My So Called Life

Bacon Bar

/ Shane / Leave a comment

For my birthday, Anna got me a chocolate / bacon bar.

I have blogged many times about all manner of sweet things involving bacon, however, I have never actually tried any of them. So this was actually a first! As I have stated, I don’t really like to mix sweet and salty things, so I was a little nervous about this. It was actually pretty good though! Well, three out of five people didn’t like it much. I wouldn’t want to eat it all the time, it was definitely a novelty item, but it was pretty good. It was pretty dark chocolate, which I normally don’t like, but it worked perfectly with this. It smelled like bacon and had little bacon pieces. It is hard to describe exactly what it tasted like…kind of like bacon and chocolate.  That being said, it was nothing like I expected.

So, in summary, give it a try! It was worth it.  But don’t buy a case of it!

Why do people want to punch me in the face?

/ Shane / 4 Comments

The other day I was telling two good stories and I realized I probably never told them here on the blog.  I didn’t find them with some quick searches, so hopefully they are new.  I should say that nobody has tried to punch me in the face recently, these are both pretty old stories.

Story the First, in which I get punched in the face:

Shortly after I had learned to drive (I think I was about 17 or so), I was waiting in a long line of traffic over a bridge. Basically, there were two lanes of traffic over the bridge, but at the end of the bridge one lane was turn only.  Since most people wanted to go straight, traffic gets very backed up in that lane, while the other was mostly empty. However, you can turn right from the turn lane and then turn left into a shopping center, go through the parking lot, and then come back out on the main road. They had lots of signs up saying not to do that, so I tried not to.  But sometimes, when you just couldn’t take it anymore, you had no choice.

So I had been waiting for quite some time in the straight lane and I finally decided to go in the turn lane. Unfortunately, on my ’87 Celebrity there was no side mirror on the passenger side.  Since traffic stretched behind me for some ways, I couldn’t see very far back in the other lane.  I slowly began inching out when suddenly a car appeared and roared by me.  Because I was going so slowly and watching for just this case, I hit the breaks and didn’t get out.  As the guy flew buy I could see him angrily shouting at me, but I didn’t think much of it and after he passed I successfully pulled into the turn lane.

After a moment I saw that he had gotten out of his car, blocking traffic, and was walking back towards me. He was huge! When he got to my car I (stupidly) rolled down my window. He began shouting at me, saying things like, “Do you know how expensive my car is?” So right there I think you know the caliber of man I was talking to. I tried to make two points, 1) I didn’t actually hit his car, and 2) given that I had no side mirror, I believe (and still believe now) that I did the correct thing, which was the best I could with what I had. I didn’t have much time to make these points however, since he then clocked me in the face. Then he calmly turned around, got back in his car, and drove away. Maybe after he got the initial rage out by punching me, he realized he was a hulking, roided out adult with an expensive car and I was a nerdy kid in a piece of junk. Or maybe not. It wasn’t much consolation to me at the time.

Story the Second, in which I almost get punched in the face, but not quite:

The first place I lived in Pennsylvania had a shared laundry room. I hope you, gentle reader, have never had the unfortunate experience of using such a setup. The laundry is always full when you want it, the equipment doesn’t work and it is costly to use. Having come to this place directly out of college, it wasn’t as foreign of an idea as I wished it to be, but it was what it was. Because drying takes so much longer than washing, there is always a backup with the dryers, forcing you to leave your wet clothes in the washer and keep checking on the dryers hoping that you get the one that just opened up before anybody else does.  So, one day, I went to check on the laundry and the dryers were full of dry clothes. “Fair enough,” I thought.  Perhaps the dryer just finished the second before I walked in the room.  You have to give the person the benefit of the doubt, even though it is more likely that the clothes had been sitting there for hours.  But when I came back 20 minutes later and the clothes were still in the dryer, I felt justified in moving them to the top of the dryer and putting my clothes in. Now, I should specify, I honestly didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. I wasn’t doing it to spite the person, I honestly just thought that was the protocol. That’s how it worked in college. Tell me in the comments if you think it is weird to move someone’s laundry.

