added]
Ponder that last sentence for a minute. Someone thought that through long enough to think it worthwhile to add that. Someone was breathtakingly thorough. I think I’d like to have a beer with that person!
Synog
In the course of reading my RSS feeds this morning, I did a little research about a church in the Kansas City area. In the search results, another church came up as a “Missouri Synog” congregation. I laughed – synog sounds like snog, which is slang for “making out” – and Googled it. It’s funny almost every time!
Close the “Iowa Prenatal Care Survey” Gitmo
From a place of extreme sleep deprivation and slap-happiness, Jennifer and I would like to present our Selected Answers to the Iowa Prenatal Care Survey. It is worth noting that they present this survey in Scantron fill-in-the-bubble format, which ought to be considered cruel and unusual punishment for new parents.
Today’s date:
I have no idea whether it is day or night, let alone what day it is. Leave me alone.
How old are you?
Stop it with the hard questions.
Have you given birth to any other children?
Not today.
How old is the baby’s father?
6. He’s a leap year baby. PS – The next time someone who was born on Feb 29 smugly insists that they are six years old, I’m going to smack them.
How many people will be living in your household, including yourself and your baby?
This is a great question. The response box lets you enter from 0 (impossible) to 99 (hopefully also impossible). Must this be completely free response? Couldn’t we just say 1-9 and 10+? But no, we need to make tired people fill out more bubbles! So you get the scintillating choice between bubbling 55 and 56 people in your household. Lovely.
How many minutes did it take you to travel from your home to the hospital where you delivered your baby?
Ah, here’s a good application of free response bubbles. But, since we couldn’t decide between 4 and 6 minutes, we’re going with 7 so that I can bubble in 007 and pretend like I’m James Bond. High Quality Data(tm).
Is your baby expected to go home from the hospital with you?
No, she is her own person and we’ll love her no matter what decision she makes.
How are you currently feeding your baby?
There’s no bubble for on the couch, from the right breast, with a pretty safari-themed Boppy pillow.
How do you plan to feed your baby six weeks from now? (choose only one)
Only one? Okay, well… on the couch, then? But only from the left breast with a really ugly pillow from the loveseat.
How often will your new baby sleep in the same bed with you or anyone else?
Well, like I said, she’s her own woman, and when she decides that the time is right (and you better be married, missy!) she’ll pick the man she loves and sleep in his bed every night. Until then, she’s flying solo.
Have you felt sad or miserable much of the time over the past two weeks?
I was in labor yesterday, does that count?
We got tired after this point, but thought this was fun and wanted to share a little middle-of-the-night sarcasm.
Lord Uxbridge’s Leg
I am in awe of Wikipedia. It contains within its august pages a detailed history of the severed lower appendage of an otherwise minor nobleman at the Battle of Waterloo. Go read the article, the poetry (yes, poetry) is really quite hilarious!
Impeccable Logic
I think there’s something to this too:
“Drink wine, and you will sleep well. Sleep, and you will not sin. Avoid sin, and you will be saved. Ergo, drink wine and be saved.”
– Medieval German proverb
Thanks to First Things for this little bit of edification.
The Worst Show in the History of Television: Cop Rock
Jennifer was in the break room at work today when VH1 was showing “I love the 90s” for the year 1990. Apparently there was a show that ran for 11 episodes in 1990 called “Cop Rock.” This show fused a gritty television drama about police work with campy original musical scores to create the hideous love child of Cannibal: The Musical and Cops. (Another site describes it as “part ‘Real Stories of the Highway Patrol’ and part Broadway musical.”) It sounded too good to be true – at first I couldn’t believe that something this awful had actually been made, let alone broadcast.
Without further ado, I give you “Let’s Be Careful Out There.”
Dwell on this: Someone paid money to make this. Someone thought this was a good idea. Just let that sink in. There. That’s better.
Mothers be cryin’, man. Life in the hood really isn’t no piece of pie, is it?
If anyone can find me video of the purported scene where the courtroom jury turns into a Gospel choir singing “He’s Guilty!” I will give them $5.
Do the simplest thing that could possibly work
Nate and I dreamed up this list this morning:
Different programming languages’ approaches to “Do the simplest thing that could possibly work.“
perl: Do the simplest thing that no one can read.
C: Do the simplest thing that could possibly compile.
java: Just extend SimpleNamingSchemeWithAllNounsNameContainer.
C#: Do it in Java, only don’t suck as badly doing it.
python: Do it the only way that you can possibly write it.
COBOL: Do the simplest thing that no one alive today can maintain.
lua: Let’s take our application and embed Lua in it, then write an interpreter for a new domain-specific language in Lua and write our new feature in *that* language. Simple!
Got any others? Feel free to add them here!
What people really think when I talk
My friend and co-worker Nate drew me a picture today with the Mouse Gestures extension for Firefox. He says that when I talk, this picture shows what it’s like for him.
For what it’s worth, I don’t wear glasses anymore, and I don’t have a receding hair line – at least not yet. But who am I to question his artistic creativity?
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