Handshake etiquette

Here's a little-known bit of etiquette which I picked up from Miss Manners last year: A man should not, in social settings, extend his hand in an offer of a handshake to a woman. It is the prerogative of the woman to make this overture first.

I try to stick to this rule whenever I'm introduced to a woman I don't know, but sometimes I forget and just involuntarily stick my hand out. I've never been called on it, nor have I ever met a woman who balked at me for offering a handshake (or not offering one), but I like to try to stick to these seemingly random etiquette rules.

Visitation

No, this isn't a map that has anything to do with the electoral college. It's a map of all the states I've visited in my lifetime. Pathetically few, I know, but my funds have usually been quite limited.




create your own personalized map of the USA

And here's a map of the European countries I've visited (same caveat as above applies):





create your personalized map of europe

I've also been to a few countries in Asia -- Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam -- but they didn't offer specialized Asia maps without including the rest of the world, and that just didn't seem worth it to see where in Asia I've been. Besides, I've also been to Hong Kong, which was still British at the time I went. It's not on the list anymore, so to have it highlighted I'd have to select China, and well, that's just misleading.

*** Woah, graphic overload. Anyone wanna give me a pointer or two about how to force the graphic to fit into the template properly?....

Just for Fun

From the Washington Post online, some fun games:

Here are a few: Our President Needs Your Help, Bush Shoot-Out, Political Rhapsody, Fahrenheit 2004 and Dishonest Dubya.

Obviously, you'll need a faster machine than I'm currently sitting at to play most of these.

Hot/Cold Salad Bars

I don't like hot/cold salad bars which are so popular at delis around town. By the same token, I'm generally not a big fan of buffets, but usually the buffets are all-you-can-eat, so there's less cause to complain, although some of the same complaints below still apply.

First, HCSBs are unsanitary. Let's face it, the "sneeze guards" they put up over them are completely useless. I once in fact actually did have to sneeze while trying to find my food. I had to totally turn my head, seeing as I knew that no matter how directly I sneezed into the guard, it would hit the food, and that would be gross.

The sneeze guards are also placed at varying heights, obviously based upon ... well, I don't know what, but they're not a uniform height. And they shouldn't be, seeing as people obviously will vary, but still, it means that people whose heights don't match the sneeze guard will not be "shielded" should the sneeze (or drool, or snot, or anything) escape their lips (or noses).

Second, HCSBs seem to bring out the worst in people. In getting to pick and choose exactly what makes it on to your plate, people can get so rude in terms of the stuff that makes it to them. I'm talking about things like people putting some General Tso's chicken in their container, then changing their mind and putting them back. Sometimes, this happens after they've put other things in their container, too, so they're using their tongs to poke past other foods in their effort to replace the General Tso's chicken, and the chicken they're putting back now has some other foreign substance stuck on it.

Third, it's way too easy to overspend on a single lunch at HCSBs. Around where I live, it usually costs anywhere from $4.50 to $5.99 per pound for the food. A sandwich would cost, say, $5 or $6, but loading stuff onto your plate -- including salads -- can quickly total more than a pound, and suddenly you're paying $8, $10, $12 for lunch.

Call me OCD, but I try to avoid these things as much as I can.

Random Photography

Check out Found Photos. Apparently someone has assembled a collection of random photos available from those file-sharing programs. They're fun. An interesting foray into someone else's world, however transient that visit may be. I'm kind of enjoying building an entire story around some random shots. What led up to it? What followed? Who are these people? It's an exercise in creative storytelling.

My World is Falling Apart -- Literally

How do I begin to explain? Everything I touch lately seems to be falling apart.

1. My cell phone. I hadn't realized how long it has been since I charged it, and seeing as it's been in my bag all weekend (I've been working, so there was very little need for me to ever pull it out), I didn't even hear the discreet "Help me! I'm dying!" tones it emitted. When I finally did pull it out of my bag, I foolishly attempted to actually use it -- turned it on and dialed quickly, hoping to get a word or two in before the battery zonked out again. The other phone rang once and it died again. No problem, I thought. I'll just charge it when I get home. Unfortunately, for some bizarre reason, my attempts to shove the charger into the phone properly were not met with success. No little "Battery Charging" symbol showed up. Nothing. I could have stuck a Q-tip in there for the same result. So, for now, my cell phone is dead and incapable of revivification.

2. My Jukie (I like this word -- just the way it sounds). Just bought it. Eventually managed to get Dell to tell me how to fix it, but for a while I was concerned. I did what the instructions told me to: I charged the device for over six hours, installed some software on my home machine, and started transferring music. It worked for a bit when I first opened the box, so I was happy. Then I took it to work -- because my office machine actually has a better music collection than my home computer at the moment. I happily started putting a slew of music from my computer on to my jukie (I still love this word). After I left for the day, taking my jukie with me, I got home to find that I couldn't turn the jukie on. The little battery indicator bar was there, but I could not get to a main menu. This irritated me greatly.