So anyway, after putting my laundry in the dryer I went back to my apartment. Shortly thereafter, there was a knock on my door.  When I opened it there was a very angry, very large man.  He was big enough that he filled the entire doorway.  He asked me if I moved the laundry and when I said that I had, he really layed into me.  How dare I this and he doesn’t know where my hands have been that and how dare I touch his wife’s clothes, etc. Since he seemed to be hung up on me being dirty, I offered to pay for him to re-wash his clothes. I don’t think he was listening to me. As he talked he was getting more and more angry until I felt certain a punch was eminent. Luckily, his wife appeared and literally pulled him away from me and into their apartment. (Luckily for him! 😉 :-P)

I spent the next few months living in fear of him.  If I was leaving and I heard them coming out of their appartment, I would hide in mine until they were gone.  One day, months and months later, we passed each other in the hall, where I couldn’t hide.  I had just gotten past him when he said, “Hey!”  I was thinking, “Oh no! Please tell me someone else didn’t move his laundry and he thought it was me!” But to his credit he actually apologized to me! I was quite shocked actually.

And to this day I doubt I would move anybody’s laundry. I am also extremely nervous to move anybody’s food out of the microwave at work!

Wicked, or, Aunt Rachael tries to give Evie a concussion

/ Shane / 5 Comments

Just kidding about the title.  I know that she reads this and it will make her feel bad.

Rachael and Chris were here for the final showing of Wicked in Chicago.  

Being a person who has seen a lot of musicals, Wicked really is outstanding.  If you haven’t seen it already, too late!  Well, not too late, but too late to stay at my place and have me drop you off and pick you up.  I think I have done enough to spread the Wicked love.  I saw it twice; once on Broadway and then again in Chicago.  I took my mom, I dropped off / picked up Sara’s family and now Chris and Rachael. And I own the soundtrack.  So I think I’ve done about all I can for them. 🙂

Evie did accidentally fall off the bench in the kitchen knocking her head. Just like the last time, she threw up all over Sara. She seemed fine pretty quick though, and certainly we felt a little better about it after the experience we gained last time. So we weren’t that worried this time.

And besides, Rachael had already made up for it by getting Evie to eat grapes and also making her a snowflake blanket. Evie would definitely take a knock on the head for a snowflake blanket!

Tesla single handedly sets back the electric vehicle industry by 10 years

/ Shane / 5 Comments

I don’t usually “talk shop” on here, but something came across my desk the other day that annoyed me.

By now, most everybody has heard of Tesla Motors.  They were a start up company that made a huge splash by announcing a souped up electric car that can go 0-60 in 3.9 seconds and looks like it.  Of course it cost $92,000 and you had to pay to be on the waiting list, but what’s a few thousands between friends.

Now here is the problem with it: it’s all a pipe dream.  And now, because of all of the hype, everybody knows about it and says, “See, Tesla can make an electric sports car, so the technology is there!  Why don’t I have a good electric vehicle?  It’s the man trying to keep me down!  Sure, theirs cost $92 grand, but that’s a sports car.  So a regular car should cost like $10,000 right?”

But as ridiculous as that statement is already, the Tesla Roadster isn’t even profitable at $92,000 per car.  It turns out that it was costing them $140,000 per car to produce.  So they were losing $48,000 for every car they sold.  Now obviously as they produced more cars, the manufacturing costs would come down.  The company says they have now reduced the cost per unit to “a little more than $90,000”, although they didn’t specify how much more.  Assuming it costs exactly $90k to make one car, there is $2,000 left.  How much of that is actually profit?  Not very much if any, once you take out the sales commissions, labor costs, etc.  And keep in mind they still have to make up the $48k per car hole they dug before the manufacturing price came down.  So in order for the company to become profitable, they have to make enough cars that the price comes down enough that they can increase their profit margin to the point that they can dig their way out of the hole they are starting in and then start making some money.  But is the market segment even big enough for them to make that many cars?  How many $92k electric sports cars can the world support?  Well I don’t know for sure, but I do know that 400 were pre-ordered and they’ve already shipped over 100. So, they’ve shipped over 1/4 of their guaranteed orders.  

