monkey nonsense

http://metaatem.net/words.php!! now lazy people can make ransom notes with the click of a button! here’s a sample:

pretty cool! i think i might switch to flickr

i was having a conversation a couple of weeks ago with a friend and we got into a discussion over funny people.

my friend believes that there are very few truly funny people in the world, that most people we casually refer to as “funny” are more people who have a sense of humor, not necessarily funny. it got me thinking because i never thought about funny vs. sense of humor. i thought most of my friends were funny… hilarious even! (see here for some of their weirdness)

is there a difference between funny and sense of humor? i guess trying to distinguish between the two… a sense of humor can be mistaken for funny because if someone has a sense of humor, they’re usually laughing a lot and can appreciate funny things. if the person has a sense of humor about themselves, they may even be able to laugh at themselves which makes them appear even more like a funny person. a funny person is able to create humor themselves. if you stuck them in front of a group of people who didn’t know them, they’d be able to make the people crack up.

?? i dunno… is there a difference? do you know a lot of funny people? are they different than people with a sense of humor?

then got into this same discussion with talida… ’cause of this one person’s xanga. i think we might know people who know people who know people of this guy (heck, i think my sister may even know him but then again, she knows a lot of people) and his xanga is really hilarious! perhaps one of those truly funny people in the world? … is it weird to subscribe to a person’s xanga who u’ve never met before?

so i got my 3rd root canal yesterday, this time with my dentist in VA. i’ve, since i can remember, only had one dentist so i never really realized there are different ways to do stuff. (similar to how i never realized some doctors just prick your finger to get a blood sample. how does that even work!? i can only imagine it’d take forrrrrever to get enough blood for a sample! my doctor always used needles!)

so during my cleaning on wednesday, my new dentist noticed that couple of my fillings weren’t done properly. the hygienist even asked me whether i got my fillings many years ago (nope) or in another country (what is it with dentists who see my teeth?! first my old dentist asked me if i grew up outside the US where they don’t fluorinate the water? and now my new dentist thinks i went to another third-world country to get fillings!). apparently, they are done so poorly that my new dentist thinks it’s worth it to replace.

so it got me worried… have i been going to a shoddy dentist this whole time?! maybe this is why my teeth are screwed! boy am i glad talida recommend this good doctor! so i went in yesterday for my first root canal with this dentist. for my previous 2 root canals, my dentist referred me to this endodentist. though i now wonder whether my old dentist was good… i’m pretty sure this endodentist is good! i felt no pain during the procedure, he explained to me what was going on (even dangling my nerve in front of me to show me), and he was quick. like insanely quick! like i had just sat down and bam, my root canal was done! since he did my 2 root canals the same way, i kinda thought there was one standard way to do it.

but this time, the new dentist did things differently! first, i didn’t get stuck with one of those “dams” in my mouth. those things are really annoying and uncomfortable, but considering how quick my old endodentist was, it was really only in my mouth for like 15 minutes. new dentist used this craaaaaaazy powerful sucker (the thing nearly sucked my lips up!) to keep my mouth clean. but then my mouth was dry the whole time and i wonder how effective it was in keeping my tooth clean.

my old endodentist “hand” root canal-ed my tooth. new dentist told me he would be using a computer to help with the process. the whole time, i could hear these beeping sounds while the dentist was working. it almost sounded like a game. there would be one sound and then it would change to another sound and my dentist would react differently. kind of amusing… but a few times, i saw him looking at a screen instead of my tooth. kind of worried me.

after finishing cleaning the tooth, my endodentist would usually send me home with the tooth still open (at least the 2nd root canal was like this. i remember he told me it was to drain and make sure everything was gone from the area. i remember having to go multiple times to make sure there was no more problems and having to wait another week before getting my crown ’cause there was still problems.) this time, the dentist already closed up the hole and put a filling on it! i guess it doesn’t need to be drained? i kinda like it this way because i feel a bit more comfortable not having a hole in my tooth

then there was the whole time thing. in the end, my dentist took nearly a hour and a half to finish the root canal!

finally, my first 2 root canals didn’t require any medicine at all. this time, the dentist prescribed vicodin and amoxicillin. i think perhaps this time’s root canal was worse since i could feel pain in my tooth and because i ended up chipping it since it was so weakened. but yea… never had to take any medicine! not a fan of eating medicine. so far, i haven’t had to take the vicodin, but the doctor said to take the amoxicillin until it was all gone. hrm…

i hope my newest root canal will be ok…

i went to the dentist on wednesday. bad news, another root canal (this one being the “watchspot” my dentist warned me about the last time i saw him, ~1.5 years ago. yes i know you should visit the dentist every 6 months. but i’m scared of them!!) also, a couple of my fillings were done incorrectly… making them more prone to cavity (and also snagging my floss whenever i floss) so i scheduled the first of many appointments to fix my teeth for the 2nd.

