aubreyturner.org

I’m sitting here in the midst of the scent of perfume and cologne samples.  Foley’s is opening a new store in the local mall on Wednesday morning and they sent me a flier in the mail.  The flier included those little scent cards for Tommy Girl Jeans, Tommy Jeans, Spark for Men and Spark for Women.  The Spark isn’t bad.  It reminds me of something I’ve smelled before (but I can’t quite place it).  Unfortunately, I can’t seem to get it out of my nose. 

This new store opening also brings up an interesting observation.  Despite the reported shape of the economy, there are a lot of new stores opening here in Denton.  In addition to the Foley’s, Barnes & Noble is opening a store in the mall.  There’s also a new shopping center opening across from the Wal Mart which includes Best Buy, Pier 1, Famous Footwear, and Kroeger’s (and probably a few more I’m forgetting).  At least part of the economy is still growing around here.

Has the technology that was intended to bring us together actually split us further apart?  This article seems to imply that this could be the case.

Tim Sanders has spent his career promoting the use of technology, and it’s in this quest that he experienced his darkest of moments.

Sanders, the chief solutions officer at Yahoo!, said his career was thriving in the mid-1990s, yet he began to feel increasingly empty. He noticed colleagues sending him instant messages from 5 feet away. He watched brilliant engineers slowly replace face-to-face relationships with lower-risk contact online.

“I saw a paradox,” he said, “a world of community with loneliness.”

Sanders came to define the condition as “New Economy Depression Syndrome,” a state of work-related stress brought on by information overload, constant interruption by technology (think e-mail, instant messaging and cell phones) and the increasing personal isolation that technology affords us.

And here’s something that bloggers might need to think about.

New research suggests that limiting our use of technology might be good for your health. A study by Chiba University in Tokyo found that spending five hours or more in front of a computer increased a person’s risk of depression, insomnia and other mental-health-related diseases.

The study, which monitored the mental-health changes of 25,000 Japanese high-tech workers over three years, found that employees who worked five hours or more in front of a computer were more prone to depression and anxiety. The results were published late last year in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.

One thing I’ve noticed lately in my own workplace is the push towards “virtual teams.”  I’ve been working on a team for the past 16 months and I’ve only met two of the people on that team.  We do everything through conference calls, instant messages, emails, and web conferences.  We somehow manage to get the work done, but it’s not very satisfying.  I’ve worked on other projects where the team members were all located in the same place.  It just seems more efficient to walk into someone’s office and work something out, rather than trying to handle it via phone calls and emails.  You can’t wave your hands around and draw on the whiteboard via the phone.

I don’t see this trend getting any better, though.  There’s a rumor afoot that we’re going to have to give up our current offices and move upstairs (and into cubicles) (or we may have to move to another office altogether).  Given that my job entails a lot of time on the phone (that pesky virtual team business), being in a cubicle will be painful (even with a headset), so I may have to compound the isolation by working from home more often.  Some of the other people on my floor may even give up their offices altogether and work from home fulltime. 

The company may think it’s going to save money this way, and their bottom line will show a savings, but I think that there are intangible costs that they can’t track so well.  Our tediously anal hourly tracking system, despite having a zillion codes for everything, doesn’t have a code for ‘farting around trying to make someone understand something over the phone when I could explain it in 30 seconds in person.’ (At least not yet).

Sometimes it’s the little things that really annoy you.  Last month I switched my phone plan to the Verizon all-in-one plan, since it would give me unlimited calling (and just about everyone I call is long distance).  But I forgot to factor in the huge bite that the state was going to take out of my behind for this transgression.  The state in all its various forms added another $20.91 in fees, surcharges, and taxes on top of the $54.95 for the basic plan.  That’s an effective tax rate of 38%.

I saw this house on Realtor.com and I thought it seemed like a really good deal, given the size of the house and the price.  I even went so far as to request a showing via the website (although they haven’t gotten back to me yet).  However, upon further investigation I found that the house is part of the Arcadia Park homeowners association.  For me, that makes it a non-starter, regardless of how good a deal the house may be.  One look at their rules confirmed this for me.

I have to deal with enough officious twits as it is without having to sign a contract to put myself under the jurisdiction of more of them.

That’s the main question that always comes to mind when I get spam for various dodgy items (like “enlargement” pills).  Obviously, someone is buying something or we wouldn’t be getting spam (although given the economics of spam, there don’t have to be very many people buying to make it worthwhile for the spammer).  This Wired article helps to answer this question.

A security flaw at a website operated by the purveyors of penis-enlargement pills has provided the world with a depressing answer to the question: Who in their right mind would buy something from a spammer?

An order log left exposed at one of Amazing Internet Products’ websites revealed that, over a four-week period, some 6,000 people responded to e-mail ads and placed orders for the company’s Pinacle herbal supplement. Most customers ordered two bottles of the pills at a price of $50 per bottle.

