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You Too?!

BuzzFeed has made quite a name for itself by compiling the modern listicle, numbered sets usually adorned with animated GIFs that are supposed to make you laugh or remember something fondly from your childhood.

Just when you think they have done every possible topic, they roll out a new one. It’s a never-ending factory of things like “21 Times ‘The Simpsons’ Bizarrely Predicted The Future” or “The 25 Whitest Things That Have Ever Happened” (several of which involve horrendously failed high-fives).

But I came across one last week that was potentially eye-opening: “36 Things You Never Realized Everyone Else Does Too.”

Obviously not everyone does them, and neither do I, but there are a few that stood out as particularly entertaining.

1. On a road trip, you start to think of the other cars as your travel companions, and feel a tinge of sadness when you exit the highway.

This makes me think of my journeys driving home from college. It was a three-hour trip, straight down Route 15 from central Pennsylvania to Virginia. Along the way, I often ended up cruising along with the same cars for long stretches of time, sometimes 20 minutes, sometimes two hours. I talked to them using their license plate state as their name. “Come on, New York! I’m giving you plenty of space to get in this lane before you catch up to that truck!” The moment they exited, I bid them farewell the same way. I tried not to cry.

4. You’d rather take an inferior parking spot and walk than stress yourself out looking for the perfect spot.

I worked in retail for a long time, including almost two years at a large mall. I can’t tell you the number of times I watched as people patrolled the first two rows of parking in the garage waiting for someone to show up and free up a parking space. While they were cruising, I stuck my car in the first convenient-enough spot and walked inside to continue my day, because after all, what’s a few more steps when you’re going to be walking around the mall anyway? Life is too short.

11. You need a fan blowing on you as you sleep because you like being buried under covers.

Best feeling ever.

16. You always feel weird saying your name out loud.

Not so much my name, but when I lived for a while in Florida, I was really self-conscious about the way I said the name of my street. Because of that, I also became aware of just how often I needed to give my address to someone. My apartment was on Hanging Rock Court, and for some reason the “Hanging” part always sounded so odd when it came out of my mouth, as if I wasn’t pronouncing all of the word and my pizza or cable service was going to get misdirected. Say it with me now, han-GING.

24. You need to check behind the shower curtain every time you go in the bathroom.

If you go into my bathroom, the shower curtain is always open for this very reason. If I’m at your house, there’s a 20 percent chance I will check. BONUS: I also sometimes check the back seat of my car at night to make sure no one is han-GING out back there waiting to strangle me as I drive. Blame Hollywood for that one.

26. You OFTEN feel phantom phone vibrations in your pocket even when your phone didn’t vibrate.

This doesn’t happen OFTEN to me (the caps are a bit intense here), but it does happen. I try to be cool and not check my phone.

32. You immediately forget someone’s name right after they’ve introduced themselves.

This does happen OFTEN. I think it’s at the point that I don’t even try anymore.

34. You refuse to accept “jif” as the proper pronunciation of GIF.

I will never accept this. You shouldn’t either.

October 18, 2013 internet Uncategorized
Selling Holograms

My second book blog post of the day either means that I crushed through the second one in record speed, or I was really behind on blogging and finally got around to writing about both of them today.

I strongly advise you not wager money on the first scenario.

After highlighting a ton of things in “Quiet” I found myself barely flagging anything in Dave Eggers’ “A Hologram for the King.” That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it, but the story didn’t bring out a ton that I felt would make for good discussion here.

In fact, the only thing I picked out that wasn’t some sort of personal reminder to look something up is this idea about a very specific role some people play in our lives. Alan is the protagonist, a consultant trying to help a big American IT company land a contract at a new city in Saudi Arabia. He’s divorced with a daughter, and during a trip overseas to try to seal the deal he writes letters to his daughter, Kit.

In this one, he’s talking about Kit’s mother and how whatever the daughter thinks of her, the mother wasn’t always as awful as Kit thinks.

“Whatever she’s done that has displeased you I want you to know that you are who you are because of your mother because of her strength. She knew when to be the tugboat. She coined that term, Kit. The tugboat. She was the steady, she navigated around the dangers lurking below.”

Just as there are anchors who weigh us down, I like this idea of someone who pulls us along, navigating us through the waters with their strength and knowledge of the environment.

I’ve read several of Eggers’ books, and what I like about them is the way he latches onto and really develops the main character, whose eyes are the ones through which we see the story. It’s like Eggers is walking down the street, sees someone interesting, then shrinks himself down small enough to jump inside the person’s brain and starts narrating the view.

That said, this was not my favorite of his — “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” is the clear leader — but certainly an interesting story to dip into.

October 12, 2013 books Uncategorized
Personality Power

“The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some, it’s a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamp-lit desk.”

I’ve wanted to read Susan Cain’s “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” for a long time, with great interest about the insight she brings in talking about my personality type.

The result? There’s no doubt I highlighted more in this book than any other — roughly five times more than the average book. She both explores and explains the differences between how introverts and extroverts experience the world and points to how embracing your personality type can help tailor your life to be more successful.

“Probably the most common — and damaging — misunderstanding about personality type is that introverts are antisocial and extroverts are pro-social,” she writes. “Introverts and extroverts are differently social.”

I would bold, italicize and make those sentences bright green if they wouldn’t look too odd on the screen. In talking to extroverted friends, this is the exact thing I feel like they don’t get when talking about our social lives. Cain describes a big part of the difference through the way extroverts and introverts “recharge.” Extroverts draw energy from being around people and feel drained when they spend too much time alone, while introverts can get drained by being around a lot of people and need that alone time to recover.

That doesn’t mean we don’t like being around people or doing social things, but that the environment and timing matter. Hanging out with a group every day — especially if we work in a more social environment — is what leads introverts to decline the next invitation or seek a one-on-one hangout to relax. We can be up for doing group things once in a while, but ultimately it’s those smaller groups we prefer. To my more extroverted friends, that idea can seem crazy, but as Cain writes, “It can be hard for extroverts to understand how badly introverts need to recharge at the end of a busy day.”

She also discusses how people like me really dislike small talk and tend to play the “observer” in taking in what’s going on in the world around us, whether that’s in a group conversation or just sitting somewhere by ourselves.

“When introverts assume the observer role, as when they write novels, or contemplate unified field theory — or fall quiet at dinner parties — they’re not demonstrating a failure of will or a lack of energy. They’re simply doing what they’re constitutionally suited for.”

That last sentence is a great sub-thesis of the book that I found myself nodding along to over and over. Cain describes a situation I know all to well, then clearly states that it’s totally fine. Embrace it, use it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a group big or small, listening to what other people have to say — the most interesting part of any conversation to me — only to have one of the super outgoing members pause and ask why I’m not saying as much. An example is a movie outing with a few friends earlier this year during which one girl stopped mid-sentence to say, “We’re not getting much from you over there.”

Cain talks to an introverted student at a very extro-centered school where class participation is considered essential. But the student tells her that he’s not into making comments during class for the sake of making comments, but rather participates when he really has something to say or disagrees with what others are bringing up. I wanted to high-five him. If I have something I think is interesting or adds to the conversation, I’ll say it, if not, I’m perfectly content hearing other people’s contributions.

The book also covers the intersection of the two groups and how they can often work together really well, whether it’s a group of extroverted employees working for an introverted boss, or a couple with different personality types. Cain shares the story of an introverted woman named Emily and her relationship with the extroverted Greg. Emily “has always been attracted to extroverts, who she says ‘do all the work of making conversation. For them, it’s not work at all.'”

Cain describes how in one-on-one conversations, extroverts enjoy talking to introverts because they can “relax more” and are “freer to confide their problems.” I find this is very true with my own friends. Whether it’s that their extroverted friends are more interested in small talk or don’t listen in the same way, I have a number of friends who have called me “Dr. Phil” after listening to what is going on in their lives. That fits with what Cain says is a preference to devote “social energies to close friends, colleagues and family,” and “enjoy deep discussions.”

Introverts, she writes, “Listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation.”

So in a country where Cain says “we see ourselves as a nation of extroverts,” how should we act in professional, educational and social environments? Should introverts — a third to a half of Americans — be pushed to be more social, bold, outgoing?

Cain says that once we understand introversion/extroversion as preferences for certain levels of stimulation, we can begin to put ourselves in favorable environments — what she calls “sweet spots” — to “feel more energetic and alive.” Think about your own personality and how your life is structured. I know that if I am busy every day for two weeks, there’s nothing I like more than seeing a weekend on my calendar with absolutely nothing written down. That recharge time is something I count down to, knowing I need it to feel truly like myself again.

An extrovert might see those same empty calendar boxes as the source of stress and need to find a way to fill them in order to feel the same way. So what we have to understand is that difference, and when trying to make plans with the other type to keep in mind that saying no or finding a quieter weekend are not anti-social, but just putting ourselves in a “sweet spot.”

Cain writes that there are “physiological limits on who we are…But should we attempt to manipulate our behavior within the range available for us, or should we simply be true to ourselves? At what point does controlling behavior become futile, or exhausting?”

Think about any time that you’ve been told to function outside of your disposition. That could be an extrovert stuck in an office by themselves all day with little co-worker interaction, or an introvert exhorted to spend all their free time meeting groups of strangers. It’s good to move outside our comfort zones at times, but reverse those situations and everyone is in a zone that allows them to thrive on a day-to-day basis.

Personality is a spectrum, and well all fall somewhere along the way. We should embrace who we are, as well as those around us, finding the niches that make everyone the best they can be.

Maybe Cain says it better:

“We know from myths and fairy tales that there are many different kinds of powers in this world. One child is given a light saber, another a wizard’s education. The trick is not to amass all the different kinds of available power, but to use well the kind you’ve been granted.”

October 12, 2013 books Uncategorized
Reading and Riding

Pretty much anyone who hears about my commute thinks I’m crazy.

I work in Washington, DC, and live in Virginia, a fact my coworkers often respond to with looks of horror. It’s really not that far — I can drive there in about 30 minutes if I have to — and my normal routine involves a quick drive to the Metro station and riding the train to within two blocks of the office.

The car/train trip takes about an hour door-to-door, which is much higher than the average 28.7 minute commute for people in my zipcode, according to Census data. But when you factor in what I do on the train, it’s really more like a 20-minute commute.

My routine typically involves reading on the way to work and listening to podcasts on the way home. That works for me in a number of ways. First, it lets me roll in the time I would spend reading at home into my trip to work, and gives me some relaxation time just before going in for my shift. I’m usually too tired to focus on reading on the way home, so the podcasts — a mix of sports, economics, storytelling and science — is both entertaining and educational.

Apparently this type of commuting is the way to go. The Wall Street Journal published an article this week on this topic, saying “people can enjoy commutes as long as 45 minutes, studies show — and men are less frustrated by long commutes than women.”

The article includes several examples of how “predictable” commutes and ones “enlivened by mobile devices and satellite radio” can be happy and productive.

Thanks to working overnights, I have a very predictable reverse commute, going into the city at night and riding out in the morning. I see horror stories and complaints every day from people who run into ridiculous traffic or rush hour problems on the Metro, but I usually arrive to work within a range of 10 minutes. Often, that 10 minutes is my own fault in leaving the house too late and missing my normal train.

So yes, my commute may sound horrendously long, but it’s easy, predictable, enriching and really not that long at all.

October 11, 2013 Uncategorized
Harper Goes DEEP to Right

Movies, television shows and commercials often take dramatic license with real-life details for the sake of the story.

As a viewer, we can suspend what we know and just go along for the ride, or we can spend far too much time dissecting just how far from reality they have strayed. After seeing a relatively new Geico commercial featuring Washington Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper, I am choosing to do the latter.

In the ad, Harper is taking batting practice at Nats Park in southwest DC. We see a baseball land in the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial, then another bounce of the memorial steps, and finally a ball roll up to a pair of Secret Service-looking guys standing in front of a gate on the north side of the White House.

Let’s focus on that last one with some help from our friend Google Maps. I drew a line from home plate to the spot where the guys are standing. The left-handed-hitting Harper was really late on this pitch, but showed impressive power driving it out of the stadium down the third base line:

According to the ruler feature, Google calculates the distance of this hit to be about 12,545 feet, or roughly 12,000 feet farther than what would be a “HOLY CRAP HARPER SMASHED THE CRAP OUT OF THAT” homer:

Another thing we have to take into account is the landing. Here’s a close-up view of where the ball came down:

Notice in the commercial that the agent guys have their backs to the fence with the fountain in the background, which means the ball had to have gone past them and changed direction in order to roll up to their feet:

So there are two possibilities, either there was an incredible northwest wind in Washington that day, or the ball bounced off of something with enough force to rebound in the direction of the White House.

If it were the wind, think about how hard Harper actually hit that ball — 12,545 feet into the wind! But I like the second option as a more plausible explanation (amid an entirely implausible scenario, of course). Let’s look just a touch to the north of the final landing spot:

There, in the center of Lafayette Park just across the street, there is a statue of Andrew Jackson on a horse, raising his hat above his head. A ball hit hard enough to fly all the way there surely could bounce off the bronze with enough force to make it back to Pennsylvania Avenue and roll up to the White House gates.

Heck of a swing, Bryce. Next time get around a little earlier and keep it inside the foul poles. Where would the same hit end up if he hit it in fair territory, let’s say straight over where a right fielder would be playing?

With the right trajectory, that could land smack in the right field stands at RFK Stadium, the Nationals’ former home. Now that would be a holy crap homer.

October 5, 2013 baseball Uncategorized
Be Like Bagel Bites

The Red Baron pizza company is going backwards.

They still make what I consider to be the best miniature lazy day microwave pizzas, but their branding efforts are threatening to alienate what may be a core part of their customer base.

Last year, I wrote about their old box design and the way it calls out that the pizzas are a “Feast For One.” I talked (slightly tongue in cheek, but still with a point) about how people reaching for that box in the freezer aisle maybe don’t need to be reminded that they are getting a potentially lonely meal.

The other day I was cooking the same kind of pizza and noticed a new name on the box:

What used to be “Feasts For One” are now identified in giant script as “Singles.”

My points from last year stand: obviously that size box holds a meal for one person, and I don’t need a refresher on why I’m getting such a portion size. Bagel Bites don’t do that. Just call it a mini pizza, Red Baron Fun Size or some other way of denoting it’s a pizza without needing to be so blatant about it.

The singles will thank you.

(And to clarify, I probably eat one of these a month, with a regular diet of actual cooked food featuring normal proteins and vegetables.)

October 5, 2013 Uncategorized
Mady Is Not Impressed

The most entertaining thing kids can do is take a piece of information and give it a slight twist through a combination of imagination or not quiiiiite understanding distinctions.

I spent last weekend at my brother’s house, which meant lots of quality time with my niece and nephew. They both just had birthdays, so I got now 3-year-old Mady a spider monkey stuffed animal from the National Zoo. She started referring to it as “Spider Man Monkey” which clearly I could not endorse more:

No word yet if it has any super powers.

One night after her bedtime story I tried to get her to make the McKayla Maroney “not impressed” face. You know, this one:

When I pulled out my phone to take a picture, she insisted I make a “Mady video” so she could see herself. So obviously that happened:

In the end, I think we did okay, especially with the second picture:

Just so you don’t think he was neglected, here’s my equally funny nephew Colbert chillin in a tot-sized chair:

Part of the weekend included doing some work to get their house ready to sell. The snake population in their backyard did not appreciate me revamping the brush/tree stump portion of the yard:

Fortunately, we were able to talk things out and nobody had to resort to biting.

October 3, 2013 family Uncategorized
Where Have All The Tables Gone?

Don’t be alarmed, but there are other people out there who think like me. And by that I mean ridiculously.

The Guardian’s website has a recurring feature in which they pose a reader’s question and have other readers give their answers in the comments section. Sometimes the questions have real, concrete answers, while others are very open-ended.

Some recent examples:

–Why do we enjoy watching people argue?
–Should coffee be made with boiling water?
–Are there any truly useless species in the world?

But the one my mind-twin answered was “How should we spend our last 3.5 billion years” (based on the idea that the sun will eventually make things too uncomfortable for us.)

There are the normal things you expect in any comments section, including people making everything into a complaint about politics, those who take the questions way too seriously, and those who attack whatever anyone says.

And then there’s this, from a user named backwards7:

“Predictions about events that may occur in the distant future are notoriously speculative, however there is one thing that we can be be absolutely sure of:

3.5 billion years from now, there will be a lot less tables.

In these times of plenty, we take it very much for granted that there will always be a flat, relatively-level surface, upon which we can place a drink, a laptop computer, or some enormous books of glossy black and white photography depicting the Devonshire coastline or unflattering-lit poor people from Newcastle.

The assumption that tables will always be this abundant is based upon the faulty premise that what has been the case in the past will remain so in the future.

The unpalatable truth is that, as our sun grows ever hotter and the climate on earth more fierce, the rising temperatures are likely to cause damage to our existing supply of tables. In many cases this damage will not be cost effective to repair. Therefore, it is imperative that, over the next 3.5 billion years, we build-up a table surplus. This will enable us to replace any that are rendered broken or unusable, quickly and with minimal disruption.

My vocal position on this issue has not been echoed by my peers in the scientific community, nor is it widely accepted as a priority. Much of the current discussion is focused on the need to get on with mapping Madonna’s genome, with a view to sending it into space.

I am one of the few dissenting voices on this matter. Frankly, if anyone’s genome were to be used to populate far-flung inhabitable worlds, in other parts of the universe, it should have been, Michael Jackson’s. That ship has unfortunately sailed. Thanks to our collective dithering we must now endure what is likely to be a lengthy wait for Michael Jackson (circa the Thriller era) to re-manifest in our locality as a Boltzman object, indistinguishable from the real thing.

This, along with my isolated stance on the need to increase table production world-wide, has caused serious damage to my professional reputation. My colleague and oldest male friend, Dr Stephen Porter, has, on numerous occasions begged me to stop publishing academic papers about an impending shortage of tables. Dr Porter is of the school of thought that this crisis can be averted altogether if we begin the process of interviewing for a new sun within the next billion years.

All I can say in response is that I would a poor scientist indeed if I ignored the overwhelming evidence in front of me. If, 3.5 billion years from now, I am proven to be correct, I shall derive no satisfaction from this most Pyrrhic of victories.”

When the day comes you are holding a plate of food and find yourself with no place to set it down, remember the wise words of backwards7. He tried to warn us all.

And to answer the first three questions:

-Watching other people argue is amazing because drama that doesn’t involve you is perhaps the best entertainment humans ever invented.
-Coffee should never be made.
-The Pittsburgh Penguins.

October 3, 2013 Uncategorized
#SageHugs

New things happen to me on the golf course all the time. At least, the few and far between times I play.

The nature of my game is such that I often end up with interesting shots that someone on the PGA Tour never gets to encounter. They include decisions like, should I try to go under this first tree and over the second one, or shoot a little to the right and skip it as far down the cart path as possible?

A few weeks ago I played two rounds with roommate MR, who has beaten me each and every single time we’ve played going all the way back to high school. And that’s fine. I have a great time whether I shoot 92 or 104.

But in our second round, something magical happened:

I won! I should note that under our long-time scoring system, we do not assess penalty shots for lost balls. If we did, I would have lost by roughly six strokes.

So how did this happen? Did I magically get better at golf by not playing all year? No. Sage happened.

As our foursome (with three lefties!) came up to the tee box on the par 3 third hole, a young woman walked toward our carts. I was thinking about which club to hit and thus didn’t take in the whole situation. I figured she was the beer cart lady, and told her we were fine for now.

Then she started talking. Very quickly. She mentioned a hole-in-one challenge that cost $10, earned you a free vacation if you made it and a golf magazine subscription if you didn’t. Your choice whether to bring her on the trip. We all declined.

As we stepped up to the tee box itself, she mentioned that one of her things is to hug everyone she meets. She said we had the option of cashing in this hug before or after we took our shot. I opted for the pre-shot hug, hoping that I could harness some positive energy into a solid swing.

Hug. Swing. Ball eight feet from the whole. Par.

Forget more practice or a functioning five iron (which I broke at this same course six years ago). All my golf game needed was a hug from a pretty girl. #SageHugs.

September 19, 2013 golf Uncategorized
Just Say No

Last month I bought a box of baseball cards and noticed something very different from the ones I got as a kid.

In the lower-left of the package, there’s a child rating that suggests the cards are not appropriate for kids under the age of 6:

I don’t know that much about kids, but I feel like I understand baseball cards pretty well. I can see how a child would be a major threat to a baseball card, but for the life of me could not figure out what would make the opposite situation an issue.

So I called Topps.

I waited on hold for about 20 minutes (somehow there were seven people in front of me) and in that time my new friend David Wright of the New York Mets informed me many times that Topps is on Facebook. Oh and that they make MMA cards too!

Finally though, I did speak to a customer service representative who provided an answer I never even considered.

“Mainly because in the Major Leagues there are some players who are using drugs, and they don’t recommend that for kids,” the rep said.

I don’t know what it is about turning 6 that makes you able to process seeing the baseball card of a guy who has used performance-enhancing drugs, but since I have a niece and nephew who haven’t made it there, I had to make my set safe.

Bye bye, Jhonny Peralta!

So long, Edinson Volquez!

Thanks to the always amazing baseball-reference.com for their database of PED suspensions. And for the Topps company for taking a stand for the sake of baseball and the youth of America.

September 13, 2013 baseball Uncategorized