johnrobe

I don't drink coffee, but the truth is, I wish I did. As described in my ongoing saga with the Cold Drinks machine, I need my caffeine from somewhere and to be honest, I'm jealous of all the coffee drinkers out there, for two reasons.

The first reason is how much everyone LOVES their coffee.

A friend who I won't name but who recently started reading the blog (you know who you are) was a non-functional robot first thing in the morning, but as soon as she had some coffee became remarkably human. She made me buy a coffee maker for my apartment even though I never drank the stuff. Although it was not logical to be jealous of someone being incapacitated every day until they had a specific beverage, I was jealous nonetheless.

I love seeing the gratification on people's faces when they get that coffee that they really need, or that coffee that is extra special and delicious to them. I don't understand their joy, but I wish I did — kind of like how I feel whenever people look at those crazy 3d puzzles that I can never get, GAH I hate those things. But that's another rant.

The second reason I'm jealous is the coffee LINGO. All you coffee people have a special language that only you speak, and I feel left out. I don't like excluding people, but deep down, I'm a language snob, and I secretly love when I'm happily conversing with someone about things that other people won't get because they don't know what "interface affordance" is, for example.

I admit it, okay? I don't know what the difference is between a latte or a cappuccino or an espresso. I know one is really small and one is really big and that there's steaming milk involved with at least one of them, but I don't get it! There, I’ve said it.

And don't get me started on Tim Horton's lingo. I'm standing there vainly looking for a chocolate coconut doughnut and trying to decide what I'll have instead and someone in front of me says something non-sensical like, "I'll have a double double" and the person behind the counter just KNOWS what they mean? How do you learn this stuff?

Which brings me to today.

I have a cold, and I'm trying to drink my fluids and get my vitamin C, so I went to McDonald's and was waiting in line to order an orange juice, when the person in front of me asked for, and I quote, "A small hot coffee please."

The friendly but bizarrely named Nickeisha behind the counter blinked and said, "A small what coffee?"

"A small hot coffee please," said the man.

Poor Nickeisha didn't know what to do, and I admit I was a little confused as well. It's an interesting phenomenon. Obviously, when you're reading this, you're thinking, "What's so weird about this? It's a perfectly normal sentence with a perfectly valid use of the word 'hot'". But when you're actually standing there in line, taking orders all day, when someone throws in a word that you don't expect, your brain can suffer a little jolt.

If the guy had ordered a "hot sausage mcmuffin" I imagine she would have been confused too, but probably not as badly. With coffee, you have so many weird things you can ask for; decaf, cream, sugar, milk, double double, non-fat, vanilla etc., that you sort of go into a mode where you're ready for some sort of specific subset of input and when someone says something that fits but doesn't fit at the same time, your brain sort of goes on tilt.

It doesn't help at all that in this case the modifier was "hot". I mean, what else would it be? Sure, there's such a thing as iced coffee, but not at McDonalds. I mean, he could have asked for a small liquid coffee too and although valid, it would have been confusing.

Anyhow, Nickeisha, being the pro she was, soon recovered and got the man his coffee. As my mind wandered, thinking about the way both she and I had been messed up with his inclusion of the word hot, I decided to see how she'd react to another one, so when it was my turn, I asked for a large cold orange juice, but sadly, I couldn't do it with a straight face and my experiment was ruined. She got a laugh out of it though.

John Food, Rants

Anyone with a cat knows that cats and keyboards don’t mix. Someone at Google seems to know that too.

I was slightly distracted and so I didn’t really see that Lance was sitting on the keyboard until after he had somehow managed to not only go to Google, but also sit on the letter P and then hit search. The results are shown above.

There are a few things that jump out at me when I look at it:

“pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp”… is too long a word. Try using a shorter word.
For some reason, this cracks me up. It’s so helpful.

How about the fact that there are actually matches? Apparently people who love the letter P as much as my cat are into digital photography. Perhaps they’d like to see the latest Canon Digital Rebel xT?

Or the unfailing consumerist optimism that has them refer these search results to Google Checkout?

The best part though?