my root canal tooth had been hinting at problems for quite some time. off and on, it’d hurt and then get better. the day before my dentist appointment, it started hurting again i attributed it to pre-dentist visit anxiety. my tooth was nervous! well, finding out i needed a root canal just kind of confirmed what i longed believed (but never acted on ), there was a cavity. and now it was massive.

so for the first time in the past couple of days, my tooth was feeling a bit better. it wasn’t hurting unless i bit on it. anyhoo, i was snacking on some cereal just now… paul newman’s! blueberry! pecan clusters! it’s great. happily enjoying my food… not chewing with that tooth, but around that area. i had been chewing exclusively on the other side, but worrying that i was wearing out the teeth on that side and making them susceptible cavities, i needed to spread around the chewing work!! i figured, the tooth being as sensitive as it was, it would yelp in pain before i got remotely close to biting down on it.

and then it cracked. i thought it was the pecan cluster, i chewed some more. little bits of “rocks” didn’t seem consistent with the pecan cluster. so i freaked out, realized it was my tooth and spat everything out (it’s ok. both my officemates are out today)

well… the good news is that it didn’t hurt as much as i used to think chipping a tooth would hurt. the bad news is, yup… it looks pretty bad. i had been wikipedia-ing cavities earlier today and made a comment to julie about how my cavitied teeth never seemed to show any indication of decay… none of those visible gruesome brown rot or whatever. i thought i had stealth cavities. not so… one of the pieces of tooth that broke off, while not as nasty as those pictures, is brown…

i had to set up an emergency appointment with the dentist tomorrow. the receptionist mentioned possibly needing an extraction … i’m hoping this chip isn’t that big and that they can salvage my tooth

BOOOO

CNN video about Potty Time Elmo.

Apparently one of the phrases that Elmo says “Uh oh, who wants to go?” sounds a lot like “Uh oh, who wants to die?”

I gotta say it kind of does!

http://www.cnn.com/video/partners/clickability/index.html?url=/video/us/2006/01/26/levitan.wa.elmo.book.confusion.kndo … i tried to save the link, not sure if this works

CNN had a link to the dumbest business news: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/101dumbest/?cnn=yes

here’s a sampling:
Winner, Dumbest Moment, Security
May I see my ID?

In February, ChoicePoint — the self-proclaimed “leading provider of identification and credential verification services” — admits that it sold the personal data of 145,000 people to a number of unauthorized recipients, including an identity-theft ring in Los Angeles. ChoicePoint thoughtfully offers the victims a free credit report — but still makes them pay to see the detailed information that was provided to the criminals. The incident kicks up an identity-theft furor serious enough to draw congressional hearings; the company later reports the incident cost it $21 million.

Winner, Dumbest Moment, Outsourcing
Told you we shouldn’t have rented that list from the Department of Homeland Security.

Blaming a mailing-list vendor for providing bad information, JPMorgan Chase apologizes for sending a form letter about its credit card services to an Arab American man in California addressed to “Palestinian Bomber.”

24. Damn those infernal computating hoochamagooches.
In November ex-MTV veejay Adam Curry logs on to Wikipedia and edits the entry about podcasting, playing up his role as an early pioneer and deleting mentions of other inventors. Caught by server logs that point to his involvement, Curry admits to the attempt but claims that — despite being smart enough to invent podcasting — he was befuddled by Wikipedia’s interface and altered the entry by accident.

26. And maybe the cops come three days later and find you stabbed to death on your kitchen floor.
“If there’s a burglar in my home, maybe I send an e-mail or a text message to the police instead of making a call.”
– Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom, on his VOIP service’s lack of 911 access.

36. We know why you fly … JetBlue.
The winner of the American Airlines “We Know Why You Fly” contest, which promised to award 24 round-trip tickets to the traveler who submitted the best video about his airborne experiences, turns down the grand prize. Why? Because American fails to cover the winner’s federal, state, and local income taxes, which amount to about $19,000, or $800 per ticket.

98. Call it a merger of equals.
A few weeks after eZiba.com sends out its winter catalog, the call center’s pin-drop silence begins to worry execs. As it turns out, a bug in a program designed to identify the best prospects on eZiba’s mailing list led to the catalog instead being sent to those deemed least likely to respond. “Sadly, our probability estimates were correct,” says eZiba founder Dick Sabot. On Jan. 14, eZiba suspends operations while seeking new investors to cover its cash shortfall. Overstock.com later buys the retailer’s assets for $500,000.