Eventually I got a customer service rep to talk to me about my problem. He suggested I use the "reset" button on my machine. Honestly, I had thought of that before, but I didn't want to have to reload all the music if I could avoid it. So I made sure I wouldn't lose the data if I hit reset, and he assured me so. So I did it, and it works now! Funny thing is, he said I shouldn't use that button often. And he also said that the jukie, like operating systems, sometimes requires a reboot after installing new stuff. Wait, says I, if I have to reset every time I load new music on, but then shouldn't reset too often, doesn't that mean I can't put new music on here very frequently? Now that I think about it, I don't think I received an acceptable reply to this question: I was just happy that the thing was now playing my music.

Oh, random aside: The hold message I had while waiting for my support guy (in India) said:

We are currently experiencing longer than usual hold times due to a recent outbreak of an internet worm. If your computer crashes upon startup, or if [blah blah blah], you may be infected with this worm. . . . Point your browser to [Norton or McAfee web sites] to fix this problem.

My question is this: If your computer is "crash[ing] upon startup," how the hell are you supposed to point your browser to anything, let alone anti-virus sites?

3. As mentioned above, my home computer isn't doing so hot. I installed a second hard drive where I'm storing data (as opposd to programs), including my music collection, and (ahem) pictures. Well, the hard drive is slightly farged. I've identified that there are some specific files in there that suffer from a "cyclic redundancy error", making them unreadable and, thus, useless. Problem is, the error also apparently renders them undeleteable, and they're stuck on my machine. Moreover, something about this error, it seems, prevents my Explorer from being able to "see" everything on the drive. So while my RealPlayer gives me a complete list of the music it can get to, my Windows Explorer won't show me music files past "D" on my subfolers.

4. My ceiling. Okay, so I didn't literally touch it, and it's really not even my fault. But earlier this summer, I noticed some slight water stains on the ceiling in my living room. Eventually these water stains turned into a giant water bubble -- sort of like an off-white version of those black domes that house security cameras in department stores. One night it finally hit breakdown, and dripped all night long onto my shelf. I know because a pilsner glass I have was filled with water, and then some. I complained to the condo about it, and they're getting my upstairs neighbor to pay for the fix-it job.

5. The closet door in my bathroom. Okay, again, I didn't touch it, and I don't know how this happened, but I was awakened in the middle of the night last night by a tremendous THUD. It had been a long day at work (literally 10 hours in the office -- on Columbus Day!) so I awoke groggily, thought What was that?, and looked up to verify that my front door was still closed. As long as no one had broken in and started doing bad stuff to my apartment (or me), I decided whatever that was could wait until morning. I went back to sleep.

This morning I found my closet door halfway to the floor in my bathroom, its fall broken only by the ironing board which used to sit right in front of it. (The ironing board, by the way, is now rendered dangerous to useless, seeing as a door collapsing upon it caused its legs to become uneven.) I spent a good part of the morning just trying to get everything out of the way so I could shower and other prepare for the day. I just didn't have the time or energy to fix the actual door.

So that's my laundry list so far of things broken. I do sincerely hope my work machine doesn't pull a kaput on me. I have got a lot of work to do this week.

¡Goooooool! -- or not

Okay, so here's a non-exhaustive list of medium-term goals I'd like to achieve. Just for fun, let's say I'd like achieve them before I hit 35.

1. Learn to play the guitar. The regular, wooden kind, not something that's plugged in. I think it's sexy, and besides, it's easier to practice a regular guitar than something that has amps out the wazoo without bugging your neighbors.

2. Become competent in one more foreign language. I'm thinking of either Italian, Japanese, or Korean.

3. Find that ideal job.

4. Have enough to buy a new house without selling my condo.

5. Travel abroad at least three more times.

6. Go snowboarding.

7. Get in shape.

8. Clean the damn apartment up.

9. Finish those books that have been on my dresser for months now.

10. Find poker buddies for regular hold 'em games.

Netflix administrivia

I've been a member of Netflix since June of 2002 now. I recently decided, just for fun, to run some statistics on my rental habits:

Number of movies rented (through 7/29/04): 234
Average cost of rental: $2
Average number of rentals per month: 10

Number of movies that I subsequently purchased (excluding tv show DVD sets) : 9
Number of movies that I subsequently purchased (includes Sex and the City): 22
Number of movies that subsequently ended up on my Amazon.com wishlist and are currently still there: 4

Number of movies with some kind of gay theme or prominent gay character(s): 39
Number of those gay-themed films I actually liked: about 7 (why do I continue to rent them?....)
Number of non-English-speaking films (in whole or in non-insubstantial part): 20

Number of movies which robbed me a few hours of my life: Too many
Number of movies which put me to sleep: zzz... wait, what was the question?

Number of rentals that are DVDs of tv shows: 58
To wit: All available DVDs of Six Feet Under, Oz, Sex and the City, Freaks and Geeks, Sports Night, the Superfriends series (before I came to realize how lame they are), one season of Curb Your Enthusiasm (which led me to detest that show with a passion), and one apparently random disc of Queer as Folk. Also, one disc of Coupling (the BBC version, of course!), before I realized I knew I would love the show, and ended up just buying them as they came out with "test running" them first.

Number of movies currently in my queue: 216 (yes, I am a freak)
Probable number of movies that are in there solely because I'm stalking a hot actor in the hopes that he'll do a shirtless or otherwise nude scene: >20 (see above "freak" comment)