Knee replacement Dec 28, 2005
I know a lady in her 50s who just underwent knee replacement surgery.  They gouged open her leg, snipped off tendons attached to her leg muscles, and sawed the existing bones out, including parts of the leg bones.  Then they inserted a new knee made of metal and plastic. 

That was right around Thanksgiving weekend.  No more than 2-3 weeks later, this woman was walking.  This is absolutely amazing.  I'm over the fact that doctors can replace bones with pieces of metal.  That's cool in itself, but I'm over it.  The part that I'm amazed at is how quickly this woman recovered.  Sure, she went through (and continues to go through) a rigorous physical therapy program.  They had her out of bed within a couple days of the operation, and they continued to push her beyond her limits.  That's the nature of the recovery program.  But I'm still completely amazed that a person can have a piece of their leg sawed off and replaced by a chunk of lifeless material, and they can recover fully and quickly. 

When I was 16, I sprained my ankle playing soccer.  A sprain is when the ligament (bone to bone connection) becomes slightly torn or snaps from a sudden over-extension.  I had a slight tear, and the trainer said it was a "bad sprain".  This bad sprain took about 3-4 weeks to fully heal, during which time I was doing strengthening exercises and keeping it wrapped.  My point here is that it took me about the same time to heal from a slight ligament tear as it took for a woman to heal from a "slight" muscle tear, bone removal, and foreign object insertion.  Amazing. #health
Opinionist Dec 28, 2005
Opinionist - "One fond of his own notions, or unduly attached to his own opinions."

This is just a friendly little reminder that this website is a collection of my uninformed, unfounded, sometimes racist, and often offensive opinions.  I'm an Opinionist.  That definition at the top defines me.  Britt posted a few comments recently and sort of brought this idea to light.  I don't write this to accuse her.  I write this to agree with her.  Unlike some people who try to discount my personal preferences, Britt disagreed with an opinion I held about a specific issue and backed up her argument.  I welcome this.  If you disagree with something I say, go ahead and tell me by leaving a comment. 

But if you disagree with everything I say and you want to write about how much you hate me, get your own website. #psychology
December to remember Dec 28, 2005
I can't stand those stupid Lexus ads on TV and radio where they talk about their annual December to Remember Sales Event.  The idea is that instead of buying the same old golf products or nice sweaters, a thoughtful wife would buy her husband a brand new car.  And not just a run-of-the-mill beater car.  A Lexus, a $35,000 (and up) luxury automobile.  Maybe it's because I drive a Toyota Camry, the cheaper little sister of (or maybe the older, cheaper mom of) Lexus.  Or maybe it's because I'm a rational, thinking, breathing human being, and I wouldn't blow a ton of cash on anything, let alone an expensive automobile, without my wife's input. 

And I like how the guy in the commercial is pleasantly surprised.  "Ooh you got me a gray one! [Sips champagne out of alligator-skin Prada bag while lighting a Cuban with hundred dollar bills]"  If my wife bought me a car without telling me, I might be a little peeved (Wendy, if you're reading this, take note).  If you happen to have $30,000 lying around, just give me the cash.  I could get a couple Hondas or Toyotas for that price. #entertainment
Computer obsolescence Dec 22, 2005
I got a laptop in college in the fall of 2000.  It was a Compaq Armada E500 with a Pentium III 650 MHz processor, 10 GB hard drive, 128 MB RAM, Windows 98, and Office 97.  Within a few months, I upgraded to Windows 2000 and Office 2000.  After a few more months, I bought a PCMCIA wireless card and was hooked up to the then-brand-new idea of WiFi.  In another year or two, I upgraded to Windows XP and Office XP.  At some point along the way, my hard drive crashed, but it was under warranty, so I got a new one.  Five years later, this laptop was still running great and was pretty up-to-date.  Sure, I couldn't run any graphics-intensive games or extremely processor-intensive programs, but I could run everything from email to office applications to Unreal Tournament to SolidWorks.  My point is that my computer didn't really go out of date.  And it's still not completely out of date, although it's no longer with us.  It passed away from an unfortunate illness. 

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when computers would become obsolete.  Back in the days of Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS, a brand new computer became completely obsolete in about 2 years.  And there was nothing you could do about it, unless you were super-smart and could replace major internal components.  The differences between a 1990 computer and a 1992 computer were unfathomable.  No new 1992 programs could run on a 1990 computer.  There wasn't enough hard drive space or RAM. 

