March 2004 Archives

March 04, 2004 — I received a letter today that said "Urgent Priority! Red Alert!" There were several other markings and phrases to indicate that I needed to open this letter immediately or the world might end. Upon turning the envelope over, I saw it was from Rolling Stone. I wondered what Rolling Stone would be sending me that would be so urgent. Maybe they wanted to put me on the cover! How exciting!

Turns out that my subscription is almost due and I should renew. I've actually been getting letters like this every week for the past 3 or 4 months. Entertainment Weekly is doing the same thing. I get lots of super important mail. A lot of it is from companies I don't even do business with like people who want me to sign up for their credit card or long distance calling plan.

In my life I have lots of priorities. Lots of things that need urgent attention. Magazine subscriptions and long distance providers are not among these things. All these junk mail people are dilluting the meaning of the red alert. It's yet another example of the boy who cried urgent priority. It's a shame because when they do decide to put me on the cover of Rolling Stone I won't even know because I'll have thrown out the letter.

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March 05, 2004 — I've put some new pictures online from Pittsburgh, Madison, and Park City, UT.

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March 08, 2004 — Things happen from time to time when you travel so you gotta play it cool. But the numbers don't lie. This weekend I spent 29 hours getting to and from my destination and 29 hours at my destination. And I didn't go to India or anything like that. Just New York. Nonetheless, I had a good time for the short time I was in New York. Here are some new pictures.

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March 08, 2004 — From time to time I get into these conversations where a bunch of friends and I come up with baffling questions. We brainstorm for a while but sometimes we still don't come up with a good answer. I've decided to start taking these questions to smandel.com in the hope that some smart person out there may be reading and may know the answer.

Today's question involves using the article "the" in front of proper names of locations such as "The Ukraine," "The Bronx," and "The Haight." Most locations are not prefixed with "the," so the question is: when do you use "the"?

As Greg points out, this is an especially tough question because Google usually strips out "the" when doing a search. Besides, I thought it would be more fun to ask people I know than to research it myself. Don't be afraid to use the comments link below if you know the answer or have a good theory.

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March 11, 2004 — For those of you who haven't seen me this week, I would like to announce that I have shaved my beard. To save myself from having this conversation with each of you when I see you, let's do it here.

You: "Hey, Seth. Shaved the beard, huh?"
Me: "Yup."
You: "How come?"
Me: "Just getting ready for the warm weather and I'm going on vacation."
You: "Wouldn't want a beard tan, huh?"
Me: "No, that would suck."
You: "You look so much younger."
Me: "Uh... thanks, I guess. I keeping hearing that. It seems it's unanimous now. Beard = older. No beard = younger."
You: "When did you do it?"
Me: "Sunday night."
You: "Did it hurt?"
Me: "Not at all. I used a buzzer and then a razor."
You: "Cool."
Me: "Cool."
Awkward silence.

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March 11, 2004 — I will be out of the office from Friday, March 11 to Monday, March 22. Should you require any blog entertainment in my absence, please contact the following Web sites, listed in the order of how long I've known each person:

Adam Koniak | dumbEngineer | coffefog | Monzy.com | ASEEM!
jpearce | John Davin | bhendrix.com | The J.Minnick Experience

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March 22, 2004 — Two new Web sites to add to my list of links. First is my brother's new site for his practice. The other is Brad's campaign site for his run for the Pennsylvania State House.

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March 23, 2004 — I'm back from my first cruise and as you may have expected, I have some observations. I had an awesome time but it's more fun to complain, so here are my thoughts:

• Ned? Ned Ryerson? It felt a little like that movie Groundhog Day with the same things happening over and over. Like how there was this great reggae band by the pool which was awesome until I realized that they kept playing the same 8 song set over and over again. There was this semi-edible pasta dish with this mushroom cream sauce. It was decent until I noticed that each meal featured the same sauce with a different shaped pasta. The same song played as we entered the dining room each night.
• With a little bit of this and a little bit of that. There are only so many times I can do the Chicken Dance, YMCA, Macarena, and Electric Slide in one week. The plethora of these group dance songs begged the question: what ever happened to Hands Up? Gimme your heart, gimme me, gimme me.
• The tourism industry has no confidence in the diversity of musical preferences and knowledge of the general public. Apparently, every piano bar, island restaurant, karaoke bar, dance club, and pool band is limited to songs that have permeated so deep into popular culture that every member of al Qaeda can sing along. Although I love these songs, there's only so much Sweet Home Alabama, Piano Man, Sweet Caroline, and Brown Eyed Girl you can handle. Apparently, Hey Ya and In Da Club are the only songs from the past five years that Osama can rock out to.
• Observing people make mathematically ignorant statements around a roulette table never gets old.
• Water so clear you can see to the bottom? Nope. Hundred thousand dollar cars? Not everybody got 'em.
• A cruise can't help but make you think of the "Take What You Need Principle". As I've said before, just because you could eat all you can eat does not mean you should eat all you can eat. Nonetheless, people will eat until the morning light (and forget about the worries on their mind). And the cruise line does nothing to discourage this behavior. There are huge pourable jugs of salad dressing next to the salad bar and about a five gallon tub of wasabi next to the sushi bar. And it all gets consumed.
• Are you done with your glass? The only thing worse than fat people are fat cheap people. Living on a budget is fine. But sitting in the hot tub and bragging about how sneaky you are for sneaking on bottles of water, collecting people's left over plastic souvenir glasses at the end of the night, and cutting off you son's debit card because he had the nerve to charge a $2.50 bottle of Coke makes you look like an asshole. A cheap asshole.
• If you have multiple chins, you should apply sunscreen to all of them.

Again, the cruise was a blast and I'd definitely recommend it for a relaxing vacation. The only piece of advice I'd give is: watch out for that first step. It's a doozy.

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March 24, 2004 — New pictures have been posted from Erica/Dave's Wedding and the Carnival cruise.

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March 25, 2004 — Some of you may recall my fun with fractions experience from The Gap. The story involves the difference between 40% off and 25% off plus an additional 15% off. I argued with them until I got my coat for the price I was promised. I was very proud of myself for squeezing that extra $3 out of them.

Well, what goes around comes around. For the past month or so, I'd been getting about five hangup messages on my Pittsburgh answering machine per day. Since I'm often travelling about, I simply ignored the messages when I was away and unplugged my phone when I was home. After about several hundred hangups, I decided that I would plug the phone back in, answer it when it rang, and catch my stalker in the act. As you clever folks may have figured out by now, it was The Gap.

Apparently, it turns out that I never actually paid for my coat. Between finance charges and late fees, they expected me to pay around $160 for my $80 coat. Unlike the store clerk, the credit card division has a firm grasp on compounding percentages.

After some discussions, it turned out to be a big misunderstanding. I actually never got my card or bill since I have my mail forwarded and they don't forward credit cards. After some smooth talking, I got them to reduce all the fees and penalties and now I only have to pay for the coat. I don't remember what the coat originally was supposed to be, but I'm pretty sure that they snuck that extra $3 back in there. I guess that kid at The Gap wasn't the only one to learn a little lesson from this experience.

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March 30, 2004 — Congrats to Sara on her job promotion!

The pleasure is all on this side of the table. She doesn't have a case of the Mondays! This is not a suck! Free drinks courtesy of Sara at Flingers. Perhaps some pizza shooters and extreme fajitas too. These Office Space references have been brought to you by Greg, Shaina, Aseem and Ish. You may now return to reloading and watching the random pictures show up.

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