My morning of people cutting in front of me

Not sure what's going on today, but three times already today people have just felt free to cut in line in front of me.

The first time was when I was looking for parking spots this morning. There was this other older lady who was also circling around near work...so finally I see one of the garbage guys (there's a garbage processing facility near our work) leaving, but the car in front of me looked like they were going to take it. The spot was in the perpendicular street ahead of me and I had to make a left turn to get to it, and there were cars zooming in front of me so I couldn't make the turn, which was fine cuz the dude was taking his time getting out of the spot. Then I spot the lady behind me making a right to pass me to make the left. I could have taken the spot, but she looked pretty frazzled so I just gave it to her and parked in the $10 ADBE parking lot.

So then now it's noon and I brought food from home. So we have two microwaves at work, and one of them had a minute on it and the other was free. I have a glass tupperware container and it gets hot if I don't put a paper plate under it, so as I was reaching for the paper plate, this dude comes over and looks at the free microwave, and before I could say, "hey fuck you!", he opens the freezer, grabs his frozen dinner, punches five minutes in and leaves.

I'm like, "alright I have to go to the bathroom anyway." So I put my food with the paper towel on top and the paper plate on the bottom sitting on the counter and go to the bathroom, knowing that the other microwave should probably be done by the time I'm done. So as I come out of the bathroom and making a beeline to the microwaves, one of my coworker calls from behind me about some work thing and I have to spend a minute talking to him. So by the time I get back I see the microwave free. But before I get there this other lady comes out of nowhere with HER tupperware full of food and starts the process of placing a paper towel on her food to get it ready to microwave. Not wanting to just quickly shove my food in the microwave, I decide to come back here, leave my damn food on the counter, and blog about it. So here I am 15 minutes later.

...

...

Ok I'm gonna go back to the kitchen and check to see if someone has stolen my food (which is highly likely the way my day is turning out.)


Edit:
Got my food. Ate it. Drinking a Mountain Dew. Feel much better.

DIAF China!

Another week...another toy recall because China sucks. First we have to remove all our red Thomas trains, now it's Sarge from Cars:

http://service.mattel.com/us/recall/h6414_IVR.asp?prod=

I've become a social network website whore

First there was the friendster craze, so I hopped on.

Then they said friendster was out and myspace was the shit. I said, "a'ight."

Then work people got on LinkedIn. I was like, "WTF?", but got on anyway.

Then family members, who weren't on friendster or myspace, got into Multiply. I was like, "...no way." and refused to do it. But then after a few months I get another invite from my sister and I saw that she had posted a bunch of pics, so I signed up.

Then my coworker told me about facebook and how it was "white-collar myspace." Not wanting to be left out of the loop, I sign up.

And today I was googling myself and saw that this site called athlinks had a few of my old races listed under my name. Turns out you can also add friends and "rivals."

I just dive in and accept who I am.

P.S. Oh yeah. There's also flickr.

The subjunctive

The discovery of the subjunctive. It's like a puzzle piece of English that I never learned and therefore always screwed with what I thought was proper and correct in the world.

From http://www.ceafinney.com/subjunctive/

Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary defines subjunctive as:

1. adj. 2. in grammar, designating or of that mood of a verb used to express condition, hypothesis, contingency, possibility, etc., rather than to state an actual fact: distinguished from imperative, indicative.
2. n. a verb in the subjunctive mood; specifically, the subjunctive mood.

Common expressions:
be that as it may
blessed be!
far be it from me
if it please the court
if need be
truth be told
God bless [you | her | him | them | us every one]
come what may
[God | Heaven] forbid !
perish the thought
God save [the alpacas | the Queen | the King | our merry band]
suffice it to say

Taken from http://www.bartleby.com/64/C001/061.html

the forms.
"If she were coming, she would be here by now."
"I insist that the chairman resign!"
"Their main demand was that the lawsuit be dropped."

These sentences all contain verbs in the subjunctive mood, which is used chiefly to express the speaker’s attitude about the likelihood or factuality of a given situation. If the verbs were in the indicative mood, we would expect

"she was coming" in the first sentence
"the chairman resigns" in the second
"the lawsuit is dropped" in the third. 1

English has had a subjunctive mood since Old English times, but most of the functions of the old subjunctive have been taken over by auxiliary verbs like may and should, and the subjunctive survives only in very limited situations. It has a present and past form. The present form is identical to the base form of the verb, so you only notice it in the third person singular, which has no final -s, and in the case of the verb be, which has the form be instead of am, is, and are. The past subjunctive is identical with the past tense except in the case of the verb be, which uses were for all persons: If I were rich …, If he were rich …, If they were rich….

if clauses—the traditional rules. According to traditional rules, you use the subjunctive to describe an occurrence that you have presupposed to be contrary to fact: if I were ten years younger, if America were still a British Colony. The verb in the main clause of these sentences must then contain the verb would or (less frequently) should: If I were ten years younger, I would consider entering the marathon. If America were still a British colony, we would all be drinking tea in the afternoon. When the situation described by the if clause is not presupposed to be false, however, that clause must contain an indicative verb. The form of verb in the main clause will depend on your intended meaning: If Hamlet was really written by Marlowe, as many have argued, then we have underestimated Marlowe’s genius. If Kevin was out all day, then it makes sense that he couldn’t answer the phone.

Damn that's tight.

The use of me versus I

I've always been confused with when to use either word in a sentence. Apparently there are some helpful rules:

1. Finish the sentence.
"Most people write English better than me." == wrong
"Most people write English better than I." == right, because the actual meaning is "Most people write English better than I do."

So if you 'finish the sentence' you can tell which one to use.

2. Take extraneous people out.

"Molly and I/me are going to the store."
Do you say "I am going to the store" or "Me am going to the store"

Take the "Molly and" out of the equation.

"Give the cookies to Alvin and me!" or "Give the cookies to Alvin and I!"

"Give the cookies to me" is correct because "Give the cookies to I" doesn't make sense.

Adobe Day 1

Biggest change so far after the acquisition: free sodas in the vending machine.

Oh yeah baby.

BTW, rumor has it that the axe falls on Wednesday and Thursday.

One Laptop Per Child

MIT Media Labs developed a $100 laptop and plan to give one to every child in developing nations.

http://laptop.media.mit.edu/

The best part? Hand crank baby.

General Zod 2008

http://www.zod2008.com/index.htm

General Zod for President. 2008.

Halloween doom and gloom at the factory

Someone at work made this today in light of the Adobe acquisition coming up. Latest reports say it'll be sometime in late November/December. I'm not too worried, but I think some people are nervous.