If I Didn't Tell People, Nobody Would Know I'm An Idiot

I just did a Google search for “Google.”  I need a vacation.

Good job, Jeremy.  Now the NSA knows that you're a moron.  They keep track of your internets searches, you know.  

Whether or not that's true, there's actually a mildly plausible explanation as to why I ended up doing a Google search for Google.  Also, in my defense, pretty much the instant I pressed the Enter key, I realized what I had done and felt shame...so I've got that going for me, at least. 

Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery.

First of all, you loyal Blag readers will learn something about this that the folks who only read the Sametime Status at work won't.  This actually happened last Friday, so it technically didn't "just" happen.  You feel better knowing that.  So, here's how this came about.  I was planning some little snack foods to take to a party in the relatively near future.  They involve putting things in little phyllo dough shells.  You are now jealous and want one, but stay with me for a little while longer here.  I wanted to do a quick search on the internets to see which, if any, of the local grocery stores carried them, so I pulled up The Google.  I did this by typing Google.com into the address bar, as most of us are wont to do.  I type "phyllo dough mini shells" into the Google's search box and away I went, hoping to see if the "In Stock Nearby" button would work...it totally didn't.  So, I thought to pull up the website for one of the local supermarkets directly.  I go back up to the address bar and type in what I presumed to be the address of the store, though I wasn't sure...so I put in...for the sake of the blag, we'll call it "shopcorrectly.com".  I figured, if this was the actual web address for the ShopCorrectly chain of supermarkets, then the website would load just about instantly.  When it didn't, I decided to myself that the address must be something different, so I should go back to The Google and search for the supermarket's real address.  To do this, one would normally go back to the address bar and type in "google.com" as we have done previously to great success.  Well, as you might suspect, since the "ShopCorrectly" website didn't load immediately, the browser window was still showing my previous Google search results, including the search box at the top.  In my haste to get back to The Google, and spacing out on the fact that the search page was still being displayed, I clicked in the search box instead of the address bar, typed in "google.com" and hit enter.  Strangely enough, a search for google.com on The Google yields results including The Google.  Immediately sobered by the fact that I had done something this dumb, I at least had the presence of mind to type "ShopCorrectly" into the search box rather than clicking on the link to The Google to do my search.  I realized two things right then.  First, this story would make for a great, if self-deprecating, Sametime Status.  Second, my brain is mushy and I need a vacation.  Fortunately.....

Today is Jeremy's last day of work for 2013!  He'll be on vacation until Thursday, January 2, when we'll return with a whole bushel of 2014 Sametime Statuses waiting to be unleashed upon the unsuspecting world.  

So, from all of us here at Jeremy Is In The Office, have a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Any Other Holiday You Celebrate At This Time of Year (AOHYCATTY), safe travels for anyone hitting the roads and airports, and I'll see you all in 2014!

Jeremy Is In The Office will be Out Of The Office from Thursday, December 19th until Thursday, January 2nd.  So long, 2013!  

It's A Little Safer Now, Too

As of today, people have been flying for 110 years

And boy are their arms tired!  

So in case you were caught unawares, today marks the 110th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' historic flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.   

Very strictly speaking, powered flight was achieved three days earlier, when Wilbur Wright did manage to get the Wright Flyer airborne for 3 seconds before stalling and crashing, but that was not considered a successful flight.  On Dec 17th, 1903, the first four successful trips on the world's first plane were achieved, the longest being around 200 feet.  

Since then, we've improved upon the Wright Brothers' design a little bit and have planes that can carry hundreds of people thousands of miles at a time, and others that can carry one person a thousand miles in a matter of minutes.  Yeah, Science!

How About It, Kellogg's? (Part II)

Companies should be required to post the Floating Coefficient of breakfast cereals on the box

Ah, yes.  The seldom-referenced Floating Coefficient.  Often symbolized by a lower-case Greek letter Eta, it represents the ratio of amount of a buoyant object above the liquid surface to below.  Very useful in nautical engineering, but applicable in culinary fields as well.  

Right you are.  So, we've all had this problem: You pour yourself a nice bowl of cereal, then you pour in some milk, causing all of the cereal to rise and promptly dump out all over the table.  Not only annoying in that you now have to clean up a mess, but you either lose cereal or have to eat it dry out of your hand.  Boo.

All of this nonsense could have been avoided if you knew in advance how much your cereal would float before you put the milk in.  You could then adjust the amount of cereal in the bowl to account for the additional milk space required.  As you know, it varies from cereal to cereal.  For example, "Life" cereal doesn't float at all, so you can fill your bowl right to the brim with cereal and add in milk with no danger of spillage, whereas Rice Krispies are mostly air, and float about as well as a beach ball.   

Using these examples, the math is actually quite easy.  "Life" cereal will remain entirely below the milk's surface, since it has a Floating Coefficient of 0.  Therefore, when filling your bowl, you have to leave Milk Space, (or Sm) of the volume of milk multiplied by the Floating Coefficient.  Since Eta is zero, milk space is equal to zero.  Boom.  Done!  Rice Krispies, on the other hand have a Floating Coefficient of 8.3, so whatever volume of milk you plan to add, you have to leave 83% of that space empty at the top of the bowl, or else you will spill cereal.  

