I'm surprised I never wrote about this before:  I'm absolutely, unbelievably, indisputably not a morning person.  It takes me about 4 hours to fully wake up.  Yeah sure I can run, read, drive, and work, but I still don't feel awake until about 10am.  It doesn't matter if I get 15 hours of sleep or 5.  It doesn't matter if I drink 7 espressos or nothing at all.  It doesn't matter if I start my day with exercise or inactivity.  It's always the same.  And people know this.  They've told me.  "Good God, you look horrible.  Did you get any sleep at all?"  Yeah, I got like 10 hours of sleep and I got up over 5 hours ago.  But thanks for pointing that out. 

I usually try not to do much at work before 9 or 10 if I can help it.  It's my time to eat my breakfast, drink my coffee/tea, and wake up a little.  I used to work on a project with people that started at like 8am.  And they didn't start off slow; they started at a sprint.  The loud walker would come to my office and tell me all the things she wanted me to do that day.  I would sit there and try to pretend to be fully functioning.  Then about 2 or 3 hours later, I would go to her office and try to figure out what she asked me to do, without actually coming out and asking her. 

If you're around me in the morning, the best thing you can do is keep quiet.  I'm not a big talker, and my listening abilities aren't exactly at peak functionality in the morning.  Your best bet is to write it all down and send it to me in an email at around 10am.  That's about when I'll be able to respond.  Or if you can cure my inability to wake up, that would be good too. #health

One of the most hideous and ridiculous things that happens atop peoples' heads is the comb over.  Wikipedia defines a comb over as "a hairstyle worn by bald or balding men where the hair on one side of the head is grown long and then combed over the bald area."  Calling this atrocity a "hairstyle" is quite a stretch.  It's more like a "joke" or a "mistake" or a "failure to admit baldness".  Whenever I see a comb over, I'm tempted to have a little heart-to-heart with the perpetrator.  "Hey man, listen.  You're bald.  Everyone knows it.  You couldn't hide it if you spray-painted your head black.  So just admit you're bald and move on.  Lots of people are bald.  Being bald doesn't make you any less of a man.  Having a comb over makes you less of a man." 

I think it's oddly appropriate when a comb over goes horribly wrong.  I saw a guy at a restaurant the other day who grew his hair out to about 8 inches long so that he could slick it over the top of his completely bald head.  He looked ridiculous.  And as the meal continued, part of the long stuff started to unstick from top of his head and dangle down the back.  He looked like Gollum from Lord of the Rings.  It was both funny and gross at the same time. 

I've already decided that I won't have a comb over when I go bald. 

On an interesting side note, the comb over was patented in 1977. #lifestyle

I was talking to a guy from my church recently, and he said something awesome and funny about his job:  He said he's not willing to do what it takes to get to the next level.  It's not that he doesn't have the ability or the credentials.  It's not that it's unattainable or impossible.  It's just that he's not willing to put in the time or the effort to make it to the next level.  It sounds like someone else's criticism of him, not his own personal statement.  I think it's awesome because he's made up his mind to not make his job the focus of his life.  And he's not a failure; he's a married man with a kid and a house.  He's not struggling.  But he knows that the next step in his job will require more time and more effort.  He's just not willing to do that.  And that's awesome. #business

I don't think I fully understand the purpose of autographs.  Yes, I see the point of meeting a famous person and having a little smalltalk with them.  And I understand the idea of getting something that belongs to a famous person.  But getting a them to sign a little piece of paper for you?  It just seems a little pointless.  What are you planning on doing with that little piece of paper?  Keeping it in your wallet?  Hanging it on your wall?  What will you tell people who ask about it?  "That's the piece of paper I got the famous person to sign."  That's dumb.  I can see the purpose behind getting an autograph on something like a baseball or a picture.  But having a book full of autographs?  Meh. #psychology

I edited the AbsoluteRSS plugin to fix the same problems in the comments feed.  I changed "the_content" to "comment_content", and made a few other similar changes. #technology

Drywall is a building material used in walls and ceilings of houses.  It's made of gypsum sandwiched between two sheets of thick paper.  Sheetrock is a brand of drywall. 

