Chopstork

By the time you finish reading this, I will have vanished without a trace, with houseplant in hand.

And then I shall practice my ninja rolls.

It’s a cat video and a vacation video.

My new marketing campaign for what I work on at— uh, work. (see: lolcats)

A few days before I came home (Japan) mom sent me an email:

The other day we found a store who had a good Ninja outfit (they didn`t look like just cheap Holloween costumes). If you are interested in buying one remind us to take you there while you are here.

Score. Of course I got one. …But you won’t ever see me in it.

Ninja Parade Slips Through Town Unnoticed Once Again

Update: a demonstration

via laughing squid

I had a burrito for dinner. The “big burrito” at Baja Bean on the corner. I think it ties Atomic Burrito* downtown for the worst burrito I’ve ever eaten. I never liked mexican food before I graduated college (and moved to SF), except for tacos at home. Now I know it was only because the burritos suck in Charlottesville.

*Atomic Burrito does have good fish tacos though. Uh-huh-huh, I said fish tacos … and ate one too.

Well now I have to be a Cal fan. Or at least a Cal band fan.

via Snakes on a Blog

Wherever you business types out there learned the slogan, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” with attribution to Einstein or Ben Franklin, please stop using it. It’s stupid. I heard it from an important person at work recently to motivate change in the company—hmm, how convenient. And sure is catchy. …Doesn’t seem quite true though, does it?

Well it’s not. First off, neither Einstein nor Franklin said it. No one knows who said it. Someone else did the research for me here. (Hey, teh internets is better than no source at all). The quote appears to be attributed to Franklin for the first time in 2004. Dead for 214 years and someone finally decided he was worth quoting? It’s attributed to Einstein in 1998, and to some football guy, a comic, another football guy, and an author before that.

Second, the statement just isn’t true. I don’t have a copy of DSM IV (psychology bible) to look up the medical definition (some would say the medical definition according to big pharma), or a law text book to look up the full legal definition, but you won’t find any sources that use the definition in question, except for people misquoting Einstein or Franklin.

So doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results is not insanity. And vice versa is false. Someone else might have said it already, but doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results … isn’t that just practice?

Last Sunday we put couches through our upstairs window. We had to because they wouldn’t fit up the stairs. We tried. Turn them sideways. Take the legs off. Take down the banister. The stairs are just too narrow.

Really? There’s such thing as a house that won’t fit a couch? Yes, there is such a thing.

Why do the couches have to go up the stairs when they’re perfectly fine in the living room? Because we’ve had new ones picked out for the living room, and the old comfy-but-it’s-ok-if-they-get-a-little-ratty-cuz-they-got-beat-up-in-the-move ones were supposed to go upstairs where the new big TV is. But most importantly, because I’m stubborn and wanted to prove that we could get couches upstairs through the window.

Half the neighborhood (well at least five passers-by), attracted by the two 16ft ladders we rented for the occasion, came into the house to convince us that we could get couches up the stairs. Dude, if they would go up the stairs, we would have done it three months ago when we moved in. You think we’re risking our friends’ lives climbing giant ladders before we tried that? But thanks for the concern.

Plan A—a boom lift—costs a good $500, so we went with Plan B: two really big step ladders. Just push the couches up the side of the ladders, prop the top end onto the porch’s roof, and slide them into the window where someone will catch it. Awesome plan.

So we opened the ladders up for the first time. Wow, 16 ft step ladders are way bigger than I thought. Uh…Plan B might not work so well with the 2 yard gap between the top of the ladders and the roof.

If you’ve taken Error Prevention Training, remember when they tell you about saying “This is stupid,” and stopping the operation? Well, this is about when “this is stupid” kicked in. Laura and I said it out loud even. But give up? You’re talking to one of two people that believed we could get all our crap into only two ReloCubes. Did I mention I’m stubborn?

Plan C: Turn the ladders sideways next to each other right up against the house. Result: Again, way too big a footprint—can’t even fit them in front of the house.
Plan D: Stagger them. Result: The front yard is a hill; the second ladder barely keeps from tipping over.

This is stupid.

Plan E: Close one ladder and prop it against the house like an extension ladder. Slide the couches up this one while someone on the open ladder guides it. Laura’s suggestion. We were trying to avoid crushing the gutters, but it was the only option left. Sorry gutter.

Here are the results. We make it look incredibly easy, but really it was incredibly scary. Four people on or under ladders pushing a couch up to the second floor, with four people in the window blindly tugging on ropes attached to the couches … what could possibly go wrong??? Oh yeah, Dan almost getting his head lopped off when the first couch goes tumbling off to the side. Unfortunately we didn’t get a video of that, but here’s a video of the second one. And some pictures.

Thanks to everyone that came to help, even though you all told me afterward that you really just came to be entertained by a failed attempt and didn’t believe for a second that we’d actually get the couches upstairs. As with every other stupid thing we do with friends, we couldn’t have done it without you … and this probably the stupidest thing we’ve done.

Oh and thanks to Strongo who was kind enough to come over Saturday night to show me how to take out the window (i.e. take the window out for us). I would have figured it out, but it would have taken me 6 hours and I would have broken something important.