Turns out not to matter in most cases, since you just fill the bowl regardless of cereal type and just make a mess, but I like to believe that with a little extra information, and the ability to make a better cereal choice, a lot of this can be avoided.  If you knew in advance that 60% of your cereal would float above the milk surface, you would leave a little extra room at the top.  But since the Floating Coefficient is left entirely hidden by the cereal manufacturers, spillage is all too common.  What is it these factories don't want you to know?  Do they want you to waste cereal?  Are they working in conjunction with dairy farmers to destroy breakfast?  Do I like asking conspiracy-theory type rhetorical questions?  Since the government isn't about to step in, I think it's up to the people to stand up.  Demand that your cereal's floating coefficient be displayed prominently on the box!  Your breakfast depends on it. 

Today's Blag Brought To You By The Number 4

Earlier today, I broke a mirror underneath a ladder while ignoring a chain letter email.  Should be okay, right?  

So, hello to all of you triskaidekaphobics out there, and welcome to Friday the 13th!  Jeremy's been spending his whole day killing albatrosses by spilling salt on them while they're under an umbrella.  It's not looking too good for him right now.

Today, we celebrate superstitions!  There are apparently quite a few of them out there that cause bad luck, and I'm not quite sure how many I can check off my list today, but since it's Friday the 13th, I figure it's as good a time as any.  I still have plenty of time to kill a spider in the house and whistle once it gets dark outside. 

All in all, I've learned a couple things today.  There are a number of places you can't hold your breath or are supposed to hold your breath, depending, upside-down horseshoes are a no-no, as are 50-dollar bills and certain arrangements of shoes (be it under the bed or on top of the table).  It's just too much to keep track of. 

On the other hand, most of these luck-based superstitions are pretty easy.  in addition to salt, it's bad luck to spill pomegranate seeds.  I don't have pomegranate seeds very often, so I'm probably in good shape here.  Peeing in cemeteries is frowned upon.  I seriously doubt I'll ever have a problem with that, or not being allowed to shoot a black rabbit.  So, I guess it all depends on how much bad luck the more unavoidable things give me as to how much bad luck I'm going to have.  These things aren't very well quantified (aside from the 7 years thing for the mirror), and I really can't imagine that all things provide equal amounts of bad luck.  Somebody should do a study and publish a chart or something....

I Have To Ask People Not To Sue Me Too Often

Not overly comforted by the fact that the CEO of the company that makes Cold-Eeze is named Karkus

Jeremy is, of course, referring to ProPhase Labs and their CEO Ted Karkus, who I would remind Jeremy, has a large team of expensive lawyers on retainer.  

So we all know Cold-Eeze...they make cough drops with zinc as one of the active ingredients.  The idea being that zinc causes cold and flu viruses to be unable to attach themselves to receptors in the body, effectively shortening the duration of illnesses.  I'm told they work very well, but have very little first-hand knowledge.  

The CEO of the company that makes these things is named Karkus...which is, of course, a homonym of "carcass," which seems to be the exact thing you're trying to avoid becoming by taking medicine.  Strangely enough, I don't find this very encouraging. 

Looked Like Rudolph Sneezed All Over Everything

And now we’ve learned an important lesson about storing Christmas candles in the attic

That lesson would be the fact that candle wax melts at a temperature less than the attic reaches during the summer months.

This fact is at least a little disturbing.  Attics get hot...it's kinda what they do.  But, near as I can tell, candle way melts somewhere north of 140 degrees F.  I suppose there exists the possibility that the $3 holiday-themed candle that I bought on sale last year isn't made of the highest quality wax money can buy, but how much that changes the melting point is an exercise left to the reader.

Yeah, nobody's doing that calculation for you.  

So, I got my Christmas decorating done recently.  This includes putting up a tree, lighting and decorating the aforementioned tree, putting some lights outside, hanging up a novelty-large stocking (which seems to remain empty...what's up, Santa?), putting out the Christmas rubber duckies, and making the house smell like Christmas.  This final part is achieved through the use of novelty scented jar candles purchased on a whim last year when they were on sale for like 3 bucks apiece.  Since they are all Christmas-scented (one of them is mine, one is holly berry, and I totally forget what the purple one is supposed to be, but it totally does smell purple), I tucked them in with the Christmas decorations when I put everything away back in January.  All of that stuff goes into the attic which reaches some pretty lofty temperatures, even with the addition of the attic fan.  Those temperatures are apparently enough to melt $3 scented candle wax, apparently.  This turned out not to be much of an issue for the white and purple candles, since they were stored upright in their plastic tubs.  Sure, the wicks disappeared into a little pool of wax, but nothing a little flame and a pair of tweezers couldn't solve.  The holly berry candle (arguably my favorite), suffered something of a worse fate.  The lid of the jar, with its flimsy plastic gasket, was insufficient to hold back the torrent of melting candle wax from an entire summer's worth of attic heat, and red goo poured out all over the tub, ruining a length of silver garland, a spool of white ribbon, and half of a string of lights.  Several other boxes of decorations are now tinted red as well, with no significant damage to the contents.  