All my life, I've called it drywall because that's what my dad called it.  Some people would refer to it as Sheetrock, and it always threw me off.  But I just learned recently that I've been right all along.  I went to Home Depot to buy some drywall and noticed that there are other brands of it besides the Sheetrock brand.  Although I ended up buying the Sheetrock brand, I bought "drywall", not "Sheetrock".  It's like calling a tissue a Kleenex or a copy machine a Xerox.  I've written about this before. #products

I grew up in a house with a well, so we used to wash our cars by hand.  This went on for the first 22 years of my life.  I used to see places that offered to wash your car for money and I'd think, "Why would anyone pay money to have their car washed?  Buncha idiots." 

Then I got married and moved into an apartment that didn't have a well or anything close to it.  I still couldn't justify paying for someone else to wash my car, so I went to a self-washing place in beautiful downtown Dover, NJ.  I would put some quarters in a machine and wash my car as fast as possible, because the quarters bought me a certain amount of time.  For about $4, I could wash my whole car.  Not bad. 

Then one day, for some reason, I went to a paid car wash.  I think Wendy might've convinced me that the $8 was worth it for someone else to wash my car.  So I tried it. 

And, good Lord, was it awesome.  I drove up to the entrance, put my car in neutral, and let the big car washing machine take over.  I watched soapy water being shot at my car at high speeds.  I gazed at big finger-shaped sponges move back and forth across my windshield.  I was tempted to open my window to touch the "big spinning thing" (technical term).  It was hypnotizing.  I felt like a little kid watching his first fireworks display. 

Ever since then, I've loved going to the car wash.  Even when they keep increasing the price and giving me mediocre customer service, I just can't stop going back.  I'm addicted to the car wash. #travel

This application launcher launches programs that are written in XUL, which stands for XML User Interface Language.  They can only be opened in browsers that support XUL, which means Mozilla/Firefox/Camino.  Pretty interesting stuff.  (via Digg) #technology

I learned an interesting thing in school one time (amazing, isn't it?):  My international relations professor said that everyone hates number one.  He used the argument in reference to every country on earth hating America.  His thought was that the reason everyone hates our country and our leaders and our foreign policy and our "westernism" is because we're number one.  We're in first place.  We're the "best" country in the world.  People didn't hate us 50 years ago, and that's because countries like England and France were number one. 

Whether or not this is true, it makes some amount of sense.  And here are three more examples: 

1.  Microsoft.  People hate Microsoft.  Even though 99.7% (I know this is wrong) of the world's computers send emails through Microsoft mail servers using Microsoft Outlook and run on Microsoft Windows, people hate Microsoft.  They complain about having no other choice and being screwed by a big corporate monopoly.  But I think another part of that hatred is because Microsoft is on top.  They're huge.  They're unbeatable.  They make usable and popular products.  And we hate them for that. 

2.  Google.  A year ago, people couldn't stop praising Google.  They offer great services and make reliable products that do amazing things.  But then people started realizing that Google was number one.  And that's when the hatred started.  I just read an article about the top 25 reasons to hate Google.  Sure these are valid reasons, but why don't these people just use a different service?  Go back to Yahoo or Ask Jeeves.  Or maybe it's just easier to hate number one. 

3.  WordPress.  A lot of people probably don't even know what WordPress is.  But for the people in the web developing/publishing world, WordPress is a free content management system and website back-end.  And it's also a blog host.  WordPress.org (the software) and WordPress.com (the host) are two completely different things, though they involve the same people and most of the same software.  There's a huge community of developers and supporters for WordPress, and it keeps growing everyday.  What I didn't realize until recently was that people really hate WordPress.  Comments posted on Digg show that people think WordPress is unreliable and failure-prone.  Or maybe they hate WordPress because it's gaining ground to becoming number one in the web publishing world. #technology

Attention idiots:  EXpresso is a Portuguese newspaper.  ESpresso is a type of coffee.  Get it right.  The name "espresso" actually refers to the three different definitions of the word "express": 

1. a coffee made expressly for one person
2. with the flavours 'expressed' from coffee grounds under pressure
3. a coffee made at express speed.

However, this does not give you the right to call it "expresso". #food