Suggestions:

* Try different keywords.

Oh REALLY??? Thanks Google, I’ll pass that on to Lance.

John The Weeb

At work we have a fundraising thingie where you can send coworkers “Candy Grams” and the proceeds go to charity. I usually pull down a respectable haul (I had more than anyone one year, but now that I’m a scary manager guy, I get a lot less, alas).

This year, the bags had a lot of different things in them, but one of my favourites, for no real reason I can quantify, are conversation hearts. There’s always something fun and amusing about what they have to say.

This year was a really weird mix though, so I thought I’d share them with you:

- CUP CAKE
- MISS YOU
- IT’S LOVE
- WHY WAIT
- HOW NICE

Then things get stranger and more situational:

- SLOW DOWN
- TIME OUT
- NICE TRY
- HIGH 5

And then there’s the rather inexplicable:

- NOW

Which I have to assume is a misprint. Either that, or it’s one for those situations where you’re hanging out with your sweetheart. You’ve told them you MISS YOU CUPCAKE and they go for it a little too vigorously, forcing you to tell them to SLOW DOWN. They ask you WHY WAIT and you can’t really think of a good reason, so you tell them, okay, NOW.

Afterward, you can share a HIGH FIVE.

John General

It’s a commercial excuse to sell greeting cards, but I love it!

Hug everyone you love today.

If you need something to get your love motor running today, check out the site that almost knocked Cute Overload off the first place on my RSS feeds — The Daily Puppy!

Also, for those of you who “get” Homestar Runner, there’s a Valentine’s edition of Teen Girl Squad! (For those of you about to click that link not knowing anything about the link, Teen Girl Squad is a comic strip about girls drawn by a boy who knows nothing about girls).

And now, I’m off to fight my way through the snow.

John Love

I'm watching Blade Runner. I haven't seen it in a year or two, even though I own both the original and the director's cut.

I notice that it's set in 2019 — 12 years from now.

Apparently in that 12 years:

- Los Angeles will become a dark, continually rainy wasteland where people barely speak English

- Almost all animals will be extinct. “You think I’d be working in a place like this if I could afford a real snake?”

- There are robots who are almost completely indistinguishable from human who fight battles for us off the shoulder of Orion.

- Flying cars.

- Blimps fly around enticing us to move to the offworld colonies, where we have a chance to begin again.

We are apparently in for a heck of a dozen years.

And yet … the most unlikely thing of all, in my opinion, is that people will be smoking in their offices at work.

For the record, I think that it’s amazing that the director’s cut can be so different from the original and not only be a better movie, but do it while fundamentally changing the heart of the movie. For all that though, I don’t know if I prefer it. It’s better in 90% of the ways that it changed, but I don’t like some of it, and those parts I really don’t like. I’m talking about the unicorn and what it implies. I think it’s cheap.

There, I’ve said it.

John Movies

A lot of people ask me if there is anything new to report in the ongoing love affair / feud I have with the Cold Drinks machine at work (see “Cold Drinks Machine - Why Do You Mock Me?” and Cold Drinks II - Electric Buggeryou), so I thought I would give a little update.

For a long time, the Cold Drinks machine and I had moved into a state best described as “détente“. It’s like we were lovers who couldn’t get along, but realize we have to go to the same parties because of common friends. Once in a while, I’d pass by and nod in a sort of polite but cold, “How are you doing Cold Drinks machine?” way, and it would stand there, humming and glowing while pretending that it didn’t miss me.

Once in a while, as often happens in these situations I imagine, I would experience weakness, temptation. A man can’t help it… he has needs. He gets thirsty and sleepy. He needs diet coke, and he doesn’t have time to go downstairs to a store to buy it. And so, sometimes, I have turned to the colds drinks machine for convenience. It was meaningless but gratifying.

It’s been when I go to the Cold Drinks machine for these, what I will call “drinkie calls”, that I’ve noticed a change. The Cold Drinks machine hasn’t caused me a problem once. Not a single “won’t take my coins” frustration. Never once sold out of diet coke.

