Riding in Florida (oh the wackos)
Just got back from a week at Universal Studios, and I must say Orlando drivers are creative.
For example, the first evening we were there I stopped at a red light at a T-intersection. This was after a day at the theme park. You know what I mean — 60 minute lines for 2 minute rides in 95 degree heat and everyone with 0 patience after the first 30 minutes.
Anyway, there were four lanes on my side of the street: the two left lanes had to turn left, and the two right lanes had to go straight. I was in lane two, going straight, and at the head of the line. The two left lanes got a green advance arrow and started moving. A moment later, a lady in a dark blue SUV pulled up next to me on my right. She motioned that she wanted to cut in front of me. I shrugged and motioned “sure”, assuming that she wanted to cut in front of me after the light turned green.
Nope, that wasn’t what she had in mind. While the light was red, she drove forward into the intersection, slashed in front of me, and attempted to barge into the rightmost turning lane. It was full, so she had to wait until the green arrow was past red before she could make the turn. At that point my light turned green, but since she was stuck in the intersection and blocking my lane, I had to wait for her before I could move.
It was kinda like this — me in blue, her in red…
Most interesting to me was how no one cared.
The next day, I was stopped at a different red light at another major intersection. Ahead of me, some guy in a beat up compact sedan decided he had enough of waiting and cut across the median to make a U-turn. The median was a grassy depression about 30 paces across. So he went out, down, over, up, and then peeled out in the other direction. It took a dozen seconds and was in plain sight of everyone in both directions.
Again, no one cared.
And this was only the first and second day we were there. There were other stunts as impressive as these but I, like the locals, no longer cared. When in Rome?
Try a Coke Float and You’ll Never Go Back
I admit I’m a Coke addict. I find Pepsi too sweet and I like the bite of Coke. However, I don’t want all those horrible calories in my drinks. I’ll save my calories for chocolate and ice cream, thank you very much.
That’s why the Coke folks created Diet Coke. But I don’t like the taste of aspartame. So what to do?
Simple! Add a little Coke to your Diet Coke.
A little Coke neatly covers up the taste of aspartame. Yes it adds a few calories. So park your car a few stalls farther away and walk the next time you go to the supermarket, instead of driving around for fifteen minutes looking for a stall that is 30 seconds closer.
Anyway, I was so pleased with my discovery that I started thinking: What other combinations might work? So I did some experimenting.
Warning: Do not try this at home! Coke and Pepsi products are a carefully balanced combination of chemicals with names no one can pronounce. Combining them willy-nilly could seriously affect your health. Like Morgan Spurlock, I have put my body on the line in the name of science so you won’t have to. You’re welcome.
| Coke + Diet Coke | tastes like Coke with strong cola notes and a crisp finish |
| Coke + Diet Pepsi | blech |
| Coke + Diet Dr. Pepper | tastes like mud with a hint of blech then a flaccid finish |
| Barqs + Diet Coke | not technically a cola, but I love Barqs… and this combo works |
| Pepsi + Diet Coke | sweat sock soaked in sewage |
| Pepsi + Diet Pepsi | tastes like Pepsi (good if you like Pepsi) |
| Pepsi + Diet Dr. Pepper | tastes less aspartamey but also less Peppery, I believe the Dr. is out |
| Mountain Dew + Diet Mountain Dew | definitely not a cola, but everyone likes ‘Dew; unsurprisingly, this combo works well |
One conclusion is immediately apparent: Coke products work best with Coke products, and Pepsi products work best with Pepsi products. They must have done this on purpose.
Side note: I’ve left Coke Zero out of my tests because I’ve seen Splenda on the bottle, and sugar alcohols make my intestines blow up like pork sausages left in the sun too long. However, I think the Coke folks recently took out Splenda and put in aspartame, and now Coke Zero and Diet Coke are basically the same thing. That means my testing should apply equally well to Coke Zero. Perhaps if I can secure further funding for my experiments I will retest with Coke Zero.
Oh, and the name Coke Float? That isn’t mine. I always order my creation in restaurants, as in, “Can I get a Diet Coke with a bit of regular Coke in it?” One waiter in TGI Fridays replied after some moments of puzzlement, “Oh, a Coke Float.” So hey, if you are that waiter, please let me know so I can give you proper credit.
And you the reader… if you try these combinations, let me know how it goes.
(another) awefull rant
Continuing my rant from earlier this week, let’s look at decimate. It was originally used to describe a punishment inflicted on cowardly or mutinous Roman legions. Every tenth soldier would be killed, as chosen by lot.
Hence the root deci- for “tenth”. Think of a decimeter (or decimetre for all you Brits and Canucks) which is one tenth of a meter (or metre for all you Brits and Canucks).
So decimate means “reduce by a tenth”. Yet somehow, decimate has come to mean “reduce to a tenth”. Or as used by the news media, “any number big enough to grab your attention that we can’t actually define”.
