I don't like listening to the radio, so I never do it myself, but I am occasionally subjected to it in public places. There are lots of reasons to dislike radio listening: stations reply songs too often, stations play many bad songs, stations play annoying commercials, stations have sketchy reception thus producing static or cracks (even in cafes); but the reason I can't stand the radio is the abject stupidity and annoyance of the MCs and announcers. And in particular I am thinking about NPR because that is what is playing in the cafe where I am.

I like almost all the music I hear on NPR, and I get exposed to new and interesting music, but that does not compensate for having to put up with the moronic and lamely stylized announcers. Just now there was some ridiculously unimportant and uninteresting news blip purportedly reported from Berlin. To signal that this was a foreign correspondent they pushed the voice through some filters to make it sound softer, scratchier, echoier, and all together harder to hear and make out. Look you NPR dumb asses, this is the 21st century and I can Skype to a friend in the middle of the Brazilian rain forest via satellite and it's clear enough to hear birds chirping in the background. Am I to believe that you only have access to sub-Skype levels of technology to get your bullshit report from Germany? I don't...I'm not an idiot. And if I actually wanted to hear your crappy news reports I'd much rather it be intelligible rather than simulated to sound like it's coming through two cans connected by twine.

And that's just the most immediate example. It seems like every speaking role on the radio is stereotyped to a completely inane and annoying way of talking that both makes me cringe and turn it off. Like my intelligence and/or integrity is being insulted because they think I can only follow along if they dumb it down to massive head injury levels. Just talk. When a song is done (and not before it's done) just say in ordinary ways of talking what it is. If you sound canned and stilted and overly stylized then you sound fake and that is not an endearing feature. Quit the bullshit and just say it straight and keep it real.

I look occasionally at laptops (that is, tablet PCs), cell phones, and computer monitors and I am always frustrated that the screen resolution is USUALLY not listed ANYWHERE. Specifically I was looking to get a HP TouchSmart computer. You can go to the manufacturer's website and look under specs and you'd expect that the resolution of the screen would be there...but isn't. It almost never is and that's just plain stupid. I mean the company is trying to sell me a piece of equipment and one of the most salient parts of my experience with that equipment is the screen resolution, so not telling me what that is is a deterrent to my purchasing it...and that's obviously a stupid sales approach.

Sometimes a site (or info tag in a store) will say the screen is something like 12.4". The problem with the physical size data is that it doesn't tell me how many pixels (i.e. how much information) I can display on the screen. The 10.4" monitor on my HP TC1100 tablet has the same resolution as a 30" 720p LCD TV. My 24" desktop monitor has better resolution (more pixels) than a 52" 1080p HD TV. So saying the number of inches does not tell you what you need to know. Of course you might want to know BOTH the physical size of the screen and the pixel dimensions. And perhaps the pixels per physical inch (which is a measure of image sharpness) would be something that more people would use to judge things if the data were readily available. I want all three, and I typically will calculate the pixel density from the other figures. Who could possibly be making, selling, or buying a computer and think that the physical screen size is sufficient to judge the value of the monitor...only complete idiots is who.

And sometimes a site or store will report that the screen is VGA or XGA or WXGA+ or something. These are specific screen pixel dimensions and so that series of numbers contains the information I want, but it's encoded in this mysterious arbitrary letter code. Some of those I remember because I look frequently enough, but most people don't know any. And there are so many different sizes for different devices that things like WXGA+ may be specific to two products in the whole world. That's not a standard!!! Those companies are helping anybody by putting that number instead of the actual screen pixel dimensions.

Every screen that is being listed anywhere needs to listed as "10.4" at 1024x786 px" or whatever the screen happens to be. And that's not even enough anymore because there are no more accepted standards on the relative sizes of the sides (i.e. aspect ratio). So the diagonal inches no longer provides sufficient information (it used to in the old CRT days). So really it has to be:

7.5" x 5.7" at 1024 x 786 px

And anything less is JUST WORTHLESS CRAP!!! Every listing on every site, store, info pamphlet, eBay listing, product catalog, anything needs to have the physical and pixel dimensions to minimally communicate the necessary size information.


p.s. to those who think that this level of information would just confuse consumers: you're friggin' STUPID!!! Compare that to the other details listed on standard spec sheet. This information is much more comprehensive, in fact it should be on the description part...one shouldn't have to go to the spec sheet to get such basic and easily digestible information.

