Enjablog

It’s that time of year again:
Race for the Cure!

Late registration is still open through this Friday, if anyone else is interested in coming out. Race is this Saturday, June 3, 2006.

Otherwise, please donate if you can.

Thanks! :)

Well, there goes my post for today… I was going to post up the lyrics for the horrible new TJ Alma Mater, but I left the sheet at Ian’s parents house on Sunday. I’ll get it back and post some other time. Also waiting for them to get posted somewhere on the TJ website. But don’t know when they’ll get around to that.

But for a taste, picture full orchestra with an 8-minute intro. Then the chorus starts:

“May the circle of infinity be unbroken.”

Oh, yes. Most pretentious alma mater ever. And ∞ ≠ O, so I don’t even know what they’re talking about. But the amazing part is that the lyrics get worse.

QOTD Tony Snow to CBS Early Show’s Julie Chen (Yes, I know this is so last week): “…you can’t talk about a program that we neither confirm nor deny the existence of.”
Oh, wait. I think she just did. Oh, snap!

Edit: I don’t know what happened. It only posted half my entry yesterday. I guess it posted the part that I saved halfway through.

Watched Crash last night. Yeah, I’m a little behind the times, but I got around to it…

It was very cool how they intertwined all the characters. I understand that all the characters were supposed to be exaggerations of how people are in real life, but they were all so mean. It was hard trying to find someone to root for. No heros or heroines in the movie. Everyone had a very bad moment and most of them had a moment of redemption. I guess this was supposed to make me root for humanity or something like that… hoping that in everyone’s lives, the good moments out-number the bad.

Good movie, overall. The characters were so extreme at some parts (Sandra Bullock), they were unintentionally(?) funny. At the very least, I could empathize. And that’s something.

QOTD: “No I mean it, that is like death to me. I’d rather sit in church.”

Happy National Maritime Day!

JOINT RESOLUTION Designating May 22 as National Maritime Day.

Whereas on May 22, 1819, the steamship The Savannah set sail from Savannah, Georgia, on the first successful transoceanic voyage under steam propulsion, thus making a material contribution to the advancement of ocean transportation: Therefore be it

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That May 22 of each year shall hereafter be designated and known as National Maritime Day, and the President is authorized and requested annually to issue a proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to observe such National Maritime Day by displaying the flag at their homes or other suitable places and Government officials to display the flag on all Government buildings on May 22 of each year.

Approved, May 20, 1933

So much going on…

Highlights:

- Going last Friday to see Fashiongrrl dubbed Dr. Fashiongrrl.
- Date night at Dominion!
- Getting to level 262 in Tetris… On SPJ’s card because DW borrowed mine.
- TJ 20th birthday picnic thing — and introduction of the most pretentious alma mater ever
- Mushroom infestation

QOTD: “I have a question for you guys… Should I marry [my girlfriend]?”

Yay! Happy mothers’ day! :)

That is all… Will write something more later.

Happy birthday, Rock! :)

So, the bathroom at work has 3 stalls and all the doors hang open when they’re unoccupied. The other day, I was in one of the stalls, with the door securely closed. A woman came into the bathroom and walked into my stall door. Not like, oops, put her hand out to enter her usual stall. She had one foot partially in the stall in the gap below the door while the rest of her body followed… into the door.

Weirdo.

Well, rumor had it that offensive guy was getting sent back to Mississippi. It turns out he had received an offer that would re-locate him back to Mississippi, but he ended up not accepting it. So, to continue the on-going saga, I have been moved to put me as far away from him as possible.

Last Friday, I swapped offices with a guy at the end of the hall. It was a stealthy mission. One of the IT guys stopped by my office around noon and asked if I’d be free to move at 3. I said sure, he came back around 2:30 and asked if I was ready. Go! Go! GO! 3:45 and I was all swapped out with new guy. We got two inquiries while we were moving, but for the most part we were quiet enough that people didn’t really notice until they came looking for us. That just means more work though, so it’s ok if it takes them a little longer to figure things out.

What I wasn’t prepared for, though I guess I should have been, was the numerous inquiries as to why we moved. I’ve been answering people by saying “[New Guy] and I swapped offices.” And then someone always comments on the view, which is 4 offices down from my old view. (I can now watch the smokers on the sky walk vs. the side of the sky walk.) Which doesn’t address the question at all, but I don’t know if people are looking for an answer like, “Offensive guy doesn’t understand appropriate office behavior.”