And while we’re on the topic, electric car enthusiasts will tell you people are falling all over themselves to get a hold of electric cars.  That’s true…until you ask them to put their money down.  But only 400 people were actually willing to put money down to get on the waiting list.  To a big company like GM, 400 people isn’t worth your time.  And that is assuming you are actually making money, not hemorrhaging it. 

Now, the people in charge at Tesla aren’t complete dummies.  They see the writing on the wall that this business plan is a losing proposition.  So they told the people on the waiting list that they will still sell them the car for the promised price of $92k, but this will be a stripped down version.  To get the full featured version you will now have to pay $128,500.  Makes $92k look downright affordable.

But what features are missing from the $92k version you ask?  Well at least one feature, but it’s a doozy.  The “cheep” version comes without the “fast charge” capability, meaning it will take 37 hours to fully charge the car.  Let that one sink in for a minute.  It will take more than one full day to charge your car.

Now again, this is a sports car, not an every day commuter car. And a luxury one at that.  So taking it out cruising every other day probably isn’t an issue. But if the biggest, best, most highly publicized company out there can only make an electric vehicle that is neither profitable for the company, cheap for the buyer, nor usable in any real sense of the word, then you are crazy if you think GM could have made one almost 20 years ago. And we haven’t even gotten into issues of reliability, since these cars are all brand new.  I know nobody will cry for these millionaires if they have to put down another $20,000 for a new battery pack in 5 to 10 years, but it is something to think about. (Note, I’m not saying that this is true, just that this is new technology and we don’t know for sure what the shelf life of this sort of thing is going to be)

But, alas, the damage is done and everybody thinks the oil companies and big business are conspiring against them. And at the end of the day, people’s misconceptions of what is possible will cause them to miss out on things that people are doing right now to help with fuel economy, because they will be brushed off as inconsequential.

The Uncanny Valley

/ Shane / 2 Comments

I don’t remember how I originally stumbled upon this years ago, but it was something that always really stuck with me.  You know how in really creepy horror movies or even video games, the ghost or whatever it is will seem mostly human, but it will just be…off…a little bit?  Like it will move a little jerkily, or it’s face is a little messed up or something? And this is way creepier than something that looks totally inhuman.  Those usually just come off looking comical.  

Let me give you an example.   Make sure you watch the part about 35 seconds in when he kicks it and it recovers, and there is another good part about 1:25 in when it is on ice.  Aw heck, just watch the whole creepy video! (You might want to turn down your sound a little, it is loud)


Do you see how creepy that thing is??  Well there is actually a term for it, with research and everything to back it up!  It is called the “Uncanny Valley“.

Basically, the theory says that when things are completely inhuman looking, we don’t like them.  As they start to get more and more human looking, we like them more; we think they are cute.  However, at some point the curve has a sharp downward spike (a valley if you will) where something is a little too close to being human and it creeps us out.

There are two parts to the explanation of why this is that make sense to me.  The first is that when things don’t really look much like us, we tend to focus on the positive ways in which they ARE like us.  “Isn’t that monkey cute, he looks so human like!”  But when things look a lot like us, we tend to focus on the negative ways in which they AREN’T like us. The second part is that we seem to have a built in survival instinct that makes us shy away from messed up looking people (that’s the scientific term). Biologically, these people are probably diseased or, basically, no good for us.

Notice that zombies are the pinnacle of scariness. 🙂 There is a good biological reason for us to be afraid of decaying flesh. Also, a zombie might eat your face.

Consider the pictures below.  The first one is an industrial robot.  It is neat when it does things that humans normally do (like pick something up) but I have no attachment to it.  If it is destroyed, I won’t shed any tears.  The second one has arms and legs and sort of moves around like a human.  It can also talk, and laugh, etc.  It is, of course, the beloved robot from Lost in Space.  The third robot is just creepy.  Look at the way it moves.

   

This probably explains why I find cartoons where people are drawn with computer animation to be way creepier than regular old Scooby Doo style cartoons.

Another good example of this, is seeing someone whose toe was used to replace their missing finger.  Creeeepy!