Holy crap!  That’s a lot of people (and a lot of money for the spammer).  Even more surprising was the number of people you’d think would be smarter (which I suppose proves that the cream doesn’t always rise to the top).

Among the people who responded in July to Amazing’s spam, which bore the subject line, “Make your penis HUGE,” was the manager of a $6 billion mutual fund, who ordered two bottles of Pinacle to be shipped to his Park Avenue office in New York City. A restaurateur in Boulder, Colorado, requested four bottles. The president of a California firm that sells airplane parts and is active in the local Rotary Club gave out his American Express card number to pay for six bottles, or $300 worth, of Pinacle. The coach of an elementary school lacrosse club in Pennsylvania ordered four bottles of the pills.

Other customers included the head of a credit-repair firm, a chiropractor, a veterinarian, a landscaper and several people from the military. Numerous women also were evidently among Amazing Internet’s customers.

All were evidently undaunted by the fact that Amazing’s order site contained no phone number, mailing address or e-mail address for contacting the company. Nor were they seemingly concerned that their order data, including their credit card info, addresses and phone numbers, were transmitted to the site without the encryption used by most legitimate online stores.

“There was a picture on the top of the page that said, ‘As Seen on TV,’ and I guess that made me think it was legit,” said a San Diego salesman who ordered two bottles of Pinacle in early July. The man, who asked not to be named, said he has yet to receive his pills, despite the site’s promise to fill the order in five days.

So if something is ‘As Seen on TV’ that makes it legit.  I think these people deserve everything they get.  Heh.

Link via Slashdot.

That phrase has been rattling around in my head today, since this blasted bug that I’ve been afflicted with has decided to stick around.  It’s gotten a little better (at least I can talk now), but I’m still tired and fuzzy-headed.

Anyway, it got me to wondering where that phrase came from.  I didn’t find a really good explanation, although there was one that suggested that since dogs will eat just about anything that they’re prone to throwing up.

But now that I think about it, there’s nothing quite so pathetic as a sick dog.

Watching Final Destination 2 last night got me to thinking about something.  There’s a scene where one of the characters gives his keys and wallet to the main character and tells her to get rid of his porn and drugs so his mother won’t see them after he dies.

I wonder if there’s a business opportunity here.  People who live alone and worry about what their relatives will find after their deaths could contract with someone to come in and remove things before anyone else sees them.  In order to preserve some privacy, the person would create a list of items and their locations and seal it up along with whatever keys were needed to access the items.

Of course there are still some logistics matters to be worked out, like how the company would get notified (i.e. the next of kin usually get notified first, and they may not want to let the company do its job).  And it probably wouldn’t work for people who are living with other people (i.e. married or still living at home).

It’s definitely not a mainstream business, but then there are some interesting niche businesses out there.

As I was flipping through the Sunday paper, I came across an odd item in the Office Depot circular.  I couldn’t find the exact item online (Office Depot doesn’t sell the item online), so here’s the closest match I could find:

It’s a ball chair and it’s supposed to be ergonomically better, as they claim that it improves posture.  I have my doubts, though.  I don’t see how your posture is improved if you’ve fallen off the damn thing and hit your head on the floor…

I met with the mortgage broker today to give him the records he requested.  The only downside is that I waited so long to get into the game that rates have started back up.  I won’t be getting the really good rates that we saw earlier this year.  However, it still looks like the numbers will work out (I’ll just be paying a few dollars a month more).

After leaving his office I went out driving around to look at some neighborhoods.  I’d previously done a search on Realtor.com for houses in certain areas that met my criteria.  I didn’t get the agents involved, though.  I just went to the houses and checked out the area.  Along the way I also stumbled across a couple of houses that weren’t listed when I did the search (but that should have been).

The house that I was really interested in (4 bedroom, 2 bath, a little over 2000 sq. ft. for $108K) was somewhat of a disappointment.  The house itself looked fine.  Unfortunately, the neighbours didn’t seem so good (there was an old rundown house across the street and the place behind it had an old decrepit bus in their back yard).  I guess the neighborhood is the reason it’s not a lot more expensive.  However I did find a nice place about four blocks down (and the whole area around it was better) that wasn’t on the listings.  The only thing that might bother me would be living near a middle school and a huge church.  It looks like the street might get a little crowded in the morning (the church also has its own school).

I’ll probably go check out a couple more areas tomorrow.  Next week I’ll contact the agents to arrange some showings after work.

I purchased an atomic wall clock with a wireless outside temperature sensor at Sam’s today.  I made sure to mount the sensor in a shaded area.  Here’s what it said a little after 6:00pm today (yes, the quality sucks, but I had a hard time getting a good angle):

My poor air conditioner starts up in the morning and runs straight through until some time in the middle of the night.  Even with all that, it still gets hot in here (it doesn’t help that I’m somewhat warm natured and my preferred air conditioner setting is the one where frost starts to form on interior surfaces).  At this rate my next electric bill will be as horrendous as the last one.