This is crap.  

So, in addition to having to replace the lights and the ribbon, my house will no longer smell red and there's not a lot I can do about it.  Unless, of course, I find myself in a store selling Christmas-themed items between now and December 25th, and they happen to have holly scented jar candles.  I guess the odds of that are fairly decent.  And if I do manage to replace the candle, I'll have learned a very valuable lesson in jar candle storage.  Always store candles vertically when they go into the attic. 

There's Something About Radishes

Somebody may now explain to me why “Moon Over Parma” is stuck in my head

It's a fine Ohio-themed Christmas song.  Aside from the fact that you're not from Ohio, you don't live in Ohio, it's not a Christmas song, and it's not Christmas.  Other than that, it makes perfect sense, in a Jeremy sort of way. 

So last week, right around Thanksgiving, I was having a conversation about bowling and referenced this song.  There's a line in it about going bowling, and it's one of about 4 lines of the song that I actually know.    Over a week later, on a random Friday morning, the stupid thing pops back into my head and I can't get rid of it.  

At least yesterday, I had a new actual Christmas song stuck in my head, and that made sense.  Of course, when I say "new," it's one of the oldest Christmas songs around.  The song is called "Gaudete," and it comes from either the 15th or 16th century.  The lyrics are entirely in Latin, which led more than one Youtube commenter to announce that he would wait until there was an English version of the song to listen to it.  Good luck with that one, buddy.  Either way, it became relevant to me because Euro synth-pop recording artist Erasure recently put out a Christmas album, and it features this song.  As with all Christmas albums, the majority of Erasure's is boring derivative crap, but this one particular song is very well done, and worth a listen if you have Youtube And 4 Minutes To Kill Today. 

At some point overnight, this catchy and timely tune was replaced with Drew Carey's voice singing Bob McGuire's song.  I sometimes wish these things didn't happen. 

The Prize Was The Best Parking Space For His Horse

I like to think that back in feudal times, some king handed out a “Sentry Of The Century” award

This would assume the fact that back in feudal times, they actually had awards ceremonies.  I think the rampant celebration of doing a good job is a relatively recent phenomenon.  

I would agree, but at the same time, we don't really have sentries anymore.  Sure, there are security guards and whatnot all over the place, but I don't think they're called "sentries."  It's a little sad, really.

Also, back in feudal times, if you were a good sentry, that usually means that you were still alive after the castle was attacked.  Being a bad sentry probably meant you were dead.  Also a little sad.  

But great motivation for being good at your job!  

So whether or not some knight of the realm was presented with the title "Sentry Of The Century," I prefer to think that it happened.  You can choose to believe it or not...but it's certainly more fun if you do.   

Buy Me Stuff!

Okay, everybody.  What is the perfect gift for the engineer in your life?  Seriously...I need to tell people what to get me

This is important, folks.  Jeremy wants the best possible stuff under his tree.  He just has no idea what that is.  

It's true.  I'm plum out of ideas on what to tell people to buy me for Christmas.  I'm also ridiculously busy with meetings today, so I don't have time to write anything more interesting here.  It's up to you!

Celebrate Cyber Monday By Buying Me Presents!

Attention Stores:  It is now acceptable to play “Jingle Bells”

This public service announcement brought to you by all of us here at Jeremy Is In The Office as well as the world as a whole.  Thank you for your cooperation.

If you're like me, you've been to a store in the last month.  Perhaps it was a clothing store, or a department store, perhaps a home improvement store, or even a grocery store.  Regardless of the type of store, your experience has been largely the same.  Christmas trees, ornaments, lights, and music.  This is perfectly acceptable for this time of year.  Here's the problem...the last month is NOT THIS TIME OF YEAR!  

Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, we had our whole Black Friday deal happening, Small Business Saturday was a Thing, and today happens to be Cyber monday.  This conglomeration or events officially concludes the "Thanksgiving Season" and kicks off the "Christmas Season."  Where exactly the line gets drawn is a little ambiguous, but it's right around now.  It was not a month ago.  

I say this because it seems like I have to.  "Jingle Bells" has been pervasive in society for over a month now, and by the time Christmas actually happens, everybody is sick of it.  The same holds true for every Christmas song, but I chose Jingle Bells because it's a universally recognized song for the Christmas season that doesn't actually say "Christmas" in it...have to be culturally neutral for a Sametime Status at work, you know.  Either way, you get the idea.  People get tired of Christmas music after a couple weeks, tops.  We're already there, and most of us just started our Christmas shopping three days ago.  

It's up to you, Stores.  Help stop this nonsense.  Leave Christmas to the Christmas season, and don't play Jingle Bells before it's time to play Jingle Bells.  Thank you, and Merry Christmas.