In fact, check out the Webster definition for decimate. It starts out with the correct definition then devolves to the wrong one.
So by this logic, a decimeter can also mean nine tenths of a meter. (Or metre for all you Brits and Canucks… yes, this is getting tedious.)
Here’s a fun one: awful. It can mean really bad, or really good. I’m serious. The original definition was “full of awe” — this makes sense. But now it means the opposite, which makes no sense.
Instead of fixing the problem, our English ancestors invented a new word to fill the gap: awesome. So far awesome has kept its original meaning, but its overuse in modern vernacular is awful.
How about PIN? It stands for Personal Identification Number. So why do people say “PIN number”? (You see that, right? They are saying “number number”.)
Same thing with LUN. Time to go all techie on you, so non-IT people can change the channel. Or maybe not, you can probably follow this and still find it amusing.
In the IT world, we use a lot of virtual disk drives. They are commonly called Logical Units, since they are real drives grouped logically to form a virtual drive. The main advantage is if one of the real drives crashes and burns, other drives can take over and you don’t lose any data.
Well, we need some easy way to identify this virtual drive, so we give it a number, because computers like numbers. We call it a Logical Unit Number, or LUN. Thus a LUN is a number that identifies a Logical Unit.
Well, everyone in the IT world (except me) refers to the drive itself as a “LUN”. It’s like calling your house an “address”. The address is how people find your house, it’s not the house itself.
In fact, when my colleagues want to know the number that identifies the virtual drive, they ask “what is the LUN number?” Yep, it’s “PIN number” all over again.
Sigh. You and I are the only sane ones here. And I’m not so sure about you.
Gone in an instantaneous
No one says instant anymore. It’s always instantaneous. The former and the latter are nearly the same thing except the latter has more syllables. More is always better, right?
It’s just like irregardless and misunderestimated. You may think the extra syllables make you sound smarter, but I ain’t kidding, they aren’t real words and they make you sound foolish.
And yes, ain’t is proper English. It’s a contraction of ‘am not’. For some reason, English speakers dropped that contraction but kept all the other ones. English is weird that way.
For the record, instant can be a noun or an adjective where instantaneous is only an adjective. Instantaneous has a much narrower meaning, basically it’s a much shorter instant. Nearly every time people say instantaneous they should have said instant. The reverse is not true.
While we are on the subject, what’s with this obsession of using “I” as an object? (See what I did there?)
For some reason, saying “you and me” has been universally replaced by “you and I”. For example:
I thought she was going to give the book to you and I.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. “I” is always a subject, the doer of the action, remember? You use “me” when “I” becomes an object, the receiver of the action. For example:
You and I thought she was going to give the book to you and me.
Remember the old grade school test: does “I” or “me” work on its own? For example:
I thought she was going to give the book to me.
Not:
Me thought she was going to give the book to I.
At least we still have instant coffee. Or maybe not.
A couple of manly breakfasts
If you don’t have time for the omelette, try these:
(1) I do all of this in a blender bottle which you can get at any health food or vitamin store. You could use a real blender but that’s overkill. Maybe you have a little hand blender?
Pour in about 8 oz milk or Silk. Add a scoop of protein powder, the kind that comes in massive bags or bottles and gives you 25g of protein per scoop. You can get protein powder anywhere, from health food stores to grocery stores and Costco. I think they are all pretty much the same but some brands taste better than others. I found chocolate flavor works best with this recipe but anything is fine.
Add a scoop of clear fiber supplement, like Benefiber or the Metamucil Clear and Natural. Bonus tip: if you use chocolate flavored protein powder and add orange flavored Metamucil, then you get orange chocolate, which is kind of like a Terry’s chocolate orange in liquid form… but I find the psyllium based fiber supplements get all clumpy.
Next, add a spoonful of hemp hearts for a little more fiber and protein, plus they add a slightly nutty flavor. You can get hemp hearts from Whole Foods or any health food store (I assume). They are kind of like flax flakes except softer in texture and milder in taste.
Shake up the concoction and drink. You need to give the bottle a swirl before every swig or the hemp hearts settle to the bottom. You’ll get around 30g of protein and a few grams of fiber. It’s almost enough to hold me ’til noon, but usually I need a few almonds at around 11 to get me through the morning.
Rinse out the bottle and put it out to dry. Boy was that ever easy, and you get to feel like Rocky except with hemp hearts instead of raw eggs. Progress.
(2) Here’s an even simpler one. First, wrap two strips of pre-cooked bacon in a paper towel, then zap in the microwave for about 20 seconds. Add a small dollop of BBQ sauce or HP sauce or whatever for dipping. Restrict yourself to a wee dot of sauce per morsel of bacon.
Then add a generous blob of low fat cottage cheese and a small blob of low sugar strawberry jam. Stir it up. Voila! Quick and easy.
It’s about 25g of protein but maybe 12g of carbs. Oh well. Live a little. You can always cut out the jam and sauce and be miserable.
(another) Midnight Writer 