This post is a response to a blog post I found on another blog A Random Web Page from April 2004. In that blog post a person was complaining about a noisy office worker and used a Dilbert cartoon on the same subject to demonstrate the point. I found this blog because I was searching for a different Dilbert comic where that same guy decides to try chewing crushed ice to annoy people and Google found this first. On this blog I complain about everything I hate (which is most things), but I also reserve a special place in my (black, rotten) heart for ice chewing and other slurp/crunch combinations.

I had the following advice, conceived of when I though the post was current. It's probably still good advice. Personally, in his situation, I would be up front about it. Just tell her that her eating noises are very loud and disruptive. Tell your manager that sharing an office with the sow is destoying your productivity and your happiness. Managers care about your productivity, so you or she may very will get reassigned an office. If it's not that kind of situation then use earplugs and headphones and be curt with her so she gets the point. She may be too dense to get the point; after all, she is too dense to realize for herself that her behavior is intolerably annoying.

But anyway, there is a guy who hangs out in some of the same cafes that I do that gets iced tea and the first thing he does is use a spoon to slurp up the ice and chew it. Now, to start, this guy is already a mouth-breather (although I've never seen him drag his knuckles, conversations I've overheard indiciate that such behavior is probable) and so naturally he chews the ice with his mouth open. I thought it was common knowledge that chewing ice is super-annoying to everybody around the chewer and that people did it only as a compulsion, a bad habit. I saw this guy get a cup of iced tea and and then commence the ice chewing while he simultaneously began flirting with the girl sitting next to him. Clearly this poor loser does not know that ice chewing is super-annoying. I was hoping to use the Dilbert cartoon to indirectly give him the message (by talking about it with somebody else in his vicinity). I'll keep hunting.

Maybe we need to do something to publicize these problems nationally. In the past we could just have a Seinfeld episode about it, but now? Maybe on the Daily Show.

Once upon a time I had a brief stint as a shoe designer, and in addition to that I run a small niche market shoe business (Jika-Tabi.com ). So I happen to know a lot about shoes and perhaps I have somewhat high standards of some sort. So when I went looking for a soft-sole shoes replacement for my old Acorn slippers I had something rather specific in mind. Before I discovered jika-tabi during the summer of 1998 I used to wear moccasins all the time, but I didn't like the typical loafer design because the damn things slip around and off. I used to buy shoes from thrift stores, remove the soles, and then sew on soft leather soles myself. It looks like I'm going to have to do that again because soft-soled shoes still seem to be only available as pseudo native American styled loafers.

Well, there are actually a couple of exceptions to this: Old Friend's bootie, Minnetonka's fringed ankle and thigh boots, and Acorn's fleece or wool sock slippers. The Old Friend bootie is very insulated and looks a lot like Tibetan footwear, so it's only good for the winter. Minnetonka's whole like is, as the name suggests, geared towards the whole Native American cliché. Fringes, seriously? The Acorn fleece with leather bottom slippers have served me well for several years and so I could replace them and maintain the status quo. But what I'd like is something more like a real shoe that happens to have a soft bottom.

Maybe you're thinking (and if you know me then you probably are thinking) that if I have tabi and jika-tabi, which are cotton and soft rubber bottomed, then what do I need these slippers for? Good question. Sometimes I'm relaxing at home wearing the indoor cotton bottomed tabi and I went to step outside to get the mail or take out the garbage or something. I don't want to change shoes; I just want to slip something over my tabi to go outside. But enough about me. I can't believe that everybody who wants some soft-soled shoes (like for driving, or chilling at home, or just to have comfortable shoes) wants them to look like stereotyped throwbacks to the reservation or split-toed ninja boots. There must be room for some decent shoes that happen to have soft bottoms. I can't find them. If you know of any then please let me know. In the meantime I guess I'm back to buying some Minnetonka fringed ankle boots and restyling them to my own desires.

