My So Called Life

The EZ Cracker

/ Shane / 5 Comments

Infomercials have been hawking useless crap to us since the dawn of time (for the record, I consider the invention of the T.V. the dawn of time). However, I think they have now reached an all time low. I give you, the EZ Cracker:

Thanks to the Tivo, I never see commercials, so I was blissfully unaware of this. Now that I am, however, have you ever seen a more worthless piece of junk?

Cracking eggs isn’t that hard. Certainly not worth paying for something to do it for you. But this contraption is so overly complicated, that cleaning it and maintaining it is most likely *more* difficult than the task it is intended to replace.

My favorite part of any infomercial, is when they show someone “struggling” with the task that this wonderful product replaces. It is always exaggerated to the point of absurdity. Therefore, my favorite parts of the infomercial are when people are just cracking entire eggs directly onto their counter top or stove, and then slopping them all over the place, instead of actually cleaning up the mess. That part makes me laugh every time. “Lord knows we’ve all slopped an egg all over our stove for no reason, am I right??” The only way the EZ Cracker would help solve that problem, is if it cured mental illness.

So who has one of the gems? I’m dying to use one.

Link via Sara, who says I never give her credit for giving me links.

New Garden

/ Shane / 6 Comments

I’m not sure how much of the garden saga was been here on the blog. Long story short, the University owned the land that the garden was on. Eventually, it was time to pay the piper and the University decided to pull the plug on the garden to use the land as a “construction staging area” for a building they were going to build next door.

Obviously this was hard on everybody. As much as we loved the garden, there were people who had been there for years and years. However, their pleas fell on deaf ears, and the University insisted that the garden had always been a temporary arrangement, and the time was up.

Every time we pass the site of the old garden, Evie offers some commentary. “I don’t want them to tear down the garden!” or “Why are they going to tear down our garden, I love that garden!”

We went to a community meeting on the subject, and things got a little heated. After seeing how adamant the University was on the topic, my personal opinion was, let’s move on. It became obvious that continuing the argument about keeping the garden was beating your head against the wall. The University owned the land, and they were exercising that right. Although, I did agree that it was frustrating that the University was going to be using the land for something so temporary as construction staging, and that it was somewhat ironic that the garden was going to be destroyed to build a certified “green” building.

Some people, however, were not content to complain about the past, but instead took the Alderman up on his offer of space for new gardens, throughout the neighborhood. In a stroke that can only be described as fate, one of the locations selected for a new garden is the trash-filled abandoned lot almost directly across the street from our condo.

This is a win-win for us. Not only have we already secured a spot in the new garden which is literally across the street, we also get to get rid of an ugly eye sore. How much better is the neighborhood with a lush garden than an abandoned lot? Evie was pretty excited about it too:

Shane: “They are going to make a new garden here.”
Evie: “Thank you world!”
Evie: “I was saying thank you world because the world made a new garden. I still miss the old garden though.”

More Chicago Coyotes

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Over the weekend, we were driving by the park a couple of blocks from our house, when I looked over and noticed a coyote stalking Canadian geese on the baseball diamond.

Coyotes are among us! This picture on the Internet proves it.

This wasn’t like under the cover of darkness or anything, it was in broad daylight, at about 10:30 a.m. We pulled over and watched it for a while, but we didn’t have a camera or anything to take a picture. It is very bizarre to see such a large wild animal, just chilling in the middle of the day on the corner of two very busy streets, in the middle of an enormous city.

Coyotes are taking over Chicago! Send help!