These days, a computer from 1998 can keep up with the times because of the internet.  Without upgrading any hardware, a Gateway Pentium II 400 MHz computer (my parents' old computer) could still work.  Sure, you could get a computer that's about 10 times faster/better/bigger for about 1/5 the price.  But the point is that technology isn't progressing as quickly as it used to, and computers aren't becoming obsolete as quickly as they once did. #technology
Without the www (1) Dec 22, 2005
Yesterday, I changed a little part of my site that should have no effect on anything whatsoever.  I changed the official location of my site from "http://www.ddhr.org" to "http://ddhr.org".  The one with the www will still work, but all internal links on the site won't contain the three w's.  This shouldn't change anything, but I guess we'll see what happens. 

The reason I made the change was because I went to the trouble of getting a short domain name for a reason:  So it would be short.  Those three w's aren't really needed for anything as far as I know, so there's no reason why they can't be removed. #technology
Bills (2) Dec 22, 2005
The first bill I ever got was a phone bill in my freshman year of college.  As soon as I got it, I figured out how to pay it online.  Since then, I've tried to use the internet to pay every bill I get.  That's what was so cool about paying my traffic tickets a few weeks ago.  And that's what's so not cool about people/companies that require you to mail in a check.  It hardly ever happens, but every once in a while, I have to mail a check to something or someone.  But even with those things, I try to use my bank's BillPay system.  In reality, there's no need for actual paper checks.  A check is just a written notice that says I'm agreeing to transfer money from my bank account into another bank account.  I think it's pretty easy to do away with checks.  I'm just waiting for my church to agree with me. #money
PigeonRank Dec 22, 2005
If you've ever wondered, "How exactly does Google manage to find the right results for every query as quickly as it does?"  The answer is PigeonRank.  The idea is that "low cost pigeon clusters (PCs) [can] be used to compute the relative value of web pages faster than human editors or machine-based algorithms."  Google founders Page and Brin "developed groundbreaking technology for converting poop to pixels, the tiny dots that make up a monitor's display. The clean white background of Google's home page is powered by this renewable process." #technology
Strike revisited (4) Dec 22, 2005
I mentioned my strike breaking idea to someone, and it was brought to my attention that many of the transit workers are on strike against their will.  And they're being fined daily for it.  They were forced to go on strike because otherwise they'd be kicked out of their union and never be allowed to work as a transit worker again.  That's a shame.  Seriously.  But if I were in a powerful position (which I'm not), I would get rid of that entire union and hire back everyone who actually wanted to do some work, starting with the people who were originally in the union. 

I realize that many people in unions don't really want to be a part of their union, but were forced to join as a requirement for the job.  That's the case with my mom (now retired).  She was a secretary at my high school and was forced to be a part of the evil teacher's union.  I understand why unions exist and I realize that they can promote some amount of good.  But she received little to no benefit from being a part of the teacher's union.  She worked more hours.  She worked summers.  She worked winter breaks, spring breaks, and teacher convention holidays.  But she was still forced to fork over some of her hard-earned cash to some big, litigious body that didn't care about her. 

I was listening to the radio this morning, and I found my new hero.  In 1981, President Ronald Reagan gave a 48-hour warning to the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, which was on strike because they wanted more money for doing less work.  After the 48 hours, he fired all 11,359 of them and replaced them with people who wanted to work.  That's awesome.  It just goes to show that it's a relatively feasible thing to do.  However, it was only feasible because the replacements were some of the people who weren't on strike and also some military personnel.  Hiring 33,000 new transit workers might be a bit difficult. 

So in conclusion, I feel bad for the transit workers who don't want to be on strike.  It sucks for them.  But I don't feel bad for the people who want to make more money for doing less work.  I hope that the people who deserve a raise will get a raise, and the rest of the people will be replaced by people who are willing to work. #business
Paperboy Dec 21, 2005
This article from the San Francisco Chronicle is about a paperboy who's 65 years old and who's been delivering newspapers for the past 28 years, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.  Wow.  He says he plans to throw papers until he's 100 or dead, whichever comes first. #entertainment
About.com Dec 21, 2005
I'll go on the record and say that about.com is the worst website in the history of the world.  It was recently talked about favorably in some tech press because it started using WordPress.  But I still hate the site.  It's so full of useless ads and unrelated links that it takes hours for a single page to load.  But the site has such an unbelievably large amount of information that it always come up in search results.  Whenever I see it as one of the results, I automatically move on because I know I'll find nothing useful. 

Boycott about.com.  It's stupid and slow. #technology
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