More Stuff Stolen from David's Blog

Part 2 in my ongoing series of original blog ideas I stole from David.

OK so David's most recent post is something about do-it-yourself home projects. I had a small home project of my own last week, but quite unexpectedly. When I turned my shower to "OFF" in the morning, the water became very cold but did not in fact go away as it normally does. This was alarming because, in order to minimize the amount of water dripping on my bathroom floor, I am a person who towels off while still in the shower. Let me emphasize again that this water was very cold. Like the water they put in pictures on the labels of vodka bottles. After doing a short interpretive dance to memorialize my feelings about my now frigid shower, I turned the water back to warm and wondered what I should do next. Being in a warm shower is quite nice first thing in the morning. But when you are ready to get on with the rest of your day, having a steady downpour of water can become something of a nuisance. It makes it impossible to do anything with your hair. This is why people do not generally like to go walking in the rain (except in movies, where people routinely do insane things, like dating Meg Ryan).

I fiddled with the shower knob repeatedly, but to no avail. The water was more than willing to become ice-cold, but it would not turn off. I tried pushing down on the knob, pulling out on the knob, and everything in-between. I tried using a loofah as a tool. This idea was exceedingly misguided, but I was desperate. I finally was able to get the water to turn off, but the knob by now was pointed straight up, as though in supplication. Its normal "OFF" position is all the way to the right. This struck me as a less-than-favorable outcome.

After exiting my water trap of a shower, I decided to look up home shower repair on the Home Depot web site. The site assured me that replacing a show knob is exceedingly easy. Any person can complete this procedure. People do it all the time. Sometimes they even allow their children to help, building lifelong memories along the way. This was followed by a series of instructions and schematics that convinced me, utterly and completely, that this was outside of my abilities. I called a plumber and went to work.

Love It

This is outstanding... The twins dressed as Sherry and Teri are the best...

Spinvox (Part 2)

OK so David recently blogged a new service called Spinvox. They have a novel kind of idea and a terrifically frightening web site. The background photo on the main page was too intense for me and I had to go back to a less intimidating web page immediately. My thoughts on the service will, therefore, be pretty much uninformed. Like a picture of an airplane as drawn by a cave man, the basic idea is pretty close but there are bound to be some wild inaccuracies and maybe a dragon head thrown in for good measure.

The idea behind Spinvox is that you are way too busy to actually listen to the people who have called you. They will, in all likelihood, go on about unimportant details such as their grocery lists or the exotic diseases they have recently contracted. No one wants to hear about these things. So instead, Spinvox will route your voice mails to a handy call center where a friendly call center employee will listen to them. Yes, that's right. The call center employee will then transcribe the contents of the message and send it to your cell phone as a text message. You can now READ about Heather's grocery list instead of hearing her prattle on about how she can never find English Cucumber, even at the Fresh Market.

My problem with the whole thing is the idea of the call center employees listening to my calls. Mainly because I DESPERATELY want that job. I have a voyueristic streak a mile wide and the idea of getting paid to listen in on people's voice mails is inifinitely appealing to me. I would imagine you have to wade through a lot of boring messages. If they are anything like my own, most of them probably consist of "Hey, it's me. Call me back." But once in a great while, you would HAVE to hit voice mail gold. Something like a confessed wife-killing or a scandalous affair! Maybe even a Celebrity Scandalous Affair! I suppose hoping for a Celebrity Scandal Baby to come out of it is probably too much to ask for.

The other thing that worries me about the idea of this service is whether or not my voice mails would be worth the time and effort to transcribe. Most of them consist of "Hey, it's me. Call me back." How will the call-screeners even know who that came from? Without a thorough grounding in my friends' various idiosyncracies, I can't imagine how they're going to have any idea. And that's not even touching on the worst of it! Inevitably, one of my friends is going to decide it's a clever idea to test the limits of the poor call-screeners. I will receive a text message that just reads "Poop." Or maybe "Heard about the chlamydia - what a bummer! Does your mom know?" This is the sort of thing they will find amusing and I will just find upsetting as I sit and fret over the opinions of the Call Center Employees.

It turns out that I am concerned about how an outside listener would perceive the contents of MOST of my messages... Peter, for instance, would gain a certain degree of celebrity within the call center community, due to the nature of our calls to one another. Our voice mail messages are generally left in the voices of any of a variety of characters we have created to entertain ourselves. The Old Man voice is very popular and generally involves something to do with medication, culminating in eventually dozing off towards the end of the message. I'm not sure how the Old Man's loud snores would be translated to text. I'll leave that for the experts. Equally puzzling to the Call Center Employees might be the back and forth banter of Betty and Helens, two midwestern housewives who frequently swap recipes, stories, and embarrassing personal revelations via voice mail.

But by far the worst will be the gibberish messages. I can't help but pity the Call Center Employee who has the unenviable task of phonetically transcribing "Mook tlak bakka woongabbalah" . I picture the Call Center Crew huddled around a speaker phone, listening intently, with their eyes slightly squinted in deep concentration. "I think I heard 'poop'", one will say.

That's Some Melon...

The following IM conversation clearly demonstrates why Leah is great:

Leah M -ND says:
i haven't eaten a THING today yet
coffee, that's it
you?

Todd J. says:
I ate an entire watermelon

Leah M -ND says:
wow
that's not very filling

Todd J. says:
It was an entire watermelon! Have you ever seen a watermelon?! They're HUGE!

Leah M -ND says:
they're mostly water though

Todd J. says:
I can't believe you're so nonplussed, like people eat a whole watermelon all the time...

Leah M -ND says:
Are you bullsh*ting me then?
I somehow doubt you did

Todd J. says:
Maybe.

Leah M -ND says:
i think there is some hyperbole involved here
and so rude of you not to save me some

Todd J. says:
I just thought you would have reacted more.
That's the last time I eat an entire imaginary watermelon for your benefit.

Leah M -ND says:
i haven't effing eaten all day
i have no energy from not eating and waking up with a migraine this morning ... you could have told me you ate a whole yak and i would have been like, "oh yeah ... great. how was it?"

Todd J. says:
I ate a whole yak.

Leah M -ND says:
REALLY?!?!?!!? WOW?!!?!?!?!!?!?!
Was he delicious?!!?!?!?
That's AMAZING TODD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Todd J. says:
Now THAT is more like it.
I'm blogging this conversation.

OK

So I guess it's time for me to join the mass of bloggers detailing the day to day minutia of their lives. Why? Title says it all... I'll try to keep it interesting - promise.