The use of jewelry dates back tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of years. The modern concept of jewelry in America derives from its European roots where it played a particular role in fashion, attractiveness, and status. Jewelry serves to focus a person's attention to a particular region of the body, the place where the jewelry resides. If one has particularly attractive ears then wearing earrings will divert a conversant's attention temporarily and occasionally to the wearer's ear thereby highlighting the attractive feature and making the wearer seem more attractive. Bracelets would be worn by women with slender wrists to bring attention to that socially accepted mark of beauty. It can also be used to divert attention away from unpleasant parts; earring divert attention to the ears, and hence away from other (perhaps less attractive) parts of the face. But it also diverts attention away from the eyes and from that all-too-important eye contact.

Jewelry nowadays is used with less deliberation. People accessorize without regard for the effect it will have on other people but rather with how well the pieces go together or who nice or interesting it looks on its own. This has diminished jewelry's effect overall and has confused a once-useful signaling mechanism for social interaction. A shiny necklace may bring my attention to a neckline or bust, but if it's a manager or professor wearing the necklace then focusing on those regions is a bad thing. If you wear a nice ring (or several rings) on you finger(s) then I will naturally and subconsciously turn my eyes and divert my attention to your hands on occasion. Is that what you want? If not, then don't wear the rings. Do you really want me checking out your nostril every once in a while? If not, then don't get a nose ring. Duh!

As for the status element of jewelry, by wearing expensive jewelry you are sending a signal that you have surplus money that you can readily waste on non-productive merchandise. Like the feathers of a peacock, this sends an unambiguous signal of high quality. Or, more precisely, the quality of one's jewelry sends a signal of the quality of the person wearing it. Perhaps you should rethink wearing that five dollar necklace you bought from a street vendor in Peru. Sure it looks nice, but is that the signal that you want to send? Sometimes yes. Some people appreciate the simple things in life more than the extravagant, and if that is who you want to garner attention from then a simple piece is better suited to your desires. Then there is a whole crowd of "counter-culture" people for whom the jewelry itself is the attractive thing (it's a mild fetish) and you can expect to see multiple piercings in multiple locations (and as a rule these people know that this is only a desirable feature to other people in their clique). It may be quantity rather than quality that matters here.

This is nothing new or surprising. I pick my eyeglass frames based on how well they suit my face, the type of personality image they project, and various practical aspects such as weight and durability. Eyeglasses and watches are a type of jewelry, or at least have a jewelry-like component to their affect on other people. My point is that all jewelry does have an effect on other people and so your jewelry should be chosen strategically to have the affect that you desire. If you want people to really pay attention to what you are saying then no jewelry is probably best. If you have nothing interesting to say, then the more distraction (and so the more jewelry) the better; and you will be sending those respective signals even if you don't mean to. People have a subconscious understanding of this and it is revealed in subculture jewelry conventions (self-identified feminists rarely wear much jewelry while teeny-boppers are covered in bling). But having a conscious understanding will help you better focus your conversant's attention to where you'd like it, wherever that might be.

On the old systems, decades ago, items on shelves had little stickers on them with the item's price so that the customers and the cashier knew how much the items cost. These days, items have UPC numbers and bar codes that the cashiers scan to read the items' prices. And customers read the prices from the place on the shelf where the item is located (which also tells them unit prices for comparison if they are lucky). Reading the price of the shelf tag is better because 1) you don't have to look for it on the product, 2) it's bigger and easier to read, and 3) you can match the shelf tag's description to make sure it's the right product. So what's wrong? Stores still put price tags on products and actually spent time and money to decrease the value of the products and the shoppers' experience.

Whence the problems arise? The first is that the shelf labels are generated by the same computer system that manages inventory and orders and they have effective dates and other fail-safes on them to ensure accuracy. Price tags are set and put on by some person who is supposed to look at the shelf tag for the item, set the price gun, and click all and only those items. The point is that, at best, the tag price matches the shelf price and, at worst, there is an element of user error that generates mistaken prices. The mistakes are always with the on-product tags, not the shelf tags. So if you really care how much something costs then you'd better ignore that item tag and look for the shelf tag. If one had an argument that price tags are there because people care about prices, then that line of argument has just been sunk.

