Category Archives: Humor

Purge/Binge & Some Ephemera

1 Reply

Screen Shot 2012-12-27 at 10.31.11 PM

I’m purging my RSS feeds again. The last time I did it completely was 2008. It has been far too long.  Currently I’m sitting at 248 feeds and have been using Google Reader since 2007- roughly 6 years and 203,731 items read. That’s about 93 items a day, every day for 6 years.

Screen Shot 2012-12-27 at 10.31.20 PM

Clearly, I read most things from 6:00 PM until 11:00 PM.  Getting an iPhone has evened some of the reading time out some.

And with that self indulgent surface level data done with, here’s some strange Internet ephemera.

Screen Shot 2012-12-19 at 9.33.12 PM

That is a terrifying glimpse into someone’s house built in 1724 that happens to be full of partially dismembered mannequins.  My wife found this one.

Screen Shot 2012-12-23 at 12.52.03 PM

Screen Shot 2012-12-27 at 7.59.16 PM

Both of the clips above are just two recent examples of things continuing to move after people have died.  Package deliveries are pretty common (and hopefully positive) but the second endorsement by a man who passed away earlier in the week felt pretty unpleasant.

 

IMG_0815

Sadly, I collect screenshots of odd wireless network names.

IMG_4455

I don’t know why edtech is fascinated with bananas but it is.  I took this shot at ISTE.

IMG_4590

This is from my hometown.  It’s pretty much sums up how things went in high school.

Picture 5

Hawking. The world is strange.

Picture 14b

So if a teacher on a social network stumbles across something like this, what do they do?

Picture 17

The best review for a digital voice recorder you’re likely to see.

Picture 19 copy

Ah. I am sorry for you.

Screen Shot 2011-09-10 at 10.00.10 PM

The first “under construction” Facebook site post I’ve seen.

Screen Shot 2012-12-01 at 12.24.42 AM

Jimmy’s charge was “sanitary facilities.”  What in god’s name did he do?

Guest Post

7 Replies

Hello Ms. Rivas,

I would be interested in a post that details why allowing random people who solicit you via email to guest post on your blog is a terrible idea.

Seriously,

Tom

On Feb 24, 2012, at 5:38 AM, Katheryn Rivas wrote:

Hi Tom,

I hope this email finds you well. I only recently started reading your blog, I am a freelance writer, regularly write for USELESSCRAP.com. I was wondering if you would be interested in publishing a guest post on your blog.

Here are some samples:

  • spammygarbage.com
  • spammygarbage.net
  • spammygarbage.org
  • spammygarbage.us

I could write on any topic you wish, or I can simply come up with a post that I believe would supplement your blog. I just need a link to my homepage (http://www.onlineuniversities.com/) on my anchor text in the author by-line. Thanks so much for taking the time to read this; please let me know if this is something you might be interested in.

Sincerely,

Katheryn Rivas

My Phone Coughs Politely

6 Replies

untitled (19)

I’m a bit old school when it comes to phones. I habitually leave my phone on vibrate. I never notice that it vibrates. This occasionally makes people mad. I do this mainly because I’m absent minded and don’t want to be that guy with the annoying phone going off.

The solution came to me the other day.

I needed a ring that doesn’t sound like a ring, something that’d be a normal sound in most places1. I can make custom ringtones for the iPhone in Garageband.

My phone now coughs politely2.

In case anyone else wants to sound vaguely sick, but maintain politeness, here is my cough ringtone as a m4a and as a m4r ringtone.

1 The mosquito ringtone would not work for me because it’s noticeable to kids. I want something unobtrusive to everyone.

2 My guitar still gently weeps. I’m unaware what other objects I own do.

“Small People” Limited Time Offer

3 Replies

As an English or foreign language teacher I’d be all over the “small people” quote by BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg. It’s not going to be useful much longer so act now.

Questions:

  • Should this comment make people mad?
  • What did he mean?
  • What should he have said?

It’s a beautiful entry to arguing about word choice, synonyms and nuance. In this case, one word really mattered quite a bit.

It might be fun things like have students reword famous quotes/sayings using synonyms to make them offensive or otherwise rob them of power.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
becomes
“A chopped up house, will fall down.”

Minnesota’s “Land of 10,000 lakes”
becomes
“Our state has a lot of standing water”

After you get them written, you could have them post them in some way and students could try to figure out what the original quote was.

Another bonus was I found that I could search MSNBC video by certain keywords- in this case, small people. It highlights those words in a transcript and shows the points in the time line where the words occur with colored dots for the video. A really nice way to quickly get where you want.