Also, who the hell sees a rocket launch on their way to dropping off their kids at school?
"My brother got kicked out of Barnes and Noble for placing bibles in the fiction section. IMMD"
haha.
If I had a rocket launcher, some son of a bitch would finally get to school on time.
Yesterday, my friends went to buy bagels. They stopped at my house on their way home and fed me bagels and let me coo at their adorable baby. IMMD.
Today, I woke to a "just thinking about you" text message. IMMD.
5.2: He woke you up? This is why there should be a "no communication before 10 AM" blanket rule.
I thought the rule was "no texting to each other from the same bed"?
Technically, yes. But I needed to get up anyway to go parent and stuff.
Also, who the hell sees a rocket launch on their way to dropping off their kids at school?
That would be conceivable in Lompoc, CA (home to Vandenberg). I didn't live that close, but we used to watch the missile launches. So fun.
10: It's sort of sad that when I respond "I wish" I will sincerely mean that "I wish" I had been in bed from 8 to 6. Alone. Sleeping.
I wish.
12:
So you werent alone? And you werent sleeping?
And you regret that!?!?!?
I second Will's comment.
Umm, since nobody's reading the Tissue Lament, here's my question. I'm going to a healthcare town hall with my Congressman Ed Markey. What should I say? I'm thinking that I should mention that I want individuals who don't like their employer options to be able to go into the exchange.
What do you guys think?
Feel free to answer in the other thread.
You know, I should know better than to open my mouth when Will is around...
Man, it must be low fruit season in Di's neck of the woods.
Di refuses to open her mouth when I am around. FML
Hmm, a rocket launcher ....
At the moment I am considering buying this alarm clock for my 12 year old. I nearly told her that if she won't get up in the mornings she'll have to be home educated again, but then I'd have her being fucking annoying all day!
Those with older kids, please tell me I'll get through the next few years without beating her to a pulp?
Those with older kids, please tell me I'll get through the next few years without beating her to a pulp
It can be a challenge. I find things smooth out when they are in their late 20's, so hang in there.
asilon, can you try out the vibrating function in a store?
I just heard a review of Ralph Nader's new novel (novel!) on NPR.
"At 700 pages it's an assault against trees." Chuckle.
22: Trying to compete for the low-hanging fruit?
can you try out the vibrating function in a store?
That seems like it would be unsanitary.
My kid's math teacher just called to say she had a splinter. I thought that was odd until further discussion revealed that another student had stabbed her with a pencil, the sliver in question being graphite.
Tried out the vibrator function in the store. IMMD.
At the moment I am considering buying this alarm clock
Have you considered this alarm clock?
29: I bought that for eekbeat! Unfortunately, it goes unused.
29: I bought that for eekbeat! Unfortunately, it goes unused.
I've never actually tried it, but I like the idea of it.
30: We also have one sitting unused that someone bought for my son.
To expand on 30, I do periodically push the button that makes the whirligig fly off, so I guess it's getting some use as a toy. Never as an alarm, though.
I had a vibrating alarm clock a few years back. A bit jarring, but it did the trick.
(I know. Low hanging fruit. I've given up hope of avoiding it. )
We don't bother using an alarm clock any more, because the kids never sleep past six thirty anyhow.
Good lord, that flying alarm clock would be mashed to a bloody pulp in short order in my bedroom. Or, more reasonably, relegated to the basement.
Best alarm clock may be a cat or two standing over your head on the pillow patiently placing his or her paw on your nose or eyelids or lips. Do not crossly say, "Cut it out!" and toss the cat(s) on the floor, unless you're a meanie. The cat may choose to gently extend his or her claws onto your face if you aren't getting the point, but hey.
Are clock-radios ineffectual? Works okay. 9 minute snooze. Set the clock a bit fast and pretend you don't know it's 7 minutes fast.
Set the clock a bit fast and pretend you don't know it's 7 minutes fast.
I can only manage so much pretending and that would be way down the list.
37: It's true, I set the alarm for 8:07 a.m. Let me have my game here.
If the electricity goes out, I'm faced with a dilemma as to how to set the bedroom clock again. I still go for 7, or even 9! minutes fast if I feel daring. DO NOT ASK ME WHY.*
* I know why.
38: It's like Cheeze Whiz. Sure, it seems to work at the start, but soon you need more and more to just get back to normal.
(My alarm is only a back-up. I'm usually up for the reason Apo gives in 35. This works fairly well until daylight savings time ends.)
I'm surprised there's not more example giving. Maybe everyone already knew about IMMD?
For heebie from the current top of the page:
In math class my teacher asked me to define "matrix" I told her, "Unfortunately no one can be told what the Matrix is, they have to experience it for themselves." IMMD
Too many obvious examples involve schadenfreude, which makes it a depressing exercise.
