Sometimes I have Mentos moments.  Mentos moments are when things happen and it looks like a Mentos commercial.  Remember the commercial with the guy in a single-color business suit who sat on a freshly-painted bench?  He ate a Mentos, rolled around on the bench, and left with a pinstripe suit.  Or the guy who was crossing the street and got separated from his friends?  He ate a Mentos, climbed through the backseat of a car, and rejoined his friends on the other side of the street. 

Most of my Mentos moments happen while driving.  Last week, I was backing out of a parking spot and going right, and there was a car to my right who down backing out and going left.  The person was blocking the right lane, which is where I would've driven past them.  Instead of pulling back in and letting the person go before me, I had a Mentos moment and drove to the left of them instead of the right.  I find myself breaking all kinds of rules in parking lots, and it's great. 

The other day as I was driving home from work, I was at a stop sign and I needed to get into the "going straight" lane at the next traffic light, but the "turning left" people were blocking my way.  Instead of sitting there feeling dejected and waiting for the light to change so I could catch an opening, I just went around behind everybody and got into my lane.  It was a beautiful moment. 

Some of these Mentos moments are hard to describe, but the looks on the people's faces say it all.  If my assumptions are correct in that all human beings are against me and everything I do to outsmart or outperform anyone else is a point for me, Mentos moments gain me good points. #entertainment

Cars companies all sort of work together.  The following lists of companies all have something to do with one another, ranging from putting different emblems on the same car (Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable) to collaborating (Nissan Z Coupe and Infiniti G35 Coupe) to owning shares of each other's companies. 

Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda, Volvo, Jaguar, Land Rover, Aston Martin
GM, Chevrolet, Buick, Pontiac, GMC, Saturn, Hummer, Saab, Cadillac
Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep, Mercedes-Benz
Nissan, Infiniti, Suzuki
Toyota, Lexus, Scion
Honda, Acura
Audi, Volkswagen, Lamborghini #travel

When I was in elementary school, we used to celebrate Valentine's Day by bringing in a bunch of Valentines and handing them out to the people in our class.  Except I think I remember having the option of giving certain people Valentines while not giving other people Valentines.  So basically, it was a popularity contest, with the fat and smelly people getting the least number of Valentines (sorry if that's offensive; it's what I remember).  I think I also remember noticing that this was a terrible system and giving Valentines to certain people who didn't have many. 

What a terrible holiday.  Join me and Wendy in boycotting this fascist invention they call a holiday.  But continue eating M&Ms and other Mars products. #sociology

These pictures are amazing.  They show closeups of fake little people working on giant pieces of food with jackhammers, shovels, and brooms.  Really weird but cool stuff.  (via Cynical-C) #technology

Wendy and I have some occasional problems when we're ordering food because we're both sort of picky.  We've gotten used to repeating ourselves when we ask for something.  Wendy can say "Can I have a water, no ice, no lemon" faster than anyone I know.  Every time she orders any type of sandwich, it's an ordeal.  And it's not because it's complicated.  It's because it's different (read:  not normal).  Wendy will order a turkey sandwich with lettuce, oil, and vinegar.  "You want cheese?"  No.  "Mayo?"  No.  "Onions?"  No.  Just turkey, lettuce, oil, and vinegar.  "Peppers?"  No.  "Bacon?"  No.  "You sure about no cheese?"  Yes.  And it's like this pretty much every time.  Getting people to understand that you don't want cheese on your sandwich is a pretty big feat.  They just can't comprehend a sandwich without cheese. 

Taking this into account, it's quite refreshing to order a sandwich without having to clarify and/or repeat yourself.  I just ordered a turkey and swiss sandwich with lettuce, oil, and vinegar.  The lady said ok.  Five minutes later, I had my sandwich, made right, without a single question.  I guess it's because it's a pretty standard sandwich.  Maybe it's because I covered all the main food groups:  meat, dairy, vegetables, fat, and vinegar (vinegar's a food group, right?).  Either way, it's nice to get what you want. #food

Did you ever get out of your car or walk into a public place and think to yourself, "Am I wearing pants?"  This is a question I ask myself fairly often.  Sometimes I just feel like I'm forgetting something, and I have to double-check to make sure I'm wearing a normal amount of clothing.  I guess it's sort of like the bad dream where you're naked and in front of a bunch of people.  Except that this is real life awake time.  I haven't yet forgotten to wear any major clothing, so I'm not sure where this fear comes from.  Any psychology people out there that can explain this? #psychology