What else do price tags do? They obscure packaging and useful information; they look unattractive and ruin the design effect that the company was aiming at; they put hard-to-remove adhesive on the tops of cans, lids of jars, etc. reducing product convenience and cleanliness; and they use up store employee hours increasing the prices of the very goods they needlessly stick to. Part of the issue is that store employees don't take care when placing the labels and could avoid many of these repercussions with a little effort. But what's the point? I don't want to come off as elitist, but these employees are already the lowest bar for job performance in the employed world. Expecting them to put thought into price tag placement and make appropriate decisions is rather silly. But the overall point is, "Why bother?"

Even if they labels were ideally placed, that would only mean that they would detract less from the value. They still have a negative net effect and they are completely obsolete in the modern age of barcode scanners and computerized shelf labels. If there is a small store that still actually uses the price tags for that information then clearly that's fine (although they should put some consideration into where they put the tag). But for the big box retail stores and supermarkets this practice is just backwards thinking and the propagation of an outmoded business convention from a bygone era. The point of new technology is to stop using the old technology! Stop using price tags.

All stringed instrument players must deal with the minor hassle of changing strings on a (semi-) regular basis. Strings come in two basic varieties: ball-end and loop-end (although a ball-end can be converted by removing the ball). The straight end of a string wraps around the tuning machines and the ball or loop end attaches behind the bridge of the instrument. I am primarily a mandolin player, though I also play several related instruments such as the mandola, octave mandolin, mandocello, banjolin, violin/viola, etc. These instruments have a variety of systems for holding the string.

Most of the mandolin-family instruments use loop-end strings attached to hooks in the tailpiece. Violins and violas use ball-end string if they have fine-tuners (and I do) and I really don't know what those more hardcore no-fine-tuner people do. Most electric instruments use ball-end strings that run through a hole in the body. I bought my Ovation mandocello and some (standard loop-end) mandocello strings on the same day from eBay, but when they arrived I realized that I had made an error; Ovation uses their own system for the ball/loop end of the string. Ovation uses the optimal system.

The Ovation system is to have a hole in the tailpiece for each string such that the player runs the string through the hole parallel to the top of the instrument up to the ball-end of the string. Not only is this very convenient, it also improves the look, sound, and simplicity of the instrument (fewer things to break). Since changing the strings on my other instruments was never a problem for me, and the Ovation system wasn't much an improvement over these systems, I didn't really notice the amazing innovation for what it was. Not until I bought a guitar.

Since I can't seem to find anybody to start a band or even jam with here in Ann Arbor, I recently began playing guitar again so that I could at least lay down some chords when recording tunes by myself…alone…isolated. Toward that end I bought a decent-quality super-beautiful Michael Kelly electric/acoustic dragonfly guitar. I got the guitar and decided to put some fresh strings on it, and man was it a pain in the ass. You see, the guitar has these pegs that keep the ball-end of the string crammed down a hole in the tailpiece and through the top of the instrument. I had a hell of a time getting those pegs out, resorting to pliers and an elaborate technique to get enough leverage to pull the peg out without damaging the top of the instrument. But that tribulation did not alone make me a peg-hater.

About a month after I bought the guitar I decided that I needed to fill the bottom end and so I purchased a really spiffy 5-string Michael Kelly dragonfly acoustic bass. This thing really needed new strings, but I just couldn't get the damn pegs out. That experience was such a fiasco that I even emailed Michael Kelly to ask how I was supposed to do this because clearly nobody would design and use a system that made it so hard to change strings. That would be just plain stupid. They said it was normal. I looked around and it turns out that almost every company uses this ridiculously retarded peg system to hold the ball-end of the string into the guitar. But not Ovation!!!

Ovation (and their cheaper cousins, Applause) guitars, basses, mandolins, etc. all use the same convenient, attractive, and acoustically awesome tailpiece system. It is so clearly superior to the peg system that I simply can't imagine why, after Ovation released its first guitar with this system, every guitar company didn't see its superiority and immediately switch to it. Changing strings is by its nature an annoying chore, so it should be as easy as possible. Ovation's system is the only one that makes any sense. I've already replaced my guitar with an Ovation Celebrity, and the bass is next (as soon as I can afford a 5-string Ovation bass).

And Ovation includes a built-in tuner with the electronics of their instruments; another brilliant innovation that should have been instantly adopted by every musical instrument manufacturer who produces acoustic/electric instruments. The final analysis is simply that Ovation instruments are designed so that I can focus my time on the thing that I actually buy the guitar for…playing the guitar.