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Sometimes, technical manuals are hard to read and understand. Occasionally, they may even include pictographs that are supposed to help the user better understand the instructions. But what happens when even the pictographs make no freakin' sense?
Perform a Google news search on "olympic gymnastics controversy" and you'll notice 1,230 articles (at least, at this point) pertaining to what seems to be evolving into a silly event.
I don't want to take away the athleticism of the participants. They do things that not even the best breakdancer, which is what I want to be when I grow up, cannot do. But the reward for their efforts is a couple of judges apparently randomly giving out scores. One time, I think I saw the South Korean judge with a Scantron, trying to create a flag pattern with his scoring.
Two teenagers in Grand Rapids, Mich., set a new Guinness World Record recently by watching TV for 52 hours straight. And, of all places, they performed their feat at an International House of Pancakes.
The father of one of the young men said, "He has to be good at something, this is just as well." Is this for real? People don't have anything better to do than set records watching TV? Better yet, did they try the stuffed French toast?
I must be a little out of touch with large amusement parks or something. I recently visited Kings Island, which I've been to numerous occasions. Unfortunately, I stumbled directly into Walk-On Weekends, which allows some season pass holders to skip waiting in lines in order to ride the bigger rides almost immediately.
Actually, it's not as bad as I thought. Only the first 1,500 Gold Passholders are eligible, and they receive only a couple of tickets, with scheduled times to ride.
It has been a couple of long weeks, but I'm finally stepping back out on the book signing trail for The Developers. I'll be at the Evansville Barnes & Noble 10 a.m-5 p.m. April 29 for the store's AuthorFest, in support of WNIN's Ready to Learn Program.
I will be appearing at the following locations in the near future to talk about and sign The Developers. If you want to check out the book, feel free to stop by, take a look and ask questions. I won't hound you like your mom does to eat vegetables (I've noticed other authors doing that, and it's generally pretty scary.).
Many people in Western culture are starting to take search engines for granted. I'm not talking about just having a computer and having access to the Internet. I'm speaking of what you can and cannot find in some of the top engines themselves.
Once again, there is proof people ACTUALLY read my column, even years later! The first time I visited Seattle, I wrote a column about many of my experiences there (click here to reminiscence). I also mentioned a car I saw, covered entirely in floppy disks. I asked readers to put me in touch with the driver.
Well, the driver found me ... here's her response to the column:
I have joined a fair number of social networking websites, primarily to see how each works differently. I rarely send invites through these websites, although I did a number of years ago when I initially joined Friendster.
Now I realize why that was a bad idea, because Friendster re-invites those individuals on an automated basis. It's clearly spelled out in the privacy policy: