Oct 15 Well seeing as how there have been more ants as of late, I’ve had a few thoughts that have crossed my mind. Because ants do that. They inspire me.
What would life be like without insects?
Well there’d be less annoyance because ants wouldn’t invade your house. Then again, who’s going to clean up those little bits of food that you’ve dropped and are unaware that they’re there?
Structures would be more sound because termites wouldn’t get to the wood that holds it together. But then how are you going to justify spending lots of money on rebuilding?
You won’t get stung by bees, wasps, and more. However, honey is very good. And good for you. And it doesn’t expire because of its antibacterial properties “as a result of the low water activity causing osmosis, hydrogen peroxide effect, and high acidity” (ref. Wikipedia’s article about honey).
As you’re walking, you won’t get attacked by a swarm of gnats that endlessly annoy you. But then you won’t get amusing things like gnats helping the Indians win their game.
All in all, even though there are lots and lots of things that I don’t particularly care for about ants. However, I’ve learned from reading Foundation and Earth that perhaps making worlds into what they were not intended has many unintended and distasteful consequences. So let’s leave everything as it was intended in its beautiful and wonderful balance. Even if it can bug us to no end. Sorry, I had to. :P
Oct 10 There’s not much more annoying in life than those small things that are seemingly insignificant but turn out to be extremely noticeable. Wonder what the heck I’m talking about?
So I burned myself while eating a few days ago. And now it’s a bit of a cut (or something that feels like a cut) on the tip of my tongue. This can also be called an apical cut of the tongue. And it’s really annoying.
Everytime I move it against my teeth or eat something salty or anything at all, I’m reminded that it’s there. It’s like a little kid who keeps tapping you on the shoulder saying, “Here I am, play with me.” Not that playing with little kids is bad. So maybe it’s more like a little kid tapping you on the shoulder saying, “Here I am, clean up my poo.”
So what solution do I have for this? Nothing. I’ve got nothing. But here are some points that I’ve thought:
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It’s on the tongue inside of your mouth so that eliminates the usual antiseptic and bandaging for cuts to the skin. Since the mouth is well-known to be full of germs, it is really unfortunate that they’re nothing that can be done about this. Maybe saliva protects it? Maybe not.
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It’s supposedly the strongest muscle. How do they know this? I have no idea. Whether it is or is not doesn’t matter so much as the fact that it is almost always moving. That makes it hard for the cut to really settled down, kick back, and recover.
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It’s necessary for eating. We can’t just bypass the tongue by sticking a feeding tube through our nose or veins, can we? Okay I guess that we could. But we won’t because that is just unreasonable.
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How do people that bite their tongue in their sleep deal with this?!
So you understand that a cut in the mouth must be annoying. But you know that there are a lot of other annoying things out there such as:
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Cold sores. Especially if they’re big. Especially if they’re in the crack between your lip and your gum. Especially if you’re at a celebration banquet with lots of good food but which when put inside your mouth actually gets stuck in the cold sore and pokes it, aggravating it even more until you’re at the point of torture. Yeah that’s never happened to me.
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Paper cuts. A million of these would be absolutely unbearable torture. One of them is pretty bad, too.
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Pinched nerves/muscle knots. Whether you slept wrong, you exercised too much, or anything else that you did, these are so annoying as to make you think about them constantly for the day or two that they last. You almost can’t do anything but complain about it (whether out loud or in your head).
So after all of this, the conclusion is that either I get annoyed very easily or there are a lot of annoying things out in the world.
Oct 5 Alright so we had a fire drill the other day. And it was annoying. The sirens were piercingly loud. I guess that’s good because you don’t want to have your earphones in and listening to music so that you don’t hear the alarm when it goes off. Nevertheless the fact of the matter was that there wasn’t a fire and it did hurt my ears.
When you go down the stairs for the fire drill, it’s mild because nobody is actually trying to get away from a fire. I can only imagine that some people would panic in the case of a real fire and try to run by people. These are probably the same people that need to learn what I have to say On Driving. They’re the ones zooming by, cutting you off, and still getting to the destination not a minute or two faster than you. In a fire drill they’re gonna run as fast as they can, knock people over, and cause general pandemonium. Great.
But those thoughts weren’t the most disturbing of the day.
Many people exited the building (it’s a 5 story one with multiple companies), and as we’re standing in the grass I see someone (from my company) who is standing there with his arms raised. They’re resting on his head. Maybe he was stretching. Maybe he was subtly trying to get someone’s attention. Maybe he was trying to touch the sky. How do I know? But whatever he was doing, all I know is that his shirt was too short (so it raised along with his arms), and his pants were sagging too much. And there was a great view of his man hair (if you know what I mean, pubic hair if you don’t) if you’re into that. But I’m not into that. Not at all. And I don’t know too many people who are. So that made me unhappy and disgusted.
So remember, kids, to pull up your pants. Especially if you’re at work. Especially if you’re raising your arms up and trying to grab birds out of the air. You know who you are.
Oct 4 I’m a little slow on this news, but one of the sites that I subscribe and read (ProBlogger.net) is having a contest to celebrate the anniversary of his blog. You can find more details of it all at the competition page. There are $54,000 worth of prizes to be had in a number of smaller contests (although admittedly some of the contests are already done). Many of them are fairly easy to participate in.
So check it out because remember: the possibility of winning is better than no possibility at all!
Oct 3 Well, sorry to create a new post on the same subject (Winning With Blingo). But I just wanted to let people know about some further information about using Blingo. Besides, it’s not as if this is going to be a series or anything like that.
Well it’s worth revisiting because:
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I got no comments on the last post. Not that I’m extremely popular but posts seem to get a fair amount of comments usually. Thus, I have no knowledge that anyone read it!
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It’s a worthwhile thing to do because I feel like people only stand to benefit from utilizing it.
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I’ll admit it, I want you to join through me because I wouldn’t mind getting extra chances to win things. Who wouldn’t want that?
In any case, for those of you using Firefox I have a tip for you. Now you can search Blingo in Firefox without ever having known the difference!
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Go to “about:config”. This stores all of the configurations (sometimes hidden, sometimes available through menus) of everything in Firefox.
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Change the keyword.enabled preference
1. In the "Filter:" text box, search for "keyword.enabled"
2. Right-click the entry with the Preference Name of "keyword.enabled" and click Toggle (make sure that the value is "enabled"
- Change the keyword.URL preference
1. In the "Filter:" text box, search for "keyword.URL"
2. Double-click the entry with the Preference Name of "keyword.URL". Change the value to "http://www.blingo.com/search?q="
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Now hit Ctrl-L (hold Control and type the letter l) or Apple-L (Mac OS X) to access the URL bar. Type something not a website that you want to search for. Try “Derek Wong” if you’re unimaginative. :)
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You should be directed to the Blingo search results for “Derek Wong”!
This is something that many people could benefit from. Using the keyboard to access the url bar instead of the mouse is faster as well as minimizing ergonomic issues by using the mouse. (If you didn’t know, increased and poor mouse usage contributes to Repetitive Strain/Stress Injuries.)
Also this will allow you to search the Internet through Blingo (whose benefits I’ve expounded upon in Winning With Blingo) without having to actually go to the Blingo site each time!