101. Little Big Man
In September, as the result of a typo in a spreadsheet, Electronic Arts issues an update to Madden NFL 06 that reduces 6-foot-3, 305-pound New York Jets lineman Michael King to a height of 7 inches. The next day, EA fixes the bug — to a chorus of complaints from customers who enjoyed watching the shin-high blocker get steamrollered by full-size players such as seven-time All-Pro linebacker Derrick Brooks of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

8. Here’s to you, Mr. Insult-Your-Customers Marketing Guy.
In January a new installment of Anheuser-Busch’s “Real Men of Genius” ad campaign celebrates “Mr. Discount-Airline-Pilot Guy” for putting “the fly in fly-by-night.” When the ad comes to the attention of executives at low-fare carrier AirTran Airways, director of marketing Tad Hutcheson calls the brewer to complain and is put on hold — where he hears not Muzak but a loop containing the offending ad. AirTran threatens to yank Budweiser from the airline’s galleys.

84. And now, 15 words from our sponsors.
In July, Nascar holds an event at Colorado’s Pikes Peak International Raceway. Its official name: ITT Industries, Systems Division, & Goulds Pump Salute to the Troops 250 presented by Dodge.

i go to mcdonald’s quite a bit for lunch at work. the mcdonald’s near the office is on a pretty small lot, traffic gets pretty bad, it’s not a good combination.

in the diagram above, i am the gray box trying to make a left into the mcdonalds. the blue box is a car who has just exited the drive thru and brilliantly decides, i will make this INSANELY sharp right here (nearly 360 degrees) and i will make it goshdarnit! if you’ll note, the blue dotted lines (indicting the car’s desired path) runs right over my gray box. yes, because i am on my side of the street and therefore, clearly in the other car’s way! what was i thinking – that i’d be safe on my side of the street?!

so other car finally realizes hrm, i am not making it… as her bumper is pretty much facing my bumper on my side of the street. so she honks at me. uh… ‘cuse me??? where am i supposed to go?? any space i could’ve had to pull around you, YOU’VE USED UP TRYING TO MAKE A 360 DEGREE RIGHT TURN!!!

sadly, this is not the first car i’ve seen attempt this right turn and fail… however, they usually don’t demand cars who are obeying traffic laws to get out of their way. they usually reverse back so that they have more space to swing around the remaining 90 degrees…. really not saving them much time and hassle had they simply made a left out of the drive thru lane and gone around the mcdonald’s and exited at the other entrance (route marked in yellow in above diagram)

when very nearly all of the posts in your xanga subscriptions are in black and yellow coloring and include the words go and steelers.

GO REDSKINS!!! … even though they’re already out

so if you haven’t already figured it out… i haven’t really been enjoying work lately. i’ve gotten really depressed on how things are going with life and what i want to do with it. some people have been trying to encourage me to just suck it up and go into work. and as much as i appreciate it and i obviously need it (’cause otherwise, i’d be a fired lazy ass lying on my bed still), telling me “it’s just a job” isn’t true, it’s not just a job.

i like to think that i’m able to separate out the things that are important to me from the things that aren’t. All through college, i think i had a preeettty good balance between work and life (after some reflection and a look at my transcript, one could even argue too good of a balance). i’m generally not one to bring the stress of homework/work home with me, homework/work have little effect on my playing. compartmentalizing things works- when the things you are separating are small… but when it’s something as large as “what do i do with my life,” there’s no way to avoid it. so now that i am really stressed about work and constantly frustrated at home and at work, i want to clarify. this isn’t about “just a job.”

it’s about feeling like i have no future. it’s about having to bang my head on a laptop for 8 hours a day and realizing this is it… there is no “end of the semester” to look forward to, there is no “next semester, i’ll be rid of this class forever.” there is no end in sight. “just a job” is like when you’re in high school or in college. if it turns out to be crappy, who cares? you can always just stick it out until the end of the summer when you head back to school. if it’s an after school job/job during the school year and it sucks, there’s a feeling while you’re in school that hey, better things will come because you’re getting educated and the world is your oyster! with a career… it’s something more permanent, something like “you’re here indefinitely until you terminate the contract or we terminate you.”

the past 1.5 years, i have been thinking of work as “just a job.” it’s help me stay reasonably sane (with occasional spurts of frustration) for the past few years. but i don’t want just another job, i want a career! i want to be doing something i can see myself doing for years to come. i could easily switch roles/projects/companies and i’m sure that’d alleviate some of my stress/frustrations, but it’d only be a temporary fix.

not know what i want to do, feeling limited and stuck with the current direction of my “career,” wanting to switch to something else, but not know what to switch to, being afraid to switch even if i figure out something i might like better… that’s why i’m stressed and frustrated.

bored at work…

Aaww, youre woodstock! Youre a peculiar but popular
cutie, who always seems confused. Youre a
little forgetful and adventurous and although
you might get the odd funny look, the opposite
sex flock around you! Sweeeet!

Which Snoopy Character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

it said i was odd looking!!!