Swipe-free credit card Oct 29, 2010
My credit card company sent me a thing in the mail that works the same as a credit card except you don't have to swipe it.  Instead you just wave it in front of a magnetic or infrared reader.  And it's tiny so it fits on your keychain, or it can come with an adhesive back so you can stick it to your cell phone.  The problem is that this method of payment isn't accepted everywhere, i.e. merchants have to buy a special swipe-free credit card reader, and it's not nearly as ubiquitous as a traditional credit card reader.  So while it's convenient because you don't always have to bring your wallet with you, you have to know whether or not a store accepts swipe-free payments, which means you're better off bringing your wallet with you just in case, which makes the swipe-free payment tag completely useless. #money
Different values (1) Oct 29, 2010
Sometimes I learn things that blow my mind.  Such was the case a while ago when Wendy told me that not everyone thinks rationally.  How an irrationally-thinking person doesn't irrationally decide to jump off a building to attempt human flight or go on a killing spree just for fun, I may never understand.  Rational thought generally prohibits these actions; irrational thought, I would presume, might make them sound attractive. 

As we were waiting at the gas pump the other day, I watched a guy in a little car pull into a parking space where he had plenty of room on either side and he had all the time in the world to do it right, but he totally pulled in crooked and over one of the lines.  I laughed at how much of an idiot he was, but Wendy simply said, "Not everyone values parking straight."  That almost made my head pop, though not because of anger.  It's because I'd never thought of the fact that different people have different values, even with seemingly universal things like parking straight.  Maybe some people don't value getting all their waste products in the toilet, hence why public bathrooms are so disgusting.  Maybe some people don't value not smelling bad, which is why they eat onions and garlic and don't wear deodorant.  Maybe there's a fairly simple reason for a lot of the things that piss me off, and aside from the obvious "you can't control what other people do, so stop trying," it's largely because not everyone is exactly like me.  This is probably something I should've learned in kindergarten. #psychology