I'm a big fan of geeky TV shows.  Whenever I look through the various garbage that's regularly on TV, I usually stop at things like Modern Marvels, Engineering Disasters, MythBusters, and CSI.  My dad used to watch "learning" shows on the Discovery Channel and History Channel, and I used to hate it.  But now I'm totally into learning shows.  It might have something to do with studying engineering in college, but it might not, seeing that many people who study engineering don't have much interest in it after college (i.e. Wendy, Kripa). 

I have a slight problem with the commercials on the Discovery Channel.  I've noticed that they show the same 3 commercials during every commercial break.  And the weird part is that 2 of the 3 commercials are for other shows on the Discovery Channel, so I'm assuming no money is being made or exchanged in the process.  I'm not sure how that works, but as long as there are new episodes of MythBusters, I'm ok with it. 

Some people may argue that CSI isn't really a geek show.  I could agree with that.  But I think I watch it from a geek perspective.  I like seeing the cool tools they use to solve crimes and the lab techniques they use to test out their hypotheses.  A recent addition to my geeky crime-solving shows is Numb3rs, which is probably the geekiest show on TV.  It's interesting to see the math and physics they use to solve crimes.  But I'm always a little skeptical of certain magic tricks that seem to give all the answers with little to no effort.  One of the things that always sticks out to me is when people are viewing camera footage and they say, "Enhance that part".  This is a myth; it doesn't actually work that way.  Sure, cameras can zoom in, but cameras generally don't record things in extreme detail.  That would take too much power and digital storage space.  And digital zoom doesn't make things clearer; it makes a tiny blob into a bigger blob (you can't get more information from the same amount of pixels).  But hey, it's TV.  If they keep showing it, I'll probably keep watching it. #entertainment

What's the deal with legal paper?  It's sorta like normal 8.5 x 11 paper, except it's unnecessarily long and doesn't fit in any folders or filing cabinets.  The world isn't made for legal paper.  And what do we gain by using legal paper?  Nothing.  Sure we can fit more stuff on a single sheet, but is that worth it?  I personally don't think so.  Boycott legal paper! #products

I just learned the difference between a trackback and a pingback: 

A trackback is a small message sent from Site A to Site B to notify Site B that Site A wants to reference a post on Site B and provide a way for Site B to link back to Site A's reference.  That's a very complicated way of saying a pretty simple thing.  There's usually a textbox in the post-writing section of a website to paste trackback links. 

A pingback is the same thing, except that it's done automatically by pasting a link in the post content.  So instead of pasting the trackback link in a separate textbox, the trackback is sent directly from the content textarea.  For example, if the sites referenced above could accept trackbacks, they would receive a trackback from this post because it links to them. #technology

My site is powered by WordPress, which has functions that automatically output several different RSS feeds.  An RSS feed essentially allows a person to read the posts on my site without actually visiting my site.  Using an RSS reader (written about here and here), a person can view content from several different websites all in one place, without actually visiting any of those sites.  This saves time and generally makes things more convenient. 

WordPress automatically generates several different feeds:  RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0, RSS 0.92, and Atom.  These formats are all essentially the same, though they have slight differences.  The differences are sort of like the differences between Microsoft Word 97 and Word XP.  They're not that big of a deal, but if you had the choice, you'd probably go with Word XP.  With that in mind, I'd recommend using Atom, followed by RSS 2.0.  These are the most recent in terms of development, and Atom is the only format that's still in development.  This means that there will probably be an Atom 2.0 sometime in the future, but that's not something you need to worry about.  RSS 2.0 is copyrighted by Harvard and its development is frozen.  More info about the differences between these two formats can be found here. 

In addition to these site feeds, WordPress also generates several more specific feeds.  Each individual post has its own feed, which basically tells a reader when the post receives new comments.  For example, my "Intolerance of lactose" post (which had a surprisingly large number of comments) has it's own feed.  There's also a feed for all comments on all posts, which was recently updated and written about here.  There are also feeds for each category (such as the food category) and each page (such as the about page).  The bottom line is that WordPress generates an obscene number of feeds which have little to no actual purpose. #technology