Now, you might be asking yourself, “Maybe the Cold Drinks machine was repaired and that’s why you haven’t had any problems”. Sure, that’s logical thinking, but just yesterday as I was passing through, I heard someone complaining that they couldn’t get a coke because the machine wouldn’t take their loonie. They gave up so fast — they didn’t seem to know that it takes real persistence to get the Cold Drinks machine to pay off. That’s another story though.

No, I know what it is. I watch MoPo. Now that I’ve given up on the Cold Drinks machine except for the occasional drinkie call, it misses me.

Sure, I’ve had this theory before, and as it turned out, it was all part of the Cold Drinks machine’s evil plan to suck me into a cycle of new frustration, but it’s different this time, and here’s how I know.

Today, I walked up to the machine and gave it a serious, “I need a drink, but I’m not here for anything more, Cold Drinks machine” look. I put in my loonie, and expecting no nonsense, I pressed the button by reflex. That was when I heard it, the sound I hadn’t heard in a long time — the annoying jingle-clink of the coin running through the machine harmlessly. My reaction was instant and visceral. The Cold Drinks machine was up to its old tricks again and our state of détente was over!

My finger was cocked for a serious wagging and just as I leaned over to pick up my coin out of the change return slot, I heard another sound… a low rumbling, then a clank, then another rumble and a clunk — it was my diet coke falling into the pickup tray.

What the …? I picked up the drink, confused, because I was sure I’d heard the coin return sound. I leaned over and reached in and sure enough, there it was, my loonie.

The Cold Drinks machine had just done the unthinkable — it had coughed up a freebie.

This could only mean one of two things. 1) It misses me and it’s trying to say it’s sorry for all the hard times it put me through in the past or 2) It has kicked off a whole new level of mind games, starting with me getting something for free, and no doubt ending with me either destroying the machine with an axe, or throwing myself off the 4th floor into the atrium.

Only time will tell.

John Rants

The most important thing to note in this story is that I am not talking about myself, no matter how old you think I am.

Last week, I was in a washroom at the food court of a major downtown building in the finance district. Unlike the food court of, say, the Eaton’s Centre, which is mostly teen girls no matter the time or date, this food court is dominated by bankers for the most part, who have a much wider age demographic.

Warning, although I’m keeping this PG-13, it’s a slightly icky topic.

As I stood at the urinal, preparing to do my thing, one of these banker types walked in and proceeded to demonstrate that he really, really needed bifocals. He came in, unzipped, then looked down, couldn’t see what he was doing, tried to peer over his glasses, then turned his head sideways to try and look around the glasses out the side, then eventually had to reach up with his free hand and lift his glasses onto his forehead. Then he’s still not happy because now his vision isn’t inhibited by his glasses, but clearly, he can’t see very well at that distance without the glasses either, because now he’s squinting and leaning over, one hand aiming, the other holding his glasses, all while trying to take a wizz.

Now add to the image that he’s holding a newspaper under one of his arms and through all his contortions, it starts sliding out, so he start doing an improvised chicken wing flapping motion to keep it in place.

Try and picture this. Your mind probably can’t get itself around the problem I admit. I’ll tell you this much though … you do not want to be standing next to someone when all this is going on! Seriously people, if I start doing insane stuff like this, just tell me I need bifocals and let that be the end of it.

John General

Here’s exactly why I love my Wii … as demonstrated by Conan O’Brien and Serena Williams. Just watch them and the fun they’re having. Watch Conan beat Serena. I have no idea how good a tennis player Conan really is, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that Serena is better than him — but that doesn’t matter in Wii Tennis — and nobody cares, because they’re having such a fun time. It reminds me of when I play Timmi in Wii tennis. She’d CREAM me in real tennis, but we’re pretty close on the Wii, and we have a riot when playing.

EDIT: Bah! NBC has taken the content down. General description is: Conan challenges Serena to a match, then rips off his tear-away suit to reveal a 70s style tennis outfit. They then play a game on the Wii, where Serena gets a quick lead, but Conan comes back to win. The real issue I think was that Serena was swinging too hard. She’s scary good.

John Sports