I have now read this thread and I'd like to say my brain is translating IMMD as 'IMMa Dork'.
max
['Sad, really.']
Well, you don't have to be insulting about it, max.
I'm surprised there's not more example giving. Maybe everyone already knew about IMMD was glued to the nailbiting end of the NLDS. Los Angeles, here we come!
I mean, I can keep my alarm clock behavior to myself.
Really, it's between me and my alarm clock, isn't it.
45 gets it right.
Finally, a game at a time I could watch!
41: That guy like eight minutes in putting those spilled coffee stirrers back is almost certainly a health department violation. Shame on him.
49: he was actually deactivating the force field keeping our hero from leaving the store. Wheels within wheels.
Well, you don't have to be insulting about it, max.
It made my day.
No. Not really.
max
['IHNTSH, IJLS 'pulsing meat acronym'.']
53: ['IHNTSH, IJLS 'pulsing meat acronym'.']
I have not the shit, I just leave such [a] 'pulsing meat acronym'.
Sigh. Clearly I'm not trying very hard.
IHNTSH, IJLS 'pulsing meat acronym'.
"I have nothing to say here, it's just lightning sausage"?
So on the bright side the apples that someone gave me that I thought were kind of meh for eating turned out to be very tasty when turned into an apple upside-down cake. The unfortunate side effect of this is that I just ate a quarter of an apple-upside down cake over the course of an hour.
Ah! This is exactly what unfogged is for.
58: I thought so, too; hovertext updated.
I had an alarm clock that broke so that the alarm could not be reset from the default time of 12:00 am. For months I would set the time so that the clock would read 12:00 am at the time I wanted to wake up. Eventually, I bought a new clock, but the old one had a 5 minute snooze, which I liked a lot and could never find again on a clock radio.
hovertext updated.
That just made my day.
62: I figured as much. Willful misunderstanding.
Plus, I made CJB's day. Let's not detract from that, yes?
If only there were some sort of website where such a thing could be commemorated...
55: "I have nothing to say here, it's just lightning sausage"?
Which provokes the question, 'What, exactly, happens during a lightning fart?'
59: That's not what I meant.
That's what they all say.
max
['BZZT.']
||
Has Atrios been 37 since he unmasked himself as Duncan Black?
|>
59: That's not what I meant.
That's what they all say.
I've noticed.
After a lightning fart the perpetrator leaves the room, no?
Oh, but the question was what happens *during* a lightning fart. Dammit. Sorry.
Atrios has been 37 all his life.
the old one had a 5 minute snooze
Now I've just wasted fifteen minutes reading different explanations of why the standard snooze time is 9 minutes, none of which is convincing.
There's a standard snooze time? I had no idea. I think mine's 8 minutes, but I never use it.
It's true of almost every digital alarm clock I've ever used. (And Google auto-completes 'why is snooze' to 'why is snooze 9 minutes'.) But about two snooze-intervals is enough time to waste pondering why, I think.
I use an alarm clock on my computer that I like quite a bit - you can specify the playlist you want to wake up to, you can set the snooze to whatever length you like, you can have different wake up times for every day of the week. Lovely.
Before I gave up on the radio altogether, I'd listen to the radio as triggered by the alarm. That way if, as often happened, a song came on that I didn't like, I could just press snooze and not have to think about turning the radio on again. I'd do the same for advertisements. Five minutes meant you'd miss a little of the next song - but not always an entire commercial break - but nine minutes was just too long. After repeatedly "listening" to most of each hour on snooze, I just stopped using the radio at all. It hasn't been a loss.
Now I use my watch or travel-size alarms pretty much exclusively. If I really need to, I can put the clock on the other side of the room and still use my watch to check the time if I wake up during the night. I usually wake up to the watch alarm, anyway.
74: Huh. Do I have that? I should have that.
69--His sidebar has had him at 37 for the last four years, right?
77: Hell if I know. I never read Eschaton. (Do I have to turn in my Online Lefty card now?)
77: I'm not sure why it's a concern, JM. He probably set that 4 years ago and never updated it. Or maybe he made it up. I have a friend whose advertised age is 99, the idea being, in that case, that's it's not relevant. I wouldn't be surprised to see that friend of mine change his age to 12.
I don't think so--he's always been a year older than me. (I'm 36 at the moment.)
He was 32 in 2003. So he should be 38 by the end of the year.
It would have been confusing if he were actually 54.
76: It's a program called Awaken. I like it, and it hasn't failed me, but I must admit that I've never managed to get it to turn my computer on (I think I have to change some setting and I've just never really bothered because I leave my computer on sleep mode all the time anyhow).
83: Thanks. It's giving me a not-found-on-server error. I'll re-try tomorrow.
84: Strange! I do wonder if there is a free program that does the same thing.
I don't know why that bothered me suddenly.