His office-mate stopped by this morning to ask if I had any extra work I needed help with and then we got to chatting about how lucky I was to get moved away from the profanity. So, I let him know it wasn’t an accident that I got moved away. And if he has a problem with sharing an office with the guy who gets angry at the drop of hat and starts cursing up a storm, he should say something. Because, aside from the fact that it’s annoying, it’s really distracting when you’re talking to clients on the phone or when you have other people working with you at your desk. It’s *inappropriate office behavior.*

Read an article recently which referred to the Wage Project, which was what got me all riled up about my salary a few months back. That led me to finding a newer, better job. And now I take another look and 6 months later, I am again 20% below average. How is that possible? Who are these people who are getting paid that much? I think their numbers might be a little off. But maybe that’s just me making myself feel better about my negotiating skills.

QOTD: “We must delete deceased members from the list of members that owe dues.”

Ok, so my whole “America as a skewed bell curve” argument was wrong. Well, not wrong. Just way more skewed than I thought. So, I take back my previous rant. Apparently it is completely irrational for me to think that 1990s size 8 people would still exist in significant enough numbers in the future, that their clothing demands would be reflected in stores.

According to the American Obesity Assoication*:

Currently, 64.5 percent of U.S. adults, age 20 years and older, are overweight and 30.5 percent are obese. Severe obesity prevalence is now 4.7 percent, up from 2.9 percent reported in the 1988 - 1994 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

A pamphlet by Pfizer* reported that “only 34% [of American adults] are classified as normal weight.”

Only about 3 percent of Americans are underweight today.*

And, apparently, standard deviation is not an appropriate measure to use on a skewed distribution. I would also need to know the kurtosis to properly evaluate the distribution. In any case, if 90-95% of the population has a BMI over 20, it really isn’t economically beneficial to continue producing clothes for people on the lower end of “normal.”

*All of these refer to 2000 data as current.

Happy birthday, SPJ! :)

Yes, I’ve ranted about this plenty of times before. But Ian sent me this article and I’m all angry about it again:
0 is the new 8

Alright, women. No one cares what size you wear. Tags are on the inside of clothes. No one is going to go fishing around checking to see what size you really are. Stop pandering to these horrible vanity sizes so everyone gets to have clothes that fit them!

I’m sick of being told I’m not allowed to complain because I’m not overweight. I look just as silly wearing slacks that sag off my waist and butt as women wearing tube tops with belly flab sticking out. Well, maybe not the same kind of silly. But you know what I mean.

I’ll concede that not every weight problem is controllable, but there are still plenty of people who choose to eat unhealthily, don’t exercise, and complain about gaining weight. Fine. You have that right. But don’t buy into vanity sizing. That really does only hurt the little people.

While I understand what the fashion industry is doing, I think the fact that it works reflects how dumb and vain women are. It’s not like I look at a size 8 woman wearing vanity size 0 pants and think to myself, “Wow, she’s hot. She’s a *size 0*.” And at the same time, it’s also not like I look at her and think, “Oh my god. That woman is a size 8. *gasp* How does she live with herself?” No one cares.

What I think the clothing industry is missing is that the range of sizes has stayed relatively the same; the distribution is just different. Assuming an increase in average weight, but still more people within the “normal” weight range than the “obese” range, we’re looking at a skewed bell curve. This leaves a significant number of people one or two standard deviations away from the mean who are getting bumped off the scale.

It’s hard enough to find clothes in the right proportions for height, hips, waist, bust, shoulders, etc. without constantly having the sizes moved around on us. Stop the stupidity!

Wow, today is Cinco de Mayo, No Pants Day, and Space Day!

All they need now are some cookies…

Ooh this is a fantastic idea!

Forever Stamps

Postal officials pitched the idea of creating a “forever stamp” that would be good for sending first-class mail no matter how much — or how often — the cost of a postage stamp goes up.

They’ll benefit from the people who will stock up on stamps and then lose them and have to buy more. They’ll get more money in the short term from people who buy stamps and don’t use them up in the near future. And there are people who will still buy the regular stamps if they’re pretty and have collectible value to them. I have a couple sheets of $0.37 holiday cookie stamps just because I like cookies. I would buy regular valued stamps if they had more cookies on them.