Top 5 Reasons I Hate the Dentist

/ Shane / 8 Comments
Sometimes when you go to the dentist, they give you a survey that basically amounts to, “Does going to the dentist make you anxious?” Well of course it does! If dentists don’t want you to be anxious, they should stop doing horrible things to you. I have my own personal reasons to dislike the dentist, but I’m sure you all do too.
  1. I had braces for 4 years. To anybody who has had orthodontics, this is all I need to say. 4 years is a long time. Allllll the way through high school, mind you. People who haven’t had braces probably think the bad part is that you look dumb or something. In reality, braces are pure torture. Teeth so sore you can’t eat or sleep, wires literally poking holes in your gums, and the inside of your lips turning into a bloody mess are all considered routine. Sometimes my teeth hurt so bad that I would pour a bowl of frosted flakes and let it sit in the milk until it was soggy, so I could drink it down without chewing. I endured this for four years.
  2. I’ve had a lot of teeth pulled. First they insert giant foot long needles into your mouth to numb you up. Then they use something like a screwdriver to push on your tooth until it breaks. This is not a finesse game, it is literally just brute force breaking off your tooth. The dentist has to brace himself against the chair. But at least it was for a good reason, right? Wrong. I had 1 tooth that did not have an adult tooth underneath it, so they pulled that tooth, and then they pulled the OTHER THREE PERFECTLY GOOD TEETH to make things even, and then proceeded to use orthodontia to pull all the rest of my teeth forward, to close the gap (see #1 above). I’d also like to note, these weren’t the only teeth I’ve had pulled. Counting my wisdom teeth, I’ve had 10 pulled total.
  3. Dentists are not above scamming you. One time, for a cleaning, the dentist used this crazy new sonic water sprayer cleaner thing. They explained how it was better because it was so much faster. Now to me, I didn’t really care. In some ways it was less comfortable than the old way. So I certainly wasn’t begging for it. When I got up to the front, I was told I had to pay extra because the super special tooth cleaning wasn’t covered by insurance. When I said I didn’t ask for it, they said, “Well, they are supposed to tell you first, those naughty hygienists. But you still have to pay.” I ended up paying (which I really regret), but when I got home, I found out they did exactly the same thing to Sara! That was just the tip of the iceberg with that particular dentist, but Sara can tell those stories. I’ll give you an example though: the dentist intentionally put too-white crowns on Sara’s teeth, in an ill-fated attempt to sell her teeth whitening. Obviously, Sara would have to lighten the rest of her teeth to match the new crowns, right? When did dentists go from respected doctors to used car salesmen?
  4. I had all of my wisdom teeth pulled, and I was awake for every blessed second of it. Some of them were majorly impacted, and removing them involved using a knife to cut my gum, a power saw to quarter the tooth (still inside my gum), removing the tooth pieces, and finally stitching up the gum. Sure, it doesn’t hurt per say, but you know what they’re doing. It hurts you mentally. It should also be mentioned that, as I sat in the waiting room, my dad leans over and asks me, “Have you ever seen The Dentist?” The Dentist, which I had in fact seen, is a movie about a dentist who goes crazy and just starts like ripping out people’s teeth. Not the sort of thought you should put in someone’s head, minutes before a major dental procedure.
  5. The dentist told me I had just a touch of a bad spot right on the top of my tooth. He thought he could drill it out without using any sort of numbing agent. He convinced me to give it a try. He just said, “If it starts hurting, just stop me and we can numb you up.” So he starts drilling away, but after a while I stop him and tell him it’s really hurting. He’s like, “Look, I understand, but it’s really just a few minutes more at the most. If we have to numb you up, you’ll have to sit here for at least 3o minutes until it kicks in, just to drill for a minute or two.” So finally he convinced me to grin and bear it, and finished it off. I’m not going to lie, it was pretty rough. The worst part? Next time I came in, he was reviewing my chart and said, “Jesus, you got drilled with no novacaine? That’s tough man, I wouldn’t be able to do that.” YOU TALKED ME INTO IT! It’s not like I was begging you to drill me, you freaking psychopath.

It’s not like these are the only stories. And this didn’t even get into the routine stuff, like having cavities filled. So if I can come up with 5 awful stories, above and beyond the normal bad stuff, then is it any wonder I am not fond of going to the dentist? If anything, it’s a wonder I go to the dentist at all.

Google Buzz

/ Shane / 4 Comments

Can anybody explain to me what the deal is with Google Buzz?

It was sort of billed as Google’s answer to the whole social media thing. In reality, it seems to be just sort of a Twitter aggregator, so you can get your updates in with your mail. So it’s kind of like facebook, except with out all the features. Twitter itself has a better interface. Why add a middle man into things, especially when it adds nothing?

Okay, so maybe I don’t have to check another web page, I can pull that stuff into my gmail. That’s the (dubious) upside. The downside is that it seems to update inconsistently, I don’t completely understand how to use it, and it doesn’t work as well as the original websites it pulls in. In fact, what ends up happening, is that I read a few of the twitter feeds available there, so that when I actually go try to read the real feeds to catch the stuff I missed, I end up re-reading a bunch of things I already saw, and trying to sort those out.

I just can’t figure out what they were going for. What’s the point? This is even more worthless than Google Wave.

That’s two strikes Google! I’m so disappointed with you. Like two months ago, I thought you could do no wrong. Who’s at the wheel over there?