85: After all I installed it. The test is on!
I hope you like it. I'll be waking up at 7:45 tomorrow morning to a mix of shamelessly cheesy pop songs, as that is the only thing that will drag me out of bed (Beyonce, Pink, Rhianna, etc). What is even more terrible is that I will use my remote to hit snooze, at least once.
I like the fact that because it wakes my computer from sleep in order to run the program*, it means that when I want to check my email in the morning there's no delay while I wait for the computer to wake up. And then, I realize that I'm totally spoiled by gadgets and modern life.
*I actually wake up to the sound of my computer whirring to life, not the actual song itself, but that's just because my internal alarm clock is almost good enough to get me up on my own and I am generally sleeping very lightly by the time the real alarm goes off.
I think people can get conditioned to the sounds they hear regularly when they're woken up so that the first sound of them wakes them up. I used to do early morning sports - swimming and running - and my dad, who's always woken up early, would knock on the door first and then say that it's time to wake up. I got used to waking up at the knocking sound and a quietish knock will still wake me up almost every single time (an unfortunate occurrence sometimes in apartment buildings with thin walls and early-rising roommates/neighbors).
Several times lately I've been awakened to a squirrel scratching at my window. I don't know what it's trying to accomplish.
This is what cron and mplayer were made for, I tell you.
Oh wow, it's 2 AM. I'd better go set an alarm clock. (I guess I'm fully recovered from jetlag. Waking up at 6 was kind of nice, while it lasted. Did you know there are several daylight hours before noon? It's amazing!)
I have abdicated from any involvement in waking her up, and told her if she can't get herself downstairs by 7.15 every morning this week, I'm buying the very loud, vibrating one, and she's paying for it. Today she was up on time, although she did apparently comment on my blog after midnight last night. Idiot child.
Did you know there are several daylight hours before noon? It's amazing!)
it actually blew my mind for a while when I quit drinking and there were all this continuous evening hours after 7 that just went on and on, and I would remember what happened during that time. I think I blacked out every evening for like a year. there are also a surprising amount of hours before noon, but as someone who woke up at 11:15 today I'm not in much position to talk about them. I don't do mornings.
94: The Ride of the Valkyries played on a good high powered sound system works. My kids still shudder when they hear that.
that time. I think I blacked out every evening for like a year. there are also a surprising amount of hours before noon
Iris' old school started at 8:15, and we had to be out the door before 8 if we were to get there on time. Now the bus picks her up at ~8:40, and it's basically around the corner - I don't think it takes a minute to get there. If I stop at the store after the bus, I'm not getting home til 9, yet it's still "first thing" in my mind. My work mornings have become vastly unproductive - not enough hours before noon.
Has Atrios been 37 since he unmasked himself as Duncan Black?
Just to support Chopper (cohort!), he has in fact been updating. I think I even noticed it changing in the spring. Something to look forward to.
I used to launch myself out of a lofted bed to the sound of a CD spinning up in time to stop the song playing. (Loading the stereo with Pantera with the volume maxed teaches you to do that really quickly.) Nothing like a shot of adrenaline to start the day.
asilon,
I have this clock radio dawn simulator, and it helps a lot once fall comes around. It's not fool proof, though, because you can make it snooze.
I had this cheaper one before, but it broke, and I'm not sure that I trust the company. The Sunrise Systems one didn't have a radio, but it did let you program a different alarm for every day of the week.
I wake up every morning to "I Got You Babe".
My power went off during the night (yay, storm) so I only got my computer turning itself on, no music. So sad.
Right. The *saddest* song is no song at all.
why does the exchange rate suck so bad? fuck.
104 should be a post, not a comment!
She currently has the radio on loudly, and can sleep through it - I don't know how. Her clock radio has a beep alarm but you can't make it louder, which is stupid. And she's just told me she's signed up for NaNoWriMo, which I can't imagine is going to help with the sleep issue.
why does the exchange rate suck so bad? fuck.
I don't know, but it's going to start to hurt if it keeps going like this. Stupid loans in foreign funds.
107: ooh. I have a friend who went to the UK for a Master's degree and ran into exactly that problem, such that he couldn't come back to the US for a while because a salary in dollars would leave him too far in the hole as far as repaying his loans.
Then he got deported. So there's that.
Actually, I was reversing things. I meant US dollars are the foreign currency my loans are in. So I'm losing because I get US funds but convert and spend them here. This is still theoretically a problem because I converted at a better rate last month, but I have more loans and expenses coming. Repayment, fortunately, is not starting soon.
Then he got deported. So there's that.
If you get deported, do you have to pay for your own trip back?
110: you know, I'm not sure about that. He's still employed by the same company -- they have a US office as well -- so they might have paid for it.
Maybe I try to hard to find the bright side in immigration control efforts.
Maybe I don't try too hard to spell.